January was quite a busy month. The new millennium has proved to be exactly what I thought - like the old one. This is good. I liked the old millennium. But it's now long gone. It's like the art of fixing things by yourself. My father knows how to do it, your father probably knows how to do it, but you and I don't. But I'm trying...
Here in NY most buildings have a superintendent. This guy is usually Hispanic (Spanish speaking) and he knows how to fix things. You would probably call him if your toilet got clogged, but some people would call him for small stuff like replacing a light bulb. I like to do things with my own hands (don't even think about it!) and during my stay here I collected quite a large set of tools.
The problem is that the shops selling these tools are huge, and I need help in finding the tools, but what are their names? Try this for yourself. Here are a few things I took out of my tool drawer. Try to name them.
If you think number one is "Contact Glue", you're dead wrong. Number 3 is definitely not a "Japanese Knife". And what about number 5? Do you even know the Hebrew word for that? I always called it "Jabka", and my father understood, but I surely don't know how they call it in Hadera, let alone New York.
It all comes down to the fact that I was on my way to Eran's place to help him hang a light fixture. I volunteered to stop on the way at the hardware store and buy a special cement drill that would be able to penetrate the strong ceiling in Eran's apartment.
When going into a hardware store, you don't want to look like you don't know what you're talking about. They're like dogs (and we'll get to that later). They sense your fear, and they will sell you what they want and not what you need. So as I was walking towards the hardware store, I was chanting the sentence "Hi [Pause and smile] I need a quarter inch cement drill [Look straight in the eyes of the seller]". I chanted it enough time to familiarize my lips with it, and then walked into the store.
- "Hi, I need a quarter inch cement drill".
The man behind the counter looked at me, smiled and said:
For our 1.3 per month non-Hebrew speaking readers I'll translate the following sentence: "You can't hide your Hebrew accent [smile], so don't even try, and I also think you don't know too much about these things so I'll attempt to sell you the pricey one."
Actually I was quite relieved to find out that the seller could speak Hebrew, and I bought quite a few other things, you know - just in case. And the names (once again, just in case): (1) is cement (not the one I needed the drill for). (3) is a utility knife, and (5) is a visegrip or a "locking pliers". The even numbers are different types of screwdrivers. What can I say, I have plenty of those.
How do you know when you become a real New-Yorker? When you're the king of the hill? On top of the heap? I would suggest my own interpretation to that "top of the heap" thing, and to do that, let me introduce you to a new friend of mine. His name is Poonch.
Poonch is the proud dog that owns Mimi & Yigal, two friends of mine that are living here in New York. Poonch is a nice owner and as such, he sometimes allows Mimi & Yigal to take vacations from the job of taking care of him (they also work as lawyers at their spare time, but that's irrelevant).
So one weekend, Mimi & Yigal decided to go to the country, but they didn't feel comfortable leaving Poonch without someone overnight. I volunteered to stay that night at their house and keep him company.
As you probably know, I'm not a dog expert, and things became more complicated when they couldn't find a "dog walker" that would take him for his evening walk. I recruited Golan and his wife Dorit, and together, we took Poonch for a walk.
After we returned from the walk, we played with him in the house. He's trained very well and can sit, bring a ball and much more. But more important, he's calm and friendly (very). When I decided to go to sleep, I saw he was sleeping on my bed. I tried convincing him to move somewhere else, but we couldn't reach an agreement, and I didn't want to make him mad (I was alone in the house with him, and I started inventing tomorrow's newspapers' headlines). I didn't know him that well.
So we slept together. This was new to me, and I must say it wasn't that bad. I really enjoyed taking care of Poonch.
I just forgot to say one thing. Just as we approached the house on our night walk, Poonch stopped and produced this smelly brown heap on the sidewalk. I was immediately on top of that heap with a plastic bag and made sure it would reach the nearest trash bin.
I'm a New-Yorker now.
Union Square Cafe is a fancy restaurant that's located near Union Square (The square came first). We had to make reservations for it 4 weeks in advance, and even that was very hard, because they only take reservations 4 weeks in advance. Eran had to wait on the phone for a couple of hours. It's so popular that they actually called Eran (I eavesdropped on the phone conversation) the day before to make sure we remember we have an "appointment" with them.
I put on my nicest clothes and went there.
I must say that what amazed me most was that the people in the restaurant (the one who took your coat; the waiter; the one who poured the wine) were all very nice. It looks like the owners of the place went to great lengths to find really nice people who will take care of you while you're there.
Obviously, the food is supposed to be very good. Physically, I think my mouth is not built to fully appreciate these things, but the names on the menu looked really complicated. At some point someone asked something like: "What is the "Tocirpa a la Sdees-Ecaps?" and the waiter fluently explained what it was, but I could only understand the vowels. For me it sounded something like this:
"We slice thin pieces of ... and put ... on top while marinating ..., ..., and ... in the ... and then mix some ... on top of all of it. On the side you have diced ... which we prepare by chopping ... and mixing it with .... It's a very good dish!"
The food was very good, but don't ask me to recommend anything.
The Americans are crazy about sports. Not participating, God forbid, but watching. And among all sport event, the most hailed is the Super Bowl - the world championship final football game (but, of course, no one outside the US is invited...)
Football rules are not very complex - you need to score a touchdown while members of the other team try to injure you in any way they can. When the offending team gets that odd shaped ball, they have 4 attempts to advance 10 yards (9 meters). If they fail, the other team gets it. If they succeed, they get 4 more attempts to advance 10 yards from wherever they were stopped.
So that 10 yards line is very important, and spectators who watch the game want to know where that line is. That's why the football field is covered with numbers that represent the distance from the touchdown area, so you can get a feeling of how many yards are left.
But the 10 yards line is invisible. You can't put it on the field because it moves all the time. Well, for those who watch the game at home, it's not invisible any more.
With the aid of 3 specially equipped cameras that are connected to a room full of computers, a yellow line is added to the picture people see at home. If the offensive players pass this line, they made it, and can move forward.
Once again, the yellow line you see on the image here on the left is not really there. That's the best virtual reality I've seen so far. There are companies that use this technology to put ads on the field, and I admit this would be more impressive, but I haven't seen that in day to day use. The only thing I did see was this yellow line, and I was impressed. It really looks solid and on the ground, even as the camera moves from side to side and zooms in and out.
You might ask yourself why I watched the Super Bowl, and I did watch parts of it. I actually recorded all of it on a videocassette. It turns out that the Super Bowl is not only the most watched sport event, but the most watched event of the year. The second one is usually the Oscar. As such, the price for commercial spots skyrocket, and companies usually produce very expensive and sometimes witty commercials. I watched the commercials and fast-forwarded over the game.
The explosion of Internet companies probably affected (or should I say "infected?") the game - most of the commercials were for Internet companies. This made quite a few of them alike. They weren't that good. But still, there were some good ones. I'll show you the one I liked most in the next issue of BOT, but for now, I just want to show you a commercial that started a relaunch of a certain 50 plus year old friend. It was aired just before the game started:
(No it's not about Spock. He just got paid for being in the commercial)
I'm sorry for the low quality of the movie, but this is because I wanted to keep the movie file small (less than 1.5MB). In addition, I'm still working on my video capturing techniques.
The Museum of Natural History is amazing. I to went see this museum with Ronit who came to visit me towards the end of January. Just imagine a 30 meter length whale hung over the cafeteria of the museum. Well, it's not a real whale, but it looks quite real. I tried to take a picture of it, but it came out too dark, so keep imagining. Among other things, this museum now shows the "Times Capsule". The "Times Capsule" is the results of a project of a fellow "Times" publisher - "The New York Times". It's a (allow me to quote): "sculpture of welded stainless steel designed by Santiago Calatravametal, renowned architect-engineer from Valencia, Spain". It has 8 compartments in which they put (And I'm quoting again) "Key artifacts from today for the next 1000 years". It will be sealed in a few months and we'll all have to wait patiently until the year 3000 before it's reopened.
You can find out more about the "Times Capsule" at http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/timescapsule/
I also visited the remains of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. I guess that without all the muscles and the sensitive-only-to-movement eyes it's not that overwhelming, but it's still quite big. When you walk near a skeleton like that, you feel you're in the presence of something majestic.
As we exit the museum, we saw from the outside that there was a model of the sun about 20 meters in diameter. I consider myself a good navigator and was quite sad that I missed it.
It turns out that this model was part of a new exhibition that opened a few days after our visit to the museum. Among other things, there's a 110 meter walk that represents the history of the universe. They say an average step in it is equivalent to 50 million years and all the human history that's located at the end of the walk takes less than a width of a hair... That's how small we are.
Have a nice life.
