the hottest place in tel aviv

going to a club with people you don't know is always fun. you meet new people, can have crazy adventures - you don't know the people, so you don't know what to expect in any way. the thing is, its good to be well prepared for it, and by that i mean swiss army knife survival pack packed with some good protein which is light to carry and matches that can't get wet. oh wait - i mean well dressed. and as everyone knows - i love dressing up! you know, nice button down shirt with the collar that sits just right and the perfect shade of colors (hmm, light purple?) along with a good pair of jeans. and of course, of course, the shoes. so important.
by the way - its still me writing this blog - there hasn't been a transformation nor a kidnapping of the main blogger (yet anyways...).
so i met keren (the camel-loving baker from davis) and in order to go out with her and a few of her friends, and as it turned out a few of her friends friends. we headed out to a place called gossip that her brother who is a barman, called one of the hottest places in tel aviv. we get there and everyone is extremely well dressed and there is a huge line. and of course israeli lines are more like clusters of cells rapidly increasing and in intense competition for every resource, constantly pushing and moving fluidly, yet the steady state equilibrium is somewhat maintained with the cluster blocking the entrance and moving in uniform. seriously, if red blood cells learned to do this - there would be very little bleeding.
anyway, keren's friend says - no problem, hadas is joining us and she knows one of the bouncers. then hadas arrives, very well dressed like everyone else all around us. and you know the moment when you meet someone who is your friend's friend's friend - and they wonder what kind of person you are? a clubber? a serious dancer? will they enjoy the night drinking with you or is it going to be an intellectual philosophical type of evening that will go into the next morning in discourse of hume kafka and maoism? and by all of that i mean, they check out how you are dressed. well that moment occurred (more than once on this night) and the eyes travelled up and down. then they, the eyes, whatever color they were, whatever makeup was decorating their ambience, saw my sandals. my shoresh (teva-like), outdoorsy, kibutz/moshav-like, definitely not tel aviv-clubbing, sandals. and the verdict was passed.
i was quite amused, quite a few times (this happened on more than one occasion) .
on my defense - i didn't know we were going to a club. i mean, i would have at least worn socks! (not with sandals.. com'on!)
this lady really did get us through the line in no time. she is a mini celeb i was told, participated in israel's equivalence of the amazing race. many people came up to her and chatted with her through the night. the girls had very positive things to say about her afterwards, which was nice as usually celebs, or min celebs, really get the run through... she is the one on the right (huh, this is my effort on competing with TMZ!)

can read about them here a bit also (you might have to use google translator...)

some impressions from the club - cool place, though extremely packed and difficult to move around in - hence dance... they put on the black eyed peas tonight's going to be a good night, and as you know, in the song at some point they say 'mazal tov'. in that part, the dj silenced the song and let the entire bar yell in unison - mazel tov! (in american pronounciation rather than israeli mazel vs. mazal). finally, israelis love to clap, and not in order to say thank you at the end (but that also) but rather in the middle of a song to show excitement. so every now and then you would see a bunch of hands go up in the air and clap, clap, clap in rhythm to the song.

clap clap. clap.

hamachon - המכון

so, did you know what the top academic institution to work at, worldwide, is according to the-scientist? so number 1 is in dresden germany (the sister city of coventry...), a place pretty well known - the max planck institute. number 3? university of bristol - the place that right now i feel is my most likely location for next year. cambridge is in the top ten as is the university of toronto! but the second best place in the world? the weitzmann instittuion!!! (hamachon - the institute - is what the cool kids call it...) and i totally see it. its just so nice, so peaceful, i guess the salary is good (well, i know nothing of professor's salaries, but students get paid around 1700 USD per month, tax free and expenses are much lower than say, davis...) there is no undergrads around (that's gotta push it to the top :) ) and hence if there is any teaching, its at the grad level, which typically (at least in physics) means teaching master students. i already wrote a little bit about how green it is and how there are so many fruit trees (all citrus) adorning the institute (i picked lemons the other day, man, they smelled soooo sweet! i love lemons. first tree i plant in my yard.). on top of that the buildings are modern but a bit warm, some are brick-laced, especially those that are more social sciences (archaeology...), lots of statues, lots of open grassy areas. three decent, quite decent cafeterias - one meat, two milk/fish - kosher reasons, one restaurant/coffee place which is very good... its a really nice place.


also the dynamics with people is very different. a really simple example. uzy' wife's mom passed away last tuesday. the funeral was the next day (in jewish tradition you are not supposed to wait with this) and was quite far away (ok, in israel terms. this means two hours north - near the sea of galilee). uzy's group includes four phd students, one masters student, a postdoc from switzerland and myself. we all went to the funeral. all of us.

we made it a bit more of a day, did very little sight seeing, a short hike to a spring and made tea there - hence the picture. but still, that's pretty unique situation. i mean in the states, i didn't even know for a while of deaths in my advisor's family. those intra-personal distances in israel, if they exist at all, are very short...

from left to right, rami, yehonatan, me, idan, amit, fabien, amit

weitzmann it is...

now i have reached the holy land. and i didn't have to walk the desert for 40 years to do it. just stay in a lot of welsh rain for a long time...

the weitzmann institute in israel (home of the most recent nobel laureate in chemistry!!!) is a very nice place. its green and hilly, with buildings hidden between brush and trees. there is a large orange grove and when the wind is right, you smell that wonderful citric flower fragrance. the particle accelerator is right near the grove and towers over it. from the train it looks like a dinosaur with the round head watching over. i tend to think it looks like snoopy also.

the institute (hamachon for those who know hebrew and want to sound cool) is a great escape for me from tel aviv. not that i dislike tel aviv, but its hard living at my grandparents which is where i am for the time being and tel aviv is a city. congestion, traffic, some smog, noise. so walking to the institute, straight from the train station - i fill my lungs with the cleaner air, the smell of the trees, the aromas of the oranges, the fragrances of the bio labs...

the physics building where i am is amazingly active. the colloquiums (have been to two so far) fill up the room completely (70+ seats) to the point that people sit on the stairs. people are friendly and nice, lots of internationals, and there are lots of cats that are running about, even inside the building. today a black cat crossed my path, and immediately i thought... wait wait wait, no superstitions, i immediately wondered if it was schrodinger's cat, and then poof, it was half gone...

i received a visitor's pass to get through the magneticized gates as well as a key to my office (and a key to rami's office, uzy's student, which is right across... hee hee, power to me!!! *evil laughter fill the room* hillel is seen planning on stealing some, ahhhh, 8x11 print paper, from rami's office, ha ha ha!!!). i am in an office with an italian guy, right next to uzy's office. i leave the door open as a check on myself that people can see if i am not working. boy what a system... self discipline to the max!!!

next - living situation, once again... decision this time? tel aviv, close to family, close to some friends (not many, but what i have here for now), close to good food, close to zilber (brother), close to action.
or rehovot - close to work, more serene city, greener, closer to nature, closer to work friends.

eh?

Coventry

Blogger’s note: this blog will be more of a diary entry describing a short trip to Coventry/University of Warwick via a hodgepodge of anecdotes, rather than the recent ups and downs of our narrator.

Dear blog-gery, there is much to say, much that has been happening lately, but I want to avoid all of that and concentrate on the little short trip that included a very nice conference. You know how it is, sometimes telling a story is dealing directly with reality, sometimes it’s a plotted escape. This is not exactly the latter, but its definitely in that ballpark.

From last Wednesday till this Sunday I was at the university of warwick, at a 60th birthday conference. It seemed that this conference was organized rather quickly which had the effect that only people who could afford coming from afar attended, along with a small group of ‘locals’. At the end of the day this meant that there were few people at the conference, all of them quite important and distinguished (read: ‘veterans’ of the profession…) and of course, me.
So I got to rub shoulders with some of the great minds of statistical mechanics, share note pads with innovators of selective random walks, drink beer with mathematicians that could describe many governing communist bodies – and in fact, chair a session and mispronounce some exotic names.
Ok, and now a bit of nerdiness - the math department at the university of warwick (as middle of nowhere as it gets in England (yes, it is England, not Wales…)) is incredible! The building is huge and modern, with lots of open space, high ceilings and light. The common room is two floors connected by stairs and an open balcony, spacious, inviting, and – excitingly, with huge blackboards! And overall, I was somehow inspired to do work while being there. In fact, I had never come back from a conference before with so much motivation to work! I am always so exhausted from attempting to concentrate so hard for 8 hours, trying to understand so many different details, so varied talks… but no, this time I came back motivated and energetic. And so far – its lasted three days! Amazing, I know. Maybe the university of warwick is in my future? Ok, we are not talking about that now…
The city of Coventry, where the university of warwick is located was heavily bombed during world war II, during the blitz. The reasoning being a jet factory. Circa 10,000 people died. The city was quite levelled. In response the brits bombed Dresden. There was a famous cathedral here from gosh, maybe the 13th century, of great importance that got a brunt of the bombing. It was located in the center of town. The walls of it still stand. The roof is gone, the inside is gone for the most part except for a few things that remained, such as some stairs. One of the towers was left completely standing. It’s a very strange place to visit, very powerful. Has that ghostly feeling of war and destruction and things that remained behind afterwards.

Interestingly, right next to it stands the new cathedral. Built in a very modern style, has no resemblance to the skeleton that it stands next to.



Inside, there is an inscription from the people of Dresden, speaking of peace and forgiveness. Coventry provided money to Dresden for its reconstruction and Dresden did the same for Coventry.

No where is it mentioned that the germans were responsible for what happened. The words forgiveness are seen throughout the cathedral.
I found this very interesting. I am not comparing this in any way to the holocaust or to Israel, but just observing that the words associated with the holocaust in Israel are do not forgive and do not forget. Again, this is not a judgement just an observation, something to think about…

Work

well, the overwhelming response(s) all said more about me. i was feeling like i was writing too much about me, me, me me me. and its hard cause i want to hear more about you in a sense, but blogging i guess is not really so much a two-way (or many-way) communication path...

ok, work. so, there has been a good amount of drama at work. and writing this down here will essentially guarantee that i won't open my blog up to the public. so let me begin with this, the major players in this story will be:
michael levitin: russian, late 40's - early 50's, russian, beard, two kids (one in cambridge, one finished uni), math professor at cardiff.
uzy smilansky: israeli, mid 60's, goatee, two kids, maybe three, at least two of which live in the UK, physics professor at weitzmann institute as well as a 1/4 position in cardiff.
marco marletta: italian, yet scottish accent, mid 40's, beard, no kids, math professor in cardiff.
hillel raz: israeli, yet american accent with faint traces of a crazyland, late-late 20's, thin beard, no kids, three year position at cardiff uni.

the setting: a three floor (two floor in the UK...) brick building on Senghennydd road (go for it, try to pronounce that... nope, try again). a cloudy day, rain plus sun, welsh and english accents heard in the street below. in the far distance, sheep are grazing in the meadows.

marco knocks on hillel's office door. hillel who is busy, tells marco he'll come in a sec. in his office marco tells hillel that uzy called and asked that hillel call him. hillel finds this strange. he has communicated with uzy plenty, via skype, via email. why is a third person involved? marco looks at hillel and says, you know why he wants to speak to you, no? close the door.

dramatic music onset.

so michael is 99% leaving the department. he has received an offer from reading university. this is due to personal reasons (and he hates cardiff). of course we would love for you to stay in the department.

huh? hillel's face expresses shock.

back in his office hillel considers the situation. will he have to leave cardiff to reading (just outside of london, not very exciting in any way shape or form - though oscar wilde was jailed there once!)? he is just beginning to maybe settle in cardiff, build some foundations. and yes, non of them are strong, still alone most of the time but getting better. move again? and into england? not excited.

hillel calls uzy. uzy talks about work. mentions nothing about michael.

days pass.

a weekend passes.

michael comes back from london (he spends essentially every weekend there, plus most of the weekdays). comes into hillel's office. does a couple minute talk of work. then asks hillel to close the door.

i will be leaving the department march 1st , michael informs hillel. personal reason. but nothing for you to worry about. the grant stays here. i'll be available by skype. we'll be able to meet every now and then. uzy will be coming to the department soon. nothing for you worry about. if you need, you can come and cry on my shoulder.
smile, leaves the office.

uzy speaks to hillel the next day. essentially repeating the same information. nothing for you to worry about. the grant stays, i'll be coming to cardiff.

hillel begins to think about this, realizing that michael esentially had applied for a job after hillel accepted the position, keeping this information hidden from uzy and himself.

a few good days later. uzy essentially tells hillel that there is no point in working with michael, that he is a bit of a dry well, has been for a while. the personal issues have affected his work and...

uzy advises hillel that he can come to israel for as long as he wants to.

hillel purchases a ticket to israel, planning on coming back to cardiff to spend two months with michael and see how things proceed. he goes back and forth on this decision, wondering maybe he should just stay in israel where he'll have family support, a friend network and people to talk to at work. on the other hand, hillel doesn't want to give up on the small foundation he has built in cardiff. these things take time, he reminds himself, so don't give up on what you have done and what may still be. on the other hand, create the best work situation possible for yourself and allow room for maneuvering.

and so, hillel will be on his way to israel november 30th. return flight set for january 25th, yet all of february has been cleared from any and all obligations and hillel may remain longer in israel.

hmmm, thinks hillel, more sunshine, less cold, more falafel, less fish and chips. this may still be a good idea...

work? that is a different equation that remains unsolved.

piano sonata number 14 by beethoven, comes on as the light fades. sounds of rain in the background. a red dragon is flashed for 1/10 a second as the music fades out.

YOU

this blog is about .... you.

why not? i have writing about me for so long, its getting kind of boring. i want to write about you, give you some facebook type numbers, throw some statistics out at you (and as you know, 92.3% of the time you can make 73.14% of the statistics mean anything you want!). so here we go... some numbers to begin with:

number of readers: 48
people with multiple email addresses listed: 3
people that haven't accepted invitation: 1
people whose invitation has been removed cause they hadn't accepted it for so long: 1 (not the same person as above... so far...)
different countries represented: 6 (none from the UK... don't want to be writing about people and my life with them and then have them read it and change things...)

number of blog followers: 18
followers with pictures: 4

total number of comments: 82
day with most comments: first blog entry, day before leaving..., with 7
second most comments: 6, occurred twice - blogs about food and judaism. hmm...
number of entries with no comments: 1
person with most comments: not even close, penguinrobot leads the pack with 23, sonya is second with 11. duck and frog, with 10, started very strongly and led for the first two months... then we have neta with 7, lisa w 6...
some others of interest: two comments have been removed by their authors (suspicious???). for a person that has only commented three times total, rohit has commented twice on the same blog that dealt with Cymraeg (Welsh) and spoke of leeks... 6 comments are attributed to hillel raz though the narrator claims to have only written one of them... three comments are in hebrew, two in welsh. one comment by the narrator is an answer to a question written by a reader (stronger effort will be made to answer all of your questions...)


future topics:
the narrator thought about a few future topics, amongst them - going out at night in cardiff, beer in cardiff, pubs in cardiff, late night food in cardiff (hmm, strong theme here, eh?), math department, driving/bike riding...
are their any topics you would be interested in reading about? please do mention them and the narrator (nagged by the group of editors and pushed by the investors threats) will comply.

finally, a reader suggested that the blog be made public. if you have opposition to this, or thoughts on the matter, please share...

Welsh

i began an intensive 5 day Welsh course, two hours a day (of which i missed four hours...). this was paid for by the uni and had to be approved by the head of the department, a native son of the land of Wales. he tested me a couple of times. hmm, i am not sure i passed... but - let me tell you about the course.

so first thing, there were about 8 of us on the first day. that number was halved by the next day - not sure why. some people take Welsh for work - the elderly here do speak Welsh and sometimes are more comfortable with it. a couple of the students in my class were actually elderly Welshians, Welshies, Welshires (hmm, i'll have to choose a favorite) who had learned some Welsh back in their elementary school days or from their parents, and wanted to learn some more. cute seeing this 60+ year old man trying to remember how to count by going back to the technique he learned in kindergarten (i.e. fingers), and having strange associations to some words...

i enjoyed learning some words, hearing some sounds. one things that surprised me was the letter ll (its considered 'a' letter). the sound is like the 'ch' in hebrew/arabic, except not. so i thought it would be easy for me to pronounce. i was the worst in the class. see the 'ch' in hebrew, comes from the back of the throat. the 'll' comes from the side of the mouth and its a 'ch' followed by a 'l' sound in a way. and there is definite tongue action while pronouncing it. its a bit weird. the teacher repeatedly helped me with it...

the roots of the language are celtic, yet there are some words that i recognized from italian (i.e. latin roots) such as llun (which is monday - lunedi in italian, but not pronounced in any way similar to that...). its much more musical than english, and this also explains the welsh accent. in fact, rather than just listening to the teachers, i spent half of the class time trying to listen to the teachers' accent so i can immitate it...

there are some definite funnies from the language:

a week - wythnos (pronounced oyth-nos). so this is funny because wyth = 8, nos = night...
raining - (yeah, they taught us that for *some* reason...) bwrw glaw (pronounced boro glaw) - literal meaning? hitting rain.
daffodil - the flower, is the national flower of wales (flowers around the birthday of st. davids, the patron saint of wales, but that's not the reason i have it here...) cenhinen pedr (pronounced kenhinen pedr). now why would i mention this here? rohit would def appreciate this - literally, this translates into Peter's leek. yipe. because it obviously greatly resembles a leek, or maybe because everything here resembles a leek...

finally - we learned how to count! and we started with dim = 0... i found this interesting. they have installed a whole number system here rather than a natural one...


10 days of rain in a row (though non yet today!)

cardiff castle

The main structure in the city centre, peering over all roads, buildings and arcades (the closed shopping areas with narrow lanes, small shops and round roofs – usually glass – old school shopping style) is Cardiff castle. This castle is built over roman remains, of which very little remains… seriously, these remains are a few bricks that used to be a wall and a few other bricks that used to be a part of a road. The castle itself was rebuilt a few times and held by various nobility. Whether this means dukes, lords, sires or other knights – I am not exactly sure – but they probably all loved fish and chips and ate leeks that were way, way, way boiled.



In the 1800s a new noble man took over the castle, Bute was his name, and reconstructed it to what it is today. He put in a variety of decorations, spanning different decades, different periods, different styles – and different political statements. For instance, the library is full of little carved out monkeys, some with sunglasses, others making faces. They say this was a caricature poking fun of the famous Chuck Darwin who of course was born in Wales. (actually he wasn’t, but why not give it a try…).

The colours of the rooms are vivid, the drawings go between strange to amusing to biblical. Sometimes, they are all three at the same time. Lord Bute spent a lot of money on this castle bringing it to what it is. He put in rooms and named them names that can only be considered ridiculous now days, but back then must have had some sort of ‘noble-high’ meaning - names such as the bachelor room, the arab room… still, he only spent 6 weeks a year here…


The castle wall is extensive and covers a huge area. One can only imagine peasants back in the day sneaking in on romantic adventures, to have a picnic in the castle grass. Now days, peasants are allowed in with a symbolic fee of 9 pounds – sometimes even to enjoy a cheese fair in the castle grounds! Either way, different animals guard the castle. The fact that these animals are made of concrete and have nothing to do with the ones that live in this country, do not stop them from protecting the castle, intimidating babies, and causing tourists to stop and take pictures with them. Ahem.

Bute did a lot for Cardiff, from reconstruction of the castle, to rebuilding parts of the city and to simply spending money here. A huge and beautiful park stands behind the castle with massive green areas and a river running through it. Its really beautiful and has traditional English gardens, colourful and wintery, all year long. The park is called, naturally, Bute park. Its one of the nicer parts of the city and follows the river for a bit of time. In fact, there is a bike trail called the taft trail (having to do with river in Welsh) which follows the river through the park, and then eventually out of town.

3 days of rain in a row.

jewish cardiff plus other bits...

so the high holidays came and went and i went to synagogue and then came back again (see the word play?! eh eh... yeah its kind of weak... but its late here so i'll give myself the benefit of doubt). so for rosh hashana (5770 baby!) i went with ronen the falafel guy. the synagogue i went to was the orthodox one which is led by a chabad rabbi, but its not a chabbad synagogue. cardiff has two synagogues (the joke about two synagogues is true...) the second one is reform and is led supposedly by a woman that has converted to judaism and has great legs and wears mini skirts (i have been told this by a non-jewish english man who married an israeli lady...). there were maybe 30 people there, three women. see, its orthodox but not hardcore - the women are facing the men and the mehitza (the dividing wall) is made of glass. so there is definite distraction going on... the people who showed up were mostly old men. not many youngsters. the rabbi is an english chap from manchester who studied computer science before becoming religious. has 5 kids now - and his wife is still young... he took a liking to me, and don't tell me that it's just because he is a chabad rabbi, darnit! anyway, i had dinner at his house that evening and met some of the israelies that work in cardiff. they all work in the carts at the mall selling dead sea products or hair stuff that provide curls. i guess the brits love curls (correction - i know the brits love curls, i went out with one of the israelies to a few clubs and he has a head full of curls and man, the girls were just magnetized to his head).
anyway, a funny thing about the synagogue. now i have seen a good number of synagogues in a few countries, and all of them take something from the local land in style - either in architecture, decorations, etc. in this synagogue, of course the accents were welsh - which was cute, to hear hebrew prayers in a welsh accent. the synagogue itself is quite new - 2002 - so the style is nothing in particular. but there is a special prayer on the wall - for the queen. in hebrew. i found this quite amusing.
the next week was yom kipur - the day of atonement. it was also the first day of school - but that's a completely different story. so i did what i usually do, and bought two puzzles in preparation. karen, one of the israelies that i met on rosh hashana, lives with a few other israelies who were not keeping the holiday, and wanted a place to fast, so she came and spent the night in my guest room. first guest!!! it was nice having someone to talk to through the holiday. someone i didn't know well (which means angry feelings of hunger and thirst could not come out... not that i was that hungry, but still). it was actually some what intimate to share yom kipur with someone. anyway - synagogue was more packed this time. some kids even. and an older israeli lady who met me once, who the first night said that karen and i are a great match, and the next evening called me over and said that she chatted with her a little bit and decided that maybe she is not that great of a match for me... ahhh, israelies.
some interesting cultural differences. not all the men wear talis here (the white cloth that goes over the shoulders, sometimes heads, worn in synagogues on special days when the torah is taken out). only the ones that are married or have been married. thats the cultural custom. i brought mine the first time and was asked if i am married.
the community, which i saw a bit more of on yom kipur, is not large. i was told it might be around 3000 people. of course when people hear you are from israel, they all want to tell you about the last time they went, what they saw, that their daughter is moving there, that their son studied there, etc. all in a welsh accent of course... the rabbi's accent though is manchesterian (?), which means all right he says all rice.
i told all my friends here about the holidays - they know very little here about judaism. in the states there are so many jewish references in pop culture, i now realize, here very few. so its interesting to tell people about rosh hashana - impress them with 5770 (2009, com'on...) and a full day of fasting.
the puzzles if you are asking were not too difficult. one was 250 of a maze, so i thought it'd be tough, but it wasn't too bad once you got the idea. the other had a ridiculous sky - completely dark, but besides that was quite easy.

finally - here are some photos -
bought some new kitchen ware, went to a fancy kitchen store. so fun. my new attitude is - i am getting paid a bit better than before, i can afford to pay a bit more for higher quality things. it begins in the kitchen!!!

my first making of schug. here is the UK version of the green monster...

and finally - swine flu is such a big deal here. here is a poster in the math department:

you are supposed to have TWO flu buddies in case you catch the virus. and then you are not to leave your house, just call the doctor and if 3 of the 10 conditions are met, you have swine flu. use your buddy to protect yourself, protect us all. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

The valleys

cardiff is situated on the southeastern edge of wales, on the sea. north of it there are small mountains (huge in davis standards...) which create a nice network of valleys. now since i have arrived here i have been hearing about the valleys. for one, there is a definite stereotype of the valley people - and its slightly different than like 'the valley' in l.a.... the stereotypes say that the valley people are the ones who descend on cardiff every weekend and get smashedly drunk. they are the uneducated, ignorant fools that cause fights. half of the teenage girls there are pushing baby carts (ok, this stereotype is somewhat rooted in reality, the valley and wales in general have one of the highest (i think second) teenage pregnancy rates in europe). anyway, not a pretty picture do the people of cardiff have of the valley folk.
a bit of history, and some geography - the valley used to be a prime mining area. before WW2, they housed the world's highest concentration of mineral, metal, coal mines. now these mines closed, some before WW2, hastened by the great depression (or whatever they call it here...) and then during the war some were opened, yet heavily bombed. and then over time, more closed, with margaret thatcher really pushing some buttons against the miners when she tried to squash a strike. anyway, almost all of them are closed to actual mining. there are many museums and mines that you can go down to, and see what it was like (one is called the Big Pit, i am totally going to that one!!!). and there are rusty factories left and some other abandoned industrial buildings.
so this is the impression i have of the valleys from travel guides and locals. ready? here we go... (yeah, i know you can see these before, but still...)




doesn't exactly carry the written stories image... amazingly green. amazingly lush. soft hills with sharp cuts of the actual valleys, filled with large neighborhoods of villages that became towns. its not suburbia in any way, there are definitely rusty factories and beat up old buildings. it doesn't seem as if the hand of the government that sprinkles money on some areas has been generous with this part. the people i saw definitely had that roughness edge to them. cut up dirty t's. tattoos of the non-surfer, chinese letters variety (try not perfectly done scorpions, probably carved in a mid-drunkness state). definitely lots of teenage mothers pushing baby carts. and generally, a rougher look, i mean that's just the best word.
so at the end, you get this beautiful surrounding soft green hills, beautiful trees, white dotted prairies (the white dots = sheep...) and the roughness of what used to be mine towns, moving towards the 21st century (at 20th century speed, at best...). very interesting.

some Welsh beauty

all right, so this will be the first installment of what i am hoping will be many trip reviews of Wales. and this one, will be a photo entry more than anything else.
let me introduce this by saying that since i have arrived, people have been telling me that the beaches here are beautiful. so beautiful that one of them won the best beach in europe award. so i nod, and i smile, and i say wow, but inside i am thinking, whatever, there is no way anything here compares to california. these brits must be crazy. anyways, so a week and a half ago i decided that i needed to see some green, some fresh non-city air. so i managed to get my only friend with a car to drive me, herself (susanne) and claire (the irish) to Gower, the lower southwestern corner of Wales that happens to be a peninsula. its not far, but it would be far via public transport as the nearest city is the relatively famous Swansea, but after that - its the Gower peninsula which is still very farm-ish and even though it enjoys a good amount of tourism, still has maintained its old school charm. we arrived in an area that was full of grass, speckled with cow crap (for good measure...) and berries. everywhere - blackberries. and they were yum. so i trailed behind the girls as we walked towards the cliffs, making sure that i'll enjoy a good berry-ache that evening. the trail was quite easy and full of very pasty british folks walking athletically, or at least pretending. when we reached the cliffs - the horizon that opened in front of us was incredible. the water was this crystalline blue, the greenness of the cliffs mixed with the brown bronze of the rocks and the yellow-orangeness of the sand. it was quite beautiful.





(remark: while i look pretty cool down there on the edge of the cliff, if i can say so myself (which i will - in fact, already did!!!), in truth, i only went down there because a runaway clementine decided to roll down the cliffs and got stuffed by a welsh bush)

following the cliffs to the right of the pictures, which was east, led us to a beach called 'three cliffs bay'. if you look closely, you can kind of see a dragon. and i mean kind of. but still.
the water = very cold. the sand = very soft. the tan = what tan?




and of course, every spot in wales has some old castle that has remained from sometime ago and some legend associated with it (the one for this one had to do with a fairy princess marrying a commoner, who then proceeded to get drunk and him and his friends saw lights coming to the party and ambushed them, thinking they were enemies, but of course it was the fairy contingency, so the fairy king said that they will be covered with sand from then and on)


from there we went on to rhossili beach (sounds italian, admit it!!!). this is on the eastern edge of the peninsula, kind of close to ireland - though you can't see ireland from there. and this is where the surfing happens. again, i was quite dubious - and as opposed to the beaches, i remain at least somewhat dubious. the waves i saw would be the equivalent of bathtub waves. seriously. a rubber duckie would not be threatened by these.
anyway, so the size was small, but as they say... the shape was beautiful and the break clean and long. so i can see that if there were some bigger waves, that would be quite a good beach to surf on.
the southern edge of the beach is cut by cliffs which extend far into the sea. the end of this extension is called worm head - and i can kind of see the worm head from the game worms... though no body shared this sentiment with me, i'll hold down the fort. its actually kind of cool to hike there as there are only certain hours in which you can cross to worm head - other times the tide is too strong and its dangerous. supposedly, people die there every year.







so, more beautiful than california? why get into comparisons. but pretty for sure, no?

some more firsts

some anecdotes from the past week. (i have lots of stories and photos but will save them till the next blog)

keys. so after about three weeks here, i have now received an office key. i know, i know, you are impressed with the british (welsh) efficiency, but hold on for a sec.
every day, the porter had to walk with me upstairs and open my office door for me. com'on, that's respect. and then in the evening, the second porter (there are two of them and they switch shifts once a week, so i've learned...) would go upstairs and lock my office door. i mean, that's service, right? and well, maybe they got tired of this a bit, so eventually the computer guy, who here is responsible for office keys as well for a very valid and logical reason, which i haven't figured out yet, decided that as an incoming postdoc, from the united states nevertheless - i do not deserve such regal treatment. so he came upstairs with a screw driver and a different lock in his hand and took out the actual lock in my door and replaced it with a different one. one that turned out to be unlocked by the key to the copy room. but shhh, let's keep this secret to ourselves, hee hee, only you know that the key to the copy room also opens your office, and hence anyone in the building with sufficient access can essentially get into your office, hee hee, but the joke is on them.
right.
so two days ago, mike the computer guy, comes upstairs again with a different lock in his hand and... well, i now have two keys. one for my old lock, and the copy room still, and one for my new lock... and of course the next day i proceed to lock myself out. of my home though... impressive efficiency here so far with regards to these things...

accents. accents. so much to say about accents. the welsh accent is more musical than the english one. it goes up and down and in a way is more cheerful, less proper. or maybe that's just in my head.
i have gotten a lot better at understanding the different accents of the british empire, and parts which the rest of the world considers the british empire (i.e. ireland). still, its quite hard at time. so the accents in descending order of difficulty:
scottish (ay = yes... chub him in the fuds = ahh, i am not translating that...) > yoga lady who spoke a form of english (i think) but had a microphone close to her mouth that muffled her words (i just looked at jo the entire time and did what she did. she was quite amused that i couldn't understand a word this woman said... ah jo, so little do you know) > irish > english (these vary amongst regions and classes, couldn't really tell identify them yet, but can definitely tell that they are different) > welsh (supposedly northern welsh is very different) > russian (most common accent/language spoken in the math department, sto?) > german (second most common accent in math dep, they speak american english for the most part though)
and if you ask me to imitate a welsh accent, i still can't do it. but they say wales by really opening their mouth on the W, a bit like as if from your lips open for a whistle, you reach back with your lips to scratch the back of your jaw. that's how the mouth moves anyway. then there is an H sound in there, so it's like whaaayles (and yes, i know this makes some of you very happy (i.e. canad) that they pronounce it in a way similar to whale). meanwhile, their language - i am learning a good number of things. gemma who has welsh roots has been teaching me a bit - the double LL is pronounced CL, with the C a bit dirty, kind of like a scratching the throat sound. the vowels? oy, the vowels. well, the Y is an 'A' as in car. the U is 'I' (let's have it with the 'put U and I together...) as in sink. so CYMRU (which is wales in welsh is pronounced CAMRI, with the I at the end trailing into an E a bit...). two DD are 'F', but in a more 'TH' kind of pronunciation...


anyway, i am planning on taking welsh lessons so eventually, in you know, three years maybe, i'll be able to truly pronounce things and then hope to 1) teach how to pronounce some of these crazy words 2) imitate a welsh accent...

social life. well - this past week and a half have been much more difficult. the excitement of the newness has drifted a bit. and now most days are filled mostly with office and white board, and then home, both of which for the time being are alone. so it's a bit empty. but i am finding fun things to do - found a yoga class with an impervious accent, a meditation class in a room with a giant wooden buddha, looking for ceramics class... so things will eventually pick up. i am optimistic! :)

meanwhile - tonight is new year's (jewish new year's... anyone know the name of the 'jewish' calendar? the 'christian' one is the gregorian...) and i am going to go to a welsh synagogue. and tomorrow i am invited to the falafel guy's place for a party. so that hopefully will be fun! and meanwhile - happy new year, whether or not you celebrate it! hope that this year brings happiness, health and peace to all. and if it happens to also bring you to wales - merry merriness!!!

address, house warming, farmer's market and... RSS Feed!!!

i am feeling pictorial, feeling graphic (well, that's not a good description ;) but not wordy)- so this one will be mostly pictures...
i really like my flat. and it has gotten the most positive reviews - though everyone says that the single room is just a tad bit small... though the bedrooms i have seen here are quite large typically, so in comparison it is small - but its definitely livable.
i hosted a house warming party saturday night, which was attended by about half the people i know in cardiff (that's either impressive, or pathetic, so i'll let you decide...). more interestingly is the collection of nationalities. there is a small international group that i have joined that consists of two polish girls, a belarussian lady, a peruvian guy (my new drinking buddy!), a sri lankan dude, a french guy (he has left meanwhile... no comment), and now me. and from the mathS department, there were three germans that came and an irish (if you are from ireland, no matter boy, girl, lamb, sheep - they call you irish) - and then we had to throw in the random english person, and indian lady that is friends of the flat owners and has my house keys. and that was essentially my party... and i made out with a bounty of alcohol at the end of the evening which is always nice!!! (of course, like any good party, it had to be broken up... by the downstairs neighbors. hmm. talk about first impressions, not going so well with them so far...)


sunday i went to the farmer's market here, well the larger one which is in what used to be an overrun area known as riverside. the farmer's market was a a historical first in the U.K. as it took what used to be a pretty bad area and made it much nicer. its not a large farmer's market, in davis terms, nor does it have much fruit and vegetables (i counted four stalls). it does have lots of ready food - lamb-burgers, persian food, egyptian food, cheese and non-prepared meat, olives. anyway, it was cute and nice. gemma was my guide - a very sweet girl i met at noelle's place (the girl from the flat that i went to visit). she explained things to me, recommended the french bread, the goat cheese and told me about bike trails. enough said.





noelle (on the left) met us for a cup of tea later on.

finally - my address is
51 Connaught Road
Flat 2
Cardiff United Kingdom
CF24 3PU

my phone number 07835 953 734 (44 is the country code i think, and i think you do not need to dial the 0...)
and, and, AND - i have advanced technologically to the point that i have managed to allow an RSS Feed!!! and i will not discuss the narcissistic nature of a person who puts an RSS on their own blog... oh forget it.

my house

well, before i get to the title of this post, let me just say that saturday was an incredible day here. and i know, you are now thinking, what could have possibly happened to make it an incredible day? did you meet a beautiful girl hillel? well, i did meet some girls, i think, on saturday, but nothing that dramatic.
maybe now you are thinking - hmm, some incredible food place? ehh, no. those are far and in between so far here - though i have found two good pakistani places which i am quite happy about.
so what else could it be? got another guess? let's hear it.
nope. that's not it either.
one last one? no? that's it? ok, fine i'll tell you. saturday, was incredible here because - it didn't rain! for the whole day!!! the entire day, no rain! not one single drop of water falling from the sky!!! and yes, in case you are wondering - the entire country stopped still! a national holiday was declared and everyone came out into the streets and danced the night away with a pint of Welsh beer (Brains) and pery (Welsh pear cider). anyway, i now must tell a story. so the English have obviously imperialized (almost) the entire world, and would they leave their little neighbors to the East alone? of course not. so often, very often, they crossed the Welsh border on their way to conquer the little Welsh land, full of lambs and leeks. yet every time the soldiers crossed the border, from grey England, into green Wales - the skies would immediately begin pouring. they would cross back into England where it was dry, and then again - a foot into the Wales border - and wham, rain. due to this the English soldiers decided that the Welsh king was a magician (there is some history there as Merlin, king Arthur's wizard, is based on a Welsh figure called Myrddin Emrys. have fun trying to pronounce that...)
anyway, just to finish that story - i want to mention that it has rained every single day i have been here (except for saturday, except for saturday!!!) but it has also been sunny essentially every day (minus two). so, the following weather forecast is quite accurate...



ok, now house. note that i haven't said home. that will take sometime for sure. but for now its nice. its very nice no longer having to live out of a bag and to be able to use a kitchen. the kitchen at the other place was just nasty. so after cleaning it every time i wanted to make a sandwich, i got a bit sick of it. i also realized that yes, i brought too much stuff. for instance - too many books. ok that may be excusable. but too many shoes? that's not like me. and too many nice shirts, like buttons and stuff? strange, very strange. this was the byproduct of not knowing how to dress in europe and well, too many nice clothes being gifted to me. and that's my excuse.
so i still haven't said much about my place. well, let me start by saying that my room = orange. yipe. orange.

and right next to it is the guest room, equipped with a sofa-bed, a desk, a closet and .... - a Winnie the Pooh lamp!!! yipe, you know you want to come visit.

from there, a very narrow and yellow hall leads to the front door. right above it - there is an excitement! yes, excitement! this excitement is a small door in the ceiling, that when opened shows a folded ladder, that when unfolded leads into a very large attic!!! large enough for a family to live in!!! ok, now that's not that nice of a reference considering the history of people hiding in attics. but the attic is cool. trust me.

the hall turns to the right, where immediately on your right there is the bathroom, nice compact and simple. then a couple of stairs up and another narrow hall on your left,


which will lead you into the living room - a very large, spacious and well lit living room. definitely one of the selling points of the place. right before it, on the right, the kitchen invites you in (hopefully with a variety of yummie aromas and sizzling sounds).



the building houses four apartments. it probably was a big house that was divided into four - i say this based on the narrow hall in my place. here it is from the outside, 51 Connaught...

one day, home... hopefully soon.