Way back when at the beginning of January, I wrote that I had made an appointment for new passports in Karmiel on 2 May: a four month wait. There have been various noises in the past month or so that new procedures will be put in place in order to shorten this wait, but I'll believe it when I see it.
Anyway, yesterday was the long awaited date and we travelled to Karmiel by train - no problems, 2½ hours travel (we had a direct train from Tel Aviv to Karmiel). Outside the station, a taxi was waiting for us, to take us to the Interior Ministry office. I doubt that this was further than 1 km from the train station, but my wife would have had difficulty getting there. Once inside the office, we gave our identity numbers to the guard who checked that we were on today's list; indeed we were, and we settled down for a short wait.
We were dealt by the deputy manager of the branch in a side office - luck of the draw. We received excellent service; we were told that next year, it will be required that all identity documents over 10 years old will have to be replaced by new, biometric, documents - the manager filled out the necessary forms, to save us another journey next year. She also noted that I had paid twice for my passport (this was because I paid in advance in January, only to discover that this was an option only for someone who had an appointment until the end of March); she said that the period had been extended and so she would use my original payment for the passport, instead of the second payment, for twice the original amount.
After dealing with the bureaucracy, we found a nearby restaurant and had a light lunch. I was feeling as if I were abroad, having lunch outside a restaurant, then ordering a taxi to take us back to the train station. At that time of day, there are trains from Karmiel only once an hour; fortunately, we arrived there 10 minutes before a train was due to leave, not 10 minutes after a train had left.
So we were back in Bet Shemesh at about 16:45 - a long but successful day.
Instead of coming straight home, I wanted to go to the health foods shop to buy more oat 'milk' and stinging nettle tea. Once there, I looked for sweeteners: I found several interesting items, including 310g containers of erythritol for 19.90 NIS: this works out at slightly over 61 NIS/kg. As it happens, yesterday I received a delivery of 3 kg erythritol that cost about 210 NIS, including delivery. This is more expensive than the health foods shop, so I doubt that I'll be buying from the special supplier again. On the other hand, 310g is enough for about five days, meaning that I'll have to buy two containers each week. They did not have the erythritol/sucralose tablets, but they did have a variety of other sweeteners that surprised me. Why would someone want to buy mannitol or fructose? Mannitol is used as a medicine to decrease intercranial pressure: in medical dramas, one often sees doctors using mannitol when a patient has a brain bleed. Whilst it has a lower glycemic index than table sugar, making it suitable for diabetics, it can also cause stomach problems. Erythritol does not cause such problems.
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 477 | Some MBA metadata | MBA, Project management, Finance | |
| 837 | Preparing for Florence | Holiday, Home movies, Florence, Italy | |
| 949 | Grandpa No'am | Personal, Grandfather | |
| 1214 | Diet (part two) | Health, Diet | |
| 1314 | A good weekend | DBA, Kindle, Grandfather, Covid-19 | |
| 1497 | ShoesOnLine (another pointless day-in-the-life-blog) | Shoes |
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