the truth

i was wrong. we watched prestige, which is a great film (both the style and the story), and i was back home and getting to bed around 3 - 3.30am. unfortunately, i set my alarm clock to go off an hour after i should have, and so missed the shuttle. i did make it ten minutes early for a helpful bus, only that bus arrived 25 minutes late.

when i made it to the "one stop before the base", there were fifteen people waiting. 45 minutes later the original fifteen were still waiting - not a single bus had stopped for us - and we'd been joined by, i'm guessing, about another hundred or so. i was lucky enough that someone from my group recognized me on his late way, and i managed to get a ride. so i only arrived about an hour late.

great hayfever - i was COMPLETELY stuffed today, and barely got any oxygen to the noggin. that kept me pretty much useless. i ate too much lunch, and passed out at my desk repeatedly for what i'm guessing was about an hour :$

at least nystire's double-shot coffee got me more or less in a better way, although still with the snarling nostrils. i went off to do some volunteer english-teaching, but the kids didn't rock up so i returned to base, and somehow managed to be productive and relatively intelligent for the last hour.

nystire and i took the shuttle to azrieli, did some shopping, and then split up - i bussed home, ran ubuntu's live cd (impressive, but i only have *just* enough memory to install it and not enough time tonight), and met up with spot to go to cafeneto. their hurried closing is what reminded us that tonight / tomorrow is holocaust remembrance day. le oops.

we made our own coffee, sat downstairs to enjoy it, met a new neighbour who seems kinda cute, and then i came back up to struggle with ubuntu and get ready for bed. i tried blogging from it, but i don't have enough memory. i tried testing the multimedia (a simple mp3), but i needed to download codecs and eventually i ran out of memory. in short, if i had more memory i might've had a most cheerful experience; as it is what i've seen i like.

and i'm blown away by the auto-detection - microsoft wishes it had built an OS this tidy.

two thoughts to leave you with:

"Oh, bother," said the Borg, "We've assimilated Pooh." (thanks nystire)

int FALSE = !(1 == 1); (could the author have been sober???)

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

a short note on my personal attitude towards holocaust day: i won't listen to music, and i'll ponder the bloody capabilities of (in)humanity [i believe that it's in our nature to be that fscked up] that we will always have to deal with.

and i'll wonder why it is that there are people who think that it was a once-off, and that we've learned from our mistakes. and at the same time people who misconstrue necessary acts of self-defense as stemming from the same absurd desire to placate a warped superiority complex.

in general, however, aside from the music and the amount of time spent thinking about these things are the only differences between today and any normal day for me. the simple fact that i'm in israel is a constant reminder to me of the degrees to which racism is tolerated in this world; my two favourite examples are hate-mongering islamic sects (and there're a lot more than we'd like to admit, and we admit a lot), and the current south african regime.