Idle musings

    On work, I had an opportunity to visit Israel from 07-Jan-2023 to 15-Jan-2023. My impressions about Israel, Haifa and Jerusalem follow.     The voyage began with a meeting between a colleague and I in Bengaluru airport. The crowd was something that surprised both of us. The check in counter and the security check both took quite a long time. The queue was long in immigration also, but it moved quickly.     In Abu Dhabi, I met a friend and three of his colleagues, who came from Pune, taking the flight to Abu Dhabi from Mumbai. One of them had visited Haifa, the city where we were all headed. Haifa is a coastal city with a lot of history as indicated in https://www.britannica.com/place/Haifa . The journey from Tel Aviv airport to Haifa took about 90 minutes. We could see banana plants cultivated under plastic covers (seemingly) on the drive. Some of the places evoked names of Israeli people: I saw a board indicating Netanya. I can imagine that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Neta