Fooks

Fooks. That is what today is, in a nutshell. Not only is it the day of the Israeli elections, it is also our half-day off and RAINING, of all things, in Israel. Why is this a phenomenon Sam, you may ask outloud to this inanimate object of a computer.

Well, I'll tell you.

Here is part of the e-mail I got back from Today's Haifa Man (THM):

and more over this is so weird or shall I say kind of fate or karma that you write to me (again, I'll explain you tomorrow so dont be afraid or something..).

We were both getting easily sidetracked by fascinating matters pertaining to both of our interests (traveling) and our distractions (politics) and our lifestyles (traveling/classic-Israeli), but finally got to the story. He really really mamash wanted to go on the summer camp program that allows soldiers fresh out of the army. Last month, however, he went on a birthright trip with a bunch of people between ages 25-26 from California... When he applied to the summer camp program, he hadn't yet met this phenomenal group of people from California, and he found out yesterday (when I e-mailed him) that he was going to be in the Poconos, Pennsylvania. The ironic bit of this all is my profile says I'm from Pennsylvania (school...), so he was very overjoyed to meet me. His reasoning: he might be sad over this whole wrong place bit, but it is karma that his first couchsurfer is me, a Pennsylvanian!

... As a side note, I have been looking into being a counselor there this summer as a viable option. It is a possibility, of course. There are a few others available, too...

Second bit of Karma.

I was telling him about the story of meeting the guy on the train from Haifa who works as a civilian for the intelligence and studied Arabic at the same place I do... and he said, "what's his name?" and I said "Guy". He gave me this look of curious/shock/interest and said, "what's his last name?" and I said "I don't know". He filled in this last blank by supplying the last name, and lo-and-behold! The one other person I know in Haifa (more or less) is this guys best friend!!!!!!

We call him up, and he's still at work in Tel Aviv, but we talk on the phone for a few minutes when he's out of work. Probably meet up with them in a few weeks. Basically, I meet two amazingly gorgeous guys that are extremely intelligent and interesting on two completely distinguishable situations.... and they're best friends. WHAT THE FUCK.

This is ironic.

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Here is my summary of the Israeli political system slash political summary urging you to do your own fucking research, copied from my facebook:

Israelis can correct me if I'm wrong, and please please do, because I'm not in the business of naivety and I appreciate contribution... anyway, enough of that disclaimer, here is my layout-- you can find out what the individual party platforms argue by reading the news. Arguably.

The political system of Israel is kind of like a rainbow. You have the left, the center, and the right wings and can be grouped into religious and secular. This chart should let you google their names with more or less the correct spelling.

[L] Left [R] Right [C] Center] [S] Secular [G] Religious [A] Arab
Balad (Meaning land in Arabic): L, A
Communist Party: L, S
Habayit Yehudi: R, G
Kadima: C, S
Labor (Avoda): L, S
Likud: R, S
National Union (NU) (Used to be called National Religious): R, G
Pensioners: C, S
RAM/TAL: L, A
Shas: R, R
UTJ: R, R
Yisrael Beitainu: R, S

The frontrunners (supposedly) are Kadima (Tzipi Livni) and Likud (Bibi Netanyahu). It's really quite lovely and rainy outside today. Pointing being, not everyone loves the rain and "bad" weather like I do; I think you get to appreciate it after awhile when you live in a desert, but it does mean that probably a lot of people who would have voted aren't out at the polls because of this. Or because they're apathetic. Or because all politicians look the same. Basically, take all the problems we've ever had with voting, put it in a hypertense situation, and change the language to Hebrew.