The search for a home

Every journey begins with a single step, and my search for a home began with a search for place to live.
Israel has a few websites dedicated to home-searching, one of them is appropriately called homeless. Most of the apartments I saw were via that site. I began the day after I arrived, with much hesitation, anxiety and apprehension. For some reason the interaction with possible roommates, worried me. The first two apartments I saw quickly calmed those fears though. I got into nice conversations with both of the possible roommates, was offered a hot drink in one case (and hence the possible roommate passed the tea test; the important let’s-sit-down-for-a-drink-and-talk test) and overall enjoyed the experience.
I had to sleep-on one of the apartments, couldn’t decide right away if it was a good fit. This became a repeated ritual in the decision process as usually I couldn’t say no right away. Yes’s on the other hand, were much easier.
Looking for an apartment is a bit like dating. You may not be sure what you want, and you learn along the way. It is also usually much more difficult to say that you are not-interested in an apartment that that you are. How do you let them know that their apartment did not appeal to you, that you decided not to live with them? Do you send a text? Do you call? Do you wait a couple of days or let them know right away? And more often than not, people don’t even bother to communicate a lack of interest, figuring it would be much easier to simply not respond and that the person would understand on their own.
I found it quite difficult to find an apartment. I saw maybe 30 apartments, and learned that I wanted a living room that was somewhat big – a communal space to hang out and host. I wanted a street that has some trees in it, some green for my eyes and lungs. I looked for places that felt homey, comfortable. Since I have very few possessions, I looked for places that were furnished, kitchens well equipped. As far as roommates, I looked for people that not only would I get along with, but also would be able to befriend in some way.
The search for a home began with a bit of difficulties in finding an actual physical home.
I had some funny experiences along the way. One apartment had the name of a girl on the mailbox. As I walked in, two cats ran out and the guy explained to me that those were his ex’s. Though he didn’t mention her anymore, I noticed that the house itself still had some of her stuff (e.g. girl clothes). I asked him if the break-up was new, fresh, and he said dismissively, over a month and asked why. I explained what I saw. He had an epiphany, realizing that he wasn’t completely over her. He responded by taking a door-sign with their names that used to hang on the front door and that now was lying faced down on the tv, and dramatically tossed it in the trash. We finished the eve with a hug and a gentleman agreement to meet for a beer and have a - ‘girl’s talk’…
Some of the apartment visits were like a reality show, with many people coming to see the room/roommates at once and trying to impress them, each in their way. One of these times, I was led into the living room with two other guys and we were interviewed by two girls/prospective roommates. One of the guy was well dressed and had gel in his hair (I – mathematician - was impressed by this) and then the usual questions – how old are you, where do you live now, what do you do… He responded that he worked for a tv channel and when the girls asked what programs he does, he said Big Brother. That was it for them I think as their excitement levels reached height never seen before in apartment searches.
Finally, one time I was actually offered marriage by a girl who was also looking for an apartment. I responded that, you know, we should probably get to know each other a bit before. And also that her boyfriend may have an issue with it. She said, hmm, yeah, but I really want a green card. At the end she just tried to set me up with her sister.
Today, I finally chose a place. At the end I took an apartment with a big living room, on a quiet and green street and what looks like a very nice roommate. Interestingly, I chose an apartment with very little in it. A place that I can shape a bit and carve a home of my own. Hopefully.


(press link on the left, tel aviv yafo part...)
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=%D7%A9%D7%93%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA+%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%A6%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%9F&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wl

January 7th, 2011

I have a pretty strange memory for dates – in that I remember really random ones. For instance, I can’t forget that MLK was shot on April 4th, 1968, nor that the first Israel-PLO peace agreement was signed September 13th, 1993.
Some indelible dates though are much more personal to me. August 11th, 1991 was the date we left Israel. I remember different pictures from that day, different scenes very vividly. I remember saying goodbye to the grandparents as we all very anxiously, and fearful walked up the stairs at the old airport. There was a very good architectural division there, as if the architect was a movie director. The steps up were blocked quite fast by a low hanging wall and we lost eye contact with the adieu-bidders as we ascended into a hall cramped with people standing in line to have their passports checked. This added to our, or at least my feeling of anxiety, confusion and a complete lack of understanding of what was next.
I also remember leaving Italy quite clearly, though the date I am not sure of. I think it was the 13th of September as well. I remember saying goodbye to Amanda, calling her on a public phone from the airport and her saying something that sounded like I love you and me saying something that sounded like that back. It was the first time.
Tomorrow, I leave for Israel. I have left for Israel from the UK before, a few times in fact, one of them, last winter, for a long term visit of three months. This time feels different. Very different. I am leaving a sort of love interest behind, yes. I am reuniting with part of the family, rather than leaving it. But the main reasons why it feels so different are that for one, it’s really a big work move. I am not changing jobs. No. Not at all. In fact one of the reasons I am going is to be closer to Uzy so that he’ll push me further. But I will also be seriously considering other opportunities while there, looking at math-education and who knows what else.
Maybe the most important fact about this move though is that I have talked about it and planned it for so long, telling myself that I need it. Need to understand who I am, where I am from, where is my home – and where to start if not from where you were born and grew up? Funny enough though, I am not so sure if I need that any longer. I have realized that I actually enjoy being a foreigner, the look that people give you when you realize you speak with an accent and then ask you if you are Canadian, scared to ask if you are American so as to not offend you if you were Canadian. The death stare I give them in response clearly puts them in their place and clarifies that I do not come from frozen land.
The point is though that there is a fun element to being a foreigner, always feeling a bit out of place, a bit not belonging. Maybe, at this point, its just part of my personality, of who I am… will tomorrow be the beginning of a change?
Will I remember tomorrow’s date not as a leaving date, but rather as an arrival?

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.
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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…

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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.