first couple of days in Israel

Right now I'm in Herzliya or Herzlya or Herzlyya, Israel. There may be other spellings for it! There seems to be no consistent way to translate Hebrew into English, so it can get really confusing here. Apparently, the problem is that there are no written vowels in Hebrew? Not sure. In a couple of days I'm going to Haifa, which is also spelled Jafa. I am attending the ICSEM 2007 conference. At the conference, they are running a tour to Acre, which is also Acco, or Akko. yikes! No wonder I had so much trouble finding maps of Israel on the web.

The things that have surprised me the most are: Hebrew is everywhere. Some people speak English, but only as a second language. Most signs are in Hebrew only. It's like walking around China. When you walking into buildings, you are always checked by a security guard. The weather is pretty temperate here. 65 deg. F and dry. Pretty nice. Even thought I saw the forecast, I always imagined it to be extremely hot here.

More later...

Hypocrisy

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.

I have nothing to say in response to this NY Times article.

Weekend Project

Awesome! Thanks to centime for sending this to me.

The Infinte Cat Project

One of the silliest things on the internet that I've seen for a while....

Credit goes to Matti for finding this.

Beware of the Galleria

Something weird happened last night. M and I were at the Cambridgeside Galleria Mall running a few errands after work. We decided to get some drinks and have dinner at either the California Pizza Kitchen or the Cheesecake Factory. (we just weren't in the Taco Bell/Sbarro/Food Court mood last night). After some debating, we decided to sit at the bar of the Cheesecake factory.

After about 10 minutes, all kinds of police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks showed up outside the window. We just mostly ignored it. Eventually they left. no big deal...

After going home, we flipped on the news. It turns out that three guys were stabbed outside the Galleria last night. They ran into the mall for help. Two of them hid in the California Pizza Kitchen, bleeding all over the place, and one ran up to Borders. We had no idea. Scary. We were almost in the middle of it.