Wednesday, March 31, 2004

We didn't bbq, since some of my friends decided to go home already. So now I'm on vacation till mid-April.

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

My friends and I are planning to have a bbq tomorrow. It's the last day before passover vacation and just a few days after one of the friends' birthday, so it's a double celebration. We're doing it in the middle of the day and I'll skip one of my classes for this.

Rachel sent me e-mail. She has a week off next month, when neither me or my sister have a vacation. I don't know whether she wants to come to Israel or meet us in Europe, but either way, it's bad timing so we can't make time for her. It's odd, doesn't she have enough friends in the States to spend her weeks off with?!?

Friday, March 26, 2004

I attended the Israeli Association of Political Science's annual conference today. It was pretty interesting. There was one panel there about whether or not the Israeli democracy is going down the drain. Some said it is, some said it isn't. I think that we're in bad shape, but we haven't reached the point of no return yet. We have to get out of the apathy in our society, which was created in no small part due to the Intifada and the end of the peace process. We need to get rid of some very bad politicians and set standards of accountability. They kept repeating the fact that there's no word in Hebrew for "accountability", the closest terms are responsibility and something that's closer to reporting. Anyway, it's too late at night for me to write more intelligently about the conference, maybe some other time, if I don't forget.

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, leader of the terrorist organization Hamas, is dead! I'm very happy about this. I don't buy into the notion that they'll jack up their attempts to attack Israelis, since they try as hard as they can anyway, and security forces usually manage to stop them.

Yassin was not a spiritual leader. He was a terrorist mastermind, he's more the Osama Bin Laden of Israel than anybody else is. Anyone who mourns his passing should be ashamed of himself for being the follower of such a person.

Monday, March 22, 2004

It's funny. Lately I've been chatting with this girl on the internet, on a site for students (depsite the fact she isn't a student herself), and I have a feeling she's been trying to get me to ask her to meet. I don't want to, since I have a policy of not meeting people I chat with, unless I know them in person anyway. She kept saying stuff like she wishes she had someone to go on vacation with her, and she jokingly asked me if she should be jealous when I mentioned the fact I would be working on a paper with Dana. This amuses me. I'm not desperate enough to meet people from the Internet.

Thursday, March 18, 2004

Upgrade

I'm happy with myself about how I handled a certain situation this week. There's this paper that has to be done by teams of two people each (as opposed to individually or in threes). One guy, Dan, who I know but isn't really a friend of mine, asked me to do it with him and I said yes, though I wasn't certain how reliable he is. So I kept thinking about it, and decided to check with Dana if she found a partner yet and ask if she wants to do the paper with me. She said yes, and I called Dan to say I'm doing it with someone else.

I upgraded. I added one letter to the name of my partner (good thing the alias I picked for Dana when I first wrote about her fits in with this story, because the two really do have similar names in reality), and I trust her much more than I trust Dan. Besides, it's a good way to see her more often. I'm not expecting another upgrade, this time of the relationship, so I won't get disappointed. But if something does happen, I'll be happy.

Sunday, March 14, 2004

Sometimes I'm very amused by the related searches suggested in the google ad above. Usually it really has something to do with what my blog is about (the middle east, for example). But sometimes, it has something that I mentioned once, and no matter how small a part it has in my posts, when it's up in the banner, one could think my blog is primarily about that.

For instance, last time I came in, the link was to some baby product store, and the related searches were "sister" and "congratulations". Someone might think that I keep talking about babies, my sisters and hallmark greeting cards or something. My ego will get a boost if one of these days the banner will have related searches: "sexy bloggers" and "genius Israelis".

On a more solemn note - the terrorist attack in Madrid last Thursday was a horror that I believe will occur again around Europe and any place the radical Islamists see as full of infidels. I miss the days when international organizations bent on destruction were just the figment of scriptwriters' imagination.

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

I was right when I said the semester can only get better. Now it turns out I didn't fail the course that I though I had failed. Turns out I got a 91! Yesterday, I got a message saying my grade is 800, which is the code for someone who didn't take the test, but I thought it is the code for a failing grade. The 800 was about the first test (called in Hebrew Moed A), which indeed I did not take. I attended the "second chance" test (Moed B), and today I discovered that I got a 91 in the test and as a final grade in the course. I'm still worried about the last test I took. I hope I passed it.

My nephew started going to a regular kindergarten this week, two hours a day with one of the people from the special kindergarten staying with him. He's doing much better that we've ever expected. He's almost like the other children, and he's even having a great time. The first day he was there he didn't even want to leave.

Lord of the Rings won 11 Oscars. Will John Kerry win 10 primaries today?