The Rationalist Manifesto

I’m not even within a week’s radius of landing in Israel and already I’m pissed at Israelis again.

Why? Because while sitting at the airport waiting for my flight I hear that every time they page for late passengers there are always Israeli names included, always. Do you realize how small the percentage of passengers are Israeli? Yet they are the star of the show when it comes to rampant disregard to anyone aside of themselves.

Passengers Vardi, Shavit, Egoz, Ronen and co., please get your lazy asses out of the duty free store and onto the bloody plane on time!

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Sitting here in Sydney’s airport, waiting for my flight to board in about an hour and a half.  These days with Gabe were great, and I should definitely arrange to visit more.

Bangkok, here I come!

To be continued…

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Just came back from a lovely night with Meg and Gabe, which started with an amazing meal at a restaurant called the Red Lantern and ended with me tying a game at the PokerDome, winning $85 having re-built my stack from 125 in chips to most of the chips on the table.

Truth be told I’ve had an amazing run of luck, but it was enjoyable. I was chip leader but agreed to split the total prize with the other person left on the table as it was getting late and I just wanted the game to end.

The funniest part is that with 125 chips when the blinds were at 600/300 I was ready to call it quits, but got convinced to stay by Gabe and two others which later in the game I took out (Gabe was out at that point). As Gabe said to me- as long as you’ve got a chip and a chair… :-)

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Melbourne is a beautiful city, well laid out and relaxed.

To me, Sydney was much like Los Angeles — seedy and unkempt, with some exceptions such as the Circular Quay, The Rocks area, Annandale, Sydney University and King St. in Newtown. One could enjoy touring the urban decay, but I would not like to live in it. Much in the same way as I can enjoy Bangkok as a tourist but would never consider living there.

Melbourne on the other hand reminds me of Chicago in its architecture but San Francisco’s downtown in its feeling. Even the less appealing suburbs such as North Fitzroy are nicer than your average suburb of Sydney. There’s room on the sidewalk to enjoy the city while walking, not just walk from origin to destination as in Sydney. People here are less about ‘getting there’ and more about enjoying the journey. There are trees everywhere and the air is clearer and less polluted. Less cars on the city roads and almost no busses as the trams serve the same function without the noxious exhaust.

My kind of city.

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We’ve been in Melbourne for three days now and managed to have both good times and bad in this short period of time. Overall the outlook is very positive and we’re finding that we like Melbourne a lot. George and Bella are very accomodating and we appreciate they hospitality very much.Assorted photo updates for you… The first two are especially for Aya:

- Omo Sensitive Laundry Detergent - for real…

- Coffico coffeeshop in Melbourne (alley near 440 Collins St)

- This is ‘Cyrus Fine Foods”, they are located in a prestigious Sydney city area. Their foods are so fine that they have this in their window display:
- Definitely what every fine chef needs in his pantry!

In other news:

- Tal and the belly in front of Sydney University (this is from our first week in Sydney)

- The view from Circular Quay station on my way to work in Sydney

- Me on the way to work

- Damien at Newtown train station

- Weird tree in Church St, Newtown

- Sauron’s helmet is located in a Sydney shop

- Avalon is the name of the Melbourne area airport we landed at.

- First photo in Melbourne

- The Jewish Section of Safeway in St Kilda, VIC

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Due to my work we have to postpone our Melbourne move by a week. So we’re in Sydney for another week ;-o

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Two more nights in Sydney…

Can not wait to get out of here. Melbourne awaits!

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Well, everyone has them. I can get that, it’s a good product, I had one myself.

But here — they are a status symbol, not just a good MP3 player.
I finally got it when I saw a guy, he had an iPod but he didn’t have the trademark white earphones, so he was walking around with the iPod in his hand, so people will see that it is an iPod. You could see it in the way he held it, awkward position but the iPod was very visible.

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This is a late update, but the events themselves kept us on our toes, so here goes:

Shelly and I had a frightful night between Monday and Tuesday as we had to take Shelly to the ER and spend the night at the ward for fear that we’re going to lose our baby. To our relief and gratitude the ultrasound examination in the morning revealed that all is OK and the doctor gave Sumsum and Shelly clean bills of health.

I’m glad to report we were both very brave and handled ourselves with stature even while facing the worst of prospects!

In other news — It seems that the University of Melbourne received AVMA accreditation, which removes a very large hurdle from the possibility of us moving to Melbourne, as it is by all accounts the better place to live. We are seriously considering it with a strong inclination to go there, Sydney is a bit too much of Tel Aviv to Melbourne’s Jerusalem.

The down side is that there’s a very nice company here in Manly which I was hoping to join if the situation allowed.

I’ll keep you in suspense for now… More updates to come.

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I wanted to wish you all a happy new year, may it hold happy days for you.

Gabe, Meg, Damien, Shelly, yours truly and one million other spectators went to see the fireworks erupting above the Sydney Harbor Bridge to celebrate the transition into 2007.

It was very crowded, but not unpleasant, as people were mostly polite and friendly and in a cheerful mood. Aside from the occasional bump and slip there was no harm from the crowding, while in Israel I am sure that such crowding would have resulted in injuries if not deaths.

To all those who welcomed the new year by boozing — merry hangover!

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