"What? No, but he's not Jewish! No, he's not! What? He was? When?! Oh dear... okay, alright. Thank you." [hangs up in defeat]
No no, not a conversation from 1939 Berlin... rather, this is what it sounds like when your admin manager finds out that a colleague has been denied a business visa to Saudi on the grounds of having some sort of vague affiliation with Judaism/Israel. I never did get the full story, but it was a krazy thing to overhear - sort of reminiscent of the time in Krakow when an aggressive tour guide approached Lar and I asking "You go to Auschwitz today?!" and we were weirdly reminded that there was a time when that was, ehrm, more than a tourism pitch.
In other quasi-religious news, if you ever want to experience overwhelming levels of cognitive dissonance, try coming to Dubai and driving to work through the desert, sand dunes all around you and 85 F sunshine blaring in through your windows, whilst listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby Christmas-caroling their way through your iPod holiday playlist. It's F'ed up, dude.
