good weekend!

new apartment!
omfg - i've now unpacked and as of now have an address :) such a pretty place.
on my way out of the building, a book in the stairwell caught my eye: "how to save your own life". i was so busy staring as the title, i almost killed myself falling down the stairs.
figures.

coffee 'n pool 'n coffee:
the dog finished his basics yesterday, so to celebrate we went out on the town. we didn't shut up for one second, it was really nice to talk again :) we began with a cup of coffee, walked to the lincoln, played really good pool:
the waitress was absolutely one of the sexiest girls i've ever seen. so much so that whenever she came past it took about a minute for the game to resume. at the end of the evening, i went to ask her out, and
<flashback>a couple of months ago the dog and i were in the lincoln. when one of the girls heard us talking, they all started asking me if my name was the same as the dog's - we had absolutely no idea what they were on about, and they were quite disappointed when we told them no</flashback>
it turns out that her boyfriend and i look almost identical (she tells me i'm better looking ^_^), and he has the same name as the dog.
bizarre.
we then went back to the same coffee shop, gabbed until about 6am, and then parted company.

it looks like the dog'll be joining my team this coming week - so cool!

my first awol:
i discovered the other day, that i've been doing translation work for her ex-best friend without knowing it, so when i was told i had to finish it i went over to her office in person to complete the job, without asking permission. that was a bad idea, and my commander was NOT pleased.

wednesday: a pissy day, generally unpleasant. continued the work i'd been assigned on monday / tuesday (can't remember), and it's a lot. by the time i got back to the hostel i was in a really foul mood, so i went for a run. by the time i got back i was wiped out - and i arrived AS the security guard was throwing someone out of the building. the perfect day for a fight, and i missed it.
figures.

i'm off in a bit to a great gathering, including my relatives from england - then hopefully off to party!

you've stunned him!

wow - it's been a week since i updated... i don't remember too much of it, either.

this past weekend saw me confined to the base, patrolling in the pouring rain. t'was actually quite fun, i really enjoyed behaving like a soldier's supposed to.

this morning, i began my day with great coffee and an enormous doughnut, and signed the contract for my apartment. i then missioned to the bank, paid the first installment (plus deposit, a frightening sum of money), and then dealt with my social security. i got back to the base around noon, *just* in time to go with my team for lunch, and when i got back discovered, to my enormous delight, a belt on my desk - one that fits me!
it's amazing how much better life is when you're not constantly constricted around the midsection.

that's pretty much the most interesting things that have happened. i'm doing a bit of work, theoretically, and then going to bed. g'nite!

*flit*

if my weeks keep flying by so quickly, my army service will be done any minute...

yesterday was a pretty sucky day, but all's well that ends well. i went to view the studio apartment i'm going to move in to. i got lost on the way... very lost... i walked for hours... i needed to pee... badly..., but eventually found the place. turns out it's in a really good area.

the apartment is fan-friggin'-tastic! i wow'ed, and whoa'ed and ohmygod'ed for about an hour. it's perfect. i can't wait!

i woke up this morning around 6.30, and coughed and hacking and sinusitis'ed my roommates awake. they weren't too happy either. i made my way through to ra'anana, to the telfed building, and spent an interesting hour sorting out the contract - it was really weird to be immersed in a south african environment like that, and i hear the whole building that i'm moving into is very similar.
w00t!

the weather was amazing, and i had myself a coffee and doughnut breakfast while waiting for the bus. by the time i got to the base, my spirits were lifted considerably, and i had a good day. now i'm waiting for permission to sign the contract, and it's all good. i just realized, as i write this, that i was meant to take the contract to the post-office, so it's an automatic day's delay already... bah, humbug.

i came to work, picked up my media, took it to the base, then returned and have been abusing the internet since. i'm on my way home in a bit, as soon as i've finished my KoLing... &ltaddicted> :/

i'm still more than a little surprised that i just put away a fair amount of pizza, after eating pancakes for supper. hmmm.

*sniff* bye bye weekend

i ended up working until 7.30, and was completely bombed by the time i made it back to the hostel. i dropped off to sleep immediately, and woke up around 2pm.

i went milling around all the nice areas of tel aviv, and some of the not-so-nice ones too, and spent the early evening in front of the telly, where i was joined by a really sexy and interesting girl, and we talked for hours.

a friend of wolfman's picked me up, and we went through to wolfman's birthday party, which was really awkward. watched some tv, talked a bit fo crap, and then went back to the hostel... at 2am.

i woke up at 8.30 or so, spent the morning watching tv / sleeping, and in the afternoon went milling about (which included an incredibly chilled cup of hot chocolate, and some random internet time), before coming to herzliyah to work, which i've just finished.

and i've just discovered that my teammates are no longer interested in inviting me to their get-togethers, so i'm going back to the hostel to prepare for a heavy week.

but DAMN, i've needed this one.

long, long week -> long, long day

not bad, though. a little upsetting, there're some changes taking
place in our unit, and i've discovered that there's a chance that i
might have to leave... needless to say, that upsets me a lot. i'm just
hoping it'll all be fine.

we worked hard this week, i learned a lot. i've just found out this
morning that my application for the studio apartment has been
accepted! yay! so monday morning i'm going to pick up the contract,
and at some stage i have to have a look at the apartment, and
according to them it'll be ready for me to move in within a week or
two :) i'm quite excited.

last night, i went out with a couple of friends (yogi, and the guy who
got me into my unit) to a really fancy sushi bar - i thoroughly
enjoyed myself, but i only got to bed around 2am... i promptly
overslept, by an hour, but fortunately i managed to get to her
base on time (we had a "thing" for lone soldiers). i got to see her
in uniform - kinda makes me sad we're not together anymore :P

i managed to find the place where SSSO's daughter's "brita" is
happening, to discover that i got the date completely wrong, and it's
next week friday. now i have time to come up with a card and a gift,
no ideas there.
i had to go through the induction base to get a bus back to my base,
so i went past the academic corps to thank the girl who helped me
out... and today was her last day in the army! serious luck, that was
:)

i'm now at work, completely exhausted, and we're here till 5am.
tomorrow i have to decide whether to stay in the area, do some work,
and go to a friend's birthday party, or to go back to the kibbutz and
get some sleep. this is a real dilemma.

i love engrish

engrish.com, that is. make your way there.

on a slightly more journally note:

saturday night was alright, the company was good and it's the first time i've had sambuca since i was 16. it's also the first time i've been informed, in a pub that claims to be irish, that no, there's no guiness available here...

what sucked about the evening is that i found it nigh impossible to follow any of the conversations, due to my distinct lack of hebrew.

sunday:

sunday was a CRAP day. it all started with me talking to the head of our division, about the weather in south africa. he asked me a question that i wanted to answer, but i simply couldn't think of the words in hebrew. and i was too embarrassed to answer in english. so i just stood there, stupidly, experiencing the dumbest moment of my life. after about 20/20 seconds, he said "bye" and walked off, apparently offended.

for the rest of the day my brain simply refused to process anything in hebrew, and every instruction i received had to be repeated 5 times, which annoyed the crap out of my teammates, and bugged the hell outta me. and it just so happened to be a day filled with work.

i did almost all of my work in english, and was informed that i would have to translate it all to hebrew. so i sat until 9pm, with a f***ing dictionary, looking up each and every word. i was so pissed off when i got back to the hostel, that i literally kicked the walls until i got rid of all my excess energy, and then stretched out properly for the first time in ages. i spoke to my mom, vented a bit, and then went to bed...
to get up bright and early to go on a daytrip.
our dept. head volunteered us, and we had no choice. and i had more important things to do...

anyway, it was semi-enjoyable - there were at least a couple of people to talk to, and the areas of jerusalem we went to were pretty. we finished off the day with a huge candle-lighting ceremony, which was weird as hell - the army band sang the blessings, and then a really odd assortment of songs.

i got back fairly late to the hostel, sat talking with timmy, did my laundry, and went to bed - i got new bedsheets, so i folded everything the way one normally finds it in a hotel - i slept great!

i continued working this morning, turned out the problem i was having with the software concept was a problem inherent in the development environment, and so aside from a simple case of forgetting to save... D'OH!... it really wasn't my fault. so that's the assignment for tomorrow.

oh - and i set up my personal computer in my office. after removing about an inch of dust off of all the components, and scraping the fans clean, and force-reseating the memory, i finally have access to all my shit again :) such a nice feeling. and now we can listen to MY music, and watch movies whenever we have to be on alert.
AWESOME!!

i've come to work just to use the net, so now that that's abused, and i've spoken to sammy for the first time in ages, all that's left to do is play some KoL and then go to bed.

i like this day better now.

weekend's over :(

well, that was interesting. last night, i was so buggered that after watching the first die hard (r0xx0red!), i forgot to change into a nice t-shirt before going to her family for supper... and so i arrived there in a standard-issue army t-shirt, and had to borrow from her boyfriend.

whoops.

supper was nice, but i was too exhausted to deal with all the people and noise... and screaming children.

i got home around 11, crashed, and woke up at lunchtime - in time for an AMAZING braai, followed by liqueur, coffee and ice-cream.

mmmm ^_^

spent the afternoon coding, most successfully - my payment is coming in the form of a p5 glove! w00t!

i'm on my way to visit SSSO, and then i'm going with some of my army buddies to a pub somewhere. or, that's the plan, at any rate.

totally bent in all the wrong directions

by the time we finished working this morning, i was completely broken. i somehow managed to transport myself to the bus station, and managed to keep my eyes open all the way back to the promenade.

where i was accosted by a horrifically drunk man from seattle, who was convinced that i wanted to talk to him. as dead as i was, he managed to pull me into a serious argument due to the sheer stupidity of his statements...

i snuck past the sleeping guard, took the keys to my room, had a shower and packed for the weekend. and then made my way to the bus.

there was no space on the bus, so i had to stand. i was so bombed that i kept passing out, waking myself violently every time as my knees buckled. it amazes me that not one person on the entire bus offered to let the obviously wasted soldier rest.
bastards.

i forgot that the bus that i took doesn't stop on the stretch of road that i needed to be on, and then managed to get on the wrong bus back - fortunately the bus driver wasn't too much of a prick, and dropped me off within 10 minutes of my destination.

i've slept absolutely brilliantly - but i've got so much crap in my head from the last two days that most of my processes are on hold... i reckon naptime is coming up :) breakfast was eggplant-pasta. as much as i hate eggplant, it really wasn't bad at all!

i'm KoLing, mailing, and then i reckon a dvd and/or sleep will do.

boing

i'm listening to trance for the first time in over a month - good, good trance. i can't believe how good it feels, my entire system has just gone from tired to wired in under 5 seconds.

works about to begin, which kinda sucks, but i've spent the past few hours KoLing, clearing email, and generally laying about; i guess i kinda chilled enough anyway.

*bounce* *bounce*

fuzzed week

i'm just about hitting the halfway mark on my day... i'm on a break between a very full day in the army, and a long night of helpdesk...

i'd try putting my week in perspective, but i don't have any. and i don't care. i'm very, very happy in my relatively isolated environment, learning interesting things (it's the beginning of the week where i become an oracle dba), and generally enjoying myself.

the only downer: my first shift back at work coincides with a huge party for our unit :( *sigh*

due to some heavy influence from invader zim, and the fact that our team leader not only has a high rank, but is also several centimetres taller than anyone else in our department, i'd taken to calling him "my tallest".
i've been officially warned that if i refer to him as "my tallest" again, i'll find myself performing every nasty task that he can come up with, and being practically confined to the base, for the next 2.5 years... needless to say, i stopped, but it's hard to break the habit!

i finally finished speaker of the dead: i loved the story, hated the writing style and pace. it felt like it was targeted at an audience aged 5-13. i managed to completely ruin the book itself with superglue, by accident, this morning - i have no idea what i'm going to tell the owner... after i've borrowed his other books.

i just finished reading a recent obituary for my father, and it's brilliant - i couldn't stop laughing when i finished it, it was written by someone who didn't have any qualms about telling it like it is - all respect ^_^

i still haven't seen AvP, and i'm no longer sure that i'll get a chance to see it on the big screen. so i've stopped caring - it's amazing the kind of inner-peace i'm achieving from spending all day in uniform. yes, that's a spurious relation, but i don't care :P

plans for the weekend: sleep, read, work. it's looking like the work will be fun, and maybe even get me some cash.

it's good to be me. ooh - almost forgot: i've been given an AWESOME army jacket, far better than the standard-issue, and next week gets me pants that are one size too big, and a big enough belt to make it *just* fit. it's time to stop looking like a rookie!

*stretch* *yawn* *blink* *blink*

wow - that's the best sleep i've had in AGES. i slept over in herzliyah so that i could work on this xml <-> sql project, and the work's alright, and it's far better than the army hostel... this week's news: our door's lock has lost its semi-functional status, so now nobody needs to even try to open it... we've had lots of visitors.

it looks like getting my own studio is a possibility - and i'm really enjoying my work each day.
^_^

ani - pashut - me'ushar ^_^

translation: i'm - simply - happy ^_^

i haven't felt this good in years, at least since the party days. and now it's happiness from satisfaction with life, myself, and almost everything.

it's not that everything's perfect - far from it - but since i've been in the army my attitude's received the biggest pickup. i feel good about the work i'm doing, i have all my confidence back. i feel like i'm living again, a feeling i haven't had since the turn of the millenium.

...

i had this absolutely incredible revelation this last week: i've been saying for years that the difference between men and women in general is the same as the difference between any two men or women: we've just all been brought up to believe in the roles society has assigned to us.

what's changed? i've finally learned to apply my theory to the task of approaching an attractive woman. and it works! all i've been doing is imagining myself in her position, thinking of how i'd feel if it was a girl, either attractive or not, approaching me in the same manner. granted, it takes a bit of confidence, and a certain amount of ego, but hell - it works! and it's made me relax a lot in general.

...

i am totally satisfied with my current station in my grand vision of the future. it's been a rough ride, but i'm on track and things are going well. the only thing i don't have time for is complainers, whiners, moaning, and the terminally stupid. and i'm not even getting impatient - i'm finding myself more and more amused, and less and less frustrated, the more i get in touch with who i am and what i'm doing.

on a slightly different note:

...

due to a bit of influence from orson scott card, whose speaker for the dead is way better than i anticipated, coupled with my idea of living underground as protection from the general dangers of the universe, and inspired by a two second clip from the national geographic channel of a submarine, i have come up with a grand scheme.

we have PLENTY of space to colonize in our oceans. there have been plenty of ideas along these lines, but this one is mine. imagine an enormous titanium sphere, containing an inner sphere, much like those weighted balls we used to play with as kids, that seem to "slide" along the ground. there's no reason that we couldn't set up a biosphere (heh - "sphere") within, and there are plenty of methods to communicate with the outside world.
i think my idea totally r0xx0rs.

...

i think i've missed AvP on the big screen. that's a bit crap. oh, and last night i totally wiped out the contents of the c drive on my cousins' pc. but, i did get everything back up and running, very quickly, and it's all better than before. and i've made better back-ups. i suck, but i rule!

confuzzled

i have absolutely no idea where to begin, nor where to end this blog. i'm not even sure that i remember even HALF of the past two weeks.

last week:

sunday: visited her parents and grandparents, and worked for an hour

wednesday: left for eilat.

eilat trip till sat. night: simply awesome, and we have incredible photos to prove it. i just had fun for 4 days, met the girl of my dreams (although she lives in eilat. swak.), and generally enjoyed myself in every which way.

this week:

sunday: looked at an apartment, and had a first date with a rather cute girl

tuesday: our first day of real work since i joined - we were all on the base till midnight. also, my birthday: to celebrate i ate 10 "krembo's" (sweetie pie's, but the biscuit's stale) in 10 minutes, and we have a hysterical video of me stuffing my face.

today: was under the most pressure coding i've been since my yellow pages disaster (sometime back in the year 2001), didn't manage to finish, but everything's alright... i've proved to my team that i know what i'm doing.

in general, all i can say is that the army totally suits me - i don't think i've been this happy consistently in my life!