funtobealive

our beloved tigerlily ( yes,yes, the one from the optimistic column…) was a victim of a horrible american “playing it by the rules” scam. the dear tiger is usually having its lunch in the whole foods branch close to her college. as a matter of fact almost every day she goes there to hunt for some tiger food. she was usually paying with a “whole foods” card. on a ruff average she was spending there at least 50$ a week for the last year. ( that is ruffly 3,000$… ) last week as usual the tiger went to have her lunch, and already waited in line to pay, but than very absentmindedly she spotted her favorite table free, and being a space-cadet tiger she is, she thought she might as well go and catch it for herself so she could enjoy her lunch sitting down. so off she went, and sat down, and started to eat, and by mistake forgot to pay. after a few minutes came the branch manager with a guard and asked the sweet tiger to come with him, and than he actually grabbed her by the elbow to a dark back room. the frightened tiger was forced to sign a form she doesn’t really know what it said because she wasn’t aloud to read it. a photo of her was taken although she said she doesn’t wish for it. every reasonable thing she said- like all the arguments written above didn’t come thou. even not the fact that she sat in the store a few feet away from the guard not even thinking of leaving. of course she offered to pay immediately, but the response was- that will not be necessary mam’…
she was told she is banned from all the branches of whole foods around the world. this part reminds me of a famous scene from the cohen brothers film “oh brother where art thou”, where george clooney is banned from the woolworth for life…
reality wasn’t as funny nor as half witty as the spoken film. the tiger was humiliated for the most silly mistake anyone can make.
therefore i plan to ban the whole foods chain for the rest of my life and i hope you will all join me doing it. overpriced fruit and vegetable i can get somewhere else. but the funtobe tribe as customers they will never see again!

so much happened it is not even funny. first funtobe moved yet again to his own place in Jaffa. an interesting neighborhood indeed. it is one of the only really mixed cites in israel. by mixed i mean arab jewish. for instance in my building only on my floor there is a canadian jew and a mixed married couple. ( an arab father and a jewish mother ). in the floor above there is a christian arab and a muslim arab, and on the last floor a jewish journalist. what a crazy mixture. the first weird combination is the music coming out of the different apartments. funtobe plays mostly classical music, it is mixed with the jazz piano playing of the canadian jew, and it is all rapped up with some horrible arab pop music. what a bizarre combination. although Jaffa is considered a part of Tel Aviv it is never the less a different world. the first thing that i notice is that it smells differently. a nice and veil combination of water-pipe smoke, something rotten and middle-eastern spices. the people on the street are very much different, it is a little bit like the arab quarters of paris. ( with out paris…). but so far so good. funtobe is not complaining. yet.