So I'm in Israel now (and you can tell from the intermittent blogging that I'm very busy in Israel right now) and some people, I am sure, are expecting all sorts of passionate, political updates with words like "terrorist bombing" and "helicopter missile attack" and "horrific religious and ethnic conflict". But since I don't live in Gaza or the West Bank, I can only offer you the following:
I was walking up the street this evening on my way to the office to check my mail and do some laundry. I was approaching a three-way intersection with a traffic circle in the middle and when I was just a few steps away from the street a car came racing into the intersection and tore around the traffic circle before exiting on the one side where the wasn't a street, jumped the curb, narrowly missed a tree, and finally stopped in the middle of the sidewalk just inches from a stone wall.
I turned to my friend who has been in Haifa for a few years and asked: "What the hell was that?"
My chilled out semi-Israeli chum turned calmly to me and replied: "Parking."