cellio | interviewed by shalmestere

(1) What advice would you give someone traveling to the Holy Land for the first time?

In no particular order...

While tours can be annoying in some ways (you don't get to decide how long you'll stay in each place), having a guide is really useful. Also, don't under-estimate the value of someone who knows the locale making arrangements for travel and lodging.
Spend a day walking around the old city in Jerusalem. As a woman, don't expect to get too close to the western wall. The Church of the Sepulchre is pretty nifty. (I don't know the other Christian holy sites.) Do spend some time in the marketplaces; the Jewish, Armenian, and Christian quarters should be perfectly safe except to your wallet (no direct experience with the last). As an American Jew not fluent in the local languages I wouldn't go into the Arab quarter alone; YMMV.
You are no good at haggling. I say this not knowing your individual skill. Expect to be taken advantage of, and decide going in what you're willing to spend on stuff. (In a similar vein: every cabbie will claim his meter is broken. Sometimes they get magically fixed if you say you'll find another cab.)
You will see more armed guards and metal detectors than you are used to, in places you might not expect (like restaurants). This is perfectly normal there; don't treat it as excessive.
Israelis, particularly merchants, cabbies, and the people in line behind you at the fallafel stand, are generally more aggressive than I expected. You might need to mentally prepare for that.
If you're going to go all that distance, take some time to see other parts of the country besides Jerusalem. There are some great historical sites along the Med (and elsewhere) and the north is pretty (at least in the winter). TS'fat is a neat town to walk around.

(2) You and Dani have a three-day weekend together! The light timers are on, the catsitter's hired, and the bags are in the car. Where are you going?

Gee, good question. It'd have to be a short flight or a drive of, say, no more than 5-6 hours to not sap too much of that time in logistics, so let's call that east of the Mississippi. We've never actually done the tourist thing in DC, so maybe there? (And we know some semi-locals we could visit with, and perhaps spend Shabbat with since you said "weekend".) Or maybe someplace in Florida, since it's winter and neither of us has ever been there, but I don't have specific ideas. With an extra day or two, and/or the "three-day weekend" not including Shabbat, I'd be interested in either going farther afield (Vancouver? Yellowstone? some place with pretty nature to look at) or in taking a road trip (through the Appalachians? to New England?).

(3) What instrumentation did you have in mind when you wrote your c15 dance-music arrangements?

Rosina and I discussed that before I started. On the one hand, aiming for the instruments specifically mentioned in the relevant sources appealed to me for authenticity reasons. On the other hand, we did this to get these dances played and danced in the SCA, and the dominant instrument in the SCA is the recorder (or at least was at the time). Further, bass recorders are relatively rare compared to the higher ones. So with the exception of the one piece that I had arranged prior to the project and the one piece in Locrian where I took what I could get :-), I aimed for all the pieces to be SAT-recorder-compatible. That said, I took advantage of the test-drivers I had available (which did not include any shawms or bowed strings, alas), so I know that they work reasonably on a few non-recorder instruments, at least.

(4) Do you miss anything about the Christmas season? [assuming that you grew up observing Christmas; if not, the alternate question is What's your favorite fried Chanukkah food? :-D]

Some of the choral music is really pretty and fun to sing.

I don't miss the Santa-fication and commercial aspects. That was kind of a head-scratcher for me when I was nominally a Christian; this was supposed to be the second-most-important holy day of the year but we didn't treat it that way? Mind, I don't like the Santa-fication of Channukah either, but at least I can understand it as "keeping up with the Jones' kids" and Channukah is a really minor holiday, and I think I'd rather a holiday be elevated in importance than diminished, if I have to choose one of those.

(5) If you were going to change careers midstream, what would you like to try?

There are two ways to answer that, depending on whether I'm magically being bestowed with the skills and credentials. :-) 'Cause if I'm not, which I assume is the case in this question, we're looking at down-time for graduate school to make a really big change, and that's just not practical for us now.

Within the constraints of "could work toward it within the confines of my current job", I ask myself that a lot and I still don't know the answer. Quite possibly something in the space of designing user interfaces (not necessarily just software).

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

1.2 When I've walked through the Arab Quarter, I have always used only English, and have had no communication issues. They knew I was Jewish, and didn't much care; their concern was whether I was a customer or not. That said, I had a bit more male attention there than in other quarters, but not to problematic levels.

I just came across this while looking up something else. Ok, what's six years between friends? :-)

I assume that people who want to sell me things will make the effort to bridge any communications gaps. No, my concern was (and is, even more so, now) that I don't want to be alone in a place containing a non-trivial number of people hostile to Jews and/or Americans, where I can't understand the background chatter I overhear. I can't assume that it's safe to be in an Arab neighborhood (or country) without better protection than I can provide for myself.

interviewed by shalmestere

no subject

no subject