Voldemort and I

In the last Harry Potter, darling wizard Harry tackles the seemingly impossible mission of locating different Horcruxes and attempting to destroy them in his road of finishing Lord Voldemort once and for all. See, Voldemort realized that in order to increase his chances of survival, he should divide his soul and install pars of it in different objects, or a snake – the Horcruxes. This is done with mal-intent, of course, I mean he is Lord Voldemort, the one-who-should-not-be-named, the one who believes in purity of the wizard race, the true leader of the dark side (oh wait, wrong movie). He partitions his soul by killing people, his soul divided into smaller parts and in consequence his whole being suffers as it cannot be complete.
In my life I have formed a few very close friendships. And I’d like to think that I have shared part of my soul with them. Of course I can say some of those friendships have been with objects, like my dear old bike Totto and my new bike E (I have an aversion of snakes so we’ll stop there and cheer Saint Patrick – who, naturally, was born in Wales!!!), but the strong deep connections, those also give back and enrich my soul via this exchange, have been with humans, and of course, some pets. I have also divided my soul. And I can say that it has hurt my wholeness, especially with these great distances that now separate me from many of my loved ones (cheesy moment, I suggest Caerphilly cheddar, a great Welsh cheese).
How different is this partition of the soul than Voldemort’s? It is also a mechanism for survival. The process is more dynamic than dividing the soul with an object, and is based on an expected exchange. Yet that exchange is rarely equivalent on both sides, and this sometimes does lead to pain and hurt. Maybe Voldemort just wanted love and was denied this, and hence shared his intimacies with a snake and a small diary?
Maybe we have misunderstood Lord Voldemort all this time and Harry is the bastard…

Mystery

Tuesday, 6 pm, London. More than 11,000 tube workers, members of the tube union (?) walked out to protest plans to robotize some 800 jobs. The strike is meant to continue for over 24 hours, till Thursday morning. Over ground traffic increased, many folks learned how to use their feet in ways long forgotten and buses were overloaded.

Wednesday morning, 8:00 am, still London. Hillel arrives in the midst of rush hour to one of the main lines to find out that it is not shut completely. Rather, the stops where no connections between different lines meet are completely skipped and a couple of the main lines are not running at all.

Enjoying the experience of being in London, H doesn’t pay much attention to the rather sour mood of many of the fellow passengers. Due to the onslaught of people, he misses the first one he tries to get on. For maybe the first time in the UK, he has to push his way onto a train. Eventually, many people get of and H gets an actual seat. A well dressed man sits next to him and starts chatting with him.

Now this is pretty rare in the tube, where most people seem to carry with them glass boxes which block out all others peeping into their private space and accidentally knocking their bags. But still, H engages. The man asks H about the tube strike and what his reaction was to it when he heard it will be happening. Did he get upset and annoyed or did he just go on his regular plans as usual?

H is wondering whether to tell the man that he actually doesn’t live in London but rather in Cardiff, that capital city in the well shaded areas away from the English limelight. But instead he simply responds that he just went along with his plans. No point in getting annoyed, transit can still be made and a bit of delay will not affect things greatly. The man proceeded to chat more, to which H responded with short yes’s and no’s. At this point the man turns to H and says, why do I feel that for some reason you work in mathematics?

H is a bit shocked. Huh? What in his answers gave that away? Was this man following him? Did a math paper leak out of H’s bag? Huh again? The man begins to explain. H gets up as the train has arrived at his station and the man gets up with him, they both exit as the man begins explaining. Suddenly he looks around and says, wait, this is not my station, and runs back into the train.

Mystery unsolved.

the longest town name in the UK

Llanfairpwllgwyngyll is the short version, and even that is already impossible for ordinary immortals outside of the phlegm-spitting-land of Wales to pronounce. Double L's are pronounced as a mixture of the Hebrew/Arabic ch with an 'l' sound mixed at the end, which my Welsh teacher instructed me, comes from the right-back of the mouth. W is an 'oo' sound except with a 'y' attached to it when it becomes like in simple American English, as in wind... but why am I even spending time on this name, this isn't the full town name!!! Try your hands (mouths) at this,

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

yeah. maybe these pictures will help a bit,



the town received its name when the train was built from somewhere in England to Holyhead at the edge of Wales and quite close to Ireland (a port from which lots of boats leave towards the green land of ire) and this village was chosen as a station. a group of astute businessmen decided to give the town, a very boring little place with not much there, a name that would attract tourists. and what better than a name that has 58 letters in the english alphabet (51 in the welsh one...)? and well, even some welsh folk can't really pronounce it.

but this very nice lady from the tourist info was able to (and no she is not reading it from a piece of paper, but straight from memory!!!).



the town itself? a big shopping center which amazingly attracts loads of tourists simply due to its name! (hmm, yeah, we went there as well due to this fact).



the longest name in the world for a place? Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu, a hill in New Zealand... if you really want to count - 85 letters!!!

Makeup sex

You know that feeling you have when you are breaking up with someone? That rock that is stuck somewhere in your throat, that heaviness in your chest? The feeling that you just need to end this, to finish this chapter of your life and move on, and then things will be better, the rock will be gone, the heaviness will dissipate? I have had this feeling once in my life, and have had it described to me on the receiving end once as well. And well, yesterday I had it, again.

With math.

It just seemed that every minute I was able to concentrate and think about the mathematical concept I was exploring (having to do with discrete graphs and the way they are divided into smaller graphs by a specific function), was followed by a moment of misery, with the rock in my throat, the heaviness in my chest. This was followed by a few minutes of the mind wandering in unfocused domains and by a few minutes of tracking and redirecting it. And then the cycle continued. Man, talk about efficacy and productivity.
So yeah, it seemed that the break-up was inevitable, we’d both continue in our separate directions. Somehow, I imagined that math would manage just ok on its own. It would be able to use strong, clear-cut logic to understand what had succumbed, to deduce that this was the best step forward, and to systematically continue on its rational path. I? I would be more of a humming bird searching for its GPS till it understands that it has been carrying it for quite some time.

And then today happened. Today? Makeup sex.

German Housemate and Holocaust Books

Andreas was one of Alex’s housemates when I initially crashed there about a year ago while looking for an apartment. He then finished his masters, minus the viva (the defense) and had moved to Spain. He had asked to come and crash with me when he had to come back to defend his thesis and I promptly agreed, assuming that at most we were talking about two weeks.
Wrong.
*********
I hadn’t read a Holocaust book in maybe 15 years. I always found them very depressing to read and hence struggled reading at my favorite time, before going to bed. This always lengthened greatly how long it would take me to finish one of these books. So I just simply avoided reading them after I went through the period in which my thirst of knowledge about my history and my people was great.
Then these past few months suddenly I read not one but two Holocaust books. Of course this had to occur when I shared my humble abode with a German friend, Andreas. Now let me say a few more about Andy German as he is listed in my mobile. He is a very very nice guy. He is also quite big as he does judo and is very fit. And strong. Shoot, the guy is strong. And just to set the scene, he does have blond hair and blue eyes. Not implying anything at all here, but just saying. Masha in the math department, did ask me once if there was anything weird about him or curiously wrong with him, just searching for a flaw, because how could someone be, in her words, so perfect, smart, strong, nice.
**********
The first book I read was a gift I got from the lovely Jo for my birthday, everything is illuminated. This book deals with a Jewish American guy who returns to Ukraine to explore his family’s roots. It describes the discrimination and conditions that the Jews there lived with before the war, and the horrors of what happened during the war. It also coincided with me finding out that most likely my maternal grandmother’s family (Guralnik) comes from Ukraine.

The second book, I picked up while visiting my fam in San Diego. It’s an Israeli book written by a contemporary author I recently discovered, and its called Our Holocaust. It talks about the author’s life (it seems biographical...) in the great shadow of the Holocaust, from growing up with his entire neighborhood seemingly composed of survivors who would not tell him their stories remarking, you are too young to understand. Then as a grown man, each one of them recounts his traumatic story of survival and the memories of those who didn’t. The book also deals with the fact that Germany somehow did not really prosecute fully a lot of the people who participated in the Holocaust and released many that were prosecuted, after very short sentences. It is a very powerful and moving book. This as I explained above, means its harder for me to read it - I still haven't finished it…

**********
Andy ended up staying for two months. Since during one of these months I ended up in the states, our shared time in the flat was not that long. And he was a very well behaving flatmate. Very quiet, relatively clean and helped out with a lot of the house chores. Still, many-a-time, I found myself angry with him. Almost always, for no apparent reason. It was one of those angers that is a volcanic interruption waiting to happen from the very core of your soul, a purely emotional and neurotic-like reaction. One of those that shakes your stability and makes you think you don’t really know yourself as well as you thought you do.
Now I never did actually erupt or release any ash, smoke or lava. And I am not sure Andy ever noticed the build-up that was occurring to me as I was flipping pages, but still. The mere fact that it was there, in this way, was a very new experience to me.

that volcano thing.

email to department from prof. M.M.:
Subject Seminars and volcanos
Dear Colleagues,
This week's seminar has been cancelled due to the lack of flights from
Germany to the UK.
It may be re-scheduled for early May.

from facebook (via dr. D. S.): Can you see the ash cloud from Eyjafjallajokull? Can you pronounce Eyjafjallajokull?

text message from G. C.: Due 2 a volcanic eruption in iceland my dads flight has been cancelled,so he's crashing here another night.I'm sorry,i can't make the cinema. U around tomorrow?

final note. iceland owns the UK lots of money. the joke here is that instead of paying with cash, they decided to pay with ash.

Riding into the sunset

We woke up from our nicely hidden camping site between a canal and the river connecting the many lochs. I remember Lyonell asking me about farts. Asking how I was reacting to the food of the previous night. What do you mean I am not supposed to be writing stuff like this in a blog? So you don’t want to know my answer? Fine. I’ll skip it.
The second day included a lot of of-roading. Some serious of-roading in fact, to the point that a road bike would not be able to make this trip.

Of course the shocks on the front of Escriptius Robustus were quite handy. The trailer squeaked and sure made it sound as if it wasn’t so happy. We had to deal with quite a few obstacles on this day. First, fallen trees made us feel, hmmm, welcome on the forrest trails.

And of course, that would be ok – if it wasn’t immediately proceeded by the world famous dangerous lambs!


And I am not even mentioning the fact that we had to drive, scratch that, ride on the left side of the road! Pssh. How is one supposed to hand signal in this situation???
From the area of the lakes we eventually made it to the Highlands. This is where a Scottish national park stands along with the highest peak in Britain, a towering snow capped of a beast peaking above the clouds at 1300 meters. Yes, that is Ben Nevis. You could see it in the background…

The highlands were quite different. this almost felt like desert meet far north meet lots of water. I mean, it was desolate, very little fauna and very few types. Yet there were streams everywhere and the land was drenched to the point that it was hard to find a spot to camp. The water was drinkable. And by that I mean, we drank it. But not so showerable.
Damn that Scottish cold water.

The final day of the trip included finishing the climb into the highland eventually, completing the descent from the highlands… quite quite beautiful. Glen Coe is the main village, I guess the best known one in the area. And Glen, it turns out is not just a popular name, it also means valley, in Scottish that is. I did see a sign for Rob Roy’s grave from the train station where we boarded back on our way towards Edinburgh.





Beautiful weather was our lot. I might be the first ever person to return from Scotland with a tan…
142 miles total. Two nights out. Pretty lakes. Lots of hills. And so so many sheep.
Fun way to travel, by bike.

Scotland on two wheels

Inverness is the northern most Scottish city (so described to me by a Scot, so I’ll take it for truth). And this is where our trip begins. Let me clarify this ambiguous ‘our’. Well, I guess I am clear, relatively. The other main protagonist is Lyonell Boulton is a math professor at Hariet-Watt university. A Venezuelan who has decided to leave his homeland, and his faculty position there, to escape an uncomfortable political climate, and take a postdoc position in the UK. Eventually, he landed this faculty position. Of more importance to this story, he is the route planner. This means well folded pieces of 8 by 11 with hybrid pictures of maps and terrain courtesy of our friends at google maps.




From Inverness, the route goes up hill. Well that’s not accurate. Up many hills is more like it. And they seemed to not end. Of course the wind which was blowing according to reports at 6 mph, but felt much stronger and in my stories will definitely be stronger. Oh wait. I mean, the wind was blowing at least at 15 mph and really impeded our climb. Add to that H being out of shape worsened by three weeks of lots of food which included family time and conference time, and the extra baggage up the hill was tough. Lyonell was riding in very low gear (something he called ‘cadence’) and I thought he was doing this to allow me time to catch up. Eventually I found out that this is a system developed by Lance Arm-o-strong which is supposed to be the most efficient way to ride. I on the other hand usually begin at higher gears, especially up hill, and slowly move down my gear ladder. Lyonell said that this is not so good for the bike. Ok, I need to be educated about this. Internet – I am coming to you!




Meanwhile, after all of the uphills we reached a nice downhill, which was rudely interrupted by another uphill, but then was followed by a beautiful downhill to the southern end of Loch Ness. This is of course the famed monster lake of Scotland. Well, I wasn’t impressed. I mean the lake is beautiful and the setting is stunning, but Nessy, the monster? Our cat has meaner streaks. She was tame and sweet, made no fuss about my hiking-boots-pretending-to-be-biking-shoes or about our lack of powerbars or gels. Simply nodded, and with a thick Scottish accent (roll the r’s and pretend you are speaking with a giant gum ball in your mouth) ‘chop chop chop, drink drink drink.’

Some tidbits about Israel and my life here so far

The intersections in Israel are named. This means that when you are given driving directions, you are not told take this exit and turn right – but rather – at this intersection, turn right. It’s a different perspective for sure.
Uzy was denied his work visa for the U.K. a couple of weeks ago.
I have moved into my new apartment which is nice and simple. It has come completely stocked, that is dishes, blankets, towels, internet, etc. the kitchen stuff is subpar and I get angry every time I cut with the knife. Anger management my friends, anger management.
Chocolate milk, shoko, comes in little bags at the store. Milk does as well. Now you may ask what do you do with the milk once you have opened it since? No worries, great minds have solved this problem.

My social life has not been what I had expected or hoped. It’s more starting from scratch with bits of pieces of seeing old friends every now and then. It has been disappointing and difficult at times.
Uzy spoke to the British counsel and expressed his displeasure (probably loudly and strongly) with the entire visa thing (I imagine the counsel was quite scared). Actually, its quite ridiculous, he travels a lot hence couldn’t send his passport to them but rather a copy. Further, he is required to take an English exam even though he has over 70 publications (some solo) in English. Finally, any question he has costs him money to ask (i.e. a 1-900 number). He appealed his visa denial.
While the rest of the world seems to be enjoying extremely cold weather, it has been amazingly spring-like here. My favorite childhood flowers (kalaniot כלניות) are out in bloom from the little rain they did receive.

I begin my mornings with an orange I pick from the orchards near the physics building. I have recently discovered a new path from my apartment to the building which passes under a bunch of pecan trees (very tall pecan trees). This has created an interesting competition between me, old Russian ladies that come by and collect and random eclectic birds (any other way to describe birds that pick unshelled pecans of the concrete?).
Last week Uzy received an answer to his visa appeal.
I joined a dating site, to see what its like and to have fun after Rami told me of the girl he is seeing and how he met her (this site…). I had some lady friends browse around and look at guys’ profile on the site so that they could help me shape my own profile well. I was then surprised when the site kept on suggesting different guys for me to look at…
It snowed in Cardiff.
My mom took me to buy shoes, nice shoes. I got two pairs. I get complements about the pair I wear. I think my mom took me because of the sandals blog…
My roommate is Austrian and kind of weird. He is spending his second year here as a visiting researcher. (this is the apartment building, my room is top left)

It turns out I have a relative in the office diagonally from me (she hasn’t been there so far). She is my mom’s second cousin (is that right? My mom’s aunt’s daughter’s daughter). I also have another relative of sorts essentially in the office below mine – he is my aunt’s (mom’s sister) husband’s brother’s son. The connection to this relation was, of course, made by my grandmother. Granma power!! Yoav is amazingly nice and had me over to his house for dinner and more importantly, to meet his wife and two beautiful daughters. Their story is amazing – they were pen-pals when they were 12 and then again when they were 16 and have been together since 16 ½!!! (pen-pals??? Talk about extinct social behaviors!)
The entire family (mom, dad, sister from States) was here for a while. It was magical and so nice. Now its, again, just my brother and I. With the rest of the fam of course…

shiduchim - שידוכים

mathchmake matchmaker, make me a match. find me a find, catch me a catch...

i haven't been learning the fiddle, nor standing on the roof, and definitely not doing both of them at the same time (though i do walk around playing my harmonica, gathering many a strange looks from passerbys yet garnering much impressed respect from the drunk), but the matchmakers of the country have come out in full force. they come from both sides of the family, they come young and young at heart, they come with numbers, they come with titles, they come with offers. not quite fiddler on the roof style, but maybe fitting for the (now) second decade of the 21st.

after a week in israel i have a number with promises of more coming (and they came, and are still coming). my brother is entitled to a number as well and he sets up his blind date before me. i on the other hand have a bit of hard time catching mine. my aunt who supplied the numbers asks if i called, and i say i have but that i haven't been able to catch the lady. a couple of days later, i get a phone call, from the lady. the chain of events went as follows - my aunt told her aunt (whom i have never met, or at least don't remember meeting - but i am related to, pssssssheeeeeeew) that i tried and couldn't get a hold of the girl, then this aunt told her best friend who is the mom of the lady. the point of this is null. or maybe... that i didn't know the person making the connection and that my aunt never saw, nor even talked to the girl.

the phone conversations flow, flow well even. the girl, shelly (means mine), is a social worker and likes asking questions. this was good. the first question i asked? where do you live? and yes, she made fun of me for it... naturally there had to be a small goofed up moment. so after the conversation, which went through a variety of topics, ended 40 minutes or so later, i hadn't made a plan with her, but was left with - call me when you are ready to make a plan.

oy.

tov, i called two days later and we met friday night. and it went all right, nothing exciting, and nothing particularly negative stood out. these things are awkward, that's all i know. and i also know that its really hard to know afterwards. at least for me. we met at a cafe/pub and ordered, well, yes, beer. after my second, and her finishing her first, about an hour and a half later, she left pretty quickly. there was no 'summary' of the evening, or a window for the future. i think more than anything, this is what discouraged me at the end. she kind of had to go - to sleep or something, or maybe to avoid the strange moment of how do we say goodbye at the end. the ending was amazingly quick. and well, i didn't feel a particular click, but maybe i would have tried another meeting? i don't know.

spoke to my brother about his date. of course i spoke, he was questioned through and through by everyone, including my grandma's plants. he said that it was all right - except that she kept on reminding him of his roommate. looked just like his roommate the intention was. now if his roommate was bar refaely or zooey deschanel then you'd say sababa. but his roommate, while very good looking, is his male roommate... is there a point? i am not sure. maybe that there is very little filtering with this blind date stuff.

i essentially decided that i wasn't interested in doing blind any longer. first reason is i am looking but not that actively. i am interested in laying the framework myself in a way. second, well, if someone knew me, knew the girl and said - hey, good matchup, that's a different story. but just random numbers? i know enough peeps in the math/physics world that can generate me many a random number...

my cousin's wife's mom though is a very good matchmaker i hear. and she spoke to my mom a week or so ago and came back to her with a number and some theory about how these things work and completely convinced my mom, who then spoke to me, and then yesterday i saw my cousin's wife who urged me that her mom is good and has a place guaranteed in heaven (three matches which come into fruit, i.e. vows) and well, at this point i am just trying to continue this run on sentence as long as i can as i don't really have anything to add... but this girl just came back from a phd program in the u.s. so in a sense there are some commonalities there and while she probably left for the u.s. for her grad program, maybe her b.a., and i left a bit earlier, you know, the time preceding the deepening of my voice, and some other changes that happen during junior high taht are not appropriate for this kind of blog... maybe we'll have some things to talk about returning to this holycrazy place. so maybe this will make sense.

was there ever a point???