shabbat shalom 15.05.09

Hi everyone,   This has been a very hardworking week, nearly all of it on my European project, EBONE.  My graduate student had to come back to Jerusalem for computer work since his laptop is misbehaving.  I have him stationed in the north right now, but in a month he will relocate to our offices here for several months, and it will make that part of the wor easier.  He's good,  hardworking, quiet Dutchman.   In fact I have two Dutchmen in the lab now.  I just hired a new technician, who is also a new immigrant originally from Utrecht.  His mother is Israeli so he's fluent in Hebrew, not bad in English.  He came over with Nefish b'Nefish, which is retrieving young religious Jews from all over the world and setting them up here in Israel.  He is in ulpan now polishing his Hebrew, and will start in a yeshiva during the summer.  Both give him a few hours for a part time job.  He was trained in nature conservation in Holland (my great luck) so I snapped him up fast.  He's still idealistic, and thrilled to be contributing to what he sees as a national endeavor.   The lab will be interesting this year.  I already have another religious young Israeli on the computers, this time a Sepahardic birder who is going to Germany in the autumn to continue his ornithology work at the Max Planck Institute.  Obviously superbright, dark (Yemenite, I think), with that brash Israeli behavior (he tells ME what to do) - he's going to be an odd sort of Jew in the Bavarian eyes, I think.  So now I've added a young Christian Zionist (yep, the grad student is also religious, in the Dutch Reformed Church way) and the new utch immigrant.  All about the same age.  Stir, and watch the lab bubble.  They should have fun with each other; glad they can keep each other company this summer.   I also got in a huge flap with our administration here at INPA, the conservational authority where I work.  They wanted 3,000 euro from my grant to perfomr a migration of the biological database from ACCESS to SQL, paying roughly half the (grossly inflated) cost.  I said we can do that if the programmers also do a few things to make the database useful to the granted project.  Okay, okay, they said.  So now we got the professiona workplan from the programmers.  Hey, where is the work for the grant?  Nada.  So, no can give 3,000 euro.   Fireworks in the computer services department.  They think like this: it's Linda's database, and Linda's grant so use Linda's money to pay for the work.  I (and the Europeans) see it like this: the grant is for specifically detailed work with Europe.  The database belongs to my organization, I just manage it.  When I spend money from the grant it has to be for the European project, and be justified by it.   I can't figure out if the  INPA people just don't get it, or they figure it is easy to bullshit the Europeans.  You see, this part of the world operated by patronage for maybe 5,000  years.  The way that works, you kiss somebody's hind end and he gives you money.  You don't really have to be accountable for how you spend it, you just have to keep buttering up the patron.  We have the trappings of a modern western society, but underneath, these ways of thinking still continue.  This isn't Germany or Holland; but Greece operates the same way, in my experience. Italy used to, but now that's mostly in play in southern Italy while the north has gone West European.  Well, the system worked for millenia, so I can see why it is hard to change.   So here's me, the "yekkeputz" pounding the table and yelling at them that either we use the money in a way I can justify to the project secretariat in Hollan or the deal is off, an them pounding the table and telling me I'm inflexible (e.g. not corrupt).  In the end, I went to the database developer we contracte to do the job and leveled with him (which everyone told me not to do, God forbid I should tell the truth).  He understands it and will see what we can do.   Now you see how I got this rep as an honorary "yekke" (German Jew).  They don't know what to do with a Gentile because all they know are tourists.  But I plug into the "yekke" slot very well if you overlook the little issue of religion.  That's the label I've had in the office for years.  (They also consider the Japanese a kind of yekke, which is even more interesting.)  But I yell more than a yekke, which puzzles them......Sigh.  However, they do recognize I get things done this way (another yekke trait) so they just groan about my behavior and go along.....   Some things about Israeli society I am picking up however.  One of them is networking.  (After patronage, the next most important thing in the Mediterranean is "connections".  Or maybe the ranking is the other way around.)  There was a governmental conference on biodiversity held by our new Minister of Environment down at Tel Aviv University yesterday.  It marks a change in interest at the ministry, which until know was more interested in pollution and hardly knew what to do with an entire animal or plant.   So it was important to go and show support for this change.  It also drew the big players in national policy.  Most of the talks were pretty dreary, but the action during the coffee breaks and at lunch was the real business.  With my own project (which is becoming known among the national players) I had a bit of moving and shaking to do myself.  We are organizing an international workshop for the project in October with half a dozen or so of th European partners flying in, and want the national players to be there too.  The objective is figuring out the next two years of our project and implementation on a nationwide basis.   So I had to approach people, tell them more about the project, and ask if they would like to come.  Most said yes.  So it was worthwhile.  But I'm not the social type and this kind of thing is stressful for me, so I was exhausted at the end of the day.  In all, it was worthwhile however.  People are not going to respond to written invitations; they are going to respond to personal face to face invitations (which make them feel important) followed by written invitations as reminders.  That's human nature so I have to learn to deal with it if I want to see some of our ideas put in play on the ground, nationwide.    Human behavior....this week was the custom of Lag B'Ober, a traditional but not Biblica holiday in Israe, when children light huge bonfires and sit up all night around them.  So far so good.  However, every year some cats and dogs are killed or injured when the children throw these poor animals on the fire for fun.  (Anyone who thinks children are sweet and innocent doesn't know children.  We are born cruel and have to be educated not to act on it.  Children are cruel.)   One kitten was rescued here by someone who can't keep animals, so I will probaby adopt yet another cat despite my vows not to do so.  Poor thing deserves a home after that. I'm pretty sure if I caught a child doing something like that to an animal, I'd either throw the child on the fire or kick it senseless. Even the thought of such cruelty makes my hands tighten.  Jeez, human nature is sickening.   shabbat shalom, Linda   burned kitty