Day 13 - Good Times

Family

This afternoon when talking to Michal, we received the the Anna update, which was surprisingly upbeat.  Over the weekend her situation had greatly improved, and she was now up and walking around the ward a few times a day, accompanied by her two daughters.  All the tubes and drips had been removed, except for a single medication that was still being pumped through an IV.  This was way better than what I had expected.  On Wednesday, the day after the operation, she was progressing well, but on Thursday her blood pressure and heart rate had been unstable, and on Friday morning, the last we heard, there was no improvement, despite all the drugs and fluids the doctors had begun to fill her with.

Not so long ago, my mother was in the hospital.
What's with you people?  Can't you just stay healthy?

Whenever in the past years I've been faced with someone I care about being dangerously ill, or even when one of the kids hasn't come home at an unreasonably late hour from somewhere, I tend to do two things.  I pray fervently for their safety, and I tell myself that this might be the end.  It sounds a little morbid, but I think I'd rather not be surprised and shocked if something bad were to actually happen, and on the other hand I get to be very relieved when everything turns out okay.  I did the same thing these past two days, and today I was joyfully relieved to hear that my mother-in-law is back on her feet.

Work

Netbeans - my development environment for this project

I resolved that this week I must finish the app for the aforementioned (in Thursday's post) medical advice website.  I have been having a lot of trouble getting the audio recording to work at all; I was getting only errors, and the documentation for the framework I'm working with was not at all helpful.  Today I figured out the problem, and all of a sudden, from nothing at all, it worked perfectly.  I was very happy.  Maybe I'll finish the whole thing one day.  All that's left is getting the video upload to work properly, then configuring the forum thread comments, and tweaking the admin options, and let's not forget about adding on links to the doctors' tips and the medical calculators, and embedding Youtube videos into the doctors' profiles, and so on.... I'll finish it someday...

Friends

Tonight I had a bachelor buddy over for a beer and some Divrei Torah.  We delved into the myriad implications of the number 40 in Scripture and in the Sages' words.  We discovered that it invariably is used, in both cases, to describe a passage of time that allows for a paradigm shift, whether it's 40 days or 40 years.  After the learning session was over, we stood on the steps for another half hour or so discussing his lack of progress in the search for Miss Right.  There are so many in his situation, successful, smart, good-looking, emotionally balance eligible religious bachelors and bachelorettes, endlessly going on dates and years and years go by before they can settle on a mate.  It's already been recognized as a community-wide crisis, the 'community' here being used in the broader sense, the non-Haredi religious community.  In recent years, special seminars and workshops aiming to let these eternal bachelors and old maids let go of whatever's holding them back from tying the knot.  I don't have any professional knowledge or experience in the field, but I do have a strong intuition about individuals I get to know.  So I gave him a piece of my mind -- not in any forceful way -- and he remarked at the end of the conversation that I really opened something up in him, that he felt something being to turn, to change, in his perception of the whole process.  It always feels right to get external confirmation on things you know deep down to be a certain way.

One student's writing implements, notes, and practice parchment that he never
even bothered to pick up from me after quitting towards the end of the course

Just as he was leaving, another guy showed up, a scribe from Tel Aviv who I've been giving guidance and advice for some time, much moreso recently as he crossed over from his 'native' Sefardic writing style and began to serve the Ashkenazic market as well.  We talked about his writing, his marketing, about pricing, and finally about my own recent withdrawal from the profession.  He urged me to stay active to some extent, since my knowledge and experience can be a great asset to others.  He prodded me to teach, instruct young students in the art of ritual scribery and all the laws connected to it.  The truth, before I stopped writing I was teaching, mostly on an invidividual basis, and I enjoyed it more than any other application of the profession.  The problem was that the students were not as dedicated as the teacher, and basically not a single one every completed the course of acquiring the necessary skills and applying them by writing a scroll.  They all just lost their impetus toward the end of learning the letters, a few even starting the scroll, but never finishing.  I don't know why this happened, but my friend suggested that it was due to the fact that my prices were too low.  "All the students of Yehezkel Yehezkel finish out the course," he put forth, invoking the name of the most well known Sefardic scribe in the country, and probably in the whole world, who takes upwards of $1000 from students who want to learn the trade from his hand.  "They paid so much money, they have to finish," he continued.  I take 500 ILS, about $120-$130 for overhead, and another 100 ILS ($25) per lesson.  On average, the student starts writing on his own after 12-15 lessons.  I have a severe inhibition in regards to charging customers or students more than what I feel is what I deserve.  That was one of the points of failure in my business attempt three years ago, and it still haunts me today in my new profession.  I'm hoping working for someone else will render this deficiency irrelevant.  As for returning to teaching ritual wriitng, I haven't decided yet.  Time will tell.