I finished my week of mind-numbing guard duty on a different base. For those of you who know me, I have had a number of mind-numbing jobs throughout my university career. I have watched luggage and washed glass, just to name a few. I'm sure that everyone can rest easy knowing that guard duty is just as applicable to mechanical engineering as is glass washing. Shout out to the fantastic University of Waterloo for giving me an education that provided me with such a wide array of totally applicable job opportunities to my degree. However, I'm sure that if the university found out that their education system was helping to defend Israel, someone might have something to say about it. The following is part of the transcript from one of the fantastic (aside: up until now I'm sure you can sense the sarcasm in this paragraph. Unfortunately, and its sad that I have to explicitly say this, but the rest of the paragraph is not sarcasm or fiction but 100% fact. No the 1 in the '100%' is not a typo, and I'm not trying to fool you all again, but the following is one hundred percent fact.) professors of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Waterloo - Dr. Mohammed Elmasry, who was (or still is, who knows) the spokesperson of the Candian Islamic Congress. In 2004 on a talk show in Canada he said the following in regards to the validity of suicide bombing that Palestinians use to inflict fear and terror amongst Israelis.
ELMASRY: Anybody above 18 is a part of the Israeli army...
COREN (host): So everyone in Israel and anyone and everyone in Israel, irrespective of gender, over the age of 18 is a valid target?
ELMASRY: Yes, I would say.
read more of the transcript here: http://www.montrealmuslimnews.net/transcript.htm
Well I'm not going to get into how retarded this guy is, but feel free to share your thoughts with the President of the University, David Johnston and Leo Rothenberg - the Dean of Engineering. And yes, Elmasry is still a professor at UW. I've already done most of the work for you by listing their contact information below, so just take 2 seconds to send them off a quick email.
Office of the President
The University of Waterloo
200 University Avenue West
Waterloo, ON
Canada N2L 3G1
Email: president@uwaterloo.ca
Phone: 519-888-4567, ext. 32202
Fax: 519-888-6337
Email: leoroth@uwaterloo.ca
Phone: (519) 888-4567 ext.33759
Fax: (519) 888-4349
So despite my mind numbing work at obscene hours of the day (and night) I did actually learn something that is worth while sharing with the internet. First some basic facts. Yes, again FACTS. I think (and hope) most of my readers know this, but just for those who stumbled upon my blog and who might not be very educated on middle eastern politics:
#1. Israel is a DEMOCRACY.
#2. There is religious FREEDOM in Israel.
So to the answer... when your on an army base surrounded by Muslim villages doing guard duty from 2AM-6AM you learn that the first of five calls to prayer (adhan) of the day occurs at exactly 430AM. The adhan is a loud announcement over a loud speaker notifying everyone its time to pray. You can also hear the call to prayer in the old city of Jerusalem. Yes, there are Muslims that live in the old city. And yes, they are legally allowed to live there. So if you ever happen to be thinking negatively about Israel, ask yourself why you don't hear the adhan where you live. So practically, what did this mean to me? To lead into it, firstly I should point out that typically when you do mind numbing jobs its best not to look at your watch, so the time passes by quickly. However, I constantly look at my watch to see what time it is becuase at the 45 minute mark of every hour I get to sit down until the hour. This makes time pass by extremely slowly. So at the sounding of the adhan, I knew that I had 15 more minutes until I could sit down, and only an hour and a half left of my shift.
So what the hell do you do between the hours of 2-6AM when your not really allowed to do anything but stand and guard? I don't know anyone who may or may not have done any of the following things during such hours or others, but things not to do are:
- write blog posts: In a completely unrelated note, I'm glad that everyone enjoyed my previous blog post, I got lots of positive responses. If you haven't read it, do so.
- work out: pushups, situps, and lifting weights.
- study hebrew words that one might not know.
So up until now, everytime we have done something it has been with our tzevet. For example, the commander would give us 7 minutes to go make our beds and we would have to be back outside in a chet formation (3/4 rectangle) standing at attention. My tzevet is/was 14 people (more on the is/was part soon). Now we are doing everything with the machlakah - 62 people. Needless to say it takes quite a lot longer to make a symmetric chet with 62 people than it does with only 14. So now we are back to doing more pushups because of the morons. Most people don't like the fact that we are doing this becuase they have inherrited a hell of a lot of stupid people. I on the other hand think its fantastic. In the politest way possible, I am not in the ideal tzevet. 2 guys are in jail. One of them for threatening another person with a fork in the lunch room. A third guy is AWOL - haven't seen him in weeks. #4 is playing crazy. After bedtime, he spent an entire night slowly walking laps around the base petting a turtle. There were 2 commanders following him from a distance incase he tried to physically harm himself. He now works every day in the lunch room. This is just scratching the surface of what goes on in my tzevet. By having to do everything with the machlakah the ratio of normal people to crazies has improved a lot for me. Unfortunately, all the learning in the classroom is still done with the tzevet.
So yesterday I was very excited for a number of reasons. The most obvious one was that it was Thursday, which means that the next day is Friday and I get to go home. Secondly, I didn't have to do my 12-6PM guarding shift, so that was a plus. During lunch I got 4 servings of meat, so that was fantastic. I also got a full night sleep for the first time in a week - and by full night I mean I got 7.5 consecutive hours of sleep, however that still involved waking up at 4AM. From the half day of being back on base, I was able to catch up on all the drama that goes on. As I suspected, it was a good thing that I was able to get away from the base for a few days. People were tweaking out because they were on base for so long and going crazy. Also in the week that I was gone, 2 people were sent to jail and by the end of the 2 weeks about 40% of the machlakah had received some form of sanction (extra hours they had to stay on base, or the entire weekend).
I have one more month left of this ulpan course before I go back to basic training with my kravi (combat) unit. Two months have passed, and I'm about ready to get out of here. There is only so much I can take of some of these people and all the stupid things that go on here. Luckily before I feel like I'm about to go crazy, something good happens - either a weekend, a day off, sending me to another base for 5 days, etc. Even something as simple as melon slices at lunch is a fantastic thing. So even though this place sucks, without it I would not have the motivation to learn hebrew and work out. The 3 months I was in Israel prior to joining the army I barely learned a new word in Hebrew, and did not get into any better shape. So to keep me from going crazy from the boredom and the people, I learn hebrew and work out.
So long until next week. Thanks for reading and mentioning how you liked the last post. I will attempt to continue to end up in interesting situations purely for my readers' amusement. So to my loyal readers, keep reading and feel free to link your friends to the blog.
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