Month: March 2007

  • Matilda, I'm home.

    Hey, I’m all the way down here. We left Israel on Tuesday night, stopped in Hong Kong and landed in Melbourne on Thursday morning. I don’t know if Wednesday even existed at all. I certainly don’t know how many sleepless hours I spent on two long flights. Here is my experience up until I landed,…

  • Happy Burnout-avoidance Month.

    So the Nesher just called telling us that we have a few more minutes until they arrive to take us to the airport; that’s impressive since Nesher is the only Israeli establishment that does anything early (especially when you’re running late). We’re off to Australia for the next month. It’s a badly needed life-vacation/ nationality-break/…

  • Israeli Pet Peeve #143: Elevator bitch.

    I don’t get it. If I’m standing in the elevator when it lands at my destination (say, the fourth floor) and you are waiting to get in to go to your floor, why do you stand at the door, and start pushing your way into it before I get out? Wouldn’t it be a lot…

  • Yerushalmi.

    I realized today, somewhere in Tel Aviv, between riding the Dan bus line – walking on Dizengoff – and getting served in a bakery-cafe – that I must be categorized as Yerushalmi. There is such an enormous difference between Tel Avivians and Yerushalmis. It’s like the difference between Brooklynites and Manhattanites: the view, the pace,…

  • Israel to hold nationwide missile attack drill.

    FYI: Security forces, rescue services to participate Tuesday in massive drill simulating conventional and unconventional terror attacks across country, in order to implement lessons learned from war in Lebanon. Siren to be sounded in south, center of Israel at 2 p.m. –YNet; click for more info…

  • The haircut.

    I haven’t gotten a proper haircut in over a year and with sfira approaching, it was definitely time. There’s a small, modest hair salon run by two guys down the block from my apartment. I got off the bus from work, after a long, painful day, and walked straight in, told the waiting hairdresser what…

  • A Cable Story.

    A couple of weeks ago we were sitting in the comfort of our main room watching a movie when we heard a knock at the door. At 9 o’clock on a Sunday evening in our badly-numbered building, it could only be a wrong number. It was not, indeed, a wrong number; it was two sketchy,…

  • City feature: Yafo

    This is Yafo or Jaffa, the second half of the area known as Tel Aviv-Yafo. Historically it’s always been a port city and today you can see the ancient ports as well as the modern docks. Its residents are both Arabs and Jews and has a healthy list of places to see and things to…

  • March madness.

    It’s March, a couple weeks before Pessach, and it’s snowing on and off here in Jerusalem. Ok, I guess that doesn’t qualify as madness, but I really wanted the title pun. Check it out, my boss sent this photo this morning from Efrat, where he lives: He’s also using it as an excuse to work…

  • Lizrael update: it's been awhile.

    Things have been hectic lately. My role at work has been expanded, I have enough schoolwork to keep me busy until Pessach and thoughts of moving out of Jerusalem loom in the back when I have time to give them room. So that’s what ‘real’ life is like, isn’t it? Work. School. Home. Commute. Weddings.…

  • Aussie Aussie puns! Oy oy oy.

    Sometimes, when a man loves a woman, and a woman loves that man, and that man happens to be Australian, you get to go to Melbourne for a month on holiday. So we’re going Down Under where Men At Work can sing freely along with the kookaburra as they dance the Waltzing Matilda until the…

  • Underappreciated, overrated.

    On one hand, we have this report coming out of the BBC World Service, saying that Israel has been voted the least popular country out of a survey of 12 countries (Iran and the U.S. come closely behind). On the other, there is this Happiness Map that shows Israel to be a pretty happy place,…