Somehow I find myself transfixed again and again before the news.
Not without a good reason, considering that during those last few days in Gaza some intense fighting has been going on. On my end of the deal it's mostly a frightening concept of being on the outside, watching (and approving) the action while fearing for the life of loved ones and friends. Or being drafted into reserves and being on the inside, being worried for by friends and loved ones. Currently, much to my luck, there's no need for me - but others around me have been drafted into reserves already, prime among them is my father.
Somehow, I feel lucky to have him around as a reliable source of information about this round of the ongoing fight - his input had allowed me to sleep well those last few nights with relatively little bother from old nightmares.

But the drums of war are playing at the distance, when we all know we are a single catastrophe from an all out war with who knows how many casualties. One missed missile, one "lucky" mortar bomb directed at some house with not enough armor... one batch of bloody bodies and we'll all spiral down into real fighting. This surgical war against Hamas is admirable for it's accuracy and impressive kill ratio - the professionalism and capability to reduce collateral damage is truly a badge of honor to the air force. The hard part comes where you realize that the air-force can't quite cut it all the way. If lasting impression is to be made, it would be done only via ground assault. Which, in my opinion is the worst case scenario - both for the Israeli side and the Palestinian side.

It's raining outside, as it should be. A good, steady rain that got me from the moment I left the house about an hour ago and is still darkening the world in a steel-gray downpour. It's unusually peaceful, for some reason - the drive was quiet and calm, none of them crazy Israeli drivers that I got used to in the last few months... just me, the road and thinking about odd stuff. (Considering plots for my Exalted Campaign, for that matter (
But the good stuff happened when I arrived at the office, blissfully vacant from the loud construction workers that usually litter the place with noisy machinery. Last night one of my office-mates, pointed out she left some Ginger and Cinnamon out in the open (meaning in the high shelf at the kitchen).
Now besides a sunny desktop and a cheerful rain-tap on the window, there be a great mug of steamy, wintery brew on me table. Just the smell makes me smile.
Also, my friend at the Gym started an experiment with me – designed to raise some attributes I have yet to develop during the Arnis martial arts classes – mainly lower back power and increased stamina. So two trainings a week, each at least an hour and a half of no slacking. I hope to see results during sparring days in the next few months and adjust the program considering the results.
Cheers!

Fun things to do: Enjoy a talk with my alcohol-trader clients, when they come visit. Always a good way to get an ear on the ground for the newest import products.

That out of the way. I have a new roleplaying campaign. Rolling, as they say.

Exalted: A system/setting of roleplaying game portraying a mythic day and age in which a curious blend of chinese, japanese and western myths are all co-mingled into a half-crazed world where sometimes your prayers are more real and tangible then you are.
In this system/setting i'm running a weekend-based games in something that would curiously remind most people of a blend between the wild-west and the "Princess Mononoke" Anime. The whole idea of the game i'm running is "Development" - meaning everything reacts to the players, even their artifacts and personal attachments wane and wax with their actions and interactions. Everything has a spirit and everything reacts to the mighty chosen of the heavens. A challenging task, to play that reactive world, but it's so much fun that I wouldn't trade it for any other role.

Last weekend, after deciding to eat out instead of cooking up something tasty back home - we actually played over coffee (semi-molten chocolate for me) in a pleasing Haifa morning. Big, toothy smile, anyone?

The internet died over the last two days. More accurately, the server on which we've been working at Simply-Smart died with no feasible explanation. As I'm not known as a common computer-killer and gremlin magnet, I have to assume someone else is to blame. That spare time in which I could not reach clients and actually download the necessary pictures gave me extra time to work on my Origami birds that seem to flock in larger and larger amounts upon my window. My cause? At least one bird a day, preferably two. I'm averaging three cups of coffee and two birds a day.
Nine hours make a day's work. Booya.

Nothing too smart or contemplative about that.
But after enough mornings of waking up at six, seeing the sun rise at my back (driving from east to west, what can I say) and enjoying a good mug of steaming coffee in an empty office.

I love mornings.

That said, yesterday was a bad day. Too much work, too many meetings too little brains on each and every one of them. Finished working around six twenty. Counting almost eleven hours of work, with little end results and mostly creating more work.
Four good things saved the day from being a disastere.
1) Having someone good to talk to, before and after work.
2) It was payday. Clearing clean 7k.
3) Having some betzalel graduate marvel at my photoshop skillz.
4) The cake at the tail end of Arnis Class saved my suger level from dangerously terminal levels. All hail cake. The Cake is No Lie.

Good day people.

Well, music's going to be A problem. Namely, since I work with customers. Most of which has no appreciation to the music I use as "creative music" - namely various power-metal bands whom general theme is "war, conflict, epic stuff, boom, grunge, stabbity, chop-chop, slash-di-slash" and so on and so forth. I guess my martial training is showing up as well.

On the other hand, the office is all my own, one of the few advantages of being the sole designer here, meaning no one can sneer off or even ask me to lower the volume beyond closing the door to the spacious place behind me.

Buccaneers Inn (BattleLore) playing in the background, followed by the wonderful "Orange Crush" by R.E.M. Such a pleasant conflict of styles and ideas.

Yesterday had a definite "smile" moment, where the rain tapped lightly on the windows, blushing slightly with the sun poking behind sparse clouds. Good music on the background with my newly acquired speakers and a good glass mug of my beloved black coffee. No costumers, no pressure, just me, music and something fun to do.

Sun kissed days,
Navot.

I've had a suggestion to play in a V:TM LARP running in jerusalem as a character that's supposedly, be acting like my father. Meaning, an ex-officer with wide experience in all sorts of warfare. Indeed unique, but I think i'll pass.

Guess I like to keep home where I love it - home. Untouched by all the tumults of life i've gone through while growing up and all the rocky-road jumping i'm still going through.

Also made a new disc for driving music.
I do so love to drive with R.E.M. in the background.

And it's quite good. Relaxing here in the morning is very peaceful and quiet. If you count out the construction going on in the same floor - but I got used to it. Morning coffee is ready and most of the red-line work is done. Now it's just a trouble-shooting day, nothing hard or uneasy.

Sometimes it's fun to know i'm the one running the show here (sole desighner in a web-application company? every one goes through me) - even it's a show of big head instead of being humble.

Like I said to my dad, whom agreed - "One must know how to price himself right, too low and they step on you, too high and no-one can afford you".
Currently pricing me quite low as a smart move considering the crash that the entire market is going into. The entire WWW.COM industry is going into shock, while we here at the company try to wave through the motions just like the little smart fish we are.

Cheers.

Well, car-ness is achieved.
Now I just need to get it, hopefully this afternoon. Being paid for by a combination of my dad and my own funding, it's essencialy my car. The funny part is that i'm likely to keep driving the Hybrid to work, since it's more cost effective.

Buying a car for the weekends.
Odd.

But it's mine and when i'll move out, it'll move out with me. Which is a good thing - it's not a company car, though the company would help me with the fuel. All in all, good raise.
It's too damn early and i'm too damned used to it. Something went seriously haywire in my head to accept waking up at six AM for something normal.

At least I get to practice martial arts as much as I want. Which is a lot.

Cheers.

Or more accurately, taking a step out of training.
Running through my head for quite a while now and finally things had come down to this: No more Ninja. With the added load of Office Work, keeping up with five martial arts training sessions every week became too much for me to take. Something had to go. I've been toying with each portion, but in the end of it, the Ninjutsu class is already dying and living (barely) only on few select people who actually try and make it to every class. Too few, too late. Being aware that if I leave, it mostly means that teacher would have to find a new (hopefully better) group of students made that decision even harder. But all good things come to some closure and at least this one was an easy one.

So, no more Ninja classes for me. Going full fledged Arnis from now on.
Hard as it may sound.

So Wednesdays. More spacifacly, Wednesday Arnis Training.
Also known as DMD days. A cute little short for "Die, Motherfucker, Die" Trainings due to the fact it's mostly fitness training, and not some regular training. It's hard on me specifically and hard anyhow. But the camel's back broke the moment we started jumping. Captain Caveman, that airborne strike became a reality in those last three weeks. And so, in defiance of gravity.
iBounce.
And it's so fun I usually can't wipe that stupid grin of my face before class is over.

I've forgotten just how fun it is to listen to HammerFall while working on Exalted games.

*hums battle-music*

Cheers!

Got here by 7:10.
The parking lot ain't even open yet.
Not to mention anything else.

Went out of the house and got into the car by six thirty two, in an attempt to measure timing and distance with and without traffic. Results ? it took about twenty minutes less to get here. Comparing it to half an hour later (Getting out of the house around seven) it's a rather large saving time.
But.
It's WAY too early to be here.
So I guess i'll take my extra twenty minutes, and be here by eight, and not by seven.

Three cheers for sleeping and traffic evading.
Me? I choose the former.

I went to sleep last night, well, around nine thirty. Early for me but that added sleep-time actually helped. Feeling better this morning, much better. Also navigated my way successfully through the morning traffic. Left home at five to seven, arrived five to eight. One hour drive, including traffic.

And I got my good coffee with me.

Good Morning Navot, thank you.

That aside, the diet is working out rather well, already lost all the inflated belly I earned in the Philippines and well on my way to lowering my fat-ratio against muscle. Just a few more months and i'll be at my target weight of 90~ kilos, feeling the change is right here and now.

Martial arts wise, we started actually working Espada-y-Daga, well, Baston-y-Daga, meaning a stick and a short knife. It's tricky, but it's fun. Also went to a new strike I like to call "Captain Caveman" for being a "flying" "Caveman" strike...
On the ninjustu end of the bargain we moved to using longs staff and short staff, also smoothing out the basics. I need to re-work my footwork. Again.

Or at least trying to.
Well, the merger with the second company didn't go as smoothly as anyone thought it would. Three weeks after we started sharing the new office - the other guys broke off in a rather ugly way. Can't say i'm hurt personally, but the entire thing sits heavy in the air. Not fun to work today.

Getting here at seven fifty five, the owners of Company B, where packing computers (not my own or any that us on company A use, though) and saying hi. Being first to the office from my company, I had little idea what was going on. Only when the programmer and the rest of the gang showed up, the entire thing cleared. As to be expacted, money blew the entire thing away.

It was a whole mess, or so it seems - with Company B wanting the owners of Company A to cover past debts as part of the merger. The owner decided to put down the condition that this is money that they (the owners of Company B) would return back to the merged company under a loan agreement. This didn't sit well with them.

So it's empty here today, no bantering around or passing about ideas.

On the other hand, it's a huge oppertunity - I get to recruit my own team and make my own desicions as the sole graphics man in the company. someone's going to test the new crew and that's going to be me.

Not fun at the moment but at least we're hitting the ground running.

Well, my routine for the morning has changed a bit.
Waking up by six, getting to the job by eight-thirty (eight, if the traffic favors) and working for somewhere between eight to nine hours a day. Two more hours of training of some sort every day (one hour for sundays, no training on saturdays) and somewhere in the middle some reading and talking with friends.
A lot of coffee is consumed during the process.

But it's good, i'm getting a leg up front in both Ninjutsu and Arnis (each at it's own pace) and learning a lot about dealing with costumers and dealing with fellow workers. I guess it's a parctice all on it's own.

In the last few days I was presented with the choice between leaving the house in favor of living closer to the job or getting a new car for the family. Not quite a big problem for me to decide that a car might be the more useful idea. My dad, being the "Think-fast Act-fast" sort of guy he is, wants to make sure we buy the car before he leaves for south america again (even it's just another week's wait) - so we need to get the car this friday.

Someone said short-cicles?

More like a day job, eight to five kind of thing. It's essentially the same old web design... just in an office. In Petah Tikva.

Not quite what I had in mind when I first joined into this place yet it seems to grow on you. Well, on me anyway. Now just need to get my first coffee of the morning and get busy, a few more sites to knock out today... and maybe a continue to the 3-D study group we started yesterday? Gotte get that program on my personal computer back home.

Someone switched the good black coffee with some weaker brand.
*rusmfusmes*

Quick recap and morning post:
Been to Manila for over a week now, also been to Singapore along with the local Lignhtning Arnis practitioners. Now i'm back in Manila, missing all the friends I left back home but still enjoying every day and hour I spend here. The exchange rate is a fun thing to use.
Got me a whole batch of new toys and hopefully will get me a whole batch of new books in the few coming days.

Also, the LARP is going strong, despite local politics and annoying interferance... It seems that good, Israeli, stomping did the job to get everyone back in line. The game would hold this friday, my very first LARP. Also the very first LARP in the Philippines.
Smells like a good challange.

At any rate, that was the short recap, for all of you that I can't reach via phone or mail.

With love,
Navot.

Where does time fly?
Well, not matter. The next post would be posted from the Philippines. Taking flight through Amsterdam and then over the globe to the humid deathtrap. Jon (My Arnis Instructor), his lady - Neta and yours truly are going on a road trip to see some of the masters that stayed there. Also sidewinding to Singapore for a brief detour. Should be loads of fun.
So, the show begins tonight at 2 AM. That is the 2 of October.
10-14 of October would be spent in Singapore.
23 of October I'm back in action in Israel.
All considered, 20 days of heat, humidity and sticks flung in various trajectories to my head. Fun for the whole family *grin*

Also, I'm arranging what seems to be the very first LARP ever to be played in the Philippines, dubbed "Pirates of the Philippines" by myself and would encompass a single night at a pub, dressed as a pirate and drinking copious amounts of beer.
What could possibly go wrong?

Cheers y'all!