Under Siege XVII - guest writer (part 2)

Hello all it's Dom here. Thought I would make a second contribution although Fi is doing such a fantastic job at recording what is going on there doesn't seem a lot to add. It has been a weird time - both of us having worked so intensely to evacuate all the Brits but we are now in a kind of lull where it is very hard to know what will happen next. Everyone is very up and down and I have to say today is more of a down day for me at least.
Spent much of the morning driving around Beirut trying to find a meeting which I was told was in one place but turned out to be in a hilltop residence about 30 mins north of Beirut. By the time I got there the meeting was wrapping up. That really annoyed me! Then I thought I would get some petrol on the way back but all the stations are now starting to run dry or at least ration. I felt very bad later on when due to a special arrangement we have with one of the petrol stations we got to barge in on a queue and fill up while people shouted and honked at us. Beirut is definitely not a pleasant place to be living while all this is going on.
But tonight I had a work drink/dinner out which was really nice. Went for an Italian (getting a bit sick of pizza to be honest) and a beer. The bottling plant was hit by the Israelis last week (obviously a big military target as people can throw the bottles over the border!) so the stocks of bottled al-Mazaa beer will start to run dry at some point. No worries at the moment as all the tourists have gone. It is sad to see the bars and cafes half-full at best, but then many have only opened up in the last week or so and it is encouraging to see people tentatively venturing out. I hear that Paddy's Bar reopened last night - a reliable source!
We are both getting a bit sick of, yet compulsively addicted to the news. This whole moral outrage over the Qana massacre seems to me a bit sad. 750 people die, almost all civilians (as well as probably around 200 Hizbullahis which of course they won't admit to). Also sadly 50 odd over in Israel, about two-thirds military. But why only cause a fuss when 65 people die in one go? It's almost as though it is OK to kill a lot of people in small numbers. I guess that's modern politics. Qana was a great place to visit - they had really worked hard on preserving the Christian shrine and it's one of those religious sites with a real frisson as it is so close to the life of Christ and clearly dates from that era. Let's hope that the site is preserved, and that the town doesn't suffer any more as the people there were more than friendly to us.
Thanks for all the supportive messages they mean a lot. We were thinking about an English pub lunch yesterday - with a pint of real ale - but settled in the end for a very nice bottle of Lebanese Rose. We are really very spoiled here in Beirut..