Hmmm, that's odd...

Last night in the Tel Aviv airport, waiting at the gate for my flight to Philadelphia, I saw some strange looking Jews. 

The men had the big black hats, white shirts, dark pants, beards. The women were in long skirts and covered hair. 

But there was something not quite right...

The men were wearing suspenders and had matching (bad) bowl-cut hair. Some of the men had dark coloured shirts which is really odd. And the women's style of hair covering was nothing like anything I had seen in Jerusalem. It was more like scraps of lace clipped to their buns rather than the full scarves I usually see. 

Then I realized they weren't Jewish. 

They were Amish. 

The best part was when I got closer, I realized the men were joking about getting mistaken for Orthodox Jews!

Off to America

Besides our wee road trip, for the past few weeks I have been working long hours which generally have me leaving the house at 7 and getting home at about 8-8:30 in the evening. The Chicken, my Hero, has been doing a lot of the cooking and errand running so I can keep working.

The reason for this is that I am flying to America for a few days starting tonight. Keep your eye on the counter in the left column. This will be changes next week!  Three of them!

An academic interview typically lasts two days. I have meetings (aka interviews) with 15 or so of the faculty individually or in pairs, I have to give an hour long seminar on my current research and another presentation to the faculty on my research proposals. 

As for the research proposal presentation, I was told by the schools to prepare for a 40 minute lecture but expect it to take an hour and a half with interruptions questions and challenges from the faculty. 

My PhD supervisor told me to prepare for it like my candidacy exam- which was not comforting. My candidacy exam was an three hour exercise in humility bordering on humiliation.  It was four years ago and I can still recall horrible details. There is a reason why beer afterwards is traditional. 

Needless to say, I have been requiring lots of hugs lately. If you have a moment, think of me next week and send me smart thoughts from where ever you are.

Woah, where AM I?

With the intention of heading to Talpiot to go clothes shopping at my favorite discount clothing store, I waited at the bus stop pretty sure that one would take me there. The first bus that rolled up, I asked the bus driver if it went to Talpiot and he shook his head no. The girl behind me pointed to the bus waiting behind and said "this one goes to Talpiot." Thanking her over my shoulder, I ran back to hop on the awaiting bus. 

Never trust strangers at the bus stop. 

What should have been a five minute bus ride to a neighbourhood I have been to lots before (except we used to walk there from our old apartment), turned into a 30 minute doodily-doop through back streets. 

I kept checking the signs on the bus stops we passed and they all said "Talpiot" so I figured the bus would eventually doodily-doop back to the neighborhood I wanted. 

When the whole double-length bus emptied, I knew I had got it wrong. 

I asked the bus driver and he just shook his head and said "Lamma lo shalact li?" Why didn't you ask me?

I was truly in the boon-boons of Jerusalem. The driver gave me a complicated way to get where I wanted using two different busses, heading all the way to the south-west corner of Jerusalem and back in again. Furthermore, I only half understood his instructions. So I decided to nod and pretend I understood and then pull the plug and hail a cab.

But, where the hell was I? 

On my way to a promising looking street to find a cab, I realized I was on the top of hill with an amazing look out. 

Woah, where AM I?

There, far in the distance, I saw a golden dome, a dome surrounded by walls and I the knew I was far, far away from the old city and even farther away from the house.

Lucky for you guys, I had my camera and made some lemonade out of my geographically confused lemons. 

Two years ago, this kind of misadventure without a map would have been terrifying. Now it is mildly amusing, knowing that I can easily get myself out of such a mess.  

I hailed a cab, told the driver in Hebrew where I wanted to go, clarified which mall I wanted when he asked, requested he turn the meter on, and I made it to my destination unscathed. 

Something from Nothing

I'll tell you one thing about Israelis. They can sure make something out of nothing.

They have taken a desert country and planted millions of trees and changed the climate. They drained the swamps and basically eradicated the malaria that used to plague the area.

But still a huge chunk of Israel is desert and the only people that live there are the few hardy Bedouin and the transient soldiers who go to the desert to train. To most people, this would be virtually unusable land and the very definition of desolate.

If you drive south from the Dead Sea through the Arava Valley that separates Israel from Jordan, you will be struck by the beauty and the bleakness of the landscape.

The view from Yotvata in the Arava Valley

After an hour of driving through the desert and gawking at the hills and wadis, suddenly you will come across the road-side stop of the kibbutz Yotvata.

If the wind is blowing just right, you might catch a whiff of something you would never expect to smell in the desert: cow manure.

That's right, the kibbutz somehow has a very large dairy farm in the middle of the Southern Negev. With no grass or hay fields in sight, Yotvata manages to feed 700 cows and produce 63% of Israel's milk needs.

I can't figure out what they are feeding those cows. Sand?

A carton of our milk and the shopping centre of the Kibbutz it came from. 

Ben Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, used to say that Israel's future is in the Negev. I am not sure he expected a dairy farm but he would probably have applauded the obvious stick-to-it-ness of Yotvata.

Road Trip Photo Journal

On the first day of our wee road trip, we headed down by the dead sea to the famous Ein Gedi Nature Reserve to do a little hiking. We forwent the most popular trail for a longer one up a wadi, being told we would have to get our shoes wet to hike through the "river", which turns out was more like a stream.  

The walk up was a hoot as we spent an hour either hiking partway up the side of the valley admiring the views of the hills of the Negev, or deep in the wadi jumping from rock to rock up the stream and somehow managing to keep our sneakers dry. It was my trusty traveling skirt, I tell you. No movement hindered in that baby. 

The scene at the top was madness with about 150 tweens on some sort of school trip, eating lunches and taking a dip in the pool of the waterfall. It wasn't the tweens themselves that bothered me, it was the collection of their 150 excited voices confined by the canyon. 

We spent about two seconds admiring the waterfall before heading up to a section that the guy at the gate said "is beautiful and hardly no one goes there." The extra half hour hike in the blazing heat was worth it and we cooled off in the pools before heading back down again.  

There were lots of horned ibexes, scads of hyrax (some sort of ground hog thing), and lots of new birds for The Chicken to gape at. 

After a well deserved icecream, we made the 300 m trip down to the dead sea to dip our toes. It is a Muslim holiday and the place was packed with Palestinian vacationers going for a float in every possible level of dress. (Well except naked- but it sometimes can be difficult to tell with the large hairy men in the speedos!)

We hopped in the car and headed South towards Eilat. Near the end of the Dead Sea, surrounded by the Nevev desert, we saw SNOW!

 Ha Ha, just kidding. It was the mountain of salt from the Dead Sea Works where they harvest all the salts and minerals. 

In Eilat, we spent a couple of happy days scuba diving in the Red Sea. As you can imagine the colours and the fish and the corals were fabulous. The only thing not to like about scuba diving is that I can't ask any questions! But I for sure saw something called a trumpet fish and a spotted ray. As for the others, there were neon blue fish, zebra striped ones, blue and pink ones, blue ones with yellow fins, ... Poor James got "chased" by some mean coral and surfaced with a very impressive looking scrape on his forehead. 

As I mentioned before, we stayed at Arie's Awesome Guesthouse and Museum of Kitch, which can be found on Patio Antenna Lane.  And as you can imagine, the proprietor was just as eccentric as his guesthouse's name. But these are always the most fun places to stay, and we greatly enjoyed Arie's stories, sitting on his couch on his roof watching the sun go down and reading a couple of his many books (stored between the kitch, of course). 

When I headed up to the roof, I exclaimed "You have a couch up here! It must really never rain". Arie told us that he used to be a high school English teacher and that last year it rained in Eilat for the first time in years. His students went completely ape and he finally just sent the teens out to play in it. 

Some genius civil planner decided that Eilat should only have round-abouts, and so there isn't a single traffic light– except this one corner. Proving that going to university doesn't make you smart, as we drove up to the intersection, James said "What the F?" at the same time that I said "What does a BLUE light mean?" It took us an embarrassingly long moment to realize it was art. 

Then back home again, home again, jiggity jig. And another whole week of work to do. 

One Last Road Trip

The Chicken has wanted to take a trip into Egypt to the Sinai Peninsula since the moment I told him that I wanted us to move to Jerusalem. The scuba diving is fantastic and cheap and apparently Dahab and its Red Sea coast, a common tourist destination for Israelis, is simply beautiful. You just drive down to Eilat, hop over the border, take a cab for 40 km and there you are. Since our time here is coming to a close and the weather is now a sane 28C, this weekend was the time to go.

But this week there was a terror threat from Al-Qaida on the Sinai and the Israeli government issued a travel warning. Apparently, they want to kidnap some Israelis and smuggle them in to the Gaza Strip to be held for political ransom like Gilad Shalit.

But since we are not Israelis and really can't be mistaken even for any type of middle easterners, we weren't so worried. On top of that, the government travel warnings for Dahab are frequent and perennial, the fear often blooming up right around Jewish holidays. We decided to go anyway.

But our insurance agents won't grant us travel insurance, and I refuse to go to Egypt- or anywhere without health insurance. So we can't go.

I guess that means that insurance agents are worse than Al-Qaida.

Instead were are going to take one last road trip. We'll head to the Ein Gedi nature preserve near the Dead Sea and then on to Eilat to go scuba diving. The diving isn't as good, and our budget wont go as far, but whatever.

Instead of a fancy five-star Egyptian hotel, we will be staying 40 minutes away in Arie's Awesome Guesthouse and Museum of Kitch, on (no kidding) Patio Antenna Road.

At least if I cut open my foot, I won't have to haggle for getting stitches.

Well that's unexpected

Now that we live so close to the Damascus gate of the old city, we hear all sorts of noises:

The call to prayer, men yelling out their wares on loud speakers, sirens, traffic, incessant honking and churchbells of every variety.

But with my window open, I am hearing something I would never have guessed to hear coming from the old city. 

A full pipe band and drums. 

This place just gets whackier and whackier. 

Over the Shoulder, Pebble Holder

This morning, I narrowly escaped a wardrobe malfunction. I heard a rip and looked down to notice that my bra was being held together with one thread. 

My other bras are in no better shape, with holes, escaping underwires and dead elastics. 

I couldn't put it off any longer. 

I had to go bra shopping. 

In Israel. 

The homeland of the well endowed bosom. 

The first store I went to didn't stock anything smaller than a C cup. 

The second store was nearly as bad. Even the comparatively smallish looking ones were sizes larger than what genetics gave me. 

But hiding at the back of the store was a crammed sale rack with some that looked possibly my size. 

I told the sales lady my size and she immediately headed for a style with little blue flowers and heart shaped brackets on the bra straps. In essence, a training bra. 

Every time I moved to look for my size amongst styles that were appropriate for a 31 year old with a PhD applying to be a professor, the sales lady shoed me away, shook her head and said "Not your size."

In a whole store full of bras, there were exactly two styles in my size: the aforementioned training bra, and one with cute little polkadots. Bras for 13 year olds. 

Since I am down to only wearing my sports bras, I really had no choice. I bought one of each and thanked God that no one but The Chicken sees what's under my shirt. 

The Chicken, Chemistry and Cats

Photoshopping by the maple shekel! 

You may be wondering what James had been up to. His post doc finished in August, and since then he has been working full time on his online organic chemistry tutoring business.

It seems to be taking off and James is frequently up in the wee hours of the morning discussing bromination of alkenes with someone in Florida, or Boston, or Texas. He uses a web cam, Skype and a white board. Students call him from where ever their laptops are, and pay with Pay Pal. Simple, effective and hopefully increasingly lucrative.  

As a complement to his business and as a way to draw students to his site, his has been writing blog posts about organic chemistry. You should check it out at www.masterorganicchemistry.com

Today, he managed to combine both his love of Jerusalem's street cats with his passion for organic chemistry. An unlikely combination to be sure, but it is really one of the more clever and hilarious teaching aids I have seen.

NanoIsrael 2010

For this week's conference in Tel Aviv, most of my labmates found family or friends to stay with, so very few of us actually had to travel from Jerusalem each day. We poor suckers had to take the bus. 

No local stepped up to the plate, so in the end I had to organize getting out two new Polish and Chineese post docs on to the three necessary busses. As they say "In the land of the blind, the girl with level gimmel Hebrew is Queen"

Annoyingly, just after I had them all organized, maps drawn, schedules and bus routes for each confirmed, two locals asked to tag along! 

In theory, Tel Aviv is only 50 minutes away, but with the morning traffic it took nearly 2 hours. I can't believe people do this every day. At some point two black Audis with tinted windows and sirens pushed their way through the stop and start traffic. 

"I bet that is the president" David said. I thought he was joking. 

Sure enough, when we got to the conference, 1/2 hour late, the Audis were parked outside the hotel, and inside Shimon Perez was giving one of his famously relaxed paced, visionary, and yet slightly whacked speeches to a couple of thousand nanoscientists and his numerous body guards. I missed the first half hour, but in the last fifteen I caught the flavour. Apparently I missed a good story about Che Guevera. 

When I am 87 years old and given a microphone, who knows what I will say. At  the early age of 31, I must admit I am already a bit of a loose cannon in front of a crowd. 

I am in the process of preparing talks for two interviews I have at the end of the month. As well, I have to get started on preparing the course I am going to teach to those 425 freshmen. 

Wishing for a Guillotine

For three days last week I wanted to be beheaded. My head throbbed incessantly with an incapacitating headache that just wouldn't go away. Every tilt of the head brought new anguish, every step added jarring agony. 

The first evening of pain, I had been scheduled to go out to dinner with a my boss, another prof and a Very Important Speaker. I had left work early in the hopes to sleep it off.  I crawled out of bed like a good soldier,  loaded up on Robaxacet, and headed out to the seafood restaurant. To my dismay, there wasn't a single entrée that wasn't fish. 

I hate fish. 

Turns out it didn't matter beacuse between the glass of wine, the empty stomach and the painkillers/muscle relaxants, I didn't taste a thing. I am have been extra-especially janetish, but am pretty sure I didn't make a complete ass out of my self. All the same I don't think I will mix wine and painkillers/muscle relaxants again just to be on the safe side. Although maybe it was for the best. By the time I got driven home, the Robaxacet was wearing off and I almost moaned in agony when the car went over bumps.  

On the second day of pain, I just longed for the day to be over. I was fantasizing about being really stupid with the hope that maybe my head would weight less. A little Flowers for Algernon action, but hopefully without the diapers. 

On the third morning of pain, I cried into my branflakes out of frustration. 

But luckily, at about 6 pm on Friday, the worst of it broke. Which is good because I had another phone interview at 8 pm. Probably not my best interview ever, but I said that about Laurier and look at how that turned out. 

Today is my first day back at my desk. I still refuse to lift anything because I can still feel it waiting to return  like a monster under the bed.  I have drugs in my purse at the first sign of trouble. Just keep me away from the wine. 

TV Stars!

I promise this is the last time I will bring these guys up, but I finally got this fantastic and hilarious Israeli tv clip converted. I am still trying to figure out what the hand sign is for "nanoparticle"