Sudan Expels EU, Canada Diplomats

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1 Roman Kalik 08.24.07 at 6:31 am

Hey, man, not sure where this would be suitable, so I post it here.

I met up with Andrew and Raccoon yesterday. Me and Andrew met at first, in front of a crummy hotel in the shadows of the big Tel-Aviv beach hotels. It’s the only place in Tel-Aviv that Andrew knows. We first went to a beach cafe to escape the horrible heat and humidity.

This was a mistake, as we later found out. We both ordered a souffle, and each received a piece of a chocolate cakey rubbish that could be just barely discerned by an unaided eye. We ate them. We paid for them. Far too much. We left. At least they had good hot chocolate and lemonade.

What one first notices about Andrew is that he talks a lot, which compliments my more quiet and reserved personality quite well. We had a lot of interesting and funny things to discuss, ranging from how only a madman would want to invade such a hot and humid place, and going on to whatever came to mind, from various religions to British and Irish shows like Yes, Minister and Father Ted. I’m now going to try and hunt them down in DVD format, so good they sounded.

Anyways, we kept going into the city proper, with the hopes that further away you go from the hotels, the closer you get to real food. We were right. We found this quaint classy pizzeria, run by a nice religious Jewish guy from a French-speaking Italian community. The pizzas were great. No, that’s not right, those were the best pizzas I’ve had in my life. I mean, dude makes his own dough and everything, not like all these fast-food pizzerias. I have the place noted for the future.

More talk ensued. Andrew is a Pratchett fan like myself, a huge plus in my book.

The pizzas, along with all the drinks we consumed, were surprisingly cheap for a tourist area. Not that anything was really expensive for Andrew, as Ireland has a much higher average income than Israel. For him, it was close to how Israelis feel when visiting Turkey.

Raccoon was being kept late at work, making crap computer games for a living, so Andew and I had some more time to spare. We went to a McDonalds (unlike in other countries, here they sell actual food. Israelis don’t really understand the concept of truly rubbish fast food, having subsisted on a steady diet of falafel and schawarma for some time now), bought a couple of soft drinks, and just made use of an ugly red sofa to sit and talk some more. The look the McDonalds guy gave us as we were waiting for him to give us straws was hilarious. It’s as if he couldn’t comprehend the concept of someone buying drinks and wanting to drink them, too. Oh well, he works for McDonalds, he can be forgiven.

Eventually, Raccoon made his way to us on his bicycle, in clothes wildly contrasting Andrew’s somewhat corporatesque clothes and my “boring geek” attire. He wore sandals, shorts, very long hair and and a constant smile on his face. We went to a more beached beach cafe (the tables and chairs were half-sunk in the sand) where Raccoon asked if we wanted a shisha (as I expected). Andrew and I didn’t, which left Raccoon sad-looking for half a second. He ordered hommous, and as he ate (Andrew and I were quite stuffed by then) we talked. Often on political matters, though Raccoon’s Discordianism came up. As he puts it, he doesn’t like organized religion but somewhat approved of Chabad and Breslev hassidim (for their party spirit, endless optimism, and the familiar haven Chabad houses gave him no matter in what distant locale he was). It took me some time to convince him that they were two quite different groups when it came to philosophy. In fact, I suspect that I failed. Chabad are more into mystical knowledge, whereas Breslev are loners, who view large crowds as often standing between them and God during pray. They often pray in forests, valleys, that sort of thing.

Raccoon thinks that I’m too serious, and should really consider making use of marijuana. Not an option for a mind-and-body control freak like myself.

Well, that’s about it, I guess. We had a great time, and we really would have liked to have you there.

2 Nomad 08.24.07 at 7:33 am

Racoon rocks

3 Andrew Brehm 08.24.07 at 12:45 pm

Hehe, it was fun meeting the dudes.

And Roman is right, the pizza was extremely good!

4 Drima 08.24.07 at 3:44 pm

“we really would have liked to have you there.”

Ya, sure. Either I’d get killed by Egyptian border security on the way there, or I’ll get deported with some of the refugees.

Maybe in Jordan.

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