Missing

So The Victoria Set is split for the moment as one is in one country and the other, home.

Which is which.

You decide.

The point is

Nour Naccache is missing Tanya Mokdad and I hope I see her soon.

Nsquared D Ghost Scam

Dearest fellows of the universe who read our blog, I have had enough.

Enough of what you ask?

I have had enough of Nigerian and Ghanian scammers who think that e-mailing me that they have paid for my ipad is enough verification for me to go ahead and send it off to Nigeria (they also add £40 for express delivery charges, how kind).

No.

This, this is starting to get old.

It was funny at one point when I started getting e-mails from Amazon telling me to post it straight away or my account would be disabled, or when they e-mailed telling me with horrendous grammar, e.g. "Contact Us" - Seriously, who puts capitals in the middle of a sentence. 

You have all met Tanios Mallah, the lovely man from our balcony interviews, well, as we have discovered, he is a little bit Nigerian, therefore speaks, a little bit of Pigeon. You can imagine the favour he did for me when he e-mailed them back telling them I was a Nigerian girl, and to stop taking me as a fool.

I thought it was over.

I really thought people were interested in my beautiful, sexy, sleek ipad, little did I know, they were not. Damn.

Tracy, my dear Tracy, Tracy was a wonderful woman, she told me all I wanted to hear, she wrote such sweet words, (as you can see below)

Little did I know, Tracy was a liar, as they all are. Damn things break our hearts without warning.
Amazon sent another 'convincing' e-mail, oh and where did they want me to send it?
Yep.
Nigeria.


Now, if I didn't know there was a 419 scamming group, sending it there would be no problem, but the pure fact they told me they paid for it, and to send it straight away, and expected me not to check my actual Amazon account, well. All I could say was...

Mr September returns with Miss Aquarius

Tanya and Tanios, both had similar backgrounds, similar names, and similar... feelings about themselves.. eh Tanios?

Getting a little bit cheeky I think.


Either way, the sun is STILL beautiful.

Mr September

Tanios Mallah, the newest addition to The Victoria Set, he came to visit and with his travels he brought his original mindset, thought processes and humour.

We welcome him with open arms.

We also thought you would like to see the beautiful sky and weather that just so happened to join us today.

Follow him on Twitter: MrSeptembr

Oh Kandie

The new phenomenon that is Kandie has hit the net.

David Walegren, an aspiring director and interactive producer at BBH London, produced and directed, www.kandie.se a series of four advertisements for Bilar, a Swedish brand of sweet.

Tracy Dariane, a student in AUB Lebanon, starred as David's Kandie.

Tanya Mokdad went out to Pimlico to meet them for lunch and grab an exclusive interview. It was definitely a struggle to get them alone, but being her closest friends, they gave her the pleasure and honour of a few words.

Check Kandie in action:

http://kandie.se/the-carburator/

http://kandie.se/shades/

http://kandie.se/he-ate-my-engine/

http://kandie.se/speeding/

Follow Kandie on Twitter:

@KANDIECARS

Follow David on Twitter:

@david161

What's eating Nour Naccache?

It had come to my attention that my friend and accomplice Nour had an aversion to Baklawa, delicious Lebanese deserty-sweets.

Our posse was in the process of devouring a whole box of them (which Angela's mother had just brought with her from Lebanon on her last visit), trying very hard to pace ourselves. I couldn't wrap my head around why that was, and I decided it was time for an intervention.

I wanted to help her appreciate these serotonine inducing treats, and I didn't think that would be too difficult, as Nour normally loves everything that has to do with Lebanon, usually in a nostalgically, subjective way. Here is my attempt, and I will not stop trying to convert her.

- Tanya Mokdad

Dearest Azza

Recently, we have been receiving comments about our very first blog post, "Statuses", it's understandable that we offended a few people, after all, we were not targeting specific people, but groups of people who have similar habits on social networking sites.

I can not claim that neither Tanya or I have never posted an update of "how low" we feel today.
Actually, we often post pictures of the food that we cook on Facebook and more recently, Twitter. I have an entire album of pictures uploaded from my phone which has no relevance to other peoples lives apart from my own and my friends.

One recent comment that inspired this blog post was from a fellow blogger, Azza:
 
Dearest Azza, thank you for your comment, however, I believe you misunderstood. Facebook, twitter and BBM are not platforms for emotions, but rather broadcast messages to your friends, colleagues, and family. Telling them where you went that day and how it was, that's okay, however, telling them that on the way there you started your period and had to stop at a gas station to buy Always ultra pad because Kotex doesn't really do the trick... now that, thats unnecessary

Public Hair Removal

Day by day, travelling through the same station, seeing the same people, having the same sandwich, avoiding the same sales representatives trying to sell you the same nail buffer (which one of us has already purchased under duress).

We become habituated to so many things that we don't even notice them or give them any significance anymore. One thing, however, that we just can't get used to is the 'Perfect Eyebrow' stand squat in the middle of `Victoria Place' in the station. We walk swiftly by and roll our eyes at the women sitting back in tilted chairs having their eyebrows or upper lips (i.e. mustaches) threaded.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, what we want to ask is: that's not right, is it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mndX851r28

Maple Syrup Diet Thoughts

After our experiences with the GM diet, we asked our friend Angela for her perspective on the maple tree and lemon syrup diet.

I think we can safely say that she was not too pleased.

One of the main points that we would like to point out is that diets do NOT work.

This is not preaching, this is truth.

Adapt a healthy living style, do a detox, but under no circumstances subject your body to your weak minds yo-yoing.

Amen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrDcjh43nME

Our Experience With The GM Diet

It should be noted that after filming this we now intend to watch Food Inc to put us off food and hopefully end our never-ending cravings.
Pray for us.

Sorry for the lack of sense within this video.
One of us was having a tough time without carbs.



Did we mention we can't drink alcohol?
No?
Oh.


http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/~jajoo/gmdiet.html
(If you dare)

Ultrasound

It's hard being pregnant.
But what's harder is knowing you missed the bin when throwing your ultrasound in the bin and a young budding creative found it whilst cleaning up the church.

Rude Companies

There are many pet peeves we share, however, one on the top of the list is rude companies who do not know how to communicate and treat their customers.

Recently, after a pleasant dinner in our home my step father ordered a taxi to take the women and the man home. They agreed on a price and all was well.

Until our friend, Angela, forgot her phone at the address they departed from.

"Would you please turn back as I have forgotten my phone"

"Yes"

He began his journey, however, half way through he heard the words "Oh the phones ringing, continue" meant as a private conversation between two customers in his back seat, he took it as "Continue to Victoria as we have miraculously found the phone we had already been looking for meticulously and thought to mumble the words "continue" to you, oh holier than thou cab driver"

As you can imagine, the miscommunication turned both parties angry when they questioned why it was taking so long to go back to the orignal house.

He charged them more for his mistake and even got his boss involved.

This made Nour very angry.

2 days later, after she heard the real story.

She boiled.

Face Exercises

With the feeling of being lazy and the fear of growing older, we decided to research Youtube for some tips on how to stop at least one of those feelings. Now the pure fact we didn't go out and buy a book or take classes shows that we opted for the "fear of growing older".

Upon our search we found this fabulous retro black&white video of a man in the tightest outfit imaginable instructing an audience about facial exercises. Here's a video of us giving it a go:

And if you too feel gravity is taking its toll, check them out.

Check out our Youtube channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheVictoriaSet?feature=mhum

Statuses

I would like to say that I have recently discovered peoples desire to write or hint about what they are going through, or even how they are feeling. But I've felt it since day one, as I'm sure many people have too. I want to be angry and call them stupid, however it is quite impossible as the entire point of the social network is to express these things.

"I am SO crazy, I just jumped into a pond RANDOMLY LOL"




However, sometimes, it gets to a point where you know more about this person through what they are saying online, then the words you have actually spoken to them.
I recently found out about a relationship I had been curious about for several months.
It started out as a relationship status change, moved on to "I don't want to talk about this pain" statuses, and now after four entire months, I know why he was in so much pain. The entire fact that I know and remember these irrelevant facts makes me respect the power of social networking and human curiosity, but at the same time, it makes me scared of it. What if I slipped up once and posted something at a weak moment. Do people still remember that status? That wall post?

Thinking about deleting my profile has crossed my mind, however, I've done it once. And in that two weeks I missed many parties, a lot of news, and too many people.
So what's next?

I'm guessing it can go one of two ways:

Either people will freak out and protest that no more information be shown.
Or, and this 'or' should come with a 'probably', our social networking will explode with new information and new mediums to show that information to the world.

Because at the end of the day, humans love to show and humans love to be seen, we will meet more people online, we will see more people online than we would in our day to day lives in person, and thus, we will show these people more of us. Because even if we try to hide it, if we are connected by choice to a social networking site, we all want the same thing.