Bezeq Blues

Etymology: Years ago, on my first trip to Israel, I was exposed to the national phone system. I overheard a friend trying to make a phone call. Slamming the phone down in sheer frustration, he muttered "Bezeq!" with such venom that for the next month, I was convinced that bezeq was some unspeakable curse in either Hebrew or Arabic.

It is, in fact. It is our national phone carrier.

Bezeq, not being content to making us curse on (and about) the phone, spun off a separate company, Bezeq Int, as an ISP (Internet service provider). Those of you who waded through my connection ordeal of last month know that as soon as providers can point a finger at other any other company involved, the situation gets very bad, very quickly. So last night when I once again lose my connection and start getting some funky error messages, I heave a big sigh and pick up the phone to call tech support.

No answer. All I get is a frantic signal that indicates the lines are overloaded. Gill tries and grins, "It's them, and so many people are calling to complain that they crashed the system!" An hour later, the connection is back.

Get that cat a therapist: There is a nation-wide emergency drill today, so we are all warned that the sirens will go off around this afternoon. I don't know how to communicate that information to Nadine so that she doesn't freak out and run for cover. She has just gotten over the war and I don't want to deal with another setback.

Statistics: It is absolutely no comfort to know that while our teachers now rank lower than ever in international standards (right after Chechnya), our country soars to the number four place in the number of malls per capita. On the other hand, I get great satisfaction from seeing our local news report Naomi Cambell's community service sentence. It isn't that I particularly care—it's just that when there is time to highlight this level of celebrity nonsense, it means that nothing has blown up recently.