Week 24

Protesters outside the PM's house

Late last night the govt agreed on imposing a 3 week national lockdown .... after one ultra-orthodox minister quitted in protest and many others left disgruntled and unconvinced. Even before the declaration, many people especially small business owners rebelled ... threatening not to comply with the rules as their livelihood cannot take another 3 week bashing. The ultra-orthodox jews were protesting because their New Year, Yom Kippur and feast of Booths will be under lockdown. Well I already voiced my opinion that the lockdown is too little too late ... imposed only after days of 4000 daily infections. Utterly unbelievable when compared to New Zealand which locked down the country after 40 daily infections. We're a 100 times more ... and nothing was done. It's too late. The only good the lockdown will do now is to ease the pressure from overcrowded hospitals. But it will not reduce the number of infections. It's out of control. This is especially bad overseas because no tourist will dare to come to Israel ... and Israel depends heavily on tourism.

I had a very rushed morning as I needed to do as much as I could to be the start of the lockdown. Though it's 5 days away ... things here people work very very slowly so I must address as much work as possible which needs to be completed ... otherwise they will never ever be done. That includes meetings with lawyers and accountants to secure enough funds to run the libraries for a month during the lockdown. Then I had to go to the Insurance company to make some applications for our sisters, and then back to the university library to organise work for our collaborators during the lockdown. Exhausting. Now I've a splitting headache from the heat and the rush of work before deadline.  

Carmelite bitter gourd

The carmelite nuns who came last week gave me several bitter gourd from their monastery garden. And I've been eating them for the past 2 days. Our indian sisters cooked it with spices and it tastes great with white rice. It;s funny we have to say "white rice" here when back in Asia it's simply rice. But that's because rice in the Middle East and Mediterranean is seldom "white" ... it's always cooked with some other thing. White rice is a rarity here ... and only we asians appreciate it. And by the way, locals and europeans consider the bitter gourd poisonous so they get terrified when they see us eat it.