Taking Care of Business

The story of Noah’s Ark was supposed to have taken place in Mount Ararat, Eastern Turkey. This morning it looked like it was happening in real time but 1,205 km south of that, right outside my apartment to be precise. I can't remember this much rain falling in Vancouver all at once (I am lying of course). 

I spent the morning at "my" cafe doing what people who don't have much to do in fact do when it rains: drink many cups of strong coffee, read the Jerusalem Post’s paper edition cover to cover including the Classified Ads and surf the internet using an iPad.  Funny thing is, the place was packed, mostly with young people like (ahem) me, doing precisely what I was doing (OK, based on what I know about Tel Avivians and how they vote, they were probably reading a way more liberal-leaning paper, but the rest was the same). I stayed at the cafe for precisely 2 hours and ate a hearty Israeli-style breakfast (which means the egg omelet came with a huge green salad, an avocado salad and dish of humus, plus a slab of feta cheese. But I was 'good': I told them to hold the bread...).

Later, the second layer of my adventure started: meeting with locals in high tech companies.  

At around 12:30 I took a cab to Ramat Gan to go to lunch with JS, at an Italian restaurant.  The menu, alas, wasn't in Italian so I surrendered and asked for the English version.

But my Hebrew must be improving. After I told the cab driver where to take me, he asked me "how much I wanted to pay." My stunned good-Canadian-girl response was something along the lines of "This is my first cab ride in Israel so I am no position to negotiate with you" --and I said it in Hebrew, no less.  He shrugged his shoulders and started the meter (later he asked me if he could light up a cigarette and wasn't too amused when I told him that "smoking isn't good for you"). The joys of the underground economy.

Tel Aviv so far seems to me to be quite a gritty city. Ramat Gan on the other hand, a suburb just outside Tel Aviv (a 15 minute cab ride away from my apartment), is all shiny and new and full of tall towers. For a moment I wished I had rented an apartment there - then quickly realized it is so very much like any suburb in North America, not quite "the real thing" I seem to be seeking (whatever that is).

 Ramat Gan's economy is dominated by the Diamond Exchange District sporting Israel's tallest tower at over 240 meters, the Diamond Exchange (a world leader in diamonds), and many high-tech businesses, plus many embassies, the European Economic Community, the British Council and Hiriya, the largest waste transfer site in the Middle East (ok, ok, I admit it; I am Googling all this, including the photo).    

 

Now back to my lunch conversation with JS.

The conversation was certainly very interesting for many reasons, including the fact that he was the first person I have spoken to since I got here who isn't selling/has sold me something, so his perspective is different.  Of course I had to also ask him about the political situation or, more specifically, THE question: will Israel take care of business with Iran?

Well, JS, like everybody else I have spoken to (rental agency manager; cafe waitresses; mobile company employee; gym salesperson; strangers #1, #2 and #3 in 3 different cafes, to name a few of my primary interlocutors thus far) doesn't know but believes that there is so much noise that it is unlikely. He tells me that he is a news junkie, like most if not all Israelis, but at work this isn’t a subject that gets discussed much.

And I can see why.  When Israel destroyed the Syrian nuclear reactor a few years back (did you miss that?), it was all a secret and it was denied afterwards. In contrast, this time the subject of  Iran and Israel’s option to fix their “need for nuclear energy sources” has been all over the papers for months on end... so, No, not likely to happen (for a more articulate elaboration of the argument, I can thank my husband for emailing me a link to Barry Rubin’s “Iran war hysteria surpasses all bounds of sanity." In case you are wondering, he and I *are* spending a lot of time on Skype).

After lunch, it was gloriously sunny (I exaggerate, but at least it wasn’t cold or raining) so I decided to take the bus back to Tel Aviv.

As you can see in the picture, figuring out which bus to take wasn’t so easy so I just hopped on a bus aiming towards Tel Aviv and told the driver where I wanted to go. He told me he’d drop me off as close as possible. It sounded good to me. (I am writing this from my apartment so it worked)

Back to Language. On my way back I realized I had 4 voice mail messages but the instructions on how to retrieve them were all in Hebrew so I had to stop by the Cellcom store again, where my new BFF fixed that problem (while simultaneously dealing with three other customers in various degrees of distress with regards to their mobile phone issues). Good thing I don’t have much to do because that alone took an hour.

I also joined the gym. No more excuses. It’s a 5 minute walk from the apartment and it’s open 24/7. Plus, I must be a masterful negotiator because after much discussion with my zaftig gym rat I got a zero discount – but two personal training sessions!