Economics in Israel

Trip up north

2008-03-11T22:16:00.003+02:00

Justin and I on the trail...

I took a great trip up north this past weekend with a group of 12. Myself, Dovi, Amir, Justin, Jonah, Caroline, Katie, Ayelet, Hadar, Rosy, and Hazel. Justin works for SPNI and booked us two rooms at the field school in Achziv beach in the north, about 15 minutes drive from the border with Lebanon. On Saturday we took a great trip up from the "Arch Cave" down to the Betzet stream and past some cave that I forget the name of. It is about a 4 hour hike, but we took it slow and stopped to eat and such. It is a hike I did probably about 10 years ago, so I was having all of this deja vu. Along the way we saw a goat give birth, which was "interesting" I guess is the best way to describe it.

Dinosaur Jr.

2008-02-24T22:01:00.000+02:00

Dinosaur Jr. is coming to Tel Aviv to play a concert on the 9th of June!!! I'm so excited! I hope they don't cancel.

Another Ironic Strike

2008-01-22T12:41:00.000+02:00

This morning I was riding my bike to the bank and I heard all this yelling and protesting, and it turns out that the workers of the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf are now on strike! I personally couldn't care less, as I stopped going there (on my own personal protest) because their stuff is too expensive, and the place is allways packed with either obnoxious 19 year old American kids, or with those old Tel Aviv ladies who still speak Polish or Hungarian and allways have issues with the food and return coffees three times because it is too cold or too hot or too much milk and they never give you the spare seat because "my jacket goes here". I long ago transfered to a different coffee shop, Vitali, on Shlomo Hamelekh and Arlozerov. Better food, cheaper, and quieter, and closer to home. I still go to Coffee Bean on occasions, because it is open on Shabbat and you can sit in the back on the couches, and the place is big enough/noisy enough/packed enough that you don't actually have to even buy anything.

I am also trying to figure out if I can finish this degree in the allotted two years now that the strike is over...

Semester has begun

2008-01-20T18:19:00.000+02:00

So the first day of the first semester finally started today... the strike ended Friday at noon. I will be in school straight through end of July... awful.

quick update

2008-01-16T19:05:00.000+02:00

It has been a while since I have posted, so here is quick update. Basically nothing is going on at all... I am waiting, like all other students, to figure out the future of the semester, and to see how it will affect my time here. Either way odds are about 99% certain that I will have to stay another semester to finish the academic year, if not a whole additional year. I put in a transfer to LSE as a backup option in case things get really bad.

Here is the situation: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/945375.html

In the meantime I'm going to start working on the research I have with Dr. Rosa now that I have the data from the World Bank.

Happy New Year

2008-01-01T16:13:00.001+02:00

Happy 2008!

family

2007-12-29T22:11:00.000+02:00

My sister is in town this week and we are swamped with family affairs. Today was the joint birthday party for my two little cousins, Tomer, who is six, and Uri, who is two. They are below blowing out the candles of their joint cake. My sister is in the middle..

Weddings and Such

2007-12-20T17:05:00.000+02:00

The last three weeks or so have been filled with weddings and families and such, and I just wanted to acknowledge them and give a big Mazal Tov to everybody. First, Sarina and Yaron, maybe I will be able to attend both of your ceremonies! Josh and Jess, I expect the catering to be hands down fantastic. Knowing you two I wont be disappointed. Be prepared for Coco and I closing down the party. Liori and Mani, even though their wedding wont be for a while, its going to be a great affair of family and friends. Sharon and Ram, who are getting married tonight, its about damn time! Finally some proof that Ram exists. And I also want to acknowledge Jeff and Lindsey who sent me a fun little holiday card with great photos (my favorite is the one in the bottom right with Jeff looking like a goofball and the one in the top left with Nicholas in his costume).

Luckily for me I have plenty of single friends to rely on, and I always know that somewhere many years from now Jacob and I will be the swinging bachelors of the Del Boca Vista Retirement Community.

New 'do

2007-12-07T03:10:00.000+02:00

This is what peer pressure at 1:30 in the morning makes you do:

North

2007-12-02T19:49:00.000+02:00

I took a last minute trip up north this weekend. Myself, Emily, Jakob, Justin, and Katie. We stayed at the Hermon Field School. The cabins were all booked the same weekend by the Chabbad International High School Girls annual conference. It was bizarre. They were making fun of us! Saturday we went to Golan Heights, did a two hour hike, and then drove along the Israel/Syria border, then drove down to the Kinneret and had dinner that we made on a bench on the beach. All in all a great day

This is me being accosted by a massive flock of goats that crossed our path while hiking

strike

2007-11-26T01:46:00.000+02:00

So the University Faculty staff has entered its 5th week, and according to news, there is no progress at all... With the Anapolis convention going on this week, there is no way anything will be solved this week, and probably next week, which means 7 weeks of strike, which is half the semester.

I am not happy at all.

And they wonder why "good" Israelis leave this country...

Acupuncture

2007-11-12T00:27:00.000+02:00

I did acupuncture today for my first time ever on recommendation from Osi, who studies Chinese Medicine in Rehovot. It was an interesting experience... The 4th year students of her school have their residency right now, so they have really cheap sessions. This very nice woman did the acupuncture, and she had a number of interesting theories.
First, she noticed that all of my previous ailments, twisted ankle, sprained shoulder, and the irritation from my contact lenses, were only on my right side.
Secondly, my eye irritation thing has happened on both occasions that I have returned to Israel.

Who knows if there is any correlation with these things...

In any case, turns out my Earth element is weak, which deals with issues of transition and rootedness, which makes sense as I have been practically nomadic for the last 6 years of my life.
Who knows if I will notice anything in the future, but I scheduled a 2nd session in two weeks.

Another Quick Update

2007-10-30T01:35:00.000+02:00

Tonight I lost 40 sheckes playing poker. A number of my friends are trying to start up a regular monthly game. Amir lost all of his money, Justin made about 20 sheckels, and both Jonah and Dovi doubled their cash. It was at my house this time, which was fun.

Saturday was a big family lunch as well at a restaurant called Susanna in south Tel Aviv. Clockwise from the top left of the table: My grandmother, Michael, my father's cousin who lives in Paris, Shula, my great aunt (grandmother's younger sister), my uncle Berti, my cousin, Daniel, Yossi, my father's cousin (Shula's eldest son and Michael's brother), Adi (yossi's eldest daugher and my 2nd cousin), Marc (her man), my aunt Ruti, my grandfather, Roi (my 2nd cousin and Adi's younger brother), and Nili, his mother.

Another quick update

2007-10-23T12:46:00.000+02:00

Nothing new to report, really. Joy and Jason left Israel after being here for 5 weeks. We went out to a final lunch on the Namal with Katie, which was fun. I'm typically not such a fan of the Namal, as all of the Brara (read B&T) of Israel show up pretending to be cool Tel-Avivi residents for a day. It has the same vibe as when the East Bay dregs show up in Union Square on Saturday's in SF and start spilling over in to the other neighborhoods (I sound like such an elitist bastard).

But the lunch was great, and the food was great.

I'm in the process of reading articles for Dr. Rosa about endogenous factors to democratization, how fun.

Quick school update

2007-10-19T02:20:00.000+02:00

School starts this sunday, how fun. I registered for classes and got what I wanted. This semester is going to be rough. I have 4 classes, and two mini-courses. Next semester is going to be equally as bad. Due to last year's student strike I am basically loading a year and a half of classes into a year so I can finish on time.

Not just that, I finally finished my project for my econometrics class last semester. A whopping 44 pages. We used the GMM estimation method to test various leisure-specific utility function forms against historical data from the OECD. I know it is thrilling for you, and therefore feel free to email me and I will send you the PDF of the project.

Lastly, I also have finagled a research assistant position for the year with Dr. Rosa Alonso, who is on sabbatical at TAU from the World Bank. I will be helping her write two papers, both dealing with endogenous variables to democratization.

Eitan

2007-10-12T19:52:00.000+02:00

Below is a photo of the newest member of my extended family, Eitan, who is now 3 months old. He is the first child of the middle cousin on my mother's side, Itay, and his wife, Silvana. He looks a little stunned, or gassy, or both..

Mazal Tov

2007-10-11T01:26:00.000+02:00

One of the three kids I study with frequently just had a little baby girl. Below is Shir, three days old, photo taken today when I was at his house working on our econ project due in 2 weeks. I have never seen a person who is so young and new to the world, only 3 days. My new little cousin, Eitan, is 3 months (I will get a photo of him up as soon as possible), but 3 days is remarkably young.
Mazal Tov to Hadar and Naama and on the birth of their little girl. Mazal Tov to Micki and Mati as well on the birth of their baby girl two days ago.
Mazal Tov to me for finally getting Matlab on my computer (over 2 gigs), and for registering for classes.

The Jerusalem Post

2007-10-09T13:59:00.000+02:00

The Jerusalem Post ran an article I wrote today, both online and in print.
They did a TERRIBLE editing job. I mean, horrible. First, they screwed up the language by dumbing down any sentence that I wrote that was a little too intellectual in nature. Second, they destroyed the context by taking out any transitional lanuage, so instead of a well thought out expository article it seems like a random string of non-sequetors. Most obnoxiously, they screwed up the content. I made a very clear opinion and they took out three full paragraphs with my opinion.

I was really pissed, so what did I do? I wrote about how pissed I was. You can see for yourself
Here is the original version (link)
Here is their version (link)
here is my rant (link)

Benny

2007-10-02T02:12:00.000+02:00

I forgot to mention in my postings that my good friend Ben was in town last week with his friend Zev. Ben and I go all the way back to NYC 4 years ago. He has his own blog as well, which I added to the links on the right. Below is a photo of us from their first day in Tel Aviv, which was Yom Kippur. Here we are breaking fast at Hannahs. Also, I got a new bike today. I went to the sketchy stores in Yaffo to get a used bike, and I am forever parking it in my stairwell at night. I don't care what Ms. Gutman says about it.

TRAGEDY

2007-09-30T02:15:00.000+02:00

Today is a very sad day... My bike was stolen...

Usually during the day I park it outside my building on the side, and at night I park it in my stairwell, hauling it upstairs 4 flights and locking it to the metal banister. But two nights ago I came home very late and I was lazy and left it outside, only to find out in the morning that it was stolen. I am very sad.

I had gotten so used to biking in Tel Aviv, it is truly the best way to get around the city, and the bike, along with my cell phone, was becoming one of my staple possessions (see the photo below that Joy took when she was here last week). Just thinking about some stranger on my bike makes me want to cry. I barely had it for 3 weeks.I decided not to give up, and I am going to get a new bike. I'm going to go to the place in Yaffo that sells used (read: stolen) bikes for cheap, and I'm going to make sure that I do not get lazy about locking it upstairs at night.

Very sad day...

More Holiday Fun

2007-09-25T00:39:00.000+02:00

The thing with Yom Kippur is that is that it means I have offically been in Israel for a year now. Yom Kippur 2006 was my first Jewish Holiday in Tel Aviv, and now I have officially done one full cycle. Like last year, I took to the streets cause nobody drives, but this time I upgraded. First, I have a new bike. I bought myself this bike on major sale from this bike shop on Pinsker. Total impulse buy, but I'm really happy I did it. Tel Aviv is a great city to bike in because it is small, compact, and flat. There are definitely some streets to avoid, and I ride strictly on the sidewalk or on designated biking lanes (there are quite a bit actually). Drivers and Pedestrians in this city are not bike friendly.
So I took my bike to areas that I would not get to otherwise so I could get some cool photos. This is what the highway looked like at 3pm. Nothing at all. This is right between two major exits on the Ayalon (the highway that cuts through the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. I got on at Arolozerof and rode south a kilometer to Hashalom exit. It was so eerie. This is the exact area that has the most intense rush hour traffic, and there was nobody there. I literally just got rode down the onramp and into this empty 5 lane highway.
When you get off Hashalom exit you hit what is probably one of the most convoluted intersections I have ever seen. The intersection of Namir/Begin and Hashalom/Kaplan right in front of the Azrieli towers is equivalent to the horrific intersection of the entrance to the Holland Tunnel from 7th Ave. in Manhattan. It is that intense. And yet at 3:30 on Saturday there was nobody.

Tomorrow I sit with my lab partner to start plowing through our Econometrics project, which I will definitely post about at a later date.

Yom Kipper

2007-09-21T23:45:00.000+02:00

Today is Yom Kippur. I was invited to an early dinner with family friends, then went to Kol Nidre at the Reform Temple, then met up with my cousins in Rabin Square, which was filled with all of these kids and their bikes, it was great. Tomorrow I'm back at my cousins, then invited to a break the fast meal with friends.

Besides that, the last two weeks have been very nice. First, Joy and Jason arrived in Israel, and will be here for a month. They are in the last leg of their 10 month long around the world tour. I can't wait to take Jason to Jerusalem, he has never been, I can't wait to see his face. Joy and I also ate good food at Orna and Ella for lunch, a very well known Tel Aviv restaurant that is kind of a local legend (even the Economist has a review of it).

Benny is also in Israel for a week with a friend of his for a wedding.

I have also sorted out my class schedule for the coming week, and I finally got approval for my econometrics project from my Professor. My lab partner and I have been waiting ten days for it...

back in the Holy Land

2007-09-08T15:16:00.000+03:00

My postings have been very sparse over the last month, my apologies.
I'm back in Israel as of three days ago.

Here is the brief recap of what happened in the last month of New York...
Katie was in town for work, we had a great time. My mother was also in town, which was a lot of fun. We ate wonderful food, even though I was not allowed to pick any of the restaurants. I also had my *gasp* 29th, birthday. My mother got me these great pair of jeans for my b-day present. I am very very happy with them.

I am still waiting to hear from NERA about a potential long term job offer... finger's crossed...

Now the coming 6 weeks will be focused on 5 things:
1. My econometrics project with Sharon
2. Figuring out my class schedule for the next year and applying to classes tomorrow
3. The Jewish holiday's with my family
4. Enjoying Tel Aviv.
5. Getting back in shape and playing ultimate, even though I played a lot on NYC.

I will post more frequently now, and hopefully I can find some photos from the summer in NYC as well.

Week Five

2007-07-23T01:27:00.000+03:00

Again its been a crazy week... Work actually was interesting and intense. I was at work from about 9:00 am until 7:30pm Monday, Tuesday, and Wed. I'm not actually doing the analysis yet, but I'm doing all the research that become the analysis. The projects I have looked at this past week including 12b-1 Mutual fund fees, mutual fund market timers, Asbestos damages (again...), and more Options Backdating. This coming week I'm supposed to start working on a paper with our Senior VP, which might be very interesting.

Rachel Diller was in town for work on Wed. She is one of my oldest friends. I have known her since I was 11 years old. Then, Saturday, I went to Coney Island with friends. It was the first time I had ever been there. The place was packed because they are tearing most of it down to make condos, and there was also the Siren Music Festival going on. I also saw Alon and his cousin Doron today (again the weather was amazing). He is a very old family friend, my parents have known his parents since before I was born.

Katie from Israel is arriving for work this week as well, which will be fun, and I think next weekend my friend Jesse might be driving up as well.

Week Four

2007-07-16T07:34:00.000+03:00

The rest of my 4th week has been fantastic. My friend Christine who worked with me at Gap was in town visiting, which was nice. We went to the Museum of Modern Art on Saturday, which is an amazing space in an of itself, but also had some very interesting exhibits going on. One really interesting one was the Barry Frydlender photo exhibit. He has a very intersting style of taking multiple photographs of the same location and layering them one on top of the other to create a sort of photo collage. Also, his photos are entirely about Israel, which was interesting.
Then there was the Richard Serra exhibit.

The other interesting thing about the Moma is that there were quite a number of artists names that I recognized. The reason I recognized them is because Doris Fisher, wife of Don Fisher, the founder of the GAP, has a number of their pieces in her massive private art collection, which she proudly shows off in the 3 huge private galleries in the Gap corporate offices.

Then Saturday night a number of us went out to Joe's Ginger in Chinatown. Me, Christine, Randy, Melanie, Sarina, Yaron. It was a great time, then we went to Russian Samovar to meet up with Coco and other friends. I believe the night ended somewhere around 3:20AM. The only thing that I regret is that I did not have my camera.

I think Diller is next on the list of visitors that will be in New York...

New York moments

2007-07-11T07:27:00.000+03:00

The great thing about New York City is that frequently you get an "only in New York" moment. I had one this evening. My friend Jess, who used to work with me at the Gap, was in town for work. They put her up in the AMAZING Hotel Gansevoort in the uber-trendy Meatpacking District on the West side of Manhattan. The hotel has a rooftop pool and bar on the 20th floor with amazing views of the city. Check out their website here, and look at the "gallery" link to see the photos of the pool. Below is my crappy photo from their bar. The funny part was that everybody there was super dressed up, fancy dresses and suits and ties, while we were sitting in our nasty shorts from the pool and dirty T-shirts with chlorine in our hair.

Then, today there was an article in the New York Times about the Bike Share that I did this weekend with Coco. The article is here. And I also cut and pasted the text below just in case the article goes offline:

Daniel Su and Adrian Garcia usually spend their lunch break going for a walk, then grabbing a bite to eat. But yesterday they tried something different, made possible because they went for a ride using someone else’s bicycles.

The two men took advantage of an experimental bicycle-sharing program meant to show New Yorkers that biking can be a viable transportation alternative to expand their lunch horizon.

Mr. Su and Mr. Garcia had read about the bicycle project online. And since both work a few blocks from Storefront for Art and Architecture, a nonprofit SoHo gallery that is the experimental project’s host, they decided to give it a try, and headed to Union Square for lunch.

The five-day project is sponsored by the Forum for Urban Design, a group of architects, designers and planners, and by the gallery, near Kenmare Street and Cleveland Place. Twenty bicycles are available free, for up to 30 minutes, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. until tomorrow. Bicycles can be returned to the gallery or dropped off at other nearby sites like Washington Square Park and Tompkins Square Park.

Displays at the gallery describe eight European cities, including Barcelona, Spain, and Lyon, France, where bicycle-share programs have thrived. The project is designed to gather data on the viability of such a program in New York.

David Haskell, executive director of the Forum for Urban Design, said, “This is our attempt to imagine bike sharing in New York City.”

“A ride-share program would reduce the dependency on automobiles. It would be a great alternative to subways and bus services — and a lot cheaper for the city,” he said.

“The bikes are definitely a better alternative than subways or buses,” Mr. Garcia, the lunchtime rider, said. “I know I would take advantage of the bike program if it existed.”

Mr. Haskell was in Paris on vacation in April and saw how such a program was shaping up there. Once the Paris program gets under way, in a few days, there will be more than 10,000 bikes available at 750 stations around the city.

New York City officials, who are aware of Mr. Haskell’s goals, are trying to determine if a ride-share program would work.

“We are studying it with interest,” said Molly Gordy, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Transportation. “The big questions for us are how to combat theft and vandalism, which are two problems prevalent in New York.” Borrowers in the test program have to leave credit card information. Ms. Gordy has been closely following the progress of a bike-share program in San Francisco. Similar programs are being considered in Portland, Ore., Chicago and Washington, where it may begin as early as September.

Caroline Samponaro, a bicycle- campaign coordinator at Transportation Alternatives — a nonprofit New York City group that advocates bicycling, walking and public transit as alternatives to driving — believes a bike-share program would benefit not only New Yorkers but also tourists.

“A bike-share program is exciting and interesting,” she said. “It’s one piece of the larger puzzle: nonpolluting transportation. This is a way people can use bicycles. Potentially, it could deal with overcrowded buses, subways, and the number of cars on the streets.”

Barbara Held lives in Barcelona but is from Buffalo, Minn. She lived in New York before moving to Spain 15 years ago. Ms. Held stopped by the SoHo art gallery to visit friends. She did not need to test the program because she participates in the one in Barcelona. She had her bike card in her purse. It was the size of a credit card. An image of a red bicycle with the word Bicing, the name of Barcelona’s program, is on the front of the card. Barcelona started its program in March with 1,500 bicycles and 100 stations.

“The city didn’t think it would take off,” Ms. Held said. “But the program is so popular. People ride the red bikes all the time.”

Baby Nicholas Patric Daems

2007-07-09T08:19:00.001+03:00

I wanted to post this up quickly as well. This is Jeff and Lindsay's baby, Nicholas. I finally got to meet him. Jeff and I were discussing that this kid is about 6% mine, as I was partially responsible for bringing Jeff and Lindsay together, and therefore peripherally responsible for the baby.

Jeff, here is my proposal: I will cover 6% of the cost of college for the child, but in turn I get 6% of all of his future earnings. Seems fair, right?

Week Three

2007-07-09T04:22:00.000+03:00

So week three has come and gone in NYC... Work had ups and downs... I had some interesting projects pertaining to market timing and patent infringement, but there were also some down moments with not so much going on. Over-all I definitely see the potential of this place of work, and hopefully this will pan out in the coming years.

On the social front, Wed. was the 4th of July, and I saw the fireworks with a few friends. I was invited to join friends of friends on the porch of the StrawberryFrog advertising agency on 25th and 5th. It was a great view, wathing the fireworks through the buildings that line 26th street (see photo below) Then Thursday Jacob joined me in the city on a visit. We had a great time. Thursday night and Friday night we went out with friends. On Thursday we joined his cousin, Chantalle (who happens to be the lead singer of Morningwood), and her friends for dinner at this great Italian restaurant called Li'l Frankies. To further add on to the Celebrity sitings, Leelee Sobieski was there as well (I also saw Steve Buscemi last night). Then Friday night Jacob and I went to friday night services at the orthodox temple across the street. The Rabbi was a midget, seriously. And the only people there were very old men in short ties like they used to wear in the 30's. Then we went out to the east village with some friends.

On Saturday we met up with Jeff and Lindsay and the baby for lunch in Union Square. The baby is MASSIVE. He is 6 months old as in noticeably bigger and heavier than Uri, my little cousin who is a year and a half. From there we walked all the way up to 79th and 5th Ave to meet up with Melanie and Noam and sit in Sheep's Meadow in Central Park. Its a 5.5 mile walk up... And then we walked all the way back down as well... it took about 1.5 hours each way.

Below is a photo of Jacob with one of the freaks in Central park. I believe the "freak" was pretending to be a Scottish gnome, or at least was he was faking a Scottish accent.
Then today I met up with Colin and his roommate on Kenmare and Lafayette for the New York Bike-share project. They are trying to get a free bike sharing program in the city like they have in cities across Europe like Oslo, Paris, Barcelona, etc... We took a bike through Chinatown, across the Williamsburg Bridge, and then hit up the new Aroma Cafe store on Green and Houston. Aroma is the first Israeli franchise to get to the states. The coffee shop is not as good as in Israel, but it was packed with Israelis (no surprise there...)

All in all it was a great weekend... Tomorrow back to work.

2nd Week

2007-07-02T06:29:00.000+03:00

So my 2nd week in New York City has gone by, I do need to put up more photos...
Here is the quick recap. Things have definitely picked up at work. I have been given my own projects that have actually been interesting. I can't go in to the specific companies that are involved, but the topics I have covered so far is damages from the Subprime Mortgage meltdown that is going on right now, Option Backdating issue, and inflation and discounting rates.
In addition, I have been catching up with more friends, which is great.

The weather has been very bizarre... Last week had 3 days straight of horrible disgusting weather... Humid and sticky and overcast with occasional thunderstorms. Then this weekend was amazing, truly perfect weather that makes you love Manhattan.

Right now the inaugural game of the Israeli Baseball League is on TV on Channel 21!!! Petah Tikva against Modi'in!! Sponsored by the New York Mets! (Proz, I hope you are watching this!!)

This week Jeffy and Lindsay are in town with their new little baby (see the Nicholas Patrick blog on the list on the right panel). Jacob is also coming in to town as well, so it is like a mini college reunion.

Also, I'm thinking about a good topic for my final project in Econometrics, if Sharon agrees. I'm thinking maybe something about interest rates for mortgages and money supply over time... We will see..

First week

2007-06-24T20:46:00.000+03:00

So it has officially been one full week in NYC. Work has actually picked up a bit, I was given an interesting project. Originally I was just updated some file work that related to Option Backdating and class action/derivative suits that are out there. Now I got a side project dealing with the Subprime Lending collapse that may create massive issues in the US economy. Specifically I'm looking at this concept of Cashback Lending, which seems harmless, but is actually illegal, and may have huge implications to the Subprime issue. My job is to summarize a number of recent papers on the issue for a few economists who just published, and try to quantify a relationship, if any.

Also have been hanging out with friends, which is good, and I found a really cheap gym by my house. The gym, called Dolphin gym, is really cheap. 33 dollars a month, which is NOTHING for manhattan standards... the "fancy" gyms like Equinox, Bally, etc... can easily run up to 150-200 dollars A MONTH. Granted, my gym is tiny, and has no pilates/yoga/buns&abs/etc... and it is also downstairs underground with no windows, but for what I need it is perfect.

The weather has also been AMAZING. it hasn't become unbearably humid yet, but it is starting to get very hot...

Still have to do stuff for the Malag report, which is irritating, but I'm doing a bit every day with it. Also need to start thinking about the final project for Econometrics with Sharon...
I'm thinking maybe something about Mortgage rates with respect to interest rates and other Macro variables over time since the 1980s.

Little Ant

2007-06-21T04:26:00.000+03:00

Being in manhattan makes you feel like a little tiny ant. I can't really explain it any better than that. So many people, so many faces, so many restaurants, so many bars... It feels like there is no way to control any of it, or to ever really see all of it no matter how many years you spend in the city. I read somewhere that if you went to a different bar/restaurant every single night of every day it would take you 40 years to go everywhere, and that is just in Manhattan.

Below is a picture from the corner of my building, on 46th and 6th, looking north. It doesn't really capture the madness of Midtown. So many buildings, and all these people running around all the time. This is my building, all 45 floors of it. One of countless massive high-rises in the city. I live/work on the 25th floor it. My company, NERA, has 3 floors in the building, and about 230 total people work in their New York Office. They have about 20 offices worldwide, from Sao Paolo to Shanghai. It makes you realize how small Tel Aviv actually is... The entire municipal city of Tel Aviv has about a third the population of Manhattan alone.

Welcome to NYC

2007-06-19T07:59:00.000+03:00

So it has been all of 3 days pretty much. I spent Saturday and Sunday seeing friends and trying to get my life in order... It has not been as easy of a move as I suspected... First, the apartment is dubious. The shower is broken, the key didn't work, and they didn't clean it. I am pissed off. I am constantly calling/harassing the owners to fix it, and I hope it resolves soon. In addition, I forgot to bring things like blanket, towels, etc... so I had to go to Kmart and get some cheap stuff, but that is sorted out. I did get to see some friends, which is always nice. Below is Randy and Melanie from Saturday night at Doc Watson's on the Upper East Side. As for the area of my apartment, the Lower East Side. I couldn't be happier. I have yet to truly take in the area and explore it, but it is fascinating. It has traditionally been a immigrant neighborhood, and for many years was the center for recent Jewish immigrants from Europe. There is still a Yeshiva and an orthodox temple or two in the area... The area is totally mixed now, latino immigrants, black locals, obnoxious credit card hipsters, religious Jews, professional caucasians, etc... It makes for a really interesting blend of cool bars, restaurants, local stores and various nationalities. I am looking forward to getting to know the area over the summer.

The other thing I enjoy is the subway... I live right next to the Delancy/Essex street stop on the F train, which takes me in about 12 minutes right up to 47th and 6th, which is where the office is. Below is a photo of the station. About 3 minutes after I took this photo a group of ultra-orthodox Jews came in and were speaking Yiddish. Go figure.
Things are still up in the air though and I am not settled. Tomorrow night involves Vector AutoRegressions for my Econometrics class. And Over the course of the week I have to finish up some lingering things for the Malag report I'm doing for Tel Aviv U, but its all grunt work. I'm thinking of holing myself up in the library on Saturday to do it all...

SF

2007-06-14T20:42:00.000+03:00

So here is a quick update of my week in the Bay Area.

I have seen the parents and seen my friends, which is great. I have renewed my California driver's license, which was necessary. I went to our family dentist, Dr. Hamako, for the first time in nearly 7 years to find out that I have a cavity, which is irritating. I finished the recent season of the Sopranos on Tivo (can we discus the ending???) I have also gotten in all the paperwork for my summer sublet in New York. I'm living in the Lower East Side, on Clinton and Stanton. I will have photos up for the place this weekend.

Another fun highlight was going with my old friends from my days working at the GAP to the SF Giants baseball game. Baseball on TV is boring, but seeing it live is nice. Seeing it in the private GAP box seats for free with your friends is much better.
The stadium in SF is amazing as well, stunning, built along the bay. The photo below does not do it justice because you don't see the water and the mountains in the background, but it was a gorgeous day.

SF

2007-06-12T20:37:00.000+03:00

So I'm currently in Palo Alto, outside San Francisco, at my parents house. I'm here for a week seeing friends and family, and Friday I go to new york.

I found this great sublet for the summer on the Lower East Side, on Clinton and Stanton for those who know. It's a very interesting area of Manhattan that I have never lived in, so it should be a fun experience.

The other thing to note is that I still have homework to do... Today and tomorrow I will be completing my econometrics homework... how fun.

Update

2007-05-31T02:18:00.000+03:00

So the last 3 weeks have been insane. The student strike has forced me to switch around my summer schedule to figure out how to balance between my academic needs and this internship. Basically I had to shift the internship earlier, and I will be in NYC on the 18th of June, with a week beforehand in SF to see the family.

This has created a whole slew of logistical issues to deal with. Subletting my place here (which seemed easy at first but then became a total nightmare) and finding a place in NYC (ideally with Coco) are the biggest obstacles. Then there is all of the smaller stuff: packing winter clothes, dealing with health insurance, dealing with money stuff, blah blah blah... On top of that, now that the strike is over I have all of this schoolwork as well.

I fly out on the 8th, a little over a week. I am definitely looking forward to a week in SF with the family and with friends, and I'm getting very excited about NYC as well.

I will definitely get back on the horse with posting and photos as soon as this coming week comes to a close and I can relax.

I'm famous

2007-05-25T13:52:00.002+03:00

Haaretz newspaper interviewed me regarding the student strike, and how it affects students from abroad.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/863034.html

The print version has a photo of me even.

I'm a bad blogger

2007-05-10T02:55:00.001+03:00

OK, I'm a bad blogger... I haven't done a good job of keeping you updated...
So here is a brief summary of the past month since Passover break, just to catch up to speed.

My sister was here all of April, we had a good time, she went to Egypt for a week with my two friends Matt and Pros. I was supposed to go with them as well, but I had school.

But wait! Then a massive academic strike happened (and is still going on). Students and professors have been on strike for the past 4 weeks to protest against increasing undergraduate tuition. I wont get in to the details of it because it is actually a very contrived ordeal.

I will say that I am opposed to the strike for personal reasons, as I fear it might affect the internship i have this summer, the one that I have been dreaming about for the past 6 months...

So needless to see not much has been going on here since there haven't been any classes... I'm working on a project for the uni, and basically wasting time. I wish I could be more productive with writing and such, but there is just no motivation because there is no external drive to push me.

My father is in town for work again this week, we went to a great restaurant and I had a fantastic steak.

Also I have vowed to try to carry a camera on me much more frequently to take more photos. I have started putting new ones on the flickr site, and I will upload more over the coming weekend.

Passover part 3

2007-05-01T16:16:00.001+03:00

Finally the third part of my post about Passover, sorry for my delay. We had a crazy 2 day trip to the north of Israel. Myself, my sister, Katie, and Prosnit in a tiny little rented Hundai Getz. We went to Akko first for the evening. It was a bizarre site because the city itself is mixed of Christian Arabs and Muslim Arabs, but durring passover all of these Orthodox tourists come to the city. Its like a fish out of water staring at another fish out of water. Akko is one of the oldest ports in the world, and to this day is functioning, but mostly for small fishing vessels (as is the port in Yaffo). Walking through the Shuk we saw this unbelievable site below... One of the fishermen must have picked up a 4 foot manta ray by mistake (I love the little Orthodox boy staring at it.)
That night we hung out in Nahariya, this tiny little Ashkenazi beach community about 20 minutes south of the border with Lebanon. There were all of 3 bars in the city. That night we camped on the beach north of Nahariya, and the following morning went all the way up to the border, where they have these underground caves. Below is our little tent on the sand.
We were at the caves (called Rosh Hanikra) at 8:30am, when they opened, and by 9am we were on our way again across northern Galilee toward the Golan Heights, stopping by for a 4 hour hike up Mount Meron, the highest in the Galilee. From there we went to lunch to Tzfat, eating Kosher for Passover food at this not-so-decent cafe that had an amazing view. Below is the view from Mt. Meron looking down in to the valley. The view is toward the North West, and it was a very hazy day, but you can see the outlines of the mountains of the Golan in the far off distance.
From Tzfat we went on a crazy car trip up to the Golan, where the scenery is absolutely amazing. There was still snow on Mt. Hermon (the tallest in Israel, which sits on the border with Syria). The picture below is of the largest village in the Golan, called Madjal El Shams, which is a Druze village. The border of the village is the actual crossing to Syria.
We drove south down the Golan and stopped at another mountain that you can climb up, which had a lot of historical significance from the 1967 war when the Golan was Annexed, again the view was amazing, below is a photo of Prosnit. You can see the turrets of the mountain that were cut in by the Israeli army in 1967 to protect the region, and there is an underground bunker as well. Very interesting stuff.
We continued south and had dinner in the Israeli town of Katzrin, the largest town in the Golan. From there we continued to the hot springs of Hamat Gader, which is in the little corner where Israel, Jordan, and Syria meet. It was packed with people, and open till 11pm on the holiday. Too many people, in fact, it was very overwhelming.

There are plenty of photos to share, I will put them up in the coming days on the flickr site, but for now you can check out the photo below that Ofra took of me driving behind the massive military vehicle. (I had to pass a lot of them on the street).

Other blogs

2007-04-22T17:37:00.001+03:00

I have added a few links to the right of people who are in similar situations as me, meaning they are in Israel for an extended period of time and chronicling their experiences. Hillary is getting her BA at IDC in Herzeliyah, Hannah is working and living in Yaffo, and Micki plays ultimate with me. This is in addition to Prosnit, who is here for a year and Joy and Jason, who are travling around the world for a year.

Check them out if you want.

Passover Part 2

2007-04-19T02:23:00.000+03:00

Now for the second part... The day after the actual Passover meal is a holiday, so all of Jerusalem was basically shut down, no public transport, no stores, nothing. So my sister and I went on a long stroll, starting with Mea Shearim, the most religious neighborhood in Jerusalem, then continuing to the old city. Mea Shearim is a crazy place. More orthodox than you have ever seen (as shown in the photo below at the entrance). It is a place that is notorious because the ultra orthodox will spit on you and yell at you if you enter the area and don't reach their standards, like if you drive through the neighborhood on Shabbat. My sister and I had no problem though, we played it cool... Unfortunately, we did not get any good photos. They really don't like being photographed, and on Passover, like on Shabbat, it's a really bad thing to do, so we tried to take some incognito photographs, but most didn't turn out well (I will get around to putting htem on the flickr site soon). From there we continued to the old city, and we entered through the Damascus gate, which is by far the most ornate, most famous, and largest. It's also the main entrance to the Arab quarter. Since Passover is clearly not a Muslim holiday, the place was packed, the Shuk was in full swing, all the vendors were selling like it was any other day. Complete contrast to the rest of the city.
The old city of Jerusalem has 4 quarters, the Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Armenian, and each quarter has interesting things to see. My sister and I snaked through the alleyways and made our way to the holiest site in Christianity, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. We took a lot of photos, which agian I will put up on the flickr site soon, but below is a cool one from the main hall. The church itself is a mess of tourists and people on various pilgrimages, it is definitely an experience. I hadn't been there in literally 10 years, so it was a lot of Deja vu for me.
We then went up the tower at the nearby church, which I believe is Lutheran, but I'm not positive. It is by far one of the best views of the old city, and the only really tall building you can climb. You slink up the spire on these very small twisted stairs to get to the top, all for 2 shekels with a student discount, roughly 45 cents. The view below is looking east, toward Jordan. This is one of my favorite views, as it shows the dome of the rock, which is probably the holiest site in the world. Here Abraham bound Isaac to the rock and almost sacraficed him. Here Mohammed ascended to heaven with the angel Gabriel. Here Jesus also did something (Coco, maybe you can tell me what...). Anyhow, behind it, and up the hill is the Hebrew University, and directly below it is the Western Wall (which is blocked from view).
Needless to say it is one of the most fascinating walks you can take in Israel, and hopefully if some of you ever come to visit me I will take you there. I always take for granted how absolutely mind-boggling Jerusalem is because I have been here so many times, but whenever I do this walk I am reminded of how absolutely unique the city is, specifically the old city.

Coco, you and I will do this same walk when you come visit, it will blow your mind.

Passover part 1

2007-04-10T13:46:00.001+03:00

I promised a posting and some photos, so I will begin at the beginning... Two Friday's ago, right after I had my midterm in Macro B, I went straight up to Jerusalem for the beginning of my Passover break. My sister came to town on Wed. of that week. Friday we saw my fathers side of the family, then on Saturday we drove to Haifa to see my mother's side of the family. Below is a photo of little cousin Uri and I from that saturday, who has started walking. My sister took this photo of Uri smacking me in the face and thoroughly enjoying himself (look at the smile on his face). We drove back Saturday night, and I spent Saturday and Sunday in Tel Aviv. Sunday night was fun, as I went out with my friend from NYC Sari, who was in town with her whole family. Her parents even joined us at the bar for a drink (way to go mom and dad!)

Monday morning I went back up to Jerusalem with my sister for Passover Seder, which was held at the house of my father's cousins... I am not familiar with that side of the family, and I also haven't seen them in many many years, but we had a good time. It was the first time ever that all 4 of the grandchildren were all in Israel for Passover (see the photo below that my grandfather took of us between the meal and dessert).
Needless to say my grandmother was ecstatic to have all 4 of us there. Below is a photo that I took of my grandparents from that night. Look at my grandfather with his hand on my grandmothers shoulder... still the charmer I guess!
Needless to say it was an interesting affair, especially considering that I have it again next year with the same people.

My next post will be about the ridiculous 2 day trip we took to the North... and I am slowly going through the process of uploading all of the photos to flickr. I've maxed out my bandwidth for now, so it might take some time.

flickr

2007-04-08T16:23:00.001+03:00

Long time no post.
The past week has been crazy. Passover break in Israel... all of these visitors from the states, my sister as well. Now that things have relaxed a bit I will start putting posts with the details. For now, I have started a flickr site so that I can share with you all of the photos that are not on the posts. You can see all of my photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/econinisrael/
Or you can just click on the link called "my photos" on the right.

For those who aren't familiar with flickr, all of my photos are categorized with "tags", so if you want to see scenery photos, you click on the "scenery" tag, or if you want to see photos of family you chose the "family" tag, etc... On the main page of the site are all of my photos, and on the top is a little tab called "tags", which helps you navigate.

Later today I will post something serious about the last week, with photos and everything.

Babysitting again

2007-03-27T00:08:00.000+02:00

Friday night I babysat again, wanted to post up a photo of my other little cousin, Uri, who is one. Adorable kid, just started walking...

This was the best photo I could get... he wasn't being very cooperative for photo poses.

Anglos

2007-03-24T00:31:00.001+02:00

So tomorrow is the Israel/England European Cup qualifying game here in Israel, and Tel Aviv is overrun with brits. What's funny is that there have been all of these news items about how to deal with British soccer hooligans, and they have been interviewing the chief of Tel Aviv police on the news... its been humorous.
In addition, there have been all these Anglos (specifically Americans) all over my campus because Tel Aviv U. has opened it's doors for Spring Semester Study Abroad programs for American colleges.

Here is the thing with Anglos in Israel... they fall in to two groups. First, by Anglos I mean english speakers, Brits, Americans, Aussies, South African's, and the occasional New Zealander. One group is those Anglos who understand that the situation in Israel, and in the greater Middle East, is very confusing and convoluted, and they make the effort to open their eyes and try to absorb as much as possible.
The second group are those Anglos who support Bush.

Update

2007-03-20T03:07:00.001+02:00

So it's almost 3am here on a Monday night. Why am I up at this hour, you ask? I have been diligently working on my final project from last semesters Econometrics class, which is due Sunday. Luckily tomorrow I don't have class and I can sleep in.
My class partner, Sharon, and I are looking at US FDI and seeing how various variables, like Corruption, Political Stability, and Regulatory Quality affect the amount the US invests in other countries.
There have been many reports written about how corruption affects FDI, but the results have been ambiguous, so we took it a step further and are adding the parameter for "Regulatory Quality". The reason previous reports have been ambiguous on the topic is because there has been this underlying assumption that countries have some "moral" premium on where they invest. Meaning the previous theory is that the US wont give money to countries that corrupt.

Clearly this is logically wrong, the US doesn't give a damn about morals. And now we are basically running the necessary regressions to prove it. Basically, the US as an investor only cares about being able to secure their investment and secure potential profit, regardless of how corrupt the receiving country is. Sad, ain't it.

Clearly the project is more detailed, with things dealing with Ommitted Variable Bias, Multicollinearity, and Heteroskedasticity. I also ran some tests, Chow-Fisher and White specifically. Below you see the regression output for the control variables and the explanatory variables, as divided into two population groups based on GDP per Capita. In other news, Passover break is coming up soon, and I'm looking forward to having some visitors. Sari, Noam, and my sister, as well...

PS, anybody who wants the full 25 page final project email me and I'll send you the pdf. I know you are all dying of curiosity.

exam results

2007-03-13T20:16:00.001+02:00

Just got the results from my Macro final, the one that I knew I did not do well on, and the grade reflects that fact. The problem was that I was under the impression that one specific model would be theoretical, but he asked a completely mathematical question about the model instead, which I did not review. So basically it is my own damn fault. My friend also suffered the same fate.
But all is not lost! My friend and I will both take the exam for the class again next year and improve our grades. Now that I have learned my lesson that you have to cover all topics from all angles, and you can't play Russian Roulette with what is going to be on the final.

McKinsey

2007-03-07T21:20:00.001+02:00

Tonight I was invited to a McKinsey Israel recruitment event. It was an open invite to the Biz School and Econ School students, and then special invites from other faculties. My friend Inbar, who studies linguistics, was invited from her department. Interestingly, she didn't even know the company, but her curiosity was piqued. I agreed to go because of my curiosity (I already have a job for the summer!). It was an interesting affair to say the least...

First, the strategy/management consulting industry as a whole is very nascent in Israel. In the early 90's a number of the major American players opened offices in Israel, but ultimately they all closed their doors. McKinsey always had a presence in Israel throughout the 90's, but they only opened an office in 2000, after the others left. In addition, over the past 10 years a number of much smaller Israeli firms have emerged as well, but they cater to much smaller companies, so don't really even compete in the same ballpark as McKinsey.

The overwhelming amount of people in the crowd were Biz school people. Of the 200 people in the crowd, 10 were Econ (only 2 from graduate school. Me and my German pal Jorn), and 3 others (Inbar and her two friends).

Here is my beef with McKinsey... They are generalists. I'm actually a big fan of consulting as a career. You get to work in a project settings with a team, you get to work with really interesting companies on fantastically tangible issues. I actually have a lot of respect for specialists when it comes to consulting. Econ consulting, Finance Consulting, Energy, whatever. These firms, like NERA, LECG, FTI, EMC, whatever.
When it comes to generalists, there are those firms that I do like, like Monitor, Navigant, and Huron. These are firms that either have a great boutique-like reputation for work/life balance, or they have a distinct appreciation for academia.
McKinsey, on the other hand, is neither of any of these things. First, they are generalists (the guy even said: we look for generalists), and second, they are so institutionalized that they don't have the quality of life like others.
On the plus side, I had like 6 of their roast beef finger sandwiches. On the minus side, I felt a little sick after that on the bus home.

In other news, I am busy converting Bellman equations to general Euler equations. What fun!

Random Job

2007-02-28T01:42:00.001+02:00

So last week the secretary of the Econ Faculty called me in (I was freaking out because I thought it was about my Macro grade) and threw out this random offer for a random job. Every year the Ministry of Education conducts this full survey on higher education in Israel, and every year they choose different departments to do participate (suffer). This year it's Economics. So every single Economics faculty in every institute of higher learning in Israel basically has to do a self assessment based on internal surveys and such. Then the whole thing has to get written in to a report with responses and Excel charts and the works. Then the report gets reviewed by an outside committee and then the Ministry of Education gives a final statement.

Here is where I come in: They have to do the whole thing in English and they need a native speaker. Since my English is marginally better than those at the faculty, I am now officially given the title of Research Assistant to the head of the entire faculty, Dr. Yoram Weiss. I get paid a little bit, which is nice, and on top of that I get my own office! (shared, of course) with my own computer! It might be an interesting experience, so of course I said yes. It will be interesting to see the bureaucratic underbelly of the Israeli Educational system at work, as ugly as that may be.

2nd Semester

2007-02-21T01:33:00.001+02:00

One of the more irritating things this school year has been that I really didn't have a semester break. Technically the semester ended Jan. 28th, and the 2nd Semester doesn't start until Feb 25th, but during the break is when they have finals, and on top of that I had a crazy last minute trip to the states to interview and see people.

What is worse is that I have no break between finals and the next semester. My Econometrics final is Thursday, then Sunday at 9am I am already starting up again. Check out the schedule for next semester: There are definite benefits to this semester over last. First, no Friday classes, and second, the classes later in the week start late, at noon. On the other hand last semester I had both Monday and Tuesday off, this semester I only have Tuesdays. Lastly, the Thursday evening class is going to be tough, end of the week, from 5 to 8pm... I would prefer to have it on Monday evening, but what can you do. In addition to this, I'm going to add a mini-course in Trade and FDI which I hope will be interesting. Mini courses are only worth one semester hour, meet once a week for 2 hours and last only 5 sessions. They are usually about really interesting topics, like last semester there was one in Economics of Religion.

big game

2007-02-20T01:33:00.001+02:00

So about two weeks ago, right after my final, Pros got us tickets to the Israeli Basketball Championships Final between Jerusalem vs. and Bnei Hasharon. Jerusalem easily won the game, beating by about 18 points, and leading the whole way. Dalia Itzik, current sitting President of Israel (since the previous one was indited on rape charges) handed out the final trophy (photo below)What was fun about the game was that the fans were totally insane. They had no problem booing and cheering, and the crowd was about 80% Jerusalem fans in red. They would boo every time one of the Bnei HaSharon players had the ball. They booed when they announced the coach of the opposing team, the really booed when Dalia was called up. It was nuts. They were lighting small firecrackers in the stadium, singing, drums, the whole nine... Think a Boca Juniors soccer match in Buenos Aires.

The other interesting thing is that the league in Israeli is supposed to be one of the best non-american leagues. Maccabi Tel Aviv is usually the perennial champ, winning the title in 9 out of the 10 last years (Bnei Hasharon beat them this year in the semi's in a massive upset to advance to the finals). Maccabi Tel Aviv has even won the all Europe league championships twice in recent years. The team is interesting as well, allowing only 4 non-Israelis per team. Of which all 4 all usually large black men from NCAA Div. I teams in the states who play abroad for a few years then try their luck again with the NBA.
Prosnit and I were joking about this one player, this kid named Scott Greenman, who was captain of the Princeton Basketball team last year and was even on the All-Ivy team. He was the 6th man for the Bnei Sharon squad, and he stands at a whopping 5 foot 9 (only two inches taller than me). We were joking because the Israeli Basketball Authority recruited him and put him through the Aliyah (immigration process), technically freeing up another slot for a non-Israeli...

Pros, who knows much more about the teams and the players than I do, wrote about the game as well and has extra photos on his site here.

Back to studying now... Final on Thursday...

back

2007-02-17T05:00:00.001+02:00

Just got back from the states. It was great seeing family and friends. I come back with some more sense of clarity of what I want to do with the MA, and how I want to form my class schedule for the coming 3 semesters. I also come back with an amazing summer job as one of the graduate interns for NERA (www.nera.com) in Manhattan!!! Anybody need a roomie?? Jacob? Joe? Jonny HK? Coco??

Jeffy, sorry I missed the baby, but I got the photo from your parents in law and it is up on my fridge!

more later, must sleep now, and I still have another final this week.

quick study break

2007-02-04T21:08:00.001+02:00

Amid all of my studying for endless hours Prosnit was in Tel Aviv with his friend Sarah, we went out to dinner on Friday along with Osi (who was studying with me). Sarah snapped this photo of us being dumb on my tiny little porch.

Back to studying...

study study study

2007-02-02T14:05:00.001+02:00

Just a quick post since I haven't written in a while. My first ever Masters final (in macroeconomics) is on Thursday, the 8th. I have actually been studying a lot over the last two weeks, and this coming week I will hopefully be wrapping up everything and studying with the people from my class. I rearranged the furniture in my apartment for the coming week, so that I can focus at home and not be tempted by silly things like Skype and TV and gchat. The table folds in half and is usually in the corner (to the left of the couch), and also has my speakers on it and such, but I cleared it off and put it in the middle of my living room so I have room for all the papers and such.

Also this week I had a pre-interview (more of a math test) for a summer internship in the economic consulting division of Tel Aviv Strategic Consultancy (www.tasc.co.il). I also had an informal informational interview with a woman from NERA (www.nera.com) also to be an intern for them this summer in the states. NERA would be fantastic, but who knows what will happen.

Random note

2007-01-26T21:23:00.001+02:00

Just a random note about Hebrew University professor math Harry Furstenberg; he just won the prestigious Wolf Prize in Mathematics.

The reason I bring this up is because he is the upstairs neighbors of my grandparents!

quick update

2007-01-25T21:35:00.001+02:00

Sorry for not writing in 2 weeks, here is the update of what happened. First, last week I was ill with a stomach virus. It was horrible... I ate nothing but bread and drank water for a week straight. It was horrible. On the other hand, while I was at home recuperating I watched Shahar Peer in the Australian Open. She is the Israeli player who made it to the quarter finals and lost in a very very tight game to Serena Williams, who is a scary looking woman.

Let me mention something about Israeli's in international sports: there are very very few of them, so when they do anything remotely exciting the entire country becomes engrossed. For example, when what's his name one the first ever Israeli Gold medal for wind surfing, he was treated like a hero when he came back. FOR WIND SURFING. So this Peer girl has taken over the Israeli news for a week straight, making it further than any Israel before in a major tennis match. They were even talking about her games in my Econ classes...

Then, last night, the kids from my Hebrew class went out to a bar to celebrate ending our class. The reason for the celebration is that many of the kids in my mandatory Hebrew class have been taking the classes for a year and half or more. I have to take this one final class, at the highest level, because I never did the Israeli version of the SAT, so I need to take the class and pass the final to get proficiency. On the other hand, some of the others in my class have started a the lowest of six levels and had Hebrew classes every single semester for the last 3 years!!!

2 weeks till my first final, wish me luck.

Random Day trip

2007-01-14T17:19:00.001+02:00

So this past Friday my friend Katie called me up in the morning, actually while I was still in class, and said: I have a rental car from work till 2pm, lets go somewhere. After a brief consultation with ourselves, we decided that the only place that neither of us had ever explored which was close enough to return the car was the city of Ashdod, about 25 minutes south on the highway.
The city of Ashdod is interesting... It has the potential of being picturesque, with this gradually sloping hill that hits a great beachfront. Below is Katie on the walk through the city park toward the beach. The center of town is at the top of the hill. On the other hand, Ashdod is entirely an industrial city, where the whole infrastructure rests on the port, which is the main port of Israel (surpassing Haifa, which was the biggest port for years). The bizarre thing is, the port is right there on the beach (see photo below). Most of the huge industrial ports in the US and in Europe are located far from city centers, in industrial zones that can be seen from afar, but nobody goes to. (Think the port in Oakland, Long Beach, or Jersey, have you ever really gone there, rather than just looked at it from afar?) So in Ashdod it's a little bizarre that the beach just bumps into this massive port (the photo below is just the beginning of what was a massive structure, we drove past it on the way in)
The other bizarre thing about Ashdod is the actual residents. The city used to be Jewish European immigrants way back in the 50s and 60s, before the port. Katie started talking to this 85 year old man (in photo below), who actually survived the entire Holocaust, and only emigrated to Israel in 1949, after the state was created.
But the overwhelming bulk of the city residents today are immigrants. The children and grandchildren of the original Jewish residents have long ago moved, overwhelmingly to the Tel Aviv area. Now the city is Russian or Ethiopian immigrants, or illegal African or Thai immigrants, plus a small amount of new French and Argentinian immigrants. That Friday everybody was in the small city center sitting around the ratty little delis wasting time. The photo below is interesting because the deli workers were all Russians who spoke very little Hebrew, but the 4 people sitting in front were Ethiopian.
We spend about 4 hours there, and seriously did not hear A WORD of either English or Hebrew or Arabic. English I understand not hearing, I can go days without hearing it (depending on who calls me), but to be in Israel and not hear Hebrew or Arabic is actually a very surreal experience. It's basically like being in Los Angeles for 4 hours and not hearing either English or Spanish.

We had a great day nonetheless.

Oy

2007-01-11T00:41:00.001+02:00

My final exams are coming up in a month exactly... I'm starting to stress.... and therefore I have started to study already. Not that the tests aren't doable, it's just that the amount of information is enormous.

More econ fun

2007-01-06T21:56:00.001+02:00

With regards to the wage statistic, it is surprisingly equal, as noted in the low JB statistic, and primarily because the mean and the median are practically the same number. Taking the exponent of the values indicates that the average salary is about 19.60 Shekels an hour (in 1994 Shekels), and 47 of the 85 observations early within +/- 3 Shekels of that wage. This is a very different picture than what is going on today, 15 years after this survey was taken. Also, we can see from a simple scatter plot that the higher paying jobs are the more professional ones, corresponding to occupational codes 00 – 19. More importantly, I have been progressing with graduate internship applications. Here is the list of what has been officially applied to already:
NERA, LECG, Brattle Group, Frontier Economics, Greylock McKinnen, The Fed (Boston/NYC), JE Austin, UNECE, World Bank, IFC, CGD

Here is what still needs to be applied to:
European Investment Bank, Brookings Institute (something was wrong with their site, so I couldn't apply today), CEPR, IIE, SEC, OMB, CBO, CEA, BEA, Finca International, Navigant, CRAI, London Economics, and a number of smaller econ consulting boutiques.

I have till the end of the month, so plenty of time.

More photos from last week

2007-01-04T19:44:00.001+02:00

More photos from the family and all the events of last week. My father, sister and I went to Yaffo, I believe it was on Tuesday, walked around the flea market. Below is a photo of my father and I looking at all the junk in one of the many many junk shops there. We had lunch that same day at Abu Hasan, which is arguably the best Humus place in Tel Aviv, definitely in the top 5 for sure. The thing with this place is that it is ALWAYS packed... They open around 10 and run out of Humus around 2pm. Also, to the point where you just sit down wherever, with strangers, in random corners, etc... Then you get amazing food and scarf it down. (Coco, we must go there together, you will love it). My father snapped the photo below of random strangers eating lunch together.
This is my sister and I outside of the place after we ate. Rumor has it that a lot of dignitaries like to go there, and you can usually see consulate cars pull up in the later hours. We were there by 11:30 already and we had to wait in line (you can see the perpetual line on the right of the photo).
Just two great photos from Yona's wedding last Thursday as well. She is yemenite, so her whole family was there, including the two grandmothers below. They had this singer who sang in Arabic to the whole group, which was fantastic.
And to top it all off, Yona about to break the glass.
Fun, but packed week.

New Years!

2007-01-01T03:37:00.001+02:00

Happy New Years 2007! I started off my evening at Rafi's apartment in Yafo. I drove there with my friends Katie and Inbar. We ate food and drank a bit and watched some fireworks from his porch, which was a fun experience. From there we went with Inbar to a house party that one of her friends was throwing. First, for those who know me, I much prefer house parties to bar parties, and second, I prefer them even more when I'm crashing them, so crashing one in Israel is a special trat. Second, Inbar drives a white 1971 Beetle, and we all crammed in to her tiny car and had the music blasting as we drove through Tel Aviv. This is Katie sitting in the back seat with me.

This is Rafi sitting in the front seat of the bug. Inbar was not such a fan of us taking photos in her car, and refused to participate.
The house party was fun, we didn't know anybody there, but we tried to make new friends.

I left the party to meet Jesse (who is staying at my house through tomorrow) at this bar called Mike's Place. He used to work there, so he wanted to catch up with his old bar friends, even though Mike's place is a horrible bar. Seriously, I would not take anybody there, and if they still insisted on going I would not join them. The clientèle fall in to three categories: 1. 40-50 year old single sleezy expats. 2. Random Euro travelers (aint nothing more irritating than a drunk German singing out loud to Pink Floyd) or 3. Obnoxious Jappy Birthrighters. In any case, I still met Jesse there, and as you can see from the photo below, he was well inebriated by the time I got there.
All in all, it was an experience, and as always it's good to see friends. Happy New Years to everybody!

2006-12-26T17:02:00.001+02:00

More Hannukah festivities with my parents all of last week (they are still here this week as well). Here we lit all the candles on the last night at my grandparents place in Jerusalem. That specific Hannukiah actually belongs to my great great grandparents, on my fathers side, and will continue down to my grandchildren as well. Every Hannukah that little thing sits in the exact same place, for as long as I can remember.

We all had dinner as well in the dining room (which used to be the bedroom for both my father and his sister for many many cramped years. Below is my sister and my grandmotther, who is now 85.
Here's a little action shot of the family below. From right to left, my father, mother drinking coffee, grandfather on dads side (who is 87), myself, Rona, my cousins girlfriend, and my cousin, Michael.
My parents and sister are still in town this week, and yesterday my friend Jesse arrived from the states. He and I are both invited to Yona's wedding on Thursday, so I will update with photos soon.

Hannukah Fun!!!

2006-12-22T02:02:00.001+02:00

So this past week of Hannukah saw the arrival of my parents and sister. They landed last Saturday and we promptly went to Jerusalem to see the fam and light some candles. On Tuesday I had the day off from classes, so I kicked it with my sister in Tel Aviv. First, we hit up the new Hummus place on King George St. Very good, but I would not recommend the Foul.
Then we went to Sheinkin St, which is in the heart of the city. It used to be drab and low-budge, but now it's all boutiques and coffee shops and packed with people, slightly like the Upper Haight area... The street even has it's own website, which is actually quite impressive, in English and in Hebrew. Check it out here. After Sheinkin we went to the Shuk, which is a 3 minute walk away, and was VERY crowded that afternoon.

Later, we walked uptown to meet my mother, who fully ditched us for lunch to hang out with her girlfriend (but can you blame her?). We met her and her friend at this fancy coffee shop and chatted for a bit, and then went across the street to Rolandin Bakery to get the really fancy sufganiot. They fully opened up a street vendor stand, on the back side of the bakery, and the line was substantial. Granted, the sufganiot were much tastier than the ones from the Super, but also really expensive. A buck forty for a donut.
Then, that night at ultimate practice, we lit candles on the field, which was a riot. Itamar is lighting, Helen on the left, and Micki is sitting tying his cleats.
I'll post more photos from the week tomorrow or Saturday.
No, Jacob, for the last time, my sister does not want to date you, nor your brother. She told me to tell you to tell him to stop calling her.

Benny, I'm going to link to your blog, if that's ok with you.

Happy Hannukah!

2006-12-14T20:23:00.001+02:00

Tomorrow night is the first night of Hannukah, and my parents are also coming on Saturday, along with my sister.
Hannukah is actually a really minor holiday in Israel. Elementary schools are closed for a full week, but high schools and Unis are only closed for one day. But all the stores and banks and such are open, like President's Day. Hannukah seems like a much bigger deal in the States because it coincides with the whole Christmas crap of shopping and blah blah blah. Actually, presents really don't happen for Hannukah in Israel.

On the other hand, they have other customs, besides lighting the candles. One fun one is the eating of Sufganiyot (Sufganiya singular). See wikipedia link here. Basically they are donuts, for all intents and purposes, that are eaten in the weeks before and during Hannukah. Apparently, there is a yearly tradition in the media and news to have articles dedicated to finding the best Sufganiyot (apparently Robino bakery in Tel Aviv is supposed to be good) as well as how unhealthy they are (500 to 800 calories each!)

Below is the photo taken literally 2 hours ago when I went to buy groceries from my local supermarket. Buy 5 and get one free, the sign says. They were about 2.50 shekels each, roughly 55 cents. I had one, it was really good, but not as fresh as I wanted it. The thing with Sufganiyot is that you are supposed to eat them warm, straight out of the oven. When they are fresh they are really really really good. When they aren't fresh they are just really good.

More Economics

2006-12-09T22:27:00.001+02:00

Dependent Variable: LNPRICE
Method: Least Squares
Date: 12/07/06 Time: 15:37
Sample: 1 530 IF AGE1=0 AND AGE2=0
Included observations: 295


Variable	Coefficient	Std. Error	t-Statistic	Prob.


C	6.184981	0.197186	31.36624	0.0000
D81	-0.402570	0.235997	-1.705825	0.0892
D82	-0.107923	0.188282	-0.573199	0.5670
D83	-0.596593	0.176965	-3.371255	0.0009
D84	-0.862678	0.182230	-4.734005	0.0000
D85	-1.269757	0.198733	-6.389247	0.0000
D86	-1.761310	0.206946	-8.510960	0.0000
D87	-2.091862	0.209213	-9.998723	0.0000
D88	-2.487856	0.221656	-11.22395	0.0000
LNRAM	0.308965	0.049699	6.216687	0.0000
LNMHZ	0.217770	0.070223	3.101137	0.0021
LNHRDDSK1	0.163762	0.016777	9.760984	0.0000
LNNUMFLP1	0.424840	0.091668	4.634534	0.0000
LNSLOTS1	0.113262	0.037637	3.009360	0.0029
PROC16	0.268336	0.072572	3.697495	0.0003
PROC32	0.769086	0.131343	5.855572	0.0000
DBW	0.023896	0.053232	0.448909	0.6539
DPORT	0.342788	0.079221	4.326980	0.0000
DDISC	-0.226070	0.068292	-3.310349	0.0011
DAPPLE	-0.063529	0.155868	-0.407580	0.6839
DCMPQ	0.434683	0.134278	3.237183	0.0014
DCOMMO	-0.363725	0.149643	-2.430616	0.0157
DIBM	-0.079640	0.123940	-0.642571	0.5210
DNEC	-0.015644	0.104959	-0.149045	0.8816
DPCLIM	-0.449430	0.230985	-1.945716	0.0527
DRDIOSH	-0.137327	0.079415	-1.729235	0.0849


R-squared	0.792639	Mean dependent var		7.709193
Adjusted R-squared	0.773368	S.D. dependent var		0.798220
S.E. of regression	0.380000	Akaike info criterion		0.986715
Sum squared resid	38.84356	Schwarz criterion		1.311669
Log likelihood	-119.5405	F-statistic		41.13025
Durbin-Watson stat	2.017575	Prob(F-statistic)		0.000000

How fun is that!!!
In other economic news, I'm in the process of finalizing my search for potential places for graduate internships this coming summer. They are almost all in the states, some in England, a few in Europe, and I'll probably add some in Israel later on. I will probably start sending out the main ones this week.

2006-12-05T01:19:00.001+02:00

I spend so much time on campus at my faculty, I actually took the camera to show you all what I see on a weekly (sometimes daily) basis. As I stated before, the facutly is one of the newest on campus, so the building is actually really nice inside and out. The bottom floor is all lecture halls and some administrative stuff. There are 2 very large lecture halls, for about 150 people, where the BA classes happen. Then there are 2 smaller lecture halls, that are shared with MA and BA students. This is room 101, on the bottom floor, which seats about 60. I have both of my classes in this room, as well as the study sessions for both classes, so I see this room very frequently. I usually sit 4 or 5 rows back in the middle.

The second floor is rooms for all the doctoral students, they get their own shared offices, more administrative buildings, and two smaller seminar rooms. In addition, the second floor also has the staff lounge, which is unofficially supposed to be reserved for faculty/staff/doctorants. You can see it below. They stock the place with coffee, and subscriptions to The Economist and Newsweek.
The second floor also has the graduate computer lab, where I spend a lot of my time doing Eviews and Stata and reading a lot of articles. The computer on the far right is my favorite, near my bags. You can see tha twe get the comfortable chairs. The BA students get crappy metal folding chairs. I have no problem kicking them out of this room, they deserve it.
The great part about the buildings is the porches. The second floor has the large main porch, seen below, which is gorgeous, especially on sunny days. The view below is looking West, toward the Medit. You can actually see the ocean as well. The large white building on the right is the Naftaly building, which houses the faculties of Poli-Sci, Diplomacy, and Sociology (I believe)
The third floor is solely reserved for faculty, all the professors have their offices on the top floor, and there are great porches there as well. Below is the view from one of the porches, looking north. On the left is the brand new Auditorium on campus, which always has events going on, concerts, lectures, congresses, etc. I have no idea what the building on the right is.
All in all it is quite a nice place to study, and also comfortable. I think I will be okay being here for 2 years.

Big Game

2006-12-02T23:09:00.001+02:00

Note to Christine and Jonny Hong Kong.
It's 11:00pm on Saturday night and Fox Sports International is showing the Cal/Stanford game right now, live!!!

Eretz Nehederet

2006-12-02T12:19:00.001+02:00

Last night was the first show in the new season of Eretz Nehederet. The show started 4 years and become something of a phenomenon. It's basically a cross between Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show, except significantly more funny than both (espeically than SNL), and with no shame at all.
I've been watching it for a while on the internet, but this was the first time I saw the actual real time telecast on TV like everybody else in Israel. I saw it with 3 friends, Osi, Boaz, and Nurit, drinking beers, it was a riot.
The real reason I wanted to post about this show is that this is also the first time that I actually get what is going on. I always thought it was funny and I understood it, but the show relates so much to what is going on here day to day, that there were a lot of things that went over my head, but last night was different.

I highly recommend the show. If you have a good internet connection, and understand hebrew, you can catch many clips on their actual webiste: link here

Also, PS, yesterday was the first day of December and the weather was amazing, blue sky, sunny, I was in jeans and a t-shirt!

this past week

2006-11-25T12:55:00.001+02:00

This past week I have been spending a lot of time with my two long lost friends, Yossi and Elan. Elan I have known literally since age zero, and is currently living in Toronto. He is in town for a week visiting. Yossi is another friend of ours from NYC who recently moved back to Tel Aviv. So the three of us have been catching up and going out a lot.

Also, this past week I had a bizarre sort of Bay Area reunion. I went out with my friend Osi, who invited her friend Roni (Schertzer), who invited her friend Asaf (Resnik) who invited his friend Doron (Klein). Turns out that all of our parents know each other from the Bay Area (I added last names for my mother, so she knows who I'm talking about)

Lastly, for all the ladies reading this. I was walking around with friends yesterday and noticed a store that was selling 7 jeans. I mention this because my time at the GAP has given me some knowledge into the world of retail, and 7 jeans are apparently the favorite for females (note to Jacob and Jeff, they are not good on men, save your money). I also mention this because I don't recognize any of the jeans in this country, all these crazy brands like TNT, Replay, Lee Cooper, and tons of other brands I have never heard of, so seeing something I recognized (besides the obvious Levis) was funny. In any case, they cost 1000 shekels in this country, or roughly 230 bucks! That's crazy! I understand maybe 130 for a good pair of jeans, but 230??? that's insane.

Happy 10 year reunion

2006-11-22T12:43:00.001+02:00

Tonight is my ten year reunion from Palo Alto high school. Sadly I will not be able to attend, which is a shame, I really wanted to see people.

So happy ten-year to any Paly 96 alums reading this, and I expect to hear stories/gossip and get photos from all of you.

Also, as a side note, I had another "only in Israel" moment on campus. On the right hand side of the entrance to campus there were these 2 ultra orthodox jews who were enticing students to join them in a quick ad-hoc prayer session. The, on the left side, were the Jews for Jesus people!!! I was in shock! I thought I could get away from those Jews for Jesus people but they have even gotten here, handing out the same lime green pamphlets they hand out in the states... ugh

Internationals

2006-11-20T10:46:00.001+02:00

There is a Japanese girl in my Hebrew class named Keiko. She invited me to her house on Saturday night for a "Japanese party" where she fed us all this japanese food. She hand-made sushi for us, and nodles, and all sorts of other Japanese things (granted you really can't get good Unagi in this country). There were about 20 people there, probably 6 Israelis, 3 brazilians, 4 germans, one swiss, one pole, two americans and two koreans. I got to talking to the koreans, who were by far the most interesting people of the group. One has been in Israel for 12 years, studying semitic languages, the other is a diamond buyer at the Israeli Diamond exchange.
The diamond buyer, Tony as he calls himself, just got to Israel 5 months ago and signed a 10 year contract. He doesn't speak Hebrew at all, except "How Much" (kama?). He speaks minimal English, and was telling me how it was really interesting being in Israel, but also very hard (even though he spend 3 months of the year back in Seoul). He told me that there are only 200 koreans in the entire country!! That's it! He said about 50 of them live/work/study in Tel Aviv and the other 150 are mostly women who are married to Israeli businessmen who do business in Korea, met somebody there, and brought them back to the Holy Land.

Imagine being one of only 50 in an entire city. That's like when Jacob, Ben, and I were 3 of the only 50 Jews in Maastricht when we studied in the Netherlands together, or like Joanna in Forever 21.

Old friends

2006-11-14T22:38:00.001+02:00

Today I had lunch with my old friend Adi, who I haven't seen in literally 8 years. She and I went to high school together and then she moved back to Israel about 6 years ago. We met for coffee this morning to catch up and gossip about all the people from high school that we are not in touch with anymore (my ten year reunion is in 2 weeks).

(note: Insert Katie in this photo)

Pot Smuggling Camels

2006-11-14T00:40:00.001+02:00

My friend Tomer told me this story today that I want to share with you.
Apparently one of the ways to smuggle pot and hash into Israel is over the large border with Egypt, except they do it with Camels. They train these camels to come home on their own, and send them in to Sinai. In Sinai they put bags of hash on the camels (probably from Beduins) and send the camels home. These camels travel for a week or so over the desert (cause they don't really need water) until they reach their home base in the Negev desert in Israel (also Beduins).

How crazy is that?

Econometrics

2006-11-09T23:04:00.000+02:00

I just finished up my first of many major Econometrics project, where we were supposed to analyze returns to scale for the electricity industry, looking at the cost of output as compared to the amount of production in billions of killowatts per hour. Above you can see the scatter plot of the residuals of the regression as compared to the natural log of output of killowatts, where the x-axis increases with the size of the firm. Clearly you can see the U shape, which indicates that there is something wrong.

First, we would expect ln(kwh) to be linear representing a steady state of returns to scale regardless of the size of the company. Second, the residual values are clearly correlated to the size of the firm. On the left side, with smaller firms, we have large residuals, indicating that for smaller firms our initial model is probably not a good fit. On the right side of the graph, with the larger firms, we see small residuals, but they are clearly starting to slope upward. Finally, we can look at the correlation between the lnkwh and the residuals, which is practically zero. This makes sense because the positive residuals are counterbalanced by the negative residuals. If there is no correlation between output and the residuals of the regression, yet we see in the graphs that something is wrong, we probably have different returns to scale depending on the size of the company and the amount of output. Even though the industry as a whole has a fairly predictable rate of positive returns to scale individual firms within the industry have different returns to scale depending on the size.
Obviously.

Weekend update

2006-11-05T00:13:00.000+02:00

Oh what a long weekend... Lets begin with Thursday night, when my friend Boaz had his birthday party at this bar called Helena, which has a definite New York lounge vibe to it, where people actually dress up a bit (which is rare for Israel, especially with the men). Needless to say we were out late, then the following morning I went to go pick up a foam pad for my bed. My bed is great, but the mattress is a little stiff, so I hooked up a foam pad from Diada. Diada is the Children's Center of Tel Aviv (more like a mother/baby place) that has a cafe, book store, maternity clothes shop, activities, blah blah blah. Their branch is right near my apartment, and conveniently, my cousin's wife runs the place, so she hooked me up with the guy who makes the foam pads that line the bottom of cribs, it's fantastic.
Then, I went to the airport to pick up my father, and we went up to jerusalem to see the family and have dinner, which was great. Today I left Jerusalem with Jon to go to Tel Aviv together. Jon and I, along with his friend Jess, were invited to Rafi's apartment in Yafo for a little gathering. We actually walked all the way down to his house. Here is Jon and I on the beach heading south, it took us a while, but the weather was fantastic. We got to Rafi's house right as the sun was beginning to die down. As I said before, he lives in the area of Yafo that is starting to get gentrified, and there are some amazing apartments that have been refurbished. The city itself is mostly Christian Arabs and Muslims, but there are increasingly more Israelis who are deciding to move there.

Rafi's apartment is stunning, seriously amazing, with this huge porch and a great breeze. This is the view from his porch, it was a little cloudy, but you can see the potential for seeing sunset every single day over the Mediterannean. You can also see in this photo how there are certain buildings that have been refurbished, and others that are still in ratty shape. Also the spire to the right with the green lights is one of the local small Mosques (the spire is called a Minaret). I took this photo right as the call to prayer was sounding. From Rafi's house we went to Rabin square next to my apartment because today was the memorial for Rabin's death, eleven years ago.
This is a realy bad photo of it, and I will try to get a better photo from one of the news sources tomorrow, but the event was very touching, ableit very somber. Rabin was assassinated at a peace rally 11 years ago today, and the mood was very somber and depressing. There were an estimated 100K people in and around the square, with songs, speakers, music, etc... The best speaker, by far, was the israeli author David Grossman (who I guarantee will win the Nobel for litterature within the next twenty years. PS, I'm very happy Pamuk won this year, after all the crap he gets from the Turkish government). His speach was fantastic, and he speaks wonderfully well, but the speach was not very optimistic, but then, the mood in Israel in general is not very optimistic right now.

Week in Review

2006-10-29T18:18:00.002+02:00

It's Sunday evening my time, so I figured I would give you all a quick week-ending review since I haven't posted in a while. Last week saw the shock of being a student, and all the reading that was contained within, but now I'm a little more relaxed mostly because I think the reading is manageable, even if onerous, and I'm also starting to feel more comfortable with the core material after practically reviewing an entire intro econometrics course online to refresh my memory. I also completed my first problem set of many, which I felt good about, so I'm starting to get the hang of it. For problem sets we work in partners, that are assigned randomly to us. My parter is this girl named Sharon, who works for Amdocs.

Just a side note about Amdocs... its one of the larger Israeli firms that has made it big on the worldwide market, with something like 40 satelite offices scattered around the globe. According to their site: "Our broad portfolio of integrated products spans the entire customer lifecycle, seamlessly linking key customer-facing business processes". The reason I mention Amdocs is because it is like the Tel Aviv version of the Gap in SF. Meaning it is a massive local firm that employs probably 20 percent of the population aged 22 to 35. It seems like every other person you meet works at Amdocs directly or indirectly in one way or another.

The other interesting thing that happened last week was that I had a job interview to be a GMAT instructor for the Israeli version of The Princeton Review. The company is called Kidum, and they are by far the largest test prep center in Israel. I have a secondary interview with them this coming Wed.

Finally, one last great thing happened today. They finally transfered my Economist subscription to Israel (I requested the address change over a month ago). You can see below in the photo!!!(Note for Jacob and Jeffy about the Economist in Israel. I'm guessing that not a lot of people actually have a subscription, cause the mailer that came with the magazine (the photo) had this little note in the bottom right that said "if you have any problems please contact Joel Gordin" who is in charge of overseas publications in Israel. Then it gave his emial address and phone number and home address.... Must be a small community of readers..."

Classes

2006-10-26T02:04:00.000+02:00

So a number of people have been emailing me asking "So, what exactly does the application of linear algebra to advanced econometrics in Hebrew actually look like?" Well, it looks something like this:
Actually, nobody has asked me that. I just wanted to share (or gloat, or cry, or beg for mercy, or complain, or ask for pity, you choose).

(Note to Jacob: I'd like to see some of your classmates do that with your MBA mumbo jumbo...)

First day of School!

2006-10-23T21:40:00.000+02:00

So yesterday was the first day of school, I started out with a 3 hour Macroeconomics lecture, followed by a study session for Econometrics. This quarter is going to be very tough, especially the econometrics... There is no doubt in my mind that BA schooling outside the US is much more intensive and advanced that what they teach in the States. This first month is going to be a lot of catch up work.
The fun thing about the first week is that the entire campus is packed with students, and there are all sorts of organizations and things going on. Below is a photo of the main quad, you can see all the students, the little shops on the left. I also went up to the top corner of the Gilman Humanities building (in the top right corner of the photo above) to get this birds eye view of the center quad, below. The big brown building behind the two tents is the main library (Sourasky). The tall building in the far background is the Sackler Medical school. The tents are various organizations, the Student's Union, various banks, cell phone companies, blah blah blah. It's exactly the same as the first week of school at any university in the US (or anywhere else I imagine). The photo was taken in Prof. Asher Susser's corner office. He is Director of the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv U. (that's his official title). I was up on the top floor looking for an open window and his office was the only one open, so I knocked on the door and asked him if I could take a photo of the quad for my parents, he agreed!
Then, to top off all the crazyness of the first day, Jacob's parents were in town and took me lunch at Giraffe Noodle Bar in Tel Aviv. They are in town for a wedding so we met up. We had a great time and the food was good. Then we walked around and I showed them the neighborhood. This was my favorite part of the conversation:
Me: Jacob isn't dating that girl anymore
Jacob's Father: Jacob was dating someone?? He never tells us anything
Jacob's Mother: Forget who he's dating, I don't even know if he has health insurance.

(Jacob: If you get a bunch of telephones from your parents asking about who you are dating and why you aren't married yet, then I apologize. I didn't tell them anything, I promise).

My schedule

2006-10-19T15:06:00.000+02:00

School officially starts on Sunday, how exciting! Here is my schedule for the first semester. I'm going to add on a Mini-Course in December as well, but there is time before I have to choose which class specifically. So for the next 2 months I only have 3 classes. I'll make sure to bring my camera to school on Sunday and take photos.

Jewish Holidays

2006-10-17T00:39:00.000+02:00

I wanted to post this up two nights ago but I forgot.... Two nights ago was the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. I wont get in to the details of it, but suffice it to say that you celebrate the Torah. There was a huge celebration in the main square by my apartment, with music and firecrackers and people dancing in the street. On top of that, there was this crazy march toward the square right before it, with this truck blasting music and people dancing and singing behind it, as you can see from the photo below. The thing is, Tel Aviv is not a religious city by any means, not like Jerusalem, so to see all these orthodox Jews dancing with Torah scrolls in the middle of this secular city was interesting. I actually really like the photo below. I think the fuzzyness adds to the quality. The other thing I wanted to add about Jewish holidays is that a large bulk of them fall between september and october, as there are four major holidays in a row. Rosh hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Simchat Torah. It's basically the holiday season in Israel and the country is in semi-shut down (that's why I start school so late). It's like Thanksgiving to Christmas in the states. The Jewish holiday's also revolve around the lunar calandar, so this year they are happening really late, but next year I think they are earlier.
(note to Gappers reading this: If you recall Easter fluctuates based on the year. This is becasue the Last Supper is actually the last night of Passover, which also fluctuates on the lunar calendar, now you can explain that to your P&D class if you ever decide to teach).

Fun times

2006-10-13T00:14:00.000+02:00

The last couple of days have been fun, as the country is on holiday, and school doesn't start till the 22nd. First, my friend Osi from high school in Palo Alto moved back to Israel yesterday. Turns out that her sister, Orit, lives literally 5 houses away across the street! Her sister's boyfriend, Tomer, is also a good friend. It was really nice to find out that we are all neighbors. Tonight was also fun, very good friends of my parents, Annetta and Sasha, are visiting in Israel and took me out to a coffee.

Today was the most fun, though. There was a Ultimate Frisbee beach tournament in Herzeliya that I participated in. The last time I played in a beach tournament was at Wildwood over 2 years ago. The Wildwood games are played on very dense and damp sand, so you can actually run on it. The sand in Herzeliya is the exact opposite, arid, super fine, and thick. This makes running extremely hard, and extremely tiring.

They also had a layout contest for the tournament, which was a lot of fun. You can see me below sacrificing my body for the sake of mindless sport entertainment. I technically won the tourament, but we decided to give the prize to these two 18 year old younger kids who really put in a huge effort. The prize was a two hour private kite-surfing lesson, so I was happy to give it to them. Benny, this photo is for you, check ou the full extension, you know you love it...
(yes, that is me)

JesusLand

2006-10-10T14:20:00.000+02:00

I was invited up north for the last 2 days by my friend Steve, who I met here. Steve is currently studying medicine at Sakler, a joint program with Tel Aviv U. and Albert Einstein med school in NY. Steve and his Sakler pals were planning to go hiking/camping for 5 days in the north, and I joined them for 2 nights and a full day. I arrived late Sunday night and saw my friend Shai, who lives in Tveria (Tiberias for you Anglos). Early the next morning Shai dropped off with the group and we started our hike. Our hike was to the Meshushim Pool (shown above) which is north of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee for you Anglos). The hike started on the shore of the sea (lake in reality) and we walked up the Meshushim river for about 2 hours until you get to the pool, where you can swim in. I took the photo on a little bridge crossing the river. From the bridge you walk down to the pool, you can see one of the girls in our group, Erica, in the top right corner. You can also see how packed it was with kids and families. The reason for this is because there are two ways to get to the pool. The long way, which we did, or the short way, where you drive your car (with your screaming kids) to the lip of the canyon, and then hike down 10 minutes instead of two and a half hours.
We spent that night at a campsite on the shore, on a place called Amnon Beach (yes, Amnon, for those who know). You can see in the photo that the sun was setting, this is looking across the lake toward the South West. You can see that the Kinneret (Lake Jesus for Coco) is not that big. Professional Bikers loop the entire thing in a full day, so I've heard. Then, this morning I came back to Tel Aviv with two of the group. The remaining people stayed up for another 2 days to hike/kayak/relax.
You can see in the map above where I was. The greenish/grey X is where we hiked, the pink X is where we camped on the beach (click on the map to expand it). Besides the scenery/nature of the North, this area is also a huge Christian tourist destination durring the summer breaks, as Jesus lived the majority of his life in this region, and performed most of his mericles here. The entire area is littered with archeological sites from all three monotheistic religions.
This is where I think Coco will get Jerusalem Syndrome if he comes to visit me.

UERO 2008

2006-10-07T17:52:00.000+02:00

I am typing this post while watching Israel play Russia in one of the many qualifying matches to get in to the Euro 2008 competition. It's currently half-time, and Israel is down 0-1. Israel is in group E, along with European powerhouses England, Russia, and Croatia. In order to advance to the quarter-finals you have to end up being one of the top two in your group. Israel has already beaten two teams in the group, Andorra and Estonia, but odds are very very very small they will beat two out of the three of England/Russia/Croatia.

I make this point because Israel has never reached the point of playing in a major international tourney, the World Cup, the Euro Cup, etc. So every single game becomes this huge national ordeal that the entire country watches.

The photo on the left I ripped from the UEFA website, the player is Roberto Colautti, who is an Argentinian Jew who apparently only finished the paperwork necessary to become a resident in Israel (and therefore to play) 4 days before the qualifying rounds began. He scored the winning goal against Estonia two weeks ago.

In any case, Israel is playing like crap right now. No offensive pressure at all, and the defense is doing a horrible job of covering the holes. The funny part about it is that the game is being played in Moscow, and the Russian crowd is already in thick leather jackets. Meanwhile I was at the beach 2 hours ago!

Say what you will about the state of the Israeli national soccer team, at least we aren't wearing scarves in October.

(Steph, I'll make sure to get you and Jess soccer jersey's when I come back to SF!!!)

Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv

2006-10-02T13:53:00.000+02:00

Today is Yom Kippur, the holiest of Jewish Holidays. The entire city of Tel Aviv is completely shut down, nothing is open, nobody drives. The streets are filled with kids on bikes or rollerblades, families walking around, and absolutely no car traffic. It is the weirdest sensation. The photo below I took about 2 hours ago at the major intersection of Ibn Gvirol and Ben Gurion. Ibn Gvirol is the main through-way of Northern Tel Aviv. A multi-lane street that splits north Tel Aviv into two (you can see it on the little map link I have to the right). The best analogy to it is Van Ness in San Francisco, that also splits North SF directly in half. You can see the kids on the bikes. The little sign says "Drive Slow"This photo I took a little later on a street called Dizengoff, which is a another major commercial street. I saw a lot of great photo ops, but I'm not that skilled of a photographer, so these will have to do. I'm hoping maybe to become as skilled as Rion (who is in Paris and has a stunning photo-blog of her experience. I highly recommend it, check it out here).

Also, I have added Prosnit's blog to the list on the right, as well as Joy and Jason's blog.

Random photo

2006-10-01T23:15:00.000+02:00

I was just forwarded this photo from last weekend. They had a hat tournament in Tel Aviv at Yarkon Park, and they took a photo of me as their new "Great White Hope" for ultimate frisbee in Israel. My team won the hat tournament out of six teams, but I played like absolute crap. Benny, you will notice the wife beater. It is actually the same wife beater as the one in the photo you have from the tourney in Boston nearly 3 years ago. They are having a beach tourney in Herzeliya next weekend as well which should be a great time (I will definitely take a lot of photos of that one). Also, I'm seriously debating going to a beach tourney in Dahab (Sinai) in January that is being thrown by some European Ultimate Frisbee organization (link here). Any of you who have a lot of cash and time to take off from work should consider joining (Benny, again I'm looking at you and Big Dave specifically)

Social Life

2006-09-30T20:46:00.000+03:00

I haven't posted in the last 2 nights because I have been invited out quite a bit. Thursday night Rafi invited me to a party in this area in southern Tel Aviv called Neve Tzedek. Rafi is a journalist, and the party was primarily journalists. It was in this amazing apartment that was decorated all Renaissance England style. I invited some friends along as well. My new friend Itamar pointed out that there were even some celbrities at the party. Apparently Michal Yanai (the one in the picture) was at the party. Itamar told me she was a soap star or something like that, and lately hasn't been doing anything, so she was probably trying to get some journalistic attention at the party. Either way I didn't meet her, and I didn't even notice her. And even if I had met her, I woundn't know who she was. It's like Jacob's Dad standing in line at starbucks behind Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Then yesterday my new American friend Jonah (and friends with Lepow, as I mentioned) invited me over to his house, as he has a huge porch and was having people over. He has an very intersting international circle, and the people were great. There were 2 mexicans, one brit, one aussie, two south africans, 3 israelis, two americans and me. We stayed up talking politics and drinking till around 3:30 am.

Tonight I'm invited out again, my friend from New York, Mor invited me out as she is having a little gathering for her friends at a place by my house called Joe's Cafe.

Gyms

2006-09-27T23:55:00.000+03:00

Over the past two weeks or so I have been searching for a gym to go to, as has become my habit since I was living in new york. I found a couple of sort of cheap gyms in the city, and then some small really expensive ones. Then, I finally went to the massive sport complex at the University. The place is huge, by Israeli standards. One olympic size pool, two smaller pools, full soccer field, two outdoor basketball courts, one indoor basketball arena (I guess for the university team, maybe, and it also doubles as the indoor soccer field). Fairly large and clean/modern gym facility, two large multi-purpose studios, two tennis courts, and even a squash court.
(Check out their website here, and their map here).

I mention this because the site kind of reminds me of RIMAC at UCSD. RIMAC was our sport facility in college, and in retrospect was an absolutely amazing place. I believe it is still the 2nd largest sport facility in the states. Granted, the Israeli counterpart here is significantly smaller and more compact, but so is everything here. The other reason I mention it is because, much like RIMAC, the university facility is open to the public as well (much like campus Libraries are also open to the public). Here is the catch, as a student, I'm paying literally a fourth of the price for the going public. Its exactly 100 shekels a month for me, roughly $22.50, which is fairly cheap (especially for Manhattan prices).

Funny Story

2006-09-26T20:34:00.001+03:00

Here is a funny story for you. About 70 years ago my great great grandfather (my grandmother's grandfather) had a piece of land in Yaffo about a quarter of a dunam (roughly 170 square meters , or 1600 square feet). This property got lost in the fray and was passed down to his sons, who held it for another 30 years or so and then it fell between the cracks and emerged on the desk of a lawyer who finally was able to sell the property and disperse the inheritance to the remaining "kids" (the grandkids who are now in their eighties). The inheritance was fairly substantial, even after the city of Tel Aviv took out unpaid property tax going back to 1943 (no kidding on that one) So I was invited along to see these old timers. From left to right: Royi, my second cousin who is 2 years younger than me (katie, he gives you a big hug). He drove his grandmother (my great aunt) Shula. Next to her in the red is her sister (my grandmother), followed by my grandfather. Next to him is Yaakov, my grandmother's cousin (at a strapping 83 years young). Followed by the youngest cousin, Ilana, I believe at 76. Then, on the far right is Roni, who is the son of the other inheritor, who passed many years ago. Roni is techinically my father's cousin, but apparently the last time anybody saw him was at his Bar Mitzvah, literally over 25 years ago.

Royi and I left them there and went to get some lunch.

More Tel Aviv

2006-09-26T02:07:00.000+03:00

I wont bore you with what I did at the bank today, but this afternoon and evening was a lot of fun. I met up with a friend of mine and my sisters named Mor and we went to this cafe on the beach and had a coffee and caught up. Below is the view from the coffee place, which is relatively north at Hilton Beach (named for the hotel that overlooks it). Then we walked south to the area between Gordon Beach and Frishman Beach (named for the two streets that reach it). Gordon Beach is the closest to my house, at a whopping 8 minute walk, roughly one kilometer. As you can see, the sun was setting, but the water was still warm, as there is a warm current that flows through the Mediterannean Sea along the coast of Israel, I believe it starts aroung north Cario and flows all the way up toward Turkey. If you look at the far left of the photo, that is basically where Yaffo starts. If you recal from my previous post I had a photo from Yaffo looking north, and this is from Tel Aviv looking south. you can see the same hotels along the strip in both photos from two different angles.
The other thing that is interesting about the Tel Aviv beachfront is that the buildings that actually line the shore are relatively nasty. They ahve always been nasty and only in the recent years have they started to be rebuilt. If you expand the photo below you can see they are rebuilding some of the disgusting old buildings (see the crane) and next to it you can see the smaller buildings that are fairly delapidated... I'm postive that over the coming 20 years this entire beachfront will get a massive face lift, as it is prime real estate.
This evening my friend Rafi invited me to Yaffo, he is housesitting for a friend. The apartment was amazing. There is an area of Yaffo where all the old Arabesque buildings have been refurbished and the architecture is stunning. The apartment was amazing and had this massive roof deck where we all sat. I have to go back durring the daylight hours to take photos, but the area was stunning.

Flea Market

2006-09-24T13:32:00.000+03:00

I forgot to post about this last week, but I walked all the way down to the flea market in Yafo last week. Yafo, which is one of the oldest remaining cities in the region and dates back to the Phonecians or even before. The city now is a little run down but is also going through the early stages of gentrification.

Yafo has this crazy flea market where you can buy literally everything. From a bed frame to cucumbers, from designer "Deezel" jeans to persian rugs. Its crazy. (Coco, I have to take you here, you will love it).

The Market itself covers a wide expanse of streets, but it also has a this central area as well where they mostly sell the clothing/jewlery/hookas and smaller things. This is the photo of the interior, I can't describe to you how dense it is. My shoulders barely squeezed in between that bag on the left and the rack of pants on the right (I took this photo by my hip because I didn't want people to notice and be offended.

I walked out of the market and toward the ancient city of Yafo, which used to be the biggest port in the Mediterannean 2000 years ago. Up on the hill I took this photo looking north toward the city of Tel Aviv. All in all, the walk was about 3 hours from my house to here, but I also stopped for lunch, and also for a coffee.

Random Encounters

2006-09-22T16:09:00.000+03:00

So I have had 3 random encounters in the last three days. First, on the way to Ultimate practice this past Wed. we picked up a new player. Turns out the new players is this kid Rafi (for those who know him) that I know from way back in summer camp days. We were counselors together, and I haven't seen him in literally 8 years.
Then, yesterday, I got a coffee with Andy Sinton (for those who know him) who now lives in Jerusalem and is doing his post-doc in Math at Hebrew University (something about the Caculus behind matrices of geometric spaces, Firas you might know about this). I haven't seen him in ten years practically, since he and I graduated college together. Turns out he is married to the older sister of Elana, another firend of mine from San Francisco.
Then, later last night I went out to this new bar called Izen with Pros and his crew and I met this girl named Jesse who turns out is best friends with Maura in San Francisco.

Small world. Well, small anglo world in Israel is more correct.

Mike's Place

2006-09-20T01:43:00.000+03:00

Dan and Sabrina came to visit me today and are officially my first visitors. Granted they only came down the hill from Jerusalem, but still. We went to dinner and then drinks at Mike's Place in honor of Lepow. (PS, Jesse, the waitress there said she didn't remember who you were, and she has been working there for 2 years, sorry).

We have Wi-Fi!

2006-09-18T01:03:00.000+03:00

I finally have wireless internet in the house!!! I'm so excited!!! Another item off the list of things to do! Here is what remains, in chronological order: Tomorrow I finally get my apartment in order becuase I have been slacking about doing that due to laziness and the desire to deal with getting wifi done with. Also go to Ikea becuase they are having a sale and I need a really cheap bookshelf and they have one for 80 Shekels, rougly 17 bucks. Tuesday I finalize the paperwork for national health insurance. Wed. I do laundry.

Tonight I also baby sat my little cousin (technically my cousin once removed). We watched Mulan (again). Then played around for half an hour till his father (my direct cousin from my mother's side) returned home. They also live in Tel Aviv, so it was a quick 10 minute walk.

Here is Tomer and I on the couch. Tomer is four and half. He told me that one of the kids from his preschool called him stupid today so he told him to shut up. Seems logical.

Southern Tel Aviv

2006-09-17T18:01:00.000+03:00

I have plenty of free time for the coming 5 weeks until school starts, so I have started to explore my city a bit. Today I went to the southern part of Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv, like Manhattan, has a disticnt North vs. South mentality. Like people who live about 14th street vs. people who live below 14th street (or in SF like those who live north of Cal vs. south of Cal). My neighborhood is in the north part, which is considered more Yuppie and stuck up. The most stuck up area, equivalent to the Upper East Side of Tel Aviv is the most northern tip of the actual city, the area just north of the Uni, called Ramat Aviv Gimel. They even made a soap opera with that name a few years back. I went to the area called Florentine, which can be most closely equated to the East Village of New York. It is filled with young people, small coffee shops, bars, boutiques, and is going through a massive restoration project right now. You can see from the photo that the buildings are smaller, more dense, the streets are narrower, etc. It's actually a really cool area, the photo doesn't do justice to the general vibe of the area. And much like East Villagers in New York, they will argue to the teeth that their neighborhood is the best in the city. I actually like my neighborhood quite a bit, which reminds me a lot of the vibe of Polk Gulch area in SF. Just yuppie enough, but not sickeningly snobby like the Marina or Murray Hill.
On the walk down to this neighborhood I passed by the major shopping strip of the city, called Shenkein street. The street itself has tons of boutiques, high end ones at that. The neighboring streets around it have tons of shops as well selling everything you can imagine, mostly knock-offs. You can see from the photo above that the shop I passed on the walk was selling Abercrombie shirts.... hmm....

I continued walking to the Shouk in Yafo as well in a search to find a cheep bookshelf, but I will tell you all about that tomorrow.

Who's in Norway?

2006-09-17T01:13:00.000+03:00

If you look at the very bottom of this page there is a Stat Counter that I added. If you click on it you will be directed to a page that has great futures like daily hits, amount of time spent on the site, etc. My favorite part is the "Recent Visitor Map" (where I can track who is reading my site from where since I know where you all live! For example, Dingle in Vegas recently checked out the site again)

So tonight I looked at it, and I had someone on this site from the town of Stavanger, in Norway. I don't have any idea who could be there unless one of you is on a trip. What is even more bizarre, is that they were on the site for OVER AN HOUR. An hour and 2 minutes and 38 seconds to be exact...

PS, Shout out to Mel and Sarina. Happy now???

Haifa

2006-09-16T20:51:00.000+03:00

So this weekend I went up to Haifa to visit my mother's side of the family (My father's live in Jerusalem). My aunt (mother's sister) has been living in the same apartment for as long as I can remember in the neighborhood called Carmelia, (you can see it on the map below toward the southern end of the city). Haifa itself is an interesting city, it was built up from the port on the inner side and grew up the mountain, and then spread. It is a gorgeous city with views of the Mediterranean Sea from every point, and the beaches on the Western Side are fantastic, much better than the Tel Aviv beaches (which are pretty good to begin with). The other intersting aspect of Haifa is that it is culturally mixed Arab and Israeli. Jersualem and Tel Aviv also have Arabs, but the neighborhoods are fairly segregated. Haifa is the only large city in Israel where both Arabs and Israelis live in the same apartment complex and go to the same coffee shops. Haifa is also much more calm than either Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. I spent Friday night with my cousin, the son of my aunt, and his friends in their apartment in the area called Bat Galim, which is the most northern tip. Bat Galim is interesting because it has always been one of the shoddiest neighborhoods, and only now is beginning a process of growth, party from the gentrification of students looking for cheap housing (like the area of Southern Harlem went through 5 years ago). Bat Galim was also the area that was primarily targetted in Haifa by Hezbollah, and my cousin showed me some of the damaged buildings. Haifa is also where my father went to university, at the Technion, which is still one of the preeminent technical/engineeringg schools in the world. Below is the view from my aunts apartment looking west down the hill to the Mediterannean...

ultimate in Israel

2006-09-14T01:02:00.000+03:00

So tonight I played a scrimmage game. I have been adopted by the team called the Holy Landers (go figure) and we played against the Disc Dragons... I tried to get some photos but it was too dark, I will have to wait until the hat tournament next Sunday. The teams are interesting because there is nobody aged 18 to 22, since they are all in the Army. So there are a group of people 24 to 34, and then some younger high schoolers aged 17 and 18. In any case, it was great to run around, and they actually have a decent field, which surpised me. They actually have practices twice a week and run drills and everything, which was great to see.

You can check out the site for the team here (also in english)

Benny, I think you should move here and join the team...

Progress

2006-09-12T17:30:00.000+03:00

Every day I make a little progress... For example, today I got cable in the apartment, and tomorrow I get internet. Then Thursday I sign up for national health insurance (socialists) and in the afternoon I sign up for classes (Macro and Econometrics as well as two mini-courses of my choosing). Basically, what I'm saying is that every day I make a little more progress, but every day something random comes up.

For example, the office for the health insurance only has open reception on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday from 8:00 to noon. So I asked the cable guy to come at 8am so I could take the bus to the health insurance place and deal with it this morning. The guy actually showed up on time, and was totally decent, but there was a wiring problem in the apartment, so he was there till about 11:45 fixing it, which means that I can't deal with health insurance now till Thursday. Little stuff like this happens all of the time here, the various beurocracies don't exact "talk" to each other, but so far all of this has been easily overcome.

The other progress that I make is with day to day comfort. For example, I went looking for a gym, and turns out the best deal is through the university (obviously), but I have started to go jogging at night (after it cools down) and I even have ultimate games twice a week already (I'll take photos tomorrow night for sure). Those who know me well (Katie) know that I'm a creature of habit. 10:45 am on Saturday I'm at the Nook, for example. 11:50 am on Tuesday I take a pre-lunch break with Steven and Christine.

The last aspect of progress is various creature comforts of the apartment. I bought a Brita filter (Tel Aviv water tastes like crap), I bought hand soap, I even bought my little electric water pot you see in the photo. Every single human being I know in this country has one of these, yet I don't know a single american who does, and I know they sell them as well.

Last night was also my first night in the apartment, and I slept well, thank you very much. (Katie, I made a copy of the keys for you, but don't go making a copy and giving it to Joanna)

Rehavia

2006-09-10T09:38:00.000+03:00

So this weekend I was in Jerusalem with my family/friends there. Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are so radically different its almost shocking. Different demographics, different feel, different atmosphere (physical and otherwise). I wont get in to the details of it for this post, but I did want to write about the area called Rehavia, where my grandparents have lived for literally 60 years. It's a gorgeous area of limestone buildings and narrow sloping streets (pictures don't do it justice). Let me mention that the entire city is made of limestone. Buildings from last month, from 150 years ago, from 2000 years ago, and from 3500 year ago, all limestone.

The area of Rehavia used to be secular german immigrants, post WWII, but, like the large majority of the rest of Jerusalem, has become very religious over the last two decades. The seculars get older, and the baby boom generation of our parents have left to go to Tel Aviv or other places. The entire neighborhood is these limestone buildings hidden behind the trees. Some are gorgeious, like this one, which is being refurbished. My guess is that it is late 19th century, clearly arab influence from the arches and the porch. Other buildings are not so nice, and there are plenty of disgusting areas in the city as well.

This building is newer, and is in a more rundown area of northern Rehavia, where it overlaps with another neighborhood. I stll like it because of the interesting angle of the bulding, and how the porches overlap the corners. I make it sound like the city is huge with all these little areas, but in fact, its tiny. (Tel aviv is actually even smaller, the actual city itself that is). Walking from one end of Rehavia to another is literally 10 minutes, but the vibe is amazing. I can't explain enough how buitiful the city is, even the uglier buildings. It is unlike any city I have ever seen.

Anyhow, this weekend was spent with family, and I also saw Prosnit and Dan Victor. (Lepow, Pros and I are eagerly awaiting your arrival). Both of them are here for a year, so and I have a feeling that Prosnit will be crashing on my couch in Tel Aviv a lot.

I will post more on Jerusalem later, I'm sure.

Israeli Necessities

2006-09-06T10:06:00.000+03:00

There are two things that every Israel needs to survive in this country. The first is the ID card. Everything functions through the ID card. You can't pay bills, get a bank account, sign up for medial insurance, or pretty much anything else besides it. The closest approximation for US is a social security number. Imagine trying to get health insurance or pay taxes or get a W4 form without it. We in the states are all just used to it so we don't think about it. Long story short, I got mine, finally! It was actually one of the easier things to deal with, and the Ministry of Interior, where I got it, was surpsingly effecient considering the infamous beurocratic mess that is usually associated with government offices.

The second, and arguably more important item on the list of Israeli Necessities is the cell phone. Israel, along with Iceland, Luxembourg, and Norway, ranks as the country with the most cell phones per capita. Over 80% of the Israeli population has a cell phone.... I have seen people here with 2 cell phones on their belt (Joanna, do not date these people, as much as I know you like belt accessories on men, please please stay away from this).

The company I chose to go with is Cellcom, which had a great deal for students, and I'm abusing any student deal I can get right now. There are 3 major cell phone carriers in Israel, who pretty much form an oligopoly on the whole thing. Cellcom, Orange (british I believe) and Pelephone. Pelephone is the oldest, I think going as far back as 1993. The word "Pele" (pronounced like the Brazilian soccer player) means miracle. So Pelephone litterally stands for "miracle phone".

Also cheers to Jonny Hong Kong for being my first international caller, beating out even my mother!

The first Week

2006-09-04T15:45:00.000+03:00

So the first week has been spent trying to organize everything, piece by piece. Internet, phone, cable, bills, bank account, sheets for the bed, etc... Slowly I'm progressing, and every day is easier. I also have to deal with the school part of it, which is a whole different ordeal (the photo is of the Berglas school of Economics at Tel Aviv University). The whole campus is strung with Wi-Fi! How cool is that! Also below is a photo of the number 25 bus that will be my main mode of transport from my apartment in the heart of the city to the campus, which is in the north part of the city, on the other side of the Yarkon River. Yes, the bus has air conditioning.
One thing that this city despirately needs is a subway system. It is also a city that would greatly benefit from it as well... (unlike in LA where there is absolutely no need for a subway).

More soon...