Adventures While Commuting, an Election, a Kitchen and Winter-Time – Finally.

Although our car's bovine interaction did dominate our week it was in no way the only event in our lives this week.

I am still trying to figure out the best way to get to work. If you remember my colleague from work had offered me a lift to the train on the mornings he has the car.
So we arranged to meet. I waited. In Israel being late isn't that unusual so I waited some more. Then my son turned up to wait for his lift to school. We waited together. My son's lift turned up and we said goodbye. I still waited. Then I began to worry that my colleague had forgotten me so I phoned. I got a response on the second try and became immediately aware that he was suffering from 'Screaming Child Syndrome'. He promised to get to me in a few minutes which he did accompanied by his small, tearful off-spring. Luckily my appearance didn't cause further upset and he managed to transfer her into the care of her kindergarten teacher pretty swiftly.

Even though the Naharia traffic wasn't too horrendous this delay meant we had to catch the later train. As we clickety-clacked towards Haifa my colleague said his morning prayers and then read the paper while I stuck my nose in a book. After awhile I looked up and realised we had reached our station. I alerted my colleague and we dashed for the exit but the doors locked as we reached them and the train started to roll forward to the next station.

This book was so engrossing I missed my train stop

By this time I was past caring and saw the humour of the situation but my poor companion nearly passed-out in consternation as he realized just how late he was going to be for work. We got off at the next station and crossed under the tracks to the north-bound platform. Fortunately my wry view of the situation rubbed off on my companion and he stopped hyperventilating and we managed to get to work without further delay.

This week we also had local elections. Luckily for me they were not on the same day as our public transportation adventure or I would not have made it home to vote. Not that I'm sure that would have been any great loss. Despite all our best efforts and democratic convictions the two idiots of the North were returned to power and will continue to 'enhance' our lives with colourful paving-stones and little much else.

Although we have now moved North to the Shlomit neighbourhood of Shlomi, a stone's throw from my parents' house, unlike my parents our polling station was located on the main road through Shlomi in the 'Dental Health Centre'. There was quite a melee round the door and as usual the queuing was Israeli-style ('I was in the line, I was just waiting over there')

white paper in the white envelope for your chosen party

yellow paper in the yellow envelope for your choice of council leader

photo: Sharon Gefen

Then they ran out of envelopes and closed the polling station. After 15 minutes of counting and signing and recounting and signing and more counting and more signing a few of the people waiting tried to push to the front, some using excuses other just using their elbows.

If it had been a queue for anything else I would have let rip as I was tired and fed up after a long day at work but I know the guards are in a sensitive position and are just guys from the neighbourhood not professional guards. As it was they threatened to close the polling station then let the most aggressive pushers in to get rid of them faster. Finally after about half an hour we were allowed to do our democratic duty.

Following our bovine escapade I would have preferred to rest all weekend but the carpenter had put the final touches to kitchen and now I just needed to buy a stove top.

Our New Kitchen

The Dresser

 I was debating between a regular one or induction. The problem was my pots. For an induction hob pans have to be ferromagnetic (ie if a fridge magnetic sticks to them they are OK).

So I spent Friday morning pressing a fridge magnetic to the bottom of all my pans.

I discovered that my two favourite pots passed the test while most that didn't were old pots I had wanted to replace anyway. The exception was my favourite large pot which is shallow enough for frying schnitzel but deep enough for stir fry. Not surprisingly my Mum eagerly offered to take it off my hands but as it is my most used pan it would have to be replaced straight-away.

My husband joked that if I had cleared all the kitchen stuff out of the sitting-room by the end of the day I was free to buy as many pots as I wanted. Challenge accepted!

And mission accomplished with some help from my mother. Almost. I didn't get all the tablecloths organised but then that box was in the hall not in the sitting-room!

After all that I was totally exhausted on Saturday but I had an extra hour to sleep as Israel switched to winter-time. This time clocks and cellphones agreed when morning came around, unlike three weeks ago when the cellphone companies failed tokeep up with the changes in Israeli law and caused half of Israel to be late for work.

First a cow, then a frog.

So this is our car for the next few days. A Nissan Micra. In lurid green. It looks like a frog.
I don't mean that as a disparagement. With those bulbous 'eyes' and wide 'mouth' it really does look like frog, which is why my husband had to chose the green.
The Micra itself is a lovely city run-about and we are very glad to it in our lives at the moment.

But why are we driving around in a hire car when only a couple of months ago we bought ourselves this beautiful vehicle?

Our Beautiful Alfa Romeo Mito

The answer to that question is: a cow.

On Wednesday evening my husband was driving home after a long day at work when a local cow, who should have been safely fenced away on the farm but was instead wandering freely round the local countryside as her owner is wont to allow, decided to make a dash from the forest onto the road in order to become better acquainted with our new car. 

Unfortunately this was a completely spontaneous and ill-calculated whim and my husband was more than a little shocked when his peripheral vision perceived a bovine advancing rapidly in his direction.

Fortunately, even after a tiring day, my husband is an alert and responsive driver and in combination with the Alfa's fantastic breaking system he managed to swerve away from a full-speed frontal collision where the cow would have skidded up over the engine and straight through the windscreen causing ...... actually no, I'd rather not think about that.

As it was, and despite the fact that the car was practically at zero speed on impact, the crash buckled the front bonnet, crumpled the bumper and wing, and smashed the headlight to smithereens.

ouch!!

My poor husband was left in total shock after a near-death experience and the pulverizing of his dream motor car. The cow, on the other hand, got up and walked away.
In fact, my husband was in such a state of shock that instead of phoning the police and taking a rest on our sofa he went home to collect my daughter and then proceeded to drive to Naharia in order to collect my son from swimming and me from a friend's house!!

While on the way my husband and daughter decided to phone me and break the news.
At this time I was in the middle of a supper party at a friend's apartment. Things were a little chaotic as my friend had discovered she had been mistaken about her flight time and it was actually taking-off at just past midnight that day. .

We all ate and made polite conversation and tried to figure out when our friend needed to leave in order to get through security before her plane departed. We came to the conclusion she had half an hour.

When I answered my phone I could hardly hear what my husband anddaughter were saying and when I did hear them I could hardly believe what they told me. They love to play practical jokes on me and my husband seemed nowhere near as distraught as I would have expected. After an accident free 20+ years of driving it seemed impossible that it would be our dream Alfa that got wrecked. It was too surreal to be true.
Once I put the phone down I thought about the conversation and despite desperately wanting it to be a joke I realised that my daughter had sounded quite upset and came to the distressing conclusion that they were telling the truth.
Then I had to explain the expression on my face to my companions while at the same time hustling my friend and her suitcase out the door. One friend dropped her off at the station while I stayed  to tidy up.

My rather subdued family walked through the door to find me elbow deep in dishes and dirty water. I couldn't even give them a comforting hug.
I kept asking my husband how it had happened and he just replied that the cow had come from nowhere.
We live in a rural area so in addition to the usual range of domestic dogs and cats that play 'chicken' on Israeli roads we also have to deal jackals, mongoose, porcupines and the occasional wild boar.
In the 17 years we have lived here Eyal has managed to dodge them all as they race to get out of our way.
But the cow is a more massive beast and it seems that although she managed to skip pretty swiftly into the path of an on-coming Mito she didn't have had the speed or the reaction time to skip away again (even if she tried, and I'm not sure she did.)

After my friends apartment was sparkling and safely locked up I went down to inspect the damage.
.

I was stunned and horrified. 

When I gave my husband a hug he was shaking and I realized he was in shock. He kept rubbing his forehead and making mental lists of what he needed to do for the insurance next day, trying to figure out how we would manage without a car.

On the way home we had to hand over my friend's apartment key. Her landlord, who is both her and our real estate agent, is also a friend and general nice guy. We meet up in a petrol station and his jaw hit the floor when he saw the state of our car. However he is a cheerful guy and he helped Eyal examine the damage calmly and they estimated that it was nasty but fixable.

yes that is cow sh*t

Neither of us slept very well and the next morning I had to go to work. Eyal stayed home to deal with the insurance. We have been with our insurers a long time and they agreed to repair the car at the Alfa garage not their usual, local place. On the way to the garage Eyal phoned the assessor, an Alfa/Lancia specialist, to be told he was already on his way. They met up at the garage. 

Even the assessor was shocked and when he was informed that the assailant had been a cow he remarked that Eyal must have been driving slowly to walk away from such a crash - "Do you know what it is to hit a cow?". "Well, I do now!" was my husband's reply. He must have been feeling better if his sense of humour had returned.

The garage and the assessor agreed to repair everything as my husband wanted. Then they had to sort out an exchange car. Of course the Alfa garage doesn't supply you with the usual grotty banger as exchange car instead they arranged a car from the rental place next door. Eyal did consider a Fiat 500 they offered but it needed a couple hours for servicing. 

And that is how we happen to be driving around in a green Nissan 'frog' this weekend.

And then at the weekend - The Kitchen

After an enjoyable week at work there was the weekend.

The Old Kitchen

Our new kitchen seemed to be progressing almost (almost) by magic. I was still at home when the base of the kitchen went in but a few days later I was back at work and I came home to a new marble counter top.

Because I didn’t want to restrict myself, or chose a colour scheme that would quickly feel old, both the cupboards and the marble are pale, creamy colours. They look lovely but I decided for the ceramic backsplash something more colourful was in order.

Naturally because I was looking for a bottle blue, to contrast with the yellow paint I had planned for the walls, beige is now all the rage. And although previously a Provence-style oval-shaped tile had caught my eye but now the pattern seemed a little dull and grey.

Eyal found a lovely yellow tile but the blue in the series which I had seen earlier was now sold out!

Finally while rummaging in the end of line corner (with the rather apathetic saleswoman wearing an expression that said ‘why can’t they take the first thing I show them. I am never going to get rid of them!’) I found a mock-collage tile strip which matched the yellow perfectly. They only had a limited amount of tiles left but because of our two large kitchen windows they were plenty.

The tiles were gorgeous but I was a little nervous about how they would look on the wall. We had some tiles put up in England when I was a child and the man had made a disappointing hash of it.

Our electrician guy promised he had found an expert tile-man but I was anxious all day until in the afternoon my mother phoned up to ask excitedly when I would be home to see my ‘lovely’ new tiles. And lovely they were.

The New Tiles

In between tiles and marble our electrician was paying us regular visits to make serious improvements to our wiring. First we upgraded then he added sockets for the major appliances. Our electrician knows I like to have plenty of choice about where to plug in so he also doubled all the above counter sockets!

And this was the stage we had got to at the weekend. We just needed the rest of the kitchen and another visit from the electrician for the kitchen to be finished.

Oh and before that happened we needed to paint!

When I was a teenager my parents’ kitchen dining room was a bright sunny yellow. Not only did the colour amplify any natural light, making food preparing much easier and more enjoyable, it also brightened up even the greyest morning helping to wake me when I was half-dead.

We had planned to use a similar yellow for our new kitchen but as the ceramic tile was quite bright we decided a paler yellow might be more suitable.

In fact, the pale yellow we had used for the sitting room and the hall turned out to be perfect and we had had some left over which saved us a trip to the shops. There was not a lot of wall to paint and on the sections that would be covered by cupboards we only made a half-hearted effort but there was a lot of delicate painting around the windows and along the edges of the tiles.

Eyal had to get out the poly-filler to repair the damage caused by removing the previous kitchen and Odelia squeezed in to paint the wall beside the fridge. We got it done quickly, though it was quite tiring leaning over at awkward angles, and were very pleased with the result.

Our Yellow Kitchen

Then we spent the rest of the weekend gazing at the boxes of kitchen utensils piled in the sitting-room and dreaming of the next week when ,hopefully, they would be gone.

The second week back at work - the technical details.

This week I thought I would test out the local bus route and try going in to work later.

Official hours are from 06:45-15:45. Although this is more flexible for the office workers many people travel on the works bus so those are the hours they keep. Because it was convenient so did I, though getting up at 05:15 in the morning wasn’t that much fun!

The work in my new department is more dynamic and involves interaction with other businesses based in Europe. It is not really practical for us to leave work as our European counterparts return from lunch break. In order not to rack up mounds of over-time my new colleagues tend to arrive a couple of hours later than the works buses.

At first I thought this would be a serious transportation problem for me but there are a couple of convenient buses and unlike our previous apartment, where I had a strenuous 10 min walk up steps then a steep hill in order to reach the bus stop, at our new place the bus stop is round the corner. The bus even makes a second pass, stopping across the road, if I miss it the first time.

So this week I had a trial run on the late start. The first time I took the earlier bus which was pleasant but left me hanging around for half an hour.

Then I tried the later bus. It is supposed to arrive in town 16 minutes before my train leaves – plenty of time.

This bus does a short turn through Gesher Haziv (local kibbutz) which explains why it has a longer journey time than the earlier bus. Unfortunately the timetable doesn’t take the rush hour into account and at the time we were supposed to be arriving at the terminal we were, in fact, just getting stuck in one of Naharia’s dreadful traffic jams!

The first stop close to Naharia centre is down the road from the train station so I hopped out and with a brisk 5 minute walk made the train with several minutes to spare. Not perfect but acceptable.

The next day I tried the same bus. Sadly for me the driver was new to the route. Not only did he take his merry time at every stop he totally fritzed up in Gezer Haziv taking the long route round and adding 5 minutes to our journey.

I ran to the train and with 30 seconds to go thought I had made it but the idiot guards had decided to close the doors a minute early and I had to stand and watch as my train rolled out of the station. Then I waited 40 minutes for the next train.

The only plus side from getting in so late was that I walked through the gate with one of my new work colleagues and we had a pleasant chat on our way to the office.

The next morning I met another colleague as I got to work. He also happens to be a neighbour and kindly offered to give me a lift so I may not need to brave the vagaries of the bus schedule in future.

Naturally I have done a little more than travel to work. I also received my work phone, a Nexus 4. This is not just a fun perk it is so I can check my email and messenger in case any urgent problems crop up out-of-hours. The phone vibrates every minute or so to announce the arrival of an email and every so often I need to check them.

At the moment I am still enjoying the novelty of my new phone so it is quite fun.

My phone, charging as usual.
H (super-duper 3G) 24/7 really kills the battery.

But the phone isn’t quite enough so I need my personal laptop connected to my work desktop.

The first day I tried it the install program squeaked up an error message.

Techie guy, “That’s because you don’t have anti-virus. Install this.”

I installed it. Still the error message.

Techie guy, “Phone us when you get home and install another program so we can see what is happening on your computer.”

Me, “What if that program won’t install?”

Techie guy, “I don't know”, impatient sigh.

Me, “I’m trying to be practical and I really don’t want to install a dozen unnecessary and unhelpful programs on my laptop.”

Techies guy. “I’m trying to help you here.

All this was said in the usual tone of a friendly techie talking to a middle-aged woman who he assumes knows nothing about computers. You know, kind but condescending.

Eventually we agreed I was probably strong enough to drag my laptop into work so the techies could check it out in person.

Next day I turned up to a 14:00 appointment with my techie friend and he was nowhere to be seen. At 14:25 I began to get a bit pissy as it had been a 10 minute walk in the sun from my office to his and I didn’t fancy a repeat performance. Finally he turned up hot, bothered and apologetic so I smiled.

I smiled even more when 10 minutes later, after trying to demonstrate how an expert would deal with my computer, he was getting the same error message as I was.

After a few more minutes he gave up and we; me, him, and the laptop, trooped upstairs to the tech genii. I asked if I should leave it with them but they claimed confidently, “It’ll only take a few minutes. Have a seat.”

They good-naturedly joked and tried updating programs but after half an hour told me I should probably return to my office while they worked on it.

A couple of hours later they phoned to say they hadn’t figured it out and maybe I could find another computer at home to use. (I was considering swapping with my daughter.) As I went back to IT I met the techie who had been working on my laptop. He laughed and said his colleague was trying one last thing before they gave up. The colleague seemed to be enjoying the challenge and said he actually had two last things to try. Thankfully, the second thing worked!

In between all this fun I have also been trying to learn my new job. It is interesting but quite involved and I still have a lot to learn before I can work independently.

Each action is time sensitive, triggered by progression through the process. At first this was confusing as many processes are happening at once. It is a bit like a song sung in canon. The overall harmony is beautiful but it takes concentration to single out the individual melodies.

Last week I sat down to work out the time table of each process and it was amazing how much it has helped.

Thursday came around very quickly and I was surprised at how fast the week and passed. Even better is that I have realized I don’t dread going to work anymore.

Back to Work!

Well, my first week back to work hasn’t been too bad.

The first day I wasn't totally reassured about receiving the salary and benefits I requested. During interviews and when offering me the position they told that HR had agreed to my terms. Now I have accepted the position they are back-tracking first on one thing and now another. But it seems that everyone is trying to be as honest and straightforward as possible so I am hopeful.

And naturally in the morning I couldn't get past the security gate because they don't have a record of me doing the safety course!!

Luckily (unluckily?) this is not the first time I've encountered this problem so a few well-placed phone calls ensured they let me through. Now I just have to make a billion and one phone calls to solve the problem. At times like this it is such a relief to be familiar with the system.

A short intro:

At the end of 2010 I returned to full-time work. Although a qualified bookkeeper with many years of experience I was a little nervous re-entering the workplace.

I signed up with a couple of personnel companies and scattered my CV across the internet. Surprisingly quickly I received an interview at a large Israeli concern. The offer was a position working in the finance department which seemed to fit my experience and abilities. The less attractive part of the offer was that I would be working through a sub-contractor on a two-year contract. And there was a lengthy commute.

The commute was tiring but bearable when public transport was working ok, hellish and exhausting when it was not. I seemed to have chosen to return to work at a time when both the road and public transport systems were being 'improved' and there were days when I believed my commute was trying to kill me!

The work itself was interesting. We had been taken on for a large project so the work was intense and required a lot of over-time.

At first everyone assumed that at the completion of our contract we would be taken on permanently, as had happened with previous contract workers, but following management changes it become clear this would not happen.

My boss was not willing to part with me so quickly and even though I was given my notice last month she put my name forward for other positions.

A few days after my contract ran out I was accepted.

Reading through the correspondence gave me the urge to start humming the theme to the Onedin Line

So here I am back at work. The surroundings are familiar, close by are the people from my previous department. They have been very supportive and were pleased to see me back. More surprisingly (in a very pleasant way) acquaintances who I saw maybe 5 minutes a day or less and said hello to in passing have greeted me warmly and remarked on how glad they are to see me back, how they had been hoping a position would be found for me.

The work itself looks interesting although I haven't yet started doing much because the bureaucracy surrounding the settling in process makes it almost impossible to concentrate. The first day was spent setting up my computer, the second day was spent figuring out why my computer wasn't set up properly and then completing those pesky safety tests.

But my new boss hasn't let me languish in a pool of boredom while the technical details are sorted. He provided me with documents and presentations explaining various aspects of the business and a detailed manual which makes surprisingly interesting reading. He's also very thorough on the details; helping me set up my computer properly, ensuring I get office supplies and introducing me to everyone around the new workspace.

I have also been reading through correspondence to get an idea of work flow and how things are done. It means that I don't feel lost jumping into the middle of the project and gives me an idea of what is involved and what I will be expected to do to contribute to the whole.

By Thursday I was tired and and looking forward to the weekend but unlike the previous few months I wasn't counting the minutes until I could grab my bag and walk out the gate. That seems like a good start!