this week
The past week has been a combination of highs and lows. I was on 'host' mode for a lot of it - one of my colleagues from the Chinese office, a woman I'd helped recruit and train and befriended while I was there, visited our offices here this week, and I spent a lot of time with her, both in the office and out. I enjoyed it - mostly the parts outside the office - but it was also a lot of time, and whenever I was with her I had to be especially "on" - being social with a foreigner whose English and cultural references aren't totally aligned with mine requires more of an effort - and hanging out extended to the weekend, so I didn't get much time to recharge.
It did give me the opportunity to:
-walk around the streets of Tel Aviv in the middle of the week in DAYTIME for the first time this summer
-take her to see the sunset in cliffs that overlook the ocean; miss the sunset and get lost in the sand dunes in the dark in a FOREST OF SNAILS and survive
-have meals at a few restaurants I've never been to before
-go for a run for the first time in 6 months! I was expecting to be super out of shape, since the last time I ran was in March, but I ended up being able to catch my breath. It was not a long run, but it proved that I could start running again without starting my learning curve again from scratch, which would have been... hard. It's good to know my body's up for starting this again.
-finally go to the beach for the first time this summer, since returning from China
-take a day trip to Jerusalem, in a day that had gorgeous weather and blue skies and a soft breeze and golden lighting. It was a great day for a trip to the Old City, peaceful and soothing like I wasn't expecting.
Other things I did this week included:
Arabic class: I signed up for a beginner's Arabic class! It's very short and super rudimentary, only 17 weeks and just once a week, so if I end up learning anything from it it will be because I do a lot of homework, which... we'll see if I'll manage. But so far I've at least learned some interesting things, and can kind of recognize a few letters (a little), and the teacher is wonderful. I'm taking the class with two friends I've been looking for opportunities to meet more (one of them is someone I took a uni class with once and we've been exchanging facebook likes and nothing else in the seven years since), which is also nice.
Pub quiz. I actually committed to that before I knew how busy this week would end up being, which I ended up regretting; it was nice enough, and I was glad to have at least a few pieces of information I knew that others didn't (Ayn Rand and Robert Pattinson, this time around), but I would have preferred spending the night at home with friends talking about MCU fic.
ADAM LAMBERT AND QUEEN! A few months ago Adam Lambert & Queen announced their tour would be stopping in Israel and I bought a ticket the moment it went on sale. I didn't know who I'd end up going with, just knew I'd go, even if it was alone; the day of the concert I was resigned to just going alone, until I saw on facebook that a fangirl friend who's no longer on LJ and I haven't met in years was tagged on the train on the way to the concert. I immediately texted her and we ended up being together the entire show, so it was an awesome reunion and I was really glad to have gotten the chance to see her.
The concert itself was great. I love Queen, and I love Adam Lambert (which, haha, if you were here in 2009 you PROBABLY KNOW), and they make such a great combination. I remember, reading concert reviews back in the day, that people always said his voice sounded different in person, and it's true - there's something more fierce and rounded and powerful in his voice in live audio; bits that sound more like falsetto in recordings that are very clearly chest voice onstage. And it was so much fun both hearing Queen's songs live, with Brian May and Roger Taylor playing and singing some fantastic solos (including a Brian May solo incorporating Hava Nagila, because it's always nice to suck up to the local crowd), and respectful tributes to Freddie, and great weather out in the part where the concert took place.
It was also awesome seeing how into it the crowd were. Like, there were a lot of people who didn't buy tickets because most people don't know who Adam is and "it's not worth it without Freddie", but the show ended up getting great reviews*, and people raved about how good it was, and the crowd loved it, and as an Adam Lambert hipster ("I knew him when...!") it was really satisfying and pleasing to see him get some local recognition because, you know, yay! It was also amusing that most of the press somehow missed the fact that he was Jewish**, and the crowd went wild whenever he snuck a little "shalom" or "oy vey" into his stage dialogue.
*Israel does not get many international acts performing here, so when the big names do come, you can pretty much bet on the concert reviews being in the front page of the paper the next morning.
**I assume, because when they do figure out an international star is Jewish it's almost guaranteed to be mentioned in every article about them.
The Queen concert definitely goes into the 'good' column.
*
...which basically means I had a pretty good week, except for work, ugh. When I came back from China it was to a different position - one where I have to lead this project but don't work with many people, where I have to be self-motivated in order to get anything done, and where I am not actually... not so much interested in what I'm doing, but more importantly, I'm not entirely sold on its necessity. Which makes it really hard to self-motivate.
I didn't know how working on this project would be, so I kept an open mind and told myself I'd give it a chance. But in the past 2-3 weeks I've really lagged on working on it, keep distracting myself by helping other people on whatever they're doing, which has made me really behind on my own work, and I'm at a place where I'm now dreading having a talk with my boss showing her how little progress I've made. And instead of sitting down and working on it, I just keep procrastinating more, ugh. So: really need to start making some headway on this, and also have a talk with her. Hopefully once I delve in more deeply I'll get more interested in the project - once it's broken down into smaller, more doable tasks instead of this big vague hulking project that I need to help define. If not, I'll have to... do some thinking, I guess.
In any case, work is not the funnest thing right now.
*
General good things include the weather being much cooler than it was in August, the faint beginnings of the fall holidays coming in, yuletide noms, and MCU fic being present and occasionally soul-destroying in my life.
Tonight: now that I have reminded myself running is a thing I can do again, I guess I'll try going out for a run.
comments on Dreamwidth.
It did give me the opportunity to:
-walk around the streets of Tel Aviv in the middle of the week in DAYTIME for the first time this summer
-take her to see the sunset in cliffs that overlook the ocean; miss the sunset and get lost in the sand dunes in the dark in a FOREST OF SNAILS and survive
-have meals at a few restaurants I've never been to before
-go for a run for the first time in 6 months! I was expecting to be super out of shape, since the last time I ran was in March, but I ended up being able to catch my breath. It was not a long run, but it proved that I could start running again without starting my learning curve again from scratch, which would have been... hard. It's good to know my body's up for starting this again.
-finally go to the beach for the first time this summer, since returning from China
-take a day trip to Jerusalem, in a day that had gorgeous weather and blue skies and a soft breeze and golden lighting. It was a great day for a trip to the Old City, peaceful and soothing like I wasn't expecting.
Other things I did this week included:
Arabic class: I signed up for a beginner's Arabic class! It's very short and super rudimentary, only 17 weeks and just once a week, so if I end up learning anything from it it will be because I do a lot of homework, which... we'll see if I'll manage. But so far I've at least learned some interesting things, and can kind of recognize a few letters (a little), and the teacher is wonderful. I'm taking the class with two friends I've been looking for opportunities to meet more (one of them is someone I took a uni class with once and we've been exchanging facebook likes and nothing else in the seven years since), which is also nice.
Pub quiz. I actually committed to that before I knew how busy this week would end up being, which I ended up regretting; it was nice enough, and I was glad to have at least a few pieces of information I knew that others didn't (Ayn Rand and Robert Pattinson, this time around), but I would have preferred spending the night at home with friends talking about MCU fic.
ADAM LAMBERT AND QUEEN! A few months ago Adam Lambert & Queen announced their tour would be stopping in Israel and I bought a ticket the moment it went on sale. I didn't know who I'd end up going with, just knew I'd go, even if it was alone; the day of the concert I was resigned to just going alone, until I saw on facebook that a fangirl friend who's no longer on LJ and I haven't met in years was tagged on the train on the way to the concert. I immediately texted her and we ended up being together the entire show, so it was an awesome reunion and I was really glad to have gotten the chance to see her.
The concert itself was great. I love Queen, and I love Adam Lambert (which, haha, if you were here in 2009 you PROBABLY KNOW), and they make such a great combination. I remember, reading concert reviews back in the day, that people always said his voice sounded different in person, and it's true - there's something more fierce and rounded and powerful in his voice in live audio; bits that sound more like falsetto in recordings that are very clearly chest voice onstage. And it was so much fun both hearing Queen's songs live, with Brian May and Roger Taylor playing and singing some fantastic solos (including a Brian May solo incorporating Hava Nagila, because it's always nice to suck up to the local crowd), and respectful tributes to Freddie, and great weather out in the part where the concert took place.
It was also awesome seeing how into it the crowd were. Like, there were a lot of people who didn't buy tickets because most people don't know who Adam is and "it's not worth it without Freddie", but the show ended up getting great reviews*, and people raved about how good it was, and the crowd loved it, and as an Adam Lambert hipster ("I knew him when...!") it was really satisfying and pleasing to see him get some local recognition because, you know, yay! It was also amusing that most of the press somehow missed the fact that he was Jewish**, and the crowd went wild whenever he snuck a little "shalom" or "oy vey" into his stage dialogue.
*Israel does not get many international acts performing here, so when the big names do come, you can pretty much bet on the concert reviews being in the front page of the paper the next morning.
**I assume, because when they do figure out an international star is Jewish it's almost guaranteed to be mentioned in every article about them.
The Queen concert definitely goes into the 'good' column.
*
...which basically means I had a pretty good week, except for work, ugh. When I came back from China it was to a different position - one where I have to lead this project but don't work with many people, where I have to be self-motivated in order to get anything done, and where I am not actually... not so much interested in what I'm doing, but more importantly, I'm not entirely sold on its necessity. Which makes it really hard to self-motivate.
I didn't know how working on this project would be, so I kept an open mind and told myself I'd give it a chance. But in the past 2-3 weeks I've really lagged on working on it, keep distracting myself by helping other people on whatever they're doing, which has made me really behind on my own work, and I'm at a place where I'm now dreading having a talk with my boss showing her how little progress I've made. And instead of sitting down and working on it, I just keep procrastinating more, ugh. So: really need to start making some headway on this, and also have a talk with her. Hopefully once I delve in more deeply I'll get more interested in the project - once it's broken down into smaller, more doable tasks instead of this big vague hulking project that I need to help define. If not, I'll have to... do some thinking, I guess.
In any case, work is not the funnest thing right now.
*
General good things include the weather being much cooler than it was in August, the faint beginnings of the fall holidays coming in, yuletide noms, and MCU fic being present and occasionally soul-destroying in my life.
Tonight: now that I have reminded myself running is a thing I can do again, I guess I'll try going out for a run.
comments on Dreamwidth.