Rain

Rain in Tel Aviv

Yesterday evening just crumbled into chaos. On my way home from school yesterday I stopped by a new filipino food shop and bought some chicken curry for Leo to thank him for his kindness to me when he accompanied me to hospital for my surgery last week. I went to his monastery and gave it to him, then I walked home thinking I'll sleep early because I need to wake up at 3am to go back to hospital for a followup checkup. As I was sleeping at 8pm I received strange emails from my former student talking going out. Not the slightest idea.

Then at 9pm I got a call that "they" were at my door downstairs. I was sleeping so well ... anyway I had to rush down to see what was happening. Well a group of my former students and members of the filipino community of Jerusalem had come to see me. And they had brought a lot of food. So I invited them into our parlour and we ate and chatted till 10.45pm. Then I had to send them out as I was totally exhausted and stuffed with soft food - they made sure it was food that I could eat in view of my surgery. I was stuffed with pandit and adobo (boneless chicken).

Demonstration at Dizengoff Center

Then with only a few hours of sleep I was up again, cleaning my room, feeding Buddy and Chilli, and left for Tel Aviv at 5am. I almost slept along the way except for the fact that there was lightening and thunder when we reached Petah Tikva area - that's the nearby city of Tel Aviv. Then it started raining as we Tel Aviv. When I reached St. Peter's Church at 6.30am it was cold and wet. Celebrated Mass with the community, then cleaned up the aquarium and then it was off to the city centre to see my doc. The doc took out the stitches ... total of 9 (nine) because of the mistake (cutting a blood vessel). It wasn't painful but I had a bad headache. I decided to take a taxi to the central bus station but there was no available taxi in all the roads I walked ... all the way down to the legendary Dizengoff Square. It used to be an overhead plaza above the main road junction but today I discovered it's now brought down to ground level, much more trees and sitting places. Beautiful. But the central fountain is a lot smaller. And there was a demonstration there ... don't know what it was about ... but a lot of balloons were released.

Anyway I found a taxi at last and reached the Central Bus Station and managed to grab the first mini-bus (called sheroot) and reached home at 1.30pm. All I can say is I want to sleep.

War drums are beating as yesterday's Cabinet meeting decided the Israeli army should come down hard on the Gazan provocations. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-october-18-2018/

Well anti-christian vandalism is still alive and active here ... yesterday for the 5th consecutive time, a catholic cemetery was desecrated, headstones and crosses toppled and smashed. If it had happened to a jewish cemetery, it would be an antisemitic crime. But here no culprit is ever caught or prosecuted. Yet Israel claims it's the only Middle-Eastern country that protects christians.   https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/headstones-smashed-in-christian-cemetery-near-jerusalem-in-suspected-hate-crime-1.6570609?fbclid=IwAR3cwq4kfGP-NqhxVFIM-W6dYJ1Ws0b_E_UB1JnTeBYg4fpwgqbijm83W8I