Blog/February 2008/Feb 22nd

February 15th (See this week's devar torah)
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Hi again!

I have to preface this week's edition by telling you that, like Dave Barry, I am not making any of this up. My imagination isn't that fertile, despite what you may think...

On Sunday, a collections agent from the city came to our house, and gave us a notice of "imminent collection", giving us 48 hours to settle our debt with the city before they return and repossess our belongings. Of course, the debt they are talking about isn't ours, but the previous renter's. We told the collector that, but he said that since we are in the house, we were the ones who had to pay up! So that afternoon Esther and I went to City Hall, to talk to the head of the department -- with whom we are now on a first-name basis. As we were waiting for him, the clerk (who also knows us on a first-name basis) motioned me over and asked if she could help us. I explained the situation, and she said, "but that's not your debt!". "Exactly", I told her, "which is why we're here now". She told me to hold on, while she called someone in the collections branch and gave them our landlord's address and phone. There is justice, after all.

That night, as we were at home trying to calm down (my blood-pressure was elevated for hours that day), we hear another knock on the door. We open the door, and some guy starts speaking very quickly -- and all I understood was the first few words, "I'm here to collect ..."! Both Esther and I were pretty wiped out and asked him to repeat himself a couple times. Finally I understood that he was coming around to collect gas-masks. He was collecting them because they need to be recharged periodically. We don't have any, though. So the guy goes on, "oh, you're new immigrants? OK, bye.". I guess we don't get gas-masks in case the SCUDs start falling.

In further bizarre news, Daniela reports that her school has cats in the ceiling of the beit-midrash (study hall). Somehow they crawl into the suspended ceilings and can't get out. Because they can't get out, they meow and sound like human babies trapped in the ceiling. So the maintenance people managed to trap some of them and remove them, but alas! the smell remains.

Even more bizarre is that the Arabs expect us to protect them from a nuclear Iran. Excuse me? We have a government which can't even protect its own citizens from two-bit thugs with model-rocket building skills. Well, now there is a truly proportional response being discussed. Let's hope the citizens of Sderot take the advice.

Some of you may think my approach to the "fakestinian" conflict is extreme. This week Esther pointed me to this blog. I couldn't have said it better, he almost duplicated my thoughts. Despite it all, peace may be possible - if only Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran, Syria ... will let such people continue to breathe.

On the more sane front, the company I work for is presenting in Barcelona at the 3GSM conference. Well, by now I guess it's "has presented". Hopefully good things will come of it.

B"H, I've managed to keep my fingers away from sharp objects, even though I did do a manly "repair job" this week. The gas inspector had told me the gas feed in the kitchen had to be below the level of the electrical outlet there. He said I could do it myself. This involves bending thin-walled copper tubing so that instead of pointing straight up, it turns 180 degrees so the valve end is below the electrical outlet. Those of you who have bent this sort of tubing know that it likes to kink rather than bend, and if it kinks it usually cracks as well. Fortunately, I was able to bend it (around a small can as a form to keep it from kinking) and the repair was done without necessitating professional assistance.

This past week, a couple of the major supermarkets are having a "price war", where the price of chicken is 82 agorot a kilo. We're paying 22 shekels, or almost 27 times that amount. Well, that's for fresh chicken with a specific hechsher (kashrut authorisation), but it's still kind of a lot. Actually, it amounts to about $2.76 a pound, which isn't too bad really. Anyway, I mentioned this to the butcher we buy our chicken from, and he asked me what I do for a living. I told him, and he said, "I've got this computer that's not working...". Who knows? Maybe we'll get a discount if I can fix his computer... like I said, I'm not making any of this up.

Shabbat shalom!

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