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876 days ago
Moving Day - Some Facts about MacDara As today is the last day on this site and the first day on my here are some things to know about MacDara. M acdara is from The North side of Dublin. More specifically he was born in a Nursing home just opposite where the Big Tree pub is on North Circular road. The nursing home is no longer there but there is still a plaque. He was saved from a possible death at a young age by a picture of Eamon De Valera The picture was hanging in a hallway of the house he lived in, the picture fell from the wall this one day and the glass shattered making enough noise to make the people in the house go to see what happened, while in the hall they decided to check on baby Macdara who was sleeping in his cot, it was fortunate that they did as they found him hanging form the cot with his head stuck between the bars choking. Some may call it propitious co-incidence but MacDara knows better. He Went to School ...
878 days ago
MacDara has a lot of friends that enter the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, some of them are UN workers, some of them are journalists and others work for NGO's. The one thing they all have in common is that they all are shocked by the poverty and they are all amazed about the amount and type of Arms. Macdara even heard a story two days ago about the remote controled sniper weapons that Fatah Al Islam was using against the Army. It seems that the army has recovered at least 10 so far, each weapon is said to cost around $40 K. Now Macdara doesn't believe the story and the weapons may actually not even exist in the world but there is no doubting that the Palestinian factions are well armed. Look here at list of sniper rifles or here for a toy one. In this post over on blogging Beirut you can have a glimpse inside Ein-el-Hilweh camp where among others are the Jund El Sham group which is linked to Fatah el Islam. Pictures are of other factions that ...
878 days ago
Yesterday there were two events reported in Lebanon that caught my attention, one was an earthquake in the Bekaa valley and the second was a brand new bridge collapsing. The two events were not connected although someone that had their hand in the cookie jar may try to suggest otherwise. The Earthquake occurred in near the town of Zahle in the Eastern Bekaa and registered 3.1 on the richter scale which is barely a shake really. However while these shakes are common enough in the past they have sometimes been seen as warnings of a larger quake. Back in 1997 some though Beirut could witness a sizeable earth quake like it had done in the past including 551, 1170 and more recently in 1956. I guess its another thing to worry about. The second story was about a new bridge collapsing , the bridge is being built in the Dahiyeh area and is replacing one that was bombed last year by the Israeli’s. What seems to have happened is that the construction company had just ...880 days ago
Yes it had taken Macdara a few days to recover form last Thursday’s Irish reception, that is because it was probably the best embassy reception to occur in Lebanon for some time. On behalf the guests not all of whom were actually Irish a big Thanks to Irish ambassador Gerard Corr and his very good Staff. Not only did they organize a great evening but they did it at a time when other embassies are shying away from public gatherings. If there was ever a time for the community to get together to let their collective hair down then it was now. To top it all off the hosts stayed long into the evening entertaining and being entertained by some of the more colorful characters living here. The evening was very enjoyable and welcome break from the more mundane worry of avoiding being blown up. The feed back for everyone that attended was good and if it wasn’t we have told them they left too early. One of the reasons for the night which was very important was trying to ...883 days ago
As mentioned previously MacDara will be having Ferrero Rocher tonight and as a result he is off tomorrow so thankfully the blog should be quiet for the next few days. He also won at the poker table last night and on one hand was a Queen of clubs away from turning a straight into a royal flush. Today the Gods (Be they Greek, Roman or whatever ones your having yourself) also seem to be with MacDara and it is a currently an above average day. On the 5 th of July this Blog will have been on the go for Two years and it that time I have enjoyed using MSN but it has also been frustrating, a while back lot of other blogers switched to wordpress and at the time I considered doing likewise. I have always been easily led, especially that time my friends decided to rob weights out of this guys garage, on top of stealing being a completely idiotic and criminal thing to do trying to steal weights must rank in the top ten worst ideas ever thought up. The sight of four weedy ...
