Blog/March 2012/Mar 9th
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< Blog | March 2012
| Mar 9th (See this week's devar torah) | Comments or questions? Click here! |
Hi, again!
פורים פורים, פורים לנו. ברוך אשר בחר בנו!
The central theme of the purim holiday we just celebrated is ונהפוך הוא -- "and it turned upside down". The underdog becomes the victor, the oppressor is vanquished and the descendants of King Shaul's family fix the mistake he made with Agag, by eliminating Agag's descendant Haman. This week, in keeping with that general theme, the weather started out near freezing and is set to become quite hot for the season, this shabbat.
We made our travel arrangements this week for Daniela's upcoming (July) wedding. The experience of placing the orders reminded me that it was indeed purim week. First, I purchased a prepaid Visa card (from the Israel Post office) -- specifically for the purpose of using it for this trip. In order to spread out the pain, I wanted to use several credit cards. Also, I wanted to ensure that all three of us would return on the same flight though we are leaving on different ones, so Esther made her reservations while I placed Sarah's and mine.
Being a high-tech kind of guy, I opened up two browser "windows" to the El-Al site, and simultaneously made arrangements for Sarah and myself. It appeared to be going well. Swimmingly, in fact -- until I got to the payment part. I paid for Sarah's ticket using the US card I keep for such eventualities. Of course, I almost never use it -- so I immediately got an email from the card company saying "there may have been a fraudulent purchase on your card". OK, says I, not a problem; I'll call them when I'm finished with the reservations. El-Al didn't mind, I saw a confirmation from them in my inbox as well. But upon reviewing the confirmation email, I saw that it was my reservation I had just paid for, even though I had clicked in Sarah's "window"! Apparently, the El-Al site gets confused if you do two reservations simultaneously.
No problem, says I! I'll redo Sarah's reservation, after making sure there was only one browser window open to El-Al. I then placed the reservation and attempted to pay using the new card. El-Al told me the card was refused. Now, I had specifically put more than the cost of the ticket on the card, and had verified (via the Post office website) that the card was in fact charged with the amount I had put on it. El-Al's site said that they couldn't place the order, but the reservation would remain in the system for another hour, and I would have to pay for it within that hour.
OK, says I, no problem. I'll call the Post office card people and find out why the card was rejected. So I call, press whatever the number was for "Hebrew", and a lady who only speaks English answers the phone. Those of you who are familiar with pressing the number for "English" and getting only Hebrew speakers, now know the trick!
Anyway, the lady kindly researches the problem and eventually lets me know that there is a maximum per-day limit on the card, which is $100 less than the ticket I was buying. OK, says I, "can you please just up the limit by $100 for this one purchase so I can complete the reservation?". After all, I figured there was plenty of money on the card to cover the transaction! No, I was disappointed to find out, that was simply impossible.
OK, says I, no bloody problem! I'll just use a different card, which I had really not wanted to use. So I go back to the El-Al site, enter my reservation number, and see the information for Sarah's trip. I try to pay, but there is no way to do that! OK SAYS I! NO PROBLEM AT ALL!! I call El-Al, and talk to a lady there who takes the reservation number and tells me that reservation is not in the system. Wait, I tell her; I can see the information in my browser! She says, "If you start the process on the web, you have to finish it on the web" -- and she cannot help me. She offered to make the reservation herself, but it would cost me $5 extra (why?). I declined her kind offer, and instead re-entered a new reservation for Sarah... and finally, I was successful getting it paid for and confirmed.
I then turn my attention to the "fraudulent transaction" email, and called my credit card company in the US. I make the call via Skype, so I'm listening on "speaker-phone" since I didn't put on headphones. The man who answers is clearly not a native English speaker, but has such a thick Spanish accent that I can barely understand what he's saying -- his accent was almost a parody of a "Latino" accent. As I'm listening to this guy kvetch out his questions, he tells me he "can't understand" what I'm saying to him -- at which my lovely wife nearly keels over from laughter (though at least she did suppress her guffaws) -- and I do my best to keep from laughing into the microphone. Finally, he removes the block on my account, the tickets get paid for and all is well with the world. ונהפוך הוא!
Sarah and I had to go to the US Consulate in Jerusalem so she could renew her US passport (which expires soon). They take security very seriously, in a stupid American way: the security guards were Arabs (since, you know, the main threat to the US Consular staff is going to be from Jews); they make you leave your cell-phones outside (because, I suppose, ... aw, hell, I have no idea why); they don't let you bring in any sealed envelopes (because of anthrax, maybe?). Bizzare-o world. Anyway, almost all the staff there are Arabs. If you go to the website, you'll notice that even though they serve "Jerusalem and the West Bank", the site only has English and Arabic, but no Hebrew at all. The same site regularly gives holiday greetings to the Christian and Muslim population, but never any Jewish holiday greetings. What? The consul-general is a Jew? Why yes, he apparently is! Well, at least his name sounds Jewish. Read the 2012 press releases... not even one deals with any Jewish issues -- they're all about "Palestinian" events. Keep this in mind, my friends, when you go to the polls!
And to round out the events of the week, we noticed a small puddle of water in front of our house. I looked and notice that our downspout was trickling water. I figured, since we had torrential rains last week, perhaps there was a blockage in the downspout and a big puddle on the roof, and it was just trickling down. But I climbed up on the roof to look... and found out our solar-collector was leaking! The typical Israeli hot-water system has a "boiler", which is basically a 55 gallon tank with a heating element in it, connected to a "collector", which uses the sun's rays to heat the water (so one doesn't need to use electricity when the sun shines, which is most of the year). Anyway, the collector was already old and rusty when we moved in almost four years ago, so we're lucky it lasted this long. I called a plumber who we've used before and he had the collector swapped out for a new one this morning. So now we've got a brand-new solar collector ... and all it cost was money!
This week we're recovering from purim, so the menu is a bit more restrained. Except for the desserts, that is: ḥallah with ḥummus, smoked fish, salatim, barley vegetable soup, baked chicken appendages with baked potatoes, carrots with mushrooms, rice, hamentashen, cookies and brownies.
Until next week,
shabbat shalom!
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