Mordecai's first faint

So, this past Friday, I fainted for the first time in my life.

After sleeping in a bit, I decided to go on a bike ride to a place I'd heard about a few times, Nesher Park.  It's a very nice place, with two suspension bridges (made of steel, not grass), and a large cave. There's also a geocache hidden there.

As it happened, Nathanael was gone to his lab, and I wasn't necessarily planning to be back in time for the frisbee game in the afternoon, so I decided to go alone.  I grabbed my bike, phone and water bottle and took off.  Across campus to the gate is all downhill, but once off campus, it was uphill for a few kilometers.  Determined to make it to the top without stopping, I settled in to a low gear and kept cranking.  Reaching the top, I was proud of myself, but noticing that I was less hydrated than I should have been.  I had also skipped breakfast, so I was feeling a little light-headed from the long uphill climb.  After pulling in to the park entrance, I stopped and stood up, straddling my bike, and took a little drink.  Then I went to take another drink, tipping my head back.... The next thing I remember is pleasantly waking up on the ground.

Waking up was by far the nicest part of the whole experience.  I had the exact same feeling as when you sorta drift out of sleep, snuggled deeply in blankets, and refuse to think about what time it might be.  I remember thinking "wow, what a dream I had about riding really fast, and then crashing."  Then I thought "hmm that's funny, I'm lying with my bike between my legs"
Then I thought: "why is my waterbottle over there emptying the last bit of water out of the neck?"
It was about then that I noticed some blood on the pavement by my chin.  After a quick check for oral bleeding (none. hooray!), I evaluated my body, trying to see if there were any injuries.  I determined I had cuts of unknown degree and unknown locations on my face, and my jaw was sore.  Once I decided I was ok to move, I sat for a bit and drank the last water that couldn't get out of the water bottle.  Seeing the last of the water trickle out when I came to is the only time indicator I have for how long I was out; apparently only a few seconds.

I cleaned my wounds with some tissues and borrowed water from a big birthday party that was happening in one of the gazebos in the park, and then went on to look around the trails and find the geocache.  I was a little concerned that I would scare some people since I didn't know how scary my cuts looked, until I realized I could take a picture of myself with my phone as a 'mirror' of sorts.  In this way, I discovered one of the benefits of a beard: it not only hid the worst cut, but since my beard is dark, you couldn't tell by looking at it that part of it was wet with blood, instead of just sweat.

While I was hiking in the park, two dogs started to follow me around.  It seemed like they were abandoned or runaways, since they were very friendly, and both had collars (with no tags or id).  However, one of them was very thin and thirsty, and I was sad since I don't know of any shelters that I could take them to.


The bike ride home went great, and I got back just as the frisbee game was ending.

A few days later, everything is healing nicely, and I'm trying to make sure that I keep good tabs on my hydration level.

and nearly 1 month later...

Ok, so this blog post won't be quite as happy as some of the others...

As it turns out, I did a good thing when I set expectations for this part of my life. Coming to Israel on a few month's notice, studying in Hebrew, beginning a Master's Degree, while learning the language... my expectations were explicitly set at "this being both the hardest thing I've done and something that I will never forget." You may notice that there are no "have a good grade percentage" or "ace all my classes" mentioned in those expectations.

And... that was a good thing when my midterm came around. The course is Analytical Methods I, and is basically an Advanced Differential Equations course where we derive the Bessel Function, and use Legendre Polynomials and all manner of crazy mathematical tricks to solve differential equations.

-The exam turned out to be over a week further into the material than I thought it was.
-I made an early mistake in an infinite sum expansion in the first section of the first problem.
-The later sections of the first problem bulit upon the (correct) answer to the section I knew was not coming together. This therefore had me freaking out and spending nearly all my time working on trying to get the infinite sum correct.
-The second problem, while quite straightforward, required the use of approximately 4 specific equations that I had neglected to put on my equation sheet. Therefore, a few of my answers were along the lines of "here, you would make a certain substitution... which I don't remember."

This was the ONLY test I've taken in my life where I experienced the feeling of despair, and a true sense of failing. As it turns out, my sense was faily accurate... final percentage below:

my percentage: 37%
class average: 57.8%
median: 59%
mode: {69,82}
my distance from average: -1.23 standard deviations
my percentile: 15.4

stem and leaf plot of reported class grades on the midterm:
0|
1|
2|3,9
3|3,3,4,4,7
4|2,3,4,5,8
5|0,3,4,4,5,6,8,9
6|1,1,2,2,5,6,9,9,9
7|0,2,4,6,7
8|0,2,2,2
9|1

Obviously, to anyone familiar with my academic record to date, this will probably be somewhat surprising. I'll be really honest: failing a test is a terrible experience, but it is one that I am glad that I have now had. I've never been able to relate to people very well who have struggled academically, since I myself have in the past had nearly no difficulties. Especially since I eventually see myself as a professor, probably writing exams which people will fail, this is a particularly valuable experience to me from a life-long/ relate to people viewpoint.

(A little-known fact is that I actually took two attempts to pass the amatuer radio operator test, failing the first attempt by 1 pt. However, this didn't really count, since I took the test with no preparation, and it was just for an extra-curricular activity).

(and, yes, I am a technician class ham radio operator. massive nerd points.)

The Beginning

So, classes began yesterday.

It was... interesting. After consulting a few different resources, I had come up with 3 different sets of times and places for what I thought was the Hebrew course that I needed to take. I showed up for the most recent set of times/places, and found out that it was the wrong class. It was Hebrew 2, not Hebrew for beginners 2. Of course.

Then, I had my design and analysis of experiments class, which handily was scheduled for the exact same time as the graduate student organization had scheduled their "understanding your time as a masters student at the technion/getting started / answering questions" meeting. Clearly this was a well-planned event. Don't know how it turned out, since I was in class, not understanding much.

The professor speaks english natively, but the lectures are in Hebrew. Fortunately, he gives out printed notes so I have somethign to translate later, and there are the subject titles in English. Two of my friends here have managed to have 2 of their 3 courses in English. (Partly because their advisor was teaching one of them).

Oh, and my HTC G1 android phone arrived in the mail... finally... with customs tag of 120 dollars... so I thougth that was a little extreme, and asked the guy at the post office who said that I can come back on sunday and write a letter to the customs board. should be fun.

the Jerusalem trip of last week

As a reminder to everyone, here in Israel the week is a little different than in the US. In Israel the working days are the first through the 5th of the week (sunday though thursday) and then Friday and Saturday are the weekend. (quite literally). This also means that classes are sunday thorugh thursday.

So, last week, after class on Thursday, a group of 9 students from the class took off for Jerusalem. We took a bus from campus, transfered to another bus and then arrived at one of the central bus stations in Haifa. There we got our round trip tickets to Jerusalm for 71.40 sheqels. This was a pretty straightforward event, except that while I was waiting to buy mine, I was talking to some of the students ahead of me in line, and had been standing off to the side a little bit. When I moved around to get up to the window, an old israeli guy objected --we'll call him "OG"--, apparently saying that I should get behind him in line. There were like 2 people in line, and he apparently didn't speak english, and I'm not all that excited about getting into a fight, so I figured, hey, I can wait. Well the person in from of OG didn't take long at all. However, OG gets up to the window and starts asking the teller questions in hebrew. As close as I can tell, he was attempting to determine how many different bus routes there were in the country, with all their stops.

OG kept on asking questions and talking. I got behind him in line at about 1:30 and stayed there for a full 20 minutes. After about 15 minutes, the line had grown behind me to be about 12 people long. Getting irritated that he had been so insistant about 'HIS' unrightful place in line when he was taking so long, and having plenty of time to think, I managed to say this in Hebrew: " סליחה, יש הרבה אנשים בטור " (transliteration: slee-hach, yesh harbey anashim ba-tor; translation: excuse me, there are many people in the line) to which OG replied "I know" in Hebrew (which I was really proud I understood! ) At that point, one of the other people in line started talking to him in Hebrew in a tone that perfectly expressed my frustrations. Fortunately, he got done and finally bought a ticket before our bus left at 2pm.

Once in Jerusalem, we checked in at the youth hostel we were staying at, where we had a matress and a spot big enough for the matress on the roof for 50 sheqels a night. In case you're curious, it's the Citadel Youth Hostel, Marks St. 20, in the heart of the old city.

#####that's it for now, but I'll extend this post later####

I'm slipping on these posts...

Ok, so my goal is a MINIMUM of one post per week. last post was a week ago... so I guess I'd better post today. It's not for a lack of material :).

Last week I went to the haifa sculpture park with David Erdos, a guy from Ulpan who is from Missouri. After the sculpture garden, we stopped in the ba'hai garden for a little bit and then we tried to find the prehistory museum, which on the map we had, looked like you could get to by a nice walk on a "scenic nature trail."

Finding the scenic nature trail itself was quite an interesting search. After looking all over the area indicated as the start on the map, we finally decided to go down what looked like an access sidewalk for some businesses off the main street. At the end of this, we found a hole in the fence, from which we could see what seemed like it might be the ACTUAL trail that we wanted. Still a little unsure, we crawled through and then continued down past the zoo. There was quite a bit of litter, and some

little campfire rings in the first 1/4 mile or so, and it quickly became clear that the prehistory museum was either the fire rings we were seeing, or that you got to it by some other way. However,

the map indicated that this scenic nature walk had a convient end that we might as well continue on to. We never did find THAT end. Having gone far enough, and passed an abandoned old pumphouse, we turned back to admit defeat.

On the way back up (the whole walk had been significantly downhill), we met two israeli girls who were hiking the trail, which on their (much nicer) map was shown to go almost all the way down to the sea. At this point, they invited us to join them on the way down, and I agreed. David, however, needed to get some things done and went back to the Technion.

On the way down, we found a cool little cave

that looked like it had been walled in and maybe used as a house at some point.

After parting from the Israelis, I took a few pictures of the rocks in the surf, some of which turned out ok.

Then I hung out on the beach for a while

and then walked over to the haifa mall, which was quite nice, though not as big as the "Grand Canyon" (the hebrew word for "mall" is קָניוֹן pronounced "kan yon", so the big mall in haifa is named the grand canyon).

At the mall, I got a kitchen knife for only 10 shekels b/c it was an open package. Great deal. I also bought some childrens books. Then I took the bus back to the technion.

And, a preview of topics to come: the haifa zoo, the weekend trip to Jerusalem.

so much to say.

well, let's see.

It's early tuesday morning, and I've got a quiz in Hebrew class today, so I got up early to study, which I will do RIGHT after I finish this post.
On Friday I went to the market again, and this time I took a picture and a video.

The video is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In2Mc9e52Vg

I bought too much food, but hey, I won't have to go shopping for a while. I also mixed up the words for 1/4 and 1/2, and bought a half kilo (little over a pound) of Parmesan cheese instead of a 1/4 kilo. Oh well.
Saturday afternoon, I went to the Israel Science Museum, where there happened to be the Body Worlds Exhibit, which I totally didn't know was even here now. Anyway, I did go to see it, and it was kinda weird/interesting. Some of the most amazing parts were the ones where they filled arteries and veins with a poly mer then removed the flesh... the delicate network, especially in the fingertips and the intestines was just incredible. Anyway, there was a sign that said no photography... but I did sneak one picture. Because maybe not everyone wants to see people w/o their skin on, I'm just going to link to the picture here:
http://www.freewebs.com/knowledge_sharers/PHOT0025.JPG
This set of three people playing poker (note the passing of an Ace under the table) makes a cameo in the James Bond film Casino Royal.
The science museum proper was quite nice. Not nearly as big as the London one, but pretty well done. In particular, they have a puzzle room with oversize wooden puzzles that was one of the best collections I've seen. The biggest disappointment was that there were many "push teh button" exhibits which were not working. They also had a really great outdoors area, with a really fun energy storage toy using a big flywheel... see the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvgIpXHL-ms

There was also a great sound wave demo, like one they have at all the cool science museums, but this time i got a video of it, available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4itkvYnuGQ

Then, later that night I went to the German Colony, a sorta touristy place in Haifa, and ran into some friends from class, so I joined them for a dessert at one of the outdoor seating restaurants. I came back to the area on Sunday, looking for a church that someone told me about, but couldn't find it. Then, however, I was able to take some pictures, as well as visit the Haifa subway, the only underground in Israel. It was definitely interesting, but I'm afraid I didn't get too many very good pictures due to the fact that I was kinda freaking out about having just lost my camera case. I set it down with my map somewhere and I have no idea what happened to it.

More pictures have been posted at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2070049&id=141300373&l=2197b4bfdc

setbacks are a way of life.

Yesterday I was going to mass the dye for the known, calibrated solution that makes measuring possible for the water chlorination project. However, the person with the keys to the lab wasn't in his office. I figured, hey, try again tomorrow at a time that's not as close to 5pm.

Today I found out that he's on vacation for this week.

Wouldn't be a huge problem, but everyone else that has keys to the rooms is at the faculty/staff luncheon. So I'm pretty much stuck until 1pm.

Also, the "for drain or sewer use only" size of flexible connector is only strong enough to hold onto the main pipe up to about 10 gal/min, which is about 1/6 of what we would like to test.
It really needs to be glued, but I don't have time to do that. Right now my goal is to get a data point, and to type up the documentation.

Tomorrow my mother comes down to help me finish moving out of the Cedarville apartment, and then I'll be packing at home, until the party friday night. Then I leave on Saturday. Crazy.