The Old and the Beautiful

It’s cold in Israel.

Now obviously cold is relative.

It’s not Toronto Canada cold, where minus 5 degrees centigrade is considered a mild December (go figure).

Cold in Israel means it snows in the north, and might snow in Jerusalem.

It means we may have some frost on our car windows in the morning.

It also means we try and heat our homes using our air conditioning, which most of us bought to deal with the summer heat and humidity in Israel.

Side note – Heat and humidity in Israel is not relative. It’s hot and humid by any standard. Except perhaps by jungle / monsoon standard.

Anyway I digress.

When it’s cold in Israel everyone takes out their fleece jackets, because no one really buys down coats or the like for the few cold days we have.

And even those who do, wouldn’t be caught dead walking out in the open in them because it’s unfashionable. It’s unfashionable not because down coats look less chic or stylish than fleece jackets. It’s because no self respecting Israeli would publicly admit he’s so cold that he needs to wear a down coat.

So everyone walks around in their fleece jackets with nothing but their ego to warm them up.

The exception is probably people living in Jerusalem, who have no sense of fashion anyway, and even if by chance they do, no one expects it, so they can pretty much do whatever they feel like.

Now I don’t live in Jerusalem, so I have some standards to live up to (some are self imposed and some are spouse enforced).

Therefore I can’t go outside wearing whatever like, even if it’s cold.

But in the confines of my home, I’m cut a little slack.

In the confines of my home, I walk around in my ultimate cold-night attire.

It’s a jumper my mother knitted for me over twenty years ago, and it’s the best.

It may be old but there’s nothing like it. It’s warm, cozy and beautiful.

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, and on nights such as these there’s nothing more beautiful (apart from my wife of course).

So thank you Mummy.

I wish me and my jumper many happy winter nights together.

For those of you wondering – The picture is for illustration purposes only. My Mum did a much better job, and she didn’t put a smiley on it because I used to wear it to Shul on Shabbat.

You are what you eat?!

I hope I’m not what I eat, because then I’ve no idea who I am.

I mean seriously, have any of you looked at the ingrediants of some of the food we ingest?

What are sodium alginate, citric acid, calcium phosphate, dextrose, maltodextrin?

And don’t get me started on the food coloring which are just a bunch of letters and numbers.

Now I know some of you are rushing off to Google and saying, of course I know what sodium alginate is. Sodium alginate is the sodium salt of alginic acid and it’s formula is (C₆H₇NaO₆)_n.

Well good for you! You’re probably best friends of Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bang Theory (great show by the way).

I can also look the stuff up on the internet, but that’s not the point.

I think R.J. said it best in the movie “Over The Hedge”:

That, my friend, is a magical combination of corn flour, dehydrated cheese solids, BHA, BHT, and good old MSG; a.k.a., the chip, nacho cheese flavor.

Do we really know what these chemicals are and what they do? I doubt it.

Do food manufacturers want us to know? Well let’s guess …

Does this mean we should stop eating all these fun, chemical infested, non-natural concoctions? I don’t think so.

But it’s probably a good idea to pay a little more attention once in a while.

In any case it’s probably a good idea not to go overboard with eating in general, and quoting R.J. from the same “Over The Hedge movie” again:

http://www.traileraddict.com/emd/2309

They always got food with them. We eat to live – these guys live to eat! Let me show you what I’m talking about! [as he speaks he shows the other animals what humans do] The human mouth is called a ‘piehole’, the human being is called a ‘couch potato’. [signifies telephone] That is a device to summon food. [signifies doorbell] That is one of the many voices of food. [signifies front door]That is the portal for the passing of food. [signifies many delivery trucks] That is one of the many food transportation vehicles. Humans bring the food, take the food, ship the food, they drive food, they wear the food! [signifies grill] That gets the food hot! [signifies cooler] That keeps the food cold! [signifies turtle pinata] That…I’m not sure what that is. [kids break the turtle piñata and Verne yells] Well, what do you know? FOOD! [signifies table where family prays before dinner] That is the altar where they WORSHIP food! [signifies advert for Seltzer] That’s what they eat when they’ve eaten TOO MUCH food! [signifies treadmill] That gets rid of the guilt so they can eat MORE FOOD! FOOD! FOOD! FOOD! FOOD! FOOOOOD! So, you think they have enough? [everybody nods]Well, they don’t. For humans, enough is never enough! And what do they do with the stuff they don’t eat? They put it in gleaming silver cans, just for us! [opens the trash cans and knocks them over] Dig in!

We can do better by eating less in general and eating less junk in particular.

And that’s it for now.

This is my first post in a while, but I hope I’ll manage to keep it up.

Friday Decadence

Friday in a religious home in Israel is usually made up of all the last minute chores needed to get ready for Shabbat.

Final cooking, cleaning, shopping, tidying and various other “ing” words that by definition insinuate an on-going (never-ending) activity.

For those with kids – most of these tasks are actually daily with some additional intensity before Shabbat.

This Friday the shopping aspect was limited to buying some Challah.

We got into the supermarket and located the relevant isle and proceeded to bag a Challah.

It was hot. Just-out-of-the-oven, completely fresh type of hot.

Now I’m a pretty healthy eater and I can usually control what I ingest, but I was no match for this Challah.

The smell just got to me and we bought another Challah … for me … to eat on the way back home.

In the 5 minutes it took to drive home from the supermarket, the Challah was almost gone.

It was crispy golden outside, soft and warm inside and had a slightly sweet taste to it. It was delicious.

Prior to actually eating each piece I also breathed in it’s enticing perfume.

It was heavenly.

I hadn’t eaten a freshly baked Challah like that for ages and it felt good.

As my late grandfather used to say, there should be a special blessing (bracha) on freshly baked bread.

There’s something to be said for experiences that happen only once in a while, there’s that extra enjoyment to them.

I highly recommend doing this every now and again regardless of whether it’s a bunch of grapes, a good piece of cheese or a hot pastry.

Just treat yourself to something special.

You’re worth it!

A Pot to Remember

Every wedding or other occasion I’ve gone to, has been coupled with the grand question:

“What should we give”?

The answer to this, usually depends on parameters such as the financial state of those giving the present, the financial state of those receiving the present, the affinity of the two parties etc.

In the past, to make things easier,  the couple used to publish a list of wedding gifts the guests could choose from. This helped choose a gift that fit the budget while making sure it’s something the bride and groom actually wanted.

However, over the last years, this has changed. Everyone gives money. The question has changed for “What should we give”? to “How much money should we give”?

The parameters were the same but instead of inanimate objects the gifts were always currency.

This has slowly developed into a more exact science that clearly quantifies the amount to be given. This is easily calculated using the following formula:

Amount-to-give = Price-of-food-per-person X Number-of-people-coming-to-the-occasion.

Let’s use some simple examples to illustrate:

• My work colleague is getting married in the Ritz where a portion costs $100, I’m coming on my own, I give $100.
• My friend is getting married in the park and handing out ice-cones at $5 a piece, I’m coming with my wife, I give $10.

Very simple.

My gift has nothing to do with feelings, emotions or anything else.

I could hate my work colleague and come only because I need to work with him afterward, I still need to cough up whatever it is he’s paying for having me.

To understand how ridiculous this is let me tell you about a friend of mine.

She told us she’d just beento a beautiful, lavish wedding the night before. She said it was the fanciest wedding she’d ever been to and in accordance with the formula above gave 600 NIS, as she came with her boy friend.

As it turned out, she used the wrong data in her calculations.

This wedding was quite an item and appeared prominently in the newspapers too. Apparently a portion cost 400 NIS. This meant that according to the formula above my friend should have paid 800 NIS.

She was misinformed regarding costs.

When she learned of this she was devastated. She had failed to cover her “expenses” at the wedding.

I, for one, thought she was nuts. “If someone arranges such an expensive wedding”, I said, “they probably have the means to pay for it without counting on gifts to cover their expenses”.

But other than the sheer stupidity of this attitude, the main issue is what happens after the wedding.

I for one can tell you that I don’t go around the house thinking: “Isn’t this a great sofa, 20% was covered by the Smith’s, 15% by the Cohen’s, 45% by my 3rd cousin twice removed and 20% by my next door neighbor”.

No one remembers this stuff.

But last night while doing the dishes and rinsing a pot we use on a regular basis, I remembered that this pot was given to us by Mrs. So and so. I remembered how she stood and smiled at our wedding, I remembered visiting her home and how, unfortunately, she passed away due to cancer several years ago.

Every so often I remember her and her smile fondly because she gave me one pot instead of more money to buy a frying pan too.

Try and think of that, next time you give a gift to someone.

Safety in numbers?

Groups were originally created because we can do a lot more as a group than we can as individuals. 

This is something known not only to man but also to animals, a simple example is hunting in packs. 

Groups are also useful for avoiding unwanted events, as the famous saying goes “safety in numbers”.

This simple idea is manifested in the formulation of communities, companies, agencies, countries etc. A collection of people come together to realize a common goal.

Obviously any such group requires maintenance which includes things like management, rules, procedures, regulations and so on.

This maintenance is what we all commonly refer to as bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is defined in Wikipedia as: the combined organizational structure, procedures, protocols, and set of regulations in place to manage activity, usually in large organizations.

Now bureaucracy is the required “penalty” for organizing individuals into groups, however, over time, bureaucracy tends to cripple the group it’s trying to maintain. 
The problems start when the bureaucracy becomes inflated and the maintenance of the group is allocated more money and resources than those alloted to actually fulfill the tasks for which the group was formed. 

There’s a simple reason for this bureaucratic inflation. As time passes new challenges present themselves. These new challenges usually require adding more individual contributors to the group, these in turn need to be managed by additional people and sometimes require a different set of procedures and regulations.
At some point the growth in bureaucratic needs not only wastes resources but also causes management to stop any activity that will require additional changes in the group and its maintenance. So now the management of the group actually becomes opposed to change, as it destabilizes their ability to maintain the organization.

This adversity to change makes the group less able to respond to the new challenges its facing thereby rendering it irrelevant over time.

Unfortunately, adversity to change is our natural inclination. Stability, balance and equilibrium are usually characterized by lack of energy. Most people prefer the “don’t rock the boat approach” and this is evident in most of the organizations, especially the large ones, we come in contact with.

However in this day and age we have an additional challenge regarding the groups we belong to or require the services of.

In our modern world there are groups that aren’t formed by the individuals who wish to benefit from their combined abilities. The groups I’m referring to are created by outside interested parties who see these groups as a means to advance their goals. These goals are usually financial.

Don’t know what I mean? Think of all the ads and media around you.

The iPhone owners group, the Coca-Cola drinkers group, the Lost watchers group etc.

All these groups are created by companies selling their goods. They want to make us believe that if we consume their product we’ll belong to a special group. We’re a group of cool geeks, early adapters, people who know how to enjoy life , TV connoisseurs etc.

Are we part of this group because it advances our needs as individuals?

No, we’re part of this group because we’re made to believe that we’re in need of belonging to it. Belonging, in this case, means consuming and spending money.

These groups actually serve the needs of the ones creating them and not the needs of the ones that are part of them.

If we add our previous point to this, then the more groups there are and the more maintenance is required the higher the price each individual needs to pay in order to belong to a group that isn’t really serving any real needs he may have.

Some people have actually realized this and have created anti-group groups. An amusing example are the Crocs haters (I Hate Crocs dot com).

I remember that when I was going through my dating phase one of the common questions I was asked was whether I’m a fan of Friends or Seinfeld. Apparently these are two very distinct groups and your association to one or the other is a definitive indicator of your character.

In my opinion, someone asking this question, belongs to a group I don’t want to be associated with. The group of the brainwashed. The group of the media indoctrinated masses who believe that a sit-com can be an indicator of anything other than our need to laugh and our inability to fulfil this need in a more productive manner.

It’s time we realized that groups should be formed on the basis of real needs and should be maintained in a way that assures the group’s targets can be met even when circumstances change.

If we don’t realize this, we may find ourselves belonging to groups that are lemming like in their targets, aspirations and behavior.

Let’s make sure our numbers provide safety from harm and lack of productivity rather than just safely lining the pockets of bureaucrats and consumer corporations.

English Bloopers Revisited

A couple of months ago I wrote a post about English Bloopers.

I decided to mention this issue again because of the crowning blooper jewel I saw yesterday.

In an email to a customer someone wrote:

Sorry for the incontinence.

I’m pretty certain they meant to write inconvenience.

I’m sure that if incontinence was actually involved the customer would have been a lot more than just “inconvenienced”.

Luckily someone asked me to read the email before actually sending it.

So PLEASE re-read your emails before sending them, preferably out loud. Do this even if the spell checker doesn’t find any errors.

If there’s a word you don’t know, don’t use it before consulting with someone.

Make sure no one thinks you’ve lost the ability to control your vowels.

Beware of the Numbers

This post is about the numbers around us. About the numbers, graphs and statistics people love throwing at us to prove their point.

How much do we really understand about these numbers?

My take – not very much!

A joke I once heard illustrates how “well” people understand statistics:

An American woman with 4 children says to her husband: “I just heard that one out of four children around the world is Chinese. We’ve been lucky so far”.

This is a classic example of someone who understands nothing about statistics. She’s got the numbers right but hasn’t got the faintest idea what they mean.

(explanation for those who are just as clueless as the woman in the joke above – although 1 in 4 children is Chinese they’re probably born in China and not in the USA).

But sometimes numbers are correct and it’s just a question of how they’re presented.

Here’s a classic example:

Actual case: A 100m race between an American and a Russian in which the American won.

Headlines in USA the next day: American beats Russian in a USA-Russia race.

Headline in Russia the next day: In an International race – Russian 2nd, American one before last.

The same case, using the same numbers but presented in a completely different way.

Why did I decide to write about this?

Because of an article I heard on the radio the other day talking about the percent of children killed in car accidents in Israel. They wanted to prove that children in Israel are at higher risk than children elsewhere.

Now don’t get me wrong – this is no laughing matter and regardless of whether 1 child or 100 were killed its tragic and should be prevented.

However I don’t like being brainwashed by mindless statistics.

You cannot say that Israeli children are more likely to get killed in car accidents just by comparing the percent of children out of the total number of casualties. You need to take into account the actual percent of children in the population in the different countries.

Unfortunately I can’t find the data from this year, so I’ll use data from previous years to illustrate. To make this shorter I’ll only include some of the countries in the articles.

Here’s some of the data from 2003 regarding percentage of children killed in car accidents**:
Turkey – 13%, Israel – 11%, Luxembourg – 9%, Estonia – 9%, Ireland – 8%, USA – 5%, Russia – 4%

Now let’s look at the percentage of children out of the total population (Statistical disclaimer – No 2003 data, used the data for 2004 as I’m assuming it didn’t change much between 2003-2004)***:

Turkey – 30%, Israel – 28%, Luxembourg – 19%, Estonia – 17%, Ireland – 21%, USA – 21%, Russia – 16%.

So now if we put these numbers together to understand what percentage of children are affected we get the following (divide the first number by the second to get a percentage, for Israel 11/28 etc.):

Turkey – 43.3%, Israel – 39.3%, Luxembourg – 47.4%, Estonia – 52.9%, Ireland – 38.1%, USA – 23.8%, Russia – 25%.

Based on these numbers – Estonian children are more likely to get hurt than children in Luxembourg, Turkey and Israel. Ireland also seems nearly as dangerous as Israel. Russia is more dangerous than the USA although the initial numbers suggested the reverse.

Here’s another hypothetical example (I made this one up):

Recent study shows: UK roads are more dangerous for English speakers than other EU countries.

Statistics to back this up: Data showing the percent of English speakers involved in car accidents in various countries:

• UK – 95%
• France – 15%
• Germany – 21%
• Italy – 18%
• Holland – 22%
• Scandinavia – 33%
• Eastern Europe – 7%

So what’s wrong with these numbers? Don’t they prove the point in the headline? Of course they do, if you don’t take into account that the UK is the ONLY English-speaking country in Europe and is therefore bound to have a much larger percentage of English speakers. This obviously affects the way these numbers should be perceived.

Why am I going on about this?

Because the media loves shoving numbers in our face to prove some point or other and most of us out there are duped because we lack information or knowledge.

Do we know that the sample used was large enough or that it wasn’t biased. I mean I could easily prove that people in the middle east have seen camels more often than people in Europe or vice-versa regarding squirrels. Does that tell us anything about people’s eyesight in different regions of the world? NO. Why not? Because camels don’t roam around freely in European parks and squirrels do.

I could also prove that people eat less sugar and carbohydrates than they did 2 years ago. How? I’ll just poll people who’ve discovered they’re diabetic in the past 2 years.

My point?

Beware of numbers! Statistics can prove a lot but they can prove to be very unreliable if they’re not done properly or if they’re marketed inappropriately.

Data sources:

** 2003 data of children killed in car accidents: Or Yarok Research

*** 2004 data regarding World population and percentage of children: Population Reference Bureau (PRB) Data

Customer Call

I was working with a customer that happened to be in the US (I live in Israel).

He wanted to talk to me and when I mentioned it was pretty late (time difference you know) he apologized and suggested we aim for the next day but a little earlier.

The next day it took a long time for us to get in touch. We got on the call after 11 PM (that’s earlier isn’t it).

Here are some highlights of the call (in chronological order):

Customer: What time is it by you?

Me: 23:20

Customer: Oh. That’s late. Do you always work this late?

Me: Quite often, although I try not too

Continued work related discussion…

Customer: Do you always go to sleep so late?

Me: I try not to, but sometimes I need to.

Customer: It’s not good for you to go to bed so late, you can get sick. I used to stay up late too, and it was really bad for me.

Me (thinking): Interesting thoughts when I’m on a call with you so late at night

Customer: OK that looks good. Let’s just check another thing.

Me (thinking): Another thing? Do you remember what you said a minute ago? Late? Going to bed earlier?

More work related stuff…

Customer: Let’s just run that again.

Me (thinking): Do you remember what you said 10 minutes ago? About the late hour? Amnesia perhaps?

Customer (trying to use his application): Oh, this isn’t working. Do you know why this isn’t working? It worked before!

Me (thinking): It’s your application, I only saw it today for the first time, how do I know why it’s not working.

Customer: I need to go in about 10 minutes.

Me (thinking): I would have liked to go to bed 40 minutes ago

Call ends after an hour and fifteen minutes. Customer asked for a 15 minutes call.

What can I say – the customer is always right, especially when he tells you it’s time to go to bed.

Black Olives

We went to the zoo in Jerusalem last Friday.

As usual we had a great time and got a lot of exercise running after the children.

However this time the normal zoological experience was augment by a special botanical one.

As we were about to leave, we noticed a new exhibit which seemed to be endemic to Jerusalem, although it may exist in Bnei-Brak, Brooklyn and the diamond district in Manhattan.

I’ve no better way to describe this new phenomenon other than a Hasidic Tree.

It looked like a cross-breed between an Olive Tree and some Hasidic clothes (mainly hats and jackets).

The Jerusalemite zoo-goers didn’t seem to take much notice, but that’s to be expected as Jerusalem is a city of many faces, cultures, clashes and weird occurrences.

For us out-of-towners this phenomenon seemed a little odd to say the least.

One thing I’m pretty sure of. If this tree still bears Olives they will be black and not green.

Evening at the beach

I left work early yesterday so we (the family) could go to the beach.

A family evening out.

Executive summary:

• Great fun
• Lovely sunset
• Sand everywhere
• A definite success

The longer version:

One thing you don’t realize is how much baggage you need for a couple of sea-side hours with the kids.

As singles it was just putting on a bathing suit and taking sunblock and a towel. But kids … that’s a whole different beach-ball game.

We packed the towels, sunblock, hats and change of clothes.

Then there was food. The sea-sand-sun combo makes their little tummies more needy than their size would suggest.

So we took sandwiches, vegetables, eggs, fruits and snacks.

Once this was packed we had to get the kids in the car. This included the usual engineering challenge of getting 3 kid seats in the back of a family sedan … I wonder if the car manufacturers have ever tried this themselves … I think not.

We were about to pull out of the car park when we remembered we forgot our baby’s bottle and some beach toys.

Lucky we remembered…

We got those, and we were off and after about 30 minutes we arrived.

The first thing that happens when you get to the beach is what I call the “Sand Syndrome”. You start trying to arrange your stuff so the sand doesn’t get into it.

THIS IS DOOMED TO FAIL!

Sand will engulf you just as surely as the sun sets, the water is wet and your kid will need to go to the toilet when you’ve got him dressed and in the car.

The sooner you admit defeat the quicker you’ll enjoy the beach. Yesterday, the realization set in after 30 seconds.

So we put everything on the sand under one of the shades (aka couple of sticks with a holey tarp on top) and plodded down to the water.

The next couple of hours consisted of:

• Wading in the shallows
• Digging tunnels, building sand castles, getting happy with the water filling the tunnels and angry at it for toppling the castles
• Swallowing sea water and crying because of the salty water in our eyes
• Eating food, eating sand, eating sand coated food

At some point the life guards left and “closed” the sea.

Now it was time for the real “fun” – cleaning up the kids and getting everyone in the car.

The specific beach we were at had no real changing rooms, so the cleaning up was done using the outdoor showers that were actually surrounded by sand.

The kids displeasure with this “cleaning” process was expected. It involved undressing them, holding them in the air under the cold shower and turning them over and over to try and get as much sand as possible out of them. They expressed their discomfort with lots of yelling and wiggling.

Their discomfort was understandable and our attempt at cleaning them was futile. The sand remained firmly lodged in various nooks and crannies.

Then they had the traditional end-of-beach treat – some ice-lollies.

We all sat watching the setting sun with the lollies dripping and mixing with the remaining sand grains. Our kids were happy, tired and sticky.

And of course at the end there was the packing into the car at the beach and out of it when we got home.

What can I say – There’s no better way to spend an evening especially when it includes images of my baby girl with shiny eyes and a mouth stuffed with sandy melon.