Counting (moldy) peaches

Trusty Dodi is now twice over an Israeli government researcher. Once by day for the vaunted Heroes and Martyrs Remembrance Authority and by evening as a randomly chosen subject in a government household study run by the Prime Minister's Office.

Last week a woman knocked on the door and explained my roommate had been selected to play his role in helping his country by participating in a study of all household expenses. I explained that DanK was about to leave the next day for two months as RoshMosh. She said, "Great, you'll do it!" I asked to see the crazy woman's ID: alas, she in fact works at the statistical department of the Prime Minister's Office.

Despite protestations that I'm still not a citizen, I live alone and buy almost nothing, and that data about my spending will hardly be representative for Israel's burgeoning over-30, single, male, employed, American immigrant, highly-educated, bicycle-riding demographic -- I had no choice and have spent the past week keeping receipts for every peach (or moldy peach), chumus meal, cab ride and shekel spent.

Noga the statistician comes every other day to record my every expense in an elaborate ledger, which keeps track of the weight of produce, whether it was purchased at shuk, super, makolet, or kiosk, how far the cab ride was, how many people I bought dinner for, etc. It's exhaustive. I've been going out to buy more stuff than usual to play my patriotic duty.

Noga, my statistician, filling out my expense report for the today:
A loaf of bread (whole wheat; she identified they charged me twice -- she's saving me money!), cookies, croissant, chumus, peaches, tomatoes, artichokes, cucumbers, salad.

From Feldman Family Blog