I’m sitting in the lounge at Singapore Changi airport waiting for my flight home from what will be my last overseas work trip. This past Tuesday the day finally arrived for me to quit, but unfortunately I had to do it via phone from Malaysia. I had run the words in my mind a thousand times coz i wanted to get them just right. I did. I caught them off guard. They were surprised. I am free.

It is very empowering to actually quit a job. Empowering, rewarding, relieving and terrifying. I do not know what we will do for $$ in Israel but hopefully I will figure that out before the money runs out. This is all starting to get real.

31 days to go…

Wouldn’t you know it. but with so much to do back at home, my workload at my job has increased significantly and seeing as how I have not officially announced anything just yet, I have to go along for the ride. I just got back from a week in Malaysia, a country that is openly anti-Zionist but it seems now that they may have stepped it up a notch too. I found this sign hanging on the outside fence of a mosque in Kuala Lumpur.

Basically it is calling on people to boycott ‘Jews’ and especially the companies “Starbucks”, “Coca Cola” and “Colgate” as the Jews are responsible for all the the war crimes and atrocities that are committed especially those perpetrated against those poor innocent children in the photo. To say seeing this up disappointed me is an understatement.

I have travelled to Malaysia many times and have always found the people to be friendly and helpful, but I cannot believe that anyone can happily live near or walk past this sign without seeing just how wrong it is. If we allow people to start to blame ‘jews’ for everything that is wrong in the world then 1939 is not too far away again. Good people need to stand up and make their voice heard against those small but LOUDER extremist minority.

68 days to go till Israel and I can’t wait.

AM YISROEL CHAI!!!!

We leave for Israel in 71 days and unfortunately I am starting to accept that in Israel I will not be able to satisfy my desire of staying up late when all have gone to bed and watching live international cricket.

Now for those of you who come from countries that don’t play cricket I am sorry for you coz you will not know what I am talking about. (oops had to leave for a minute as something interesting happened in the TWENTY20 world cup game between Australia and West Indies) At the moment the shortest form of the game, the one that takes about 3 hrs in total is having a world cup in England and even though it is only day 2, it is already fantastic with some unbelievable games and unexpected results. (looks like my boys are gonna start off with a loss)

Anyway, being someone who can very easily survive on only a few hrs sleep each night means that I have in fact spent many a night camped on the couch eating potato chips until the birds start chirping, thoroughly enjoying every moment of every game from countries so far away as England, Jamaica or even South Africa.

The wonderful WWW will no doubt mean that I can get updates and scores on every game, everywhere, every week, but it won’t be the same as watching it live and being there when it all happens.

On the Israel front we have received confirmation that we have been accepted into Kibbutz Ein Gev and that the Ulpan starts on Sep 7th so we have delayed our departure by 2 weeks to Aug 23rd. This extra time very much needed as we still have so very much to do before we can leave and I unfortunately have a week away this week for work in Malaysia. Tickets have been booked and issued and now we just sort through all our possessions. What to take, what to store, what to sell on EBay, what to donate to charity, what to lend to others and what to throw away. So very humbling and grounding to go through all your collected material possessions and sort them into piles.

1:33am and children are stirring, time to pop a bottle or 2 in the microwave.

George

Tickets are booked and we are flying on August 9th. We have met up with and befriended another family that are very similar to us that are also going on Aliyah on that day and now it seems that we are on much the same path. Talking with others in the same boat somehow makes it all a little less scary.

Our plans have taken a slightly different course, for reasons beyond our control. We had always planned to begin life in Israel at the Ranaana absorption centre, but then last week the shaliach told us that due to budget cuts, that absorption centre is no longer accepting people. Add to that the fact that he didn’t feel like any of the other centres would fit us properly and we found ourselves in slight predicament. The problem was that we do need to have some sort of rent assisted home for the first few months while we are doing ulpan and getting settled. (and don’t have jobs).

So back towards the original plan of Kibbutz we go. Bayot Rishon Bamoledet is a program that aims to make your first steps in Israel as comfortable as possible by placing you in an environment where you feel safe and don’t have to worry about many of the normal things that you would when you first move to another country.

We are hopefully gonna get onto Kibbutz Ein Gev which is way up north by the Kinerret. It is a little more removed that I would have hoped, but what it lacks in proximity to the main cities, it will certainly make up for with natural beauty as well as softening the initial shock of arriving in Israel and having a million and one things to worry about.

No sooner had we applied for the program than we got a phone call from the organizer Elana who over the course of 3/4 of an hour talked me thru everything step by step. It was great and very re-assuring.

So now we are planning to be up north on a Kibbutz for 6 -12 months and who knows what adventures and outcomes that might bring. With only 69 days to go we still have so much to do as we need to clean out our house and get it rented as well all of the other day to day things that never stop like work. (oh yeah, I probably need to tell them at some point that I am quitting and moving to Israel!)

Anyway, it’s 5:22am and another night I can’t sleep as my head is constantly full of thoughts of Israel. Hopefully the northern summer air and breeze off the Kineret will help me to rest easy and sleep soundlessly once we arrive on August 9.

A few applications for official certificates from govt agencies as well as a couple of quick trips overseas have slowed things down a little. Tuesday we have the next appt with the Aliyah Shaliach at which point we hand everything over and should be one phone call away from getting the go ahead to book our tickets. By our calculation, we only have 14 more Shabboses left in Aus until we hit the Holy Land.

As an interesting note, I almost made it to Israel for this weekend. I was booked to be in a neighbouring country to Israel for some work this past week and had managed to to some how finagle a weekend on the company $$ in Israel on the way back. Thought it would be a great chance to check out the absorption centre and take some pics for my lovely wife. Also a chance to drop off a suitcase or two of stuff at a friends house to look after for us for the next few months until we arrive. I thought I had worked it all out. I managed to figure out and book all of the flights needed in and out of countries that are both friend and foe to Israel and was less than 24 hrs from getting on the plane when something I didn’t plan on just happened. Ouch…that’s a strange pain in my side I’ve never felt before…

11 hrs later…

… I am one appendix lighter and have 3 small holes in my belly. Apparently you can’t fly to the Middle East from Australia for a while after surgery and general anaesthetic. Go figure.

Anyway, farewell my trusty appendix, you served me well for almost 37 years but alas you had nothing left to give. I guess I can’t eat grass anymore but on a good note I can now apply for jobs in Antarctica.

As I sit in my hotel room in Toronto on Sunday afternoon I feel so far from home and unable to really do much to further our plans. I am googling stuff about Israel but really it is all just to fill the time. Days are ticking down and we still have soooooooo much to do. Yael took in all the paperwork to get the kids passports this week so in 10 days that should be one less major thing to have to worry about. We are also in the (slow) process of going thru all our stuff and either donating or ebaying it to new homes. We are trying to be harsh in that if we aren’t taking it with us and it isn’t worth putting in storage for an extended time then it has to go. It’s funny how possesions that once seemed so important are now easily put into a goodwill bin.

I am trying desperately to have some sort of a job lined up for me so that when we get there we will have some $$ coming in but there really is so much uncertainty. There is a lot of pressure in the unknown that awaits us. Many cannot understand why we are leaving all the wonderful material possesions and comforts that we have surrounded ourselves with at home to move to a global ‘hotspot’ and I guess the answer is that we feel there must be some bigger purpose and reason to life than a huge widescreen TV and a nice car.

Which means that work commitments have taken me far away from home again. This time I find myself in the lovely city of Toronto. I think I have travelled  just about as far away as I can get from Melbourne before I am already on my way home. 14 hrs to LA from Melbourne and then 4 1/2 more to Toronto. 

The weather here is cold and miserable and wet and windy and not at all friendly. Luckily the people are. Everybody tells me that Toronto is a much nicer city in the summer. It isn’t really much in the winter. Last week it hit -27c. Its not that I can’t understand how people live here in the winter, its just that I don’t understand why!

There’s plenty of room in Australia…you’re all welcome.

(There’s also plenty of room in Israel too!)

Unfortunately Toronto doesn't really look like this in the Winter!

Goodbye my love

She has been faithful to me for 6 long years and has never let me down or left me stranded anywhere. The only saving grace was that I sold her to someone that I feel will love her and look after her as much as I did.

…it’s all for the good and makes up only a small part of the big picture which is getting over to Israel. One more box ticked and one less thing to now have to worry about doing before we can go. The clock is ticking…

Now I’m sure that it is strict and regulated in your country when it comes to the rules of what is allowed and what is forbidden with regards to passport photos, but in Australia, the rules and regulations themselves take up about 3 pages of the passport application booklet. They are very strict about things like angle of head, no smiling, no expression, light background, straight faced etc. That’s all well and good but try explaining it to a 3 or 1 year old.

Anyway, below are the results of tonight’s attempt. I’m not sure that we really have one that is acceptable, but I know that we all had an awesomely good time bonding as a family for the 1/2 hour we tried to get them. We all laughed so hard and that made the exercise more than worthwhile.

We are trying really hard to make every element of the move to Israel as much fun as possible for all of us, and tonight certainly added to the enjoyment.

My daughter is trying really hard to make the Australian Govt happy

My son doing his best for the camera