Category Archives: Life Balance

On a recent vacation trip to Israel I realized prior to boarding the plane, and to my horror, that I forgot the power cord for my MacBookPro laptop. You all know how ornery I get if I don’t get my daily access to my Mac. I quickly used my iPhone to email my friend Dov Gordon in Jerusalem asking him to make the connections necessary to see where I may get such cord. Upon landing eleven hours later, fully rested in first class, and greeted by the beautiful Israeli afternoon, my iPhone email inbox and text messages quickly notified me that I might be in luck. Dov, with the help of technology and probably the Israeli secret service, informed me that the only place in Israel that may have my desired cord is the Mall of Ramat-Aviv, located in an affluent suburb outside Tel-Aviv. So we (my wife and I) picked up the Hertz rental car, turned on the GPS and on our way we were to the mall.

Less than thirty minutes later I parked the car, turned off the engine, smiled and said to my wife: “We’ve made it. Let’s get the cord and start our great vacation.” She smiled and said: “And what a better place to start than this great mall.”  As I opened the car door and stepped out of the car, my keys dropped out of my hands. In a split second, and to my true horror this time, I realized that they fell into a grate and from the sound of it I could tell that it was quite deep. “Oh shoot,” I yelled. (Well it kind of sounded like that.) “What happened?” asked my wife. “I dropped the darn keys in this hole in the ground,” Frustrated I explained. For a moment she thought I was kidding but she quickly learned I was not.

Looking for a quick solution or perhaps a miracle such as parting of the red sea since I was in the holy land after all, I noticed the security booth around the corner. I quickly ran there and explained my situation to the friendly guys. “Not to worry,” said one of them. They quickly grabbed the ladder, gathered the troops, well three does make a troop right? They rolled my car off the grate, lifted the grate and explained to their buddy that they won’t need the ladder while grabbing his legs and dropping him into the hole in the ground. He was mumbling something while going down and seconds later, my keys are flying in the air and land in my hands while the guy is pulled out of the dungeon. I thanked them profusely and rewarded them with American dollars as a sign of my gratitude.

“The cord you are looking for is on back order,” said the clerk at the store. My life flashed before my eyes. Well, not quite but you get the point and the seriousness of my situation right? Yet, I was determined that there is no possible way I am walking out of that store without a cord. After much schmoozing, we find out that this guy helping us at the store, traveled the US quite a few times, he has a family in Cleveland which my wife happens to know quite well and he admits that someone just turned in their laptop for repair with the cord attached. It took all of my positive influence, talent and mastery of the language (begging probably had a lot to do with it) to finally convince him to sell me the cord for a full price. It was double the price I would pay in the US but who cared at that point. I was able to convince him to take the back order cord when it comes in and attach it to the item being repaired. We paid, thanked him and ran out of the store before he changed his mind.

Luckily the stores and coffee shops were still open so it turned out to be a fabulous evening as we gladly invested in the local economy. See pictures below as proof. On the way back to the car I held the keys tighter than ever before yet realizing that in the midst of all this excitement I forgot to take some pictures or videos that would have made my story believable. Well, it truly did happen, really, I mean it!

Chad drinking as known in Israel “upside down coffee” or simply  latté in the US.

Laurel after another successful shopping day

© Chad Barr 2009. All rights reserved.