Here’s a little video I made for a friend who is working on an audio project and asked for sounds:

Life in Israel | 2 Comments »

Rivulets of water have been coursing through the streets and alley-ways of Jerusalem this week - water coming not from the sky, but from thousands of broken solar panels.

It’s the law in Israel that all buildings must be equipped with a solar hot water heater. For 9 months out of the year, these panels are more than sufficient to provide household hot water needs. There are various systems in place for the remaining 3 months (an electric element that can be turned on 30 minutes before shower time is the most common, and it’s what we use). It’s a very eco-friendly way of doing things, and I’m happy that it is part of my life. Usually.

It’s been unusually cold in Jerusalem this week. It’s been hovering around 0º Celsius during the day, and well below freezing at night. Freezing water in your solar panel would be a disaster, so the engineers who designed the system created a failsafe. They built a weakness into the design in the form of an unpretentious looking brass ring. If it gets cold, the ring cracks. If the ring cracks, water is prevented from entering the solar panel and is instead diverted onto the roof, down the drain, through the pipe, and onto the sidewalks and streets below.

Foolishly, we thought it couldn’t happen to us. We left the hot water tap dripping all night as instructed by our less fortunate neighbors who were struck early in the week. The cold spell is almost over, which is good because the entire city has been stripped of those little brass rings and even the plumbers are unable to get hold of them. You can imagine the sinking feeling when we awoke this morning to a parking lot full of water.

Franklin is on the roof now trying to figure out how to stop the water to the heater without cutting off all of our water. I’ve already put in a call to the neighbors asking if we can bum off their hot water tomorrow (I feel justified in doing this, as we offered them hot showers when they went through this two days ago). We’ll put a call in to the plumber soon - fingers crossed that he has at least one little brass ring left in his inventory.

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Yesterday on the way home from work, we found our road blocked off by a police van. We could hear the policeman shouting over a bullhorn, but we couldn’t quite hear what he was saying. Being the good Israelis that we are, we decided to see if we could get through by going the back way. We made it all the way to our parking area where we had a great view of what was going on: a “suspicious object” had been left on the road right outside our house.

Suspicious objects are taken very seriously here in Israel. If you see an unattended bag or box in a public place, you let security know immediately. They’ll get everyone away, cordon off the area and contact a special police team. These teams respond quickly, and are on the scene within minutes. They’ll use their experience and training to make a judgment about the severity of the threat, and then they’ll send in someone to rig the object for destruction. Sometimes they’ll send a person in a special suit, sometimes they’ll send a remote-controlled robot. Everyone backs away, and then the object is exploded.

Usually the suspicious object isn’t a bomb - it’s just some guy’s gym bag, and I’m sorry fella, but your shorts are now a tattered mess. In fact, we once had an Embassy employee who absentmindedly left a huge box of fliers outside the post office. Upon remembering them, he ran back to the scene to find that the police were in the act of blowing them up. He was too embarrassed to claim the package, so he just watched as the entire box was turned into confetti.

Yesterday we arrived on the scene too late to see the exploding of the object, but it must not have been anything major. From our parking area I got a picture of the sapper packing away his tools.

In other exciting Israel news, Susanna found a tarantula on the upstairs Embassy balcony. We discussed capturing it, but decided that it was likely that we’d injure the poor guy in the process, so we just let him be. There are people in the office who refuse to go on the balcony, and get really upset if you leave the balcony door open - but most of us just watch our step out there. We didn’t see him at all yesterday, so maybe he’s gone.

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Last night we came home from church to find our front door wide open. One look at the open drawers and junk on the floor inside was all it took to let us know that we’d been burgled. My first thoughts: “the dog! my computer!”; Franklin’s first thoughts: “my guitars! my cappuccino machine!” Thank the Lord, all the important stuff was in place. So far, we think all they made off with was a watch, Franklin’s class ring, and an old camera. The house was completely ransacked though - I’ve never seen such thoroughness. There was only one room in the house they didn’t go into - the one where the frenzied dog was barking her head off. Our valiant pup scared the thieves away from the room wherein resides the single most valuable thing in our house: my engagement ring. Good girl!

We waited forever for the police, and when they did arrive they were singularly unhelpful. It was just a routine check to verify the break-in. We had to wait until today for the detectives to come, which meant 12 hours of not being able to touch anything in the house. Joel and Laura were with us when we discovered the break-in (for which we are grateful - it was a lot less creepy having friends there too), so we grabbed Chloe the dog and went with Joel and Laura down to the King’s house to hang out with Chloe the dancer. We had pizza (NOT on the diet) and watched my in-heat dog ferociously pursue the King’s poor little puppy.

Well, the detectives came and left (no fingerprints, of course), and we’ve had all the locks changed. At the end of our lock changing procedure, Chloe (the dog) decided to silently slip out the front door. Franklin found her in the mall parking lot. I think that in the 2 minutes she was missing I panicked so much that I probably lost 2 years from my life.

Well, that’s the excitement from this part of town. More later.

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Our return flight from Spain landed at 5:00 in the morning, and we were completely zonked when we touched down. But with all the passport and luggage hoopla, we were quite awake by the time we got home. Franklin went to work, and I started unpacking and doing laundry. We stayed up too late for some inexplicable reason and so at 7:55am this morning we were more than asleep. We were dead to the world. Making it the perfect time for a pipe to burst in the guest bathroom. We laid there for a while listening to the loud “PFSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH” before Franklin (thank goodness) got up to investigate. Yep, water everywhere, but cleaned up quickly and fixed already.

Spain was, of course, amazing. We really really love the Salway/Phillips clan, and anything involving them is automatically fun and good. We spent most of our time in the villa near Mijas - swimming in the pool, reading Harry Potter, eating vast amounts of delicious non-south-beach food, and staying up late playing games - but we also managed to visit Cordoba, Rhonda, Mijas and Marbella. I’ll post pictures soon, once I’ve had time to round up the best from all the various cameras that were floating around.

Right now Jerusalem and Copenhagen are playing soccer in the stadium next to our house and it is wonderful to hear the sound of cheering and chanting in the air. It was hard to leave the relaxation and fun of the Spain trip, but it’s oh so wonderful to be home. Burst pipes and all.

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