2 March 2007 (12 Adar 5767)
When I was recommended to use Google for web search by a good old friend of mine who knows one of its founders personally, it was not so known, at least among my friends and colleagues. Since then Google has become not only a household name but the search engine of choice for many people on this planet. But it is not only a search engine; it offers an increasing number of nifty products, mostly for free. As a result, my cyber-life has become more and more dependent on this Web 2.0 giant, and my dependence became decisive when I started using Google Apps recently, which for me is second only to the web search among all the services it offers.
This relatively new service consists of those products which were hitherto available as standalones, including Gmail (now open to everyone on this planet), Google Page Creator, Google Calendar and Google Docs & Spreadsheets. What makes Google Apps unique is the fact that if you own your domain, you can use the interface and functionality of Gmail under your own domain name. Now my email at ts-cyberia.net is hosted by Google.
There is no doubt that Gmail is also among the most important Google products. There are a number of things that make it stand out from the rest of the free webmail services. The first is its sophisticated spam filter; now my email inbox is almost spam free. The second is the ability not only to have an access to it through a POP mail client such as my favorite Thunderbird with no external plugin but also to send and receive email messages from other accounts from inside its interface, making it unnecessary to check multiple email accounts separately.
As of this writing, there are slight differences between the English version of Gmail on the one hand and its other language versions and its component in Google Apps on the other. One of them is that only the former can receive email messages from other accounts now, but it will probably be implemented soon in the latter, too.
I strongly recommend Google Apps to everyone who owns his or her own domain or plans to have one, mainly because of its Gmail component. Unfortunately, however, its Page Creator component is too primitive, so unusable for lack of FTP support. In order to sign up for Google Apps, one has to sign up for a Google account if one does not have one yet. Configuring your MX record may be one of the hardest parts in the registration, especially if your domain host does not have any web interface for changing it. But it is still worth your while to take this trouble to start using this amazing service. Even if you do not have your own domain, I still recommend Gmail warmly to those who have multiple email addresses. You can even use another non-Gmail address as the default in sending messages.
9 March 2007 (19 Adar 5767)
There are at least two types of works that are restricted to specific ethnic groups in Israel. The first is construction work restricted to Arab Israelis and guest workers from poorer countries, and the second is home nursing restricted to guest workers from the Philippines. I have seen few Jewish Israelis who are engaged in these works. This ethnic division of labor, which may be common in other developed countries, stems from the fact that these two kinds of jobs require hard work, but they generate low incomes, so they have low social prestige.
Although this division may be the result of demand and supply in that these workers are probably desperate as to take upon themselves those jobs even if they are paid far less than Jewish Israelis who would do the same things. If so, this is nothing but exploitation of the weak and poor.
What bothers, or to be more precise, worries, me more is the fact that the disabled senior citizens of a whole nation are taken care of 24 hours for six days a week by workers of another nation as this situation seems too precarious. I have met and spoken personally with quite a home nurses from the Philippines, and naturally I have full respect for them. What really makes me sorry more than anything else is the fact that they themselves have families, which we are liable to forget. They are sacrificing their family life in order to support their families by taking care of people who are total strangers to them, while being unable to take care of the elder members of their own families. There is something fundamentally wrong with such ethnic division of labor. Of course, it is easy to criticize it sitting in an armchair, but unfortunately (and naturally), I have no briliant solution for it.
16 March 2007 (26 Adar 5767)
As part of my attempt to eat less animal products, I finally tried something that always drew my attention but never aroused my appetite - Israeli made tofu. Its almost waterless appearance that barely resembles what I know as tofu in Japan made me suspicious of its taste, and unfortunately, I was right. I tried three different types of tofu manufactured by three different companies in Israel, but all of them had the same bad taste that reminded me more of tires than of real tofu. Since I was afraid that average Israeli consumers might think that this is how tofu is supposed to look and taste, I thought of writing letters to the three companies. But then it came to me that this was actually what happened in many parts of the world when not only new foods but anything new were transplanted from their places of origin elsewhere, at least in the beginning.
This seems to be the main reason why I am not used to eating cheese as the one I was forced to eat in my child simply tasted bad, just like tofu in Israel. So every time I eat cheese, including excellent one, I am reminded of the culinary torture I underwent. The first wine I drank in my life decades ago was made in Japan, and it tasted bad. I had to spend several years in Israel drinking splendid local wines to get rid of this association. (Now I am addicted to them, especially to those made by Binyamina.)
Do we have the right to use the same names to call those that (have come to) have different contents, sometimes better, in new places where they were transplanted, when they are not extinct in the original locations, or even in the same places? I do not think so if the newly invented contents are too different from the still existing original ones, though of course there is no clear criterion to decide the degree of such deviations. I think they should simply use different names for totally different contents.
In spite of initial hesitation to write to the manufacturers of tofu in Israel, it seems sacrilegious to call their products "tofu", as there is little resemblance between them and the authentic ones except for the fact that both of them call themselves tofu; of course as tires these Israeli made delicacies are the (first and) best ones I have ever tasted. Another possible example of name abuse is "Judaism" used by Reform Judaism to refer to itself; it may offer seemingly easier solutions to mixed couples (and their Jewish family members) in the short run, but it might bring more chaos than benefit in the long run, as the famous cynical Jewish jokes says: Question - "How are the grandchildren of Reform Jews called?" Answer - "Christians." ;-)
23 March 2007 (4 Nisan 5767)
When I started drinking beer more than 20 years ago back in Japan, I did not like its taste. It took me at least two years of forced drinking in parties, until one day I suddenly fell in love with it. As time went by, the quantity of beer I drank increased gradually and constantly, especially after I started living in Israel in August 2004. This week, however, I had to make a difficult decision to stop drinking beer on a regular basis.
This Monday morning I noticed that my right big toe had swollen up and caused pain in walking. Since this is the place where gout occurs most frequently for the first time, and considering the quantity of beer, which includes a lot of purine, which raises the level of uric acid, which in turn causes gout, I feared that I had the first attack of gout. I went to see my family doctor on the same morning, but he was not sure if it was gout. On the same day I read many professional websites on gout and personal diaries by those who suffered from it. The symptom and the background were quite similar, but my pain was not so excruciating as they described, and fortunately, it disappeared after two days.
I am not sure it was really the first attack of gout or not. But I took it as a sign of warning from my own body, especially, liver, which was forced to struggle with such a large quantity of purine for such a long time. Since it was not so easy to start the new habit of eating supper without any alcoholic beverage, I have decided to switch to wine, especially red one, which is said to keep the level of purine intact and prevent some other diseases resulting from bad eating and other habits.
Although I have decided to stop drinking beer on a regular basis, I still consider it as one of the greatest inventions of mankind and definitely my most favorite "food" (yes, I categorize beer as food!). I might allow myself to taste it only on special occasions, but then I will choose only the best ones. Now I have a new hobby of searching and tasting inexpensive but delicious red wines. Israel is a bad place for lovers of beer but it is one of the best places on this planet for finding excellent kosher wines.
30 March 2007 (11 Nisan 5767)
The fact that I was born premature and weighed less than two kilograms has had a decisive influence on my life. I was always the smallest in class until around the tenth grade, which has made me introversive and introspective. Naturally, I was poor at sports, especially in competitive ones. There is no wonder that what few sports I have like to do are those that do not require partners. Cycling was the sport I first fell in love when I was still a child, though I did not consider it a sport. As I became a university student and started living alone, my interest shifted to running, as it requires no special equipment and no special place except for a pair of good shoes and an open air. I have been running since then, though I run much less now.
Table tennis and kendo are the only competitive sports I did practice, but since I was forced to learn them in school and I was very poor at them, I never liked them, and as a result I never felt like trying any other competitive sport. Other modern Japanese martial arts were out of the question. Actually, I had to learn kendo for two years as it was compulsory for male students at the high school where I studied to choose either kendo or judo and the latter seemed less barbaric.
It is ironic that recently I have come to take an interest in aikido, partly because I have heard about it quite a lot from a colleague of mine living in Japan and practicing it and read a number of blog entries about it by someone who also happens to be a master of aikido. It seems less aggressive than other Japanese martial arts and less dependent on the strength of our muscles. From what few things I have heard and read it also seems to be able to show us the wonders concealed in our own bodies, and is even reminiscent of yoga, which I practiced for some time when I was younger.
To my surprise, there is an association of aikido practitioners in Jerusalem called Aikido Jerusalem, and they organize lessons and seminars. I feel like studying aikido, but it seems a little ridiculous to study something I could have studied, probably more efficiently, in the place where it was originated. Actually, several months before I moved to Israel, I even thought of studying it in Kobe, where I used to live, but I gave up the idea because I was afraid that I would not have enough time to learn even the basics before my translocation. This may be my prejudice, but studying aikido in Jerusalem looks like studying Hebrew in Japan.
I am still sorry that I did not exploit the opportunities to learn things that might be best learned in Japan. Shiatsu is one of them. But here in Israel I have learned at least two things for which Jerusalem is probably the best place on this planet. It seems to make more sense to deepen my knowledge of these two things for which Jerusalem is so famous in the meanwhile instead of starting to learn something for which Israel is not so famous. Someday somewhere back in Japan I may have a chance to study aikido and shiatsu.