The Bubble

Technology

I love my GPS device. Driving to Montreal was so easy. I love my GPS; its feminine voice, its robotic intonation; I feel like in a science fiction movie. “Wouldn’t it be boring? You won’t be able to argue anymore as in “why did you take that turn now we will never find the road again!?!” my friend Izhar pointed matter of factly when I told him about our new acquisition. Oh but we do! That’s the beauty of it: “You have to realize the system is not perfect yet”, husband patiently explains when I almost lose my mind as SHE (whomustbeobeyed) festively announces in her robotic voice: “lost satellite reception!”
The system is still in its diapers, so to speak, which makes it almost human. It reminds me of sleeper. Facing numerous difficulties (losing satellite reception, often losing its voice), she manages (“RECALCULATING!”) to direct us to our destiny with a firm but gentle hand.

The world feels so small. You feel at home in every city, in every country. No maps, no guides – SHE tells you everything. Are you hungry? She will guide you to the nearest restaurant. Thirsty? To the nearest bar!
It can get a bit absurd; you become dependent; You find yourself standing (on your first night in a strange city) at a corner of the street for 5 minutes waiting for her to find her satellites, and when you give up you cross the street to find the grocery store you were looking for right in front of you. You become dependent on yet another device, after your computer, your palm pilot, your digital camera.

I look at Daniel and think of how he was born into the world that I saw in science fiction movies. How all these things are natural to him: a robot directing our way, or the Internet (“we will have to check on the internet”, he knowingly informs me).
I first flew out to a foreign country when I was 14. Daniel is four and a half years old, he has double citizenship, he is bilingual, he lived in three different countries and visited many more. He is a child of the future.

The Olympic Stadium, as seen from park Mont Royal.

Technology really excites me.

More Montreal

Today we're leaving Montreal with great sorrow. It is an amazing city and I'm totally in love.
We stayed here (just as gorgeous as in the photos, mindyou), and look who lived over our head and walked ALL NIGHT LONG stomp stomp stomp. “They are doing a photo shooot” apologized the reception clerk when I complained about the noise. I decided to Google the name that was written on the buzzer and see who it was that was making my life hell. Everything was made clear in an instance.

Montreal

We're in Montreal and those are real butterflies that freely fly here.
 

Rambling

Riverdale Farm, today, looking for turtles and snails.

I’ve been checking the news everyday, worrying, wondering when and where it will happen. It happened in my lovely city.  Lisa tells her (more personal) story of being in Tel Aviv near where the bombing took place.

I was a soldier. I didn’t like it. I don’t have even ONE photo of myself in uniform. Although Israelis (man and woman) take this for granted – all of us served in the army - I realized that out of Israel the fact of me being a soldier truly surprises people. “You should write a book about it!” a bewildered Dutch friend once told me with enthusiasm.
Rachel, a photographer and a friend of a friend whom I didn’t see for more then a year (last time we met it was on Sheinkin street, she visiting from NYC me on my way to Toronto both of us lamenting the difficulties of the nomad’s life) has done an amazing photographic project on Israeli women soldiers. I was so happy to find her web site at Yahoo! Picks. Looking through her photographs I felt that somehow they manage to convey the unique reality of the Israeli society.

Reading Persepolis – a beautiful and highly recommended graphic novel telling "Marjane Satrapi's wise, funny, and heartbreaking memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic revolution." A guy I know from Daniel’s school excitedly approached me today: “I’ve seen you read Persepolis the other day on a porch in Mutual street (we were visiting friends). It’s exactly what happened to me! It’s my life story!” It took me a minute or two to understand what he was talking about but when I did it warmed my heart –how art enables us to connect and better understand each other. By reading the book I can understand what it was really like – being in Iran during that time – more than any news report could ever do. Reading that story enables me to understand where that friendly guy came from. He felt like sharing it with me because he saw me reading the book and thought that I might understand.

Fabulous

A fabulous day: a trip to forks of the credit, and a thoroughly enjoyable film.

Things that break my heart

Things that break my heart.

Wonder woman

Watching the Superfriends with Yao.

Daniel: “you can hold my hand if you’re scared. I’m not scared at all. I’ve watched it a thousand times!"

Yao: where’s Wonderwoman?
Daniel: “she’s sitting right next to me, silly”.

Have a lovely lovely holidays, we miss you so!

Things lately on my mind

Things lately on my mind:

I’ve been recently interviewed for a local Israeli newspaper, the article’s topic being immigrant’s stories.
The interviewer: “why didn't you choose to live up north, where all the Israelis live?”
Hadas: “I didn’t come all this way to live in an Israeli ghetto. I wish to mix in my surroundings; I love the fact that Toronto is so multicultural. I wish to take advantage of that. I was once invited to a barbeque in Thornhill (a Toronto suburb mostly populated by Jewish/Israelis) and felt very sad: all the guests were Israelis, the food was Israeli (I’ve heard that shopping in a Thornhill supermarket is similar to shopping in Tel Aviv: a lot of the food is imported from Israel. Even cottage cheese), the talk was Israeli. Yet the landscape was very much North American suburbia. These people seemed transplanted in this environment, It seemed unnatural, like the Henri rousseau’s painting of a Zebra in a forest, do you know that painting? In the painting the Zebra is detached from her natural surrounding – the African desert, and transplanted in a European landscape. It always makes me feel so sad when I look at it.”
The interviewer: “But YOU are the Zebra!”
Hadas sadly, after a long pause: “You are right.”

“Next week is not going to work for a play date... just too much "programming". A mother of Daniel's friend's response for my attempt to set up what is called here in Toronto “play date” – meaning two kids meeting together to play. In my vocabulary, kids play should be spontaneous, free of “programming”, scheduling, planners, calendars and appointment books. In my vocabulary children play includes running freely in the streets, parks or beach. Laughing deeply from the tummy. Rolling in the sand, enjoying friendship and silliness with your own kind.
Hey, but what do I know: I’m a Zebra.

A friend’s friend at the park: “I heard you were going back to Israel.”
Hadas: “Yes, we are. We don’t know though if it’s going to be this October or the next”.
The friend’s friend: “why did you move to Toronto?”
Hadas: “Well, we lived in New York and had to go back and....it’s a long story...let me put it this way: life in Israel can be tough. We thought that the grass is greener, and found out we were wrong.”

The friend’s friend nods her head in understanding.

On art

"A work of art is one that tells us that nature can not make what man can make" (Louis Kahn).

Narnia

Woke up this morning and realized that winter has taken over spring and the streets are covered with snow again. I had an epiphany: Toronto is Narnia, bewitched by the vicious witch to have an eternal winter. In order to fight the witch I have to give birth to a baby girl, thus having the required two sons of Adam and two daughters of eve to fulfill the prophecy and fight the witch.
Photograph by Super Daniel. Special effects: Your humble desperate H.