Category Israel & biblical history

Sep 24 2009

Put Hebrew support on Windows XP

(and Arabic and Persian and any other right-to-left language)

Have been doing this in my current job and also when I was at the UK branch of NICE Systems, an Israel based VOIP telecoms recording software company, mainly as one of the proprietary web based databases had to have the Hebrew support to operate.

These tips will come in handy if you want to set up a computer to Hebrew speaking staff or for someone learning languages at home.

To start with you will need your XP CD handy as Windows will need to fetch some files off it, if you have a computer like a Sony Viao/E machines/Packard Bell etc PC which don’t provide you with CDs to restore your operating system you will need to check your C: drive for a folder called i386.

Go to Control panel and Region and Language Options.   Tick the box that says “install files for complex script and right-to-left languages (including Thai)”

Click Apply and ok.   Windows will now ask you for your Windows CD, if you don’t have it, choose a path where your i386 folder is, ie: C:\i386.   Once done, you can go back to the “languages” tab and click Details and then choose Hebrew.

You can test now this by going to www.google.co.il

If you live in Israel don’t forget to set your time zone to Jerusalem GMT+2 hours.   To do this double click the clock in the bottom right hand corner and then click on time zones.

Don’t forget if you are or your users have two or more languages and you don’t want to use the little blue square language control icon on the taskbar, you can use Alt + Caps lock to switch keyboard layouts.  Some of my users need Russian as well as about 10-15% of Israelis originate from the ex-Soviet Union countries.

If you need a Hebrew keyboard, take a look on ebay, you can get sticker sets very cheap to give you the necessary symbols to type in Hebrew.

Sep 22 2009

Rosh Hashana & rain

This weekend during Rosh Hashana it rained. This maybe a fairly unpleasant dampener or our British soil is decidedly non trivial here in Israel with its desert climate. Some of the other volunteers say it has not rained since March. I would bet that many Christians and Jews in the land have prayed and God has answered on this turn of the new year, we are now in 5770 in the Jewish calender. I think it rained four times in total, once when I was taking a walk through the park which was actually quite refreshing and the gentle wind meant I was mostly dry but the time when I was home.

Got to eat apples and honey with pomegranate seeds, as this purpose made tray shows this a regular custom on this holiday.

apples and honey

apples and honey

I wanted to get to a Synagogue but didn’t really plan what I was doing that much as being tired and have difficulty sleeping lately, but did have bible study at a friends house and got to have a blow at a Shofar. Sunday went to my normal church and just met up with some people and had quite a honest debate about some of the more difficult challenges that us Christian volunteers from various different continents face here.

Aug 24 2009

prayer around Knesset

In view of the news about Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu appearing to side with the US about stopping building work in some of some of the disputed land, and I forgot to do my one hour prayer slot at work on tuesday, I decided to go prayer walking around the government buildings. I live not far from there but today I thought about taking a different route and went via a main road past one of the museums, after a mile or so I saw some very attractive gardens with neatly trimmed hedges next to the stone perimeter walls of the Knesset and there is a smell of lavender from the bushes, a glimpse of the days of Solomon in some ways. There was a road turning off here directly to the Knesset buildings themselves and approaching some booths with a barrier across the road, seeing a park on the left hand side I was not familiar with I ventured into there. Although its dark and not easy to see, I suddenly saw a family in a tent there, or to be more exact two or three tents with a large canvas over all of them, and a man and his two sons sitting outside. There were various cardboard signs in Hebrew and some in broken English they had been thrown out of their house by the government. I asked the man if he knew English, he called for his son who got his friend from another tent close by who looked about 15. This boy was telling me they had been living here for 2 months as their house was seized without saying any reason why. They didn’t say much why this was, I think they were living before in Jerusalem and not in any of the parts of the West Bank or in East Jerusalem. I asked if maybe I could get someone to interview them as this might made a good story for our magazine, the man said he would be ok with this. I went away sad for them, a little confused of why this community of people were living in a park. I told them Christians would be praying for them.

I went and finished my praying for Mr Netanyahu and the government and headed off back home.

Around the government building and in the hedges I have seen some spools of cassette tape wrapped around trees, I have seen this a fair bit back in Portsmouth, but there’s quite a bit of it around this city, I have been told its some kind of occultic practice, I don’t know who does it, but I always make a point of praying over it and breaking it.

Aug 8 2009

cats in the holyland

Cats in the holyland

For some reason, there seems to be lots of stray cats here, saw plenty of them on previous trips here, in the city walls of old Jerusalem, around one of the Roman amphitheatres on the Mediterranean and in a museum near Masada.

Stray cats can serve purposes, to get rid of rats and mice, but often they don’t bother as there are ready stocked dustbins or generous human neighbours around, There’s at least 15 cats in a hundred metre radius of my house, most of them sit in a garden two houses away which seems to have loads of rubbish (and really stinks, as do our drains and rubbish bins with the heat we have) and appears empty. Some of the kittens appear ridiculously cute, the little tiny black one that’s often asleep by my front door appears to have a nasty eye infection. Most of them look a mixture of ginger, tiger stripes and black. I don’t think anyone bothers to get their animals neutered or spayed.

Try and pet one of the adult moggies and you will get a nasty scowl and a paw swiped at you. I dont know if this country has a rabies or other nasty diseases but I think large numbers of feral animals can be a problem and really numbers probably need to controlled a bit, just as national parks in the UK, have to cull excess numbers of horses and deer.

Now, as domestic cats are widely thought to originate from Egypt, I wonder if Moses brought some over to here at some point….

will get back to some more articles soon….

Jul 27 2009

prayer walking places

Before I left, I used to go walking along the seafront in Southsea, head out of my house and turn left and go as far as the rock gardens on South Parade Pier, or turn right and head around Old Portsmouth and Gunwharf. At the moment Rehavia Park is my blank canvas for speaking to the Lord on thanking him, giving him praise or asking for help at the moment. Walking in the park is nice as its usually full of families often having barbeques or people out with their dogs or jogging.

Jul 23 2009

The Shuk

Now, somehow I thought I visited this market before on my previous two trips to Israel, but I was mistaken as was confusing this with the more general sort of market held in the old city. This was different as this market is just food.

It was sunday midday and I was going to head to church about 5pm, the market is hugely hectic and full of shoppers looking for bargains, and young men pushing around trolleys of fruit and vegetables on to the shelves. To me this is the most fun part of weekly shopping.

Things here are just not what you expect. One man had what appeared to have large hand operated meat mincers, I am not sure if this was for mashing up baby food or for butchers for producing meat products. Behind him were various odd looking mostly rusty metal parts, maybe he was repairing and recondition these contraptions. Another sight was some workmen using an angle grinder to cut through some kind of redundant plumbing fitting on the wall, but without much regard for the safety of nearby shoppers the sparks off the tools where flying all over path and all over some meat put out in the stand close by. Some cheeky pigeons swoop down and start scoffing some of the tubs of corn, nuts, cereal and dried fruit sold for people to buy and and weigh themselves before the owner of the shop looks up from his newspaper and they are suddenly gone.

I want to get myself a falafel, but this particular counter doesn’t have them, instead I got some kind of shwarma a sandwich with omelette, fish and some kind of spicey sauce, and a malt drink, the 50 something man tells me to sit down on a small round table as he will bring it over, as he turns around his cigarette ash blows into my face, yuk. The food is really good though. He then flings the cigarette but carelessly into the middle of the market road where it just misses a box full of mostly paper rubbish.

I got a kilo of plums, some pita breads, and best bargain of all a large half of a water melon, this item was just one Shekel (16 pence) Its funny in this country its generally cheaper to buy fruit and vegetables than to get a microwave meal. I really like the fact that prepackaged food is not really that easy to get hold of so everyone is encouraged to eat decent stuff here.

Jul 17 2009

second day here in Jerusalem

Plane journey was not to bad, left on time, although my screen on the seat in front of me stopped working, pressing any of the buttons would not respond, the screen was just black, after a couple of presses of the alert steward button, someone came after a few minutes, he then pressed some of the buttons making me feel somewhat stupid. Got chatting to the guy next to me who was returning back to his home in Haifa as he had been on the way back from Los Angeles which required 3 different plane changes, so he was obviously very tired. Also spoke to a British girl who was only 18 but was bravely coming on her own to see some family here, so we chatted whilst waiting to go through security and waited as she went to buy a new mobile phone from kiosk in the airport, then we got a Sherut (taxi van) which gets you from TLV airport to anywhere in Jerusalem for NIS50 (£10ish) this is great as you can get to the door of where you want to go, but the taxi only leaves when it has enough people, and it took a few hours going all around different bits of Jerusalem dropping other people off.

My phone has decide to not work doing roaming here which is odd as its worked before. In my flat I share with an American called Josh, and once I arrived I had a Cellcom SIM card, some food, and few books and literature about the charity waiting for me.

Today I got up about 9.30, and don’t have to work till next week, so got a free day to take a wander and look around town. There was a demonstration on a road nearby for the release of the young 18 year old soldier who was captured by Hamas a few years ago, he is meant to be still alive somewhere in Gaza, so continued to pray for him that he will be released soon. Jerusalem has changed a bit since my last visit here in 2006, there’s a huge bridge held together by some steel wires, looks like a big expensive and ambitious design, its not finished as there were workman there as there is no actual road surface on it. In the middle of town there is a lot of work going on as well and its obvious a new light railway that is going to through the city is underway.

Its not easy negotiating round the city as the street signs are small and directional signs are a bit vague. As I was hoping to get to the Shuk (main market in the middle of Jerusalem) it became apparent as it was 1pm the chances are it will be shut already or soon because everything closes for Shabbat. I got a few items in this medium sized supermarket, but things like falafel or bagels were not to be found, and this shop like a few others for some strange reason do not sell drinks in bottles smaller than 1 litre. It was slightly worrying my carrier bag I had these items nearly broke half way walking through the park, think I must of walked a good six miles today in exploring the city, but not got see the juicy bits like the old city, the Shuk and the tomb of Jesus.

My room has wireless and Cellcom sim seems to work all ok, I also have a land phone as the international rates we have seems extremely cheap too. My housemate is making me dinner so will call this journal a night I think.

Jul 17 2009

Flying London Heathrow to Tel Aviv Ben Gurion

Woohoo! Time for some airport lounge style blogging, even though all the wireless networks here are subscription only, I am just typing this into Open Office and uploading later.

My flight is going at 11.15 to Tel Aviv, getting up at 5 wasn’t so bad as for some reason I keep getting up early anyhow, but some how feeling hugely dehydrated and some tea and orange juice didn’t really help things, it go worse on the coach up here, but found praying and getting a bit more sleep seem to help things hugely.