I didn't even get any cheese!

Well, my last semester is about to begin, and I already know it's gonna be horrible. I have about 3 billion courses, because I have to make up for credits lost on last year's slack-off. For now, I still have to write a paper for a course on the history of basic chemical terms: it was an interesting enough class, but I really have to stretch my bullshiting skills in order to pull this last requirement off...

Monday and Tuesday I spent in Tel-Aviv, visiting the 71st Meeting of the Israeli Chemical Society. Most lectures were, at best, bearable, and on the really boring ones I read a book, hiding behind the meeting's booklet. By the way, "The Kite Runner" is a very engaging book - it might be devastatingly depressing at times, but being so easy to read, I always managed to get to the uplifting parts rather quickly. Anyway, going back to the lectures, the last lecture I attended was one given by Prof. P. Atkins. It was really great, finally witnessing academical greatness, or maybe I was just star – struck by the guy who wrote my second-year textbook on physical chemistry…
After that lecture, I ran out to meet Daniel, a friend of mine from the big city (doesn’t every Jerusalemite have at least one?). To those who don't know, this is what the streets of Tel-Aviv look like:






















I always get lost; I don't think I ever had a positive experience navigating these streets. Well, this time I managed to find my way rather rapidly, thanks to the guiding voice of Daniel, which curiously enough was to blame for getting me lost in the first place.
After 30 minutes of navigating, I had the pleasure of meeting Katia, his Finnish girlfriend, which is a really smart, pleasant and good looking girl. I refuse to let it eat me from the inside out. For now, I’m managing to be happy for him and that’s it. My time will come, won’t it?

I'd rather have an enema

T'is the season of exams and term-papers, here at the Hebrew University. I HATE exams: I'm really bad at studying properly, and so I tend to not do so well in classes that really need you to sit on your ass; like advanced organic chemistry, which I already failed once.
I've spent all of this week, trying to study - I took time off the lab, and I told the other-job people that I won't translate anything this week, but all I was left with is a lot of free time to play basketball and Texas Hold'em with friends. @#%*@%&#. I hate school, I feel 14 again.
At least I have something to look forward too: Thursday in Tel-Aviv, the Israeli basketball league is holding the semi-finals for the cup tournament. My sister and I already have tickets, I'm sooo exited - all there's left is for Hapoel to play well. Oh, and the NBA All-star weekend is only a few days away! I don't think I'll watch the rookies challenge game, cause I might have a date on Friday night, but I sure am going to watch the all-star game on Sunday.

Adidas Stabil 6 Red

I will get to the shoes in a minute...

My D-link router died last night after a week-long struggle, and after about a year and a half of working for us. I have no bones to pick with D-link about the router - I bought it when home-office-small-routers where only starting to appear and were really costly, and it did serve me well, apart from the occasional disconnection. On the other hand, it didn't give me a good enough reason to buy D-link again, so when faced with new competition I decided to invest in a 3Com router, this time around. It took me about 30 minutes to get it working. It would actually have taken me 5 minutes, but I had some problems with the ADSL modem I have. Well, all's well now, and life can go on. Happy ending at last.

On a different subject - It seems my impromptu-second-job I undertook, translating for a tourism site, is not gonna be so easy to ditch. I really want a new video card, but the money this month was invested in the router, and paying back people from last month. I guess I'll do it for at least another month. I should have expected that forgoing a second income would be difficult...

About the shoes - I won a competition on TV! The Israeli sports channel - channel 5 - chooses a lucky winner from all the people who phone in and pick an MVP in the weekly basketball game they choose to air. I phoned in when they showed the Rishon vs. Ramat Gan game (which was really good and ended in overtime), and chose a guy called Omar Snid. Turns out I was picked to recieve 400 NIS to spend on adidas shoes, a sucky MP3 player, and a pair of sunglasses.
I had to add a few shekels to get the adidas shoes I mention but they are really worth it! Aren't they beautiful?

Flixonase Aqueous Nasal Spray

It's been about 10 days - I'm sick with some kind of throat infection and I've been spending all my time at home. I've started taking antibiotics and some kind of spray (above mentioned), for now the fever is gone and only the nasty cough and flam have remained for me to cope with.
The positive part of the ordeal is that for the past week I've started translating for the job I took. I don't really agree with the enterprise since all we do is rip off different local sites, and they're not even paying that well... I guess I'll do it for a month, or until I have enough to buy a decent video card - I really want to play F.E.A.R.
Hapoel had a great game yesterday, beating by 12 a team from Belgrade. It feels like things are looking up for us underdogs. I even bought tickets for me and my sister to the Israeli final four. I do hope we get there because I hate scalping tickets.

Sometime life feels like a bad song

Since I can't link from the title - this one might be appropriate for this post.

On one hand, I don't like writing about really serious stuff that's going on with me, I guess I'm not really used yet to venting on-line. On the other hand, I do feel there's room for it - feeling like I'm sharing my troubles with people out there might be nice.

My mother has cancer. She discovered a lump about 8 years ago, was operated, and recovered. All was well, until about 2 years ago, when she started having back pains. Now – the cancer has spread around her back and onto her liver.

The hospital where she undergoes chemotherapy referred her and my dad to a psychologist, which after a couple of session with them decided she wants to talk to me too. Well, I’ve never seen a psychologist, and I was kind of intrigued at the prospect.

She is really nice, more then you’d expect is common of therapists (after all empathy should be implied, right?). When I talked to her, and especially when she talked, you could see how she felt from little facial expressions she’d make. For example, I could anticipate she might say something meaningful, because a second before she’d sort of wrinkle her nose. I really liked that. Let’s close the subject for now with that…

Oh, I have a job interview today. It’s just a part-time thing, translating Italian web-sites to Hebrew for a tourism site. I bet I can do it from home – and make my folks help me with some of it. I’d be nice having a second income – the lab just doesn’t quite support my lavish lifestyle...

Pushing through

Everyone in Israel knows the most difficult part of the school-year is between Sukkoth and Chanukah, because it's the longest stretch without holydays.

Well, I just got back from a week-long conference in Eilat :-)

I really had fun: although I feel guilty about sitting through only 50% of the talks, it was the first time I've enjoyed myself in Eilat. Since it's December, the weather was incredible - despite the fact that it was quite bleak - temps where around 25 at all times… I went drinking a few times, and I even rented a bike from the hotel one day and went for a ride along the coast. Speaking of the hotel - the Herods is supposed to be a really luxurious hotel - but I was dissapointed: maybe my expectations where too high, but the room I had above the conference center wasn't really that impressive.

All-in-all, people were nice, and it was time well spent career-wise.

The hard part is crashing back to reality - I have two mid-terms right after the one-day-Chanukah-break I get from the University, and I bet the boss will NOT let me have a few days off..