Guest Post: James versus The Volcano

Uh, well, I'm doing fine but James sounds like he is going to bust a blood vessel. Here is what he has to say:

The volcano. Eyjafjallajokull. Whatever its name is. I hate it. I hate it so freaking much. I have turned into a volcano of hate toward everything to do with the volcano to an extent which surprises myself.

Let me tell you how I got to this point.

Over the past few months, Janet and I have been making plans. Ambitious plans. Plans for a big family visit. How big? We made plans to transport 8 family members, from 3 different cities, all to Jerusalem, and all on the same day within 2 hours of one another. We also made a whole bunch of other plans for the two weeks they would be here. Like, for example, booking an apartment for everyone to stay in. And a trip to the Dead Sea. And a trip down to Eilat (found cheap hotels too - not easy) followed by 2 days in Jordan visiting Petra and riding camels in the Jordanian desert near Wadi rum. But wait. There is more. We rented vehicles. I called around for a 9 seater van (with car seat- I had to make sure of that) and a second car so that we wouldn't get all smushed. Janet found a stroller for Vivian. We even hunted down our old Ulpan classmate Taufiq to see if he could be our tour guide in Jerusalem for a few days. And we mailed shekels to everyone several months in advance so that when the Big Day arrived, everyone could take the sherut from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and pay in Israeli currency.

All was set for the big day, which was to be this Wednesday: 2 days from now.

But we failed, dear reader. We failed to plan that a BIG FRICKING VOLCANO would suddenly erupt, and leave Western Europe ensnared in a huge cloud of volcanic ash, effectively shutting down air traffic and delaying/canceling/inconveniencing the flights of hundreds of thousands of individuals around the globe.

Clearly, Wednesday is not going to happen the way we planned. What is going to happen? I am not sure.

One thing I am sure of is that I dislike this volcano very much. I got so upset on Saturday night that in a flurry of activity, I started an "I HATE THE ICELANDIC VOLCANO" Facebook group and sent messages to all my friends to join it. In this whirlwind of activity I am ashamed to say that I even joined Twitter. Never in a million years did I ever imagine I would join Twitter. But there I was, on Saturday night, twittering to the world. One of my first tweets was " I VOTE WE NUKE THE VOLCANO".

I have calmed down considerably since then. But I am still immensely frustrated. My mom is stuck in England, Janet is stuck in Munich, and we have all these busted plans for a trip we were so looking forward to and we aren't sure how to proceed. It's heartbreaking. We aren't sure what the prognosis is or when/if our family will get to visit us after all. It's still a work in progress. Let's keep our fingers crossed that the jetstream starts dispersing the ash.

Of course, if a well-placed nuclear warhead right down Eyjafjallajokull's pie-hole was sufficient to do the job, I'd still be all for it.

Guest Post: Jerusalem then and now

Maybe you didn't know it but The Chicken has been to the Middle East before, a couple of years before I met him and during a time of youthful idealism and self exploration. Every once in a while he leads me down his memory lane with him but suprisingly not that often. The turn of the decade it seems has been the impetus for some reflection and recalling his time here at the turn of the millennium, ten years ago.



On the evening of December 31, 1999, I joined a crowd of about 200 people at Gethesmane on the Mount of Olives for a New Year's Eve service. About an hour before midnight, each of us was given a long red torch, which we carried in a short procession up the hill to the place that is known as "Abraham's House". As befitted the turning of the millennium, a lot of international media crews were there, asking people questions like "A lot of people would say this is a dangerous place to be right now. So why are you here?". It was a little rainy. I met some American girls working as nurses at Hadassah Mount Scopus. As the final seconds of the millennium ticked away, a cameraman trained his giant video camera on me and the girl I was talking with. "I need a kiss!!!" he said - but that would have felt awkward, and I wasn't going to do something inappropriate just for the sake of giving him good copy. The moment passed, and before long I was back in the quiet streets of the old city, which was absent any signs of the millennial procession except for a small flock of nuns on their way back from midnight mass.

Ten years ago, I had no idea where my life was heading, what I'd be doing in a year, or where I'd be a year from then. I had gone to the Middle East more out of sheer desperation than anything else, because everything I'd done before felt like a miserable failure. It sounds like a cliche, but I thought I'd become an artist here. I needed some time to myself to work out what I really wanted from my life and at the time the last thing I wanted was another lab job. But life has a weird way of working out. A few weeks later, I borrowed a copy of Don Cram's old textbook "Organic Chemistry" from my friend Faisal's apartment in French Hill. I carried that book with me in my backpack through Cyprus, Syria, and Lebanon, and it planted the seeds that would eventually lead me back into the lab. If I went back in time to tell my 26-year old self on the Mount of Olives that I'd do a Ph.D. in organic chemistry, work for 2 years at MIT, publish a total synthesis in Science, and would soon (2001) meet an incredible lady that would later be my wife (whom, I should not forget to add, is responsible for dragging me back here in the first place) he surely would have thought I was talking about someone else - there was no way I would have believed that all those great things would ever happen to me. I certainly never expected that 10 years later that path would take me back to Jerusalem.

Just like 1999, it feels like an end and a beginning here. I have no idea where we'll be or what we'll be doing in a year. But this time, that in itself seems more a cause for excitement than despair. I hope the next decade brings us just as much love and adventure as the past one has. Maybe on Dec 31, 2019 we can come back to Jerusalem to reflect on it.

Guest Post: Aunt Sandy

Here is a little note James wrote for you to see. You may recall me writing a note to James' Aunt Sandy when Operation Cast Lead started last December. Again, you should not confuse this Aunt Sandy with my Aunt Sandra, (one of my most faithfull readers and commenters) whom is alive and well and living in NZ.


This past week we received some sad news. My dear Aunt Sandy Mackay (nee Ashenhurst) has passed away in her home in Stony Creek.

Aunt Sandy was a real fireball. By training, she was an emergency room nurse and was extremely good at it. During parts of summers our family spent together in Port Charlotte, Florida and innumerable colourful family dinners, I will always remember her as a tough, vigorous lady who spoke her mind and kept everyone on their toes. Primarily though she was a loving mother, grandmother, and aunt - who worried about us being in Israel so much last year we had to write a special message to calm her down. Mother of four and grandmother to nine, her family and friends will miss her dearly.

Rest in peace Aunt Sandy.

Guest Post: A Canadian's Guide to Israeli Supermarkets

This morning the Chicken and I divided to conquer: me to the market and him to the grocery store. It must have been an eventful trip –Fridays are always a mad house at the supermarket– because he immediately wanted to write a post. How could I say no when he was planning diagrams? Diagrams, for goodness sake. Just so you know, he used Chemdraw for this so if anything happens to look like a benzene ring, there is a reason for it. Also, this explains the odd picture quality and I lack the savvy to make it better. If you click on the pics, you will get a slightly better copy.

Let me begin by telling you my favorite Canadian joke.

Q: How do you get 10 Canadians out of a pool?

A: Say “Excuse me, could everyone please get out of the pool?”

I guarantee you that getting 10 Israelis out of a pool would not be that easy. One of the big adjustments that North Americans have to make when they move to Israel is dealing with the fact that Israelis are not as programmed toward avoiding conflict as we are. I don’t know exactly why that is, but I suppose when you grow up in a country that has fought a number of major wars in the past few decades, the shouting matches and long arguments that are a not-uncommon sight over here probably don’t seem like such a big deal. Every week, this important difference between our two cultures gets hammered into my head when I visit our local supermarket in Rehavia, otherwise known as The War Zone.

Here’s a classic example of Canadian supermarket behavior. When a checkout line becomes too long, Canadians seem to instinctively create an L-shaped line (Figure 1). This way, they stay out of the way of people who are still pushing their grocery carts around, thereby avoiding having people be angry with them for blocking their way. It also minimizes the chances of actually having to interact with anyone while they’re in the grocery store.

Figure 2 shows a naïve attempt to put this strategy in action at an Israeli supermarket. The Canadian, feeling uncomfortable since he is at the end of a checkout line where he is blocking cart traffic, instinctively forms the L-shape in order to minimize any chance of unnecessary human interaction. Unfortunately, this conflict-minimizing behavior is not recognized by the largely Israeli clientele, who do not perceive the Canadian as actually being in line. As a result, the L-pattern is not established, leading to increasing isolation of the Canadian as a “nub” on the line. The result is frustration and anger on the part of the well-meaning Canadian.


The situation is eventually resolved by the inevitable appearance of a frustrated shopping-cart wielding individual who must “break-through” the check-out line (Figure 3). If he has positioned himself well however, the Canadian can then take advantage of this opportunity to sneak back into line. This has the effect of causing heaving sighs and grumbles from those who were formerly “ahead” of him in the line (Figure 4).


The net effect of all of this is that the situation is exactly the same as it would have been if they had just done it the Canadian way, except this way everyone gets to go home much more pissed off.

Guest Post: Omlette de Fraise

The Chicken’s family has been noticing how often he gets roasted on this blog but I promise, it is all true. So this time when he did something spectacularly chickenish, I decided to let him tell the story. I should also mention that the night before, I served for shabbas dinner: hallah bread, white wine, homemade french onion soup, potatoes, carrots and a whole roasted chicken with rosemary, thyme and sage. The whole thing looked like a painting by Christopher Flodberg. I will admit the gravy was a complete failure: I accidentally grabbed the ground cloves instead of pepper. Perfect I am not, but James takes culinary imperfection to a whole new level. Coming straight from The Chicken's beak:

A common reaction from people who don’t understand something is to belittle it, and my wife Janet is no exception when it comes to my cooking technique. Case in point: my ongoing study of omelettes. For the past month or so on Saturday mornings, it’s been my appointed task to cook omelettes for the two of us. Not coincidentally, this means that Janet gets to spend some extra time sleeping in while I slave away in front of the stove. I actually don’t mind too much because I get to indulge my whims and curiosity without The Wife looking over my shoulder at every turn and bossing me around.

A lot of people have compared a kitchen to a laboratory, and I’m inclined to agree. In my laboratory there’s all these neat bottles of reagents, catalysts, and solvents and the mark of any chemist worth his NaCl is the burning question: “what happens when I add these things together?”. A kitchen is no different. When you consider all the meat, fruits, veggies, and spices we have available in our well-stocked kitchen (a far cry from my bachelor pad in Cambridge, I’ll admit) what self-respecting chemist wouldn’t get excited about all the culinary possibilities?
About a month ago I was charged with the task of making my first omelette. My advice from Janet was the following: “Beat some eggs, add milk, cheese and veggies”. Then she went back to sleep. After I beat the four eggs, chopped up the necessary veggies, and prepared a small pile of yummy salty Bulgarian cheese, I was faced with a question: How much milk to add? I wasn’t sure. I settled on a nice even number: one cup. As was described here earlier, the result was a very pouffy culinary masterpiece, albeit admittedly somewhat difficult to flip. “Wow!” I thought. “Look at the effect of adding all that milk! I made a soufflé! That’s really cool!” Excitedly, I roused Janet from her slumber.

“You added HOW much milk?”, she growled.

“One cup”, I said.

Several minutes later, after she picked her jaw from off the floor and wiped away the tears of laughter, she went and wrote a blog post about how dumb I was in the kitchen. Welcome to my life, dear reader.

The next week I was excited about another omelette adventure. OK, I thought. One cup was too much. What if I add about a quarter of that. The result was similar: quite pouffy, albeit a bit more easily handled. Janet ate the omelette, but added plenty of ketchup.
In the kitchen this Saturday morning I decided to go the full monty (figuratively, not literally – don’t worry) and add no milk at all. If I was really doing careful kitchen science I would have kept all the variables the same. But life is short, and you don’t get to cook multiple omelettes in the kitchen the way you can set up multiple reactions in the lab. So I changed two variables at once. After adding the chopped up peppers, I decided to go out on a limb and add another component: strawberries. Strawberries are pretty yummy after all.

My strawberry omelette went rather well in fact. I noticed that it wasn’t pouffy at all, and it flipped very nicely. When it was done, I gave Janet an excited high-five. “Wow chicken!” she exclaimed. But as she looked past the stove to the countertop, her smile quickly faded.

“Did you add strawberries?”.
“Yep”, I said.
She was silent, her eyes wide open, staring at the omelette.
“Is that bad?” I asked.

The result, as usual, was peals of laughter and having to endure about fifteen minutes of wife-ly haranguing about what a bad cook I am. Apparently adding strawberries to omelettes is a big faux pas. Well how was I supposed to know about that dumb rule? Since she refused to eat her portion, I had to eat the whole strawberry omelette, OK, I’ll it wasn’t the best omelette I’d ever had, but whatever. What’s the point of having all these ingredients if you don’t experiment and add new ingredients together? If you ask me, I think she is trapped in her little world of strict by-the-book cooking, while I am exploring bold new realms of gastronomic adventure. I am already excitedly planning my next omelette experiment.

Omlette de James

We have discovered that The Chicken, if he is going to cook, has to be in the kitchen alone. I have to leave and do something else while he “experiments”. I will admit, the turkey soup he made was pretty yummy, but there have been some cooking mishaps. The key problem is the “experimenting”. Experimenting is good if you already know the basics. Unfortunately, The Chicken does not.

Experiment 1 : Omelette de James

Introduction: It is lunch time and an omelet sounds tasty. An omelet in it’s simplest manifestation is a hybrid structure of eggs and milk.

Hypothesis: A four egg omelet needs one cup of milk

Experimental: Omlette du James was prepared by vigorously stirring four eggs, and one cup of milk to yield a yellow cloudy mixture. Diced onion, red pepper, salt and pepper were introduced. The heterogeneous mixture was heated neat in a wide and shallow reaction-pan under ambient conditions for 10 minutes. Steam was observed as the mixture became pooffy and gelatinous. A phase separation occurred where a clear liquid separated from the yellow gel. Attempts to flip the omelet were met with failure and only chunks resulted. The heat was removed and the mixture served to the wife.

Results and discussion: The desired omelet structure was not obtained. Although the product was edible, the wife was observed to be adding large quantities of ketchup to her meal. It is likely the milk was in excess and caused side reactions which prevented the synthesis of the desired omelet structure.

Conclusion: One cup of milk is too much.