Like, oh my god.
Somehow I got selected for terrorist-level screening in Israel. Before I could get on the plane, I had to go through a 30 minute interview and then 1.25 hours of luggage screening. They took every single item out of my bags, swiped it all with their weird little chemical detectors, and then made me pack [...]
I was actually somewhat excited to go to the US Embassy and see what it was all about. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it is a symptom of the last vestiges of patriotism that haven’t been beaten out of me yet? In any event, I had two expectations, both of which were easily met:
The processes [...]
Important things I have lost while visiting Israel:
My cellular telephone
My passport
I guess we won’t be going to see Jordan after all! I still have a week and a half left, so stay tuned to see what else ends up on this list!
Update: I posted this from a posh hotel in Eilat, a resort town on [...]
Carissa and I planned to work through the week and take off to tour the country on Saturday. But we’ve both grown pretty bored of Tel Aviv by now, so we said “fuck it” and rented a car on Friday morning instead.
Carissa makes all the travel plans. She tries to read the Lonely Planet book [...]
I met my friend Gal on my third night in Tel Aviv, I believe. She was at a dance club with someone else I knew and when the club closed at 5am, four of us went out to breakfast. Still, I didn’t really recognize her when she shouted my name from a café two blocks [...]
I bought a camera two weeks before I came here. So far I have taken a total of 26 pictures. And that includes the ones I’ve deleted. You know who likes taking pictures, though? Carissa. Maybe you should look at her flickr thing if you want to see Tel Aviv. (This is especially for Kelly, [...]
Every day here I read the International Herald Tribune, a paper which bills itself as “the global edition of The New York Times“. After shelling out $4 for a tiny 20-page paper, I am treated to the increasingly panicked reports about the economic crisis. (And, boy howdy, I sure am glad I didn’t end up [...]
I was excited for Yom Kippur, even though I found out my beloved bar Minzar was not, in fact, going to be open. Apparently they decided too many people had heard the rumor and so they figured they’d get caught. But still, I figured today would be fun.
Around 2pm, I parked myself on a park [...]
The monthlong stretch of 60- to 80-hour workweeks is now behind me. We finished on Monday with a relatively unclimactic 6pm (PDT, 3am on Tuesday here) code freeze. Yesterday I cooked a giant pot of pasta and forced myself to gorge like crazy in order to finally catch my stomach up for the meals I [...]
After grabbing food, I spot some gin on the shelf of a corner market. Having not yet found any in Tel Aviv, I wandered in to grab a bottle. When he rings me up, he asks if I want some plastic cups, apparently presuming I was going to drink it on the street. No brown [...]