the Israel househunter
I'm looking to move out to a place closer to uni by the end of February with a couple of friends from uni, so to this end we've spent the last week attending various house inspections.
So on Friday I was on my own, and somewhat nervous because a) it was only my second house inspection and b) I'd stupidly forgotten to print out a map of the place, so I wasn't even sure if I was at the right house. The total absence of anyone else around made this feeling worse. Then, luckily for the both of us as it turned out, I was approached by this stranger who was facing a similar problem to me. Between the two of us we worked out that we were at the right location, but then there was still no sign of anyone else such as the real estate agent. So we started making small talk, as one does in these situations, and it turns out that he just moved here from New Zealand, his wife is teaching at Emmanuel. "Emmanuel?" I queried, thinking about how Matt works there and it's just up the road from my high school. His wife was becoming the head of Hebrew, it turns out, and suddenly I realised where I'd heard his accent before. "Oh, you're Israeli" I blurted out. "Cos I'm Jewish and stuff.."*
And between one moment and the next we changed from somewhat friendly acquaintances into.. somewhat closer acquaintances I guess :p We're talking about a 10 degree rise in friendliness here, with both of us making an implicit assumption that a fellow Jew is more trustworthy.
After that the house opened for inspection and we had our couple minutes of checking out the size of the rooms and so forth. Afterwards he needed to find another location, and since I was going in the same direction I walked down with him, dispensing advice about Sydney, answering his questions, and exchanging quite a lot of information. I'm still somewhat surprised that we didn't end up exchanging names at the end.
Anyway, just thought I'd share this as it's the first time I've really felt the sense of community that everyone always yammered on about at school. After being alienated at high school for 13 years I came out under the impression that I would never fit in with the Jewish community and that I would be best served running as fast and far away as possible. But on a hot summer's day I met a complete stranger and we walked together for a while, knowing that the other person would help for no other reason than that we both called ourselves Jewish.
* Those were the exact words, or at least close to them. Yes, I say really dumb things sometimes, especially in spoken conversations when I'm caught off-guard
So on Friday I was on my own, and somewhat nervous because a) it was only my second house inspection and b) I'd stupidly forgotten to print out a map of the place, so I wasn't even sure if I was at the right house. The total absence of anyone else around made this feeling worse. Then, luckily for the both of us as it turned out, I was approached by this stranger who was facing a similar problem to me. Between the two of us we worked out that we were at the right location, but then there was still no sign of anyone else such as the real estate agent. So we started making small talk, as one does in these situations, and it turns out that he just moved here from New Zealand, his wife is teaching at Emmanuel. "Emmanuel?" I queried, thinking about how Matt works there and it's just up the road from my high school. His wife was becoming the head of Hebrew, it turns out, and suddenly I realised where I'd heard his accent before. "Oh, you're Israeli" I blurted out. "Cos I'm Jewish and stuff.."*
And between one moment and the next we changed from somewhat friendly acquaintances into.. somewhat closer acquaintances I guess :p We're talking about a 10 degree rise in friendliness here, with both of us making an implicit assumption that a fellow Jew is more trustworthy.
After that the house opened for inspection and we had our couple minutes of checking out the size of the rooms and so forth. Afterwards he needed to find another location, and since I was going in the same direction I walked down with him, dispensing advice about Sydney, answering his questions, and exchanging quite a lot of information. I'm still somewhat surprised that we didn't end up exchanging names at the end.
Anyway, just thought I'd share this as it's the first time I've really felt the sense of community that everyone always yammered on about at school. After being alienated at high school for 13 years I came out under the impression that I would never fit in with the Jewish community and that I would be best served running as fast and far away as possible. But on a hot summer's day I met a complete stranger and we walked together for a while, knowing that the other person would help for no other reason than that we both called ourselves Jewish.
* Those were the exact words, or at least close to them. Yes, I say really dumb things sometimes, especially in spoken conversations when I'm caught off-guard