stupor-fried

i spent most of today not absorbing anything (apparently not even coffee, no matter how much i gulped down). at one point i was dreaming about some girl teaching me which bits to flip on a giant circuit board type thing, and when i woke in a panic (i must've been out about 10 seconds) i couldn't remember how that information was supposed to help me :S

and there's nothing more worrying than asking someone to teach you something when you can feel your eyelids clamping down.

i came home a bit dazed - it might also have had something to do with asgaut and opeth on my ipod, the music is incredible. i remembered to go past studio b to find out prices and classes (why not take dancing lessons?), and my previous SC called me and we had a pleasant chat.

i sat with spot over coffee and food at cafeneto, and have been transferring more music since we've been back. my collection is insane ^_^

i'm jes' a-glowin' from this thar weekend

yesterday:

i woke up, played fallout 2 a lot, watched heroes, and then the mongoose and his gf picked me up. we had a huge lunch at his place - i haven't seen his parents in more than half a year - and then took siesta until late evening. i spent an hour or so reading v for vendetta (the graphic novel is brilliant), learned that "u" used to be known as "consonantal v", and then got a ride home to go to bed early.

that didn't actually happen, as i played fallout 2 and watched heroes until 4am.

today: heroes, more heroes, fallout 2. then a break for a couple of hours to clean the apartment and have lunch, then high fidelity (it's just one of those re-watchable movies), then the evening sorting out my ipod.

then more heroes (it just keeps getting better. much, much better), and then spot and i sat at cafeneto for a bit before i left for the lizard.

the lizard was kinda fun, and now i'm back and ready to shower and crash.

oh, yes. a stray thought on the way home: "i'm holding out for a girl who will really break my heart."

packing rubber, not lunch

actually, the beginning of the day was alright - only a little bit of pushing and shoving to get on the bus this morning. on the way back a bunch of us almost got trampled, and things got bad for the second bus because we'd all been hanging around for over half an hour waiting for an extra-specially late one.

too many people, not enough space to breathe, and one agitated totalwaste.

i just discovered that it's been exactly four years since my uncle passed away. every time i think about him the story of his totally unnecessary death upsets me anew. it's the main reason i don't trust doctors, especially those quick to write prescriptions.

i'm not sure if i found this story more amusing because of what he did, or how he explains why he thinks it worked.

run-of-the-mill psychopaths

please read the following links - the last one is particularly powerful but requires a *little* bit of background.

the CNN story that started it
skip to "here we go again", a harsh but deserved response
skip to "a rare opportunity", a good look at what the global society we live in allows

*how* much coffee?

after being compared to nystire in terms of caffeine consumption, it has been decreed that only beer consumption may be measured in litres: anything else in "doses" or "hits".

i went to visit her grandparents tonight, and i really enjoyed chatting with them. they helped me get my living arrangements into perspective when i asked about my "taped" experience yesterday :)

spot got all upset because i told both my flatmates that stealing my underwear is unacceptable. can anyone reading this back up his claim that there's a woolworths in new york with the same logo as the woolworths chain in south africa?

i can't believe it's thursday already!

forms multiplication

the morning began with me arriving at the city council, whose "service" branch has moved. not too far away, fortunately, so i got over there and waited for my turn in the express queue.

i noticed that their new symbol is a piece of curled red tape. how sweet, and comforting.

from there i was sent off to a regular queue. i spent half an hour having a screaming match with the cow behind the desk because i'm not an expert on city costs per metre squared of apartment space and i couldn't figure out what the hell she was talking about.

eventually i managed to get some sense out of her, and i've discovered that the amount that the city is planning to extort from me is actually quite frightening. and i haven't the foggiest idea as to how often i'm supposed to pay that small fortune.

i arrived on base roughly 11am, and aside from a bit of missioning around with nystire for a short while after lunch, it was a day i spent basking in the radiation from my monitor.

nystire and i took a bus back to tel aviv, and i got an opportunity to catch up with one of the cuter girls i know from the girl-farm. we split up at the station and i made my way home, and now that i've studied a bit and have seen episode 6, i'm going to bed.

there is hope for me!
vindication
a world of truth

just pushed me to bed

totally in it

taking the right bus is *good*.

breakfast on base is *good*.

four / five cups of coffee a day is *doable*.

getting a ride home and it taking fifteen minutes is *good*.

walking into a smelly, chilly apartment is *not good*.

napping in the evening is *good*.

having a spiritual re-awakening, internalizing all the craziness and making peace with my past few years is *good*.

watching episodes four and five of heroes is *good*. [breathtaking, actually. i mean wow, and then wow again.]

spending time with sunshine (albeit not alone) is *good*.

the cocktail room (even if only for an hour or so) is *good*.

knowing that i'll be waking up "late" (7.15) to pay the city council a visit is *good*.

t'was a dark and stormy morning,

the dishes were piled high. i washed them, waiting for the water to boil, made ready and left the apartment, still feeling awful from a long, sleepless night spent tossing and turning. i have a feeling that something that i ate yesterday caused my suffering... either that or the jogging.

i got off at the right stop this time, but i chose the next bus incorrectly - i took one with a round-about route that put me precariously close to having to fight my way onto the bus from the station.

it was a pleasant morning until i got a call from the states asking me if i knew where spot was. spot really isn't to blame for his shameless lack of self-discipline and basic sense of duty or responsibility. i blame his parents. if you keep treating someone like a child, they will never learn independence or be able to care for themselves.

i was provided a satellite phone this morning, and plugged it in immediately to begin charging.

the morning went well. the four cups of coffee and odd wafers smoothed it over considerably. lunch was decent. ten minutes on the phone with spot's aunt, who agrees with my previously stated sentiments, didn't do much for my irritation levels from this morning, but the rest of the afternoon was good.

leaving the base, i left the new phone on my desk, still charging - apparently it needs to plugged in almost constantly :S [at least i don't have to pay for it]

the public transport home pissed me right off. there was simply too much of it, and lots of being sandwiched between smelly and sick people. there's no need for that. when i ran into spot on my way home, after having had to fight to keep my place in the queue at the supermarket in order to buy some chocolate, all i had to say to him was how i feel about his family. i'm sick of them.

it's past my bedtime again, i hope tonight will be better than the last.

some links:

but is it quality mental masturbation?
possible correction
sharp-ish
a trip back in time

shin splints

i can't believe the weekend's over already... i don't really feel like i had one, as most of it passed by with me more or less dazed and with a serious headache. i think i'm just stressed because i don't really have any reason to be.

the kid and i went jogging today - i really needed that.
on the way out we were waiting at a red light, and i kept enough eye-contact with a cute girl coming the other way that she got confused, and her friend had to remind her to change direction - we all got a good laugh out of that :D

i was getting some good exercise until we reached the painful ending, and then we slowly hobbled back (along the promenade, quite nice actually). luckily, it began improving when we closed in on our apartment, and i've been good since.

spot made excellent spaghetti bolognaise, and we had a serious tekken session to go with the coffee afterwards. the rest of my afternoon was consumed by fallout 2 and heroes; the differences now that i've patched the former are pronounced, and the latter just keeps getting better.

gmail just came to the rescue - i've finally moved over all my university mail (and that didn't take too long), so i can stop being irritated by the intolerable volume of spam. i've finally outgrown the account that's been my "base" since i immigrated.

magist and his flatmate arrived, and we just came back from great sushi (right next door, too) and absolutely fantastic sorbet ice-cream (guava and strawberry). it's now most definitely past my bedtime.

a day with the birds

i woke up to some heavy reading this morning, and then went out to meet nystire and his siblings. cider for breakfast, waffles for lunch, falafel for dessert, and a relaxed while spent reading a new and seemingly interesting book i've bought called licensed to kill - hired guns in the war on terror in the park by lake's old place.

i was planning on napping when i got home, but fallout 2^*1, a bunch of educational stuff, alien resurrection^*2 and tekken kinda got in the way.

and now it's bedtime already.

^*1 after all i've done, it got stuck - turns out it's impossible to play properly without patching.

^*2 turns out i haven't seen it after all. i really enjoyed it. winona ryder rocks.

concluding the introduction

i discovered which bus stop not to wait at this morning. good to know :S
the day's highlights included an amusing introduction to the rest of my new unit, and having remembered to bring my brolly without knowing we'd have to deal with a crazy storm on leaving the base.

today was the end of an excellent but tiring week. lots of hebrew, lots of memory activation, beginning to get used to a new routine... and at 9.10am, babylon was installed on my pc, so i've stopped flipping through an outdated treeware dictionary and can now simply ctrl-click on any word i don't understand for translation. YES!

what now seems a long, long time ago i interviewed for my new unit and had my cv laughed at. today i had a long talk with the guy who interviewed me then, and he is absolutely incredible when it comes to pushing my buttons.

he had me fired up then about wanting the position, he has me all fired up now about succeeding - it appears that my desire to prove myself and to demonstrate that i'm not worthless is almost as strong as my desire to achieve my dreams.

cafeneto, tekken, unfuzzying my beret, heroes, and now bedtime... it's time to enjoy the weekend!

qubits
how romantic!

early to bed, early to rise...

again, 5.15. it's late now, tomorrow's going to hurt. i left the base around 8pm, after getting shamefully stuck with a rusty revolving door for over five minutes. more bent than rusty. whatever.

i received an email today with my previous unit's logo attached, so i edited it and sent it on to nystire. sitting with a photo editor open, i was tapped on the shoulder and told "i'm guessing you're <totalwaste>."

my new branch commander, a deadly serious-looking middle-aged man who looks like he's used to people jumping to attention on sight.

whoops.
so i got up and introduced myself, finished sending the photo and got back to work. pity about first impressions lasting.

i joined the kid and his brother for a huge humus lunch, and was returned back in time for a branch meeting. i barely managed to keep my eyes open - over an hour of hebrew. although i did manage to follow pretty much everything, the humus effect was taking hold and my focus was swimming. i'm wondering what was going through nystire's head.

no more "okay, you can leave now" when my commanders notice my eyes rolling :'(

i had a personal meeting with the BC which went way better. he told me to print something out afterwards; on clicking the print button i was asked if i was absolutely certain that i needed a hardcopy, we're trying not to waste paper.

nice :)

i ate supper with a couple of guys from our building - one of them from my office, and i actually didn't recognize him at all. that was a tad embarrassing. i really should start paying attention :P

since i've been home, i've watched the beginning of an absolute horrifyingly bad movie made in south africa. queen's messenger (1 / 2: anything with a character named captain strong) - DON'T watch it. it's the wrong kind of bad.

now i've seen part 1 of heroes, i'm going to shower and crash. tomorrow's the last day of the first week of the rest of my life.

a warm puppy

i can't believe we managed this morning, nor that it's going to become normal for me - much easier to arrive an hour early though, especially hopping on an only almost-full bus.

brain-breaking hebrew today, oodles of it. i really got attached to babylon making everything a ctrl+right-click away, and flipping through the dictionary is distracting.

at the same time, i'm well impressed with how much my hebrew's improved!

i'm really happy with where i am. it's not easy adjusting to the new life, but i'm feeling good about every step!

i got home, did some shopping, had a quick dinner, and after playing some fallout 2 and prepping my system for my p5, it's bedtime. i'm a lot annoyed about this intermittent internet thing, but i can't simply scrap everything and install windows xp just to see if spot's right :S

... you gotta wear shades!

one of my teammates complained about the glare of greenness exuding from my monitor: "how the hell can you read that?!"

my eyes and brain work, more or less. everyone's got there own, personal lack of taste, and i'm no different.

i tried to get hold of my medical files today, and was told what i could do with myself. i then went and bought myself a new uniform, so everything i'm wearing is suddenly fresh and smelling rookie again, i passed through my previous base to say hi, and returned to mine too late for lunch after hours of sitting on a sweltering bus.

nystire and i got into a minibus for a ride to tel aviv, and due to a lack of space people were being unseated according to rank and time served. that sucked. eventually they told us that one of us had to leave, and i can't decide if it felt worse being thrown out or staying on the bus while others were getting thrown out.

after changing and putting in laundry, i joined nystire and his to-be, or more precisely they joined me on a mission to buy a router (pronounced root-er, for you americans and aussies who don't speak english).

on my way home i spoke to my now ex-employer, and re-explained to him that nql isn't supposed to wait for me to do simple things that only he can take responsibility for... like writing test scripts for his own applications. he's a bit of a doos.

spot set up the net connection, i handled the laundry, and we sat at cafeneto for a bit.
the kid and i have agreed to wake up at 5.15am, he's coming to my base for a driving course of some sort.
sod this, i'm going to sleep.

a sign for the dawning

a new era: and the sign is a beautiful, old-school, clicky keyboard with proper layout and none of the windows keys sitting on my desk. and a p5 glove attached to my home pc; the mouse functioning's alright, but i need a connection to the internet in order to download a dll that wasn't installed off the cd provided :S

i have to get up really early to make it to the new base on time, and today stung a little. i spent most of the day running around forms hiking, and i met many interesting people.

i just have this feeling like things are going well, as they should be, as they should have been, and today left me with the unusual sensation that all the horrible shit i've been through during the last six years has been made worthwhile.

i was thinking about this on the bus: i look back on my blogging and i see how much i've matured since i began, and it's hard to remember that the reason i view all that stuff now as simple and easy to deal with is because i learned how the first time through suffering.
and 20/20 hindsight is complete bullshit, because if i knew a week ago what i know now i wouldn't have behaved the same and i wouldn't have gotten to the point i'm at.

but as my mother taught me, i've always done what i've believed is right at the time, and somehow it's all worked out. and even if it hadn't i wouldn't be able to regret *my* actions...

the house that controls the spice...

i slept badly last night. i have a strong suspicion that it's the quiet that got to me. or the quantity of strawberry and cream cake that i consumed. or the odd space that i'm in in my head because i finally made it up here and my life is finally back on track - and that track makes sense.

more cake for breakfast, and i sat warming myself by the tv until we all went out for a drive through the countryside.

our first stop was a spice farm, a tiny house *packed* with people buying every type of spice and spice-related that you could possibly imagine. absolutely amazing stuff... i especially loved walking past the mustard powder that can clear sinuses at three paces; i didn't buy anything just because i wouldn't be able to do anything with it.

although i did organize granola with coconut chips for my breakfast tomorrow.
our second stop was a small restaurant: it sucked. really, truly, unbearably aweful service, and the food was mediocre at best, unpleasant in general. we all left with an unpleasant taste in the mouth, but i'm feeling better after a quiet drive home and some more cake to smooth it all out.

i think the most interesting bit about that restaurant was sitting there as a couple received the fish they ordered - standing upright on a plate, in full uniform (fins and scales and eyeballs) and with an expression that suggested that if it were thrown into water it would carry on swimming.

now *that's* presentation.

i'm hitting the shower now, then it's back into uniform and back down south... i'm so excited for tomorrow it's silly...

the television in its natural habitat

i left a little later than i'd intended to, but arrived on the kibbutz around lunchtime, which was a little earlier than i'd anticipated.

i have to admit that wearing this new rank is odd. i feel awkward, and i can't stop staring at my shoulders. it's a rank i've laughed at - i showed spot this morning and he got hysterical - and it's a rank that very few people actually want.

i had to work my ass off for it.

at the same time, most soldiers simply aren't familiar with it. my cousin here (he's a basic training commander) took one look at it and stared at me in horror, thinking i'd somehow become an actual officer. "no, no," i explained with a smile, "this is even worse."

so i switched clothing, and spent most of the day on the couch watching the telly. good stuff, i can tell you: from a life less ordinary to a really fun movie with john cusack and frasier's dad released in 1989 (both so young!), and i even let myself be entertained by some israeli tv...

so i've napped, been fed a good meal, eaten the most decadent cake i've ever come across that my cousin made (my god - a strawberry and cream cake that even the base was is amazing: *so* having it for breakfast), and now that i've completed my little updation i'm off to read and sleep.

speaking of reading (i'm still near the beginning of war made new):
1) great quote from hiram maxim (inventor of the maxim machine gun): "in 1882 i was in vienna, where i met an american jew whom i had known in the states. he said:'hang your chemistry and electricity! if you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these europeans to cut each others' throats with greater facility.'"
2) the book briefly mentions "chinese" gordon, of whose clan i'm a descendant. what was that about being familiar with one's roots?

IANAP...

... but this just cracked me up :)

i've been reading news this morning, so before i hop off up north:

anti-darwinism
another form of cuckoo-ism
dna rainbow (cute)
test for string theory
a good start to the weekend
and this is almost true. aside from forgetting about japan, he doesn't take into account the quanitity of americans abroad who *have* to watch the superbowl.

me and my time machine

my day began with sunshine directing me to where my orders sent me... arriving without too much hassle, being shouted at about being AWOL, being sent off to wait and twiddle my thumbs for an hour or so... after getting sick of waiting, and having other arrangements to attend to, i knocked on the guy's door:

"listen, sorry to be rude, but i'm supposed to be promoted in a couple of hours. is there any reason i'm sitting on my arse?"
"you're getting promoted? why didn't you say so before?"
"did you ask?"
"listen, i can't do anything with you until you've been promoted. i don't even know how you got here, or who issued your orders..."
"you did. your secretary called me yesterday..."
"nevermind. go to your promotion. you were never here. bye."

so i made my way to my old base, stopping by cafeneto for coffee with sunshine, and then continued on... to discover that while my promotion was scheduled for 1pm, i wasn't authorized to receive the rank.

that's an oops. doing everything under last-minute pressure as usual, and using some really good people i've met during the past month, we managed to sort out everything by 1.02pm. i *rushed* to my old office, to discover it abandoned and everyone waiting for me in our BC's...

it was an amusing little ceremony, especially the part where i was stripped of my previous rank.

but i did manage to speak this time. as i started off: last time i was mute, this time i've been upgraded to having a mere speech impediment. i was shaking while speaking, i was all emotional, but at least i said what i had to say. the retort from my now previous BC only emphasized how right i am and how great she and my now previous SC [the bull] are.

i spent the afternoon in morbid fascination - i now have a rank that even privates hold in low esteem :P

i spent the afternoon performing a knowledge transfer to brother bear and our sergeant first-class, and was almost done when the bull rushed in to inform me that there was a huge problem and the kid had to go to work...

"oh shit," i thought to myself. it actually turned out to be a fun problem to sort out, and by sort out i mean discovering, in conjunction with a number of other sections, that there wasn't really a problem. it was generally a good laugh.

i received my new orders before leaving the base - they're back-dated for two days ago, so when i arrive on sunday i'm at their mercy :P [i'm *really* not worried, though]

my now previous TL [OaG] gave me an awesome little goodbye gift, and i finally really actually properly officially left the office for the last time, not counting visits. i bussed home, changed, and made my way to mmf's. his girlfriend made great supper, we sorted out his site, watched too much telly, and i left with my psOne cable in my pocket ^_^

from there i walked to the zamir, which was a cute party, and i came home to shower and rest a bit before heading up north. it's been a nutty week. hell, it's been an insane nine months.

no, one better. it's been a rediculous and silly and harsh two years and three months. i already feel like i'm beginning to normalize!!

new orders

i slept better last night, went to base early again this morning. it was an interesting morning of nothingness, but after lunch i heard tell of things moving and i made my way to herzeliya to have my wallet raped so that i could re-receive the papers that i already filed with the army two weeks ago so that i can re-file them.

stupid, slimy bastards.

i met up with piles and spot on the way back for coffee, then hopped to work for the last chat with the boss, ate with yogi and came back home to fight with spot over the broken washing machine and unhappy internet connectivity.

gotta get me some shuteye. a large part of the day was dedicated to buying the p5 glove, but it's an annoying process in this country :S