Erika's POV

Ichilov Sale: Two for the Price of One

2012-02-04T19:06:00.000+02:00

Imagine you are young and generally healthy. You have abdominal pain, are diagnosed with appendicitis and are awaiting surgery. You know it's a minor procedure and you expect to be dismissed from hospital within a day. Waking up after surgery, you realize you can't breath. That's what happened to Dan a couple of weeks ago.

With Dan in recovery after appendectomy followed by pulmonary edema, Tom got permission from the Army to visit him. He skipped breakfast, took the first bus-train-bus and arrived to the hospital in the morning, a bit before myself. When he saw poor Dan attached to all those needles,wires, tubes and monitors he fainted.

Now if you are about to faint, the best place to do so is in Ichilov's recovery. Seeing him collapsing by his brother's bedside, the nurses asked him whether he suffers from any diseases. Halfway down, he answered 'yes' to the imaginary question "do you feel bad?". The nurses panicked and called a doctor to come and save him. They put him into a bed on the other side of the wall, hooked him to IV and gave him a cup of tea.

Since I was the last one to see Dan the previous night and knowing that visits are extremely restricted in recovery, I offered Peter to be the first one that morning. His "you're stronger', you go" surprised me somewhat, but didn't have time to philosophize too much over it. I headed towards the receptionist and was surprised she had been almost expecting me. The story of the two brothers spread like wildfire in the entire ward. Went in, put on that ridiculous robe and shoe-thing and jumped back and forth between the boys, until Dan was transferred to intensive care and Tom recovered.

After almost a week in hospital (most of it in intensive care) and a small pharmacy in his veins, Dan could breath by himself and was finally dismissed. Tomorrow they take out the stitches.

Bus Stories

2012-01-27T20:00:00.000+02:00

With Dan hospitalized in Ichilov and crazy parking fees in Tel Aviv, last week I traveled by bus - something I rarely do.

I get on the bus near work with a banknote of NIS 100. The bus driver says he has no change. I offer to sit behind him and wait until other passengers pay and he collects enough change from them. He refuses. I ask him what should I do. He claims it's against the law to pay with a banknote more than 10 times the price of the ticket. I apologize, telling him I don't know about that law, I rarely use buses. He rants about the general lack of civilized behavior in Israel. A women gets on the bus and changes my 100 for two 50s. I'm saved.

I'm walking towards the bus station in the morning. A few meters before the station I see the bus coming towards me, after it left the station. I realize I missed it and I know it's not supposed to stop, except at designated stops. I'm frustrated. The bus stops at a red light while I am near it. The door opens and I get on. I thank the driver and ask him whether he is a mind reader. He says that's part of a bus driver's job. What a counter-experience!

Mobile Victory

2012-01-14T13:43:00.000+02:00

After reading my previous blopost on mobile phone dilemmas, many asked me what phone I bought. Samsung Galaxy S II. This was back in July 2011. While paying for it, I accidentally found out in the shop that my mobile operator is supposed to reimburse me for it because they were not selling this model yet. Called them up and indeed, after asking me to fax the paperwork, they promised to start reimbursing in monthly installments. So they said. I waited a month, two months, three months, nothing. Called them up from time to time and always got the same answer: "next month". After about three months and the same lie, I asked the rep to check what's really going on. "You are not on right plan for getting the reimbursement". I didn't know there is a 'right' plan for it, but they assured me there is. Of course the 'right' plan was much more expensive than my current plan. In fact, the data part of it was so expensive, I decided not to buy it at all and just use Wi-Fi for Internet. Naively, I believed what I was told and forgot about the issue completely.

Last month, Tom came across a ynet article on this very issue and sent me the link. No mention of linkage between plan and reimbursement, but a handy list of options for contacting the Ministry of Communications for complaints. So I complained.

My operator's call followed shortly. I repeated my story to their Nth rep and was offered all sorts of inattractive plans, with thousands of minutes and SMSs I don't need. What I do need is a reasonably priced 3G connection. This time they claimed there is no 'right' plan, but I simply don't speak enough to reach the reimbursement threshold. So now there is a threshold. After a few more uninteresting offers, I was frustrated and ready to get back to the Ministry. Just before acting on my frustration, the operator finally offered a reasonable data plan. Since the reimbursement is higher than the price of the data plan, I signed up immediately.

Started using Waze. The first time, it navigated me home using the same route I use every day. Beginners' luck. Since then I'm happily following its proposed routes. Now I just have to learn how to disable the annoying messages and understand the meaning of all the cute icons. And use all the features of my smart phone I don't even know exist...

The Fate of the Wandering Chandelier

2011-11-26T22:34:00.000+02:00

Our story begins before WWII, with the wealthy Grunstein family in Oradea, Romania, the owners of a flourishing logging business in the Transylvanian forests. They helped their less wealthy relatives, either by employing them or in more original ways, like sending a few wagons of timber to the reputed French Notre Dame school to cover the tuition fee of my mother in law, a poor villager relative, who dreamed of attending this school, but could not afford it.

The Grunsteins lived in a beautiful home and this chandelier was hanging in their living room. Then came the war with the Holocaust, where the Grunsteins perished with so many others. Gross Feri, one of their relatives and Holocaust survivor, returned (without his first wife and daughter) and collected some of the Grunstein belongings. He met Rose, another Holocaust survivor and married her. The chandelier was now in their living room, in the house where their daughter Marion was born. In the sixties, the family emigrated to the USA and the chandelier, one of Marion's childhood memories, was collected by my mother in law, the Grunstein relative who studied at the French school on their expense. At the end of the seventies, the family moved to Israel, but this time, the chandelier was not left behind. My husband disassembled it and meticulously numbered and packed each part. The chandelier, together with some other furniture and household items, was transported by ship to the port of Haifa and from there, by truck, to the nearby Jewish Agency storage in Tzur Shalom.

About a year later, my husband released the luggage, assembled the chandelier, and hanged it in the living room of their first rented apartment in Holon. Then in the second one. Then in the last one, where my mother in law lived till 2002. For five additional years, all her belongings remained untouched, until the apartment was sold and we had to empty it. My husband disassembled and packed the chandelier yet again, and the box waited patiently in our storage for its next journey.

Last month we repacked it, photographed the parts in their order of assembly and sent the box overseas by plane, to Marion in New York. The photos, arranged in a PowerPoint presentation, were sent by mail.

I don't know if and where it will be hanged again, but considering all the mileage and wandering, I can safely call it a Jewish chandelier.

In the Crusaders' Footsteps

2011-11-20T23:05:00.001+02:00

Two weeks ago, the weatherman announced it was the last chance to go on a trip before rains start. We took his advice, which proved to be both wise and true as this Saturday it's raining all day, and went on a trip with Dan (who else?) as our guide. At 5:30 AM we were on our way. The weather, and sunrise about an hour later, were no less than glorious.

It all started in ~1070 when Byzantine emperor Alexios I appealed to Pope Urban II for mercenaries to help him resist Muslim advances into the territory of the Byzantine Empire. The "Reply" email button was not yet invented at the time, but this did not bother Urban at all, as he had more important business to attend to, like figuring out what's in it for him. This took him a mere 25 years. In 1095, in one of the most influential speeches ever made, Pope Urban II launches the Crusades at the Council of Clermont.

Why did he do that? To restore Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem. Why did he really do that? To improve his own status vis a vis his fellow Patriarchs (him being one of five equals before the East–West Schism) and vis a vis Europe's secular leaders (showing them his strong influence over their people), and to clear Europe from the many knights challenging the feudal landlords and fighting each other, by channeling their energy towards a 'just cause'. To ensure a high number of participants, he granted them plenary indulgence and promised feudal fiefdoms, land ownership, wealth, power, and prestige. These ingredients yielded the 200-year, fascinating historical chapter of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, where as a conquering minority, Crusaders were confined mainly to fortified cities and castles, such as Monfort and Belvoir (Kochav Hayarden), the two main sites of our trip.

As you can guess from this photo, the way between the parking lot and the fortress remnants is quite rocky and goes down- and then uphill. Once up, we visited the dungeon, refectorium and fortifications, and indulged in the pretty sight of Kziv creek.

From there, we took scenic route 89 to the ancient synagogue in Korazinm National Park. The site is quite small, but the geometric, floral and faunal patterns carved in basalt are exquisite. During the short walk, we spotted lizards sunning themselves on the rocks and hyrax climbing the impressive Christ-thorn jujube trees.

Next, we cooled ourselves by taking the wet route in the Majrase, which means walking in the Daliot stream, amidst lush greenery and small school of fish swimming away from our footsteps. On the way out, we picked blackberries as the appetizer of our fish lunch with a view at Bet Gavriel.

Our last site was the concentric Belvoir fortress in the Belvoir National Park, the best-preserved Crusader fortress in the country. Our visit included the moat, glacis, double gates, water cistern, Jordan valley view, external barbican, warehouses, watchtowers, refectorium, church, and the neat secret passage called poterna, which for some reason appears here 90 degrees rotated counterclockwise.

From Belvoir, we continued south, following the Jordan valley and because it turned too late to visit Qasr el Yahud, we turned west and crossed the Samarian hills on the way home, with the sun setting in front of us.

What a great trip!
Check out the rest of the photos here.

Birthright Triggers Traffic Jam Preference

2011-11-05T20:29:00.000+02:00

Dan accompanied two Hungarian Birthright (Taglit) tours and he just applied for a third one. It's a great idea to bring young Jews to visit Israel and meet Israelis. This is how he met P, his new Hungarian speaking Serb friend, who just stayed with us for a week, after a second tour to Israel, accompanying Holocaust survivors. Dan took him on trips to the North, South and [twice to] Jerusalem. They went to the beach, art exhibitions, Bauhaus architecture walk in Tel Aviv and Dan's favorite ice cream place. When Dan was at school, I showed P around the hi-tech area where I work, the promenade along the Yarkon, and then we walked around the Tel Aviv port, where he witnessed the season's first real rain and a wedding ceremony led by Rabbi Lau. After finishing his BA in Communications, P plans to make aliyah, learn Hebrew, enroll in the IDF and study for his MA at the Tel Aviv University. Zionism in motion. Israel needs young individuals like P, and P needs a place where he can build a happy, meaningful life.

What's the thing with traffic jams? Well, Dan needed my car for the trips and so I took the bus to work and to return home. I hated the bus rides. They were long, noisy and shaky, and brought back my old motion sickness. I sat near the same aging, religious woman, whom I saw on the same bus a couple of months ago, when I took the bus to work for a different reason. She reads the same prayer from the same overused book, for who knows how many years. But hey, at least I had a seat.

The next day I got my car back. On the way home, while crawling, as usual, in the heavy traffic on the Ayalon highway, I realized I much prefer the traffic jam in my car than the bus ride. A young Serb Jew decides to participate in a Birthright tour and I realize my preference for traffic jams. Butterfly effect.

The Phantom of the Choir

2011-10-20T12:18:00.000+02:00

In a previous post, I mentioned singing in the choir of the Jewish Community in Oradea. In fact, this period is worth more than a mention, as I sang there ever since I remember myself as a little girl until I left Romania in 1981. This choir attracted many young (and old) singers along the years, while its sheer existence was and still is a miracle, after most Jews left Oradea after WWII and gradually till the revolution in 1989.

I loved being part of the community, singing songs on festivals and holidays for the community members, and touring on Hanukka and meeting Jewish youngsters from other Transylvanian cities. One of my strongest memories is the Kol Nidrey tunes we sang with the cantor and pipe organ on Yom Kippur. As if I knew how much I'll miss this, I recorded the entire evening on a casette, but with my moving to Israel, the casette was unfortunately lost.

During the last 30 years, I sang some tunes for my children, until I myself questioned the existence of these different tunes in the gloomy past. It felt like I was the only one on Earth still singing them. Last week, a choir member whom I haven't met for 30 years, came to visit and brought me a CD recorded by the choir. What an intravenous shot of pure nostalgia!

Thanks to my recent choir experience and learning, I am now a critical listener. I can hear the imperfections in the singing, breathing, attacks, scooping and the cover-ups by the accordion accompaniment, but that is not the point of this music. It brought back one of my best childhood memories and for that I am thankful.

A New Type of Present

2011-10-13T15:50:00.000+02:00

The time between end of August and end of the year is full with family events and Jewish holidays. It starts with our anniversary, then our birthdays, the high holidays in September-October, the children's birthdays, and finally Hanuka and New Year. Naturally, on some of these events I either get or give presents. For my birthday this year, I got lots of wishes on Facebook, I held a modest celebration at the office, dined in a French restaurant with my family, and got flowers and a "present" from hubby.

In case you are wondering what the quotation marks stand for, here is the story. For some time now, my gym sneakers were falling apart and I needed a new pair. Since I hate sports (yes, all sorts of it), I don't invest a lot of thought in sport apparel, I usually buy the first item I see and get over with the boring task of shopping for it. This time, hubby convinced me to buy myself a better brand than I originally planned. So I went to the Saucony shop, tried some models on the treadmill and finally bought a lightweight pair. The actual present was convincing me that I don't need to be sporty to allow myself and enjoy quality shoes. Not very romantic, but clever.

Why do I frequent the gym even though I hate sports? Self-discipline and the knowledge it's healthy. And BTW, the dinner at the French restaurant was not up to our expectations.

A Walk for a Blog

2011-09-03T21:02:00.003+03:00

Happy that another work week came to its ending, I skipped my planned gym training and drove to the railway station to pick up Miriam. Inspired by a blogpost of hers, we have arranged to walk in Tel Aviv and compare the resulting blogposts. You can read Miriam's here.

Since we were on "my territory", it was my task to decide where to walk. After consulting with the "natives", I followed their advice and drove us to a parking lot next to the Opera Tower. No, not the opera, the Opera Tower, where the opera once used to be.

We walked on the beach promenade towards Yaffa, where I was told there is an emerging 'scene' in the Flea Market area, especially on Thursday nights. What I wasn't told was the fact that this particular Thursday was the last day of Ramadan, a huge Muslim celebration. It seemed like the entire Muslim population of Israel was barbequing and picnicking in the beach park, in extended family formations, among considerable amounts of trash, scattered throughout the place.

The walk was quite unpleasant, not only because of the crowds, but also because of the proximity to the crawling traffic with all its side effects. We passed the Jaffa Clock Tower and turned east (left) towards the Flea Market. We indeed saw quite a few restaurants and bars (aka the 'scene'), but when we arrived, the shops were about to close and the restaurants still relatively empty. Israelis tend to hang out much later. We browsed some real flee market stuff and visited a posh two-story design shop with pricey furniture and household items. Carpet and rug stores abounded.

After surveying the eateries, we (or was it just me?) decided to have a light dinner in an unpretentious, kiosk-like beer garden (that's what they call themselves). We waited a long time for our orders. The shredded-ice lemonade was way too sweet and had an artificial minty taste. My frankfurter was OK, but Miriam complained about excessive amounts of salt in her unevenly tossed salad.

Since Miriam is the more serious blogger among us, she came well prepared with a small notebook and a pen. While waiting for our food, Miriam wrote something in her notebook and I was curious to know what, but was too shy to ask. When done, I persuaded Miriam to buy some kürtős kalács to take home and I took an unsweetened decaf cappuccino to balance the excessive sweetness of the aforementioned lemonade.

While sipping my cappuccino on the way back (this time we walked closer to the water, but it was still unpleasant), I was wondering whether this scene is the same in neighboring Arab countries in terms of crowds and fashion-many Muslim women were wearing pants and long sleeve pullovers and sarafans and head scarfs-in this humid heat. I also thought how ignorant we are (or at least myself) of Muslim holidays, although we have a large Muslim minority in the country.

A topic that came out during our conversation with Miriam, was the music we listen to. IMO, one can know a person better by knowing what genres he or she likes to listen to. In the car, on the way back to the station, I made Miriam listen to Hungarian operettas-the genre of my childhood.

Priests in the Temple of Solomon

2011-08-27T20:20:00.000+03:00

After a certain age, when you either possess or can easily buy any normal household or personal object, new experiences are the best presents. What I mean by experience is a trip, a good meal in a restaurant, a visit to a museum, a theater play, sunset with a glass of wine, and so on, (you got the idea by now), in short, an activity you usually do with your loved ones. With the years passing by, material presents become smaller and more symbolic, or consumable (like a box of fine chocolate or a bottle of drink) making room for the experience-type presents.

With the occasion of our 31st anniversary, we got one of these great presents from our son, Dan. As you may already know, he is studying towards a tour guide certificate, an almost 2-year program, and is already offering monthly trips to the GLBT community. He loves history and archaeology and is one of those guides with Bible in one hand, pointing to the subject matter with his other hand, while reading the relevant passage from the Bible and enlivening the ancient text with [sometimes humorous] contemporary comments. He prepares extensively for each trip and always has a binder full of relevant illustrations, time lines, facts, diagrams and other self-made educational materials. I joined a few of his trips and enjoyed immensely. But of course, I'm biased.

Just before 10 o'clock in the morning, we purchased our tickets and were the first to enter the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, "the largest cultural institution in the State of Israel, [...] ranked among the world’s leading art and archaeology museums". In the Archaeology Wing, we got a thorough stone age to Ottoman period retrospection, while browsing the exhibits found in the other locations of Dan's yearly trip program. We saw the Dead Sea scrolls in the Shrine of the Book and finally, after a well-deserved coffee break, the impressive Model of Jerusalem in the late Second Temple period, which completes the story that starts at the City of David, up to 66 AD.

"Yes, I am a Jew and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon." (Benjamin Disraeli)

The Quran and Me

2011-07-23T23:57:00.000+03:00

Car radios are now built in (which is a good thing), but are much more complicated than they used to be (not necessarily a good thing). After getting my new car, my husband set for me the radio stations I use to listen to on my way to/from work. But the stations did no stay put. Every few minutes a TP Search was initiated and the Quran station popped in. After fighting it for a couple of days, I decided to listen to some CDs. Same happened and something even weirder, the Quran station would start at an increased volume.

Told hubby exasperatedly what was going on. "Maybe you should convert to Islam and enjoy it", came the intended-to-be-funny reply. The leasing company rep said there is a setting somewhere in the menus to disable this annoying feature. The way he dealt with my previous questions was reading the manual in front of me and then explaining to me what he read - perhaps suitable for an illiterate customer, but I can read by myself, thank you very much. So by now, we knew there is a setting and it took my husband some more time to set all the stations again in two different configurations and disable the TP Search.

So long Quran station, hope not to meet/hear again.

Mobile Help Needed

2011-07-09T19:46:00.000+03:00

"It's difficult to get used to a new phone after a certain age", "You can't afford not having a smartphone, you work in hi-tech for God's sake, it ruins your image", "Stop using gadgets from the 70s, they make you look old" are just a few comments shot at me since I told people I need a new mobile phone.

I am a proud owner of a Nokia 6310. For 9 years. In mobile technology years, that means an eon. It has a monochrome display, but synchronizes with Outlook, where I keep my contacts and calendar. I would have used it for longer, but its sync application doesn't run on Windows 7, the operating system of my new PC at work. Plus, I'm getting a new leased car and I don't think it's worthwhile installing the old hands-free in it. On the other hand, the phone doesn't have Bluetooth to communicate with a headset. Since I can't synchronize the phone or use it in the car, and it's 9 years old, I decided it's time to replace it.

But with what? The possibilities seem endless. Some swear by Apple's iPhone, some by Android-based smartphones. But do I need a smartphone at all? I made a list of useful features, but haven't found any unbiased site or person to tell me what phone I need based on that list. Here goes: large screen and buttons (no qwerty keyboard), thin, updated design, sync by cable (for contacts and calendar), Bluetooth with headset and hands-free, decent camera, WiFi, GPS with local maps.

To complicate things even further, in September-October, my employer will sign a new agreement with one of the mobile operators that will possibly include some good models and plans for employees. And the iPhone 5 will be released, should I decide to go in that direction, and the iPhone 4 will get cheaper. So maybe I should buy a cheap model now and go for a more serious one in a couple of months?

I'm drowning in options. Help!

The Real Paris

2011-07-09T16:46:00.001+03:00

I am a big fan of Woody Allen. So is S, my former New Yorker friend. Natural progression: last week we went to the cinema to watch 'Midnight in Paris'. The reviews described the movie pretty accurately. It is a very aesthetically pleasing concoction of romance, comedy and fantasy with an underlying message.

Watching the movie urges your soul to board the first plane to Paris to experience all this beauty in person. And then comes the mind and asks whether you will see the same beauty as in the movie or rather this?

Upbringing vs.Personal Responsibility

2011-06-25T19:26:00.000+03:00

A new singer candidate for my choir: "I regret stopping piano, but my parents didn't make me practice". Hey, that's my line, but I don't buy it anymore. It's so much easier to blame someone else or find excuses than acting upon something we consider important.

I hear adults in their 50 and 60s blaming or praising their parents/teachers/siblings for the way their lives turned out and I can't stop wondering where is that elusive boundary between upbringing and the choices we make. Unlike canned food, upbringing doesn't come with an expiry date. Its impact diminishes with time, making room for personal responsibility. Or does it?

Over-engineering

2011-06-09T00:15:00.000+03:00

For some time now, I was looking to replace my 30-years old Kenwood Chef. It was a great mixer (still is) but it got old and noisy and there was no food processor matching this old model. I looked into the separate mixer (like KitchenAid) and food processor configuration, but since I keep the mixer on the counter-top, the all-in-one idea makes a lot more sense to me. So naturally, when I saw the new Kenwood Chef models in the importer's glitzy showroom, they felt familiar and reliable, just like my battle-proven model and I decided to buy one. Got a good price and took a unit from the importer (same place I bought the previous one 30 years ago) the same day.

When chefs use food processors on cooking shows, it seems so easy and convenient. You place the food in the bowl, close the lid and rotate a dial to turn on the machine and set its operating speed. It looked as even a person with two left hands like me can use a food processor with no difficulty. Although I'm a novice user of the new machine, I assumed that all Kenwood products are easy to use like my old mixer, so I made a brave move and planned the Shavuoth meal for 8 (invited some friends over) around the new food processor attachment. This decision is actually in line with my risk-taking cooking policy of using my friends as guinea pigs for new dishes I prepare.

So I over-chopped some onions (common beginners' mistake), as I don't yet have the right correlation between processing time and food granularity. I also used the food processor for mixing and learned it would have been better to just chop the onions and use the K-beater for mixing. But these are minor issues. Apart from being too small, the major problem of this attachment is that it can be mounted on the mixer body only in a certain hard-to-achieve position. Also, it is over-engineered for safety: the lid cannot be open while the attachment is installed on the mixer, even when the power is off and there is no risk it'll chop your fingers. If you need to taste what's inside and add ingredients accordingly, you have to remove and install the attachment for each tasting. Obviously, the Kenwood engineers haven't heard of usability tests.

Timisoara Reunion 2011

2011-06-03T21:36:00.000+03:00

When I lived in Oradea (sometimes I wonder if I ever did), youngsters from Transylvania studied either in Cluj, or in Timisoara, as only these nearby cities had universities (a few studied in Bucharest or Iasi). Timisoara also had a rabbi: Dr. Ernest Neumann. Being a larger city and having affiliate citizens (as they now call these past students), Jews from Timisoara are a large, organized group, thanks to Getta, the late rabbi's daughter, who maintains a site and publishes a monthly newsletter, featuring Jewish cultural events and related activities.

She was one of the main organizers of the Timisoara reunion, held last week in Haifa. My husband studied in Timisoara, so we decided to participate, although I knew I wouldn't meet many acquaintances there. Since I had a plan to organize a reunion of Oradean Jews (but on a much larger scale), I decided to make this a learning experience.

The organizers invested a lot of time and effort in this meeting, but they lack practical experience in logistics, or so it seemed from the many organizational glitches. With more than 200 attendees, the site was in a busy Haifa location with no parking facilities. After a sweaty 15-minute walk, we arrived, got our name tags, a booklet and CD (was not clear what is being given out and where), and found ourselves in this crowded restaurant garden, with no mingling area and appetizers. There were no seating arrangements, so it took a very long time and some nerve-wrecking moments until everybody was seated. The speeches went on for too long, while the crowd was already impatient and hungry. The food was buffet-style, a difficult arrangement for the older participants (there were plenty in their 80s). Finding it unpleasant to stand in line for food, I never made it to the buffet. My husband brought me a plate with some salad, meat and petrous rice. Getta made a very nice movie for the occasion, but the screen was small and not visible from all tables.

Seeing old friends beats technicalities, so people really seemed to enjoy the reunion. I met some fellow Oradeans, Daniel Klein, Getta's son, and the reps of two Romanian organizations in Israel I didn't know about: former Labour minister Micha Harish of AMIR and Dan Krizbai of ICR, and even the rep of Radio Romania in Tel Aviv, Dragos Ciocirlan.

The cost per participant was a mere NIS 170 and the remaining budget (!) was donated to the Jewish cemetery in Timisoara. The well-meaning organizers are maybe not the best logistics experts, but for sure they are financial wizards.

Social Skills

2011-05-22T23:08:00.000+03:00

There were two interesting ideas in the Friday newspaper. Columnist Yair Lapid righfully said we (Israelis) are much better in making others listen to our ideas than listening to others. Columnist Dana Spector said if we don't learn from our mistakes the first time, we should at least realize there is a pattern when the same situation happens again, and use the opportunity for soul searching on why we act the way we do.

How is this related to me?
Recurring pattern 1: too much information

I suppose I'm not a great listener myself, but with a twist. Instead of being judgmental and pushing my own agenda, I am first to admit that different things are not necessarily good or bad, they are simply different, but I feel an urge to offer advice or help. It's hard for me to get the idea of people telling me their problems or difficulties just to vent and get my empathy, I always jump in with some [uncalled for] advice. Even with the best of my intentions, people are not interested to hear my advice.

Recurring pattern 2: barriers

I know I am also distant, don't open up easily to new people in my life, unless I trust they will stay and our relationship will become meaningful with time. But how can it become more meaningful if I can't overcome my barriers and give them a chance?

To put it succinctly, I am simply unable of saying the right thing at the right time. I wonder when did I lose my social skills or is this a sign of aging? Do I need professional help?

I Am My Own Best Doctor

2011-05-14T22:57:00.000+03:00

Turns out I was right when I asked my GP for the blood tests mentioned in a previous post. Some test results were way outside the norm, so I made an appointment to hear my GP's opinion on changing a drug dosage to address the problem.

He is usually overbooked and spends less than 10 minutes per patient, but had enough time (out of my 10 alloted minutes) to discuss the rightfulness of the doctors' strike and show me his wife's payslip (she is also a doctor) to prove his point (As an aside, last time he ran for city council). My lab test results were less important, how I feel was completely unimportant, his only advice being to keep a stricter diet. I asked for a second opinion (luckily I have a doctor friend) and got completely different advice. Then I set my own dosage and started to feel better within a week.

Coming to think of it, in more than 10 years I am this GP's patient, he examined me maybe a handful of times, out of which twice he took my blood pressure (always perfect BTW) to comply with a health fund regulation. He either looks at papers I bring or at the monitor. He is very helpful with paperwork, though, unless it costs the fund an extra buck.

'Perfect Balcony' Project

2011-05-09T15:57:00.000+03:00

The house of my childhood had a fairly large garden, dominated by a majestic nut tree and populated by lots of flowers, peaches, gooseberries, grapes, strawberries, table with benches, resting chairs, cats, dog and occasional chicken.

I never had a balcony before, so planning our perfect balcony was one of my challenges after moving into the new apartment 2 years ago. My wishlist inventory included an Armenian coffee table (lower that eyebrow, I'll explain) with 2 wooden resting chairs complete with footstools and matching cushions, a small herb 'garden', a griller, a climber, a mini-citrus and wind chimes. I started with much enthusiasm, decided to report successful completion in a blogpost, and even took pictures along the way.

A colleague of mine and proud owner of an ample collection of Armenian ceramics, introduced me to this world. You'd think Armenian ceramics are to be found in Armenia. Wrong. Turns out there are none there (I can attest the weirdness), and the best place to buy them is ... Jerusalem. If you still don't believe me, just google it up! The few rival Armenian ceramic artist families in Jerusalem claim their pieces are hand made, while the others' are mass produced. I just trusted my colleague's judgement and went to visit Arman Darian's shop on 12 Shlomtzion Hamalka st., Jerusalem. The shop was crammed with lots of pieces, one more beautiful than the other. I couldn't decide which way to look, it felt like being in Hansel and Gretel of Armenian ceramics.

There was progress and there was regression. The herb garden was nice, then some herbs died. The wooden resting chairs and matching cushions are in place, but without footstools. The Armenian table by Arman featuring the seven biblical kinds [of crops in the land of Israel] was beautiful, then the varnish popped and 2 tiles cracked. The griller is there and works well and much. Never got to the climber, mini-citrus and wind chimes, but have a small olive tree in a pot.

After more than a year later, I realized I won't achieve perfection (how stupid of me to even assume I would), as the balcony project is more an ongoing process than a task with a distinct endpoint. Today it's time to decorate the balcony with flags for Independence Day. Happy birthday, Israel!

Market Dilemmas

2011-05-06T17:51:00.000+03:00

For months we are complaining about the rising vegetable and fruit prices in the supermarket. Unfortunately, there is no market in Holon, the closest being the Carmel in Tel Aviv. As a new emigrant, this long and crowded noisy-smelly strip of oriental mess appealed to me, but I haven't been there for many, many years.

A friend who buys there often and knows the worthy stands, offered me a guided shopping tour. Armed with a short shopping list and 2 empty bags for the catch, I met him there early in the morning, to avoid the Friday crowds.

(1) Turns out that early was not early enough to find a parking spot along the sidewalk, but too early for fresh merchandise, that just started to be unpacked.

(2) The prices are better than the supermarket, but the difference is 'eaten up' by the parking fee, especially if the quantities you buy are for less than a regiment of hungry soldiers.

(3) On one hand the place is an anti-hygienic forest of tin huts, on the other hand the mess of underwear, carrots, baked goods, fish and beads living in charming proximity makes is authentic. Your shopping experience depends on they way you decide to perceive it.

(4) You can shop efficiently, visiting your regular stands owned by the merchants you befriended during the years, or wander aimlessly and experience sights, sounds, smells and tastes. Or combine the two. Whatever you chose to do, my friendly advice is stop checking the prices of items you bought, for sure the nectarines are being sold for 2 shekkels less per kilo 3 stands away. Well, actually the ones you bought seem slightly larger now...

And my bonus for today's market visit was watching the surprise flyover rehearsal for Independence Day.

Last Night - The Movie

2011-04-19T21:18:00.001+03:00

Friday night Dan invited friends over and told us in advance we are personae non grata in our own house. So I picked up the phone and invited friends for a night out. I thought about dinner and a movie. I never considered going to the cinema as spending quality time with someone, watching a movie is basically an individual experience, even though physically you are not alone (hence the dinner). Being a very busy woman (=she doesn't work), our friend S just told me what she doesn't want (restaurant), so I ended up picking the place, suggesting 3 movies and ultimately ordering the tickets. The name of the movie (Last Night) made the ordering process kind of comic, as the name kept appearing on the web form and confusing me - what do you mean last night? I want tickets for tonight.

To combine the no-restaurant request with a movie, it was finally decided to go to a VIP movie. This means the price (aka a small fortune) includes unlimited refreshments and drinks for 30-40 minutes, a huge screen and only a few rows of chairs, super-comfy armchairs with electrically adjustable backs and legrests, lots of place for your stuff, and even blankets.

The movie itself was aesthetically pleasing, but that's about the only positive thing I can say about it. In my view, a non-comedy should have a message to convey, something new to teach you about life, or yourself, provide food for thought. Yet, the only thought I had after watching this movie was 'boring'. I learned nothing about infidelity - definition, regrets and impact on relationships are not only individual to a person or couple, but also a matter of geography (I bet the French perceive it differently), so basically no rules apply.

Is it necessary to make a full length movie to tell me that?

Chametz of the Soul

2011-04-16T17:09:00.000+03:00

Sometimes in a shop or restaurant, the salesman/waiter addresses Israeli clients (me included) as 'chevreh' (pals, comrades, mates, buddies, amigos). My sons detest my reaction to this. They claim I'm not cool, unfriendly and I should just let go. The poor guy is just trying to be friendly. Sorry for my old fashionness, but the person is supposed to serve, not befriend me. I just want a normal service provider-customer relationship.

This goes on on a national level as well. In the last few days, there is an annoying commercial on the radio about Elijah (the one we open the door for on Passover eve) waiting for the children at Mini Israel, together with Moses, Pharaoh and all the other 'chevreh'. Respect!

Another pet peeve of mine is also related to the media. From time to time they cover criminal activities, crime is sensation, and sensation apparently sells. But the way they do it, the local Mafia families are presented as celebrities. We know their names, when they go to jail, when they are set free or arrested and interrogated by the police. Every such mention in the media makes them even more popular and fearsome in the underworld. Please, save us the details. We have the right to know, not the obligation.

Just some Passover soul cleaning.

Falling Apart

2011-04-05T21:56:00.000+03:00

We switched to daylight saving time, but my body is still lagging behind. For a few weeks now I feel in a rut and have this heavy, yet-another-workday feeling in the morning. My greatest wish was having breakfast with a human being before leaving for work, instead of just rushing out the door into the eternal traffic jams. Unfortunately I am the last one to leave the house in the morning, except for Venus the cat, who apart from being cute but not human, doesn't feel like socializing in the morning.

Then, out of the blue, I chipped a tooth and was on painkillers until my dentist could see me. She explained that the 'crater' is so deep that the nerves were almost uncovered (hence the painkillers). I can either have a root canal treatment and crown (or cap), or and extraction and implant. I chose the first option and asked her why this happened. "Fatigue of material", came the laconic answer. With everything feeling difficult and slow, I decided it's time for hypothyroidism blood tests.

For years, we are having a widowed relative and his family for the Seder (Passover ceremony and dinner, usually celebrated in large family gatherings). I always felt this is something I have to do, so they are not on their own for the holiday. Onto this steady platform, I used to invite more friends and relatives, so they are not on their own either. This year, the widow's daughter and my son cannot leave their base and he decided there is no point in celebrating without them. They are not coming. My other son threatening to celebrate with friends, I'm certainly not going to bother for just the two of us. Turns out without these relatives, the usual holiday celebration is falling apart. I realized THEY did us a favor all these years and not the other way around. Leaving my Polishness behind, I had my cousin invite us for the meal. They were invited themselves, but didn't want us to be on our own (sounds familiar, doesn't it?).

Time for some spring buzz taking over the falling-apart days.

First Arab Democracy?

2011-03-20T00:29:00.000+02:00

A Tunisian vegetable seller sets himself on fire, and next thing you know, the Arab world is trying to shake off its tyrants. Some left, some are more stubborn.

As always, we are posing the eternal question: is this good or bad for the Jews? According to Thomas Friedman, democracy is supposed to be good for peace, that's why the West wants to see democratic Arab states (while more realistic Israelis praise stability), but is this going to happen?

At the beginning of the revolution, we saw and heard middle class Egyptians claiming that anti-Israeli propaganda is an insult to their intelligence, they are not going to attack us, they have enough problems of their own. So why are we not convinced? The well organized Muslim Brotherhood (and others) called for a reassessment of the peace treaty with Israel. Mubarak was denounced as a friend of Israel, gas export has stopped and the Egyptian embassy in Tel Aviv stopped issuing visas for Israelis. The military of this 84 million neighboring nation (we are barely 7) has top notch American gear and is constantly training against the IDF. Each year, one million new Egyptians join the ranks of the unemployed and corruption is wide spread. Turning Egypt into a democracy is a long and painful process, with a fair chance for the masses to loose patience and faith in a better system along the way. When that happens, self-preserving power can conveniently point at an external enemy (Israel) to divert attention from real problems (as countless examples in the history of nations teach us), while extremists and fundamentalists are ready to offer a better 'solution' to the impatient mases.

In the mean time, gas supply has resumed and the Egyptians intercepted truckloads of weapons from Sudan meant for Hamas in Gaza.

First Girlfriend

2011-02-19T18:45:00.000+02:00

For some time now, I hoped Tom (20) will have a girlfriend. I thought how wonderful it would be for him that in addition to being mom's cuddly baby and the most loving son in the whole wide world, there would be a girl to love him for being this honest, intelligent, loving, compassionate and humorous young man he is. I would ask him from time to time what's going on, knowing how shy he is. The answers were evasive, usually around 'there aren't any nice enough or smart enough girls where I hang around', until one day, while spending quality time together, he told me about O, his first girlfriend. He was afraid I'll ask many questions. I didn't. I was happy for him. But the change was so sudden that I didn't have a chance to get used to my new status as woman number 2 in his life. He spent more time with her than with us, which, coming to think of it, is actually quite logical, but neither my nor his logic were fully functioning at the time. I guess I made some inappropriate comments until his 'you are not in competition' made me realize my mistake.

Judging by the short time I saw her (a few minutes one morning and evening and once for lunch), O really seems a nice young woman. She must be if Tom likes her. I know there will probably be other girlfriends, so there's no point getting too involved. As always, I try to support him as much as I can (with phone calls, lots of home made cookies, stuffed eggs and errands), I drive him and change my schedule around his, whenever possible.

Tom got a 2-day vacation starting tonight. He is going to see O first, then come home tomorrow morning. I'm cool with it. I know this makes him happy. Isn't this what we really want for our kids?

Identifying

2011-02-04T20:37:00.000+02:00

Some people taste a dish and can identify its ingredients. Some listen to music and can identify the composer, the performer and the conductor. Some look at a product and can reverse engineer it.

We are having a late Friday lunch in our kitchen. Strange squealing-like noise is coming from the walls. "Our downstairs neighbor is trying to drill a hole in a concrete wall, with a screwing machine attached to an electric drill with weak batteries", says my husband, Peter. He despises using the wrong tool for the job and almost considers offering the neighbor his hammer drill. When he needs to do a job, he first makes sure he has the right tool for it. If not, he makes or improvises one.

Peter is a tool collector. He has tools for every possible profession (even defunct ones) and task. He respects his tools, including those that belonged to his late grandfather. With his amazingly good hands, he can fix everything around the house. He enjoys it too. We enjoy the results.

The Duty to Enjoy

2011-01-30T19:40:00.000+02:00

A colleague of mine was talking for a long time about joining the Pilates class at the gym. After she finally made it (to the one class I missed), I asked her how it was. "I'm not going again", she said. "I didn't enjoy". What a novel idea, I thought, enjoying an activity right from the beginning, before you get to a certain level.

In a TV interview about private high schools, a middle-class father explains: "my daughter didn't enjoy going to the [public] school, so I moved her here". I never thought about high school as an enjoyable experience. You go because you need education and because your parents expect it from you.

Our jobs are not merely a means to survive, we enjoy our challenging tasks and status at work. Life is short and we want to enjoy as much as we can right now, not later, after we finish our duties.

With this inflation in enjoyment, sometimes I wonder what happened to good(?) old sense of duty.

The ascetic blogger.

You Are Not Guilty

2011-01-17T18:59:00.002+02:00

With all the Katsav festival going on in the media, there was one short sentence in a Yedioth article that grabbed my attention. It was an anonymous letter sent to the newspaper by a 45-year old religious woman about a rape attempt that happened to her when she was 18, while volunteering in a Tel Aviv hospital. She had a small injury and was treated by a doctor there. After the treatment, the doctor (40+) offered her a lift home. On the way, he made up some story about a female patient he had to visit in a hotel for treatment, to trick her into going into the hotel. While she was waiting in the hall, he asked her to bring his case and once in there, he assaulted her and tried to rape her. She fought him and managed to escape and run home, where her mother told her to keep the episode to herself as nobody would believe a teenager, but rather the well-known hospital doctor. This is the story in a nutshell, without many other details published in the article.

'Why didn't I see the signs?' was the woman's sentence that intrigued me. Because you couldn't. No unexperienced 18-year old has a chance against a 40+ criminal, who planned the rape in advance. What is it with us women that makes us feel guilty when we are sexually harassed? Why do we always ask ourselves whether we did something to provoke it or maybe didn't do enough to prevent it? Can a man understand this "logic"? How many such incidents (some 'successful') happen without anyone knowing about them or being punished? Why are we ashamed? (Actually I have a good guess for this one.)

In his own distorted view, Katsav doesn't understand what's wrong with showing affection (that's what he believes he did) to women, even though they say they are not interested. He belongs to a different place (Iran?) and time, not to our democratic reality, where women don't have to put up with this kind of behavior.

As for his sentence - I believe it should be more severe than that of an average person who has committed the same crimes. He not only hurt those women, but also, as a symbol of the state, embarrassed all the citizens (I feel personally ashamed) and caused Israel to get negative publicity. The punishment should be proportional to the damage he caused.

Global Food Crisis

2011-01-17T17:14:00.000+02:00

Experts are threatening once again with Malthusian catastrophe. Malthus was wrong when he first predicted that population growth will outpace agricultural production meaning there won't be enough food for everybody, because he did not consider new agricultural technology. In many places agriculture is still rudimentary, so there is more room for improvement there and with genetically modified food, so he might be proven wrong once again.

The reasons for the global food crisis are well known, and so are some measures governments can take. China realized this potential problem many years ago and ruled the controversial one-child policy to save the nation from starvation. Population growth in Western world is declining naturally, while developing and poor countries are adding 100 million people every year to the world population. And these are the people to suffer the most from increased food prices.

Westerners could eat less meat and use grains for food rather than fuel, but why are people giving birth to children whom they cannot feed in the first place? Because of religion and because they want to outnumber the others at any cost. They figure that by expanding their problem, it will become everybody's problem.

There, I've said what many are afraid to admit.

Tea

2011-01-11T21:17:00.000+02:00

When I was younger, I used to drink either hot chocolate or coffee with milk. I thought tea is for old or sick people. Lately, I find myself drinking more and more tea, and since I'm not sick, it means I'm getting old. Logical, right?

We now posses a collection of all sorts of tea, some in their original package, some in tin boxes with improvised labels, crammed and stacked in the kitchen cupboard. No wonder it's hard to see what's on offer.

Although I'm a lousy shopper and never actually long to buy stuff, I decided we need a tea box, but not an ordinary one. I want a special, arty box. Actually, I saw some very nice wooden boxes with mother-of-pearl marquetry in the Old City bazaar of Jerusalem and I'm wondering whether these are suitable for tea and decently priced.

If I decided to buy something already, why not do it with style?

Satellite Woes

2011-01-05T23:46:00.000+02:00

In a previous post I mentioned we bought a new TV. Last week we added to it a home entertainment system (also known as home cinema) and today we completed the unholy trinity with a new satellite set-top box that allows us to view HD channels, record and order VOD. For oldies like us, this is a big leap forward, as we still own (and sometimes use) an analog stereo system, including a tape recorder and a vinyl record player. Yes, we have audio cassettes and vinyl records, as unbelievable as it sounds.

The new TV is really smart, can even connect to a LAN, and the HD channels look superb. If everything is good, then why am I mad? Because this is not what I wanted.

I asked the satellite company to replace our 3 set-top boxes with simple HD ones (no recording, no VOD). The rep 'translated' this to one newest-model box and scheduled a technician for a couple of weeks later. The technician came today and that's when we realized the gap. This plan is more expensive than what I thought, we get features we'll probably never use (even with video tapes we never watched what we recorded, and we usually don't order VOD), the set-top box took up the last port on our wireless router we planned to connect the TV to, and HD is available on one TV only. I hate paying for stuff I don't need. 'There is lots of free stuff in the VOD library, and episodes of series that you might have missed when they were broadcast - all for free', the technician tried to convince us. 'I have one plain HD box in my car for ages as no customer wants these anymore', he continued. So we decided to try it for a month, and change the plan if we won't use the extras.

In the evening, I remembered I missed the last episode of a popular satirical show, so I decided to put the technician's words into practice and watch it. I plodded through the new menus with the new remote just to find out the episode was not free.

Alpha Trips

2011-01-02T20:59:00.000+02:00

Unlike Jacob, the Israeli tour guide in the Simpsons' episode about Israel, licensed Israeli tour guides are highly professional. They study for almost 2 years and have to renew their license yearly after more compulsory vocational training. There is a lot of ground to cover, after all this country is packed with history, archeology, religion and culture.

Before 'real' university studies toward his ultimate goal of becoming an ambassador, Dan is studying to be a tour guide and enjoying every second. Since he is approaching a stage when he can get a temporary license, I advised him to practice on a group of friends, taking them on trips for gaining experience, and publicize these beta trips on Facebook. After several reminders and months, he finally decided to take my advice.(Look up the FB group he built).

Before each such trip, he organizes an alpha trip for a limited number of friends to rehearse the beta trip. I had the pleasure of joining several alpha trips and enjoyed immensely. The last one was in the City of David, in Jerusalem. The shape of the ancient Jebusite city reminded me of Manhattan, with the Kidron as the East River and the Central Valley as the Hudson. Although the landscape is different now than in Biblical times as valleys have filled up with remnants of past civilizations, The Valley street (rechov ha-guy) in the Old City follows the trail of the ancient Central Valley. The 500m waterway we walked through is a 2700-year old engineering masterpiece, with water flowing through it today as it did then. In general, the site consists of 17 discreet excavations, with important archeological findings buried under private houses and gardens. Passing from site to site, visitors actually touch the Arab-Israeli conflict.

During his tours, Dan loves reading from the Bible and then pointing to the place where the Biblical story happened, enlivening it. His vivid explanations transform, in my [poor] imagination, any pile of rocks into the lively places they once were. And of course, I'm not biased.

Lately, a journalist approached him for an interview about his trips for the national GLBT website. 'Don't forget to tell him the trips were my idea', I remind him before the interview. 'Were they? I don't remember'.

Commercials

2010-12-22T18:23:00.002+02:00

No matter how hard we try to avoid them, there is no real escape. And since we watch them anyway, commercials should at least be fun and entertaining, regardless of their effectiveness (I leave that to the advertising experts).

I know what you,'re thinking: 'She is bored at home, watches tons of TV and then blogs about commercials'. But this is very far from the truth as I don't turn on the TV during the day, at all. I swear I haven't watched any soap, morning program, talk show or the like since I broke my ankle. I planned this post before my injury, believe it or not.

So now that we've made that clear, what makes a good commercial and what makes a lousy one? The Design Center commercial is definitely an annoying one, selling the false idea of buying all your new furniture in one place, including a new partner (pseudo-celeb Aki Avni in a ridiculous grandpa hat). Now what are they trying to imply here? That a partner is like a piece of furniture? That instead of bothering with dating sites, blind dates and the like, single women should simply go shopping in the Design Center for their Romeo (who comes in the form of an accessory to the expensive brands sold there)? Now here is the truth, girls: hunks are not design-center dwellers. All you'll find there are other desperate single women (dreaming about Aki-like boyfriends), some husbands dragged there by their wives and maybe some design-conscious gay men, along with plenty of opportunities to use your credit card. Talking about truth in advertising...

On the other hand, I find the HOT cable TV commercial absolutely charming. Despite being built on the concept of a series I haven't watched, the message is clear even without that background. In a few short seconds you find yourself in a traditional Georgian family atmosphere, cleverly built with elements such as the wallpaper in the bathroom, the nameplate on the front door and the enormous quantity of food. They talk about commitment (a nowadays archaic value) and give a brilliant punchline complete with charming syntax mistakes. The message is both clear and positive: real relationships are built on commitment, while a HOT cable TV agreement is commitment-free. Well done!

I'm not sure I'll replace my satellite TV (with commitment till 2014!) with cable, but I might consider it.

How Much Can One Talk about a Fractured Ankle?

2010-12-20T18:09:00.002+02:00

A lot.

X-Rays with a Story
When I showed up for the X-rays I mentioned in a previous post, the receptionist said I couldn't have them taken without a referral from my health fund doctor. No, the one from the hospital doctor is not good enough. In my naivety, I suggested she let me do the X-rays and deal with the paperwork later. "That is not possible because I wouldn't know what body part to shoot", said the technician. Well, since I came with a broken right ankle, I thought of taking X-rays of my left hand. I mean how complicated is figuring out what body part is broken when the patient walks in on crutches and has a bandaged right foot? Classical example of procedure-centered rather than client-centered approach. Assuming there is a valid reason they really need the referral (even though I cannot think of one), the minimum I expect from a fund official is to try to help me get such a referral on the spot, by making a few phone calls, for example. But she didn't even think of it, of course. We did. Called up my GP, told him what's on the hospital form and he faxed the referral on the spot.

What's the Complication?
I told everyone I'd be into work last Wednesday. Then I told them I wouldn't. "What complication do you have with the ankle?", asked my colleague logically assuming that was the reason I postponed my arrival. "Wishful thinking", I replied. I didn't want to believe I am not some kind of superwoman whose fracture heals in 2 weeks rather than 6. Now I do. The doctor (who saw my X-rays with the story) told me so. And just to be absolutely sure, I also googled it on the net and yep, that is the standard bone healing time and 3-4 months for complete healing.

Bonus of the Week
Saturday we decided spontaneously to go out in the evening, that is Dan couldn't find any friends to go out with and so we all went together. After 2 long weeks of prisonership (interrupted only by the 2 aforementioned medical appointments), I suddenly saw streets and people and lights and had a way too large Belgian waffle in a cafe.

Fractured Ankle - Weekend and Start of Week II

2010-12-12T19:51:00.000+02:00

Last week ended with some positive developments, as 2 people came to visit and there are more coming tomorrow, not to mention the first serious rain (and storm), which is a positive development for this dry and thirsty land of ours. The downside is that my foot hurt more (I guess because of the change in atmospheric pressure) and the whole apartment is covered in very thin yellowish dust.

My entire family was home on the weekend and they replaced me with my usual weekend tasks. Took 3 men to replace one woman! Actually, it was quite fun to instruct them on cooking, that is after I succeeded pursuing them to enter the kitchen in the first place. When Tom realized I want him to make soup, he thought of combining hot water with soup mix powder. 'So why do you think I asked you to buy all these ingredients, then?' "Dunno, you asked for them, so we brought them', came the intelligent answer. I had to give very precise instructions, including location of ingredients, pots, utensils and the process of combining of all of these together into something edible. At the end, the food was ready on time and tasty, too.

This week I decided to get out of bed and stop feeling sorry for myself. I did some work around the house at my own [slow] pace, from the wheeled office chair and by standing/hopping on one foot.

And now to the bonus of the week: a new 46" LED TV.

Day 2: Necessity is the Mother of Invention

2010-12-07T19:59:00.000+02:00

I was really worried this morning about getting along until I figured out a way of moving around the house: sitting on a wheeled office chair and pushing myself back and forth. OK, it's not perfect, I can't get everywhere, the carpet is a problem and I can't reach stuff on upper shelves (nothing new for handicapped people in wheelchairs), but it's good enough for my current minimalist approach.

The discovery made me feel better in an instant and my first thought was that I should make 'kapros-túrós lángos' (Hungarian flat donut with cheese and dill filling) for dinner. My second thought was that I should fold the laundry. Well, turns out it's not so easy to operate this makeshift wheelchair, especially with the bruises on my right butt and a hurting ankle, so sadly (or not) I had to postpone the grandiose plans for a few more days.

Instead, I concentrated on setting up my 'operations room' atop the bed: moved the laptop to the other side so I don't have to cross any cables and laid out newspapers, books, the TV remote, the land-line wireless handset and my mobile phone within easy reach. Crutches across the bed and the office chair nearby. With all set, I decided to spend most of the time on reducing my electronic backlog (reading and writing) and answering work mails.

Following some online messages I sent about my situation, friends wrote to me, some called (my cousin even made an international call) to ask how I feel and offer help, my employer sent flowers (especially thoughtful and appreciated). Nobody came. Venus came in a few times, pushed its plushy face against mine and purred.

Tomorrow the cleaning lady will come and make this place more pleasant and presentable. Face time with a human being between 6:30 AM and 7:30 PM (even between vacuum cleaning sessions) is not a negligible mercy these days.

Hanukkah Bad Luck

2010-12-06T22:39:00.000+02:00

I know Hanukkah is related to miracles, but this year Hanukkah brought the country and myself lots of bad luck. The Carmel went on fire and I broke my ankle. According to Rabbi Ovadia, these are caused by insufficient Shabbat observance. Maybe I should check my mezuzah at home.

Day 1
After fracturing my ankle I was in a lot of pain, could not step on my foot to make the trip from the underground parking to my apartment. My husband brought a wheeled office chair and pushed me with it into the elevator and the apartment. When my son came home, we used the same method to get into the car to go to hospital and back again.

After lots of X-rays, the doctor determined I fractured a small bone between the ankle and the foot that cannot be set in plaster. He told me not to step on my foot. Funny man, this doctor. I can't step on my foot, it hurts even when someone just breathes next to it. It's like those signs atop the Ayalon highway lanes amidst traffic jams, restricting speed to say 80 km/h when you can barely drive at 20 km/h.

While Prime Minister Netanyahu and Minister of Inerior Yishai are competing over circumventing bureaucracy to ensure swift compensation for the Carmel fire victims, the medical bureaucacy is in full flower. Before going to hospital, I called my private medical insurance company, but could not get through. My friend Z, a medical doctor for my Sick Fund, advised me to call their emergency number. I needed their authorization to turn to the hospital trauma room. I also needed a Social Security form form work to be given to the Sick Fund, a liability form from the Sick Fund to the hospital and some other forms from the Sick Fund and hospital back to my employer.

In a week I have to see an orthopedic doctor with fresh X-rays. One would think this is an easy task as many people before me needed the same. But no, it is not possible to have X-rays taken and seeing a doctor right after, even though they are located in the same building. These will have to happen 2 days apart, as all the doctors are booked. Who cares I can barely walk a few steps with crutches and that someone will have to lose work to drive me to these appointments.

In the mean time, I joined the minimalist movement. I walk/jump the minimum steps when I get out of bed and combine several tasks into each such trip. I've never noticed how many redundant steps I take every day. I also do many projects: turning over in bed is a project, a trip to the bathroom is a project, not to mention taking a shower.

By tomorrow I have to figure out how to use crutches and hold my lunch plate at the same time as I will have to manage on my own.

Towel Story

2010-11-28T00:31:00.000+02:00

The same one-day business trip to Eilat I mentioned in a previous post gave me the taste for a fun weekend there. There is something special about the atmosphere in Eilat, it smells of holiday, relaxation and fun, the closest thing to 'abroad' without passports, borders and duty free. We flew, stayed at the Dan and dined in nice restaurants. The weather was superb, the Red Sea temperature coldish but pleasant, shop windows inviting, life's good.

At this point, I have to make yet another confession: I never bought towels. I don't know where our towels came from, but I certainly did not choose any of them. They were presents from various people/institutions for various occasions. None of them match and many of them are worn and torn. I know that good, hotel-quality towels are expensive, so I decided to do my homework: learn about the 'towel world' and survey the offering of some nearby shops, but who has time for such a grandiose project?

Elat is also a tax free zone, there is no VAT on products sold there. While strolling on the Northern beach, we came across an Arad Towels shop, well known for their quality products. Towels were the last thing I thought about buying in Eilat, but the opportunity presented itself and I decided to go with the flow. The shop was simple but elegant and the shopkeeper patiently explained the differences between the various products. I bought 8 of the most pampering towels in the shop for what seemed to me a small fortune, but still a better price than anywhere else.

By now, we finished washing them and, more importantly, disposing some old towels to make room for the new. I have yet to try the first one, but one thing I already know: plans and projects are good, but also keep your eyes open for opportunities.

Parenting in a Changing World

2010-11-05T21:42:00.001+02:00

I'm thinking about the 'gain/lose time' paradigm shift for quite a while and a recent piece of news made me put my thoughts in writing. A 26-years old man stabbed his mother to death and his 38-year old brother to near death because 'they had been pressuring him to find a job'.

When I was only 5 years old, my parents filed a petition with the authorities to let me begin school before I was 6. In line with the contemporary thinking (socialist materialism), this would make me gain a year. Not sure what the repercussions of this move were. Throughout my school years I was always the smallest in class, always had older friends. Perhaps another year would have given me more mental strength to cope with the world, especially socially. With the subjects taught I had no problem, always being among the top pupils in my class.

In older times, youngsters staid with their parents until married. Then came the first shift: until 10-15 years ago, most youngsters were eager to leave their homes and start their own independent life. Nowadays, there is an opposite trend. Youngsters start their 'lives' much later, taking their time to travel, to decide what to do next, to study something they like, to study something practical, to find a real job, to marry and bring children into the world. By this time they are 30 something, almost 40. And where should they rush to? 30 years of commitment and mortgage payback? More work years? There is plenty of that until the new retirement age of 67. (I admire and envy the French protest against changing retirement age from 60 to 62, not to mention their short work week and long vacations.)

Except for a few basic truisms, life and perceptions have changed so much that it's pathetic to think that what worked for us 30 years ago is relevant advice for our children. Does a full time job for a large brick-and-mortar corporation make them happier than Internet-based freelancing? City life and traffic jams or country home and organic tomatoes? Government and politics or high-tech? Life-long marriage with compromises or excitement hunting? And what's the right balance between volunteering and saving the world, and minding your own business?

Only they can define their own happiness.

Over-Simplistic Comparison

2010-10-30T19:27:00.001+02:00

Going back to the Georgia-Armenia trip, as I have some unfinished business with my avid readers. (I don't have stats on my blog, but I suspect there must be at least 2). The many visits in churches, synagogues and a mosque led me to an over-simplistic comparison between these religions.

In a synagogue, the prayers face the Holy Ark housing Torah Scrolls. These contain lots of texts (no pictures) that Jews are expected to continuously learn and question and also keep the 613 commandments of the Pentateuch. Tiring.

In a church, the prayers face icons of Jesus and Mary (pictures, no text). No need to read, learn or question (or even understand the Latin prayer). Christians are expected to believe what they are told: the best cover story in history of a woman who committed adultery. (I'm expecting the Vatican death squads to be on their way...)

In a mosque, the prayers face the qiblah wall and thus face Mecca, the location of the Kaaba. In the qiblah wall, usually at its center, is the mihrab, an empty niche or depression indicating the direction of Mecca. Basically, Muslims are being shown the way to Mecca to go there on pilgrimage and help the local trade.

Bag Story

2010-10-29T21:09:00.002+02:00

About 2 weeks ago, I flew to Eilat for one day, for business. Since it was a one-[long]day trip, I just took my black office case with me, an oldish leather bag bought by my husband in the US a few years ago. Maintenance not being one of my strong points, the bag became kind of shabby. When you see something (or someone!) every day, you get used to it and your brain processes what you actually see, by adjusting it to the way it looked in the beginning. Besides, the daily changes are tiny, easy to overlook. But my fineschmecker coworker and travel partner for the day did not fall into that trap and hinted that it's time to buy a new bag.

And so the bag quest began. This time I wanted something more feminine and bright, maybe red. Looked on the net, went to some shops, saw some interesting (mostly not) models and almost gave up - forgot to mention shopping is also one of my weak points, I lose interest fairy quickly and rarely buy stuff for myself.

And so, like in all good stories, in the last shop, just before giving up, I found a non-feminine, brown Hedgren bag (never heard about this firm before), with hidden back straps for when the bag gets too heavy to hand-carry or you need free hands. It also features a padded laptop compartment, place for cellphone, pen and such, hidden handles for hand-carrying, detachable and adjustable shoulder strap, smooth zippers, and water-resistant shell. Practical, but kind of ugly.

Did it happen to you that you went shopping for an item with a predefined list of features, then saw a real one that just clicked with you and decided to take it anyway, features or not? I bet it's the same with partners...You imagine a tall handsome smooth talker with blond curly hair and blue eyes, but end up with a short, shy, squint, bald man, who is actually a good, sincere person and a good match.

After a few days in use, I started having second thoughts. Why do I need the laptop compartment, it's not like I sit in trendy cafes and blog while sipping cappuccinos. Not to mention that my laptop stopped connecting to any wireless device, so what's the point in carrying it around anyway? After trying (and failing) to fix it myself, I was planning to have a technician look at it, but decided to show it to someone at work first. I placed it in the padded compartment, together with some accessories, but could barely lift the bag. You guessed right what happened next: the shoulder straps absolutely saved me. And the person at work, too. After 2 minutes he realized that a button accidentally pressed shut down the wireless connection.

Here's to practical choices.

Change - Yet Again

2010-10-24T22:24:00.001+02:00

You do everything to the best of your abilities, even have some nice plans for the future. Suddenly the other party (your boss/friend/partner/body) fundamentally breaches your unwritten agreement. He/she/it is not there for you anymore. The change is out of your control, yet you suffer the consequences. You blame yourself for not noticing the symptoms. Too late for that, the change would have come sooner or later. You are never really ready for it anyway. You remember that time heals almost everything, but until that happens, use these tips. They may (or may not) help.

Rationalize - the matter is out of your control, there is nothing you can do anyway, let the time pass.
You know the 'why me' type whining is not helpful, so don't.
Occupy your time with activities (time passes faster that way), but don't try to read a book. You can't concentrate anyway.
Even if you feel like being alone, resist the temptation. Have a good talk with a friend instead.
Do some physical exercise you enjoy (walk, swim, etc.).
Take a massage, bathe in a jacuzzi or indulge in some other body pampering that works for you.
Listen to/play music or sing.
Stay away from comfort food.
Count your blessings.
Write a blogpost about coping with negative changes.

And Now for Something Completely Different

2010-10-17T00:33:00.000+02:00

This year we didn't feel like planning our vacation, so we decided to take an organized tour with everything being taken care of and us being served. We strongly dislike organized tours, but some places really do need a lot of preparation and if you don't have a common language with the locals and the infrastructure is poor, you can experience frustrating situations. Since we compromised on the organization, we decided to go for the best tour operator, the Geographic Society (an excellent decision, in retrospect). They did a wonderful job and I certainly recommend both the operator and our amazing guide Dr. Chezy Shaked. But the organization was not the only difference this year, as we also decided to visit a close (2.5h flight) but less known area, the Caucasus. Why? Because we couldn't afford the tour to the Galapagos Islands or Madagascar and also because the Caucasus is different than any place we have visited before. It is a troubled region between the Black and Caspian seas, home to more than 50 ethnic groups, many enclaves and a 'neighborhood bully'.

It is very interesting to compare Georgia and Armenia, the two countries we visited. Both are Christian, Armenia being the first country that took on Christianity as state religion in 301 A.D. Both have their own alphabet (none of them use Cyrillic letters) and language, both were under Soviet occupation (and many others before) and gained their independence in 1992. Since then, they took different paths.

Georgia's goal is westernization. Its young and popular president, Saakashvili, prefers western-educated, young civil servants with computer skills. He has targeted corruption in his first year of office. To that end, he revamped the police force by firing all of the traffic police in his country in one day, cutting 30,000 police officers from the payroll. The new police station in Tbilisi is a beautiful, modern glass building symbolizing transparency. All other police stations being built around the country also feature glass walls. Georgia's foreign policy focuses on the USA ans NATO, but being a small country in a strategic geographical location for Russia, it is limited in the actions it can take. The Russians demonstrated how their slap felt on the Georgian wrist during the last war in 2008. The fear from Russians is very much a Georgian reality, as proved by a TV program that showed a fake newscast of a Russian invasion. The show, preceded by a disclaimer but with no disclaimer during the broadcast itself, caused panic, rushes on banks, stores and gas station and even a few heart attacks and other medical emergencies, and anger at the government for perpetrating the hoax.

Georgia's infrastructure is quite poor. Roads are full of holes, cows and other obstacles, and lack asphalt. Some remote locations are cut off for 6 months during winter. When returning from such a region after a rainy night, at one point all vehicles had to stop in a sea of mud and wait until a car was pulled out of mud by a tractor. Georgians are religious, hospitable, musical and overweight. National food staples include khachapuri (cheese-stuffed bread), khinkali (cooked, oversize dim-sum), lots of nuts, cilantro and wine. Although Georgia is the oldest wine-producing region in the world, traditional Georgian grape varieties are little known in the West. Georgian wines are classified as sweet, semi-sweet, semi-dry, dry, fortified and sparkling. The semi-sweet varieties are the most popular.

At the Georgian-Armenian border (a typically third world place), we had to switch buses and drivers. We left the small Georgian bus with narrow seats, and driver Misha and his belly, who expertly slalomed between holes and cows, while speeding and overtaking everything and hooting at the same time, and got a big, comfy Armenian bus with a fit driver in a button-down shirt and a necktie. Armenian roads are much better and Yerevan, planned by architect Alexander Tamanyan, is a surprisingly beautiful city. The building facades are made of the local pink tuff stone, richly ornamented with intricate stone-work patterns. In the city center, young people with laptops sip cappuccinos in fashionable cafes among super-expensive shops selling Western brands. Unlike Georgia, Armenia has many flower shops, cats and accepts credit cards. People are better dressed, but we are not talking about Parisian chic here.

With its 3.2M population (descendants of the Urartu empire) and at least a twice as large diaspora (contributing to the economy), Armenia is under heavy Russian influence, with more than 70% of its products being exported to Russia. Depending on Russia is not such a bad idea when your eyes are on the Ararat mountain (literally) and lake Van (in today's Turkey), and lake Urmia (in today's Iran), you are a small Christian country surrounded by Muslim neighbors and suffer from frequent earthquakes.

Unlike Georgians who eat way too much (you never know if the course they served is the last one before dessert), Armenians eat 3-course meals, are musical (the Garni quintet we heard in the Garni pagan temple left me with my jaw dropped - literally) and arty (Sergei Parajanov's museum proves there are no borders to creativity). While the most famous Georgian is Stalin (I heard here pianist Alexander Korsantia and learned there about poet Shota Rustaveli, the author of 12th century epic poem "The Knight in the Panther's Skin"), the most famous Armenian is Charles Aznavour, along with Aram Khachaturian, Andre Agassi, Cher, Garry Kasparov, Emile Lahoud and many others. BTW, I saw Emil Lahoud's tree in the garden of the Armenian Genocide museum.

We visited many churches, some synagogues and even a mosque, but the most touching site was a small 12th century Jewish cemetery, with the Hebrew inscriptions readable and the language understandable after almost 1000 years.

Only time will tell which country will succeed on the long run, multi-challenged Georgia with its clearly defined goals, living in Russia's intimidating shadow or realpolitk-practicing tiny Armenia.

Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right

2010-09-10T17:58:00.000+03:00

In a previous post, I was outraged by the racist discrimination in a girls' school in the religious settlement of Emanuel. I am still outraged. The compromise achieved after the Supreme Court's ruling was that one of the communities will build its own private school, where it can [and will] decide who gets admitted to study. This means the segregation will continue and the problem was in fact swept under the carpet rather than solved.

A few days ago, ultra-religious deputy health minister Jacob Litzman suggested applying the Emanuel 'solution' to the theater actors' boycott of Ariel. Theaters that refuse to perform in Ariel will be denied state funding (private theaters can decide for themselves where to perform). The underlying principle, according to Litzman, is that the state may have a say only when it pays the bill – one of the stupidest statements I ever heard.

Never mind how the ultra-religious use and twist every wrong to make it beneficial to their cause, let's concentrate on the role of the State. The State (through legislators) defines what is right and wrong and changes the definition from time to time, as society mores evolve. A fundamental wrong is wrong regardless by whom it is committed, state-funded establishment, private person, or group. Racist discrimination is wrong, Mr. Litzman, even in private schools.

As for the Ariel boycott, it reminds me of the following joke: Two Jews are stranded on a desert island. They build three synagogues - one for the orthodox Jew, one for the reform Jew, and one that neither one of them will ever set foot in!

"You Are Not Romantic"

2010-08-28T18:24:00.000+03:00

Just before our 30th anniversary (a few days ago), I learned through a friend that I'm not romantic. At first, it hit me, but then I realized he is right. What he meant is not that I don't watch [and cry at] romantic chick flicks or like candlelight dinners (can't remember when I had one), rather that my thinking doesn't follow the romantic theory.

As I wrote in a previous post, contrary to romantic Hollywood comedies, there is more than one person whom you can partner up with. Question is what do you do when you find a good candidate. Do you keep looking to find the perfect one or stay with what (whom) you've got? Finding another one is time and energy consuming (this is what triggered my friend's remark) and nobody assures you he/she will be perfect either. I say go for the good partner. Maybe this is not romantic thinking, but it is certainly practical. Don't be the lady (or gentleman) who continues looking for the perfect outfit for the party even after the party has already begun. The party of your life will not wait for you, so you better learn compromising - again, a practical skill rather than a romantic one.

Stories We Like

2010-08-21T22:38:00.001+03:00

Maos' Last Dancer presents a very American perspective on a true story of struggle and hard work with a happy ending. We like it because we can identify ourselves with the hero and it fulfills our basic need for justice.

Here is another true story. Mr. Y has 3 old and useless Shekel banknotes buried in an envelope in a drawer. On his way home from work he listens to a radio program. He is a big radio fan and radio programs helped him more than once in his life. From the program he learns about the extended period these banknotes can be exchanged. Once home, he looks it up on the net and prints out the relevant press release from the Bank of Israel. He goes over the last sentence with a marker. He fully expects he will need this. At his bank branch, he heads towards his usual banker, but gets transferred to another clerk, Haim. Haim listens to the request and is puzzled. He never heard about this. He calls someone in the Center. No answer. He tries a different number. He explains the problem and listens.
H: "Mr. Y, I'm sorry, but this can only be done at the Bank of Israel."
Mr. Y shows him the printout. Haim is now even more puzzled. He attempts to make another phone call to find out what to do, but Mr. Y stops him.
Y: "I'll leave you the banknotes, you find out the procedure in your own time, and then transfer the amount to my account. I really have to go."
H: "I have to give you a receipt for the banknotes, at least. I can't take money without a receipt. Could you give me your account number for the transfer and I'll see what I can do?"
Y: "Sure. 1276490/58".
H presses the keys on his keyboard and watches Mr. Y's financial status coming up on his screen. Haim watches the numbers and changes his attitude in an instant.
H: "Mr. Y, I certainly understand you are a busy person and I don't want to waste your time. I'll figure out how to handle this." Haim's attitude is metamorphosed completely by the time the last figures are displayed. He walks over to a teller, takes out a few banknotes from the cash register without any receipt, and hands them to Mr. Y. "I know how precious your time is Mr. Y, please take the money and I'll deal with the paperwork later."

There are no surprises in the dancer's story and there are no surprises in this one. It's a known fact banks treat wealthier customers better than poor customers. So why do we still like the story?

I Don't Get It

2010-08-06T20:02:00.000+03:00

I don't consider myself a bad person, occasionally I even consider myself a good person, but there is something I really don't get when it comes to the issue of deporting or not the children of foreign workers. I am not even at the stage of taking sides, I simply don't understand why is this an issue. Children are in their parents' custody and go wherever their parents go. If and when their parents leave, they should take their children with them. While the parents are allowed to stay, so are their children. While here, the children should get all the benefits Israeli kids do, such as free schooling. If an illegal worker with a child in school is caught and ordained for deportation, the authorities should delay the deportation until school year ends.

We should make the children's stay here as pleasant as possible. With good memories of Israel they may become Israel advocates.

Doers and Commentators

2010-07-31T14:55:00.001+03:00

While some people are busy doing things, others make excuses for not doing them and explain what's wrong with what the others do, even if it takes more time or energy to complain than actually do the job. Doers and whiners. But not all non-doers are negative. There are positive talkers, who give ideas for others to implement. They don't implement their own ideas either because they [think they] can't, are afraid of failing, find it hard to make the first step or are plain lazy.

Some professional pairs have an inherent doer vs. commentator nature, like politicians and journalists, sportsmen and fans (OK, this is not a profession), or playwrights and theater critics. But not all is black and white. Some politicians don't do much themselves, but criticize the rival party. Some journalists write articles and books presenting their own ideas. Sportsmen may criticize their spouse's cooking while avoiding the kitchen, sports fans may be good at planning family trips, playwrights may be wine connoisseurs and theater critics may be good gardeners.

While in general we are either doers or commentators, in different cases we may act as either one or the other type. I'm not saying which one you should be, just advising to choose your side consciously.

Individual and National Happiness

2010-07-24T20:52:00.001+03:00

We are hard wired on analyzing and improving our imperfections. It's enough to look at my close family members to realize it. Dan is dieting for 5 weeks now and lost 1 kg every week. Peter follows in his footsteps and also takes UltraShape treatment.

If a child brings a high and a low grade, we always focus on the low one. Now comes positive psychology and tells us to focus on the aspects that make us happy and content and implement them on weaker areas. This new branch of psychology is also called the science of happiness. Turns out that happiness is also measured at the national level and we are the 8th happiest country out of 155 surveyed, preceded only by North European countries, New Zealand and Costa Rica. Not bad.

I wonder if the survey took into account my weekend depression. All this dieting needs me to prepare and box food for every workday of the week, so I spent most of the weekend in the kitchen.

Domestic Intelligence

2010-07-11T22:21:00.001+03:00

I love to watch National Geographic Channel programs on nature, plants, animals, the Earth... Unfortunately I live in an apartment with not too much nature in it. We have Venus the cat reign the house and a few herbs in boxes and flowerpots on the balcony. One of them is mint. Initially, it grew very fast and developed beautifully. It absorbed lots of water and I was happily trimming it for tea, salads and cooking. Lately, however, it weakened, lost leaves, grew no new shoots and didn't absorb water. I also noticed some black "tears" around it. When I analyzed the poor plant more closely I saw five fat, disgusting caterpillars expertly hanging on the delicate branches and exercising those excellent camouflage skills I so admire on NG programs. Had to admit they look way cooler on TV than on my beloved private mint. I cut the branches together with the caterpillars, but was too disgusted to even sweep them away so I sought assistance from the only male awake at that time in the house, Dan. I made a serious face and told him 'we have NG animals on our balcony'. 'Lions, elephants, gnus?' he asked amused. He left his PC (a small miracle) and managed to place the branches into a nylon bag and into the garbage it went.

Just like in the caterpillar case, we also had a few fridge-related symptoms. Ice cream melted, some steaks got spoiled, milk and cream cheese turned sour. Everything happened boiling frog gradually, while we kept making excuses. Friday afternoon, after we filled the fridge with a week's worth of products and was too late to call a technician, we finally realized the fridge has stopped cooling completely. Oh, and I've also invited people for coffee and cake on Saturday and made a delicious mango parfait...

We had the facts, but misinterpreted them and failed to see the big picture. Just like the Israeli Intelligence prior to the Yom Kippur war.

Four Wheels and an Engine

2010-07-03T22:08:00.000+03:00

I know very little about cars. I'm not interested in their technical specifications, and if asked what car is so-and-so driving, I'll say 'green'. No idea what make or model. I've always said I don't care about car makes, any four wheels and engine that take me from point A to B is good enough. Until my leased Ford Focus went to the garage for a small reparation and I got a Chevrolet Optra as a substitute. It's much less comfy, has less features and it made me realize I want much more from a car than just four wheels and an engine.
It also made me think about the progress achieved since Henry Ford made his first assembly-line, famous Model T. Now, we are on the verge of a new era with Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi introducing electric cars. You can find many more videos of him explaining his idea by googling for his name + electric cars in the video category. Go Shai, we are proud of you!

Football World Cup

2010-06-26T23:41:00.000+03:00

For me football is just 22 men chasing a ball. And when they reach the ball, they kick it! How logical! It is also a game, taken way too seriously by some. But most of all it's a huge business. For years I was outraged by the money some football players make, while they can't put 2 straight sentences together.

This year I changed my mind. I decided that professional football is, um... a profession. I just realized that stupidity and narrow mindedness can be found in many other professions, it's not a football exclusive. There are stupid waiters, carpenters, lawyers, actors, engineers, musicians and dentists and there are clever ones too. So the new way I'm going to look at football players is good old supply and demand. They have an ability in high demand, that's why they make the money they do. Suddenly, playing football looks like any other legitimate career.

Panem et circenses. There's nothing new under the sun.

Racist Segregation

2010-06-18T23:47:00.000+03:00

I'm referring to the recent Supreme Court ruling following the on-going racist segregation in Emanuel. Reading about the differences between the two groups, instantly reminded me of the High Heels and Low Heels in Jonathan's Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Some people argue that we should not allow racist segregation in public schools, funded by tax payers' money. I say we should not allow it in private schools either.

But are we really that different than the 'lesser' others? Genetically, all humans belong to the homo sapiens sapiens species and there are no genetic differences between the 'races'. What makes us different is our cultural context. Different, not better. If one must be judgmental, then he/she should do so on in individual basis, not a collective one.

It's so easy to find differences. My mother and mother in law (God bless their memory) used to have this ritual conversation about a Hungarian dish called káposztás kocka (square-shaped pasta with cabbage). "Oh, you eat this with sugar, how interesting. We make it with salt and pepper". In this case, I can't even argue that pornography (or taste) is a matter of geography, as they lived in the same city, on different banks of the same river.

Multitasking: A Virtual Drug

2010-06-13T20:56:00.000+03:00

A few weeks ago I attended a short lecture given by venture capitalist Michael Eisenberg. He spoke about key skills we should posses in order to be employable. One of them is the ability to multi-task. Being a high-tech worker bee, I know too well what is he talking about.

In '7 Days' magazine of Yedioth Ahronoth, columnist Dana Spector defines multitasking as a person's lack of self-respect and lack of respect for her quality of life. Instead of enjoying something you do, you try doing two more things in parallel. She called her column 'multi-bullshit'.

Senior broadcaster Yitzhak Noy also spoke about multitasking in his Worldwide Sabbath program last Saturday. While reviewing international press, he mentioned an article in the International Herald Tribune that discusses the toll multitasking takes on us: it releases dopamine into our body and can be addictive. Furthermore, it diminishes our ability to concentrate on one thing, to analyse in-depth and reach the right conclusions. It can lead to severe brain damage. I, of course googled for the article and found it here.

A little multitasking makes us feel good, but avoid over-dosage like the plague.

I Have a Dream

2010-06-12T22:29:00.001+03:00

I am at Terminal 3 of Ben Gurion Airport waiting to board a special direct flight to Oradea, along with many other Jews from there. We land after about 3 hours, full of anticipation for the long weekend ahead of us. It's a beautiful spring afternoon in 2015. We get on the buses waiting to take us to our hotel in town. We all check in, meet some others in the lobby. They arrived from the US, Germany, Hungary and even Australia. I tour the facility just to make sure all is in place and running on schedule: the registration desk, the convention hall, the big banner outside the hotel and in the hall. I am so excited, I can't fall asleep and decide to walk along the Koros river.

Day One: Introduction
Next morning, right after breakfast, the name tags are all neatly arranged on the registration desk, waiting for the crowds. People start walking in, get their tags and convention program, hang around the coffee and morning pastries, chit-chat and finally enter the convention hall. The Master of Ceremony opens the event. The first speaker is Oradea's mayor. He welcomes us and speaks about the linkage between past and present, about the Jews' contribution to the city's cultural and economic life. Then, the representative of the local Jewish community speaks. He mentions preservation and cultural activities of the community. The MC hands the microphone to attendees to introduce themselves, tell us about their linkage to Oradea, their current city and whatever else they want us to know. We spend the morning getting to know each other. The afternoon siesta is followed by a welcome cocktail party with live music and great food, in a beautiful Art-Nouveau style ballroom.

Day Two: Yizkor
The next morning, we gather again in the convention hall to listen to scholars presenting the history of the Jewish community of Oradea, followed by a Holocaust memorial service conducted by former Zion Temple cantor Yossi Adler, at the Holocaust monument.
Day Three: Fun
The third day is packed with fun. In the morning there is a guided tour, where our spouses and family members and even the hard-core Oradea-born attendees discover the city. We all learn something new, take pictures and recall old memories from school, neighborhood and community activities. The afternoon is dedicated to music. First, we listen to local talents (for example Kovari Kati, Alexandrina Chelu) and the community choir, then to piano concerts given by [ex-]Oradea pianists attending the event (Roth Andris, Vogel (Grunberger) Nadia and Hausmann Gyuri come to mind). Finally, we all have fun by singing along with current and old-time community choir members. We finish the evening by singing Hatikvah.

Day Four: Grand Finale
The fourth and last day morning we spend out of town, at the Felix thermal baths. The event ends with a gala dinner, music, dancing and great atmosphere.

The entire event is documented and the resulting pictures and videos uploaded to the Oradea Reunion (Varadi Talalkozo) Facebook page.

Do you share my dream? Would you like it to come true? Then, let's speak about reality. In reality, behind such an event there is a lot of hard work. I know because I planned professional conventions in the past. I am not yet sure I'm prepared to do this. However, here are a few starter needs that came to my mind:

Energetic person who lives in Oradea, with excellent organizational skills and ties to city council and Jewish community
Contact with the Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania
Contact with the Lempert Foundation (couldn't post a message)
Contact with the Avichai Foundation (didn't get back to me) to obtain their list of invitees to the 2005 event
Israeli travel agent to organize flight, accommodation and transportation
Media person to get the Israeli and local media interested in the event (press, TV, documentation, sponsorship)
Volunteers to maintain the contact list (I have a starting list of about 340 people and couples)
Volunteer treasurer.

I'm sure this is a very partial list.

So what say you?

Simple Logic - Parent Perspective

2010-06-02T10:37:00.000+03:00

I'm sick and tired to listen/watch/read any more commentary on the Gaza flotilla. Everybody seems to be convinced by their version of the truth, no matter the facts. I don't know the facts, nobody does. Even those who were physically there only saw/felt a small fraction of it.

So instead of facts, I'll just communicate my feelings as a parent of an IDF soldier. I fully expect a soldier to shoot a person attempting to lynch him or his comrades, even more so if the person is a supporter of my enemy, whose purpose is to kill me and my people. Can't be simpler than that.

And BTW, true peace activists/humanitarians don't attempt to lynch anyone.

Oradea Jewish Baby Boomers Reunion

2010-05-28T20:57:00.000+03:00

A former colleague whom I appreciate for her social skills once told me that reunions are stupid. People you want to keep in touch with, you do anyways, and those you don't, it is probably for a reason. So what's the point? To see how everybody got old and fat? Nostalgia for a younger you? And what's the role of reunions in the age of Facebook and Twitter? With these questions unanswered and despite being way out of my age group, I went to the Oradea Jewish Baby Boomers reunion, held yesterday May 27, 2010 at the Metropolitan hotel in Tel Aviv. It is being organized once every few years, and attended by a different mix of people from many different countries.

As expected, I didn't know most attendees, saw some acquaintances, and had a blast with the usual comment I get at such occasions. Many people there knew my parents and me as a little girl. They look at my name tag (with my maiden name on it) just to make sure I am whom they think I am and say: "You haven't changed a bit since I last saw you, when you were five". I swear I get this comment every single time, and yesterday I got it more than once. Some add "you have the same face, same curly hair". One sleazy guy went even further with "I was already in love with you when you were five, but didn't say a thing as they'd think I'm a pedophile". Answered the ubiquitous "where did you live in Oradea?" and "where do you live now?" ad nauseam, exchanged phone numbers and email addresses, had some photos taken, chatted with some women around the desserts, all in all a pleasantly spent 3 hours. Even volunteered to start a Facebook group based on the list of emails I'll get from the organizers. (Today I discovered it's impossible to find friends on FB by hometown).

Towards the end, Dan came from a nearby event he attended, to join us on the way home. After amazing some people there with his Hungarian knowledge, he concluded the event: "everybody there is connected to everybody else in a way - like in a giant spaghetti". How true. If someone would map the relationship between the people there, it would really look like a giant graphical spaghetti showing your connections to people from the neighborhood, the Jewish community, school, the famous 'choir', through someone else...A very special bunch of people sharing the memory of our beautiful hometown and its post-WWII Jewish life, dispersed all over the world, speaking Hungarian, Romanian and at least one or two other languages.

There was this special feeling in the air that even though you don't know many of the attendees personally, you all share a common heritage, something an outsider would find difficult to understand.

Less Is More

2010-05-18T17:41:00.001+03:00

I was invited to a wedding reception - coffee and cake at 7:30 PM - an unusual combination of the time of the day and food served. Coffee and cake is perfect around 5 PM, but 7:30 is dinner time. After the Tiramisu (see my previous post) I had after lunch I could not even think of more food that day, let alone something sweet. All I had was a cup of coffee, so for me it was in fact perfect.

A usual wedding reception consists of a 4- or 5-course dinner and there is usually way too much food. Same is true for many other types of social gathering. It's time to start a trend of health food in moderate quantities at parties, receptions, etc. Although Israeli hotel breakfast buffets are well known for their abundance and eating frenzy, the breakfast at the Dead Sea hotel I last visited started to show signs of refinement.

People also have too many cloths, bedding sets, towels, and stuff in general. It's immodest and I disapprove it.

Less is more.

The Other Stomach

2010-05-15T23:01:00.001+03:00

Since Tom won't be at home for Shavuot, I decided to make a few dairy dishes this weekend. My favorite food blog (now also in English!) offered two items I decided to try: chickpea pancakes with honey and goat cheese (made this for breakfast) and Tiramisu in individual bowls (for dessert after lunch). I also plan some baked mangold-cheese croquettes. I recently had some in an interesting Jerusalem restaurant, where they call it Swiss chard pancakes, and decided to try my own. So far I had no luck finding good recipes of this dish on the net, so feel free to forward me your own. Shameless promo: Stay tuned to find out what was I doing in Jerusalem and about my relationship with this city. Unfortunately (or not), this weekend Peter also decided to bake his excellent cocoa kuglehupf - see the proof on the left.

OK, so we weren't really hungry this weekend. Here we are sitting at the table after a BBQ lunch and me asking what I thought to be a hypotethical question: 'Dessert now (this is the hypothetical part) or later with coffee?'. 'Now', say both my soldiers, after some kebabs in pita, with hummus, pickled lemon tahini, green salad, and a steak. 'Where do you have room for dessert after all this?' 'In my dessert stomach', comes Dan's nonchalant answer.

No matter what we just had, in some miraculous way, there is always room for dessert. Maybe we all have another, dessert stomach?

Up and Down

2010-05-10T23:34:00.001+03:00

We have just started to recover from the US sub-prime crisis, low dollar and decreasing stock values. The first quarter of 2010 looked so optimistic (too good to be true as the Polish would say). Now the Greek crisis and its impact on the Euro is the next hit. On the other hand, we are joining the OECD. We work hard to attain the good things (OECD), while we get the bad ones effortlessly. The world just throws them into the equation without consulting us first.

The comic moment: Lebanon broke Israel's Guinness world record for the largest hummus plate and then went for the falafel.

Boring it is not.

In and Out

2010-05-08T22:13:00.001+03:00

As my blog tagline indicates, change and transformation fascinate me in general. The way the new replaces the old in nature, in our lives, in technology, medicine, art, all over, preoccupies me.

I think a lot about changes in life. Not those abrupt ones than happen suddenly (they really frighten me), but those smooth ones we don't notice happening until one day we realize they happened. Once important parts of our lives evaporate, as we take up new activities, meet new friends, move on.

We all had friendships triggered by circumstances (people we befriended while living in a neighborhood, at work, during army service, school, university, gym, art class, you name it), that ended with the changes in circumstances (moving to a different neighborhood, starting a new job, finishing studies). Circumstantial friendships are an important part of our social life, alongside our true, lifelong friendships, occasional encounters, superficial relationships, family. Their coming and going is part of the continuous change in our life.

People we were close to in previous periods move away from us as their lives and priorities change too. Maintenance needs more resources than we care to invest and the relationship empties out. We realize there's been months/years since we talked to/met such-and-such. And then one day we ask ourselves what exactly do we have in common with this person? And the usual answer is 'not much'.

So what affects who goes and who stays? The equation seems to be 'the stronger the initial bond, the more we are willing to invest in maintaining the relationship'.

Full disclosure: this post was inspired by my own friendship with M and by this post.

Democratic Thought

2010-05-01T19:26:00.000+03:00

You know those criminals you sometimes hear about in the news and you wish the powers-to-be just take them away and punish them on the spot, no courts, no judges, no lawyers? Actually, you don't really want that to happen because you don't want to live in a country where such things happen. Believe me, I tried. Not fun.

Thinking Old

2010-04-25T20:30:00.000+03:00

Once, planning a vacation was part of the fun. Reading background material, planning the route, reserving flights, car rentals, lodging ... Now, you prefer an organized tour to sit back be served.

Once, your bruises healed in a day or two. Now, you go to physiotherapy, you have pain every time the weather changes and after many months you are wondering if your body will ever get back to its previous state.

Once, your body was that functioning thing you didn't worry about. Now, you devote time to maintenance and you can still feel pain in multiple places at once.

Once, it was easy to get rid of a few kilos, even though you ate unhealthy food. Now, it seems mission impossible, even though you only eat whole-wheat, whole-grain rice and brown sugar.

Once, you told friends what happens in your life. Now, you tell them what happens in your children's life.

Once, you wanted to visit distant, exotic islands. Now, you sadly acknowledge that your world of interests is shrinking.

Budapest in the Spring

2010-04-24T19:10:00.001+03:00

Budapest in the spring is mostly cold. The city itself is a mixture of Art Nouveau buildings, baths, stocking shops, excellent food, fine china and great shows.

We rented a studio apartment for a week (price is about the same as a 4-star hotel) and had a rich program every day: landmark visiting in the mornings and shows in the evenings. Public transportation is good, especially trams and metro. The buses are more run down. Prices, in general, are still lower than Western Europe (inevitable with a conversion rate of HUF 260 = 1 Euro), but much higher than, say, 5 years ago.

All the beautiful buildings were built around 1900, but not all of them are maintained properly. The combination of tarnished buildings and glitzy neon signs make a weird sight. The most famous bath, the Széchenyi, is an architectural masterpiece, but lacks some modern comfort. There are not enough signs inside (if you don't know the place, expect to get lost), no water way from the inside out and the entrance system is overly complicated (you need a special wristwatch, a card and a key to operate it) - no wonder they have workers there to explain how all this works together. The showers are scarce, with no privacy or space for your stuff and there is no comfy place for those important finishing touches before the exit. Haven't seen a kiosk or restaurant inside, either.

The food is one of the major features in Budapest. You can lunch starting at around HUF 800, indulge yourself in one of the fine cafés or restaurants, or buy food in the market hall. Some must-order dishes are gulyásleves (goulash soup), halászlé (fish soup), paprikás or pörkölt (meat stew with lots of paprika), túrós csusza (pasta baked with cottage cheese and bacon), galuska or gombóc (filled dumplings), gesztenypüré (sweet chestnut puree with whipped cream), and Somlói galuska (sponge cake dumplings with chocolate sauce, rum and whipped cream). Of course, there are many, many others. Also worth trying are Pick salami, kolbász (sausage), hurka (fresh sausage), tepertős pogácsa (round puffed pastry with bacon), birsalma sajt (quince jelly) - for a start. Don't forget to stock up on paprika and pálinka (brandy). Hungarian cuisine includes an endless list of dishes and sweets. On our daily way to the closest tram station, we passed an excellent confectionery, where Peter had cake every time we passed by. I had some too - the scales in my bathroom still remind me the sweet sins.

Budapest has about 100 theaters and concert halls. We watched diverse shows, from grand operetta productions to fringe. There is an endless variety of just about every performing art form.

Shopping experience depends on your budget. Souvenirs abound all over the city, from cheap touristy items to Zsolnay or Herendi porcelain. I bought a small Kósa Klára pottery piece in a gallery in Szentendre.

A week in Budapest is a great battery recharger, there is a lot to see and experience.

Some of the pictures we took can be seen here.

Dishwasher Woes

2010-04-23T23:57:00.002+03:00

You know those annoying people who wash their dishes before inserting them into their dishwasher? Or those who don't put pots and pans into it? Heaven forbid the poor dishwasher should work too hard...

I had on old Siemens that needed too many repairs lately, so we declared it defunct. Eli, the technician, came this morning and took it away for spare parts. Because we liked it, we bought a new Siemens dishwasher. The inside of the new one has more features, but it's less user-friendly. For example, the additional shelf for knives does not open completely so it's inconvenient to push a piece under it, in the corner.

The machine came with a booklet that shows, among other things, how to load it. Unless you are German, you will find it hard to believe they actually tell you where to put each piece, depending on the type of food that was in it. Also, the cutlery basket has a lid with individual holes for each piece and a picture shows where to place spoons, forks, teaspoons, each one in its dedicated place. Knives have their own individual rails in the top rack. I can imagine the clever Siemens engineers applying all that calculus to determine the perfect angle for each piece to get the optimal exposure to water and detergent and the right space between the pieces based on their shape and hight for best results. With all due respect, I hereby solemnly declare I have absolutely no intention of loading my dishwasher according to your instructions. Why? Because my ID expires before I place every teaspoon in its own little hole.

In your effort to give us the best results, you forgot that machines should make our lives easier and not the other way around.

Left=Wrong?

2010-04-17T08:15:00.000+03:00

Do you realize that right, in English, means the opposite of both left and wrong? Same in Hungarian. The name of their neo-Nazi party, Jobbik, is not only an acronym of Jobboldali Ifjúsági Közösség ("Right-wing Youth Community"), but a word on its own, meaning "the better one". In the recent elections, Jobbik gained entry into parliament for the first time after winning 16.71% of votes. Hungarian Jews say the atmosphere, narrative, colors, uniforms, marching and antisemitic incidents are like pre-WWII. They didn't believe then anything bad will happen to them and they don't believe now.

According to their spokesman, getting on the first plane to Israel doesn't solve the problem, but they expect Israel to help. Although I'm sure Israel will help as much as it can, but preventing any single antisemitic manifestation is a somewhat unrealistic expectation. IMHO, the solution is getting on that plane. 'So you think that being nuked by Ahmadinejad in Tel Aviv is better than being attacked by a Hungarian neo-Nazi in Budapest?' asks my friend A.
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: The reason I chose to be an Israeli taxpaying citizen rather than a wealthier American or Canadian one is to maintain this country for Jews who wish to come. Don't wait to be shot into the Danube.

Circus

2010-03-25T22:33:00.000+02:00

A couple of days ago, the news broadcaster on Channel 2 announced the coming of an animal-free circus (her emphasis). In the following reportage they showed various acrobats from that same circus who've been injured (took them years to recover) and some others who perform dangerous acts without a safety net. Although they are experienced, all it takes is a momentary loss of focus and they drop dead.

Not that I am for any form of animal abuse, but didn't we lose proportions here? Now that we stopped abusing circus animals, it's about time we legislate mandatory safety nets so that injured or dead acrobats will not be part of the show.

A Breath of Fresh Air

2010-03-20T21:15:00.001+02:00

This was my first time at the Dead Sea in springtime. Turns out that the otherwise barren hills of the former seabed are not barren at all. They are covered with vegetation, which made me somewhat ashamed of the imminent bulldozer I mentioned in an older post. The water temperature was absolutely perfect, the weather great and there was a huge bonus too: I met a very special young woman, the meeting being the reason for booking this weekend in the first place.

She is the daughter of Peter's former boss (of 30 years ago) and friend. When he last saw her she was 6. I never met her before. She found me on Facebook several months ago, pursuing a childhood image of our wedding picture. We started emailing and then she booked a week-long Dead Sea vacation. That's where we met.

She was born in Oradea, our hometown, to a couple of engineers who got divorced after we left, while she was a teenager. The father, who turned out to be a Don Juan with children from different women and an ego constantly hungry for women to boost it, didn't talk to her for 2 years despite living only 15 minutes away. Following the divorce, her mother went through very rough times financially and emotionally and kicked her out at 18. She is independent ever since. She is a nurse, she lived in Hungary and obtained Hungarian citizenship, then moved to Göteborg, Sweden. She lives in a lovely apartment, cooks and bakes, trains and does her best to live a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle despite her hectic work schedule at the hospital. She is knowledgeable in many areas, including Bible, with independent thinking and great human relations. She is funny and smart. A breath of fresh air.

Purim Thoughts

2010-02-28T16:06:00.000+02:00

One of the Purim traditions is wearing masks and costumes, being disguised. Many religions and regions have similar customs: fools' day, tribal dances, Venice, Rio, Mardi Gras, any theater play, and even the Hamas terrorist killing in Dubai.

Now why would we want to be someone else? Why pretending? It's fun, it's a show, but there must be some root cause. Don't know much about tribal dances and African or Polynesian masks, so my take is probably a Western one. We want to be someone else because:
a. We are unhappy being what we are ('If I were a rich man...')
b. We want to do something unaccepted by society
c. We make a living out of it
d. A combination of the above.

I believe religions and early states allowed masquerades as a safety valve for [oppressed] masses. 364 days you do what religion/society prescribes, 1 day you are free to live the dream you cannot fulfill in you daily life.

In fact, we do a little pretending or acting in many mundane situations. We are not behaving the same at work, with our spouses, with our children, with our friends...They all have a different image of us, even though we don't wear a real mask at these encounters, maybe just a virtual one. Our acting was best described by William Shakespeare in his immortal "All the world's a stage" in 'As you Like It':

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Illnesses and Grandchildren

2010-02-27T19:39:00.003+02:00

My blog is usually triggered by some event or thought that come to me during the week. During the past week I caught a nasty cold and felt really bad. Although it's very tempting to describe all my symptoms and gain loads of compassion, I won't do it. Why? Because nobody is really interested in other people's illnesses. Besides, only old people and maybe hypochondriacs talk about their illnesses.

My late mother in law's favorite subject whenever she met another older lady -whatever the occasion- was discussing constipation remedies. Need I say more?

Israeli songwriter Naomi Shemer had a group of fellow grandmother friends, that used to convene at one of the Tel Aviv cafes. The rule of the group was that each woman is allowed to mention only one illness and one grandchild during each meeting.

Have a healthy week!

Self-definition vs. Reality

2010-02-20T20:14:00.003+02:00

Lately, my chorus decided to put up a new website and all the singers were asked to write a short bio, 1-2 sentences describing us. This is mine: 'Apart from singing, juggles between a high-tech job, spoiling the men in her life and blogging her opinions.' I wasn't sure this is a good self-definition, until this Thursday's events.

Tom and I decided that after my therapy in the morning, I call him to to check his location (he was supposed to be on his way home from the base) and if he is less than 30 minutes away, I return home, wait for him, have breakfast together and then leave for the office. This arrangement worked successfully in the past. I called as soon as I left the clinic, but there was no answer. After a few trials I gave up and headed to work. I thought he fell asleep on the bus and hoped someone will wake him up on time.

After about half an hour in the office, my phone rings and shows an unknown caller ID. Tom was on the line. He forgot his phone in the base (asked a passerby to use his cellphone), got home and couldn't find his key. I'm having a deja vu. He asks me to come and rescue him (as if I have a choice). Half an hour later, rescue squad 669, aka mom, lets him in and makes him breakfast. Noticed he coughs and has a sore throat. Gave him Vitamin C, instructions for lunch and left for work. Again. After work, instead of going to the gym as planned, went to a nearby supermarket and bought ingredients for chicken soup, aka the ultimate Jewish medicine. Came home and made him soup. "It makes me feel better", he says slurping from his bowl. I'm melting away.

Tom: "Will there be a time when I will rescue you?"
Me: "Hope not."

Romanorum Queribundus Machinator

2010-02-13T12:27:00.001+02:00

I admire engineers. They know a great deal about the underlying laws of our world, they apply logic to solve problems, they drive technological progress and make the world a better place. I'm married to an engineer. That's because I can only love someone whom I appreciate and because statistically, many of the good Romanian Jewish boys at the critical time went to engineering (or medical) schools. (Just like in England they became lawyers, accountants and doctors, in Yemen they were jewelers and singers- of course these are gross generalizations, but that is what this post is about.)

Do you know what do engineers and German shepherd dogs have in common? They both have an intelligent gaze but can't express themselves.

Well, that's one of their downsides. Their social skills could sometimes be lacking, they apply logic to 'soft', human matters, they are not smooth talkers or good writers. A salesman will tell you want you want to hear and even though you know it's not the truth, you enjoy the pleasant atmosphere. There are times we really don't want to hear the truth (like in a romantic setting) and times we absolutely need it (like for home repairs and maintenance).

Many of my friends are engineers, most of them of Romanian origin. They are excellent professionals, but only a few made it to management or business for a variety of reasons: they like engineering, they lack drive and entrepreneurship because of the socialist environment of their childhood, they immigrated late to fully integrate in Israeli society and enjoy the opportunities it offers.

Lately I made a [statistically invalid] observation. They all complain about management in their workplace, mismanagement to be precise. According to them, their managers take poor decisions, are bad leaders, don't have high enough degrees or sufficient experience, request too many progress reports, are involved in office politics, waste time on insignificant issues, are basically high-wage parasites, or all of the above. And of course, they, the engineers could do it better. Just let them put all the problems into equations and crunch the numbers.

Isn't it easier to complain and make excuses than push yourself to become a good manager and prove you can really do it better? Now, before you start hating me, consider my small token of appreciation - a species I made up specially for you: Romanorum Queribundus Machinator.

Food - Advanced Tactics

2010-02-06T23:08:00.000+02:00

Even though I cook mostly for weekends, I don't like being too repetitious in the kitchen. Apart from my traditional Hungarian/Transylvanian cooking with some appreciated staples, I like trying out new dishes. With time, my family moved from the frustrating 'have-we-tried-this-already?' to the more encouraging 'wow-this-looks-really-good' attitude. They can't tell me what they'd like, they expect me to come up with the ideas and the precise shopping list.

In a previous blogpost, I described some basic meal planning techniques (searching for recipes on the net and watching the food channel). Still, this entailed deciding what I want or getting an idea from somewhere and then looking it up. Takes too much energy. Lately I've improved my tactic and here I am ready to share my winning formula so far, hoping it helps some fellow meal-planning challenged who like to try new dishes (did you taste spaghetti in beet and poppy seed sauce?).

I start by looking at the recipe columns in the Friday papers. If I find something I'd like to try, a save the paper till I cook the meal, then throw it out. I know it's not clever (Dan is still reminding me of some kind of roast beef with cherries I prepared for a Passover dinner years ago), but I prefer not saving recipes as this would require digitizing, storing, indexing, retrieving ... too much energy. I prefer recipes coming to me rather than me haunting for them.

This brings me to tactic number two: following professional food blogs. I know there are many out there, so just pick some you really like. I incidentally ran across http://matkonation.com/ (Hebrew) in an acquaintance's Facebook status and liked it immediately. They have really good weekly recipes. Here's an English one too: http://deliciouskitchen.weebly.com/recipe-blog.html (less professional than the previous one, sent by a friend of mine mostly for the site's aesthetic look).

The last tactic requires a little more investment: bookmarking really good food sites (like http://www.cookeat.co.il/ - also Hebrew). The recipes come from many different chefs (yeah, some are too fancy) and they have professionally taken videos as well. The good thing (apart from the videos) on this site is the clickable categories. These allow you to find a soup/salad/side dish/whatever is still missing from the plan. They don't have an RSS feed, you need to register instead - yet another username-password pair I won't remember - so I just check back from time to time. They also have a non-recipe blog I don't have patience for. Just give me the recipes, no literature please.

And finally, here is a little bonus for my Hebrew-speaking readers looking for Hungarian recipes. This page will also take you to Ofer Vardi's site and book. Personally, I never used this blog since I can search in Hungarian, but I saw many positive feedbacks, so I decided sharing the info with you.

And a plea: if you eat something at my table and like it, come and have it again, just please don't ask me how I made it. For some mysterious reason, I prefer keeping it for myself.

Stop the [Fruit] Madness

2010-01-30T20:25:00.002+02:00

It's Tu B'shvat. One of the customs is eating fruits from the Land of Israel. Of course in the Diaspora, there weren't any fruits at this time of the year, so we had dried fruit. But why on earth are we eating dried fruit here when plenty of fresh fruit is available in any neighborhood supermarket? Not to mention that most of the dried fruit is imported from Turkey. This year, shops went over the top and also offered candied fruit to the hordes of tradition-hungry buyers. And to top the outrage, people are making cakes out of dried and candied fruit!

How about a nice natural fruit salad or shake?

C2H Index

2010-01-22T19:31:00.001+02:00

No wonder you don't know what it means, I just made it up. It means Contribution to Humankind Index. There are lots of indices that rank states and people: GDP/capita, credit rating, academic papers and Nobel prize winners, sport achievements and many, many more. So one more can do no harm. All we need to do is associate a weight to any actions states take and calculate a weighted average. Starting an unjust war to conquer a neighbor state would give a state -100 points or some other negative number that takes into account the number of injured, dead and ruined facilities. Polluting rivers, seas, deforestation, violating human rights etc., would also give some negative number. Scientific achievements and humanitarian aid would give a positive number. You got the idea. The criteria need to be set by the UN (in endless debates, what else?) and the results continuously publicized. A true mirror to our world that will ultimately improve it.

Love-Hate

2010-01-10T22:01:00.000+02:00

How come people's most irritating features become their signature behavior that with time we actually miss? The only answer I could find is that the behavior sneaks into our routine and we get used to it. David Ben Gurion kept eating Paula's 'kuch-much' after she died to remember her.

Don't we hate our routine (but sometimes also miss it)? Don't we always wish we could change it and do what we want? Turns out that what we want is just a different routine. Most people can't afford to change their routine completely (except for the courageous or those who won the lottery), but introduce one or two enjoyable activities in your daily routine and watch for Pareto to take effect.

So easy to advise others...

Old vs. New

2010-01-02T22:27:00.001+02:00

We have a gramophone, an analog stereo system (amplifier, radio, double cassette player/recorder), big old loudspeakers, old TV (not even flat screen), old VCR, no DVD. If we want to listen to a CD, we connect a discman to this old stereo system.

NEW: I think we should replace this entire anachronistic 'package' with a new, functional home cinema system. After all, music and movies now mostly come from the net, so all you need is a comm cable and USB connector (for disk-on-keys).

OLD: I am not a gadget person. I don't like learning new buttons.

NEW: I am not a nostalgic type of person. Things that happened in the past are all in a big nebulous timeframe, whether they happened 2, 5 or 10 years ago.

OLD: I have an ancient cell phone which I'll carry until it dies. I won't buy myself a new, technical item while the old one functions well.

NEW: For my own home, I prefer functional, new designs over intricate antique furniture.

OLD: I won't buy any new item just to feel renewal, only if I need it. Don't understand why people need more than a small number of any type of item in their possession. Imelda Marcos's shoe collection comes to mind.

NEW: I am an early adopter of the newest versions of software applications I use.

CONFUSED.

My Pendulum Theory

2009-12-27T01:06:00.001+02:00

This is my last theory for 2009. Actually, it's not really mine, as during the research for this post I found another blog that explains this social pendulum from a different angle. My example is on a much larger social scale, specifically related to what happened 20 years ago, in 1989: the revolutions of 1989. Back in 1989, I followed the revolutions on TV. Actions that were unimaginable before, were really happening. The masses courageously took action.

Many documentaries were broadcast to mark the anniversary and I watched one describing the fall of the Berlin Wall. One little story in this documentary made a big impression on me. It was about an East German lady in her fifties, working for the local ice cream factory. Apparently, there was a constant ice cream shortage in East Germany and the entire quantity this factory produced was always sold in an instant. When western goods started to be sold in eastern shops, people stopped buying eastern products, among them ice cream. After the eastern ice cream could not be sold, the shopkeeper asked the factory to take its products back. This lady came and tried to convince clients to buy her factory's ice cream by explaining that otherwise the factory will be closed down and the workers will become unemployed. The clients couldn't care less. One client even replied that he was fed up with this ice cream for 40 years while it was the only one available and now he was taking his revenge. This woman disposed the refrigerator and its contents. A few month later the factory closed down and she was unemployed.

Lately, people are nostalgically reviving former East German products, including Trabant cars. A new word, "ostalgie", has been coined for the phenomenon.

These days people are buying agricultural products from local farms, for helping them stay in business and for saving transportation carbon dioxide, and non-profits help the unemployed, although volunteering and civil society are much weaker in the east than the west.

Initial large pendulum swings are human and understandable, but after 20 years, the pendulum motion has slowed down, swings are more moderate.

Logic

2009-12-25T10:01:00.001+02:00

We left the apartment in the morning and locked the door with 2 locks, as usual. Forgot Tom was home and that the upper lock can only be opened from the outside. When he realized he was locked inside the apartment, he called. "I feel so frustrated having the keys and not being able to open the door. If I could only stand on the other side of the door, I could open it".

I hope he applies more logic to his IDF work, otherwise this country is in real danger.

For the logically challenged: if he already stands on the other side of the door, he is outside, no need to open the door.

Happy ending: He called his friend, who happened to be in the neighborhood walking his dog, threw the key from the balcony and the friend came up and released him.

Additions to this post after Tom's comments:
Disclosure: Of course I understood what he meant at the time, he wished he could have got out without his backpack, stand on the other side of the door, open it and then take his stuff. I think it's still funny and we both shared a laugh on this little episode.

Full disclosure: Every mom would like to have a son like Tom, but only I, the luckiest mom on Earth, has the privilege of having him. And I thank God every day for it. I do.(Now I embarrassed him).

What's Wrong with Healthcare?

2009-12-12T13:41:00.005+02:00

There are millions of people who don't have access to potable water, not to mention healthcare. In the US, healthcare is so expensive that middle-class unemployed cannot afford it. The democrats are working on improving the system, with no results so far. In communist countries healthcare is free, albeit usually not of the best quality. I was told that in ancient China, people paid their doctor only when healthy, but not when ill, so it was in the doctor's best interest to keep them healthy. What an incredibly clever idea!

Since the mandatory healthcare tax was introduced here, we get less for more, but everybody is insured and gets medical care through one of four existing sick funds. The insurance includes a finite number of consultations, lab tests, hospitalization, rehab and a 'basket' of medicine. Naturally, not every possible treatment is included and many hold different gold and platinum insurance plans or private policies to augment the basic coverage.

For historical reasons, dental care is not included in the basic package of any of the sick fund offerings. My private dentist schedules periodical check-ups and hygienist appointments and that seems to work out just fine. The less you use the sick fund service, the more it makes. So why should they tell you about screening tests you are entitled to according to your age group, gender and other criteria? To compensate for the lack of preventive medicine, one should take ownership over test requests and stats. Thanks to my employer, I attend a yearly medical check-up, but the results are not accessible by my GP, I have to bring them to him on paper and make him enter them into his computer, so that he can see the broader picture.

In recent years, since a wealth of medical information is available on the web, the doctor is no longer the only source of information and many look up their symptoms, lab test results and disease information. They read about treatment options and ask their doctor intelligent questions. According to our friend Andrei (the husband of a doctor and father of a med student), doctors will soon be replaced by software that given your symptoms will diagnose your problem. According to a radio program I recently listened to, personalized DNA-based healthcare is around the corner. Everything seems to go in the right direction, so what's wrong then?

My medical pet peeve is personal medical records. You should own them and not the private physicians or organizations that treat you for a certain condition. How? On a smart card or disk-on-key. The different service providers will add their data and the accumulated records will be analyzed by an ever upgraded software application that will provide you with stats and trends, recommend screening tests, remind you to take your prescribed drugs, renew prescriptions, make appointments, suggest further reading and keep you on top of the latest findings, procedures and rights. It shouldn't even cost you since many service providers will be happy to advertise their services based on your location. If you carry it with you at all times it can also be used in emergency situations by ambulance and trauma center personnel. The infrastructure is there, the funding is there, and I don't believe I'm the first or only one on the planet to think about this. So why doesn't it work that way? It takes a few champions to lobby for the initiative with the legislators and fight their way through red tape.

Anybody to take up that [surgical] glove?

Role Model

2009-12-05T18:05:00.004+02:00

While kids at my age were crazy about ABBA and Boney M, oddly enough my teenage years were fandom-less. I listened and danced to their music, but wasn't into knowing every little fact or gossip about them. Many years later, in a work related training session, the trainer asked us who was our role model. "Marie Curie" I replied and was shocked to see nobody else in the room seemed to have heard about her. Her tremendous determination and achievements inspired many.

Of course there are many others whom I appreciate for achievements in other areas, such as the Hungarian Kishon-Lapid-Dosh trio. They made it despite all odds. I won't miss Yair Lapid's Friday column in Yedioth Aharonoth and I often watch him on Channel 2 on Friday evening as well. Often the two are inter-related. Shortly after he started to host the Friday news magazine, he instituted a "one good thing" corner, where he presented a positive news story. I enjoyed it, but after a short while, it was discontinued. In one of his articles he explained that its rating wasn't high enough to keep it going. Strangely enough, yesterday there were two very positive stories on the show: one about an Israeli ex-businessman who donates hundreds of millions of dollars to create a successful computerized learning system for schools and another one about Israel's newest Nobel prize winner, professor Ada Yonath. From the reportage I learned we have the same role model, Marie Curie (not that I can even remotely compare myself with them). Professor Yonath was annoyed to constantly being asked about the dress she will wear at the Nobel Prize award ceremony and about her hairdo for the event.

"Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas." - Marie Curie

A Matter of Geography

2009-11-28T19:15:00.003+02:00

You know those shampoo/dye ads with women's soft, shiny yet strong hair?. Now imagine one such hair in your soup and...fishing it out in disgust. Same hair, different place.

Think about an appetizing dish, nicely laid out on your plate. Same on the other plates at the table. You finish eating, gather all the plates with the remainders on the top plate. Much less appetizing, isn't it? You throw the remainders into the garbage, but a few pieces land accidentally next to the bin. You grab the sticky matter and place it inside. Same food, different attitude.

You pet your cat. Nice, calming feeling. The cat goes away leaving a bunch of hair on the sofa. Damn cat!

These deep thoughts come to me after too much housework, especially in the kitchen. This is what I do on weekends, as during workdays I return home late from work and other activities. This weekend I made some above average food for the boys' birthdays. I usually don't write about cooking, as there are plenty of food blogs out there, but this time I'll make an exception as I feel you are really curious about the menu. I made peanut and coconut Chinese chicken for Friday, Hungarian stuffed chicken for Saturday and a punch cake.

Now, there is a really high pile of washed clothes on one of the armchairs in my living room, waiting for folding and returning to their respective closets. The same garment in the pile or on its shelf in the closet, different feeling. A matter of geography!

What's in a Uniform?

2009-11-17T20:36:00.004+02:00

Since I defined happiness in a previous post, I had a few happy moments with my kids, mainly when visiting Tom and taking him out for a fancy breakfast, together with Dan. On one such occasion we went to a nice garden restaurant in Nahariya (excellent food), on another occasion to a cafe in Tel Aviv (nothing special). I realized that despite the quality of the experience (Nahariya was far better), my level of happiness was higher on the Tel Aviv occasion.

It took me a Yad Vashem visit to realize why. There, the witness videos unfold a myriad of 'private' cruelties and murders alongside the well-planned mass-murders. The war gave legitimacy to many people's evil tendencies. At some death camps, most operations were carried out by local volunteers! At the end of the visit at the Holocaust History Museum, the triangle shaped building opens up into a balcony with a breathtaking view of the Jerusalem hills. This was the point I broke down into tears. Dan was standing by me in his IDF officer uniform, trying to comfort me.

"The feeling is indescribable", says my friend Jeff. "It's like the Exodus theme music playing in the background", he easily and beautifully describes it.

So what made the difference between the two occasions? At the Tel Aviv breakfast, both 'kids' wore IDF uniforms and that made me infinitely proud of them.

Communications - Take IV: A Confession

2009-11-14T09:30:00.005+02:00

Two recent triggers gave me the courage to confess about this little problem of mine, although I was drafting this post in my mind for a long time. The first trigger is a blogpost about identifying yourself with a description in a text. I don't remember reading such text, at least not recently. I'd like to think the reason is that my personality is more complex than a descriptive, even well written, paragraph. The other possible reasons are much less compelling (not reading enough, not remembering in general, not paying attention to details), so I'll just conveniently ignore them. But it is possible that a description matches one facet of my personality. This actually happened on page 87 of Marianne Legato's "Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget", under the topic "Say What You Mean" (the second trigger I referred to). According to the author, 85% of women (me included) don't say (mostly to their partners) what they really want or mean. We expect them to read our minds and respond to our unverbalized wishes. When they fail doing so, we conclude that our relationship is just not working. There might be a few reasons why we act like that, but most probably it's a combination between our brain structure and upbringing.

In my special case, I take this even further (you didn't really expect me to define something 85% of women do as "my little problem", right?). After going through a long thought process, involving analyzing different possibilities and reaching a conclusion, I am surprised when the others don't have a clue about my conclusion. That's because I never told them. I think/feel I did, but I actually didn't. Is it a 'senior moment'? Am I having Alzheimer's? Do I expect others to reach the same 'logical' conclusion? All of the above?

Now don't tell me you don't understand how this image is related to the subject. It's Citrine. According to a website, it helps overcoming difficulty in verbalizing thoughts and feelings, among its other healing powers (if you believe in such things). Now I'll be really disappointed if I don't get a few of these as a present. Preferably in the form of jewelry.

P.S. Just realized how relevant my previous post is.

Communications - Take III

2009-11-07T20:58:00.003+02:00

When I started blogging, my husband was suspicious. Then he started reading and even enjoying my posts. Now, he reads my posts to keep up with my thoughts.

Me: "Would you like to invite M and his wife for dinner or dine together in a restaurant?"

P: "Who is M? Is he someone you mentioned in your blog and I didn't read the post yet?"

Me: "No."

My Social Theory

2009-10-31T21:47:00.007+02:00

Recently I've incidentally discovered the meaning of social anxiety. Someone I know wrote she suffers from it and I looked it up. My next logical step was to categorize it to file it in my mind. Hence my social theory about coping with uncertainty. If I understand correctly, person suffering from social anxiety abstains from communicating rather than facing the other party's anticipated negative attitude. They avoid uncertainty (the other party's reaction), because they presume it to be judgmental and basically negative in nature.

However, there are many types of uncertainty and many reasons to avoid them. Uncertainty avoidance is one of Hofstede's five dimensions for assessing culture. He defined uncertainty avoidance of societies as preference for explicit rules (e.g. about religion and food) and formally structured activities vs. preference for implicit or flexible rules or guidelines and informal activities. We all want to avoid uncertainty to a certain degree, which may be below or above the norm and the national or international average. Israel's uncertainty avoidance index is quite high (meaning Israelis prefer to avoid uncertainty), which somehow contradicts our general feeling of existential uncertainty. We thrive in uncertainty; we like to stretch the limits (even our borders are still not defined) and we are referred to as the start-up nation. This paradox is yet to be explained.

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky define our behavior and decision making in financial uncertainty in their Nobel Prize winning prospect theory.

After mentioning all these great names, I feel awkward presenting my own little theory. The action we choose for coping with uncertain situations depends on our own uncertainty tolerance and the level of predictability of the situation (uncertainty magnitude). People suffering from social anxiety have low uncertainty tolerance, they don't cope well with uncertainty, and so they either avoid uncertainty (yellow square) or, if possible, reduce it by preparing in advance (green square). Others either just act normally (blue square), or, when faced with a low predictability situation either consider the worst possible outcome (and from there they can only be pleasantly surprised), or just face the big unknown with no expectations at all to avoid disappointment (red square).
Critiques welcome.

Food

2009-10-17T17:37:00.002+02:00

In my childhood food was something you eat when your parents put it on the table. Heavy, greasy, tasty. All households had cookbooks, but the real treasures were hundreds, if not thousands of recipes diligently collected by mothers along the years. They came in all shapes and sizes, handwritten, typed, on small pieces of paper, on napkins, newspaper clips, many untitled. My mother had a sweet tooth (see the chestnut incident in a previous post), so she collected mostly cake recipes.

Our old family cookbook (written by Szmuk Iren) is now barely in one piece, its yellow pages crumbling away with every touch and turn. I still consult it many times when I want to prepare something with a childhood taste. During the past years, I also bought some new trendy cookbooks I consult on occasion, but I find myself more and more searching for recipes on the net. My technique is synthesizing a few recipes of the same dish and making my own combination. I also watch the Food channel on satellite and get ideas from there.

Recently, my husband started organizing some old stuff in our storage and surfaced my mom's collection of recipes I kept after she died 20 years ago, and his mom's. One one hand I really don't feel like investing a lot of time in understanding, sorting and digitizing age old recipes. On the other hand, there is a slim chance I might discover a few true gems. In the mean time I keep procrastinating and crying out for sound advice.

Help!

Essentials

2009-10-10T17:10:00.007+02:00

The essential elements of my daily survival are hair cream, dental floss and optalgin (pain killer for my headaches). And my glasses, of course. Without them the world is a moving collection of colored patches. A hairbrush and water spray are welcome too. My Fa deodorant, creams for various body parts, and my perfume, Happy, complete the list. Oh, and also soaps (3 types), shampoo and conditioner, toothbrush and paste, scissors, tweezers, razor, nail file, physical exercise, medical checkups, hairdresser and occasional beautician appointments, dental checkups and treatments, hygienist appointments, food (preferably healthy), drink, toilet, shower, bath, whirlpool, bath foam, towels, sheets, clothes, shoes, shelter, clean and hygienic conditions, sex and air to breathe. These are all for body. Those who eat and dress for their soul have large bodies and bank accounts, respectively.

For soul: vacations, nature, movies, theater (OK, the last play I saw, 'Uncle Vanya', left me unhappier than all the characters in the play so I'm not sure that counts), music, dance (starting ballroom dancing course soon), literature, radio, television, newspapers, writing (including this blog), spending time with family and friends, status, art appreciation, aesthetic surroundings, achievements (personal and of meaningful others), stress free environment, shrink, relationships, pet, holidays, festivals and celebrations, love.

Isn't life complicated?

Only in Israel

2009-10-02T09:41:00.007+02:00

Seven o'clock in the morning. Dan in his officer uniform and me lock the door and enter the elevator on the 6th floor. The elevator stops on the second floor and a neighbor (50-ish woman wearing heavy makeup) gets in. On the ground floor Dan gets out to throw the garbage.

Neighbor: "It's always so touching to see soldiers."

Me: "I have two."

Neighbor: "May they return in peace."

Basement. We get out, say goodbye and get into our cars to head for a day's work. I pick Dan up at the parking exit, next to the garbage room, drive him to his base and then drive to the office.

So, how was Canada?

2009-09-28T20:17:00.011+02:00

Not Canada, just the Canadian Rockies, or the four national parks to be exact. That's where I spent a 3-week vacation and concluded that Canadian Rockies are a larger and friendlier version of Switzerland.

CPR and Fairmont

Although scenery is superb and people very friendly, some weirdnesses are quickly encountered by the innocent tourist: cable cars are called gondolas, toilets are washrooms and some nature spots are named after businessmen (mostly after past CPR executives). Although the history of the CPR is tightly connected to the parks, you still wonder whether there is a shortage of Canadian pioneers, scientists, artists or heros who deserve to be immortalized more than P&L mavens.

The CPR sold its luxury hotels to the Fairmont company, that is holding them today. The Fairmont Banff Springs hotel is one of our first targets, a piece of local history.

As we enter the lobby to find the exhibition, a black porter in Scottish uniform approaches us and releases a "what are you doing here?". He explains where the public areas we can visit are located, asks us not to move any furniture (why would we?) and not to bother hotel guests (huh?). He sumarizes the places that "will keep you busy for a while" or was it "out of trouble"?

About a week later we return to Banff and decide

to take Victorian-style pictures of ourselves. The photographer makes us imagine we are one of the Fairmont guests in the early 1900s to get proper facial expressions out of us. He also tells us the recession made Fairmont offer lower prices of about C

AD 200 - a tad more we paid for our own accomodation. I could have been the one whose peace was so fiercely guarded by that porter.

Weather

The weather can be pretty tricky. It changes in a matter of minutes from sunny to snowy and back to sunny again. This is exactly what happened to us on the Chester Lake trail. Above treeline, it can get very windy. Near Takakkaw falls, the mist turns the air very cool and walking on 300m of ice of the Athabasca glacier definitely warrants wearing those thermal undies.

There, I learn from Marianne, a twenty something driver-guide of a Brewster Ice Explorer, a wealth of information about glaciers. Later on, I apply my freshly acquired knoledge to the landscape of the Edith Cavell Trail, the best trail in all the parks. My other favorites are Emerald Lake and the view from Whistlers Mountain (reached by the Jasper gondola).

Hidden Spots

On the Kananaskis dirt road, noon reaches us at the Mount Engadine Lodge, a true gem amidst fabulous scenery. They don't serve lunch, but the table is soon covered with cold goodies, all nicely layed out and very tasty. (I am still trying to reproduce their lemon-poppy seed cake). I am truly enchanted. Back home I found out I'm not the only one. According to TripAdvisor, the lodge is 'among Canada's top ten hidden gems', while the Canadian Geographic Magazine refers to it as 'one of Canada's hidden treasures'.

Another gem off the beaten track is the Glenogle Mountain Lodge in

Golden, BC. Norbert and Doris are the friendliest hosts on the planet. On the evening we dined there, we were the only guests. While sitting on the terrace and indulging into Doris's delicious German dishes, a couple of deer and a baby deer slowly pass their yard and disappear in the forest.

Wildlife

Wildlife in the Canadian Rockies is abundant. The most widespread species is the mosquito. (Still haven't figured out how the little beasts got under my clothes.) We also spotted deer, caribou, elk, coyote, bear, hoary marmot, mountain goat, bighorn sheep, Canadian geese, different species of squirrel and some more I haven't been introduced to. For us city dwellers, observing wildlife is really cool, but the 'natives' don't appreciate the large herbivores eating their flowers and the bears collecting fruit from under the trees in their yards. Don't get close to big mammals and they won't bother you.

Travelling with Friends

Travelling with friends can be fun but also challenging, especially if you want to remain friends after the trip. We quickly learn the 'rough spots' and adjust (after getting yelled at in the middle of pouring rain). The central issue is how much togetherness is right for the group. Should we walk together on the trail, should we all dine together? As Dan planned the program, I made the lodging reservations and Peter did most of the driving, we also absorb all the complaints. The praises too.

Things to do

Most days we are out on the trail, walking. While in Jasper, the guys go on a half-day fishing trip on Malign lake and the girls go shopping. After the first shop (pricey indian art) I lose interest and find myself a chic cafe. I sip a decaf capuccino and devour a brownie. I feel on the top of the world.

Back to Calgary

On the highway back to Calgary, we decide to stop next to a deserted house to strech out a bit. 3 kids on bikes and a dog approach, but stop at a distance. A few minutes later, a man comes in a white van and questions us, then tells us we are in an Indian reservation and threatens to call the police.

Next morning in our Calgary hotel, businesmen and people looking busy at breakfast make me feel unease. Then I remember I'm on vacation, which is probably what they'd want and I conclude they should feel bad, not me. As cities make me nervous, I decide to take a day trip to the Royal Tyrell Museum to see dinosaurs. The visit turns out to be disappointing - vacationing kids ruuning around skeletons, not really understanding what they are looking at. The only intersting exhibits were 46 creatures from the Burgess Shale, a 505-million-year-old underwater world once home to over 140 species of soft-bodied organisms, one of the most important fossil resources discovered on a 2300m Canadian mountain top. One small creature turns out to be the ancestor of all vertebrates, so ultimately ours too.

Food

Regular restaurant food is boring: steaks, hamburgers, salmon, pasta. Cilantro seems to be the most fashionable ingredient in Canadian contemporary cuisine. I hate it. It's used in organic agriculture to prevent bugs from eating nearby crops, as even bugs hate it and don't come nearby.

The Last Supper

We ask the hotel receptionist in Calgary to recommend a place for dinner. She sends us to a fashionable bistro on the posh 17th avenue uptown, a few minutes walk from the hotel. At first, I feel awkward in my tourist outfit among other well-dressed diners, but I soon recover and delve into people watching and my dinner (halibut with couscous, asparagus and... cilantro).

At the table to my left 4 guys are eating steaks and discussing the ultimate guy subject - making money. Actually only 3 are discussing, one is just mostly sitting there silently. On the bar, 2 young women, one overdressing the other and trying very hard to look cool. At the table opposite ours, a yuppie couple is dining quietly, almost apathetically. Seems they are out of discussion topics even before they are married (diamond ring on her finger). They are being served by a dancer postured waitress. Our waiter has longish curly hair, pulled back with a band. A slant-eyed waitress moves among the tables, pouring water from a stylish white designer jug. On the terrace an older man with different-aged blondes, one chicly late. A young couple enters. She is radiant wearing a fabulous short dress, moves out of my site. I spot her on my way out, sitting at a semi-dark corner table. Definitely a place to see and be seen.

Naive Question

2009-09-23T20:04:00.006+03:00

The Goldstone Report left me with a naive question. International law defines this, international law defines that, why doesn't the international law define that war is against the law? Instead of defining what weapons and conduct are allowed during war, wouldn't it be simpler to just not allow war at all?

Former military industry workers and soldiers will use former defense budgets to create new and exciting things for humanity. Disputes between countries will be solved by international court and police. Disobeying countries will be sanctioned up to cutting all ties with them.

Don't raise your eyebrows, told you it's naive.

I know what you think

2009-09-12T21:58:00.009+03:00

Two new insights from the past weeks:

1. If you need a manicure, don't ask your tailor.

2. If your bank invites you to the movies, you're gonna like it.

I know what you think: this woman is logically challenged, completely non-coherent. So here are the (true, of course true!) stories to prove you wrong.

For the first time in about 25 years, I felt the urge to have my nails professionally done. As I don't know any manicurist or pedicurist, I searched the local Yellow Pages.

I know what you think: this woman probably looks like a neglected slob. Wrong again. My nails look rather nice, actually. Clean, with no nail polish.

So, in the Yellow Pages I saw a large concentration of manicurists in Weizmann square, where Michael, our long time alterations tailor has a modest shop. As I needed to visit him anyway, I decided to ask him to recommend someone form his neighborhood. He took me to a nearby shop, where I was seated and waited for my turn. After taking in the non-appetizing scenery and considering escape, I decided to try at least a manicure. Bad decision. Both the outcome and the process were subzero.

I know what you think: she expected a 5-start treatment for her lousy $10? Nope, but I didn't expect to see bits of dead skin all over the place either, not to mention the lack of attention to the customer.

Our investment banker called. Strangely, she wasn't pushing a rewarding (for the bank, of course for the bank) investment. The bank invites us to a movie in one of the VIP halls of Cinema City. This turned out to be a very pleasant evening that also coincided with Peter's birthday. There was a free buffet in a private lounge before the movie, where I had coffee and cake. The hall featured leather armchairs with electrical tilting and leg rests, plenty of room for our stuff and refreshments and an absolutely huge screen. And blankets, too. They played the chick flick The Proposal, which was cute, stupid and entertaining. I know we indirectly paid for this via the bank commission, but we would never do this without their intermediation.

I know what you think: I expected her to be more cynical.

Roots

2009-08-28T20:42:00.007+03:00

I remember an archeology program on TV about excavations in Jerusalem. 3000 years of existence give plenty to dig. 'Here are our true roots, not in some shtetl in Poland', the archeologist said. Perhaps he's right, but 2000 years of diaspora made their mark on the Jews.

Deportation and enslaving by the Romans, burn-alive, torture and deportation by Spanish Inquisition, pogroms and other atrocities were all suffered before the terms 'human rights' and UN were invented.

For some reason unknown to me, lately I think more and more about the Holocaust. The other day, I was standing in my shower and thinking about the poor souls who were told they are about to take a shower, just to die suffocated by Zyklon-B a few minutes later. I wonder what they felt in those last moments. It's not that I am in a generally morbid mood, it just crept up on me.

When it comes to certain isues, my usual logic is suddenly suppressed by emotions. An American gentile acquaintance of mine (now in a divorce process from an Israeli) asked me for a recommendation letter to help him with the authorities against his residency revocation. I hesitated. On one hand he is a nice person and a potential positive citizen, on the other hand, he is not Jewish.

Israel is not like any other country, very deep roots and emotions attach the Jews to it, even those who do not live here. The sheer fact of its existence gives Jews around the world a sense of security and pride. It is true that many non Jews also live in Israel, spouses or family members of Jews, and native arabs. For those who don't fall into one of these categories, no citizenship is granted by law.

After an internal debate, I realize that luckily I don't have to make the decision. The Minstry of Interior has. That's why my taxes pay their salaries. I write a letter listing all his achievemnts here, as objectively as I possibly can and send it to his lawyer.

Forty years after WWII, Jewish genealogy was one of two major Internet applications. (Sex was the other one, in case you wondered.) The primary challenge of the Jewish people today is bonding together the Jews who live in Israel with those outside it. One great way of doing this is the Taglit-Birthright project. Dan just returned from a week of accompanying 30 Hungarian Jewish youngsters. Don't know how the trip affected the Hungarians, but Dan's Hungarian improved significantly.

I am thinking of visiting the death camps in Poland around Passover. Just feel every Jew must go there once. Some read books, some watch movies and some feel they have to physically touch the remnants of evil. The plans of Auschwitz have been recently found and handed to the Israeli PM during his visit to Germany.

The residency issue is not over. Now I'm facing a series a emails on behalf of my acquaintance requesting me to donate money to pay his lawyer. After some soul searching, a gut feeling takes over me. I'd rather have a [criminal] Jew as a citizen than a honest gentile.

Between Love and Violence

2009-08-22T21:22:00.006+03:00

What sort of sick mind would starve her own 3-years old child to 7 kg and make him undergo several unnecessary medical treatments and hospitalizations? Sick or criminal? Whatever the answer, when a child is abused in his own home, he is left without a safe harbor, he ventures into the world without a base camp. What kind of life is that when you can't trust anyone and don't have a refuge? Will he be able to have a normal life as an adult? To establish his own family and provide a safe environment for it? I guess it depends on your age when something like this happens and the help you get. He is still young, he can make it. I hope.

Former Israeli TV rating king Dudu Topaz grew up in a normal family and made it to unprecedented stardom, but ended up hanging himself in prison after ordering attacks on influential TV people who wouldn't hire him anymore. He could have done a million good things with the money and time he had, but he perceived himself worthless without audience adoration and that affected his psyche and acts. He lost his internal compass and got addicted to liking by others until his self definition became completely dependant on external rewards. Sick or criminal? In this case, it doesn't really matter anymore.

According to Aaron Ben Ze'ev and Ruhama Goussinsky's 'In the name of love', 'some of the worst evils have been committed in the name of love'. Just extrapolate the romantic love analyzed by Ben Ze'ev to love of a child and love of audience to get some indirect insights to the cases above.

My First Demonstration

2009-08-09T10:21:00.010+03:00

I watch demonstrations on TV from my armchair in my airconditioned living room, no matter how just the cause. Many times I wondered what would be THE reason to make me actually get up and demonstrate. Perhaps personal freedom or religious coercion.

Well, life proved stronger than any planning. Following the hate attack at the Tel Aviv gay center a week ago, I was one of 25,000 people who demonstrated yesterday in Rabin Square, Tel Aviv. As I circulated among the protesters, I overheard a woman asking about the meaning of a 'closet' and a youngster saying he's there with his lesbian aunt. Everybody looked straight into my eyes (usual Israeli behavior) as if they were trying to figure out my ties to the GLBT community. Or at least so I felt.

One sign said 'My son is gay, so what?' and another 'Today they hate gays, tomorrow they hate you'. This is probably the reason many came to demonstrate. They realized hatred has only a beginning, but no end. Today they hate gays, tomorrow they'll hate fat people, or bald people or any group you can imagine.

After a few speeches, I went to find some icecream. I'm not a serious protester. Yet.

Communications - Take II

2009-06-22T20:11:00.007+03:00

In an older post, I discussed how different new communication means affect our relationships. This week's events got me think about how they affect our lives.

First, we had to change our Internet infrastructure provider from ADSL-based to cable-based. Why? He (it) who has the money (my husband's employer) has the say.

Cable technician Dima came early Friday morning and announced me that if he can't pull in the cable, we might need to change our TV provider from sattelite to cable. Then he managed to trench the cable. He just asked me to call my ISP and notify them about the infrastructure change, so they can set their systems accordingly. 3784 calls later I realized that the ISP I called was no longer my ISP for 2 years and managed to find the number of my current ISP and the access data. Another 62 calls later between Dima, his back office and the ISP tech support, and after he replaced the modem and cable (twice), bingo! The Internet connection was back. What a relief, I couldn't bare the thought of not being connected for the weekend. Since when did it become so essential? Since it is commoditized and I can't even remember who provides what service and how do I connect to it (it's automatic!). I just expect it to work transparently.

The riots in Iran prove that even despotic regimes understand the importance of Internet or phone communications . That's why they cut them off. Protesters can better organize themselves and share news with the world using modern communication means. Of course, they can succeed also without (after all French revolutionaries didn't have Twitter or cell phones), but presumably at a higher price.

The ability to communicate [enhanced by modern means] should be considered a basic human freedom. Any readers from the UN?

Same Difference

2009-06-20T07:59:00.005+03:00

Parents often think of their children as their extension, but youngsters need to define themselves as separate (different) entities. We want to do things our own [better] way. After years, when we are sure we succeeded (perhaps with some question marks along the way), we find ourselves smiling as our parents, repeating their gestures, line of thought, food preferences, attitudes or other similarities. By this time, we acknowledge the similarities with understanding and even love. It reminds us of our beloved parents and we feel these resemblences bond us together (in the chain of life, if in a philosophical mood). We are different, but in some aspects, the same.

Statistically, battered children have a higher chance of becoming beating parents, children of self-employed/entrepreneurs have a higher chance of becoming freelancers and children of divorced parents have a higher chance of divorcing. According to popular psychology, we choose our spouses according to the model of our parents. Something deep inside us recognizes an imperceptible resemblance of the potential spouse to something familiar from home and that subconsciously affects our decision to marry them. A friend told me about a young fellow whose mother suffered from severe depression. He married a nice young [healthy] women, who one day felt she couldn't get out of bed. She was different than the mother, but in some aspects the same.

Another friend told me about an unhappily married collegue of him who was having an affair with another women because of the problems in his marriage. At some point he divorced and married the other woman. Years later he confessed to my friend: "did I know there is so little difference between the two, I wouldn't have bothered to make the change." Different woman, same problems.

We have to acknowledge that our decisions are not as independent as we'd like to believe. Yes, they are completely ours, but in a context. And this is not negative, but human.

Domino Effect

2009-06-11T21:14:00.003+03:00

Greedy bankers in one corner of the world mess around with subprime mortgages and next thing you know your shares go down and your employer (in a different corner of the world) is firing. Welcome to globalization 101.

After two nerve wrecking weeks, my employer fired 10% of its workforce and stripped the 'lucky' rest of 20-25% of their income. I won't be working every other Sunday. Yes, I have plans: from firing the cleaning lady and cleaning my place, through lunching with friends, making hairdresser appointments, touring around to volunteering. Some friends suggested learning French, some think I should find another income creating activity. Decisions, decisions.

Have advice? Comment on this post.

The Legitimate Rights of the Tung People

2009-05-24T20:38:00.005+03:00

In the aftermath (me and my overanalyzing everything) of a great meal at friends (professors, doctors, engineers and alike from Transylvanian origin), I found a troubling lack of parallelism.

The people were really nice, the food was great, and so was the music and general athmosphere. For no ulterior motive (other than a laugh), there was some ridiculing of the ways of the 'natives' or other ethnic groups, their clothing (weird combination of nightgowns, slippers and anoraks) and their grammatical mistakes with foreign words. Someone mentioned a contestant at a trivia show on TV answering 'Tungestan' when asked about the element found in electric lamp filaments, instead of Tungsten. One could think it is a former Soviet state, like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan or another 'stan'. In Hebrew writing there are no vowels, and so when reading a word you don't know, you might pronounce it either just incorrectly, or with a different meaning. This could be the possible cause of the mispronounciation.

The underlying subconscious assumption here is the natives' lower cultural level, compared to Europeans. At the same time, European immigrants' mistakes in Hebrew pronounciation or writing are considered chic, certainly not related to cultural level. To all hypocrites, I suggest reading Horace Miner's 'Body Ritual Among the Nacirema'.

Detachment and Fears

2009-05-09T18:19:00.004+03:00

A few days ago I went to a funeral and noticed a distancing trend of funeral participants. In the past, people would stand right at the front, close to the mourners, the body and the Hevrah Kaddisha rep conducting the ceremony and then close to the grave itself. They would watch the body being lowered into the grave and covered with earth. They would actually participate. Not anymore. People stand at a distance, barely there, as if detaching themselves from the ugly details, would send death away. They want nothing to do with death, they are afraid of it. Or at least that's my interpretation.

I am afraid of many things, mostly of sudden incidents that would change my life in a split second. I'm afraid of plane crashes (leaving orphans), of animal attacks (not clear where would I meet them), of cockroaches (actually, I'm more disgusted than afraid), diseases, unemployment, false arrest, loneliness and war, although I'm pretty sure I can cope with most situations, should they occur. Now that I mentioned them, I'm even surer.