Today's musings

Here's just a bunch of odd bits:

• Our Chabad friend Ze'ev said Beer Sheva is "a G-d-less city."  But on Shabbat it's pretty quiet.  I live near a big, busy street, like Metcalf or Broadway in NYC, and the traffic is <5% of normal on Shabbat.  The sidewalks mostly have families out for walks.  It's not ~100% like Jerusalem or Tsafat, but much more observant than I would have thought from Ze'ev's comment.
• Laundry-drying takes 36-48 hours.  That's not too bad, since I'm not hanging them outside.  The quick-dry clothes I invested in are working out well.
• One odd observation from the big shuk, is that they sell brassieres!  That is one item I don't want to purchase there.  It seems especially odd because most of the Bedouin women are orthodox.
• And, I know that Jaffa oranges are really famous, but I haven't looked for them yet.  Oranges are year-round here.  I bought navel oranges at the shuk for a good price:  they're pinker on the inside than US oranges.  Not quite as pink as pink grapefruit.  Slightly different taste from US, but definitely an orange.
  
• And I really like my Kindle.  It's so nice that it is self-illuminated.  I've already read 3 books!  I usually only get to read in airports.  So maybe all the books I loaded on the Kindle will be read!
• I found the mysterious location of the Structural Engineering department.  It's in the old campus, in the downtown business district.  I will post photos later.  It was a rather Sherlock Holmesian search for that location, because the faculty on the main campus couldn't have been more vague about where the structural faculty were located.  It's actually really close to my grocery store.