Shopping pre-Holy Sabbath

Every friday should be like yesterday.
Except not, because the one major thing I hate about Shabbat in this country (among others) is that everyone and their dog are doing their shopping, right when I'm doing my shopping, and just when all 340 of us that are in the store go to the checkout, at the same time of course, that's when a)all the cashregisters will break down b)nobody's credit card will be accepted or c) the cashiers who are actually competent will go off their shift, and I will be stuck behind three other people being served by the new trainee.

New trainees should get Friday's off, for their own sake, because a mutiny was in the air.

It should not take 45 minutes for me to buy a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

Anna, Jessie and I went to the Grand Canyon (apparently the largest mall in the Middle East, but it's got nothing on the Eaton's Centre) yesterday. We stopped at Aunt Shirley's, cause she feeds us, got an invite to dinner for next shabbat, and went on our way. I love my Aunt Shirley. They got their ears pierced and I of course took pictures. That's about when we got stupid and decided that we needed some stuff from the Superpharm.

Note to self: On Fridays, no matter how pressing you think it is, you never need anything from the Superpharm that can't wait until Saturday night.

In case you haven't lived through the Israeli chavaya (lit: experience) that is shopping on Shabbat, let me enlighten you: The Jewish Sabbath goes from sundown Friday night to sundown Saturday night. A good 80-90% of the stores are closed, starting at around 3 pm, and don't reopen until about an hour after the sabbath has opened, or until the next morning on Sunday. Consequentially, Israelis not only do their shopping on Fridays, they seem to do all their shopping on Fridays.

You think you've seen traffic jams? Go shopping Friday early afternoon. Damn.

Lesson learned: None. We're going back next week.

=P
Jess