Friday, December 30, 2011, 17:03 - General
As I said, I'm reactivating this to keep a travel diary for the tour.Yesterday I went to Brooklyn to get the van's oil changed. They told me it'd take an hour so I walked around Bedford, then hung out at Oslo for like 2 hours reading. I then wandered some more in the coldest day of the year so far until finally, after 4 hours, it was ready. I went and filled up the gas tank and parked it in McCarren Park. Should be ready to go for our first stop on Wednesday: Boston.
In case you don't know, our itinerary is:
1/4 Boston
1/5 Pittsburgh
1/6 Chicago
1/7 Minneapolis
1/9 Grand Rapids
1/10 Lansing
1/11 Cleveland
1/12 Columbus
1/13 Milwaukee
1/14 Madison
1/16 Asheville?
1/17 Wilmington, NC
1/18 Richmond
1/19 DC
1/20 Baltimore
1/21 Philadelphia
I'm pretty excited.
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( 2.6 / 14 )Tuesday, June 1, 2010, 04:40 - General
We bought our flights - one-way tickets on Royal Jordanian Airlines through Amman (with a direct flight from there to JFK which is way nicer that splitting it in the middle in Europe). We'll be back on July 30, with our sublet not starting until July 31, so we have to figure something out for a night.[ 1 comment ] ( 22 views ) | permalink |
( 2.9 / 778 )Friday, May 28, 2010, 10:33 - General
I've been in Israel now for 11 days, and I'm back used to the Israeli groove. Galia and I woke up late (as is the case for us - I think we've gotten up before 11 only once since getting back to Israel), on Monday the 17th, unpacked and cleaned, and that evening we went to Ramat HaSharon to have dinner at her parents' and see her family. They were of course very happy to see her. That night Tal, Orit, and Ranan came over and we all hung on the balcony until quite late.The next morning was the anniversary wake (yahrtzeit, nahala) for Shlomit's father, who passed away 2 years ago. We went to the cemetery for a ceremony involving a rabbi saying some stuff and then various people reading things, and then we all reconvened at Shlomit's apartment where people mingled. Galia and I later had a discussion on this practice, as it seems to us that the most likely result of it (reliving the death every year in a big production) is that people would have a harder time getting over deaths as opposed to having it be easier for them. In any case, I saw a bunch of people through that for the first time in a while including Shlomit herself. I also lost my shoes, as I took them off by the door and apparently this wasn't appreciated as her mom hid them in the shower.
That evening we went to Galia's aunt and uncle's for Shavuot dinner. Her uncle was diagnosed with leukemia in December and that night was the first time he was allowed out of isolation after his radiation, chemo, and marrow transplant. He's doing quite well considering, and he looked great. I think that night we stayed in cuz we were tired. The next day we did go out, with Tal, Ranan, and Orit to the Prozdor, a hipster bar to which I'd been before.
That Friday I went to "brunch" at a cafe quite near where we live with Shlomit, Morann, Idit, Assaf, Ravit, etc. It was pretty cool and long and relaxed. I guess Idit is going to move to Tel Aviv for the next year at least and try to get a job. Galia went to meet Tal, Ranan, and Orit at some Greek bar/restaurant on the sea in Jaffa I think instead. That evening we went to a modern dance performance at Suzanne Dellal by the group Vertigo which was quite cool, afterward popping into this club Milk that Orit and Ranan wanted to take us to but we vetoed that one and headed home.
The weekend is a bit hazy for me. At some point we went to the Silon with Shlomit, Nir, and Assaf (I think it was on Monday). Shlomit left first, then Nir, and the remaining three of us got a few free shots from Uri, one of the owners who's a friend of Nir's and Galia's. We've also watched Delicatessen and two Bunuels (which were fun to watch for French purposes now as well as being good movies) in the last while, as well as Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (the book was amazing, the movie only good). We also went to Ramat HaSharon on Monday I think to have lunch and see Ronia. Last night, Thursday, we went to see this modern dance performance by this famous group Bat Sheva called Mamootot. The performance piece is a few years old, but they're performing it again now with new dancers. We went with Galia's mom. There was a part in the middle where one of the male dancers got naked and danced around which was thankfully not too awkward for us. The piece in general was also quite cool, with tasteful challenge to the audience's sense of space. Galia's into dance, and she studies ballet in the evenings, and so she's been taking me to some performances and I have to say it's pretty cool. After the show we walked over to the Armadillo and had some great conversation about determination and Sex and the City among other topics.
I've been filling my days with research (been working quite a bit), studying Hebrew (doing a chapter every day in my book), playing guitar (writing a new song), and translating Galia's grandfather's book about his Holocaust experience into English (with Galia doing most of the work, me just polishing the language). Life is good. I'm getting pretty excited about the weddings and all the visitors, especially my parents. They're going to love Israel and Jordan.
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( 2.9 / 27 )Friday, May 28, 2010, 08:20 - General
I just arrived in Tel Aviv for the summer. Galia and I will be here until something like July 31 (we haven't yet bought our return tickets), at which point we'll move into a sublet we rented in Greenpoint for 10 days. We're going to use that as a staging area to look for a more permanent place, which we really hope to find during that time but it'll be tight. Looking for apartments in New York is never fun, but at least the market has gotten way better for renters since I last moved. We're hoping to get a 1 bedroom somewhere in Williamsburg or southwest Greenpoint so that I'll be close to Lewis and the music space, and we can still walk to the Bedford L. After that, we'll fly to Minnesota to get married and then come back to New York with whatever international guests want to make it to hang there. We're planning on renting a short-term apartment at Hotel Toshi, this sort of infamous hipster party rental agency that has apartments in Williamsburg. Then it's off to Hawaii for the honeymoon, LA for Neal's wedding, and back to New York to get back to work.About a month ago Galia and I went to Minnesota for a week. The main impetus of the trip was to get oral surgery to insert the screws for my future implants into my jaw in the places where the teeth flanking my front top teeth should have been. They changed the date of the surgery on me after I'd already bought Galia's and my plane tickets to the day before we were to fly back, and I was a little worried that the air pressure would be painful. In the end though, the surgery went as well as it possibly could have and I felt hardly any pain at all. The rest of the trip was cool too. We went up to visit Andy and met his girlfriend which was nice, went bowling with Chelsey in Pine Island, cruised Broadway (which apparently isn't really done anymore), etc.
During our last weeks in New York we had a lot of stuff to take care of. I was working up to a paper publication deadline at this workshop HLPP collocated with ICFP. I also had to set up my computers, pack all my stuff and move it into the music space loft, find the sublet, change the bills to be in the other roommates' names, etc. Can ended up finding romance by way of one of the two Turkish girls he had visit from Montreal, and he's now up there visiting her. Sal, Arthur, and I finished recording a 5 song (though surely more than that many tracks) LP. Well, other than the bass parts and the mixdown anyway. I'm pretty excited about it. I think I already wrote that there are 2 tracks up on our myspace, but here's the link again: myspace.com/zvoovband.
On the 11th we were to fly to Amsterdam for 4.5 days en route to Israel. For some reason getting to JFK took longer than it usually does for me on public transportation, and we arrived at the terminal around an hour before the plane was to depart. It turns out that the hard deadline of checking in an hour before the flight is really hard, and in the frenzy of being there so late I foolishly followed the directions to head over to the self-check-in kiosks even though I (incorrectly, it turns out after all) was under the impression that Galia's passport isn't machine-readable. After finding that we couldn't check in at the machines, I frantically explained to a woman that we needed to check in immediately, and she twice told us to get into this other line. After 20 minutes there, we asked the first woman who'd told us to get into the kiosk line what to do and when it came out that our flight was leaving in less than an hour she told us we were screwed. We then had to argue for a long time in order to get a free re-booking onto an indirect flight through Detroit for the next day - we spent in total something like a useless 3 hours at the airport. The Delta terminal at JFK is really insane - it's insanely small and understaffed and chaotic. Be warned. On top of all this, we were too tired to lug the 3 suitcases and guitar and backpacks back on the subway and paid for a cab to Lewis's since Can and Arthur weren't home and I no longer had a key to my apartment.
We got to Lewis's, then went out to eat with Brandy and him, played shuffleboard at Diamond, and then played Puerto Rico (about which Galia wasn't too happy I think) there til something like 1. Luckily, Arthur hadn't moved into my room yet, and so I put the mattress back down on the bed and we had somewhere to sleep. In the morning we had brunch at Lodge and then went over to Lewis's to grab our stuff and caught a cab back to JFK. The cabbie happened to be amazing - this old guy who grew up in Queens and was a nonstop talker and full of great stories. This time we showed up well in advance of the flight and had no problem getting checked in, but the incoming flight for our plane was delayed and so we were slated to miss our flight to Amsterdam and had to again be rebooked, but luckily there was a later flight that day out of Detroit to Amsterdam. The flight to Detroit was so delayed that we hardly had time to buy some food in the Detroit airport, which was much nicer than JFK and even had an indoor train on stilts shuttling people between terminals, before we had to board for Amsterdam.
I slept most of the way, but I still wish Europe was a little farther away as I can never get a whole night's rest on these 6-8 hour flights. We found that one of my two suitcases hadn't made it through the trip and so put in a request for it at the KLM counter, then took the train to the city and then the tram from central station with one fewer bag to carry. It was dark and gloomy and chilly and dirty as hell (the garbage workers had been on strike for over a week), but we both were excited to be there. The apartment is a two-bedroom palace with a nice big kitchen, dining room, living room, and balcony into a rear courtyard and I love being there. We both agree that it's the quintessence of relaxing. That first day we hung out a bit, went grocery shopping, and then took a nap before going out to meet Mila, Judith, and Otto at La Belgique. We luckily got a table (almost never happens), and all squeezed in there. It was really nice to see them all, and Otto aka Lucky Fonz III got the bartender to play both sides of his new single, one of which is the song translated from Dutch into Afrikaans. Somehow none of them had ever been there before.
The next day we woke up really late - around two - so there wasn't much time before the evening. I did some writing for a paper that Alex and I wanted to submit to this workshop called High-Level Parallel Programming co-located with ICFP, while Galia went out into the city to get us provisions. We then had a very nice interesting night staying in the apartment together, and again didn't go to bed until something like 5 at least.
The next day we got up a bit late, and I stayed in while Galia went to the grocery store for some provisions. I then cooked up a lentil soup and Galia made pasta and we had Mila and her American boyfriend over for dinner. They stayed for a few hours chatting, and then the three of them went out to some party while I stayed in and wrote for the HLPP paper. Galia was only gone for a couple hours, so we went to bed before 2 I think.
On Sunday, I set my alarm and got out of bed around 8:30 and then started writing feverishly. It was somewhat hectic, as we had to pack and clean the apartment, and Alison and her Dutch boyfriend Michelle came over to make the hang for a while. Galia and I had a bit of a tense moment over whether the Dutch version of AAA was going to come in time to jumpstart her parents' car before we had to make it to the airport. In the end it did come, and I got a fair amount of writing done, and Alison and Michelle even drove us to the airport (so nice). We had yet another scare with our flight because apparently when we'd been rebooked through Detroit they'd given us a paper ticket and not told us, so when we went to check in they couldn't issue us a ticket. We waited in like for half an hour, were told to go to another line, waited another half an hour, and barely made it on when this guy typed like a madman to get us another paper ticket. Luckily we'd gotten there over 2 hours before the flight or we'd never have made it. I did have to re-pay for my extra suitcase, and I have since been too lazy to call and ask to have that reimbursed…
We arrived in Tel Aviv around 3am Sunday night/Monday morning and took a cab to Galia's apartment. There we found her roommate Nir waiting for us with a tiny month-old black and white kitty he named Uri. The thing is so cute. We're keeping him for a couple months until his to-be owner moves into a new place where she can have a cat. I found out then that Alex hadn't been able to scramble together the code we needed for the paper, so we were free to go to bed at 4am rather than stay up writing some more. Oh well, the majority of what I wrote and coded will be usable for the paper we are definitely going to submit this summer, so it's not that big of a deal.
Man, the latest Red Sparrowes is just so good.
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( 2.8 / 12 )Wednesday, April 14, 2010, 17:05 - General
The past few weeks have seen Alex and I miss a few paper deadlines. In reality, only one of the conferences really would have fit us well, and that was the one with the first deadline, so once that was gone morale fell a bit. It's not such a big deal though. We're going to try and finish up a paper before I head to Israel and submit it this summer.On Monday March 29 I went to Galia's friend Gal's apartment in the upper west side to attend the Passover seder she was holding there with her husband Dan, her mom who was visiting from Israel, and another friend. It was my first, and I took the ritual of drinking entire glasses of wine a bit too seriously I think as I ended up rather intoxicated and sort of making a fool out of myself. Gal was really nice and made vegetarian food for Galia and me and I got myself an English version of the haggadah to read.
That Wednesday Arthur and I went to this show which had 2 local bands I like, Yukon and STATS, playing in this party house basement in Bushwick. I'd emailed the drummer for STATS who's a friend of Matt's and asked whether they'd be into playing a show with us soon, and at first it seemed like it was gonna work out that we'd be playing something at that same place mid-April but it fell through. In any case, it was nice to meet some musicians and the show was good and Matt and his girlfriend Amy came too and I hadn't seen him in quite a while. We recorded 2 songs called F Space F and Everbrown, the latter of which is 14 minutes long so we split it into 2 tracks, and have Everbrown up on a myspace page now if you're interested in hearing it. We'll put F Space F up tomorrow probably as we're finishing the final mix down. The link is http://www.myspace.com/zvoovband.
Sunday April 4 Galia and I took the Metro North up the Hudson to Hudson Highlands State Park to go hiking and take advantage of the unseasonably warm and sunny weather. It was interesting to be sweaty in a forest with no leaves yet on the trees. The area was gorgeous and we had a great time and took lots of cool pictures that are up on the website.
Last Wednesday a Dutch friend of Galia's from Amsterdam, Judith, and her boyfriend Otto got to New York and crashed with us in the loft for a couple days. We ended up taking them to the Lucky Dog two nights in a row, which has now opened is nice big backyard. Otto is a singer-songwriter who played at SXSW for the second time, and he and Judith had been traveling around the south for like a month before their week in NYC. It turns out that I've actually met him and seen him perform before at this Tuesday open mic at a club called Sappho in Amsterdam to which Masha brought me a few times.
Last Thursday we had dinner at this medium-expensive fancy Korean vegetarian restaurant in Midtown with Petter's dad Sverre, Sverre's wife and their 10 year old daughter. It was very nice to see them and the dinner was also fantastic and fun. I'm really glad we got together.
Friday Judith, Otto, Arthur, Galia, and I went to see El Ten Eleven at Pianos after having dinner at Earthmatters. I really don't understand the booking there - in fact, the venue is generally sort of horrible, with this frat boy crowd that yells stuff about farts and Freebird to the bands that are playing. Don't get me wrong though, I'd love to play there. This time the opening band was, well, both really not any of our cup of tea nor did it fit at all with El Ten Eleven's. The show was, as usual, awesome, and everyone seemed to have a good time.
Saturday Galia and I rented Sophie's Choice from this cool video store near McCarren and the practice space called Film Noir. I'd always thought it looked cool from the outside but had never been in, and it turned out really cool. The guy who runs it seems about 45 and is really into krautrock and Shellac and other great music, and we got to talking about that stuff and I agreed to show him some Salvatore which I'm always trying to spread around. When we got back home I realized that Sal had taken his DVD player back though, and I couldn't remember the password on my old laptop and the Macbook Air doesn't have a drive so we had to settle for Trailer Park Boys on the bigscreen. I have her hooked and we're already into the fifth season.
Sunday Galia revealed to me her birthday present for me - a new set of rollerblades. She wanted to give it to me a day ahead of time so that I could take advantage of the nice weather and day off on Sunday. We went over to Oslo, her walking alongside me, and I tried to reteach myself how to do it. I'd always relied on my brake before but these don't have one, so I was trying to learn on the New York streets which is perhaps not the best idea in the world. We then watched Sophie's Choice on Arthur's old laptop. It was quite good albeit long, and we realized that it was fitting to watch it on Holocaust Remembrance Day which we at first had forgotten about. The movie was so long that I was almost late for band practice so I suited up the rollerblades and flew out the door. I had a bit of a scare coming down 4th St. onto Kent cuz I got a lot of speed and couldn't really stop so I just zipped around the corner and was happy that no cars were coming. Practice was cool. We're trying to finally finish our fourth and fifth songs so that we'll have a full set, and Arthur and I recorded the parts we have the other day so that we can work on them individually. The whole recording setup is great and Arthur has like 10 mics now so it's sort of flick on and go.
Monday was my birthday and I got lots of congrats. Galia and I stopped by a vet clinic to try and talk to them about what a vet tech's job is like cuz she decided she wants to apply to a 2-year degree for that in Long Island City starting in the fall. They were too busy though, so we came back this morning and the woman talked to us for a while and suggested she volunteer at a shelter at first. There's one in the neighborhood that needs people to walk dogs and hang with the cats so we're gonna start doing that soon. I then went to the dentist and she removed my other fake tooth to take an impression for my retainer which has to false teeth and which I'll wear for the next 6+ months while I heal from the surgery I'll have next week to implant the sockets in my jaw. I thus spent 2 days with 2 holes in my mouth and looked quite rabbitlike - don't worry, pics were taken, and the retainer is removeable anyway. We had lunch at the Willburg Cafe to which I'd not yet taken her, and then went back home for a while before picking Judith and Otto up at LA Burrito. They'd been crashing with someone in Queens but Monday and Tuesday nights were to stay with us again. They got me a Bukowski book of poems. We all went out to Spuyten Duyvil and got the big table in the back and everyone ate Galia's delicious homemade chocolate cake and I got quite tipsy. Lots of people came and it was quite fun.
Yesterday I was hurting quite hard from the revelry and didn't get into the office until like 2:30 and didn't get much work done. Eventually Galia and I went to Curly's Vegetarian Diner for some much-needed grease and I ate pizza fries and a veggie bacon cheeseburger which were delicious. We then wandered around the East Village, hitting this bookstore I really like near Tompkins Square Park and then tried to find a cafe in which to read our new books but 9th Street closed early (as I thought it did). We walked past the Mercury Lounge, where we were going to see Red Sparowes with Arthur that night, and ran into Judith, Otto, and Arthur, all in the same place in the street but the Dutchies not noticing Arthur at first and neither he them. We weren't planning on meeting any of them there so it felt pretty strange. The Dutchies went off on their own to meet another Dutchie, but Galia and Arthur and I went to this cool dive cafe called Sugar Cafe on Allen which has a huge row of tables next to a wall made of glass so you can watch the street. We hung there for an hour and then went to the venue, but the opening band was way too metal for us so we hung in the bar until they stopped and then camped out up front. I was a little wary about the show cuz I wasn't ever all that into them and I wanted to keep Galia's trust in my concert taste, but the show was actually fantastic. Really interesting, really great musicians, and I now have a much better appreciation for them.
Today I got my retainer and also got to keep the clay impression of my teeth which I'll use to scare small children some day. Tomorrow night is Kaki King at Music Hall, Friday I might see Unwed Sailor at Pianos, and Saturday we have tix to see Trans Am at Santos. I love spring. I'll be in Minnesota April 21-28 if you happen to be there. I'm gonna have oral surgery and some other doc stuff done, and also apply for my marriage license...
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( 2.9 / 457 )Tuesday, March 23, 2010, 14:37 - General
Last weekend Galia and I flew to Chicago to visit Liz and see one of my, and recently her, favorite bands - Steve Albini's Shellac. We'd been sort of hoping to set this up as a fly to Minnesota for my oral surgery then hit Chicago either on the way there or back kind of thing, but that didn't work out and then we couldn't peel ourselves away from the idea of going. Very bouge I know, but hey you only live once.The Thursday before we left, I went to the practice space with Arthur and Sal at 5 (we'd skipped practice the day before so I could work on research - we have some deadlines looming for publications) so we could set up mics and record drum tracks for 2 of our songs. We want to get a demo together so we can try and get a show or two before I leave for Amsterdam and Israel on May 11. Barring a few hitches (one of the overheads produced no sound e.g.) we got the drum tracks recorded at around 12:30. Arthur's recording some bass tracks, and I'll be recording guitar tracks this week. The idea isn't to have something super polished, but just to get something that sounds good enough and showcases over 15 minutes of our material for promoters to have a listen.
Friday morning I woke up at 7 to pack and catch the flight and was quite tired, as I'd not gotten much sleep the previous night either cuz we went out to the Lucky Dog again.
Random interjection: if you ever record an album, don't have a background sample of thunder, especially if you're a slow instrumental band. It's so cliche it's painful.
We packed and took a cab to La Guardia (so close) and landed early in Chicago around 11:30. We met Liz outside the building downtown where she works and dropped off our bags, had $35 worth of salad at Au Bon Pain, and then wandered around trying to make the most of what we knew would be the last bit of really nice weather (we'd be missing two days of 22C in New York to be in 4C + snow in Chicago). We walked over to Millennium Park and saw the jelly bean and some tight rope walkers who had me help them tie up their rope between a couple trees. Then lied down a bit, checked out the lake, wandered inside some Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, over to the Sears Tower (I mean Willis Tower), then back to Liz's building and via the bus to her apartment in Lake View. We drank some and then went out to Vision at like 11 cuz ladies got in for free til 11:30. Vision is this big dance club downtown which used to have like 3 levels but the basement is now closed. The crowd was mostly black people, and while I didn't notice that until Galia pointed it out, she really liked it cuz there aren't many black people in Israel and so it felt exotic. (Forgive me if that isn't the state-of-the-art PC term.) We got our drink on, and then got our booty shakin' on. An African-American man of about 30 came up to me at some point and told me the following: "hey man, I been dancin' for a long time now, and I ain't never seen a white boy with rhythm like you got". I was very pleased and honored - until like a year ago me dancing on a dance floor would have been unthinkable.
We stayed only for like a couple hours before we all got tired and called it an evening. It was quite fun though. The following day we woke up to snow as expected, and waited til 11 for La Creperie to open and then had breakfast there which was great. We then wandered around Boys Town, stopped back at home after a coffee at Intelligentsia, and then took a cab over to Wicker Park to check out the "hipsterville" of Chicago. It didn't seem nearly as concentratedly hipster as Williamsburg, but we did stop in a couple stores including American Apparel. I model 3 hipster-style tight-legged $250 Swedish-made jeans at the first store for Liz and Galia which was pretty hilarious. I had to pretend with the salesman that I was actually interested, and he went on some absurd spiel about how the company that makes them "is interested in the uplifting of humanity and stuff like that". At American Apparel I tried on some tight pink pants. From there we walked north, stopped at a bar to recharge and grab a drink, and then we bought a 750ml bottle of Kettle One and some chips and hit a tiny house party at some friends of Liz's. They had a cute dog named Otis, and we got pretty tipsy before we had to rush out the door looking for a cab to go to the Shellac concert. Apparently they started right at 10pm and we barely made it to the front of the stage right in front of Albini when they started to play. The venue had a waitress taking drink orders from the crowd which was pretty cool so I bought myself a beer. Shellac was amazing and played the three songs we really wanted to hear. From there we walked to Liz's apartment and were there by 12 cuz we weren't interested in The Ex, the other band playing. The key Liz had given us didn't actually work so we were stranded outside, but luckily she'd decided to come home early too so we didn't have to wait long. They started watching An American Tail on demand but I fell asleep after like 3 minutes.
In the morning we woke up and after lazing for a while went over to The Bagel, this Jewish diner which gives you unlimited free pickles, and had an awesome giant breakfast. We then finished the Disney movie before heading downtown and going to the top of the John Hancock as is my tradition since it's nice and free. It was pretty cloudy but spotty, and it made for cool effects as the clouds raced over the buildings. We then wandered all around the Drake Hotel, photographing various ballrooms and hallways which was really cool and random. We ended the weekend by watching this movie Liz likes called Flatliners which was nice but I wouldn't really recommend it - I mean, it has Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland, a Baldwin, and Julia Roberts. The journey back home was pretty uneventful, and we were back a little before 1am.
The last couple days had Alex and I realize that we weren't going to hit the PACT deadline this Saturday, so we're thinking about maybe submitting to Supercomputing on April 5.
I was in Pittsburgh the previous weekend with Galia and Alex so that Alex and I could hit the day-long GPGPU workshop which took place as part of ASPLOS. The conference was pretty useful, and Pittsburgh was really cool for its size. Lots of stuff to do, cool neighborhoods and music and bars, and very beautiful geography.
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( 3.1 / 59 )Friday, February 19, 2010, 23:44 - General
So I've taken to headbutting people lightly, especially when donning my replacement blue hat which Galia bought for me. One example of this was while waiting in line for my popcorn at IFC last week (where I told the guy I wanted popcorn with a disgusting amount of butter on it, and he told me he'd give me so much that he'd have to charge me for a drink). A girl commented that I had great form.Another was today when Arthur and I were walking home from band practice we stopped into El Beit so he could get a coffee and I some grounds for the mornings. I headbutted him while we were waiting for his coffee, then again after he'd gotten it but I was still waiting for the grounds. I think I must have hit a nerve in his upper arm or something, as he dropped the coffee and it exploded everywhere. I offered to buy a replacement, and Arthur offered to clean up, but the friendly barista made him another on the house and told us not to worry about it.
Good times.
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( 2.9 / 477 )Wednesday, February 17, 2010, 16:39 - General
It's been 2 months now since I wrote. I guess I'll do a synopsis of far-way stuff the details of which I don't really remember, and then post again about more recent stuff.I went with Galia, her parents, brother Tomer, and brother's girlfriend to the far northwest corner of Italy for 5 days at the end of December. Galia and I had our own hotel room in this quite nice hotel and we went snowboarding together twice (my first times ever and I hardly fell - it was really fun). I was a bit baffled by the apparent need for snow chains on the tires of the rental cars when there was hardly any snow on the roads at all, but whatever, I guess non-Americans are just wussy. We also celebrated Tomer's birthday while we were there one of the nights, and Galia's parents got me this little keychain for Christmas with my name engraved in both Roman and Hebrew alphabets which was cute.
I stayed in Israel until the morning of January 25. Galia and I hung out almost 24/7, with only brief times apart when I was at this research seminar led by Prof. Shavit that I was attending at Tel Aviv University or when she had dance class. It was great. We bought ourselves a desk and a couple chairs so we could study in her room together, worked a lot on her PhD applications for the fall, she took the GRE, I gave a guest lecture at the seminar. The time went by too quickly of course.
My last week there she and I, after having joked about the subject off and on since the summer, decided that we want to get married. It was just between us for like 2 days until we told her family at Friday dinner and they were all shocked. Luckily her little brother Noam chimed in that "this is good, this is good" and helped her parents to process the news. After that, it had an existence of its own, and we've been planning it ever since. She'll arrive in New York on Monday evening, then we'll stay here together until May 11, spend 5 days in Amsterdam, and then we'll go on to Israel for the summer together. We're going to have a wedding ceremony there that her parents are more or less in charge of (neither of us wants a traditional large wedding, but they insist on it, so we just have to roll with it) but it won't be the legal thing. That will be in either August or September in my parents' backyard in Minnesota. Then we'll move in together in New York and live there at least until I graduate. I'm really excited, very in love, and very lucky.
Since I got back to New York I've been working really hard. Every day I study some Hebrew, play drums in our practice space for an hour, and spend around 10-12 hours in my office on research. We also have band practice 4 times a week these days and we're getting all the songs I've written down - about 50 or so minutes of material all told, though only 6 songs. It's instrumental math rock with some sludgy metally stuff and more complicated bass lines than I think are usually present (Arthur and I both have big egos) and I'm really proud of it. Arthur bought an 8-channel firewire breakout box and Sal has a bunch of microphones, so we're going to try and record a nice demo and get some gigs before I leave in May.
My research is coming along pretty well. Our compiler as of today finally can launch JITed code onto the GPU. Now starts the phase of adding optimizations to make it actually perform well, but the basic grunt framework is in place which is really satisfying. I have a publication deadline for PACT in late March, and I'm supposedly trying to also finish my Swiss work by March 25 for OOPSLA but we'll see how that goes.
So yeah, life is good, though somewhat monotonous. I can't wait for Galia to get here.
Lewis, Brandy, and I went and saw a performance of the first three Bach Cello Suites on the 9th and then we walked over to IFC after a quick bite at Sacred Chow and saw this amazing movie. It's truly absurd - surreal Japanese horror from the 70s with lots of scantily clad young girls. Tonight Lewis and I are going to see Four Tet which should be fun. I'm trying to start a solo electronic music/live electric guitar project sort of like Ratatat but maybe more up-tempo, but I don't have a keyboard and I'm all of a sudden feeling broke with 2 weddings coming up. I'm thus trying to sell my Orange which is sad but hey I never use it anymore with the 2 Super Reverbs anyway. Also, if anyone knows of someone looking to take over my room in my flat (really an amazing apartment) for $1000/mo in Williamsburg, lemme know.
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