Thursday, October 29, 2009

Swirling Thoughts #74 –small nostalgic foods and gross creatures, small vs. big emotions, and my not so small anymore determined activist

Strawberry sighting!
In the bigger, meaner makolet. 25 shekels for approximately 15 strawberries. That’s almost 50 cents/strawberry.

I was there in search of pereg – poppy seeds. It was the fourth store I visited this week in search of pereg. I can’t wrap my brain around the shop first, menu second concept. Except for strawberries. I know not to put anything on the menu that calls for strawberries.

I’m spending half my cooking time making conversions – grams to ounces and cups – and the other half approximating (for example, margarine comes in a 200 gram block but 1 cup of margarine is 226 grams). As for Fahrenheit to Celsius, I cheat with an oven thermometer.

Bob just called to me from outside and asked if I wanted to see the fattest slug ever. You know I do – I was outside before he finished his sentence! It was pretty fat but I think I’ve photographed fatter.

There is no like. Only love.
When I was in first grade and learning to write I wanted to write a card to my mom’s hairdresser. I didn’t want to ask her for help but I didn’t know how to spell ‘like’. So I wrote:

Dear Seymour,
I love you.
‘Lisa.

I gave it to him even though I was embarrassed that I had overstated my affection. And I never forgot about it – not when I learned to spell ‘like’ and not even to this day. The man I told I loved even though I only liked him.

We learned numbers and time in ulpan today. And more about love. I pushed my teacher to give me the secret words to distinguish my love for my husband from my love for sanvichim. I insisted there were degrees of affection and that while I might like her cooking, I love my mom’s cooking. How could I ever make such a subtle distinction using only one word? She smiled and said in Israel everybody loves everything and everybody. There is no like here! Only love.

Speaking of love, I’d like to add Stevie Wonder to the list of artists Israeli’s really truly love.

Activism
Bob’s working on his platform for when he runs for mayor of Efrat – there will be an El Al style tax (the legend is that El Al has to pay passengers if its flights out of Ben Gurion are delayed) on shopkeepers who keep customers waiting by trying to wait on all of them simultaneously. It would be called the “you’re being too nice and it’s making us all late tax.”

The economist in me is trying to figure out an incentive structure that would change the behavior of cashiers in supermarkets all over Israel so that instead of them sitting and watching while you struggle to bag your groceries before the groceries of the person behind you are completely comingled with your own, the cashier would actually see benefit from jumping out of her chair and helping you to bag, thus moving the whole line along. I have far to go on this.

In the meantime, Barbara is working on her own issue – one that she feels quite passionately about – school uniforms. Yesterday, upon seeing Becky’s new and extremely short haircut, one of Barbara’s friends told Becky she liked the haircut – that it expresses Becky’s personality. I thought that was right on the money and yet clever for a 4th grader. So when Barbara told me her principal is deciding whether or not to implement school uniforms starting this coming Purim and that she was writing a letter of protest to the principal, I fully expected a letter about individualism and expressing her personality through her clothing choices. So I asked her – what are you writing? And she answered – “I am telling the principal that the uniforms (long sleeved white collar shirts with a long black skirt and a pink sweater vest with black buttons) will be sweaty. And they will be ugly. And we will all look like Hello Kitty.”

...as long as i know i have LOVE i can make it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vxVyaYuGYE

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