Today I went to a press conference at the Intel site in Kiryat Gat. Before I describe the day's events, I'll say this: The whole thing has resulted in a tentative retraction of my previous statement about Israelis not giving a gosh-darn about public relations. They were excellent to the whole seedy lot of us!
There was a press bus that took people from a central location to the Kiryat Gat site an hour south. There was rugelah and chocolate milk (!) and lots of warnings about safety. Okay, I get it! "Stay together and don't jump off the building." But then later, after we put on shit-kickers, construction helmets, gloves and goggles and were clambering up rickety metal staircases, I understood. This is Israel baby! Where the children's science museum boasts a device that reads "touch this" and sends electric shocks through poor unsuspecting kids' hands and delivers the lesson: "That was electricity." I fared well both in the science museum and Intel tour, but some seemed a bit nervous about the whole "grab onto the rail for your dear life" thing.
The press conference was all cookies and apple pie as far as I was concerned. B'emet, it was all in Hebrew. I asked the PR people for a copy in English, and they told me such a thing didn't exist. Later in the day, I thought they redeemed themselves by sending an English version to me by e-mail, but alas, no. They sent the Hebrew one. Bleh. Two steps forward, one step back on the PR front folks.
