akrish

So we’re going to skip forward quite a bit in my israel trip to today. I promise to go back and write about the rest of my trip, which was arguably the best part. But now, lets jump to today…

I have 7 days left (by now it’s more like 6). I generally have very mixed feelings about leaving Israel. Part of me really likes everything about being here, except for my dormitory. I have a solid group of friends, I have a great, stimulating job, I get to play ultimate, go to the beach, eat amazing food, you name it. This part of me is really sad to leave.

The other part of me is really excited to go home. I haven’t seen my parents for almost 9 weeks and I haven’t seen my brother for even longer (I think I last saw him in January… ridiculous). Of course I also miss a lot of my friends from home and from college and I’m excited to see everyone. My parents would love to hear me admit this, but I actually miss home-made indian food, though I’m sure I’ll still complain about it when I get home.

So last night I took part in a ultimate game between the two teams in Tel Aviv. In my time here, I’ve gotten to know many players from both teams pretty well, and yesterday I had to say goodbye to many of them, because I’m not sure if I’ll be able to play ultimate again before I leave. And it made me pretty sad. I really liked a lot of the people who I played ultimate with, and unless I come back to Israel or they come to the US, it’s very unlikely that we’ll see each other again.

Fortunately, I did get contact information for many of them, and I plan to keep in touch, but it’s definitely not the same as hanging out or playing ultimate together. I do have a reason to come back though.

And as my time here quickly runs out, I’ll have to say more and more goodbyes to some really great people. I really wish I could spend more time with them before we have to part ways…

Ok wow this post and the previous one were probably really depressing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not moping around and wasting my last days, I’m “living it up”: doing as much as I can, eating great food, hanging out with my friends and making sure I take advantage of being here. But I do think about the depressing stuff every once in awhile.

Oh yeah, one more reason I’m excited to go home. I’m going almost directly to Bali for a solid week and a half of vacation!

Everyone speaks hebrew as their primary language here in Israel, and in interacting with people, I’ve noticed a couple of interesting things about languages. Almost everyone CAN speak english, but it isn’t their natural language (it’s kind of like how after only 6 years of studying spanish I CAN speak spanish, but in speaking spanish with spanish people I’ve met here, I’m not very effective at communicating in the language). I don’t have a hard to getting things done here because most people do speak English pretty well, and if they don’t, then there are always people around that can translate. However, in an environment where very few people naturally speak english, it is much harder to connect with people.

Given that I do spend some time in difficult interactions, I’ve been thinking a lot about languages in a variety of lights. Politically, languages can be a uniting factor (like it is in Israel), or conversely in can hinder unification attempts (like in India). Socially, speaking a different language from everyone else does have negative consequences on your relationships and interactions. And lastly, technically, the language that you think or operate in may close your mind to new ideas.

Language as a political tool
When you think about it, Israel is not incredibly different from India. Yeah, India is a much bigger country geographically and population-wise, but both were under British rule until the mid-20th century, both gained their independence around that time, and both are now relatively modern democratic nations (Israel more so and probably India less so). Further, Hinduism and Judaism are two of the oldest religions and both countries have rich ancient histories. Ok, so there are a lot of differences, but one I found interesting is about language, and how it affects the political environment.

There are tons of languages in India and although Hindi is the official language, unification did not come easy. Now, my view is that most kids in India, while knowing Hindi and their native language, are also very good (almost proficient) at English. I haven’t been to India in years so I could easily be wrong, but a lot of Indians come to the US and speak well enough for me to think this. I found some sources that counter this claim, but my friend Vivek, who lived in India for a couple of years recently supports me (but he went to an international school so…). And of course all of my Indian-American friends pretty much “know” just one language, and if they aren’t from an historically Hindi speaking area, it usually isn’t Hindi.

In contrast, in Israel, EVERYTHING is done in Hebrew (Ok that’s not entirely true, a lot of people speak Arabic and you do see street signs in Arabic). Since Israel was founded as a Jewish nation, there weren’t any real problems with making Hebrew the official language (except for the Arabs that were living here). All of the Arabs that I’ve met speak Hebrew fluently now, so here, everyone who calls themselves Israeli is fluent in Hebrew.

In Israel, practically everyone operates in Hebrew, and as a result, there’s more of a national sense of pride here. In India, I feel like this pride is lacking and the diversity in languages seems to correlated. The fact that it is much harder to settle on a national language in India is evidence that India is really diverse, and this diversity leads to less national pride. In Israel, not only does everyone speak Hebrew, but they are the only country where people speak Hebrew. If I were Israeli, hearing someone speak Hebrew would give us an immediate connection, just because we are both Isreali. One of my lab-mates was traveling in Europe with his family and another Israeli group overheard them speaking in Hebrew and the two groups started talking, simply because they shared this language. When he told me the story, he used the words “sense of national pride,” hopefully supporting my point.

Aside: While I’m here, I do the same thing with people speaking English. If I hear some one speaking English with an American accent, it’s an immediate connection.

So it’s pretty obvious that language is an indicator of how diverse a country is, but I never really thought that it could contribute to national pride.

Language as a Social Barrier
So even though I don’t speak Hebrew, I can communicate well enough to get things done here. However, I’ve noticed that I do miss out on a lot of things. As an example, I play Ultimate here and everyone that plays speaks English really well (In fact, many of the players spent considerable time in the US), but they naturally speak in Hebrew. So one time, there was a foul call that lead to an argument (as it is guaranteed to do in Ultimate), but this time the argument took place in Hebrew. I didn’t see what happened during the foul, but I couldn’t even figure it out by listening in. I could only decipher what happened by listening for tone and interpreting body language, from which I only learned a bit about the incident. After the uproar had died down, I asked what happened and was given a good explanation, but in the heat of the moment I could not participate.

Also, I went to a party this weekend and I found it really hard to interact with people. Of course everyone spoke English pretty well, but over the din of the music and in that kind of a setting, most of the people I talked to seemed reluctant to talk to me. Basically, people don’t want to have to think really hard to speak to someone at a party, so conversations are short and I didn’t really meet that many people. The party was still fun, but I definitely felt that I was at a social disadvantage by not speaking Hebrew.

In both of these situations, I felt left out of an experience because I don’t speak the native language here. Of course, if two people don’t speak the same language at all they are unable to connect, but here it’s hard (though not impossible) to connect with people even if they are quite familiar with English. You can have a conversation and build relationships, but it’s hard to share a lot of experiences without a common primary language.

Language as a mental prison
Ok that heading sounds a lot worse that what I’m going to get at. For my first week here, my parents and I sublet an apartment from this guy in Tel Aviv. When we met him, he was really nice and helpful, and in talking to him, I noticed that he used the participle verb form a lot, and in places that I (or other english speakers) would not use it. For example, he said something like: “When I am taking my bike to go somewhere, I usually am not leaving it for long, because bikes get stolen here.” A native English speaker would probably have said: “When I take my bike to go somewhere, I usually do not leave it for long …”, instead of using the participle form.

I noticed him say it a couple times and I’ve noticed a lot of Israeli’s use the participle in unconventional ways since then. A couple of days ago, I asked a friend about it and she said that it’s because in Hebrew they don’t have a participle form, they just have present, past and future. So, when people think in Hebrew but speak in English, it’s hard for them to figure out when to use the vanilla present tense and when to use the participle, resulting in unconventional uses.

So, I started thinking about how language affects how you think, and here’s where the article takes a technical turn. I think in English, so I’m sure my mind is constrained in certain ways that would not exist if I thought in a different language. Obviously, since I don’t think in another language I don’t know how that would be, right? And similarly, people who think in Hebrew are constrained in different ways that I am, like in how they are not sure about participles.

I think this is true for programming languages too. Over the past year, I’ve spent a lot of time programming in Java and Python, and as Java was my first language, it took me awhile to start using some of the more dynamic features in Python. For example, I don’t immediately see uses for dynamically adding a method to a class, and I think that’s largely because I think in a statically typed language. And recently I build a compiler in C++, and when I write in C++, I don’t think to use features like multiple inheritance, because I’m not used to them existing. Basically, the language that you think in tends to restrict how you use other languages, and it may result in you using a paradigm that works well in one language but that is horrible in another.

I’ve been reading a lot about functional programming and have spent a bit (not a lot) of time with Haskell. Everyone says Haskell is “hard” to learn if you’re used to imperative programming languages because you have to change how you think about programming. From this perspective, I completely buy that. It’s hard to get myself to think purely functionally because I’m used to methods having side effects and all of the stuff that isn’t “purely functional.” Since my first programming languages were all imperative, I’m constrained to think in a certain way, and it’s harder for me to think in a different way.

Of course you can get break those constraints, but it takes a lot of hard work in a new environment. With programming languages, I’m sure that if I spend a lot of time with Haskell, I’ll be able to think in the functional way. From observation it seems that the same is true for spoken languages. Of the Israeli’s that I’ve met, the ones that have lived in the states speak english like natives.

And so…
After spending tim here, I’ve begun to understand how important language is from a variety of perspectives. I find it quite interesting and it makes me a lot more excited to finish reading “The Languge Instinct” by Steven Pinker (but I’ve been “reading” it for like a year so we’ll see if that actually happens). I’m starting to think that traveling is really cool because you get to observe these kinds of things only when you dive into a new environment.

What separates the good from the great? Is it talent, sheer work-ethic, or a mixture of both? I know from experience that you can’t achieve greatness just through work-ethic; I used to spend countless hours training so that I’d be a “great” soccer player, and I’d say I never made it past the “good” stage. I’ve had this debate with some of my friends and family, and I’ve always steadfastly held that you need both talent and drive to make it big in anything. I’m not exactly sure what’s really changed my viewpoint from then, but I think now I’d also add that you need scrutinizing attention to detail, along with work-ethic and maybe some talent, to become great in almost every activity that you engage in.

So why attention to detail? Let me proceed with a short anecdote to maybe clarify my point: I practiced my clarinet for the first time in about 5 months today. I decided yesterday that I’m going to audition for the University Wind Ensemble this coming semester so I need to be practicing everyday for that audition. I didn’t sound all that great, but I haven’t forgotten anything and I’m really excited to hear myself getting better over the next couple weeks. On the whole, I still retained a lot of the dexterity and technical ability that I had before, but I noticed a bunch of small things that I was unhappy about and need to work on. However, I don’t remember ever mastering these details in my playing (or even trying to master them for that matter), which made me ask myself: “Why hadn’t I mastered them when I used to play clarinet every day?” When I practice now, these minor things are so glaringly wrong to me that I devote my time exclusively to fixing them, so how come when I used to practice, I didn’t notice or care about the same mistakes I was making. I’m pretty sure the reason was that they’re really hard to fix, and I don’t like to do things that I find to be really hard.

So back then, I learned to shrug off these egregious mistakes and I thought that I was on my way to become a “great” clarinetist. But when I look at it now, I realize that without scrutinizing these flaws in my playing and working to fix them, I have no hope of becoming great. Without paying particular attention to the hard things that I hadn’t already mastered, I was just going through the motions, and even though I would put in the time and practice, it wasn’t really getting me anywhere. I was a “good” clarinet player, and to become “great” I needed to focus on the subtle details that were adversely affecting my sound.

Here’s another situation: I’ve spent a decent amount of time designing websites. With web design, due to the sheer number of sites out there, there’s a huge disparity between the “well-designed” sites and the “amazingly-designed” sites. When I visit a website, I immediately know if it’s amazingly-designed (unfortunately, this disparity makes the “well-designed” sites just suck) and I’m sure most people have the same impression. The thing with web design is that ever single pixel of your page must be scrutinized, or your presentation will be awful. I know that I’ll never be even good at it, because I don’t have the patience to fix really minor issues that literally make or break a web site. In this regard, attention to detail (along with serious work-ethic and passion) is essential to being a good web designer.

I’m not entirely sure if what I’m really talking about should be called attention to detail; maybe it should just be lumped in with work-ethic. But it’s working smart; fixing the things that are hard to notice and even harder to fix. It’s a willingness to take on the most difficult of challenges rather than circumvent them or take the easy way out. I think I notice the details that are hard to fix, but I really don’t enjoy working on these things and usually just completely avoid them. My standard web design thought is, “It looks ok, I can probably just leave it like that,” when I know that there are tons of flaws with my website. Greatness comes from noticing the really minor problems, and then putting in the time to overcome them.

I think college has helped me pretty significantly in my attempts to achieve greatness. First off, I know that I have a much more determined attitude and a lot more drive than I used to do. I can see it in the way that I’m running with a lot more motivation and enthusiasm than I used to. I also see that I have a lot more patience with working on things that I find really hard. I noticed that today when I was practicing clarinet. I definitely wasn’t like this in high school though, and even though I’m not exactly where I want to be yet, I’m pretty happy with how college has helped me out.

I guess maybe all you need for greatness is some talent and a lot of hard work. But work ethic does include attention to detail and serious drive to address all those details that you find. I’m pretty sure everyone has the capacity and ability to work, and I also like to think that everyone is talented at something, so maybe then everyone has the ability to become great.

After a grueling two and a half weeks of non-stop studying, I’m finally done with my final exams and with that, fall 2007 semester seamlessly comes to a close. In retrospect, this semester was probably the best of my college times in almost every respect. The semester really flew by; I still have vivid images of moving in and the first day of classes, but at the same time I feel like a lot of time has gone by. It’s bizarre, I know, but I can see that time has passed when I look at how I have grown, how my friendships have solidified and how much I’ve learned this semester. At the same time, each individual week seems like a blur when I think about it.

This semester was my first semester living off campus (I live in a house with some of my best friends). It was an amazing experience that certainly has helped me grow and become more independent. I have a lot more responsibilities and there are serious consequences for not taking care of them. I have to spend a lot more time thinking about what food I want to eat (if I want to eat well), along with many other financial obligations such as rent, utilities and others. In a lot of these respects, living off campus felt a lot like being an adult, or at least what I think being an adult would feel like, except for the fact that I could go “home” to my parents at will and they would always pamper me and feed me.

Despite the added responsibility, living off campus was a lot more fun than living in the dorms. It’s really amazing to live in an environment where your best friends are always around and it takes absolutely no effort to spend time with them. My friendships with my house-mates and a few others have definitely matured as a direct result of living off campus. The only downside to this is that I neglected a lot of my friends who didn’t live with me. Take my soccer buddies for example: last semester we would hang out 2 or 3 times a week, just playing soccer, or getting dinner, or something and this worked because we all lived near each other. Now many of us have moved off campus and further away, and as a result, we don’t end up hanging out nearly as much as we used to. We did have an intramural soccer team so we played soccer together about once a week, but it wasn’t the same as the late night games that we played last year. So really, living in the house had it’s upsides and it’s downsides, but on the whole it was a really good experience. Next semester there’s a soccer field opening up really close to where me and some of my soccer friends live, so I think we’ll end up hanging out a lot more.

Changing subjects entirely, the amount of academic material that I learned this semester truly boggles me. I took four engineering classes, and I enjoyed all of them in regards to subject matter. I think it may have also helped that my professors were outstanding and they all did a good job of showing their excitement in the material, which naturally got me a lot more interested in it. It also helped that my classes overlapped a bit, so I saw different sides of the same concepts while reinforcing my understanding. For example, I learned about propositional logic from a proof writing side in discrete math, from a relational calculus query writing side in databases, and we also talked about it in signals and systems. There were tons of theoretical subjects that I learned about in discrete math that I saw applications of in databases and signals and systems, which got me a lot more interested in the material. Academically, the semester was the most intellectually stimulating so far.

Carrying my trends from summer, I tried to run and exercise a lot during the semester. I didn’t find it hard to balance school work with exercise but it was harder to motivate myself to go running in comparison to the summer. In the summer I had a nice schedule that I stuck to pretty religiously, but with work varying from day to day it becomes a lot harder to maintain a schedule. Fortunately, I discovered the running club (it’s a group of students who run a lot…) and joined them for runs a couple times a week earlier on in the semester. I noticed significant progress when I tragically injured myself and wasn’t able to exercise for about a month. Now I’m starting to get back into it, and during winter break I’ll probably spend a lot of time running (hopefully).

So it’s finally over. I now have about a month of rest and relaxation and by R&R I really mean 8 hour days working on my startup. But that’s all going to be fun work so I really won’t mind it. Plus I’ll get to spend time with my family and all of my high school friends so I’m really looking forward to going home. And it all starts again in a month when school opens for the spring!

Lots of short random things here.

1. Changed the layout a bit. Please tell me what you think. The header image is some fractal from wikimedia commons (I don’t think I’m supposed to use it without giving rights so… Thank you Jonathan Zander.) I personally think it’s a decent layout but will probably be updating it after finals are over.

2. Firebug is really awesome. If you ever do web design it’s almost a must have. It made changing my layout a lot easier.

3.  You can base a company off of almost anything. Mod My Life has a really strange idea that’s pretty entertaining but I don’t really see how they’re going to make money. The video clip on Tech Crunch was pretty amusing. Also made me feel a lot more comfortable about our company idea, which we think has a much more solid business plan.

4. Finals really suck. It’s not that I really mind taking exams, it’s just that productivity goes way down. I had 2 finals today (only 2 more to go!) and in between the two, I didn’t really spend time studying for the 2nd one but rather, I puttered around on the internet. I didn’t really want to study (obviously), but I also wasn’t ready to focus my energy on anything else and so I ended up killing a couple of hours. Not that that’s entirely a bad thing, it was good to have some free time to do nothing.

5. My mom used to say to me and my friends, “As if playing video games isn’t bad enough, you all sit around and watch each other play video games.” yeah… definitely did that for several hours today.

6. I really want to play soccer soon. It’s been awhile.

7.  It’s funny. This week, the house that I live in has become harmlessly divided. Half of us have been sleeping “normal” hours (i.e. going to bed between 12-2am and waking up between 8am-noon) while the other half have been sleeping at really odd hours (i.e. going to bed between 8am and noon and waking up whenever they so desire). I woke up early today (7am) to go to a final and found that 5 people were still awake. This has kinda gotten me thinking about human nature a bit and how different people are. Like I have to get a decent amount of sleep to be productive (or even function at all) the next day and even still I do the best work in the morning. On the other hand, some of my friends work the best between 2 and 6 in the morning. This was true even earlier in the semester, but it’s seemed to be exaggerated by finals week. I’m not really going anywhere with this, I just think it’s funny and interesting.

8. Random question: Is it bad to eat raw pasta?