lizrael update

‘Tis the season.

Like back in the old country, the Israeli shopping centers are gearing up for the oncoming holiday season (it’s just minus all the green and red).

Get ready to light up, folks.

Art show opening in Jerusalem.

Joy Langer’s art show:

A chance to see some incredibly original art;
A chance to meet a friendly, experienced artist;
A pretty cool down-to-earth place to take a date;
Something to do on a lazy Friday afternoon…

Here are the details:

Joy Langer

Putting The Pieces Together

Opening Reception

Friday December 1st, 2006, 12:30pm

Closing Date: 27.12.06

Liquid Roots, acrylic and collage on canvas, 90cm x 70cm © Joy Langer, 2006

Gallery is Open on Tuesdays and Thursdays 4 - 6pm

Merkaz Hamagshimim Hadassah

7A Dor Dor V’Dorshav, Jerusalem

Strike too.

Today, on strike day: two, the paper said that the government employees are striking because they haven’t been paid - in one month, three, and even twelve.

Well, that sucks, and I’d strike too.

Which means one painfully, frustratingly obvious thing:

The government is SELFISH. And it can be as socialist as it wants, but it’s not very social.

Social pressure.

I am not at Misrad Klita (Absorption office) right now.

Everyone with a government paycheck is on strike.

Why?

Because now they have to bank (and get screwed) like the rest of us.

SELFISH!

I get it’s a socialist country, but it doesn’t seem very social that we, the people, should get screwed both ways.

Reverse laughology.

A Thai comedy group singing “Hava Nagila”… I suppose it serves us Israelis right.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0RtRTx7NMA]

Caring for the kalba.

I never had a dog in America. I don’t know what the vet experience is like back there.

But, not surprisingly, the vet experience here is very… Israeli. I just get this feeling that the same laid-back attitude that pervades all other areas of life (especially government offices) is not absent within the walls of the animal doctors.

Tonight Stella and I made our third trip to the clinic of Tza’ar Baalei Chaim, the Jerusalem SPCA.

Third in one week, you ask?

Well, the first two we were sent off with gentle pats and compliments for my dog, but no suggestions as to why my bitch was going through some - ahem - visually upsetting symptoms.

“She’s fine… Aren’t you Stella? Wow, she is cute.”**

Thanks, but there is still blood coming out of unwanted places, doc.

Well, third times a charm and now I hold a perscription for doggy antibiotics to be filled tomorrow (and a fourth apointment for next week).

Where do doggy perscriptions get filled, you ask?

At Super-Pharm, where else…

**This is Stella, and wow, she is cute:

Food colouring.

Thanksgiving Day ranks as one of my top favorite holidays. Nothing to do with thanks or meaning or scalping Pilgrims.

It has to do with… food. Glorious food.

And here it is, homemade today:

Perhaps that is why I continue to celebrate, even from thousands of miles away.

A picture worth 1,000 seeds.

The students strike.

I’m not sure how far the news has traveled surrounding the university tuition increases in the face of the university budget decreases. I suppose if you are not an Israeli university student, the news wouldn’t particularly interest you.

The state of university education is becoming more and more dismal here in the state of Israel. Universities can’t afford to higher more professors, renovate and build on campus, and soon they will be giving us major tuition hikes. For a socialist-modeled country like this, where taxes are vast, salaries are low and loans are heavily-interested, students (nevermind their parents) are finding it more and more difficult to thrive.

Here is some of what went on today:
On another note, this afternoon did bring me back to my American university days, when protests and rallies were popular, real and often and I was very involved in many of them.

Although, I’ll admit, we never handed out Krembo ice creams and shouted into the louspeaker: “Quick! Get all the ice cream now, before we can’t afford to give you anymore! Hurry!”

I used to be a journalist.

I used to be a journalist. I didn’t like many aspects of it, so I stopped my advance into that profession.

One thing I have found that I enjoy about the field is the collecting data for the story. Not integorrating people who don’t want to be questioned and not pushing my way through crowds to get a cliche line. I loved the collection, the sorting: Getting the perfect photo, picking up on the right emotion from a speech. Putting all the elements I collected into one piece that tells someone’s story.

Yeah, I am the scrapbooking sort.

Anyway, this is to explain why my next post is the way it is, and perhaps many of past posts as well; in fact, why this whole ‘lizrael update’ venture exists at all.