On September 24th my computer slipped into a coma. It was completely unexpected. She had been working just fine: no slowing down, no suddenly this or that, and one day I set her on the table and clicked to open iTunes (a thing I did several times a day) and as iTunes opened, the screen went black. So did the keyboard. It was Friday afternoon. The sun was still up, but as far as businesses were concerned, the Sabbath had come.
After Googling, Facebooking, emailing, and conversing with a myriad of resources, it seemed I needed to take her in to the professionals. Saturday after sunset I took her to the store in the large mall in Haifa, called “The Grand Kenyon” (Kenyon is the Hebrew word for “mall” and they made a play on words by writing the English word “Grand” with Hebrew letters to form the name). There I found what appears to be an Apple store, but is apparently not. They informed me I needed to go to the Apple “lab” outside of Tel Aviv since my MacbookPro is still under warranty and I bought it abroad.
Well, I was planning to head to Tel Aviv that Tuesday anyway, and a friend was meeting me there who used to live in Tel Aviv, so I figured he could help me find it. He was coming from Jerusalem, where he lives now, so he gave me directions—which I must say were terrific! and we decided to meet at the store. Unfortunately, it turned out the place he knew about had the same problem with my computer as the place in Haifa. They sent me to the “lab” in a suburb near Tel Aviv called Petah Tiqva (which I found amusing as it translates as “Gateway of Hope”, haha). But unfortunately we were in the middle of Sukkot that week, so the lab would not open until the following Sunday!
After I gathered my things together from the Apple store, (I’d taken out the laptop, charger, pen and paper, book, etc…) I quickly made it to the bathroom to drop a few tears of feeling helpless and angry and discouraged. A few sighs, and a walk around the mall with my iPod, and then I plopped myself down at Aroma (one of Israel’s most popular coffee shops) for some sustenance and one of my favorite comfort drinks. In America and Italy we call them Cappuccinos. In Israel we call them “upside downs”. Instead of a lot of coffee with a little milk, they are a lot of milk with a little espresso. In Hebrew: “Affookh” (I think the "hard h" made in the back of the throat, so commonly associated with Hebrew should be spelled "kh", so there ya go. :-)). It’s a fun word, and was a lovely familiarity.
My friend met me there (his bus ran almost an hour and a half late due to unexplained traffic. He said they would be driving along no problem and then everything would be jammed up. Clearly there must be an accident ahead…but then it would clear with no sign of its cause. And then it would happen again. Anyway, he made it—and while I would have loved a “wingman” there in the store, it was good to have some time to gather my emotions together before he arrived.)
By the following Sunday, I had met a fellow Mac user from Jerusalem (I’m leaving out the in-between days to finish this story. I’ll go back in later posts), who knew where the “lab” is located. He first offered to give my friend and I directions from Jerusalem, which is where we’d be traveling from, but then said it was so confusing he’d rather just take us there himself. So we met up with him at the bus station in Jerusalem Sunday morning and he took us on a privately guided tour to the Apple lab. :-) He sure was right! It would have been crazy to find it on our own! But with his help we went directly there, with him pointing out landmarks to help me when I’d be returning to pick up the laptop later.
We had to wait for about an hour to drop it off, and they said they would send me a text message when it was ready, in about 10 business days. (I confirmed a few times that they would only text me when it was ready, since the text would come in Hebrew.)
The next Wednesday rolled around and I hadn’t heard any word (or excel), so I gave them a call. They said it was a problem with the power source and it would be ready early the next week (today they said it had been a problem with the logic board—I don’t know the diff *shrug*). I waited all Sunday to hear something (Sunday is the beginning of the work week here). Nothing. So I figured it would be ready on Monday.
Hopes high, I called Monday after my Hebrew class ended at 10am. The switchboard lady wasn’t able to connect with the lab people and said she would call them again in a bit and have them call me. . . . . I tried again at noon. Then at 2pm. Afterall, it is easily a two hour trip from door to door, and I figured they’d close around 5pm. When I finally got an answer, it was that it would probably be ready the end of this week. I thought that might mean at the end of the workday on Thursday. And as they don’t open on Fridays, that would mean another weekend with no computer. :-/
Recalling all the counseling I’ve had regarding the Israeli culture of assertiveness, I gathered all the bits of me that can handle confrontation, and pushed the only ways I knew how, and she said okay, and to call on Wednesday after 3pm and they would let me know if I could come get it on Thursday. *shrug again* Who knows if it would have been ready today with or without the channeling of Israeliness or not, but I am now, on October 21st (four weeks later—I challenge you to go four weeks without your computer! ;-P) sitting on a bus with my lovely silver laptop on my lap, telling you all this story.
First thing I did when I opened it was to write down directions from Haifa to the lab, for anyone’s future reference: (This brings you to it from the opposite direction of Tel Aviv, so it only works from the bus, not if you take the train, but anyway, hope it helps. :-))
Haifa to the “Apple” “lab” (By way of landmarks ;-))
Take the 921 bus from Hof HaCarmel (round trip about 48 shekels) toward Tel Aviv and Petah Tiqva. You ride for between an hour and a half to two hours until you get to the city where the busses drive beside a fence-thing in the middle of the road. Shortly after, you see Office Depot on the right and a Yellow and Blue gas station on the left. That’s your stop. Get off and head over to Office Depot. Just to the left, up the hill a little, is what is right now an empty office building. The parking lot opens on the left down a hill on a little private road. Follow that down towards the back of the building. When it is about to curve to the left ahead, there is a little parking lot on your left in front of a bigger fenced-in parking lot. In the corner, next to the fence you’ll see a door with the sign above it marking it as “iDigital Retail Sales” or something. There you have it. Enter the door, take the elevator to the third floor and buzz to be let in. Viola.
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