the middle of a big week

sunday:

the visit to the allergist took hours longer than anticipated. mr smear is still very much allergic to dairy. the big decision was whether to put him on a programme to increase his tolerance or not, which would entail him consuming daily "doses" of dairy. considering how bad dairy is for kids, the fact that we've been managing fine until now and that he's getting older, i didn't think it was a good idea / worthwhile and the allergist didn't disagree with me.

monday:

the biggest event this week so far was mr smear coming to my office for a few hours. it started off really well, but i needed him to eat something before i went into a meeting and things escalated rapidly and bizarrely to drama in front of... pretty much all my colleagues.

two days later and i'm still mortified. apparently it was less of deal for my coworkers, but maybe they're just being polite...

earlier that day i received my first negative feedback from my team lead, relating to how much effort i invested in something that i didn't want to do at all and - in my opinion - shouldn't have been responsible for in the first place. it wasn't a bad conversation, but it's a little frustrating.

yesterday:

yesterday morning started well, with mr smear and i giving the first chapter of playstation's king's quest a go. it's BEAUTIFUL. and lots of fun for both of us. it was a tough day in the office, but successful.

i left the office, ran into the mongoose on the way home, switched to beach volleyball clothing and headed down to gordon beach to meet a group of coworkers and discover that i'm much older than i was last time i played beach volleyball, that moving dynamically on sand is tougher than i recall and that getting a face full of sand isn't an optimal experience. but aside from that, i had a fantastic time and played pretty well over all!

i did wash a LOT of beach sand down the drain when i showered at home, though, i hope i didn't cause real damage...

...

today is the class birthday party for mr smear and a couple of other kids. we're praying it goes smoothly.

back to work

well... in a few minutes, at least. two significant things happened on friday, the first being that after a whole lot of confusing research, i discovered that while the mongoose was advising me to buy an xbox rather than a playstation, he has a playstation. and that's what he was offering to lend us. for a much, much longer period of time than i initially understood.

i now get the logic behind the xbox recommendation - that it's far better value for money when you have kids - but we're a family that's definitely good with playstations, and the VR gear they're loaned with. even if repurchasing and configuring was an expensive chore.

the second was dinner, we were invited to mr smear's friend's home and we had a really lovely time!

yesterday was mostly a good shabbat. we started off watching the third tobey maguire spider-man movie (because venom, in spite of it being a crap movie the tom hardy venom movies are definitely age-inappropriate), but it soon became apparent that mr smear needed the back story in spite of his protests to the contrary so we watched the first one. 2002! it came out in 2002! and it was also a bit crap, but for a seven year old it was just fine.

then i rolled over to the mongoose's again to pick up a power cable, and spent a good chunk of the afternoon sorting out our upgraded entertainment system. in the evening, we took a walk downtown, with mr smear responding to the old riddle of two guards with an interesting take of his own (not quite the solution, but if allowed two questions he would have asked "do either of you tell lies?") and following up with a crazy tale that i'm right now trying to convince him to draw for us because it was seriously convoluted and he did go on and on about it.

we enjoyed a delicious special-treat veggie-sushi dinner followed by vegan frozen yoghurt.

after getting mr smear into bed, i played an exploratory couple of rounds of fortnite for the first time ever and it was fun. i did okay in my second attempt, although i ultimately ended up with a bit of motion sickness, but as fun as it is i'm very confident it's not age-appropriate and we'll be sticking with the ratings stickers on this one. gd and i also ran through a couple of levels of rayman: legends to break in the machine :D

it was a good weekend.

health report

oh! and gd and i got our blood test results back. it turns out i'm super healthy in most respects, but possibly anaemic.  also, it looks "bad" that i don't have nearly as much cholesterol in my blood than normal people. medicine is weird.

breathing out

i worked from home yesterday morning so that i could be with my family for the "zoom funeral". it was weird watching my brother carrying the coffin and saying kaddish for our uncle, he's really looking like a hunched-over shadow of his former self.

that set off an unpleasant train of thoughts. i don't want to have to return to south africa for any reason whatsoever, least of all to bury people.

this is a selection from what i sent to hido on wednesday evening: "this is gonna sound harsh but i'm praying my mom gets out of there soon because honestly, if i never set foot on SA soil again i'll be much happier for it... i'm over looking over my shoulder, brother, being thoroughly relaxed walking through the city at any time of day is where it's at!! i'll take the occasional siren/bomb shelter run over 24/7 security any day of the week"

...

gd and phoenix were on their way to a store next door to my office, so they popped in for a visit. the office was practically empty because thursdays are mostly-remote days, but within five minutes my son was begging me to let him stay. we have a playstation. one of my coworkers had brought his dog in. and the snacks drawers has his favourite chips (doritos spicy sour).

an investigation a bit later into installing rayman: legends on the playstation quickly turned into a dressing down by a coworker when i suggested that i was planning on getting an xbox (the mongoose had convinced me that in israel it's the better option, my coworker strongly objects, now i have research to do), and our discussion quickly generated some in-office rivalry after i told one of the fifa-leaguers that we were talking about real video games }:>

otherwise, i spent an hour sharing my RCA reports with my department and apparently i did really well.

i also managed to implement most of the feedback i'd received from my team lead, so even if i didn't accomplish my goals i did make a lot of progress.

last night was a celebration of... the end of the week? not being thoroughly exhausted even though mr smear only went to bed around 10pm? i had a beer, making sure to disturb it into as much foaminess as possible, and gd and i watched an episode or two of the boys. something's "settled" a bit in the third season, but the payoff is amazing.

...

i still can't believe this scene from don't look up actually played out in real life.

...

i've become increasingly frustrated by all the things that don't "just work". and by all the people and organizations that think that mobile messaging is a viable, reliable communication medium. or that the consumer needs to make an effort to get services instead of the service provider.

reset

 i struggled to get to sleep until 4 or 5am on tuesday morning, and i was a complete wreck during the day. i went home in the late afternoon for a quick rest - sprawled on the couch with my fam watching the cuphead show in hebrew - then i put on my rollerblades and returned to the office for game night. it was fun! i rolled back home to say goodnight to my family, then headed out for TAR.

twenty five kilometers of TAR. it was a great route, though some of it was quite tough, and we had a few amazing downhill stretches.

once home, i needed half an hour of stretching under the air conditioner before i was ready to shower and go to bed, and i slept pretty well.

yesterday was a much better day, i was still a bit tired but very relaxed. it was a productive day, even if i didn't finish as much as i'd hoped, and i walked home, had a mostly enjoyable evening and then went to bed early.

this morning i woke up to a message that my uncle had passed away during the night, i'm sad for his kids but relieved he went quickly.

the staycation: over

i'm starting this post at 2.15am on tuesday morning. i've spent more than two hours lying in bed, the first hour or so reading and the last stretch just trying uncomfortably to sleep.

friday:

we went to the tomorrow exhibit at the ramat gan museum. the AI-assisted videos were mostly amazing, but we could have experienced that at home on youtube. the female pop icon NFT thing (women ape yacht club?) was dramatically unimpressive and the icons themselves so remarkably uninteresting that we rolled on by, the VR experience was interesting for all of two minutes (the games we've played on the mongoose's setup were incredible, this seemed like an attempt to suck the joy out of the technology), and the "classics" stuff was hebrew-only; one section was boring, the other was cool for gd and me but unnerving for mr smear.

i hard napped when we got home, then dragged myself out of bed to walk with mr smear to the beach to join cm and his family. we had a really great time!

overall, it was an excellent day.

saturday:

we started walking to the port to meet up with ric and his family, but a quarter of the way there gd realized she was in too much pain so i walked back to pick up a car and we drove there instead.

driving in tel aviv? not recommended.

we enjoyed our outing with them, their little one's super cute. mr smear was mostly cool until just before we left, and we ended up with a bad vibe on the way home.

we stopped at home for a short while, then i took mr smear to ra'anana to meet up with dod* and his family. mr smear wasn't being particularly social (we have to teach him that the concept of "strangers" in israel works a little differently), but he thoroughly enjoyed the ninja obstacle course.

* divan orange dude. i've just learned that le divan orange closed down a few years ago and that makes me a bit sad

we left just after a gangly kid wearing glasses tried to run up the side of the ramp mr smear had been using, and i looked on in horror as he slipped and smashed his glasses into his eye socket. dod and his wife helped tend to him while his grandparents made phone calls, the cut looked awful and i hope his eye's still functioning.

sunday:

sunday was accompany gd to the pain clinic day. it was a long day of doctors and bureaucrats. some of it felt constructive and promising. between clinic visits she got her nose piercing switching out and mr smear and i had a huge hummus breakfast at mashawsha. it was expensive but delicious.

monday:

back to work! aside from a tedious day of completing reports (two down, one to go) interspersed with multiple distractions, it was a good day and i must admit that it feels good to feel welcomed and appreciated.

gd had a rough day (feeling nauseous), but i was pleased to hear that mr smear had a very successful playdate.

...

the other day we watched a compilation of child comedians on the got talent shows, and mr smear is trying very hard to be funny, with results that are sometimes hilarious but usually for the wrong reasons...

...

i've been re-reading neuromancer for the last while, there's soooo much i'd forgotten and it's really, really amazing in spite of the anachronisms. during the staycation i also started reading the elements of eloquence, and it's very enjoyable!

...

of course, i got side-tracked writing this. i wonder if i'll be able to get to sleep soon.

the staycation: day five

 i'm stressed out and it's not even noon. i'm feeling strangled by an overwhelming sensation of a million things that need doing that i'm not taking care of, a million fragments of my attention tugging at me in all directions and all i want to do is curl up into a ball and close my eyes and figure out how to drown out all this noise.

yesterday was nice. we met up with a cousin and walked around the shuk in tel aviv and had a huge lunch at the vegan place that urchin introduced us to a while back and met up with her daughter for coffee, then had a pleasant walk through king george and gan meir park to the bus home.

we watched a bit of luca over dinner and then crashed.

the staycation: day four

we did it! we actually went to jerusalem yesterday, and visited the western wall. the train ride there was pleasant - we spent most of it playing "i spy" - but the bus ride from the train station to the old city was tragically long and smelly. some religious nutters left their toddler on the bus, didn't even bat an eyelid when the shocked bus driver managed to find them.

the wall experience itself was powerful for all of us.

after the wall, we walked through the shuk, meeting an ex-south african along the way. then hunted down food, eventually finding ourselves eating build-your-own falafel in a rather grimy spot, staffed by another ex-south african. we walked back through another part of the shuk, at which point i developed crowd and shuk fatigue, and stopped by the wall to use the bathrooms before heading back.

while mr smear and i were using the bathrooms, gd was accosted by a teenage girl about covering up her tattoos. when i got back to her and found out, i was furious. it's such an ugly thing to do to anyone, least of all an israeli jew who practices judaism far more authentically than these societal parasites ever will. we talked about what we could have and should have said. then we headed to the bus.

we stood waiting next to someone who turned out to be another ex-south african, another recent escapee.

and then we saw that girl. and confronted her. not only was her ugly smirk accompanied by ugly, bully-like responses, but her friend was defending her by telling us about the "laws" they're protecting. i was becoming frustrated by their bullshit when gd pointed at her smile and talked about "this ugly thing", at which point they fled to the other side of the waiting crowd and i think i saw her friend consoling her.

human pieces of garbage.

anyway, the bus back was less long, but pretty awful. that's due the people on it, the writhing mass of overdressed humanity with more babies than they can care for and public displays of domestic violence (one woman kept slapping the back of her kid's head whenever he made a noise, not sure if he's autistic or those are just symptoms of abuse). the bus ride itself was a rollercoaster, as our driver didn't appear to believe in speed bumps as he sped through the windy hills.

getting off the bus and through the crowds and into the train station was a corrective experience. the train back was a relief. gd, like me, was very grateful to return to our little bubble of civilization.

two joggers ran past us, one speaking to the other in a heavy saffer accent.

...

we were all exhausted after such a long day. after a ramen cup dinner i chatted with my mom, gd got mr smear ready for bed (he was pretty much asleep by the time i said good night), i chatted with vfmp for a bit and then crashed.

...

for me, yesterday morning before we left was a long string of frustrating events, mostly related to needing to update the side project i've been neglecting. maybe i'll make some progress today before we meet with our cousin. or maybe i'll read a book, play games and do not much of value. that could be good, too.

the staycation: day three

 holy shit, it's wednesday already. effectively, i spent yesterday setting up the projector and the soundbar, which took two trips for hardware - the second one being on rollerblades and involved travelling around the port trying to find reflectors for the night ride. i came home red in the face, overheated and dizzy.

by the time i'd said good night to mr smear, i was too tired to go out anyway.

win for the day: everything's set up. there's a bit of weirdness with the subwoofer, and i'm quite frustrated that while the macbook's airplay works beautifully with the roku, the windows machine's miracast / airparrot is an abysmal failure.

...

four months later, i finally received confirmation yesterday that my payment to the licensing bureau was reversed. paying for the renewal using a local card was quick and painless. and i've ordered a credit card for gd so hopefully we'll get her health insurance website access sorted out soon.

...

plans today: to go to jerusalem. and start making actual holiday plans.

the staycation: day two

last week was horrific. i'm calling it "seven days of retaliation" - based on sept jours du talion - but the only revenge was being taken on me for being an anxious chump by hundreds of micro-services and the onboarding of a new customer using new tech that hadn't been battle tested yet. i got to enjoy the first battle.

tuesday 9th:

the first two days were alright, and i was fine. it was going to be a corrective experience to my on-call nightmares when working for AWS. but my pager went off on tuesday morning at 3.30am, neither my team lead nor my line manager were available, and everything was on fire.

it turned out to be caused by a third party service that went down, and there was nothing we could do about it. by 9am, when the issue was finally resolved, i'd done a full day's work and i was tired. but that was just the beginning of my day.

after a quick visit to the clinic to "activate" my membership - i thought i'd done that weeks prior and they'd given me a card, so... - i napped for an hour or an hour and a half and then went to the office. everything was fine for an hour or two, then the pager went off again. and again. and again and again and again. a couple of us stayed until late putting a patch in place, which would let me sleep that night, but by the next morning the patch was rendered ineffective and my first cup of coffee was interrupted by another alarm.

wednesday 10th:

i tried not to stress. i tried not to freak out. but even after a night's sleep i was still shell-shocked. my brain was... sideways. i was a deer caught in the headlights and struggling to keep up with anything that was going on.

this was not quite the corrective experience i had been hoping for.

after a long day in the office with no much to show for it, i returned home, had a meal with my family, put my son to bed, then checked in to discover that we were experiencing another fire that had no alarm attached. that took me to midnight.

i'd been over the week for a while already.

thursday 11th:

another long, tedious but stressful day. the fix for the ongoing series of issues that had begun on tuesday was finally ready - or so we thought - but it was a thursday evening. israeli weeks run sunday to thursday, what we pulled the trigger on was the equivalent of deploying on a friday night.

we spent the next two hours "following" the deployment, not only monitoring but also making emergency changes directly via the console.

it wasn't pretty.

by the time we left it was long dark, and for the second time in the past couple of months i'd said good night to my boy over video chat, that might be the second time ever. i followed the graphed metrics for the next couple of hours, then said good night.

the weekend:

i woke up to a 2.22am message informing me that our operation had ultimately been a success. it was an immense relief, to be sure, but i spent the remaining two days of my shift on edge, constantly waiting for the next page and worried about somehow managing to put together all the handover documentation before going on leave on sunday.

i spent a large chunk of the weekend "housekeeping"; migrating a large quantity of my tasks and to do's and lists to notion. while doing so, i found a half-written rant on the implications of being overweight and i felt compelled to complete it as a medium article. i'm still waiting for the internet to turn me inside out and cancel me, but so far its performance is just mildly disappointing.

on friday morning we went to our cousin's mother's funeral. it was hot, and there wasn't a lot of shade. the eulogies were heartbreaking. the deceased's surviving husband's heartbreak was palpable.

sunday:

what was supposed to be my first day of vacation started at 6am with non-stop evidence gathering, reporting and documentation that last until our 2pm handover meeting. i informed everyone that although my leave is until the end of the week, i'll be seeing them on monday and not sunday.

nobody argued.

i spent the remainder of the day putting together a lego set that the mongoose had gifted to mr smear. lots of the pieces were missing. what ensued, while mr smear was enjoying his first playdate with our previous neighbour in ages, was gd and i obsessively sorting lego pieces in a hunt for what we could find, eventually being thwarted.

getting replacements off the lego website turned out to be a mission, not only are the parts expensive but they'd take a month to get here. we're going to try to get them from the store instead.

going out for falafel was a good idea.

yesterday:

we got up early and went to ikea. by the time we left ikea, i was frustrated and hangry. i don't like crowds in general, i detest holiday israeli crowds in particular. and salesman who talk shit to me after being condescending. and having to buy a not-great drill in order to pacify my wife when i could have borrowed a good one instead didn't improve my mood, either.

after a ten minute walk carrying a heavy shelf and a heavy bag we almost missed our train home.

...

gd made pancakes for breakfast. then we went out to pick up a sound bar.

it was hot outside.

we eventually returned home with the cheapest sound bar we could find. it seems really good. i spent the next while installing a shelf.

1. i used a level, and miraculously managed to get the shelf precisely along the pencil line. which was slightly off the level. so now that's going to irritate me forever.

2. i managed to get two fisher plugs in, for the other two i was unable to drill even half the distance i needed. i *think* it's stable enough, but i'm not 100% confident.

3. only after putting up the shelf and the projector and setting up the sound bar did i see how many power leads, adapters and cables we're missing.

in the evening we went to our cousin's shiva house for an hour or two.

we almost missed our bus home.

...

i'm tired.

birthday deliveries

it's mr smear's birthday tomorrow! after about a year of instability and drama and anxieties and moving halfway across the planet into a new language and culture and climate.

so this week we've been spoiling him a little. we began with a couple of comic books* recommended by the mongoose over the weekend, who subsequently rocked up mid-week with another couple of them in hand. we picked up a beautiful children's anatomy book in hebrew along with "anomaton", a human body you can take all the parts out of. i missioned around yesterday evening after work and picked up an x-box controller for him**, and today we all went to the new lego store in dizengoff center and let him pick out a set of his choosing (he went for minecraft, which was surprising considering his enthusiasm for the actual transforming optimus prime, the harry potter series, the marvel superheroes, the star wars stuff***, and pretty much everything else in the store. while in the queue i had to call on gd to back off when i caught her (unconsciously) trying to convince him to reconsider after she'd been eyeballing the harry potter stuff and the ninjago dragons... her birthday's coming up soon enough :P

* okay, these are really a sneaky trick to pull him in to reading in hebrew

** okay, so this is really because it's better for his spine and eyes than him playing minecraft etc. with the keyboard, and so far we've both been enjoying having it ;)

*** a lunchtime conversation this week convinced me to rewatch the original star wars trilogy, and it's going great so far

...

the last couple of days of the week were high-pressured, i eventually managed to bring the project to code-complete before my on-call next week but there's still a bit more work to do... i'm feeling quite relaxed about everything, though. i don't know if i'm learning to manage my anxiety better or if i'm just all out of ****s to give.

...

my side project that i invested so much time in? i haven't touched it in half a year, i simply haven't had the bandwidth. i received an email yesterday informing me that the lady who i sat with for two hours and helped put notes together to teach her how to run exports and imports hasn't touched it either in all this time, and has lost her notes. i guess i'm going to have to dive in again, and i'm almost feeling ready to get in there.

speaking of which, we've been making "staycation" plans: i'm taking a week off after my on-call, my first vacation in years, and we've got loads of things to do and family to see.

...

last week saturday the left side of my middle-back began to spasm, and it was uncomfortably sore and continued threatening spasms until yesterday. this morning i woke up and it felt fine. then on our way back from the lego store my right shoulder did a thing so i'm still in pain, it's just moved like an air bubble when you're trying to smooth out a sticker.

over hump day already?

 four and a half months in israel, and i'm still not used to weeks beginning on sunday. i just registered that i have two days left on this one. next week: "ninja" (on-call). the week after: a staycation week for the summer holidays. this means i have to deliver the thing i thought i'd be able to deliver last week - it's a bit of a bummer that it's not ready yet, but the code quality and testing have both improved dramatically and i've learned a lot.

also, github copilot is AMAZING. it doesn't always help, and it doesn't do all the work, but my gods it saves lots of time on the repetitive coding and on the documentation hunting.

...

i felt terrible - thoroughly exhausted to the point where i felt perpetually on the verge of collapse - from friday until monday. i'm still feeling tired, but since yesterday i've been feeling actually functional.

that's physically.

psychologically i'm feeling relaxed and safe and confident for the first time in so long i can't remember. while i still have plenty to do vis-a-vis writing up and publicizing our stories, we're finally on the other side and it's such an enormous relief that i cannot describe it in words.