End of holidays

Musrara night market goes on
as usual

Today is the last day of Sukkoth ... a solemn day whereby no work must be done. The streets in West Jerusalem are empty of traffic ... which is nice. But so are all the shops and offices. However the jewish crowds are flowing by the thousands toward the Wailing Wall for the close of this 8 day feast. Then once the final prayers are recited at sunset, they start another feast Shimini Ezret and another feast Simhat Torah ... 2 feasts on the same day. The autumn season can be quite a stress if you're celebrating all these feasts. The country has practically stopped for 25 days. But finally the holidays are over.

Salak from Indonesia

Tomorrow evening life will go back to normal in West Jerusalem. The Eastern part which is arabic is still with its hustle and bustle despite the tight israeli security cordon. Well let's hope the security will lessen and everyone get back to his routine. We all want to live peacefully. But of course there's Gaza in the south ... but that doesn't seem to bother us like before. There's warning of an impending war with Gaza and the border clashes yesterday was bad ... 7 dead if I'm not mistaken. Still we don't see any interest from the Jerusalem arabs. They don't want to be involved.

This morning after one month of preaching the conference/retreat to the MC nuns, I could finally sleep a little longer and steam some Singaporean kueh for breakfast. Then an Indonesian student gave me 3 salak that an Indonesian group brought for him. It was nice ... I haven't tasted one in 3 decades.

Something fishy is happening on my blog. The usual readership is 40 to 80 each day. But 2 weeks back it went up to 700 in one day. Then it went up to 1800 on another day. I think I'm being hacked. Or bugged. Or both.