Well it turns out Doon was spot on....I did get bored of blogging (and in 3 weeks not 3 months...must be something to do with my fast metabolism).

Truth is I am lazy and busy in equal measure. I am flying to London on Thursday to begin World Cup preparations, I hope Sven will send a car to the airport. Me, Lior and Shay have got 2 days in England to buy 2,000 plain t-shirts (we're thinking Commercial Road, East London) before heading to Berlin via Paris and Amsterdam to pick up workers and supplies.

Berlin will be my home for 7 weeks (with a brief interlude back to UK for the auspicious occasion of the Marriage of Paul and Clem).

Keep your fingers crossed that everyone in Berlin is desperate to buy Che Guevera t-shirts and sparkling temporary tattoos!

Some more pictures for you. Don't worry the M16 isn't loaded! It does take a bit of getting used to seeing teenagers on the streets and buses with machine guns slung over their shoulder. Incidentally, if a soldier loses his gun he faces 7 years in jail!

One other thing that helps pass the time at the moment if I am in a mischeivous mood with Jo-Eva:

I show Jo-Eva a picture of a butterfly and she immediately say's "parpar" (hebrew for butterfly). I tell her, "no it's a butterfly". She gets really wound up, "no Daddy, it's parpar". "Butterfly", "no parpar", "butterfly", "parpar"...after about the third time she goes mental and I relent! We've started the same routine with "flag", "no daddy, degel". It helps my hebrew and Jo-Eva's english!

Hello,

Well I haven't done a blog for a couple of day's and already my pessemistic buddy Doon has predicted I'm bored of it! I was disappointed I couldn't upload more pictures but am still considering stumping up for the full version where I can post pictures galore...UPDATE, got full version hence pictures!

There hasn't been too much joy in the Hughes household this week due to ill health. On Thursday night Jo-Eva started vomiting and had a temperature of nearly 40c...after an unsettled nights sleep the fever relented but, until this day she has got chronic diahorreah. I took her to the doctor on Sunday and she was diagnosed with acute gastroentiritis. She isn't allowed back to the nursery until the diahorreah has passed so I have been at home with her and have missed all the Ulpan this week.

Last night the inevitable happened...Daddy started puking and running a temperature. Here we go. Since then, until this very minute, I have been unable to keep anything in my stomach for more than 10 minutes. It is quite something when you drink a cup of tea and then squirt it out your arse while it is still warm! Soda water comes out bubbly!!!!

It's a bummer (excuse the pun) that we are not feeling good (Keren is so far unaffected) as we are in the middle of another Israeli holiday. Today is Rememberance Day for all the soldiers who have died since Israel was formed and that is followed, tomorrow, by Israel's Independence Day (independence from the British Mandate). Every apartment in our street has Israeli flags flying outside for Independence Day. Tonight everyone goes out onto the streets and there are firework displays all over the country and tomorrow (bear in mind our family stomach family dilemmas) everybody goes to the park and does bbq's. I am hoping that another 12hrs will be enough so I can tuck in and replenish my body with nutrients!

As I type this Keren is having a nap while Jo-Eva is playing with her new best friend...Tzavit. She is 20 and lives next door to us. She is a Leiutenant in the Army but is home for the holidays. Every time she comes back from the Army she brings Jo-Eva a present and happily takes her off our hands for half an hour! She also lends me her nagila. She grew up in the house next door and remembers Keren's grandfather (who's place we now live in) giving her sweets when she was a child.

I spent 2 days this week trying to open a bank account. I first went to our nearest bank and after explaining myself was told the computers weren't working and I should try the bank across the road. I did and was also told the computers weren't working. This seemed a bit suspicious. I returned the next day and approached the Manager of Bank A, this time he told me that I am not entitled to open an account because I am not Israeli. I challenged this and very quickly he retracted that statement and went back to "the computers aren't working"...come back in a few days. I went to the bank across the road...same thing. The reason for this is very clear, customer service is appalling in Israel and the bank clerk basically cannot be arsed to have to sit with me, talking in English and filling out dozens of forms when she could spend her time moaning to her colleagues. Finally I went to Bank Hapoalim, a further 5 minute walk from where we live but a much larger bank and after 90 minutes I managed to open an account. I would list the following places as examples of where you see the darker side of Israeli life: Bank, Post Office, Road, Doctors. Anywhere involving a queue...things get ugly very quickly!

My local football team, Bnei Yehuda, are in the Israeli Cup Final. When I say local, I mean their ground is about 100m from our place (just behind my Ulpan). If they win the final they will qualify for the UEFA Cup for the first time in their history. My friend Lior has got me and Danny tickets for the match which is being played in the Israeli National Stadium a week today.

OK, I gotta scoot to make dinner...not that I will feel much benefit from it! I hope to have signed up to the full version of this blog site by the next time I write so I can bombard you with pictures. And just as I have typed this paragraph a very wierd thing has happened. I heard a noise and looked round to see a cat running for the door with a piece of the fish I took out of the freezer for dinner!!

Yalla....

Hi,

I forgot to bring my camera with me to the Pitta Porter today which was a real shame. I went with Danny (my father in law) and Jo-Eva and all the usual suspects were there...including Gad Tsabari. It would have made a great picture. We had a good time.

Anyway...here are 2 more pictures....one of the art in our apartment which stops every new visitor in their tracks, such is its beauty! It's a great conversation starter for any newcomers as it is a picture, developed from my own photographs, of the beach that Keren and I met on (Palolem, Canacona, India).

The second picture is a long distant shot of our neighbours...2 Russian sisters who spend a riddiculous amount of time claiming "achoti zona", "my sister is a whore". They are mental but with good hearts! Anyone who knows anything about an area of Russia called Buhara please let me know as all the nutters in my neighbourhood seem to hail from there!

Hope you are all well.

Andrew

OK, got lot's to blog about, Disneyland style supermarkets (chocolate section mock Hanzel and Gretel House, beer section mock pub, sanitory towels section...near the back) and total trainer/t-shirt bargains (buy any pair of trainers at about £30 and get any other pair for £5!).

But...it is Thursday night and that is the Israeli equivalent of Friday night i.e. the weekend starts here so I haven't got time to type! So...

...I got interviewed for the BBC and might be on the BBC Interactive Website by next week. Ulpan is cool, Pitta Porter is cool and all is well. Here is a link to the website of Ricardo Puscetti (he met his wife 12yrs ago at a clown workshop in London...as you do...), my Brazillian classmate, he leaves Israel next week and I will miss him:

http://www.lumeteatro.com.br/english/index.htm

And here are pictures of the Ulpan...I'll update again soon....

I'm back in front of the computer again and itching to blog! Firstly a big thank you to everyone who offered a comment on my first blog...it's given me the encouragement I needed to carry on! I was quite surprised that people from Brasil would be interested in the mundanities of my life but I am very grateful.

One lesson I have already learnt about blogging is that you have got to fill your time with something if you want to be able to write. Since the last blog I had an uneventful evening playing a lot of online chess while Keren watched a film. Rock 'n' roll huh! But I was in the Ulpan again today and it does give my life some much needed variety!

All the same characters from my class mentioned in yesterdays blog were in attendance plus another Lena (this time from Ukraine) and a different teacher (Irit doesn't teach on Tuesdays I was told which makes me wonder how many Tuesdays I have missed coz I had never seen this new teacher before and I have been going to Ulpan since the start of March!). I was immediately presented with 2 pieces of text and told I would be reading them to the whole School at 10am as part of the Holocaust Day memorial.

Next thing I know Ricardo from Brazil is putting together his claranet and the class is practicing the song we are performing for the school...all of this got sorted while I was at home waiting for the BBC to call yesterday. On that subject she didn't call again today so I fear my wit and insight may never grace bbbnews.com :-( I have sent her a link to this blog though as she took up 2 paragraphs of it yesterday!

So, while Ricardo plays his claranet the class attempt to sing a hebrew song...total and unequivical disaster. Plain awful. It seemed riddiculous to think we were going to attempt to sing this in front of 70 people in just 2hrs time. There were 3 of us from our class selected to read and light a candle and we were asked to attend a rehearsal at 9am...this suited me as reading English is a whole lot easier than trying to discuss which season I prefer and why in hebrew!

The following is the 2 passages I was asked to read (I should explain each passage was read out in Hebrew, then in Russian and then in English and was written by the Director of the Ulpan who is a well meaning, if slightly hysterical, woman in 60's):

"There is no way in any language to properly describe the Holocaust, neither in books nor in movies, in pictures, nor in music. History does not recall such atrocities on such a scale: six million Jews murdered, including one and a half million children who were massacred according to a precise systematic plan. This was the Nazi program to solve the Jewish problem - the Final Solution."

"In 1939 there were eight and a half million Jews in Europe. The Nazis exterminated 72% of the Jewish population in Romania, Hungary, France, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Austria, Poland, Holland, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria and many more countries. And where was the world? The world pretended that it had neither heard nor seen a thing. The Jewish population was not important enough for anyone."

At the rehearsal the Director was encouraging us to say every word with "20 kilo's of emotion attached"...fair enough, she likes drama. But I had a slight problem, I didn't totally agree with the sentiment of the final 2 sentences. What to do? Do I refuse to read them or raise my concerns...I did mention the Director is prone to hysteria didn't I? Do I simply read them and stop being pretenscious? In the end I opted to say nothing until the ceremony itself and then apply a very subtle edit, the words I actually spoke at the ceremony, in relation to the last 2 lines were:

"It seemed that the world had pretended it had neither seen nor heard a thing. To many it felt that the Jewish population was not important to anyone." This left my conscience clear. While the horror of the Holocaust is undeniable, to suggest no-one cared or tried to do anything doesn't fit with my understanding of that piece of history. Certainly Britain and America could have done more. Bombing the train tracks that lead to Aushwitz would have been a start.

The rest of the ceremony was really emotional, we looked at pictures of the Ghetto's in Warsaw and Budapest as 1,000's upon 1,000's of Jews were being herded onto trains bound for the gas chambers. It remains hard to imagine 1,500,000 children being gassed under the auspices of a nation. Some people at the ceremony were crying. Anabel my German friend attended and also read a piece of text in English, she felt quite shocked.

To lighten the mood my class was called to perform our song...oh dear! From my point of view I didn't know the words or the tune and I had already done my reading so I felt I should be exempt...quite the opposite as it turned out. Those from my class sat in the middle and back of the hall kept their heads down when called while the 3 of us at the front (having been told to sit there by the Director) were named and called up to sing...oh shit! There we were, me, Anabel (also no clue on words or tune), Ludmila (slightly closer to being able to sing) and Ricardo on claranet..facing a hall of 70 people. It was as bad as you might imagine, I hummed while Anabel stiffled laughter and our teacher did her best to sound like 15 students and not just herself singing.

Since finishing the Ulpan for the day I have done very little but I am waiting for Keren to get home so I can go to my local pub to see my friend Lior. When I say "local pub" I am of course not being accurate! Israel does have plenty of pubs but, Schunat HaTikva has precisely none! I have had to improvise! I drink bottled beer (brought there myself or from the shop opposite) at what I call the "Pitta Porter". There are 2 reasons why I have named this market stall with side bench so.

First it is primarily a pitta and lahouch stall. But it does have a bench and some high chairs where people sit and drink, eat and chat. 2nd, it is on the corner of Tel Aviv's best food market and 5mins from my apartment. Those reading this who knew my life in London will see the similarities with a certain pub on the corner of Borough Food Market in London Bridge...The Market Porter.
http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/pub_of_the_year/
I go to the Pitta Porter regularly and am never disappointed...there is always something happening there!

I need to go see Lior today because we are desperately trying to secure some accommodation for ourselves and our workers in Berlin in advance of the World Cup. We have got 2 market stalls on the Kudamm Strasse (Berlin's answer to the Champs D'Elyses) and will be selling T-Shirts and temporary tattoos to footballs fans for 33 days in June and July. I will try and blog from there aswell! But getting the accomodation sorted is proving a real hassle. Oh, and he also has some stuff from India he wants me to check...

I hope to blog lots more about the Pitta Porter and what goes on around Schunat HaTikva in the coming days but in the meantime, anyone who is interested, google a chap called Gad Tsabari (spelling of surname can differ slightly)...he's Lior's relative and a regular at the Pitta Porter...very interesting man. Told Spielberg to kiss his arse...google him to understand why...

That's all for now folks...comments welcome.
Cheers
Andrew

OK...this is pure practice! But knowing my luck with IT it will end up on the Blog forever and I won't know how to delete or change it..."ma la'asot" (Hebrew for c'est la vie, what to do etc..etc...).

OK, well what to say? Help? Anyone got any ideas? Nope, me neither so I am gonna be really dull and simply explain what I have done so far today. It is 2:45pm in Israel.

On weekdays I get up around 7:30am (note: weekdays in Israel includes Sunday, a fact I still struggle to come to terms with...no time for hangovers, roast dinners or afternoon snoozes). This morning I was awake before Jo-Eva (my 2 yr old daughter for those who don't know) which might have meant I had time for a luxorious shower but sadly I forgot to put the boiler on the night before and therefore had to dance and maneouvre around a gushing stream of ice cold water. 30 secs later I was out. Brrrrrrrr!

Today my wife (from here on in known as Mrs X....sorry, Keren) started work at 9am so she took Jo-Eva to the nursery around the corner and I proceeded straight to the Ulpan (Hebrew Language School) where I study from 8am until 1pm. There are many many things I could blurt out about the Ulpan but I am going to stick to my plan of just describing things as they happen each day. So, in the class today was (in no particular order) Tania (Ukraine), Lena (Uzbekistan), Svetlana and her husband Mihail (Ukraine), Iliya and his wife Galeena (Ukraine), Annia (Russia), Ludmila (Russia), Jenia (Russia), Auxanna (Ukraine), Isra (Palestinian Territories...more on that later...there's an even thornier issue that come up this morning which I want to talk about in this entry), Ricardo (Brazil), Andrew (that's me, England) and Anabel (Germany).

So first issue in the class this morning was the fact that tomorrow is Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Ulpan will be having a ceremony. There is a tradition of lighting candles in remembrance and Irit (my teacher) went around the class asking if one of the Ukranians would light a candle in the ceremony to remember the Ukrainian Jews who were killed, if one of the Russians would light a candle to remember all the Russian soldiers and likewise if I would light a candle for the British soldiers who were killed. But what I was more conscious of as Irit is explaining about various national Holocaust events in Israel is that I am sat next to a German. Hmmmh. Bit wierd. Irit took this matter head on. She did her best to make Anabel feel good (I should mention Anabel is only 25 and is about as far from a Nazi as you could get), but it was made clear that there would be no lighting candles for German's who lost their lives in the 2nd World War. While no blame was mentioned Irit enquired what German kids are taught about the Holocaust in school and implored Anabel never to forget what the German's did...but in a nice way!

I chatted with Anabel during the break about this and she said she thinks she will give the ceremony a miss tomorrow as she would feel a bit self-conscious as the only German in attendance. But she also said she hasn't encountered any anomosity against her in Israel because she is German and that the only negative comments she has heard have come from her friends and family in Germany who suggested "you can't go to Israel, they must really hate us over there". I fear if German's adopted the approach of only going to countries where they are popular as a race...well, ummm, errrr, Lufthansa might struggle to make a profit!

Anyways, I ducked out of the Ulpan early today because, very exciting, I was expecting a call from a lady from the BBC! I sent in an article about life in Tel Aviv as I live less than 1km from the recent suicide bomb and she emailed to ask if she could interview for a piece on the BBC News website. While waiting for her call I did a bit of googling on her...the results were fascinating! She has 2 news reports which you can watch online via the BBC website, one about the former President of Peru who is in fact a Japanese citizen and is wanted in Peru for human rights abuses but the Japanese won't deport him; and the other, and this is wierd, was a report about some Beluga Whales in an aquarium who have been taught how to blow the underwater equivalent of smoke rings using scuba divers air tanks. This woman is clearly well qualified to interview me I thought!

About an hour ago Miss BBC emailed me to say she is suddenly really busy and could she call to interview me tomorrow instead, but in the meantime could I send her some pictures of Schunat Hatikva (my local 'hood). I was a little disappointed especially as, with my big mouth, I had told lots of people about the interview and will now have to spend tonight and tomorrow saying "nah, she was too busy today"...oh well. Every cloud has a silver lining and on this occasion you are reading the silver lining, in the absence of a BBC interview I decided to investigate blogging...and you have just read my first attempt. Email me with any thoughts, comments or questions. I'm off to collect Jo-Eva from the nursery now. Bom Shankar. Shalom. Andrew