We speak English, don't we?

The other day I started up a new WhatsApp group: Lloyds English. I announced it to my close family: Israeli-born offspring and Israeli-born wife, and stipulated that it would serve as a place where we'd communicate only in English. The immediate response to my announcement was: "What are you drinking and are you already drunk?" And then silence. The last words uttered in Lloyds English. So there was nothing left to do but fade back into the linguistic woodwork.

A friend of  mine asked me the other day, over a pint of Guinness, what I regret in life. Normally, my response to such a question is that I regret nothing. I believe in learning from mistakes, rather than dwelling in regret. But this time, whether it be the result of my increasing age or growing egocentricity, I admitted to having one regret: that I did not speak English with my children.

Now, in an earlier blog posting: Curiouser and curiouser, I defended my reasoning for not speaking English to my children, and in doing so, robbing them of a golden opportunity for becoming bilingual. If you haven't read that posting, or have forgotten what it is about, it would be a good idea to read it first. There I explained why my entrance and acceptance into Israeli society was not a simple one, and why much of it was dependent upon my acquiring a working competence in Hebrew. Speaking only English at home, at that time, would have prevented me from reaching the linguistic competence required to meet that goal and would have sent a wrong message - both to those in Israel and in Canada back home, who were waiting for me to come back to my senses and leave Israel - about how serious I was in my endeavour to fully adapt into Israeli society. So, I put my linguistic competence first, above that of my children. I thought that they would have ample opportunity for picking up English  on the way. Wasn't this a small price to pay for not having a father who was a social outcast?

The irony is that, in the long run, all of my effort really didn't make much of a difference. True, I took university classes in Hebrew, wrote papers in Hebrew, gave lectures in Hebrew, carried on correspondence in Hebrew - but in the end I was still the odd man out. I would never really fit in. Not because of the language, but because of me. I am simply meant to be an outcast, whether I live in Israel, Canada, or on the moon. I reached the point where I felt that I had adapted as well as possible to Israeli society and had nothing left to prove. And it was then, that I began to regress. At times, I felt like I was speaking with stones in my mouth, and Hebrew was often like a hot blanket, under which I lay smothered on a hot summer day.  Words only flowed in that ancient language when I felt emotion, and such moments became less and less frequent over time. My adult identity was slowly beginning to crumble. I needed to find a way to slip back into something which was perhaps lost forever: slip back into me.

Would speaking to my children in English help in any way? Or had that ship sailed forever? It's not that my children don't know English. They did pick it up along the way. A daughter who now speaks mostly English in her work. A son who is writing a 100+ page MA thesis in English on a very technical subject. And another son who decided one day, through his own volition, to speak to me only in English (and was the only one to applaud the creation of Lloyds English and not question my sobriety).

It seems that I never know when to stop chasing windmills. Don Quixote. It is my battle alone. And in the meantime, Lloyds English still lies there, ignored, like an unwanted orphan. Why should I expect anything more?

Can beautiful people really feel the Blues?

I first saw the movie, Bagdad Café, long before coming to live in the desert, but even then its haunting sound teased me with dark promises as to where a desert road might lead. When I first listened to the Blues, I felt very much the same way. I wasn't there yet, but it touched me in ways no other genre of music did. The Blues is like Guinness. Either you love its bitter taste, or you don't like it at all. And if Guinness is somewhat of a rarity in most Israeli restaurants and pubs, the Blues is almost non-existent on the Israeli music scene.

Why is it that Israelis have never locked into the Blues? It doesn't even appear as a genre on most Israeli music listings. The YES satellite music select station, which proudly offers over thirty music categories to choose from, does not include the Blues on its list. Nor does the Wikipedia page - Music in Israel - mention the Blues on its long list of popular Israeli music genres. Perhaps an Israeli foundation - The Israeli Blues Society - will help spread the word. It's not that Israeli music hasn't considerably evolved over the years. It has: especially Israeli rock. Why is it then that Rock has become increasingly popular with Israeli youth, but not the Blues? Are there age restrictions to feeling the Blues?

Some of us are born old. Old Souls. We flirt with this all our lives. And then time catches up with us and we are just old. That's how I felt the other night while listening to Lazer Lloyd and Ronnie Peterson play the Blues at a pub in Kibbutz Tlalim. They had come there, down a long desert road, to this little oasis in the middle of the desert.

The makeshift desert pub was full of young people - beautiful young people - for this musical event. It's not that I have anything against beautiful young people. I was almost one, once. But now my presence felt like a hiccup in the passage of time, as I appeared to be the only one over the age of forty.

My eyes slowly scanned the room as the young audience awaited the appearance of Lazer and Ronnie. What were they expecting to hear?  I asked myself. Were they here out of curiosity or had they somehow developed a passion for the Blues, down here in the desert? And then Lazer and Ronnie appeared. They sat at the front of the crowded room, without the benefit of the buffer of a large stage that usually separated them in their larger venues. Perhaps it was this that knocked them a little off-balance at first, or the strange quiet of the desert setting. Or the shock of playing to a young audience: an audience of beautiful young people with expectancy still in their eyes, Ronnie appeared to have a bit of a problem synchronizing with Lazer's changing chords. Lazer appeared to improvize, at times, as if slowly feeling his way into this irregular setting. Some people soon started to sway back and forth with the rhythm. Some simply nodded. And others just sat rooted to the spot, as the music washed over them.

Ronnie and Lazer looked at first like I felt: aged and washed out. But it didn't take long until Lazer found the groove. One might even say that he caught fire, carrying Ronnie along with him. And everything else did not matter. It was the Blues again. Only the Blues.

The crowd was appreciative. I suppose each person took away something different. And for those of us who were Old Souls, we said hello again to old ghosts, and felt the music take hold and rip out our guts, leaving us exposed, the pain a welcome old friend. And for a moment, I did feel truly alive.

When is a Lloyd, not a Lloyd

I carried the name Lloyd on my long, solitary journey to the Holy Land, so many decades ago, only to discover that I was probably the only Lloyd in the whole State of Israel. Was this a new dynasty I was about to create, or would the Lloyd name peter out here altogether? One can only imagine the weight of the burden upon my shoulders.

"Will David Levid please come to room 9," a voice called out at the neighborhood clinic, as they tried to make sense of my name written in Hebrew (there are no vowels in the Hebrew script, so you see only the consonants and the rest is left to expectation). My last name has also been written in many different ways: Levid, Lavid (before I was asked to pronounce it) and Loid, Loyd (after I pronounced it).

But the writing and pronunciation of the last name Lloyd isn't what this piece is all about. Instead, we are going to delve deep and try discover the real significance of this name.

Our story begins with my daughter. She has to renew her Canadian passport - a feat in itself (see my prior blog entries on the subject) and came to me to get advice on how to do it. I told her that she has to pay by money order and that she should get the money order at the post office the same day, or the day before she submits the application - in case the Canadian dollar rate changes. She said okay, and a few days later (about two weeks before she was planning to submit the application) she phoned me from the post office telling me she was having a problem getting the money order. They didn't understand what she wanted. I wearily tried to understand why she was getting it so early, after we had earlier agreed that she'd wait, and then tried to explain what a money order exactly was, but she basically talked through my explanation:
"I am going to a different post office," she said, "one where they know what they are doing."
At that point I told her that she shouldn't be getting a money order at this time, anyway, and should wait until a closer date. In the meantime we could research the matter. Later I went into the Internet and sent her links to explanations by Israeli Post as to what a money order is and how to obtain it.

This continued to bother me after I switched off the phone. What disturbed me the most, was that after all of the neurotic effort I had put into raising my three children, my daughter wasn't acting like a Lloyd at all, but rather as an Oved. Now, I don't want the Oveds out there (and there are many) to become upset with me over this point. But hey - if I don't stick up for the Lloyd name, who will?

So I wrote a message to our Lloyd family group, which we affectionately call The Levids (you already know why), explaining why I felt that my daughter wasn't acting as a Lloyd, but rather as an Oved:

1) She didn't check to find out what a money order involves beforehand
2) She didn't go to the post office when I told her she should
3) She talked through my explanation.

How more Oved can you get? I told her, and my other children in The Levids group, that if they didn't put in more effort in being a Lloyd, their children would never know math, they would lose important documents and only discover that they were lost much later, they would never check the gas before leaving the house and the house would burn down, and they would never learn from their mistakes, but would simply say Lo Norah (It doesn't matter).

Well, my daughter, her Lloyd side boiling to the top, wasn't going to take this lying down. A message from her soon came through to the family group:

============================
First of all, it is hutzpah to say that it was irresponsible to go to the postal office so early. I was simply following my Lloyd genes in doing something far before it needs to be done. In any other family, I would have gone straight to the embassy and then remembered that I hadn't gotten the money order. And I made R go with me to Raanana to get our pictures taken, as Abba David said that was the only place we should get them.

You wonder where the compulsive obsessive disorder and genes that I have inherited from the Lloyd Family appear in my life? Let me tell you.

1) I turn on 3 alarm clocks so that I will be sure to get up in the morning.
2) I ask R if he has also put on an alarm clock
3) I check to make sure that R turned off the water heater
4) I check to make sure that R locked the door.
5) I check to make sure that R closed all of the doors
6) I check to make sure that R turned off the gas after he cooks
7) I get into bed and then remember that I didn't check to see if the door is locked, the water heater is turned off, and the gas is turned off.
8) I check again to make sure that I turned on an alarm clock
9) I have to be somewhere at 10:00 and get there at 08:00
10) I pressure everyone around me to also be there at 08:00, even though the event begins at 10:00
11) I file every page/receipt/document that falls into my hands
12) I stand on the waiting line at the bank machine and not on the person who is taking out money
13) I arrive to see a movie at the cinema even before the advertisements begin
14) I don't get up to go to the washroom on a flight so as not to disturb the person next to me
15) Every morning I check to see that the keys are in my bag (even though I know they are there)

Should I continue??
==============================

Shot down and outLloyded by my own flesh and blood. Couldn't be more proud.

Frozen wonderland without borders

"Do you have any ice salt?" I asked the woman at the Canadian Tire store.
"No, all out."
"When will you have more?"
"Don't know. Going to take some time. The truck is coming direct from Montreal, eh?"

When travelling for my annual Canadian winter visit, I never expected ice salt to become the most sought after commodity during the Christmas season. But people were searching all over Toronto for at least a bag or two.

"I hear you have ice salt," I said to the man in the long black coat hiding behind the Canadian Tire store.
"Shh, not so loud," he said. "Sure, I can sell you a few bags."
"How much?"
"Twenty-five dollars a bag."
"Twenty-five dollars! That's five times the list price!"
"You want it or not?"
"Sure, I'll take two bags."

I should have expected something when a rare snow blizzard hit Jerusalem, closing the city down completely for two days. It rarely snowed in Jerusalem, and when it did, it was nothing like this. Not only was the power knocked out in many places, but the roads were closed and cars stranded all over. The people of Jerusalem felt quite helpless. "Where is the government?" they asked. "Why didn't they prepare for this? You never hear about this happening in a civilized nation!"

Even when I landed in Canada a couple of days later during a blizzard, I still didn't expect anything extremely out of the ordinary.
"We Canadians aren't stopped by such things," I bragged to my Israeli wife and children in an email after completing the perilous drive from the Pearson International Airport to my mother's house in Scarborough. "We drive right through it."

And shovelling snow at five the next morning to battle jet lag didn't dampen my enthusiasm.
"Good to experience a real Canadian winter for once," I thought, remembering my visits of Christmases past when little snow was on the ground.

The weather reports did nothing to prepare us for what was to come, either.
"The end of the week may be a little tricky," the weatherman announced, "with a mixture of rain and snow."

Then the first ice storm hit. It, in itself, wasn't that irregular. We were used to having to avoid ice covered sidewalks at times, forced to find traction through snow laden lawns instead. But it was a small taste of what was to come.

"Another, quite bigger ice storm in on the way," we were told.
They still didn't use the term epic, although they would soon. Nor did they say that this was the mother of all ice storms, although this was hinted at in many different ways over the days to follow. Most of the weathermen had become increasingly gun shy after making too many wrong predictions over the previous weeks and didn't want to take the chance of being open to further ridicule.

I don't know what we really expected to happen, as most of us were about to experience something for the first time. What did happen is that we woke up to a winter wonderland: a wonderland of ice. Trees, cars, buildings... everything was covered by a thick layer of ice. Events were cancelled, people were told not to go outside. And the only ones who dared venture outside were mostly kids on skates, skating over frozen streets and lawns, setting up makeshift hockey rinks wherever they desired.

It was then that we began to take notice of an ominous cracking noise, which seemed to come from almost every direction. Soon trees began to fall under the weight of the ice, branches breaking off onto power lines, through the ceilings of houses, and crushing the tops of cars. Soon the estimates came in: over 300,000 households and establishments without power. Many people no longer concentrated on Christmas, but were concerned mostly with just how to survive the bitter cold until the power came back on. And it slowly became evident that this wouldn't be for days.

And as the days went by without power, food thrown out because there was no way to refrigerate it, and people having no way to heat their houses in the -15 degree weather (celcius) - people began to ask: "Where is the government? Why weren't they prepared for such a thing?"

In the end, they got everyone hooked up again to the power... until the next time. Some people had gone without power for more than seven days.

And for those of us who thought we could drive through anything, we had now acquired a much greater respect for the winter, and were in much greater awe of a Mother Nature who could so easily humble and bring us to our knees at a moment's notice. For, despite all of our technologies, it only took one really bad storm to send us temporarily back to the Stone Age. And it didn't matter whether you were in Canada, Israel or the Arctic Circle. Mother Nature has a very long reach.

So, the next time you have something to say about Mother Nature, you had better be nice, or be ready for the outcome.

Comfort and Fashion - Never the twain shall meet

Those of you that know me, know that I don't struggle much with fashion. At least not now, when I am pretty well worn out."
Adva would claim that my poor dress habits even go beyond fashion.
"You're not wearing that!" she exclaims. "It is full of holes!"
"There are only two... three," I respond. "And I am just wearing it around the house and for working in the garden," I lie.

Usually I get away with wearing what I want, but sometimes I hit a snag.
"I hope you haven't been wearing that to work!" Adva says, surprising me on one of the rare occasions that she arrives home from work before me.
"Well... I had to move some computers and stuff."
She doesn't seem quite convinced. A few days later, the shirt mysteriously disappears.

I have been struggling with clothes since the early years. My mother would dress me up in a suit and tie for Sunday school and I would enter with what some people might call my penguin imitation: my arms curved up and out like a penguin as I waddle into the room. But it was no imitation. It was all me. I just couldn't stand certain things rubbing up against my skin. This struggle between comfort and fashion continued for a long time after that and may be one of the reasons why I ended up on an Israeli kibbutz. Israelis, in the early 70s, weren't concerned much with fashion - whether they lived on a kibbutz or not. Even in the 1980s and early 1990's, when I went to international computer business conferences in Israel, it was rare to see an Israeli in shirt and tie. Almost all of the suits were visitors from abroad. No wonder why I felt more comfortable here than in Canada. All this suited me fine.

But in the last decade, suits and ties have started popping up in many places where they hadn't been seen before on the Israeli scene. Fortunately for me, by the time this happened, I was already turning into a grumpy old man with little patience for anything, let alone primitive trivial social norms. Wearing a noose around my neck and dressing like everybody else to fit seamlessly into some social norm had no longer any meaning for me, if it ever had. You are what you wear, they say. And as I have already been deemed a social outcast - I guess it is time that I dress the part.

Some of you might think that I am an ideal candidate for a nudist colony. You can't get much freer than that when it comes to dress, they say. But there are two flaws to that assertion.
1. You are once again conforming to what you can and can't wear.
2. This conflicts with my incessant need for privacy - I just have to keep some things to myself.

The desert serves me well, in this regard. During the long Israeli summer - which lasts close to seven months - all that I basically need are two pairs of shorts, three short-sleeve shirts, a pair of sandals, and enough underwear to last me the week. Oh yes - and running shoes for the gym.

Adva, like most women, has a much more extensive wardrobe. Most women won't wear the same thing two days in a row. I am not sure how many days must pass before they can wear the same outfit again. Then there is the makeup, perfume, and the trick of showing just enough cleavage. While I make do with a short shower, a dab of deodorant, brushing my teeth and my hair (what's left of it) - Adva disappears for a thirty minute ritual and comes back all made up.
"It's important to dress up for work."Adva says, noticing that I am wearing the same outfit for the third day in a row. "Don't you want people to respect you?"
Which translates into: "What, don't you have anybody to flirt with at work?"

It's a matter of priority, I suppose. What really is important. Which, for some of us, cannot come without comfort.

When will Israelis get a real weekend?

One of the first things I had to get used to in living and working in Israel was the fact that Sunday is the first work day of the week. Sunday is actually called Yom Rishon ("First Day") in Hebrew. When it comes to naming the days, Hebrew is quite sensible:

• Yom Rishon ("First Day") [Sunday]
• Yom Sheni ("Second Day") [Monday]
• Yom Shlishi ("Third Day") [Tuesday]
• Yom Revy-ee ("Fourth Day") [Wednesday]
• Yom Chamishi ("Fifth Day") [Thursday]
• Yom Shishi ("Sixth Day") [Friday]
• Shabbat (the "Sabbath"- day of rest) [Saturday]

As you can see, the names are quite practical and straightforward. No messing around with borrowing from the gods, celestial bodies, or whatever. The formula is quite simple - name the day by its number in the week. Except for the seventh day. It had to be different:
And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation.
And so the seventh day was given the name Shabbat (the day of rest).

But things didn't stop here. Not only was Sunday the first work day of the week, Israelis also seemed to have never heard of a two day weekend. They should be given credit, though, for coming up with the whole concept of a day of rest, far before others. The Romans didn't come up with the idea until the year 321, when the Roman Emperor Constantine declared the dies solis (Day of the Sun) [Sunday] an official Roman day of rest. And another twenty centuries would pass until the Western world came up with the idea of the two day weekend. Apparently this was first instituted by a New England cotton mill which wanted to allow its Jewish workers to adhere to their own religious Sabbath. Ironically, it was Henry Ford (who was considered by many to be an ardent Anti-Semite) who, in 1926, was among the first to standardize the two day weekend, shutting down his automotive factories for all of Saturday and Sunday, while still paying his workers the same wages. As for Israelis - "If the one day of rest was good enough for our forefathers..." - well, you get the message.

I may have adapted better to this one day weekend in Israel had it not been for the fact that there were no buses on Saturdays (you couldn't go anywhere unless you had your own car), no stores were open (no opportunity to plan shopping for the end of the week when you actually had the time), and no television (no afternoon ball games on the tube). If  you were an observant Jew, this worked out just find. But if you were secular, you really did want to have the right of choice.

And if all this weren't enough, I was rudely introduced to the seven day work week. Yes, you heard me right. And no, this isn't something that came straight out of a Charles Dickens novel, although it might have.

I should clarify here that the seven day work week was not something common to all Israeli society. Rather, it was an essential part of the kibbutz way of life: the dreaded toranut. Back in the days when most of the kibbutzim were still communal in  nature, kibbutz members took turns in working in essential services on the Sabbath - services such as the communal dining room, children houses, milking and feeding the cows. Which meant that every three or four weeks, you didn't have a weekend.

Now, I don't think I have to tell you how important the weekend is to maintaining our sanity. Already by midweek, the promise of the approaching weekend keeps us going. And when the weekend arrives, we heave a huge sigh of relief and lapse into denial for two days. No matter how bad the week has been, things suddenly get better. But when the weekend is taken from you  - even the one day with such limited opportunities as the Israeli weekend - one is prone to enter into the pits of despair. There is nothing to hold onto to keep you going during the week. I kept telling myself that this was my choice, that this was an integral part of maintaining a communal way of life, but I could never get used to it.

Things have changed since then. The cows have been sold, the children now live at home with their parents, kibbutz members no longer go to eat in the dining room... and somewhere along the line we decided to leave the kibbutz. Sometime after that the kibbutz was privatized. Meanwhile, Israelis unofficially got a two day weekend. I say unofficially as the schools are still open six days a week, as are many businesses. But most people are now taking the Friday off, as well (which has always been a half-day workday in any case, as people are given time to welcome in the Sabbath which begins at sunset on Fridays).

But voices are beginning to be heard that are calling for more. Silvan Shalom, an Israeli government minister, has suggested making the two day weekend an official one - with people having Saturday and Sunday off. And Friday would be  a work day until noon. This would enable schools to move to a five day week and it would also be easier for the Israeli business community to coordinate things with business communities around the world whose weekend is Saturday and Sunday.

And most of all, as Silvan has been reported as saying:
"It is time Israelis got a real weekend."

Facebook status: Grandparent

My daughter in-law, Sharon (with significant help from my son, Noam) gave birth to a beautiful baby boy and I am now a grandfather. Adva and I are still getting used to this new status. Grandparents... wow!

Soon after being told the news,, a picture of the baby - taken with an iPhone - appeared in Adva's inbox.
"Come see the picture of the baby!" Adva called out to me.
"Wow," I exclaimed, looking proudly at my grandson.
"But Noam said that this is only for us privately," she added.
"Oh, you mean..."
"No facebook," Adva said, dejectedly.
It took us a while to digest all of this.
"Well, I need to change my facebook status," Adva said.
"Yes," I nodded, "I hadn't thought of that."
I went into facebook to make the change in status which would be broadcast to the world.
"You know what?" I called back to Adva.
"What?"
"You can't change your status to grandparent in facebook. When it comes to - in a relationship - it can only be something like: single, married, it's complicated."
"Really!"
You'd think facebook would have thought of that. Here is a major event in our lives and facebook doesn't even have a place to mark our new status (or would that be an addition in status.)
"Well, I'm going to write something in the status box at the top of my page," I called out to Adva, now that she had got me going.
"I'll probably wait and write something this evening," she called back.
So I announced to the facebook world (or more exactly, to my facebook friends) that I am now a grandfather.

Soon after that, pings began to sound from my computer, somewhat like popcorn seeds beginning to pop.
"What are those sounds?" Adva asked me.
"People commenting on my announcement of being a grandfather, I suppose," I answered.
"Oh," Adva answered, and then she disappeared.
A little later, suspicious as to her whereabouts, I went into her facebook page. There she eloquently expressed her joy in being a grandparent. She already had over 50 likes. Hmm...

A day passed and we received more pictures, but still with no permission to put them up on our facebook pages.
"I think Noam and Sharon are punishing us," I said to Adva.
"Why?"
"For putting their wedding pictures up on facebook without permission."
"That was a long time ago."
"Lloyds know how to hold a grudge." I said.

Fade out to Noam and Sharon's house, where they sit looking at wedding pictures on Noam's parents' facebook pages.
"We are going to have to do something about my parents," Noam said. "They are becoming incorrigible."
"Maybe we should cut off their facebook access," Sharon said.

The evening of the second day, after arriving home from the hospital, and sending pictures of the baby to relatives (that we did have permission for), Adva asked me, ever so nonchalantly.
"How many likes do you have on your announcement?"
"Likes? What, are we in a competition?" I asked.
"No, just wondering."
"Let me check." I went into my facebook page. "47 likes and 31 comments. How many do you have?" I asked suspiciously.
"Oh, I don't know," she answered, trying to sound a little aloof, "I would say, offhand, about 84 likes and 57 comments."
I tried not to let my sulking appear too evident. The thing was, I needed a good picture of the baby to get things moving again. Maybe if one appeared innocently on my facebook page from an anonymous source. No, Noam and Sharon would never buy that excuse.

Now, don't jump to the conclusion that after 30+ years of marriage, Adva and I are in a competition for public recognition. That would be just sad. Mainly because I'd have little chance of winning. Despite my wide presence on the Internet with all of the initiatives that I have started and developed, when it comes down to it, Adva has the contacts. I mean, she even had our President Shimon Peres personally autograph his biography (in English) for my mother (my mother is a huge Shimon Peres fan).
"That was nice of Adva," my mother said. "Do you know Shimon Peres also?"
"No, but Adva introduced me to him, once."
"Hmm...."

But now that we are grandparents, Adva and I must start behaving ourselves and acting our age... well, let's just say, start behaving ourselves. Otherwise, Noam and Sharon may not let us babysit our new grandson.

Someone pass me the remote

I grew up before the days of cable or satellite TV, in Scarborough - a small suburb of Toronto. Like everyone else, we picked up broadcasts by means of a roof top antenna, with a very limited choice of stations. There was no remote control at the time - just a knob that we turned to change stations. When there were only about six stations to choose from, that wasn't much of a problem. Which doesn't mean that this station  control wasn't mobile. When my parents went out and left my sister and me alone, the channel war began. At the time, my sister was obsessed with anything to do with horses and I wanted to watch pretty much anything else. After we were unable to negotiate agreement, the channel knob came off the TV and the race began. Which meant that instead of actually watching TV when my parents were away, we spent the time wresting control of the channel changer, which couldn't do much of anything until it was attached back to the TV.

So much has changed since. And as the technology continued to develop, I somehow appeared to always be one step behind.

It all started when I decided to leave Canada and see where my travels would take me. After working my way through Europe, I ended up on an Israeli kibbutz, and just as my friends back home were entering into the world of colour and cable TV, I entered into a world of black and white and one state-run TV station.

It's not as if I missed TV. At the time my whole life was still an adventure, and TV was of little interest to me. Of course, when the Yom Kippur War broke out about four months later, I did squeeze my way into the television room and watch as generals used maps to explain the present situation. Luckily I didn't know enough Hebrew at the time to understand that we were very close to being pushed into the sea. All I knew was that Israelis kept telling me: "Yihyeh  beseder." (Everything will be okay). It was only much later during my Israeli experience that I realized that Israelis only said this when things were really bad, or out of control.

We had to go to a communal television room, at the time, to watch TV because kibbutz members didn't have TV in their apartments. All to do with socialistic values which have long since disappeared.

Watching Israeli television at the time was like going back in a time machine to the fifties and sixties. And since the whole nation was watching the same programs, it was quite easy to find someone with whom to discuss a program from the previous day. And it was remarkable to see how the whole country appeared to shut down once a week to watch a new episode of  I Claudius. There was almost no traffic on the streets. You could hear a pin drop.

When it was finally decided to introduce TV sets into the apartments of kibbutz members, my future wife to be and I would go to her parents' apartment to watch TV with them (TV sets were handed out according to kibbutz seniority and we still had to wait). I found myself watching things that I would have never watched - had I a choice. And although there was a vibrant TV world developing out there, Israeli TV was basically a collection of grade B reruns. This was still before there was any real Israeli Hebrew sitcom content. What original Israeli content there was on Israeli TV was mainly made for TV documentaries and children programs. Israeli Educational TV was the shining light in the early Israeli television experience.

In the meantime, I missed a whole generation of North American TV. I never saw the Watergate broadcasts; I never saw Wayne Gretzky play in a regular season hockey game; I  never saw Seinfeld until the last episode was finished and all that was left were the reruns. But I rationalized: "If you are going to leave a culture behind, leave it behind. Don't expect it to follow you to wherever you end up." Just another reason for my friends back home to proclaim me crazy.

But TV is somewhat a measure of the ever-changing Israeli experience. Israel before and after colour television is not just a question of colour, but also a question of social fabric. Why, we must ask ourselves, did Israel wait for over ten years to implement Israeli TV broadcasts in colour when it already had the technology and equipment? Moreover, when Israelis began to import colour televisions in order to watch imported TV programs in colour, why did the government order the state-run TV station to use a special mechanism to erase all colour from the broadcast? Then Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, described colour television as artificial and unnecessary. Political elements in the government went even further in claiming that the import of colour TV sets would only widen the gap between the Haves and the Have Nots. But Israelis, known for their ingenuity, began to purchase TV sets which had a built in anti-eraser mechanism which returned the colour that had been erased.

The kibbutz also struggled with the social impact of television on the kibbutz way of life. Bowing down to increasing pressure, it was finally decided to introduce black and white TV sets into kibbutz members' apartments. But by the time that that happened, Israel had started to broadcast in colour and the rest of Israel was moving over to colour sets. It took a while for the kibbutz to catch up to that, too, but by then we had decided to leave the kibbutz and were headed south, deep into the Negev desert.

That was when we really began to feel the technological gap. But what do you expect, living in the desert?

The first development was the creation of a second Israeli TV station - this time a commercial one. Soon, not only were friends back home in Canada telling me what I was missing, but friends back in the centre of Israel, as well.
"You have to watch Seinfeld!" they told me.
"It is only on Channel 2," I told them, "and the signal doesn't reach us."
The children were complaining and my wife kept pointing out what we were missing, but what could you do - it was out of our control.
"Yihyeh beseder," I said.

And then Channel 2 only made things worse, by increasing the signal, just enough to tease us, but not all the way there.
"What are you doing on the roof?" my wife called up to me one day, as I stood precariously above twiddling with the antenna.
"Trying to get Channel 2," I said.
"Are you crazy!", she exclaimed. "You will kill yourself."
"That program you told me about last night, that you really want to see, is on."
"I'll turn on the TV" she said. "I'll let you know when we get a picture."
"Do you see it now?" I called down to my wife, through the open window.
"I see something."
"And now?" I asked twisting the antenna just a bit more.
"Better!"
One more little twist.
"Good! That's it," my wife called out. "Don't move!"
After about ten minutes, I decided it was time for me to be rewarded for my efforts and let go of the antenna, starting to make my way down.
"We lost the signal!" my wife cried out.
It was then that I discovered that I am a good human conductor.

But if I am known to be one thing, it is obsessive. The signal was out there taunting me, and I wasn't going to give up soon. I found a long iron pole that had been discarded in a nearby junk yard and brought it home. Attaching it to the house, outside of the living room window, I attached the antenna at the top. I could then lean out the window and slowly turn the pole, turning the antenna, until I got the best picture. I even managed to pick up Jordan TV at times. But because of usually strong evening winds, I had to hold the pole so that the wind wouldn't cause the antenna and pole to turn. But at least now, hanging out of the window, I could keep a hold of the pole and watch TV at the same time.

It was then that cable television reached Israel. Israel was finally catching up to the rest of the world. Well... most of Israel. The cable company (a monopoly) informed us that it was too expensive to lay cables down in our remote desert neighborhood. And here we were again, way behind everyone else.

It's not that I had to have such access to the boob tube. It wasn't totally necessary, as Golda Meir would say. But I wanted the ability to choose, even if it were the choice not to watch.

And along came an Israeli satellite company and the cable company's monopoly was over. For the first time, anyone, anywhere, could be hooked up to hundreds of stations. Since we were one of the first communities to hook up to the new service, we were offered the opportunity to sign up to the unlimited package, something I jumped at, and something they soon no longer offered to new subscribers. And just like that, everything changed. It wasn't long before we got a digital recording box as well, and access to VOD (video on demand). Suddenly, all those years of drought were behind us. We had better access than many of my friends back home in Canada.

So, what is the punch line? Patience, perseverance? What comes around, goes around? I don't really know. Right now I can choose not to watch 90% of the stations available. And I like that - just fine.

Wake up and smell the flowers

No, they aren’t roses. These be wild flowers. Wild, but protected by the Nature Authority. Israelis may be a grumpy, aggressive, loud lot - but they sure like their wild flowers. On a beautiful spring day (can the 9th of February be considered spring?), we wandered about admiring the flowers up on the Carmel Mountain on the outskirts of Haifa. It was a beautiful day, one of those magical, bright days which appear unexpectedly during the winter. All of Israel seemed to be outside on that day, migrating into the parks - enjoying barbecues, hiking, and of course: the flowers.

Which is fitting. We are into the second month of 2013. It’s time to wake up and smell the flowers.

I know that much of Canada, and North America as a whole, is deep under snow as I write these words. So it may seem a little unfair, the timing of this particular blog. But then, you get to put on skates, head out to the nearest rink, freeze your butts off and drink hot chocolate. 
All we have is sunshine.

Israelis don’t get the Canadian cold. During the last winter storm, an Israeli interviewed in New York City complained about the "extreme cold".
“It's -1 (celcius) right now. During the day it sometimes goes up to a little above zero. But then it usually goes down to about -7 at night.”
Excuse me? 1 below and it even reaches a bit above zero? And you dare to call this cold? 7 below at night? Don’t talk to me about cold until it is at least -8 during the day.

Israelis' concept of the cold is something like the following (I am adding fahrenheit for the benefit of our American cousins):
+22C (+72F) - comfortable
+18C (+64F) - chilly
+14C (+57F) - cold
+5C (+41F) - really cold

Now, let's see how Canadians view the cold according to the “Canadian Temperature Scale”:
+21C (+70F) - Texans turn on the heat and unpack the thermal underwear. People in Canada go swimming in the Lakes.
+10C (+50F) - Californians shiver uncontrollably. People in Canada sunbathe.
-7C (+20F) - Floridians don coats, thermal underwear, gloves, and woolly hats. People in Canada throw on a flannel shirt.
-9C (+15F) - Philadelphia landlords finally turn up the heat. People in Canada have the last cookout before it gets cold.
-73C (-100F) - Santa Claus abandons the North Pole. Canadians get frustrated because they can't thaw the keg.

Now, I admit, there may be a bit of an exaggeration there. At least about Santa Claus lasting that long, and Philadelphia landlords actually turning up the heat. But you get the gist.

I remember one year when my wife (Israeli born and bred) and I were on a winter visit in Canada. My parents and I decided to take Adva out on snowshoes in order to enjoy a winter walk in the deep snow of Northern Ontario. I must admit that at that time it was beginning to get cold even by Canadian standards (-25 C). After about 10 to 20 steps, we noticed that Adva wasn't with us. Retracing our steps, we found her in the car, doors locked on the inside.
“I’m not going out there again!” she announced with Israeli finality.

Another year we went to Canada on a summer visit. No worry about the cold then. We went camping with my parents and on a cool rainy summer day, headed down to the beach to go swimming.
“Are you crazy?" Adva said. "Going swimming in the rain?”
“Why not?” I answered. “You're going to get wet in any case.”
Adva just didn’t get the cold-headed Canadian logic.

But then, in Canada people think it is hot when the temperature reaches +28C (+82), and really, really hot if it creeps up to +33C (+91F). 
"Hot?" I say. "It only starts to get hot, down here in the desert, when it reaches +33C (+91F). Don't talk to me about hot!"

Where does all this leave me then - as a cross between a Canadian and an Israeli? Do I feel cold in Canada only when it reaches -8C and in Israel when it reaches +14C? Do I feel hot in the Israeli desert only when it reaches +33C, but if I were to spend a summer in Canada - feel hot when it reaches +28C or +30C? As strange as it may sound, that is exactly how I might feel. We expats adapt in so many different ways. 

It doesn't appear, then, that Canadians will be smelling the flowers soon. Will they let these months slip by, waiting for spring to arrive? So much is lost in the waiting. We are reaching the middle of February. Isn't it time to wake up?

The Puzzle Maker

I have started doing puzzles - jigsaw puzzles. There is something therapeutic, soothing, yet stimulating in sitting in front of a puzzle for a few hours each evening. I imagine that we use only about five per cent of our brain during the day, even if we are multi-tasking twelve different screens on the computer. If we break each thing down into its separate part, we really aren’t demanding too much of the brain at all.

But with a puzzle, we must both see each part separately and all of the pieces as a whole. So often we put in the wrong piece, believing that we have a fit, only to later realize that a mistake, however subtle, has been made somewhere, offsetting everything else. And then we painstakingly work our way back, looking for that wrong turn.

One might say that doing jigsaw puzzles is an inherited tradition in our family - a tradition passed down from mother to son. The only time that I tend to do puzzles nowadays is when I visit my mother in Canada. One of the reassuring things of “returning home” is finding a partially completed puzzle spread out on the table, awaiting me. It doesn’t take long before I am sitting there, ensconced, filling in holes, putting together new sections.

But this time, upon arriving back in Israel from my Canadian visit, I decided that I needed to continue the tradition in my adopted land. Partly to sharpen my mind, partly to serve as an alternative to staring at the wall. I know that some of you will say that a good book serves the purpose just as well, but not really. At least, not for me. First of all, a book is linear. Secondly, after sitting in front of the computer screen most of the day, digesting all types of text, my eyes need a reprieve from constantly sweeping from left to right, right to left, scanning row after row. The easy and soft pace of working on a puzzle in the evening provides a welcome visual massage.

My daughter became hooked on puzzles, also, when she visited Canada with me many years ago. We actually picked up on it when we returned to Israel and were even doing two thousand piece puzzles at one point, which required taping together two large hard plastic sheets so that the puzzle could become “mobile” when needed and not totally neutralize a major part of the living room. We had to try and keep Bijou, our Labrador, away from the puzzle, or we would find small pieces chewed up in different parts of the house. There is something about the glue used in the pieces that is quite tasty to dogs. But Nicole grew up and left home, and Bijou passed away, and I was left with an empty table - the plastic sheet going into storage.

Until now. A thousand piece puzzle is once again spread across the table. But working on a puzzle now is different. The house is empty. No children, no dogs. A busy wife usually arrives home late in the evening. Coming home to an empty house after a long hard day at work can sometimes be comforting, but often disconcerting. No one there to welcome you. It is good then having the puzzle there. I pour myself a glass of whiskey and settle down, the pieces coming together on the table, pieces coming together in my mind. Life is but a mosaic, isn’t it. We are constantly looking for which next piece will fit. We should never give up the hunt.  

Travelling the Italian Way

What is loyalty, really? I know you can be loyal to a husband, a wife, a country, or a friend... but what about being loyal to an airline?

For five consecutive years I travelled from Tel Aviv to Toronto and back with Air Canada, faithfully collecting miles through their Aeroplan frequent flyer program.  After having flown with many different airlines in the past, I decided to make Air Canada “my airline” for a number of reasons - the leading reasons being that it was a direct flight and I felt I was supporting my “national” airline.

“National airline?” you say. “Isn’t that a little far-fetched? What about El Al? Surely they are more a national airline for you now. And they fly direct to Toronto, also.”

Well, yes. But I have one small, very significant problem with El Al. Put too many Israelis in a confined space and things just get nasty.

So one might call me a loyal Air Canada traveller. Well, at least until December 2012, that is,  when Air Canada and I parted ways and I travelled to Toronto and back with another airline. Did I feel guilty? A little. Did Air Canada really care? Probably not. And there lies the problem.

Over the years, I started to feel that I was being taken for granted by Air Canada. Instead of welcoming my business and adding in a few perks to reward me for my loyalty, Air Canada showed no real signs of wanting my business at all. Not once was I offered an upgrade, or a chance to exchange points for an upgrade. I never knew whether they would be offering special winter deals that year, and when they did offer, it was usually announced late in the year - in October or November. And I couldn’t wait that long before purchasing my December ticket. And when I flew to Scotland with another Star Alliance member airline earlier in the year, Air Canada wouldn’t honour the miles accumulated with that airline, providing some lame excuse. Except for the direct flight, and the feeling of “Oh Canada” as I entered the plane, I began to wonder whether there was really much of an advantage flying Air Canada. And then along came Alitalia.

Six years ago, at about the same time I joined the Air Canada frequent flyer program, I also  joined the Alitalia frequent flyer program on a whim. But when I discovered that Alitalia was experiencing financial difficulties, I decided that they were not an option at the time. However, over the years, Alitalia managed to get its act together through new financial arrangements and they began an aggressive marketing campaign. Which led one day to an offer that I found in my inbox - an offer I found quite difficult to refuse. 15% off any ticket to a destination of my choice. And not only 15% off the base fare, which Air Canada had once offered me (the base fare constituting only about a half of the total cost of the ticket before taxes and services are added on) - but 15% off the final price. The only catch was that I had to purchase a ticket between 10 p.m. that night and 5 a.m. the following morning. Usually I am not that spontaneous (ask my wife), but taking into account that Alitalia’s regular price for a round trip ticket to Toronto was already about a hundred dollars cheaper than Air Canada’s cheapest combination, and that all in all Alitalia’s price would be about three hundred dollars cheaper, I made the leap.

Now, you may say that I sold out my loyalty for $300, and in part, you may be right. But it was more than this. I felt sought after again. I felt that someone valued my business. I just hoped that there wasn’t another catch somewhere.

The only catch I could find was Rome airport where I had to catch my connecting flight. Even a Kupat Holim corridor has more seats than they have in a gate section at Rome airport. With little chance of finding a place to sit, you are left to wander the halls or sit down on the grubby floor. But it was only two hours between flights and I could excuse this small hindrance for the price offered. And when it came to flying Alitalia, I was pleasantly surprised. The flight from Tel Aviv to Rome was a bit cramped, like most flights within Europe, but the flight from Rome to Tel Aviv was spacious, with a personal screen on the back of each seat (although the movie selection was quite inferior to Air Canada’s selection).

So, I made it to Toronto. The only thing remaining was to see whether they would get me back to Tel Aviv in the new year.  And here was the icing on the cake.

You’d think that once they had “roped me in”, they would treat me with the same disregard as Air Canada. But here I was at Toronto Pearson International Airport, awaiting the return leg back to Israel, when I heard my name. “Will David Lloyd please come up to the desk for the Alitalia flight to Rome.” I walked up to the desk wondering whether they would tell me that I had only paid for half a ticket when a very pleasant woman attendant took my ticket and gave me a new one. “We are upgrading you to business class,” she said.

My first flight with Alitalia and I already got upgraded. Air Canada, suck on that! It is almost enough to get you to wave the Italian flag and learn to speak Italian. Would I fly with Alitalia again? Well, right now I see very good reason to travel the Italian way.

Arrivederci.

Canadian Passport Blues Revisited

Canada has recently initiated the “Simplified Renewal Application Process” for a new Canadian passport. Yes, really. Does this mean that we are no longer left with the dreadful anticipation of wading through a complex bureaucratic nightmare at the Canadian consulate in Tel Aviv - a nightmare that I described in graphic detail in my blog post from May 2011 - “The Canadian Passport Blues”?

Well, I decided to try it out, and I’m smiling.

But let’s begin at the beginning.

Shortly after my former passport blog came out, the Canadian Consulate in Tel Aviv decided to make things even harder for us humble, hard working Canadian expat folk. They informed us that we could no longer pay in cash, but had to do so through postal money order or certified cheque.

“Do you think this has something to do with your blog?” a faithful blog follower asked me.
“No, I’m sure it is just a coincidence.”

But then, as if seeking a way to rub more salt into the wound,  they offered the “Simplified Renewal Application Process” - a simple way of obtaining a new passport. Gone was the need for a guarantor signature and documents in English to attest to your existence. You needed  now only to supply the contact details of two people (could even be friends or your next door neighbour) who could confirm your existence. As long as your passport was still valid, or hadn’t expired more than a year before submitting your application, all that you needed to do was to fill out the two pages in the form and submit it together with your passport, two photos and the paid fee.

But... and here is where it became painful, this was not offered to us expats living in the Middle East.

“Are you really sure they haven’t read your blog?”
I simply shrugged. I was no longer sure of anything. Luckily most Canadian expats living in Israel did not blame this on me. Or so I believed.

And I had my own personal dilemma. The expiration date of my Canadian passport was creeping up on me and I had to weigh my options. Did I really want to go through the whole process again? What would happen if I didn’t have a valid Canadian passport? And, for the first time, my indecision led me to stand by and watch as my Canadian passport expired in March 2012.

“They’re watching you, you know.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Those embassy people. They are waiting for you to take out a new passport. You are serving as a bad example. More people may be encouraged to do the same.”
“You’re crazy,” I said. Although I had heard from other Canadian expats who told me that their passport had expired and they had not yet set out for Raanana to get their passport photos taken.
“Do you know,” one expat told me, who had actually braved the long trip again from the Negev to Raanana to get her photo taken, “that they rejected my application because the guarantor’s signature was not dated later than the date of my own signature on the form? That never happened before. What is happening?”

“The question now is who will blink first,” my faithful follower said.
“What?” I asked, the words breaking into my reverie. “What are you talking about?”
“I know what I know.”

So March slipped into April, and April into May, and then June, July, August... It was a standoff. It appeared that no one was going to budge. And then I saw it, in black and white on the Canadian Embassy site:
“As of September 3, 2012, Canadians living in the Middle East may apply for a new Canadian passport through the simplified renewal application process.”

Was this a peace offering? Or a simple chain of events? I could feel them watching me, wondering if I would be seduced into accepting their offer. And time was on their side, for in order to take advantage of their offer, I had to do so before my passport passed the one year expiration date. And  then I found a way to rationalize it all. I would be your test case, and report back to this blog. I really did not expect to get a new passport so easily. I thought that I would enter into the interview with the consulate official and when I presented the filled out form, I would be told something like: “What simplified renewal application process?” or “You are not personally eligible - didn’t you read the fine print?”

So, armed only with my two photos, expired passport, filled out form, and paid postal money order, I marched into the consulate offices. Sitting across from the official, separated by a wall of glass, I passed everything through the compartment to the official. I didn’t even have time to nervously fidget. Within two minutes, she had quickly scanned everything and asked: “Do you want us to mail the passport to you or will you come and get it?” And that was that.

“Is that a hint of praise I hear in your voice?” my loyal blog follower asked.
“I believe that credit should be given where credit is due.
“But you still had to drive all the way to Raanana to get your passport photo taken.”
“Yes.”
“And that is a two and a half hour trip.”
“Actually, now you can do it in two hours, with the new extension to the highway.”
“Still a long way to go.”
“Yes. Zion, the owner of Photo Zion in Raanana,  told me that there are only three computers in Israel with the system he has for generating the passport photo.”
“Where are the other two?”
“I don’t know. It appears to be a well kept secret.”
“How did you find out about Zion?”
“My lips are sealed.”
“I see. Well, all said, would you suggest to expats, whose passports have expired, to rush out and get a new passport through this new process?”
“Well, I suppose so. Unless they want to wait for the new e-passport format, which will be valid for ten years instead of five.”
“When is that coming out?”
“At first there were rumours that it would come out in 2012. But the latest word on the street and on the Canadian Embassy website is that it will be in Spring, 2013.”
“Did you ask at the consulate?”
“Yes. The woman official simply shrugged and said that she had no idea. But these things do take time. Don’t forget, we are Canadians."

When New Years comes twice a year

Doesn’t seem fair, does it - that we get to celebrate New Years twice a year. First time around: family, gefilte fish and presents. Second time around: friends, cocktails and smooching at midnight. Officially, there is only one New Year in Israel - the Jewish New Year which falls sometime in September. Just as, “officially”, we have one calendar - the Hebrew Calendar  ;-)

Quick - what day, month and year is it today according to the Hebrew Calendar? Okay, while you try to work that out in your head, or look it up on the Internet, I will move on.

The Hebrew Calendar is a lunisolar calendar, meaning that things - such as Hebrew holidays - shift around, when trying to synchronize them with the Gregorian Calendar (you know, the one we use every day). So sometimes the High Holidays (New Years, Yom Kippur, Succot...) come earlier in the year and sometimes later.

This does cause schizophrenia among Israelis at times. Especially when it comes to birthdays.

Let’s say that you were born on the 20th of Elul, 5747 - which fell on the 14th of September, 1987 according to the Gregorian Calendar. Which date do you now celebrate your birthday on? The chances of the 20th of Elul falling exactly on the 14th of September again is slim, or sporadic at best. So unless you expect to receive presents on your birthday twice a year, you are going to have to decide - the Hebrew calendar or the Gregorian one. If you were by chance born on a holiday (New Years, first day of Hanukah... but not something somber like Yom Kippur), the choice is easy. It will be easier for people to remember your birthday according to the holiday, even if it jumps around the Gregorian calendar every year. So, Hebrew calendar it is. But if you were born on just an ordinary Hebrew date, such as the 20th of Elul, 5747, the chances of friends and family remembering that date, let alone converting it to the Gregorian calendar, are slim. There go the presents. Like it or not, the 14th of September will be much easier to remember. You can’t have your birthday cake and eat it too - although you may still try. “Yes, my birthday is today on September 14th,” you say, opening yet another present, “but it is really on the 20th of Elul”.

And when people say that you will be paid on the 10th of every month, or that rent is due on the 1st of every month, I don’t ever remember this referring to the Hebrew months.

But although we measure over 90% of our daily affairs according to the Gregorian Calendar, Israelis continue to have a love affair with the Hebrew Calendar. Why? Because it is ours. We are embedded in it and it is embedded in us. Much like the Hebrew language, although Hebrew is much more entrenched into our daily consciousness, even though it almost lost out to German when plans were being made for the revival of the State of Israel. At the time, the idea of reviving a language which hadn’t been used in daily life for two thousand years must have seemed rather daunting. I mean, look at all of those things that had been invented and conceived of since - Mein Lieber Gott - how do we give them names. One could become almost meshuganeh. But it was done, and Hebrew has become a modern and linguistically rich language - although it has borrowed heavily on Anglicisms in the process.

But let us return to the Hebrew and Gregorian calendar, and subsequently - the “Jewish” and “Gregorian” New Year. If Israelis can manage peacefully with the two calendars, why should two separate new years be a problem? It’s not as if we are requesting the Gregorian New Year to become a national holiday so that we can sleep off the hangover from the night before. But the celebration of the Gregorian New Year on New Years Eve is considered problematic by many, even viewed as a sacrilege by some. So much so, that hotels have been threatened in the past with having their Kosher certificate taken away if they allow New Years Eve celebrations in their establishment.

Why all the fuss?

“Sylvester” is apparently the culprit. And I’m not referring to the cat in Looney Tunes  (“I tawt I taw a putty cat.”) - the only Sylvester I knew of before moving to Israel. No, we are talking about an anti-semitic Pope from back around 325 C.E., who not only was proclaimed a Catholic Saint, but was also awarded a day of his own by the Catholic Church: Saint Sylvester Day, which falls on December 31. Which also happens to run into New Years Eve. Somehow a connection was made between the two. In Israel, the Gregorian New Years Eve is even called “Sylvester”. In my first year in Israel, as January 1st approached, I kept hearing about the evils of celebrating Sylvester. “What does New Years Eve have to do with a pussy cat?” I asked. “No, you don’t understand. We are talking about an anti-semitic saint who lived about 17 centuries ago.” “Oh,” I answered, “What does New Years Eve have to do with an anti-semitic saint?” I never really received an answer to that. Except for the fact that Saint Sylvester Day falls on the same date (and I imagine that we can find many other things that fall on that date), I don’t really see the problem.  New Years Eve, for most people I know, is a time for getting together with friends and celebrating the coming in of the new year. Marking time, marking friendship, hoping for a year that is better than the one that came before.

And a time for New Years resolutions. You know, those things that we swear by and never carry out. (You can read more about this in a former blog post of mine - Taking the “new” out of New Years. ) Here we Israelis can have more fun and cheat. Not only can we make new years resolutions on the Jewish New Year, but we can test them out before reaching the Gregorian new year a few months later. Then we can either continue on with them, toss them aside and make new ones, or toss out the idea altogether. Now, who can have a problem with that?

So you have seen, in many of my former blog posts, how schizophrenic I can be in being both Canadian and Israeli and in speaking both Hebrew and English. And now we can also see how easily schizophrenic Israelis can be, simply because of a small matter of a calendar. (And I am just touching the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Israeli schizophrenia. Don’t get me started.) Now, take this Israeli schizophrenia and mix it into my own Canadian/Israeli split personality, and what do you get. I don’t know what it is, but it certainly is messy.

Happy New Year!

Is Ageing all in the Mind?

A friend of mine sent me an article: “Can you trick your ageing body into feeling younger?”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11284180
I am not sure what she meant by sending me this. (What would you think if a  woman - significantly younger in years - sent you such an article?) The thing is, when it comes to unpleasant things like ageing, my best line of defence is simply “denial”. But when things are shoved into your face through a slot in your inbox, it makes it harder to ignore.

The article relates to an experiment designed to test the hypothesis first put out by Professor Ellen Langer of Harvard University: “If elderly people dress, live and talk as they did in their heyday, will they feel younger and fitter? “ Yes, the same disturbing image flashed through my mind - that of a group of elderly people dressed up as hippies, or even worse - in 70’s garb and hairdo, speaking in what was once considered “cool”  slang.

But the experiment has at least spared us this disturbing spectacle.  It was designed to make a group of elderly people feel younger by recreating an isolated world resembling what they had left behind 35 years before, and placing them in this world for a week. I am not going to go into the details of this experiment. Let’s just say that there were positive results. You can read the rest by yourselves (and then look for your old beads and dried flowers in the attic).

But let’s continue with a few more words about ageing.

I do believe that ageing is in the mind. (Tell that to my receding hairline.) Okay, let me reword this: the "effect of ageing" is in the mind. Some things - such as receding hairlines -  we have no control over. But do we need artifacts from the past in order to trigger this anti-ageing process? Perhaps it wasn’t the recreated world of younger years at all, but merely the introduction of radical change which made the participants feel younger. We definitely feel older when we become stuck in a rut, and get up in the morning with really no expectation from the day. Change brings about new challenges and opportunities. We must exercise our minds and imaginations in order to cope with these new stimuli, even if these are things that we experienced long ago. One might even hypothesize that if a whole new world were created for us - with nothing there that we recognize, neither from the past nor the present - that the results of our feeling younger might be about the same as those in the experiment - perhaps even better.

Another thing that might be interesting to compare is the ageing process of “expats” to that of people who have grown up and lived in the same culture and spoken the same language all of their lives. Would we find any sort of definitive pattern there? Change is also  involved here - at first radical change which slowly evens out over the years.

But let’s leave our physical surroundings for a moment and concentrate on chemistry. Does the intimate interaction with others lessen the ageing process? Yes, I know what you’re thinking. But this doesn’t necessarily relate to an older man dating a younger woman - although Woody Allen would argue its benefits, first in his movie Manhattan and then in his own personal life. I personally cannot argue the merits of such an arrangement, mainly because of a lack of experience.  I do have a good friend, though, who dated much younger women between marriages. I asked him once what was the cutoff point (as to how young she could be). He said, “Well, if she doesn’t know who the Beatles are, that pretty well says it all.”
 
But our intimate interaction with others needn’t necessarily be of romantic or sexual nature. I have two very close friends in Canada and when I return to Canada for visits, we always get together. And I must say, that without any conscious effort, we keep each other young. We see each other and ourselves as we always have. This was perhaps best summed up in a dream that G (one of these two friends)  had.
“I had this dream last night. I was standing by P’s car talking to P (he was sitting in the car). I looked into the rear view mirror and P and I looked just as we did at the age of 18. I was so excited that I wanted to run and find you and see how you looked. But at that moment, I woke up.”
 
I would gladly go into the interpretation of this dream further (when I was 14, I read Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams and it soon became my hobby to interpret my friends’ dreams, something that I still do now and then), but we will leave it at that for now and move on.

And in moving on, let’s get back to things shoved through the slot of the mailbox. One thing that I don’t like receiving are those so-called cute attempts at humour about ageing (sent to me by people who are at an age when they feel they can personally relate to such things): “You know you are getting old when...” and so on.  I agree that humour: satire and the ability to laugh at yourself, is an essential requirement for a healthy physique. However I see no benefit whatsoever in laughing about getting old. If we have come to some sort of agreement that the effect of ageing is in the mind, then succumbing to jokes about how ageing is diminishing our physical and mental capacity is raising the white flag. Why don’t you just shoot me, instead?

But then maybe I am just becoming a grumpy old man.
.