rough edges

 rough night. still better than with the previous beds, but having mr smear in the bed with us is just uncomfortable enough to make the sleep... not good. there were only two or three attacks last night, but there's no way to know whether it's worth sending him back to his bed or not because we can't tell when the next attack is coming.

and what sleep i did get was filled with disturbing dreams. i can't describe them better than "commando prostitute". and from that i woke up to a message asking for donations for two families from mr smear's school who live near it, and lost their homes in one of the attacks during the first first week of the war.

i haven't sipped my coffee yet, but i just spent way too long moving my mouse around, patiently and sadly, waiting for my computer to wake up - but it wasn't plugged in yet.

in addition to everything else, mr smear and i had to get up early this morning because i'm taking him for the allergy test. i had the presence of mind to ask gd if he'd had any antihistamines these past few days, even if i hadn't had the presence of mind to set reminders for him not to take any.

he had one yesterday.

so now we're going to the hospital to meet with the doctor anyway, but we can't do any tests.

...

at least yesterday evening went well. we had a good mma / taekwondo session, and we both felt sufficiently exercised by the end of it. we enjoyed another episode of strip search, and when mr smear "went to bed" (reading) gd and i shared a local beer (a bit too blonde for my tastes, but not bad flavor) and i watched a really comedy set that i've seen before (it's kellen erksine, it must have been republished), and then went straight to bed.

less than minor disruptions

 so far today we've had two warnings of incoming attacks, one attack with a siren, and one without. but we got to go to south tel aviv, visit some furniture stores and find a couch we're excited about, order it, and learn that it *should* be here in time for pesach.

hopefully my mom will be too 🤞

gd wasn't feeling so good - it was pretty impressive that she managed to make the mission at all - so mr smear and i dropped her off at home, stopping for a siren warning and breakfast (we were both very hungry by that stage), and then took the (delayed due the war like all of them) bus to the apple store, where there regretfully informed me that gd's ipad is too old and too scratched to be worth much in trade :(

so i guess it's hail-mary time, we'll try to back it up and completely reset it in the hopes that we can ugrade its OS...

we had a very pleasant walk home, picking up liquor, running into an old colleague friend and his dog (abahd - a boy and his dog, referencing the movie he introduced me to when he learned i'm a fallout fan), and picking up a sorry-we're-at-war gift from my employer of half a kilo of ice cream for (theoretical) dinner tonight.

then, as promised - after a cup of coffee, of course - mr smear and i went into MMA mode and i taught him taekwondo side kicks. which he did surprisingly well for a first time!

he's also - in fits and bursts - getting used to the idea of discipline, shutting the fuck up and taking instructions whether he agrees with them or has something to say or not. and it's really help that the motivation to do the work is coming from him because he's fixated on losing weight and we don't want him dieting...

i'm developing a karate kid fantasy of teaching him to a point where i can take him to my old master and see him holding his own :)

we took turns showering, and then there was an unannounced attack - lots of booms but no sirens - and now we're busy making dinner plans. it seems like the challah-peño's going to be good tonight ^_^

and i'm listening to moby - for the nostalgia - and figuring out what to do with my brain.

two for two

 i'm now two for two with the canishower.com app, i'm in.

i'm also two for two getting mr smear into short, but real, martial arts training sessions by rewarding him with screen time. my, how the mighty have fallen... but he did pretty well in yesterday's boxing drills, and was very pleased with himself in today's taekwondo drills. if this is what it takes...

also, mr smear and i made a fun little rage game during an attack today, capture the fly, sticklight's surprisingly good at what it does!

...

yesterday:

in a nutshell, yesterday was all about network disruptions; mainly due to misconfigurations, but also dealing with a lot of intermittent VPN disconnections that i've been experiencing ever since i got my company laptop.

it was extremely frustrating, and while i'm finally dealing with the provider's support directly... after an entire day of back-and-forth troubleshooting over email, i'm starting to suspect that their support team is a bunch of AI agents dressed in a trench coat 😕

who ever thought that the trickiest part of the turing test would be that humans can be so unexpectedly dumb?

the frustration of hearing a door buzzing just before a siren and hoping i didn't miss the delivery of the new network device...

gd cleaned the apartment yesterday, with mr smear and i helping occasionally. it's a big apartment, compared to what we're used to.

our early dinner, more like a very late lunch, was followed by me teaching mr smear boxing fundamentals, and then me continuing to work on the RCA that i was finally finished around 9pm, during another attack.

mr smear went to bed really late last night, and i read to him anyway, then crashed. and then half the night was spent with him in our bed after attacks.

i had a weird dream about him and his previous class, but they were much younger and in danger of falling out of these weird little cots.

today:

we all got up late, and i spent at least an hour tweaking the network until i had it good enough that it felt like maybe? we don't need the new network device. but after a day spent moving back and forth between the office, the bedroom and the living room, i'm pretty sure we need it to sit in the middle of the two wired points.

i struggled in a rush to get mr smear's account set up for his online classes, and then spent the work day feeling pretty useless and entirely unmotivated.

between yesterday and today, i got my first real taste of using MCPs. they can be extremely helpful, especially when it comes to understanding badly produced logs.

we received a very welcome voucher from my employer for a tub of ice cream. gd found a decent vegan salmon replacement (thank god), and brewer's yeast, that we could have delivered. and there was much rejoicing.

just another manic monday

sunday evening:

the time spent posting flew by, i was shocked to discover that it was 9.30pm and i hadn't prepared dinner yet! and of course, preparing food when in a hurry took longer than usual...

... between my salad and indian leftovers, i ate so much that my body pressed me into an early night.

---yesterday:

a while ago a girl from the french class contacted me and asked if i'd be interested in going to a meet 'n greet for the big financial firm she works for, as they hadn't responded to my job applications and she figured it'd be an excellent opportunity for me to put my resume in the right hands. she promised to send me a formal invitation so i forgot about it, and yesterday morning she phoned me to ask if i was still interested. it just so happens that it's precisely between the thursday afternoon's stupidly exciting aerospace job interview and friday morning's french exam, but i asked her to send me the forgotten invitation and told i'd let her know.

still no invitation. that's pretty annoying.

...

rabbit sent me a message informing me that she'd taken the aspie quiz... and is officially an aspie. feeling like i'd done something positive, i shared the news with gd. so *she* took the test. the test took forever because every second question turned into a discussion, but eventually she got through it.

"$#@% YOU!" she shouted at the screen, "NEUROTYPICAL MY ASS!"

...

a friend of gd's came over for a haircut and we got along almost as well as her friend from the previous morning. this one teaches tai chi, though, and was excited to learn about my muay-thai / taekwondo experience and wants to trade lessons. sweet! i'm really liking this whole "barter" community :)

we had lunch at sandwicherie st henri, the vegan option was great and we had a really interesting conversation that ranged from crazy dreams to epic sci-fi. we also had an uncomfortable moment, but it was resolved before it could become an issue and what was interesting was the way it came up and the way in which it was resolved. we have this communication thing down, and we're so much on the same level it's a bit surreal.

on the way back i learned the story that had introduced gd to pulse: garbage bag fines. some idiot in her building keeps putting out his garbage after the truck's passed, and the authorities have decided that gd's apartment is the easiest to fine. if she goes to court to contest this there's a good chance that the judge will reject her appeal and that the fine will be increased. wtf?!

anyway, i've encouraged her to take action by alternative means and today she took the first steps.

*sigh*

our post-lunch nap was one of the greatest i've ever had, even though i learned that in addition to snoring (aargh!) i also twitch a lot, and not just as i fall asleep. gd informed me of this as i responded to a between-states dream in which a volleyball was launched past me and i dove backwards to reach it...

...

[tears of relief]

...

i returned home in tool / a perfect circle mode, a mode i haven't been in in a long time. it's still going, so strongly that i haven't been able to keep myself from humming when outside and singing along with abandon in private.

i chatted with my mum quickly before training, and was most amused by her (granted, predictable) response to hearing that gd has a facial tattoo. and then that she has most of her back covered. i probably should have mentioned that she's considering chest ink and that i've convinced her to try it out with a temporary tat (printed or henna) first... the context of the conversation with my mother was my wondering out loud which buttons of uncle hate she'll press if and when we're invited to godmother's :P

...

muay thai yesterday was AWESOME. the guy taking the class has just returned from a year in thailand and the exercises were all properly hard and interesting, and to make it even better i was partnered with one of the taekwondo guys and we had a couple of rounds of free kicking with thai pads so we not only worked on roundhouses and push kicks but on doubles (low / high), side kicks and outside / insides as well. we worked really hard, had a lot of fun and attracted a small group of impressed spectators :)

after the class mti and i went to the starbucks to work on the comics. we were both disappointed, first by the lack of soy milk (again?!) and then by the lack of seating, but the latter resolved itself quickly enough. the evening was productive and exciting, we appear to be on the same page (although i always get that impression...) but she's totally professional and that has to make a difference!

i got home late, worked on a few job hunting emails and then returned to gd's.

---today:

in the middle of the night, as we prepared to go to bed, gd's phone went missing. i called it to hunt it down, and after finding it accidentally redialed the recruiter for the aerospace job, only realizing that my phone was calling after it had rung a few times. AAAAARGH!!!

gd laughed hysterically at my panic and my response to it, i sent him an apology by email and hoped this wouldn't upset him...

...

we enjoyed another wonderful, slow morning, made even better when gd's taxi didn't show up and she called her work to let them know she'd be a little late. they told her she could take the day off, and so we went to the hospital together. i was going for blood tests, she went to pay her mother a visit (she's being kept for testing for something). she asked me if i was okay with meeting her mom, and i told her i was up for it.

we seem to have gotten off on the right foot, her mom and i :) the mixture of french and english wasn't a problem, and it's actually the best practice for friday's exam that i've had in weeks!

at one point she made a comment about how strong i look. "i train five days a week," i said, and she switched to french to tell us that she'd be requiring my services because she's moving house soon. gd and i laughed, and i reassured her that it would be a pleasure. i'm built to carry stuff :P

later she introduced me to one of her fellow patients. "he's also jewish," she told him, "he's from israel. and he's a computer genius!"

between that and the previous not-so-subtle hints about grandchildren, i was both a little embarrassed, flattered and amused no end :P

my blood drawing had only taken a minute (i'd spent the waiting time with gd and her mom), so after saying goodbye we went for coffee before separating. it was a dark discussion about childhood traumas (and the funny things that came out of them) and scary siblings, of which we both have a fair amount in common. it moved upbeat, however, because that's what our conversations tend to do. and everything, good and bad, keeps us feeling like we were made for each other. it looks like we're in it for the long haul.

that's extremely gratifying.

i've had puscifer - rev 22:20 stuck in my head all day. it's kinda how i feel.

---my phone rang a short while ago, it was the recruiter for the aerospace job setting up a meeting with a hopefully future counterpart. since the call i've had the syndicate "calm" music stuck in my head, and i'm wondering at the serendipity of my life turning around just after changing all my tones :)

---nystire sent me a couple of strips to look at. surprisingly good is surprisingly good, but fight is totally winning the week.

super lazy

some days... it's been snowing, but it's too late for me to do a full day at saint sauveur and so i'd rather be productive instead. but then i received my activation key for shadowrun online's beta which is opening on monday, which i'm super-stoked about! opening steam saw me compulsively opening ftl, though. i don't know why but i simply couldn't resist. after a fairly quick game i closed it, but i kinda want to open it again. i really shouldn't, but there you go...

---i printed out a few more pages and then went to the mall to submit my documents for the tax returns. i began by getting lunch: the chef seemed quite incompetent, and freakishly clumsy so i figure he was drunk or something. but the tofu came out perfectly! i stared at it from the beginning of the process to the end, and have arrived at the conclusion that getting the right texture has to do with starting with the right product. so regular supermarket types won't cut it. good to know.

i hunted for the h&r place for a while before giving up and calling their helpline. the website's store locator gives the mall address with a mall store number, and in brackets says "(bay #1607)"; the store number wasn't visible on the mall's map nor was the name of the office. on second inspection, the "store number" is the address of the mall itself so that was silly of me, but the bay reference? that meant that it's in the department store "the bay". oh! oh, i see. totally obvious.</sarcasm>
so i walked through the bay until i eventually found them. hidden in a corner. apparently "office" covers "temporary desks with a couple of dividers set up amongst clothing lines".

the woman there didn't speak english and so advised me to make an appointment with the "specialist" who does. that whole conversation took place in french and wasn't too bad. it's funny, but when she said "tuesday" she was trying to be helpful, but francophones often confuse tuesday and thursday so i had to double check that the date was correct. only, for some reason i couldn't remember the word "mardi"... nice one, brain. nice one.

i sat down at the starbucks to continue my research, and i'm excited to say that i've come across a couple of very exciting pieces of the puzzle. gods, there's so much work to be done! i climbed into it when i got back home, but i'm going to need to de-prioritize or i won't get my interview and french prep done...

music for the day: rev - amusia has been providing the soundtrack for the last day or so and i'm still in love with those beats! couldn't stop bouncing :)

i shopped on my way home, and felt like a total idiot because i get a $10 discount if i go over $75, i hit $72 and there were people behind so i didn't think to stop and rescan a chocolate slab or something to make up the difference. dammit :(

i was totally clumsy when i came home, for five minutes everything i touched landed on the floor and i was so not impressed. maybe whatever the chef had was contagious. i spoke to my mum and finished the mac hall volume, then went to the gym for kickboxing. it was a good class, though i lost the battle of my shins versus my partner's shins. i gave some kid a five minute taekwondo lesson with homework, then got dragged into a debate on nutrition that went on and on and ended with a very brief argument about monsanto and gmo and drugs (not connected). in retrospect i shouldn't have gone down that road.

i put on kevin hart: let me explain while making dinner. that's one unfunny dude! it kinda bothers me when so many people are laughing hysterically at him just being an asshole.

i watched amélie, i think it's only the second time i've seen it in its entirety. what a wonderful film! *that* is a rom-com i can get behind. it's clever, it's fun, it's charming, it's different.

i received a message from a girl i might meet next week and was amused to be notified that fp was using the dating service too. so... i guess that's over, then. i feel kinda odd about neither of us saying anything.

easy like a monday morning

well, i'm feeling sensitive today! i just watched another couple of episodes of freaks and geeks and i'm totally in. it's been light and fun, sometimes a little off, but overall its characters are absolutely wonderful and their development is sneakily subtle.

---i woke up this morning from epic dreams in a final fantasy world. odd mountains and oceans and guns and magical creatures. very cool.

i woke up this morning to an sms from sq telling me about a french movie i should watch that reminded her of me. i just saw the trailer for it, it looks interesting. i wonder what the connection is?

the first thing i did when i got up, as i knew i needed to go outside, was check the weather app. apple ui fail: i accidentally pressed on the temperature and discovered that THAT'S how to get all the details! why would i intentionally press on the temperature?! it's a display, with no indication to the contrary. if you can tap somewhere to get more detail then it should be clear. or there should be a tutorial.

i felt horrid on my way out, kinda dizzy. as if friday night's events hadn't totally finished with me... but it was gorgeous out, minus the evilly cold wind. i came across a postal van decorated with superman: so they think superman's 75th birthday is cool enough to celebrate with stamps? when i was a kid and stamp collections were a thing, i never saw this coming :)

i drew the cash i needed, so suspicious that the machine hadn't given me everything because all the notes were so new that the wad felt too thin. i looked around to make sure i was alone and quickly counted next to the machine, which is something i know not to do. nothing bad happened, but i still felt ashamed.

i was on my way to walmart when i recalled the homeless pirate and suddenly the comment i made then concretized. as of now i'm only going to refer to toonies as "doubloons". or "doubloonies", at a push. and it makes enough sense that everyone will get it, just like everyone calling the two shekel coin "shnekel" (shne is "two" in hebrew).
ooh, an opportunity to share stephen fry making a marvellous point about being a guardian of language.

i was freezing by the time i walked into walmart, the wind being bitter and mean. my mission was simple, i found thick glass cups quickly and easily, loaded up on some builder bars and then headed out to subway for lunch. or second breakfast. what the hell?! it really is only my local subway that doesn't do falafel. bastards!

when i got home, i paid my rent and finally sorted out the piles of papers that have been accumulating over the past month. i found my caq... which appears to be locked in to my previous employer. oh, shit. maybe it doesn't matter. whatever.

i plugged in my leap motion controller and tried getting the sample code to run - i thought it was broken, but it needs to be set up in a specific way that's not explained in a readme file. why not?!

i went shopping before heading out to the french meetup as a pretext to acquire laundry coins. the experience was efficient but i forgot the damned coins, and it was so bloody cold...

the meetup was cool. by the time i arrived both tables were full, and beginners were being tutored on both sides of me. at least there were oreos. i forced a conversation with the guy across from me, but he gave up at some point, and shortly after the guy next to me took a break from tutoring and we started talking. he's slightly more advanced than i am, but we had stuff to talk about which was nice. i ran through one of the canned role playing exercises with someone else, and overall i think it was a good experience.

i also found out about tv5.org, which godmother had been telling me about. nice!

i've been reviewing a friend of mine's book pre-publishing, it's a pdf on my kindle. so... i've finally found a use for highlighting things :P

boxing: i've become one of the guys, it appears. and i don't think the girl said anything to the coach about my dancing. i was partnered with an older woman who's been allowed to join the advanced class but needs a ton of work to get up to speed... i'm starting to sense a pattern, a flattering one in which i'm the goto guy for technique. i was happy to do it, though it didn't give me much opportunity to practice. fortunately, nobody minded switching partners for impact and i went with a guy who hits pretty hard. after that, a sparring partner i haven't seen since the beginning of winter returned and i joined him and a buddy of his for muay thai in the octogon.

i was completely gassed by the end of the last round with them, i'd gone three or four and my left leg and foot are quite banged up. i would've preferred being better than "you're much better", i certainly wasn't in control and there were a few times when i just stood in front of my opponent and took punishment - having said that, it wasn't bad at all and i'm really glad we're back in action :)

army brat came past as we were finishing up and i harassed her about her technique. i tried to work with her on one of the bags, and suddenly realized that her punching and kicking is completely irrelevant in light of the issues she has with her stance. i love figuring out the causes! our coach laughed when he saw the exercises i was making her do, exercises i had to do for taekwondo thirteen years ago that made a world of difference. once we'd established what her homework was, i was ready to head home.

after showering, i finally went back onto the dating site and got back on the horse. pulse has been relegated to "miss february", and it's march now. after that, i discovered that the slam on sunday is only going to be two rounds. oh, shit! well, i'm prepared for four, and while it's usually not easy to cut pieces i knew exactly which had to be relegated to the following event.

---brainbug - nightmare came on on my way to the french meetup, and i daydreamed about the first time i heard it. i was about to write about it when i realized that i may have done that before. oh gods, i'm repeating stories on my blog, just like i do in real life. oh, no...

mass celebration!

i have consistently been 91 kilos for a few days now! i'm very excited ^_^

on a related note, tonight's training was pretty cool - i wasn't great during muay thai (although the quick taekwondo demonstration a couple of us did at the end was a lot of fun) but boxing was awesome. at first i could barely raise my arms, but at some point something clicked and my punches felt soooooooo good, like my arms were tightly wound springs! i hope that stays...
i worked with a guy who's an absolute animal, a real powerhouse and i had to teach him which punches to relax in order to increase his responsiveness and maintain momentum. i was feeling very proud of myself until we did body sparring with each other and he showed me what he thought of my earlier lesson by repeatedly driving his fists into my upper arms as well as my gut. that's one heck of a way to make friends :(
i did impact training with the dangerous girl again, and it was a lot of fun - i took it better even if she did properly knock me down towards the end; i managed to hit her hard without hurting her this time, although there were a couple of unfortunate misses because she's all hips and breasts.

...

i was smart enough to avoid weight training afterwards :P

---i got really lucky this morning because there was enough space to do homework on the metro - i simply ran out of time before i had to leave the apartment.
the weather? beautiful. a sunny minus five and i had to exercise maximum control to not sing along at top volume to tool.

the french class was comfortable and amusing, and during the private lesson later it became apparent that there's a vast improvement in my pacing. we even had a meta-discussion about french particles! it involved some confusion and lots of repetition, but my half hour just flew by and i was actually a little disappointed :P

before lunch i did a quick walmart run to pick up creatine and b12 tablets, on the way home i was stressed by another opus card fail when i thought that the train was coming and the guy ahead of me at the info booth was asking for complicated directions that weren't metro-related. the israeli in me was jumping up and down and i was feeling bad for not having the patience to wait my turn. which i ended up having to do anyway.

---online dating: i sent a message to an apparently beautiful and interesting girl and she responded by informing me that my profile made it look like i didn't really care. huh! i made a bit more effort to change that, but it's possible it's just a subconsciously executed expression of how awkward online dating makes me feel.

the sounds of the universe

just like janna levin said.

i bought tickets for a mindless self indulgence concert next month! awesome ^_^

it was not a bad day, and it wasn't a good day. i put my nose to the grindstone on some uninteresting chores, and got at least one messy clean-up job done. the shock at the end of the day was receiving an email that the coo - my other boss - is leaving. or, more to the point, had left, and we wouldn't be seeing him again.

i'd been informed that it was a possibility and asked to keep my mouth shut... but that didn't make the abruptness any less startling.

---i was inspired to get back into training yesterday, and i went to check out a taekwondo gym this evening. i'm still mortified by the experience: i felt like i was watching a train-wreck. i was especially shocked by the overweight, sloppy black belts, but in only a few minutes i saw what i didn't want to train with and i gave them forty more for the benefit of the doubt, which they didn't warrant. they certainly seemed to be having fun, but none of them looked like they were taking it seriously. except for the guy with the deformed arms, who was the only one keeping his balance while kicking and looking like he was making an effort. respect to that dude!

there's another taekwondo group not far from my work, but right after reading about that one i discovered that i live about two minutes' walk from georges st-pierre's gym.

universe? is that you??!

not only would i like to learn mma, but it sounds like they treat the place like a regular gym as well, so i could practice alone too.

i didn't see it when i took a walk in that direction, but that's because i didn't bother to be wowed* by google street view until after i returned. what i did find was indoor go-karting, which is something that popped into my head a few days ago.

universe? i'm listening!!!

* google street view is a lot more impressive when you actually need it.

humanity roll

i spent the afternoon wallowing and feeling horrible. i watched random shit on and off, including the entirety of snatch and an episode of ufc 100 greatest fights before something magical happened: i got amped. i haven't felt like this in a very long time. aggressive, driven, and not at all passive. i did some taekwondo exercises in my apartment and i think i'm ready to get back into training.

this is a feeling i haven't had in an extremely long time. and it feels good. i also suspect that i'm in pretty good shape. it's time to get physical.

a full weekly - part ii

[... continued]

tuesday:

i slept well, but still woke up grumbling about needing more sleep.

---due the fact that there's the need for a law for this, to the lady who refused to take a veteran tenant:
you don't have to agree with the wars your country fights, and you should be as vocal and violent as you are able to prevent or stop such wars. taking out your grievances on some poor bastard whose crime is that he disagreed with you? people disagree on important issues every day, and both sides of any argument are always supported by loads of idiots. at least that idiot was willing to put himself on the line when he felt, right or wrong, that his country and its people needed him. can you not respect that?

french class: the massive coffee wasn't working. and i was shocked when, after smelling something a bit weird, the girl next to me got up, brushed the seat of her skirt with her hands and disappeared, presumably off to the toilet. yes, i know that girls fart, but that knowledge is impotent in the face of what society has taught me :P

i arrived at the office to attend to a bug - the boss walked in at some point and when he heard what i was dealing with he said "oh! that happens when x and y occur. you can get around it by doing z."
his work-around let me know where the bug was, and if he'd only sent me an email the night before when he'd discovered this he would've saved us all a lot of trouble. i don't understand people who don't work with email :/

it was a day of hard work and zero customer satisfaction. additionally:
me? angry? because the unprofessional "doesn't have time" to read the instructions for an api i've constructed, so i should just tell him what he needs to do when i have nothing to do with his project?

the api is in place and in use by non-programmers, which is a subtle indicator that this is not rocket surgery. the programmer in question has access to code that uses a previous version of the api, and i had already attempted to explain the changes verbally (these are simple changes) in addition to having updated the documentation that is informal and written specifically to make our own lives easier (in other words, it's short and to the point). i cannot make the changes for him, as he is a big boy (supposedly) in charge of his own codebase. as he is a developer, on a mobile platform, i hardly think it unreasonable to expect him to make a small change to an existing api call by looking at the reference.

i have a lot of patience for stupid people, but absolutely none for people who are unprofessional. at least the boss eventually gave me some support, and when scr (who hadn't been in) heard about it he was just as irritated.

i left for an appointment with the doctor, and arrived about fifteen minutes early. if i'd known that she was running late by up to an hour, i might've taken my kindle outside for a cup of coffee...

... if the guys who've claimed they want to train with me were serious, then i'd have had a problem because i scheduled a training a reasonable amount of time after the appointment. i get the feeling that there're only two of us who're actually keen. which sucks.

i had to finish up some work before dinner and hellsing - after a few chapters it gets really interesting. it was then time for a solid blade, 30km of exercise and chatter followed by fantastically good frozen yoghurt. and now that i'm shorn, showers are a pleasure again :)

[continued...]

still restless

so i was the only one awake on time for the meeting that didn't occur this morning? at least i didn't presume that it was actually going to take place... i simply couldn't get back to sleep, though. i spent the day either reading, or in front of the computer, when i wasn't shopping for bristol boards, saying goodbye to the taekwondo instructor* or sitting with urchin.

* she asked if i wasn't going to train, and i said: "nope, this is where we part ways; i've come to say goodbye." i thought that was pretty dramatic, but she didn't so much as bat an eyelid. "okay," she said, "come take your book before you go." that totally surprised me.

the bristol boards are for tomorrow morning's promenade event - as i was purchasing them the clouds opened up and it rained. proper rain, after two minutes of which the streets were made practically impassable without galoshes. bloody israeli street planning and lack of sewerage :/
none of us organizers had seen this coming, and we hurried to find alternatives to reading poetry in the park tomorrow. that cost a lot of phone calls and things still aren't finalized :S

i spent a while trying to convince urchin to go ahead with her plan to open shop; she's lined up all her ducks and the only thing interfering is her mother, who doesn't have a clue what's up. in other news, she's very excited about the project i conceptualized last night, and we should be getting started soon :)

pg's been in a bad way today - her one eye's been giving her a hard time and her successes with the eye-drops are often offset by the misses. i can only do so much when she closes her eye on me as the drop falls :P we just had delicious dinner down the road, but she spent most of the time with her eyes either closed or weeping. my pity for her didn't transfer to her mother's dog, though, who i still have no patience for... we had to walk her a lot to get her to relieve herself.

i'm most of the way through titus: holy crap. tough to watch, but absolutely astounding and brilliant in every way.

---
this is absolutely mental: reading pictures from one's mind. if they manage to take this research down the course they're intending, it could open up so many possibilities that the mind boggles.

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.

---
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!

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

weekend something

it's late, i gotta be in bed already. a list! a list will solve the problem!

---friday:

friday's early morning meeting at cake art. i'm fairly certain the waitress was flirting with me. the keish was great.

one-legged beast-fighting: i couldn't use my left foot and was made to fight, one-legged, against the big dude. that could've gone badly, but it didn't so i feel good about it.

buscope (bush cafe?) dinner with pg: it's a place right close by that does steak and eggs breakfast all day. it wasn't the best steak, but the service was sterling and the music was great.

i was in time to get a ride with scrapper to his and botchman's farewell. we made it up to botchman for nobody having rocked up to his twelfth birthday party, only to discover that the story he'd told us was meant to be a joke.

---saturday:

another early morning meeting. this time at landver, with a good breakfast but a terrible table vibe as co-conspirator and wordsworth had... words. all sorted out fairly quickly, though. the second part of the meeting bored me to lots of angry birds.

i promised pg i'd take her to the "luna park" - and so i did. it was a hot day, and my system doesn't handle quick direction switching at high g's. i managed four rides, having saved myself for the big ones, and enjoyed them even though they made me feel horrible. it took coke to fix me up after the first two, and another coke and an ice-cream after the second - it was the only thing i could consider eating :P

watching the people was an experience and the cultural incompatibilities were blatant. also - the games are a rip-off.

we had frozen yoghurt for dinner, which was delicious, and then i left for gasoline's house-warming. most of the evening was awkward - especially with her flatmate - but some of it was a lot of fun and overall i drank too much.

---sunday:

another stupid-early meeting. i was barely functional and then the coffee machine, as is its wont, stole my shekel. we spent an hour building the presentation - the good stuff was all mine. everyone loved the "0 = A LOT" slide. the head of the department even quoted that after we were done :P

the talk with the new students was long and i'm fairly certain i wouldn't have understood much if i hadn't studied this last year, which only makes the case for us giving an orientation course that much stronger. during my bit, i really did need the guys standing near me reminding me not to leave things out: of course it's an actual course! didn't i say so?!

back to work. still tired. the boss found the flaw that was annoying me last week, the fix was quick. lunch with harry potter was more fun than lunch with the girls: they spotted me and i couldn't not join them :/

jquery's sexyselect add-on is a bitch. after much struggling to tweak it according to the design i was given, i gave up and performed all the bits manually. it took about half an hour; setting up the add-on has cost me at least a day or two so far.

i was under time-pressure to save my work and pack up at the end of the day; that sense of urgency didn't leave me until... nope, still here. after doing some quick editing in the other office, i rushed off to return to tel aviv to meet with kc's father, who'd brought a couple of boxes of books that i'd left with them in 2004.

and i'd been wondering where some of them were, and automatically assumed grootbek had sold / lost / stolen them. [the discussion that led on from that got pg really angry with me for still being friends with him - what??? we went to his wedding after he did all that horrible stuff to you?! - i suppose she's not entirely wrong...]

nothing more frustrating than finding my old copy of shakespeare's complete works after spending a semester squinting at the shakespeare iphone app... *sigh*

i took apart, after more than five years - marathon man's computer. i've tried enough to contact him about it, it's now on its way to being recycled. it had a internal zip drive that might work.

facebook lists don't help: you have to manually click on everyone you're trying to invite. and some of those invites don't get sent, so you have to do them again. and i'm trying to invite a lot of people to saturday's events...

i was fasting for tomorrow's breath test, and pg offered me watermelon when i wasn't concentrating. i double checked the amount of time i needed to fast, and it's changed from ten hours, to six, and now one. one hour. i could've relaxed about food this evening :(

slightly less complex - part ii

[... continued]

i slept pretty well, and dreamed a lot. and vividly. then i got up to make rounds. i waited a long time for the bus to ramat aviv to meet with wr - i had coffee and a discussion that blew my mind. it made me really, really angry and frustrated and for the first time i have seriously considered fleeing this country. i'll write about it in a minute [or two, or three - i need to rest from writing for a bit after this post]. the conversation carried over to my next meeting with scrapper, and i got him all fired up too.

unable to find decent grub in the ramat aviv mall (or, at least, decent grub that didn't cost an arm and a leg) scrapper and i made our way to tel aviv. we were joined halfway through by a mutual friend, and the breakfast was almost as enjoyable as the conversation. unfortunately, by the time i was done i had less than an hour before training...

there's a reason one should eat more than two hours prior. for most of the training i felt like i was about to taste breakfast again - not nice. otherwise training was great! we worked well, and things definitely seem to be improving. not on the list of improvements: having the damage from tuesday increased; my forearm's a bit swollen and very tender.

the mongoose and i had agreed two weeks ago that he'd pick me up at 5.30pm and take me to see his new home, but instead he came by just as i stepped out of the shower and we chilled here until he decided he was calling it a night. pg and i continued playing crash bandicoot until i got motion sickness (some of those jet-ski levels are a bit much) and we switched to watching the rest of the alice mini-series while eating great sushi.

i passed out on the couch while pg watched friends, and eventually put myself to bed and had big dreams. the entire night.

---today:
i'm done re-visiting my ripped albums, and i'm done with this post. i'm considering paring down my posts (i think i hear grateful sighs from anyone who reads this), because it's now about 3pm and i feel like i've done nothing that was on my agenda for today: playing gabriel knight and transcribing from my travel journal.

---from an online conversation i witnessed yesterday morning:
"sometimes you just have to make a decision to be happy. just realize that things aren’t going to be what you hoped they would be. the only thing that separates one kind of person from another is that there are some who stay angry about it and there are some who accept what comes their way."

a seemingly benign sentiment, but i had to interject:
"i'm concerned that there's another thing that separates that isn't mentioned: that there are some who face the immediate trauma of choosing a different path for the benefit of their long-term happiness. there's very little in this world that's truly didactic"

simplicity

yesterday was a simpler, more entertaining workday. in fact, pretty much everything aside from another totalwaste / secretary moment where i became very aware of the fact that she keeps "pretending" to be uncouth and uncivilized "as a joke," and that produces very real behaviour which can be quite embarrassing.

the journey back to tel aviv was hot. the basement dojo was stuffy and lacking oxygen as usual. i'd been tired and a bit bloaty all day... i thought the energy drink would help, but i was wrong. and then we had to fight. real fighting, not the usual poking and prodding. two arab brothers were with us, and the energy with which i was beaten down by one of them was only amplified when turned on his brother - that was undoubtedly the most interesting and entertaining fight i've seen in years. they kicked the snot out of each and they did it well.

after the session i sat with our master for a while in a continuation of the whole motivation discussion - i've definitely had an effect, but i wonder how long it is before she gets the whole picture... at least she's listening.

the bus ride home happened to be with pg's sister and brother-in-law, which was fun, and after i had a shower pg and i settled down to watch the first half of the first part ofthe alice miniseries - it's AMAZING! i love the reinterpretation, it's slick and it's gorgeous, and most importantly it's loyal.

pg and i went up to the roof to switch wheels on our blades... she got a bit moody, but we got it all sorted out eventually. the route last night was brilliant! there was much chatter, and great downhills to balance out the solid exercise we were getting leading up to them :)

after another, quicker shower we settled down to the rest of the first part of alice, i finished digitizing another disc and then went to bed.

---
i don't think i slept enough, in spite of the additional hour i stole. i was thinking of passing out some more on the bus, but one of ze germans sat down across from me and we talked the whole way. i think it was the longest conversation we've ever had...

i got the last task on my list done surprisingly quickly, and am already on the next project. it's an exciting way to begin a workday :)

trained out

the print shop closes at 2pm, but by the time i strolled in at 1.45 the dude was antsy, the place was crowded and... i was the second last customer to be allowed in. if he really needs to go at 2pm, and his shop is usually busy, shouldn't he officially close at 1.30 and leave the last half hour for the last ones in on time?

---tough stretching was the primary focus of the two hours. of note: the kid with the red belt who's been on my nerves since he made yellow belt because he *still* doesn't deserve the yellow one. he's half-assed and full of excuses at every move, as if he can rhetoric his way through a martial art.

to be fair, he's been successful so far.

today i let him know exactly what i thought, and for once i got our instructor's support. she paired us up for most of the training; i'm pretty certain he hates me now, but i think he may have gotten the message. and my message was simple. stop talking shit, do some work.

---as for my own body - i'm hurting, man. that was tough. a cornetto helped me home (passing a girl i went to officer's course with, no acknowledgement either way), and after a shower i made myself a sandwich and settled in for some gaming to cool down. now - shakespeare.

---my sister sent me a very interesting article on the jewish attitude vs the palestinians' - it's quite insightful.

good show!

two in one week? it's been a while - a LONG while. but hatachtonim (התחתונים) were absolutely incredible tonight. their sound was even better than usual, in spite of (or perhaps due to) a couple of changes (the drummer and the bassist), and even though misha's voice sounded a bit hoarse he still carried it through a great evening.

it was also great seeing some of the guys; it's been a while since we all got together. and botchman gave me a ride home, and tel aviv on a (real) bike is always fun :)

---the bad with the good, because there almost invariably is... i won't be going back to the sublime again. they're assholes. and not just because they're expensive and have rude waitresses. i arrived late, considering that enough to keep me "on time," only to discover that the previous act was running so late that they weren't willing to let us in for another twenty minutes.

in case we "steal" the tail end of the show? the one they weren't going to see any more money for anyway? so we had to lurk outside, not even able to sit on the chairs that are reserved for those who have paid to get in already? i might've bought another beer to make up for it. now i won't be paying anything for the show i was going to go to next week. or any of them. because they're nasty money-grubbing misanthropes.

---it was a bit of a "F*" day besides the sublime hassle. [Note: "F*" rhymes with "duck stew".]

after getting into bed a little after 4am, i had trouble sleeping because i hadn't stretched properly after training - this is happening a lot more lately than ever before. it's become a "thing". and coupled with my foot muscles being perpetually tender i'm beginning to become concerned that there's something unusual... *ahem*... afoot. [sorry] F* getting older and being out of shape.

i went to meet wr at his work, which is close to my old office, but as usual he wasn't answering his phone when i arrived and that left me standing outside in the baking heat wondering which way to go. if he wasn't so gorram awful with giving directions... F* heat wave, and F* wr for being so disorganized.

i was in my old office for about two hours, most of which were spent trying to understand an email enigma. F* smtp, F* exchange server, F* active directory. the first told me that my email had been sent successfully, the other two made the mail disappear and refused to tell us why.

thank you, microsoft. [here, "thank" can rhyme with "duck" too.]

so i waited an extraordinarily long time for the bus to arrive, slowly roasting and with energy drained so low that when it eventually did come past it was difficult to extricate myself from the shaded corner i'd settled into. things in heart of darkness have just gotten exciting. i can't stop comparing it to apocalypse now. it's good they're so different :)

i spent the next few hours going crazy with a jquery plugin called sexyselect; its basic functionality works fine, once you've gone through three different forums just to find out how to run it. it breaks the second you try to use the methods it's supposed to have, though. the best part: everything's trial and error; the documentation is *so* bad that reading through it seems to do more harm than good.

it didn't help that my boss couldn't figure it out either. F* jquery plugins.

i got a ride home with mmf, and we had an argument about the existence of god that at first grated on my nerves and by the end had us not-quite-agreeing but in a better place than we'd started.

F* nihilism.

i was still upset over the two work-related F*s, so i had a shot of rum and played abe's exoddus for a bit. i had straddled the new chair (it's a fun shape, pg's sister made it) and was wearing nothing but my underwear, eating doritos and getting totally into slapping sligs and squeaking along with my blind friends in tow... pg's brother was supposed to come pick something up, and when i asked if i needed to put on pants i was laughed at.

but pg's brother didn't come. her mother came in his stead. i would have just said hi and continued playing, but i'd set a playtime alarm and i had *just* shut it off. i couldn't get up to cross the room to put some clothes on, so i sat as nonchalantly as possible and tried to blend in benignly with the background. only she stood in the entrance, and looked right at me. "wow," she said, approvingly.

i stared at her.

she stared back.

after a long moment she realized what was making me feel so supremely awkward, and explained: she'd been appreciating the chair i was sitting on.

---i read up some things for the shakespeare exam, then made my way to the bus. at least i've now officially opened a book :P

burned eggs and dylan

yesterday:

after going to bed at 4am, exhausted (as usual, i don't believe there's any point in attempting to quantify anymore), i was pounced on by a tiggery girlfriend at 10am to make breakfast. the worst part: making the eggs according to moonflake's instructions, and still getting it wrong. i suspect that i may have followed them a bit too literally, though. i've made notes and i'll try things a little differently next time. i'm going to be scientimerrific about it.

---
i went to work, because i was already up, and... after much struggling with a really frustrating problem, having sunk many hours into it, my boss informed me that we were going to do without the upgrade that caused it. we had a chat about bad design - or more specifically, about receiving the design requirements only on demonstration of what we considered to be a finished product - and he explained his recent attitude towards me as "a planned lack of management" in which he intended for me to become familiarized with the relevant web technologies.

so, umm, i guess i'm going to need to pretend that i'm my own boss and handle the entire development process, then.

---
i thought i'd nap before the concert, but i didn't really get a chance. it was only while getting dressed that it really began to sink in... i was on my way to see bob dylan. i started getting really excited.

the buses were packed, the stadium's entry policy offensive*, but we walked in with more than an hour to spare and all we had to worry about was keeping ourselves occupied until it all began.

* no bottles allowed in, even half-litre plastic water bottles of the kind they sell inside at twice the price. and of all the wonderful things they claimed to stock inside, only water, shitty beer, coke, hotdogs and not-quite pretzels were available. that's just rude. it's not like we hadn't already paid an arm and a leg for the tickets, and we're talking half-a-stadium-away tickets, not front row seats.

the music that played until the warm-up acts began was wonderful: 50s and 60s folk, blues and psychedelic. the sunset was gorgeous. the weather was comfortably cool. it was only when the warm-up acts started that we found we were sitting in the seats with the lame crowd, the section that barely demonstrated any enthusiasm. i couldn't figure out what the vast majority of the crowd around us were doing there in the first place - godsdammit! it's bob dylan! the place was packed with cool people, why weren't any of them around me?!

the obese, religious pre-game drunk was loud and offensive, and twenty minutes into the main act he had to be carried off by his friends. the guy next to us tried to deny the laws of physics in his attempt to convince us that the no-smoking rules are ridiculous in an open space (we could smell him most of the time, and he was downwind), and i overheard his conversation with the cheesy dude in front of him and from that was able to determine that they were both righteous pricks. the guy behind me talked loudly into his cellphone for a while (unnecessarily, it was clear that whoever was on the other side was trying to say goodbye), and after that did a good job of spilling his beer on my back.

in spite of all of them... the warm-up acts were excellent, and i enjoyed them. assaf avidan and rickie lee jones. although i enjoyed the former more than the latter his excessive repetition did cross a line at some point, but on the whole it was all gravy.

and then the stage went dark. and then it slowly brightened, and i noticed the massive chicken-head at the back of the stage. we were too far to really see much, and the video screens weren't much help so i don't even know what side of the stage he was on, but no matter how much wear-and-tear there may be on his voice, you immediately hear it's him in his lyrics and in the music. and those were all just... well, bob dylan.

it took me a while to figure out how to describe what we saw last night: that wasn't just some old geezer reminding us that he used to be bob dylan. that was THE bob dylan. wow. the music was hypnotic, and the songs we were familiar with have all been recycled into new forms. his narrative lyrics had me seeing visions of things that i'm going to have to write about someday, and i was completely sober.

until a few months ago, when i heard that he was coming, it never occurred to me that i'd ever get an opportunity to hear him live. a number of times during the concert i thought about the scene in the '60s where michael and sarah go looking for him... for me, the concert was not only about him and his greatness, it was about being immersed in an experience that in essence connected me with that era of which he played such a big role.

i walked out of that stadium deeply moved.

---
we picked up dinner at aronson on the way back. the guy serving us was überweird. their non-dairy pizza is a bit strange, but delicious. we ate it while watching the first couple of episodes of my little pony - friendship is magic. ignoring a couple of super-extra-girly or childish moments, it was by and large pretty good. the style rocks, but i'd have to watch a couple more to see if i really enjoy the plots and characters the way the "bronies" do. i don't think i'd go quite that far.

---
today:

*facepalm*
i just realized this morning that we have a bus stop right next to our apartment that serves all of the primary lines i take. not only would this have helped me a couple of days ago... but it would have made my life *so* much easier during the last three years of my service...

*sigh*

bob dylan... dylan thomas... "i choose to die" from dangerous minds... that was a movie heavy with good ideas.

short work, long lunch, then a rush to return to tel aviv in time for training. i was so tired i needed an energy drink just to get there... and arrived as our instructor was explaining that we were jumping to the university for some kind of video shoot. a long bus ride there to discover that there'd been a miscommunication and that the shooting was pretty much over. so we hung around to show the other gym up before returning to tel aviv.

i was given an interesting opportunity to openly tell our instructor *exactly* what i think she needs to do if she wants more students... and *exactly* where i think she's been going wrong the last couple of years. i know she was listening. she seemed to get what i was saying. i'm not holding my breath, but i really hope to see some changes.

i was going to go rollerblading, but we had dinner and a relaxing evening instead. most of it with our backs to each other between studies and work. i'm feeling good. less stressed. one more exam to go, far less of a workload (of actual work) than i'd thought, canadian family's arriving soon, i think the summer's going to be alright.

today is thursday

i must admit to being a bit confused about such things as "days of the week" - there were a brief couple of days when i felt like i suddenly had time to breath, and then i began with antibiotics and exam fretting so it's all a bit...

---tuesday night:
the route was great, although pg was quite impatient with me and we sat in silence over the post-blade frozen yoghurt. the sense of drama on heightened when she discovered that the shower door's damaged - neither of us know how but i'm considered the prime suspect. it's the kind of damage that requires a professional :(

---we went to be early, around 2 - 2.30pm, and i got up early to go to the bank and sort out a money transfer. the woman presented me with one of the unfriendliest forms to fill in, one that contained far too many unnecessarily legal terms and even post-translation was unclear. i became progressively more tense, and then the poor clerk got upset because she thought i was angry with her.

well, i should have been. she didn't offer me much assistance with the damned thing, and to make matters worse i got a phone call a few hours later explaining that there were a couple of details i hadn't filled in so i'd have to come in and do it again. very professional, lady. very professional.

---pg was super-weird yesterday morning. we walked to the bus in uncomfortable silence, and then we stood on the traffic island and she accused me of putting ideas of awkwardness into her head. i can't say i'm completely innocent, but i've been sensing strange cues the whole week...

the day began with a headache. the first class was a two hour preparation for mark strand's later appearance, and it was fairly interesting. after lunch with wr (who proposed some interesting ideas for the september event) and a few minutes sitting with one of my study groups (some of whom were engrossed in linguistics homework, which looked really familiar... it resembles discrete mathematics, actually) i went out to wait for a friend of mine to pick me up.

after two hours discussing politics, the arts and how to approach the problems in israeli society - two hours during which i learned about all sorts of surprisingly awesome projects that don't get promoted at all - he dropped me back on campus for mark strand. on the way i spoke to nystire, who made a pretty good case for why i shouldn't return to training until i'm over the antibiotics. no, i don't really want to risk kidney troubles :S

---a certain professor gave the introduction, and some members of the faculty were as shocked as the rest of us to hear her obscure analysis of mark strand's poetry. quite presumptuous. one of the poets who introduced him (there were a number of hebrew translations read, and they were very good) told us how he used to publish strand's poems on the back of the magazine he was working for, without informing readers that it was poetry - shock poetry? apparently it was surprisingly engaging.

mark strand was absolutely inspirational. everything he read was magic - few poems, but it was all poetry: he's very funny on the topic of prose form. riveting stuff, presented with such easy humanity that i was touched. and all of this appreciation in spite of the splitting headache; i only managed the reading on the wings of the chocolate and coke that i'd arranged at the last minute :P

---from art to politics: i walked to the building next door for a talk by noam shalit. while waiting for him to arrive, a man with a really cool t-shirt walked in.

i'm really glad i went to hear him speak. noam shalit just gave me a whole new perspective on an issue that i had taken a rather solid stance on. i'll discuss it more in detail at a later stage, but the bottom line really is that gilad shalit has been in captivity for almost five years and it's past time that we should bring him home.

trading terrorists is not a perfect solution, but it is the right one. it's time.

---i spent the way back home stuck into my phone, learning about twitter. i have begun providing a service that i'm hoping will take off, and there's a certain amount of journalistic responsibility involved...

i took pg out for sushi - for the first time this week things are back to normal ^_^
we ate way too much and it was really good.

the scar on my lower back (i had a mole removed a couple of months ago) is itching, and driving me crazy. i wonder if that has to do with the antibiotics?

...

i went straight to bed afterwards, and woke up early thinking to post this and get some reading done... so much for the reading. and what's here only made up about 50% of my notes; i have a daunting to-do list...

---gay parent bashing. in texas. this is quite touching.

another riddick? i can handle that.

it doesn't FEEL like sunday...

yesterday:

there are certain birthday presents which are awesome, fully customizable, and available only in the US. giant suck.

after a sweaty blade back i hit the shower, and came out dizzy. we picked up a coke and a slab of chocolate on our way to the cinema, which helped. running into urchin was a surprise - haven't seen her in ages!

we watched the king's speech, and it really is awesome. i'm sure that most of the humour went over all the israeli heads around me because they're not aware of just how uptight the british can be, and that's in the present tense :P

we did ze sushi for dinner, eating tons of it. and i drank quite a lot of sake. i was exhausted when we got home, with a big belly (okay, i can't really blame one meal for that) and passed out almost immediately.

---
the incredible heat! two days of heatwave, and i can't decide if i'm loving it or not. my day began around 8am with phone calls to the city council, eventually giving up and missioning off to visit them in person. the guy i spoke to asked if i really think i can change things in the "wild west of israel"...

then i visited the police station, where my attitude was laughed at again. both parties referred me to their main branches in jerusalem. great.

i was pleasantly surprised to see a column of cars waiting patiently (not hooting, at least) for a garbage truck. the guy performing the slamming of the bins was taking his time because he had a cellphone nestled between ear and shoulder... that's a bit wrong, isn't it?

i then had another police chat when i walked past a cruiser whose engine was running. at least for them it makes sense to do it.

herzeliya: the chocolate melted, the coffee had some milk in it (even though i'd asked for none). and mmf was too busy to see me, so i spent an hour or so sorting out student union bureaucracy and playing with iphone camera apps, eventually leaving (in a rush) when i realized that i was going to be late for my physio appointment and offending mmf with a badly formed question when i asked about next month's paycheck.

only i hadn't checked my physio appointment properly, and arrived about two hours early. so i met up with pg and we had lunch at haronson. good food! a woman with a pram bumped it into me and apologized; i would've preferred not being bumped into at all. then her large friend stood up and for a minute his bum hovered way too close to my head for comfort...

israelis and personal space, not quite what i grew up with.

we went home for a perfect (very short) pseudonap, then i headed out to the bus to return to the physiotherapy.

---
the pram in the middle of the aisle of the bus i'm used to. still shocked by, but used to. it's the woman's other children at the back of the bus that bothered me - the one with her face covered in pizza tried to forcefully share her slice with my shirt, then threw it to the ground (roughly) and continued to harass the other passengers.

how do i know i'm in a first world country?

---
the electro-therapy was staggering, but the face-pads wouldn't stick to my beard properly (oops) so it was less traumatic than usual. the physiotherapist gave me some good advice regarding exercise, though... i think it's time to lower my standards and return to taekwondo.

i came from there to work, and my mind's been a mess since i've arrived. i did get something done, but my heart's just not into it. and i've still got stressers like my seminar to keep me distracted. gonna go get some exercise now, then see if i can kill that shit off before the holiday officially begins.