Unmasked: The Mystery Man
I have often wondered if I would recognize Gil on the street, having seen his photo. He seemed to be the blogger (now ex-blogger) I had most chance of running into. After Thursday I can say for sure that no way would I have recognized him on the street. Unless we were both on our way to a Blog Meet, that is.

Walking along towards the Blog Meet on Thursday, I spied David (Treppenwitz) and Zahava getting out of their car with Yonah and two ladies who turned out to be Mich (Tonecluster) and Sarah (Chayyei Sarah). I recognized David and Zahava immediately - couldn’t not have actually, David’s blog offers an extensive family album, which I have perused at great length, on a number of occasions. They all look so nice (for Settlers!!! ;-)).

So now I had to decide if to surreptitiously pass them by in the shadows, and introduce myself later, or make myself known right away, and thus A. enjoy the advantage of not arriving alone B. get another chance to practice my very subtle introduction line (‘Hi, I’m Imshin. Who are you?’). C. be able to pretend to be a normal non-shy person.

I think I was very brave to just walk up to them, like that. What if I’d been mistaken, and in fact they had been the local chapter of one of the Israeli crime syndicates? I hear their octopus-like tentacles are far-reaching these days. Yonah in his stroller could easily have really been the Godfather in a wheelchair, in disguise. And a very devious disguise too. Even hardened criminals would immediately have been disarmed by that happy little chuckle of his.

Anyway, enough beating about the bush. On to the business in hand:

Thank you Rahel and David for filling me in. I knew you would. Mystery man was apparently David of Rishon Rishon, whom I have only recently discovered. I was convinced he was from the town of Rishon Letzion, because of the name, but apparently there is a far more interesting and thought-provoking explanation.

For some reason his link isn’t working on my browser right now (maybe it’s because of all the traffic from his Instalanche, lucky fella!), so you’ll just have to look for the explanation yourself.

Update: Link to explanation is working now.