We speak English, don’t we?
The other day I started up a new WhatsApp group: Lloyds English. I announced it to my close family: Israeli-born offspring and Israeli-born wife, and stipulated that it would serve as a place where we’d communicate only in English. The immediate response to my announcement was: “What are you drinking and are you already drunk?” And […]
Curiouser and curiouser
I think I have become somewhat of a curiosity to my children. Perhaps this is a part of losing relevance as we grow old. Or perhaps it is also linked to circumstance. A close childhood friend of mine – same age as me – started having children much later in life. His oldest child is […]
When is a Lloyd, not a Lloyd
I carried the name Lloyd on my long, solitary journey to the Holy Land, so many decades ago, only to discover that I was probably the only Lloyd in the whole State of Israel. Was this a new dynasty I was about to create, or would the Lloyd name peter out here altogether? One can only […]
How GPS will battle
On our trip to Italy, we decided to take with us a GPS – provided by an Israeli company and loaded especially for Italy. We could have rented a GPS with the rental car in Rome, but there is something special about a female Hebrew voice treating your vain attempts at following her instructions with […]
When will Israelis get a real weekend?
One of the first things I had to get used to in living and working in Israel was the fact that Sunday is the first work day of the week. Sunday is actually called Yom Rishon (“First Day”) in Hebrew. When it comes to naming the days, Hebrew is quite sensible: Yom Rishon (“First Day”) [Sunday] […]
Ideally Speaking
Vivian Rakoff, in “Ideally Speaking” says: “Idealism in a way is a manifestation of a generalized human desire to have a sense-making model or paradigm of the world. There are those who just accept what is given to them implicitly without it being explicit and there are those who try to make it explicit and […]
Are Canadian writers Canadian enough?
“Are you Canadian enough to understand?” she asked.“That depends,” I responded. “What do you mean by enough?”“That’s a relief,” she said. “I thought you were going to ask me what I meant by Canadian.”John Barber, in an article entitled “Are Canadian writers Canadian enough?” (The Globe and Mail – Oct. 29, 2011), bemoans the fact […]
A rose by any other name
What’s in a name? Are you happy with your name? If you had a chance, would you change it?A name is something that belongs to us. It is both a part of us and a part of how others perceive us. But how unique is it?It wasn’t until the age of Google, that I realized […]
How to write Canadian
Hello everybody. This is Tom Chambers, from Expats Anonymous. Today we are interviewing David Lloyd, a Canadian Expat, whose first novel – As I Died Laughing – has been published as an e-book. We thank David for allowing us to reprint this interview on his blog.Tom: From looking at your personal history, I see that […]
If Celine Dion only knew Hebrew
“How many languages do you speak?” “Four. But only two when sober.” For some reason they never seem to like this answer. “No, wait. Five,” I added. “Five?” “Yes, I forgot Yiddish.” “You know Yiddish?” “No. But German and Yiddish sound the same after three pints.” I don’t know why people sigh so often when […]