Friday, November 28, 2008

Turkey Perfection

Yey – aren’t the posts where this blog turns into a food-blog fun?
Our conquest of American culture began last week when Uri went to play football at the Johnson School’s annual Turkey Bowl (ie football game before Thanksgiving). That attempt was semi-successful. His team won, but he got a ball thrown in his face, ending up with lips so huge Angelina Jolie would be jealous.
Our second attempt was on a more level playing ground: yesterday was Thanksgiving, and we made Thanksgiving dinner. Here is the menu:
Roasted Turkey, Stuffing, Cranberry sauce, Green Beans with Beacon, Brussels sprouts with cheese sauce, Coleslaw with jicama, Onion tart-tatin, Savoy Cabbage with Worcestershire sauce, Boiled butternut squash with parmesan pangrattato, Sweet-potato mash, Pumpkin oatmeal bread with Squash and pecan butter. As for dessert: Butter pecan cookies and my tried and true pumpkin-cheese cake.

Everything was really good, but the turkey was incredible. It looked fantastic (the picture really doesn’t do it justice). Just like in the movies – beautifully browned, and needless to say very tasty.

We wrapped up the holiday with the one thing that is more American than apple pie: Shopping. For a few years now the Friday after Thanksgiving has been referred to as “Black Friday”. All the stores have really massive sales, and people line up waiting for the stores to open their doors. Uri, letting his inner anthropologist shine through, volunteered to stay up and go to Wal-Mart to buy us a microwave for $25. Just to be clear – he didn’t stay up that long after his normal bed-time :)



Last a few thoughts on the holiday:
1. It took us some time to process that since is not a Jewish holiday, the holiday starts on the day of the holiday, and not the night before. We kept expecting Thanksgiving Dinner to be the night before, but why would it be?
2. It turns out that in most American homes, Thanksgiving Dinner isn’t dinner at all but rather lunch. Most dinners start around 1pm and then last all day long.
3. We had a realization that Thanksgiving is the American Passover.
     a. It’s a holiday that passes on the mythology of how the American people came to this holy               land and why they deserve to be here.
     b. It’s a time where everyone gathers with their extended family
     c. It’s a day spent eating.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Monday, November 17, 2008

Random thought about snow

As most of you know, it has already snowed here a couple of times.  It was a short, and melted quickly to be followed by a sunny day.  Well – today it started snowing for real.  That is today, it snowed on me this morning, the kind of snow that makes your coat turn white.  It’s supposed to snow all day, and continue snowing the rest of the week.

And now to my point: I always wondered how come during group settings on TV shows some people were wearing T-shirts and some heavy sweaters.  I kept thinking – don’t they have people that get paid to look for problems with continuity?

Well – now I have my answer. I am currently wearing an undershirt and a heavy wool sweater, across from me there is a girl with a thin long sleeved blouse, and behind me there is a guy in a short sleeved T-shirt.

Now that I finished writing this down, and I have no way of cleverly ending, I realize that this will probably be one of the stupider posts.  Hey – it’s just a random thought; I’m not claiming it’s too deep.  You rather I not write at all?!?! At least it’s short!

Thursday, November 6, 2008

The little engine that could

So... a comment on the recent elections - I'll try to keep it short.
After months and months of tracking the elections through "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" (and in the last few months "spying on the enemy" and watching Fox News), the Big Day finally arrived.
From my perspective, the day could have just gone by - naturally, it effects me, and I try to keep up with the news... but let's not kid ourselves - if I have any time to spare watching TV or reading the paper, I would rather watch "HEROES" or read the marketplace section of the WSJ.
But for all the Americans, and for Uri, it was a very engaging experience. We ended up going to see the results with a group of married couples from the school. It was a very interesting experience. Especially after it was clear Obama won. I think the sentence that resonated with me the most was "I can feel proud to be an American again".
I can certainly understand why this is - not only is Obama someone that you can be proud to call you leader, but also I think Americans can be proud that their country has finally overcome this societal hurdle.
On the flip side - there were also tears shed. I found myself thinking whether I could get so excited about elections in Israel and reached the conclusion that probably not. Uri said it's because I'm too cynical - and in a historic moment, I would probably find some joke to crack. He's probably right.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Some things we never got around to telling

A friend recently wrote us a nice, long email (hint hint, nudge, nudge). At the end, she asked us all kinds of questions as to what's going on with us, and it made me realize that there are a few basic things that we haven't wrote about yet - we meant to, but then too many other things started happening and we either wrote about them, or didn't have time to write. So here is my answer to her, published, because I thought it would be interesting to everyone.

Hey!
It was so great hearing from you. Everyone keeps asking us how we're doing, and not telling us what's going on back home. So it is really great to hear what's going on there and feel that we're still "in the mix".
Here all is well. I recently started my 2nd quarter, which means 3 new courses. It seems that this semester will be a bit harder. Not only are the courses harder, but we also have a lot of other things going on. Most importantly, we have to really intensify our job search. After this quarter ends, we have a break for winter (more on that later) and then when we come back interviews start for internships. So that means that we need to start figuring out which companies we want to interview with and start reaching out to them so that we actually do get invited to interviews.
Also, we have all these things going on with clubs we have - bringing in lecturers, going to events . Last but not least, I'm also involved in something called "Big Red Incubator" (BRI for short). This is a school run program that gives us the chance to do real life consulting. I will consulting for an Italian Restaurant in the area. It seems really cool, but will also be pretty time-consuming.
At the point that I'm in now, it seems like the end of the quarter is really far away, just because there is so much that will happen, but the truth is that it's not far away at all, it will just be really intense. The quarter ends mid-December. And, in answer to your question, we will both be coming home for a visit. I'm really looking forward to it.
It will also be nice to get out of the cold for a couple of weeks. Autumn has started here, which means that it's as cold here now as it is in winter in Israel. You would think I'm exaggerating, but I'm really not - yesterday I wore one of my heaviest sweaters from home.
What else did you want to know?
What do we see from the windows? Well that's probably the 2nd most depressing part of this apartment: from the front window we see the stairs to the upstairs apartment, and from the back windows we see the fence of the golf course and then trees. It's part of the reason the apartment doesn't get much light. Hopefully it will also keep the cold away during winter. However - after those trees and that stair case, Ithaca has amazing views. Here are some pics that Uri and I took last week:

What are we eating? Well - we're certainly eating more meat and less vegetables, but not that much more/ less. The meat (and fish) is much cheaper and tastier than back home, and the vegetables are much more expensive. In vegetables/ fruits there are a lot of things that we have here that we don't have at home - like a million varieties of apples and pears and all kinds of veggies. There aren't a lot of things that you can't find here, but it might be really expensive (like peppers) or really not tasty (like mango). I think probably the biggest change in our diet is that we're eating a lot more sandwiches, because that is the most common thing you can find here, and more often then not, the only thing you'll find on the menu.
You also asked about our neighbours - but I think I'll leave that to the next post. Apparently there are people who think that I write too much...

Love,
Me

Saturday, October 11, 2008

More Pictures! Yey again!

This time around, a few more words. It's been a busy two weeks or so. Uri came back, and then Lior came, and now my mom and aunt are here.
I tried my hardest to do as much work as I could while Uri was in Israel, and just before he came back I hit a low point when it seemed like despite my hard work, I was getting as much (or as little) done as everyone else. Well, in the last week I discovered that it wasn't so. I did, somehow, magically, manage to be ahead of the game. This let me go hiking with Uri and Lior, and go shopping with my mom and my aunt. Yey! for me. Now, the pessimist in me has to say that I'll see if I'm, ahead of the game or not when I actually get my grades back for the finals I have this week... but the fact is that I did feel I can take the time off. Let me tell you - it was fantastic! Now I'm back to studying hard - 3 finals in 3 days is a lot. after that, Uri and I will head to The City for a few days, and then I'll be back for the 2nd half of the semester.
What about Uri you ask? Well, he should have his new computer in a few days, so he'll once again be able to write. In the meantime I will say that he is really enjoying his new PS3.

Pictures! Yey!

Lior visited us last weekend.  It was a great weekend of gaming, cooking, eating, hiking, coffee drinking and picture taking.  Here are the results, straight from Lior's Flicker.


PS - Lior, who for the sake of the following statement, is a coffee expert said that while on the east coast, it's worth coming to Ithaca just for the coffee

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Blogging isn't easy

Not to complain - but... this thing isn't easy.
Without going to into the time thing again, it's hard to describe life and share my true thoughts without:
a) Being afraid I'll offending people
b) Feeling like I might be over-sharing
I think (b) is pretty easy to understand, but I will say a few words on (a). It's not that I think offending thoughts, it's just that in my head everyone is always potentially over sensitive. You never know what will offend someone, especially when your in a place that is culturally different. And while I don't feel alien to the culture here, there are small idiosyncrasies that make me unsure of what is the right way of behaving. This obviously goes both ways.

BTW - new addition to the "Foodies of Ithaca Unite" section of the blog.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Comments for someone elses future doctoral thesis

So apparently, one of the upsides of paying so much to go to school is that he school has enough money to pay a lot to the Professors. I’m studying accounting from the guy who literally wrote the book on accounting. So, strangely enough, I’m actually enjoying accounting. Let us not confuse enjoyment with complete understanding, but still…
So here is a little bit of accounting info: It turns out (Prof. Libby uses this expression a lot) that while a company accounting for its assets, has to report the cost price of the factories, machines, land, natural resources etc. that it uses for the running of its operations. It also has to account for their depreciated value. That means that it has to make an estimate of how long it will be able to use whatever it is and then divide the cost by that estimated number of years, and each year take that sum off of the book value.
So, when I got sick of doing accounting exercises, my mind started wandering, and sadly this is what it wandered to: How many years of useful life do oil companies estimated for their oil wells? Has this changed over the years, and if so, how has it changed over the last few years during the debate on the diminishing crude oil reserves? Have companies re-estimated? If so, have they changes the estimation to be higher or lower?
Professor Libby, despite his great accounting wisdom, didn’t know the answer but did acknowledge that was an interesting question. He also added that, from an accounting perspective, it’s interesting to note that companies who own natural resources might at times change estimates from a resource depleting itself to suddenly having value again. An example is natural gas. In the last few years, gas prices have risen enough and technology has advanced enough that it makes economic sense to go back to a field that previously was shut down, and drill again. This in some way has to be reflected in the books, despite the fact that the book value of the natural resources has already reached zero.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Comments for my future doctoral thesis (2)

The upside of Uri not being here is that I can focus my non-study time on writing and not on Uri. At the risk of being kicked out of the MBA program, I want to share with you another observation I recently had.
To put it in context, and let you in on a bit of or semi-social life, last Saturday Uri and I participated in a school tradition called Johnson Night Out. This is a school organized event in which School Faculty and 2nd year students host 1st and 2nd year students for pot-luck dinners. Pot-luck is the American expression that means, everybody brings a dish for everyone to share. We were assigned to go to Prof. Charlotte Rosen’s house and invited with us was one 2nd year student and 2 other 1st years.
We got into a conversation about “the job market”. I won’t go how we got to it, but I at one point said that I think it’s sad that the world has come to a point where an MBA is so (over)appreciated, and a PhD is so under appreciated. How do I put this delicately? I guess I could call it a faux-pas.
Everybody was shocked at my statement and proceeded to state that there are a lot of vital skills taught in an MBA program that a PhD does not necessarily have. Now, let me say what should have been obvious to everyone there – I am in an MBA program. Therefore I am very grateful at the business world’s faith in such program to determine success in management position. And I do believe that this will help me reach my short and long term career goals. However, I am also able to step aside and look at this system with a bit of criticism in order to say that more than anything else the MBA program is a long screening process. It’s about getting into a club and being “one of the gang”. Most jobs, at least the high-profile ones, have some sort of training in order to purchase the main skills needed for the job. And these are jobs that a person who is smart and has good deductive skills can do, at a starting level, without much experience. I do not doubt that an MBA does a good job in training for this. I just wonder when did it become so that a PhD (and it doesn’t matter in what) isn’t an indicator for these things?
So back to the main point, I was really surprised at the fact that this was such a faux pas. Is it an American thing? Is it an MBA thing? I don’t know the answer. Hence the title of the post.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

How time flys by

For all of you who might have been worried – I am alive.
Some of you have commented that it has been a long time since last I wrote. My only defense is to say that time has lost all meaning where I am, so I haven't really been aware of exactly how much time has gone by.
I guess it's safe to say that my life is pretty crazy. This week I woke up in a panic. It was 6:20 am, which meant that I had over slept by 20 minutes. I know that to some of you are saying to yourselves “I get up before 6, what's her problem?” Well, for one thing – the reason I was oversleeping was that I want to sleep after 1 am. But that aside, the point I'm trying to get at is how worried I was by the fact that I'm starting the day so “late”. There are so many things happening, so many things I have to do, so many things I want to do, that it can get over-whelming. As it turns out (this is an expression professors use a lot – it turns out it's the intellectual “like” or “ya' know”) this is what is hard in business school. The formal teaching is what it is, and everybody here is smart enough to understand and do well, given enough time. The question is: What is enough time for you? If you are average (for the school) you might be able to do your school work and a few of the other basic things that go towards career building. If your above average, you'll be able to do more extra-curricular.
I assume that I need to explain the phrase “things that go towards career building”. Not only because it's vague, but because it is key to understanding the trickiness of time management in business school. The thing is that in today's market – and by this I am not referring to the economic state, but to the fact that there is a high supply of MBA students, it is hard to get a job. So starting from day one, the MBA program teaches you skills and coordinates events that go towards finding a job. This might mean having a course in Leadership, teaching us how to present ourselves in social events and where to put our name-tags or holding “corporate briefings” - an event in which a slew of people who work in a certain company come to campus, tell us about the company and then interact with us during a small cocktail party (=”networking event”). At the last we get to use the skills that we developed at all the “Sage Socials” and basically try to make the best impression we can, so that come interview time, we might have some advantage over our peers. I'm going to continue on the last example, because it is the best one, as it is the most intangible.
So... “Corporate briefing”, how much time does it require? The company will talk for 45 minutes, but you really really really don't want to be late, so it's marked on the calendar as 50. After that, there is the social, and that's really your chance to make any sort of impression, so you can't miss it or leave early – so that's another 45 minutes. All done? NO! There were at least 20 people in the briefing, how will anyone remember you over them? You need to find a way to continue the relationship: Write them a thank you note, write an e-mail asking to continue the conversation. (I'm cynical about this now, but it if it's a company you think you want to work in, these things are also important in order to make sure that the company is a good fit for you). So how much time does e-mailing require? More than you would think. The email you send is your digital footprint. You do not want any mistakes in it, so you spent quite a bit of time writing and proofing it. Because my natural tendency is to be more informal than formal (part of the deal of being Israeli), I also have someone else proof my emails. So there go another 45 minutes – and we're up to more than 2 hours allocated to career building. And that's just one company's briefing - there are multiple companies and there are more types of events. And they all have that deceiving quality that, unexplained, they might seem like fun. It's not that they are not fun, it's that their main purpose, and the reason you participate, is not necessarily the fun. I will however make the disclaimer that there are clubs and events that are purely for fun (As this is the USA, these things usually involve beer drinking).
The bottom line is that each student has to decide how much time he or she wants to spend doing each type of thing. Nobody is meant to do everything, but no one will tell you which is more important.

Saturday, August 30, 2008

It's good to invest in Dragons

Hello friends and family! This is Uri writing. Yes, this is not a mistake. I am using a voice recognition software that is called dragon.
It allows me to talk to the computer and the computer is supposed to understand what I'm talking and write it down. So far it's 70% accurate.
It's really fun to use. It gives me a whole new medium to communicate with you, but this way of communicating is new to me so please be patient. This post is not going to be as amusing as my wife posts I don't have the years of experience she has as a cynic and razor-sharp writer.

So what's going on with me? It's hard to tell, I have made good friends here and I like the city, but I still haven't found exactly what I am going to do here, and it's not easy to be in a state of uncertainty. But there are a couple of possibilities:

1) to be a private chef - that means to cook for families and to fill up their refrigerator with food for the whole week. I hope to have between three to five families every week. This idea seems to be the most realistic one, but it needs a lot of work and marketing
2) to be a teacher or substitute teacher. to teach in New York you have to have a diploma from New York State and that could be tricky but I am going to check it out
3) to be a cook in a restaurant, there are plenty of good restaurants in Ithaca area, but I am not sure that I have the experience to start as a cook and I'm not sure I want to start in lower capacity

These are pretty much my options here work-wise. But I have lots of other things to do here, for example I am working with the head of the diversity office on a project that is supposed to expose the student in the business school to other cultures. She offered me this project after she heard of my Masters Degree in conflict resolution and mediation. We had a sit down for two hours. It was really fun, she's a very nice person. It was fun using my intellect and experience and I got some good feedback from her and now where are working on this project together. So you can see I'm trying to keep myself busy.

So how was this post? It was really a good experience for me to write on my own. I am going to give this post to Tamar to check for any big mistakes but it's going to stay pretty much as I wrote it so you can see how the program works.

Hugs and kisses to anyone that I usually give hugs and kisses to and a manly handshake to the rest of you.

I will sign out with my usual (~`face uri

The pressure is on

Some of might read the title of this post and think they will find an entry explaining why I haven't written in more than a week and about how intensive school has been since classes began last Monday.
You would, of course, be mistaken.
I am actually referring to the pressure I am putting on Uri by posting this blog to go ahead and post the next blog himself. Now I explain: We finally bought a desktop, and then finally the university let us have a second IP address so we could connect that computer to the Internet, and then finally installed the voice-to-text software we bought before coming here. (I sort of took the whole point out of the word "finally" there, didn't I?) So, as it turns out, Uri can write in English. There are a little mistakes here and there, but as some of you bother to comment, I make a few mistakes too - don't I?
So just to clarify - Uri is perfectly capable of blogging now, and if he doesn't do it, it's because he doesn't care about any of you readers ;)

I reserve a short comment for myself - we'll go for a subtitle:
You'll understand only when you get here
Today, after a mildly useless strategic leadership course that lasted 4 hours I had a true Ivy league experience. I went to the basement floor of Cornell's undergrad library to see a one of 5 copies of the Gettysburg Address. That's the one that starts with "Four score and seven years ago" and ends with "government by the people, for the people". Then I sat down to write my first marketing case in one of the rooms of the Graduate Library. The Grad Library is in Uris Hall (though we've been calling it Uri's Hall), a building planned by William H Miller. I thought that was a bit more significant, but after writing the name, I googled it and came up with mostly nothing - I'll go back to the library and see what they have there. The point is that it's this beautiful old looking buildings, that includes a clock tower with bells. Did I already mention that they occasionally play concerts on those bells?
I sit in this beautiful room that overlooks the lake, and has so much atmosphere in it makes it seem like time goes by more slowly. This last part is very important because school has been very intensive since classes started last Monday, that is the reason I haven't blogged in more than a week.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Comments for my future doctoral thesis

I'll start with explaining the title - I have no intention of doing a doctorate at this point in my life. However, I can't really turn off my sociologist view of the world. The interactions of my class and the things said in my classroom are enough to be the base of not just one, but several theses. I started writing a document i named "After thoughts", but I thought it would be much more interesting to share those thoughts with you.

I had a class today called "Foundations in Leadership" in which we were presented a story about a guy named Chad. Chad, an office-supplies salesman, was approached by Jerry who said he would buy a large quantity of office supplies if he were given a Rolex watch. The story gets a bit more complex, with Chad's BF, his Banker, his Boss and the Boss' secretary as additional characters. The assignment was to create a hierarchy of the characters, ranking them according to their morality (or lack there of). I, like many of the international students, had Jerry as least moral. Most of the Americans had Chad as least moral.
In this libertarian country, founded by a group of Protestants, it's all about choice and personal responsibility. Chad was the least moral because he made a conscious choice to bribe Jerry.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Ready, Set, Network!

It's a good thing I added that "or tomorrow" at the end of my promise. I actually meant it as a joke, but here we are - and it's tomorrow. So I'll get to the point (because I actually still have school related things to do - more on that later on).
The first week has been very hectic. Some of the sessions we have are about getting to know the resources Cornell offers us. Some are about leadership (next week is going to be all about that). Most of the sessions we've been having are about what career path we want to take after we graduate and how we go about achieving that. Unfortunately the last part is still rather vague and taken out of a coffee table book. Points that are stressed are:
  • Be authentic
  • Know what you want
  • Work hard at making and keeping contacts
  • Remember to write the contacts you meet Thank You notes
  • Make sure the Thank You notes/emails are spelled correctly.
This are all valid, of course - and, good student that I am, I've already written my first Thank You email (I hope I spelled everything correctly) but I sort of want to get the fluffy stuff over with and get to actually learning the skills that will get me the job. So far, all references to that have been in one of two ways: Either by say something like "Fit is really important to recruiters... Obviously having the skills is important to, but you'll all have that...". Or by remarks like "Once the Core (ie the classes that teach core skills) starts, you'll have absolutely no time".
Tiny sidetrack to stress how much they have been saying that second part: On the second or third day, while the MBA students where in a session about Ethics, the school had a session for the spouses to speak with them both about what they will be going through, and what the school offers them. Uri's report was that all they talked about was how busy we (this is "we, the students", not "we, Uri and I") will be and that they should get used to not seeing us much. I think it was on the next day that we got our TV (Sony HD 32 inch that we found on sale). At this point I'll refer back to the beginning, when I said that I still have school relate stuff to do, I doubt that I will have anytime in the near future when I won't have school related stuff to do.
Back to the story - the last type of sessions that were on our schedule we "Networking Socials". What does this mean? It means that there are specific times the school put in our itinerary for the week in which the whole class, 270 people, stand in the school's Atrium with the goal of meeting each other. After a whole week of this I can honestly say that I can not think of a more tiring and useless way of meeting people. It feels a bit like speed dating on crack (not that I've tried either one). [They also told us to manage our online presence, so this I write this whole paragraph rather hesitantly]. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make, is that the first 5 people you approach you can have a nice conversation with, but by the time you get to 6 your capacity to remember everything she/he tells you (and you always talk about the same thing - where they are from, what they did, what they want to do) is starting to dwindle. And since the "Networking Social" is scheduled until 5pm, and you still have an hour to go, you continue to the 7th person, and then 8, 9, 10... Maybe I should be writing "I" and not "you". I'm sure there are some of you out there (Mom, Shai...) that do have the capacity for this type of thing. But I'm pretty sure it's not just me who doesn't. Just so the recruiters that will be reading this in 6 months don't think I have no social skills, I will say that I have met some terrific people. I few of them I've actually met during a"Networking Social", but most of them I met either during or after breakout sessions, where we were in smaller groups and had a recent common experience to talk about. Oh - and it really helped that we didn't have the specific goal of meeting people. I will end this section by saying that the hardest part of networking (again, when it is done for the sake of networking) is ending the conversation. Off the bat, you would think that the hard part is starting the conversation - but it's really not, because everyone has the same goal: to network, so anyone you start talking to will happily talk to you. However ending the conversation is really hard. Once you finish hearing where they are from, what they previously did and what they want to do in the future and tell them the same about you, that should pretty much be it. You are in a room with at least 268 other people all talking at the same time, so the chances of finding a common subject to talk about and going into a more deep conversation in which you'll really get to know the person are pretty slim. Add to that the fact that both of you are looking around at the other 268 people and are thinking "I still have to meet all these people" (The Dean said so). The Save is usually one of you saying "I'm going to get a drink" or "I have to go to the restroom". So - I have to go to the restroom.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

The Moment of Truth

So school Started this week. Officially, it still hasn't. We are in "Orientation". Which basically means we're learning stuff, but not being graded on it.
I actually don't have time to write now. I spent the 30 minutes I had this morning putting up the pic of Uri below, adding the link to Lior's pics and trying to figure out how I transfer the school's public calender in Outlook Exchange to my Private calender in my Outlook Desktop so I could then go ahead and sync that with my Google Calendar.
Don't worry - I wrote all that out just to say that I know it's ridiculous, and a bit of a time waster, but that's modern times for you.
Anyway, I decided to post this anyway as a sort of vow that I will blog today! or tomorrow ;).
I'm off now - "morning session of "Career Self Assessment".

Monday, August 11, 2008

The Wedding

So the weekend is over, we said goodbye to our friends, and now it really begins.
Well, sort of - I'm on a bus on the way to Ithaca while Uri is still in NYC with our friends. Tomorrow they are going to 6 Flags - Great adventure, home of the Kinda Ka. Of all the things I'm missing out on, I think this is the one I'm most jealous of.
This weekend was all about Marc and Wolly's wedding. It was probably the biggest wedding I've been to, not in terms of the amount of people (no one can compete with Israelis there), but it terms of production.
The wedding began on Thursday with the rehearsal dinner that took place in the basement floor of a cool place called The Smith.
The wedding itself was Friday night. We both got dressed up. For Uri this meant wearing a suit for the first time. I think that I can objectively say that the suit suited him well, but I'll add a picture so you can judge for yourselves.

The venue was Tribeca Rooftop and it was amazing. When we got there it was still light out, but as the cocktail hour(s) went on the sun set and all the while we had an awe inspiring view of the Hudson and the Brooklyn skyline. The food was fabulous (and plentiful). Opening cocktail included, a cheese bar (with an amazing aged cheddar), a cold seafood bar, a sushi bar, a martini bar and an alcohol bar. Even the peanuts at the bar were great. Afterward there was a buffet that featured an amazing Chilean Sea-bass (I'm pretty sure it was marinated in milk) and pork-chops (I think) which I didn't try, but I'm told were really good too.
There was a fantastic three tier wedding cake and assorted tarts and truffles for dessert. Marc and Wolly will have to forgive me that I'm not describing every little thing in detail, but if I do this post will never end. If you really want to know, your can check out their blog Gromzilla & I, maybe they will have it there. Add for those of you that want the story in picture's you can check out Lior's Flickr page (besides the batteries in our camera ran out, we were too lazy to bring in to all these events - it didn't really go with the suit).
Anyway, back to the important stuff - the ceremony way beautiful mainly because of the beautiful vows Marc wrote for Wolly and the funny (yet still touching) vows Wolly wrote for Marc. The ceremony was presided by a reform (woman) Rabbi who reminded me of a character in a movie, but I still can't place my finger on exactly who. Her part of the ceremony was a bit strange to me, since she kept going back and forth between speaking in English and blessing/singing in Hebrew. There is a certain sacredness that comes from the fact that to American Jews, Hebrew is the language of the holy texts, and not an everyday language. In Israel we understand every word said by itself. Thus a single word might start a random line of thought or a line can be played with, its meaning changed (like Yehuda Amichai did in El Male Rachamim). Here it was different, Hafrada Bein Kodesh Le'Chol.
Of course there was also speeches, dancing, and the obligatory video montage AND also something called a Mazinka. I would appreciate any information any of you have on this thing. Apparently, the Mazinka in a Jewish-American tradition that celebrates the wedding of the last child. The proud parents (who now don't have to worry about who the kids are going to bring home) sit with floral writhes on their head while their family and friends dance around them. Strange but true.
I will say again that it was THE wedding. I know that Americans have different standard than Israelis, and if we continue to live here, we'll probably be invited to other impressive weddings, but I doubt any will match this one. It's all in the details, and Wolly and Marc (I assume especially Marc) paid a lot of attention to a lot of details - from the "save the date" magnets, to the decor, to the suits they wore, and the outfits they changed into after the ceremony, all the way to the Bagelworks muffins that waited for the guests when we exited the venue.
Oh - and on Saturday there was brunch at a Dim Sum place in Chinatown called Golden Unicorn.
I'm getting tiered of writing, I can only imagine how the two of you who really got all the way here are tiered of reading, so in bullets - things we did in the city, in between the wedding events, while saying goodbye to our friends (mainly food related):
- Friday: Went to Houston's to eat the grilled chicken salad. Uri claims it's worth the $16. I'm not sure I agree, but it is very good. Conclusion: Don't trust Eitan's uncle when he calls something a "diner".
- Saturday: Went jogging in Central Park: I'm really proud of myself, I kept up with Uri and Eitan (who didn't even brake a sweat) as we ran through the park a whole hour.
- Saturday: Went with all the friends (sans grooms) to Hill Country. Cool BBQ place meant for menly-men.

Now, as I said in the beginning, I'm on the bus to Ithaca. It started raining before, but now it stopped. The driver keeps stopping by the side of the road (literally, on the side of the road, not in rest-stops) to go to the toilet. Hopefully I'll be home in an hour.

Friday, August 8, 2008

Ithaca is Gorges!

This will be short:
While I was finalizing the bureaucracies of us buying and registering our 2006 Honda Civic (Whoo-hoo! We got a car!), Uri took our house-guests hiking in the Ithaca area. During their first day, they went kayaking in Cayuga Lake, which gets all the way to the bottom of Ithaca. They didn't take the camera, so I have no pics of that.
On the second day, they did 2 hikes, one a bit north of the city, and one a bit to the south. After they came back, we walked around campus and went up to the 5th floor of Cornell's Art Museum for a scenic view of downtown and the lake.
Uri didn't divulge any information about the hikes, so I have nothing to write, but enjoy the pictures. Everything you see is less than an hour's drive from our house.

Eitan's Happy Meal

The blog hasn't been updated for the last few days because we simply had no time. Our friends from Israel - Yuval, Bella and Eitan came up to visit. They are here (in the USA) for the event of the century - Marc & Wolly's wedding, and while in the area, decided to see where we live.
Since Eitan, like us, loves to cook, Uri guessed that he would love to have the opportunity to go shopping at Wegmans and cook a meal.
It was a bit scary to see Eitan loose at Wegmans. Eyes wide open, his radar immediately found the most expensive items they had on sale, then the finger went out, pointing: "I'll have some of those please".
Anyway, what came out was a fantastic meal, that probably should have been 3 separate meals:
Appetizer:
Seared Fresh Scallops with Fresh Salsa (tomatoes, fresh sweet corn, red onion, cilantro, apricot) in a Baked Corn Tortilla Cone
Main:
Surf & Turf: Lobster and Steak
Sides:
6 Mushrooms, Sauteed
Baked Potato Duet: White & Purple Oven Baked Potatoes
Sauteed Red Swiss Chard
Green Salad: Dandelion Greens (this are terrific, the have a strong, horseradish flavor), Lettuce and Cucumber with a Honey-Mustard Vinaigrette)

No dessert needed!

Enjoy the pics!

Monday, August 4, 2008

Saturday is Sunday in the USA

In between all the shopping, we did other important things like open a bank account and get mobile phones. I mention the two together because they are the begging and (hopefully) the end of a lesson we learned about credit that made us think that maybe the by-line of this blog should have been "The adventures of two Israelis trying to establish credit in the land of plenty". While in the bank, I discussed with the manager getting a credit card. This was after he told us that we would each receive a debit card. Uri, confused, said "If we have the debit card, I don't understand why we need a credit card too".
I replied that we need to start establishing credit. He nodded, but when we were back in the car, he said to me, "I still don't really get it".
From the bank we headed to Verizon, the preferred mobile phone company in the Ithaca area (they have the best reception). After looking around, we wanted to buy numbers and phones. Not as easy as you might think. It turns out that to do that, they run a credit check on you, and if you don't have credit (meaning: you've proved that your an honest person, meaning: that you have money, meaning: that you pay your credit card bills on time) they don't sell you a phone without a very hefty deposit. Seriously? Yes! So... Lesson learned.
Paris Hilton once again popped into my mind - Obviously, Paris does not need to buy using credit. So I wonder - Does she buy things using a credit card instead of a debit card simply to establish credit history? If not, then did she too have to put a deposit down when she got her mobile phone?

And now for something completely different:
To get used to the fact that the week here starts on Monday and ends on Sunday, we had the other MBA Israelis over for Sabbath Tchulent for lunch on Sunday (Uri insists, so I’m adding: Chamin).
It was excellent. US adjustments were made: There was Kogel instead of Kishke, and no Shmaltz was used, but it hit the spot anyway. The day was even a bit gloomy, just to get the atmosphere going. For dessert I made rustic tarts with pastry cream and fresh summer fruit (4 (!) different kinds of berries). Just to make clear - "rustic" because I have no electrical kitchen gear or a rolling pin, so the pastry crust was rather rough looking.
Kogel:
2.5 cups of flour
1 cup oil
1 large onion, sauteed
1 egg
¼ teaspoon mustard powder
Salt and pepper, to taste

Mix all the ingredients together and pot in a cooking bag, place in the stew pot.

It's a food slideshow this time. You can click on the little speech bubble icon to see my comment on each picture.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Canned Cornucopia

So the question still remains: How do you make a house a home?
The answer is: by filling it with stuff.
Yes, yes... you also need to fill it with love, and friendship and good-times, (and the sent of the Tchullent cooking downstairs in the oven isn't bad toward the wanted "homey" affect). All that is true and nice. But you also need stuff.
Stuff that you can call your own, stuff that makes you feel your house is different from the house to your left (or the one on your right), stuff that helps you relax when you come in after a long day. For those of you shaking their heads right now, asking - "Why can't they relax with a good book?" I will answer: (1) a book is also stuff (2) it would be nice to have a shelf to put that book with after your done reading.
After that forward, I will now explain that our first week of Ithaca was mainly spent buying things. Let me tell you - For a small town, this place sure has a lot of malls! There are 2 mall complexes, one on each side of town, each actually consisting of around three separate malls. So as far as everything for the home type stores: there is a K-Mart, a Wal-Mart, a Target, a Sears (though a small one), Lowe's, Home Depot. For supermarkets: a Wegmans (I hyper-linked that one because it's the nicest, with huge fresh meat and seafood counters, lots of local fruits and veggies and fresh bagels made around the clock), 2 Tops and a P&C. In the supermarket department there's also something called Aldie. We went there after being tipped off that it's the cheapest supermarket. We went in expecting a warehouse, and accordingly, warehouse prices. Instead it turned out to be a rather small supermarket with imitation everything. You know the type: That everything is generic, but made to be reminiscent of the real thing. So "I can't believe it's not butter" will still be yellow, but will be called: Butter-flavored vegetable spread that is reminiscent of butter". And some things might have named similar to the original, like "Hola" a red bottle labeled "Carmel flavored fizzy soft drink". Anyway that place was really depressing and Uri and I decided that without the need to feed 5 children, the price difference did not justify the depressing atmosphere there.
Wow look at that - I wrote all this, and still have not gotten to what I initially wanted to say... can you handle more? If you can - read on, if you need a break:



Anyway, we spent the first 3 days just going between stores buying thing. From essentials like toilet paper, to must haves like lamps for the living room (I already mentioned it's low and dark - right?) to personal touches like shelves for the kitchen with baskets for the potato and onions. I have to tell you that I have a new respect for Paris Hilton. It is not easy to do so much shopping. After about three hours, your eyes start to water from the neon lights, your head start to sway a little, and your most intelligent thoughts are (read in cookie-monster voice): "Oh! Look at all the pretty colors" and "Ah! This pillow so soft and nice".
One of the most amazing things about shopping in the United States concerns grocery shopping. I can not begin to describe the extent of which everything is pre-packaged. The supermarkets are just rows and rows of cans and jars and finding basic items (ie dried beans, tomato paste without flavorings) is really hard. This of course, versus the Israeli supermarkets where there is a "canned goods" section. Also, walking around the supermarket, we keep saying to yourselves "What will they think of next?" (Or, when in a more cynical mood, "How lazy can these people be?"). They have taken the "take the same thing, make a tiny change, and sell it as something new" concept to an unbelievable level. For example: Garbage bags: at first it was just a bag, then there was the whole string thing, now there is also bags the have flaps, so tying the bag will be easier. Or, a special plastic cooking bag (very different from a regular cooking bag, because it has a different name) that one puts inside the slow cooker before using it so as to avoid the need to clean the slow cooker after using it. Amazing.
Friday, we decided not to go shopping at all. Saturday we tried to have an alternative shopping experience. We started the day by driving north to Trumansburg to check out a garage sale. I will quote Uri who defined it as: "People trying to sell junk they bought at other people's garage sale and then found out they have no-where to put it". We were younger by at least 40 years from anyone else we saw. These included two gentlemen that had an oxygen device hooked to their belt. This experience made it clear that in this post-Craig's List era, garage sales are really for those who don't know that the Internet is on computers now. From there we headed to the Ithaca Farmer's Market which was a bit disappointing on the practical side. I don't know why we expected it to be cheaper than buying at the supermarket. But I'll cut the story short by simply saying that it wasn't. Around a third of the stands sell prepared food, which makes the market a nice place to get lunch (though, again, not a cheap lunch), but since we did need to by fruits and veggies, we headed afterward to Wegmans to do our shopping.
To end on a high note: On the way from the garage sale to the market, Uri spotted a guy BBQ grilling in a parking lot. The size of his grill, the amount of chicken he had inside and the fact that he was almost alone were signs that this was not a family-weekend BBQ. We pulled into the parking lot, and it turns out that this guy, for a couple of years now, has been selling BBQ ribs and "Cornell Chickens" every weekend. We bought a chicken, which Uri had for dinner - Delicious! The guy said that the NY Times just interviewed him, and that he will be featured sometime soon, so when that comes around, I'll send the link.

Thursday, July 31, 2008

What makes a house a home?

Well here it is - the much anticipated post on our new house.
We live in one of two on-campus housing communities, called Hasbrouck Apartments. I'm not 100% sure, how you pronounce it, but thus far I've been saying Hass-brook, and no one has corrected me, so let's just stay with that.
The housing community consists of around 40 townhouses (or as they are called in Hebrew - "train houses"), set up in a semi-circle. There are cement paths leading from the road to each of the individual houses, and grass all around. Right now there are a lot of little plastic cart toys all around, I guess once the school year starts, and people will come back from vacation there will be a lot of kids playing around. Just above the complex, there is a golf course, and since we're at the edge of the complex, we can actually see it from our living room window. Since Ithaca is in the middle of no-where, and we're at the edge of Ithaca, the "life in the country factor" is very strong. When night time comes, you can see all the stars in the sky. During the day, there are wild animals of all kinds. Needless to say, there are squirrels and raccoons, but also deer and bunny-rabbits. Two days ago Uri when on his first jog almost stepped on a bunny and also saw a beaver.
The house itself in nice. It will take some work to make it a home. I think our apartment in Tel-Aviv was just so nice, it's hard to compete. The main difference is that while there are ceilings were relatively high, here they are relatively low. If you compare the two, and figure in Uri's size, it makes this apartment seem kind of small. The top of Uri's head is about 10 cm from the ceiling.
Slowly but surely, it will come around. I started with the bathroom, since from all the rooms, it got me down the most. My bourgeois-self kicked in and gave the solution: Nothing can't be fixed with a little bit of money. I bought a match set of towels, bath rug and shower curtain with the thought that if I put beautiful thing in there, it will take my eyes off of the things I hate. Guess what? It worked!
There is of course the kitchen. This was mainly taken care of by Uri's lucky find on Craig's List. We bought almost everything anyone could need in a kitchen Yesterday we already cooked ourselves dinner, and I even made a sort of cake. I had no recipe, but all I wanted to do was make some sort of cake-like dough and stick lots of fresh blueberries in it. The oven is a little strange. It's gas. We'll have to see how that works.

That's all for now. Next time: We're shopping 'till we're dropping!

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

I just flew in to Ithaca - and, boy are, my arms tired!

Highlights of our flight:
  • 747-400 filled with 2 groups of teenagers: one group American, on the way back from summer camp in Israel, the second Israeli, on the way to the US for summer camp
  • Bad weather in NY caused a backup of landings at JFK. 41 planes waiting in the air.
  • Ours didn't have enough fuel to wait that long in the air, so we flew to Hartford CT, to re-fuel at Bradley Airport.
    Notice: the word International is not in the airports name. ie - we were not allowed to get off the plane.
  • It started to rain in Hartford. Apparently, you don't fuel airplanes during lightning storms. We waited for the storm to pass.
  • Remember those kids? Instead of dimming the lights (Israel time was around 2300), the crew decided to give them fruit juice.
  • We made it out of the terminal at JFK at around 8 pm local time, and headed for the car rental agency, only to discover a line about 10 people long. We got the car just before 11 pm.
We started driving, Ithaca bound. We new we had no intentions to make it all the way, but at least get started, and find a motel on the way. A bit before the Poconos we felt like there was no more driving in us. We headed into a town, and there it was: a "Whole Foods" parking lot just before us, and the motel nowhere in sight. Can you guess what we did?

Yes - we slept in the car.

It really wasn't that bad. I mean, because of the problems at Budget, they gave us an SUV, so there was plenty of room. And we had pillows and a blanket that Uri carried on board from home (in a vacuum sealed bag, the sized reduced by like 50%, very cool).
The sun woke us up at 5:30 am. Or, more precisely, it woke Tamar up at 4:00 am, and she managed to go back to sleep, but my the time 5:00 rolled around, there was no more of that. She started to move the car in the lot, to see when the supermarket opens, Uri woke up and we hit the road.

We ate breakfast at a cute diner, got our first taste of the US when, together, we couldn't finish one order of pancakes, and continued. We made it into Ithaca at around 10 am.
More about that next time.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Starting our blog

Moving to a different country and all, we decided to enter the blogasphere to facilitate making the world a little smaller, thus bridging the span of the Atlantic Ocean just a bit.

The first order of the day was finding a name for the blog. Among the finalists were:
  • As American as apple pie
  • The j-files (a reference to our j visa status, not to our religion)
and:
  • The Princess Diaries
However, once the current name came up, there was really no more arguing. For those of you not following stupid movies coming out of Hollywood these days, it's a reference to Adam Sandler's new movie "You Don't Mess with the Zohan". It was, of course, Uri's idea. Tamar sited all the reasons it might bot be a good idea, but - again - there was no arguing. Hopefully when the time comes to name our kids, Uri will be less enthusiastic choosing such silly names.

As we said, this is where you'll be able to read all about what's up with us.
Without committing to anything, we hope we'll be able to tell you all about:
  • food we're cooking
  • resaurants we eat in
  • TV we watch
  • games we play
  • places we visit
  • people we meet
  • the exotic nature of the North American culture