Blog/May 2008/May 9th

May 9th (See this week's devar torah)
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Hi again!

Last week I mentioned that my laptop had given up the ghost. It turns out that it was "heat death" -- the machine had overheated at some point, and the "thermal compound" which is put between chips and their respective heatsinks, had all squished out. Some of the chips had "popped out" of their sockets, and so my machine was in a bad way. I gave it to the guy I mentioned last week, on Friday morning. A few hours later, on Friday afternoon, he calls me back to say I can pick it up -- he had resuscitated it completely! For anyone in the Maale Adummim or Jerusalem area, I highly recommend this guy: Raymond, phone: 052-384-0188. The machine actually seems to work better than it did before ...

Before I get too serious, those of you with connections to Chabad may appreciate this odd video of a Jamaican meshichist. Yea, mon!

This week we went to Talpiot (southern Jerusalem) to pay for the appliances we had ordered two weeks ago. Now we didn't want to use our Israeli credit card, because that would basically wipe out our credit line (that's another discussion). We didn't want to use our foreign credit cards, because the exchange rate is so bad. Instead, we wanted to use plain old checks. The store was fine with that, and even let us spread out the payment over twelve checks at no interest (this is pretty standard procedure here). So when we are just about to write checks, they say, "not yet, we have to get approval first". They call some check-clearing agency, which doesn't approve the transaction. Why? Don't know. So we call our bank, figuring there must be some reason they put a hold on us. The bank manager was surprised we didn't get approved, and said that it's not really connected to the bank, but rather to this independent bureau. We went home without paying, and faxed our information to the bureau -- who said the problem was that the address the store gave them didn't match the address on record for us. Of course: the store gave them the delivery address.

During the week, we met with the contractor who is going to do the actual work on the house -- and he told us the price of a toilet (installed, with all the parts) was 450 shekels (or thereabouts). I told him I had just bought a toilet seat (only!) for 140 shekels! He laughed, and said he gets "contractor prices". So we mentioned our purchasing the appliances, and he said we should go to some other place, with whom he does business, and they would give us a better price. So we went there, and did get a better price. We ended up getting better appliances for about the same price, all said and done.

This week was "Yom Hazikaron" (Memorial Day), and "Yom Ha'atsmaut" (Independence Day). The first is a somber day, filled with various ceremonies at the several military cemeteries across Israel. An alarm siren sounds twice, once at night and once during the day; during which the vast majority of Israelis stop what they are doing, and stand in silent memory of the fallen. Even I remembered people with whom I had served "back when", and who had fallen in the line of duty.

Immediately at the end of that somber day, the mood changes 180 degrees, and people start honking horns and playing music, firing up barbecues and generally having a good time. In our fair city, there was a big concert/presentation at the central park. Esther and I went with a blanket, parked ourselves on the lawn (yes, a lawn here in the desert!), and waited as people milled in and the festivities commenced. There were between five and ten thousand people there, making noise and having fun. The show started with some singers and dancers. Eventually, the mayor of Maale Adummim came on and told us how great we were. Finally, the star of the night, Yehoram Gaon, who was called by the announcer "the Frank Sinatra of Israel". Pardon me, but his voice is much better than Frank's. There were excellent fireworks displays, and a good time was had by all. All of the two of us, that is -- Sarah and my mom stayed home and missed out.

The festivities for Israel's 60th birtday party were paralleled by the Pal's celebration of "al Naqba" (the disaster), which is what they call Israel's founding. Indeed, a terrible disaster for the Arabs who live in Israel -- since they have higher literacy and longevity rates than their co-malefactors in surrounding countries. The disaster is so extreme, they even have representatives in the Knesset. Now that is a disaster, but we don't need to discuss it now. By the way, for those of you who think that giving back the territories conquered in the 1967 war will bring peace (because Arab terrorism is a direct result of Israel's aggression then), a quick recap of only some of the Arab terrorist acts before 1967 may be an eye-opener. Interestingly, once again the Jordanians have the guts to tell the Pals to take a hike. Boy, maybe we should have bought in Amman?

In more odd news: the son of the Kuwaiti ambassador in Poland took several Brazilian students on the March of the Living hostage. Good old Saddam Hussein apparently never studied relative risks; he was afraid of getting HIV from his American captors -- he should have been more worried about keeping his head attached.

In good news: our mayor Benny Kashriel kept office in a tent in the E1 neighborhood (not really a neighborhood just yet) on Independence day. And Israel shows its true face, helping out Myanmar.

Shabbat shalom!

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