Recommending a book: "In Defense Of Food"

Dear family and friends,

I'm currently sitting onboard a flight from Tel-Aviv to Los-Angeles, en-route to the bay area (Mountain View, CA), where Google's main office is located. At almost 15 hours, it's the longest lag I've ever flew. It's also the first trans-atlantic flight for me, with no kids, for more than a decade! And being lousy at sleeping in planes, I do have some time to write...

This is my first visit to the US since we returned to Israel. It'll be my first entrance into the land of unlimited opportunities, as a US citizen. It dawned on me when I had to present my US passport in the airport. Weird. Quite naturally, and as I wrote in my previous posting, I feel less American today than I did a year ago.Those of you who have been following this blog in the past few years know that I have strong sentiments for the US. While I do have quite some criticism, I value many important aspects of the society, culture and way of life.

Talking about the American way of life, I'd like to warmly recommend a book I recently read - "In Defense Of Food" (http://www.michaelpollan.com/indefense.php). I found this short book (about 200 pages; if you're really lazy, you can check the 1 hour video of the author, Michael Pollan, talking about the book: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-t-7lTw6mA), strikingly enlightening and eye-opening. A follow-up on Pollan's ecology-focused "The Omnivore Dilemma" (which I didn't read), this book discusses nutrition, the "Western Diet" and the dangers to one's health stemming from the plethora of processed foods in the US, and from the American way of eating in general.
The book is full of fascinating information. I learned a lot from reading it, and I believe many of you may similarly benefit. Want an example? I grew up believing that saturated fats were bad, and should be avoided as much as possible. The book convincingly explains and demonstrates why this is believed today to be a fallacy. Few books can make you change the way you do things in your daily life, let alone the way you're eating. This one is such a rare book. I would recommend it to any curious person, and for those of you who live in the US, I think it's a must-read.
For those who live in Israel, I have a copy I'll be happy to lend.

Take care,
Giora

Life is great!

Dear family and friends,
I didn’t forget about this blog. It’s just that at any point in the last 10 months, either time or muse were missing...

Long story short, life is great!

We found Haifa to be a fantastic city for us, and we’re enjoying it a lot – the beaches, the climate and the social environment. In general, living in Israel appears to have been a very good decision for us, with the proximity to our families, as well as the culture and way of life. There are still, of course, disadvantages when compared to our life in the US, but we’ve been pretty good at offsetting or ignoring them. For example, we rarely read the newspaper; we never watch the news on TV. I’m not sure we’re being the most responsible citizens by doing this, but it buys us a lot of peace of mind.

The girls are simply amazing, and it is a pleasure watching them grow up:

Maayan, just a tad older than 2.5 years, thinks she’s a 5 year old, and acts accordingly. She’s pretty much constantly happy. It’s extremely hard to resist her charm, and her ability to hug and express affection is unusual and very enjoyable for me. A third daughter, she’s as assertive as it takes for her to get all the attention she wants, at times to the dismay of her older sisters. But, she adores Hadas and Noga and very often, for extended periods of time, they peacefully play together.

Hadas just started school (first grade. Unlike the US, in Israel kindergarten is for playing, not for studying). Fortunately, the elementary school in our neighborhood is excellent, and was one of the main reasons we chose to rent a place in the area. Naturally, Hadas, and us, were very excited about it. She’s one of those kids that love school, and love to study (well, not very surprising considering her parents...).
She’s mature, very curious and magnificently lively. Having a conversation with her often reveals a surprisingly deep understanding of her surroundings and insights about life in general. Her schedule is fairly busy, with after-school program, gymnastics, art class and many playdates, accommodating the flood of new friends she’s instantly acquired.
I sometimes watch her walking to school (hand-in-hand with Noga), and find it hard to believe she grew up so quickly.

Noga is already over 9, which sounds astonishing to me. My daughter is going to be a teenager soon?! But luckily her behavior is still not (yet) that of a teenager, and we’re enjoying a smart, happy and wonderful child. She’s a classic book worm, reading (mostly in English) every moment she can spare. And there’s many such moments, since she’s extremely busy – gymnastics, very frequent playdates, girl-scouts (“Zofim”) and soon a gifted-program school-substitute once a week, for a full day. That program seems terrific for Noga, and she’s can’t wait for it to start.

Other than that, as a family, we have many activities on weekends. Pretty much every weekend we get together with friends and/or family. We go hiking and camping fairly often and enjoy the beach as frequently as we can. We also make sure to have some time for the parents alone. These lines, for example, are written in Tel-Aviv where Anat and I are having a lovely weekend (museum, dinner, movie, sleeping with no interruptions). Mayyan finally got to spend a day with her grandparents without her sisters, and her sisters got to watch a performance and spend the Sukkoth holiday with the other set of grandparents. In a few minutes we’ll get going to Binyamina for a big family gathering.
Did I mention proximity to our families was an advantage?!

So, as I said, life is great. No complaints.

Kisses and hugs to everybody, and those outside of Israel - please do write!
Giora

A brief professional update

Dear family and friends,
As I fail to find the time for elaborated reports about the important things in life, I thought I'd at least share what I'm doing at work :-).

From this week:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/faster-is-better-on-google-suggest.html

A couple months ago:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/local-flavor-for-google-suggest.html

Local media:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3696293,00.html

And in Hebrew:

















Cheers,
Giora

Settled down in Haifa, Israel

Dear family and friends,

We have been silent for a long time, but certainly not due to a lack of things to write about. Simply put, we've been extremely busy. But we're still here, alive and kicking :-) It'd be fair to say that we're now fully settled in our new home in Haifa, Israel.

The girls are all happy by now, which wasn't the case at some stages. Noga, as I wrote before, had a rough start. Eventually, we transferred her to a different class in her school, which improved her situation drastically. She returned to being a happy girl, with a rich social life and a smile on her face. Sometimes, you learn to appreciate something only when you lose it (if temporarily), and in Noga's case, her vivacity is such a big part of her personality. Still, my gut feel is that she's not as happy as before, but I believe she will fully bounce back eventually.
Hadas was almost instantly integrated into her new environment, and experienced very few difficulties if any. She has become a very popular kid in her kindergarten, and she explicitly says that she likes it here a lot.
Maayan proved unique again, being part of those 3% of kids that get a vaccination against chickenpox but catch the disease nonetheless. And boy did she get it - in a very violent form! She was very miserable for a few weeks, and so were we - although common and seemingly harmless in the long run, this is a TERRIBLE disease. But luckily the ordeal is now behind us, and she's back to amazing us daily by how advanced she is, how charming, how verbal, how assertive (not to say aggressive) and most importantly how happy she is. We often refer to her as being a "Goosh Osher" (something like "bundle of happiness").

Our family life has settled into a welcomed routine. I typically leave home early in the morning (around 7am) leaving the morning drop-offs to Anat. I leave work very early (before 4pm), to pick up the girls and spend the evening with them, playdates and other after-school activities included. Anat normally joins us much later, around dinner time. We're fortunate in being able to conduce our daily lives with very little driving - Noga walks to school daily, Maayan's daycare is a short walking distance and Hadas' kindergarten is literally across the street from our home. Anat has an easy short bus ride to the university and even my commute, in the aforementioned times, typically takes no longer than 15-20 minutes.
We live on the Mountain top (Mt. Carmel), and Google Haifa is down by the beach, so I also get the bonus of magnificent view to the Mediterranean Sea while driving downhill. With the typically blue skies of Israel, this is a fine way to start a day! In general, I'm very happy with my job, mostly with the fact that it allows me immense flexibility in my work hours, so I can afford spending a lot of time with the girls. Make no mistake, this is not at all common in the Israeli high-tech industry, and I consider myself very fortunate for this. I also feel more confident professionally than I did in Google Pittsburgh. In terms of leisure activities, I play basketball once or twice a week, and also started attending Pilates classes once a week. Oh, and last but no least, I visit the open-air market ("Shuk") every Friday morning, marveling at the unbelievable variety of fruits and vegetables Israel has to offer.

Anat had a bumpy start professionally. It's natural for new faculty to get overwhelmed, and I think that in her case several factors made it even worse, such as the insane teaching load and the need to integrate into an environment which is drastically different from those she was part of in the past. I believe she has passed the peak of her frustration, and is getting on track to maintain and develop her new lines of research. But, nonetheless, her career is greatly demanding, and leaves her constanly terribly busy, at least in the first few years.

But, as part of getting on track, we definitely remember to live, go out and have a good time. Last night, for example, we sent the girls to my parents for a sleepover (didn't get that in Pittsburgh...), and went out to a fantastic show by Chava Alberstein, one of our favorite singers. It was fabulous!!!
So, the short version is that the girls are truly amazing, life is fantastic, and although busy and often fairly tired, we're enjoying it a lot!

Kisses to all of you, and please do write!

Maayan, Hadas, Noga, Anat & Giora

Why Israel is our home

Dear friends and family,

My last posting led to a bunch of responses, and I wanted to thank all of you for the support and encouragement. Clearly, the difficulties we experience are not unusual for our situation.
I'm going to start working next week, and combined with intense social activities over the Jewish holidays month, I suspect my schedule will be fairly hectic. So I gotta hurry and blog beforehand, and what's better than the promised highlighting of the positive aspects of landing here?!

The biggest advantage, without a doubt, is being close to our families. Indeed, in the past 3 weeks, there was hardly a day where we didn't meet a family member. It's hard to exaggerate the importance of these get-togethers for us, and especially for the girls. They're really thriving, playing with their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
We also have many friends from our past in Israel, and our presence here allows us to see them more, if not very frequently. And in general, relationships between people here are much warmer and spontaneous. It's not rare for our daughters to arrange a playdate on the spot with friends, when they're picked up from their daycare. This is a sharp contrast to our reality in the US, where playdates need to be agreed on days in advance.

There are additional advantages, such as the much better food (at least to our taste), especially the amazing produce, or the wonderful Mediterranean Sea. But in my opinion, there is one central benefit for us here - we really, completely, utterly, entirely understand how things work around here. We are well familiar with the culture. Unlike in the US, we're versed in the nuances.

Let me try and give an example to better explain that last point. In an attempt to demonstrate it also to my US readers (at least the non-hockey fans), I'll examine a piece of Canadian folklore.
There is that cute song which I used to hear a lot on the radio - "I Make The Dough, You Get The Glory" by Kathleen Edwards, a canadian singer (see clip and lyrics). Let's examine the following portion of the lyrics:

You're cool and cred like Fogerty, I'm Elvis Presley in the 70's
You're Chateau neuf, I'm Yellow Label
You're the buffet I'm just the table
I'm a Ford Tempo you're a Maserati
You're the Great One, I'm Marty McSorley
You're the Concorde, I'm economy
I make the dough but you get the glory

You surely get the idea of the lyrics, but what about the finer details?! When I first encountered the song, I thought - who the hack is Marty McSorley? And what does she mean by "The Great One"??? Turns out the latter is a legendary hockey player, while the former is, how to say, a less legendary hockey player. If you're Canadian, I guess, these go without saying.
I hope it conveys my point.

Have a great weekend, and a happy and sweet (Hebrew) new year to everybody!
Giora

Landing in Haifa, Israel

So we’re back in Israel, landed two weeks ago, and we’re mostly settled into our wonderful new apartment in Haifa. Phew, there is so much I want to tell, but so little time to write...

Some past feedback hinted that my writing tends to be too optimistic. Thus, in this post I chose to emphasize our difficulties. Starting one’s life in a new place is never easy, let alone when kids are involved. Indeed, after a too-good-to-be-true beginning for all three girls, we started running into various bumps.
With Maayan, we had more than a week of crying in the mornings, breaking my heart each and every time. Happily, a couple days ago she got to the point where she has started staying at her daycare without shedding a tear.
Hadas became, almost immediately, an integral part of her kindergarten class. However, she is still encountering many difficulties in adjusting to the new environment, and her behavior, mainly at home, certainly reflects them.
Noga, a new kid among a group of kids who’ve been together for two years, is having the hardest time. She feels fairly lonely at school, a situation she never had to face in such intensity. Astonishingly she’s seemingly pretty happy most of the time, but once she lets out her feelings, it’s evident that she’s not. I can’t tell you how sad (and tearful) it makes me to see her struggling. How helpless I feel as a parent, knowing that I have little ability to make her social reality a more pleasant one. I trust her social skills, and I’m certain that she’ll find her place sooner rather than later, but the way there is tough, both for her and for me.

The above are, without a doubt, the main difficulties, but they aren’t the only ones. Although it’s been more than two weeks, I still feel I’m in a culture shock, returning to the Middle East from the US. It’s not only how people drive around here – that’s way too obvious (although still frighteningly unbelievable!). You see things differently after living elsewhere for a long while, and I am unable to turn a blind eye on the many deficiencies around me. Let me give some examples:

The security guard in the custom offices immediately recognized us as returning residents, saying “you’re STILL smiling...”. Jokes aside, we quickly realized that people on the street rarely smile.
The urban areas are amazingly ugly. No milder way to put it. It’s in everything – the patchy buildings, the black oily stains on roads and pavements, the ad-hoc signs, the total lack of urban planning.
The notorious Israeli tendency to disregard the law has deep influence on one’s daily quality of life. The pavement, theoretically for pedestrians, is frequently occupied by parking cars (just try walking with a baby stroller...). Dog poop is on every corner.

Surprisingly enough, the fact that we’re still waiting for our belongings to arrive, thanks to the port workers’ strike, became the smallest obstacle. Indeed, we’re sleeping on mattresses on the floor, and wearing mostly our traveling cloths, but that turned out to be minor.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of good things about living here, both objectively and specifically for us (being close to our families, to name one). I’d say that all in all we’re doing OK, despite the above.

I hope to write more and highlight those brighter aspects too, as soon as I get the chance.

Hugs and kisses,

Giora

We're still alive...

... and having a wonderful time in the San Francisco bay area, meeting with friends and family and enjoying the perfect weather! And tomorrow we will start the long journey back to Israel. Our trip is practically over.

Since we last posted, we spent 8 days camping in Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia national parks. Yosemite was magnificent, though very crowded and touristic. Coming after Yosemite, Kings Canyon seemed like a quiet backwater. Nature is less majestic there, but it was still beautiful, with high cliffs and cool rushing rivers. We found it very relaxing.

We hope to update our latest batch of pictures soon, and will continue updating on the process of settling down in Israel.

Love,
Anat