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In the three years that I've worked where I do, the building has changed quite a bit. When I first started out, my cubicle was next to an exit that led outdoors, and in fact to the designated outdoor smoking area. That was pretty annoying for me, as the smoke had a strong tendency to waft in when people would open the door. Fortunately, after about a year, the factory expanded, and that outdoor area was enclosed. That left me with a convenient shortcut to the new coffee corner in place of the smokey outdoors, and I was happy. We still had an EXIT sign (in Hebrew, yetzia) above the door leading to the coffee; since the new exit was through there, it all made relative sense.
The company just keeps on growing, and all the departments with it. We finally got our upgrade in the engineering department this past month. We moved from cubicles to "open space," and got fancier (like I said, everything's relative) desks, chairs and individual shelving. Here's my new corner:
(Please note the blinds behind where I sit - that's a window, since it used to lead outside, but now it opens to the back of a closet. Needless to say, I leave the blinds closed. Convenient hook, though.)
Anyway, when they were designing the opener space, the need to scootch the door over became apparent. The door had previously been in the corner of the room, but in order to utilize the corner so that someone else could sit there, they decided to move that door to the center of the wall. You can actually see the very edge of the newly placed door in the photo above - it's between me and the guy who now sits to the side of me. The door no longer leads to the coffee corner, it ends at our archive/closet.
I realize that this is a bit confusing, but the funny part is not so confusing. They went to a lot of trouble to move the door and rebuild walls, but apparently removing the EXIT sign was just too much trouble.
That's pretty funny, right? Yesterday, the fire alarm went off accidentally for about four seconds, and one of my coworkers and I realized that our emergency exit is now farther away than it would have been had the coffee path been left open. It's still not very far away - the whole building is pretty small. But for some reason I couldn't get an image out of my head - that of a Toby shaped hole in the wall below the EXIT sign, ala Warner Brothers...
Hi everybody, sorry to have been away for so long. It's been a crazy few weeks, but I'm back, and happy to be.
My brother came to visit last week, and we had a great (albeit hurried) time with him. We were chatting in the kitchen one day, and naturally, the conversation eventually turned to silly street signs. I told him about a funny one that I had briefly seen in Jerusalem, while sitting at a red light. Unfortunately, by the time I had gotten my camera out, the light was green, and I had to settle for "I'll come back and get it someday." Anyway, I went to work, and he went touring, and lo and behold, by the time he got back, he had managed to photograph that very sign! I was quite excited, to say the least, and I hope you enjoy our cooperative efforts:
This one is equally funny in English and in Hebrew, and I assume also in Arabic, although that one I can't yet read. It's near those things in the entrances to one-way driveways or parking lots. You know, those pointy things sticking up out of the ground to discourage you from driving in the wrong direction. I actually know someone who blew two tires as she went the wrong way, but that's a whole different story.
Anyway, the funny thing to me is that although the sign is presumably a warning, no actual warning appears. It doesn't say "Beware, Spikes" or "Wrong Way, Spikes," just "Spikes." Then the exclamation point comes and adds a simple, almost childish look, as if to say "Woo hoo! Spikes! It's a party!"
Dunno - I enjoyed it.
Israelis are known, among many things, for being expressive through their cars. By this I'm not referring to driving style or speed, although that too has become sadly stereotypical. I'm referring to the quantity of bumper stickers plastered all over what seems like the majority of the cars here. It got to be so much that a song (actually, a really good song) was written a couple years back in which all the lyrics were direct quotes from various popular bumper stickers.
A lot are political, a lot aren't, but the ones that I find funniest are those which are aimed at a direct dialogue with God. Things like "God in Heaven, we love you!" seem to me inappropriate for a bumper sticker, somehow, and yet they're everywhere. Come on, do you really think God is stuck here in this traffic jam, and getting excited about your sticker? If you love Him, show Him in more heavenly ways, I say.
And yet, despite my real cringe every time I see one of those, there is a religious bumper sticker that I like - short and simple:
I realize that it's pretty hard to see here, but it has the words that are familiar to Jews worldwide: Shema Yisrael, Ado(n)ai Elo(h)einu, Ado(n)ai Echad. Literally, it means, "Listen up, Jews, God is our Lord, God is one." It's the phrase that we've been saying for thousands of years, it's our mantra. But generally, when we say it nowadays, we're either a) in a synagogue, surrounded by people who don't need convincing, or b) at home, praying in our living room quietly to ourselves. And so no one is there to listen up - it's a shame, really.
But here, finally, is a good opportunity! "Listen up, Jews," and there are the Jews, potentially listening up all around you. What could be better?
My workplace took us out for our yearly festive-ish evening last week. It was nice - dinner and a stand-up comedian, and not too many speeches. Since it's one of the few perks that I get, we make sure to go every year.
This year the event was at a local place in Gush Etzion called Eretz HeAyalim, or in English, "Land of the Deer." I hadn't been there before, but I'd heard about it - Eretz HeAyalim is very well known for its Omega. Ah, "but what's an Omega," I hear you cry. An Omega is what most English speakers refer to as a zip-line, and this place has the longest one in Israel. I'm pretty sure that in Hebrew it's called an Omega because the shape of the thing that holds you resembles the Greek letter, but of course I could be wrong. I actually found a promotional movie for the place, made by a neighbor of ours, and there are some bits with footage of the Omega around 3 minutes in, if you'd like to see.
Anyway, the place was lovely, the comedian was pretty funny, the food qualified as fancy, and we enjoyed relaxing with friends. As an added bonus, I found a new kind of typo that I don't recall having seen before. Generally in life, you come across words that are misspelled because letters that sound similar are incorrectly interchanged. Here, I found a letter swapped for one that looked similar, rather than sounding similar. Maybe the difference isn't that big of a deal, but I was amused:
I mean, we can forgive them the missing silent e on "rop" - a lot of intelligent adults I know can't quite get the hang of silent e (believe it or not). But swapping a g for a y? Now that's a high-class typo.
Funny story - a few years back, when my oldest daughter learned to read English, we found her reading everything she could find, and of course it made us very proud. One day, she came up to me and asked, "Why is everything made in China?"
Ah, she didn't know just how profound a question she was asking.
We really need to be grateful for this abundance of non-local products - they provide such a treasure trove of humor. My younger daughter's birthday wasn't too long ago, and she got a truly nifty gift - a sort of roulette game, in which players take turns spinning a top amongst marbles that then are knocked into holes with varying points. It really is fun, and she opened it and began playing so quickly that I almost didn't get a chance to see the package. But, good girl that she is, she kept the box for storage, and so I got a good look when we took it out to play the next time. I actually got my first impression from the side, before we had even taken it off of the shelf:
That was amusing. Not so special, but amusing. It in no way prepared me for the crazy potential on the front, though. Just wait, it's coming.
See, it's getting better already. This isn't just a game, it's a funny game. The "first grade product" seemed perfectly reasonable to me at first - it's an age recommendation, right? Until, of course, I realized that it might be a declaration of quality... hmm... which is it? Tricky.
Now this is just childish humor, I know; some capitalization issues, a bit of metathesis, and a missing apostrophe aren't really that funny. But really, this is the promise we need to be most grateful for, since their "model" is:
Whoa! That kid is downright frightening! He (she?) seems to be calling out for help right here on the box - look what they've done to me! Please come and save me! Put my hair back!
And of course, the grand finale:
Here's hoping that things look up for China, and for all of us non-native English speaking countries...
I find that even now, after having lived here in Israel for so long, some basic things still take me by surprise and make me laugh. I don't mean important things, like the multitudes of political parties, or working Sundays. It's the dumb little things that get to me. For example, we often mistakenly assume that we're familiar with the produce section here in our supermarkets. You know, after you learn the name of an item, you figure that it probably translates over to whatever had that name back in the old country. But that's not necessarily so.
This was brought clear to me this past month, when I walked into our local grocery store. I'm pretty familiar with d'laat, which we've bought as needed over the years. Pretty much any dictionary translates d'laat as pumpkin. So it's a pumpkin, right? The thing is, you can't usually buy a whole pumpkin here - it comes cut up, and has a lighter, less orange color to it. That's okay, it didn't ever bother me. Generally I use it for soup, and you certainly don't need a whole pumpkin as an ingredient for vegetable soup. Anyway, I walked in, and found two pumpkins that hadn't yet had the chance to be cut up:
Those don't really look like good old Halloween pumpkins, do they? Oh, well.
By the way, this week's edition of Haveil Havalim is up, and you can see it here. Haveil Havalim defines itself as: a carnival of Jewish blogs -- a weekly collection of Jewish & Israeli blog highlights, tidbits and points of interest collected from blogs all around the world. Enjoy!
Here's an item found by one of my Chicago correspondents: my dear brother Avy. On my recent visit to the States, he had a photo of this ready to show me as I arrived at the airport. Pretty impressive.
I eventually saw this in the store - not too surprisingly, it was in the fancy imported foods section, and is not a native American product. It seems to be British, as we might also understand from the "biscuit" reference.
I was, of course, mildly tempted to open one and take a bite, just to see if the Yorkie Police would appear to arrest me. I managed to resist, and instead looked a bit more closely at the wrapper. The thing that somehow grabbed my attention the most was the small purse that this stick figure is holding. Apparently that's the international symbol for "girl," one hand on her hip and the other clutching a handbag.
There are plenty of snide things that I could say about the Yorkie bar, but I think I'll leave this one open for free association...
