Trinidad Bay

I am a very goal driven and obsessive person. I tend to feel alive when I have something to look forward to or work towards. Without some kind of ‘next big thing’ in my life, I begin to feel empty. For almost 2 weeks I spent just about every spare moment planning (or just being excited about) the Northern California coastal trip. Following this trip I had basked in its afterglow, but soon thereafter, began to feel a longing for something new.

I started planning out a Southern California coastal trip to see the remaining three lighthouses on my list, but due to the limitations of visiting times, realized a trip to cover those would not be so easy. Besides, the trip seemed too similar in nature to the recent one, and I came to think that it was a copycat operation.

Ultimately, this all got me to think about my obsessive personality and my goal seeking nature. I think the sense of obsession never disappears, it simply takes different forms over time. When I was younger, I was completely obsessed with hockey (there’s a reason I have so many hockey pictures on my site). At some point, this obsession transformed to reading philosophy, developing Software, then lacrosse, and now the coast and lighthouses consume my time.

My obsession for the coast has not subsided, nor have past obsessions died out. I still play hockey, enjoy reading philosophy, play lacrosse and like writing Software. However, this latest trip has left me wanting more than just a hobby- of visiting lighthouses and touring the coast- to obsess over.

I have a strong, increasingly growing desire (which is becoming an intense goal) to move out to the coast- in the near future- and away from the seemingly straight-line, restricted path of standard life. I often wonder if my obsession is enough to bring about this goal or will this forever just remain a hobby. If these hobbies and obsessions merely remain just those, will I continuously develop more? And assuming I do pursue this coastal desire, how long will I feel a sense of accomplishment?

A few weeks ago, Tobia and I went to Mendocino. While there, we stopped by a small shop in the village to look around. Immediately, I noticed a good quality hacky sack near the cashier. $3.50 later, I purchased that hacky sack.

I could not have guessed the amount of pleasure this simple thing would bring me. For the record, I hadn’t hacky sack’d since my senior year of high school, more than 10 years ago. Back then, me and my buddies- DR and Beast used to hacky sack every day at brunch religiously… good times.

Now, I find myself with no one to hacky sack with, but I’m truly obsessed with it. I’ll take breaks in the mid morning at work to step outside and hacky sack for 5 minutes, I’ll definitely sneak some time in during lunch, and will spend at least half an hour every evening in the garage. My current record (as of last night) is 45 kicks in a row.

This past weekend, we went to SF with a bunch of friends for the day and I brought my hacky sack with me. I must have hacky sack’d for about 8 hours (on and off) throughout the day, hopefully not driving everyone in the group crazy.

A friend from work and I were chatting today about how upset we were that all these websites were irrelevantly popping up yes on 8 advertisements. I told him that there was no way my website could possibly have anything related to politics because my google ads are tailored towards subjects on my website – namely things like lighthouses, hockey, Mendocino, lacrosse and square foot gardening.

So sure was I in fact, that I had him come over and I proceeded to show him how my site was clear of these intolerant yes on 8 ads. Now, I’m not into writing politically driven posts, and I like to keep my website focused on my interests and hobbies, but I had to comment and take a stand on this. A HUGE ad comes up on the right side of my website saying “vote yes on 8″. Needless to say, I flipped out and very shortly thereafter got rid of my google ads (and they are never going to return!).

I am FIRMLY OPPOSED to prop 8. It’s mere existence bothers me to no end. Not only did google violate the trust I had in that they weren’t going to stray with their ads on my site, at the very least they shouldn’t take advantage of my site to represent values (not sure I can even call it that) that are first not my own, and second, WRONG.

I find companies taking the moral-neutral ground to be disgusting. The whole concept of turning a blind eye to what people use ad spaces for is a cheap out for making money.

All too often, I find that engineers (I am a software engineer) as well as high tech companies using the whole technology is an end in and of itself argument to avoid having to deal with real issues involving morality. Here, I’d like to borrow from one of my favorite books of all time “Atlas Shrugged”. “Innovators” in all professional fields often strike me as corrupt by refusing to ever analyze the greater sense of the particular technical task they’re working on. In particular, this reminds me of Project X in Atlas Shrugged, it’s uselessness, and an indecent ‘creation’. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged#Project_X

Why would anyone behave this way?

2008 started with our apartment complex management unreasonably wanting to raise our rent by 20 percent. Frustrated by all the problems we had with our apartment, and the sudden surprise of the upcoming hike, I convinced Tobia that we needed to buy a house. She wasn’t as willing to come along, but ultimately agreed.

We spent the first few weeks of 2008 looking for a house and settled on a fixer upper in Santa Clara. We were disrupted by two great events during this process that enriched my life. The first was finally getting permission to see the private Point Conception Lighthouse in mid-late January. I have blogged at length about this great trip. The second happened in early February, just before moving into our house. The NY Giants unexpectedly beat the NE Pats in the most amazing sports championship I’ve ever seen (close 2nd is the Diamondbacks game 7 win over the Yankees in the 2001 World Series).

We moved into our new house in March. Our contractor promised to finish our house remodelling by the time we were to leave for our upcoming trip to Greece and Turkey. That gave him two months. Needless to say, this didn’t happen. In fact, running out of options, and giving the contractor more space to work with, we moved in with my parents for a couple weeks before the trip.

In early May we left for Greece and had a wonderful 2 week organized tour there. We toured the beautiful country, and saw/did many different, exciting things. The tour group consisted of great people and we had a very memorable trip. We followed this up with two weeks in Turkey. It was much more of the same- great sights, some hot air ballooning, good food and nice tour group members.

Early June came around and the trips came to an end. It was time to come back home. Unfortunately home was still not completed. It wasn’t until early July that the house was sufficiently well along that we were able to move in for good.

Once in the house, I immediately started my square foot gardening project. It was already early summer, and I wanted to take advantage of the weather to grow my crops. It turned out to be a very successful summer and I will plan on tripling the size of my garden in ’09. We also took some time to rennovate the front and backyards, as well as purchasing furniture and just settling in.

Late in the summer I joined a new lacrosse league, started by a professional indoor lacrosse player. I’m still involved in it and it is going extremely well. For years I’ve wanted to play in a league but have struggled to find one. It has been an awesome experience to finally play against other people instead of just shooting a ball against the wall.

Around fall time, I started getting bored with my job, feeling it wasn’t going anywhere. The company was also struggling fairly badly. I started a lengthy job search project. After many interviews with different companies, I settled on a new job close to home a couple months later. I have since been at the company for 3 weeks now.

One of my favorite times of year- Thanksgiving time- did not disappoint. Beast came to town for almost a week, and we were able to hang quite a bit, as I was (at least mentally, if not actually) between jobs. A bunch of other friends out of town and those I hadn’t had much of a chance to see this year were able to show up and hang out as well.

Christmas vacation was short but excellent. I pushed my old body to the limit, playing hockey, more hockey, lacrosse and even more lacrosse. It has become a tradition with certain friends to get together and compete til we drop.

Tobia and I will be celebrating new year’s eve in SF with a handful of friends. Looking forward to our tapas style dinner, and to being out late.

In the new year, I plan on seeing some Oregon lighthouses. I hope the lacrosse league generates more players and more competition. Also want to get back into hockey more seriously. I will be hitting the 30 mark at the end of January. Don’t expect that to be a big thing personally, but it’ll be an interesting measuring point. Most of all, I look forward to getting one step closer to Mendocino.

Once or twice a week I take my lacrosse stick, gloves and balls and head out to the tennis courts near my house to practice.

The tennis players despise me and don’t appreciate my presence there. They’ve used excuses from “please leave we’re having a tournament” to “you’re making too much noise” to get me to leave.

All the while, I am completely out of their way, often leave instantly when they want my court, and always make sure to throw their balls back to them when they’re anywhere near me.

I think two factors bother them. The first is that I’m not actually playing tennis, but lacrosse. The other is that it’s just me- a single person- taking up a whole court. That’s why I’m all too happy to share the court with them. I’m perfectly happy shooting along the red colored sidelines, well out of their way.

Two nights ago, I was playing in one of the courts, when a guy coyly came up to me and wondered if he could hop on the court as well. Naturally I said I’d be happy to share the court with him.

He pulled out a cricket bat, some wickets and some balls and thanked me like I owned the joint and was magnanimous for sharing with him. He was practicing bowling along the other sideline of the court, using its length while I used its width.

Shortly thereafter, a friend of his joined, and they were practicing together. About 5 minutes later, a mother and 4 children looked into our court, full of desire to play tennis on our court. They wouldn’t dare ask if they could hop on, but I could see it in their demeanor.

I turned to the two cricket players and said that I didn’t see why these 5 folks couldn’t just join and use the tennis courts while we stayed on the perimeter. The guy said sure, and we waved the people over to our court. Ecstatically, the kids hopped on and played around right beside us. It was a full house (we were later joined by one of the kids’ father, making us 9 people) but it was also so lively, inclusive and social.

Sure, I didn’t have as much room to run around and shoot, but that really wasn’t the point. The point was that the sun was going to set, we would all have to leave for home pretty soon, and there was no reason we couldn’t all just get along and enjoy this limited resource while there was still light. Besides, it wasn’t like there was no room to play; it is a total misconception that we need all that room to play.

The situation reminded me very much of my childhood, when I used to play soccer with dozens of people in a small playground area in Israel. Within short running distance there were basketball players right next to us, as there was only 1 hoop, and of course the hide-and-seekers and tag players were also sharing our court with us. We never thought twice about the court belonging to anyone of us, it seemed only natural that the resources were scarce and we all wanted to do our own thing and would have to accept being so close to each other.

This whole episode made me wonder why we’ve become so possessive, exclusive, and snooty about public resources for which we feel so entitled. We have to have the resources we want, when we want them, we don’t want to share them, and we feel so isolated so much of the time. And why make all these unnecessary rules about who can use the courts when we’re all harmlessly having fun and doing no damage to anything?

The solution has always seemed obvious to me – let’s share the limited resources and let everyone feel included and have fun while we still can.

(1985) just after the beginnings of our legos obsession.

Ever since I was about 5 years old, I have loved legos. My best friend, Nir, and I, used to play with legos just about everyday, for hours. I would come to his house everyday, and we’d pull out his enormous box (I didn’t have much legos) and have at it. In fact, we became friends in kindergarten because of a mutual obsession for legos.

I think legos were really good for both of us. Not just in the social sense of giving us something to do together. But it also helped our imaginations, as well as our technical skills. We are both engineers these days, and I attribute much of that to legos.

Recently, Tobia and I stopped inside a lego store. After I got passed all the envy of “we didn’t have this when I was growing up”, I came across a classic collection of lego people. It totally took me down “memory lane” and I felt nostalgic.

I can actually remember playing with every piece before 1993 extremely well.

Late last year, I found myself training for a marathon and starting to lead a healthier lifestyle. At the end of the year, I played a neat roller hockey tournament with some buddies- 12 minute games with penalties resulting in penalty shots at the end of the game.

Our team was pretty bad and we came in last place. It was just the kind of event that made me decide to quit playing hockey for good. After all, I decided, I’d been skating for close to 20 years and it was time to explore new activities in life. Besides, I had already been away from the game the entire year.

Well… it didn’t quite work out that way. I had a change of mind and instead gave up marathon training and returned to hockey again, right at the beginning of this year. I have played league hockey the entire year and am planning on skating the 2010 version of the tournament around Christmas time this year.

My Grandmother passed away at the beginning of the year. Tobia and I thought it would be a nice idea to travel- in the Summer- to Poland and Eastern Europe, to explore the part of the world where some of my family is from.

But before heading to Europe, we had a couple 3 day weekends that enabled us to travel a little closer to home.

During President’s Day weekend, we traveled, by car, to San Diego. We saw the last two California lighthouses on my to-see list. We stayed in the Gas Lamp Quarter, and also enjoyed Valentine’s Day down there. On our way back home, we had some serious car problems which made the drive back more memorable.

For Memorial Day weekend, we headed out to Yosemite National Park. We did a fair bit of hiking around, and the waterfalls were in full flow. It was also tremendously packed that weekend. Unfortunately Tioga Pass was not open and we could not get to Mono Lake. That might be a trip for 2011.

Finally, in June, we headed on our 3 week trip to Eastern Europe and a quick visit to Israel afterwards. Eastern Europe was really wonderful and we enjoyed and learned a lot on the trip. There was even an opportunity to see where my other Grandmother grew up, and I saw her childhood home. We also made a few good friends. During this trip, the World Cup was going on, and I got to enjoy great soccer in different countries, watching with different people.

Upon returning from Europe, Summer was swinging in and gardening got me fairly involved in growing my typical Summer crops.

When Labor Day came around, we traveled to Seattle. We watched the Mariners play, walked and drove around a lot, and enjoyed our time up north.

For Tobia’s birthday in October, we took her parents to Mendocino, where we spent a great weekend showing them around town, walked the coastline, and ate wonderful food. We came back in time for Halloween and the trick or treaters.

We had our annual day-after-Thanksgiving tradition of inviting some friends for a leftovers potluck. We drew a good crowd and had a great time.

On the gardening front, after struggling to keep squirrels away for ages, I have finally found a solution that works well, and as easy to work with- I built PVC pipe cages and bought some bulk netting to cover them with. Removing the cages and getting into my crop beds has now become easier. Additionally, our trees produced well this year: pomegranates, lemons, apricots and mandarins.

As the new year nears, we plan to stay around, and enjoy the holidays locally. We’re saving our vacation days for travels to Italy in 2011. I plan to play lots of hockey, possibly drive out to the coast, and bum out and eat good food to round out the year.

Besides more travel in the new year, I am going to attempt to grow new fruits and vegetables in my garden. I hope to spend more time with friends, and also keep my mind alive by studying more geography, reading more fiction and non-fiction, and hopefully sharpening my software skills, too.

On a recent weekend, Tobia and I headed to Natural Bridges in Santa Cruz. Interestingly enough, we had been to the Santa Cruz Lighthouse just east of this place in fairly recent years and I had never heard of it.

We got there on a an early Saturday afternoon, pulled up the car in the short parking area and went to explore. I thought it was quite nice and it reminded me of Twin Rocks at Rockaway Beach in Oregon. There were some surfers and quite a few beach-goers, but the water was too cold for me to fully enter.

We spent a little while there, then continued to Pink Godzilla, a nearby Japanese restaurant we’ve enjoyed over the years.

Even though a few years back we walked the Golden Gate Bridge with Mitch and Frank (for the first time ever), we only walked about 1/4 of it as it was too windy, cold and foggy that day.

So Tobia and I returned there determined to walk the rest of the bridge. It just felt long overdue.

We got into SF right around noon and took about an hour to walk to the end and back. The weather was nice, visibility was great and the wind was gentle. I came across some stats/facts about the bridge in the parking lot after our walk. The most interesting to me was that the total amount of wire used for the bridge is roughly 80,000 miles.

Following our walk, we did another first- we drove to Tiburon just north of the bridge. I thought Tiburon was quite beautiful: just far enough away from the Bay Area to be quiet and slow, and yet had great views of almost all of SF, views of Mount Tamalpais, and in and of itself nice with bay waters coming right into it. We got some views of Angel Island as well but decided not to head there.

Instead we headed back to SF, had dinner at Plant Cafe and returned home after walking quite a large chunk of the wharf past pier 39 for some caramel apples.

I love Point Lobos.

Frank and Elizabeth joined Tobia and I for a walk along the North Shore Trail recently. The weather was nice and the air really clear.

Following our jaunt, we went into Mission Ranch Restaurant in Carmel for an awesome brunch. We sat outdoors and lazily enjoyed the rest of the morning unfold while stuffing ourselves.

From there, we continued into Main Street in Carmel and walked around/hung out for a while before heading back home.

	Sheep grazing close by as we had brunch outdoors at Mission Ranch

Frank and I planned a beach BBQ, and I got to select the destination. So I picked Gray Whale Cove State Beach, just between Pacifica (South of Devil’s Slide) and Montara for our Saturday picnic.

Gabriel, Richard, Val, Jared and Arthur also joined Frank, Tobia and I.

We brought our new mini-BBQ grill, some chairs, meat, and half our kitchen sink from home. So did some of the other folks. The path down to the beach was a bit tough given all the supplies we had to carry. It was a pretty steep decent, and then a ton of stairs down to the sand. Well worth it, though.

We had an awesome time, getting there before 11am and staying until just after sunset. I couldn’t believe how warm it was, possibly in the mid-low 70s.

After the picnic, we headed for some small bites, but really just to relax, at Moss Beach Distillery in Montara. That was really nice, and eventually afterwards we all headed home pretty late at night.

On Sunday we hiked with my in-laws up to Coyote Peak at Santa Teresa County Park in South SJ.

And, for the cherry on top for the weekend, the Giants beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl!

Whale Cove SB. Top right of pic is Devil’s Slide		Val
		Jared and Arthur	Looking down at San Jose from atop Coyote Peak

I spent so much time in my teenage years playing roller hockey here, at De Anza Park in Sunnyvale. Some of my fondest hockey memories were here, skating 3 on 3 (with two goalies) with/against Beast, Frog, Dinger, Victor, Hesse and others. All the drama that came with not only carrying the home-made nets we had, but sharing the space with the skate boarders too, is still in my mind. At some points in the year, we’d be out there every single day for hours, and from time to time, late at night with the lights on.

There were other places, too, like “Oren’s Circle” out in Santa Clara and Corvin’s (for those rainy days) that were also excellent, but no place was quite like “The Hockey Circle” in Sunnyvale, often followed by a drive thru at Taco Bell for dinner.

Tobia and I met Marc in SF this past weekend. Joe Dimaggio’s restaurant closed down and a new Original Joe’s was put in there instead. As it is really close to Marc’s place, we thought we’d try it out, and it was quite good.

Following lunch, we walked around, hitting up several joints and bars along the way.

Marc had to draw the line and amicably say goodbye to us when we decided we’d act like tourists really in what is our own city around here… we went to do the Ride the Ducks. We’d done that in Seattle and enjoyed it, and thought we should try to see SF in tourists’ eyes.

My favorite part of the ride was going into the water in the Mission Bay district. We got nice glimpses of the city, from angles I’d never seen before. I also appreciated being in McCovey Cove recalling the wildness I used to see on TV every time Barry Bonds hit a homerun. I also really liked the new condo developments around UCSF in that area… I’d move there if I didn’t already have a house, and if I could afford it.

Our tour ended where it started, right at Fisherman’s Wharf. From there we walked down to Pier 3 to meet our friends at Plant Cafe. We were a group of 8 and had a great dinner.

Following dinner, we thought we’d walk to China Town to see the New Year’s Parade they had going on. As we got closer, we realized we were probably too late, so Tobia suggested we go to the Punch Line Comedy Club instead. Unbelievably, we were able to get some tix right before the show started, and ended our night laughing hard out there.

To me this guy is an iconic SF figure. Sitting just below Ghirardelli Square, he speaks at least a few lines in dozens of languages and often makes people laugh. Actually, many times he guesses people’s nationalities as they simply approach his area. He is really jolly, I’ve spoken to him a handful of times over the years.			The new Bay Bridge can be seen behind the current one.
		McCovey Cove

Back in March, my team at work had an offsite for 2 days. We went to a beautiful villa just south of Capitola right off the Santa Cruz coast. The place we rented for the night had something like 7 rooms, tons of beds, beautiful back yard on-looking the ocean, and was just amazingly put together. The first day we got to enjoy the house for a couple of hours, but unfortunately spent most of the time there in meetings and technical discussions. Here are some pics (most were taken by Vivian):

Tony	Marco	I had to keep our rally going	Lesley
	Nils chatting with Byron and Richard		KC and Nils
Whiffle ball with Marco	Tony and Thierry		Bhavani takes a crack at whiffle ball
Mike likes beer	Matt	Aleks swings his big guns	My baseball gut
	Thierry, KC and Richard	Marco playing bocce ball	Mike was really good at bocce ball
Part of the work gang	Technical meetings were held in here for many hours, despite the beautiful weather outside	Alon	Playing frisbee with Thierry during a short afternoon break
	Took many tries, but we finally pulled off the classic ‘show off’ catch (Vivian’s great timing, and Thierry’s nice throw)	Thierry is good	Don’t touch Nils’ beer
	Alon	Richard	Marco
Byron	Mike	Bhavani and Alon
Aleks and his wife, Ksenia	Matt grilling for us	Mike and Lesley	Dinner
TJ		Lesley	Mike, Matt and (sort of) Alon
KC and I took on Aleks and Ksenia at the pool table	‘Berlusconi’ seems to have all the chips at poker	Thierry	Mike encroaching on TJ’s territory
Lesley, Aleks, Thierry, me, Alan H, Alon, Byron, Richard, Marco, Matt, Nils (kinda), Bhavani, KC	Alan H and KC	Kickoff breakfast. Lesley, Vivian, Ksenia, Aleks, Marco, Alon, Tony, Mike, Nils, KC, Byron, Richard, Thierry
	Richard		I ended up sleeping in the kids’ bedroom
	Poker game. Nils, Mike, Thierry, Tony, Richard, Marco, Lesley, Byron, Bhavani, Alon, Matt, Vivian.

some random pictures I want to put up from recent activities. Pictures happened or were taken in March, 2012.

Picture of my grandmother, Sarah, and her older brother, in Miskolc, Hungary (1932?)	My grandfather, David, in his 30s	Guy, Inbal and I in our youth, Kiryat Eliezer, Haifa, outside the Ziklik grandparents’ apartment (1989?)	Me in Junior High (1992)
My sister, Inbal’s wedding (June, 2000)	Grandmother Sarah in school in Sweden, following concentration Auschwitz camp (1946?)	My parents wedding	Little Guy used to be a soccer stud
Miriam and Mom dressed up for Purim	Sharks vs Predator game with Frog	SJ Sharkie came to cheer in our section	My in-laws, Cho and Victoria learning to play the guitar together