If you want a Burrito in Tel Aviv

What's a Southern Californian to do??

1. Patronize one of the faux-Mexican restaurants around town?? Heyell NO!
2. Cry, throw a hissyfit, wonder why it is the Children of Israel didn't head for the Baja Peninsula instead of this God-Forsaken land barren of any Carne Asada beef and guacamole (I'm talking REAL guacamole, not some avocado salad variant).

OR
You can head over to Kar-naf (which translates to "Rhinoceros"), which although is not a burrito place per se, it's about as close as you can come.
So they use a wheat wrap instead of a tortilla.
And they use grilled tenderloin rather than carne asada.
And you would have to add your own rice, beans and cheese (and no Mexican cheese, you'd have to make due with whatever Israeli stuff you can find).
And you would have to use store-bought Salsa or make your own because there is no place to get good Salsa here (although they will slather your wrap with a whole host of sauces ranging from sweet chili to spicy chili to Pesto, etc...)
But other than that, it's just like the real thing!
And if you believe me, I have some beach-front property to sell you in the West Bank...
No, Seriously, it's good stuff.
Enjoy :)

*This post is lovingly dedicated to the best Burrito place on Earth. Long Live the Conga Burrito.

Cafe Sirkin - A Tel Aviv gem

There is a little Cafe around the corner from my house. It's called Cafe Sirkin, on the corner of Sirkin and Frishman streets.
It's a quiet, cozy little spot right around the corner from a busy street and about 2 minutes walk from the beach.
The food's great (although I wish they would bring back the Hamburger Lunch specials, they were awesome), the Wifi's free (like everywhere in Tel Aviv, did you hear that Starbucks??), the coffee's good and the environment is very cozy. And they have a great breakfast-for-two special.

Oh and I have another recommendation, to the guy sitting close to me on the window-bar overlooking the street, talking to his father on Skype without using earphones or a microphone and thus sharing his entire LOUD conversation with the entire floor:

Dude, get a life. Your conversation is sooo boring I put the iPod earphones on not because I was disturbed by your rudeness but because another couple of seconds and my pulse would have stopped because you were boring me to death. Some dirt would have been nice. Gossip about the family, some drama, SOMETHING!
So either keep it down or for God's sake keep it interesting.

Spray it into the air and walk through it

One little thing I've noticed about (straight) Tel Aviv men: They tend to use a lot of cologne.
And by "a lot" I mean they will marinate in it for what has to be hours before they go out.
Interestingly, the women don't overdo it with the perfume.
The reason I mention this is because yesterday while sitting at a coffee shop I literally had to move my table away from the people behind me as the guy's cologne was making it hard for me to breathe. And every time I inched the table away, he would eventually back up with the chair and get closer again. ugh!
This is a picture of me disturbed by the sea of cologne the long-haired guy behind me was slathered in. I mean, seriously, if you put on half a bottle every time you leave the house, even to go to a coffee shop in the afternoon, how much are you shellin' out for cologne a month? There are starving kids in Africa for cryin' out loud!!!
And I have to say, with out being (too) bitchy (ok, it's bitchy), that his own body-chemistry-odor type or whatever wasn't doing the scent any favors, i.e. it sucked.
So if you're stuck with a bottle of cologne and an important engagement THAT REQUIRES its use and you're not sure how to go about SUBTLY applying it, use the title of this post as a one-step instruction manual.
Or else keep to breezy, open areas.
Thanks!

p.s.
(I tagged this post as "Germany" because Zemanta, my automatic label recommender, suggested it because I used the word "cologne". Just goes to show with today's state of artificial intelligence we won't be building any army of robots soon).

WTF? Is he still here??

I apologize.
To myself mostly, since I don't think any of my three readers will check this blog any more since it's been dormant for so effing long.
It's been a long fall. Lots has happened, but hopefully I'm back!!!!!
to start things off again for the season, I'm gonna talk about creatures that are quite ubiquitous in Tel Aviv. No, not the bats (really! I'll try to take a picture one day), but....CATS!
They're everywhere.
Imagine squirrels in the Northeast/Northwest US - they practically own the streets of the city.
You don't scare them walking by, in fact they seem to be inconvenienced if anything at all if they have to move for you.
My car is regularly full of cat pawprints from the cats that like to sleep on the warm motor (why my car is dirty enough to have pawprints left on it in the first place is completely irrelevant to this post, thank you very much!).
This pic was taken right next to my house, a cat was apparently sunning itself on the warm leather seat of a scooter:

Of course we have our share of hardened war criminals as well, this Hitler-cat, or Kitler was waiting quietly justa round the corner:


The cats on my street get fed, too. Somebody walks by a few times a week and leaves them piles of dry cat food.

Seems like someone is very gracious. Wish they'd leave me some oreos or kitkats or something too...

Greetings from Bled, Slovenia

I am at a conference in Bled, Slovenia so I want to take a moment and depart from the usual Tel Aviv posts to say that this is a beautiful place, definitely worth a visit.

Image via Wikipedia

Pictures don't do it justice. I did the row-boat thing in the pic today

Image by StrudelMonkey via

And the Slovenians are wonderful people. I will post some pics I took soon.

Another Office Pet Peeve

First of all, I know it's been a while (SORRY) but it's been a really busy Summer. There's probably no one who reads this blog anymore anyway... :)
So in this installment let me tell you about my latest office pet peeve...
Israeli high-tech employers are really great with providing some sort of food or another - we get breakfast stuff (cheeses, vegetables, bread) and fruit throughout the day. not to mention the bottomless cookie jars, and by bottomless I mean that there are office elves (ok, the Russian Cleaning Lady) who keeps refilling them every time they dip below a certain level). These cookie jars really are the embodiment of evil, but that's a different post.
Anyway - it's the cheese that I have a problem with.
Well, not the cheese.
The Cheese containers.
Well, not the cheese containers.
The people who do not remove the plastic/nylon covering thing from the cheese containers that is supposed to seal in the freshness until the container is opened.
Because, darlings, once the container is opened for the first time and the seal is broken, this nylon/plastic appendage becomes superfluous (GRE word!).
In the picture above, I just opened a new container of Cottage Cheese (notice the cow-hide design of the container - how cute! it's cheese, it's from cows... get it?).
Anyway, because I just opened a new container, and because there is no point to keeping the seal on it any longer, I COMPLETELY REMOVED IT AND THREW IT AWAY!!!!!! No need to keep it half-dangling from the rim of the container, now is there, office people!??!?!?! Whats the point in that?!
Good, now that we've learned this lesson, go back to dipping your hand in the Cookie jar. Literally. those wafers go like hotcakes.

an open letter to the woman by the water fountain at the gym

Sweetie, we need to talk.
No, really, stop chewing your gum and looking at the mirror while you do your squats, and stop making sure every hair is in place just long enough that we can have this conversation.
When you decide to fill up your 1 liter water bottle at the water fountain and there is a line of people behind you waiting for a sip, it would REALLY REALLY be curteous of you to let someone get a sip because it takes you like half an hour to fill that thing up.
Curteous.
Yes, it's a word, look it up in the dictionary.
It means being nice to someone.
Nice.
Yes, that's a word too.
It means, well, it means not being an asshole to someone.
What's that? Yes.
You CAN put "not" and "asshole" in the same sentence.
there ARE people out there who it can apply to.
Anyway, it would be one thing if you had the bottle openining pointed to the water and were filling it up, but it seems to demand too much motoric skill for you to maintain that position because you keep moving your hand and missing the water, so it takes about 3 times as long to fill up that bottle.
Oh, and when you finish filling up the bottle it seems like you're adding insult to injury when you THEN take a few sips from the fountain while STANDING THERE WITH A LITER OF WATER IN YOUR FUCKING HAND!!!!!
Just thought I'd vent.
Get back to your shameless ogling of yourself in the mirror.
G.