1,500th post

First came the 500th, then the 1000th, now I am on the 1,500th post - and I am also very close to celebrating 8 years of blogging (the official launch was Jan. 10th 2007). I know this is the part where I should say "oh, it feels like yesterday". No, it does not. A lot of water has passed under that bridge, so many events have happened on all possible levels, and so looking back it really does feel like (almost) 8 years have passed.
So now that we have established I have grown older, have I grown wiser with it? The jury is out on this one. I still receive hate mail (mostly from advertising agencies disguised as anonymous accounts), I still get people who don't even know how to spell who bombard me with missives doubting my own intelligence level, and basically every PR agency in the land has given up on inviting me anywhere with the hope of a positive "review" (an overused word in the blogging community). So by the standards of the online community, no - I have not grown wiser: I have not become an ad agency whore, or a mouthpiece for some PR machine with the hope of getting free goodies in return to post, tweet, instagram and whatever other verb fitting here.

In short, (almost) 8 years down the line, and 1,500 posts later I am older but essentially still the same. More or less. When "Noun" magazine was launched their magnificent selling line was "ni tout àfait la même. Ni tout à fait une autre" (based on the poem by Verlaine "Mon Reve Familier"). And so this is Beirut/NTSC today, "neither exactly the same, nor exactly another".