i am sitting in ben gurion - once again, i seem to live here! - and i'm just thinking that its the random acts of kindness that do it for me. people here are rude. on both sides. as a general rule. so here more than elsewhere its the small things that make a difference.
at the train station where i catch the train to the airport you have to scan your luggage (like most places in israel) and a colleague dropped me off in a marked un car. they watched me get out and run over to avoid the bus. i stood there putting my bags through and as i turned to get my big bag (pilot size expanded) the girl looks at me and says wait.
i'm thinking damn the fun is going to start here and they're going to want to search it etc. and she starts shouting in hebrew (its amazing, they speak to you in a normal volume in english then turn around and shout in hebrew). so she's shouting at the security guy, with his m16 and two handguns who comes trottting over.
i'm going no, no, no i just got out of erez! and he slings his gun back over his shoulder, picks up my bag and gently puts it on the belt for me!! she was shouting at him to pick it up for me. i just let out a breath i didn't know i was holding and laughed a bit.
this place makes you cynical and makes you expect the worst, but its those little things that make you appreciate the goodness in some people so much more. they knew i was un and still did it. this probably makes me sound like a loon to most people here, but i've literally had my car stoned, with me in it.
all because it was a marked un car. and not by crazy settler types or orthodox jews, by random people walking down the street because they decided that they didn't like the un. so this really makes all the difference. it started my trip off on a far better note than i was anticipating.
proper update from london either tonight or tomorrow. i have some other ruminations from the last few weeks. its nice being out, it gives my mind a chance to think, to actually formulate thoughs beyond my personal experiences, but how they fit into everything. i miss taking that step sometimes.
i really need to go to bed before the sun starts peeking over the horizon... good news: i have the flat to myself and can sleep in relative peace for as long as i want (until the shabbat riots start down the street). bad news: my body is beginning to switch day for night, never really a good/healthy option!!
it is 0645hrs. i just walked in the door. i woke up yesterday at 0530hrs and i have not slept since. to be honest, i could keep going for a while - but i have to be pleasant to be around this evening so i should sleep. don't you love how sometimes it happens that you just don't need to sleep?
i love cities at 4 or 5 in the morning. even cities i don't really like i love at those hours. there is something so real about a city when you see it at that time, like you are seeing it stripped away of everything else - the proper place, the place it really is.
there is a cockroach in my kitchen. here i was going along having a chaotic, horrible, pleasant day - yes i realise those are odd bedfellows, but that is my life. and then i come home to discover a cockroach in my kitchen. i tried to catch it. but it escaped my mixing bowl and jumped at me.
which elicited many screams and smashing motions - stupid bug, who jumps at a bug scared woman?!!? so my kitchen door is shut and there is a towel running along the bottom. that bastard is not going anywhere. and yes, logically i know its more scared of me than me of it.
but its icky. and it has long antennae. and too many legs. i think thats the worst part of it. that and remembering what my flat-mate junior year of college's mother used to say: for every one you see there are three hiding out somewhere in the house. not encouraging words.
maybe i can wait it out. i am debating how long i can stay out of the kitchen. maybe it'll just crawl off and die. maybe i can pull a fast one and have my house cleaner get rid of it. ick. i hate bugs! anything with more than 4 legs is just creepy. i don't do creepy.sigh - how am i going to sleep tonight? all i can hope is that i forget about it by tmrw morning...
anyway, today was a nightmare. it was long and horrid. and i am convinced the week is trying to kill me. thank god its almost over. and i have shopping plans, and a dinner date and a drinks date - they're not quite dates in the traditional sense more meeting up with people. i wish they were dates. that would be nice. maybe i could find someone to come and get rid of this cockroach...
its sexist, but that is definitely a mans job. if i hadn't worked as hard as i have to gain the ground i have as a young female in this environment i would totally have someone up here disposing of the damn thing. but, i will come up with some kind of plan. i am smarter than a cockroach.
this forgetting about it is not easy. hmm... distractions - yeah, there really aren't many. at least its a quiet night. i suppose i can sacrifice and deal with cockroaches if it means there are not planes and tanks on the horizon...
half way through the week - just a day and a half left to go, then out for this farewell dinner. of course, thats a full day of work, a bastille day celebration at the french cultural centre (yes, they are a day late...) a farewell pancake dinner, a half day of work, crossing out and another farewell dinner...
i think i want to come back in on friday for the weekend. curling up on my couch with a book sounds good. not having to cope with the jerusalem crazy sounds appealing. but there are people to see, and i want to see them, its been ages, and i am flying again next thursday, so its this weekend or a month from now...
today was another mass of disconnectedness and getting things done while never seeing the bigger picture. i seem to spend my life getting distracted and solving problems. and soothing hurt egos. not sure how that happened. i am not a people person.
but people tend to be like cats in that. they find the one person who truly couldn't care less and they spill their guts for you and then you feel a sort of responsibility to help them. or you can be like my sister and deadpan 'look at this face ::points at face:: does this look like a face that cares?'
but then again thats everything thats wrong with the world. no one takes any responsibility, no ones takes any initiative, no one takes the time to enact small things that can make all the difference. we live for grandiose and prestige, but sometimes the most important things are the small actions that no one else sees, but truly make the difference to one individual.
and my mind is wandering again. that happens - it was a hard gym day, i seriously thought i was going to pass out by the end of my workout, yuck. but i will feel much better tmrw. and the f16s are back with their sonic booms out over the sea. poor fishermen. but - selfishly - as long as they don't do it over the city. i hate being woken up by a sonic boom, your ears don't stop ringing for a good 8 hours and you chest just feels uncomfortably hollow...
ugh and i forgot the ceremony on thursday. it will be really nice - recognising the highest achieving students in our school exams. its always good and the kids love it. but it will be hot and humid, all those people and no electricity... 24/7 electricity will be sheer luxury after this. its the small things you never think about....
there is a lesson in this - write the post before going to the bday parties. on the plus side: our finance officer makes killer g&t's - in that you have no idea how much gin is in each and drink far too many... the gym is going to kill me tmrw... groan.
hmm.. and i smell of thai food. ugh - its not bad, but not really how you want to wake up smelling the next morning.
today was exhausting. but a good, productive kind of exhausting. i think it helps that i took the weekend out, i took a day off on thursday and just chilled. i spent the day on the beach in tel aviv. some solitude in a crowd is nice. some beach time is nice. and coming out a bit more golden is also nice :)
so the day on the beach, the evening having drinks in jerusalem and ramallah with friends. i stayed up until second prayer on friday morning... the sun was starting to peek out over the horizon as i put D's tortoise to bed in it's box and that was when i decided sleep was probably a good option. the others kept going til proper light, i'm a bit glad i got that extra hour of sleep in!
and then a lazy day in ramallah, getting lunch and watching old episodes of grey's and catching a taxi back to jersusalem. the taxi went straight through hizma - the checkpoint - we barely even stopped, clearly i look very foreign and the soldiers didn't see me as a threat. poor J on the other hand held up her bus there for an hour because they wouldn't accept her UN ID, what a nightmare!
it just depends you can never tell with this place, you can never tell. saturday was good, relaxing and lazing about the flat and the park, watching lots of tv, reading. in general doing nothing. my brain feels a bit recovered, so clearly it was a successful weekend.
then back to gaza today. we had a slow morning - our donated armoured vehicles, which were supposed to be for emergency capacity right after the war, finally came in today, 6 months later.... anyway, they're in mostly one piece... ours had a flat battery, so we had to jump it - we weren't so sure how that would work on an armoured vehicle... but it did!
only to break down once it got into gaza... but we at least got it here. it had this add-on on the dash a little red button with 'FIRE' written across it. it was behind a plastic protective case. i really, really, really wanted to push the button. but my two colleagues wouldn't let me, and made me sit in the back :( i don't think that was quite fair. i really doubt it was flame-throwers installed in the car. most likely not. that would have been a but cool though!
so, yes, we got the damn thing. god, they are so heavy and not friendly to drive in typical driving settings and certainly on the roads of israel... they also had a great safety feature of locking automatically after 2 minutes if the drivers door was shut and the car was running.
we were seriously panicked that we would lock ourselves out and thus super vigilent. we tried to warn the other drivers, who of course know better than all of us combined. needless to say they spent 4 hours trying to break into the vehicle when they did just that and got locked out. they finally got in when the spares arrived from jerusalem :)
and it was a long day in the office of a lot of work. of fixing other peoples mistakes and trying to pretend like they were never made. if only people knew... and fly-bys. for some reason the aircraft activity has seriously picked up. the helicopters were also back this evening, and there were more tanks at the crossing. i really hope they're not planing anything more... they love to hit in the dead of winter and the heat of summer. august is always a bad month.
and its bed time. i'm only posting because i had to stay up for a bit having only eaten my dinner at 2115hrs... bit late to be eating anyway, but there was no chance i was going to bed without dinner. not after the length of today!
i was far too productive this evening. the gym, a load of laundry, lunch for tomorrow, dinner, a batch of brownies (made with after 8 dinner mints instead of chocolate, we'll see how those actually turn out...). so yes, feeling rather good about that.
and now i can hear a helicopter buzzing around just out to sea. always a bit worrying.
my bizarre telephone conversation in a while, i just spent 90minutes on the phone with the lady who will potentially be my replacement.... she seems nice enough, its hard to know over the phone... i couldn't decide if i should be trying to sell the job or not.
it was an awkward conversation at times. another reason i should never be an HR person, i would be awful in in-person interviews. its such a technique and i am not sure i have it....
i am sitting here watching the sun sink into the med again and wondering where my weekend went... it just seems like i have finished all of the laundry and cleaning. like i have finally cleaned out my inbox and caught up with correspondence.
i've just finished making soup (lunch for the week - a recipe from a vegan colleague, its quite yummy, nothing like her's was when i tried it, but quite yummy none-the-less!). i salvaged my books from the broken bookshelf. i didn't even touch the pile of job applications in my inbox...
its like i need 2 days at the end of each week just to get over the week. not to even accomplish anything, just to recover. this is getting old. this feeling tired. everyday i look in the mirror and i cannot remember the last time i saw my reflection without black circles under my eyes. 45. 45 working days left, that is. 9 weeks. i think i can just about manage that.
just want to go back to a simpler time. i didn't mind having to watch every penny i spent if it meant i was enjoying myself. i miss that. somethings are just not worth it. i wouldn't trade these last 2 years for anything. i just wish that they had perhaps come at another time in my life.
right now its time to get back to the basics. to figuring out who i am so that i can actually figure out what i want to do. nowadays its such a pre-set course. you go to high school, you graduate, you go to college, you graduate. you either go on to do a graduate degree or you get a well-paying, prestigious job with intentions of getting your masters in a few years. you work, you graduate, you get a job, you work more.
its not much fun. there's not really any kind of actual learning in there. sure. i mean, you learn at college. but at least 50% of what you're learning is not in the classroom. its not from books. i miss that. i realise that everything has a time and a place, but i just fail to see why you have to ever stop learning, be it from books, or others or life.
i guess i just feel like i have hit a bit of a dead end. this kind of life is very much for people who are certain in their ways and what they are doing. i am not. i don't even know what i am doing, what i want to do! we all joke about that, but i really have no idea. and trying to figure that out here is just not feasible.
your head has to be in the game all the time or it just doesn't work. i miss that time. its like every minute is scheduled out, even if its not. i miss having time to be lost. i kind of liked being lost. the epiphany that always came at the end of mulling through things.
i guess i just miss strange, intangible things. but i do know that its time for me to go. 45 days and counting... well, really, 87 days and counting, but only 45 working days.
