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 :).

New logo

While I was in Yangshuo I had a stamp hand made by a Chinese calligrapher. I don't have much use for it, but it reminded me stupid games we had while at university with one of my reader's stamp. I figured I could also use it as a logo for my blog. Well now it's done, not that I didn't like the previous one, but I haven't been skydiving for quite a while so decided for the change. You can see a few examples in front of my keyboard below:

Sunset

The past few days we had really nice sunsets, so here today's one:

Civil war in Gaza

Well everything is in the title. Hamas is trying to take over Gaza and has been taking over Fatah positions. They are attempting a truce, but in the past month as many truces got broken that people killed.
In Lebanon yet another "anti-Syrian" lawmaker has been killed in a bombing. It seems the region is diving into the chaos everybody has been talking about for the past 6 months.
Next step is how Israel is gonna get involved in this, but last summer it degenerated in the war we all know about.
Only optimistic news about politics were the videos on youtube showing the French president drunk at the G8. He seems to enjoy himself a lot...

Longjing tea

Today I received a long expected packet from my Chinese friends Jia and Yilin (the one I toured Tibet with). During the trip I was surprised that they weren't drinking tea and asked why. They answered me that they didn't like Tibetan tea and preferred Longjing tea from Hangzhou. They promised me to send some so I would understand why :).
This morning I got the packet after 3 weeks and got 2 giant luxury boxes of 2 packs of tea showed here:


Well I'm no expert in tea but the tea leaves are from a nice green color, every single of them in perfect shape for sure manually processed, 2 cm long and not dried, and it tastes great :). I think it's gonna enter in my list of common drinks as did the Turkish coffee with cardamom when I arrived in Israel and rum, well I can't remember when ;).
There is no bug in this picture but you can see me hiding somewhere on it, looking at the higher res version is required though to find where I hide.

Dolmas 1 - Fefe 1

I am sure a few laughed at my previous post about dolmas, so here I am again on my quest to eat good dolmas. I don't give up that easily, especially when I am the one that define the rules. This time I stopped by the mall on my way back from work and bought the dolmas from the local Druze cook. I have been buying stuff there for like 3 years, and they're always good. The man is really nice, has like 30 or more years of experience in cooking dolmas, plus he let me take pictures.


For the ones that would say I gave up, don't worry there will be a third round.

New toy

On the picture with its happy owner.

Neighbourhood

This evening I walked all around the neighbourhood. The lighting was great, it was peaceful like every sabbath.


Walking further, I came up with this panorama on Ramat Eshkol neighbourhood, my home would be a bit up and farther to the left of the picture (don't forget to click on the image to see a large enough version).

Hachis Parmentier

I tried recovering from the dolmas by doing something easy but good this time: a hachis parmentier. It is made of multiple layers of potatoes puree alternated with ground meat (in my case lamb with sliced onions, garlic and oviously chillies). I melted some goat cheese with the top layer just to make it taste better once roasted in the oven. It was good, but now I feel so heavy that I can't move my ass so I'm posting pictures on the blog.


PS: find the bug on the second picture.

French politics

I have discussed recently with quite a few of you about French politics. You probably heard quite a few bad things about our new president from me, so to balance things a little bit here is a relatively fair quick guide for americans to understand french politics. It actually works as well for non amricans as american politics are more known worldwide than ours.