shabbat shalom 25.05.07

Hi everyone,

It's been a beautiful week here in Israel. Partly the weather is lovely, partly we had the Shavuot holiday, and partly I am steadily gaining strength and energy now that my anemia is being treated. Each day I wake up feeling better.

As you may have gathered from earlier posts, I was sick all winter. Lack of energy was the main complaint, some dizziness. It may explain why I fell from that ladder last January. My family doctor was totally ineffective in helping me figure it out, and after he even refused to do the paperwork for my insurance, I finally demanded my health service place me with another doctor. This time I picked him, a young Massachusetts-trained American immigrant, e.g. a Yankee Doctor. And like a good Yankee, he buckled down to work.

First he cut back my thyroid meds, telling me I was taking way too much. I protested, since I figured my symptoms were due to low thyroid level. He ran blood tests and they came back with medium level anemia. He sent me to a hemotologist (and told me to go to the top one, a teaching professor). Took a while to get there, but when I did, two weeks ago, the professor looked at my blood tests, diagnosed most likey iron deficiency anemia, put me on iron tablets and sent me off with the biggest checklist of blood testing I ever had in my life. 90% likely we have it right, but since there is a remote chance of gastrointestinal bleeding (e.g. colon cancer) we are not taking chances.

Two weeks of iron tablets and I am beginning to feel a real difference in energy and stamina. It took a while to kick in; I guess it takes the body a week to make new blood from the new ingredients. I also have to be careful because the iron interferes with the thyroxin uptake from those pills, so I have to juggle it. But this is not too hard. I hope the energy continues to increase.

Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks (Pentacost) was celebrated this week. I laid low, since I still don't know what I can handle and what I cannot. Normally people stay up all night reading the Bible, but I sure wasn't going to do that, so I skipped my own congegation's evening service. I could have done that part, I think. Just didn't want to go into town for an hour and have to come back.

I also am feeling better because I got a major question sorted in my work. I'm still facing off with our hugely unpopular computer services manager about who builds databases and under what authority. I've been building them since I got this job 13 years ago, and in fact that was central to my job when I was hired. Nobody told me that anything had changed. So I wanted a clear definition of my duties and responsibilities now.

Here I ran into what is probably THE major cultural difference between Israelis and Americans. Americans like clear definitions and they want to know where the fencelines run, in order to reduce conflicts and tensions. "Good fences make good neighbors" is very much part of American thinking.

Israelis (like nearly all Middle Eastern people) in contrast do not like clear definitions and clear boundaries because this reduces their ability to manuver, and survival as Israelis and as Jews has often demanded clever manuvering. They prefer constant negotiation and power struggles rather than clear definitions, something an American Gentile will find annoying and tiring. (And here is the Israeli advantage because by using negotiation, patience and steady pressure, he will whittle away as much as he can get.)

After 25 years in Israel, I still prefer clear boundaries because I don't like constantly defending my turf. It's not a fun game for me, it's just annoying and tiring. I'm still a Gentile in this respect.

So, I had to push my boss to hammer it out. He may still consider my boundaries negotiable, but I don't. I can peacefully surrender what is not my responsibility, but I will bite your ass off if you try to take a piece of my turf. (This is what alarms my office; when they try the boundary pushing games, I get mad and smack them. I don't play the game, and this disconcerts them.)

Well, I got my boundaries clearly in my mind, put them on the table with my boss, verified and re-verified them (he probably thinks I'm obsessive on this) and then folded my papers and await a battle. We meet with the head of computer services on Monday, and I've got my guns cleaned and oiled now.

This difference in approach is what has given me something of a reputation for a bad temper here. Folks around me are constantly sqwaking and quarreling with each other, and I do mean constantly. It's just part of life. I stick to my work and quietly go about my business. In Middle Eastern culture, this usually means a mouse who is intimidated and doesn't dare raise her head, therefore is a legitimate target for aggression. So for several years, until they learned, I got picked on.

People couldn't read me because I don't behave like a Middle Easterner. I'm quiet until provoked and aroused, and then I come out like a lion, bash people in all directions, and end up the last person standing, with a dripping war club. And then they look at me in astonishment and say "How come you are so angry??"

It's simply because quarreling is not a form of entertainment for me. I fight only when I must, and then I fight to win. It's very Norwegian, and gets misread all the time here. As a result of this I got a reputation for being a bulldog, utterly determined and going straight for the jugular vein. Best to steer clear of me. All things considered, it's not a bad reputation to have, and has given me a measure of peace. The only reason I'm having trouble now is that the head of computer services is a new guy, very much into control and aggession, and he doesn't know me. He's learning, though.

Well, that's for Monday. Today I look forward to a concert in Abu Gosh, part of the Shavuot concert series, and a nice quiet weekend.

shabbat shalom,
Linda