A kind friend sent a referral my way: someone in "fashion" who was going to be going to the US later this month for "a festival or something" and who would be meeting "cinema people" and wanted to brush up on his conversational English. She had even arrnged a fee considerably higher than my usual for tutoring.
I arranged to meet him. He had a car sent. It pulled up in front of his shop in a trendy area of town, his name in large letters engraved on a brass plaque outside. Oh my. I am buzzed in. Gowns. Gowns and fancy lights.
A very nice perosn. Very gay. I ask him what his plans are and what he wants to work on. "You are going to the States," I say. "Yes," he says, "to Los Angeles, to the Grammys. I am hoping some of the stars will be wearing my gowns." Oh my.
Being wildly uninformed on fashion and LA culture, I send emergency emails to my friend Leslie in LA, a former model. Suggestions roll in and the sessions go well. He particularly enjoys a tape of an LA radio traffic report as a listening exercise... I will be helping him practice for the interviews he expects to have and presentations he will make. Fun!
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Hezbollah has left the coalition government. Sigh. Honestly, parliament has been so ineffective anyway you have to wonder if it will make much difference. Lebanon is so pressed by outside interests. The US and France want the report on the Rafic Hariri assassination released and Syria and Iran don't, because Hezbollah may be implicated. And the fragile consociational form of government unique to Lebanon has 14 diferent "confessions" = religious parties, sharing power and, well, too many cooks. And then we have Israel, which lost no time stepping up its illegal overflights of Lebanon the day after the gov't fell. Vultures, too early for a feast.
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