Frustration

The power was still out when we left the hotel this morning. It is claimed to be the worst power outage in the history of Cincinnati and the area. This, however, brings little comfort to our lives. Since most of Cincinnati is out of power, the schools are out, and many people stayed at home with their children. My department secretariat is closed for the day, so I still can't do anything. There is no one answering the phone at the real estate agency, so we still cannot go and do anything about renting a place. D's check in appointment was rescheduled to later this week or even the beginning of the next, so she is REALLY frustrated. Everything is just on a consistent Wait-Wait-Wait loop. URGHHHHHHH

First Weekend

It's Sunday afternoon and we're staying at the hotel, stranded by the strong winds (and future heavy rain) of tropical depression (formerly known as Hurricane) Ike. The strong winds blew down the power circuit and we are left with no power. This leads me to consider how dependent we have become, as a species, on the ubiquity of power. We're just so used to being able to generate everything with a turn of a switch: light, heat, food, entertainment, and so on. Now that electricity is gone we cannot heat water for coffee, we need flashlights to go to the bathroom, we're disconnected from the internet, and once the sun sets we'll have no light. Hopefully the power circuit will be fixed by then.

The day started much better. We went to the Levee on Newport, Kentucky to see the views. The weather was hot, humid, but relatively mild, and we had a good time strolling along the waterfront and watching the Cincinnati Downtown skyline over the Ohio River. I had a nice phone call from the department head, asking if she can help with anything. It's nice having someone looking after you, especially when you're new in town, and have so many things to do. I also head a talk over Skype with my former boss. It's funny to be able to talk for free with people and stay in touch with them when you're half a world apart. I think that I begin to miss my friends and family. I talked to my dad yesterday and he doesn't sound well. He sounds depressed, and I wish I could help him. It's hard to hear a man, who for all my life I have looked up to and considered to be as stable as a rock, becomes so weak. I fear for his health both mentally and physically. Skype is not useful in such situations. Perhaps we need a way of communicating physical gestures just as we're able to communicate sound and vision over the internet.

I also miss life in Israel. The main reason is that it was so much easier for me there, having a nice job, good pay, financial security, credit history (and no need to prove one), and my friends to help me. Now we are starting all over again, like being reborn, but without the parents support. Some small examples: we know that we are able financially to lease (or buy in credit) a car, but we don't have the credit history to do it. We have the money to pay for D's first term tuition in our bank accounts, but we cannot access it readily, nor do we have the means to pay for it electronically, nor will the "domestic partnership" thing be settled soon enough to avoid the need to pay for the tuition at all. Life here seems like a magic circle that we need to penetrate, but we still haven't figured out how. You need a positive credit history to be able to receive credit. It's the perfect Catch 22.

I wish we were two months from now. Hopefully things will be better than and we'll have our lives sorted out.

Cincinnati

We traveled from Newark to Cincinnati in two days and two hours. The trip was efficient both in time and fuel, as we had a hybrid Toyota Prius. We fueled only twice during the 1000+ Kilometers drive from Newark to Cincinnati, roughly a 20 Km/liter fuel consumption. If the Prius was not so expensive to buy perhaps it would be a good idea to buy one. However, it costs $22000+ as a new one, and even more for preowned cars.

The only perks we allowed ourselves to have during the drive is buying D a new laptop and getting a new GPS navigation device for us. D is enjoying her laptop pretty much so far, and the GPS device has been most helpful in the city. We decided to postpone purchasing a laptop to me until we have the money for that.

We arrived in Cincinnati yesterday. Currently we stay at an extended stay motel just outside the city. So far, we haven't achieved much from our to-do list. The only two things we managed so far are getting a cellular phone number and opening a bank account. The coming week is going to be extremely busy, with both urgent tasks and preparing for school. D is having an orientation meeting every day of the coming week, which leaves too little time to do all the stuff we need to accomplish. Undoubtedly, we will have to extend our stay at the motel and our car rental in order to be able to survive past this week.

After the cellular phone and bank account I finally started to feel that this is not a trip. This is the real deal. It is said that "all beginnings are difficult". Hopefully, after the transient period it will be easier for us.

Incompetence

It is unbelievable how hard it is to get a decent service in Israel. It is even inconceivably harder to get a service person to rid you from a current engagement. As D mentioned, we are faced with numerous setbacks and problems that various service personnel raise in our way. Today, however, I faced the other side of the same problem: people who are way too overzealous about doing their jobs. So overzealous that the two of them even complete their jobs before the schedule. What can I say? Let's give them a prize for being so diligent. Oh, I just forgot to mention, one of them disconnected me from my aDSL line three days before the requested disconnection, and the other one simply put my ISP account in a "frozen" state. So, if you're looking for hard-working and zealous communications providers, jost follow the links above.

6 Days To Go

We're less than a week from the flight. Today my visa was approved, and now I wait for the passport to return. We gave D's cat to a lady, who kindly agreed to take it in, and now D is sad for parting with the cat :-(.

Yesterday we signed the lease for my apartment with none of the candidates I mentioned in the previous post. The tenant is a brother of D's friend. These three achievements: the visa, the cat, and the apartment, are the three show-stoppers that could have prevented our flight. Getting them done clears the way for our trip.

11 Days to go: A Full Boidem, Perhaps a Tenant

Today we finished packing my folders and loading them to the boidem. With them we loaded D's CDs and DVDs. The boidem is now officially full. Some of the boxes found their way into a nook in their exact size. About third of both our belongings are now stored in less than 3 cubic meters (image from D's flickr).

In another subject we have two possible tenants. One is a nice American girl who wants the place with all the furniture and appliances in it, which is exactly what we want. The other possibility is a nice couple. We're now waiting for the American girl to call us and then we'll know who takes the place. I know that it's not over until we sign the contract, but I hope that we will do it soon.

We had a very disappointing talk with D's parents that now refuse to take Willy the cat in. Had they told us earlier we could have tried and arranged something else, perhaps take it with us after all. Now, as can be understood and expected, D is very stressed over this subject and she had a fight with her parents. I still hope that they'll climb down the tree they so wrongly climbed up. However, I learned some important lesson from this incident.

Leaving my work

As part of our preparations to the university, I had my last day of work today (actually, the last day is Sunday, when I sign my clearance, but today I had my farewell event). It's hard leaving a place where some of my best friends, and colleagues of 4+ years, are still working. I knew it was something hard needed to be done, but I didn't realize it until today how hard it would be. The fact is that I write this post while still at work. I received many compliments, and presents. Most importantly, we pledged to keep in touch, and - from my side - I'll try and do that.