Category stupid

Mar 11 2012

Premium priced motorway lanes between Jerusalem and Tel aviv?

I was helping out at a robotics event in Tel Aviv that encourages youth in learning technology and engineering.

Leaving the house early, we took this motorway from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, I spotted something odd on this highway I have not seen this before.

It’s a little hard to make it out maybe, but it would appear you have to pay extra to use this fast lane, just in case owning and running a car isn’t hurting your pocket enough.  There are already toll roads in some parts of Israel too.

When you take a trip on a train or get a flight, you have the option of paying a bit (actually quite a lot) more to get a better seat, or nicer food, etc, it seems that this business model is now planned for motorists as well maybe?

Back in the UK, I remember the government did an experimental idea to make certain lanes only usable for cars with two or more passengers, this would be a better idea to keep traffic down and get people to share cars, rather than have premium prices lanes I think.

Feb 23 2012

Can we overload prayers to help our Christians brothers and sisters in Iran?

Following recent news that the Iranian Christian Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani held in a prison had been sentenanced to death, I decided to email the Iranian embassy politely in the UK to tell them how angry I was with this decision.   Hes been offered leniency if he rejects Christianity and takes up Islam, which he has refused to do so.

http://aclj.org/iran/execution-orders-issued-pastor-youcef-nadarkhani

A while back the UK embassy in Tehran was broken into and looted.   I don’t know if there are many people in the UK office doing any administration.   Sounds like a tough job trying to do PR for a company that flaunts the ability to destroy another neighbouring country by saying they will “wipe them off the map”.

I looked in the spam folder of my email and saw this today, their mail server rejected my email as their mailbox is full.

I wonder if this means that lots of Christians (or indeed anyone upset by this decision) have emailed the Islamic republic’s UK operations and overloaded their mail system.   Or maybe their IT systems are just are rubbish as their human rights.

Of course, if this many people were praying for this man’s release and safety, without compromising his life with Jesus, you can’t pray too much, my loving God has infinite capacity for requests to him.  I hope all Christians feel compelled to pray to see this innocent man’s wife and children get to see him come home safely.

Feb 12 2012

Rubbish piles up on Jerusalem’s streets

I recently heard there were some strikes from people who work in Jerusalem’s municpality.

Today I forgot all about this until today….

Here with my friend Jessee, there’s one heck of a lot of rubbish in the streets!

As no one has as collected it, theres about 4 times rubbish that supposed to fit it in the bin, looks pretty bad!

I wonder if the owner of this old VW Beetle (actually in very good condition) knew what he what he was in for when he parked here!  Often I see homeless or poor people looking in the bins for bottles, which can be redeemed for cash they have a deposit on them, but here no one wants to sift through this!!

Oddly enough, friends of mine that have visited Cairo, the Egyptian capital says this doesn’t look as bad!!

Anyone who has visited the centre of Jerusalem will know there is thousands of stray cats around, they were brought in to get rid of rats and mice, buts its worrying to think what kind of health risk there is.   One of my local friends told me the garbage collection should start again today though…

I hope some kind of agreement can happen with the government workers, but it seems a strike is not so sensible considering a back log of waste to have to deal with when they get back to work!

Today I was in the shuk and saw lots of extremely cheap (less than 2 shekels a kilo) vegetables that were at the end of their life, they would have to be eaten that day, after getting a knife and hacking out mouldy bits.    Maybe this is an incentive to recycle more, and maybe bad vegetables could be composted or fed to chickens or something.

Jan 16 2012

Pastor of church in Uganda has acid thrown in his face by Muslims, gets surgery in Israel

Thought this was a really encouraging story.  This hospital in Israel are paying a large chunk of the $128,000 needed for this poor man’s treatment.   Ex-Muslims and Christians working amongst Islamic cities are in great danger, and this horrific attack with acid is no the first one I have heard about.

http://muslims4jesus.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/ugandan-pastor-treated-at-israeli-hospital-after-attack/

I think this hospital is meant to be the most advanced in the whole of the Middle East/Africa region.   Its wonderful that this man can get treatment there after pledging support for Israel in his home country.

Genesis 12:3 -And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

Dec 27 2011

The Palestinianisation of Jesus

very interesting article I saw recently:

http://fromthetopcom.blogspot.com/2011/12/palestinianisation-of-jesus.html

Unfortunately, this happens quite often, and Palestinians turn to promoting history revisionism to naive Christians visiting the holy land.   One example of this I have heard is Samson being the first suicide bomber!!

Dec 19 2011

Great reasons to not have a smart phone

Some people wonder why as an IT person I don’t have an iPhone or another smart phone.  I have thought about it, not being in paid employment is the main factor, but lately I have been thinking a simple type phone has some advantages that sophisticated internet capable phone

1. Cost.   Either a large amount for complete ownership of the handset (£500+)  or having to pay £30-40 or more per month for a contract, that’s a lot of money you could spend on a holiday or many other things.  At the moment, my pay as you go phone on Cellcom IL means my 57 shekels (~£10) worth of credit lasts me about a month.

2. Long commitments.  I reckon people don’t often always think they are stuck paying for this thing for 18 or 24 months (3 years typically in Israel for an iPhone) without a simple way to get out, if the service or the handset don’t meet expectations.  The novelty appeal of the phone may wane way before you are able to get an upgrade or switch to a different payment model.  I wonder if less young people these days will go off traveling, doing volunteer or overseas work when they realise they can’t get shot of the mobile phone plan without an expensive exit fee.    Someone I know who is coming to Israel from the US was paying $106 a month and was struggling to get out of it!

3. Being forced to be doing work stuff when you are not at work.   People I know in the hospital I worked hated their blackberry handsets for this reason.   Employers don’t always plan that staff are doing work without always getting on-call commitments recognised in their actual salary package.

4. Fear of theft or damage.   One of the IT professional web sites I am a member of recently said that in a typical corporate environment, 10% of the phones get destroyed or lost in a year.   I suspect figures for consumers are not that far off.  I have seen many people crack the glass displays on an iPhone, and so therefore your monthly bill may need to have an insurance cost also added on that too.

5. Creditworthyness for getting a contract phone.  This is always checked in phone stores, not everyone qualifies for this.

6. Saying something you later regret online.  More easier to do on a device in your pocket that it is on your regular PC or laptop.

7. Not telling everyone a running commentary of your life’s problems on social media.   Its better to meet up or call a close friend and spill out to them.   Seriously.   Social media provides the tools online for narcissists to talk about themselves all the time too.

8. Enjoying life not being online.  Hiding behind that little device may mean you miss out on some of life’s things like sights of the countryside, getting chatting to strangers in a queue in a shop, and going camping when refraining from anything with an LCD display.

9. Chatting to a friend about a funny story you heard, can be done by A) showing said-item in Youtube or Wikipedia on a phone, or B) using the power of words and acting, in some ways, B can often be more appealing in the same way a good comedian just uses his hands and microphone stand to stimulate the imagination of the audience without any props.

10. Being antisocial in general.   If you are in a party or at a pub, people getting out their phones and then discussing which celebs they follow or what apps they have, are similar to loved-up couples that are too preoccupied with themselves to think about other (non phone obsessed) people around them.  I was watching the popular British motoring TV show Top Gear once when they had writer and actor Stephen Fry on there once, he decides to talk about an app on his phone he uses for gay cruising. geez, keep you nasty habits to yourself please, I used to have a lot of respect for him until this.

Fiddling with a phone in a job interview, theatre/cinema, in church or cell group or also examples of this I have seen being annoying to other people around you.

11. Being technologically unsatisfied.  Some people hop from one model phone to another and regardless of what the features of this and how new it is, are never seem happy.   despite all phones have limitations in one way or another.

12. Metering cost of data.  Its easy to go over the data allowance per month when using data on 3G network, which can make monitoring how much data consumed hard, to avoid any nasty shocks when the bill comes.

Of course, smart phones are incredibly handy for all kinds of things these days, with email, calender, navigation, web, media playback just for starters, but respect that not all people will be associated with the problems above, I have decided I myself would rather just do these things on a regular computer at home.

Dec 17 2011

Bad taste bible stories

Sometimes I see people use stories from the bible out of context in the worst way possible.   In the case of these two pictures its from both people groups here in Israel.

The last supper with Hollywood stars?  Me and another Christian friend challenged the Jewish owner of a youth hostel on this, wondering if its really wise considering how many Christians visiting his business might feel offended about this but he just seem to think it was funny.

Yes, its the nativity scene with a seperation barrier.  This commonly used by Palestinians to manipluate the west that this hated barrier uses to keep terrorism from getting into Jerusalem.    The concrete pilars that make up this structure are ugly, but no sensible person wants to go back in the days during the intafada where there were bombings on buses and coffee shops every week.

Dec 10 2011

Return to Nazareth – 2. The uglier sides of Nazareth

Nestled in the middle of Nazareth’s high street I walked past the Mary’s well monument, this picture was taken from my first journey.  Now some of the grafitti has gone and some more has appeared, along with an official sign telling people not to drink the water, reason being is at the back of the monument there is a discarded big wooden drum for keeping electric cable, and lots of rubbish, and an odour hinting its been used as a toilet.  Sad that Nazareth’s iconic centre piece in the middle of the city isn’t respected by some people.

Back to old city streets:-

I went to the Synagogue church again, this is the place Jesus made his debut as a Rabbi, a teacher of the Torah as part of his youth.   Today there was a different door open with a talk being given I wanted to take a closer look but didn’t want to interrupt the teaching here.

I was kind of disappointed by the Vatican flag hanging up here.   I don’t really care for the oddball palace in Rome as it has little to do with the teachings of Jesus and doesn’t really fit in here.

In the market place there is everything from fruit, vegetables, home made olive oil, cakes, clothing, cleaning supplies and books on sales outdoors,

 

I was a bit perturbed by some of these, as you can see the middle ones look like they have more than a hint of antisemitism to them.   There was also people casually selling Keffeyahs, like I saw in Jericho, neck scalves made famous by Yasser Arafat, these tend to have a very political edge to them.

The youth hostel I mentioned earlier I stayed in is run by a Christin Arab family, its a beautiful place, there aremaps and guides available to plan what to see.  I didn’t see anything in the way of obvious Christian literature, ie: pictures of Jesus on the walls there, unlike Jerusalem its kind of interesting to hear Arab people speak a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic, but I was a bit annoyed that the local man on the desk seemed to use the Lord’s name in vain quite a bit.  Ok, they probably aren’t religious, there is a youth hostel in Eilat owned by Messianic Jews that does have bibles and Christian books there.   I am guessing if you go to a youth hostel in Memphis, Tennessee you would see photos of Elvis there I reckon!! 🙂

Some people may think I am being overly romantic about Jesus’s home town, Nazareth has an entirely Arab population and around 30% of these are Christians, but I was hoping to see more Christians, particularly people who could pray and intercede for people here, especially when you seen provocative posters put up like this.   Someone has tried to deface this quite recently it seems!

I would like this know what these posters say, I suspect they are just as poisonous as the previous above.   By the way, these are Christians from an African nation on a tour with nice tartan matching jackets.

Along with not seeing any of the visitors of Christian background at the hostel, many of the experiences of this day left me feeling kind of depressed.   Of course Nazareth is reliant on tourism and aspects of businesses here tend to be geared towards this, but this should be a special place, but churches seem like relics of history without any modern day meaning, Nazareth is important to our Lord Jesus and his Jewish upbringing, a lot of the things seem to be anything but.  Of course, there are minarets nearby, the tall very vocal prayer towers that Islam feels obliged to share with anyone else around.

Trying to sleep was an awkward experience, mainly because the beautiful old house that was a hostel had these big wooden shutters on the windows, and the heavy wind outside was causing them to bang loudly, getting up half a sleep to try and wedge them shut seemed impossible as the latches were broken.   Part of this I think was the Lord was prompting me to pray for my fellow travelers who had come from different backgrounds, a few with some mixed up views about their spirituality.

The Saturday evening meant I got to meet three chaps from New Zealand that were Christian, I was glad to see more believers here.

Am I trying to put Christians from visiting and show Arabic culture as being negative in a Christian light, no – some unexpected surprises happened as I will explain later….

1. The Fauzi Azar – 2. The uglier sides of Nazareth – 3. Welcoming the king with palm leaves? – 4. Looking for the Jesus village – 5. The replica village of Jesus – 6. Today’s Nazarenes

Dec 9 2011

Learning Hebrew without a dummy

I got this book before I came over here:

Actually its a terrible book, its really לא טוב / Lo Tov (no good) for learning Hebrew.   Why?   There’s no Hebrew symbols on it apart from on the front!! The tuition is based around purely only phonetically using Hebrew using Roman letters.  Makes me wonder how much the Dummies franchise check things out before putting their name to their titles.

This is a bit like people I have seen learning to drive a car that’s an automatic, and they can’t get to grips with a manual, it requires drastically re-tooling your brain a second time to learn the native method of doing it.

The symbols in Hebrew are quite different, there is no upper or lower case like there is in European language, or Greek for that matter.   As well as being right to left, there isn’t an upper and lower case set of characters, but there are ‘sofits’ a longer leg on some (N, P, F, etc) characters, you can see this trend also with Arabic which has curvy bits also at the end, as bother languages are derived from Aramaic, an ancient language spoken by Jesus as used in the Passion of the Christ movie, almost extinct but still practiced by a small number of people in small towns in Syria.

What can make it harder is only a small number of things you see in Hebrew include the vowels (dots above and below symbols)  making looking at some words involves a bit of guess work!!

I am learning in a small class of 6 with a friend, most people tend to opt for doing Ulpan, a professional type class, if you want to immigrate to Israel, use the language just for religious or biblical study or if you are just curious.

I only learned French at school which I wasn’t interested in, nor can I really remember any of it.  Its made me think though how hugely challenging it is for a teacher to demonstrate a language, and build the confidence of all the students at the same time and motivate them to practice speaking/listening, reading and writing, and if anyone in the group struggles, helping them out without making them embarrassed.   I think with any type of adult education, you inevitably get people dropping out, not want to persist when it gets difficult.   This happened to us with two pupils thinking that were not making enough progress and worried about letting down the rest of the class.

I know several Japanese people learning Hebrew from a Japanese teacher, which surprised me is that Japanese Christians read their bibles up to down! apparently they used to read all old style books like this but all other modern books contains the kanji symbols left to right.

This book on the right is what our teacher recommended us, it has a mix of conversational bits and individual words too.  Notice this book is ‘proper’ as looking at the front it has the spine on the right hand side!

My personal recommendations would be:-

  • Make sure books and training materials are of good quality, check on Amazon or review sites to see if they can offer learning all the aspects of Hebrew at the right time.
  • Be persistent.   I meet up with some of my class in an Aroma coffee shop in between my monday night lessons, I am not motivated to do practice on my own, so being with other people is good.
  • If you are not yet in Israel but planning to, do some searching for flash cards and learn the symbols and the numbers, print them off and go through them at least 3 or 4 times a week.
  • If you are Israel already, try practice whilst out shopping, when buying things in the big outdoor Shuk (market)  I found I could pick up the names of numbers well this way.
  • Encourage those in your class that aren’t making so good progress and be sensitive not to embarrass them.
  • Asking friends who already know Hebrew to help you practice!

I am a long way from having anything that useful, but I look forward to being able to gain some understanding of what was spoken in the bible and get more detailed examination of the harder to understand parts of the old testament.

This week our teacher showed us Cursive (hand written) Hebrew letters, which really throws me as they look radically different from the regular right-angled looking ones!

For a new immigrant to this land, it is critical to persist and get to grips with Hebrew if you want to get employment, make friends and fit in here, its not easy, but possible when you put your mind to it.

Its quite embarrassing as like most other British person I have been not conversant in any other language, friends from Europe seem to speak 3 including English, and my various Israeli friends immigrant and sabra also know a third language which maybe Arabic, Russian, Ukrainian, French, Spanish, Amharic or Armenian!

During my time I went to Karmiel and Nazareth again, its a pleasant surprise to know I can read the boarding gates now in Jerusalem bus station without having to ask someone! 🙂

Dec 7 2011

fees for flight payments are daft

I bought three plane tickets recently, to come back to Britain to see family for Christmas, on the way back here I am stopping for a short break in Basel, Switzerland to spend New Year with my friend Matthias who lives there, I am going to do some travelling and fly out of Geneva back to Tel Aviv.

I really don’t like airlines for their dishonest practices with upselling you things that used to be included.  This booking I did here was an extra £13 to use a credit card or £8 using a debit card!

I am already doing this on the cheap by not taking any luggage, just everything as carry on.    I don’t have a Electron card to circumvent payment fees, as I thought they were pointless as they are not accepted in a lot of places, but with three flights, I think should exploit getting one just save of these stupid fees I think…

I bet you if you bought a chocolate bar with a credit card in Tescos they couldn’t care less!

I’d like to know if anyone has ideas on getting a suitable Electron card just for buying flights…