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!

I wanted to write about israel about once a week, but this past weekend was really busy (read on for why) so I didn’t get around to it. Plus my weeks have been pretty uneventful (until now…) so there wasn’t much to write about.

So last week (week 2 of work) was, as mentioned, pretty uneventful. I’ve gotten used to going to work in the morning, spending most of my day there, coming home and working, watching tv, or otherwise passing time at night. In my previous post, I commented that the dormitory isn’t a very social place and that definitely still holds. In fact, now that I’ve stopped trying to be social, it’s become even more so. Thus, I typically come home, make some dinner, and head to the lounge where I do work, watch tv (online), or otherwise waste time on my computer. So usually life is just that.

Last Tuesday, I went to play ultimate with the Holy Landers, one of the few teams in Israel. We “practiced” in a town called Rishon, a bit South of Tel Aviv, so I got a ride from one of the players. Practice was really fun, it was good to get back into playing again. I also met a bunch of people from the states, who have been playing ultimate for years and are quite good.

I’ll get back to what I did on Friday, but on Saturday I participated in a Hat Tournament at the nearby Hayarkon Park. The tournament was very different from the tournaments I’d been to, in that teams were created on the spot (I guess that’s how hat tournaments work) and the games were very relaxed. There were two “divisions,” a youth division and an everyone else division. I was amazed that the youth division had like 25 people and the adult division had around 50. People came from all over Israel, but I definitely did not expect to see such a good turnout. There were 5 teams in my division and consequently I got to play 4 games.

Apart from the ultimate, which was pretty awesome, the tournament was a great chance for me to meet a lot of different people here. I met some of the kids, some other natives, and a lot of people who are originally from the states or other english speaking places like Canada and New Zealand. Since the tournament, I’ve been hanging out with many of these people, and I think they will be my core group of friends during my stay.

Even at school, ultimate was my way to meet people and branch out from my existing group and I felt that this year was a lot more interesting because of ultimate. Now in Israel, ultimate is again a really great social tool. Since I’m not really in a happening place, and since my living environment isn’t that social, I’m relying on ultimate to kick-start my social life and so far it’s working. How ironic is it that I just met someone from the states in my dorm, and he seems pretty cool.

So this week, I was supposed to play ultimate yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and practices got cancelled so I went to throw with a couple of the people that live “close” to me. And it’s definitely good to get out of the dorm and to go around town and stuff. Tomorrow, hopefully I’m going to go into Tel Aviv to hang out with someone else from ultimate. So life is good this week. I’m actually pretty busy and unable to deal with the minor crisis of choosing what I want to study in grad school.

In other news, on Friday I went to Haifa to see the Baha’i Garden. The gardens were amazing and Haifa seems like a really cool town. I only wish I could have spent more time there, but it was Friday, and everything stops/closes early to prepare for Shabbat, including the trains. I took a bunch of pictures but I don’t have any more space in my Flickr account until August. As soon as I get space, I’ll upload them.

Work is also going pretty well. I’m still working on the same project, but basically we are happy with how fast things are running and are now looking at improving “correctness” of the results. By correctness I really mean, massaging our algorithms to spit out solutions that are biologically significant. We are also trying to make the algorithms find similar quality solutions. So this week I’m mostly generating a bunch of statistics and analyzing them so we can figure out how to move forward.

I mentioned this mid-life crisis I’m having and it’s pretty serious. I plan to apply for graduate schools in the fall, but I don’t really know what area I want to focus in. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and researching about it and I think it merits its own post (I’ve noticed myself saying this a lot recently…).

Finally, some food related things: croissants here are really good, I’ve been eating a lot of them. I also went to a really good hummus place with some ultimate players after the hat tournament. It was a small place, near the harbor, and unfortunately I don’t remember the name, but their hummus was excellent. In haifa, I ate at a really good cafe near the entrance to the Baha’i Garden, where I got a mozzarella, pesto sandwich and a salad. The sandwich was one of the better ones of that kind that I’ve had.

In summary, things have really picked up here. I’m really glad that I play ultimate, and that it’s a pretty big thing here too.

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.

My first week here in Israel was tons of fun, I got to travel a lot, eat good food, go to the beach, and pretty much enjoy the country. Last Sunday, I moved into a dormitory in Ramat Aviv and since then life has been quite a bit different. Several things contributed to this change, but the net result is that I’ve been spending a lot of time working and I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s going to happen after I graduate. First, why are things different…

I started working on Monday (which interestingly is the second day in the work week; the work week is Sunday-Thursday, Friday and Saturday are the weekend.) and so I’ve been pretty busy with work and I haven’t had the opportunity to travel like I did in week one. My work is really cool. I’m working on finding pathways in gene networks that seem to be linked to a specific disease (Here’s the paper I’m building on top if you’re interested). It’s interesting because the problem we’re working on reduces to Connected Set Cover and I just learned about the Set Cover problem in my algorithms class a couple of weeks ago (see this article for why I think this is cool). I’m working on optimizing our algorithm so we can run it on larger data sets efficiently and so that other researchers will be willing have the patience to use it. I’ve already made some progress in my first week (this is good because my time here is pretty short!). I think I’ll write more about my project (and Bioinformatics in general) as I learn more and spend more time working here.

Another key change is that I’m not with my family anymore. Last week I had people (my family) to travel with, and this week, although I’ve been meeting tons of people, I haven’t made many solid friends to do things with. It’s totally not what I expected but the dormitory isn’t really a social place at all. Although the building is 8 floors with many rooms per floor and they say that it’s full, I’ve only ever seen a handful of different people in the building. My lab-mates and other students say that no one wants to live in the dorms because they’re boring and old (the old part is definitely true). Many students prefer to live at home or in Tel Aviv, and then commute to school. Most of the people that I have met here are international students, but I’ve yet to meet a student from the US, although I do hear some American English every once in awhile as I walk around on campus.

One interesting thing is that in Israel everyone goes to serve in the army for 2 (girls) or 3 (guys) years. Then they all usually take a year off and travel before coming to college, so by the time they start their undergrad, they are 21 or 22. They become a lot more focused on their studies and it makes sense that they as “adults” they are just at a different place in life than college students in the US. Most of the people I’ve been meeting are older than me, and that grad students I work with are much, much older than me (many of them have kids!).

Still, I’ve met some really friendly people and I think this “lack of people to do stuff with” condition will quickly disappear. But since I don’t have much to do, I have been getting tons of work done.

I guess another key change is that I moved to Ramat Aviv, which although pretty close to the heart of Tel Aviv (where we stayed in week one), is completely different from Tel Aviv. Ramat Aviv is a much more residential area and as such, you can’t just walk around and find things to do. There aren’t many restaurants around, so I bought a cooking pot and have been making pasta (yup just like at Berkeley) for dinners. Most of the people I’ve talked to also do the same thing. Yesterday, I took the bus to Tel Aviv and enjoyed walking around there; I visited a couple of open air markets, hung out in a guitar store, and wandered around this huge mall. Despite going by myself, it was really fun to explore the city and people watch. Ramat Aviv is not like Tel Aviv at all in that sense. Although there is a pretty big mall (which supposedly is very trendy), there isn’t much else to do. Maybe that explains why students prefer not to stay in the dorms.

Also, I don’t have a roommate. It’s made me realize how cool it is to live with people, be it roommates, family, whatever. I think I’d prefer to have a roommate I didn’t particularly like than to live by myself. So this especially has got me thinking about what life will be like after I graduate. Hopefully, I’ll go to grad school and have a roommate there, but what if I don’t? I really don’t think I’d enjoy it, but maybe it’ll be different if you have a lot of people around, in your building and such. Here it feels like there aren’t that many people around at all.

I’ve been thinking a lot more about graduating and stuff but I think it may warrant it’s own post. Between writing the beginning of this post and now, I went to play ultimate with a team here and it was awesome. They really made me feel welcome even though I’m not on the team, and I don’t speak their language. I plan to keep playing with them and hopefully make some good friends there. A lot of the players on the team have spent a couple of years in the states so they speak english well. And a lot of the players are pretty good so I should get some decent ultimate in over the sumer. Unfortunately, I am really out of shape, and it’s quite hot/humid here so, we’ll see if I can hold my own on the field.

So to summarize this week, it’s been really different from the last week. It’s been interesting meeting people from places like South America, Romania, and of course Israel. Work has been really captivating, which is really good because I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time. I’m making progress on a couple of other projects I’m working on. As I said, it’s been different, but it’s still been pretty good.

I’ve been in Israel for a week now and I plan to stay here for 2 more months until the end of July. I just started my work doing bioinformatics research at Tel Aviv University, but since work only started today I had the opportunity to explore the country for a week. Overall, the country is amazing. Geographically it is very diverse, with deserts in the south, beaches all along the west and mountains and plains in the north. And of course there is so much history, from biblical times, to the war for independence just 60 years ago. Almost everywhere you go you will find ancient ruins, religious points of interest and other monuments.

I think it’d be pretty hard to see everything Israel has to offer in a week, because I feel like we (My parents and I) were quite busy, but I still haven’t been to Eilat, Haifa, Nazareth and Be’er Sheva. We did end up going to Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, and Golan heights, with a drive through Galilee. Also, since I stayed in Tel Aviv, I spent quite a bit of time in Tel Aviv and have become pretty familiar with the city. Fortunately, since I’m here for two more months, I’ll get an opportunity to see all the things that I haven’t seen yet. Like this weekend I want to go to Haifa and hang out there, just to see what it’s like.

So here’s the synopsis of my travels thus far. It’s broken down by region.

Tel Aviv
I’ve spent 3 full days in Tel Aviv, two of them mostly taking care of errands and logistics for my stay at the university. The third day (actually the first chronologically), we went to many of the Tel Aviv hot spots, and the old port of Jaffa.

For a one-sentence history of Tel Aviv, Jaffa is an ancient port that became too crowded about 100 years ago (actually exactly 100 years ago) so some families moved a couple of kilometers north and founded the city of Tel Aviv. Now the port of Jaffa isn’t operational, but there are some ancient ruins around there that we visited. It wasn’t super interesting but still worth a visit as it wasn’t very far from where we were staying in old-town Tel Aviv.

Tel Aviv is the cultural center of Tel Aviv, while Jerusalem is the religious center. As such, the main streets are lined with cafe’s and small boutique shops. There are also several open-air markets scattered throughout the city where you can get produce, clothes, household supplies, and anything else you could want. There are several malls scattered throughout the city and they are very similar to our malls. You can always find a great place to eat and the food is amazing. I’ll write about food some other time.

Tel Aviv is also famous for it’s beaches. On Friday, which happened to be a holiday, we headed for the beach to find the beach packed with tourists and locals (I think mostly locals). People were lounging, tanning, swimming in the water, playing volleyball and generally having a good time. It’s not something I’ve seen much recently in the states and it lead me to some thoughts about Israeli lifestyle versus our lifestyle. As I spend more time here, I’ll have enough material to write about lifestyle in a separate post.

Jerusalem
On Tuesday, my parents and I went to Jerusalem with a tour group. We visited the Mount of Olives, the old city, and the Holocaust Museum. I definitely want to go back as there is still a lot more of the city that we didn’t get to see, but our visit was pretty cool.

The Mount of Olives is where Jesus ascended to heaven and it’s where the Messiah will come to resurrect everyone, so it’s quite a holy place. From the summit, you get an amazing view of old town Jerusalem. The old town is again a very holy place. It was founded by King Solomon years before Christ. Inside the old city, we visited the Western Wall, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (where Christ was crucified). We didn’t get to visit the Mosque on the Dome of the Rock (and I’m not sure if I’m even allowed to) but it’s another site that I’d like to visit.

The old city is incredibly busy and active. I think part of it is all of the tourists and worshippers who come there every day but on top of that the streets are lined with stalls and shops selling all sorts of things. A lot of the shops appeared to be targetting tourists, but I did see produce stands and other non-touristy shops. The whole visit to the old city was an awe-inspiring experience; seeing the religious sites and all of the worshippers was simply amazing.

Dead Sea
On Thursday, we took a different tour bus to the dead sea and the ruins of Masada. It was a bit of a drive but well worth it. Masada was a palace built by King Herod (back in the day) that was abandonded and then repopulated by the Zealots (a group of ultra-orthodox Jews). The Zealots were the seiged by the Romans and the Romans eventually took control of Masada after the Zealots honorably killed themselves rather than fight. The whole story of the place is fascinating and the ruins although partially reconstructed, were fun to explore. Masada is located up on a small plateau with an amazing view of the dead sea. We took a cable car up to the top of the plateau, but there is a hike up that seems like it’d be pretty fun to do if it isn’t too hot. Unforunately, we’re talking about the Judean Desert here, so it usually pretty hot.

After visiting Masada, we went to Ein Gedi Spa on the Dead Sea shores. At the spa there’s this place where you put this special mud all over yourself so I did that. Supposedly the mud is supposed to have like regenerative and healing properties, so a lot of elderly people come here for treatments. I thought it was pretty gross. Anyway, I got to float in the sea and that was amazing. The area we were in was really shallow but it’s not like that matters much. I found the whole thing really strange, but also really cool. Of course it all makes sense chemically, but even though I knew what to expect, I was still kind of shocked when I couldn’t sink. Anyway, the water was also really goopy and slippery and if you do go there, do not get it in your eyes; it stings like crazy.

Galilee and Golan
The Sea of Galilee is in the north-east of Israel and Golan Heights are to the East and North of Galilee. My mom knows someone living near Tel Aviv so he offered to show us around the area. Again we ended up doing a lot of driving, but we saw some interesting historic sights and had some amazing views.

We drove over the Israel Valley, which is an agricultural center and then onwards to the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus supposedly walked on water. We didn’t stop near the sea, but naturally it’s a very holy place for Christians. We essentially drove all around it, and had many amazing views of the sea and Tiberias, a coastal town.

Then we drove up to Golan Heights. This area is a huge plateau a couple-hundreds of meters above sea level, but it’s so big that after driving for awhile, you forget that you’re so high up. The area is filled with more recent history as the Golan was recently annexed by Israel from Syria in the war of 1967. There are tons of military relics such a bunkers, tanks, and outposts all over the area. Scarily, there are also several areas marked with “danger land mines” signs.

On our way back, we drove through Galilee, which is to the west of the Sea of Galilee. The area consists of these lines of mountains with valleys in between each range. It’s a very picturesque area but we didn’t stop here so I don’t have much else to say.

So that’s a brief summary of my travels so far. Of course there is tons more to say about my trip and I hope to talk about more soon. I took pictures of everywhere I went and I put some of them up on Flickr. Unfortunately, I ran out of space, but I’m seriously considering buying unlimited space in which case all of my pictures will be up soon. You can see pictures by clicking on “photos” on the right.