Lettuce

This is a tip I got from a farmer – I was buying lettuce and chose one round lettuce and went to take an "Arab" lettuce which I always knew as a "Romanian" lettuce. I had second thoughts when I noticed how much earth & sand there was on this lettuce. This farmer, who was working at the supermarket, explained to me that other than those organically grown, lettuces are sprayed with a lot of insecticides during growth, but two weeks before they are picked the spraying is stopped as per the law. “Arab” lettuces are cut with many of the outer leaves still attached and a fair amount of these still have the remains of the insecticide on them whereas the round lettuces have most of their outer leaves removed before they arrive at the shop.

Getting written confirmations

One of the most difficult things is getting a written confirmation of a verbal agreement made over the phone with Bezeq and any of the cellular and internet provider companies. I have been having a year-long romance with one internet company and despite their offering me what appeared in the first instance to be a most interesting offer, I never managed to get a written confirmation of the exact details of this verbal agreement. So when this offer appeared to be in fault as against their billing – I had no leg to stand on. The same with Bezeq. After a long argument during which they agreed they had overcharged me by about NIS150, their offer to return this sum was to offset same again phone calls. And how, I asked, could I check if this was carried out. So they agreed to deduct this sum from a forthcoming bill. However, it took one hour of phone discussion to get them to send me the bill showing the credit due and given to me.

My cellular phone company out of the blue started adding a sum to our bill for each of our phones for internet usage – something which is impossible with the phones I have. It took a few months before I could get them to remove these two sums of some NIS 20 each from the monthly bills.

So be warned and try and get some sort of written confirmation of all agreements with the various phone and internet companies, even if it is just your own written confirmation of the verbal telephone conversation, giving the name of the person you spoke to, the date and if possible hour, and send this to them either by fax or email and/or by "avis de reception" postal mail and make sure you keep a written copy for yourself.

Counting numbers

Recently I have started taking a variety of food supplements/complementary medicines, whichever name you want to give them. My warning is that the market is ‘crazy’ with different offers of the same product often by the same manufacturer in different size containers, as well as different strengths of the product. So if you are in the market for these goods I definitely recommend that you go shopping with paper, pen and a small adding machine, and carefully check the label for the quantity and strength of the contents of the product.

Shoes

This is one of the best pieces of advice I have received. When buying shoes, wait until the afternoon. Your feet tend to be relaxed first thing in the morning after a night's rest, but may swell during the day, so if you go shopping for shoes in the morning you may find that they pinch you in the evening. A further piece of advice: even if the shoes appear to be comfortable the first time you put them on, try putting them on and taking them off quite a few times and walk them around the shop in them each time.  The last time you put them on is the best way to judge if they are really comfortable.

A remedy for squeamishness

A remedy for nausea is to inhale lavender, preferably a fresh sprig or essential oil and the squeamishness is alleviated.

Contributed by: Sally Shaw