Random adventure 2010: Prague

On Wednesday morning, we got up bright and early and headed to the airport with our passports, a wad of cash and our bags backed for four days in Bulgaria on the Black Sea beaches.

Three hours later we were on a plane to Prague.

Shortly after getting off the plane, I was struck with a very unusual sensation that niggled the back of my memory. What was it? Ahhh! I know! It is the sensation of feeling cool and comfortable! All hail 20C, cloudy with scattered showers! It was simply wonderful.

We had five great days of exploring all the nooks and crannies of the city which people say is the way many European cities looked before everyone started to bomb each other's cities to smithereens in WWII. I feel cultured now. A little over cultured. I saw so much art that I started looking for the most handsome Jesus, and giggling at the most spectacularly incorrect depictions of Jerusalem.

I feel like I spent a greater part of my savings on museum entrance fees- but it was worth it. There is some great art and architecture to be seen.Our favorite was the private collections of the Lobkowitz family. Amongst all the priceless paintings, letters and furniture, I saw a chair that looked strikingly familiar with its spiral dowels, ornate carving and wicker seat. There was one almost exactly like it in my grandfather's house that we kids were NEVER allowed to sit on. Now it doesn't get sat on in my parents' house.

A little known fact about me is that between the Irish reddish hair and the Scottish freckles, I am one 32nd (or is it 64th?) Czech. This is one of the great things about being a multi generation immigrant; you end up a crazy variety of mutt. Because of the Lobkowitzs' chair, I spent the rest of our trip trying to convince James that I am descended from Czech nobility. "Yes, Milady" was all James would drone as he pulled me off to the next site to see. I posted pics of both: you be the judge.

We also spent a day taking the train out to some random town, checking out a fantastic gothic cathedral. I have decided I like Gothic way better than Baroque. The Gothic gargoyles don't freak me out nearly as much as all those creepy Baroque cherubs with just wings and a head and no body. When I die, if those freakish things are leading me to heaven, I hope I have a baseball bat with me.

On the way back out to the train station, I entered one of the creepiest chapels known to man, decorated by the hands of 40 000 former residents – but also their arms, legs, ribs and heads. Cremation, my friends, is looking better and better.

One of the evenings we went to the State Opera house and saw a production of Verdi's Aida, which The Chicken described as a sonic assault with over 60 people on stage at times. We both agreed the skinny-b^&$* pharaoh's daughter was far more interesting than the perpetually suicidal title character.

In no time at all, it seems we were back on the plane taking the red-eye home. I *planned* to go to work today, but I fell asleep instead.

Clipped wings and flying by the seat of our pants.

Well, the bank transfer isn't going to work out. They take three days to process and travel agent man says they won't reserve the seats until they get the cash. BOO! Well, so much for Bulgaria. I can't believe they don't accept foreign Visa cards! I thought they were "everywhere you want to be". Well, I want to be in Bulgaria!

Sigh.

But wait.

Travel agent man on the phone tells me there is another option for the truly spontaneous. We can pay in CASH at the airport. But without a credit card, we cannot reserve seats. That's right, this means we can show up at the airport with a wad of cash and play vacation roulette with whatever seats are still available.
We, being brave, are going to try this out tomorrow morning.

We have no idea where we might end up this weekend. I have packed my bag ready for beach, for city, for road trip. WHO KNOWS!?!?!?! WHO CARES!!!?!?!? It is adventure time!

You know what really gets me "everywhere I want to be"? That's right, not my stinkin' foreign Visa card, but my friendly Canadian passport.

Adventure HO!

Are we going?

It is time for another adventure! We found online some stupidly cheap vacation packages that seemed to get cheaper every hour that we waited to book. The university is closed down for the week, I just emailed a draft of a paper to the boss, so heck! Why not?

For days it has been a toss up as to exactly where we would go on our trip. Which package would end up cheaper? Today, we couldn't wait any longer since we are to leave tomorrow.

So this afternoon we booked our trip to....... Bulgaria! Five days of swimming from the pristine beaches of the Black Sea coast, road tripping into the rolling verdant hills, sleeping in an air conditioned room.... sounds fantastic. I'm in!

Woot Woot!

Twenty minutes of pre-Vacation Elation!

Then we got THE CALL. They don't accept foreign visa cards.

Vacation elation is on hold.

So now we are waiting by the phone for some dude to call us so we can *try* to convince them to do bank transfer from our Israeli account. He *said* it would be minutes. Seeing as this is Israel, I expect the call sometime within the next three hours.

Grrr. Should have read the fine print. Except it was in Hebrew legalese.

43 degrees C

It is Hot. Not just hot , but Hot. I feel like every part of me is sweating and I haven't felt this uncomfortable since I worked in the desert of Australia. Which makes sense, because the temperature is comparable. But we have the added bonuses of no air conditioning and a top floor apartment with a large south facing wall. Even sleeping on the tile floor, I was sweating and too hot to sleep by 7:30 this morning.

Here is the weather forecast for the week. We already exceeded today's expected high since we just hit 43C, but my favourite part is Wednesday's forecast. Apparently the weatherman is getting sick of the heat too.



We have been doing what we can to avoid our apartment. I spent a very blissful ten minutes in the frozen food section of the grocery store contemplating crawling in the with bags of frozen peas and carrots.

Then we spent another couple of hours drinking iced coffee in an air conditioned cafe. This was followed by one of the cruelest jobs on the hottest day of the summer: apartment hunting.

The lease on our Proto-coop runs out at the end of October, but we have decided to stay until Christmas. This means we need to find a furnished apartment for only two months, but without having to pay the exorbitant prices of a vacation rental.

I put up an ad and one response wanted us to pay $3000 US for the two months for a tiny studio. Oh yes, and because we aren't super Glatt Kosher, we can only use the fridge and the kettle. Nothing else in the kitchen.

As luck would have it, we found a newspaper reporter going on exchange for exactly those two months. The apartment looks great, the kitchen non-kosher, the price right, and the neighbourhood funky. Most importantly we will be a five minute walk from Damascus gate of the old city and the 6 shekel felafel stand. We just need to finalize some details, but it looks like it will work out.

I love it when things get planned out and the stress is taken off.

Next goal: Job!

My two cents

Some of you may have heard about a controversy going on here in Israel over a soldier's facebook account. She posted photos of her self smiling with blindfolded and tied up captives to document her time in the army.

A huge media kerfuffle has sprung up and she can't figure out what she did wrong.

She has been stripped of her rank and she feels let down by her military. And she still can't figure out what she did that was wrong.

In a way she is correct. Her military let her down. She is not the first, or dare say the last soldier to have taken a smiling picture with a captive or a dead enemy. Yet she alone has become a figurehead of behavior that is both repugnant and rampant, which many would like to think doesn't happen.

I chalk this up to her being very young and very, very stupid. At my advanced age, I have lived through times of great military shame and dishonour. I remember the Somalia affair vividly and how shocked I was that our soldiers, the good guys, could so something so awful and evil.

But as I get older, the soldiers stay the same age. What were many of today's soldiers doing during Somalia in 1993? Learning to tie their shoes.

What was I doing at 19? I was learning to cook, my mind was being opened to higher learning, I was becoming independent and I was growing up. I most certainly was not asked to question the moral correctness of what myself and all of my peers were being told to do and I most certainly was not put in such positions of power over another human being.

In the blush of youth, it is so easy to paint the world into good and bad, us and them. And I imagine the culture of every military is as such, because a soldier who pauses a moment to recognize the humanity of the man on the other side ends up dead.

But even at 18 or 19, these soldiers should know better than to strip the dignity of another. Part of growing up is realizing that everyone, even yourself, is capable of evil. If a society is going to put young people in such positions of power, they should prepare them for where they may meet their own devils.

Even if they have not come to recognize this aspect of themselves, the youth are very versed in pop culture. And everyone knows from the movies that only villains grin and gloat over the bodies of their captives.

The Big Guns in Chemical Suppliers

I loathe the fact that this has happened to me, but I have been desensitized to large guns. They are simply everywhere. Not just little hand guns, but full-on giant weapons strung around soldiers like dangerous guitars.

For someone who has only ever shot a B-B gun at a margarine container, it is surprising how they have become part of my everyday life. Guns are in the predictable places like hugging police officers, and decorating the necks every one of the five or six security dudes and dudettes hanging outside Netanyahu's house as I walk by to the supermarket.

But they are also in places that Canadians would be uncomfortable with. Large guns hang at the waist of the security at the university gate when I get my id and bag checked each morning. On the way to Hebrew class, I might might see one hanging almost vertically on the back of an off duty soldier pushing a stroller down the street. Getting pushy in the grocery store line? Well I might get shoved up against the assault rifle of a soldier picking up some hummus and cheese for his mom. Or I might see a three foot long gun resting on the lap of a young combat soldier nodding asleep on the bus to Tiberias. Even the security guy at the botanical gardens packs heat.

To be honest, I probably only go one day a week (Shabbat) without seeing some sort of gun.

Yesterday at the bus stop there was a soldier with a large unidentified mean looking weapon (but clearly not for moose hunting) which wasn't really a big surprise. What was a shocker was what was also around his shoulders.

Makes me want to put up my hands and surrender my Strem catalogue.

On Facial Hair

When James came back from vacation, he came back with a beard. I kinda like it on him and managed to convince him to stay fuzzy for an extra two weeks. Isn't he handsome, in a total Muskoka, lumberjack way? I didn't want to see it go, but admittedly if it got much longer, we were going to have to buy him a black kippa and a prayer shawl.

Today he headed to the shower, and after a long time, he called me into the bathroom to comment on his progress. This is the horrifying sight that met me.


This is what I had to say about the Mo:


In fact I locked him in the bathroom and wouldn't let him come out until that horrible lip caterpillar was gone. Ahhh, much better.

From one paper to the next

So now that my big paper is off and accepted, the boss has been pestering me about cover art. I checked out previous covers of the journal and the are all textures rather than concepts. I could draw a nice scheme or make a nice diagram, but textures? Hmmm, I am not so good.

Any graphic artists out there want to make a few bucks and possibly get your work on a magazine cover?

In the mean time, I am working on another paper- this time with Yossi. He has done most of the experiments but I am helping him out with analysis and the writing. I read his first draft and I soon realized that everyone has the same problem, no matter what your first language is; organizing your thoughts into a coherent story is really tough.

So I told him we were going to take a a pair of scissors and some tape to his paper.

He thought I was kidding.

We went to a big table and spent an hour slicing and dicing and taping and marking and post-it noting his paper and now it flows like a river.

Sick Mac

I have an excuse for slacking on the blog posts.
My poor old mac is sick.

It was probably the 33 degree heat in my office last week, but suddenly she was working really reeeeaaaalllllly ssssllllloooowwwwwlllllyyyy. I have been seeing a lot of the spinny wheel of death.

Turns out, one of my little ol' mac's RAM slots kicked the bucket. And the remaining RAM is pathetically small.

Basically, my two horse carriage is being pulled by a single old crotchety nag.
With only three legs.

Others have had this problem and won a class action suit against the evil Apple. In 2005. No help for me then.

So now I am on the hunt through Israel looking for a 1Gig RAM stick to beef up the remaining working slot. In essence I want my two horse carriage to be pulled by a single feisty stallion.

My computer is so old that this 70$ fix- if it works- will actually make it run better than it ever did.

Better brush off the survival Hebrew. Wish me, and my Mac, luck.

The Cell Phone

It is a long story, but I finally broke down and bought my own, fully functional cell phone this weekend.

Already I have had three calls from some Arab dude looking for someone named Achmad.
"ACHMAD!!! ACHMAD?!!!! MI MEDABER?!!!?! AIFO ACHMAD???!!!"
Who's speaking? (but the grammar was as if he is talking to a guy.) Where's Achmad?
The dude's Hebrew is worse than mine, so I will be asking the Arab cleaning ladies today to teach me to say "wrong number" in Arabic.

I sent an email out to the labmates with my new number. All morning I have been getting smirks and congratulations on finally getting a cell phone. They smirk because they see this as a sign that I am a) becoming a grown up and b) slowly, but ever so surely becoming Israeli.

First of all, who are we fooling, I am a child at heart and always will be.
Secondly, just because I have a cell phone doesn't mean I need to yell into it once every hour to maintain my life force.

I swear I am getting more congrats on the stupid phone than I did on my paper!

Heck Yea!

I saw my paperwork from the university so I can start the process of getting my visa extended.
Yep, Yep, reads the same as last year.

But wait! What is this about my stipend?!?!?

That is right, the boss gave me a 25% raise!

Heck YEA!

Then I headed to Hebrew class and when I got home there was a series of emails from all the coauthors on my paper.

Hold your breath....

Wait for it....

The beast got accepted for publication!!!!!

HECK YEA!

You know what that means! Celebratory pizza at Pizza Sababa.

Roasted Egg-planet, pineapple and fungus.

Heck YEA!

The Return of the Chicken and the Pale Flamingo

The Poulet is back.

And he has a beard! I think he looks cute, but I am not sure I can convince him to keep it many more days in this heat. Plus, he is threatening to shave it into horrible 70s chops.

Although I can't starfish in the bed anymore, am I sure glad to have him back and his toothbrush in the cup next to mine.

From the sounds of things, he had a great vacation and his stress levels are reduced to a low simmer. He even checked up on the garden I put in at the Doc-in-law's when I was home in June. He emailed me a few photos and when I looked closely, I was horrified.

"James! There is a giant dandelion in the middle of that garden! I can't put that pic on the blog! Get it out! Get it out!"

So James dutifully did some weeding, and sent me a pick of the garden, the revised, weeded version- with all the weeds lying on the lawn beside to prove his hard work. The pasty pink flamingo has clearly spent too many days in the sun, but I think he looks dashing with his jaunty purple ribbon cut from the three-in-one bag.

I'm not sure if the season is too early or too late, but there should be some big orange lilies and some big fat pink peonies to go with the green. I remember picking out the peony at the nursery. It was called "Dr. Alexander." How perfect for the front garden of Doc Al's house!

You know what that garden is missing? Some Hen and Chicken plants!
Next year, next year.

I shouldn't have looked

Not to mention the 85% humidity.

While you folks are sitting on the dock, sipping a cool drink on your long weekend,
I'll be sweating in my office weeping pitifully over the broken air conditioner.