Aliyah Diary 13: Bureaucracy and Stories

by tostien · October 30, 2024

Article Outline:

Waiting at the Bank
Our Car Does Not Have a Bomb
I don’t own my cars!
Did you bring the garbage out?
One, two, three day Yom Tovim
Zernike polynomials
Fahrenheit is King
Costco Medication
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Aliyah Diary

01. Aug 19, 2024: Preparation In America
02. Aug 25, 2024: First Few Days
03. Aug 29, 2024: Moving In
04. Sept 4, 2024: First Day of School
05. Sept 8, 2024: Two Weeks In . . .
06. Sept 16, 2024: Getting Comfortable
07. Sept 22, 2024: Ready for Guests and Yom Tov
08. Sept 25, 2024: Visiting Jerusalem – Kotel and Concert
09. Sept 30, 2024: Nasrallahed All over the Floor
10. Oct 8, 2024: Driver’s License
11. Oct 13, 2024: Packages. (חבילות.)
12. Oct 25, 2024: October Sun and Understanding the Jew
13. Oct 30, 2024: Bureaucracies and Stories

Waiting at the Bank

I promise there will be a post about traveling and the kindness of strangers – first some stories. At high school football games we used to cheer something like:

“Eat ’em up, eat ’em up, yes we will” and the other team would scream back, “no you won’t, no you won’t . . .” and we’d go back and forth a few times, only starting this cheer if we were winning because at the end of the cheer we’d point to the end zone and stay, “scoreboard … scoreboard … scoreboard!“

I’ve been warned about Israeli banks and so I avoid them. In fact, I avoided them in America too. In either country you can do anything online. So I arrive at the bank … okay, it’s not on the first floor like in America … climb up four flights of stairs to the second floor, take a number, and ooo, the screen says I’m next! The take a number thing is actually great because you put in your ID number and get text on your phone and you’re verified.

Now I sit in the bank of chairs (get it, bank?) and wait. I sit where I can look at the screen and wonder why there are half a dozen others in the chairs since there are no numbers to be called except mine. Now, I don’t want to be a jerk. I told myself when I come to Israel I will be an upstanding citizen – I will not honk at cars badly being driven (that lasted a few days – also, I honked a guy who pulled out on his bike without looking and almost rode into my hood … he yelled “ma koreh?” like, “what’s your problem?” … I don’t know … I didn’t want kill you. Is that a problem?). I am not going to argue with bank tellers, you know.

The truth is people have been very, very polite and also patient when I tell them I want to practice Hebrew. This time, however … 20 minutes go by and I’m the next person. Finally I go to one of the eight bank tellers sitting at a cubicle (they aren’t standing behind a desk and all cash seems to be at the ATMs downstairs) and say … remember that cheer above … “I am next, I am next, yes I am” to which she says back, “no you’re not, no you’re not …” to which I point to the screen and say, “scoreboard! scoreboard!” She says, well, I don’t have an appointment and these non-existent people who have appointments go first.

We continue around (“no they don’t, no they don’t, ra ra rah…”) and she says, “I don’t know why you’re acting so surprised!” I’ll tell you why – well, I’m faking it. I’m not surprised. I just want to introduce you to this thing we call “customer service” … and just then, “oh look at that, another teller is calling your number!” I pick up my bank card, which they won’t put in the mail, and … success.

Our Car Does Not Have a Bomb

My wife parked somewhere and went to do her business and when she came out a kindly gentlemen who cared deeply for the safety of the country called the police saying that her car might have a bomb in it because he didn’t recognize the car.

By the time my wife comes out the police are gone. It’s apparent they searched through everything. She brings this up to the kindly gentlemen acting like she’s just killed his cat and he gives a whole rant about the car being owned by an Arab company, the transponder doesn’t match, and so on and so on and he tells her that the police are going to be looking for her.

Now stop and ask – if the police were going to be looking for her why would they not wait by the car until she returns? Why not call the listed owner? Why not impound the car?

I had a similar story with a jerk at my office in New Jersey a bunch of years ago … the signs for the assigned parking spots didn’t exist when I moved into the building and so I took one … now, why the best spots are reserved for workers and not customers at office buildings is a different pet peeve … a get a note on my car, “we are reviewing the security tapes to share with the police”. Okay. I guess. Why not just show them my car and give it a ticket or something? Oh right, because you don’t own the unlabeled parking spot. Remember I said he was a jerk? That’s not why he was a jerk. I saw his car when he parked in the spot later and it said, “BMW” on it. That’s why.

Back to the story about my wife – we don’t really know what this guy’s motivation was in threatening her … I’m thinking maybe he was pressing his stupidity further and further rather than a simple, “oops, I’m an idiot”.

Anyway – some consequences … the ownership of the cars was never transferred to our names! Further, the insurance company says we can’t be insured because the transponders haven’t been updated with our names.

Why is there a transponder giving my location to the insurance company? I’m from America and I don’t want Big Brother watching me. GPS tracking lands you in jail in the United States, along with other practices that are perfectly normal in Israel … like … parking on a different street and not being accused of having a bomb.

So … apparently in addition to car insurance I’m supposed to pay a monthly fee for GPS tracker in my car. I delay in getting this done and the car insurance, within about three days, cancels my policy. No certified letter in the mail? I only even know this because the insurance agent tells me that day … and now I’m on a different car insurance company which is slightly more expensive, albeit they aren’t Big Brother.

I don’t own my cars!

What actually happened is that we picked up our cars very soon after arrival (that’s a story in an earlier diary entry) and we needed to go on “gov” to change the ownership. It’s pronounced “gOHv” and said only with an open-throat deep Israeli voice. We didn’t have an account there so the seller said “never mind, we’ll do it later”. This was later.

After fighting with SMS codes, passwords, and answers to security questions (most of which were inapplicable because we’re new here), after 45 minutes I have an account. Now … this thing is amazing. It has parking tickets (mine doesn’t show up – car wasn’t registered to me yet! Story coming in a later article…), you can get new government documents, request various services, and whatnot rather than filling out forms and going to offices. It is well done, other than allowing you select from multiple languages and then bringing you to pages where the choices are widdled down to Hebrew and Arabic.

Now this was jaw droppingly done well – what a good idea and way to do things – I log into gOHv (said with a deep, open-throat Israeli accent) at the same time as the car dealer. He does some wizardly and on my screen pops up a screen about taking ownership of the car. A few clicks for each of us and in real time the car is now registered in my name! No DMV line … nada. It’s done.

Forty five minutes to login and three minutes to own the car. Not bad considering the bank was twenty minutes in line followed by three minutes to pick up a bank card.

Did you bring the garbage out?

My job, as a child, was to bring the garbage to the curb and empty the dishwasher. Hence, to my wife’s shagrin, I often “forget” to do these things. (My great-grandfather was a butcher and my grandmother wasn’t allowed to eat hotdogs because they were the most unhealthy … hence, they became her favorite.)

In a lot of places in Israel there are “carve outs” in the wall or similar where your garbage can has a nice home. I can’t tell you how many people have come to me with ideas to patent garbages that roll out to the garbage man and go back to their homes. Here, the kindly garbage men – who come at, I don’t know, 5am, empty the garbage and put it right back in its home. That sure beats America where you have to remember to shlep the garbage out and then find how far down the street it’s traveled during a rain storm to pick it back up. It’s so bad in America that people want robots to do it for them.

True story – in America our garbage cans multiplied. Someone left the same exact garbage bin as us across the street (no houses there). It sat there for two weeks or so, so I decided to adopt it and make it my third can.

One, two, three day Yom Tovim

Quick note to acknowledge that others responded to my last diary entry about not liking multiple days of yom tovim … apparently, others do like it and some friends in Israel miss having holidays for longer than one day. I had no idea …

Zernike polynomials

I’m waiting in line at an amusement park-like place (not saying where because it could be loshon hora about the place) and there’s a line of Americans. Of course, I found the Americans again. I’m trying to understand the entry fees and ask a friendly chap behind me speaking English how fluent he is in Hebrew. He says very fluent and so I ask him how to interpret the prices. This is gold.

“Oh, don’t read the sign. It’s different today.” He proceeds to tell me the pricing structure which is not displayed anywhere. It’s a fixed price for everything for kids except for the thing that is extra. At least they had a sign with pricing – that’s a madrega (level).

While waiting on line another guy pushes his way past everyone else with his credit card in hand ready to purchase … and then takes a long time to complete the transaction. Heard about people like this.

Then we get inside to do the activity we’re there for and “you and your daughter are too heavy together” and so we try and find another lass that she can join so they’re the right weight. Nope, their weight isn’t enough. Where’s Goldilocks? We found her and – oh right – still not enough weight with her.

Did they want to tell us the weight limits? Did they want to have a sign with the wrong numbers, at least? Anything?

Eventually my daughter finds someone and good time was had by everyone.

Meanwhile, I keep running into the same guy who helped me on line figure out the prices which weren’t actually known to anyone except magicians like himself. This is something that happens only when chilling with Jews … more and more questions and I’m asking him questions in return … finally he tells me he’s a college math professor, because, of course. Ever to Great Adventure and strike up a conversation with one of those?

Running out of conversation I decide it’s time to step it up – let’s get some information that only he can answer in this amusement park (well, he and probably 50 others over educated Jews) … “What’s your favorite integral?” He looks at me with stunned, like I’m crazy and walks away.

Just kidding. No – he answers right away: Zernike polynomials! Ever see someone talk about the beauty of waves crashing on the seashore while stoned? That’s what he sounded like.

Fahrenheit is King

In one of my first diary entries I wrote about the supremacy of Fahrenheit. Sure, the boiling point is off and taking the original scale and multiplying by 8 so we get a freezing point of 32 doesn’t make much sense (though it does make for good branding … imagine, “0 degrees cool” on your rear sold at Costco rather than “32 degrees cool” … actually, maybe the first is okay).

My car no longer tells me temperature in a measurement system that requires decimal and has gradations 9/5th larger – sweet mother of mercy, Mazda has a Fahrenheit setting! You can take the American out of America and I will teach y’all bank customer service and Fahrenheit:

That’s funny – I usually have the AC on “eco” mode. Not sure what it does though it makes me feel better.

Costco Medication

Speaking of 32 degrees at Costco, you know what else Costco has? Cheap medication. I once flew in a sofer (wrote a Torah scroll) from Israel and took him to Costco. There’s thousands of square feet of products for cheap and you know what he bought? Tylenol! For the price of 36 pills at any normal store (America or Israel), at Costco you get a life-time supply: