Isrealis are NEVER freiers

As a fallow-up to the kitbag question, this is another Israeli phenomenon

[Waste] My time... [spend] your money, From TreppenwitZ, Oct 8, 2007

Israeli supermarkets are the bane of my (and most non-native-born Israeli's) existence.
We will never understand the folks who walk into the supermarket, park their shopping cart on a checkout line as a place-holder, and then proceed to wander around the store casually picking out items.
We will never understand the people who walk into the meat department, tap someone on the shoulder and say "I'm after you" and then go off to make other purchases... then swoop back into line 20 minutes later, pissing off all the frayerim (suckers) who were dumb enough to actually wait on line.
We will never understand the absolute shamelessness with which many shoppers will stand and argue with the cashier that they should be entitled to a particular special/discount despite the fact that they have clearly picked out a different product/size/number of items than the special advertised in the circulars. They will do this for as long as it takes until either the cashier gives in and lets them have the better price... or until they decide to casually stroll back to the aisle to get the correct item(s)... while a long line of angry shoppers waits helplessly behind them.
We will never understand why Israeli supermarkets haven't figured out that the only remaining bottleneck in the check-out process is the additional time everyone spends bagging their own groceries. This single task defeats all the speed and convenience gained by the bar-code scanners. After scanning a cartful of groceries in recored time, the cashier can't complete the transaction or go on to the next customer until the previous shopper's goods are bagged and off the end of the conveyor belt.
I could go on... but I won't. Because yesterday I had what is, without a doubt, my most enjoyable Israeli supermarket experience ever!
After work I ducked into the local 'Mega' because Zahava had called to ask me to pick up a few things. I needed to buy a box of Splenda (actually, the Israeli version of it), some cold cuts, a bag of sandwich rolls and a package of cheese (don't worry, I wasn't going to eat these together... sheesh!). The list was so short that I didn't even have to take a shopping cart.
When I finished picking out the goods I walked up to the 'Express Checkout' line and noticed that it was fairly long. However, I wasn't overly concerned since the sign clearly stated '10 items or less'... so things should move along quickly.
Yeah right.
Directly in front of me in line I noticed two women with a shopping cart that was 2/3 full. I politely pointed out that they were in the express line and that they had too many items. But instead of begging my forgiveness and going to another line, one of the women gave me a mirthless grin and said, "We're together... we each have ten items". The two of them stood with arms folded across ample bosoms, daring me to challenge their clever ploy.
I took another look at their shopping cart and my blood pressure started to climb as I noticed that just the items on top approached the stated number... there must have been two or three times that number of things buried underneath.
This is the moment of truth that most immigrants are intimately familiar with. Do you marshal your limited Hebrew and make a fuss... risking having unhelpful idiots around you jump in with "What's the big deal... just let them go... it isn't worth all the yelling"? Or do you sit quietly and feel like the biggest frayer in the world because somebody is flouting the rules and wasting your valuable time in the process?
This time I decided to make a fuss. I had a small armful of items (as did all of the people in the line that had formed behind us), and we were going to be trapped in what was supposed to be the express line while these two thoughtless women bought a huge cart of groceries!
I cleared my throat and calmly said, "Excuse me, but even if you are together, there are a lot more than 20 items in your cart. You have to go to another line."
The second woman, who had remained silent up until this point chimed in, "It's close enough to twenty... and who are you anyway, the shopping cart police?"
By now most of the people behind us were watching with interest... as were some of those ahead of us. It infuriated me that none of them spoke up in support, but at least they hadn't told me to pipe down, so I continued, "No, I'm not the shopping cart police, but I'm also not a frayer. Anyone who can count can see that you have too many items to be on the express line. Forget about 20 items... you have at least twice that number!"
Both women remained facing me with arms folded, but I was pleased to see they were no longer smiling. The one who had spoken first said, "What does it matter... it may be a few more or a few less, but we have about twenty items... and so we're not going to another line!"
At this point I decided to take another approach. I said, "OK, I don't want to argue with you... but I also don't want to be a frayer... so let's be fair. Since it's possible I'm wrong, I'll make you an offer: If there are twenty items or less - no forget that - if there are twenty five items or less, I'll pay for your entire cart of groceries. But if there are more than 25 items, you pay for my few things, OK?
Suddenly, the people around me began to come to life. A chorus of "That seems fair" and "if you're so sure then you should accept his offer" joined a general consensus of nods. The women sputtered and tried to wave me off, but I pressed my advantage:
"No, no... I'm offering you a great deal. If you don't want to take it you can go to another line. But if you really feel you have the correct number of items to be on this line, you have nothing to lose by accepting my offer."
They were trapped. Pride wouldn't allow them to go to another line, so they both nodded.
A Yemenite man standing behind me offered to count the items and there was general agreement that an uninterested party be responsible for verifying the number of items. When he reached 46 there were still a number of uncounted items in the cart... so I stopped him.
By this time the family in front of the women was finishing up with their small purchase so I smiled and gestured chivalrously for them to start loading their 46+ items onto the conveyor belt. The cashier took a jaundiced look at the nearly full shopping cart and seemed poised to say something, but several people in line preempted her, saying 'It's OK, we don't mind".
When the cashier was scanning the last of the women's groceries, I casually dumped my few things on the belt and said (loud enough for everyone on line to hear) "Also these please... my friends have offered to pay for my things too."
The cashier just shrugged and continued to beep the products past the bar-code scanner. The two women just glowered at me, but the happy stares of my fellow shoppers kept them from giving voice to the protest behind their eyes.
While they were still busy bagging their groceries, I breezed past the two women and walked towards the exit of the store. There was a tense moment when the security guard asked to see my receipt, but he seemed satisfied when I gestured vaguely towards the two women who were busily reloading their shopping cart and said, "It's OK, my friends have the receipt."

Food Truck Nation

An interesting article on the spread of 'fancy' food trucks
Why now: "well suited for a financial downturn"
The only problem: “We go up against the stigma. We’re trying to prove we’re on a different level than a lunch truck,” he says.
The solution- branding: "The new breed of lunch truck is aggressively gourmet, tech-savvy and politically correct"
The effect: "The new trucks are rolling in as many restaurants report steep declines in their lunchtime traffic. Businesses from fast-food chains to upscale steak houses have rolled out cheaper lunch menus to try to persuade consumers to spend money during the work day."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204456604574201934018170554.html

Best 25 in NYC: http://nymag.com/restaurants/cheapeats/2010/67139

Tavern on the Green, the landmark restaurant in Central Park is now a courtyard with... food trucks. The product(in this case the trucks and not the food) has really changed:
http://www.slashfood.com/2010/09/17/tavern-on-the-green-turns-into-high-end-food-court

And an update on LA Food Trucks from Prof. Gal Zauberman

LA also had a very interesting period with food trucks and social media. For a time, the only way to know here the best trucks would be that day was with FC or twitter.

This is the truck that started the trend: http://kogibbq.com/

There are maps that allows you to track them remotely: http://www.foodtrucksmap.com/

http://www.findlafoodtrucks.com/blog

What's happening now:
http://laist.com/2010/09/21/food_truck_lot.php
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/business/15cater.html

Different Kind Of Capitalism (or "patient capitalism")

"They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I took mine and fell flat on my face. As a young woman, I dreamed of changing the world. In my twenties, I went to africa to try and save the continent, only to learn that Africans neither wanted nor needed saving. Indeed, when I was there, I saw some of the worst that good intentions, traditional charity, and aid can produce...
I concluded that if I could only nudge the world a little bit, maybe that would be enough.
But nudging isn't enough."
-Jacqueline Novogratz

If you are interested in exploring VC to make social changes I highly recommend listing to the NPR podcast named Different Kind Of Capitalism
This is the link to the main page http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2010/different-kind-of-capitalism/index.shtml (look for Download, Listen now or Podcast")
Listen to the interview with the wonderful Jacqueline Novogratz founder and CEO of Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture capital fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty http://www.acumenfund.org/about-us/our-team/jacqueline-novogratz.html

“The devastation of the Haiti earthquakes and the lack of infrastructure for responding to the disaster have deepened an ongoing debate over foreign aid, international development, and helping the poorest of the world's poor. Jacqueline Novogratz, whose Acumen Fund is reinventing that landscape with what it calls "patient capitalism," is charting a third way between investment for profit and aid for free.”

Olim Chadashim

In this skit immigrates arrive on a boat to the port in Israel, the current residents see them coming and sound their opinion (usually using a lot of curses in their native tongue)
As the next wave of immigration arrive, the "new immigrants" are now the current residents, they give the new wave of immigrants the same welcome.
Some things never change...



Lul/Sgablol: "Olim Chadashim" or "New Immigrates"

If Facebook says so...

Do we need to jump rope?

At the end of almost every workout, Eric asks Yaniv if we need to jump rope. I look at his with disgust. We just finished an hours of a kickass workout, do we really need to jump rope? Luckily Yaniv is Israeli so we explained to Eric that his question is a Kitbag Question. Now go explain that to a non-Israeli.

My sister Tali came to the help when she found this article
Forward.com, The Kitbag Question, By Philologos, June 1, 2007

Reporting on a visit by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to Sderot, the town near Gaza repeatedly hit by Qassam rockets, the Hebrew newspaper Ha’aretz had this to say about her meeting there with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana:

“In the course of a press conference…. Solana said that he understood the local residents’ pain and that ‘the European Union wishes to advance the peace process, which is the only solution and cannot be attained through violence.’ To a question from Ha’aretz about what he thought of the Israeli army’s [retaliatory] measures in Gaza, Solana said he thought that, so far, they were reasonable. Livni then said to the reporters with a smile [in Hebrew]: ‘And bring your kitbags.’”

Although most Israelis would have understood Livni’s seemingly odd comment unaided, Ha’aretz came to the assistance of those who might not have by adding the parenthetical explanation, “The [foreign minister’s] meaning was that the question was unnecessary.” Yet this, in turn, raises two more questions: Why did Livni think the question was unnecessary, and why did telling the reporters to bring their kitbags convey this?

Question one is political rather than linguistic: Presumably, the foreign minister thought that Israeli reporters should understand that this was not the time or place to embarrass the publicly peace-loving Solana with queries about Israeli military actions to which he had already privately acquiesced. Question two brings us to the Israeli slang expression “she’elat kitbeg,” a “kitbag question” — that is, the kind of question that only an idiot would ask.

Kitbags are something that most people see only on the TV news, when soldiers of one country or another are shown decamping for some military theater with their gear slung over their shoulders in what looks like a large canvas duffel bag. In it is whatever a soldier has received as army issue, or carries with him, that he is not wearing at the moment: an extra uniform, his helmet, his pouch, blankets, his personal clothing and possessions, etc. Originally called simply a “kit,” the kitbag was defined in 1785 by Francis Grose in “A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue” as “the whole of a soldier’s necessaries, the contents of his knapsack,” and it entered Hebrew as kitbeg via Palestinian Jewish soldiers serving in the British armed forces during World War II.

And what is a “kitbag question”? There are, in Israeli folklore, two opposed stories of how this term had its origin. In one of them, a squad of soldiers, being punished for some infraction of discipline, was told by its sergeant to take all its gear and run 100 times with it around the parade grounds. At which point, one squad member, obviously not the brightest, raised his hand and asked, “Our kitbags too, sir?” Since a kitbag with all its contents is very heavy, and no sergeant would ordinarily think of including it in such a command unless inspired by a very dumb soldier, one can imagine the groans that went up from the rest of the squad when this question was asked.

This is obviously not, however, the version of the story that Livni had in mind, because in that case she would have told the reporters, “And don’t bring your kitbags.” She was thinking, rather, of version two, in which the same squad is told that it is being transferred to another military base and should get all its gear together and be prepared to move out. “Our kitbags too, sir?” the same soldier asks. Since in this case, leaving one’s kitbag behind would mean permanently abandoning everything in it, the groan that went up from the rest of the squad was just as loud as it was the first time.

In Yiddish, a kitbag question is known as a klots-kashe, or “klutz question,” our English “klutz” coming from Yiddish klots, a block of wood. Jewish humor is full of klots-kashes. A Jew, for instance, is told by his friend of a marvelous new invention called an airplane. “One day, everyone will have one,” the friend says. “You’ll be able to get on your airplane here in Minsk and be in Moscow in an hour.” “But what will I do in Moscow when I don’t know anyone there?” the first Jew asks. A klots-kashe!

In proper Hebrew, on the other hand, a she’elat kitbeg is called a she’elat tam, which is a question asked by a tam or “simpleton.” This comes from the passage in the Passover Haggadah about the four sons — the wise son, the wicked son, the son who doesn’t know enough to ask and the simpleton who looks at the gala Seder table, with all its guests, and says, “What’s all this for?” The longer answer to this question is in the Haggadah. The shorter one is, “For this we spent $20,000 a year to send you to Hebrew day school?”

I can't beleive we have to do this

I am sorry more people didn't fell it was their obligation and not just 'right' to make it to this March, especially people who live in places they could have made a one day trip for low or no cost.
Younger generations tend to forget the fight older generations fought for us, so we can read an openly gay blog for example. Even worst, we who live in big cities, forget about our gay brothers and sisters in smaller towns, the teenagers, the other minorities, that still suffer from discrimination and bashing. Not to mention our community in places like Iran where being gay is simply dangerous.
The day of course was glorious, the weather was amazing and there were tons of people from all over the country marching pass the White-House and up to Capital Hill. The first speakers were young activities, ages 18-22 and they were the best speakers of the rally, they made all of us emotional and motivated.
But the simple fact is that this is a sad story, the fact that we have to act and protest to get a right that is naturally ours is just wrong. There were tones of really good signs I saw, but I think this one really drives the point home.


Photo by Marc Leonard for LOGO