Eye-opening, unsettling, worrying.

Be ready for this.

Be ready to watch it, be ready to feel unsettled, and be ready to perhaps think that maybe it's time to change the way we eat, drink, shop, and make those simple daily life decisions.

http://www.realfarmacy.com/eye-opening-six-minutes/

Rant: Flaking around

Maybe it's the heat and the humidity that's been suffocating the city centre but here's  another rant that I just can't keep to myself any longer.

Smartphones, and the destruction of social etiquette.

With smartphones, we are reachable almost anytime, anywhere and in every way. Plans and meetups however grand or casual can be formed in 2 minutes and carried out within the half hour, or changed or cancelled with just a few taps on our tiny pocket-sized devices.

But it feels that it's exactly this tight connectivity that we have, making communication too easy and too instant, which is causing a rapid breakdown of social etiquette - or what I like to call FLAKINESS (please refer to this urban dictionary link for a more all-rounded definition). This is what I mean:

1. Not responding

If I send out an email or a message specifically inviting a few people to something, I DO expect a response from everyone. I'm not talking about Facebook events that are sent out  to the masses and their mothers, nor am I talking about an invitation to an big event where headcount is flexible to the plus or minus twenty. I'm talking  about a personal, small private event, inviting only a select few, where headcount matters.  I'm not even going to demand any hellos and thank yous (even though that really ought to be a standard reply to an invitation) - but seriously, how long does it take to hit reply, and typing out a simple "yes" or "no"?

2. Unpunctuality and justifying it with a text

If we're meeting up at 3pm, I do expect one to be physically present at 3pm (+/- 5 minutes), and NOT a freaking text message at 3pm saying they'll be X minutes late or X-quarters of an hour late. The text or whatsapp message doesn't make me feel any better about awkwardly standing at a street corner or awkwardly sitting at a table by myself like an unwanted loner for 20 minutes, waiting for your incredibly SELFISH ass to trot along at your own convenience.

3. Not turning up and justifying it with a text AT THE LAST MINUTE

Quite self-explanatory, and this infuriates me a lot. How selfish can you be to cancel on someone last minute? What kind of friend are you if you just leave someone hanging like that? I won't even do that to strangers.

I'm not even making this stuff up. Very sadly, this is happening right now, regularly. Time is precious, and the last thing I want is people wasting my time. Not to mention the disrespectfulness caused. There's just no more motivation to organise anything anymore.

Related: Top 9 smartphone etiquette blunders

EDIT: I myself am guilty of all the above charges. I admit that. So change for me starts now.

Beirut: Day 6: Roadtrip to Saida!

I know how incredibly slowly this Beirut series is coming out but time doesn't grow on trees around here and when I do have time I get sucked into a procrastination-bubble that demobilises all my brain cells.

SAIDA/SIDON

Old Caravanserai

Another day-trip out to another corner of Lebanon! After breakfast we hopped into a taxi to the cola intersection (with, I must say, a really nice and dashingly goodlooking - in an older, almost silver fox kinda way - taxi driver who didn't talk much but when we got to the intersection he asked around and made sure we got on the right bus to Saida).

I says bus, but I really mean minibus, in fact what I really mean is one of those old rattly white Mitsubishis vans that can sit about 10-12 people or so if we squeeze and hold your breath (because it was pungent with body odour and second hand smoke). It was quite an experience, being the only "foreign" girls in a van packed with mainly men (who looked a bit like labourers or construction workers) and a couple of head-scarved ladies. The van dashed down the coastal highway, at speeds which, if you hadn't been on a Hong Kong red minivan, would probably have left you with more than just sweaty palms.

In the souks

We managed to arrive Saida in one piece – albeit a little shaken. We took a look at the Sea Castle, decided that we didn’t want to pay to see the interior which would look the same as the exterior, but rather wandered around the souks and wandered into free museums/monuments such as the Debbane Palace (where the entrance was just a random staircase in the souks which anyone could have easily missed), and the Old Caravanserai. We also visited the Soap Museum and learned about the significance of Sidon as an ancient stronghold for trade between Europe and the Middle East. 

But for me, the most enjoyable thing was just getting lost in the souks, children (and old men..but mostly children) yelling HELLO! at these two girls who clearly don’t look like they belong, taking pictures of friendly children (and old men), eating falafel from “the famous falafel uncle” on the roadside while people-watching, trying Turkish/Lebanese sweets from little old sweet shops run by old uncles and grandpas, asking for directions to and being personally escorted to the Grand Mosque by a random one-armed grandpa – who also gave us a silent guided tour of the place (after reminding us to scarf our head before entering the Mosque).

 The problem with having someone guide you is that when they leave you, you don't remember where things are and get lost even more easily. So there we were, two girls looking lost and out of place, going around in circles trying to find a cafe or convenient store for a drink before heading back to the bus terminus for another hair-raising journey back to Beirut. Our lost looks and maps promptly drew the attention of a kind uncle who offered to help, who even more promptly walking us to a bakery + ice-cream shop while telling us his life story on the way. He ended up treating us ice cream, éclairs and water - further contributing to the mind-blowing-ness of how kind and friendly and open people are here.

The Grand Mosque

Shisha uncles outside the Grand Mosque

Falafel!!!

Sweets of Lebanon

....sweethearts of Lebanon..!? :P

We managed to survive the minibus trip back to Beirut, and a not-so-hassle-free taxi ride back home. We even had some energy left to cook dinner for the family and recount our eventful day out.

Oh how I would love to live here for a few more months just exploring the nooks and crannies of each town and city. If only there was no war in Syria next door, spilling it's unnecessary violence across the borders, and if only I had a job that does not confined me to one geographical location. But I am grateful, nonetheless.

The Grand Mosque

Typhoon Fruit Salad

Winds outside are blowing at 120kph, the trees on the hill outside are bowing down to the world's largest tropical cyclone of 2013, and the rain its dragging along is giving the windows of this thirty-something-storey apartment building a good washing (and battering).

With all the fruit lying around the house, and with all the time I had because we got the day (or at least morning) off, I decided to make myself a healthy fruit salad for breakfast! 

INGREDIENTS (aka stuff I found at home): Papaya, peach, blueberries, mandarin
Topped with: Squeeze of lemon juice, teaspoon of olive oil, and sprinkle of cinnamon. The olive oil was inspired by randomly watching a snippet of an episode of Master Chef UK (or Professionals?)  when a girl served her chocolate pudding with a side berry salad which was highly praised for its innovative olive-oil-and-lemon seasoning. And then I added the cinnamon myself because I found some. 

And voila!

I didn't think about taking a picture (or even blogging this) until my last few bites, so this is all you got. 

(And YES I feel immensely proud of being able to think of applying the olive-oil-and-lemon seasoning to my own creations, only to be knocked down by my Chinese mother for consuming extra oil than necessary...)

(And also I kind of regret having that salad now because I had already woken up with a cough and Chinese doctors always say avoid fruits and cold and oily stuff)

But whatever. TYPHOONS ONLY COME ONCE A YEAR.

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!