Dateline Jerusalem — I awakened this morning to find a small crack in the bottom of my new laptop computer, and two missing screws, one of which I found on my bed. How and when this happened, I have no clue. It had been atop the bookshelf next to my bed. I do not remember dropping it, like I did with the last one, necessitating the buying of this one. In the eight years I have been in Israel, I have had five laptop computers! Technologically illiterate, not just a computer idiot, perhaps this is another sign to me, along with the ATM machine at the bank breaking down yesterday not long after I took my money out, that technology and I are on a collision course. What does one do when almost everything today is online? Israel is a frontrunner in the world when it comes to technology.
Even the use of a Smart phone takes someone smart to figure out. It doesn’t need me because it is so smart it dials on its own. Once a friend was concerned because my phone (not me) called her on Shabbat. Last week, out of the blue, I heard my printer in the next room, startling me because it hadn’t worked for five weeks. When I went to investigate, it had printed something that my neighbor had tried to print three weeks earlier without success. The weirdest part: It magically started printing by itself.
Sometimes I amaze myself by figuring out problems with computers that the experts can’t handle. When I took advanced math and science, I could arrive at the answer in my head but had no idea how I got to it. In physics class in high school, I could not figure out how to use a slide rule but I came up with the correct answer without it. In junior high school, I fell asleep in class after lunch every day. My science teacher would call on me. I would blurt out the correct answer, stunning both of us since I was sleepwalking.
Ticket, Please, M’am?
Perhaps Israel needs my bizarre technological skills and abilities to figure out how to make their banks and post offices work efficiently. Yesterday I spent two hours in the bank. Here, as opposed to the U.S., everything is taken care of by someone else. You don’t stand in line, but get a numbered ticket. One ticket to deposit or withdraw money, one to order check books and credit cards, one to pick up checkbooks and credit cards because they do not send them in the mail, one to speak to a banker. If lucky, you are not called to three different tellers at the same time. Otherwise, you have to get another ticket and wait to be called again. Bank customers are charged a “commission” just to deposit money into the bank. If you do banking at a different branch from your home branch, the tellers say they cannot give you information such as how much is in your account because it is not in their branch’s computers. Of course if you work in another city, by the time you get home, your branch is closed. When you have a day off, like a Friday, the banks are closed as well.
I understand why bank checks and credit cards are not sent through the mail. The post office is so busy dealing with everything other than mail, they do not have the time to handle normal post office duties. If you want to pay your utility bills or city taxes, you go to the post office. If you want to buy an inexpensive cell phone with service, go to the post office. If you don’t like Israeli banks, the post office becomes your bank, handing all your banking needs such as deposits, withdrawals, and the issuance of debit cards and checkbooks. If you need to get health insurance, the post office is where the healthcare voucher is issued. Just my luck, when I made aliyah (migrated to Israel), that section of the post office was on strike. If you want to buy or sell your vehicle to a private party rather than through a dealership, the post office handles that paperwork. Therefore, it is not unusual that there is a backlog of thousands of undelivered mail and packages. Now we are told that mail will only be delivered twice a week. Family and friends: Do not send me anything via snail mail. There is a high possibility I never will receive it on time, if at all. I still await the return of the Return Receipt Requested card for mail I sent to the U.S. in May. I know it was received. I was notified by email that the matter had been handled. I guess I must rely on my computer after all.
L’hitraot. Shachar