Introducing the Hardline According To
     ...Ofer Maimon

* The Vibe has found an apartment in Tel Aviv and is – it seems – moving out tomorrow. He´s also found a job as a telemarketer, pushing dugs if I understood correctly. He doesn't seem too happy about the telemarketing thing, but he´s looking forward to the move. In the meantime he and Roger have constructed a web page where you can elicit his services and buy his books, so if you feel you need to throw your inner light switch, you can visit him below. * Me personally, I am going to miss him very much. Although somewhat skeptical about his vibrating spleen (or Light Activation as he prefers to call it), he has been a fantastic friend and a real Mensch . * Speaking of web sites, my eminent and beloved friend Nano has started a company with a few other Creative Pros named Brickit . They are specializing in the creation of mobile apps for iPhones, Android and other Smart Phones and Handhelds. Yours truly has written the copy for their web site (English version is in the t...

The funny guy will tell you there are only two seasons in southern Israel: Green and Brown. While this may be hyperbole, summer definitely belong to the brown season. So I thought I'd go out and document the Green season, a bit late but still. The results you'll find in the below pics. Enjoy.

”You know, I think Assad is going to fall”, my old Kurdish friend tells me over Skype last night. ”Something is happening although nobody knows exactly what. You need to understand that just a few months ago, no Syrian even here, in the diaspora , dared to say anything against Bashar Assad. That is how scared everyone was .” Now he tells me that in a village in Kurdish Syria, a group of elders had visited the secret police, asking them to take down a statue of Bashar Assad, for as they had said: ”The youngsters are so angry we can't control them, it's better you do it.” The blood baths this passed weekend at funerals in Syria, with security forces killing around 17 civilians, again puts the finger on the double standards of the West's involvement the Arab Spring and it's revolutions. The Syrian diaspora is watching in disbelief how Nato has intervened militarily on behalf of a disorganized and Al-Qaeda linked Libyan opposition to overthrow a dictator who has spent t...

Insomnia has been the name of the fame lately. Blurry nights and blurrier days. People tell me I should cave in to the stillnochts. But I don't know. I still doubt it's really a chemical issue, I guess. Currently I'm indulging in nostalgia by way of a Youtube Safari into the golden age of Swedish Hip Hop. Should you wonder what was created under this short period that lasted from around 1994-1998, I recommend having a look at "Blend Dom", by Latin Kings, the group that ushered in said Golden Age. Other than that I spent the last couple of minutes trying to change the font of my last post, a pome that may not be for eternity, but at the time fairly well captured my thoughts on the emptiness of putting yourself at the center of the world at ever instant. And I can't get this poem to read out in the predefined typeface of this blog, no matter how many times I paste it back and forth from my trusted text editor BBedit. It remains in some screwed up version of H...

Last night I fell asleep around 2 AM. At 4.30 I awoke because someone was banging hard on my door. Drowsily I lifted my head. "What the hell?" "Air raid siren"", Quentin yelled, "missile incoming!" We rushed out in the kitchen and sat down by the walls, while the sirens kept on wailing. Then the siren stopped and we both watched in amazement as Doron came out of his room, busy getting dressed . "Sit down!" Doron looked perplexed. Silence. Silence. Then a thunderous boom that shook the building. From Quentin banging on my door it may have taken some 40 seconds, but it felt more like 5 minutes. Doron looked slightly bewildered at us and then he sat down by the other wall. After the rocket had landed. After a little while we got up and looked through the window. The rocket had landed just 200 meters south of us after flying over our building, and exploded on the street where my synagogue is located. Had it flown 3 more meters it would have...

Few things will lighten up your Shabat evening like getting cracked over the head with a chair. Twice. The evening started out as usual, with me and Quentin lighting the candles and heading off for Kabalat Shabat at the nearby Kippa Shul (The "dome" above it has the form of a Kippah, hence the name). After services we went over to the eminent Rav Nissim and had a nice shabbes dinner with signing and eating and a great atmosphere as per usual, nothing peculiar except that crazy Pavlova (see earlier post on the subject) was in attendance for the first time in a couple of months (the Rav had enough of his constant insulting and fight mongering with the other guests and asked him to stop coming). In any case, he behaved and around 10 PM we split for home, planning to make a quick visit to Peters birthday party. Peter is a well-mannered English gentleman of 57 who made aliya about a year ago. He is also a fencing Master, busy teaching his students how to handles sables and oth...

So it's that silly day again. We've all seen the movies and heard the cheesy song about the boy/girl who doesn't get a card in the high school mailbox or posted flowers or whatever is the Godot of this day. It's a cultural cliche even for all us peeps who were lucky enough to have seen light outside The Home of Fly-over states and bad posturing. In the end, the girl get's the boy or vice versa. Here in Israel it's two hours left of this florist-invented day and I haven't gotten a single lousy binary FB salute or digital bouquet of flowers. Reason to believe my admireresses can be counted by the dozen minus twelve. Makes me think of a conversation I had the other day, when one of my friends in this my new homeland came for a visit. For whatever reason we started talking about the notorious " Shidduch Crisis " in the religious Jewish community – meaning the fact that a large crowd of religious singles nowadays tend to stay single forever, until th...

...is now back on track, but now the darn images won't display:-( Instead of doing homework, I found a new way of procrastinating - re-designing my blog! Let me know what you think!

I was going to write something witty about today being my birthday, but all that came out was everything but. It came out more like the lyrics of a Country song, so I ditched it. Suffice to say that according to the Gregorian calendar I'm a year older, and Jochanan was kind enough to invite me to a sushi place in the "Old City" which to my astonishment actually served OK sushi. So we had sushi and debated the Middle East future in light of the Egyptian revolution, and to a slightly lesser degree, the Hizballah takeover in Lebanon. In short he took a slightly gloomier view than me, in the short run I don't believe the consequences  for Israel will be disastrous. In the long run it might mean war, but as J.M. Keynes so eloquently put it, "In the long run we're all dead". For the time being I hope Egypt manages to get some sort of democracy going, and that the Old Guard don't decide to start murdering people as soon as the media limelight goes elsewhere...

So it's been little over a month since I last updated this blog and the reason is quite simple: it's been a rough month, but I won't delve into the sad specifics, suffice to say it's tough to change language, country, city and culture, and that when the novelty wears off, it gets tougher. Being single for protracted periods of time doesn't help much wither. Today I was supposed to go to Ramat Beit Shemesh to spend Shabbes with a friend, but unfortunately Egged had decided to runt their last bus there at 14.00, so I had to cancel. Below, please find some pics and action points. * I did manage to get to Tzfat about a month ago, and it was a very pleasant stay in an environment very different from the one in Beer Sheva. I stayed at the Chabad run Ascent hostel  – clean, friendly and cheap and I dearly recommend it for anyone interested in spending some time in Tzfat. Tzfat is located in the Galilee, high up in the mountains, on a mountain top, and it usually snows in...

As far as I understand, once you own a plot of land and have secured a building permit in Israel, you can pretty much build what the hell you want on it. This gives architects and builders a very big freedom, which results in interesting, fascinating, innovative and horribly ugly buildings. Below, please find what I believe may be the ugliest building on the planet. Now, what on earth were they thinking? First of all, you can't see anything out of the windows as they are facing the street. And second what is it supposed to look like? It has a vague similarity the the Escanian speciality "Spättekaka", with soot stains added..... Escanian speciality Completely Ad Hoc, if you like snacks from the plant kingdom, Israel is your place, as can be seen from the above picture from my tobacco dealer. The below vista is the first that will greet the newcomer to Tel Aviv, capital of the state of the Jews,  if he gazes right just after exiting from the maze that is Tel Avi...