I have always been one to cry on planes when watching films. I don’t know if it’s the anonymity of the plane seat combined with the sleep-deprived emotion of travel, but I’m useless when the music swells and the camera cranes up for the hero shot.

This film particularly left me speechless.
Amazing, amazing, amazing.

13 out of 10.

Spending time in Israel, and I’m learning Hebrew slowly.

Learning another language can be tricky, but not once you realise that people talk about the same stuff everywhere, just not in English.

There’s also a few languages that are international.
Non-verbal communication that normally revolves around a few essentials: Sex, Drugs, Alcohol, and Food.
In any foreign country, with the right hands signals and facial expressions you can usually get your hands on all four, sometimes at the same time.

Here’s a few other examples of things that transcend borders and cultures:

Love from the eight-day eating festival of Channukah, which leaves Xmas dinner in the dust, eight days in a row.

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I believe it was Axl Rose who said “You ain’t the first”.

So here’s a short list of things that you (and certainly I) ain’t the first to do..

- Download a song online and think “ooh it’s just me, it won’t make a difference”

- Access your neighbour’s wireless portal and think that they won’t mind.

- Put and old parking ticket on your windshield thinking that Ms. Inspector will think they’ve already passed this way.

- Sit butt naked on hotel room furniture.

- Drive a rental car like you stole it.

- Mash your wet nightclub stamp onto another’s wrist to avoid cover charge.

- Secretly delete facebook friends and think that they won’t notice.

- Wonder where Today Tonight and ACA get all their ratings.

- drive at 10% faster than the speed limit and think you’re safe because someone in a pub once told you that 10% is the margin of error in speed cameras.

- think that playing air guitar on the dancefloor will impress chicks and therefore get you laid.

- think that driving around with your stereo up really loud and the windows down will impress chicks and get you laid.

- think that having a blog and posting your dribbly ideas for all the world to read will make people think you’re smart and funny and much more than a bleach-blonde autocue monkey.

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Is anyone else creeped out by the subtle, gentle, caressing way that Facebook invades your privacy?

I’m suss of it..

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I’m proud as punch today.

Tel Aviv late session

Originally uploaded by Andrew Günsberg

Israel. It’s awesome. A place where you can walk in Jesus’ very footsteps, swim 440 metres below sea level and breathe air, and be besotted by a nation seemingly wall to wall with smart, beautiful olive-skinned women who all know how to break down, rebuild and fire an M-16 in less than two minutes thanks to their mandatory military service.
In Tel Aviv, most of the things you see on CNN are far from everyone’s minds. People party 24/7, drink fabulous espresso, and the girls ride around on mopeds being gorgeous, on their way to the beach to sunbake. Sometimes it seems like nobody works for a living there, they just hang out being fabulous.

It’s also a place where, depending on the weather, you can surf. Situated at the far-eastern edge of the Mediterranean’s wind fetch, Israel cops the sort of swell that wouldn’t get most surfers out of bed after a big night – though that doesn’t stop the hundreds of surfers here, they’ll take what they get given with glee.
Because the surf is so weather dependent, there’s a whole community of surfers who have moved right by the beach in Tel Aviv, and have all taken jobs that allow them to be flexible with their schedules. When the surf comes, it’s usually on for a few hours at the most, before the onshore whips up and ruins it. Beneath the landing path of the Dov Hoz aiport where planes fly so low you can see the pilots smiling faces, they punt, they hassle, they try and pull moves like you see in the videos, and all in this weak, sloppy gunk. Best of all, they love it.
It is here in Tel Aviv (and to some extent, to the North in Haifa) that most Israelis first stood up on a board. Some time after that, they were drafted into the Israeli Defence Force, and soon after that they were up to their necks in it on the front line of Middle-Eastern diplomacy. After serving their three years, most of them get as far away from Israel as they can for a while, boards under their arms, looking for solace in the open oceans of the world.

So next time you’re dropped in on by an Israeli with the crazy eye, spare a thought for him. He’s probably spent the last three years of his life dreaming about waves like this, stuck in a stinking hot fox-hole in a sticky situation somewhere on the Lebanon border, acting under orders of old men in safe offices far away from danger, and dreaming of clean waves, warm water and not being shot at.

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