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Radio Interview

You can listen to my radio interview at http://www.podfeed.net/episode/The+Building+Boom+in+Judea/2046098 - find the episode "Building book in Judea" and fast forward to around the 25 minute mark. I sound like I'm 12.

AT&T SocialNet is Launched

I started my current job just under 5 months ago. I am a QA Tester for cell phone software. It is completly different than any of the jobs I have had in the past. The job is a great fit for me, plus I have the bonus of 'having' to use Facebook and Twitter at work.

Today AT&T officially launched AT&T Social Net This is the main program I have been working on. It combines Facebook, Twitter, RSS and MySpace into one application on your phone. The program is completly free, although it is not recommended to be used without an unlimited data plan.

It is really cool, to see a project that I have put so much hard work into finally in the market place. I just keep thinking how cool it is that a problem I noticed and was fixed could effect the user experience of millions of people.

New Add

Attention Chattanim! Make your Kallah's happy while playing with a blowtorch!

Ok, I like it.

New stuff in the studio

I have started a small side project where I am running a seminar for chattanim to make their own wedding rings. It is 2 sessions, the first they learn and practice basic metalsmithing skills on copper or brass, and in the 2nd, they work on pre-purchased gold to actually make their own wedding rings.

I only just started running the program and so far have had some success. The students seem to really enjoy it, and because they are so in to it, I really enjoy teaching the class.

Hopefully it will turn into a nice side stream, and I hope to add some different jewelery making classes in the near future.

For pictures and a little of what people are saying about the new program please visit

http://www.phony-art.com/weddingringseminar.htm

Picking Up License Attempt #1

Living in Israel you just have to accept that the first trip to any government office is likely going ot be unsuccessful. Yesterday was my first attempt at picking up my license. I had the hasa to work drop me off near where I had to go. There was a hand written sign saying the felt like being closed for the day. As I saw my driver instructor, it appears closing the office did not effect driving tests.

I was disapointed and did not want to pay the 22 NIS to get into work. I arrived at the bus stop just in time to catch a nesher. The ride would only be 6 NIS (still more than the bus) but I would get to work right away. It was my first experience on a Nesher and my first experience crossing a highway during busy traffic. The only draw back from the taxi is taking the hike up the steep hill on a really hot day. I am hoping to get a ride into Bet Shemesh from a coworker over lunch in my next attempt to get my license.

Teaching again?

As of Sunday I am taking two piano students. Neither have piano's at home. this ought to be interesting. But the two students will cover our arnona rise once our new olim discount is over, so I figure it is a worthwhile endeavor.

A Day Working in Israel

At one point this week my job was described as living out a second childhood.

"Your broke it and I am going to tell!"

Every year in Toronto my boss would send me the prayer for Parnasah that is said Erev Pesach. As he was the one who signed my paycheck he knew I needed it. This year I forgot.

Every month my company has some sort of lunch for Rosh Chodesh. When I got to the office yesterday, all I knew was that there would be pizza and the possibility of being outdoors. There was also to be a surprise. Lunch was scheduled for 12:00. At 11:28 a company wide e-mail went out telling everyone to be ready to leave in two minutes for our trip. Some would be travelling by car and others by bus. There was a list of travel arrangements.

Our first stop was a tiny orchard off of highway 10 (the backroad) near the entrance to Bet. There were olive, lemon, orange, grapefruit and pomello trees in various stages of bloom. At one point there was a disagreement if a tree was grapefruit or pomello. Someone made the comment that it was too small to be a pomello. Someone else pointed out that it was because it was still growing on the tree. We made the bracha on newly budding trees that is said after Pesach.

We have launched a beta version of our product in Germany. It can be downloaded and used for free. One of the cellular provieders is even waiving airtime fees on the product. We need 500 users to get to the next stage in marketing. If you anybody in Germany willing to give it a try please let me know.

The next stop was a park in Migdal HaMayim for a picnic. We had pizza and ice cream. We also had an update on how the company is dong financialy and where it is going in the future. In spite of all of the economic downturn the future looks bright for our company. We have a product that everyone wants, that other companies are not able to deliver.

It was a fun day. It is nice to be in a good working enviornment with a company that has a promissing future.

Settling in- Again.

So once again we are settling in to a new routine. Now that Jason is at work all day pretty much every day we have had to reevaluate some of our timing. As of now

Jason son gets up at 7, davens and gets Channah out the door at 7:40. He drops her off on his way to his bus which means that Channah gets to school and is the first kid there so she gets her pick of toys, and Jason never misses his bus. I am seriously not a morning person. Over time we have learned it is much better for both of us if I take the late at night stuff and he takes the early morning stuff. 8:30 or so I decide it is time to face the world. By 10 I am almost human (and have generally spent the last 2 hours or so on volunteer stuff I am involved with, responding to random emails, and whatever else I can do with my brain set to off). Get up, clean upanything left over from breakfast and take care of any errands that need to be done (shopping, post office, banking, researching purchases, whatever it happens to be). you might think of each of these as little tasks, but with no car these things take a whole lot longer than you might think. Also, I rather enjoy the walking first thing in the morning, so I do not exactly rush it most days as fast as I could.

I spend most of my time during the day in the studio. Baruch Hashem business is ok. Not great, but okay. Recessions suck for purveyers of luxury goods!

On days I need to go to Tel Aviv or Yerushalayim I am on the bus by 8:15. It is the only way to make it back here by the time I need to get Channah.

Channah gets picked up at 3:30 except for Tuesday when I get her at 1:00 and Fridays when Jason or I get her at 12:00. Often Fridays is still Jason as he does not work on Fridays and is often out and about doing errands (buying Challah, toivelling the third can openiner we have gone trough since getting here, going to the post office, etc.)

Most days, so long as we are not in a rush to get somewhere or it is not to mucky, after gan we go to the park for about a half hour. Sometimes more, sometimes less. She has fun with the other kids. I have fun with the other moms. Works out great.

Thursdays right after gan Lor picks us up and Channah and I go straight to Ballet. Ballet ends at 4:30 so by about 4:45 we are ready to leave. We tend to run whatever errands we need to run at the mercaz. We also do the big weekly grocery shopping. Jason meets us there after work (it is one of the stops he can get off at) and helps with the shlepping (by taxi) home from the mercaz.

Most days Jason gets home just before 6. Dinner for the first half of the week is generally leftovers from shabbat. The second half of the week is single fix meals like tuna patties, stir frys, or pasta.

Bedtime for Channah is somehwere around 7:00, but with dinner often not being until 6:30 it has been creeping towards 7:30. She brushes her teeth, gets a story and goes to bed pretty well most nights. Her room is the hardest to keep at a normal temperature for some reason, so we often get called to readjust the blanket situation at least once or twice before she is really out for the count.

Around 7:30 ish is when I find I need to start dealing with American clients. Any orders that came in, questions I have or they have, bids I am submitting, packages I need to trace. That is part of the reason mornings just do not work for me. Some of my work tends to be "American hours".

Monday through Thursday nights Jason goes to a Mishnah Breura shiur followed by maariv at the Beit Knesset. Sundays he goes also, but there is no shiur. Shacharit with a minyan is a nice thought, but there is no way my husband will be getting up for a 6 am minyan anytime soon. He is almost as great a morning person as I am. consdering this time last year minyan was sort of a once a shabbat thing, I am really proud of how often he is going! He is building a nice kesher with the shul and the Rabbi and I am really happy to see it.

Then he comes home. We blog. sometimes we watch a movie on the computer. He falls asleep fast and I am my normal insomniac self. Yes I know that if I could go to sleep earlier I could wake up earlier, but after almsot 30 years I am pretty sure that is just not going to happen.

What do I do?

I have been getting a lot of questions about my new job. Our company has been in the news lately.

This is an article about my company.

This is an article about the product I am working on. It is amazing how much I have learned in only 2 weeks. Some issues are under our control and some issues are directly based on our customers specs or the social networking sight.

My job is to test the software as it is being developed and report any bugs. I interact with the program on the cell phone. I am also learning Unix, so that I can more accuratly diagnose bugs.

I have a Twitter and MySpace account that I only use for work. Plus I get paid for checking my Facebook account at work. That should cover all of the basic questions.

The Start of Purim

It is amazing to think how different my thoughts, hopes and worries are from a year ago. I can't believe that the decision to move here had not been finalized.

On fast days, those who are fasting are allowed to leave my office at 1:00. The catch was that the bus would be leaving at it's normal 2:30 time for part time employees. I was fairly busy as I discovered a really major bug that required extensive testing before writing up my report. It turns out that I had actually uncovered 3 seperate bugs at the same time. I was proud of myself, especially as I hadn't found any yesterday. I took the 2:30 bus home. With only 5 passengers in the middle of the afternoon, it was a quick ride home.

There was some time to finish preparing costumes and resting before Mincha. There was 20 minutes between Mincha and Maariv. That left plenty of time to take care of Tzedaka and go home to get Rachel and Channah. I love being able to do Machzit HaShekel with a real circulation half shekel coin. There were some collector silver ones there, but that didn't interest me. One of the Tzedakah organization provided an envelope where you could allocate how much of your donation would go to Matanas LevYonim and how much could be used to help the poor the rest of the year.

Megillah reading was packed but nothing too much out of the ordinary. After Megilah reading was the fast breaker that we helped sponser. They had pastry, bagel, buns, eggs and tuna. It wasn't elaborate but it was a good way to end a fast. Next time they will need to increase the filling to bread ratio.

Then they had the costume 'contest'. One girl had a hat with speghetti and meatballs on top. Then she put her head through a red and white checkered table that had place settings including cups and napkins for two. It is interesting to note the differences in the types of costumes used for Purim as opposed to Halloween.

They then had a Purim Shpeil, where they did the musical Purim story. It was quite entertaining. In order to give everyone a turn, they had different people play the same character. It really confused Channah. We were in the front row. At one point there was some dancing, that included the person who leads the kids programming that Channah goes to. Channah let out a laugh. He told me that laugh made the entire night worth it. He also complimented me on how nice she sat during the play. After the play they had shtick with the thank yous. They also had a few people take an oppurtunity to make fun of the announcements.

It was really great being in a shul where I know people and they know me. I have a close relationship with the Rabbi. Two of my co-workers are there. Channah goes to the children programming and I have been in touch with people running various programs.

In the evening there were cars driving around playing loud music. A shul one street down had music blaring that we could hear it in our living room. They turned down the music at 11:15. There were also fireworks going off at different points of the evening.

Purim has been really fun. Tomorrow should be even more fun.

First Day on the Job

Today was the first day of my new job. I woke up early to make sure everything was prepared for my first day. Channah woke up even earlier as she had another nightmare. We got up and ready.

We left the apartment with 30 minutes for me to get to the bus stop. I walked Channah to school and continued to the bus stop. 11 minutes after leaving the house I was waiting in the rain at the bus stop. Approximately 4 minutes before the bus was supposed to arrive, I had not seen anyone else waiting. I called the person I knew to make sure I was in the right place. The bus runs like clockwork, so most people arrived exactly when the bus did. It was a 15 seater bus. The song playing on the radio was "Whisky in the Jar" sung in Hebrew. We then zig zagged our way down to the mercaz with a bunch of stops in between. We then headed out to the highway and off to work. We arrived shortly after 8:30.

I went to my office where the QA team works. It is a very nice group of people. There are some Israeli's with very little English and some Olim like me. At one point they were trying to explain to the Israeli's what a car pool was. My boss said, Car as in מכונית and pool as in ......
Myself and the person who sits in front of me both jumped in with בכירה. We got a good laugh and our boss went on to try to explain the concept properly.

Playing music for the team is part of the day. I also noticed there are basically no phones in the office. My table was ready but not my computer. I was handed a cell phone and asked if I had facebook and twitter. I was told to log into my facebook account and also start playing with the software.

A little while later my boss came in. He gave me the grand tour. The last big office I worked in was a giant circle, so if you got lost you just kept walking until you got to where you are going. You really have to know where you are going or you will end up in another department or somebody's office.

I was then briefed on the background of the company and my job. One of our older customers is an European cellular company that is the parent company of Orange. Another big customer is Skype. Skype had a contractual obligation to produce a Skype phone. Cell phone technology is not quite advanced enough to produce a quality product. We were able to offer a solution to make it happen. Using our software you can call anywhere in the world, for the same price of a local call. Phones sold in Europe with a Skype button are running off of our software.

Another product we have is designed to bring RSS Feeds, IM, Webmail, Facebook, Twitter into a single user interface. It has the advantage of conserving the amount of data being used and minimizing the use of battery power. Part of the product is being made specifically for AT&T which has already soft launched the product. My job will be mostly software testing on the AT&T product.

When I got back to my desk, IT was just finishing setting up my computer. I was instructed to immediately set up a Skype account. I played around with some software before meeting with HR. They had a number of forms to fill out. Some were in Hebrew and some were in English. A few times I was not sure if I should fill out the English forms in Hebrew. I should have a contract by the end of the week. If I want to use the gym, I have to get a doctors note.

I went back to my desk. I had a little bit of training and some more familiarizing myself with the program. I tried to get a 3 way chat with myself on the test servers. I could only get the chat to work two ways, but someone else did join the conversation. That kept me busy until I was told it was lunch time.

Lunch time is 30 minutes and our department normally eats on the roof. With the rain this was not going to happen today. I went to Avri's office instead. He has his own large private office. From what I can tell it was the only private office not reserved for executives. He claims he used to have a room mate. Then again he also claims he was at a murder mystery yesterday.

After lunch, I had more getting used to the software and looking thorough the main QA website.
Mincha is at 2:45 everyday. Towards the end of the day, I was introduced to the program where bugs are reported and tracked. It crashed partway through my lesson, but that was not my fault. I was then introduced to the bus Skype group. Each day everyone needs to confirm if they plan on taking the bus home.

The office is a fairly laid back environment. As long as you put in your hours everyday, there is room for flexibility. We have a swipe card for clocking in and out. There are snacks in the kitchen. It is understood that every once and a while you may need to get up and clear your head. The QA website even has a list of blogs to read during the break. People seem happy.

Every Rosh Chodesh there is a company lunch. There is a report on the business side of the company. Next week, Tanis Esther is a half day for those who are fasting. We get one day off for Purim and we can choose which day that is.

The bus took a different route home. It let's me off one block closer to home than the pick-up point. Somebody pointed out that at the end of the day I still had a smile on my face. I think this is going to be much better than my last job.

Settling In.

Today is a real turning point in our Klitta. We are going from getting used to our new environment to really feeling like we belong and settling into the routine that goes with our new life.

Today, I wrote the Ulpan examine. While the people who have been teaching us tried to take the pressure off the day the ministry tried to make it really proffesional. The girls in the class were busy taking pictures. Our shirut leumi girl Yael, made cards with the prayer for taking a test. Yael also gave out water during the exam. Our teacher brought in chocolates before the exam started. The examiner had a giant name tag identifying him as the Mashgiach. There were less than 15 taking the exam and it was easy to recognize who the person was that we had never seen before. He was going to enforce a rule of no pencils allowed until he called in for approval. He also didn't speak a word of English. At one point he had to ask the class the translation of a word, as the synonym and example on the white board was not helpful.

The exam was broken into 2 parts with a short break in the middle. We have spent a lot of time doing practise exams, so they were not too far off. The first section consisted of reading 3 stories and answering the questions. We are at a point where we can understand enough of the story to answer questions without knowing all of the words. I was fine on the first two but I had a lot of trouble with the 3rd. Either I completely missed the mark or I got the whole thing right. Others said they had the same problem.

After the break the exam consisted of a technical section, which I have always done well at. There was writing a letter and a story. I did OK on the letter. I feel like it needed one more sentence. The story section was close enough, to a sample question that I was able to modify from practise tests. I wrote about playing hockey which made me happy. I wonder what the marker is going to think when they read a story about playing ice hockey.

In the last couple of weeks, I have settled into my learning routine. I learn Mishnah Brurah Monday, Wednesday and Thursday before Mariv. Tuesday is the big learning night and I learn a potpourri of topics. I go to the Shabbos afternoon Shiur which covers a potpourri of topics and finishes off with halachos of Karbonos. It so much more interesting, when contemplating if you can by flour at the grocery store. There are generaly pracitical lessons that can be applied today. During the week the Rabbi gives a short Dvar Torah in Hebrew plus a short shiur after that. Channah and I learn together in the father and children learning program after Shabbos. I had them rename the program when I started bringing Channah. We have a Rabbi who knows us, cares about us and is a true role model. In Toronto it took years just to find a Rav we were comfortable with.

On Sunday, I start my new job. I will be making more money then I did in Toronto. That is before factoring in the benefits that did not come with my last job. It seems to be a great place to work. I have to be on the company bus at 8:08.

We are starting to get involved in community projects. Rachel runs the local appliances gemach. We are also getting involved in shul programming. Channah has adjusted to school and loves going. She is also taking ballet lessons. Rachel is in the process of getting all of her licensing taken care of. Business is already doing well, she needs all the paperwork in order before she can do major advertising.

In general, my overall mood is happy. That is the way a home should be.

Yay!

Jason starts Sunday :)

The Studio

Ok, I know it may look like nothing special to anyone else, but it is awesome and perfect and organized and has loads of storage and work room. There is also a table that can fit on the left hand side as extra workspace or display space if I need it, but most of the time it is folded on the mirpeset.

This doubles as a 2nd room and has room to inflate 2 air mattresses on legs that are really comfortable.

Tooling Around Tel Aviv

Although I have now been working and building a jewelery business for over 3 years, I have never gone out and bought propper tools. Most of what I had was stuff I could "use to get by"- either it was a cheap version of the tool I needed that was mostly okay for what I needed, or it was 2nd hand , or it was a cobbled together solution that would work "well enough". I never bothered getting good power tools becuase we were aclready talking about aliya and knew that we could not really bring them with us (different current here. Although they would work if used with a converterm they would not maintain a consistant speed.)

So yesterday I took the bus to the train and the train into Tel Aviv. Have I mentioned before that Tel Aviv is grotesquely muggy way more Toronto-like weather-wise (although it is still waaaaay hotter than Toronto ever is!) than Bet Shemesh?

Anyhow, Ahua met me at the train station and together we went ot the store I chose to get my tools and stuff like that. We got there and the guy was wonderful! Not as pushy as the first place I had gone, not as stuffy as the second. Between his English, my Hebrew, and the fact that I had come prepared with pictures and drawings of what I was looking for, we managed to do really well. It was actually great becuase once we worked out what I wanted, he would give me the Hebrew terminology for it and wait so I could write it down next to the picture.

So for the first time ever I got the real deal. This was what we had been waiting for! I got a proper flexshaft rotary tool with minimal vibration. I got a propper jeweler's work bench that sits at the right height. I got real polishing motor (70,000 rpm!!!) and mill. It was so exciting! I may not have any of my hand tools, supplies, or books, but man does my studio look awesome!