25 years

This month once again marks my birthday and-pardon me for the melancholia-is a reminder of mortality. My days have been spent teaching and being occupied with its various trappings, together with self-absorbing activities. I feel this great restlessness within me. Play and work all we want~but ultimately what do our lives count for?

As a sharp juxtaposition to the mood of the above, here is a recommendation of the following:

Fantastic Lebanese food and great ambience, both indoor and al-fresco. The waiter who served us is an Egyptian who conversed in Arab with his colleagues. Anyway, the cous cous was good, and I highly recommend it, whether vegetarian or not, together with its accompanying vegetable stew. Art had grilled chicken which is unlike any that we have usually eaten, and you get to taste well marinated chicken more than the grill. For starters, we had grilled eggplant together with pita bread, which is sourish and raw-tasting~not bad to date. If you have an average appetite, I would suggest you give the starters a miss and go straight to the main course.

Following the extremely full but palatial satisfying meal, we took a stroll to Clark Quay and had a drink at Forbidden City. Art chose this medicine-tasting banana-melon-rum mix which he insisted was good (no comments~i swallowed it quickly with my usual strawberry magarita). Overall it was not a bad night, I will certainly return to Sanobar again to try more Lebanese cuisine, and Forbidden City has a nice layout with music that is of the right volume and type. It was so unlike Tapas, which I persuaded my JC friends to venture with me two days before as a celebration as well: extremely expensive dishes that we did not wait for as more than an hour and a half had lapsed without our order giving a show. In the end, that night, we just left and dined at Manhatten Fish Market, which---served too much fried food too cold.