I have a problem where some water is leaking down onto the window of the neighbour below me. The guy, Aryeh, who is supposed to fix it sets appointments with me to come to fix it, but never comes. Then, when we don’t have appointments, he calls me saying that he’s at my door, that he has come to fix it, and naturally, I’m out. But no matter. Today’s Israeli moment has to do with dealing with a handyman. I don’t know how often it happens to you, that they come without you even calling them, but this morning, it happened to me. The guy, not Aryeh, calls when he is on his way and when he gets there comes in and without doing any kind of tests, pulls a plastic pipe out of the wall and then places it in between the slots of my shutters, effectively just switching holes to the outside. I didn’t expect switching pipes around to be this easier and was pretty worried if my handyman was doing the job right. I searched all over the internet for guides on replacing pipes and found out that it was much more complicated than it looked. The only guides that I had came across were about pipe flange manufacturers which for my home wasn’t what I was after. I continued my search to find the right guide to see if I was able to do it myself if this ever happened again but I decided to put that idea to rest and just call out the handy-man if this was to ever happen again. I would definitely make sure you read more about frozen pipe discoveries here. This will keep you in-order for any possible eventualities at your own property. My aesthetics are offended, but if my neighbour won’t yell “Allo! Allo!” while I’m showering, then fine. He was here for shorter than it takes the kumkum to boil. Since I’ve been here for a year, I already saw it coming before he even opened his mouth.

Him: Ok, its 80 shekels.
Me, in broken Hebrew: I’m not paying for that.
Him: Who is?
Me: My landlord.
Him: Who’s your landlord?
Me: Shlomo.
Him: Who’s Shlomo?
Me: My landlord. I’m not paying.
Him: But you called me.
Me: No I didn’t.
Him: Yes you did.
Me: No, I didn’t. Didn’t you hear how confused I was when you called. I was expecting someone named Aryeh. I didn’t call you and I’m not paying you.
Him: Ok, tov, I’ll talk to Shlomo. Bye.
Me: Bye. UGH!

About the author

alli

5 Comments

  • LOL!

    We just had an ‘exterminator’ come by to get rid of a rat that was tresspassing our apartment. For 290NIS, he came, dropped a dozen or do blue tea bags around the place, left us some spring-traps to use, and told us to wait until the rat eats the bait so it can roll over and die or get its skull snapped whichever comes first. Zehu.

    In the end, we managed to chase it into a hole in the wall which we then sealed up. I think that it finally dies, not before trying to eat the electric socket from inside.

    Bye, bye 290 sheks.

  • It seems that there is a disconnect in the aliyah population. U have on the one hand, those who continue to work in North America, either they travel there every week, or they go periodically. It appears that the Jewlicious staff is part of the latter group. I have counted 7-8 trips they made last year.

    But for someone to only stay in Israel, that is the hard part.

    I commend you for trying. It sounds like you need a chizuk of some kind.