field

Today i went to the field to see how my spiders were doing. Havent been visiting them very frequently, mainly becasue i was running a set of experiments over here in Sede Boqer,and also the weather hasnt been very good. But today the heat of the Arava valleywas a welcome change from the freezing temperatures in SB. There were rumours of snowfall in Mitzpe Ramon, a town some 30 mins away, but it turned out to be just that. It snowed in Jerusalem though.
Anyway, Efrat (girl who is in my lab- she works on spiders in agricultural systems) and me drove down. The best part about today's ride was the desert was blooming rampantly. Normally we see only scattered vegetation, but today almost all the plants were decorated with splashes of colour. It is something special to see flowers in the desert, and only when you see drabness for so long you suddenly appreciate the value of such small events. Even the grass was flowering. As we drove through one of the wadis, we passed a herd of camels being tended by a bedouin on an All Terrain Vehicle (or as they say in hebrew-tractaron). it was eerily similar to a safari- imagine an african safari scene and replace giraffes with camels and you get the picture. The bedouin guy had tied the forelegs of some camels together to prevent them from wandering off, i guess. i remember once we met a bedouin chap asking us if we'd seen any camels there:). The spiders were doing well, i discovered two new colonies of cyrtophora where previously there were none, and so added a couple of more points to the data set :)
Saw "confessions of a dangerous mind"; review- worth watching

concert

For the first time since i came here, there was a concert here in Sede Boqer. It was a duo comprising of an Irish singer (Collum Sands) and an Israeli story teller (Sharon Aviv) who performed a series of pieces loosely titled "talking to the wall". It was mostly folk songs and folk tales from Ireland, Israel and even one from India! Sands was great, and Sharon had a lovely voice -and she had one of the most fluid faces ive ever seen. Though i have to admit it was quite distracting to watch her but once i closed my eyes it was perfect.
But the effect was excellent- just the guy and his guitar and soft voices, though more suited to a campfire under moonlight than under flourescent lights in an auditorium that i didnt even know existed till today. In between the pieces, they related several anecdotes that had the audience laughing, but the irony was quite heavy as they kept alluding to the troubles both in Belfast and Tel Aviv. It was an unexpected reward for venturing out into the night, because there's a cold spell on- enough to freeze the blood in my veins.

picnic

left to right: claudia, Jaime, me, adriana, anat, felix

Sede Boqer in the news

One of Israel's major newspapers sent a reporter to interview a few students and faculty in the institute. The article appeared in a supplement called the Anglo File, which is usually devoted to articles about the english speaking jewish minority in Israel. I know this because i get newspapers on the weekend and spend the rest of the wekk obsessively reading and rereading every single article, no matter how boring. Anyway, the article was supposed to include another interview with Jaime (colombian as well), but for some reason they didnt include it, and he was pretty upset about it. They made it seem like an article introducing the institute to the public, but i feel they were being politically correct and praising rather than giving a balanced outlook. But its okay, its good to see us in the news :)

Primo Levi's 'The Sixth Day'

I found this book hidden among all the science books in my supervisor's bookshelf and it seemed intriguing enough. Primo Leviwas an Italian writer, born in 1919. He's written a lot of novels and essays concerning his Auschwitz experiences. But this book is particularly interesting to me because its one of those in which a 'mainstream' writer addresses issues so familiar to science fiction. This book is a collection of loosely linked short stories. Most of them deal with the impact of a invention on society. He doesnt care to describe how the machine or the phenomenon works, all he is interested in is seeing how the people involved would change or react to the invention. Its lightly humorous and wryly satirical at times but altogether an enjoyable read. Some stories deal with evolution seen from unusual point of views. I found many concepts familiar because they appear frequently in SF stories, but Levi's handling of the concepts was something akin to hearing an electric guitar riff played on a piano. Familiar yet different. His style of writing is also reminiscent of Italo Calvino's, in fact one of the stories is dedicated to the latter. Italo Calvino also has this underlying fascination with technology and speculative fiction, he even edited a collection of fantasy stories.

gas masks

today we received our gas masks and had to attend a demonstration class. it was a strange experience, for many reasons.First even though this is a small place, and with very few people, most of the time, our paths don't cross. so it was a chance to hang around and chat, almost like a party. Second, we were all foreign students and from countries where a threat of war would never result in such a response from the government, so there was a strange mixture of fun and subdued worry in the air. some people even took photographs as souvniers, which led to more hilarity. The instructors were very patient i must say, and repeated the instructions very carefully and systematically. Of course nobody expects anything to happen, because Sde Boqer is so out of range and besides being surrounded by desert is hardly a strategic target anyway, but i admire the thoroughness of the preparations. i dont expect to even open the box it came in. but in any event it was a welcome break in an otherwise featureless day.

poem

I got a response from this poetry website for an entry i made a month or so ago. They say that i have been entered into the finals for the competition but it smelled too much like the deal they tried to offer me for the previous poem i'd submitted. I didnt think the poem was that good anyway, ie enough to shell out 60$ for, though they claim that the 'artist' is under no obligation to buy the anthology of selected poems, and so i decided not to pursue the process. But there is something to be said about the pleasure of seeing your work in print, and i can't deny that the letter was good for my ego. Anyway the poem can be read below or if you prefer a nice and fancy format you can go here and do a search for my name.

Discovering a skull
Under a pale sky-blue sky
flecked with cirrus clouds
I stride upon my field
Yet another dawn to fill the void
by scraping fragments of the shifting earth
(fingers bathed in gentle dust)
I seek but a hint
if only a secret mirror-twisted clue...

My scalpel brushes away the surface
to reveal a skull. A feline skull.
Eyeless, it gapes at me- eternal and mocking
my meagre efforts to seek its identity;
its place in my time.

Went out to the Zin Wadi with Felix. Felix is from Peru, and he just started work here in the Desert School in the Ecology programme. He's working on the spatial distribution of the Fat Sand Rat (Psammomys obesus) and its fleas. So we went down the wadi, which is around 20 mins steep downhill from home and looked for burrows. Apparently the burrows can be distinguished from any other hole in the ground by two entrances/exits. Felix was recording their GPS coordinates, and i was trying to take innovative photographs of the desert, but it was a losing battle. There are only so many snaps you can take of barrenness before you think its overkill. The Zin river (hah!) is a bit demented though. It twists throught the wadi, changing its mind every 100 m, before reaching the arava valley somewhere beyond the horizon. We spent some 4 hrs wandering around before returning. Not many spiders, most of them must be nocturnal or live their lives under rocks. Saw one tree! but it looked like an australian acacia :)

Since there are a lot of weddings in the air, I thought I might tell you about this Jewish wedding I went to yesterday. The bride was an ex student of Sde Boker, Carly. She's originally from Australia, but came here to study, eventually made aliyah (according to the laws of the state of Israel, anybody who is proven to be jewish can apply for Israeli citizenship, this process of immigration is called aliyah). She met the groom, Haim somewhere here. HAIM is descendent of Russian Jews and is quite orthodox, while Carly is not so much. However in the interests of sanity they decided to have a orthodox wedding. OF course like any other religions there are thousands of small sects in Judaism, and the orthodox are generally the kind who enforce the Sabbath laws and the kosher laws etc. so this promised to be a strange experience, especially since Haim's parents don’t speak a word of English and Carly’s don’t speak Hebrew.
The first problem was getting there. The wedding was in Petah Tikva which is very close to TEl Aviv, and im living in the south in the middle of the desert :) And since there is no bus service after 11, we (Clara, Francisco - Colombians, Henri- Swiss, Miraj- Ex- soviet republic, cant remember which, Antonio- Chile and me- India) rented a car from Be'er Sheva and Henri drove us to the wedding hall. Since it was an orthodox wedding Carly had warned us (males) to get Kippas and the women to wear modest clothing etc, or else we wouldn’t be let inside, so we bought some kippas at the Be'er Sheva bus station. They look something like this Mine had a spider web (with a spider) design :)
Anyway we all looked properly Jewish and headed to the hall. The wedding was in the 3rd or fourth floor of the building, so trooped up the stairs. There was a lobby with food, and then the hall, which looked more like a restaurant than anything else. So we did the traditional wishing the parents etc, went and met Carly who was sitting on a throne like thingy decked out in full bridal gear, very similar to Christian Bridal Gear, I think. She looked totally different, wouldn’t have recognized her if I didn’t know better. Anyway Each of us was given a little card with a table number on it, so we were allotted a table close to the exit :). The food by the way was not fair to vegetarians, but I’m holding my peace. The ceremony started at around 9 pm. I thought it was pretty strange to hold a wedding at night, but then I realized that the Jewish day starts at sundown, so I guess it was pretty auspicious. First the groom was walked by his Father in law and somebody else (holding candles) to where Carly was sitting. The ceremony included HAIM placing a veil over Carly's head, symbolizing some biblical story where somebody (Jacob?) was cheated of the wife he wanted (Rachel) because of the veil, so now the groom puts the veil on his bride to make sure the same doesn’t happen again :). I know all this symbolic stuff because of Zoe, the fiancée of Elli, who's in my department. They are getting married soon, and thus Zoe was very knowledgeable about all the traditions etc. She was kind enough to provide running commentary. Zoe, by the way is an indophile, part of that category of people who are strongly attracted to India and Indian things. In fact she was wearing a skirt that looked like it had been massacred out of a zari sari. Anyway after this, Haim was led away and then Carly had to recite some prayers, which nobody heard. And then a whole procession of people led her to the roof where the actual ceremony was supposed to happen. On the roof, there was a pandal, which they call “Hupah” and the two took up positions under the thing. The first thing that Carly had to do was to go around Haim seven times. No fire. Apparently they went through both the engagement and the wedding itself in this ceremony. So rings were duly exchanged. Then came the reading of the marriage contract. So the contract, which is written in Aramaic was read out by one of the Rabbis (=priests), and then given to the bride for safekeeping. After that, seven different rabbis blessed the couple, but it can be anybody who knows the couple. Finally it ended when the cup of wine that all of them were holding (in order to bless) was drunk by the two and then the cup was smashed by Haim, symbolizing a little bit of unhappiness in midst of their happiness, i.e. because of Jerusalem. The whole thing took no more than 20 mins. Then the entire contingent proceeded downstairs and that’s when things began to get seriously weird. First they set up a screen to separate the women from the men and proceeded to start dancing. The music was provided by this live band who were uniformly dressed in traditional orthodox clothes but they were good -though repetitive, singing religious songs which sounded all the world like folk- gypsy music from some east European country. The rule here is that orthodox men are not allowed to look at the women, and hence the separation. The dancing itself consisted of men holding hands and going round in circles, doing quaint folk steps along the way. Haim got into lot of stress dancing with everyone who wished Haim well, and I could see he was exhausted and a bit unfocussed at the end, while Carly had a comparatively easier time, because the women were dancing slower and with more emphasis on moves rather than speed. There were some really bizarre dances, but it’s too vivid to describe. Lets just say it involved; a spinning chair with Haim on it, spun in a very innovative way by 8 orthodox jews; a burning hat dance; a real clown and a guy who did a balancing act with a bottle of wine on his head. Very disturbing to see men of God in this way, but I guess if you spend most of the time in serious study of God and his works, these weddings are your only outlet for fun and who blames them if they do get a bit over the top. These guys also continuously peppered the meal with loud singing and blessings hidden safely behind this makeshift screen. Later on when it was time for Carly to receive their blessings, they allowed her to peep through the screen and continued their blessings all the while. Finally people were leaving and it was getting pretty late, around 1 a.m., I think, so we decided to go as well. We said a last goodbye to Carly etc and headed to Rehovot (where Antonio lives) and recuperated in a pub, but that’s another story J.
Whew , my fingers are tired!