Since I don't have access to my favorites at home, I'm just gonna put two links here. Both are pretty interesting sites.
There is a song that the Jews sing on Hanukah, it’s called “Mi Ye’malel Gvurot Yisrael”. The best literal translation I can give is “Who will make the words about the heroics of Israel”; a less literal translation would be “Who will sing the praises of the Israeli heroes”.
Oh how times have changed. No longer is Israel a nation that fought off the oppression of the Roman legions, nor is it a place for Jews to find refuge from the Nazis, now it’s a place where two groups of people try to live their lives in serenity (a better term than ‘peace’). Sadly a (growing) minority on both sides can’t accept this.
My goal here is not to take a side, it’s irrelevant, but I can vent at one specific group. A large part of the settlements in the west bank are populated by foreigners who come here for a year or two to be ‘heroes’. A large majority of them are Americans, whom after watching Rambo, come here to defend the holy land. Their method of defense is to live in disputed areas of ‘religious significance’, which sparks anger on the Arab side, which causes terrorism.
They have no care for Israel the state, just for Israel the out-dated Zionistic ideal. They don’t see the repercussions for the majority of Israelis. After a year or two they go back to the holy land of New-York City, smug with their own belief that they fought the good fight.
I hope no one sings the praises of these ‘heroes’.
We arrived safely in Israel, which is the important thing I guess… We flew with IsraAir, an Israeli charter company, something like RyanAir or Easyjet, but without the really low prices.
The plane stunk of urine from the toilets. This bothered Karina more than me of course, considering that I have no sense of smell (The only good thing to come out of my 13 years of smoking). The was virtually mo leg room, which is pretty standard on charter flights, but when I, a pretty tall guy, asked for a aisle seat, I was told that they don’t give aisle seats to couples, because then they would be left with all the window seats! The food was probably the only redeeming feature of the flight, because we got a little tub of Humus and a pita.
On the subject of food, the airport duty-free area closed more or less after we checked in. We were one of the first people to check in, so we at least got to look around, but after a few minutes we decided to go eat something and found that all the food places were closed. They didn’t even keep a single sandwich place open, so I had to suffer 8 hours of hunger with just airplane food to look forward to, thank god parts of it were edible.
Back to IsraAir, I guess it’s just the lack of professionalism that bothers me. For example the air hosts wore jeans! Not that I have a problem with casual wear, I don’t wear suits to work, but then I’m not in a service industry, they are. I don’t know, I think I have just gotten used to expecting a certain things when I pay hundreds of dollars, if they are trying to make air flying like bus rides, then charge bus like prices.
Well today was my last day at Climax. I was surprised at how emotional it was. You don't realize how friendly you get with people until you say goodbye to them. There are several people at Climax that I will really miss.
I realized today that since my days at Makh-Shevet, the 2 and a half years at Climax have been my longest stay at a company. My past is littered with jobs for companies that closed down or jobs that I was hired for to do a single project and when that was complete I left. Hopefully the upward curve will continue at EA and I'll be there even longer than I lasted at Climax.
I was playing with Mamma and search for myself, and it pointed out that someone entered me into Moby Games.
I managed to sell the Car yesterday. Sadly we had to go around town to all the second hand car shops and just take the best offer we could get. It's a bit lower than we originally wanted, but quite a bit higher than I expected second hand dealers to give me.
So we are all set for Vancouver, all the big things are out of the way. Tuesday is my last day at Climax, then Wednesday we get the flat packed and cleaned, and Thursday we are off to Israel.
Yay.
I remember the bit of Fox news I saw in Israel. I kind of liked it, they are extremely pro-Israel. But it was obvious to me that they were biased, and I'm wondering if American's also realise that. Take this for example. I mean it's such an exaggeration (LIE), of what happened that it's not even funny. It's actually full of lies that it's almost slander.
Oh the Irony....
Remember I told you that some people are more talented than me? Well this guy is too, but I don't Envy him :)
I wish there was some way to regulate the internet. There needs to be some editing process. Maybe a tool that marks a webpage as ‘has been edited’ or ‘is full of bullshit’.
Take this article for example. It talks about Holland, but has a Danish flag. Admittedly the Dutch and the Danish both start with ‘D’. (Thanks to Mr Chen for the link).
I think you will find that KATV is an American website, so I guess since Holland is over to the east where the weird Yuropians come from, it doesn’t really matter which flag they use.
I honestly don’t watch “I’m a Celebrity, Get me out of here”(Interesting that 10 seconds of Googling didn’t find the homepage of the show), but due to the quality of Freeview over the weekend, I have been doing a lot of channel surfing. I have noticed that each time I go over ITV2 they show more or less the same images, B-Rate British Celebrities sitting around a camp-fire talking.
But the thing is, I have no idea what they are talking about, because the sound is always off! Now who knows, maybe the people are talking about interesting subjects, they are human after all, and some possibly created great works. But for some reason ITV2 have decided that everything they say should be muted “For legal reasons”.
I feel sorry for the people that are actually interested in watching the show. I mean beyond feeling sorry for them actually wanting to watch it that is.
Now, it can’t be a swear word issue, I was channel surfing before the Australian Open final, and that was at 2:50am!
Over the years I have had to go to many Embassies, both for traveling visas; and for my work visas. The latest was the Canadian High Commission in London. We found the information on the internet a bit confusing.
After looking around the Immigration Division of the Canadian High Commission London page, a very badly laid out webpage, which is also extremely ugly and doesn’t fit with the important of the page, we managed to find the Citizenship and Immigration Canada webpage and found what we were looking for. It had a guide (which missed out a couple of details) and downloadable forms. The forms could be filled out inside Acrobat Reader which was a nice touch and made it a lot easier for us. Minutes later 2 forms were filled out and signed. Just too bad the forms insisted on only accepting American/Canadian formatted phone numbers, but you can’t get everything.
The High Commission’s opening hours start at 8am. We got up bright and early, took the train into London,but still by the time we got to the doors, it was 7:55am. We weren’t sure if I needed photographs (I did), so I decided to go find a place to have some taken. I expected to have a long time, because all embassies are really slow. By the time I got back, Karina was already inside, in line. She had also called me to tell me that they had their own photo booth onsite (Nice touch #2), but I had already had mine done in a booth at the local Tube station.
From here on it was clean sailing. For some silly reason I had assumed that the guide that said “Cash only” was wrong, so I had to run out in the middle to draw cash, but that was the only flaw. By 9:00am we were finished. Others took longer, but that is because they didn’t have the forms, and my advice to anyone doing a similar thing, fill out the forms at home.
The last nice touch was the work permit forms themselves. I had to give a fax number, and they said it would be with me within 10 working days. Unfortunately the fax number I gave would only be valid for 8 working days, so they said they couldn’t promise anything, but would mark it as priority. Little did I know, but at 3pm that day, the fax arrived, very prompt.
So in short, a good start to my life in Canada.
