Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Business As Usual - Take 2


(Pic is from the very first day of the war, when I spent 3 hours with colleagues in the basement of our office building, waiting for instructions. As you can see we had cold drinks, good company, and some people with foresight had their laptops.)

Tuesday I went into my regular office. I could tell by the plethora of empty parking spaces what kind of day it was going to be. Example: not normal.
Forbidden from working in our cubicals, we were restricted to working in safe conference rooms that are also secure rooms. A good chunk of these stuffy little spaces is taken up by monstrous air filtration contraptions installed during the last Gulf War (aka, "Gulf War 2, Electric Bugaloo"). I chose a small conf. room very close to my normal work space. I was able to water my thirsty plants and get supplies and imagine sitting there again.
Work in the bunker wasn't the most comfortable, but there were some perks. At 11:00 they brought us ice-cream. Cold mineral water stood on the table all day. There were special boxed lunches and fruit and muffins in the afternoon.
I got to have coffee with my friend Sarah in the afternoon. Her visit made me realize how horribly cut off socially this situation makes us. I mean, in some ways we are more intimately connected but normal interaction is seriously compromised.
That is probably why at the spa I had a nightmare that all my girlfriends left. I drempt that it was before I knew Adi and one by one all my girl friends left the country and I had no one. Awake, I've decided to make more of an effort to connect to everyone.

Tuesday night I went to meet Shirley for coffee at the cafe where she's been working during all this. She was frazzled. Determined not to leave her cat alone in Haifa for more than a day, she'd had non-stop siren stress from the start. Still, after a while we were able to talk about "normal" subjects and it felt great just to be out and about again.

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