1st Day of Ramadan

First day of Ramadan. The streets are strangely quiet as the heat rose early in the morning. The canon was fired around 4.30am and the fast began. The muslims around our area are simply too weak to stay under the sun or work full-time ... so the streets are pretty quiet. Just as well because it's the Jewish Sabbath and Jews are flocking to the Wailing Wall. The junction at the 3rd Station is pretty tense as Jews and Muslims jostle side by side. Soldiers everywhere.

Managed to video the the canon shot that started Ramadan yesterday and the calls to prayer from all the various mosques around the neighbourhood. It was very windy so the sound quality isn't that good. And it's only a snippet. But you can get a taste of our daily ritual in the neighbourhood.

Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse with arab workers, I was proved wrong. Yesterday our janitor Jadallah turned off the hot water in the house because he removed 3 toilets bowls from 3 rooms. But typical of arab work, he removed the old ones but did not replace the new ones. Job half done. And the hot water was left turned off. Today Saturday he worked on everything BUT replacing the toilet bowls, so not hot water still. Tomorrow is Sunday and he doesn't work so no hot water tomorrow either. And maybe, just maybe ... he might decide to restart the toilet bowl job on Monday. The thing is - why couldn't he turn back the hot water yesterday? No he can't. He's an arab. So I finally lost my temper and yelled to high heaven at him. He went upstairs and turned on the hot water system. It's as simple as that. But he's arab. I think it's time we sacked him. He's utterly incapable of the simplest jobs, and always ready with an excuse "I don't know". Enough is enough.