I have no excuse for why I did not update my blog for over a month. Before the month of May kicks in and my blog goes barren for the whole of April, I want to put up an updates post.

Travel:

Honestly, I am a little tired of travelling. I set a personal record of going back and forth between Tel Aviv and a couple of cities in Palestine in April. Three trips in ten days and one trip to just Jerusalem Old City and East Jerusalem. Ideally, this travel should not be as tiring as it was for me. But because I used only public transportation to go into Palestine, I was miserable. Here is how that works for me:

First, I hop onto a bus from home to the closest bur terminal (Arlozorov Bus Terminal). This takes anywhere between 15-25 minutes, depending on traffic. At the Arlozorov Terminal, I find the bus to Jerusalem (No. 480) buy a ticket and if I am lucky get a window seat.

45-60 minutes later, I get off at the Jerusalem Central Bus Station. Here, I head to the Tram station opposite the CBS, purchase tickets and wait for the Tram to arrive. I always end up missing one tram, because the ticketing machine defaults into Hebrew after two stages, and I am forced to ask for help. On my latest trip though, someone showed me a ‘translate all’ button. Hopefully, I will not miss anymore trams in Jerusalem.

Now, I have just one more transfer to make and I will be inside Palestine. Phew. In fifteen minutes I get off at Damascus Gate and walk to the Palestinian Bus Terminal behind the tram station. Here, I look for the bus that will take me to my city of the day, get into the bus and calm down. I am nearly there. In 30-60 minutes, I should reach my destination.

It is clear, I hope, why this toing and froing can make one miserable.

On these four trips I visited: the Palestinian Refugee Camp at Aida, Beit Jala, Duma, and Jerusalem Old City and East Jerusalem.

I also visited the Rosh HaNikra Grottos and Haifa city in Israel. The travel was mostly by train, except the return from Rosh HaNikra was tedious.

Books:

The Colour Purple by Alice Walker: Compelling, that’s what this book was. Very few books have captivated me right on Page 1, The Colour Purple was one of those. The book had me rooting for every female character and it was so easy to love those women. Be it the very agreeable Celie, brash Sofia or jazzy Shug, every woman was unique, strong, and passionate. I loved this book.

How we got to Now by Steven Johnson: This book was just okay. The author tries to study the ‘hummingbird effect’ on six topics in this book. The Hummingbird Effect: An innovation or cluster of innovations, in one field ends up triggering changes that belong to a different domain altogether. The concept is interesting; the extrapolations somehow did not convince me. I learnt many new things though.

AND WAIT FOR IT

Worm by Wildbow: Superhero action fantasy. In a world where people with superpowers are common, a teenage girl who can control insects takes on superhumans who have superstrength, can set themselves on fire, can set others on fire, you get the drift. What can a girl who can control flies, worms, roaches, etc do to not just take on but beat these supervillains?

Worm is a webserial and in the epub version it is 5708 pages long. I am on Page 2062 right now. I am going to take a break from Worm to read a couple of other books.

This is a super exciting book that leaves me breathless while I read some of the action or thrilling sequences. I cannot recommend this enough.