Kav Imut, part 12

Another belated birthday bash: We gather last night to celebrate (3.5 weeks late) Gill’s birthday. Gill’s brother suggests Siam at Hamat Gader, and we happily agree. We remember the crisp table linens and even crisper service; we salivate at the thought of the extensive pan-Asian menu with subtle and creative dishes. Unfortunately, all has changed, other than the physical building and the restaurant name. Still, family gatherings are great, especially for a happy occasion. Here is Gill’s birthday chocolate soufflé (the sparkler has already burned out). If you look carefully, you can see that they’ve written mazal tov (congratulations) in chocolate syrup on the plate.

The birthday celebration continues: How often do you turn 50 (and in the middle of a war, no less)? Gill continues to celebrate by trying out the new bicycle shoes, a gift from his sister. (Can’t see the picture? Yell at the guys at Blogger; the site isn’t working at the moment. I’ll try to upload the file again later.) Designed for mountain biking, the shoes have a metal plate that fits a pedal clip, but also feature a rugged sole to allow the off-road enthusiast to actually walk over those difficult bits.

Stretch and kvetch: My first day back at the gym was not too bad, until I hit the locker room and found a large cluster of women blocking the showers while they discuss reisisim (shrapnel). “I always hated that sofa, anyway,” confesses one woman. And we continue to kvetch (complain) for a long time, it seems. It is as if the need to tell our stories has become a common instinct for everyone here. At today’s memorial service, many conversations around the refreshment table are of the how-close-were-you category. And at last night’s dinner. And on the train. And in line at the bank. Therapists say that talking about your experience is the best way to cope with trauma; if so, we are doing a bang-up job of self-healing!A question of language: Some of you have commented on my use strange expressions. I have always been an avid reader, and as a kid I read a huge amount of British fiction from the 1920s–1940s. This means that I picked up some very curious colloquialisms. Here in Israel, English quickly becomes an unnatural mixture of American, British, Australian, South African, and who-knows-what-else English. (Sidebar: Yesterday I run into Peter, a fitness trainer from Wales. Wales? you ask. I once asked him if there was much of a Jewish community in Wales, and he replied, “Not so much; I mean, I’m here now, aren’t I?”) While I still use the trunk of my car (not the boot), and stop at traffic lights (not robots), I occasionally find myself going to a shop (instead of a store) or navigating a roundabout (instead of a traffic circle). If you tell me that you served aubergine to your auntie, which she wasn’t mad keen about, so she ran to the loo, and just when everything started going horribly pear-shaped, a lorry pulled up to the flat and the bloke said he just wanted to chat her up, so Bob’s your uncle… well, I know what you are talking about. I am bilingual in English.

However, as a profession TC (technical communicator) I have to be careful to write my documentation strictly in American English. It’s only in this blog that I can let these ridiculous idioms run amok. Of course, the more perceptive among you will notice that I use an equal number of American slang expressions, so don’t get your knickers in a twist, mate (translation: Chill, dude!). And the confusion works both ways; the other day, a colleague was stumped when I used the oh-so-American baseball idiom drop the ball. Oh, pul-eeze. I’m supposed to master revise, chemist, and car park (study, pharmacy, and parking lot, respectively), but you can’t figure out drop the ball? Sheesh…

But being a lover of language has its own rewards. At a management meeting last week, I was delighted to notice that the goodies came from a bakery named after the owner: ma’afia ronshi (resh vav nun shin yud). Sorry, but the only logical way to pronounce that for an English speaker is Raunchy Bakery. Now, this is great fun, because all the English speakers get to have a good giggle over it, and then they get the added entertainment of trying to translate raunchy for the others. Cheap thrills, yes, but why else would anyone attend these meetings?