Thursday, December 02, 2004

Coming Home

I am going home, Home is a weird concept, but for the first time I am looking at Israel as home. When I got on the plane this week to get home for Shabbat, home was Israel, home was Ra’anana and home was where my wife and kids are. I am coming home, I am coming to Israel, and I must say I missed it.

It takes on a whole new light the nice things about Israel when you spend some time in Europe. When you see the milkies have gone from 2 NIS to 59 Pence you feel like the price has normalized, but they have actually more then doubled. When you spend 6 pounds 40 pence on an all day travel card you start to understand how much stuff costs, for 52 NIS both me and my wife can eat dinner. The chicken at 1.49 per KG, works out to be 2.5x the cost in Israel. Most everything in London costs 2.5 times the cost of Israel.

The other thing that got me was I went to Tesco, and I could no longer eat everything. I had to pick and choose what I would eat and I had to pick and choose what I would buy. Food became an identifying mark for me again. I always thought I would have ballooned up in Israel with all the food options. Rarely do we eat at the same place 2 times, as there are just so many to choose from, but I got on a scale in London after my suit no longer fit me again (I was too skinny for it), and I found out that I was at 99 KG, or just over 221 pounds. This for me is amazing considering I am living in the land where land where low fat involves deep fryers and no one has the concept of high fiber.

I am getting back on the plane, I am sitting in Germany on my way home and I am understanding how much I miss my home land my country. The train station between the terminals has an open area that you could coceavably climb out and over onto the other side which I guess is the other side of the customs control. In most counties this would be guarded with a piece of decorative metal something that blocked but was aesthetically pleasing. In this airport it is a triple stack of rolled barbed wire. This did the job, it made climbing over impossible, but it also added to the caged feeling on the space. It just did not make me like the space, it make me feel like I was a criminal. I am sure that there are logical reasons for this triple stack of barbed wire, but I just did not like it.

I had a good week, I am starting to understand what I am giving up to live in the land of sunshine. I am not sure that I would be happy working from 7-7 every day to do some job that did not necessarily impact the world in any great way. I am not sure that I want a real job, but again, I am not sure that a real job would take me. What I am good at is doing research working out issues making sense of stuff, I am not sure I could fit slot a into plug b for the rest of my life.

I am going to shut down this computer and read the papers, but I should be home soon, and I cannot wait.

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