Have you ever gotten so wrapped up and engrossed in something that you forget where you and you just blurt something out? I was looking at some code for one of the applications my team supports and there was a drop-down menu with a list of countries in it. I’d like to think that nothing would really surprise me anymore at this point, but sure enough…when I saw Alaska listed as one of the items in the “Country” drop-down I almost lost it. I actually said out loud, “Why is Alaska a country” incredulously. This has to be a mistake. I kept repeating it, until I realized how funny and ridiculous this sentence was and started laughing.
So, I checked with another teammate and sure enough he said it was right. In the Baha’i Faith there are a few administrative levels — Local Spiritual Assembly (think city), National Spiritual Assembly and the Universal House of Justice (world-wide). All the volunteers at the Baha’i World Centre (where I’m working) serve the Universal House of Justice directly. We are here to support them as they handle the administrative duties of the faith for the entire Baha’i world. They say, we do.
Anyways, so back to this Alaskan country dispute. It turns out Alaska has its own National Spiritual Assembly for some reason. This doesn’t make any sense to me seeing as how Alaska is not a country and is part of the U.S. which has its own NSA. I don’t know anymore, I’ve given up trying to figure out these things. But now I know why Alaska is considered a country, at least for that drop-down. Every once in a while, that line still pops in my head and I just laugh. Some things tickle you just right sometimes.
So, I finally did it. I decided to sell some of my Teradata stock! That was a big psychological barrier to overcome. I had TD stock in two accounts — an investment account and a retirement account. I didn’t have a ton of money invested in these stocks, but regardless, they were down 35-40% in both accounts. That’s a tough pill to swallow. But here’s how I rationalized it to myself:
Sure, TD stock may go up eventually, but it doesn’t pay any dividends (something I’ve gone crazy over recently) AND I think I can use that money on other stocks that will perform much better. This way I don’t have to wait anymore for a stock that may or may not come around. And seeing how now the market is at an all-time high and TD stock isn’t doing anything, just imagine if and when the market goes down. Then I’d really be stuck. So, might as well cut my losses now and invest it elsewhere.
I can use the capital loss to reduce my taxable income. This allowed me to transfer the remaining cash from my old 401K to my Roth 401K! So now I have even more flexibility to put that into the market when the time is right. I converted too much cash to my Roth account last year and got bumped into the next federal tax bracket and that really hurt. So, I’m trying to stay out of that higher tax bracket as much as possible. Let’s see how I do.
It was kind of hard at first to sell it, but those two aspects pushed me over the top. The other thing I learned is that you can’t as easily apply capital losses from a retirement account to reduce your taxable income. It has to be over a certain threshold before you can take a deduction. But losses from an investment account, no problem. So, I took advantage of the “opportunity” to sell at a loss and it felt like the right decision. I still have a bunch of TD shares in my retirement account, which I hope will eventually go back up so I can recoup those losses. That would be a tougher sell to sell.
I have about three more months left here. I can’t believe it’s coming to a finish soon. I’m hoping to be able to travel to Petra in Jordan, that’s the only place I really wanted to see before coming here. And then either Egypt or Turkey, probably Turkey, maybe followed by a couple weeks in Colombia. And then maybe stop in Florida to visit my uncle and family before I head back to San Diego. Wait, what’s that? Oh, Señor Corona, you’re still here! This would have been a lot easier a year ago, but it may still be do-able. We shall see.
So much for all that chum talk. It looks like the Steelers themselves have become the chum. I said better to have a loss or two now before the playoffs, but I didn’t want three terrible losses in a row. Hopefully they can turn it around. Big Ben’s starting to show his age, but he should still have a couple good runs left in him. I can’t believe Federer will be 40 this year! It’s beyond amazing.
This cat has been guarding the office entrance ever since last March
Now this is real garlic bread, Russian style, with actual garlic cloves embedded
The bread in these Russian markets is amazing, they are so thick and fluffy
I have no clue what any of the breads are in the Russian markets, thankfully some have pictures on the side
My fresh orange juice operation. It takes about an hour start-to-finish to fill up that pitcher with juice. It lasts about four days.
I’ve never had a pet but I still love animals. Any time a friendly dog comes up to me I’ll pet it. I draw the line at slobbery kisses, but petting I can do all day. I like cats too, and I used to think I was more of a cat person because they’re cleaner and more orderly than dogs, but I’ve found that cats are kind of boring. They don’t really do anything. If I could have a pet, I’d like to have a calm, clean dog. I’m sure some breeds fit the bill.
I have a few canine instincts: 1) I am very loyal. Unless you do me wrong and I ex-communicate you, I will always have your back. 2) I can be trained. If there is something you like or don’t like, I’m pretty good at learning and remembering that behavior. And 3) I have a good ability to sniff out and find my way to food. Oh, and sometimes I scratch the back of my leg with my other “paw”.
So yesterday was nice and sunny after a few days of rain. I wanted to go down to lower Haifa again and get some lunch and walk around. Just to get out of the apartment a little bit. I braved bus #12 again, but this time no adventure thankfully. I didn’t really have a place in mind for lunch, I just figured I’d walk around and find something good. I keep forgetting everything is semi-closed these days, only some restaurants are open for take-out.
I remembered that this city has a subway for some reason! So I hop off the bus and hop on the subway. Something different. At the entrance, the security person asked me in English, “Do you have a weapon?” That surprised me, although it shouldn’t have in Israel, and I said, “No, I’m a nice person”, to which she laughed and said “Good!”.
Subway entrance
The subway has six stops — Downtown, City Hall, Post Office, Masada (residential), Golomb Ave. (Baha’i Center), and Merkaz HaCarmel (city center). I got off at the “Downtown” stop and knew exactly where I was. It was where I had my “fish” falafel. Now that I was situated, it was time to find food.
I walked down this main street, but nothing appealing popped up. I was starting to get discouraged, but then I passed some people sitting on a bench eating something. I peeked at what they were eating and it was glorious — crispy fish and chips in a box. I knew exactly what I wanted for lunch now. Now I just had to find it. So I asked them where they got it from. The woman tried to give me good, proper directions, but her limited English kept tripping her up. All I understood from her was “food truck”. Finally the man next to her just said, “Right, Left, right.” That’s all I needed to hear! Men just understand each other.
So I follow his instructions — the first two were easy and got me to the main road. The last “right” was a little tricky. How do I find this “food truck” when I’ve never seen anything even resembling a food truck here in Israel. I see some weird mobile-looking type of structure across the street and there are some people congregating, so I figure it’s worth a look.
Here’s what I saw from a distance. I’d run up this road before, it leads to the Haifa port entrance
As I cross that big intersection I start smelling something good. Oh boy, I’m on the right trail now. I keep following my nose and it takes me straight to that group of people. And when I see the “Oyster” sign, jackpot. Good job nose.
Not to be confused with the Blue Oyster Bar
Right under the bridge to the Haifa port
So I found the place, great. Now how the heck do I order? These things can be surprisingly confusing at first in other countries. I don’t see any cashier, so I find a guy who is preparing orders and must work here. I show him a credit card and ask how do I order and pay. He points me along down the line. Again, I see no cashier, so maybe the people cooking also handle the ordering? So I wave my credit card at the chefs and they give me this bewildered and annoyed look. They also motion me to the other side.
Eventually, I see there is a semi-line formed in front of a boxed covering with a plexiglass window and a microphone. Ah, this must be it, even though I don’t see anyone inside this contraption. So, as any good citizen does, I get in line. Once I get to the front, I see there is actually someone inside this box taking orders and I put in my order. I ask for my fish and chips (36 NIS, ~ $10 USD) and go look around while I wait. The place is literally under a bridge, so you can imagine the ambiance we have here, but people were having a good time. A few families even brought blankets to put down in a nearby parking lot and have lunch. It was actually not too bad. It seemed like it was a “hidden” secret and probably a popular food spot.
I was happy with my discovery. Sometimes it’s good to not have a set plan and just follow your nose / instincts and see where it takes you. And wouldn’t you know it, I also solved the mystery of the identical hummuses. It turns out one package has a big “1” on it, while the other has a small “750”. It’s all starting to come together now.
I’ve been very unmotivated to do anything the past week for some reason. I finished the video I was making for my grandma’s anniversary and also wrapped up the yearly summary for the Programa de Incentivos. So maybe it’s a natural letdown from finishing these two big items. The weather has also changed — it’s now much colder and starting to rain more. I don’t even feel like going for runs, it’s a struggle to get out the door and get going. Hopefully that passes.
I think I’m really starting to feel the fatigue of this situation. I mostly am in my apartment, I have very little contact with people, and all I do is work. I don’t enjoy the work particularly, but it has become easier as I’ve become more used to it, which is a big help. I am writing a very light reporting framework and am learning more and more about Oracle.
I hate to say it, but each time I use Oracle, I feel like I die a little inside, although it gets slightly easier the more I use it. The syntax is just ugly and the error messages are so obtuse and unhelpful. They don’t give you the offending object name, like in Teradata or Postgres, so fixing your SQL is not as easy as it could be. It’s very frustrating. Each time I get a syntax error in Oracle and see that generic error message, I go a little crazy. For example, this error message is beyond useless:
Why not show a pizza instead of an error message — it won’t help you much to debug either, but at least you’ll smile 🙂
Anyways, I’m doing my usual “mash the keyboard” method until I get something to work and I’m making progress with this reporting framework. On the positive side, it is exciting that I am finally using Oracle and getting experience with it. And I feel that once the code works and is stable, that it WORKS. I feel confident that the DB is stable and will return the results pretty quickly. In that sense, Oracle has won a few points with me. I know I poo-poo Oracle a lot, but it does have some good aspects.
So last night about 7:30pm, I was just laying on my bed face down, thinking what should I do? My window to go for a run has already passed — it’s too late and probably too cold now. I need groceries, but don’t want to go through the hassle of getting on a bus and having to lug back all my stuff. It really was a mental hurdle to overcome, but I knew it needed to be done.
So, I got ready and walked up to the bus stop. I’ve learned about myself, that my biggest first-world problem / pet-peeve is waiting around for a bus. And God help me, if I have just missed the previous bus, that’s another slap in the face. I really, really hate waiting for the bus. It drives me nuts, I don’t know why. Especially, when I know I just missed the last one and that the next one will come in anything more than 6 minutes. I’m not sure why this triggers me. I guess I’ve sort of been in an extended state of agitation ever since I got here.
Once I actually got on the bus and started making some progress, my agitation started to go away. Buying groceries here is usually guess-work. I have to check the pictures on the boxes, since it’s all in Hebrew. By instinct, I always look at the nutrition facts, but again, it’s all gibberish to me. Another instinct I still can’t shake is that I always try to get things that are on sale, but the only thing I can read here are the prices. I don’t know if I need a “Russian Market Loyalty Club” card or not, so I normally take a picture of the item with its price on my cell phone and show it to the cashier. Sometimes they speak Anglit and sometimes, “nyet”.
So what can you make of this tag above? This item cost 18.10 and now it costs 11.90. Easy enough. Now, is that a regular discount or do you need some kind of loyalty card? I don’t see a date anywhere, is it still valid? I see a 500, which has to be the weight, so I can at least match that with the item I have. It goes on and on like this. Another example is the hummus. There’s this container of hummus for 11.90 and another one for 14.90 that looks exactly the same. Same size, packaging, company, everything, except the image on the plastic cover is slightly different. I can’t read what the heck it says and the image change is ambiguous, so what’s a person to do.
I bought my stuff — including about 30-40 pounds of oranges — and lugged it back to the bus stop. One of the good things about living in a new place is that after a while, you learn some of the secrets and little tricks to make life easier and more efficient for you. Previously, I’d have walked further to a separate bus stop to catch a bus that would have left me further from my apartment. But a few months ago, I found out that Bus #3 actually does serve a purpose in this world. There’s a “hidden” bus stop very close to the super-market, so I use that now to catch Bus #3, which comes pretty frequently and drops me off much closer to my apartment too.
I only have a few more months left and am starting to do some “wrap-up” things to get ready for my departure. I don’t know how I feel about it. Mostly good, but there are some other feelings in there too. Good, in the sense that I had this experience, learned new things, gained some more clarity on what I want in life and am looking for in my next job / career.
The other feeling is a kind of uncertainty. It’s not one that’s overly unsettling or strong, but I still feel it. It feels like the end of my “wild ride” of the past five years, which is fine. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I feel ready to return to the real world. But it also means I need to find a job, move, clean out all my stuff from my parents’ house. It’s another transition, but this one will feel different than the last few.
This is not an ode to Bus #12, that’s been said and done. This is an apology of sorts to my once favorite bus. An acknowledgement, an understanding. Yesterday I decided to head down to lower Haifa to get some nice lunch and enjoy some time outside. I checked my possible bus routes — Bus #12 was the most direct and Bus #3 was the most frequent, as usual.
I get to the bus stop and check the arrival times, hey only 2 minutes until Bus #12 gets here. What luck! Right. Eventually the screen says 1 minute so I stand up in anticipation. I wait 30 seconds and check the screen again and now it says 6 minutes! What a slap in the face. So I go through the five stages of grief in record time and just decide to wait for Bus #12 to come, which it eventually does.
Right after the first roundabout, there’s a stretch of road that’s one-way and narrow, which is compounded by the fact that cars park on both sides of it. Now combine that with a huge bus and terrible Israeli parking — i.e. people here park wherever and however they please — and you have a recipe for disaster, which came to fruition yesterday.
Entering that fateful road
We get on this road, and after 200 yards the bus slows to a crawl. It nudges forward an inch and brakes, another inch and brakes. Immediately I know what’s going on — the bus driver’s trying to make a tight squeeze. And with a massive bus on a narrow curvy road with cars sticking out at weird angles, this is going to be difficult. Like a true superhero, I quickly assess the situation and jump into action.
I see that we are indeed trying to squeeze through a small gap, with about 4 inches of clearance on either side of the bus. So, I gesture to the driver if he wants me to help guide him and he says yes. I go out in front of the bus in the middle of the street and start waving him forward while strafing left and right to make sure both sides of the bus are not going to hit the parked cars. It was a super-tight fit, but it seemed doable.
That is until we get to two cars parked at just the perfect angles that they sucked up all of the bus’s wiggle room. It had to be perfect, no mistakes, and it was getting difficult. Usually the bus drivers are a little gruff and grumpy, but I could tell this guy was anxious now. I see a woman on the side of the road just standing there watching us, right next to the problematic car that’s parked at an awful angle.
So I ask her if she could help guide us on that side with the poorly parked car and she says, “that’s my car!” in perfect English. To which I say, “Great! Can you move it please!!” So, she gets in and now I start directing her on where to move the car…I felt like a third-base coach excitedly waving all the baserunners home. The bus driver sees this and he just slumps over the steering wheel in relief. It was a funny, funny sight. That’s when I knew for sure that he had indeed been stressed out by the situation.
Israeli parking at its finest — outside my apartment
So Bad Parking Lady adjusts her car, the bus driver backs it up a couple feet and we manage to finally squeeze through! I hop back on the bus and everyone thanks me, from the old people down to the school kids. The bus driver is grateful too. It was about a 10 minute delay. I didn’t give it a second thought, I knew right away what was going on and what needed to be done. Besides I was hungry. My stomach normally has a hand in these things.
So now…now when I see the ETA for Bus #12 say 2 minutes for 10 minutes or jump from 1 minute to 5 minutes, I will no longer get mad. I now know exactly the daily perils this bus faces. I will no longer wonder where the heck this bus is. I will just accept the fact that while we’re out on our daily adventures, this bus is probably having an adventure of its own too.
My first visit to Central America was in June 2014 for a microfinance class when we visited Guatemala for four days. I remember my first impression was that all the cars looked like they were from the 1980s with so much smog and pollution being spewed into the air. It felt as if all of America’s old 1985 Toyota Corollas and Twinkie school buses had all been cast to this city. On the flip side, I also remember that outside the city, everything was so green and lush and beautiful.
As we drove to our hotel in Antigua, there were all these nondescript buildings along the streets. It was more like an outer wall, with who knew what inside. You would never have guessed what each building was just by looking from the outside. Once we got to our hotel and went to the “inside”, wow! It was as if we had discovered a hidden paradise. It was so beautiful, plants, wooden adornments, clean, everything. You would have never known unless you had been inside before. It felt like finding a hidden gem.
Old ruins
Streets of Antigua
Playing tennis here, or doing anything really, requires a lot more effort and planning than doing things back in the U.S. Not having a car and not knowing where to go to find things is a handicap. A few weeks ago, a friend and I wanted to play some tennis. Normally, you’d reserve a court (or just show up), get some balls and play. Alas, here’s how that went:
Reserve a court This involved searching around online for the phone number of the Haifa Tennis Center. I had to call a few times before someone answered, but eventually I got a court reserved. 60NIS (~$17 USD) for one hour.
Find some balls The last time we played, we had to use some practice balls, so it wasn’t as fun. This time we wanted to get some new balls, but the tennis shop isn’t normally open on the weekends. So, I took a bus down to the main Grand Canyon mall, to see if I could hunt down some balls. A thirty minute bus ride later, I get to the mall and it turns out everything is closed due to Coronavirus restrictions. 1.5 hours of effort results in zero tennis balls and one sub sandwich.
Get to the court Thankfully, I had access to a car that weekend, which makes life so much easier here. But if I didn’t, we would have had to take a taxi (no buses on Saturday morning) or walk an hour to get to the courts. So I had to coordinate with a friend who was borrowing another friend’s car. Thankfully, he came on time and we got to the court on time as well.
Are you starting to see why it’s hard to do things here now? There are lots of variables in play and things are not really straightforward. It’s not impossible or super-difficult, but just often times inefficient, time-consuming and draining.
So, the first time I walked by this random magical tennis court sitting along a main road in Haifa, on Hatzionut St, I was intrigued. Whenever I’d walk past this court, I’d walk through the street gate and just pop my head in. It was like a forbidden fruit. It seemed like it was always open! Lo and behold, you can actually rent the court. It’s cheaper (50 NIS, $14 USD) than Haifa Tennis Center, you get more time (1.5 hours), and it’s 1000 times more convenient (no bus / taxi needed). So, we got to play here this past Friday night and it was memorable for a few reasons.
View from the street — the main entrance is behind the silver car
At 5pm, when it’s already dark, I walk inside the street gate and am soon greeted by Boris, who I assume is the guy in charge. We chit-chat in broken English and I show him my rackets, to which he was amazed by my head guard protectors. The little things. Once I actually got on the court, it was in decent shape. A few hazards to avoid — the sturdy metal fence, unlike regular flexible chain link fences, you don’t want to crash into this one. Another was some unevenness on the court surface, like earthquake fissures but nothing too bad.
Not your typical cushy U.S. tennis court fence
Oh yeah, the lights 🙂 The court we were on had makeshift lighting attached to the tops of the fence. It was well-lit, but they were not your standard tennis court lights, they were more like those bright halogen lights that construction workers use when they are working at night. After a couple minutes on the court, the lights went out. So out popped Boris and he climbed on a ladder inside our court with his buddy to consult and fix the lights.
“Five minutes, five minutes” he told us. So we rallied in the dark for about 10 minutes, but it wasn’t bad at all, it felt great to be out on a decent court running around and chasing some balls. I missed that feeling. I miss tennis and basketball. I haven’t held a basketball in my hands for over a year. That’s the longest I’ve gone since I was 12.
On one side of the court is a 3-4 story building. And what do you get when you have two rusty players trying to regain old form? Shanks. Lots and lots of shanks. Within 15 minutes, we lost our first ball over the fence. No problem, we still have three more. Another 10 minutes and boom! The second ball just rockets a good 40-50 feet into the air, completely clears the top of the building and is probably still sitting on the roof right now.
Now things are starting to get dicey. Forget the fact that this was a $10 can of balls (4). We only had two balls left. Ten minutes later and I hit one off the top of my frame and as it soars towards the 3rd-story balcony, I have hope that it will bounce around up there and gently fall back to the court. Well, it made it up to that balcony and just decided to stay put. D’oh! Danger zone, one ball left. And as you could have guessed, we shortly smashed that ball out of the court too.
Balcony where ball #3 landed (center with the hanging sheet)
Around 6pm, not too long before losing that last ball, a group of five Arabs walk onto our court and ask me something in Hebrew. I say, “huh, anglit?” and they ask until what time we have the court. I tell him 6:30pm, so they set up camp in the corner of our court and mostly hang out there for the next half hour. A couple of them even start running around the inside of our court warming up. I kept thinking how bizarre this was. You don’t experience things like this in the U.S. But I was happy.
After we lost that last ball, we were thinking “Game Over”, but one of the guys in this group waiting for us tossed us one of their balls. We were so happy and finished up our last 10 minutes with no miscues and returned their ball. Now here’s where things really start to get interesting.
We came here with four balls and now are leaving with none. Unacceptable, especially since these balls are $2.50 each. We have to find them! We knew the location of one, it was right over the fence near the tall building, so we go around the side and easily retrieve it. Success! Now that we’ve got one, why not try for the rest? Buoyed by our first recovery, we decide to explore and enter the belly of the concrete beast (As Salah from Indiana Jones would say). In this case, that concrete beast was the dilapidated-looking building that had swallowed up our balls.
I’d walked past this building so many times. The front door had broken windows, so I figured it was abandoned. But I’d learned that broken windows do not always mean unoccupied here. My friend and I pushed open the door and started making our way up the dark stairway. I won’t lie, it was spooky, something I would have never done if I hadn’t been living here for a while now. We make it up to the top, the third floor, and there seems to be the possibility of life.
A spooky building during the day, imagine going inside at night!
Broken glass, everywhere
I knock on the only door — which is the one where I assume has that balcony that’s housing Ball #3. I hear something, someone is saying something from inside! I keep repeating “hello, shalom” over and over again until the door opens and in front of us stands a 75-or-so year-old Israeli lady in her evening wear. Well that’s not something you see every day.
I explain to her with my hands and some words that we are two desperate tennis-playing souls who started with a full can of balls, which is now empty. I re-enact to her how our balls flew threw the air and ended up on or near the top of her building. Now I see she’s starting to get it. And then I start saying “balcon, balcon” in Spanish for some reason, assuming she would understand any language other than English. The mind does strange things, sometimes. My friend asks me how I knew the word for balcony in Hebrew, and we just laugh.
She says, “wait, wait”, to which I have a Chris Tucker – Jackie Chan moment upon realizing she does speak some English! She closes the door and comes back a minute later with four tennis balls in hand, and one of them is our famous balcony ball! Wow, I am truly amazed now. So, we thank her “toda toda” and say good night “erev tov”. We’ve now hunted down two of our lost balls. That’s pretty good, so we head back, pretty satisfied with ourselves.
We leave the building and start walking away and my friend notices that the lady is hanging out of her window waving and gesturing to us. I wonder what the heck is going on. Hey, she has something for us – it’s another ball! My friend walks onto the court where the other group is playing and the lady nervously tosses the ball with as much strength as she can muster. It turned out to be a perfect throw and we walked away with a new prize — it was another newer ball. I don’t think it was one of ours, but it looked new. We’ll take it.
Seeing as Ball #2 was launched like a missile over the building, we decided to call off the search and headed home happy with 3 out of 4 balls recovered. I’ve had some weird experiences playing tennis outside the U.S. the last few years, but this definitely is near the top. Just the setting, the location, the ambiance, the other group on our court, the extra-curricular search activities. It really was unique.
But these are the hidden gems you never know about. I’d seen this court and walked by it so many times, but never knew how to play there or what it would be like. It was fun! I’d walked past that run-down building 30 or 40 times, and never gave it a second thought, until I walked in and up those steps. This one not necessarily a gem, but something with a story to share and more than meets the eye.
Viva el Falafel 