Textures and Sights of Old Tel Aviv

This morning, W and two others met a professional photographer and had a tour of old Tel Aviv--she also taught us new techniques and reminded me of many old ones....  Most amazing was to simply just put your camera out on front, pointed up or across at the subject, no looking at viewfinder, and snap, snap....  It was almost too easy to have good pics this way!  Check them out: click here.  I do admit to cropping a few pictures...  :-)

Meanwhile, we're keeping an eye on events in the south.... And bid season is in full swing....

Tipping, Our Omnipresent Bête Noire...

As we live overseas, at every country to which we travel, we ask ourselves, "How much should we tip?"  Personally, we'd rather not think about it at all, but as there is no universal system....sigh.  Maybe we need to go to Japan again....

 New York Times/IHT Aug 6-7, 2011

Where to Get the World’s Best Service

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By NATE SILVER

Published: August 5, 2011

The guidebooks tell you never to tip in Japan. But when my partner and I traveled there last December, and our 90-pound bellhop insisted on carrying our overstuffed suitcases to our room, we thought a few hundred yen was more than appropriate. She politely refused our money. And over the course of the next week, so did the hotel clerks who equipped us with umbrellas at the first sign of drizzle, the concierges who booked us tables at mind-blowing sushi restaurants too off the grid to be listed on the Internet and the restaurant owners who presented us with a souvenir menu — in English — to commemorate all the delicious food we had just eaten.

No tipping meant no tipping, period.

This hard-line stance raised a question: do you get better service in countries where gratuity isn’t expected, or is Japan unique? The answer is a little bit complicated and involves something I call the Tipping Curve.

Last month, I polled 400 experienced international travelers about the levels of service they experienced in 24 countries and how much they tipped when they dined out in each one. In terms of service, Japan won in a landslide — it scored 4.4 points on average on a 5-point scale — while Russia came in dead last, with a paltry 1.7 points.

To figure out what constitutes generally accepted tipping practices, I built a “tipping index” from a combination of the survey responses and the guidance of three travel etiquette Web sites. I discovered that countries sort themselves into one of three groups: those where reasonably large tips are a part of the culture, those where tipping is uncommon and those that fall somewhere in between.

The countries that received the highest grades for customer service tended to cluster at either end of the spectrum. In Japan and Thailand, tipping is rare, but the service is regarded as excellent. The most tip-friendly countries — the United States and Canada — also received above-average marks for service.

Most European nations (Germany being the exception) scored below average. Places like France, Spain and Italy often append a service charge to the bill — but what you tip on top of that is an open question. About one-third of visitors to France said they left no more than pocket change for their garçon, while another quarter of the people tipped at least 15 percent for decent service.

There are also weird cases like Russia, where a tip is expected of a foreigner but not always of a native, and Egypt, where tipping is common but often at a flat rate rather than as a percentage of the bill.
All of this brings us to the Tipping Curve. If servers expect a generous gratuity, there is a strong economic incentive for them to do superior work. And if they expect nothing at all, good service is taken completely out of the economic context and becomes a matter of custom.

But when countries try to split the difference or if they introduce confusing rules into the system, their servers are more likely to leave customers dissatisfied.

Israeli Summer of Discontent....

 It was a very warm, sultry night....C and I went into town last night--saw no sign of the protests, yet not very far from us....(click on the below)

300,000 Israelis took to streets in third rally for social justice. 

 

What's on THAT Bid List??????

Let's see....

Washington, DC (various bureaus)
Brasilia
Seoul
Nicosia
Hyderabad
Amsterdam
Frankfurt

Riyadh
Belmopan, Belize
Manila
Casablanca
Cairo
Dar-es-Salaam
Calgary
Kingston
Skopje
Athens, and many many more.....

Looking good to us are: Brasilia, Seoul, Frankfurt, Washington, DC....we change our minds daily.... Have to consider: jobs that don't appear to go backwards management-wise for W (very hard to do as she has a plum FS-02 job now), whether C can find a job, our two cats, our beloved barolo red car and, as always, our families and our B&B!  :-)

As always -- if you have been to or have opinions about a place on the list -- let us know!

Encore: Summer in Israel: Divorce, Spies, Sign Language, Construction Grumbles

Click on article titles....(and ignore our spacing, letter and font problems....)

Wife refuses divorce because of financial dispute threatened with prison sentence if won’t agree to divorce, in unusual rabbinical court case.

Inside Intel / Who was killed in Tehran last week?

Plus Ça Change, Plus C'est La Même Chose.....

A Stir Over Sign Language:  A recently discovered trove of documents from the 1950s reveals a nasty battle in Jerusalem over the Hebraization of street and neighborhood names. This campaign is still raging today.

The next article has a personal element -- we drive down this stretch every day to reach the Embassy....and have been annoyed by the non-working signal, which as of Aug 5 has not been fixed--this article was published July 18.

Tel Avivians complain promenade rehab snarling traffic, endangering pedestrians

Coming soon:  The Israeli Summer of Discontent...

How Does an Ambassador Formally Start Work in Israel? What's the BEST Location for a Bar Mitzvah?

To answer the first question....click here.  The event takes place at the Israeli President's house.  The Ambassador was accompanied by several senior Embassy staff along with his wife and eldest daughter. Afterwards there was a Vin d'Honneur reception at the King David Hotel, which W attended. At this reception, our Ambassador was joined by several newly credentialed ambassadors representing Germany, Slovakia and Nauru.

Click here for a Haaretz writer's thoughts on the Ambassador's media interviews and goals.

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Now for the second question....  The next morning, we attended a bar mitzvah that took place literally right under Robinson's Arch, on the southern end of the Western Wall.  During the ceremony, to describe the event's significance, the rabbi said it had "location, location, location." :-)

The ceremony was on the Herodian street that ran under the arch circa AD 30. The arch, the spring, and all the stones in the wall below the arch are original from the days of Herod's construction, which began in 19 BC. The arch, the staircase, and the gate were in use in the days of Jesus when he spent time on the Temple Mount.  The area was destroyed in AD 70.