The Water Companies

 When I was head of a large city's water and sewage department, I had half a secretary and an assistant engineer. Today the Dept. is a TAAGID (Corporation) with about 60 employees. The basic infrastructure is the same, the service is the same, but the bureaucracy has multiplied. Today, to ask for a water connection in Tel Aviv, one needs an engineer. I accepted to do the planning for an old building and since then the demands of information, etc. are unending. They went to check if my submittal was exact and now they ask me to resubmit the 5-meter long printout adding the two or three numbers that are missing, the information they already have. The plotting of this "garmoshka" (submittal) in color in three copies alone costs 200 dollars. I asked for one thousand dollars for the service, but I should have asked for more. All for a simple connection!

  

How to Tie an Afghan Turban

 Ask President Ashraf Ghani.

“I … strongly support holding elections at the earliest possible time,” Ghani said. “My greatest honor will be to hand over authority to my elected successor." He carries his American passport in his pocket as not to lose a split second to fly off as soon as the time arrives. 

Leftist Ruins Political Alliance

The Netanyahu Government succeeded, after a decade of secret negotiations, to establish complete and open diplomatic relations with the Gulf Emirates. The relations would greatly benefit the Arabs as their gas and oil could reach European markets bypassing the Cape and the Suez routes. KATZAA, the Israeli Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Company, suddenly became a profitable and vital part of the international oil trade routes. I did some work for KATZAA in its preparations for the new traffic. 

Then the power changed hands and the MInistry of Environment fell into the extreme leftist hands of Zandberg. To start, she nixed Katzaa's permits and accused it of having submitted untrue environmental risk reports. She maintains that the agreement with the UAR may harm the Red Sea coral populations. The corals are in Egyptian and Saudi waters, not in Israel.    

Abandoned

 

Rohail Paradis, an Afgan national who worked as a military translator for the American forces, has been beheaded by the Taliban. It was to be expected that Afgan collaborators will be treated worse than the French girls that slept with German soldiers in Paris. The Americans are evacuating them but maybe not fast enough.  

Artistic swimmers

Germans. Bronze medal. The gold went to the Chinese. 

 

I wish I was there

Australians. They are the best. The new California.
 

Stressful projects

 

I accepted a failed project, rejected by the regulator because of the potential contamination of a water reservoir. The installation designer pretends it is not his work and does not answer, everybody is panicked. Till now I have no original designs, and I am not going the visit the building in this canicula  and suffocate in the deep, obscure, airless tunnels under old Tel Aviv. In fact, I felt trapped. After sleeping a night, I feel I can do it. But still feel tired and depressed.