Monday, February 6, 2012

We Tour Herzliya

What adventures we had today - first, we were surprised by the oven installer who said he was coming on Tuesday - no really, I KNOW the scheduler said Yom Shlishi, not Yom Sheni, really!  Anyway, thank goodness we were here.

So this nice man starts taking the oven out of its humongous box.  As he opens the box, piece by piece, he hands me the trash.  "Here," he says.  Oh!  I get it!  I'm his lovely assistant!  OK!  He proceeds to hand me pieces of trash and then tell me to pull the bottom of the box out from under the oven.  It takes a lot of self control for me not to start laughing and saying, "Yes, boss."

He tries to explain to me why he has to halfway install the oven BEFORE the gas company comes to turn on the gas. I nod like any of it makes sense to me, but I do understand it has something to do with a possible explosion, so I guess it is important.

After that, we drove to Herzliya to visit a car dealership. I prepared for this visit by going to Google maps and mapping out the drive and writing out the directions [we didn't have a printer yet, but now we do.]  I was very proud of myself and thought, ha this will be a piece of cake. 

We left at least a half hour early to give us time to get lost.  We needed it.  The directions on Google maps had nothing whatsoever to do with the signage in Herzliya. Before we knew it we were driving through a run-down residential neighborhood.  Thank goodness for son in law Donny who directed us to the dealer.

We found out from the dealer that the discount that olim get on new cars has an inverse relationship to the car's fuel efficiency.  That is, the less efficient the car is, the more the discount for olim.  Make sense?  No?  You're right.  But we are now in the "whatever" mode. 

We decide on a car and work out a deal and guess what the salesman did?  Hold on, this is going to be traumatic.  He TOOK my Teudat Zehut, our Teudat Oleh, my US driver's license, my Israeli driver's license, AND my passport! [He did make copies for me to keep for now.]  He has to send all of those originals to the ministry of something or other and promised to give them back to me.  He put them all carefully in a special envelope and then I asked nervously, "Um, you're not sending that through regular mail are you?" 

"No!  Of course not!" he said, "we have a special courier who picks it up and takes it to the government office!  Don't worry!" 

In my head, as we left, I saw him and his fellow salesmen clutching their stomachs and roaring with laughter, saying, "Wow, she actually believed us!  Here, Ziv, put this envelope in the mailbox on your way home - or not."

Tomorrow we await the visit by the gas company.  It is Shabbos yet? Please?

1 comment:

  1. I had a similar experience with all the important documents and imagined them just tossing them into a shredder as I walked out of the office. I am sure that won't happen to you.

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