There are no more free lunches

Not just the cost of lunch, it will be an expensive day

A call from an old friend to join a group of other old unemployed friends to discuss job search strategies and have lunch in Jerusalem got our juices going. I have to admit, I was more interested in getting together with friends for lunch than job search strategies. We never go out for lunch. Lunch is usually a 5-minute affair at the kitchen table with a can of sardines or a cheese sandwich, depending on whether we are demolishing or building cholesterol on that particular day. A 40 mile drive and gas is expensive, I thought, but I can get around that with a Payday Cash Advance Loan.

It’s only money

Alternatively we could take the train but the line isn’t open all the way and we have to change at the airport. The bus is a better bet, but the bus is always full and stuffy. In the end we took the car. It’s only money I thought as we zoomed along and listened to the automatic toll stations whistling as we passed them on the freeway. It’s only more money, I repeated as I forked out for some very expensive parking just outside the gates of the Old City. The car park was only half full, but I still have to pay?

The mall

A new mall has been built since we last visited the Old City and it is quite stunning. All the latest mod fashion shops are there and the goods are priced at tourist level. Construction is still not complete and we stood and watched stonemasons busy laying ancient stones back into building elevations. Each stone is numbered so that it is rebuilt in the exact location it was before an old building was demolished.

Jerusalem is build entirely from lime-stone in accordance with a law and the age of the buildings can only be estimated by the style of the architecture. To make the age guessing game even more difficult, old stones are cleaned and used over and over again. I once wrote a fictional story about the life of a stone in Jerusalem. It had started out in the Stone Age and had been re-used dozens of times. My stone had some fascinating stories to tell of events it had witnessed in the Holy City.

The old friends

The old friends were old, all right. My wife and I looked at each other and wondered in whispers how come we’re the only couple that hasn’t aged. But in the space of a minute we slipped back in time 30 and 40 years, remembered incidents, children’s names and a few of the neighbors who are no longer around or no longer travel. It was an easy reunion.

The place was busy, with tourists wandering in and out and the selection of languages huge. I watched the waitresses patiently and smilingly handling the food orders with smiles, here and there dropping a word to help a customer get what he or she thought they had ordered. How come, I thought, it can’t be like that all the time?

A good day

All in all it was good day. The weather was grand, a warm summer day with a light breeze blowing and the aura of Jerusalem inspiring. And we re-energized each other to head back out into the world of job searching.