Thursday – Day 16
August 5, 2012
Sleeping at the boys’ apartment is an experience. With people on both day, afternoon and night shifts, the house is always moving. As the lucky one left without a bed, for me this means shifting beds at some point during the night to accommodate for those entering the house and those just waking up. Thus last night I did not sleep particularly well and needed an extra hour in the morning.
Following my wake-up I tried explaining the finer point of scheduling attacks on the WEP WiFi encryption scheme to members of the apartment, who suddenly were interested when they realized it had practical implications.
Sarah then rocked up for me to take her to lunch, which to her surprise, was to be held at the top of the circular Azrieli Tower, the tallest building in Tel Aviv.
At the top of the forty-ninth floor, is a restaurant 2C, kosher and more upmarket, with a 360 degree view of the Tel Aviv skyline. Being a lunch reservation, we were able to order from the business set menu which included three courses for the both of us for the price of ~70NIS each (~$20). I ordered bread and homemade dips, followed by the beef carpaccio with a main of Simia morrocan lamb on a bed of grilled vegetables. Sarah on the other hand took the dips, sweet potato soup and perfectly grilled salmon on mashed potato.
By the time they brought out the dessert menu we were completely stuffed and made a hasty exit, partially due to the impending chime of Sarah’s 3PM ambulance shift.
In the late afternoon I met up with Abi Reisner who has been living and working for the last few weeks on a permaculture farm just outside of the town of Modiin. Over an organic, fresh, eco-passionfruit we had a good chat about the gap year program and various other things.
The evening was Ma’ayan’s party, and on the way there I became a little more than slightly lost. Having been instructed by her to take bus number 25, I cleverly alighted onto bus 125. Following her instructions to get off after a certain number of stops, I found myself in what I would describe as an urban desert. A few buildings scattered here and there, large empty fields to my left, and nary a car in sight. After deciding to walk straight for a few minutes I came across a helpful guy who showed me a map and, when I asked him how to get to Haiim Levanon St. let me know that it was a good hours walk away and called me crazy. Nevertheless, I decided to walk there.
An hour later, and sweating from head to toe I made it to Ma’ayan’s place, where her, her boyfriend and a smart guy, Ariel Davis, were chatting in speedy Hebrew. Though my Hebrew was good, the conversation was a little hard to follow for me and I felt particularly awkward as this was also my first time meeting these people. For the next few hours it followed similarly, with new people coming in and me struggling to connect with them, as I had little in common and there was a small language barrier. I ended up conversing mostly with Ma’ayan’s brother, Elior and his girlfriend Lior. However, a bit later in the night things improved and by the end I was very glad I came and had met new people.