‘Do you want that for here or to go?’ I get that question every time I order something at Power Coffeeworks because the barista du jour is supposed to ask. I invariably look at the coffee server in amazement and feigned shock. ‘Where else would I go?,’ I respond with my own somewhat rhetorical question. Should I wander the streets of Jerusalem clutching my take-out container and intermittently sipping the world’s best coffee? Can you imagine walking into your favorite watering hole and ordering whatever it is you order: a beer, a glass of wine, a cocktail, and being asked if you want to take it with you? In this particular case, I had an even better response. ‘Ellie, if I go outside in this heat with my iced latte, it will soon be a watery lukewarm latte, and who wants that’?
Month: June 2024
The Dreaded ‘M’ Word — Part 5
I know – I JUST KNOW – that there are folks out there waiting on pins and needles for the continuation of my stirring and evocative saga, The Dreaded ‘M’ Word. We had left off with Asaf (the correct spelling of his name) holding the key to the front entrance of this new building on Hashofar. We were about to walk up the flight of stairs (I guess the elevator was not yet in service with only one apartment actually occupied) and open the door to apt 6, which might or might not become the future home of the Casdens. So what were you thinking? What did you expect to find? We know that apartment hunting is not your idea of a good time – to put it mildly.
The Dreaded ‘M’ Word — Part 4
There’s no way I can prove it, but I KNOW, I just KNOW, that was not the way it’s supposed to work. At the Shabbat kiddush we were considering mishtaken mechir, which I didn’t even know existed until a few weeks before. This is a program that allows young couples to enter a lottery, the winners being able to purchase their first apartment somewhere in The Land at a substantial discount from the market value. I try, as much as possible, to discourage discussions about real estate (or anything else that might raise my blood pressure), but, in this case, we were discussing Economics, and that’s allowed (anything under the rubric of ‘social sciences’ is fair game, even politics – although American politics is by invitation only, show your credentials at the door or remain forever silent).
The dreaded ‘M’ word — Part 3
Imagine if they had started when they said they would. Of all the different building projects put up lickety-split in our part of Ma’ale Adumim when the city was nothing but a collection of barren hills, by far – with no fear of competition – the worst, the ugliest, the ones that have most been defeated by the passage of time, are the buildings right across the parking lot from our own humble abode. They really need to do something with those buildings.
The dreaded ‘M’ word — Part 2
To trample on Tolstoy’s immortal prose: every successful real estate transaction is successful in the same way; every unsuccessful transaction is unsuccessful in its own special, one-of-a-kind, that’s-what-went-wrong way. More or less. Here’s one example of selling a home that defies description.
alittlebiteast 