Chametz Purcahsing office- Update!

With only two hours to spare, I got a call from Asaf on Monday afternoon.

"I have a last minute favour to ask," he said.
"I have some leftover chametz, would you be willing to buy it? And my mother-in law's too?"

I happily agreed and we agreed on the steep price of twenty agarot (7 cents) which I left on his desk this morning. My new purchases are locked away in Asaf's and his mother in law's houses.

How great. I am providing a service. Buying chametz totally made my day.

My only regret is that I didn't act like a real Israeli and try and haggle him down.

Chametz Purchasing Office

So what happens to all of those wheat and leavened products over Pesach? Some people clean house and have none leftover. Our ulpan buddy, Helen, tells us this makes for some really odd meals at her house in the days leading up to Pesach as they try to use it all up. Pasta and red beans, anyone?

Another option is to seal all the chametz up, lock it away, and sell it symbolically to a non-Jew for the week. All the big grocery chains each have a trusty non-Jew who does this for them every year. The chametz never moves from the warehouse, but the sale and the contract is real and so the position of non-Jewish chametz buyer is not a toy position.

Adiel tells me that individuals can also find someone to buy their remaining household chametz so they don't have to throw it out. And thus, since it is almost Pesach, I decided to put up a little sign on my office door today. I am glad I can provide a service! Each time someone noticed it, there was a round of giggles.

Rrrrrrrrrrr x 2

After about 30 hours of travel, Katrine arrived at six in the morning, weary eyed and dead-dog tired. When I left for work she was sleeping peacefully.

She was so tired, she probably hasn't noticed the noise yet. There four constructions sights within two blocks of our house, and in the daylight hours we are surround by the grating sound of Yoni Patish (our translation of jack hammer). Rrrrrrrrr.

Two of the construction sites are renovations of old mansions, and a third is a new small apartment building. The last of these construction sites is a mystery building in the centre of a big traffic circle. What could it be? Felafel stand? Florist? Convenience store?

I am hoping an praying it turns out to be a drive through Tim Hortons. Rrrrrrrr.

Spring Cleaning

People all around Israel are madly cleaning their houses this week to get ready for Pesach. You can call it Passover if you find the guttural "ch" a little to hard on the throat. This is not a simple clean, but every knook, cranny and couch cushion needs to be explored and cleaned. The reason: Hametz. Any leavened or wheat product has to go. Every last crumb.

James and I did a big spring cleaning in the house last weekend getting ready for Katrine's arrival on Wednesday. Going against the grain (pun intended), we kept our bran flakes, pasta, and cookies. I am heading to the grocery store tonight to stock up before they all disappear from the shelves for the whole up coming week.

As far a cleaning goes, our Ulpan buddy, Shelly, says that in Jerusalem, dust doesn't count. And normally, I agree, however, since the rains are almost all done, and in honour of Katrine's visit, I broke out my new bottle of blue glass cleaner and cleaned all the windows.

Unfortunately, all the windows now have a greasy film all over them because the blue "glass cleaner" turned out to be bathroom cleaner. How was I supposed to know? In my world, blue clear stuff in a spay bottle = Windex. Shoulda stuck with vinegar and water.

Did I tell you I have a new found respect for people who are illiterate?

Buying Spices in the Orient

James has been trying a new recipe each weekend. Last friday he bought all the key ingredients for a new experiment before Shabbat started.... except the spices.

Since we were planning to go to the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem on Shabbat anyway, we detoured through the old city to buy some spices in the Arab quarter.

There are many spice sellers with huge colourful displays of their wares. We chose one of the ones that has a huge pyramid of spices on display out front. The choice was a little intimidating as you can see.

James had put his short Arabic course to work that morning and wisely translated and wrote down the names of what he needed in what I call doodly-doop-doodly-doop.

This crusty old man took his list and just started filling bags, despite the fact that we only needed one tea spoon of each. But, it was the old city, and the spices that perfume the air are cheap. Poor James' fifty words of Arabic caved under the pressure and he and the crusty old spice seller had to regress to James' better second language: Hebrew.

Anyone need any tumeric?

More Evidence of the Quilled Bigfoot

Last weekend we wandered the back streets of a trendy neighbourhood called the German Colony, not far from our house. These days, the residents are dominated by loaded American immigrants and tourists, but once upon a time it was a community of German protestants called the Templars.

The Templars got hoofed out in WWII and sent to -of all places- Melbourne, but left behind the only peaked roofs in the city and lovely tree lined streets.

We made our way to the nature museum on one of the back streets, payed our 15 sheck and got buzzed in through an old wooden door with many layers of paint. Sadly the site appears to have once been a beautiful mansion that was donated/liberated in the previous generation and hasn't received a speck of funding since. Every single exhibit was 1970s vintage. The best part was what I found in the stuffed animals section. The plot thickens!

10 000 The winner! Well sort of.

You may have noticed that you can't really search the contents of this blog on google, and this was a conscious decision to keep it, ostensibly, between friends and family and word of mouth. HOWEVER, that hasn't stopped a few lurkers whom I can't identify. Number 10 000 was a mystery lurker from Haifa. This person doesn't seem to want to be known or is too hoity toity to receive one of my fridge magnets. I suspect they are actually a member of the Israeli version of the CIA, the Mossad, and my blog is scanned for state secrets. Maybe they know something more about the quilled campus big foot that they don't want me to reveal.

Number 10001 was Costi, the Mad Chemist in Boston, but he gets disqualified for a) being able to read the fridge magnet and b) not putting his name in the comments. Unless he asks really nicely.

So I have decided, as blog benevolent dictator, that the winners are:

9999 My Brother Colin in New Brunswick who can pick out his favorite off my fridge when he comes to visit next month.

AND

10002, Joel in Edmonton who should have his head in his fume hood. Be expecting some awesome fridge magnetness in the mail.

Congrats! Thanks everyone for reading and procrastinating!

10 000

Look down on the left hand side of the page to the little purple counter and notice that this wee blog has had nearly 10 000 hits to the site. This is truly a momentous achievement in the history of, well, my blogging.

Are you the 10 000th visitor? 'Cause if you are, post you name in the comments section and I will send you a prize that will make all your friends jealous! For your extreme luck and loyalty to the Maple Shekel, you will receive by first class air mail an awesome possum completely incomprehensible Israeli fridge magnet!

Will it be Mel or Joel in Edmonton? Chico in Texas? Mom in Dwight? Aunt Sandra in NZ? Costi in Boston? A Mackay in the Hammer? Em or the Gros in Saskatoon? Lawrence in Morefield? Siu or Katrine in Ottawa? Or someone I had no idea even read my blog?

Ohhhh the excitement!

Spring is in the air

Almost every lunch time, James and I hang out with the campus cats, whose coming and goings are very entertaining. There is a big orange tom who, with his harem of ladies, lies around like some sort of feline Henry VIII. It is a regular soap opera complete with war, love, deception, redemption, families, and intruders.

The most accurate way to tell that spring has arrived in Jerusalem is by the size of the female campus cats. Most of the year they are pretty thin, but with great flaps of skin hanging below their bellies. Their mommy bellies swing back and forth as they trot down the campus pathways. In contrast, right now, all of the female cats are mini Zeppelins with legs. You seem them waddling about, looking near to busting, or more often, lying in the shade with a look on their face as if to say, "Don't bother me. It is hot, I am fat and I am not moving."

James here is torturing a cat we have called "Preggo" for her astounding breeding capabilities. He is pretending to put stuff in the garbage, fully knowing the wide-load cat is not quite capable of jumping up on to the can.

TGIF

Winter, if that is what we can call it, is over. The day time high was over 30 degrees today, and the heat sent me digging though the closet looking for a tank top and a skirt. I have officially started working on this season's flip flop tan. It seems like only a week or so ago it was pouring rain for four days straight, and we were freezing with wet clothes draped all over the apartment.

Wait one sec... let me check... yep that was 12 days ago. This place is crazy.

I don't have that much to say other than it is Friday and we went shopping at the shook. James got a hair cut and used his Hebrew. He has made it his goal to try out as many old-man barber shops as he can in the city. In a fantastic coincidence, the Hebrew word for barber or hairdresser is the same as the word that means to tell a story. Both of which were going on in full force at this barber shop.

While The chicken was getting his feathers trimmed, I bought carrots and zucchinis and red peppers, then headed elsewhere for tomatoes and then to another spot for oranges and apples, then a pomello as a treat for me, some dill from a fresh spice seller, then come cucumbers when I saw some good ones for three shek a kilo ($1). On my way back to meet James at the barbers', I got yelled at by about half a dozen insanely loud shook guys "Gaveret, Gaveret!" "Miss! Miss!" and chased down because I forgot my 30 cent turnip at one of the stalls five minutes earlier. Love it.

Then we went for lunch (hummus and stuffed vegetables) next to a courtyard full of old men gossiping and playing very serious games of backgammon.

And this is just a gratuitous posting of a photo of a little scene at the shook. I am a shameless people watcher and a photographer from the hip.

Decision on your Manuscript

One of my goals for this blog is to give my non scientific friends and family a realistic and fair view into the life of academia: all the glory, the gory, and the God-awful.

As you know, I have had a paper out to review for over a month now. The anticipation has been killer.

This afternoon while I was on a scientific safari, hunting down references, I heard my trusty laptop give out a little boop to let me know I got an email. Instead of one of the many of repeated seminar announcements or annoying pointless announcements in Hebrew I seem to get every day, this one was from the boss with the subject line:

"FWD: Decision on your Manuscript"

My heart skipped a beat. I clicked on it, scrolled down to the body of the email and read:

"We apologise for the delay in reaching a decision on your manuscript entitled "Best Nano-Chemistry Ever". We hope to hear from the referees in the near future, and we will inform you of our decision as soon as possible."

JUST TELL ME ALREADY! ARRRRGH!

If you hear on the news tonight about a Canadian researcher in Israel who spontaneously combusted from overwhelming anticipation, you will know what happened.

Hebrew U's Bigfoot

One evening a few weeks ago, James called me from the cell phone excitedly. He claimed he had seen two GIANT porcupines on campus AND he had gotten a picture. This is the pic he showed me.

That is not a porcupine. That is a blur on the stair case. I think a GIANT campus porcupine is like campus bigfoot. I don't think it actually exists, despite James' adamant claim he saw two.
But then two weeks ago, I saw this on one of the campus walkways, right where James claimed to have seen them. Very suspicious...

But still, this was only circumstantial evidence that a GIANT campus porcupine frolics in the flower gardens and I remained skeptical.
Tonight my whole world changed.

As I was coming down the stairs to the Neve Shanan gate, I saw a strange thing in front of me. Scuttling down the path was a startled porcupine, or rather a porcupine tail, surrounded by a whirl of erect quills. The quills were knocking together as he scurried away, making a noise not too dissimilar to the sound pasta makes when you pour it into the pot of water. His swaying two-toned quills in the light of the street lamp reminded me somewhat of a big Souxian headdress weaving through the air in a circle dance.

Like many people who report having seen a Sasquatch, I did not have a camera on me. So I did not get a picture. But I am now a converted believer. I believe the GIANT campus porcupine exists!

You may not be believers yet, so I will continue relentlessly to find you real proof of the GIANT campus porcupine.

Morning Call to Prayer

We are having a warm spell and we have opened up all of the windows like we do in the summer. When our bedroom windows are open, I sometimes wake up in the dawning light to the call to prayer. It echos softly and eerily across the large valley below- early enough that the birds do not even accompany it.

In some ways it reminds me of home and the predawn calls of O-Oh Canada, Canada, Canada by the white throated sparrow. He sings his heart out in the dark as if the sun only rises because of his welcoming cries.

If I wake up, I listen to the call to prayer for a few moments and then roll over and go back to sleep for a few hours until morning starts in earnest.

Have you ever wondered what those men are singing in Arabic?
I have been told that one of the phases means "prayer is better than sleep."

Knowing that, I can confidently tell you that there is no chance I will be converting to Islam any time soon.

I am going back to bed now.

Attack of the Killer Fre-Brew

The bus driver this morning forgot to let off a couple of French tourists at the museum and then was trying to give them directions to walk from a much later stop in Hebrew. I decided to be a good Samaritan and help out. What resulted was a shameful display of my current foreign language skills.

"Je parle un peu de français. Je voudrais donner vous le direction" I said. Not bad. A bit awkward and a misplaced object pronoun but the point was clear an the tourists looked thankful.

I hopped off the bus with them since it was only one stop before mine. And the French went downhill from there.

"J'ai étudé français beh Canada. Aval maitenant, j'étude Hébru. J'ai...... J'ai.... J'ai..."

"melange de languages?" the nice man finished for me.

"Oui." I replied and then got down to business. "Zeh ha rue." and pointed down the road. "Vous marchiez cinq minutes, veh le museon est à la droit. Il y a un simon gadol" I said as I made a big box shape with my hands to indicate the big sign. "Beseder?" I asked.

They seemed to understand me, nodded, and happily headed on their way despite my dreadful Franken-language. Good lord, I didn't even realize I was doing it! Is this the horrible state my French as degraded to in only a year an a half? I used to be able to discuss philosophy and world politics in French. How humiliating!

The Chicken said it was completely endearing, but I disagree. It was completely disheartening.

Refugee

Yesterday I was a refugee from my own lab. I spent the day moving from office to office seeking out free desk space, warmth, quiet and the illusive wireless internet.

My office and the lab was shut down because they needed to change the catalyst on the old glove box. Because the catalyst is a whole lotta fine powder, my labmates, Itzik (the bunny guy on the right), Itai (bunny on the left) and Gabi (holding the camera), had to suit up in bunny suits and face masks. Itai said it reminded him of his childhood and the first gulf war- but without the scuds.

Changing the catalyst only took them a few hours. Every time I peeked in the window it looked like something out of a B-grade end-of-world movie but with a bright yellow vacuum cleaner purchased the day before for -well I am not sure exactly what the vacuum was for, but I could hear it working so they must have needed it. After wards we could go back in the lab but then they had to regenerate the new catalyst right away which is an extraordinarily stinky process. So after three minutes in my office I was kicked out again.

But it was all worth it because now the glove box is sitting at a wonderful 1 ppm of oxygen, the blower softly whirring away, keeping my nanoparticles happy and oxygen fee.