the other side of the DOOF

okay: just got back a couple of hours ago from neverwhere, the doof / paganka party up north. neverwhere also happens to be an incredible book by neil gaiman, which makes it all the more amusing that the similarities to it didn't end even after we left, when we heard a report on the radio about which destinations where most popular this weekend and ours didn't get a mention. we were a LOT of people!

i have a bit of a headache but that's because i worked my body really hard having so much fun and then took responsibility for driving three out of four of us home.

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thursday night:

after dinner and before bed we ended up playing pirate fluxx after pg got bored with WOW. at least we tried... and the fluxx game was fun :)

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friday:

we spent a horrible morning (well, the weather was great and we did start in good spirits) trying to renew our student passes at the dan bus lines office. the ministry of transportation has decided that having a valid 2012 sticker on the student card isn't enough, even though that's all that we've received in the mail. so first year students had no problem, but we had to go to campus to print out our registration authorization.

but it's holidays, so campus is closed. when i called up the ministry of transportation they informed me that this was by design, and screw you. well, they didn't say "screw you" but that was the gist of their response. the worst part is that this is all happening the week before icon, a week-long festival all around tel aviv that requires a lot of short bus trips.

ASSHOLES!!!

anyway, after a long, complicated mission (and having to pay for a full bus ticket for the dog both ways), i managed to print out pg's but the machine that read pg's card wouldn't read mine and the other one i found that does read mine was out of paper.

figures. and this isn't the first time that's happened, either.

so at least we organized hers, but the day was lost, our feelings towards dan and the ministry turned to sour, and i think i might have to sneak my way using her card... it's not like i haven't paid my fees, either. but them's the rules, and those are narrow-minded do-as-you're-told kind of people.

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we stopped at cafe henrietta for lunch - kind of to make up for the crappy start to the day (and i hadn't even had coffee yet) - and there was some inexplicable delay with our meal after we'd had to wait a bit to be seated. i honestly don't think i would've noticed in the state i was in, but our waitress (who'd been pleasant and professional from the beginning) saw to it that we'd get a bonus dessert. not only a bonus dessert, but she threw in my orange juice too.

that *did* make me feel a bit better.

unfortunately, that much chocolate after last night's killer vat o' mousse didn't do much for my stomache... i slept the sleep of the dead for a couple of hours after i got home. after waking up, being dragged outside to park the car (it's such a pleasure when you can find a parking nearby!), and snacking, i spent a long while learning how to sort kindle books and then we played a bit more fluxx until on-my-honour arrived.

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today:

i have to admit, as long as i don't expect her to be anywhere near on time we have no issues whatsoever. we had a great time together on the drives and at the party, and i have learned to accept that we have completely different perspectives when it comes to all sorts of things... we still get along like a house on fire :)

we arrived around 3 - 3.30am, found a good enough spot for our tent, mulched around a bit and crashed. i got up to the tail end of zirkin's incredibly powerful wake-up set, having slept pretty well considering that my bladder was full and i'd been conforming my body to the location of the rocks beneath me :P

we'd picked up a very pretty swiss girl on the way up north - i thought that she and on-my-honour were friends from before but it turned out they'd never met. a pity for on-my-honour that the swiss girl has a sharing problem: she drank almost all the vodka, and on-my-honour had brought the vast majority... have i mentioned before that i don't like babysitting drunk people? i did the barest minimum and felt absolutely no discomfort for abandoning her. we were in a more or less safe space, and i think i succeeded in making our neighbours feel uncomfortable about taking advantage of her.

aside from running into anti-1 and finally having a proper chat (she seems to be doing great, actually), i spent the morning contemplating the wonders of how my life is on track (even if i am on break) and how it all began at my first trance party. neverwhere? these gatherings give me hope. slowly, maybe, but it feels as if we're impacting the world around us for good. and the world has so much to learn.

for a good while the beats from loud and laughing buddha made me aware that my prayers on the dance floor are nothing short of my submission to a higher power, the beat. and protoplasm's sentiment that "trance is electronic music with a sense of humor" echoed over, and over in my mind. too true. in particular, one of those sets was making fun of us, half of it was total retro and pure goa trance, and old-school rebirth samples were being mixed in with the newer stuff and it was all magic ^_^

i'm still amused about running into my kibbutz cousin's younger son in the morning - i'd wanted to visit them afterwards, but i had to drive the others...

i'm well pleased with myself. and well pleased with my hair, i think i know what it's going to feel like when it's dreaded. i'm now in desperate need of getting to bed.

discretion

how strange to read about a kid who used to be in our taekwondo group dying, without any context. i was sitting next to him on a bus a short while back, and he seemed alright to me...

also, i forgot to mention that anti-1 resurfaced... only to disappear again. and nobody seems to know what's up.

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i left work in a bit of a state - i'd rewritten a whole bunch of code in my attempt to clear up the mystery of the untouchable database, and was successful. it turns out -someone had turned off the auto-commit feature of the database connection in order to solve a particular problem, and hadn't thought that this could possibly affect every other use of the database.

the mail i sent him was as explosive as i was feeling, but that didn't help me to calm down.

...

pg post-surgery is in dire need of assistance... i came back from the supermarket half-crazed by the infuriating stupidity of all involved in its operation, made a chicken-breast salad and took off an hour or so to drink a screwdriver and read more harry potter.

oh, and i went through the books i got back. all sorts of great stuff, in particular the cookbook that my grandmother bought me and the funkiest book on discrete mathematics: rosen - discrete mathematics and its applications. *boy* was i upset about losing those!

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i've only just started watching garbage warrior, but i've already decided that this dude is made of win.

being human

point 1:

on sunday morning, i walked out of the apartment on my way to the bus stop and was surprised to find anti-1 outside, apparently saying goodbye to someone. she walked most of the way to the stop with me, and i tried to talk to her but she was noticeably troubled. at first i thought she was embarrassed about me seeing her with the guy she'd said goodbye to, then she got really weird and i just couldn't figure her out. the only response i could make out from her mumbling was "not good" to my question on how things have been...
i was on my way to work, and pg was sleeping, so i didn't invite her up to my apartment... i told her i'd be back the next morning (because we were going straight to a wedding), and to give me a call. i felt bad when i continued walking to the bus stop, wondering as i passed etnachta if i shouldn't have invited her for coffee, but she'd already pulled a "no, no, it's alright" so i sent her an sms.

i didn't think about it much until sunday evening, when her brother called me to inform me that she's been psychologically unstable and had fled jerusalem on friday night, her phone having been disconnected, and the guy i'd seen her with had been told that she was going to hang out with me. which i hadn't known about.

this troubles me a lot. not in the least because she's an intelligent and, from what i know of her, successful girl. i can't stop speculating on what could possibly cause someone who "gets" this world from going over the edge. what could it be? generic life complexities? lack of fulfilment? family issues?

i really hope she's alright.

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point 2:

on sunday evening, after a long and exhausting day at work, i arrived home to a wonderful surprise - pg had made a tray of meringues for me. this totally set the tone, and we left for the wedding in great spirits. i'd prepped the map (and was surprised to learn that my iphone's map is location aware, i thought i'd have to do something to enable that) and scribbled a backup and i pretty much knew where we were going.

what a bummer that, at the very last moment, pg noticed that i was taking the right highway (road 1) instead of the left (road 20) - i was certain it was the other way around and i hadn't even bothered to check the signs.

traffic was a bit nuts at that hour, and i immediately pulled over to the left lane... but i was so focused on integrating with the left highway that i didn't realize that i wasn't just going over the painted island, but that the physical curb-height island was right in front of me. i didn't see it until it was too late, and to much grinding and car-simulation bumping about i committed and went over it.

there's nothing worse than being forced to accept that i'm just a regular human, capable of remarkable idiocy. after the initial and immediate shock, the reality of what had happened, i looked in the rear-view mirror to see that the guy behind me had simply stopped. in the middle of the highway. i would have done the same thing. i wouldn't want to get close to someone driving that badly either.

so my ego was more bruised and battered than pg's mother's car - with it's ultra-low suspension - at least the car made it most of the way and i parked it neatly in the parking lot of a gas station so that we could inspect the damage, only to discover that it wouldn't start any more.

and the fact that it's due to be sold within the week... my timing couldn't be better.

after work last night i was going to go visit pg's mother and tell her that i will obviously be taking all costs upon myself, but was fortunate to run into her walking her dog on my way from the bus stop and so was spared some of the awkwardness. there was no argument over who was going to pay, and on the plus side the towing was covered by insurance and i've just been informed that there's no actual damage aside from undercarriage scratching... *breathes out deeply*

if that drops the price of the car, i've offered to pay in the difference. either way, i keep reliving that moment, mounting the island - it's painful and horrible :(

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sunday:

one of ze germans gave me a ride to work after spotting me waiting for the bus, and there was a supremely awkward moment when he asked me what i was doing, i gave him the usual schpiel, and he said "okay, but can you not give me a general direction? what field is it?"
what harm could it have done? i told him.
"ah, you're working with mmf, huh?"

shit. so much for discretion. mmf was shocked when he heard, but once the cat's out of the bag...

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sunday was technical fail day. things just weren't working, and i spent a lot of it frustrated. or feeling silly. and i was tired.

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facebook surprised me by reactivating my online status in the chat, and i discovered that when a guy i went to school with began a conversation with me. i didn't mind talking to him - i quite respect him - but i was working and i didn't have too much time to concentrate. he asked where i was, and i told him. "oh! you're with so-and-so." i didn't say anything, i'd heard that the so-and-so was somewhere in israel but i don't even know where - i certainly haven't seen him anywhere. "yeah, he just gave me some money," he continued, and i found that strange and thought i'd just let it go. i asked instead how he's doing, and his response stumped me:
"poverty."

alrighty then. i'm only just starting to get my life sorted out (and still in a bit of debt, even if my bank numbers are finally in black again), i haven't seen this dude in years, and i automatically felt like i want to help and the whole thing just made me feel awful, and not a little guilty for living well.

i expressed my regret at the news, and pounced on a pause to disconnect, set up the new "limit availability to," and tried unsuccessfully to forget the incident. no dice.

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lunch was argumentative: i need to chill with our secretary, and accept that her attitude is great for an israeli and kak for a westerner, and at least she's nice about it. she caught me on a point that really pisses me off, though. in israel, you can't be interested in more than one thing. so if i'm making the case for recycling: "you're such a saint! you should dedicate your life to recycling" is a more-or-less traditional response.

how am i a saint? like most people who are aware of what's going with our planet, i'm concerned about sustainability. i'm not making any great sacrifices, i'm living my comfortable, polluting, wasteful lifestyle just like everyone else. the difference is that i'm trying, with the little things, to minimize the damage i do in living that lifestyle. one doesn't need to become a monk to do that.

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our orientation proposal has been accepted. next semester, i'm going to be teaching first years how to be happy (happier, at least) students. w00t!

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google+ hangouts: i pulled a trick i learned from chatroulette, joining a hangout with a bunch of friends and holding up an offensive message to my webcam. i logged off as soon as i got a funny response; i must admit that's even funnier when it's people you know. also in the google+ news: circles as opposed to friends means that you can follow anyone's public posts, twitter-style. without obligating the followed to be a follower. not bad, google. not bad. now we just need circles within circles and we'll be mostly happy.

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it's hard to argue new tariffs with the bus driver on a packed bus with people pushing and shoving from the curb during rush hour. i thought he was confused by the new setup, as a lot of them are. i discovered later he was right, though, and not only that but that it was to my benefit: glilot is covered by the "red" zone tickets, which means that my "cheap" student card takes me all the way to cinema city... and here i thought it ended in ramat aviv :P

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yesterday:

i had to wake up twice, and *just* missing the bus meant an hour of transport hassles. perhaps it was to pay me back for getting a ride on sunday. i was a bit stuck in my thoughts of the day before, mostly about being disappointingly human but also about accepting the craziness around me.

i also levelled up on self-awareness.

mmf's first question when i walked in: "how do you spell personnel?"
"S-L-A-V-E," i offered.
my boss chimed in without missing a beat: "B-O-T-S." it took mmf a few more tries before we stopped offering alternatives and helped him out :P

we had a pleasant lunch, for a change. i managed to keep a lid on my emotions, even responding calmly when our secretary stated that what i didn't know was that there are scientists who don't think that global warming is a real problem. jesus, we're backwards here.

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on seeing a religious family of half a dozen children, all i could think of was:
seriously, guys, i think we've been able to check the "be fruitful and multiply" box for a while now... either chill with the procreating, or have a properly violent world war, or get off this rock. this shit just isn't sustainable.

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norman finklestein was amazing. the chat afterwards was fun, too :)

back to work: i learned that XMLConfiguration doesn't like being used in a logical fashion - at least i got it to work eventually, even if it was arse-backwards.

dinner: the frozen fish were impossible to separate, and we didn't want to defrost all of them. after much struggling we headed out to goocha, and had a great meal. i was *tired* afterwards, and wanted to go to bed, but *OH NO MARINGUES AND BEN & JERRY'S!* and then i passed out.

i woke up this morning with an unhappy stomache [i wonder why?] and ripped another disc before heading out to the bus. i was on time for it, too. i finished the second chapter of heart of darkness, napped a bit, and then rocked up here...

the first item on my priorities list took about ten minutes to secure. that makes me happy. now for the rest of them.