Campagne de pub

Act-up a lance une campagne de pub a laquelle je vous conseille de jeter un coup d'oeil :).

Vacation in France

I am leaving wednesday for 2 weeks vacation in Paris. See you all.

Yet another day I wish I didn't read the news

Yet another suicide bombing in Netanya, in a mall. The bomber was spotted by the security guard thus could actually not enter the mall, which probably saved many lives.
Like if this wasn't enough I also read about that Belgian women who was the first European origin person to blow herself up in Irak. Irak where a French engineer just had been taken hostage. He was working with the local water company...
And on the other side Europe starting to wake up and realize that the CIA had been secretly transporting prisoniers through all Europe with private planes, before taking them into secret detention centers that are models of human rights (so much than CICR is not even allowed to visit them).
News reading done for today...
[Edit] And it seems that there is going to be massive retaliation in the west bank vs Islamic Jihad + colateral damages...

New template

I have played with various blogger templates all day, and got rid of the old one. I'd like some feedback or suggestions on the new one. Anyway, if you hate this one, I can always restore the old one, but I believe it is more readeable now.
[Edit] Played a bit with text and links colors, flickr icons, and rolled back to my home panorama instead of Jerusalem.

Immigration en France

En lisant Liberation, aujourd'hui je suis tombe sur ces mots de Sarkozy (dans cet article):

Nous voulons choisir ceux qui seront accueillis sur le territoire de la République (...), mais nous ne voulons plus de ceux dont on ne veut nulle part ailleurs dans le monde.

Ma premiere reaction en lisant ca a ete, mais ou vont ils aller maintenant que plus personne n'est pres a les accueillir, meme pas la France. Dans un deuxieme temps, je me suis dit qu'au vu des directions prises par la France actuellement ceux qui avaient une autre option s'empresseraient de la prendre.

Voila, fuite des etudiants Francais vers l'etranger une fois qu'ils ont fini leurs etudes (je suis dans ce cas ainsi qu'une proportion importante de ceux avec qui j'ai etudie apres ma maitrise), beaucoup d'etudiants etrangers choisissant d'autres pays, frein important aux mariages Franco-non europeens, reconduites en masse a la frontiere prevues pour 2006, apologie de la colonisation, refus de la constitution Europeenne, etc... La France d'aujourd'hui se replie sur elle meme, reve de son passe "glorieux" (pourquoi ne pas faire l'apologie de Petain aussi? ), et fait fuir ceux qui pourraient ameliorer son avenir.

Oui j'amalgame un peu tout ce qui m'a deplu recement, mais vu de loin cela ressemble vraiment a des exces de nationalisme, de securitarisme, et de ...

Illegal outposts...

I suggest you have a look at this Haaretz article. You'll tell me nothing new, everybody has known for ages that evacuation of illegal outposts in the west bank was never conducted because the people backing those settlements have too much political weight. The news is that they admit it now.
On a contiguous topic, I am wondering if Sharon's new political party could start to do the kind of moves that would make a real difference. As it is not from the left, everybody from the right will not vote against (actually a reasoneable part of the right will follow him), and he might get the left's help on a few important topics (like he got it for Gaza's withdrawal).
Many say that this party has no future after one term, but I don't think it really needs more than that to do the proper moves (like removing outposts that are illegal even by Israeli law, which should be a nobrainer seeing how quick they can buldoze houses when they want). Now knowing if Sharon is really ready to do it, and for everybody's benefit and not only his... that's another question.

Independance celebration ?

Yesterday it was the first time Lebanon was celebrating its independance since Syrian troops withdrawal. This was used as a good reason for a giant "fireworks" between Hezbollah and Israel.

Most of the press agencies report massive missile firing in the Sheba farm area (BBC , Le Monde), however Israeli press reports that all the Golan Border was under Hezbollah attack, including cities. The Metula news agency, which is located in Metula right on the border reports (in French, and you don't have to agree with their interpretations, but I doubt the facts are wrong) about the attacks with some pictures and details.

For the ones that don't read French:
15h 49
We just watched the launch of 2 Katiouchas batches from Kfar Kileh, 600 feet away from our desks, followed by nourished automatic weapons fire. Several injured victims were evacuated on the Israeli side.

15h 57
The place in Kfar Kileh where the rockets were fired from got hit by an Israeli missile and fire stopped (cf pic).

I just wanted to point at this, as shootings in Sheba farms happen all the time and people have been used to just ignore it (when I read it I just think "oh yeah, again..."), reporting a shooting there instead of reporting it actually touched cities (which hopefully is pretty rare) is misinformation. Usually Hezbollah attacks are over a disputed area (cf my post on it), this time it is targeted at Israel cities (it is in Israel on UN maps, while Sheba farms are showed as occupied Syrian land).

Just another proof that you can't be informed correctly if you don't read the press from all the sides (often I wish I could read arabic).

Tourist guide and politics

As some of you know my sister came to visit me here so I transformed myself into a tourist guide for 10 days. She's pretty much enjoying the visit, especially the desertic areas like the dead sea coast (the reason why the water is so clear on the picture is not because the sand is white but because the bottom of the sea is a thick salt layer).

There was a lot of diplomatic activity in the past days here, revolving around the 10years anniversary of Rabin's death and the 1 year of Arafat's. At this occasion while having tea in the Souk in Jerusalem we had the surprise to see the Clintons pass a few meters away from us while headed to the celebrations. Fifille's comment was that he is still very cute :).
It seems that all these efforts from the EU and the US are headed somewhere, Rafah crossing is supposed to be reopened soon under EU supervision, and talks about Gaza's airport and harbour reopening seem to move forward. I hope this is going to progress as it could end Gaza's current "prison" status.
On the pessimistic side, 10 days after my trip to Amman 57 people died in 3 hotels suicide bombings, Irak is still a giant bomb, Palestinian top militants get killed by IDF on a regular basis, noone knows how will Israel behave towards Hammas candidates in the next poll, Al Qaida is supposed to have finaly infiltrated Gaza, and the stream of bad news just never ends.
In the past 2 weeks the headlines were stolen by the French rioters, and many attempts were done here to compare it to the intifada. Most things I can say as I wasn'nt in France is that no rioter was shot/killed by the police as far as I know (quite different from what happens here), the ideology of the rioters was pretty weak (quite different from here too), Sarkozy gained more popularity by using extreme right words and actions (well this one is quite similar), nothing has been done to address the root of the problem in a civilized way and many ended up blaming muslims for it as well.

Hope

Sometimes you can come to think that there is no hope ever for peace here and that hearts are charged with too much hate because of too many loved ones killed. But some other days there are some signs of hope, Mr and Mrs Khatib I admire you and I share your sorrow.

CNN and geography

I suggest you have a look at this article from CNN.com talking about the urban unrest in France and enjoy their knowledge about French geography (thanks Totof for pointing at it). If you look well you can see that on the screenshot I took:

Notice that Seine Saint-Denis is adjacent to Paris and about 500km away from Switzerland, the mistake at the country scale is similar to putting Chicago in Florida.

Wadi Mujab

I am back from my trip in Jordan, the eyes still full of nice scenaries, places and peoples. On the picture you can contemplate wadi mujab, a 1000m deep gorge in the middle of the desert with a dam.

Before crossing the gorge I was at Madaba and mount Nebo doing like every tourist, watching the various mosaics. My next stop was in Kerak, the famous fort of the infamous Renault de Chatillon. Noone forgets to remind you how refined were the french at that period. The fort is on top a high cliff and has high walls (in some areas the castle is 7 stages high so 20m). And one of local customs was to throw prisoniers from the top of the walls, nothing fancy you'd tell, besides the fact they were putting their heads in wooden boxes so they would still be councious when they reach the bottom of the moutain after numerous bounces. The golden age of our culture I tell you. Kerak is so big it is itself a small city. The travel there was pretty long but I really enjoy the desert.

The next days I was in Amman and visiting the desert castles near the Saoudian and Iraki borders.

...

Well I feel lazy for now so you'll know later :). 

Jerash, Ajloun and Pella

I'm continuing my trip here in northern Jordan, after haveing been waken up about 10 times by muezzins that weren't on time (or there is something new about making 10 prayers in the middle of the night :).
I realize while waking up that I did two mistakes yesterday (proper french word being gaffe). I was pretty tired as well as hungry and thursty in the Taxi yesterday so I asked to stop in a place for drink. I knew it was Ramadan, but for one day I forgot it. He finaly found a place on the road side and I ate lafa, humus and olive oil in the middle of a Palestinian refugee camp right in the middle of Ramadan. It was probably not too bad because I had lots of smiles and few or none angry faces (and I usually notice them because I am watching a lot).
The seond one is when heading for Um Qais my driver showed me something in the opposite direction and said "Bella". It took me a night to remember that B and P are the same thing in arabic and that he was offering me to make a small detour to visit Pella. Anyway I visited it today.

So Jerash is quite impressive, it was realy a giant roman city (cf Jordan tourism ministry for history and stuff), I caught the usual nose sunburn, and ended up buying a "bob". Then Ajloun, it is the best conserved medieval fort I have seen in the area, it was the arabic side castle opposed to Belvoir I visited a few months ago. Really a nice place, especially that they let you climb everywhere and if you're adventurous enough you can see nice additional places. I really enjoyed it as you guess. Finally, there isn't much remaining of Pella, outside of a few columns near a source and a nice oasis. The interresting part of it is that I took the "free entrance" as advised by my taxi driver (a hole in the fence:).

PS: Little game, there is something very surprising on the Jordan tourism website. I'll give a special price to whoever finds.
PPS: For those that were wondering, I am traveling alone and in a taxi :), but with a map.

Umm Qais and Irbid

This morning I left home to go for a short trip in northern Jordan. I passed the border crossing in Bet Shean pretty quickly and took a taxi to Irbid. On the way I stopped at Umm Qais (Gadara), it was a pretty nice visit, I ll post pictures when back home. Now I am roaming in the streets of Irbid and stopped by in a cyber to post news. Taxi here is still pretty scary, this afternoon we dodged a crash by almost nothing and the driver got agressed physically by another unhappy driver. Finaly driving in Cairo was amost quiet and gentle.

Megiddo

Today I woke up almost early and went on a trip to visit Megiddo city ruins (Tel Meggido Israeli national park). Mount Megiddo (Har Megiddo in hebrew) is known in the Bible as Armageddon (the wikipedia entries are great on both subjects). On the picture you can see the entrance to the city, built during the reign of King Salomon (~3000 years ago).
Two things impressed me during the visit, the first one is that the hill is actually half artificial, most of the height coming from 26 layers of cities built starting more than 6000 years ago (some archeologists even talk about remains aging back to 10000 BC).
The second one is the effort that was put in the water system. On top of the hill there is a gigantic hole (roughly 40m deep counting the steps down) followed by a 70m horizontal tunnel getting out on the side of the hill in a hidden place where was located the local water source.
The scenary from there is fantastic, you overlook the Jezreel valley, and also have a great view on Mount Gilboa, Mount Tabor and Nazareth. I'll try to create a panorama from my pictures and will post it on my flickr.
On my way back I decided to take the mountain road passing through Dalyat Al Karmel, and ended up being pretty happy about that choice. It was olive harvest time, I stopped near an olive tree field and ate some Druze pita with labane and za'atar under the shade of a green oak, tasting this year's olives, chatting, drinking coffee and playing backgammon with the harvesters.

I finished the trip at the Mushraka to watch the sun setting down on mount Karmel.

Akko Festival 2005

As last year I went to the first evening of Akko festival. Last year it was full of concerts, street theatres and other forms of art demonstrations, as well as filled everywhere with people selling good food, so I enjoyed it a lot.

Unlike last year my car was stopped by the Police 1.5km before the center of Akko and sent to an out-of-town parking lot where shuttle were supposed to bring me to the old city. After a few traffic jams and lots of police barrage (4 that I can think of), I finaly end up on that parking lot, and start to wait on the shuttle line. When I realise that there is 15 min waiting and that I'll have to pay I just decide to do the walk.

The moon was full or almost, and the night was beautyfull, reasonably fresh and dry for here. Soon after I pass another police barrage to enter the festival, it looks super crowded, I start to be excited so I head to all the places in the moat and in the squares where the action took place last year ... to find these places deserted. I keep on searching, and outside of food merchants (still a lot but not as many) I barely find 1 or 2 guys playing some music. I head to the bazar where local artists were exposing work, ... I pass yet another police barrage and nada, empty.

Streets are full of bored people, there is nothing to be seen, nothing to do besides buying food or other stuff... I was pretty disappointed, and when I talk with Octavio he tells me there has been a lot more people visiting than last year but it seems the only 2 areas where there is some demonstration are paying areas with fixed time spectacles. It was enough, I go around my beloved streets of Akko, buy some bread and some Ramadan cakes (the semoul ones filled with date paste) and head back home.

I hope the next days are going to be better than that because there are 1000s of cops deployed, lots of organisation, lots of visitors, but yet anything attractive to be seen :(.



PS: On the picture above you can enjoy the view of a bunch of bored people.

Banias

I took advantage of the vacations here to go spend some time in the Galil and around the Kineret. I like this picture because it's very historically charged.
This is a view on the roman city of Ceasarea Philippi or Panias or Banias (Banias Wikipedia entry), with an antique synagogue in the center. The green area at the bottom of the cliffs on the left and center of the picture is one of the Jordan river source. At this spot carved inside the cliff was a temple dedicated to greek god Pan built during the Alexander the great era. It is also a pilgrimage area for christians.
On top of the right hill is Nimrod (cf my post about it) citadel built by the Mamlouks and the crusaders, and on the left background is mont Dov and the Sheba farms. According UNO Mount Dov is Syrian territory occupied by Israel, but it is at the Lebanon border and Syria gave it to Lebanon while it was occupied. Now Hezbollah is still fighting against Israel because they claim ownership of this land despite Israel having fully pulled out of Lebanon International borders.

New usage model for falafels

Jpost reports an interresting new usage for falafels: smuggling drugs into your sandwich. I think this can only happen here, how the hell did the policemen think abouth searching INSIDE the falafel balls of the sandwich the guy was bringing. This gives you an idea of how ingeniously the smuggles and the searches are done around here (and also gives you a hint of what I have had to go through countless times at the airport :).

Qassam vs Airstrikes

Well it all restarted, Gaza pullout is finished, and the circle of I shoot you because you shot me restarted. You can read articles on Haaretz,
or Libe, or any other press on the web...

The difference now is that they are not anymore Israelis occupying Gazas, and the Gaza border follows the UN recognized border. So what is it changing ? Well Israel is deploying artillery and might just start to shoot a little less carefuly because there is no more Israeli to injure. So i guess things are heading again in the wrong direction :(, I thought that the disengagement truce was a first step in the right direction and hoped for it to just be the start, but some seem to refuse any idea of peace.

Gaza/Egypt border

With Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the border control got handed to egypt. The first days Egypt took a popular measure of opening the border so people could visit their families, etc... This was very nice of them, and probably improve heir image in Gaza, however, as usual in this type of case, the porous border was used to smuggle a big load of weapons into gaza, so much than NYT reports prices halved on AK-47 and handguns in Gaza. Is this doing any good ?
Obviously this just comfort the anti disengagement in Israel, that this was a bad thing to do for security, darkens even the picture of PA security forces that just look the other way when this happens.

Finally, I am almost not surprised to see that this is ignored by the french press which focuses on other aspects of the future of Gaza (economical ones, which will be fundamental if peace happens one day). So once again you get half the information reading the french press (like le Monde or Liberation) and the other half reading the US one (WP or NYT)and the remaining details with Israeli and Arab world press.

Red nose ecologists

Hating SUVs inside cities like Paris started to do some commando actions against them. Find their blog here.

PS: kind of private joke for Izard.

Paella

Oguz was rightfully pointing at the fact I didn't publish any paella pictures even though I spent one month in spain. Here is a picture of a nice paella very similar to the one we had together on the Barcelonetta piers. I have to say it was pretty darn good ;). 

PS: sorry for the soft g, it doesn't appear on my keyboard ;)

State of law in Gaza ?

I just wanted to point out these articles about the assassination of Moussa Arafat: Libé, Haaretz (2), NYT...
(btw they don't seem to agree on something as simple as his age).

I can't really understand all the implications and reasons around that, but having a man being assassinated by a little army without any opposition from the security forces does not sounds especialy good. Maybe a little trial for corruption would have been better before the execution, no ?

Some News

I haven't given news recently so here they are. My passport is being stamped by the proper Israeli ministry so I'll finaly be fully legal here until ...

We have started to plan fifille's vacation here and we might manage to get everything ready more than 1 month ahead which would be a personal record :).

I am starting to plan a trip sailing from Haifa to Cyprus during Rosha Shana week (new year here). It'll depend on the weather and how many people we can get but it looks like some good future fun.

Being a kid in Pensylvania USA

can get you charged with a felony... This is basically what is explained here . In their school the kids were given a laptop for their studies (they couldn't refuse taking it or return it, some tryed). The admin password happened to be written on the back of the laptops, the kids used it to gain access to the computers and do all sorts of things that were originaly blocked on the laptops, like chatting together, watching porn, etc...
As a deterrent the administration did put 13 of them to trial (while a hundred or so used the pass). Hopefully with all the bad advertising around this the charged were dropped and they had to do some community service. Did they even think of punishing the admins for being incompetent and the persons that took those decisions for being stupid ? No...

Original story found on slashdot.

Bat-Mobile

I am now going through all my Barcelona pics :). I found this one taken during the Gracia festival. Many strange items were hanged in the streets. I liked the idea of a bat-mobile ( mobile=cell in french and spanish :). 

Castellar de nhug

Yesterday, Fernando took me to Castellar del Nhug, a very nice little traditional village in the Catalan Pyrenees mountains. We got pretty wet thanks to our weather misprediction, but still have enjoyed the beautifull place. More pictures as soon as I go back to Haifa, which should happen tomorrow... 

Tristan bathing in a dinky boat.

Last weekend I went to Narbonne-Plage to visit Olivier, Claire and Tristan. We had very good time together, despite strong winds and poor weather. Here is a picture of Tristan in his favourite element : Water (he doesn't really seem to care whether it's hot or cold :). For those that know the "Petit Singe" blog, you'll recognize the toy. 

Festival de Gracia

Yesterday evening, Fernando took us to the Festival de Gracia (Gracia is one of the villages forming Barcelona). Some streets were decorated with crazy stuff like these trash-punk vampires, some other with soft blues mimicing the depth of the seas, etc... Very original. Best part was all those little concerts everywhere and those giant bar stands servin mojitos and capihrinias :). 

Bavure, planes falling like flies, etc...

It seems that we know a little bit more about what happened to that Brazilian guy that got assassinated by Scottland Yard in the subway a few weeks ago. According ITV he was mistakenly "identified as" one of the supposed suicide bombers. Still I can't believe that they put 7 bullets hin his head before asking him questions... Even Israeli Forces don't shoot the ones they suspect of carrying a bomb (and they still shoot quite easily if they think they are at a danger).

Liberation is also reporting it, for the french readers ;).

To complete this last days sensational informations, yet another plane crashed, this time killing more than 150 french passengers. This is the 4th major plane incident this month, I never heard of that many in such a short time.

Finaly today over 200 (yes two-hundred) bombs exploded in Bengladesh. These were low power explosions, but enough to injure many people. Again it would be some extremist Islamist group that acted. Even if it wasn't, nobody has problems trusting it, it tends to become so common. Well ... but 200+...

More Gaudi

More pictures of Gaudi architectural crazyness, here the roof of some covered area in the Gueil Park, north of Barcelona.  

Antonio Gaudi

At the beginning of the 20th century, Barcelona had a crazy architect called Gaudi. He's the one that spent all his life building the sagrada familia, that is still unfinished 80 years after his death, but he did build other things, like this building. He loved the forms of natures and said squares do not exist in nature, so the building is quite strange and original. 

Fontaine musicale

This weekend Valou came to visit me here in Basrcelona. We enjoyed the city, toured many Gaudi architected buildings, drank good local cider, sangria and cava and ate lots of tappas. Very nice weekend indeed, that was concluded by the beautyfull musical funtain show near Montjuic. 

Israeli jewish terrorist

killed 4 israeli arabs (muslims and christians) in a bus headed to Haifa when they disagreed on a talk about the disneygagement. He appeared to be an IDF deserter (he refused to participate to disengagement). He got lynched to death by the surrounding people that survived his fire.
Haaretz, Liberation, Le monde and many more report the event.

And the tension is not yet at its peak, many people have automatic weapons in Israel and I do fear that more just get crazy like that :(.

Barcelona (2)

I will probably post a lot of pictures from Barcelona in the coming month, so here I start. Fernando took me on a walk around the Olympic site before going to a Gallician restaurant (his original area) after work. Here is a taste of what was on the way :).

In Barcelona

I left Haifa around 2:30 AM monday, thanks again Cyrille for driving me to the Airport. For once I didn't got checked for hours at the border (there was a guy with longer hair than me on the same plane:). I arrived in Barcelona shortly before noon, dropped my stuff in my new appartment and went to work. I was surprised by the weather in Barcelona that was very enjoyable: only 26C and a little bit of rain in the evening, not what I expected :). To start with Barcelona pics, here is one from the Sagrada familia (cathedral in construction for a century) that i took in february this year.

Flying to Barcelona

I am leaving home in Haifa for my future temporary home in Barcelona. See ya'll in europe.

News

I haven't posted many news recently, I have been busy at work and getting sunburnt on the beach. Las week I enjoyed a full day at Arziv again, and this monday I organized another breath fire thing on Haifa beach with the local french connection. Everybody seemed to enjoy this pretty much.

Finaly my visa renewal didn't come on time so I am moving to Barcelona and going to work with the UPC folks until my work permits gets re-approved. So I won't be here for the Disneygagement, I don't know if it's good or bad, probably good for my health and bad for my natural curiosity.

Triple bang

Well, after London subway being under attack for the second time in one week, Egypt got the 4th attack in the year today. Over 88 deaths in a triple suicide bombing in Charm. Yet another slaughter signed Al-Qaeda. Many of the victims were egyptian workers...

/cry

Akko streets

Yesterday I was back in Akko, Mounir had invited me to join them to a barbecue. Ihad some time to spend before meeting them so I went and took a few pictures of the streets of that city I like so much. Later on we ate barbecue, smoked narguile... on the Arziv beach just below Roch Aniqra until 1 am. We had lots of fun, but I wish I would speak arabic, it would make things so much easier :).

Gaza on fire

This morning, going through my usual blog-browsing I noticed on Rafahpundits that things were getting very bad in Gaza.
Yesterday evenings rockets were fired by Hamas from the strip to the northern Negev. An Israeli woman died. This triggered response from the Israeli Air force which fired a few missiles which seem to have killed noone yet. The PA police in an attempt to stop the Hamas to shoot more towards Israel had serious clashes with them. Abbas who is currently in Gaza declared the state of emergency. Several militants and policemen were injured in the clashes and 2 deaths.

Some will say that Abbas is loosing control on Gaza (did he really had it), but at least this time Israel can't say the PA didn't do anything in order to stop attacks towards Israel... I really fear that the next month will be like the past days were, bloody and sad.

Department event

Yesterday evening our department had an out of site event at the beach of Arziv, northern of Nahariya. It was pretty nice, and clearly better from similar events I had been at in the US... The interresting part was when I threw Omer in the sea and he had the keys of the car in his pocket :). Few hours later we discovered that a mazda 3 alarm cannot be deactivated just using the key...

Hopefully for us after opening the wett remote command, drying and cleaning it up for 20 minutes I managed to operate it back and we could go back home. On the way back we spotted a billiard place and decided to try it out. Was our lucky day, it was the grand opening and it was free ! :).

So remember if you want free billiard throw the driver in the water with the car's keys, especially if they are absolutely necessary to start the car...

Netanya mall bomb

A suicide bomber detonated himself killing 2 other people at the entrance of a mall in Netanya, it seems civilians managed to barr him the entrance in the mall. The Islamic Jyhad claims responsability for this. Like it's going to help their cause... I just hope the fragile cease fire between Hamas, PA and Israel will remain and not get crippled further by this.

There's 1 month remaining before the disengagement, more and more people are displaying their political colors on their cars, t-shirts etc... Orange is the color of the ones against and Blue the color for pro-disengagement. I'm wearing a blue ribbon on my car, If anyone had told me that one day I would show support for something Sharon was going to do I would never have believed it... The oranges have mostly stopped their stupid protests in which they were pissing off the rest of the population (blocking roads etc..) but got stupid enough to plant a fake bomb in a bus stop in Jerusalem... Like this country does not have enough real ones...

Peace.

RC cars

Sunday is Karate day for Pierre's wife, so I often come by on sunday evening, we eat pizza drink beer and play with tiny RC cars on his balcony. I know it sounds both childish and "beauf" but we're enjoying it quite a bit :). Yesterday a couple of friends joined us so we had a race. I was impressed by how small those things are, when I was a kid a RC car was at least 30cm long, now they're like 5 long and 2 wide have lights, good steering etc. The ones we are using are ZipZaps, enjoy.

Sad day in London

This morning 3 trains and 3 buses blew off in London, 1 day after the celebration of their victory in organizing the 2012 Olympics. The BBC is posting updates as they come. Unfortunately it seems that the casualties are numerous, like the world needed more subway bombs... I'm going to stop the rant here as I could go for hours on how it is bad for everybody, especially the ones who did it...

Edit: Revendication by Al-Qaida in Europe...

Experimental salad

Today while browsing on various cooking blogs and websites to find out what to go buy to the supermarket I noticed a vietnamese salad that looked good. Because I lacked many ingredients and adapted it my way I won't call it Vietnamese anymore.
You'll need half a white cabbage, 3 - 4 carrots, 3-4 mushrooms, 1 chicken white, cashew nuts. Cut everything very finely, fry the chicken in a pan. For the sauce, press 2 lemon juice, add about the same amount of soja sauce, 4 tea spoons of sugar, 4 ground garlic cloves, 2 tea spoons of hot chili and some cesame oil (I used tehina). Cut the chicken in small pieces while still hot, spread on the salad with crushed cashews and add the sauce.

The desert is an apricot/fig/peach salad with lemon juice, mint leaves, some rose essence, sugar and a bit of cachaca.

It took me 15 mins and this tastes great.

Per request

Aaron the Truck Driver said: "I have a request.Pictures of the people who live there. The local people. Any local people."
So here is a picture:

You did say any local...
Ok, let me find real people's pics, like the ones that do work with me during a group event in western Galil:

Kineret

This was a long weekend, I spent today in northern Galil, between a Kiboutz preparing goat cheese and a "speed boat" trip on the Kineret (Tiberias lake). The picture shows the lake looking towards south-east and was take from a nice little coffee-shop lost in the mountain. 

Belvoir

Today I woke up around noon, like many weekends, but for once I was quite awake, maybe it was because I didn't party the night before, who knows. Anyway I was awake and I felt like visiting a new crusader fortress, yeah like that. I had 3 options but as it was quite "early" I picked up the farthest one that was supposed also to be the nicest one. It was build in the 12th century and as it name says, you're supposed to get a nice view from it.

I picked up the car, discovered a new way to get out of Haifa towards the west going through a road that would have its place in the "Corse Rally" (at least that's the way I drove) and 1:30 hours later I am in the Jordan Valley south of the sea of Galil climbing up a steep road towards Belvoir also know as Kochav Hayarden: Star of the Jordan in hebrew or Kaukab al-hawa: star of the winds in arabic). The castle sits at a pretty windy placeand has a fantastic view on the Jordan side and over all eastern and southern Galil from Mt Gilboa to Nazareth.


It is in a pretty decent shape as you can see on the pictures and it has a 6 to 8 meters deep moat. I was really pleased, especially that I arrived late enough to not pay any entrance fee ;). Many rooms in the center of the Castle are still covered and it is supposed to be one of the crusader fort that is in the best shape.

I had a very good time there, but had to leave because it was closing (I hate the fact that everything closes early here on fridays for shabbat, I'm always late :). I decided to take the "road" the other way which is more direct towards home. It just happens that this one is a gravel road, so this time it was more like a Morocco Rally :). On my way towards home I spotted the Mount Tabor:

And remembered that I only visited the orthodox monastery there and not the Catholic church. Hopefully it was still open and there was a lot of pilgrims singing and praying so it was also nice to the ears.

Like it wasn't already a day busy enough Raph and Laure invited me for dinner, and I'm finishing the evening with a mojito.

Visa stuph

We will file my visa renewal paperwork tomorrow, the expected delay is over 2 months so I am starting to make plans for august. The best option seems to go to work in Barcelona while waiting for the thing to be approved. Seems I'm gonna have some extended vacations in Europe, yay !

Turtle day

Why was this day a turtle day ? Well, we (bunch of french) met a cute little turtle on our way to Sahne this morning and we spent our day eating fruits, sunbathing (under the shade of olive trees obviously, nobody's staying outside of the shade here) and swimming in an everhot river (28°C all year round - 82°F) in semi-natural pools. What do you think the turtle we met in the morning did all day ? Sleep under an olive tree and eat some yummie stuff and eventually have a bath so that was definitely a turtle day.

Justice and CIA

Finaly some democratic country's justice is looking at CIA illegal actions on their territory, like abducting people they do suspect of terrorism. Come on, couldn't they just ask Italy for their cooperation if they were real terrorists ? What would the US say if the french secret services were abducting some of their residants without notice ? Oh maybe it is just because countries like Italy wouldn't let them handle their prisoniers like they wanted (read torture). Or maybe because since the GI's killed the Italian secret agent that was freeing their journalist in Iraq, the Italians are pissed off and want to hit on something.

Google maps

Google started to have high resolution satellites pictures of all Europe, as far as Israel. I live here (in the middle).

If you know where to search you can find Dimona (Israeli nuclear plant) as well as all the territory pretty detailed (even Nezarim, Gush Katiff and co...). I am surprised as in the US they tend to blur sensitive spots...

Tension Raising 3 ...

Well, with Israel resuming targeted assassinations on Islamic Jihad members, the suicide bombing attempt intercepted at Eretz , massive arrestations in the west bank and communication between the two parties not really being bidirectionnal, I think I can say that the tension is raising again :(.

Only good thing left is that Sharon still plans to disengage from Gaza in august, but the days of peace hope seem to move farther away.

Maybe I'm just too tired, worked for too long today and partied too late yesterday but I have hard time seeing anything positive in the past few days local news.

Some bad news

The visa that allows me to work in israel is expiring on July the 30th and it seems my employer didn't take the required steps to renew it, so I have just initiated the process. It might take up to 3 months to get the renewal so I will eventually be kicked out of this country (this is absolutely not due to the israeli immigration services, outside of their standard administration slowlyness) in 38 days, and will have to work from another place until my visa get renewed. I'll keep you updated on that, but I don't know much besides I've filled lots of forms in the past 2 days.

Sand sculptures

Last weekend there was a sand sculpture competition on Haifa beach, we only saw it on tuesday night but it was pretty neat. They bring giant boxes with compressed sands and then sculpt it and get pretty nice results. These sculptures can resist wind and rain for over a year supposedly, and are guarded day and night for now so there is no man-induced wear. This sculpture ranked second on the competition but is in my opinion the best, plus it is my best picture of that night to :).

Little Game III

What's this ? Again 100% unphotoshoped picture. Price is a free beer next time you meet me (or any other non-alcoholic drink).

Casino Bar

During our trip in Egypt we found what I think is probably one of the nicest place to hang around in Cairo. This bar was called the "Casino bar" and is situated along the Nile waterfront on the Giza side (not far from the Zoo on Nile Street). We just entered there by luck the first evening and then we came back every single evening we spent in Cairo. Waiters were very nice, drinks excellent, food very good and abundant and all was quite cheap. So we just spent hours chatting, smoking narguile and watching the young egyptian crowd that was having fun here as we were the only tourists (or it seemed like it). One nice and original thing was that they were using jeans as seat covers, Jyby loved it and took a few pictures of it. More pictures in my flickr.

Road trip to Cairo

Back from Egypt ! Here is a quick summary of our trip.

We left last tuesday with my car and drove to Eilat where we parked. We passed the border to Sinai at the Taba crossing, and everything went pretty smooth, actually too smooth. Once in Sinaï we start to ask for our visa to Cairo (no need for any Visa when going to Sinaï fro Israël) and they answer us that they don't deliver any visa for Egypt and that we have to go back to the Egyptian consulat in Eilat in Israël... So we spent one night in a nice Sinaï hotel with a view on Salah El Din fortress, and the next day we went back to Israël to get those stupid visas. This is the sunrise on the fort:


We almost got kicked out of the consulat when they saw Jeremy juggling to pass time while waiting for the stamp but we got it in a few hours. We passed the border again and took a taxi for Cairo. We loved that 5 hour trip through mountains, desert, a tunnel under Suez canal and finally Cairo. Here is one of our encounters on the road :


We stayed in a cheap Hotel right by the Giza Zoo and we were lucky to have a view on some green which is pretty rare in Cairo. Our next days are probably close to every (not really organized beforehand) tourist tour excepted our long evenings spent in a nice cafe along the Nil river drinking fresh juices and smoking chicha.

So I got pics of Pyramids taken during our 25km Camel back riding hike (I lost a few vertebras in this story :) :


Mosqs (in the Cairo citadel):


and Churches (In Old coptic Cairo):


For the trip back we took a bus from Cairo to Taba (5x cheaper than the taxi that was already not too bad). We woke up at 5 to wait for a late bus that happened to break after 20km... So we changed bus at the depot and the new bus lost air conditioning like 5 minutes out of the depot. We were the only non arabic speakers in the bus, but seeing the bus reliability I wasn't too suprised to see no other western countries tourists in it :). It took us over 8 hours to arrive in Taba, where we waited over 2 hours at the border because we came back at the end of a 4 days long israeli weekend (monday 13). After 5 more hours driving through all Israel and an automatic gearbox attempting multiple suicides (made in France obviously) we finally arrived to the term of a 17.5 hour travel.

Jeremy flew to France today so you might meet him pretty soon if you're near Paris (a dragon-clown carrying a unycicle in the airplane).