The Post Office

I went on a little trip to the post office this morning. Fairly ordinary I hear you say, but alas you would be wrong. Whilst after almost three years of living here, there are a few things in my life in Israel that are starting to become ordinary, the post office is definitely not one of them.

A trip to the post office, I'm here to tell you, is always a most extra-ordinary experience.

I was apprehensive about my trip to the post office because I've been having a bit of a zoning problem lately. And when I say lately, I mean for the entire two and a half years I've lived in my flat. Whenever I get one of those 'come pick your letter/package/whatever up from the post office' notes, I go to the post office, and, without fail, they tell me I'm at the wrong post office and send me walking 15 minutes in the other direction to the other post office in my area. Regardless of which post office I decide to go to (obviously there's no number to call and check these things), I'm always wrong. There's some sort of Israel-evil bureaucracy-Murphy's law power play going on here. I'm telling you.

Each time this happens I have the same conversation, they tell me that there's been a zoning problem, I'm right in the middle, apparently. If I lived at number 32 or 28 it would be fine, but number 30 is a problematic building. Right. Regardless they always assure me it'll be fine next time, and surprise surprise, it never is.

Maybe they're just trying to keep me fit.

On my last post office trip (which was only two weeks ago so I'm still smarting from it), the kind man at post office number one let me in on a secret. The scribble in the circle in the corner of the little slip is actually code for the post office that the item is being held at. TWO AND A HALF YEARS. Two and a half years of back and forth, and I find out there's a code. You live and you learn right?

Next time, I thought to myself, next time I'll know.

So. That's one reason I was apprehensive about my post office trip this morning. I'd deciphered the code on the slip, and I thought I actually knew where my item was being held captive. I was excited to put the theory to the test.

There was, however, one other thing niggling on my mind. I had no idea what the item was. I'm fairly sure that I live an inoffensive enough life not to be the victim of any anthrax type letters, but still. On my last post office adventure, the very same one when I was let in on the secret of the circle-scribble-code, the item that I was rewarded with was in fact a bill for a superannuation policy that I'd canceled three weeks earlier (which is a whole other story). So I was concerned that perhaps, for the second time in two weeks, my trip would be a colossal waste of time.

All this aside, I took a deep breath, and headed to the post office.

I honestly believe that a trip to the post office is one of the most organic Israeli experiences one can have. Walking up to the building, the first thing I saw was the security guard, chatting to two people like they were his best friends, whilst in reality I'm pretty sure he'd never met them before. They're holding little slips of paper with numbers on them. First tip-off that this wasn't going to be an in-out deal - people are having cigarette breaks from waiting in line. I open the door, and all hopes of getting home in the next hour are out the window. There's about 20 people standing around, all holding their precious numbers, chatting with one another like they're at a family reunion.

I don't know what to describe first.

There's the old American woman who comes up to me and tries, in her terrible Hebrew, to ask me how long I've been waiting and what my number is, and if it's usually this busy, and what I'm here for (it gets a lot easier when I tell her she can just speak English).

There's the crazy shaved-head three-teeth-left-in-her-mouth woman literally screaming at the man across the counter because he isn't doing what she wants. Presumably giving her money for more crack.

There's the postal teller who screams out "ENOUGH! Stop screaming! We can't work like this" to the three-teeth crack woman.

There's the Moroccan man who finds it necessary to explain to me that no other post office in the world is like this one, making sure to go into detail about what other post offices do that is so much better.

There's the four year old kid running around the place with a toy car making 'zoooooooom' noises.

There's the young guy who after about 15 minutes decides it's up to him to tell crack-lady that she's wasting everyone else's time and should leave.

There's the normal looking woman who sits down next to me, asks my number, and starts trying to calculate, out loud, exactly how long until she will be served.

Seriously. Anyone who knows me knows what a massive statement the one I'm about to make is.

I was the most sane, most normal person in that place.

Eventually my turn came. I walked up to the teller, gave her a smile, and handed her my little slip. Poor woman looked like she was about to lose it as the screaming woman hadn't stopped yet. Anyway she got up, and I held my breath waiting to find out whether I was even at the right post office. Miracle of miracles, she comes back with a package in her hand, gave it to me and I was free. Didn't check my ID or anything I might add. Whatever, I was free.

It had been almost an hour.

What was the package? I know you're itching to find out. Oh, that's right, it wasn't even for me. It was sunglasses and a curling iron that my friend's mum had sent her from Canada. Yup. All that for someone else's stuff.

At least it seems I've broken the secret-scribble-code. Still, I think maybe I should just quit my job and stay home all day, every day, so that I can catch the postman when he arrives rather than having to ever go to a post office again.

Sleep is for nerds

A list of facts about sleep:

• It's very hard to multi-task whilst sleeping. I find it near impossible to read, answer phone calls, eat, drink beer, or watch TV when I'm unconscious. At best I can listen to music, or workshop issues and ideas in the somewhat surreal form of dreaming.
• If you go to sleep with wet hair, you wake up looking funny.
• If something cool is going on and you're sleeping, you'll probably miss it. Unless it's loud, like the workman in the apartment underneath mine, who are actually not that cool at all.
• Most jobs don't pay you to sleep, so really it's a financial burden. Time is money, after all.
• Often if you don't have enough time for the regaled 8 hours of sleep needed, you wake up feeling worse than when you went to sleep.

Unfortunately, despite all the above facts, I seem to be evolving into a normal person that actually needs to sleep sometimes in order to function.

Very, very unfortunate indeed.