Myla Katzav

I love the book by Leslie Levine entitled Ice Cream for Breakfast.  It has a subtitle that goes: “if you follow all the rules, you miss half the fun”.  According to Leslie Levine and I quote the book “Breaking the rules can give you a fresh perspective, shake things up a bit, and force you to see life through a slightly different lens”.

Living in Israel has me doing this but in an unconscious manner because what seemed to me as “The Rule” in my everyday life has turned me into someone breaking them.  Below are my very Filipino traits that seem to break the Israeli rule of daily living:

1. I eat rice for breakfast..or better I eat rice all the time!
2. I cook rice plainly…not with potatoes or nuts, or herbs or whatever…
3. I do not eat omelet with cheese and fresh tomatoes for dinner
4. Breakfast is between 8am-9am not 10am or 11am; Lunch at 12 noon, not between 2pm – 4pm
5. I always have the “sawsawan” on the side and dislike hummus and tahina
6. I marinade my steak
7. I looove pork: barbecued, fried, stewed, boiled..lechon! lechon! Lechon!
8. I don’t start pumping my car horn one second after the traffic light turns red and yellow (signaling one to prepare to go) even if it is in the middle of the night and unfortunately, the driver chooses to stay behind our car and not in the three other empty wide lanes beside us.
9. I do not complain every chance I get.
10. I spank my children to correct a mistake.
11. I have my 3 year old Rachel and 1 year old Ben staying at home with me and not in a day care or gan
12. My children never drank tea with leafy herbs from their feeding bottle
13. I don’t take my children out everyday
14. I used to iron my bed sheets
15. I will not send my son to the army.
16. I start my year on January 1 and not in September
17. I turn the pages of a book or newspaper or magazine from right to left (even if it is in Hebrew and I just want to look at the pictures)
18. I don’t walk for 1 km, I take the car
19. I call my father-in-law Aba (father for Hebrew) and not David (his first name)
20. I call my husband Aba  and not his first name.

 I will add up to this list as I go along.  Just like the book, I want to have 52 rules to break.  32 more…not bad, considering I’ve only been here for a short time and need to reaffirm other “rules” I think I am breaking…but not yet, not now.