...we didn't have plates, so we had to beg, borrow, and steal...

Sixty-four.  An even number and a square.  The year in which the Ford Mustang was introduced, and also, the age of Israel.  Israel has survived 64 years and is still going strong.  Leading up to the independence day celebration, Yom HaAtzmaut, are several other days that are an important part to the history and the future of Israel.

Yom Hazikaron Ceremony
Outside the Old City Walls

About a week and a half ago, we remembered those who perished in and were affected by the Holocaust.  Yom HaShoa, Holocaust Memorial Day, is honored with ceremonies both in the evening and throughout the following day.  At 10am, there is a nationwide siren and everyone stops what they are doing, stands, and remembers those affected by the Holocaust.  There are plenty of stories from people driving on busy highways: as soon as the siren sounds, and even a bit before, cars pull over and people get out to stand and remember.  I was not on a busy road.  I was not even around people.  I was alone in the lab pipetting.   I had been in my own bubble for the past couple hours, but as soon as the siren sounded, I was jarred out of my focus and stood up.  I cannot tell you what the rest of the campus felt like, but for me, being alone and experiencing that minute might have been even more meaningful than being in a busy place and looking around to watch as people paused.

Yom Hazikaron Ceremony
The little lights are our candles

The following week (this past Wednesday) was Yom HaZikaron, the memorial day for fallen soldiers.  The night before, there were ceremonies throughout Israel.  I went to a ceremony in the Sultan's Pool just outside of the Old City walls.  There were speakers, musicians, movies, and another siren.  This time I was surrounded by thousands of people and also by several pretty busy roads.  As was expected, everyone paused, and afterward, the ceremony officially began.  As we came into the outdoor stadium, we had been given electric candles, and to open the ceremony, the whole stadium "lit" their candles and together remembered the soldiers that had fallen fighting for their country and our country.  The ceremony lasted over three hours, and I am proud to say that I understood almost all of it (so Israeli!).  At last year's ceremony at the military cemetery, Har Herzl, I barely understood a thing.

The following morning was another siren.  I was in the lab again, but this time, I was in the computer work room instead of in the secluded corner lab.  The siren sounded and my fellow labmates and I stood.  At the end of the siren, we all sat back down as if nothing happened; a spoon clanked in a hot cup of coffee prepared a few minutes prior, an email was sent, a document saved.  Only a few minutes after, once we wrapped up the tasks we were in the middle of, did we discuss the siren.  We discussed it not in a memorial way but in a logistical way.  There was an Israeli, a Russian immigrant, and me, an American immigrant in the room, and we tried to brainstorm if any other country existed that had the infrastructure for nation-wide memorial sirens.  In the US we have weather sirens in some places, in Europe there are out of date WWII sirens, but in Israel, where these sirens are necessary to save lives, they are also here to help us remember.

 

We remember the lives that were and the lives that are, and as Yom 
HaZikaron comes to a close, Yom HaAtzmaut comes in.  Just like in the States, the traditions involve drinking beer and barbequing. A lot.  There were also fireworks, lots of blue and white, oh and did I mention barbequing?   My friends and I had a rooftop bbq the night of Independence Day and the following day we had a HUGE bbq in the park, along with the rest of Israel.  Along with our burgers and wings and hot dogs and kebabs, we also got to see the air show; beg, borrow, and steal plates and cups from our picnicking neighbors (the potluck might not have been so lucky in terms of utensils, but we had a ton of food!); and relax in the sun while celebrating our new country.  The whole day was so Israeli!


After a bit of time off from work, a bit of hiking, and a ton of eating, I am back into the swing of things in the lab.  I'll keep you posted!

...we were fighiting, but she was still calling me a cutie...

Israel is supposed to be technologically advanced.  Per capita, we produce more scientific papers than any other country, hold more patents than any other country, have more museums than any other country, and have more biotech start-ups than any other country.  This country invents and produces so many things that we (the rest of the world) rely on every day, from the most advanced air flight security to Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, from ingestible video cameras to revolutionary drip irrigation systems, from cell phones to innovative software, from large-scale solar panel networks to pop-rocks chocolate.  There is no shortage of innovation, yet within the country, there is often a dichotomy; even thought we create all of these cool things, the technology we actually use seems to be lacking.  Here is an example of a technological faux pas that seems so intuitive and simple to fix yet is really just a big headache—so Israeli.

Taken from this site

In Israel, the public transportation network is pretty functional.  There is a good mix of intra- and inter- city transportation, and I, for one, am quite reliant on the bus system.  Recently, the entire country (which includes several different transportation companies working under the Ministry of Transportation) switched from paper tickets to an electronic system.  The system has already been in practice the past several years in Tel Aviv.  Now with one electronic card, the RavKav (translates to:"many lines" or "master of the line"), works on Egged buses, Dan buses, the light rail, and maybe even other things that I don't know about.  You simply load money onto the card on any of the countries public buses: you can load a ten punch for Jerusalem intra-city buses and another one for the company in Tel Aviv and a five punch for the Jerusalem to Bet Shemesh buses and a month pass the Haifa bus network.  And usually there isn't a problem. 

Taken from this site

My life isn't that complicated.  I just have a month pass for the Jerusalem transportation network on my RavKav.  Or at least I did.  Last week, I left my house in the morning, got on a bus, got to work, and worked the whole day.  No problems there.  When I left work, I was off to meet a friend for dinner.  It involved taking a bus and the light rail.  Both things were possible and included in my monthly pass on my RavKav.  When I got on the bus, though, I put my RavKav in the little machine that reads the chip and tells the driver I have a month pass in there.  And nothing happened.  I didn't get a yellow light ("wait, please"), a green light ("good to go") or even a red light ("denied").  I got nothing.  Luckily the bus driver was in a good mood.  He said that normally he would have to make me pay for the bus ride, but because it was only a few stops and because our final destination was the Central Bus Station (CBS), the place where I needed to go to get this fixed, he let me ride along for "free."  I texted my friend to say that I'd be a bit late and went into the CBS to see what the deal was.

At the RavKav customer service station at the CBS, there is one of those card readers like on the bus.  It’s kind of funny looking sitting there on the desk, but it's there, and my card still didn't work in it.  The lady who was helping me asked me if I had my receipt from my month pass purchase which is half the size of a playing card, flimsy, and from almost three weeks ago.  I said that I didn't.  Apparently if I had saved the slip of paper, they would have simply loaded a month pass onto a new card and saved everyone a lot of fuss.  Because I didn't, a bit of a balagan (craziness) ensued.

If you don’t have the receipt of the things stored on your RavKav—in my case, a month pass for Jerusalem—then you must re-buy what you already bought.  This will go into the system.  You must also turn in your broken, old card.  It will be sent to Tel Aviv so the data on the chip can be extracted.  If the data on the chip matches your new purchase which should be in the system, you will be issued a refund in the next three to five months, by which time, you will have already left your current apartment, gone through three more RavKavs, and bought a car.

It seems like an annoying process for everyone involved, especially because the clerk said that RavKavs break a lot and there are boxes upon boxes of old cards to be sent to Tel Aviv.  This wouldn't be so Israeli if the story ended here, though.  After the woman explained the above procedure to me, she began the process of closing my first RavKav account and opening my new one.  In the computer system, there is a copy of my ID card, contact information, my RavKav number, AND a notice of the last use of the card.  Mine said 18.04.2012, Month Pass.  That was the same morning, and clearly if I was using a month pass that morning, it meant that I had bought a month pass in April.  Thus, there was proof that I had purchased a pass for the month, and it should therefore be easy to transfer a new one to my card without going through the above balagan.

But it wasn't.  In this state-of-the-art, electronic ticketing system in which there are no options to make online loading purchases or log in to an account to see if I have punches left (no such accounts exist), there is also no way to keep my account and simply change the RavKav associated with it.  My whole account had to be closed.  I had to have my ID rescanned, take a new picture, and buy a new month pass.  I still didn't understand why a scrap of paper (the receipt) was necessary, though.  Even if she had to close my account and reopen a brand new one when she issued me a new RavKav, and even if none of my details or purchase history transferred to the new account, couldn't she use the fact that I used a month pass this morning, a visual, technological receipt stored in space and seen on the previous computer screen as proof that she could rightfully load a new one onto my new card without me buying a second one and waiting three years for a refund.  We went back and forth a bit.  It was so Israeli when we were more or less fighting, but she kept throwing in the words mami and chamuda, terms of endearment.  She and I both knew it was a dumb system, but there was nothing either of us could do about it.  She proceeded to open the new, blank account, I proceeded to be grumpy and take a HORRIBLE picture for my new RavKav (it will only last a few months anyways, right?), and off I went.

I had to board a bus to buy the new month pass and then get off so that I could take a light rail to meet my friend (silly bureaucracy), but luckily, a bus driver on a break before his route started let me on to buy the pass, gave me a smile, and I was on m way…until my phone rang.  It was the clerk.  She opened her scanner for the next person and found my ID still sitting there.  In my rush to meet my friend for dinner I forgot to ask for it, so back into the CBS, through security up three flights of stairs, and down the hall I went.  I got my ID, returned down the hall, down the stairs, out the door, and across the street.  I help my breath as a boarded the light rail and swiped my card, but it worked, and I was finally on my way!