Life at Tel Aviv, so far so good :)

"Meter or fixed price", the first words that stuck my ears as soon as I entered the taxi at the airport. Being an optimistic Indian, it is my tendency to not trust the fixed prices, and I responded, "meter meter". And soon the taxi driver responded in a silly vioce, "meter meter". I soon realized that this is not India and you need to say only once to make them understand.

Nevertheless, he started driving and I somehow went into memories of my previous trip. At this very place when I entered the taxi last time, someone almost jumped into the taxi; it was Bipinbhai from Surat, Gujarat.

Background: Bipinbhai met me at CSI airport in Mumbai, being an illetrate person he required help to fill the immigration form and I did that favour for him. Later at the waiting lounge, he kept on bugging me for around 2 hours. I could only make out that he was from Surat, was in diamond business and a frequent traveler to Israel. After I escaped from the waiting area, to my surprise I found that I was sitting at the last row in the plane and Bipinbhai was next to me. No wonder I had a sleep deprived and a horrible flight. I somehow escaped from Bipinbhai at arrivals terminal, but mannnnn - Gujjus mean BUSINESS (no offenses meant to my gujju friends). He followed me till the taxi bay and at last asked the driver, "Drop him first and then start my meter". Ideally I should have a problem but I somehow agreed, allowed him IN and then negotiated on the price. I paid 70 NIS out of 122 NIS and asked him to pay the rest. A win win situation for both the parties.....

I was still busy in the world of my thoughts till a vioce said, "77, Ben Yehuda". Yeah, it was the taxi driver and I had reached my destination. This place was fimiliar to me as I had stayed for around 40 days here last year. Nothing much had changed here, even the workers of the red store were same (red store is a general store next to my apartment). The only thing that had changed was my address, from apartment no 36 it was now apartment no 16. This one was bigger and better, it had a separate living room as well.

I always knew that cooking is going to be a pain because this time I had to be all alone. As a precautionary measure I had carried with myself enough of 'ready to eat' stuff from India, a lot of maggi and puliogare powder (thanks to my tamil friends for introducing me to puliogare - kind of tamarind powder). As a precaution I bought tea bags also from India. From full meals at lunch, I shifted to fruits and started having a couple of apples and bananas each day at lunch. Falafel is another delicacy which I enjoy to the fullest. I have also developed a liking for hummus and pita bread, its simply awesome. And if nothing works, SUBWAY always works....

Though most of people here can understand and speak good English, I always had a tough time explaining things to people. Pardon my pronunciation but I have to pronounce Herzel street with 'H' silent to make them understand. I have learned a golden line, "Ani lo medabel everit" which means I don't understand Hebrew (pardon me if I am writing 'right hebrew in wrong English' but that's how I understand it). From past many days I am constantly telling my driver to pick me up at 6:30 in the evening, I am not sure how he comprehends it but they always come to pick me up at 6. I have been into even tougher situations: there happened a chance when the lady at the shop didn't knew a word of English and my Hebrew is as good as my Mandarin ............ well jokes apart, the purpose was to buy a few chocolates and it took me around 2 minutes to understand that the price was 8 NIS per 100 grams. Thank god, sign language works when nothing else works :)

It's been more than 3 weeks here and I didn't even realize that this voyage is about to come to an end. I go for a walk every alternate day, sometimes to the beach which is just 2 minutes walking distance from my apartment or sometimes to the dizengoff street. Sometimes I take long strolls and cover the beach, dizengoff street, allenby street and carmel market in a single go.

The more I explore it, the more I like it. I like almost everything here - the place, the people, the beaches and on top of everything, "FALAFEL"

To sum it up, "Tel Aviv, The more I come here, the more I fall in love with this place".......