HUJI 2003

Started Latin. Sum Amir, adsum, non absum. Blogo.

Local Elections 2003

Only about 40% of the people voted. No final results yet. I voted the first thing in the morning. I don't have big problems telling who i vote for in local elections -- for the mayor i voted for the Greens' Avi Binamo and for the council -- Shinui. I considered the Greens, but they didn't have a website and didn't even answer my email, so there -- they lost my vote. I don't know almost anything about the candidates in either list. I really hope Shinui pass the barrier, they should have ran together with the Greens.

As i write this, i realize why 60% of the Israelis find the elections so boring. It's still a shame, though.

Eilat 2003

The flights were incredibly cheap -- 95NIS (1 person/1 way). Thank you, Arkia.

Caesar hotel is OK, not 5* and without the wonderful omelettes like in Orchid, but who cares about the hotels, when there is the sea, the desert, and the restaurants.

And the tax-less shopping -- i bought myself a Hohner chromonica and i'm gonna learn it (420NIS), Ray-Ban sunglasses (450NIS, usually it's 900NIS, and strangely i don't hate myself for buying sunglasses...) and also Rockfour's "For Fans Only" and Led Zeppelin IV (it's about time).

Made a quad runner ("tractoron") trip in the desert. Expensive (150NIS) but fun. Now i want a motorbike.

Restaurants:

• Eddie's Hideaway -- hidden in an actual Eilati neighbourhood, it is a real hideaway, worth seeking out! The food is mostly French, big selection of big steaks. When there, don't miss the appetizers. Great service.
• Santa-Fe -- Mexican/(Native) American, whatever, very good. Bean soup, wonderful pork osso buco, amazing smoked chicken (a complete one), and Isla De Mujeres -- profiterolles with ice-cream and chocolate sauce.

On the last day we won another free weekend in Caesar. Thank you, God (and sorry about that osso buco).

Qu'est-ce que s'appele cet ensemble ? (probably bad French, i don't care)

Bathroom improvement nearly finished. It looks great and i can finally take a good bath. I'd describe how it looks, but i'd have to change my gender first.

Signed up to Lithuanian and Latin for the next year in HUJI. Hope it goes well with all the bureaucracy.

Eilat City, here i come.

Sam Rockwell, ya mama

Weekend -- two films with Sam Rockwell, mostly memorable as the obnoxious Wild Bill in Green Mile. Both good.

First -- Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Howard Stern's Private Parts meets Beautiful Mind. I didn't know what it is about, which is good, that's how i love my movies -- surprising.

The second was Matchstick Men whichs was also a good surprise. A little more than an average Hollywood sympathetic con-artist movie. The welcome bonuses include the very charming Alison Lohman, and some great acting by Nicolas Cage, who takes a few hints from Monk. Very much a Hollywood movie though, but good fun.

Social Betterment Activities

Little improvements -- changed encoding to Unicode, and small template changes. When i checked if they are look correctly at the actual page, there were to ads at the top -- Conversion to Judaism and What is Scientology?

What the hell am i promoting??

The Bathroom Improvement Haiku

Home is still ruined
And there is dust everywhere —
Bathroom improvement.

Killing me softly with his words

It is said that Karl Marx learned Russian to read Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. I think that it is worth learning Russian to read websites like this one. Or its total political opposite -- Rus-Sky. I don't know what it is exactly, but there is something in Russian that makes it particularly well-suited for the purpose of writing insane extremist essays.

TooMuchStudlyCapsWillKillYou

More about my Italian studies -- and language studies in general. In some computer magazine (it was printed on paper!!!) i found a link (which i couldn't click!!! ok, 'nuff) to this site: My Language Exchange. The article said that this site arranges (virtual) meetings between people who are interested to learn each other's languages. Well, i tried the search feature and when it immediately found a few people who are willing to teach me Welsh (!) in exchange for Russian, i was extremely happy. But there was a catch -- to initiate contact, one has to become a "gold member" which costs 12$/year. I couldn't stand the temptation, and i paid!!! Ya mama, i was so excited. I already spoke to a few Italians, and received great compliments, none of them could believe that i studied just two months (i blush). I hope they'll give me a discount for the membership for the next year for the great PR i'm doing for them...

This morning i went to the University, to sign up for the courses next year. I wanted to take Lithuanian and Slavonic, but they changed the hours since the last time i checked, so i can't take them both. Maybe i'll take Latin, or Catalan, or (as i hope) Latin and Lithuanian together.

Free Lunch Design . com

Go to Free Lunch Design . com -- it's a platform and shoot-em-up heaven. And it's completely free. The stuff there makes one think that things like Pentium, Wolfenstein-3D and the year 1993 never existed. Icy Tower is the hit, but check out Hellcarrier.

The Summer of Aharoni

I've been bad, i haven't written anything here for a long time. So, what happened:

Italian course for beginners at the Italian embassy in Yaffo

The memorable points:

• The teacher, whose name is Paola was very nice.
• There were some obnoxious "ugly Israelis" who left after a few lessons. After that the course became considerably more enjoyable to attend. I don't know how did they get there in the first place.
• The road to Yaffo through all those Southern Tel-Aviv streets -- Allenby, Aliya, Salame -- is very depressing. If i was Bill Gates, i'd start buying all those dumps and slums and rebuilding them.
• Italian is easy and fun to learn, except all those pronouns before the verbs. So confusing.

A wonderful trip to Rome

A little short -- only 4 days, but wonderful. The weather was perfect. The flight was El-Al, so the meals and the movies were incomparably better than the crap on the charters. The Italians are nice people, but why did all those popes have to steal so much obelisks from Egypt??

Although the food there is pretty good, there is good Italian food in Israel too. Anyway, the best meal of the trip was the one we had at Osteria Margutta (Via Margutta, near Piazza del Popolo). The runner up is Pasquino, near Piazza Navona.

One of the high points was Enzimi -- a free rock festival. We popped at it by a total coincidence when came out the metro at Termini. We were hungry, so we sat in a Tavola Calda nearby and heard a complete Thrills show which ended the second we stepped out of it. Nevermind, it was tasty and we discovered the wonderful porcini mushrooms. The next day we went to see Elbow, which was great + i got myself a t-shirt. We even caught them rehearsing earlier that day. Ya mama.

My mama rebuilds the house

Walls painted pink, green and yellow, with Greek paintings on the living room walls. So now the living room is Greek, the parents' room is American with paintings based on Henry Miller's books, and for my room she said she plans to make it "Chinese", but only when i marry Hadar and leave the nest (notice the when, not if).

Now when she said "chinese", she apparently meant feng-shui. She surprised me by just doing it when i wasn't home for a few days. It included taking away the shelves and putting all my cd's in plastic bags, taking away my bed ("What's the difference? Sleep on the floor.") I was shocked. I hate surprises of this kind.

Now that the damage is done (and fixed) i admit that i'm obviously happy with the change. The carpet is gone too, which is a most welcome improvement.

My old bed is temporarily back, until the new one she ordered arrives ("God almighty, i shudder to think/my new bed is a sofa and it's coloured in pink"), but it's on the other side of the room, so the sunrise is right in my eyes and it literally wakes me. I wonder if it's a part of feng-shui too.