Good thing we finished buying our furniture in December

Because one of our old reliable suppliers burned down this month in Israel - IKEA.  Check out this link to see a picture and more of the story.  No one was injured, as it started in the wee hours.  But having closed down this store on a few Friday afternoons and Thursday evenings this fall, I can tell you there will be many sad Israeli's, as it was always packed with shoppers and Swedish meatball eaters. 

Last sunset

Last sunset in Tel Aviv until I return in February. 

I'm off to meet my nephew, Ernest, in Seattle!

Why it's important to park close to the curb

This is the second time I've seen a truck get stuck on our street.  Our street is like a funnel, narrowing as you drive around the curve and toward the light.  Last time the result was a car with a large horizontal gash from the tail light to the headlight on the passenger side. 

This time it was a tow truck, looking for victims.  In Israel the tow trucks pull up beside the car, extend a fork under the car, lift it up in the air, and slide it onto a flatbed.  I should know.  Check out my post "Learning for next time" dated 8/10/10. 

Changes around us

Tel Aviv is a young city.  It celebrated it's 100 birthday last year.  It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to the largest concentration of Bauhaus buildings in the world, among other things. 

It has become the 17th most expensive city in the world.  We discovered this when we began our adventure with our apartment hunting visit last May.  The place we chose was built just last year, so our neighbors also recently went through move-in balagan. Our building is only about 35% Israeli, the other 65% are foreigners like ourselves, or mixed marriages, like the southwest unit on our level (6/5) which is occupied by a British man and Israeli woman, and their kids.   

We continue to see city lots all around us in varying stages of destruction and reconstruction.  The weekday morning orchestra of city noises often includes jack-hammers with the car horns.  So Saturdays are a real treat, as it is nearly silent for this "day of rest."  This week we passed the above pictured lot around the corner from our place on the walk up to Ulpan.  Tel Aviv is continuously changing, and rapidly.  What I don't yet know is whether the city is taking this opportunity to enforce greener building standards.  In general though, most Israeli's I've met say that Israel is "waking up" to sustainable planning, not just as an economic opportunity, but as a social and environmental responsibility and necessity as well.

A treat for halloween

In mid September we met with a cabinet manufacturer and ordered the final furniture we need for our apartment - bathroom cabinets, filing cabinets, and professional assistance hanging Ikea cabinets in our kitchen so that they can withstand significant weight despite the plaster/concrete wall construction.

We were told 2-3 weeks to delivery and installation, despite the upcoming holidays at that time.  We left for 2 weeks, and were excited to get our place organized when we returned the first week of October.  After several unsuccessful attempts to get ahold of the guy, we were told 10 more days.  So we waited patiently.  At the 10 day mark, we again couldn't get ahold of the guy.  After round two of frustrating phone calls, we were told another week because their machines broke down.  Now the target date was Oct 26th.  Well, on Oct 26th, we were told they won't be ready until Sunday, October 31st. 

In the meantime, our kitchen has looked liked this for two months - a hurricane of boxes and cabinets.  The bathrooms and the office have been in a similar state of disarray. 

Today we finally received a happy halloween treat (thankfully, no tricks!)  Two guys arrived at 1:30pm, with 3 filing cabinets, 3 bathroom cabinets, and all the right tools to hang our kitchen and living room cabinets.  HOOOOOORAAAAAY!!!! 

I scrubbed  them out and started to fill them tonight, but I am still in disbelief. 

Emotional Intelligence

From Wikipedia, "Emotional intelligence (EI) describes the ability, capacity, skill or, in the case of the trait EI model, a self-perceived grand ability to identify, assess, manage and control the emotions of one's self, of others, and of groups.

I am finding that functioning in Israel can take a fair amount of emotional intelligence, and emotional energy. 

A few days before we moved into our apartment, the owners called us and tried to change the terms of our agreement by offering to leave the TV for 3,000 shekels (about $800).  As this was the very first item we asked to be left during our initial meeting with the owners back in May, we were more than a bit peeved.  After reminding her that we were 100% certain that they had agreed to leave it along with the patio furniture, she let it go.  But needless to say, everything in Israel seems to be a negotiation on a good day, a battle on most others.

My first visit to the shuk hakarmel (the tel aviv market), resulted in my ability to catch one vendor trying to rip me off (he told a guy in hebrew 15 shekels for asparagus, then told me 20 in english).  When I told him to forget about it, and that I was irritated by his attempt to rip me off, he gave them to me for 12.  Who knows how many times I didn't catch someone trying to take advantage of me.  But my overall spend still seemed less than the grocery store for fruits and veggies, so here's hoping I did ok.
 
Mindless tasks in the U.S. take a high degree of attention and focus here.  Sometimes I get so tired of it I'd rather not go out and have to interact. 

wireless, wireless, where have you gone?

Internet access has not exactly met my expectations here.  In a country that boasts one of the biggest high-tech industries around the world, I expected internet to be a given, like water and electricity.  While it IS widely available, it is NOT reliable.   The concrete building construction isn't helping, nor is the lack of thinking during building to ensure different floors in the same apartment can receive signals.  Between the lack of thoughtful wiring and lack of power outlets in useful places, accessing the web and setting up other electronics has been a challenge, to say the least. 

This is impacting our Vonage phone as well.  Over the course of several hours, internet will go from flying, to crawling, to crapping out completely, then picking up again.  So, bear with us, if you've tried to call or Skype from the States.  There's only so much time one can spend with unreliable technology before you're ready to throw it off your 6th floor balcony (or at least lock it up in a room and leave the problems for another day).

blew a fuse

You may or may not be aware that outside the U.S., they use different electrical settings.  This means that you can't just plug in U.S. electronics here.  Computers and cell phones are already designed for use around the world, so all you need is an adapter for the shape of the plug into the wall.  But for appliances (coffee makers, blenders, hand mixers, etc) you need to know the watts and volts, and buy an appropriate transformer.  Well, we thought we did.

Last week Dan plugged in his coffee maker, excited to have coffee at home for the first time.  He double checked the watts used by the coffee maker, and the maximum the transformer was able to handle.  The coffee maker was 500 watts and the transformer was for 1600 - plenty of wiggle room (which is recommended).  As he plugged it in, we heard a loud "pop" sound, and that was the end of that.

Today he wanted an ice coffee.  So out came my cuisinart blender/mixer.  He plugged it in and "pop"!  That was the end of my blender.  Only this time he blew all the power on the 6th floor (for once I'm happy that our 5th floor is wired separately from the 6th).  We're now waiting for the electric company to send a guy over, because flipping the breakers in the apartment did nothing for us, and the ones in the basement for the building are behind lock and key. 

Oh the joys of relo....

We're in!

We move in last Sunday with the help of 5 Russion guys from Ocean Moving.  They arrived around 11am; couldn't get the truck on our street, so started the process by carting everything from about 100 meters (yards?) up the street and around the corner. 

Remember, it was still August - the sun was beating down on them, tshirts soaked in the first 5 minutes.  Once in the building, they had to bring everything up to the 6th or 5th floors in 2 tiny elevators (they fit about 4 people, 6 uncomfortably) without A/C.

Dan took the ground floor location to direct them to the correct floor and check off each box as it went in from our list of 250 items.  I took the apartment level position, directed the movers to specific rooms, and spent the first 4 hours ripping protective packing off items with the box cutter.  There was a mountain of paper wrapping in the entry (this pic only shows about half of it).  You never know how respectful movers are going to be with your property, but these guys were great about taking down the paper as I unwrapped it, moving things from one floor to another without complaining, and keeping a pleasant attitude (except for one guy, but there's always one bad apple). 

Mid afternoon a lift arrived in the back parking lot.  They loaded our king mattress on it and mechanically elevated it to the 5th floor balcony where they took it in through the sliding glass doors.  They also brought up one set of shelves this way.  But that's it.  Two items!  All the rest came by cart, elevator, and heavy lifting.

They got it all in before 4pm, then spent an additional hour re-building our beds, dining room table, coffee table, and desks.

Moving time!

Yesterday was our first day in our new apartment (for the second time).  We met for the key exchange at 10am.  They did a good job of emptying it, and it's relatively clean, but the fridge needed a scrub down, as do many of the walls and switches, and the floors will probably need another round once we've tromped around in there with our cleaning rags, ikea boxes, etc.  After some kitchen scrubbing, we spend the afternoon building new Ikea furniture. 

Today we'll continue.  And I'll try to get some pics to load for you.  Tomorrow the movers bring our stuff (Sunday is the first day of the work week here, remember?)