Great anticipation

Exotic asian fruit on sale

New infections hit 5000 in the last 24 hours .... 4 days before national lockdown. Hospitals will soon be unable to cope with growing number of covid patients. People are worried and begin stocking up on food. Some food stalls are selling off stock very cheaply as a month lockdown would ruin all their perishable stock. Still underlying the fear of economic collapse, there is a spirit of defiance that they will continue working even when the lockdown is enforced. And the operative word here is "if". We've seen the past week, the half-hearted attempts of the police to enforce the night curfew in 40 red zone areas. In one ultra-orthodox city, there were riots and total disregard to the curfew ... with police doing nothing about it ... and consequently today infection rates there spiked.   https://www.timesofisrael.com/daily-infection-rate-surges-to-nearly-5000-ahead-of-lockdown/?fbclid=IwAR2W1AmxWIXCdvu3kbfNizEak8Ud9GT0P0TohX_09ign01-SRa1Po98ANXE#gs.fn3awx

The new directive for the lockdown has been published .... and not everything is for sure. There are still many parts that are undecided. Result? Confusion among the public now. Just go to any local FB group and see the contradictory questions and answers to the lockdown. I met some old friends who run a jeans shop in the Old City ... haven't seen them in over 2 years since they moved from El Wad street to the upper Suq ez Zeit (Olive oil market). They were torn between closing down and defying the lockdown. We had a good chat so they could air their fears and frustrations. I have no solutions but I'm here to listen to them. It's just a general air of anticipating the worst and defiance at the same time.

Fresh dates ... crunchy and sweet

And the northern border is once again tense as Israel bombed Syria for the 3rd time in a week. Nobody is celebrating the normalisation of ties with Bahrain ... we have too much local problems to distract us.

What distracts me is the countless fruit during this autumn harvest. Lots of asian fruit grown locally including starfruit, dragonfruit, lychees and guavas. But local dates are also ripening and I love the fresh ones more than the preserved ones. It's crunching and less sickly sweet. Buddy and JJ like it too so I got a small bunch yesterday for ourselves to enjoy. Autumn fruit to chase the lockdown blues away.