Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Orange You Glad You Can Tel Aviv From a Fig?

Nuffin like a beautiful day at the beach with your lover... Except a delightful evening, perhaps?



29th December, 2015 (Montreal) As part of our calendar series we went looking for cities around the world that have famous stadiums. Meet Tel Aviv.

Macabai Tel Aviv (please see here) play at Bloomfield Stadium--some of which is shown at bottom right corner of the illustration above. What's great about Bloomfield Stadium is that it came from Montreal (Please see here).

OK OK OK, it didn't "come" from Canada, but the funds to construct it were from the Bloomfield Family in Montreal.

I can't imagine a better way to donate family money than to build a football stadium in the Motherland.

Really, can there be a better example of philanthropic behaviour?

The headland in the foreground is the section of town the call Jaffa. It's an historic district that might have been named after an orange... I mean, some say that the fruit we call Oranges are only called Oranges because most of the first traders hung out in Belgium in a town called Orange. Now, so what came first, the fruit? The Colour? Or the town? Turns out, the Town of Orange in Belgium doesn't exist, that William of Orange, although a major Belgian, got his name from the town called Orange in Provence, which somehow got lost in the mix. Then people began thinking it meant the same thing as the fruit but this was before the internet... Then we started calling them round juicy things that came from there "Oranges" and then when we started seeing that colour on teevee and in crayon packets we had a handy word for it: Orange. So meanwhile Jaffa Oranges are named after a fruit that is named after a town that gives it's name to a colour. And no! Macabai Tel Aviv play in Blue and Yellow, so there is no connection whatsoever (please see here).

Israelis are laughing at me now, coz they think I don't realize Jaffa and Tel Aviv are separate, but look how close they are. There have been people leading civilized lives in Jaffa for almost four millennia. I cannot imagine what on earth they did with themselves before the Bloomfield Family came to the rescue.

Some say there is no rhyme for the word "Orange" while  Teevee Game Show hosts the world over have been catching contestants out on this one for years, but it's ridiculous--my Jewish Uncle Avi used to say the word "Oranges, Smoranges..." all the time... beats the boring old "Apples and Oranges" phrase hands down, yeah?

TRAVELLERS ADVISORY:  Do NOT open this webpage if you are ever visiting in the Holy Land. Puns are punishable in Israel, and have been banned, in something to do with "Geo-Political Complexities and National Security" but I would say this wasn't a pun. It might be kinda pun-ish, but not full on, ya know?

Peace in the Middle East? As long as you got tickets to the match, what's the worry?

Meanwhile, please like our facebook page: (please see here).

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