"Nothing Much"

So the average conversation goes like this, "What you been up to? Nothing much."
Do people really mean that, surely you have been up to a lot and keeping busy and interested in life or are people stuck in a same mundane routine that nothing new occurs or "nothing much" happens.

So I decided to look back on the highlights and points of interest for me of my last week where "nothing much" happened (Chronological order of how they happened):

World AIDS Day

Being from South Africa this day is having more and more significance, due to a country with a ridiculous high infection rate and terrible government policies to try sustain the problem. The international press did cover the day a bit and I picked up on an interesting interview of Zackie Achmat (South African AIDS activist) in the Independent. Zackie is a very interesting and inspiring person and I am proud to say that my friends back in South Africa work closely with him and the work that he does. On local issues here, Israel's AIDS cases consist of 5,130 HIV-infected people of whom 384 a AIDS patients. In 2005, 26 people died as a result of AIDS in Israel, and 350 new cases of HIV infection were discovered. It is a ten percent increase. Nothing in comparison to the South African epidemic but yet still something to be aware of and educate about. Marking the World AIDS day the health ministry had free AIDS tests around Tel Aviv and the university. It is interesting to note that Palestinians HIV statistics are pretty much unknown. In a simple form of utilising technology, I was reading an Israeli paper there was an advert that said sms this number (3300) with the number 10 to donate ten shekels to the Israel Aids Task Force. I obligingly did.


Innercity traffic - Tel Aviv is a great city but not so well designed and overcrowded in terms of traffic and automobiles. The favourite trick here is to rip up the roads a bit lay down some pipes and put the road back. So nothing really changes to the human eye but large sections of roads are often just closed. So I took my car on Thursday night just to the outer suburb of Tel Aviv called Givatayim, for a game of evening doubles in tennis. It took me just to get out of the city centre about 40 minutes (no more than one kilometre), I was stuck in the centre no matter which way I took I could not get out and then finally out of the centre it took me 5 minutes to get to the tennis courts which are normally about 15 minutes away. Highly frustrating!

Evening game of doubles - The previous paragraph gave this one away, but I occasionally play tennis, and last week was the first ever game of doubles I have played in Israel. Amazing...

Abu Shukri Humus in Abu Gosh on Friday: I went on an outing with some friends to the "so called" best humus in Israel in the Arab village of Abu Ghosh just outside Jerusalem. Now everyone has their humus favourite but Abu Shukri is always in the top three. The famous story of Abu Shukri is his fallout with his partner who opened up "Abu Shukri Number One Original" right opposite the first one. The legend and story goes that they stand outside and shout at each other while also shouting at customers to come into their store. Needless to say both hummusiot (houses of humus) were fairly busy and I being a traditionalist stuck to the original one.

Borat movie - I went to see the much spoken about Borat movie with actor who is Ali G impersonator, Sacha Baron Cohen. A surreal experience watching in Israel when Borat who is a Kazakhstani news journalist is actually speaking Hebrew when he is supposed to speak Kazak. A really humourous, scary look at society and its deep down secrets. The method he used of a fictional story line using reality clips and some set up scenes made it all the more memorable yet uncomfortable to watch at times with the awkward moments.

That is my view on top of the world from the week where "nothing much" happened!