yin to my favorite things’ yang

Remember what I said about the locals here and their lack of cheating? I’ve decided this clemency does not apply to taxi drivers. Most are happy to capitalize on a foreigner’s pocketbook, as there is no official meter. What should be a $2 fare turns into $10. Forget to negotiate the cost at the outset and beware the consequences: one driver followed us into a store and proceeded to argue about the fare (the same we had paid many other drivers on the same route), winning by sheer persistence. Rider beware.

Smuggler is an adorable pup (and fully deserves to have made the favorites list, but for lack of space), but he is still young, and young pups have small bladders and special teething needs. Coupled with his latent anger about the flight here, he makes for fun, yet sometimes stressful diversions. Whether it is chewing on the rugs, stealing shoes, needing to pee at 5am, or making a mess two hours later, he can throw us for a loop at any time.

While puppies are cute, our repairmen are absolutely not. They keep us waiting much longer than the legendary cable guy of the United States. A 1:30pm appointment means they will arrive no earlier than 3:00, unless of course you happen to be out of the house, in which case 1:15 will be when they come and go. There’s no winning. It took ten days and six visits for the plumber (trained in Italy to repair this special instant water heater) to finally provide us with consistent hot water (it would usually last long enough for him to get in his truck and pull away). Best bet: don’t count on anyone. Play it selfishly and live your life—let the repairman worry about his.

The driving in Beirut leaves much to be desired. Gone is the revered orderly conduct of the Sicilians or the gun-toting Los Angelinos. The drivers here are a childish, horn-happy, chauvinistic bunch. Horn honks are more prevalent than turn signals flashing, and tires here are quickly worn bald by middle aged men peeling out for ten meters before braking for the stopped traffic ahead. Time of day is irrelevant: 3:00am is fair game for some horn-happy drag racing in the streets behind EB’s apartment.

Most ‘fun,’ perhaps, is the workmanship. If our track record with the repairmen wasn’t enough, consider when Sammy closed the front door to head out recently: a fifteen kilogram cast iron decoration came crashing down, gouging her finger open, narrowly missing her foot on its way down. I performed some minor surgery that morning, cutting away dead skin and bandaging (thank you, EMT class of ten years ago).