I just thought this would serve as a good example of what I meant in a
previous post when I mentioned the terrible coverage in the media of
the new candidates for the papacy.
As it seems, in the addition to the all too common jokes about Black
popes, Jewish popes, and the like, some news sources can’t even keep
track of which candidates are real people, and which of their
candidates are just TV characters.
I’m subscribed to Nature
magazine for years now. The sciences are a hobby of mine, and Nature is
one of the best, and oldest, interdisciplinary journals out there.
My current subscription was nearing the expiration period, and I logged
in to the site to renew. I don’t usually use the site much, since I
read everything on the paper, but when it comes to registration it
beats filling a paper form and sending an envelope, hands-down.
Before starting the renewal, I took a quick look at my account details,
and noticed a problem. I was listed as working in the pharmaceutical
industry. I certainly never provided that information, so it must be a
mistake. This is one of the information fields that doesn’t have any effect on me,
and only interests them, since it gives them better data about their
subscribers.
I decided I can spare a minute to be nice and go and change this. I
entered the account details page, changed to a more appropriate
category, and tried to update the data.
No such luck. They have required fields which were not
filled.
Mind you, these are required field that didn’t contain any info
previously, so how can they really be required? But specifically, they
require that I also fill in my Secondary Speciality, my Main Activity,
and my Professional Qualification. Even ignoring the fact that I’m not
entirely sure what the heck they’re talking about, why would I be
required to provide that info? I don’t want to, and don’t need to.
I’m a paying customer, have a subscription for years, and nobody forced
me to go change my details. I’m doing them a favour of updating some
details, and they won’t let me do that without divulging even more personal
information? Yes, that’s exactly what they’re doing.
I could either tell them more than I wanted to, or let them keep the
wrong info that I was willing to correct. So I said goodbye, and left
them with the garbage info. This makes no sense, why demand to receive
more information, when the info isn’t really required? Do they really
prefer to get no information about people, than partial info? Why?
And, oh, as a side-note, while the new subscription page works
great, the
renew subscription page is a total bust. The help system has a page
saying something about the entire on-line subscription being
inoperational, but the page is entirely undated, so it’s impossible to
know how close it is to apply. And the support rep, by email, said that
she doesn’t know why the renew pages don’t work, and offered me to send
her the credit card details by phone, fax, or email. Yes, clear-text
unencrypted email. Sloppy all around.
I ran a simple search on Yahoo!, for two quoted phrases, and forgot to
close the second quote. No big problem, since the normal options are
either that the search engine would guess right on its own, or will
guess wrong and ignore the double-quote character.
Instead, I received an error page, with this nice line at the bottom:
d=document; function init() { addHandlers(); } function
addHandlers() { if (oRoot=document.getElementById(‘yschres’)) { if
(!oRoot.getElementsByTagName(‘ul’)) return false; var
aSpns=oRoot.getElementsByTagName(‘ul’); for (i=0;i
The sort of thing you can expect from some improperly debugged web page, but not from a service as experienced as them.
Quite odd.
In any case, a second attempt with the same malformed search string, a
little while later, worked properly. And while I didn’t get result
(which is true, even had I close the quotes), I also didn’t see the
error message and the server code.
In case anyone missed it, and until recently I’d never have though
of it as a possibility, the Pope John Paul II has died. A few weeks ago.
I’d have thought anyone and everyone have already heard about it. It
was covered in about all the news and media sources, all over.
Certainly in the "western" world, but in right about everywhere else as
well. If you told me that there’s a person who managed to miss that
fact, I’d have said no way.
That is, until I met that person last Wednesday. I was meeting with
a few friends, and during the course of the evening the conversation
also drifted in the direction of the new papal candidates, and the
terrible coverage in the media. And one of them suddenly said something
like "How old is the Pope now anyway? He’s really old, right? Must be
around 87 or so?".
We all stared at her agape. She looked back, saying "What?".
So I politely explained that the current Pope is dead. Has been for a
couple of weeks. And the other people nodded, and added that it’s true.
Which got us a nice "What? You’re kidding me, right? Right?". It took us
as long to realize she’s serious as it took her to realize we were…
Don’t get me wrong, I make fun of her here (well, it is a
funny story), but she’s otherwise a very intelligent and nice person.
But as she explained, she doesn’t really follow the news. Lives in a
dorm without a TV, and doesn’t pay too much attention to the
newspapers.
Or as she put it "So how should I have heard?". I was as
nice as usual (Yep, I’m like that even with friends. But it’s in a
friendly-teasing manner, so that’s all right) and said "You could talk to
people occasionally". Which she actually does, but apparently the topic never came up during all that time. Amazing.
Needless to say, it took her some time before the red colour receded from her face.
And I can proudly say I had the honour of meeting the last person on
the world to hear about the Pope’s death. And the double honour of
helping close that category of people.
Now, should I tell the Guinness committee? Is she eligible for world fame?
I got a phone call today. The women presented herself as working for
my credit card company. According to her, details of credit card
numbers, including my own, have leaked from a certain business establishment.
She wasn’t very forthcoming about the business involved, claiming that they cannot provide more information at this time regarding it. But the card needs to be cancelled.
I asked if they think my credit card details leaked because someone
made suspicious purchases with it, or because they know for sure that
there has been a leak from a certain place. She assured me that as far as
they know my card was not used, yet, but that the details are out.
She then read to me the last two transactions made with the card,
yesterday, and asked me to verify that they’re indeed my own. Which
they were.
This had the added benefit, though I’m not sure if it was
intentional from her point, to let me know she is probably legit. The
two orders where made from different places, using different payment
methods, so anyone with access to the data is either from the credit
card company, or has access to my own computer.
All the information she asked, in order to verify the person she
called is really me and so authorized to cancel my card, was my date
of birth. And by the reasoning of the above paragraph, I knew this
wasn’t a phishing attempt, since anyone with her data already has
access to this information as well.
This isn’t that bad a verification method from her point too, since while anyone trying to pretend to be me would have that info, she made the call herself from a number they have for a long time. A wrong number wouldn’t have been able to give a date and pull a prank, and intentionally planting my phone number at their database is too much work for someone just so they could cancel my credit card after stealing its details.
So we cancelled the card, and I’ll have to survive the weekend
without. According to her it would take three business days to issue a
new one. Hopefully, by Monday next week I could actually buy stuff, or
withdraw money. She did ask if I had enough cash on me, or want a
slight delay to go withdraw. But I have some cash, so I told her to cancel straight
away.
This left me curious as to where the information got out from.
And
seconds later, I received an email, from a second-hand book store here
in Israel, letting me know that:
We just got a notice
from our hosting service that some of the information on transactions
from our site may have been tampered with.Because we can’t confirm the extent of the damage at the present time, we feel obliged to inform you of this current situation.
We notified the credit card companies and we suggest you do the same and act according to their recommendations.
We apologize for any inconvenience and are sorry that things such as these can happen.
Feel free to phone us for additional information or questions
Which is very honest of them. And rather prompt, at least assuming the credit card company didn’t wait too long with it.
Their website is currently down. I assume they switch hosting, and using the opportunity to clean everything up. Time will tell.
To continue the US visa stories from my previous post about my own visa, my friend needs to get a new visa. Which is a whole different ballgame.
To get a visa, you need to go to an interview at the embassy, and
bring with you various forms with information about yourself and the
planned visit, and that photo I mentioned. They also take your
fingerprints, and try to assure themselves that you’re not trying to
sneak in and immigrate.
Once you have taken your picture (which due to the non-standard size
means you need to take it especially for this, and can’t use any other
passport photo you may already have), there are two problems remaining,
filling the forms, and getting to that interview. Oh, and paying a
hefty processing sum, which will not be returned to you even if your
visa application is not approved, but that’s just the cost of doing
business these days.
Let’s start with the simple one, the forms. Plenty of personal
information, along with the part where you’re supposed to honestly
reply to questions about whether you are a terrorist, drug dealer,
mass murderer, or anything like that.
Traditionally, you schedule the interview through a travel agent,
and the travel agent gives you the papers. You can then fill them up in
the time you have until the interview, and bring them with you.
But ever on the cutting edge of progress, the US State Department
have noticed the existence of the internet. So they have a special site
for Electronic Visa Application Forms.
And before we get to content, let me just say that the site is a
technological wonder. They run a javascript code intended to
ensure that visitors run a browser version compatible with the site,
and have an Acrobat Reader version compatible with the PDF
(commonly used for documents that can be easily viewed and printed on
most platforms and computers) files they create. Except… The script
is a total bust.
The code was written in 2003. The newest version of
Acrobat Reader available today is 7, yet the code checks for, or rather try to check for, up to
version 9. Talk about forward thinking. But, well, it doesn’t check
properly, so visitors with Acrobat Reader 7 installed are told that
they don’t have a recent enough version. Apparently the minimum version
is 5. Now, I know 7 is greater than 5, but they don’t. So anyone who is
up to date is guaranteed to be told they are not updated enough to
properly work with this site. Cool, eh?
Anyway, you have two options. The first is to download the forms in PDF
format, and print them at your home. If you schedule an interview
through a travel agent, this is basically identical to taking the forms
from them, except that you pay for the paper and ink yourself. If you
get in by the other method (which I’ll cover soon), this can be
convenient.
But wait, there is the second option. There is a web form there,
with fields for all the information you’d need to fill on the paper
form. So you can enter all the information directly on the site, and
submit it there. Now, anyone with even a little web experience would
automatically make the very likely assumption, that this would enter
the details directly into a central database, and it won’t be necessary
to use the actual paper forms, or remember to carry them with you on
the interview.
And anyone who makes this natural assumption would be
wrong. What it does, once you fill all the information on the web, is generate a PDF of the form, with the information entered written into it. You still need to print it, and you still need to take it with you.
If you have a particularly lousy handwriting, it could make some
sense. If it’s much easier for you to fill forms on a computer instead
of write on paper, it could also make some sense. For most people, it
doesn’t make sense. People would use it to save dealing with papers,
but it doesn’t quite do that.
OK, say you’re done with that. Now you need to schedule an
interview. On the off-season, that’s easy. Contact your travel agent,
and have them schedule one. Two or three days, and you’ll get an
interview. But, well, now isn’t off-season, it’s holiday season, and
everyone is out to get a visa. The waiting time for a scheduled
appointment is about two months. Yes, two months.
So what do you do if you need it sooner, or if you just need to know
that the visa application will be approved, since you want to arrange
for plane tickets, hotel reservations, and the likes, in advance? This
is our case. There is time until September, but some things are better
done now. Yet if for some odd reason the visa will be denied, that’s a
lot of money that will be lost on cancellation fees.
Well, the Americans have figured out a solution. Based on the
classic first-come first-served system, each day the have a queue of people which
will be accepted for an interview, the first 100 of them. And yes, this
does imply that every day there are much more than a 100 people who try.
According to the web page on the site,
the people are counted in the morning, when the embassy officially
opens for business, and the first 100 are listed and told to return at
noon. This mean that you practically burn the entire day on this, but
you at least get an interview on the same day.
But there will be a line, so it’s best to get there before time,
right? Preferably a lot before time. How bad is it, you ask? My friend
planned to get there at about 5 AM. Which may have been very late,
since someone else
my friend talked to, who did the same thing a couple of days ago,
arrived at the
evening of the previous day, to wait all night long. Yes, all night. It
turns out that there are a lot of people who wait in line the entire
night in order to
get to the embassy first thing in the morning. It’s like those
super-popular rock concerts, or something. Some even bring sleeping
bags with them. Which I totally don’t understand. Waiting in line I can
get, but sleeping in line, on a promenade, with dozens of people
wandering around you?
My friend arrived on 5AM anyway, to see if maybe it would be enough.
Well, guess what? There were people coming… and going. No line. The
security guard outside provided an explanation, saying that about a
week ago the system was changed. They now count the first 100
applicants at 19:00, not in the morning. This of course was not
announced anywhere, and is still not listed on the site, so people kept
arriving and being turned away.
The guard advised arriving at 16:30-17:00, in order to manage to get
in. Looks like a reasonable time if people aren’t crazy enough, and he
should have the experience of the last several days, and so provide a decent estimate. Right?
Wrong. Just to be safe, my friend arrived some time before 16:00.
And got a number very very close to 100. Five minutes later, and it
would have been a no-go. And sure, that mean that they gave the numbers
to people when they arrived, not kept them waiting till 19:00. This is
the right thing to do, I think, and just keeping the people standing in
line would be pointless and mean, but that’s still not the official
guidelines, as were told to my friend. They need to get themselves in
better synch.
Oh, and all the people got a numbered tickets, and told to return the
next day at 12:00. All of them. So at 12:00, another long queue of 100
people milling about, waiting for the few interviewers to go through
them. That’s a long wait, if anyone wonders…
At least my friend has strong family ties, work, university studies, and no reason to want to live in the US, so the visa will in all likelihood be approved. America be willing.
I’m planning to go on a trip to the US, with a friend, on September.
As Israeli citizens, we need a visa to be allowed into the US. I have
an old non-immigrant B1/B2
visa, and my friend doesn’t have any. So I wanted to make sure mine is
still in order, and my friend needs to get a new one.
My own visa was issued in 2000. I
was working for a start-up company, which at some points decided that
they may want to send us (anyone on the development team) to the US for
whatever reasons. So they urged us all to get US visas, and dealt with
all the costs and bureaucratic process themselves. All I needed to do
was say yes, so I did.
Of course, as happened to most start-up
companies, it didn’t quite manage to sustain itself, and I never did
went to the US, but the visa remained.
It’s a 10 year visa, so officially it only expires on 2010. I do
know, however, that in the last few years the Americans have changed
the process of issuing visas, and have much more stringent demands, so
I wanted to ensure that the visa is indeed still valid. It would have
been a very unpleasant surprise to land there, only to be sent away
since my type of visas were globally cancelled.
The current requirements include things like fingerprinting, more
in-depth interviews, and facial pictures sized 5×5 cm, with the ears
visible. Yes, the ears have to be visible on this non-standard sized
picture. If you have a picture with your ears covered by hair, or
hidden due to a slight angle of the photo, it’s no good. Don’t ask me
why. Maybe they intend to use it for some never-effective facial
recognition system at some point.
In any case, I didn’t have any of these things, so thought it
prudent to make sure I don’t need them, and that the Americans will
stand behind the old visa they gave me.
I went to the list of all US embassies,
found the site for the Israeli one, and went in hunting for
information. Things were pretty confusing, and I didn’t find anything
that seemed very clear cut to me (at least not enough to face the risk
of making the wrong decision), so I decided to ask them. There was a
contact page, listing a phone number, and the hours for calling. Only
two hours per day, four days a week, but two hours are more than enough
to make a phone call.
As an interesting side note, they don’t work Sundays (probably since
it’s still weekend in the US), and they don’t work Fridays (since it’s
weekend in Israel). So they have a short week. Sweet deal.
OK, back to the story. So I called, and called, and called, but
nobody actually answered the phone. Instead of trying the next day, I
decided to try and send an email.
Funny thing, on their email lists, there are addresses @state.gov
which are official email addresses for the State Department of the US,
but the general-purpose email address is named ac5 (??) and
under a local Israeli ISP account. Still more odd, another email
address is at an Hotmail account. Not very inspiring or professional.
But the one for non-immigrant visas was an official State Department one, so I sent an
email to that.
I had another possible problem, my passport is only valid for about
half a year after the planned trip. Which doesn’t sound like it should
cause any problem, but there are places where they want a passport
valid for longer times in the future, so I had to make sure the current US isn’t one of them.
I sent an email about the two questions, detailing the condition and date, and asking if the visa is valid, and if I will need to increase the valid term of my passport before the trip.
I received a very quick response, which arrived on the next day. Which contained, apart from the polite pleasantries:
If you have a valid visa, simply carry the old passport with the valid visa
on it with the new passport and present both passports at the port of entry
to the US. Your length of stay will be limited by a validity of your
passport.
My
passport is, like I wrote to them originally, still valid on the time
on the planned trip, so there won’t be a second one. And I wasn’t sure
if "If you have a valid visa" is enough of a confirmation that the
expiry date on my old visa is enough to make it valid. So I sent
another message explaining my concerns and asking for more details.
The response included:
The new fingerprints requirement from the U.S. Department of State, which
became effective Monday December 1, 2003 applies to those applicants, who is
planning to visit the United States and have no valid visa in their
passport. The above requirement is implemented by all American posts
worldwide and does not waive visitors of providing fingerprints at a
port-of-entry into the United States. Therefore, if you have a valid visa of
an appropriate category, which covers the purpose of your visit to the U.S,
you are not required to provide fingerprints at the U.S. Embassy prior to
your visit.
Which
I believe does answer my question. My visa is good. They will still
take my fingerprints when I land, but they won’t send me back due to
lack of valid visa.
I sent them back a thank you, and that’s the end of this story.
Basically, they lose
points for not answering the phone, and for not paying exact attention
on the email, but gain more points by responding to the email quickly,
and giving me the answers and information I needed pretty soon. Not sure that this isn’t a case of low expectations, but they did surpass whatever expectations I had, so that’s good.
Considering that this is holiday season, and they’re swamped with visa
applications, I think I received a pretty good service in the email
part.
A little while ago I was reading a post discussing the effects of the environment on code quality
(i.e. how working conditions are related to the quality of programmers). And
one of the items mentioned there was dedicated floor space.
Which makes sense, it’s easy to see the relation between the quality
of work done, and whether you’re stuck in a tiny cubicle or in a spacious
office. In either direction.
In any case, the sizes discussed where 46, and 87, square feet. And for
about any case of area, 46 square feet would indicate an area sized
6.78 x 6.78 feet. Very intuitive, very obvious, very mathematically
correct, and yet I managed to misinterpret it.
You see, in all the times I got to be around anything involving
construction and floor space (Workers and architects discussing room
design and carpeting for my home when I was little, or similar
discussions more recently about office buildings for companies I worked
at), for some reason everyone called an N by N meters area "N square
meters". This is patently wrong, and I have a hard time believing it’s
some sort of an industry standard, but that’s what they all did. So
this way of referring to floorspace got stuck in my head.
And reading 46 square feet, I automatically converted it to a 46×46 feet area, which is
huge. Certainly as the smaller option being correlated with the
less-good programmers, but even in and by itself it’s larger than about any office I saw anywhere…
I replied accordingly, asking if maybe it’s
a mistake and they intended to write 4.6 and 8.7. Which is, as was
appropriately replied to me, about the size of a refrigerator box, and
certainly not something you could stick an average programmer in. Well,
not in working order, anyway.
One good thing came of it, I’m finally rid of this particular problem,
and will be able from now on to treat all area measurements the same,
regardless of what is the area actually of. Which is the proper
mathematical approach to things. At least I only got a little
embarrassed, rather than comissioning a new hourse and coming to view the construction only to discover I’m
paying for a palace…
The US has perfectly valid, real,
and legit, 2$ bills. They’re just rare. So many people aren’t aware of
them. Especially low level salespersons, it would seem. Oh, and cops.
So what do you expect happened to a man who tried to pay in Best Buy with 2$ bills? Right, police was called, and he was arrested. Just like that.
Nice. In some places, you can’t even pay with money.
I just wonder if, this being America, he’ll sue over his bad experience…
This is a long study about Gender Issues in College Student Use of Instant Messaging. But if you can’t read the whole thing, these are the highlights.
Mainly, they claim to find clear differences between the way men and women use IM. I read their differences. And you know what, I actually know college/university students who use their IM
accordingly. But I also know just as many, if not more, who don’t.
Heck, if what they claim was true, then I would just have to be an
hermaphrodite.
Which I’m not. Seriously.
But what I find most amusing is the general claims, beside the main
interest of the study, that most subjects were found to not use those
obnoxious shortening of words which are so common on SMS and IM conversations (Oh, wait, did I say common on IM?! Well, guess I did… Imagine that…). And that there is an extremely low percentage of spelling errors in those IM conversations (about 1%).
So very little occurrences of "10x u r gr8", and very little occurrences of people forgetting a few letters, or slightly twisting words.
That’s absolute rubbish, you know. I use IM,
and mostly with university/college students and recent graduates,
considering I’m a part of that group myself. Personally, I try very
much to keep my spelling, and using full words. And I fail on the
spelling front occasionally. Many people don’t try, or care, to work
for spelling, and some don’t care to work to write whole words. A much
higher percent than this study find...
Heck, most of the time people don’t even bother commenting
when they’re conversation partner shorten a word, or misspell a word,
because of how common it is, and how everyone is doing it anyway.
Yes, the invention we’ve all been waiting for is finally here! Remote chicken petting device!
And, er, if it’s not absolutely clear, chicken here isn’t a euphemism for anything except chicken.
Because, of course, everybody needs to be able to pet their chicken when it’s in the yard and they are inside, right?
And even better, to pet the chicken when you’re out of the house, maybe
at the office, or maybe visiting friends. Can’t leave the chicken
unattended without constant petting. It may feel like you don’t love
her.
Hat tip to Letters of Marque,
which is often quite interesting, despite (or occasionally, like this
time, because of) Heidi’s obsessive interest in chickens…
Sometimes the rampant paranoia of the Americans amazes me.
Pilots are instructed not to fly near nuclear power plants. But they
are also not allowed to be told where are the plants located.
Yes, they are not allowed to fly near areas which are not specified to them. Nice and easy to do, isn’t it?
So they decide to find out by themselves, run some searches on publicly
available data, and publish it among themselves. Only to be told that
they’re not allowed to reveal those secrets. And back to square one.
Oh, yes, and it seems that it’s really not that hard to find those power plants.
A couple of weeks ago Yahoo! changed the interface of their Groups
service. And they made some very unfortunate choices during the
overhaul, which looked nicer, but drastically reduced usability.
They did, however, provided an easy access to a feed-back form. And
they paid attention to the comments, fixing the main problems almost
straight away. And by now all but one of the problems is fixed. So
basically I’m impressed, and in a good way. Currently, the groups look
better, and retain the previous functionality, so that’s a success.
One other odd problem which I’m not sure about, related to the amount
of members in the group. After the graphical change the group I was
monitoring listed about 200 more members than there were before… And
there weren’t more than 4-5 people tops who joined during that day…
Odd, and I still don’t know whether the problem was before the update,
or after the update.
My original list of problems, as I listed in the feed-back form was:
1. The main messages list doesn’t show message ID for
individual message. This is actually useful sometimes. You also removed
the option to find a message by number/ID. I, and other people I know,
used this, several times.2. Messages on date view are sorted as new-on-top, with no possibility
to change that. From the main list choosing "last" goes to the first
messages, and "first" to the last. In a single message view, "next"
goes to an earlier message and "previous" to the newer ones. This is
different then before, and feels very upside-down. Please either change
it back, or make it a user-option.3. The new message posting screen allows to specify a language. The
drop-down list is not alphabetically sorted, so if someone looks for a
language they have to read all the list entries.4. Please make the message preview, and the nice break lines, on the
message list optional. It’s prettier, but less functional when I want
to go over several messages in advance. I want the ability, that I had
on the previous layout, of seeing as many message subject at once.5. The message view page has an ad which pushes inside the message
area. This mean that the first few text lines of the message are
shorter. This is very very bad. If some of those lines are quoted, and
the ">" character are properly formatted to fit standard line
length, the first few lines of the message will still look broken and
unreadable once the length is changed. Don’t do that.Thank you for your attention, and please do address these issues. The
new look is nicer and friendlier, but parts of it drastically reduces
functionality, which is not worth it.
And like I said, they fixed everything, except the problem of the ads
inside messages (#5 in the message). This is still there, and still a
problem. It is a big problem, but I don’t expect they’ll fix it, since
the ads probably pay money.
But the rest is fine, so overall I’m satisfied. The next/previous
problem was fixed straight away, as where the ID related ones.
The ability to choose sort direction and preview were added later.
Currently it’s through a URL parameter, which does the job, but is
carried through all index and message views, so changing the sort
option also changes browser history, making read messages appear as
unvisited links. But that’s minor and doesn’t change often. I’m still
not sure that there are advantages to this system over others without
this drawback, but I can see why this was the simplest to implement.
I saw this little article in today’s paper announcing that the
department of tourism declared its intent to build an hippodrome in the
Negev, to be used for horse racing and bets. They expect it to be a centre of
tourism, and to cause other tourist attractions to be built in the same
area. The minister of tourism is quoted as saying that "The state would
benefit from the bets that will take place in the hippodrome, and the
Negev will enjoy the creation of many labour sources".
First, I’m really not so sure about the merit of the idea. Sure, there
are horses in Israel. But we’re pretty far from being well known as the
equestrian capitol of the world. So people who are seriously into
horse races won’t come, due to it being too amateurish. And are people
who are just enthusiasts, or want to experience a race for the first
time, really expected to come to Israel of all places? This makes very
little sense to me.
Unless we expect serious horse breeders and racers to bring their own
horses here. A lofty ambition. Too much so, I think, considering
freight for a race horse to Israel would probably cost a lot more than
inside Europe or the US. They won’t bring them until we get a good
reputation, and we won’t ever get that good reputation without people
bringing them.
All of which doesn’t matter much, because the way I see it, and the way
I can’t believe my esteemed minister of tourism doesn’t see it, the point
is to allow gambling. Yes, bets on horse races are gambling.
So how come this goes on so quietly? There were discussions once about
opening approved casinos in Israel. It suffered from many loud
objections, citing things like increased crime rate, or people losing
too much of their money. It reached such a state that on the last
election we had a potential party running that was only about making
gambling legal (which it now isn’t), and they didn’t get enough votes
to enter the Knesset.
So how come betting on card games is illegal and much contended, but
opening a hippodrome and betting on horse races doesn’t raise any
hackles? This is the exact same thing – gambling. Or am I missing something?
Last Sunday I was invited by a friend (let’s call him H) to go to a
show by an Israeli rock band, Rockfour. The performance was in a pub in
Tel-Aviv, was supposed to be an acoustic concert, and was free of
charge (Meaning they didn’t charge a ticket for the show, not that you
could be in the pub for a long time without being expected to order
something).
We arrived at about 22:00, and the show was supposed to start at
23:00. An hour in advance was supposed to serve the dual purposes of
giving us some time to eat and drink before they start, and to get a
good sitting place before the onrush of the crowds.
Well, one and a half out of two ain’t bad. There were still some
seats by the bar when we arrived, true, but they were on the distant
side of the bar, far from the stage and without a line of sight to it.
Still, we could sit, and for the time until the show starts, that’s
plenty.
Things starting a little late is an all too common occurrence, but
this was more exaggerated than usual. The performance only started at
about 23:50. Not that it was much of a problem, since we are friends,
and definitely had enough to talk about. Plus, there were some amusing
incidents helping to pass the time, which I’ll get to shortly.
Their songs are in English, and, at least according to my friend,
who is a fan, they sang the more well-known ones. At least, he managed
to identify all of them based on the first few notes. At most, I
managed to recognize that some of them sound vaguely familiar…
The performance itself was good. The music is the calmer type of
rock, which I like, and they play and sing well. Although, frankly, I’m
not sure that I’d have labelled it an acoustic show, because apart from
an acoustic guitar, it didn’t seem that anything else fit the bill. In any
case, we received more than good value for our money, so no complaints there.
Before the show started we were sitting, as I mentioned, next to the
bar. At some point some guy arrived to the bar, put down a glass of a 1/3 litre of beer, pointed at it emphatically, and asked the bartender for "another 1/2".
She looked at him oddly and asked "Another 1/2, or another 1/3?". The
guy looked at his glass, looked a larger glass of 1/2 litre that stood
nearby, and pondered. Eventually he came up with "Er… a small 1/2.
Like this." and pointed to his 1/3 glass again. The bartender deserves
a lot of credit, she managed, though barely, to keep a straight face. A
lively discussion ensued, and eventually the guy agreed that he wants
another glass of the same size as the 1/3 glass he had with him (notice
the lack of admittance that it may not be a 1/2 litre glass).
Another guy arrived next to the bar at a different point, and asked
for "diet coke". Mind you, here in Israel, when speaking Hebrew, you
call it "Cola", or in this case "Diet Cola". The only people actually
saying "Coke" are some tourists. This guy wasn’t a tourist, he was
local. Which places him in the different category of people who, very
mistakenly, think they’re very cool.
In any case, he asked for his "Diet Coke", to which the bartender
replied that they don’t serve soft drinks, only alcoholic beverages.
"What, not even a diet coke?". Yes, apparently not even a diet coke.
She asked him if there’s anything else she could give him. The guy gave
it serious consideration, and asked for… soda. Me and H were trying
very hard to avoid bursting out in laughter, I’m not sure we managed.
The bartender, again, kept an almost straight face, and explained,
exactly as she did several seconds ago, that they don’t serve soft
drinks, only alcoholic beverages. The guy gave up, and ordered a beer.
H and I were discussing this, reaching the conclusion that it’s a
silly policy, since they surely stock non-alcoholic beverages for
various mixes, so why not offer to sell them if people are willing to
buy? I came with the classical example of asking if they have a Bloody
Mary (Vodka with tomato juice and some flavouring, if it’s news to
anyone), and when they said yes, asking for a Virgin Mary instead (Same
thing, only without the Vodka. Yes, technically you can call it tomato
juice, but it doesn’t sounds as cool when you sit next to a bar).
But the discussion was moot. Someone else approached the bar, and
asked for mineral water. We were waiting for the bartender to give him
the explanation about serving only alcoholic drinks. Instead, she gave
him mineral waters. We failed to see how mineral waters are an
alcoholic beverage, or to understand why this, apparently available,
option wasn’t suggested to the previous guy.
Later into the evening, a girl squeezed next to H to get to
the bar. This was about the time the show was supposed to start, so the
place was jam-packed with people. Those sitting places of ours were at
a premium. The girl waved at the bartender, but she had to wait for
quite some time, since there were a lot of people waiting in queue. So
in the meantime, apparently to discourage idle small talk, she turned to
my friend and told him that she only wants to order a drink, but she
isn’t social, and so he doesn’t have anything to talk with her about.
Not lacking in ability for retorts, my friend replied that if it becomes difficult they could
always talk about the weather.
Which should have been the closing phrase of the conversation.
Instead, this girl started to talk about the weather. With great
enthusiasm. This is the first time in my life that I saw a "So, how
about that weather" type of line actually working as a conversation starter.
Amazing. So the girl (Let’s call her D) and H started chatting with
each other, and I was trying not to snigger too much in their faces.
Since it was a long wait, a friend of D arrived, offering her a sip
of her own glass. Which contained some sort of a white wine. To which D
replied that wine is for nerds, and refused. An amusing reaction,
isn’t it? Well, not amusing at all, compared to the fun-value of what
she eventually ordered… Yep, wine.
Somewhat later, the show finally started, and H wanted to go closer
to the stage. We decided to be polite, and offer our seats to D and her
friend. So H stood up and went looking for her. There was a coat on his
chair. And I placed my arm over his chair in a very obvious manner. Yet
it took less that three seconds for the first person to arrive and ask
if we’re leaving, and if he can take the chairs. I had to fight a bunch of
them off with a stick, figuratively speaking, until D and her friend
arrived.
H, in the meantime, offered D the seats, in exchange for her phone
number… He was joking of course, and she really would have gotten the
seats regardless, but I’m not sure how obvious it was to her. In any
case, she gave him a number, and the number even turned out to be
real…
So we moved closer to the stage, and actually managed to make our
way very close, so got a good look at the band members and their
equipment. At which point we did have to grudgingly give them the
acoustic guitar, but it still didn’t make this an acoustic performance.
And during the show I needed to go to the toilet. I made my way
through the thick crowd, only to discover that there are several
people waiting ahead of me in line. The first one entered a freed booth
straight away, leaving one guy, and one girl that arrived immediately
after me. The girl was very agitated, and jumped up and down all the
time, expressing her urgency. Eventually she knocked on one of the
booths, yelling at the occupant to move it. A while later, probably
longer than was necessary, just to spite, the occupant left, and
started throwing choice expletives at her. The guy that was first in
line wanted to enter the booth, but a cleaning guy just arrived, and
insisted that he needs to go in and clean first. During the distraction
of the arguments, another booth opened, and some jerk who was behind us
all in line run immediately in and locked the door behind him.
Eventually the cleaning guy, who has won the previous round, went
out, and the first in line got in, leaving me, the jumping girl, and a
couple more guys that arrived in the meantime. The latest one asked
about the queue order, and was dismayed to discover that there are so
many in front of him. At which point the girl, and the guy that arrived
after her, explained that they know each other, and don’t mind
sharing. Yes, just what you’ve heard.
Eventually the hijacker went out, and the girl gave me an agonized
look, asking me to please hurry it. I told her she can go in first,
since it looks like she needs it much more urgently than I do. She
uttered a thank you, and dashed over, only to be stopped by the
cleaning guy that entered before her and started cleaning the booth…
But eventually he went out, and she went in. Alone.
All in all, the evening, or night, went very well. I did made the
mistake of thinking that it won’t be crowded. Which was a very stupid
assumption given that it’s both a popular pub on it’s own account, and
had a free music show by a good band. The thing is, I really don’t enjoy
crowds.
Or, what’s worse at bars, the cigarette smoke. People smoke in
bars. And when you put a lot of them in a closed room… Let’s just say
that the first thing to do after each and every bar visit is throw all
the clothes into the washing machine, to take the stench of the smoke
out.
Both facts, the crowds and the smoke, may help explain why I very
rarely find myself in bars. That, and the loud meaningless noise many of them
like to play as foreground music (yes, that was a snipe at it being
overly loud). But the latter wasn’t a problem in this bar, at this evening,
of course.
