Category me

Jun 16 2010

EspanLOL

few oddball pictures from Spain that deserved their own mention:

A shop has this handy washing machine with built in sink in this tasteful colour

I really want to do this!  the bubbles were 2 metres long.   Going to try and head to Ben Yehuda Street back in Jerusalem, where street entertainers often gather and give this a try and maybe make a bit of cash…

This just means do not disturb on my hotel door, but the translation just sounds so wrong!!!!

No parking outside the church unless you are religious.  I think.   A bit later there were a couple of hearses outside though.

Jun 16 2010

time out of Israel: wedding in Asturias, Spain

I took some time out of my volunteering for a break for a variety of reasons, I promised my good friend Ian I would go to his wedding, which was in Gijon, Asturias, northern Spain.

This hotel had this interesting looking old government building in a square.  Asturias is quite different from what I imagine Spain to be like, less tourists, bars supplying cider and people playing bag pipes.   Its a nice place, and Ian and Veronica had a super day with a beautiful old building overlooking a lot of hills, perfect weather, and got chance to meet up with some people I not seen in a while, as well as get to know Ian’s family, as well as some friends of Ian I went to Iceland with on a lads holiday back in 2005.   Ian surprised us all by doing all the work driving people from the (relatively dinky) airport with me, and other guests arriving off an Easyjet flight from Stansted, great as I thought he probably had a lot more to get ready as the groom.  One particular point of note with the cider is the barman will hold the bottle above head height and pour into a glass at waist height accurately from behind their backs, its apparently to do with the amount of air that gets into the liquid on the way down but I suspect its more a piece of unique bar showmanship.

Its worth mentioning the Spanish are seriously into their fish, probably more than the French I reckon.  There is some weird and wonderful finned and scaled creatures, such as this pink one with huge eyes at the local market, and tanks of lobsters still alive only a few minutes cooking and preparation to someone’s plate, as Jacobs shows here.   Some of these crabs and lobsters were 30 Euros each in some medium-class restaurants.

I also visited a train museum with Ian’s dad and sister and friends.  The steam trains here are in beautifully restored condition, and the bright bold colours and livery makes them eye catching in familiar Spanish colours.

Lastly of course I have to mention the beach.  Here the beach is sandy but quite empty, mind you it was quite cold being windy the two days before the wedding, of course chances to go and get cider on a pre-pre-wedding jolly with just the lads, seeing as Ian didn’t have a stag due to cancelled flights because of volcano ash.

Jun 16 2010

my East Talpiyot neighbours

My neighbours are nice, I don’t seem them that often, apart from the odd shalom to the Ethiopian family in our block, some people say Israelis are hard to get to know initially which maybe true to some degree, but in the flat that I live in East Talpiyot, I burnt some toast, and someone knocked on the door asking if I was ok and to make sure I had not set the place on fire, I have had people twice knock on the door asking to borrow a bottle opener (sadly I didn’t have one)   and someone else below me pointed out when I had a leaking tap on the balcony gushing out over the side of the block, but today I had someone else knock on the door to say she was watering her plants and some of the dirty water had gone into my balcony, and she wanted to say sorry and clean it up.  I told her thanks but it wasn’t necessary, but was quite touched but how thoughtful this was.

Across the car park from my block is a large house owned by an Arab family, I don’t know them so well, apart from see the kids out playing at the front, but I have seen a very large tame rabbit jump out in front of me on my bike as well as their large garden at the back and have three sheep I can often hearing baaing and a few chickens, the sheep seem to be a recent purchase though.  I guess Arab people may chose to buy sheep ready for Eid, the Islamic festival in November.  Either way, with 100 yards down the road is across the 1949 Armistice line, as the Palestinian territories I sometimes go to a shop to get supplies as they are open most of the time.   I think its great that many Arab families with largish amounts of land around their house aim to be self sufficient and keep their own animals.

Jun 4 2010

June Gaza Flotilla incident and being a volunteer in a unpopular place

I know Christians working in numerous troubled parts of the world all over.  Pakistan, South Africa, Chile, Ukraine and many more.  Western nations as well.   For me, being in Israel has to be one of the most difficult, not so much just in the context of my actual role and living there, but more in case of being an ambassador and explaining to people in my home country both Christians and non-Christians alike why I am volunteering there.

“Christians supporting Israel? Oh so you are Zionist are you?”  is sometimes reactions I get.   This week has been particularly difficult as I try and explain to some people what I believe why the IDF had to board the ships by ‘freedom fighters’ trying to enter Gaza.

In a usual predictable fashion, there is worldwide condemnation of Israel being an aggressor on civilians yet again.   But hold on are these people really people providing humanitarian aid and support to the Palestinians?  Look on Youtube and you can see videos released by the IDF about these people came armed, ok mostly with relatively crude weapons, kitchen knives, iron bars and such, but still able to kill.   Fine if you wish to make a legitimate statement they could of just held up banners and could arrange a third party from the UN to arbitrate sending goods and assistance from their boat to the people in Gaza, instead they were there motives are not so well intentioned.  Even more so, one of the pro-Palestinian activists (I think from the UK or Europe) brought an 18 month old child, why?  Sounds familiar like Hamas terrorists deliberately attack Israel from amongst buildings knowingly containing women and children.  To the folks from Europe, just like some anarchic animal rights protest group, it probably seems jolly exciting to join a band of mercenaries against what they have read as an oppressive authority, and join a cause.  Its now been found that the supposed Turkish freedom fighters have links to Al Queda.

As I said earlier, I am not really a political sort of person.  In the UK I have voted on all three parties at different years, sometimes though when injustice and lies come from our familiar media channels you need to speak out, and when you are a Christian supporting Israel, your views are not always very popular.  All boycotts are a stupid and pointless thing and don’t achieve anything productive.  Instead we need pray and show love to people in all places of conflict.   Israel may get financial support from the US, but for me as a volunteer, the kind donations I have been given by people this year can be counted on one hand.   I am in great need of sponsorship and through asking through various channels, finding a regular sponsor has turned up very little so far.

My role as an IT administrator in the charity in Jerusalem means I have a relatively hidden backroom job but very necessary role of keeping a charity infrastructure running.  As usual with my blog I don’t like talking about politics and arguing, so I will get back to just more biblical places I have visited and seeing people in need lifted up and encouraged by the different Christian organisations I know of here.

Jun 1 2010

Dead Sea Odyssey 422 metres below sea level – 1: The snake trail at Massada

( 1 ) – ( 2 ) – ( 3 ) – ( 4 ) – more soon….

My friend Magnus from Sweden who I work with and Marcel from the Netherlands who works for another Christian organisation in Jerusalem decided to spend a weekend on a trip, as Magnus was close to the end of his volunteer time in Israel.

Various different ideas were discussed on a biblical place to go, maybe Jericho (although didn’t manage to fully research safety and security in this place) or more of the Galilee. In the end we decided to check out the Dead Sea. I have been there twice before but not recently, but where as before I went up in a cable car, this time this would be a gruelling climb up the ‘snake trail’ at 3am, a zigzag path that goes right up to the top of the Masada fortress where a Jewish community once lived before tragically committing suicide after being hopelessly surrounded by the Roman army.  More information on Masada here.

After the shock of getting up at 3am to get there to see the sun rise and not have the intense midday heat when hiking up the path, this was definitely worth it I think 🙂

( 1 ) – ( 2 ) – ( 3 ) – ( 4 ) – more soon….

Jun 1 2010

few weeks break to Spain and the UK

Apologies this blog has been quiet. I took a leave from Jerusalem for a short while for several reasons, I needed to visit to Gijon in northern Spain to see my good friend Ian get married, also then fly back home to the UK to see my sister and family who is expecting a baby this week, I also need to work on an email migration project for the UK office of the charity I volunteer for.

More soon….

May 19 2010

currency conversion and Google Documents

Often whilst I am here in Jerusalem, I need to convert money from one type to another.  Items sold for large figures like property here in Israel often get listed in US Dollars.  If you haggle over something in an Arab market, if he knows you are foreign he will give you a price for a more expensive item in Dollars also.   I have bought parts to fix volunteers laptops every now and then and so I often need to give them prices in UK Pounds, Shekels, Dollars, Euros or South African Rand, depending where I source a part for and what currency they are most familiar in.

I often use a popular site called www.xe.net to convert things, when using Shekels you have to scroll all the way to the bottom and select “more currencies..”  this means this can be a bit slow and fiddly for working out conversions for small countries like Israel with their own indigenous monetary system.

In the last year or so I have started using Google Documents more and more, doing some work with traditional tools like Microsoft’s venerable Word and Excel is fine, (apart from a revamped and unfamiliar icon system on Office 2007 which befuddles a lot of users)  but rather than make a file and email it or have to copy it onto a USB stick to given to someone say, outside of my work, instead Google documents has files conveniently on the web and can be fetched from ANY computer be it a Windows XP, Vista, 7, Mac or Linux, or some kind of mobile device that has live connection to the internet, and set if you want just yourself, a selected group or the whole world to just read or have read and write access.

I looked around and couldn’t find something that shows currency conversion in a simple table format I wanted, so I made this one.  Google Documents spreadsheet has an ability to pick live figures of current set of exchange rates, so I decided this would be a good tool for the job.

Please note, I did my best to check the formulas of each cell are correct, feel free to use for any purpose you want but don’t use this for anything too critical.

At the moment this spreadsheet is available for anyone to read or edit, its possible it could get ‘vandalised’ so I have a second protected copy if that happens if it gets interfered with, I need to figure out the sharing rights to let people publicly use this without changing anything

If I could only get text to wrap over multiple cells properly… 🙂

Go to this Google spreadsheet here:- https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AtYywUr33gtSdDFGMWpkRm5VZm15Y0RKdEpscmFyMlE&hl=en

You need a Gmail account to log in.

As a IT professional who is volunteering for a charity in Israel I enjoy creating solutions using technology to make things easier or save money or time, if you find this useful or just want to offer me a tip, feel free to donate the price of a beer or a coffee, using a Paypal account click here. Thank you!!

– NB correction, my blogging host wont let me put a link to Paypal here, so if you feel inclined, just send an amount of your choice to jp.hayward AT gmail.com, thanks!

May 17 2010

12th of May is Jerusalem day!

Got to finish work early today, although the parades of anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem from 1967 start at 5pm, we were told we could leave at 3pm because buses would either cease running or traffic would just make things impossible to get home.

I stayed a little late as needed to clarify what some issues were with networks with our other office in Karmiel which is 3 hours drive away, so decided these problems couldn’t be fixed with remote software and am arranging to get a lift up there with a colleague who leads our home repair team tomorrow (thursday)

After a quick visit to the market and then read sit in a coffee shop for 45 minutes or so reading my National Geographic magazine that arrived a couple of days ago, I got to just relax for a while then head off on the bike to see what celebratory activities would be happening.

When I got to King George Street there are thousands of people everywhere and the police have cordoned off the roads to let people gather all over the main roads of the city centre.  I stuck around for 10 minutes and didn’t see much apart from people with flags and banners so I decided to head off home and get some dinner.

Here as you can see the Magon David ambulance service are here ready in case of any urgent need.   This organisation always has the sponsors written on the vehicle, most of them time its from a Jewish philanthropic group in the US, sometimes Canada, but sometimes they are paid for by French or British Jewish people.   I am not sure if its because the government cannot stretch to pay for this kind of essential service, I think its more to do there is always a regular source of funds available from generous Jews in the diaspora wanting to provide medical help in times of need.

Its funny that these ambulances are always American vehicles, this one being a GM Savanna or they may be Ford F150s, which in this particular van has a 6 litre engine, which does seem enormous compared to European or Japanese made commercial vehicles, as you often see regular 2.5L diesel British made Ford Transit vans for regular businesses used in Israel.   I have an Arab friend who is training to work for Magon David at the moment.  It would be interesting to know if wealthy Arabs in places like Saudi, Qatar or Kuwait fund ambulances in Palestinian towns like Ramallah, Nabulus or Hebron.

May 16 2010

furry (and sometimes spikey) neighbours

Found these pictures from last year.

Was walking home to my old flat from a friend’s house after a party, down this narrow alleyway, when I saw something move from a distance which I thought was a rat.

When I got a bit closer, I was pleased to see it wasn’t.   I was quite amazed how tame it was, must of been a baby hedgehog, it eventually moved into bushes, I had to say ‘sech’a’ (excuse me) to a man walking the opposite direction then ask him in English to be careful not to tread on him. 🙂


May 14 2010

Quick visit to Karmiel

On Wednesday afternoon I was asked to do an emergency trip to Karmiel to look at some IT problems at our food bank there.

This extra food bank warehouse is much larger than the one in Talpiyot but has only about 6 staff there.  This building operates to help Israelis from Russia or from other ex-Soviet Union countries.   As it is only about 15Km from the border with Lebanon, this area suffered much during the 2006 Lebanon war.   The food bank also sometimes supplies new immigrants with new blankets, sheets, pots, pans and kitchen things who have recently come into the country with very little.

I can normally do changes to the computers in this location using remote software (VNC or remote desktop)  but a visit in person was needed to check out problems and give users some reassurance and assess PCs for any possible future problems.   Some printer issues I quickly sorted out, some wireless routers were set up, I didn’t know we had these are they didn’t show up on my Spiceworks network management software.   These seemed all working but no-one know the wireless keys to access them as it doesn’t appear they have been used, so I had to reset them and ensure they were set up correctly so visiting senior members of staff can get on line when visiting.   The rest of the day I was working on making sure users have a secure reliable browser for internet use (getting rid of Internet Explorer 6 and move to Firefox)   and testing UPS systems (box with car batteries to keep essential equipment safe from power failures)   I had enough to keep me busy for the day, but nothing really too much to worry about.

As the drive in a colleague’s car was about 3 hours from Jerusalem, I decided against trying to get home that day by bus and stay with one of the Karmiel team at his flat about 20 minutes walk away.  The three of us got a couple of pizzas and had a few glasses of Russian beer which was in the shape of hand grenade!   I was quite amazed how my American friend speaks Russian to visitors to the office there with such ease, he has a real gift for dealing with Russian, Ukrainian and other Israelis originating from former USSR states.

This is the food bank in an industrial estate in between factory units that had a strong smell of cellulose paint at one side, and oily smell from several car garages at the other.  Sorry these are grainy phone pics, I brought my camera but left the battery in the charger in my house (bah..)

Although I only got a picture of the petrol station I went for my lunch, the town itself is beautiful.  Its only officially existed since 1964, there are nice neat gardens everywhere, with flower beds in roundabouts and by the sides of busy roads, and although some of the concrete blocks look a bit shabby, several of them have been nicely painted up recently.

View out of the window of the flat.   Looking at each side of the house, every direction reveals several mountains in each direction, its no wonder on the way home, I was not able to find a radio channel in the car that worked!   There are also some Arab towns on the outside of the town.

I definitely need to come back and have a closer look around, this place is a good base point for me (there is an empty apartment I could book out to stay there) to visit northern Israel in more depth.