משא מאסותא

שלשום בצהריים הלכנו כמה חברים מהעבודה לאכול ארוחת צהריים במסעדת ג'קו אשר ברחוב הברזל בתל אביב.
צעדנו לאיטנו ברחוב וחלפנו על פני חזיתו של בית חולים אסותא החדש שבשלבי בנייה מתקדמים. מנוף ענק עומד מעל הבניין ומתנשא לגובה רב.
כאשר התקרבנו לזירה המנוף בדיוק הרים איזו מכולה ענקית מלאה בחומרים. התרוממה המכולה ל-10 מטר גובה. טון וחצי חומר בניה התנדנד כמו מטוטלת של שעון מעל הרחוב לרוחבו. אנשים ומכוניות עשו את דרכם בדיוק מתחת. אנחנו נעצרנו וחיכינו שהיא תחזור להתנדנד מעל אתר הבנייה.
לא מעודד. אולי בעצם הם מנסים לדואג ללקוחות עתידיים. אחרת קשה למלא בניין כזה גדול.

--א

intellectual horsepower

We are having the annual employee evaluation period. I had to fill a form in which I am asked for self-evaluation regarding some questions. One of the brilliant question was: From 1 to 5 indicate your intellectual horsepower.
Hm... I know my car used to have around 80-90 horsepowers, but it wasn't so intellectual.
I am just wondering how am I supposed to measure this attribute of mine. I would say 4.57 maybe, but it must be whole number...
BTW do horses wonder?

14-18/11 - Hong Kong

In short. I came over from Tokyo to Hong Kong. I met by brother on the airport. We spent 2-3 days together. Both of us bought a MacBook. This is a most serious stuff. Mine shipped with Leopard, the latest Mac OS 10.5. Very usable interface, of a highly configurable unix-based system. HW and OS developed by Apple, so no bad integrity-related surprises there. The 13.3'' box is white and has an Intel dual-core 2.2GHz processor in it, and a 2 Gb RAM. So cute.
We walked all around the city. Living in Causeway Bay it's easy. 1 minute from the subway station, 2 minutes from the tramway stop on Hennessey Road. On Thursday we had dinner in the Soho of the city on the Midlevels. Today I returned to the Soho, and ate in a excellent restaurant. It was delicious.
Tomorrow I'm having a 12-hour flight to home. My new MacBook will provide the entertainment. I still must get used to couple of new things and concepts.

13/11 - Tokyo

After yesterday's party which ended deep in today I simply couldn't manage to be at the fish market at 6am. Well, there is at least one more reasons why I must come back to Tokyo. Today was my last full-day in Japan. I put the camera in the backpack, and just walk all around several places in the city. At the end I took a water-bus cruise in the Tokyo Bay. Now I am back at the hostel, and will soon start organizing my backpack.
Tomorrow I am heading to Hong Kong to meet my brother :)

12/11 - Tokyo

Today in the morning hours I finally understood that in order to get around in Tokyo, I can use the JR lines, besides the subway. A ride from Ueno station to Shinjuku took around 25 minutes. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that it is free, thanks to my JR Pass. Shinjuku is a very famous and crowded neighborhood of Tokyo. It has two parts: east and west. The east part is more like a downtown for young people, many restaurants, pubs, clubs and amusement. The western part of Shinjuku is a most modern business district, with lots of skyscrapers. There I entered an Italian restaurant, where I ate buffet-style pizza, pasta, salads, and other tasty stuff. They tried to speak to me Italian, however I disappointed them when I answered in English.
After Shinjuku I went back to Tokyo Station area, where I explored Hybia Park, and surroundings.
I entered some department stores hoping to find some man-wear stuff. However ALL what they had were suits and socks.
Today I enjoyed the sunshine very much. However I payed attention to the fact that I was almost the only person in the city with a short T-shirt.
Tomorrow I'll try to wake up early to go and see the Tsujiki morning fish market. I supposed to be there at 6am. Well... let's hope.

11/11 - Tokyo

Today in the morning hours I took the subway to Ueno, and entered the National Museum of Sciences. This is a huge museum, which has a permanent exhibition, and extras as well. I began my route on the extra exhibition which deals with robotics. It has explained the history of robots from the Japanese traditional mechanical puppets until Honda's Asimo, which is a human like robot. It looks and acts like a human in its way of moving. It goes,runs, serves coffee, etc... I saw an amazing 20 minute show. At the end of the show Asimo demanded a round of applause. He even played football a little bit. The permanent exhibition introduced a couple of topics: space exploration, life on Earth, and huge dinosaur skeletons.
After buying another umbrella the rain finally stopped. I knew it deters. Whom? The rain from falling on me.
Then I made a great walk on Shibuya, which is one of the most central parts of Tokyo. Many young people flow on the street. I saw the statue of a famous dog (long story, exceeds this blog). I found a museum of tobacco and salt. Missing sufficient English explanation I just gawked at the boxes of tobacco, and the detailed explanation in Japanese how they gained salt from the sea water. (There is no salt to mine in Japan).
Late afternoon I arrived at the neighborhood of Roppongi Hills. I was lifted up to the 52nd floor of the Mori Tower. There I found a breath-taking, almost 360 degrees panoramic view of the city. In the middle I saw the Mori Modern Art exhibition. A couple of interesting items I found there. Video games projected on the floor, when both players have drums, and beating the drum navigates the racket.
After the exhibition there was already dark outside, so I saw the city view also at night.
Now I'm back at the hostel, waiting others to return, we go to karaoke today, yeah. That will be really funny.

Asimo:

10/11 - Tokyo

I came back to Tokyo today. I've hardly found the hostel I stay, but finally I found my way with the 15 kg backpack in the pouring rain. Then I made laundry, the dryer took about two hours to partly dry my stuff. Anyway.
During a long walk in Ginza I finally discovered that Tokyo is a really expensive city. (Well, so is Tel-Aviv, but Ginza is considered as an extra)
This is a real youth hostel, people meet here from all over the world. I've met some good people from Britain; one from Scotland (Alain), and two from England (Simon and the other guy's name I don't remember).
We went to eat some food in the evening, then we bought beers, and came back to the hostel to drink and eat. This was tempered by occasional political, religious, and CS related academic discussions. We had fun, I won in pool game (!). The table was not balanced, so the game was more like a gravity-ball. The balls moved by themselves on the table. Miracle, they really have their own life.
Tomorrow we all hope for a better weather.
The forecast says: "clear / showers". WTF? Clean OR showers? Eh? Uh? Which one? We can't have both in the very same time! Anyway. Yep, forecasts...
Bed time now - I think. Especially after 3 beers. :)