Tales from the Holy Land: Day 52 - These days keep getting better

Today began with coffee at Madaa, as usual, and a quick stop by my lab to grab samples before heading to the TEM to meet Talmon. I decided I needed more data on functionalized tubes, and we tried two samples that before hadn't yielded much data, just in case we had missed something. Turns out we had! Talmon found great areas of both samples and I have tons more data now. Not that I need it or anything, but it's always great to start the day with a really good TEM session. The best part, though, was towards the end, when Talmon goes, "I havea crazy idea..." Turns out that even though I'll be leaving soon and it doesn't make that much sense, he thinks I should tag along with Patro for the TEM course he's giving, just for fun! I know it seems really dorky, but it will be fun, and I walked back to Perlman with a huge grin on my face because of this news. It starts next week. Yay!

Anyways, we ended slightly earlier than 1 pm, so I was able to grab some money and meet almost the entire population of Weizmann summer students for lunch at San Martin. Naming them all would be ridiculous, so suffice it to say it was a good meal.

Back at Perlman, I did a lot of thinking in the afternoon about my project as a whole: have the basic questions changed? Have I found anything out? What can I make of this data? I started making a powerpoint and writing down some of my thoughts, and hopefully I will catch Professor Wagner in the next few days to discuss everything with him.

I worked pretty late, then headed home to change before grabbing a train to Tel Aviv. I got off at the Hashalom stop, which connects to the Azrieli Center, a complex of three buildings which also houses a relatively large mall. I shoppped for a couple of hours, then met Itamar near the food court. We had sushi for dinner, and I gave Itamar a few lessons on how to use chopsticks. With practice, he'll be a pro soon. When we were done eating, we went out to this courtyard on the third floor of the mall to check out the view of the buildings. It's a really cool-looking complex; see photos below for more detail. Finally we walked a bit down the street and caught a bus to take us to the beach area, where our destination was the bi-weekly jam session at a bar called Mike's Place.

We found some seats with an iffy view of the stage, which was at this point empty. Pretty soon, though, a drummer, guitarist, bass player, and keyboard player got up and played a few songs. The lead guitarist is apparently the coordinator of these jam sessions, because after the group played three songs or so, he asked who else in the audience played what instruments, and assempled a completely new "band" on stage to play a few more songs. This process repeated itself, shuffling through the musicians present. Exciting guests included a very hippie-looking soprano sax player, a tenor sax player, and a violinist/fiddler; I saw a trumpet player on deck but he didn't get on stage while we were there. Towards the middle some seats were vacated; we took them and found ourselves with a much better view of stage.

All of the ensembles were great! Some were louder than others, and Itamar and I preferred the slightly softer ones, because then we could hear the wind instruments. Two guys played the harmoica, and were both excellent. Itamar and I sipped Goldstar and just listened.

Slightly after midnight, we decided to wait for the current set to be over, then head out. We had to walk a bit to get back to the stop for the sherut I was planning on taking, so we took off our shoes and walked along the edge of the ocean, past at least 4 groups of kids smoking hookah and playing guitar (or recorder). I guess it's the latest trend. As we approached, my sherut back to the central bus station was filling up, so I said goodbye to Itamar and got on. Once there, the Rehovot sherut was empty when I got on. This disheartened me, but within 5 minutes, seven more people boarded. I was still marveling in the magical ability of sheruts to fill up when you need them when I took a brief and accidental nap, waking up a half hour later to find we hadn't left yet. So much for that theory.

Soon after I woke up, though, we were on the road. Back at Clore I found Stephen and Jonathan's room was the party spot; Daniela and I sat and listened to Jonathan and Stephen attempt to prove to Joel the existence of electrons from basic science and first principles. A few other discussion topics came up before we all about simultaneously decided to call it a night.

Today you get more pictures!

The Azrieli Center...

(from the distance)