Weekend in Jordan
After a week trying to organize a trip to Petra from Haifa for 6 to 8 people the standard last minute slackers skipped again. I actually won’t complain, traveling at 4 is so much more convenient than more. All organization plans failed so we travelled “my” way (Habeeb said “Inch Allah” way). We drove to the border with my car, grabbed a Taxi on the other side and made our way to Kerak castle (Le Crac des Moabites) stopping on the way for some great kebabs, and nice views on the dead sea shore.
As you can see I am having fun stitching pictures (it saves me buying and carrying a wide angle lense :). Once in the castle, a nice refreshing breeze welcomed us, the scenary and the feeling was so great that we got our driver to overwait for us.
We reached Petra just for the sunset and to hear fireworks and parties starting.
We spent the whole saturday going around Petra the Nabatean city, from the gorge to the monastery, under a hopefully not too hot July sun. As my last trip there, the sky was clear blue, the site beautiful and gigantic, full of light contrasts and colors. I advise you to look at the pictures here, here and here if you have some time.
The parking (follow-up)
I’ve been quite lazy and busy so I am catching up on stories. After my car got locked into that @$#%@#$^%$ parking on Sabbat evening, I left it over the weekend in Jerusalem because the parking was reopenning only on sunday morning.
Sunday morning I took the bus to the station then jumped in an “express” bus to Jerusalem. It was obviously full, mostly with young soldiers. I ended up sitting on the floor for the 2 hours it took us to reach Jerusalem. It was a strange feeling, I was surrounded by M16s and other guns, one guy actually dropped his charger on me and spread the ammos all over the place… I am still not used to be surrounded by firearms.
The worst part of it is that I was sitted right on top of the engine, burning my .ss, and that the guy sitting next to me was impaling me with his M16 each time he was falling asleep (about as often as I was waking him up).
Once in Jerusalem I jumped in another bus and finally reached that stupid parking. I took my car, pretended to have lost my ticket to avoid paying for the whole weekend of parking and drove back to work. It took me almost 6 hours and an experience of Israeli buses, so now I kinda try to check the signs at the entrance of closed parkings…
New Old Wonder
I spent this weekend in Jordan and we happend to visit Petra on the 07/07/07 where there happened to be the celebration for the nomination of Petra among the 7 new wonders of the world. I am happy because I got a good picture, but we didn’t get to see the show because after 4 hours of waiting nothing had started. Anyways Petra was fantastic, it felt like the first time. More posts will follow if I don’t get lazy and when I’ll finish the processing of my 350 pictures and look at the other’s 700 :).
Hiking to Nimrod
After an early wakeup relative to regular weekends, I drove with Ashok and Michelle (two colleagues on temporary allocation in Haifa) to Mt Hermon area, in the northernmost part of Israel. We decided to hike from the Jordan springs of Banias up to the Nimrod fortress despite comments that it would be way too hot to leave the shade.
We suffered quite a bit from the heat on our way up (in the 40s under 1pm sun)and from the various spiky things attacking us along the path, but the hike was worth it. We finished our long, tiring and hot day in a very nice restaurant called The Witch’s Cauldron and the Milkman, and rested there for a few hours with great food.
We took the Golan heights road on the way back instead of the Jordan Valley and stopped at a few observation points to watch the scenery and ended up visiting half abandoned Syrian bunkers from the 60s. I refrained from taking pictures from the bunkers as there was modern equipment around and we were not really sure we actually were allowed to drive up there on that gravel road (we ignored the various signs in Hebrew). A gallery of pictures can found at the usual place ;).
Trying wordpress blogging
Everything is in the title, I imported my blog over to wordpress and started to play around modifying one of their templates. You can see the result here: I don’t know if I’ll leave blogger but I wanted to play around with something else.
Panoramas
Lately I have been playing quite a bit with my camera taking panoramas and testing various stitching tools. Autopano Pro seems to be the one that gives me the best results.
Here is an example with the view taken from my balcony, click on the pictures for a high resolution version, first with a single picture (horizontal angle of view 42°, focal ~47mm, close to one’s eye sees):
Same view but stitching 4 pictures (horizontal angle of view 80°, focal ~21mm):
And the same one stitching 51 pictures (horizontal angle of view 160°, 85Mpixels on the original one):
I did a few panoramas from Jerusalem as well, here is one from the Temple Mount, in the center the infamous archeological excavation that created some troubles a few months back:
I hate Shabbat
Yesterday I drove to Jerusalem with Theo and Ashok, and guided them around as it was their first time there. We had a great day under a deep blue sky, and enjoyed the city at a slow pace finishing by a tea with Niel in his shop while he was playing some Bedouin violin.
Until then everything was fine, but the following picture summarize pretty well what happened wen we headed back to the car:
It was Friday, around 7pm and the sun was still shining, but the parking lot where our car was closed at 4 because of Shabbat. After asking around to security guards and cops we found the emergency number to call, and called once, twice, etc… At 9pm after a lunch the emergency number was still not answering and there was no way to get to the car (and it was an emergency as Theo has to catch a plane this weekend). Pretty much every person that passed by tryed to help unsuccessfully. We even got the police try to contact the owner of the garage.
In the end a man that worked nearby told us that the manager will never answer and that our car was locked until sunday morning, and that it happens every week. The manager is religious and won’t answer the phone, even if this is coming from the emergency number (there is a high fine for late opening and we were ready to pay it). The man took us to east Jerusalem in a search for a taxi driver that would not observe Shabbat and we ended up getting back in Haifa around midnight.
Now I have to figure a way to get to Jerusalem Sunday to get my car back… Only good part of the adventure is that everybody was very helpful and supportive, unsuccessfully.
So I hate Shabbat, or actually I hate religious people that accept responsibilities over emergency services during Shabbat but don’t answer the phone. Just give that responsibility to someone that can do it…
Le silence
Yesterday night I went to watch a play in Haifa. It was a comedy in French, called “Le silence” (I assume none needs translation). So you are wondering if I became suddenly interested by art ? Well it was fun, but the main reason is that Kathy was the producer and the director. For those who might not remember her, she’s Pierre’s wife (a colleague), she likes to cut my hair, and she’s a black belt in karate (decisive factor), so I really couldn’t refuse the invitation.
I took advantage of it to take a few pictures 🙂
What was it this time ?
It seems that minutes ago a few Katyushas landed in the northern israel town of Kiriat Shmona. So what was it this time that decided them (it seems it’s not Hezbollah this time) to launch rockets towards an Israeli town. Press coverage here: Haaretz, Jerusalem Post (funny how the newspapers from the right report more rockets;), the news hasn’t reached non Israeli media yet it seems.
So the war everybody was forcasting for this summer is restarting ? Well I start to re-hear every loud noise my neighbours make despite the AC, I had gotten rid of that habit only 6 months ago.
Eggplant, ginger and meat
I was looking for something good to eat with pasta, and came up with this original recipe. Don’t blame me if it doesn’t taste good, but I liked it :).
Ingredients (for 4):
-1 big eggplant or 2 small diced in cubes (1 by 2cm)
-1 fresh or dried ginger root grated
-2 green chillies
-3 or 4 coarsely diced pork steaks (I tried with chicken too and it is nice as well)
-10 mushrooms cut in 2 or 4
-6 cloves of garlic finely chopped
-1 big onion chopped
-1 tea spoon rosemary leaves
-3 laurel leaves
-4 table spoons of goat labane (sour cream or curd should work)
-1 bottle of dry white wine
-350g pasta (I love Barilla)
-salt
Fry the eggplants in your favourite wok in oil, add the chillies, onions, rosemary leaves, garlic and ginger to fry as well. Pan grill your meat cubes and add them to the vegetables. Add the laurel and the mushrooms, and pour white wine until it covers the vegetables and meat (or you can do half wine half water). Cook covered under slow fire for 30 minutes. Boil water for your pasta, when you start to cook them, remove the cover from the vegetables and let the sauce reduce. When your pastas are ready, add the labane with the vegetables, stir, add the pastas, stir, remove from fire. You’re done.
You are now ready to serve it, drink the rest of the bottle of wine with it and enjoy;). No pictures I already ate all of it.
For my vegetarian friends, I am sure it will taste good even without meat. However the wine gives a really nice taste so it’s hard to remove (I need to try with grape juice once :).
About
I am a french expatriate working in the high tech industry in Haifa, Israel. Here you’ll be reading about travels, photos, middle-east politics, high tech industry, cooking, extreme sports, mmorpgs and more…
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