Chebrew

Things in IS is good (well, maybe that's too broad a statement. I'm havin fun).

My three-step "slipperly slope" plan to wear shorts to work has been a success. Here's how it works:

First day: Wear khakis and short-sleeve button-up (try to act really American and formal)
Second day: Wear jeans and t-shirt (overcompensate for day 1)
Day 3 through rest of summer: wear shorts with short-sleeve button-up (implicitly convey idea of middle-ground)

Feel free to try it out (results outside of Israel may vary)

Besides being extremely comfortable as I go about my duties, I'm experiencing aspects of Israel I didn't even know were there. I've gotten to use my Chinese twice this week. First, I saw a guy doing Tai Chi in the park. Turns out he's a representative of the Chinese government in TA (although Jerusalem is Israel's official capital, many foreign governments don't recognize it as such due to Jerusalem's "disputed" status. Instead, they put their embassies in TA). I was excited to talk about Tai Chi, but he asked me where I learned Chinese and I replied, "Taiwan." He gave me a confused look and asked again, "where?" I repeated myself (4-5 more times, trying out different tones along the way) before he realized what "Taiwan" meant. At which point he said many things I did not understand. I gathered, though, that much of what he was saying concerned the fact that Taiwan is really China, that Taiwan and China should be one country, etc. No more Tai Chi was discussed.

The second time I used my Chinese was actually at work. There's a worker's rights organization in the building, and Israel, apparently, has over 60,000 Chinese workers. These workers pay $31,000 (American) to come here. They obviously don't have that much yuan, so they take out loans and send money back. Problems then abound, so on Tuesdays this organization opens its doors to Chinese speakers who come in to get free legal advice, report rights violations, and receive cups of water from friendly Harvard law students with poor Chinese skills.

Karmically, I think all this happened because I got Chinese food this weekend. If there's one lifestyle complaint I have (which I don't), it would be the Chinese food. Ironically, perhaps, the sushi hear is reputed to be some of the best outside of Asia. Speaking of global rankings, the 2010 Lonely Planet named Tel Aviv one of the the world's "Top Ten party cities" . Strangely, it doesn't mention anything about it's Tai Chi scene.