4 In The House, 1 In The Dorm - Day 4

Day 4

The morning went very smoothly.  I awoke (as usual) from the nudging of a child, this time Chanania, with my alarm still ringing next to me.  The time was 7:25.  By 8:29 I was at the gate of the gan with my two young ones.  

At work a great part of the day was spent dwelling on the shocking discovery, made by the head of the remote sensing team, that nearly two months of collective banging of heads against the wall over what seemed to be an elusive bug in the Gamma software we used to prepare the satellite imagery was in vain, and the bug was in fact in the python wrapper that our own algorithm developer had written.  Since there has been a lot of tension between him and other members of our team over the high-handed way he deals with everyone, there was a lot of poorly hidden smirking going on.  The CTO, needless to say, was not pleased by the whole thing, particularly by the lost time and wasted resources.  Later, I helped the only female member of our team, the web platform developer, with some SQL queries.  In between, I discussed how to curb server costs in light of the impending end of our year in the accelerator program (which involves them giving loads of free credits) on the Amazon Web Services platform.  On the way back from mincha I stopped to chat with a homeless man who has set up camp in an empty lot between my building and the one where the minyan  happens, surprising and impressing my buddy from the knee therapy company on the third floor who also comes to that minyan.  It wasn't a spontaneous act - I've been friendly with this particular homeless man for a couple of months.  His name is Aharon, and he came to Israel from Georgia (in Asia, not the US).  He's divorced, with a grown son in Bat Yam.  I give a few shekels now and then, and like to ask him how he's doing.  He never complains.

At 5:30 I left the office, only to discover that my bike had a flat tire.  I knew that if I took the bus my parents would be charged with the responsibility of putting the kids to bed, a fate I wished to spare them.  So I walked the bus to the nearest gas station, to check if the leak in the tire was small enough to allow me to get home (or at least to the next gas station).  But alas, no dice - the tire shrank within seconds of being inflated.  I lock up the bike, and opened my public transportation app.  I saw little dots on the map all around me, dockless electric scooters waiting to be ridden.  The first scooters of this genre arrived in Tel Aviv in the last year, and I had yet to take a ride on one.  Mostly I was hesitant to mount an electric vehicle with no helmet on, and if I had a helmet with me, that meant I was on my bike.  Now was the perfect opportunity.  I downloaded the Lime scooter app, walked a block to the nearest one, and started my ride.  I took a short detour in order to get used to the thing before riding it on the main ride.  From the start it was a disappointment.  The scooter didn't go as fast as I could on my bike, the brake was hard to use, the tiny wheels seemed to magnify every bump and crack in the road, and in general it wasn't as much fun as it looked.  I felt kind of silly, just standing there, cruising along in traffic, instead of actually making the vehicle move with my own body.  As I neared my neighborhood, half an hour later, it occurred to me there is something about the electric scooter experience that makes it feel like a video game.  Driving the thing requires very little effort, and unlike a car, you're not cut off from the action all around you.  The same web developer I helped with her database queries rides an electric scooter (which she owns, not a rental like mine) to work every day, and is a semi-serious gamer (as well as a mother of four).  It all made sense now.

This is a photo for illustrative purposes only, not an advertisement for Lime scooters

At home, the kids were calmly occupied by my mother.  I fed them a small meal (she reported that they'd had one and a half lunches at her place) and started moving them towards bed.  They get in a Skype call with their mother and siblings who are halfway around the world, and a book, before I hugged them goodnight.  Chanania, who had been at my parent's house, showed up around 8:30 and started telling me endless anecdotes about the play rehearsal they'd put on today in front of the 5th grade (he's in 6th), and about how some little kids in the school had trouble recognizing him when he was even partially in costume.  Finally, after 10 o'clock, he retreated to the roof to sleep, and I sat down to catch up on the blog.  20 minutes in, I hear footsteps outside.  Today was Avigail's last day of school (high schools finish earlier than elementary for some reason), and in the evening she had gymnastics practice.  She ceremoniously presented her report card to me.  I glanced at it, shocked at the predominance of the number 100 in the score column, then realized that my report cards didn't look much different when I was her age.  She did a few flips onto the mattress, just as a matter of habit, then put herself to bed.  I finished yesterday's blog post and kept on typing.