Elad’s blog

Here is a short historical anacdote about the power of science and greed. A few centuries ago, after the europeans realized that the world is a sphere, they reached a conclusion that in order to balance the weight of the continents in the northern hemisphere, there must be another big unknown continent in the southern hemisphere. This bogus physical theory appealed to many politicians, who funded expensive expeditions to explore the pacific, hoping to find this land and get its treasures - just like the spanish achieved in America. Thus, the ocean was swept with explorers of many nationalities - for example portugues (Torres, de-Quirros), dutch (Abel Tasman) and the one who won the big prize - the british James Cook, who actually discovered the great southern land - Terra Australis, as it was referred to at the time.

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And my horse was two german girls.

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Since I got back to Australia, I have one main concern: to get rid of my car. It didn’t happen yet, but I keep an optimic spirit - the situation around is much better than in was a month ago.

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When I entered the car market, 2 days ago, there were 9 cars like mine over there. Today in the evening, there were 13. The market is practically dead, with no buyers. So I decided to do the logical thing, and not sell the car.

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Eventually, I drove the over 900k”m way from Melbourne to Sydney in one long stroke. I blame it on the weatherman: it was raining in Melbourne, and the forecast said that it is shiny in Sydney. Hence, I planned to drive till I get out of the rain and then camp; but the rain continued all the way to Sydney. The weather is also responsible for the poor fact that I left Melbourne at 13:00 on Sunday, thus arriving at Sydney only at 23:30, after an almost continuous drive.

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Australia is a federation of 7 states. This means, they have 7 times more beaurocracy than Israel, as I discovered today.

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The Melbourne suburb where I stay is called Caulfield. It is a jewish center, and home to over 40,000 jews - probably Australia’s biggest jewish community. You can find here stores of israeli and jewish food - from hummus and falafel to Israeli olives and pickles (Kvutzat Yavne) to traditional jewish meals; and in the 7/11 supermarkets you can find the most precious and typical Israeli snack, the Bamba.

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The 16th and 17th centuries opened new horizons to the Netherlands. The successful independence war (against the spanish empire) and the unification of the 7 provinces (most famous, Holand and Zeeland) to form modern Netherlands, together with the Renaissance that finally reached northern europe, the wars in adjacent Germany, and the collapse of the medieval society, brought a quick change to the everyday life of the common dutch. This was reflected very well in dutch art, as is evident from the works of the great artists of the era - people like Vermeer, Ruysdel, van der Voot,de Witt, van der Schoor, and the greatest master of them all: Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, known simply as Rembrandt. It was also very evident from the art exhibition ‘Dutch Masters from the Rijkmuseum, Amsterdam’ that is currently being held in Victoria’s National Gallery of Art, where works of all the mentioned artists - among many others - are shown, which I attended today.

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It is common knowledge, that most of the earth is covered by water. However, if you look at a map of the world, you will get a different impression - it looks like there is more land than sea. It once confused me, until I found out that in the maps they generally cut the earth at latitude of around 75 degrees, while there are actually 90 latitudes in every hemisphere; so they actually cut out plenty of ocean from the maps.

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Jenny Left in surprise. Just as we prepared to leave Victor-Harbor, yesterday morning, she received a phone call from Laura in Adelaide, who offered her work there. So instead of hoping on the car with the rest of us, we left her on a bus station and continuied without her. Before leaving Victor-Harbor another noteworthy event happened: I found Ivanhoe

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