New injury for the New Year

Can't type much, hand hurts. I do have a picture of the gash on my right hand but figured the squeamish might not want to see it. Once again I have had stitches in my right hand, three more bringing the life long total up to eleven.

Nothing as serious as last time, but slicing the fleshy "below the thumb" area on both of my hands with as an apple slicer split as I used it while trying to make apple crumble a few hours before Rosh Hashana earned me a visit to Terem (the emergency clinic).

Went back to work today after watching Series 2 of Lost in a day, quite frankly the house got dull and even though I am pretty useless at work, the Lod scenery really appealed this morning. We'll see about the rest of the week.

One other major update, after much nagging from many people, I managed to join Facebook. Yey?

שנה טובה

May everyone have a sweet, good year, and days of peace and success.

What I do at Work

Due to the confidentiality agreement, I can't really say what I do, but it does involve a very big database, occasional kick about, and all sorts of colloquial office-isms. Right now we're waiting for Moshiach to eat lunch, later we'll have a meeting in the Goldfish bowl.

What really matters is the fact that I really enjoy my job.

When we reached a significant, and secret, landmark, the evening was marked with an office BBQ, the photos of which you can find here.

War Crimes

As I did the morning news crawl, a BBC headline caught my attention As yet, I have not had a chance to crawl through the articles, but I did want to share this screenshot.

BBC Article
NY Times
Newsweek
The Independent
Amnesty International

לכל מקום שאני הולך אני הולך לא"י

If I were to blog about every instance of how small this world really is, I would probably need another blog to document the stories. No matter how easy it is to keep in touch, it's not so easy to keep in touch with everyone. People drift apart, lifestyles change, time zones prove to be a barrier, or sometimes you just know you will go separate ways and go for a beer when you end up in the same place again.

Last night I went for goodbye drinks for a mate who has flown back to the UK to carry on with university (will miss you man, come back soon), he too is outgoing and has a large number of friends and the bar we were at was packed. Among the crowd were friends I knew from the UK, someone I met last week that reads this (Hi Sabrena -here's the promised mention), and a load of students from the Hebrew U summer ulpan, one of whom had a very similar sounding name. This similar sounding name is a guy I went to Primary School with back in Brighton and haven't seen since 1993 when he moved to Scotland and I moved to Manchester, and we seem to have a number of common friends.

For Jews all over the world, Israel is the focus. For some, the coincidental meetings are nothing more than chance, others may say this is the fulfilling of the prophecy of in gathering of the exiles, and to be honest, last night made me think of the latter for the first time.

You don't need to be religious, orthodox or even care to have a connection to the land, in fact many of my friends feel coming to Israel makes them less religious, but there is a common bond and a common mission, to live in Israel and Jews from all over the world are coming home. If for some reason you're not planning on moving, now is the time to start considering it.

ושבו בנים לגבולם

For a while I have been mentally composing my farewell blog world post, then a week like this comes along and I have many and "only in Israel" moment or something blog worthy to share. Not having a working computer at home right now makes it more difficult to share my news with the world, but I'll try summarise while I boil eggs in the background.

Sunday was a day of bureaucratic monsters, sorting things out with the university and my ishur [permission] for study from the army was not so straight forward. By Sunday I will know what my plans are for the coming year, or at least I hope. How many times have I said that? One great thing did come out of Sunday, I met a reader. It was lovely to meet S, who studies at Hebrew U ulpan with my mate Josh2, and she gave me some very positive feedback about my blogging and may even have given me the wind I needed to carry on posting. Aliya is difficult, and I wish you Mazal Tov on getting here and the best of luck with it all, call if you need anything.

The work week was long. The product I am working on goes to beta on Monday and there is a lot to do. Not getting into the office at all on Sunday did not help either, but I caught up with a week of long hours. Never before have I seen Lod before 8am! I enjoy my job, I really do, it's another one of those small blessings that could easily go un-noticed if I didn't look around.

As Thursday came around, I was falling asleep at my desk, the twelve hour shift I pulled on Wednesday was followed by a commute, four hour sleep, commute and return to work, but as the weekend rolled in on Thursday afternoon, I headed to Tel Aviv for the Hafgana for our missing boys.

It is close to seventy days since the first kidnapping and the world is doing nothing to aid the return of the soldiers. It reminds me of the UN video tape of the last kidnapping that wasn't released until faces were disguised beyond recognition. Standing in Kikar Rabin at a peaceful demonstration gave me time to think about the land I live in. A country where tens of thousands will give up their evening for three young men. A country that cries the same tears bleeds from the same vein. ושבו בנים לגבולם. I have uploaded a handful of pictures from the demonstration and you can check them out at www.BritishYosef.com

A tiring week has been punctuated by all sorts of good news, so Mazal Tov to David Orenstien, Sharon Widdowfield, Natalie Taylor and Devorah Leah Efune, their "s.o.'s" (and families) who all got engaged recently. In addition, the long wait is over and it is a pleasure to wish dotcodotil and his wife a hearty mazal tov on the birth of their first born daughter, Yakira.

May this good news soon be followed by the return of *all* our soldiers that are held in captitvity, and may you have a Shabbat Shalom.