My Dude Abides...

....well, sort of.

For all of those not acquainted with strange Israeli words for household appliances, a "dude" is the Hebrew word for "water heater." (Other funny ones are "kumkum" for electric kettles and "mahgav" for squeegee, which is also the word for the Border Police).

Anyway, the dude in my apartment has been displaying "very un-dude" behavior lately. First, the dude broke, as in it stopped supplying me with hot water. My landlady took care of this problem.

However, the next time I used the dude to take a shower, the water was beyond scalding, and at one point was even emitting steam from the shower head. I left my apartment to go grab some pizza, and came back to find the dude still on (whoops), a pipe burst, and water gushing all over my apartment. I flipped out, called my landlord's grandmother who lives across the street, who got very angry at me since it was 12:30 at night, who ran out in her evening gown to show me where the water meter was to cut off the water to my apartment. I spent a while mopping up the mess in my apartment (which consisted of using the mahgav to push the water out of my apartment through a small whole in the wall meant for this very purpose), and then went to sleep.

I awoke early the next morning to the smell of burning plastic, as the dude had caught fire. It wasn't an open flame, but the fumes of burning plastic convinced me to take refuge at my friend Shmuel's for the Sukkot holiday, as soon as I informed my landlord of this aggression against my apartment would not stand.

Anyway, the dude has been repaired by someone who I really hope was very thorough, and actually fixed all the problems, so that I will not have to deal with these problems again in the future. "If you will it, it is no dream"....Theodore Herzl. And, thus, the title of this post: "The Dude Abides".

Ah. Anyway, life here is pretty good. In between dealing with the above problems, I am trying to make my apartment look decent, have celebrated a few holidays, spent some time in Jerusalem with various friends from the States, made a few new friends, done some laundry, and been elected "Chief Representative of TeAMS Program Class of 2011." Or, as I like to call myself, President. This basically means I have the wonderful job of putting the Technion administration in its place when it steps out of line. For example, my first job is determining why, exactly, the Technion intercepted mail addressed to the students in the program for their loans, opened the letters, and cashed checks made out to these various students. In America, I could point out that they had violated numerous federal laws, and inform the appropriate authorities. But here in Israel....well...even if there are laws against this, I cannot imagine that fact will really mean much to them. We will see.

I start Medical School on Sunday, so that is also exciting.

Anyway. I hope everyone has not been too disappointed with my lack of posting, and that you have all had very happy and meaningful holidays. Please keep in touch.

Yallah,

Michael