Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Notes for My Doctoral Thesis 3 and other stuff

The past week (and weekend) have been somewhat interesting, though nothing out of the ordinary happened. True, it was my first week on the job – but with a very slow start, it wasn’t very exciting. I had some enthusiasm at having my very first cubical, mainly motivated by imagining myself as a character in Dilbert. Yes - I am a corporate slave. As a further sign of my enslavement, I actually went to work in heels 4 out of 5 days. The latter part wasn’t that bad actually… well, most of the time I sit in my cube anyway (then I take the shoes off – it’s my little mutiny).
A highlight for the past week is another insight I had into American culture. I realized that Americans are socialized to always notice the people around them. More specifically, to notice the physical presence of others. This is why they keep going around saying “sorry” all the time, because they are always aware that they are intruding another person’s physical space. To elaborate on this point for those who have not spent more than a week here - they say "I'm sorry" and "Excuse me" ALL the time. Just as an example - today at the office, I was entering a large space through a corridor, and as I was coming in, another woman was making the corner to come out. We ended up passing each other with roughly 10 cm between us, and she said "Excuse me", to which I immediately responded "I'm sorry", and actually thought to myself "What exactly am I excusing you for?!?" Anyway back to the point, what happens is that a lot of things here have the underlying assumption that you will notice the other people around you – like a line starting really far away from the counter, or the (in)famous 4-way stop. Please note that noticing physical presence doesn’t translate into cultural sensitivity – they don’t notice if they are being loud and obnoxious – as long as it’s done at a safe distance, it’s fine.
On a different subject, I also will make a small comment to the fact that about 3/4 of the way from Ithaca to Boston on Sunday night, I the thought ran through my mind that in a couple of weeks 6.5 hours won't seem that bad to me, and I'll likely be able to make it without stopping along the way. As I drove the country roads, and the highways that run through the countryside, I thought several time about the fact that there are a lot songs that make more sense in this context of endless highway and endless plains (or mountains, or whatever), like classic "road songs" - about driving and the like, that just feel more right when you are driving on and on and on.
Oh – and one last, more informative thing: I’m going to be spending the entire 10 weeks (minus a few weekends) at the B&B. After spending one day driving to Boston to look at apartments, and the second driving to Providence to look at apartments, I came to the conclusion that it would be a colossal waste of time to spend 2 hours each day in the car rather than doing something (anything) more fun and/or productive. Considering the apartments I saw in the area, and the fact that I knew I would not want to stay the weekend in them (i.e. considering how much it would cost to go somewhere else in the weekend), it just made sense staying at the B&B.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

First day in a cubical

Yes! I have my own cubical... my very first one.  Let us toast to this, and to further cubicles to come!
I'll be short, since I don't have that much time (that is why I technically missed a day).  The first day was nice.  My boss seems very nice.  He was really friendly, though he did leave me to fend for myself for lunch.  I was very proud of myself when I actually did approach someone in the cafeteria and asked to sit with them at the table.  He (my boss) has been working at Ocean Spray for 36 years!  
Anyway, the day started off with a short orientation, then I sat with my boss and we, in a very general manner, went over what I'll be doing, during which he gave me a big stack of papers that I have to get acquainted with.   Then I had lunch and started reading all the papers.  This morning we are supposed to talk about more specific things that I'll be going (my goals and objectives). 
Another tid-bit is that for some reason my name in the Outlook system there is Tamir.  I sent out a request to change it, but meanwhile one of the assistants has started booking meeting for me with people, and keeps calling me Tamir in the email she sends out.  I wrote her a not on it, but I guess she's just cutting and pasting the original mistake.
Meanwhile Uri drove around the area and posted "room wanted" flyers in 3 local synagogues.  It's an idea the innkeeper at the B&B we're staying in had.  Didn't seem like a bad one.
After work, Uri came to pick me up and we drove to Boston to look for a place for me to live.  We found one thing that looks reasonable, though it isn't really ideal - it's a bit more than I wanted to pay, and I'm still not completely convinced that I want to make the trip everyday.
Other the house hunting we ate at a really nice (and cheap!) Japanese restaurant that mainly serves noodles. and then I drove back down here, missing the exit I needed and taking us (in the dark) through some of the towns in the area instead of on the Highway.
What a day!

Yours,
Tamir

PS - wrote this directly in blogger, so forgive any spelling mistakes that it didn't catch.



Sunday, May 17, 2009

Finally… she blogs!

Yes, it’s been a long time, no, I don’t have an excuse.  I started writing something at least two times, and was then distracted by something and then was too tired.  I really do promise that I’ll try to get back to the writing everyday thing.  Otherwise the little mundane things are missed, and I like writing about the mundane.  
So, start with a clean slate, I’ll have this post be a little longer and include everything that’s happened recently either before or after the last post and that 
I didn’t get around to writing about yet.
First to pop in my mind is a cool local event called the “Friends of the Library” booksale.  It’s a really cool bi-annual event in which everyone can by books from a local organization that throughout the year local organizations (including Cornell) and individuals donate books to.  When they open up for sale, there are over 250,000 books.  The way it works is that 2 times a week they open for 3 weekends, and from week to week books cost less and less.  We went on the first week, when books were still “expensive” at $1.5 to $4.5.  Initially we went “just to see”, and we had to stand in line 20 minutes to get in, needless to say, we did not walk out empty handed – we bought 15 books (for a total of just over $60).
Another big thing is that Uri got a teaching job with the conservative synagogue downtown. Starting September, he’ll be teaching history to the 6th and 7th graders twice a week.  It has t’s pro and cons – the big pro is that Uri gets to teach, as in – to do something that is actually relevant to what he wants to do with the rest of his life (when he grows up :)), the bummer is that it’s younger kids then is ideal, and that it’s on Sundays and also the (almost no) money he’ll be making.  But I (and he) think that he’ll have fun and that it will be interesting. In the meantime he got a set of books that he needs to study so he can teach the kids what they are supposed to learn.  I thought it was kind of amusing, and the first question that popped to my mind was what will the Rabbi say if Uri teaches something that is not in the narrative the books are written by.  It’s kind’ a like the Zionist version of creationism vs. evolution I guess.
The next huge thing is that I finished my first year of the MBA program
! It ended quite strangely actually – I had the presentation for my Brand Immersion Project, which I worked on (with my team) the entire semester, working for one of the larger CPG companies.  I think the results we got were decent enough but it wasn’t a woohoo moment since the presentation itself was one of the worst presentations I had ever given.  I don’t know what happened to me, and I won’t waste time or space going in to it, but it did put  a bit of a slump to the whole “finishing the year” thing.  One the flip side, the presentation for my BRI project with the Italian restaurant went quite well.  Also -  I got my first A in one of the core course (not an A-, an actual A) and I got asked to TA the core marketing course next year  - so good for me (lol).
To celebrate finishing the year, and having 3 days without much to do I baked like a mad-woman (I do need to admit that I did have stuff to do, but I just let then go, as I was in dire need of having a few days with nothing to do).  I can say without a doubt now
 that Dorie Greenspan is my new baking goddess.  I really recommend everyone buy “Baking: From my home to yours”.  Here is what I made from it: Chocolate Chunkers (adding cranberries on top of the raisins), Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chips (substituting the oatmeal with rolled rye flakes and rolled wheat berry flakes and substituting raisins for most of the chocolate chips), Coffee-Cheesecake Brownie and the Ricotta and Polenta Cake (using yogurt instead of half the ricotta and pears tossed in thyme and rosemary instead of the figs). 
I love that book.  And I love baking! I missed it so much, it was really fun.  I decided I really will try to bake one thing once a week next year.  Try is the operative word here.  Remember, I also said a while back that I’ll try to blog everyday and that I’ll try to go to the gym more often.
Last but not least – I’m staring my internship tomorrow.  How nerve-wrecking for me!  So yesterday (Saturday) Uri and I left Ithaca… oh I suddenly remembered one more thing that happened, before I get to the internship thing: Uri rented out a plot of land near our house ($12 for the year) and planted peppers, tomatoes and basil! He turned the land on Friday, bruising his hands in the process, and then planted everything on Saturday before we left.  It’s co-owned by him and our friend Dafna who planted everything with him. 
So back to internship - We drove to Boston (a 6 hour drive) stopping at an outlet on the way to get me some business casual clothes to have for work.  We got to the city at 10:30 pm and went to dinner with Ya’ar and Shimrit who also served as our very gracious hosts. Today in the afternoon we drove down to cranberry land, where Ocean Spray is putting me up in a really cute B&B until I find a more permanent place to live for the summer.
  Tomorrow I’ll head off to work, and Uri is tasked with trying to find me a place to live.  I’ll (try) t
o write again tomorrow to tell you how everything went.

Monday, May 11, 2009

The continuing adventures of Hummus-Man

So it took me more than a couple of days to write again… so what? You can blame Uri – because he should have written about the catering event, or at least told me what to write.  As it was, he didn’t say that much about it.  It was an event at the conservative synagogue downtown, there were 100 attendees and Uri, basically, opened a Hummus restaurant (Hummusiya) for them.  He made falafel, hum
mus, tahinni, vegetable salad, cabbage salad (two kinds/ two colors) and taboule. I’m probably forgetting something – but you get the gist.  Can you imagine the amount of food he made? Just making the list was crazy – 20 cucumbers (!) and it was those huge mega-cucumbers they have here in the US, 30 tomatoes, 10 heads of cabbage.  Uri said that there was just the right amount of food – some things got completely finished, and in some there was some left – which, in Uri’s words, is what you want in a catering event since otherwise people feel like you ran out of something or that there wasn’t enough.  I can see a certain bunch of you nodding your heads right now, but it is true.  My bosses at Iceberg always said that too, that in food service it’s important that people always feel like there is abundance.  Everyone thought it was a very successful event, or so the Rabbi told Uri.  But he did work very, very hard. He spent at least 10 hours on his feet, and when he came back ho
me I was here with my teammates working on the Brand Immersion project (meaning he couldn’t really relax and veg out on the couch).  Anyway, to end this story – he ended up going to bed at 10:30 which is odd enough for Uri, but even more bizarre when you consider that with all the work I had to do for the project I went to bed at 1:00 am.
Jump ahead about a week, (skipping over some stuff that I’ll try to get to tomorrow, but writing about something that just happened) yesterday we had a BBQ here with our Israeli friends.  Most of the people where neighbors that live here in Hasbrouck, there was our friend Dafna and the B-school Israelis.  It was lots of fun, Uri bought a grill and we made some things (I, having time, made desserts) and people brought stuff.  It was actually quite a windy day, so everybody sat inside which made it very cozy (lucky thing we have the new couch).  I had two afterthought to the whole thing – one was that I remembered the awesome grill that we left back home.  I wonder how it’s doing, and whether it’s bringing joy and happiness to the person who is taking care of it.  The other was that it’s quite sad that 5 of these people won’t be here next year.  Just when we’re starting to know each other, and really establish a stronger relationship, it’s stopping.  Hopefully new people will come, and we’ll be quicker “make contact”, but still…

Friday, May 1, 2009

On a role - Spring on the Slope

Continuing catching up on things that happened during the 2 weeks I didn’t blog – It’s Spring!
I don’t things I have words to describe what happened here about a week and a half ago – one day, literally in one day everything started blooming.  The two trees r
ight in front of our door where suddenly full of green buds.  Now those buds are white flowers… well – look bellow:


On other news, today was Slope Day.  I don’t want to go too much into this, you can just click the link.  However, I would like to use this opportunity to bring up something that has been a mystery to me (us) for quite some time.  I just don’t get this thing with American drinking for the sake of getting drunk.  Uri keeps saying that it’s because the legal drinking age is so old, but still… in my mind that’s a lame excuse.