- Is there anything more annoying on the planet than looking down at your fingers, hunting and pecking for the Hebrew letters to type a word, looking up and realizing you were in English the whole time? NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't even have a joke here. I find this about as funny as an infected toenail.
- How long does it take to get used to Hebrew Windows really? Five? Six thousand years? It's like using a computer in front of the mirror, looking for the little "X" on the wrong side of the screen while trying to close a window.
- I LOVE how Israelis eat. Just kills me and I'm not making fun this time. I saw someone in my building last week start eating a whole pepper in her hand, as if it were an apple. Has any American in recorded history done such a thing? A whole Big Mac, maybe. Same thing goes for a cucumber.
- It's taking me forever to find the appropriate person in my company-wide address book. I'm rounding of course but I'm fairly certain there are 16 bajillion Keren's in the office.
- Sitting in someone's office last week, her cell phone starts to ring with...any guesses as to the ringtone? No, not this one. How about "The Muppet Show"? I start looking around...nobody even flinches. I turn the other way in shock and disbelief. No one looks up. Am I dreaming? DOES ANYONE HERE HAVE ANY CONCEPT ABOUT WHAT WE'RE LISTENING TO??? You're really pushing 50 paying homage to Fozzie Bear on your pelephone?
"Shmulik, call on line 2..."First-time readers, don't run away. I promise it gets better. Did I mention it's past midnight?
12 comments:
Don't hunt and peck! You'll never get to type quickly that way. Stick your fingers on the home keys (asdf jkl; or ףךלח כגדש) and keep them there all the time. Go ahead and stare at your fingers if you need to, but keep your hands on those home keys!
To help keep your head up, looking at the screen, print out a copy of the keyboard layout and tape it to the bottom of your monitor. Try searching the Web for Hebrew Keyboard Layout and you'll find a bunch of pretty images you can print up for this purpose.
It'll be a bit weird at first, but in a couple of days you'll notice that you start to remember where some of the keys are without looking. Then comes the fun part...
If you're like me you'll connect the letter locations to sounds in your head rather than letters and you'll type c looking for כ or ב looking for b and you'll be all mebulbal. :) Have fun!
Not to bum you out or anything, but I still type slow in Hebrew. I hate when that happens. It usually happens the other way around for me, and when I'm done, I sign "Tal" but since I hadn't switched the letters back to English, it spells אשך which means testicle in Hebrew.
Beat THAT. :-)
And BTW, you can switch your entire OS to English and still be able to have Hebrew. I don't have a think in Hebrew on my computer. If you want me to walk you through it, just call me. There are 2 steps to take, one of which I think you said your boss did for you already.
You know how to get the Windows XP from hebrew to english? Oh please do share! THe idiots who sold us our last computer put it in hebrew even though i explicitely asked for english installation and now want to charge yet more money to reinstall (and said its such special MS permission to replace the hebrew with english)
shoshana (who after 12+ years in this country cannot use hebrew windows)
I know, as if you have time for this...but in case you do, here is a hebrew typing tutorial. http://www.zigzagworld.com/HKTutor/
And where did I learn about it? That's right. Ulpan.
If you happen to accidentally type Hebrew instead of English, or vice versa, here a cool freeware tool that will get it all back right with one keystroke:
http://www.freeware.co.il/hebrew/
Yeah, the bathroom thing goes both ways: a male cleaner actually came into the women's room and started cleaning while I was in there using the bathroom. And this happened in a kosher restaurant, no less!!! Granted, since I was using a stall, there wasn't anything for him to see, but still...
I had a very long day at the army office (lishkat hagiyus) yesterday, and a nice break to the 2 hours of waiting to take my medical exam was watching this old arab guy walk into the women's bathroom right behind what looked to me to be a pretty high ranking female officer. She didn't even flinch.
shoshana - email me at realisrael at gmail dot com and I'll walk you through it.
You know, I used to be the freak in the US who ate whole veggies like an apple. Bell peppers, hot peppers (within reason), radishes, tomatoes (until I developed an allergy to them... still very, very sad about that), cucumbers, whatever... my coworkers got a kick out of making fun of me all last summer when we were sitting outside at the university running a conference in Maryland's 2,367º (pick your scale) heat with 400% humidity and I had a bag of radishes and cucumbers from the local organic farmer's market in my hand, just munching on them between the occasional necessary yelling bouts aimed at my minions (aka assistants)...
Then I came to Israel. And I found I'm not a freak anymore. Yay!
But alas, soon I'm to return to the land of being a freak for eating peppers like an apple. But I'll be back. Ha.
:)
You are kidding me - women cleaners come into the men's bathroom and clean while the men are all peeing around her?! I'm telling you, it doesn't matter how long you're here, there's always something shocking you didn't know about. I guess that's part of the charm.
Loved your video with the lady on the bus!
Well, not exactly peeing all around her. Mostly in a line up against the wall. And nobody bats an eyelash.
Post a Comment