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.

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.

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.

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

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: