In a New York Minute

It's the end of the year, and looking back, I'm sure many of us are thinking how frivolously we used our time.  Of course, there were things that were well-worth the time--the day of my wedding for instance.  Yet, what of all those times I zoomed about the internet looking for the perfect veil?  

I turned in a paper today, for instance, on which I spent a good couple of months--time well worth it.  What about all the time I checked my email, the news, the weather, Facebook, and more when I should have been working on my paper--time used less wisely.

Today, on the day so many are looking back and thinking of time and what they did with it, my friend reminded me how time really is of the essence.  "A minute is so much better than 15 seconds," she said to me on the phone.  On the surface, nothing exceptional.  Sure, a minute is better than 15 seconds in many cases--more time to sleep, more time to get ready in the morning.  Nadav often says to me when we're getting ready to leave the house, "I'll be ready in two minutes."  Two minutes is no time, right?

Taking into account, though, the circumstances under which she made this comment made me realized just how much time a minute can be: it's enough time to move your family from the living room to the protected room--the one with concrete, re-inforced walls.  It's enough time to run down the stairs, if need be, to your apartment building's shelter.  It's enough time to pick up your child and run for dear life, for his life.

She lives in Beer Sheva and works in Sderot.  A few days ago, we could have said, "She lives in a place where the rockets can't reach and works in a place where for the last 7 years, over 8,000 Kassam rockets have fallen."  Now, we must say, "She now lives in a place where the rockets can reach her and her family and several hundred thousand other people."  There are warning sirens, to be sure.  In Sderot, they give you 15 seconds, if you are lucky and the siren sounds.  In Beer Sheva, you have a minute.   "A minute is so much better than 15 seconds."

I think of the millions of people who will watch the ball drop in Times Square this evening and of the countdown as the ball moves down towards ringing in the new year.  Wouldn't it be amazing if everyone counting down suddenly understood that some people in the world have even less time than that to try to save themselves and their families?

   

Launch of an Amazing New Technology Website

For all you engineers out there, looking for an efficient tool, C-to-Verilog.com offers conversion from C to Verilog. It creates hardware circuits in the blink of an eye (or the click of a mouse!) and assists you in accelerating your development cycle. My husband opened it as a hobby--if you have any engineering or programmer friends, please send them the link.

It’s why I’ll never be a successful comedian . . .

I realized recently that it’s been absolutely ages since I’ve written. No, I haven’t experienced any major traumas. In fact, I’ve experienced many wonderful things this year. I married my wonderful Nadav. My family came to Israel, most of them for the first time, for the wedding. But I think here is where the difficulty lies. There were many, MANY things to write about the wedding and probably even more about wedding planning. But I care too much. You see, due to my natural ability to take most unpleasant occurrences and, well, make fun of them, I would have had a lot of material during the months it took to plan the wedding. Titles that could have been included in my repertoire include:

“The perks of finding a wedding hall located directly across the street from a strip club” (yes, I know, a bit wordy, but these are rough drafts)

“The perks of finding a wedding hall located directly across the street from an auto mechanic” (oh, I’m sorry, am I lacking creativity?)

“To sparkle or not to sparkle: Fireworks lining the wedding canopy, Israeli makeup artists, and a low-key bride’s fight for survival”


As you may gather from these possible titles, planning the wedding was, in short, something of a circus—and I am glad that I have finally settled into “boring” married life.

In any case, it took a significant amount of restraint NOT to say everything I wish I could have about the conversations I was forced to endure with everyone in the Israeli wedding industry. When one makeup artist attempted to convince me why I absolutely MUST get a pedicure, she quite simply stated, “It’s for your husband.” All this time I thought he appreciated my personality and brains, it was really all for my feet!!

Of course, nobody would have cared had I simply bashed all prima donna hairstylists who really believe that anybody remember's the bride's hairstyle a week after the wedding. It was closer to home that I learned to keep my mouth shut (at least in most cases) and listen and, importantly, understand more.

NOBODY cares about the centerpieces. And NOBODY cares about veil. And truly, NOBODY really cares even about the food. Yet, people feel the need to express their opinions and in some cases even argue over these things because . . . well, that’s exactly it. Nobody really knows. People are excited. Things are changing, and fast.

In my case, I was marrying an oldest son. In my case, again, I was marrying someone from a side of the planet I didn’t know about until I was 18. Which of course means that for both families, mine and his, these were monumental changes.

What our wedding day represented was the coming together of two different families, two different nationalities, two different cultures and languages and foods . . . and the list goes on.

It wasn’t easy for Nadav’s mother to give up her first baby. It wasn’t easy for my mother to realize that, yes, I’m here, I’m staying, and I’m going to be far away from her—the same situation she created with her own mother.

All of these emotions—joy and love, as well as uncertainty and worry—were all mixed up in the whole process called “wedding.”

For these reasons, I couldn’t write and make fun of the strength of the emotions everyone was feeling. It would have cheapened it, made it somehow less special for me to view it with such cynical eyes.

And so, I forge ahead, armed with writing material concerning the Israeli job search. I’m one month in, a bit more worn for the wear, but ready—at the very least—to conquer it through humor, patience (if only), and as many cups of Chai tea as it takes.