More Observations

There are some things which, despite my fervent efforts to understand in terms of an enlightened society, nevertheless make Israel look like a third world country.

Why don't people here clean up after their dogs? I can't begin to communicate how bad this problem is - as far as I have witnessed it. To enhance the picture for my faithful reader allow me to say that I do not live in a slump and my neighborhood is far from bad. I live jut a few blocks from giant high rises and indeed the official tallest building in the middle east. There is also a fancy shopping mall nearby. So why, oh why, dear lord, is there dog crap ON the walkway to my apartment? Why do people let their dogs shit where they have to pass to get to their apartment? Why let a dog crap in the center of the sidewalk? Not even the side of the sidewalk. It's almost as if they try to have their dogs crap in the most inconvenient places. Of course, none of this would be an issue if people cleaned up after their dogs but Israelis don't have the concept of curbing dogs.

Why are there stray cats everywhere? I once read a top ten list on the signs that you're no longer a recent immigrant. One of the lines was that you longer find the stray cats cute. I am at that point. Having never been much of a pet person to begin with I am now starting to freak out about the abundance of stray cats. They may as well be monkeys and we may as well be in India.

But there are bright sides to this wacky place!

The bank gave me a "new immigrant" package whereby I pay no fees of any kind for an entire year. I also get three free check books! To understand this you have to be aware that banks here place fees on everything - not just ATM withdrawals but also on every deposit you make, every check you write and every withdrawal you make. So I get a year of no fees. Pretty cool. I can even use other banks' ATMs.

And finally, MTV and VH1 in Israel have little or no VJ's, commercials, or programming of any kind besides videos. They are 99% videos. Just videos. One after another. Just videos upon videos. They are arranged vaguely into blocks of programming but the point remains that you can put on MTV and just sit back and enjoy. Some of the programming includes "Then and Now," which shows an old and then recent video from the same artist; "Mash," which literally mixes two different videos together into one weird amalgam; and "Top Ten" which shows ten videos in random categories such as Action Videos and Big Budgets. They also occasionaly dedicate entire weekends to specific artists or concepts: Christina, Live performances, etc.