Things I've learned about Jerusalem and Israel (part 4)

So, I spilled water on my laptop keyboard sometime in early August, leaving me without the use of the letters k, l, p, f and h.  This has been remarkably inconvenient.  I can't do any work from home that requires proper typing, like sending e-mails or updating curriculum, nor can I use Skype messenger or log in to any website that requires a password containing any of those letter and, most inconvenient of all, updating my Facebook status or messaging friends takes forever.  I developed a system for messaging where I typed out what I wanted to say then copied and pasted the requisite letters from other places where necessary but, as I'm sure you can imagine, that takes forever and is really annoying.  Leaving out the letters completely requires a degree of confidence that your correspondent will understand pidgin English - as long as I start with 'stuid broen eyboard' people get the gist but then they laugh at me anyway.  This keyboard malfunction has therefore deterred me from blogging, as I can't face doing it the long way on my computer or schlepping to work to use the computer there.  Props to my delightful housemate Allie for letting me use her laptop today so that I can bring you some more highlights of life in the Holy Land.

The deficiency in the keyboard department has been slightly compensated for by the fact that I am now a smartphone user, a perk of my recent promotion being a brand new Samsung Galaxy something or other.  I never had one of these whizzy techno-phones back home and didn't really care - I've always been a bit of a Luddite when it comes to new technology, evidenced by the fact that both my parents had HTCs long before smartphones were even on my radar - but I moved here and basically everyone I knew had one, except expats like me who needed a local bank account to get a contract and are stuck with pay-as-you-go Nokia 3310s, the mobile phone that dinosaurs once used.  I am still very, very excited about the smartphone, despite having had it for over a month now, but I'm a bit worried I'm turning into the people in this video:

Anyway, the whole smartphone thing leads me nicely into today's blog on more things I've learned about Jerusalem and Israel, the first of which is the bizarre way many Israelis use their phones.  

1. Israelis have strange mobile phone use habits.

It's not uncommon here to see someone walking down the street with their hands-free headphones on, holding their mobile phone out in front of them and talking loudly into it although granted this is not something you only see in Israel.  What I have only seen in Israel is the following: you have your phone on loudspeaker and hold it about three inches from your mouth, and proceed with your conversation at the sort of volume level that ensures everyone within a 10-metre radius can hear your entire conversation.  I was with a group of friends at Aroma on Hillel Street (saying yet another goodbye, of which more later) and a woman at the next table had a lengthy and quite frankly unnecessarily noisy conversation, smartphone held out in her hand, loudspeaker blaring out the entire conversation for us to hear.  Why would you be happy to have the whole coffee shop hear your conversation?  My Hebrew wasn't up to snuff on this occasions so I didn't know what she was talking about (hemorrhoids? a recent break-up?  what's for dinner?) but everyone else in the place would have got a pretty good idea.  I genuinely don't understand why so many Israelis choose to have phone conversations in this manner - walking down the street, in a restaurant, in a bar, on a train or bus, at the post office.  Don't they want to keep some things private?  Don't they understand how daft they look?  And don't get me started on how Arabs play music on their phones whilst out and about.

2. When it comes to cabs in Jerusalem, sod's law always applies.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when you don't want a cab in Jerusalem, every single available cab will drive past you and honk the horn loudly trying to get your attention, but when you do actually want a cab you can't find one for love nor money.  On the last day of my holiday in the UK I managed to trip over in the street and hurt my knee to a degree which necessitated a 5 a.m. trip to A&E when I woke up in the middle of the night in agony, unable to bend it.  Long story short, I ended up on crutches with a brace on my left knee, missed my flight back to Israel and had to buy another since I had no travel insurance (like most ex-pats I don't bother with it when I'm going home, a fact which my mother waited 24 hours to comment on after my accident - perhaps she felt that pointing out the stupidity of that decision wasn't tactful when her daughter was on the phone to her in floods of tears at 4 a.m.) and for a good two or three weeks I needed to get cabs on a fairly regular basis as my knee wasn't up to lengthy walks.  And every single time I had to wait for ages.  Normally you can't swing a dead cat in Jerusalem without hitting a cab; this summer apparently every single cab driver was on holiday and I ended up walking more than I really should have.  My knee still hurts, which is going to necessitate a visit to the doctor, something I really don't want to have to go through.

3. You do, in fact, have to wait longer here to see the doctor than back home.

People in England complain about the NHS on a fairly regular basis - it's something of a national pastime, but one in which I don't indulge because I love the NHS.  I was born with one side of my face a lot bigger than the other (a condition called lymphangioma haemangioma, or vascular malformation) and have thus been in and out of a variety of hospitals my entire life as both outpatient and inpatient.  I've had excellent service, amazing doctors and surgery that has basically made my face so 'normal' that now when I say I was born with a congenital malformation most people go "Eh?  Where?"  (Plus I have a really cool scar on my face that I like to tell people I got in a knife-fight.)  Anyway, my love for the NHS doesn't blind me to its faults, which are many, including - so people say - massive waiting times.  Let me reassure you now, English people, that time passed in the waiting room at your average GP surgery or in casualty in the UK is a breeze compared to the time you can spend sitting around waiting for treatment here.  I had reason to visit the doctor several times last summer and endured some seriously lengthy waits, including several hours on one occasion despite having an appointment time.  My friend Dan was recently mugged and tazered on the Nablus Road and spent far, far too long sitting in casualty in the hospital in Ein Kerem at wrong o'clock in the morning waiting for treatment.  Plus - and this may be the real kicker - there are no magazines to read.  At least back home you can read the June 2003 edition of OK! magazine to pass the time.

4. You really can get away with so many things by virtue of being blonde.

I have blogged previously about the perks and pitfalls of being blonde in a sea of brunettes. Here is a list of some of the things that I have lately got away with purely because of the colour of my hair and/or eyes:

- quickly waved through an otherwise lengthy i.d. checking process at a recent concert: the girls in line in front of Tamar and I were brunettes and had the full check, whereas the security guy didn't even bother to look at Tamar's i.d. or even ask me to get mine out, just waved us through.

- basically ignored by the soldier checking i.d. on the bus back from Bethlehem through the Beit Jala checkpoint, who simply looked at my blonde hair and walked past.  This was actually pretty annoying on this occasion because on the way over there (to spend a last day lounging by the pool at the Intercontinental with Jen, another friend who was leaving) I had, for the first time ever, forgotten my passport and had to get a cab home to collect it since I didn't want to be caught short coming back home.  Turns out I needn't have bothered.

- sitting at the bar in the summer in a restaurant where a friend works and getting shots bought for me by a total stranger, who didn't even try to chat me up but was clearly just being nice.  Granted, that may not be a blonde thing but the fact I was almost the only blonde in the room didn't hurt.

- pretending to be a tourist on the tram when I didn't have time to buy a ticket and jumped on anyway - the guy checking tickets clearly didn't think I was local so didn't fine me but he did boot me off the train a good two stops earlier than I wanted.  I would like the record to note that I don't do that scam any more because I felt pretty damn guilty the first time and, as my mother will tell you, I have an inconvenient relationship with the truth wherein I generally feel obliged to tell it regardless of the consequences and feel horribly guilty if I don't.  I once stole some sweets from the tuck box at school (at age 10, I think) and felt so awful I returned them to the box and confessed everything to the headmistress.

5. Saying goodbye on a regular basis is something you get used to, even though you never really become immune to the feelings that go with that.

This summer - this year, in fact - I have said goodbye to far too many people.  This is a feature of life in Jerusalem, which is a very transient city.  This is definitely true of the expat community and even true of parts of the Israeli community, which can be very fluid - new immigrants arriving, people with dual citizenship leaving, people going travelling.  I've been living here two years now and so by expat standards am something of a long-termer, as there are so many people who come on short-term mission, or volunteering, or who come to study at Hebrew University for a semester.  I've found that I can become worryingly detached from newcomers, since I sometimes don't have the energy to invest in a friendship with someone who will leave in three months time.  Even worse, since expat life is something of a merry-go-round, you find yourself saying goodbye to friends who have been here for quite a while, as well as those who have only been in your life for a few months.  I feel like all I've done for the past month is go to various good-bye parties, which has been a blast but which reinforces the fact that these people that you really love and who bring so much fun to life in this crazy city are now leaving it, and you, for pastures new.  At least I actually got to say goodbye to most of them - one of my friends was unceremoniously and extremely unexpectedly deported earlier this year and I'm still sad that I didn't get to hug him goodbye (Mikeeeeeyyyyyyyy!).  Times like this make me realise the value of my friendships with people who are here for the long-haul, whether Israeli or expat lifers (and once again: Tamar - what would I do without you?).  But I'm also trying to make sure that I don't get closed off to people who are here short-term and that I do my best to welcome them - I've appreciated the efforts made by people from all over Jerusalem to help me feel settled and so much of the joy of expat life lies in the kindness of others.

A few of the latest goodbyes: Kate (and Tim) but not Helen; Jen but not Brittany;
Emily and Naomi; Keeley (but not Tamar of course); Seth (but not Dan and Mario, thank goodness).

 

  

6. Israelis have an all-purpose noise that can be used in a variety of social settings and which is, it turns out, very useful.

It's great.  I wish you could hear it and if you live here, you'll definitely know what I'm talking about.  It's sort of a 'tcht' sound, not quite a 'tsk', almost like you're tutting at someone but with a bit more of both a hiss and a cluck in it.  This noise is used by Israelis in many, many situations and it is usually negative: 'no I can't'; 'no you can't'; 'wait a minute', accompanied by my absolute favourite hand gesture, a pursing together of the fingers followed by waving them up and down; disapproval of any kind.  I went to a screening recently of a film called Nefarious about human trafficking and during one particularly unpleasant scene showing mothers in South-East Asia selling their children into prostitution, the entire audience did a simultaneous 'tcht' sound, myself included.  I have picked this up to the extent that I use it at school, accompanied by the hand gesture.  I am also becoming less punctual.  This country is rubbing off on me.  Is that good or bad?