Super-unimpressed

Despite having heard reviews that the new superman movie Man of Steel was not very impressive, I still went and watched it, partly because I'm curious (later to have my curiosity punished by losing 2:20 mins of my life), and partly for the muscles. And I must say, the 4 seconds of Cavill's perfectly sculpted and chiselled torso was glorious. But the rest of the 2hr 22min 56secs of it was rather appalling. Here are my reasons why:

*spoiler alert*

1. It's in 3D. No explanation needed. See previous rants.
2. The "Love story" had no grounds whatsoever. All she did was listen to a short story about his past. Damn, I sure hope the people to whom I've shared a bit of my past with does think I want to start a romantic relationship with them (at least not all of them).
3. Lois Lane appears out of nowhere: after Superman just flew to the other side of the city from where she was - ALMOST AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT - and killed the 'bad guy', Lois turns up right there and then, and gives him a hug.
4. And how the heck did she climb over a glacier, wearing a beanie, in the middle of the freaking North Pole!? 
5. Ridiculously tiring 40mins solid of relentless fighting and destruction and these non-earthlings being thrown through buildings, sometimes the same building twice 
6. Music: sounded like someone accidentally sat on the bass super-booster / sub-woofer for far too long
7. Or tubas on steroids
8. CGI on steroids
9. Minimal humour - in fact the ONLY supposedly "humourous" line in the entire film (where the lady soldier comments on how she thinks "he's kinda hot") - not even funny, and came out of nowhere, like they suddenly realised that the whole film was lacking in a crowd-pleaser-funny-line, and shoved it in there without much thought or context.
10. The ideologies it is based on - nothing new (genocide, ethnic cleansing, exploiting scarce resources, end of the world...blah blah blah)
11. Russel Crowe plays the "powerful man" character - nothing new
12. THE WHOLE THING WAS JUST INCREDIBLY BORING. My (film-fanatic) colleague said it was like watching a cartoon. But a boring cartoon. He'd rather watch Dragon Ball Z.

If there's one thing that I did take away from this film is that: Krypton - supposedly thousands of years ahead of us in civilisation - was still governed by a political system that obviously failed abysmally such that it actually brought upon the destruction of it's own people. The lesson is: no matter how long we try and develop and try to find a perfect political system, we're effing doomed.

The other thing that I took away is: Hollywood films are a waste of time.

Beirut: Day 5

After our epic road trip through Lebanon (so epic that it took up TWO posts, but now that I come to think of it it was actually very leisurely just being driven all over the place), we took a break from the road-tripping and spent a relaxing day in Beirut.

After a leisurely breakfast, we went out and just walked and walked and walked a lot. Walked along the Corniche, walked along crumbly pavements and dodged unruly traffic, walked in and out of shops, including jewelry shops, christian music shops etc...and just walked everywhere. We went home to pick up J and baby E, and set off to the nearby AUB (American University of Beirut) to visit a stall at the University set up by Migrant Workers Task Force, a volunteer organisation that J regularly helps out with, at the University's "society's day" kind of thing.

For lunch we got veggie/hummus/whatever wraps and sat down looking at ambitions (and fashionable) students buzzing around a very pleasant AUB campus. When a rain cloud passed over we popped into the campus archaeological museum and nosed around inside.

When the rain stopped, we wandered out of campus and got coffee and more food at one of many hipster cafes in Hamra, watching people, playing with Ellinor, appreciating the interior decor, and just savouring vacation life in an exotic part of the world.

When father K arrived to pick up J and E, Jen and I decided to take another long walk to see the Raouche rocks again.

For dinner, we all squished into the bite-size family car, drove to Mar Mikhael, and had a lovely dinner at Seza, an Armenian restaurant. They had a tiny open kitchen, with only a few ladies working in there, but it was silent - no banging around of pots and pans, no clinging of utensils, no yelling, and no faffing about. And the food was delightfully satisfying.

Jen and I were eager to look for some live music within the thriving Beirut night life, (apparently?) one of the party capitals of the Middle East. We walked along the main road in Aschrafieh, checked out a few bars, but nothing with interesting live music. We finally came to a bar called The Angry Monkey - which was actually suggested by our hosts - and surely enough they had a 4 (or 5) piece all-dudes cover band belting out popular (yet not too teeny-bopper to drive us away) hits in the middle of a thriving bar packed with young rich hipster Lebanese. We drank, we talked, we listening to the (actually rather decent) sounds coming out of these American-accented musicians and their instruments, and tried to pursuade Jen to take the mic and guitar and jam up a tune (for she is, in fact, quite a talented musician herself).

We ended up chatting to some local Lebanese people who thought we looked "bored" (they so happen to catch us at a lull in our conversation/soaking up the atmosphere/thinking of songs for Jen to jam), nearly got coaxed into going to another club for some "more serious" partying, but instead headed home in a taxi where the driver took his daughter to work with him. A rather mellow Lebanese night out, I'd say?

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.

Yalla - road trip Lebanon!

9 Apr Tuesday

An early, self-inflicted stressful start - after a night of debating with myself and with everyone else whether or not I should extend my stay in Lebanon, I was finally unable to win the debate and took everyone else's side and took the plunge: I whatsapped my supervisor, and asked, with lots of SORRYs and WONDERING IFs and MAYBEs and BUTs and NEVERMINDs, about extending my leave for another two days (so that I could stay for another four, connecting the weekend). After a short but nerve-wrecking (2 minute) wait, he goes online, goes into 'typing...' for (what seemed like) a very long time, and finally gave me the go-ahead. I promised to be back by Monday morning (which turned out to be a failure - see "Hezbollah" post about 3 posts ago sigh), then Jen and I headed out for our Lebanon-outside-of-Beirut expedition.

Jaad our driver was a few minutes late but all is forgiven knowing Beirut traffic and knowing that he's going to be our chauffeur and guide for the next 8-9 hours. Leaving the coast and the lowlands to fester in their weekday traffic, we escaped up the Shouf, meandering up the mountain roads into the heartlands of the Druze community. The mountains also came with spells of drizzles and fog, which (optimistically speaking) was strangely romantic and mystic. And kept tourists away. At least those that aren't eager beavers like us.

The Shouf

The mist

Our first stop was the Beiteddine Palace, apparently where they host the Beiteddine Festival every summer, where performers included the likes of Mariah Carey, Elton John and Ricky Martin. It dates back to  early 19th century, and supposedly one of the finest remaining examples of Lebanese architecture - and it indeed looked very unique and well-kept and (almost) fully intact. The myriad of rooms and halls, beautiful mosaics, courtyards, ottoman architecture and the huge hammams (bathhouse) kept us busy for a good hour or so. The hammams intrigued me the most...and made me wonder whether Japanese onsens (温泉) & sentos (銭湯) and these hammams along with roman baths had any relation to one another, or what sort of cultural or historical similarities resulted in the birth of the baths, or was brought about by the love of public bathing? Hmmm..

Beiteddine Palace

Beiteddine Palace

Hammam @ Beiteddine Palace

We hopped back into taxi a la Jaad, up up up the hill and into the fog and down down down the temperature went. We arrived at the Al Shouf Cedar Nature Reserve, greeted by a couple of chatty old uncles and strong black coffee in a shabby little cabin. On one side of the cabin was a huge cabinet full of jams and honey and oil and other things in bottles and jars produced by the Nature Reserve. Jen and I were rather tempted to stay in the warm cabin and examine each jar and chat to the uncles than to go out in the rain and the cold to get lost in a cedar forest.

But we braved it nonetheless. But not before borrowing an oversized raincoat from one of the uncles.

The Cedars of Lebanon

It was wet, muddy, cold, foggy, quiet, cold, and a little creepy. There were a lot of cedar trees. But it wasn't in full bloom yet. Following very vague directions from one of the uncles and armed with our phone cameras, we set off almost speedwalking through the misty forest to find the largest cedar tree in the region/world/galaxy/universe/whatever. When another man suddenly appeared a mere 10 steps away I nearly jumped. I'm glad we snapped a lot of pictures along the way, because honestly speaking, the experience itself was a bit (excuse the pun) overcast by the weather, but looking at the photos now reminded us how worthwhile the trip was. While we couldn't see anything beyond 20 metres, and completely missed the view of the valley from the hill, there was a different sense of awe, standing alone in a quiet forest, surrounded by these huge and old and healthy cedars, breathing in moist fresh cedar-scented air, listening to the rain drops fall gently on the leaves and the ground around us.

In the misty forest

Even for us who have endured seasons of British weather, it was still too cold. Plus our shoes got shamefully muddy. So after we found the gigantic cedar tree we made a bee-line back to the cabin at the entrance. We each picked out a jam, drank more coffee, took photos with the uncles on our phones, scrapped off the mud from our shoes and set off in the Jaad-mobile back down the hill.

We made a pit-stop at the Khafraya winery, with true student/budget-tourist style tasted some free wine, used the free bathroom, and left in high spirits but empty handed. We carried on driving, stopped for lunch at a local cafe/restaurant, listened to Jaad continue telling us about his life story, telling us about his children, perhaps even trying to hard-sell his son to one of us, as we munched on our tasty shwarma and falafel.

The Bekaa Valley

With yum-filled stomachs we quickly dozed off soon after getting back on Jaadertaxi as it whizzed along the Bekaa Valley through the masses of Lebanese-Syrian traffic.

It was around 3 or 4pm when we finally arrived at the place we had been looking forward to seeing, and our final destination of the road trip - Baalbek. The incredible, magical, spectacular archaeological wonder that I was most excited about.

BUT, since I've already taken far too long to write this post already, I'm going to leave Baalbek for the next post. Haha. Stay tuned.