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.

Rant: Water it, or leave it

"If you think the grass is greener on the other side, maybe it's time to water the grass you're standing on." - Anon.

...and to that I add, you can also leave it.

I am growing increasingly impatient of people who wouldn't stop harking on about how much they hate Hong Kong [or wherever they're living at this current moment], constantly complaining about how this sucks or how that doesn't work properly or how something is insufficient or how something else pisses them off...and yet they still live here. 

We live in the 21st century now, where mobility (especially at our age and stage in life) is virtually unlimited, the choice of places to go is abounding and opportunities can be found (to a certain extent) everywhere. So why choose to be bitter and stay in a place where you hate with such passion?

The worst is when they try to impose their views on others, and they pick out all the undesirable aspects of the city, compare them to other cities/countries that have gone through a completely different history or has vastly different cultural heritage or geographical features, and then whine about how HK sucks because some aspects just can't compare.

 "I have no choice" is not a legitimate excuse. If you have the ability to be waffling on about it over brunch or over a $40 coffee or over a dinner table at a restaurant that's not a cha-chan-teng or if you are reading this, then you definitely have a choice.

So to them I say, either get out of my country, or zip it and embrace it and start doing something about it.

Peace.

"This sucks...I'm just gonna close my eyes and pretend I'm somewhere else"

Statistics

I thought these "blog readership statistics" are just me clicking on my own blog once in a while..but I got 10 views yesterday. I wonder who these people are. But no one leaves comments. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT'S IN YOUR HEAD TOO!

And yes. Lebanon posts are still on the way...slowly but surely.