Rupert Goodwins' Diary - Holy Land Special

Just before Christmas, Intel shipped me and a handful of other European journalists out to Israel to tour the company's sites there and talk about a new chip fabrication plant that's just been announced. Here's what happened on the trip...

Tuesday 13/12/2005

Because it was the CNET Christmas party yesterday, I'd asked for a late flight today — you just never know. Intel took me at my word and booked me on the 10:30pm to Tel Aviv, getting in at an eyeball-clogging 5:35 am local time, 3:35am UK time. Thankfully, the pilot refuses to depart because the coffee pots aren't working — an hour later, they're fixed and we're off. Spend the flight chatting to a Palestinian Christian businessman next to me who's accompanying his daughter back from her university interviews in the UK. His views about religion in general and what it's like being a Palestinian living in Jerusalem in particular are not printable. This is, I begin to suspect, going to be an interesting journey.

Wednesday 14/12/2005

I'm not sure that Ben Gurion Airport at 0630 is best described as interesting, but the driver who's picking me and another UK journalist up from the flight is surprisingly cheerful given he's been waiting for an hour longer than planned. "That's nothing," he said. "They told me you were coming in yesterday. Then, I waited four hours."

We sympathise as best we can. The joke's on us when we get to the Tel Aviv Hilton, though, and make our way past our first (but by no means last) heavily armed security checkpoint. You get used to people of all shapes and sizes wandering about with large guns in Israel, inasmuch as you can: my companion is much taken by the local young women, who carry off the military fatigues and machine gun chic with aplomb.

It's half past seven, our coach is due to leave to take us to the first meeting at eight, and our rooms have been cancelled "because you were due to check in yesterday. You're no-shows." The receptionist stares at us incuriously, as if she expects us to say sorry for being a nuisance and leave. We make it plain that this is not an option. "I'll have to get the manager," she says in a tone that suggests we really should make a run for it while there's time. We stand our ground, the manager is summoned, we get glared at some more but we do get our rooms. Not that there's time for anything more than unpacking a toothbrush.

Our first stop is at the Haifa Intel Design Centre, a large R&D lab an hour from the hotel by bus — but then, everywhere in Israel is an hour away by bus. You soon begin to understand the tenacity with which the inhabitants of the place cling to what they've got — there really is nowhere else to go. The sheer smallness of the country is remarkable in other ways as well: Intel Israel employs 10 percent of the high tech workforce in Israel and contributes 2 to 3 percent of GNP.

"Take lots of pictures", my editor had said when I left. "One rule," said the PR on the bus, "No cameras". This is disappointing: doubly so when we get to the IDC. Israel is a surreal place at the best of times: through the filter of a gallon of BA coffee, no sleep and the after-effects of a particularly good party, the place appears directed by Terry Gilliam. So I'm not too surprised to see an enormous and very accurate 3D model of a Pentium seemingly floating in the lobby: fully four feet across and positioned at head height on a perspex stand, it glints in gold and silver and demands me to photograph it. In the end, after much noisy deliberation, we're allowed.

The World's Biggest Pentium prepares to devour a hapless journalist

Then the meeting starts...