Travel woes of 2009

1. Denied a visa to Cairo twice last summer. (I applied from Tel Aviv)
2. Missed two domestic flights, one from Los Angeles and the other from Boston, and ended up rebooking for additional fees.
3. Was not allowed to board the plane in Manila because my passport is almost expired, according to the immigration rules of Singapore and ended up home alone.

I glance back at this year and am very much tempted to say that it hasn't been a good year for traveling. (or for other things even, but that's another story) But then again, I look back at all my adventures (and I suppose just taking the train out of Harvard Square is good enough, sadly) and realize it wasn't that bad at all. I have had unconventional adventures in the most unexpected places. Next year is another year. For some reason, I am hopeful once again.

Merry Christmas.

The Christ-child lay on Mary's lap,
His hair was like a light.
(O weary, weary were the world,
But here is all aright.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary's breast
His hair was like a star.
(O stern and cunning are the kings,
But here the true hearts are.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary's heart,
His hair was like a fire.
(O weary, weary is the world,
But here the world's desire.)

The Christ-child stood on Mary's knee,
His hair was like a crown,
And all the flowers looked up at Him,
And all the stars looked down

G.K. Chesterton (b. 1874).

research is done for the year.

I finished my last meeting for the year with my supervisor, and more or less got a green light on some of the things I have. As a reward for myself, this is probably the last research-related post that I will make for the year. Next year is another great story in the making it seems.

Merry Christmas!

Still nowhere with empire

Picked up another great article idea while reading for my dissertation but which is totally unrelated to my project – basically means, I now have a list of eight viable paper ideas that are useless for now. I have a meeting tomorrow with Prof. Larry Lessig, on oddly enough, constitution-advising in other countries but I have no specific questions to ask. Also turned down an ad hoc meeting with Prof. Hehir at HKS and instead asked for a schedule next week.

Today was pretty productive. Squash game at 8am, brunch at 930, two articles and three hours later, I made a venue change and got halfway through Colossus. It is a pretty interesting read (else, I would just be perusing the index) and makes an argument which I am not yet sure if I completely subscribe. There just seems to be something wrong with the idea of empire itself.

After which, we had our yearly holiday party which lasted till about a few past midnight.

My thought on empire for the day: Law is integral in the “exceptional” American empire because it can expend less resources and there is generally no need for on the ground personnel (unlike the British experience) if you can persuade the periphery to adopt and abide by a set of rules the hegemon finds agreeable. But what to make of this?

thought exercise no.1

The history of _____ is used to reconstruct the legal, cultural and imperial contexts of _____ in American _____.

***

I don’t think I can write anything. I couldn’t sit still with Ferguson so I ended up downloading and skimming at least a dozen book chapters/law review articles today. No end seems in sight for this futile expedition.

Dissertation Musings

In order to force myself to write and get the juices out and flowing (if there’s any), I will be posting a daily reflection about my research. This can range from frustrating one-liners (most of the time, probably) to Eureka moments (will be rare). But hopefully, at some point, it will stop and I can post a finished paper soon.

Also, I will be making this blog a bit more active by posting stuff about legal developments (boring, I know!) and other kinds of adventures that a graduate student can possibly have, such as successful cooking/baking, random trips (we have a scheduled one to the Grand Canyon), and other surprises that life is wont to give.

***

I give up for the day, and after engaging in some social activity, will spend the rest of the evening reading Niall Ferguson's Colossus, instead. My dissertation-related tidbit for today: transnational imperialist discourse as a source of American ideas about colonial governance in the early 20th century Philippines. Maybe apply to law?

Colored chairs

A yardfull of colored chairs caught my eye
the red, pink, yellow and olive ones
And the green grass that sway with the falling leaves
They cry out to me, come and sit
Under the canopy of trees that shade happily
They beckon with inclined angles and comfortable rests
Come and sit and hear us sing
In whispers and screams we count the days
Till the autumn sun retires and we’ll have to leave
I stop and ponder the scene
Of people sitting but not listening
For a second however there is peace, the one that
can only be provided by the afternoon breeze.

Winter Falls

My faith walks on broken glass

A thousand shards pierce me

Daily

Slowly

Cautiously

The gods of the desert speak audibly

My heart overheard the sadness

That came from the man who waited endlessly.

My reason clings to the empty well

A few drops cannot satisfy my thirst

It yearns for more

For a little more

For you

Yet the bush burned the world black

He tests me a million times.

Cry out Jericho, bring down your walls.

Why We Travel photo on the NY Times

Nothing competitive but its still great to be published online.

You, Darkness

You, darkness, that I come from
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone
and then no one outside learns of you.
But the darkness pulls in everything-
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them! -
powers and people-
and it is possible a great presence is moving near me.
I have faith in nights.

***

So I somehow found myself engaged in an impossible balancing act these days, as I always do, I suppose. But my days have always ended the same way – a smattering of Rilke before I let the darkness envelope me and the stars fade from my gaze as I enter into dreamland. Last night, I randomly came to this poem and it somehow captured my newly-resuscitated outlook. Which is great but who knows until when it will last? It’s a nice complement to my Freud readings, in a way, bringing back memories of those “we are all zebras” homily of Fr. Louie a few years ago. The dynamic interaction between binary opposites do not come as clearly as the stark consequences one side standing alone pose. But even as we remember, we also forget. More often than not, actually. But this poem powerfully makes the case why sometimes we need the darkest of nights to appreciate the rising sun.

Silence the movie

I am not a Scorsese fanatic but I liked several of his films, the most notable of which for me are Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Last Temptation of Christ, The Departed and Gangs of New York. I am embarrassed to admit that I haven’t seen Taxi Driver yet. Anyway, as I am now looking forward to seeing Shutter Island, it was recently announced that Daniel Day-Lewis, Benicio del Toro and Gael Garcia Bernal are going to be cast members of the film adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence. 

Silence is one of the most fascinating novels I’ve read and its set in sixteenth century Japan. It tells of the story of a Jesuit missionary who travels to Japan and endures persecution in the time of the Hidden Christians. Reminds me of my favorite Graham Greene novels, particularly The Power and the Glory. Can’t wait to see it in the theaters.

Kant and law schools

Some pretty odd coincidence between my current reading, Kant’s On the Relationship between Theory to Practice of Political Right, (for my orals exam, not leisure reading) and this right-on-the-money post by law professor Michael Livingston on the future of law schools.

The notion that there is a gap between theory and practice is older than Kant. But this was the main weapon employed by his critics to attack his absolutist ethics, mainly that it was unrealistic and using Rousseau’s words, “do not take people as they are.” In the realm of contemporary legal academia, a similar battle is taking place. Simply put, critics argue that law schools should be more “real-world” and engage less on idle academic exercise. The proliferation of useless legal scholarship was even the topic of a very amusing essay by Pierre Schlag sometime early this year.

My basic law training is from a jurisdiction where the emphasis is all on the real world effects of law. Hence I don’t think I am just being plain biased when I say that theory has its utility. Generally speaking, an obvious use of theory is that it provides ideals, which although it can be seen as difficult to translate into practice, precisely provides for some horizon to which peoples and institutions can aspire to realize. As a set of general principles, one can deduce concrete rules from it, employing practical judgment according to the circumstances.

But too much emphasis on the real-world causes one to lose sight of the big picture - of a world or framework that can only be imagined by reflective minds. Legal rules and policies cannot be shaped as mere reactions to contemporary events. You have to be not just one or two steps ahead, but a visionary even into the future, even of the kind that will probably never come to pass. But then again, who knows? Prof. Livingston’s emphasis on intellectual creativity is, I think, the most crucial aspect of it. Lawyers are not mostly mere firm associates, and even if a good number of them are, they are not automatons. They are creative and strategic thinkers. They are also policy makers. Whether we like it or not, lawyers are agents of change, in big ways and small. For that, a balance has to be struck somewhere between real-world skills, and abstract theorizing. It doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. .

Lovely Cambridge

English, cheeseburger and coffee with friends. Everything feels extra great now because of Israel.

Leaving Israel

The newly-minted memories came rushing in as soon as Michael drove away from my apartment of more than two months. Apropos enough, it was at that moment that he remarked that I should now say goodbye to the street, the city and later on, the country. Though it seems cliche, it is indeed quite true that the only time you appreciate your current place the most is when you actually leave it. And so it goes for Tel Aviv, and for Israel.

I was inspired to write short verses while waiting for my baggage security check. No longer fragile, The city is a memory and Strangers in the Room just seemed to burst from the pen. Perhaps part of it was because there were a lot of goodbyes said today, so much so that at some point, I just wanted to vanish into thin air. Goodbyes always unleash a torrent of emotions, both welcome and unwelcome. But even the unwelcome ones are there because somehow the place meant something, or rather the people in it, meant something to me. I am continually amazed at how I managed to survive this two-month foreign odyssey. I have been sustained and kept alive by the kindness and generosity of random strangers turned friends.

But even my hyped-up dreamy bubble couldn’t help but somehow burst in the face of reality. I caught the suspicious look of the airport guard as soon as Michael gave me a farewell hug. It continued to the baggage check where the lady, after rummaging through my meticulously packed luggage (that was for utilitarian reasons – that was the only way I could seal the suitcase shut). just left it there for me to return to its original pristine and lock-able state, to the final check before proceeding to the gates, where an obviously freaked out screener, after seeing the Arabic Catholic missal in the outer pocket of my bag, hurriedly called for the security supervisor to grill me. For some reason, I took note but remained calm and unfazed at these things. Unfazed enough to even try to be a smart aleck with the security person. But perhaps it was for the same reason that they let me go in the end. My Harvard ID is my get-out-of-jail-free card.

Nevertheless, this is not the most important thing. It was no coincidence that I am leaving Israel the same way I began it – with another stranger-turned-friend driving me to the airport, underscoring the point that somehow when you follow your heart, the universe takes care of the rest. It wasn’t an altogether giddy adventure to be sure. There were lots of tears shed and empty nights ruminated upon. But there were also sublime moments of joy and enlightenment. I couldn’t have imagined it any other way.

The city and the country were a source of alienation inasmuch as they were a source of fellowship. Its foreign language was for the most part a barrier that stood tall and formidable in the face of my longings and expectations but the Mediterranean waves also soothed the nerves and more than adequately comforted a tired and weary heart. It gave me food and drink even as it induced hunger and thirst. Its religions and traditions which is always on the verge of destroying, are likewise the same source of so much life and creation. Perhaps that’s the way it is ordained to be. After all, who can appreciate life without the horizon of fragile mortality?

So as time passes by and the memories start to fade, I write these words to preserve the remains of the moments that I will remember from this summer. The ironies, profundities and banalities have all contributed to this surreal experience. But even that is a misnomer, for the only experience there is, are the moments we live. And that – is always real.

The Kindness of Strangers

I end my last week at work and one of my last few in Israel as well the same way I begun this entire trip – looking back while looking ahead, anxious, hopeful and extremely grateful for the time that has passed. I have survived Israel and benefitted much from the kindness of strangers turned friends.

So this week started with a celebration at a bar somewhere in Frishman, where Danny and I toasted to our newfound friendship and the various handyman skills we have acquired from living in our clunky but otherwise perfectly-located apartment. Drinking exactly like it’s my last Goldstar beer till God knows when, it was almost inevitable that I would forget something when I got home more tipsy than usual at about two in the morning before Sunday – the first work day of the week here in Israel.

It turned out to be my apartment key and my phone. Nevertheless, I spent the whole Sunday oblivious to this fact, and even had a goodbye coffee/chat with Fr David at Jaffa that evening.

My next-door neighbor Shlomi the cook magically appeared at half past ten in the evening, while I fumbled around my bag, wishing for my key to appear. And for the next couple of hours till around three in the morning, we suffered to watch late night crappy movies, while I wished for Danny to come home from partying soon. To keep the story short, I ended up being given a place to sleep, a phone and coffee by a neighbor I’ve never met before for the next twenty hours. And just as I was about to give up and dreadfully prepared myself to shell out an insane amount of money for a locksmith and wreaking havoc in all the daily lives of my co-workers, friends offline like Michael and online like Wuiling, Danny finally came calling using the phone number that Shlomi lent to me. Finally. I never felt so happy to see my summer sanctuary, faulty drainage and lighting notwithstanding.

whatever happens, happens.

I can summarize my work week in one paragraph. Egypt visa denied. TF application denied. Tour company tries to rip me off. Emails are ignored. Texts are answered. Invitations are made and accepted. Egypt visa reapplied for. Yet another TF application considered. Deadlines loom large in the distance.

But things took a turn when the weekend finally started. And it’s always good when it starts with a drink. Or so I thought. I was torn between going to a party thrown by a colleague/friend from the office Mara, and just ordinary drinking. I ended up going to a bar instead. Finally, I got to try out the Armadillo bar near Sderot Rothschild with my friend Itamar. It was extra nice to have the trusty-old San Miguel to keep me company. And I even got Armadillo stickers they give for free to patrons.

Despite my promise to Daniel not to stay up until 2am Thursday night so I can be in Jerusalem on time early Friday morning, I only managed to get home half past two. In any case, I still managed to wake up and be in Jerusalem by half past nine in the morning in time for our City of David tour. Part of the Ancient Jerusalem National Park, the City of David is argued to be the center of the Davidic and Solomonic kingdoms around 10-11th century BC. It is a mecca for archaeology and history buffs, but a bane mostly for the villagers of the Palestinian village of Silwan, situated at the foot of Mount of Olives just beside it. This is a one of the many contested aspects of the Israel-Palestine conflict. My colleagues at Gisha in fact told me that the 55 shekels I was going to pay for the Guided tour would just be used for more settlement-building in the area.Though I found some of the history revisionist, I just thought it was an incredibly interesting place with all its ancient structures intact. It did have a very theme park-ish feel to it. The ticket booths reminded me of Disneyland.

 

We had to go through Hezekiah’s underground tunnel somewhere during the tour, hence the wet pants and the claustrophobia-inducing caves.

 

After making our way back to the Old City, we had a nice pasta lunch in the Jewish Quarter and walked around while waiting for another friend to join us.

When Ashley arrived, we visited the Garden of Gethsemane and hiked (yes, I can’t believe they got me into agreeing to this) all the way up to the Mt. of Olives where we checked out the Jewish cemetery. Much to our dismay, the Church of the Ascension and the Tomb of the Prophets were closed Fridays and Saturdays.

 

Afterwards, we took a cab (because of my begging, they were ready to hike down on foot) all the way to the American Colony hotel to look around and change clothes. From there, we made our way to the ultra-orthodox area of Jerusalem where we saw Ultra Orthodox Jews hurriedly going home to prepare for Shabbat. Then we walked to the city center where we took a break and had pizza.

Lots more walking later, we found ourselves hanging out at Ashley’s apartment in the German colony area where Daniel played endless guitar as we waited for half past nine in the evening to watch a movie. The three of us caught Sin Nombre at Lev Smadar, a quaint movie house in the same neighborhood, while sipping summer frozen concoctions with Bailey’s. It was in a state of total exhaustion that I surprisingly managed to get back to my Tel Aviv apartment around one in the morning, and slept till noon of today. Finally, some rest.

But now, reality looms large. Deadlines approach. And its my last six days at work. Reflections on those next time.

odd come-ons

There must be something odd at play when the two things that most people use as come-ons to get me to attend their events are the following: beer and English. Yes, English as in the English language. And beer, well, that’s a universal language too. But that, I suppose, says a lot of things about my stay here in Israel.

So my last two weeks are jampacked with those two main attractions. Though I’m not really in a celebratory/nostalgic mood just yet, I guess it’s time to bring out the camera and start storing memories somehow. Now, if only I can get the energy for it.

reasons people give.

There are several reasons why I came to Israel, among them political, religious and cultural ones although I am still at a loss on why I really came. But the past three days provided me a glimpse of all those reasons in one-go, and now, after sleeping in and waking up for lunch, I suppose it is a good time to stop and engage in a reflexive story-telling.

For better or worse, I love taking on new responsibilities. And so I expectedly said yes when offered a new job that required sending of my over-hyped legal thoughts every once in awhile for the next three months, at least over email to some influential folks at home. I spent Wednesday night to Thursday morning (330am) working on a memo that was supposedly received very well (as I was told via email today) and ended up spending the whole of Thursday at work half-asleep.

Due to my lack of foresight in scheduling things, I also had to go out pretty late Thursday night with my friend Michael, together with his friend Shachar and Shachar’s girlfriend Carmit. We got together for dinner and drinks at Nanuchka, over at Lillenblum st where Michael described every item in the menu with great detail. We ended up having, in my layman’s terms, Georgian lamb stew, caviar, sampler salad, something which looks like a pizza (I think). I was pleased to see that they serve our native San Miguel beer here, but Michael said he always thought it was from Spain. I watched with detached fascination and amusement the vagarities of Tel Aviv nightlife with people dancing on top of the bar, lots of drinking, dinner at twelve midnight, and all the bright lights outside. If not for my eyes that are about to shut down by itself without permission from my brain, that it was already two in the morning and that I had to be in Jerusalem by half past nine the following day,I would have said yes to Michael’s invitation to drink in another bar somewhere. But maybe another time.

I woke up in time to get ready and take the sherut to Jerusalem by 9 in the morning yesterday and attend an early screening of the films at the ongoing Jerusalem Film Festival. Instead of Liam Neeson’s Five minutes of heaven, Daniel and I caught Vincere, the only Italian movie in the running for the Palme d’Or in Cannes this year and tells the story of Benito Mussolini and his first wife, Ida Dasler. A review of that film is appropriately addressed in a separate entry but suffice it to say that I thought the first four minutes was excellent and it was all downhill from there. Professional movie critics from Variety and the NY Times think otherwise. Overall, for me, it was an okay movie but nothing spectacular. Or maybe I’m still miles away from being a profound movie critic a la Manohla Dargis.

With my small intestines threatening to eat my big intestines out of hunger, Daniel and I navigated the Old City to find ourselves once more on the doorsteps of Jafaari’s where we ate sweet knafes as desserts in advance. We also made a detour by visiting the tomb of David in the Jewish quarter of the Old City.

From there we took the blue Bus 21 (as opposed to the green Bus 18 to Ramallah) in the Damascus gate to Beit Jala where we were met by my friend Nidal. Nidal works for the Lajee center and organizes children and youth activities every summer in the Aida camp in Bethlehem. He then drove us inside the camp. Best known for being the place where the pope said mass and spoke, during his most recent visit in the Middle East, it is also a place where hope just manages to stay afloat despite everything (perhaps not entirely by choice).. Nidal told us stories about the camp (he was born there and grew up there as well) and the politics behind the Pope’s visit. Here are some pictures I took from the place.

Afterwards, since we were in Bethlehem already, we took a cab and decided to visit the city’s cash cow. Apparently, we have signs all over us screaming we’re tourists so that we didn’t even need to tell the driver that we’ve going to the Church of Nativity. The picture of the door is the entrance to the church.

Supposedly the nativity spot is here and St. Jerome’s statue is on the right.

From there we hurriedly left to make it to my meeting with my friend Fr. David, a forty-ish affable Jesuit priest at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem, just beside the King David hotel. But that wasn’t before we made the usual checkpoint stop,only this time, the border guards actually checked our passports. Daniel and I were just amazed to have heard Fr. David speak in four different languages (Arabic on the phone, Italian and Hebrew at the door, and English with us) within an hour of speaking with him. It gave us more resolve to learn Arabic. He told us many interesting stories but two particularly stuck to mind: about the one event in Jerusalem that unites all leaders of different religious faiths, even though they would otherwise hate each other, and this is the gay pride parade in Jerusalem and his own personal story of refusing to serve in the IDF during the first intifada. We ended up having dinner of pizza, soup and fish at the Institute as well, together with American architecture students who are having a summer camp and staying at the Institute, and with two other elderly Jesuit priests, both Americans, who were very curious about our participation in the human rights activities here in Israel. Fr. Don, an American professor at Fordham, also works with organizations based in Gaza.

It was already rround nine or so but I felt like the whole day was information-overload-day of some sort, and Daniel felt that way too so that we decided to rest and sit inside the lobby of the King David hotel and just do a recap of the whole day. I finally made my way back to Tel Aviv two hours later and just plopped myself on the bed at just a little past one in the morning.

Today, my friend Itamar invited me to a demonstration this afternoon against the recent deportations of foreign workers and refugees at Levinsky park. But for now, having had around ten hours of sleep finally, I just sit here and relax and sip cold coffee with no intentions of making any plans for the coming week, as my stay in Israel slowly winds down to its end.

alternative tours…

Despite being bit tipsy after a steak and beer dinner at Meat Bar last night with a new friend, I nevertheless managed to have a semi-serious conversation with my roommate Danny over wine at home. At some point in the now seemingly-distant past, there were days when all I cared about was getting record scores in Guitar Hero or drinking and eating with friends or racing to finish law school exams to catch a movie nearby. I was reminded of those days during our conversation. Danny’s life philosophy  is in a nutshell, something along the lines of hakuna matata from the movie The Lion King, saying that life is too short to worry about anything and not to enjoy living.

But it also got me to thinking how living that kind of life doesn’t seem possible anymore, at least in a complete sense. For the past three weeks, I feel like I’ve absorbed the problems of this country too much in one big gulp. In addition to the occupation, my new Jesuit friend, Fr David, has been telling me about the plight of the foreign workers here in Israel. And in some way, it connects to the problems at home (Manila) too, since Filipinos form a  large chunk of the migrant worker community here. Anyhow, here are some of the pictures I took.

Last week’s Hebron Hills tour, conducted by Breaking the Silence (a group of former IDF soldiers who give testimonies about what goes on in the territories) mainly told the story of settler violence against Palestinian villagers.

    

This weekend’s East Jerusalem tour focused on the haphazard expansion policy by the Israeli government in terms of building settlements and annexing strategic points in the West Bank, the lack of services provided to the Arab residents of East Jerusalem and house demolitions. This particular tour was organized by the group called Combatants for Peace, an Israeli-Palestinian group.

We ended the tour yesterday with a vegetarian lunch in the town of Anata, and where Salem, whose house has been demolished four times by the IDF, spoke about his experience. His house has since become a peace center, rebuilt by volunteers from ICAHD and all over the world. Palestinians whose houses are demolished for lack of a building permit (it is in any case impossible to get a building permit even if one applies) will have to pay a huge fine and clear their own rubble. The municipality doesn’t clear the rubble in the Palestinian neighborhoods as shown in the picture above – there is a picture/drawing of the Palestinian nationalist poet Mahmoud Darwish on the wall.

And of course, Daniel and I ate my favorite sweet knafes at the Old City afterwards, before I caught the sherut back to Tel Aviv. But not before looking at the famous signatures on the lobby of the King David Hotel. Barack Obama’s seemed to be the most recent one at 2008.

  A couple of days ago, we also went to Ramallah to catch the French Gipsy Kings in an outdoor concert, in the Ramallah Cultural Palace. I figured the best time to practice my bad Arabic is with markets, asking for directions and with cab drivers when I have a captive audience. But the cabbie understood us nonetheless so that’s at least something. In any case, I find Ramallah to be a very interesting city.

Next week’s stop will be at the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem where I will visit a Palestinian friend and his family so I will post pictures from that too.

Rock and Ramallah

Though not by design, I went camera-less this weekend, hence no pictures here. After sleeping-in quite late last Friday, I ended up eating cheese pizza for lunch (I absent-mindedly inquired if they have any meat pizzas and the guy in the store sternly reminded me that it is a kosher place.) I stayed afterwards at the nearby coffee shop to do some weekend work. Yes, you’ve heard that right. It’s mostly just proofreading and Bluebooking the legal footnotes of a report due to be published today but since it was a long one, I ended up spending a couple of hours on it. But I was happy to be indoors for most of the afternoon since the sun was blazing hot anyway.

I accompanied an acquaintance walk her baby to Hayarkon park where we stayed for about an hour and then from there, I went straight to meet my friend Itamar at another coffee shop at Masaryk square. I stopped making weekend plans very early on in my stay here so when he asked me if I feel like going to a concert that night, I just replied yes. Talk about flexibility. Well, sometimes being flexible brings good surprises. Geva Alon was fantastic. I rediscovered the kind of music that I happen to like back when I was more into rock than anything eclectic. Barby, a nice concert venue in south Tel-Aviv, also reminded me of the days when I used to hear live music. The show finished at around one in the morning and we proceeded to our weekly barhop. We settled on Bartleby’s, a deliberately inconspicuous hole in the wall along Dizengoff, as if to ensure that only the people who intend to go there can actually find the place. I was told that it’s a relatively spiffy one. They had great food and a good drink selection. The most striking thing was the sense of intimacy inside. At one point, the bartender gave us all vodka shot glasses for a group cheers.

Despite the late hour of sleep, I managed to wake up early the next day to meet Daniel in Jerusalem. After a brief tour of the Old City (and especially to eat the super delicious knafes at Jafari’s Sweets), we took bus 18 at the Damascus gate going to Ramallah. With no surprises or hitches, we arrived there just in time for a late lunch. Ramallah reminded me of certain parts of Manila actually. Lively, crowded, a bit dirty and incredibly noisy. With no idea of where to go and minimal command of formal Arabic, we ended up going to this restaurant with huge chicken roasters outside. A full meal of a quarter chicken, vegetable soup, pita bread and mashed potatoes cost us only 22 NIS. The bus ride from Jerusalem to Ramallah was 7 NIS. The only waiter was incredibly nice but had limited English language skills outside of taking food orders so he referred us to a Caucasian couple eating at a nearby table. The guy sounded jaded enough to say that if we are looking for entertainment, there is none in Ramallah but he suggested a visit to the government complex and to Arafat’s tomb which is what we did. With two people following us closely as we looked around (apparently the place where Abu Mazen stays is quite close), we didn’t feel comfortable taking pictures. Countless shops and coffee houses later, we ended up at Friends School listening to the lecture of Naomi Klein on divestment from Israel. Everyone at work would later tell me how famous she is but at that time I had no idea who she was and I wasn’t particularly impressed with her either.  The auditorium was packed and in many ways, it felt like a human rights hippie/ Woodstock festival. More than half of the audience were foreign human rights activists, I didn’t feel I belong at all. Add that to the growing list of things to ponder on at some point in the future.

On our way back, I got a small glimpse of the Israeli restrictions on movement when we had to alight the bus some distance from where the Kalandia checkpoint is and go inside the terminal where we spent about ten minutes being screened, and then board the bus back again at the other side of the checkpoint.

It was a pretty exhausting weekend overall and I am looking forward again to just staying in Tel Aviv come next week. Time flies by pretty fast. I can’t believe I’ve been in Israel (mostly in Tel Aviv) for about a month now. It’s not so bad after all. I’m just a late-bloomer for a lot of things, this one included. But maybe everything is good because I have some nice things to look forward to, including my friends’ visit at the end of the month. Can’t wait. 

The art of finding (and eating) free food

My “euphoric state” (I’m easy to please) at having only my second real meal (real=non-sandwich/non-humuus+pita) this week prompts this post. Even though I’m still in the dumps for so many reasons, there is a reason why comfort food is called such that it seems a shame not to dedicate a blog post about it.

If there is any skill which graduate school has perfected (no, not writing whatever scholarship), it is finding free food around a huge campus. Though it is mainly about sustenance, and at times, even survival, finding free food is about the skillful navigation of event calendars of not one, not two but several departments and professional schools comprising the university (sheer distance precludes me from making the long trek to the med and business schools). It means being constantly plugged in the relevant mailing lists and being alert for the occasional email from the admin people announcing leftovers. The tricky part is to make sure this hunt does not reek of desperation, like you just happened to stroll by and somebody invited you or that you were there mainly for the content and everything else (food mostly) is just a bonus. But who are we kidding?

I put that skill to use this evening. I attended the cocktail/dinner part of today’s event, a 25th year celebration of the Civil Liberties Law Fellows Program, a joint project of the New Israel Fund and the American University Washington College of Law at the Rabin Center over at Rokach Blvd. near Tel Aviv University. (To my Israeli friends who insist everyone in Israel understands English – the cab driver doesn’t speak or understand it, the AM/PM store clerk didn’t understand me yesterday, the SuperPharm cashier didn’t understand what I was trying to say and I’ve already been to two restaurants/cafes where there are no English menus). But I digress. I didn’t exactly crash this event but I wasn’t invited either. I just rsvp’d without an invitation – but hey its a general invitation to the human rights community and I work for an NGO so that should be good enough.

The balcony of the Rabin Center was filled with the who’s who of the Israeli human rights community. It looked more like a spiffy, high-society kind of gathering with tall cocktail tables, a jazz band playing in the background, and ambient lamps and plants around than a celebration of public interest lawyering. From where I come from, human rights activists were the scruffy types. Anyhow, I went there, courtesy of my fellow HLS student Daniel, who came all the way from Jerusalem to attend the day-long seminar, which I didn’t attend. We smiled and made acquaintances like naturals. We also had a nice conversation with an NIF couple. For me however, it really was just like this:

Cab going to the Rabin Center: 23 NIS

Grilled skewered salmon & mushroom risotto dinner: priceless.

Of course, the jazz singer just had to end the event by singing, of all songs in the world, We are the world, we are the children. But who cares? Pasta on tomatoes & cream, red pepper quiches, meringues, brownies, salmon sliders and eggplant on skewers were all there for me to taste! Oh, there were lots of speeches too. The US Ambassador to Israel, James Cunningham, wasn’t impressive at all though. He just recited the history of American civil rights, starting from the Dred Scott decision to the election of Barack Obama. In any case, this summer adventure is giving me lots of insights on how things work in Israeli civil society. But that will be for another post.

I also never seem to run out of strange encounters. On my bus ride home, a Chinese couple boarded the bus and suddenly the woman was talking to me in Hebrew. It certainly didn’t sound Chinese to me. Being the only Asian wherever I go in Israel is an attention-catcher, it seems. And when I told her that I don’t understand what she was saying and that I only speak English, she gave me this weird not-so-happy look, as if she thought I was just pretending to not understand her. I just shrugged, and got off at the next stop.

Oh well, good night.

i want to go home.

Musings during 3rd TLV weekend

Before I head out to hear mass at Jaffa which also ends my relaxing (read: lazy) third weekend here in Tel Aviv, I wanted to post these pictures before I forget. So the heat is of course oppressive as usual (If humans can melt, I probably would have melted already) but in any case, we just had to attend the World Refugee Day celebration held at Levinsky Park yesterday near the Central Bus station.

My friend Karin came all the way from Haifa to see Tel Aviv for the first time and we met up with Daniel, a fellow HLS student who is based in Jerusalem, interning for the Association of Civil Rights in Israel or ACRI. Yadin, the legal director and my supervisor at Gisha, brought his kids to the park as well. After a bit of an effort trying to bring everybody to one spot, I introduced Daniel to Yadin as “this is Daniel, I just met him today but I’m sure we’ll be friends in the future” (I mean, what else could I say? It would have been awkward to call someone a friend after having met him five minutes ago!) So after an hour or so at the park, the three of us headed out to Jaffa since both of them have never been there before. I became an accidental tour guide of some sorts.

We ended up eating and having a good conversation till quite late at Aladdin restaurant at Old Jaffa which has a magnificent view of the Mediterranean. The picture below is supposedly of Yael Naim (?) singing during the Refugee Day celebration and a picture (taken without flash) of the three of us.

 

Today, Karin and I met up with another soon-to-be friend (hopefully) Orit. She and I have a mutual friend from Harvard. The three of us had the traditional Israeli breakfast (3 eggs+green salad+various cheeses+tuna/tahini+bread+hot & cold drink) at Cafe Mesulash along Dizengoff st. Of course, being the only carnivore, I’m the only one who ate tuna. Both Karin and Orit replaced the tuna with tahini. We had interesting brunch conversation about work/life balance for women in Israel and elsewhere, Israeli politics (of course, how can we avoid this topic?) and general musings about Tel Aviv.

 

After which I  gave Karin a brief tour of Ibn Gvirol st. and Rothschild Blvd, including a brief stop at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. We ended up at Cafe Hillel an hour later (it felt like an eternity with the heat) for some frozen lemonade and ice cream.

After this, she had to take a sherut back to Haifa and I went to the corner coffee shop and finally finished (yey!) Louis Menand’s Metaphysical Club.That deserves to be the subject of another post. But for now, I am going to end my weekend by going to mass at Jaffa and watch a DVD at home with my roommate later. Too lazy to go out in this heat. Suddenly, my question “why am I here” has taken a more practical sense. And I never thought I would utter the words “I love the Cambridge winter” but I just did. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg of so many realizations swimming in my head. They are best addressed, however, not in a blog.

A tale of two press briefings and other realizations

What I would give to see the charismatic and handsome Tony Blair in his American Colony hotel office.

Instead, I saw Jimmy Carter. (of course it was great but still…)

For the past two days, I did the 40-minute trip from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to attend two press briefings. The first one by Jimmy Carter to the Israeli human rights community at the American colony hotel in Jerusalem. It wasn’t particularly impressive. He just gave us his itinerary in the region and then answered three to four questions from the press.

The second one was given by Gisha –Legal Center for Freedom of Movement (the organization I work for) and Hamoked –Center for the Defense of the Individual regarding the new Israeli procedures which effectively renders travel of Palestinians from Gaza to the West Bank impossible (unless of course its the other way around in which case, it is fine). This is the first time Israel has put in writing the criteria used to judge Gaza residents’ applications for a permit to go to the West Bank. More about the new regulations in the Jerusalem Post story here On our way back, my colleagues at work drove through Highway 443 or what they call the Apartheid Highway, and showed me all the walls, fences, and other things that divide. (It gave me an inspiration for another short story. Hope I can finish at least one by the end of summer!)

For someone whose main life revolves around the academe, its refreshing for me to see real people work in the real world, and in particular, to see a real NGO at work. And to write and research for things that actually have a definite outcome at the end. Of course, I love academia – but being outside for awhile is a nice change and makes me appreciate it even more. I had to remind myself that I’m not in academia when I had a eureka moment earlier and realized that I’m not going to write a paper or law review article around it.

On an unrelated note, I finally went to the specialty bookstore along Kikar Rabin and asked the lady for her suggestion -  if I can only buy one book (English translation of course) of an Israeli author, what would it be? She gave me A.B. Yehoshua’s The Lover, praising it as very good and very Israeli. Hmmm, I wonder what that means. I ended up getting that and Lawrence Wills’ Ancient Jewish Novels anthology. She told me to spend some time in the coffee shop and just read the book there. Too bad I need to do my laundry today. Not to mention eat something. I will do both now.

desperate measures

I attended my first Catholic mass here in Israel since my arrival. The catch is that, it was in Arabic, since Sunday is the start of the workweek and the only English mass is at nine in the morning. While I didn’t understand the sermon (only caught bits and pieces) thanks to the universal character of the Roman mass, I can respond in English in my head to whatever the priest had to say. I can read the missal slowly as well, so I knew how to do the responsorial psalm and the Gospel, except that its quite hard to understand what the whole thing means. But I suppose this is a good way to learn the language too.

What drove me to an Arabic mass today had something to do less with today being a Sunday than with something I happened to read online. For a short while, I felt like Harry Potter on Privet Drive during the summer. Oh well, c’est la vie.  For now, I’ll go back to being torn between the Iranian protests and the Bar Ilan speech.

2nd TLV weekend

Day 18 of Summer 2009. I guess I am finally getting the hang of this. (except the Friday/Saturday weekend setup, as of now)

So last Friday I went to the Tel Aviv Gay Pride Parade with Mara, after which I tagged along with her to the shuk as she bought some vegetables and cheeses. The midday heat was simply oppressive but I put mind over matter in braving it. And then my friend Barak picked me up from Mara’s apartment around 3pm. He showed me around the empty campus of Tel Aviv University, including the sports center complete with indoor swimming pools, the Faculty of Law, and the Jewish Heritage synagogue.

We ended up going to old port city of Jaffa afterwards, but not before picking up his friend Uri, somewhere in King George St. who served to be our tour guide around. We started the walk from the beach where Tel Aviv meets the sea of Jaffa and saw lots of people swimming and playing on the sand. As you can see, I took quite a number of pictures. The views of Tel Aviv from Jaffa is breathtaking, especially if you gaze at it with the waves of the Mediterranean (as you might have noticed, I’m a huge fan.) rhythmically crashing on the beach.

Jaffa itself is amazing – in fact, picturesque would be an understatement. You can read up on its fascinating history in the Wikipedia entry here.I could feel the history in the stones on its walls, the narrow steps, ponder on the pieces of art mounted on its walls, and just absorb the traditions that seem to reverberate from everywhere.

This particular door fascinated me at length. The entire door was made to look like it was carved straight out from a piece of wood, and yet evokes a very modern feel to it by the addition of the metal security keypad.

You also have these artsy pieces mounted randomly on the walls.

We also had the random but fortunate accident of being invited inside the house of famous Israeli painter and sculptor Menashe Kadishman at some point during our self-guided tour.In fact, the owner of the Hayek Contemporary Art museum also opened the doors for us. I guess looking like a foreigner, complete with a touristy Nikon slung over my shoulders, makes a local more welcoming and eager to show off one’s surroundings. Here is an example of the many provocative pieces in the museum, part of an exhibit called Anorexic Bodies.

Lastly, I finally got to see the second Catholic church in Tel Aviv (and there are only 2 of them in the entire city). Here is a picture of the interior of St. Peter’s and another picture of Jaffa at night.

Of course, my Friday night did not end there. In keeping with the Tel Aviv bubble, I went out with my colleague Itamar for a drink at half past eleven in the evening at Norman’s Bar, near Sheinkin. As usual, I got drunk (from just one full glass of the Israeli beer Dancing Camel) but I managed this time to go home in one piece.

Yesterday, I took a 1-hour sherut ride up to the northern city of Haifa where I met up with Karin, who was my classmate in Arabic 1 last term and an MIT graduate student. She is interning at Mada al-Carmel and we joined the tour of the Baha’i Gardens. We also tried our best to practice our abysmal Arabic (and fusha at that) with the amused vendors over at the Arab market.

It was a busy and exhausting weekend overall and being the lazy bum that I am, I am looking forward to just spending a quiet Saturday afternoon sipping coffee and reading a book or chatting with a friend. Maybe next weekend, I’ll do just that. More pictures from this weekend are in my Flickr album.