Day 22 - Climbing makes me so happy!

Sunday wasn't the most exciting day at work. I ate lunch with Tanmay, Clay, Tamara, Lior, and Jordan at Jubilee, and got to hear other stories about weekends in Jerusalem. In the afternoon, I made 5 samples for the TEM, including single-walled, double-walled, and multi-walled nanotubes, and left them to dry for the night. Once I was finished, I sat with Noa and chatted as she did tensile tests on her epoxy/nanotube composite samples.

As we talked about various things and examined her samples, Nitzan called me to let me know we'd be climbing tonight. I asked if there would be a space for a friend in the car, and he said no. So about 10 minutes later he called back to tell me there was a space, and I told him I'd call a friend and call him back to let him know. About 30 seconds later, before I had even had a chance to decide who to call, Nitzan called me again to inform me that the spare spot was only in one direction. Of course. I laughed and told him I didn't have any friends who wanted to come climb and then stay there FOREVER, and he said we'd be back, it wasn't a big deal, they'd only wait about a week. So before hanging up I asked if my spot in the car was both ways. "Nope, only 1/4 of the way," he replied. "We'll drop you off halfway there." Har har.

After a few more of Noa's samples, I called it a day and headed home. I caught up on some blogging and changed, then went to wait for Nitzan. Yaron and Dave joined me sitting just inside the gate, but of course Nitzan was waiting with the car just ouside the gate. After a few minutes he texted me: "?" Very pithy. So we found him and got in.

Yaron drove there with Yael, who is relatively new to climbing. We met her once we all arrived there, and I gave her a refresher course on belaying. We all rotated and belayed each other. I gave her some tips as she climbed, and she belayed me on a route I had never done before which was challenging but really interesting and which I think was very technical. Nitzan belayed me on my first two lead climbs ever (!), which were very exciting because I wasn't clipped in to the top rope as a backup. The first one I did was a relatively easy climb that I had done before, and it was totally fine except for a momentary panic halfway through when I forgot about the leading and wondered for one brief, shining moment where the heck my rope was. Luckily I suppressed this emotion and had a good climb. It felt pretty good!

After a few more climbs and belaying, Nitzan had me try a slightly harder climb on lead. It was new as well, so I had never tried it. I think I led well, but I really liked the route. I got to yell "take" for the first time ever, which felt peculiarly natural. I took a brief rest at that point, and when I reached the top and clipped in, Nitzan had me take a fall so I knew what it felt like on lead. It was...frightening, and he told me after I had reached the bottom that it was a bit longer a fall than he had intended. Oh wonderful :)

Throughout the evening I also watched Yaron finish this problem which had been torturing him for a while. He almost finished it twice before his third, successful attempt. It is a ridiculous overhang, and the clips are oddly placed and make foot placement hard, but he did it! Nitzan also finished some crazy routes, then had me try to lead one last climb. I made it halfway up and took a spectacular and unplanned fall. It didn't scare me that much, but the next, short one did, mostly because it was caused by a foothold rotating in the wall and had me near the adjacent wall. After that I came down.

We bouldered a bit, which was nicer than usual at this place because they had rearranged and replaced a bunch of the holds, so there were some clean and nice ones. The place was closing, though, so we had to leave. I gave back my harness and noticed the ice cream chest was gone. The dude behind the counter said I could go to the back and choose a popsicle, which is what I wanted, because I had exact change. I chose one that was pink-and-white diagonally striped, which turned out to be bubble gum flavored. As we walked toward the car, I was informed that the plastic stick was filled with bubble gum! This was an exciting discovery, and in the car on the way home I did my best to blow an epic bubble but mostly just got gum all over my face.


We dropped off Yaron and our other passenger, then Nitzan, Dave and I decided to go get some late dinner near the "science park." The place we ended up, called "Tuk Tuk," served sushi. I got sweet potato/vegetable sushi and a special containing cucumber, shrimp tempura, Swedish cheese and salmon. It was delicious. Nitzan shared a story about the worst thing he's ever consumed, which I won't recount because it still scares me. But it was an entertaining meal.


When I returned, I noticed that Jonathan and Stephen's light was on, so I knocked and entered. Both roommates were awake and relieved to see me alive. They hadn't seen me in a while, and said that when they checked my blog and saw that it was three days out of date, they were almost seriously worried. Jonathan had even written on my wall! He said if I hadn't responded in a week, he would have actually texted me. What a good friend. Anyways we chatted a bit and then I went to bed.


Here are some more pictures from the weekend, mostly from the shook in the Old City:

Day 19 - Soccer Extravaganza

Thursday is like Friday in Israel, because the work week is Sunday to Thursday. I haven't really gotten used to this yet, but it does make the weekend a pleasant surprise.

So Thursday was a relatively chill day. Got into work around 9, but since I had run out of cereal and milk and forgotten to replenish, I decided to stop by a cafeteria on my way in to work to grab a snack. I ended up with a delicious, warmed croissant and "iced coffee." And no, those are not unnecessary quotation marks. It was iced in that it was cold, and it did taste like coffee, but it was more like a frappuchino, and I am of course now officially addicted.

I got in to work, sat down with my delicious treats, and continued re-analyzing the TEM images. This method takes a lot longer, so I was at this pretty much all morning. I then met Tanmay for lunch in Weisgal Square. There was no one else with him, so we waited for 5 minutes to see if anyone else would show. This was lucky, because soon Clay and Lior arrived with food! Lior's mother had cooked him chicken with wild rice, cabbage, and cherry tomatoes. The cabbage was purple and had made the rice purple as well, so the dish was a gorgeous combination of golden brown, purple and bright red. There was enough to feed the four of us but not quite enough utensils or plates, so some of us used pot lids and we ate in shifts on some benches underneath a tree in the square. The cats loitered nearby hoping for scraps but didn't enjoy what we gave them. We had a frightening moment when a dog came by and caused one of the cats to noisily leap into a tree, but other than that it was a peaceful lunch. We then grabbed ice cream bars before heading back to our respective buildings.

When I got back, I did one or two more images before making some coffee and heading down to the second floor, where we were scheduled to have a talk by Shimon Vega, the Weizmann resident NMR expert. This was the first in a series of lectures scheduled for the summer program students, and while Vega was very engaging, the level of the talk was a bit low. He did an hour about NMR in general, then allowed whoever wanted to leave to go before diving into an overview of the theory behind MRIs. I stayed, along with some other random folks and everyone in the neuroscience field.

Afterwards, Jonathan, Tamara and I wandered around Perlman a bit, going to the top floor, then the bottom, where we set the building's Foucault's Pendulum in motion. We were basically wasting time until the Perlman cookie time, 4:00 pm according to my informant. As our wandering got less interesting and we gravitated closer to the second floor lounge, we noticed others doing the same, and eventually entered the lounge around 4 to see the table laid out with yummy goodies. However, the organizer saw us preparing to move in for the kill, and informed us we'd have to wait until 4:30. We therefore sat and waited, and sure enough, the room filled up just after that time. It was a good way to spend the afternoon, and I am no longer as jealous of the math department's daily 3:30 coffee and cookies (which isn't to say I won't continue to crash it occasionally).

I worked until 6-ish, and when I got home discovered that Ari, Dan and Tanmay were ready to go play soccer. I changed quickly and left just behind them. There was no frisbee game running concurrently, and someone had already brought a ball. We set up the goals and began some 3-on-3, but soon we had enough for 5-on-6 and then 6-on-6. I had decided to wear my Puma "retro running-inspired shoes" instead of my real running shoes, which had not only given me a blister but made my ball handling terrible, and I think the improvement was immense. We played until dark again, then Jonathan (a different one) offered us a ride in his friend's car to the front gate. Ari, Tanmay, another girl who had played named Olivia, and I crammed into the back seat of this rather small vehicle. Luckily we dropped Olivia off rather soon, so we could sit more comfortably.

We got out at the front gate, thanked them for the ride, and went to our favorite convenience store for some refreshment. We each purchased a 1.5-liter bottle of Prigat juice (I got strawberry banana, Ari got grape, and Tanmay got mango), then we walked a block down and ordered a large pizza to split. We had to wait a bit once it came out, because it was too hot to eat at first, but once it cooled down we decimated it rather quickly. Then we walked half a block in the direction of campus to the Hertzl bar and sat down to watch the Germany-Portugal game. After about 15 minutes they made us order something to stay, so we each got a beer. For those who didn't watch, it was a fun game, and (/but?) Germany won 3-2.

By the time we got back to the dorms it was not too late, but I'd been tired enough lately that I went to bed immediately.

Since you got a link today and this post is very retroactive, you don't get pictures. But I will catch up, and illustrate my adventures, so don't get too worried.

Day 18 - Start at the very beginning

Today marks the second consecutive day I've arrived at work after 9 am. It is glorious thing. I think from now on, I will only mention notable things about work, as I find myself using the same words every day.

Ok, now that that's settled, something notable happened! At 11 am Dikla came in and told us a talk was about to begin and there weren't enough people there. XiaoMeng and I were the only ones sitting in the office, but she had a meeting elsewhere, so I decided to go alone. The speaker was someone from Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, and he talked about a whole bunch of stuff, from solid state fuel cells to sensors, all in the context of microelectronics. To be quite honest, I don't even need the "science" tags, because it was way over my head, too. But even if it had been at a manageabl level, it still would have been relatively unexciting.

For lunch I met everyone in the square again, but this time the group had expanded to include someone from Clay's lab, Lior, and Tamara. We went to San Martin, the meat cafeteria where you can load as much on your plate as you can fit (which results in some interesting food sculptures). We ran into Claudia and Maria Magdalena in line, and Lisa and Dan (physics) joined our table after a while.

< .science >

After lunch, at 2 pm XiaoMeng and I headed over to Wolfson (the microscopy building) to add another coating to the TEM grids. This time it was a carbon layer, which conducts and therefore prevents the electrons from becoming trapped in the sample and causing charging. The apparatus consisted of a bell jar, a carbon filament holder, and a stage. XiaoMeng vented the cahmber, placed the grids (still on paper from the polymer coating) on the stage and strategically and scientifically weighted down the paper edges with old metal nuts. She then replaced the carbon filament from a roll of filament, tightened it, and resealed the chamber. After venting, she ran a current through the filament, instantly vaporizing the center of it. The chamber immediately dispersed the carbon evenly throughout it, effectively depositing a thin carbon coating over the polymer on the grids.

As with anything that sounds awesome (like vaporization), this was rather anticlimactic. In one second it was done, then she vented the chamber once more. As I told her, I always get excited for this stuff and then am sort of sad when it's not an epic, visible reaction. Once in p-chem lab, we did bomb calorimetry. Literally we're exploding a bomb of our sample, multiple times, so I expected movement, or a visible quiver or muffled boom, but all we got was a little red LED light to tell us it was over. Needless to say, I was incredibly disappointed.

< / science >

As I walked back to the lab, I pondered the most recent plot I had constructed of my data. Something was really bugging me about a very clear trend that was present, so I resolved to check exactly what I had done to create it. After looking at it for a minute, I reached the unhappy conclusion that the trend was completely a product of my automated measurement method. And then, being as anal as I am, I decided that the only way to show this for sure would be to recreate all of the data by hand and see if the trend remained. So basically, I started over again, this time taking manual measurements.

After about 3 hours I realized what time it was and left work. I had hypothetical plans to go bouldering with Anna, a girl from New York City who I had met at the top-roping gym on Sunday. I called her and we arranged to meet at the Tel Aviv train station nearest to the gym. In the kitchen back at the dorm, I invited Ari and Jonathan to accompany me. After pondering it for a bit, they both decided to come! We caught the 7:38 train from Rehovot, arriving at the Hahagana station in Tel Aviv at 8:00. Anna called me to tell me she was running late and would meet us there, so we started walking without her.

It was an interesting part of town, so I was glad I had recruited others to accompany me on the walk. About 15 minutes later we found it, with the help of my hand-drawn map (which of course I had printed, in color, at work and then intelligently left on my desk). When we paid to get in, there was no change, so the man behind the counter recorded his debts to us and we went in. The guys both changed into shorts, I put on my shoes, then I helped them try to find matching shoes to borrow from the large bin of them. Then I gave them a brief introduction to bouldering and we began.

They both knocked off the V0s relatively easily, but the V1s were more challenging. As we climbed I gave them a few pointers and occasionally demonstrated some moves. Both of them got very pumped pretty quickly, so I advised that they slow down. Soon, Anna called me to ask if she was nearby. I went outside and it turned out she was walking towards me from the other side of the street, so she successfully found us. She was dressed for a party at synagogue, though, so she changed and began to climb with us. She and I climb at almost exactly the same level, so it was really great to tackle the problems together. She told me the best advice she had gotten out of a climbing course once: try to be as quiet as possible with your feet. I really like thinking about it that way!

We climbed literally until the place closed, then walked back to the train station and waited a bit for the train to Rehovot (Anna is staying there, too). On the platform we met an Israeli girl our age who had recently returned from a year's stay in New Jersey! We sat with her and chatted all the way to Rehovot. She went to learn English, is the oldest of 13 children, and was recently accepted to an architecture program in Israel. When we got to Rehovot we exchanged phone numbers, so maybe we'll see her again!

As we walked back towards Weizmann, Anna redirected us to her friend Shaun's house. We met and drank some water, then headed out to the pub on Hertzel for a late dinner. Anna is obsessed with edamame, so we had some as an apetizer. After the meal we all parted ways, and just before Ari, Jonathan and I entered Clore, something icky fell from the sky onto my shoulder. Its identity remains unknown but Jonathan was kind enough to remove it.

Ari went to bed, but I showed Jonathan and Stephen (who was still awake!) The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks (see my feeds, on the sidebar of this page), which is really amusing and which you should all check out, before going to bed myself.

Since you've all been suffering, enjoy a picture of the varied reactions of Jonathan and Anna to a french-fry machine on the train platform in Tel Aviv...