Tel Aviv Diary - October 18-22, 2009 Karen Alkalay-Gut
October 18, 2009 An evening at home. Days here are very hectic and quiet evenings are rare. To keep it quiet we made sure not to watch the news.
October 19, 2009 To continue the idea of escape, there is a chocolate company
named Choconoy that employs people with special needs. The chocolate is great, and I love the idea:
4 Hatzoran St., Complex B,
October 20, 2009 Ziggy Frankel used to say that the health clinic is like life; you know when you come in but you have no idea when you'll leave. It used to be like that. I remember going for x-rays in Zamenhoff clinic (General Health Program) and coming home six hours later with a sick headache. So for a long time I was doing a super-duper program in Malram where you finish a dozen doctors in three hours and then do a mammogram and then go to work. But this year I've gone back to the health clinic, and today went for a mammogram in the spanking new electronic Maccabi building on Yigal Alon Street. I wasn't sure about where to turn, so I asked the lady in the car next to me at the light, and she said she too was on her way there and didn't know so we could get lost together. For a moment I remember the fights people used to get into about their place in line and it occurred to me to figure out how to get there before her and race up to register, but then I remembered that times have changed and people have become just a bit more civilized. We did get there, although the signs were not to clear because of all the building going on there, and I made it to the reception just in time. There I got onto the assembly line and was finished with the mammogram in 30 minutes, but like another few hazy people, was sent for an ultrasound down the hall. Unlike the previous waiting room which was filled with sympathetic partners, this one had a row of waiting women, most of them looking at the screen with their first names and last initials in the order they would be taken. "Karen," they called, but I knew it was the karen with the tattooed eye makeup and not me, so I stayed seated as another woman came running up the aisle shouting, "That's me! "I'm Karen too." "No," said the woman next to me who was crocheting a pink and turquoise baby coverlet."There is order here for everyone." "Just take it easy," the woman in a white head scarf added, "When there are clear guidelines for everyone, you can relax." In fifteen minutes I was dressed and heading home. Unlike life, the health clinic is best enjoyed when the duration is short. To answer your question George - yes - i was writing a story with a little moral. October 21, 2009
i was about to write a few lines yesterday when a visitor interrupted me, and reminded me of the publicness of this society. Like in American comedy series, but unlike real life in America, people knock on the door all the time - sometimes on a whim, sometimes because of a vague promise to 'drop over in the afternoon,' and sometimes because they're been invited. But the person, at least in my life, comes before everything else. So apologies to all my virtual friends. October 22, 2009 Maybe there was a dinner invitation tonight i forgot about. I keep feeling there should have been something happening today but i don't even have the energy to look in my diary. If you missed me at your table, I'm sorry. Really. But my days of bouncing around Tel Aviv on Thursday nights are past. Dinner at some friends, a little dessert on the beach, maybe a drink after at shesek... Not tonight Josephine. How did we ever spend our thursday nights from midnight to two cheering Sharon Moldavi at Roxannes? And how do people still do that kind of thing (of course in much smaller nightclubs now, but the principle remains the same). You're going to have to look for other blogs to get the heartbeat of Tel Aviv. I'm just going to order a pizza and watch the stupid news. You would think, wouldn't you, that with all these exercises going on aiming to defray the rockets aimed at us from everywhere there would be at least a little talk about really large tennis rackets to bounce the bombs right back at the sender, wouldn't you? Nonsense? maybe, but the real news is not much better.
New Industrial Zone
P.O.Box 8198
Natanya 42504
Israel
Factory telephone: +972 9 8659960
Factory fax: +972 9 8659970
E-mail: choco@mono.co.il