Finally! The tickets are booked, the visa is secured, bags are packed (ok now thats not true) and I’m all geared up to go.

3 days in Jerusalem - living in an hostel in the Muslim quarter, celebrating Sabbath with guys from Jewish school, praying at the Church of Nativity (where the dude was born) in an area currently controlled by Palestinians, watching the sun set over the Dome of the rock (where Hindus are not allowed for some reason). phew! so much pressure

(Too boring to link to wikipedia articles)

2 days in Tiberius region - browsing nearby areas where the Egyptians, Romans, Jews, Byzantines, Arabs (list truncated) fought with each other and built and destroyed structures. Cycling for a day around the sea of Galilee if the weather is good.

2 days in Haifa region - Bahai gardens, Knights Templar, Arab markets and other places with funny names.

Then 8 days at Tel Aviv University preaching divine MBA knowledge that I am still acquiring (thats the primary reason they are sending me to Israel for).

2 days to float on the Dead Sea, Massada and some more religious tourism (too bored to fix pronoun references).

2 final days in the Negev desert dancing and drinking with the Bedouin tribes

All this is ‘planned’. Lets see how much an individual like me can do.

Like Celine, I feel more like a traveler than a tourist. It’s been almost 16 months since any major trip, and I’m so looking forward to this trip

See y’all wonderful people next year!

PS: Its snowing like crazy in Toronto after like 60 years. Everyone is indoors. A couple of us got together and made business plans for Maternity homes. Looking for angel investors.

• Trip to the Holy Land (17)
• Scrolls from the Holy Land - 9 : Beit She’an (25)
• Scrolls from the Holy Land - 8 : Cycling around Sea of Galilee (26)
• Scrolls from the Holy Land - 7 : Tiberias (20)
• Scrolls from the Holy Land - 6 : Old City of Jerusalem (17)

Last few days I’ve been excited all the time. Ask me why. Ok I’ll tell anyway.

Thats because this time next month I’m going on a trip to Israel sponsored by my b-school. I’m a part of an elite team ‘chosen’ by the school. We are supposed to go to Tel Aviv, whip our magic wands, churn out analyses, strategies and do some MBA giri in general and suddenly the world was a better place.

Anyway.

That’s just for few days, then begins the fun part. I’ll spend another 10 days traveling across the country alone - Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, West Bank, Dead Sea, Hafia, Golan heights, and even sneak to Mt. Sinai, in Egypt. Israel is such a tiny country - just 8 hours from North to South and 2 hours from East to West.

Awesome

If you have been there, or have some tips for me (apart from sermons of being careful), I’m all ears

PS: Yes, some people from my school do read this blog.

• Israel… Here I come (27)
• Scrolls from the Holy Land - 9 : Beit She’an (25)
• Scrolls from the Holy Land - 8 : Cycling around Sea of Galilee (26)
• Scrolls from the Holy Land - 7 : Tiberias (20)
• Scrolls from the Holy Land - 6 : Old City of Jerusalem (17)

Please ignore these instructions: Read the following text very slowly because the sentences are forbidding, jumbled, tricky and excessively long and it would help if you could break the words into individual syllabi, but of course, don’t blame me if you cannot understand what I wrote, I already said that they are exceptionally long. (Recall all the stuff they told us about being nice to people who use English as second language). Here we go (I don’t really know what this phrase means, but I like it):

I spent over a day sucking up the immeasurable amount of data in the ‘Skills for [tag]Leadership[/tag] and [tag]Governance[/tag]’ portal. I trust the professor expects us to input into our brains as much information as we can, so that, in the future when braced with an ‘Oh my god, what should I do now!’ kinda situation, the angelic [tag]reframing[/tag] techniques would appear and relieve our suffering. I have a degree in engineering (and so far that seems to work against everything here), and we engineers (wink) are used to a straightforward method of addressing things. So, in spite of having a hundred possible ways of absorbing data into the brain, this stuff simply declined to enter. Aargh! I hate disobedient children (wait a minute, what are children doing here? (maybe it’s a ‘metaphor’? (oh I am over using the brackets (stop! Stop!)))) (see, all brackets closed dutifully (yeah I am so systematic)). Ok back to what I was talking about (there are so many distractions in this world, really!).

So, I start thinking about the stuff I just read on the website. Don’t be surprised, I am allowed to think (its called freedom of thought, or something). I was trying to apply those techniques to my [tag]personal case[/tag], but they won’t fit. Of course they won’t fit directly into situations! We are MBA students and we cannot expect to be spoon fed (although that would have been nice). These techniques are supposed to be ‘applied’ to the problem and not ‘substituted’ (as if the problem was a math equation). So I analyze further, and further, and further…. Eureka! (Hey stop picturing me naked) I found some stuff I can relate to (Ok now start picturing me dance around the room). No sooner than I found this, I started feeling funny. Initially I thought that the clock has malfunctioned (cheap electronics goods - is it Chinese?) but it was really 3AM and I still had to cook dinner. Indeed, by breaking regular habits, we DO find solutions.

Now comes the most difficult part – putting it down on paper. And, in English. Oh God help me, (I suddenly remember the smiling ladies in ‘learn English is 30 days’ type advertisements in Indian papers. I should have gone there instead of coming to Canada. What’s with the [tag]MBA[/tag] anyway?? (ok we are diverting from the topic)). So I spent the next few hours hammering at my keyboard (it’s a feather hammer, don’t worry). Soon, it was almost 5 AM and that reminded me of the things preached by ancient scholars and sages – “Wake up early and study”. Wow! I feel enlightened already (hey could you check if there’s a halo behind my head?). Such are the joys of mental masturbation.

PS: [tag]Mental Masturbation[/tag] is a slang term for engaging in intellectually stimulating conservation with little or no apparent practical purpose. The phrase is often associated with academics who engage in discourse that many people find uninteresting or irrelevant.
PS: I don’t know if this makes any sense to those who are not studying this course. Haha, I dont care (its my websites). Yes I do care (almost all the visitors are not my classmates)… blah blah… (and the argument continues…)

• YorkU Fine Arts Festival (2)
• Trip to the Holy Land (17)
• Submission! (1)
• MBA Fair (1)
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