Lunching with Confucius' descendent

The past few days has been a feast of food ... I'm absolutely sure of this conspiracy to fatten me. It's just food everywhere. Fr. Val went to Tel Aviv and ate at Thai House, my favourite restaurant. He bought Phad Si-Yiu (aka char kway teow) back for me .... tasted sooo good. Very well done as usual. The cooks there are all thai and the ingredients are as original as possible. Despite the cold and drizzle, I went to meet Val at Jaffa Gate to pick up the stuff. We stopped by Jacob's pizzaria for a hot chocolate just to warm up from the cold. Jacob's is run by a group of christian guys - all very young in their 20s, some are hearing impaired, all christians. I'm very impressed by these guys as they make the effort to start up a business and earn money instead of doing drugs and stealing like most other guys do. They need our support and encouragement. Yes hot chocolate and char kway teow are forbidden food, but I ate them anyway. Paid for it that same night - diarrhea.

Yesterday Val and Lee (a priest from Korea) decided to bring the australian seminarians (Steven and Michael) out for lunch ... and me being the middleman tagged along. They brought us to a korean restaurant (Michael and Lee being koreans) which I have seen many times but never entered ... mainly because I don't know korean cuisine. The food was very nice as they ordered a non-oily rice dish for me - bibimbap. It's claypot rice with veggies and beef strips. Michael stirred it up for me as I didn't know what to do with it other than eat. Michael by the way is a 75th generation descendent of Confucius who emigrated to Melbourne and is now a seminarian. I said to him "What would Confucius say if he knew his descendent is a catholic priest?" He laughed. The bibimbap was really very good ... but my tummy just cannot hold it. Immediate diarrhea. Unbelievable. After that we went to Cafe Hillel for sahlab, a turkish drink drunk in winter. It's served hot, a sticky flour-paste mixed with nuts, rose syrup and anything you like. Nice. It was strange for the rest to taste it, but a nice experience as they got to know local cuisine.

On the way home we encountered a rowdy demonstration by ultra-orthodox Jews at the Russian Compound police station and prison. We think one fo their kind was arrested and they came out to protest. Police were standing on one side of the road while the protesters stood on the other side shouting, blowing whistles and carrying banners. Got pretty tense.

Later that evening I had to accompany Fr W. Chan (visiting priest from Taiwan) to the police station as he was robbed off his cell phone. Made the report and was very impressed by the two arab policemen who were christians. We managed to converse in arabic and this made things alot easier. After that we went to Rossini's for dinner. I had my usual baked salmon (therefore no oil) and Fr Chan had a lamb fukhara (claypot). The salmon went well and I didn't suffer any consequences.

But enough of food. The cook at our place continues to make food and hang them at my door. The nuns of Mother Theresa call me over for meals. I'm being drowned by food ... I'm still 63 kg but I think I'm shrinking ... at least the pants that I bought a couple of months ago are getting baggy again. Waistline dropped from 35 to 28 size pants. But I think now it's going to 27-26 ... despite all the food I'm eating.