Hi everyone,
It's been a long week, pretty funny for a week that had a holiday in it. This time it was Purim, celebrated in Jerusalem starting Sunday night. If you don't know Purim as it is celebrated today, it's like a cross between Halloween and Mardi Gras, traditionally Jews dress in costumes, go read the book of Esther in synagogue, and drink themselves silly (the only occasion where Jews are commanded to get drunk). Needless to say, I always had a small problem with that--especially when it leads to loud behavior.....
For years, I just dodged the celebration completely. In recent years, I found parts of it tolerable. I would come for the reading of the Book of Esther and the Purimspiel (play put on by children) and then flee the party afterwards. I still do that. However, I stuck around enough to help with food preparation, then when the music got cranked up, I grabbed my hot dog, fed the stray cats outside and went home to bed. That's not my bag, and that's okay.
I did take advantage of the day off Monday to visit one old friend for breakfast (she's old and doesn't get out much) and met another one for a field trip to look for flowers. We drove down the Sorek Valley to Beit Shemesh and found lots of flowers including orchids on the way. At top is the native Spotted Orchid which is beautiful and very common right now in the Judean Mountains.
Back to work on Tuesday and facing major problems. We got a new computer services director last September, which in principle would be a Good Thing, since my work is heavily computer dependent and the situation has been chaotic for years. Unfortnately we have gone from bad to worse and this political appointee seems to have been hired to destroy what we had left. The people under him, all dedicated technical people, have been very unhappy from the beginning and now that the effects of his inaction are bearing fruit, a lot of us who understand more about computers are taking a ticket and joining the queue to lynch him.
I manage a national database service as part of my work, which holds more than half a million records. While my organization was always niggardly in providing hardware and software support for this service, I was fortunate in having two European Union grants which funded our greatest needs over a six year period from 1998 to 2004--three strong computers, necessary database software, programmer support. Those funds dried up in spring 1995. Since then I've gotten nothing from my organization, which had gotten used to the outside funding and me pulling off miracles when the system faced collapse. Sometimes I had to purchase the necessary resources from my own pocket.
Well, we have to upgrade to more capable software or our system will simply stop functioning this year because the ACCESS software I have now cannot cope with so many records. I am already getting error messages and problems in running queries and making corrections on the data. We know what we need to do, and it will cost maybe 5,000 usd to do the necessary upgrades, migration, etc.
I started asking our computer services director for help on this last November. After four letters went unanswered for four months, I scheduled a meeting. He cancelled it. I consulted with my boss, who met with the guy, confirmed he's an asshole and is playing games. So, what would anywhere else be normal maintenance work is escalating here into the typical Israeli screwup.
I know this scenario, after working in government here for more than ten years. You have pinheaded males who are more into manipulating people to feed on their egos and power lust. They don't give squat for the work itself, which is just a means to get their jollies from screwing around with people. On the othe side you have longsuffering people who are just trying to do their jobs.
Usually I come into situations like this with a minor nuclear explosion, kick ass in all directions, sort the mess out, and stomp back to my lair leaving blood, guts and feathers all over the place and several people screaming for my head on a platter. I haven't got the energy for that crap any more. Or maybe I'm getting smarter.
I would still really love to pull out my cannibal war club, bash this guy's brains, and replace him with a competent computer person. As I understand it, I now have lots of company in that sentiment, and it is likely he's gonna make the wrong people mad before long, who will bash his brains for me. Instead, I am steadily climbing up the organizational ladder with my protests, warning the system is gonna STOP this year if we don't do something. (In which case I have a backlog of about three papers to write and you guys can just cry about it....) I guess this is what older government people do to solve their problems, even though the cannibal war club is a lot more fun.
Resentments? You betcha, although I'm not going to obsess about it. Israel is full of 4-star assholes and if I get obsessive about each one I encounter, I am going to make myself sick. On the other hand, I'm a fairly smart and determined woman, and I still want to accomplish some things. I see other people around me giving up, defeated by the assholes and the inertia of systems. I also see the same people perking up if it looks like they can do something meaningful.
On a few occasions, I've broken through the system and the assholes like a Canadian icebreaker cutting through Arctic ice, and lots of little boats come bobbing along in my wake along a fresh channel. I've seen this most recently in our mapping work, European supported and completely bypassing our own bureaucracy. People got enthusiastic and had a hell of a good time working and being creative.
This kind of thing is worth doing, but you do need the armored icrebreaker to cut the channel so the rest can swim. Sometimes that seems like the job I've been given. Sigh.
shabat shalom,
Linda
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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/
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