Lametayel

Cultural difference #27

Thu, 30 May 2013 00:57:13 +0900

It’s easy (and probably sensible) to go through life without questioning why we say and do things that we do and say. But just the other day, I realised that what I say in Israel is the opposite of that which I was brought up to say in England!

Let me set the scene (!): you have entered a shop, any shop, and have collected various articles that you would like to purchase. You place them on the counter and the person on the other side rings them up on the till and gives you a total.

When handing over the money to the person on the till, people in the UK say “thank you,” as in “thank you for taking my money.” Whereas in Israel, people say “please,” as in “please take my money.”

Alternatively, the word ‘bevekasha’ translates as both ‘please’ and ‘you’re welcome’, so maybe Israelis are saying “you’re welcome” as they hand over the money. Food for thought.

Conference

Wed, 29 May 2013 22:19:20 +0900

I arrive at Herods hotel by the coast for the conference and workshop on European business development about half an hour before Eyran, and head to the reception desk where the woman knows exactly where my name tag is located, presumably because as an Englishman my name stands out amongst all of the other attendees. The conference room is relatively empty as I enter, with about a dozen people spread out, dotted around the room, some scribbling in their pocket sized business diaries, others positioned as close as possible to the nearest outlet socket to plug in their laptops. I don’t want to disturb their solitude. Perhaps they might even have an infectious disease I don’t know about. I place my jacket on the back of a seat near to the front, and make my way to the buffet, filling up a plate with pastries, then make small chit chat with a person on the table behind who Eyran later tells me was once a famous Israeli singer, had a hit song about sprinklers, and now works on water management projects. By the time Eyran arrives, the room is starting to fill, and the tables become more crowded with people sitting in silence, looking at their crotches, tapping away at smartphones. Cords run wild across the conference room floor, everyone plugged in, chained to the walls. Five hours later and the seminar and workshop comes to a close, which is when people start to interact with one another. Clearly the benefit of attending conferences is to network, but it seems that without a seminar to set the context for later discussion, people wouldn’t know how to initiate conversation. And equally, that’s the only point of the seminar — to give something to talk about. It could have been about anything, really. People at the pub start with chat about football, here we talk about tender submissions. One thing is for certain though: someone needs to design conference tables with outlet sockets either in the middle or running around the edge.

Haaretz

Fri, 24 May 2013 04:18:00 +0900

It’s always the way, that when something is in your own back yard you never feel driven to explore it. There was always a known end to my time in Korea, which gave a sense of urgency to experience as much of the country as possible before leaving, whereas living in Israel feels permanent to a degree that there isn’t the same rush to see everything. That being said, I actually have covered an extensive amount of Israel in these past nine months, but it was great to see the Land through the eyes of my brilliant friend who landed just after midnight on Friday evening for her vacation after teaching the offspring of Russian oligarchs in Moscow the previous months.

Woke up Saturday morning at a reasonable hour for what I had envisioned to be a relaxing day around Tel Aviv — though we never manage to sit still for too much time — starting off walking along Ibn Gabirol to Rabin Square and up Ben Gurion Boulevard with a quick detour to Dizengoff Fountain before eating the first of many plates of hummus, afterwards walking along the beach promenade to sit and look across to Yafo port, then meander through the cobbled alleys under the wooden shuttered windows and red roofs of Neve Tzedek and up Rothschild Boulevard back to the apartment for a good night’s rest ready to leave early for Jerusalem Sunday morning.

Arrive at Jerusalem’s central bus station without a hitch, and oddly without having to pass through any security or metal detectors when stepping off the bus. Forgetting about the city’s new metrolink, we take the bus to the Old City, sitting in traffic even as we arrived only a 100m or so from the Walls the bus driver wouldn’t let us jump out since we weren’t at a designated bus stop, eventually entering through Damascus Gate with almost an hour — what should have been plenty of time — to cross to Jaffa gate for the start of the Sandleman’s tour, but it’s easy to forget just how disorientating the labyrinth of alleyways within the Old City walls can be, arriving just in time for what would have been the tour if it hadn’t been cancelled that day, and having just spent the past hour navigating our way through the maze of bazaars, churches, synagogues, shesh-besh playing street hagglers, mosques, and similarly lost tourists, we decided to walk around the city walls to the East, climbing down at Lion’s Gate and heading inwards to see various religious places including the birth place of the Virgin Mary, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which I haven’t entered before, where Jesus was entombed, and in time for the Mass of the Patriarchs on the Orthodox Easter Sunday, of all days. Having being told the story of Jesus’s burial as a kid, it’s very different to how one might have imagined it to be; in the centre of a bustling city, and even though the church itself wouldn’t have been there in its present form, it’s far removed from a more remote desert area I’d always envisaged.

We spent another relaxing day in Tel Aviv on Monday, walking up Ibn Gabirol just past Rabin Square for brunch at a place that serves four colours and flavours of falafel which a friend from ulpan introduced me to a while back, before seeing more of the main sights including the Habima National Theatre at the end of Rothschild Boulevard closest to the apartment, and the Carmel Market on Allenby, which is apparently a great place to buy fresh produce and Arab sweet delicacies, but seems to be mainly filled with cheap trinkets aimed at tourists, which I’ve never really understood as they come across as being cheap just for the sake of being cheap, and even more, a lot of the time it appears that extra effort has been put into making some things look cheap just to justify the price of the slightly nicer looking things. Carmen tells me these trinkets are popular with the Russians, and I can believe it, watching them fill buckets with cheap tat to take back to the old country. The Lonely Plant claims that you should haggle for everything, and even though I enjoy a good haggling as much as the next Middle Eastern, it hardly seems worth it to save a few shekelim. Finish the day watching the sun set over the Mediterranean.

Another reasonably early morning for a short walk to HaShalom train station under the Azrieli Towers to travel up north to Haifa for the 12pm tour of the Bahai Gardens. Exiting the train station with the Gardens in sight at the top of Mount Carmel, it is the time I think haggling is a definite must. It seems taxi drivers in every country other than the UK quote you a price to the destination rather than turning on the meter, which I like because it takes away the surprise element of how extortionate the journey is going to be. We arrived half an hour early for the tour, which is just as well since they only let in 50 tourists each day, and queues (yes queues, composed of tourists of course, not Israelis) were already forming. It was a brisk tour this time around, with a different guide, but one who was just as impatient with the group as the last. Though, to be fair, no one really cares about the Bahai religion, but come just to pose for photos in a paradise-like garden overlooking Haifa Bay. After climbing down the 800 or so steps accessible to tourists, we continue down the hill to Haifa’s Ben Gurion Street and find a baguette shop run by a very nice Arab guy where we eat duck schnitzel, before getting on another train to head further north around the bay to Akko, which is kind of like a Jerusalem on the sea. Explored the rock pools by sea fortress walls and found a large sea turtle, and walked through the prison where a couple were having their wedding photos taken. There are information boards around, and I remember reading last time about the Crusaders and being surprised to learn how they not only killed Muslims on their travels, but that they also slaughtered many Jews, both in Israel and throughout Europe. I guess that’s the price you pay for grassing on Jesus, turning him into a saviour of all of mankind’s sins ensuring believers’ admittance to heaven. Returned to Haifa for some meat on a stick in what was actually a rather fancy diner inside of a butcher’s store, then back to Tel Aviv for some much needed rest!

After four days out in the sun, I’m confident our skin will survive a full day at the beach, which should only be 15 minutes walk away from the apartment, but even with aid of google maps I’ve never been able to plot such a route. Though I’ve long been suspicious of the accuracy of google in Israel, as the streets never seem to conform to how the map suggests they should be, perhaps to thwart potential terrorists. Continuous beach strips line the entire length of Tel Aviv, which are supposedly distinguished by name and atmosphere, but they all seem pretty similar to me, though one thing’s for sure; there would be a lot of money to be made in renting out inflatable rings like those in Jeju, because the waves in Tel Aviv are awesome.

Travelled to the Dead Sea on Thursday, called Yam HaMelach in Hebrew, the Sea of Salt (not to be confused with Yam HaMelech, which would be the king sea) which in the last decade has dissolved into two lakes and are quite a long ride away from Tel Aviv as the bus runs alongside the winding border with the West Bank. The guide book recommends going to the sandy public beach at Ein Bokek in the south, where we eat hummus and falafel (Lonely Planet claims that just because we are in Israel doesn’t mean we have to eat only hummus and falafel, but I beg to differ) in a pirate bar by the shore. Between lounging on the beach and regular floatings in the water temperatures peak at 44 C, and we return to the bar to cool off in the shade with pints of Goldstar, a dark lager, and my favourite Israeli beer along with Tuburg. We manage to go the whole day without the agonising sting of salt water in the eyes, which after the last time I thought was an inevitability of visits to the Dead Sea, though there was a constant stream of wailing kids being escorted from the water to the showers, as well as a group of old Mexican ladies who thought it would be a good idea to do a belly flop into the water and indeed it did look like they were having a whale of a time until a second later as they bolt out of the lake fists clenched and eyes all squinty.

Found a less circular route to the beach on Friday for another afternoon sunbathing and swimming in the sea, which I’ve discovered is a much better work out than time spent in the gym, before showering off at the apartment and heading to Neve Tzedek in the evening to walk along the promenade to Jaffa port, where the Greek myth Andromeda’s Rock is supposedly set. Walked up the hill to the top of the old port for views looking back to Tel Aviv, peered into what was an old jail but is now inhabited by hundreds of bats, climbed up to a wishing bridge which I’ve never seen before and where there are the remains of an ancient amphitheatre, then down through the spooky narrow stone corridors between houses to the port itself. Buy toasted bagels filled with hummus, cheeses, olives and other magical things from Abouelafia [here it is!], widely held to be the best baker in Israel and eat at a bench overlooking the Tel Aviv beach strip. Get a few drinks in a bar, where an Israeli tries to convince me Goldstar is the worst beer, but he’s drinking whiskey so what does he know anyway. Walk back to Tel Aviv, where I meet a friend on Rothschild Blvd for the second time in a week after not seeing her for a few months, and then get some sleep before going to Inbal’s parents’ for shabbat where we eat barbecue (Al ha esh in Hebrew, meaning ‘on the fire’ also known as mangal, the term I much prefer to say), and play a few rounds of shesh-besh.

Returned to the Carmel market just off Allenby on Sunday for some gift shopping, and ate some more basbousa which Carmen had introduced me to in Jerusalem the week before, followed by a final day trip on Monday to Tveria on the Sea of Galilee, which the Lonely Planet describes as the tackiest place in Israel, and apparently always has been dating back to biblical times. Granted it’s not quite tourist season yet, but the resort town was eerily quiet, with burnt out abandoned hotels that had been taken over by palm trees. Standing by the shore next to a marina we see two people swimming, and we walk around the area trying to find from where they entered into the water, eventually coming across gates with a board advertising the beach for 50 shekel entrance fee, but the place is quiet so we walk in and into a secluded lawn where peacocks run around across the grass. There are one or two people in bathing suits and a middle aged couple sitting on deck chairs by the lake, which we walk to expecting the sandy beach as depicted on the bill board but find the tide must be in on the lake. We drink a couple of beers in a nearby cafe and walk around the town some more before heading back to Tel Aviv in the early evening. It was great to finally see the Sea of Galilee, but I’d recommend going in the tourist season and continuing around further to the north side if you’re going to go.

Tuesday, and the final day of Carmen’s visit, almost perfect the most direct route to the beach, where there’s the biggest waves we’ve swam in yet. It’s another holiday — I’ve lost track of how many there have been since this post and the last — and all of the cafes and restaurants have closed, so we buy pitas from a corner store which go on to last me another week after Carmen leaves. I discovered a while ago that there’s late night trains running from the station near our apartment going to the airport for 15 shekel, compared to the 180 shekel taxi fare, but being a holiday there is no public transport running, so Inbal arranges a private taxi that will take us to the airport, wait for me for an hour, and then bring me back to Tel Aviv. We immediately go to the security line for check in upon arriving at the airport, where I have to leave Carmen in the queue since I’m not flying. She slowly passes through each stage of the security process, and I watch the seemingly nonsensical guards’ routine as they ask people for their passport, walk away with it and to another security personnel who talks to someone else who in turn speaks to the original guard and back again to place a sticker on the back of it. Even though the queue was actually very short, by the time Carmen leaves the final stage in which the bags are thoroughly searched and white powder is run thoroughly throughout the case presumably to check the pH levels of her clothes, and her Dead Sea salt gift packets are taken and placed in another ridiculously oversized cardboard box to be sent separately in the hold, the hour has passed, and we have what seems like a very quick goodbye, but she kindly walks me back to the waiting taxi to make sure I get in okay. The taxi driver takes me to the parking ticket machine to pay, which I know wasn’t part of the deal but I also know I’ve passed the hour mark he said he’d wait. The machine turns out to be broken which delays us even further, and when we finally leave he speaks to his manager about what I understand to be my going over the hour. We spend almost the entire ride back to Tel Aviv arguing (in Hebrew, as he didn’t speak a word of English) about whether I should pay the extra fee, and eventually he turns on the translation app on his iPad which he uses as his satnav, tapping away whole sentences at the on screen keyboard as he swerves in and out of traffic, before realising that it also has speech input. Speaking in his native Russian, it appears the translation isn’t that accurate, and he asks me to say something in English for it to translate into Russian. We then become good friends, taking it in turns to say funny sentences into the device to see what translation is produced, and he tells me to forget about the money, dropping me off at the apartment, and we wish each other a happy holiday.

Falafel

Wed, 01 May 2013 07:32:00 +0900

It seems like so many countries in the world have an Independence Day except Britain! Why doesn’t Britain celebrate one?! Oh yeh, right. Well this is awkward…

I celebrated my first Independence Day, Israel’s 65th, a couple of weeks back, and it still feels like a strange concept I can’t quite wrap my head around. I found myself repeatedly referring to it as ‘New Year’s’ by mistake. During the week, the streets were lined with flags and a stage built in front of thousands of seats placed in Rabin Square for various performances and covers of Israel’s winning Eurovision entries and a spectacular fireworks display. The whole area around Rabin Square and Ibn Gabirol was closed to traffic, and kids ran around spraying each other with foam, apparently a tradition here which I successfully avoided becoming a part of, while eating falafel, Israel’s national dish, and later heading to another (somewhat ironically timed) British party.

I’d never really given the idea of people celebrating a country’s independence much thought, and I’m not sure if as the years go by many people are celebrating being free from a foreign rule which they haven’t experienced directly or are just enjoying a day of barbecues and parties. Israel is interesting in that it defeated British occupation but also fought half a dozen invading Arab armies before becoming an independent state. The day before Independence Day is a day of remembrance for soldiers who died in the war and is a most sombre occasion, during which (in Tel Aviv) singers perform at Rabin Square to a full crowd who remain silent throughout, without clapping as singers finish their sets. Even more spine chilling is experiencing the entire country of Israel coming to a stand still on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Rememberence, in the week before Independence Day, where at 10am the air raid signals sound. Every person stops in their tracks, every car even on major highways stop and people exit their vehicle to stand.

Meanwhile, temperatures have risen to the 40s and stepping outside feels like stepping into a hot car and closing the doors before the air conditioning has become effective. I like it.

Youtube video of 10am on Yom HaShoah

Virtual haggling

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 23:08:00 +0900

In Israel everything can be haggled for; from the cost of fruit and veg at the market, how much you pay for your gym membership, health insurance, and probably your jay-walking ticket. If it has a price, it can be negotiated!

Being the savvy British consumer that I am, I’m used to bringing up a plethora of comparison websites (which on a side note, that there are so many gave rise to the joke about needing a comparison site for comparison sites, which actually do exist by the way) and searching for the best deal among all of the retailers selling exactly the same train tickets, car insurance, DVD boxsets etc for different prices.

Of course, it has been argued that this shouldn’t be necessary, and it’s charging more to people who don’t have the time or knowledge to search for internet details, when shouldn’t prices be reflective of manufacturing costs, distribution, salaries to be paid and further research and development? But that’s capitalism… what ya gonna do?

But what if the prices listed on the internet are individually tailored, differing from person to person anyway?

After spending the past year searching for flight deals, and watching the ticket prices jump around every time I check back because the cheap seat has just been sold but then another later surfaces, I’ve been quite suspicious that something not quite kosher is going on.

Almost every website you visit leaves a ‘cookie’ on your computer which (supposedly anonymously) reports back data with browsing habits, searches made, sites you visit, how long you spend on pages etc. It appears this data is used to alter the prices you are quoted (even on Amazon where two people can search for the same product at the same time and be given different prices) to pressure you into thinking that there will be further price increases and make you more inclined make a purchase.

For example, a flight comparison site can record the search you have made for a particular date and destination and that you have gone on to search using other comparison sites, so that when you return to the original site some time later the price will have increased by a huge amount. Knowing that you must book the flights, in a panic you check more sites and flights, to find that the price listed on the original site will have been lowered from the huge increase before, but still higher than the very first price quoted, encouraging you to purchase the ticket that instant for fear of the price increasing again.

Sounds like I’m paranoid? Maybe, but here’s a screen grab in which I used two different web browsers to search for the same flights. On the first browser, using the flight comparison site Kayak I made a random search from Manchester to Bangkok from the 22nd May, returning on the 5th June. On the second browser I made the same search with Kayak, then a multitude of comparison sites for the same flights, later checking back at Kayak. As you can see the prices for the exact same flights are different! I closed the browsers, and refreshed the searches just to make sure a cheaper seat hadn’t been sold, and it still returned the same differing prices.

Of course, as you can see the price differs by only £2 so it’s no biggie. But it is proof that websites do use your browsing habits to alter the price of products and service (often by a lot more as was the case in Korea when I’d have to book flights on short notice to find they were increasing by £300-500 every time I clicked back on a site) in the same way that a seller in a tangible market place has the upper hand in negotiating when a customer returns more desperate to buy than he is to sell.

Nefarious, but clever. But nefarious indeed.

Gefilte Fish

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 05:39:59 +0900

Celebrated my first Passover Seder with Inbal’s family in Rishon LeZion, Monday night, which in some ways somewhat resembles Christmas, though obviously is completely unconnected and is actually very different. As far as similarities go, it’s an important holiday where the extended family come together to celebrate, and like the anticipation of Father Christmas visiting, a seat and glass of wine is placed for the Prophet Elijah; though the Prophet Elijah is a biblical character with a religious connection unlike Father Christmas. But young children, at least, believe that he comes and are told that he did but that they just missed his appearance. (For accuracies sake, there is actually a belief among religious adults that there is a possibility of meeting the Prophet Elijah, not necessarily during Passover).

Arrived in Rishon late afternoon as the buses stopped running before the evening for the holiday, and ate a snack having been warned by numerous people that there’s the potential for becoming quite peckish while reading through the 60-something pages of the Haggadah before being allowed to begin the meal. But, like most secular Israelis as it turns out, we burned through the pages to start eating as soon as possible. And what a feast it was! Starting with gefilte fish, which I always assumed I didn’t like, probably after being told by so many people how unappetising it is and having only tried it once at a pub a couple of years ago, but is actually rather delicious. Inbal is keeping Passover kosher, which is even more kosher than kosher, and interestingly enough, the word kosher in Hebrew doesn’t mean what we mean it to mean, while ‘kasher’ in Hebrew is what we mean kosher to mean, ‘kosher’ is what you do in the gym.

Stayed over at Inbal’s parents’ with the intention of doing some work with her dad, but instead spent the day playing shesh-besh, of which he taught me the ancient art last week. Had matzah-breit for breakfast which isn’t too far away from Shrove Tuesday in that you are served the matzah fried with egg for you to add various condiments, of which I had Golan date spread and cherries. So when you think about it, Passover incorporates the best of aspects of Christian holidays rolled into one celebration!

Hummus

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 07:45:38 +0900

It felt like every other day was a holiday of some sort in Korea. Though, after trading in their history for a VCR (to quote Rage Against the Machine) most of these holidays are made up… school’s birthday… two valentine’s days…

There are probably almost as many holidays in Israel, generally along the theme of overcoming persecution, of which we’re now celebrating the most popular one — Passover! We’re on holiday from the Ulpan, so there was a celebration a week early in which a feast is laid on a table before us which we can only look at for a couple of hours while listening to a retelling of the story of the liberation of Israelites from slavery and as my first ‘seder’ it set a high standard with opera singers, a rendition of a song from The Prince of Egypt, and a few violinists.

I don’t know if I mentioned already, that I’d formed a study group for our class to meet during our two week break in the hope we won’t forget everything we’ve learnt so far. It’s proven to be quite popular, probably too much so, with almost as many people showing up as there are in the class, which means that we’re spending most of the time teaching the slower learners the basics. But it’s surprising how much it’s changed the group dynamic, whereas before we met at the Ulpan, made small talk and then went our separate ways till the next class, it’s almost like we’re the best of friends now. And meeting up outside of class provides the perfect excuse to waste afternoons at the beach.

Universities are now on vacation as well, so we travelled up north to the ancient port city of Akko, a mixed town with a mainly Arab centre within the walls of the ancient town, and as a such with many hummus places of which we searched for what a group of Israelis we met in Petra had told was the best hummus in Israel (a bold, and contested, claim) at Hummus Sa’id, which turned out to be closed so we ate somewhere else and truth be told (though I’d never admit it to any Israeli or Arab) my palate doesn’t seem to be able to distinguish the subtle nuances of one plate of hummus from another. But it is very different from the hummus back in UK where one buys a small tub from Tesco and dips in sliced vegetables as an appetiser or side dish. In the Middle East you are served a big bowl with a slightly depressed centre to hold what must be quarter a bottle of olive oil and other garnish to dip pita into, and no matter how hungry you were you will never be able to finish the plate.

Tel Aviv continued...

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 03:23:48 +0900

Life is busy is Tel Aviv, but lacking the weirdness (and annoyances) of Korea, and so the blog has become a little bit neglected as of late for both of these reasons. I Joined a gym closer to the apartment so I don’t unnecessarily burn calories walking there in order to get back into shape, and tomorrow marks the first month of studying Hebrew at the Ulpan, in which some of us have become quite proficient, and others not so much. Naturally I am in the former group, and in fact my Hebrew is of such a high level it got me both lost and, ironically, found, when I couldn’t remember which of two buses I needed to take to get to Rishon LeZion and on asking the driver of the first bus to arrive he must have assumed I wanted to go somewhere else because he told me to get on the other bus which took me an hour further south, which I realised when seeing road signs for Rishon pointing back in the other direction. I did happen across a roller hockey court though.

Other discoveries include Happy Hour, in which a number of bars serve food and a pint for less than half the price they would normally be combined, which cuts down on my daily expenditure quite considerably, as alcohol, though exceedingly better than that which was available in Korea, is exceedingly more expensive. It does mean that we have to eat at 8pm though, quite a few hours earlier than we usually did. Talking of eating out, after neglecting to mention Pancake Day originated as a Christian festivity, until it was too late, we celebrated at Benedict’s, where it’s breakfast all-day and the host must greet you with ‘good morning’ or the meal is for free. It probably would have been confusing if I wasn’t told about this beforehand.

And on the topic of celebrations, a few weeks ago marked Purim, a holiday commemorating the avoidance of the destruction of the Jewish people by the Persian king after his plans were scuppered by Esther, and is celebrated by masquerading in costume, eating Hamantaschen, giving to the poor, and other such merrymaking. We wore hats and Hawaiian leis at the Ulpan.

A piece of creative writing from our first homework assignment!

While two out of my three coteachers for the different schools...

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 02:59:56 +0900

While two out of my three coteachers for the different schools and year groups I taught left me to my own devices, one liked to take control of the lessons using me as a sort of human tape recorder for students to listen to how a native English speaker would pronounce certain words. I don’t recall ever having to pronounce ‘milk’ but although over 80% of Koreans are lactose intolerant, they have a milk fetish, presumably so they can grow big and strong like the Western man.

For the first 6 months of teaching in Korea, I thought even though this particular coteacher I’ve been caricaturing was a complete control freak, she was a good teacher nonetheless. Until half way through my contract when two of my coteachers switched schools, and the new one gave me the Teacher’s text book to help me, and I realised she’d been reading from an explicit script, which involved far too much Korean for the students to have to understand what was being said in English.

While teaching in Korea, very rarely I was given instructions on...

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 00:38:58 +0900

While teaching in Korea, very rarely I was given instructions on what I was supposed to be doing. One such time I was given instructions, was on how to grade homework.

Election broadcast

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 05:09:00 +0900

Walking into the Ministry of Interior a couple of days back, we passed a large group of people protesting cutbacks to sign language translation services. It was the quietest demonstration I’ve ever seen.

I’m in Israel and want to absorb and better know the culture, so after numerous recommendations I’m watching Seinfeld. I’ve got to say, these guys are funny! And it’s got me wondering why Hollywood hasn’t cottoned on to this and got themselves Jewish writers, comedians, and actors for every show.

Walked for an hour across town under blue Tel Aviv skies, then within 100m of the British Embassy it starts pissing it down.

Compared to Korea, life in Tel Aviv is quite ordinary. Schools are renovated during holidays while kids are away rather than during term time, ketchup is squirted over chips and not orange segments, people who get run over aren’t expected to pay compensation to the driver for damaging their car, cases of spam are not given as gifts, coffee shops are coffee shops and brothels are brothels… and I find myself without much to write (or complain) about.

But the Middle East is the place to be if you want to talk politics, and the only thing missing from today’s elections were the political dance-offs (literally) seen in Korea. It is interesting though, as from my understanding the electoral system here in Israel is similar to in the UK (except people in Israel vote directly for the party rather than for the candidate representing their constituency) but the results end quite differently. Though there are many parties running in the UK, it is for the most part a two horse race for fear of wasting a vote on a minor party. Whereas in Israel the votes are more evenly spread across a large number of parties, which means the parties then have to form coalitions to be with the clear majority. It seems it could quite easily go the same way as the UK with people voting only for one of two parties, but it doesn’t. Then again, why would it? People only feel obliged to vote for one of the ‘main’ parties because it’s already been established that they are the main parties. [After further research, it appears I’ve been misinformed, and Israel does indeed have a proportional representation electoral system as I suspected!]

In other news, I’ve updated the ‘Return to the Homeland’ album with 8 new photos: four from sailing with Inbal’s dad and fellow army veterans a few miles south of Tel Aviv (41 nautical miles north of Gaza!) last Friday, and four photos from this Election day spent at the beach while it was 33 Celcius!

The Last Crusade

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 06:14:00 +0900

Finish work at 8pm, close enough to reach my bonus in the last four working days of the month after we return from Christmas in Jordan. Pack bags and cross town to Tel Aviv central bus station for a midnight coach to Eilat, arriving at around 5am to a convenience store where a small mixed group of young Russian Israelis, Ethiopians and general Lost Boys are finishing a night out, and where we drink cappuccino to be joined by a post-middle-age man who resembles what I’d imagine James Dean to look like if he had lived past the age of 24, and then later a German man with an accent so strong it was easier to understand his German than his English. We wander around until the exchange kiosks open and buy all of the strip’s Jordanian Dinar before taking a taxi to the border from where we walk 100m to be welcomed into the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Take a taxi into Aqaba town for falafel and hummus, in what turns out to be a public restaurant similar to those in Poland, for the price of 3.70 JD, while the taxi driver waits before driving us several hours north to Petra through desert plains and barren mountains, past small villages with significantly less developed infrastructure but more beautiful and ornate architecture than across the border. Arrive at the hostel, the Valentine Inn, at the top of a hill where we rest a little with an amazing view down Wadi Musa towards the mountains where the ancient Nabatean city of Petra is located. The hostel provides a buffet for only 5 JD per person, and we dine with our fellow travellers before the owner puts on a DVD of Indiana Jones.

Wake up the next morning for a fifteen minute stroll to the foot of the valley, stopping at an exclusive Swiss Movenpick hotel to grab two lunch boxes having been warned about the extortionate food prices once through the entrance gates of Petra, and then buy a two day pass into the city. Passing by several monuments, caves, and cubic tombs, we find ourselves part of a private tour already paid for by a European couple who were also joined by a Kiwi family now living in Norway, from where we are led through narrow paths encompassed by sheer cliffs, eventually reaching the Treasury, the most famous monument, which tourists are not allowed to enter, I presume for health and safety reasons after seeing the many elaborate booby traps contained within during the movie the previous night. Similar to in Cambodia, streams of young children approach with postcards and trinkets, and we encounter our new friends from the hostel who hiked six hours to avoid the steep entrance fee. The tour later finishes and we part ways, with Inbal and I deciding to climb over a thousand steps through the mountains up to the Monastery for an incredible view described as the End of the World. Hiking back down and it appears that we’re almost the only tourists left in the area, and we meet a Bedouin walking his donkey down the mountain who takes us a few steps off the main path to reveal his family’s cave. He asks if we’d like to go back to the new Bedouin village with him for tea, during which he provides a free ride on his donkey for the journey. Past the hall of his brother’s home in the village, we enter a small room furnished with a cabinet on which a tv stands, and a bed where his brother’s wife lies having given birth to a baby a couple of weeks ago which sleeps next to her. A few other young children are in the room, the eldest of which must have only been 10, and the youngest plays Marbles offering me to join. Finish the day back at the hostel for a Christmas Eve buffet and Carver.

Tel Aviv, Habibi!

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 07:47:56 +0900

After a morning of idle talk about a war which never materialises, there are the first sirens warning of rocket attacks in Tel Aviv since ‘91, beginning a seemingly newsworthy week for the city. Making our way from the office to the stairwell as the first siren sounded last Thursday, there was a mixed atmosphere of apathy and genuine panic, while loud booms could be heard followed by tremors as the rockets connected with the ground. And while the week continued with the same protocol, life in Tel Aviv carries on as normal. Our apartment is quite safe, and upon hearing the alarms, I move away from the windows until the rocket has either landed or is shot down by the defence system. Yesterday, a rocket landed in Rishon LeZion, a town just outside of Tel Aviv where Inbal’s parents live, and a family emerged from their bomb shelter to find their apartment no longer exists. The BBC reports that a ceasefire has been agreed, though there was a suicide bomb attack on a bus in Tel Aviv close to our apartment this morning, which has gone without mention in international news, much like the daily rocket attacks experienced in the southern cities of Israel since 2005.

Work is going well at the moment, and the view from the office is amazing. In the middle of the top photo, you can see the minaret of a mosque across the road from the ruins of a youth club destroyed by a suicide bomber a few years ago, and which is now where I go fishing when I get the chance.

18 degrees Celsius has never felt so cold! Temperatures have now dropped from the mid-thirties and...

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 07:33:44 +0900

18 degrees Celsius has never felt so cold! Temperatures have now dropped from the mid-thirties and I’m definitely feeling the difference walking through the streets of Tel Aviv, past rows of cafes playing Orchestral Movements in the Dark’s Enola Gay on the radio more times than I’ve ever heard before; which is never.

More of the usual in the weeks gone by: British parties, frequenting the theatre, Polanski screenings… Headed to Jerusalem late Sunday afternoon, grabbing a schawarma from a joint whose emblem bears a remarkable likeness to Obama, then escaped the rain inside the King David Hotel, which housed the British administrative headquarters during the British occupation, and which at the time of our visit had received officials from Korea and Britain, the concierge told us “with pleasure,” though who exactly was “privy information.”

Currently working for a financial institution 20 minutes by foot down Rothschild Boulevard, location of the protest movements against the increasing social divide in Israel, and which the BBC news termed ‘Israeli Spring’ in reference to the earlier ‘Arab Spring’, but which later sparked the Occupy Movements in Wall Street, London, and across the world, though the BBC news chose not to run the headline ‘Western Spring’. Anyway, the view from the office is incredible — I’ll have to take a photo!

Hearing 'Nice to meet you' from a class I've taught all year...

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 04:22:00 +0900

kikinitinkorea:

I just…

It’s been over a year now since I started posting to this tumblr, and I have yet to ‘reblog’ someone else’s work, which seems to be how this blogging ‘network’ is primarily used, so I thought I’d share a site with the people back home and fulfill my tumblr’s potential.

Kikinitinkorea is a collection of animated gifs — those infinitely looping second long clips originally consigned to the ’90s, only to be resurrected as a medium capturing those moments of hilarity in an otherwise mundane daily life — of which, Kikinitinkorea nails life as a native English teacher in Korea and is for the most part, totally relateable.

Only after leaving Korea have I come to appreciate the country for what it is, and that it could...

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 20:08:20 +0900

Only after leaving Korea have I come to appreciate the country for what it is, and that it could possibly be considered an interesting place to visit. Then again, there doesn’t seem to be any substance behind the random adjectives strung together in the ‘Dynamic Korea’ marketing campaign. The Independent lists the activities which qualify Korea as a top travel destination for 2013 as follows: golfing, hiking, fishing, skyscrapers, Buddhist temples, traffic, fly-fishing, and cycling.

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/asia/where-to-go-in-2013-south-korea-8219294.html

The Independent doesn’t note that due to the lack of flat land in Korea, there are very few real courses, and it will set you back a few hundred pounds for one round of 18 holes, so you’ll probably find yourself at either a driving range or at an indoor virtual screen golf. On the other hand, there’s the opportunity for not just cycling, but cycling “past biodiversity, barbed wire and landmines” which sounds a bit more exciting.

Friday Night Fishing

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 06:53:00 +0900

BBC news posted a story about stray cats lurking around dust bins in Israel, yesterday [link]. I’d assumed there would be more than 2 million stray cats in the country, as a good number prowl our street alone, and though I do see a few familiar faces each day, while I was throwing out the garbage the other night a tiny bedraggled ball of fur emerged from the bins and attached itself to my leg. After drying it off, we spent the next few days together before I let it out for the night, not to be seen again

Last year when Inbal introduced me to a few workmates, one promptly asked me if I wanted to go fishing, and while I didn’t have time before, I took him up on the offer a few weeks back. [Obligatory joke] Now I’m hooked.

I’ve finally linked the album with pics from before and after the trip to Poland, for you to take a look-see on the Albums page!

Polska (Pt. II)

Sun, 14 Oct 2012 19:13:00 +0900

Our 20 day tour of Poland continues on a train from Warsaw Central Station to the ‘Manchester of Poland,’ David Lynch territory, hometown of my Kersland Street flatmate in Glasgow, and officially known as Łódź, where we have the ‘Volleyball room’ booked in the ‘Sport Hostel’ for the next few days on the edge of town in an area similar to Hulme with bleak high rises, only without the white trash, and in fact without much sign of life at all, much like the rest of Łódź itself.

We take a tram (unpaid, like most of our in-city public transport travels as we haven’t figured out how to purchase tickets, while the drivers refuse to take our money, and though the Polish people usually offer help without us even asking, none will explain the payment process to us) into town and see the birthing of EC1, a huge set of buildings for film production part sponsored by David Lynch, built of the grounds of the old power plant. Eat at Anatewka, another Fiddler on the Roof style restaurant where we sit at a table like Polish women (alone in the dark, with the spiders). Stop off at the film school where Inbal runs into an acquaintance, then to the MC2 modern art galleries within Manufaktura, a huge shopping complex recently built within the structures of 19th century textile mills as part of an urban renewal project. There is a carousel within the grounds, and Inbal doesn’t recall ever riding one before so we step into the stirrups.

We find a coffee shop inside Manufaktura, which is eerily quiet for a Saturday morning in a shopping centre, and though Łódź is the third largest city in Poland, it feels like a ghost town and that more than 35% of its population is missing. We check the map and realise the Apartment is only a couple of streets away, on ul. 1 Maja. The building is in a state of disrepair. We enter the stairwell, and it’s not clear whether anyone lives in the block anymore, but there are noises which might be the movement of other people, or just the creaking of our footsteps. An old man emerges and exits the building without saying a word. We cross town to the Filmography museum, starting in the basement where there are framed movie posters on all of the walls and an old English bar, without any explanation, so we ask the guy working there who provides us with a justification for the museum’s existence, telling us that the room was big enough at 2 metres tall and it’s near to the film school so it only seems appropriate, and that the bar has a food menu because in real life you can order food from pubs in England. Walk down the main street, ul. Piotrkowska, and along the HollyŁódź (“It’s spelled L-O-D-Z, but it’s pronounced ‘Wootch’” David Lynch explains) Walk of Fame, to a museum of Polish culture where the ticket man confirms it is the museum but asks what we are expecting to see.

Just a short walk from the hostel is Radogoszcz Station, where the Ghetto trail continues to a huge Jewish cemetery, then onto the Broken Heart monument, before more pierogi at a restaurant in Manufaktura on time to catch a train back to Krakow in which we share a cabin with two priests.

After a long lie in Monday morning, we join the 3pm Jewish walking tour of Krakow (by a guide who studied Hebrew in Israel with the intention of starting a business being the only Hebrew speaking tour operator in Krakow catering for the many Israeli tourists) where we are reunited with the Syrian lawyer, who we manage to lose, along with a significant proportion of the group at one of the many two minute long ‘10 minute’ breaks. The tour continues without them, and with only ten people left (out of the original twenty) it concludes at a bar where we drink a few beers from 1 litre glasses and fortunately, the Panda hostel where we are staying is just around the corner, in the Kazimierz district.

Take the morning walking tour of the Old Town of Krakow, finishing at Wawel Castle close to our first hostel of the holiday, and have lunch at the same milk bar we ate at after we first arrived in Poland. An old man holding a Polish-English dictionary, who very surely wasn’t English, helps to better translate the menu. Explore the city some more and after eating dinner from a restaurant in the plaza below our hostel we make our way to a Yom Kippur service at a reformed synagogue housed in what is now a museum of Jewish history in Poland. I cross town to bid adieu to the lawyer as he travels to his next holiday spot in Slovakia, before flying to Beirut from where he’ll take a 10 Euro taxi ride to Damascus.

Inbal is fasting so I explore Krakow on my own, still in a surprising heat considering it’s approaching October and I was under the impression that Poland was supposed to be a cold place. Meet Inbal in the evening for an end-of-fast meal with the Reformed community at a restaurant close by, and find the Syrian’s fears might be well-grounded, as Dracula themed pizza is on the menu. Still hungry, we walk around the corner and eat at a place called the Legless Sheep on a street where Schindler’s List was mainly filmed.

Take a day trip to the Wieliczka Salt Mine, built in the 13th century and which produced salt continuously until 2007, though the museum inside suggests people have been collecting salt from the location for over 5000 years. I’d never imaged a salt mine to be so interesting, and it certainly rivals Keswick’s Pencil Museum as a great day out. Descending over 400 ft underground, we were taken on a 3km tour of the mine, passing by dozens of statues, three chapels and an entire cathedral all carved out from the rock salt by the miners. Everything (asides from the wooden supports) was carved from the rock salt, from the floors to the crystals of the chandeliers! Very impressive. Another day trip to Auschwitz, before one final day exploring Krakow, catching an evening bus to Katowice Airport for our return to the homeland.

Polska

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 21:28:12 +0900

A long night packing bags on Sunday before Inbal’s dad gives us a lift to Ben Gurion for our charted flight to Katowice at 5:30am, and upon taking our seats the plane was a sea of black fedora hats of Orthodox Jews on their way to the old country. Having prepared for cold weathers, we step out of the terminal to a surprisingly warm 20 Celsius Polish morning, and take a minibus to our first stop in Krakow where we check in at the Aleje Hostel, two minutes walk up the Vistula to Wawel Castle and the Old Town. It feels strange walking through the streets between buildings made of brick and which are distinctly European. Close to the hostel there is a bar mleczny from the communist era which still serves cheap government subsidised food, where I eat schnitzel, potato and some strangely prepared mashed beetroot, before we explore a little around the castle area.

After a Polish breakfast of bread, ham, cucumber and tomato, at the hostel, I take a quick walk around the sites see the day before and retake a couple of photos having worked out how to correct auto exposure issues on my new Canon S100, then we take a cab to Krakow bus terminal from where we depart to the picturesque Kazimierz Dolny where we have a room booked in a converted synagogue and after dropping of our luggage we head to the town square lined with cafes each serving what seems like Poland’s national dish, pizza, then on for a walk around the town’s cobbled streets.

While drinking espresso in one of the cafes the next morning, we are serenaded by a guitar player, and watch as fortune telling gypsies chase tourists around the square, then walk along the Vistula and take an hour’s minibus ride to the city of Lublin, passing through a Russian market on the way to Lublin Castle which was occupied during WWII and held 40,000 inmates, but is now a nice place to have wedding photos taken, and we eat at Mandragora, a kitsch Jewish-Polish ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ style restaurant. After eating, we take a bus from the town centre passing by suburban high rises and are suddenly confronted by barbed wire fences of Majdanek, ringing a large field containing time frozen guard towers and wooden barracks. Entering one of the ‘disinfecting’ rooms and through into the gas chambers where the walls are still stained blue from Zyklon B. We pass through the prison fields onto the crematorium and the mausoleum containing the ashes of many victims. Back in Lublin town centre, we discover we’ve missed the last bus back to Kazimierz Dolny, but a kind Polish law student in his fifth year at what is probably the world’s most depressing university composed of communist concrete blocks across the road from the extermination camp, makes a few phone calls to people to check information on the internet and then finds a hostel for us to stay in for the night.

While we’re in Lublin, we wander into a bargain-basement department store for another piece of luggage in in the hope of saving my back while loading our belongings on and off transport, and then take a bus back to Kazimierz Dolny to sample the town’s famous cockerel shaped bread, before further exploring the small town on the Vistula and climb up the Three Crosses’ Mountain.

While there are many cafes lining Kazimierz Dolny’s town square, only one seems to be open for both breakfast and late evening meals, where we drink our morning coffee before taking a bus across to the country’s capital, then check in at the recently opened Fest Hostel, located on the fourth floor of a seemingly vacant apartment block, very eerie even in the day time and all it would take for it to be a set from a horror movie would be for one of the few lights to flicker intermittently and emit a low humming sound down the long corridors which are plain enough to leave you feeling insecure in the inability to hide from ghouls but with just enough nooks for them to emerge from. The hostel itself is large and brightly decorated, full of friendly fellow travellers, one if which is our friend The Fiddleman from Tel Aviv, who turns out to be sharing a dorm room with a Syrian doctor of law. It emerges a few days later, that our Syrian lawyer has a fear of Dracula.

After breakfast at the hostel, most of us leave for a walking tour of the Old Town, and it’s hard to believe the city has been rebuilt after complete destruction as it looks so authentic. Meet another Israeli during the tour and go for a quick coffee before employing our ‘right’ to another free walking tour, of Communist Warsaw, finishing late afternoon as the milk bars are closing so I gather my Middle Eastern friends for Thai food instead, from where we walk across to the Palace of Culture, a gift from Stalin, which the people of Warsaw believe offers the best view of the city due to the fact that when you’re at the top of the building you can’t see the building itself. I manage to form a group of ten from people in the queue, making us all eligible for a significant discount on entry. Across the street are three former communist clothing stores, one of which now contains a TK Maxx, which we go to and run into the two Japanese girls and Japanese speaking Flem from our hostel. Head out later with the Flem, Israeli we met on the tour and the Syrian lawyer and find a club, where the Flem bounces around the dance floor like a colossal rubber chicken later asking me if it was obvious he doesn’t go clubbing often, and we return to the hostel at 5am having planned a museum tour in 4 hours time.

While I manage to be ready, those who chose not to go out the night before managed to sleep in and delay our museum tour, and we leave the hostel around 11am, picking up our coffee from an Israeli coffee house which has recently branched out internationally. Eventually make our way to the Rebellion Museum where we meet one of Inbal’s Polish friends, whose grandfather fought in the Uprising, to give us a greater understanding of what we were looking at, but it’s Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, so we cut the tour short to conclude the next day, which was unfortunately again cut short as the museum closed and the lights were shut off while museum officials waved flash lights herding patrons single file towards the exit. Arrange to meet more of Inbal’s friends at a bar across the river in Praga, and while walking there our Syrian lawyer tells us that he’s heard bad things about the area, including the presence of Dracula which he wards off with song, and which are then sung in our native tongues, but the two Polish girls on the table next to us who are oblivious to the existence of Dracula don’t translate the song to Polish, meanwhile a new ‘cheers’ is born: “This is milk!”

Coffee at a hipster coffee shop where we have more conversations about Jewish existentialism or some such, then lunch at a cafe where Inbal’s Israeli-Polish exchange program filmed a section of their project ‘There used to be a bridge here’. Meet the Fiedleman at the Chopin museum.

Another of Inbal’s friends takes us and our Syrian on a walk around the Jewish Ghettos of occupied Warsaw, the only remnants of which are engraved lines on the streets marking the boundaries and a few memorials where Rebellion fighters died and are now buried, and during the walk we encounter an Israeli actor who left Poland a day before the war, a day later and he would not have been able to do so. The Syrian hasn’t been to a milk bar yet, and is itching to do so. Meet Inbal’s film mentor and her husband for a bottle of wine.

Return to the Homeland

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 18:07:00 +0900

It was finally time for me to leave Incheon airport after spending over 48 hours in the basement level spa, leaving periodically for junk food and to check that a world outside still existed. Arrived to the spectacle of China’s yellow dust blanketing Beijing for a transfer which would have gone a lot smoother had I not been a single non-Jewish male traveling into Israel without an onwards ticket flying with El Al airlines, but on the upside, after being given a tour of the basement of Beijing airport, I am confident to report that El Al’s security is very tight.

Landed at Ben Gurion, where I was welcomed back by Inbal and we take a taxi to our apartment in the centre of Tel Aviv. We step out the next morning into the Mediterranean sun to buy fresh fruit, and I experience something I would be hesitant to call ‘culture shock’, but was queer nonetheless: Walking around the streets, and there are so many white people. And black people. And people of many colours, and also so many colours of hair; blue eyes, green eyes, brown. So much diversity! And no one is staring at me!! Not standing out anymore will definitely take getting used to, but to quote my bow-hunting pipe-smoking friend Charles: “My specialness was gone, but in its place was clarity of communication.”

On the topic of culture shock, I think it is a phenomenon greatly exaggerated, and it’s too easy for people to justify ridiculousness as a different culture beyond your comprehension. For example when asking for summer vacation in Korea, my co-teacher and vice-principle wanted to count weekends, which my contract specified I wouldn’t work, towards vacation days, and when I point out the nonsense, I receive the explanation “this is Korea”! (I persisted in pointing out their stupidity, in case you’re wondering, and eventually they succumbed to what should be common sense.) Having said that, I am confused as to how I am supposed to show respect to someone of a higher social status than myself if I can’t use physical gestures to denote hierarchy.

I had a very busy and great ten days back in Tel Aviv, before leaving for a holiday in Poland. Met old friends and made many new, and while I had met Inbal’s close family last year, I saw a good few branches of her extended family over the course of the ten days. Went to many parties, including a British Party in Levontin 7, a famous basement club in Tel Aviv, where we danced to the Smiths and the Clash etc. Continued to top up my tan from Summer in Korea, and we’ll see if it survives a Polish Autumn.