Tayyib, yalla bye

Frequent visitors of this blog will have noticed a lack of new postings. Reason is that I have changed jobs which does not leave me with enough time and focus to keep up the blog. So, it’s time to say goodbye and to thank you, my reader, for giving this blog your time of day. It was a great experience and I’ll never forget the first time I was asked if I was the same Riemer as the guy that writes the blog. Ah, the sweet taste of pride:-)

Lebanon Update started in Dutch, and was a direct result from the outbreak of the July War in 2006. Later on, I switched to English to reach a larger audience. I am proud to say that this worked out well: after a while, Lebanon Update started to receive 500-700 hits per day. This might be small potatoes compared to the more professional blogs about Lebanon, but for this amateur the numbers showed that other people share my love and fascination for Lebanon.

Being a blogger was an interesting experience. Often, people would ask me how I came up with all the topics for my articles…a question that always amazed me: there is so much to write about Lebanon! Many stories have been left untold, lots of events have never been published.

I tried to limit myself to one article per day, so the articles would build up….often only to be permanently deleted because some major incident happened. All in all, any journalist suffering from writer’s block should stay in Lebanon for a while, there’s just too much to write about.

Another question people usually asked was how much time it would take to write a typical article. Without being snug about it, but the answer is that it wouldn’t take me much more than 5-10 minutes. After forming a blog entry ‘in my head’, the physical act of typing it up was simply that: typing it up. Lucky for me I am not a professional writer, so I could get away with the rough edges, the spelling errors and the grammatical mistakes that resulted from not polishing the articles.

Blogging is a highly addictive activity and it is with fear for withdrawal symptoms that I bide you all farewell. I had a great time writing the blog, hope you had a great time reading it. Tayyib, yalla bye.