Weekly update #9: progress and recession

This week was focused on the progress we have been making since we came here, and on the uneasy feeling of my friends back home about the financial situation. There is still a lot to do on both sides of the ocean, and hopefully things will improve soon.

In chats with some of my friends from the previous work place. It seems that the management has decided to make some cutbacks, which are defined as a "more humane" way to deal with the financial crisis rather than fire people. I hope that hi-tech companies in Israel don't generate a fake crisis just to be able to "push down" on the salaries and benefits that workers had been given before. Anyway, in order to cheer you up, my friends, perhaps this will help.

In the mean time we, unfortunately without help from the rest of America, tried to get the American economy on the move again. On Friday we returned to IKEA for another shopping spree that ended up with a sofa, two stools, a desk, a drawer cabinet to support the desk, two small cabinets, and an office chair. The total is almost $800, plus 4 hours at IKEA and a day and a half assembling everything. This came after a very successful week, some of which you can see here, which included the official approval of us being domestic partners so that D won't have to pay tuition, and of me solving the multi-agent maze problem within 4 days, which made Kelly very impressed. I don't see this maze things as being too hard or a challenge, but it seems that others do, and everyone suggests that I write a paper for a conference and a journal. If I end up doing so, it will probably be the paper which took people the shortest period of time to work on. I will certainly have to add literature survey, and a few improvements, but the main core is already there.

Another thing that has changed recently is my approach to the students. I feel that I have developed a hard skin so that their grades on a test do not bother me anymore. Today I graded the tests of one of my classes, and the average was 60, compared to the 69 in the previous test they had, and this time I feel less bad about it than in the previous test. This time I know that all the mistakes they were making are their own, because I know for sure that I taught them and told them to be cautious not to make those mistakes. If the students are not listening, that's their problem, and it ceases to be my problem. On the other hand, there are (a few) students that do try, and when they don't succeed, or not as well as I think they should, it is still a disappointment.

Today was my (almost) first time I saw snow falling. It was cold enough for something on the verge between snow and rain, but the temperature was still above zero, and the precipitation too weak for a real snow. D keeps laughing at me for not having seen snow falling, but that's what happens when you live in the desert (Jerusalem doesn't count). She also reminds me all the time that we will have enough chances to have snow, that soon enough we will wish it wasn't snowing. Perhaps she's right, but until then, a good snow fall is in order!

This also summarizes our two months of being here. A lot have changed since we came here: the economy collapsed, a new president was elected, we found a house, a car, registered ourselves to all the medical/dental/life insurance benefits, got domestic partnership approved, etc. Still, this place doesn't feel like my home. We're meeting the plan of this project, and D has even started to think about success criteria. I still don't have friends here, certainly not like the ones I have in Israel, I still miss my family, being in Tel Aviv, my flat there, and the rest of my life there. I don't know if this will change soon. There is so much that needs to develop here before I will consider this place as my home, and maybe it will never be. In the mean time I still feel a bit like a tourist here, and I know that I will feel like a tourist in my coming visit to Tel Aviv. I find myself looking forwards to this feeling. I have never been a tourist in Tel Aviv, and always considered it my home, even when I grew up in Holon, or lived a few years in Haifa. It will be a change to wake up in the morning and go for a stroll in Tel Aviv.

You may be happy to know that in the past month my view of Americans hasn't improved by one bit. They are still a lazy and stupid group of people, who will not budge an inch out of their way to help you. They are entangled in their own bureaucracy without being able to do anything different than the thing they were told to do. If you want something done, you have to do it exactly at the same way they know, and adjust to the pace they are used to doing things. I have a small hope that this is only in the university, because I talked with a secretary that joined the department a month ago, and she was amazed by the sluggishness of the university as much as I was. She said that it's probably because people at the university usually have tenure, and no one gets fired, so no one needs to work hard to justify his or her job. I think she's right, as I've seen similar things in other places, like IAI.

Perhaps Barack Obama will change things. In his acceptance speech he told the cheering crowd that they will need to work hard to change America. His speech sounded to me like the speech Churchill gave when he encouraged the British people to keep fighting the Nazis. Neither of them promised it will be easy, and in both cases the crowd was fearing the present but hoping for a better future. It worked one time, let's hope it will work again, for the sake of America, and for the sake of the entire world.