It's just one of those days...

Whenever life gets you down, rather than actually being destructive and breaking stuff, I much prefer keeping things intact and finding a certain inexplicable joy by watching this Limp Bizkit video.

An instant mood-lifter!

Road trip Lebanon [continued]

Baalbek

We were already quite tired by the time we got there. There were just a few shops selling touristy junk and trinkets. There was no big crowd, no tour buses. There was no magnificent entrance, or indeed anything that might have suggested that it we were about to see something quite as epic as the temples of Baalbek. There was simply a ticket gate with a few old men hanging out inside, where we bought our ticket, and (after brief persuasion) hired our guide.

I don't even know how to begin describing this place. Anything I write or say, or even the pictures, will just be a gross understatement of how incredibly magnificent the experience was. Seeing this majestic site that was built over 2000 years ago and still standing, the grandeur of the structures, the intricacies of the detailed carving in the stones, the height of the pillars still standing and the width of those that have toppled down...we would have been overwhelmed if we weren't trying so hard to decipher our guide's heavily accented and speed-of-light explanations of the various columns and corners of the place.

It also amazed me how much our guide (and historians) knew about this place, how it was supposed to look, how things were built, where things were supposed to be, the purposes of each nook and cranny, and what happened when and where. The only thing they couldn't figure out was how people back then managed to move stones so bloody huge that even machines today can't move.

The Temple of Bacchus

We took more time than the taxi driver Jaad had wanted us to take, but I still felt like it wasn't enough. I wanted to stay longer and almost take pictures of every stone and pillar and carving.

We were treated to more coffee and a tour of this tiny shop that was filled with metal trinketty stuff and "artefacts" from the site, where we politely peered around and backed away with the pretense that we were poor students. We treated Jaad to a coffee for making him wait so long for us, and to ensure he was awake enough to drive us safely back to Beirut.

Baalbek is definitely definitely definitely a must-see when one visits Lebanon. I think I can do this 5 times more and not be sick of it.

Novice Peach Crumble

I had less than half a day to 1. decide what crumble to make 2. figure out how to make a crumble 3. get ingredients for a crumble 4. make a crumble. And I had never ever ever ever in my life made crumble before. Never.

The internet! I thought. Yet each link I clicked into offered drastically different recipes for the same straightforward dessert.

So I messaged an SOS to a close crumble-maker friend, who had conveniently just typed up her personal recipe for another friend a week ago.

After a few personal alterations to my crumble-maker friend's recipe, this is what I came up with (...ok this is largely still her recipe):

Filing: 

- canned peaches (large can) x 1

- keep the syrup

- sprinkle of cinnamon powder

Crumble: 

- 1.5 cups of flour (double it if you want to make both top and bottom crusts) 

- 1 teaspoon baking powder

- 1/2 to 2/3 stick of butter

- 1 cup of sugar (depending on how sweet you like it, brown sugar is a great alternative and is less sweet)

- some loose oats

- chopped almonds or walnuts

- cinnamon powder

Instructions: 

1. Slice peaches and lay them on the baking dish, sprinkle cinnamon

(For apple crumble: Slice apples and place them on a baking tray. Bake for 15-20 mins till it softens (but don't let it get too dry!), add cinnamon powder and mix)

2. Mix together flour and baking powder and nuts and oats, then add sugar and melted butter to the flour mixture. The amount of butter would depend on how you like your crust, the more butter the more crust-like it'll be, less butter = more crumbly. Add cinnamon powder to the dough/crumble, to your liking. 

3. Preheat oven to 180C, (optional: put dough/crumble on bottom of the pan and) add filing, then cover with more dough/crumble. Sprinkle some of the syrup from the canned peaches on top, and sprinkle more cinnamon and more nutty bits. BAKE!

Best eaten with chilled plain yogurt!

Small joys

The nearly-midday sun was beating down on this cloudless June Saturday, but I wasn't sweating because of that - I was sweating because I was deciding whether to risk and wait for a taxi, or run and end up at the dentists' late and drowning in my own sweat. But there were a good number of people dotted along the road looking like they were waiting for taxis. What to do..!?

I noticed that standing near me was an old Indian couple, strategically locating themselves in the middle of a junction so that they can catch taxis coming from both streets. I walked up to them, asking them if they were waiting for a taxi, and where they were heading. "Pedder Street...Yes! Join us! If we manage to get a taxi...not so easy this time of the day."

Three minutes later, we were cruising inside a nicely air-conditioned red cab on our way to Central. It was only a 5 or 6 minute ride. She told me I had nice pedicure colour, and he told me he only flies with Cathay Pacific. I love them already. When we got to our destination, I already had my wallet out and was ready to pay for hi-jacking this old couple's taxi. But not surprisingly, the old Indian couple didn't let me pay a single cent, saying "I'm older than you, of course I pay! I'm like your father! You cannot pay!"

We got off the taxi, said our goodbyes, and respectively disappeared in to the crowd and noise and traffic.

It really wasn't that big of a deal. But that small encounter made me really happy. It's...the small things.