Its Thursday night and I want to party
Okay, we have two small kids so it is Thursday night and I am not partying. I did vacuum the rugs and I did some dishes, and I helped put the kids to bed. Iris managed to get glass in her foot, which was my fault as I did not clean up a bowl Sam broke with enough care.
Now it is time for reflection on where we are going. I am working on the book store idea and we will launch the first store in January, but it is not going to be a full time job for me. It is going to be a venture that will use a day maybe 2 days a week.
Iris is working at her firm and it is going okay, it is taking time for her to make sense of the speed of the process and frankly it is taking time for her to get used to Israel. Some days we really miss home, other days it is perfect here.
I should continue with Ulpan, but I think I have ventured way out of my comfort zone with languages. I broke down crying today in class and frankly it is hard to deal with the pressure of the class. I really want to get back to work.
I helped a friend yesterday work through the issues of buying a helicopter for a business she works with and frankly doing stuff like that where I have a problem and I need to find a solution is what I live for. I need to get a job, and I need to do it soon for sanity.
I could go back to what I was doing, but it very hard to work on a project without an end game a way to see where you are going. I like starting companies, but I need to be able to have mile stones and when I do not meet them I need to figure out how to either change the goal or admit that I am over my head.
On my last project for three years I pushed at all the angles that I could push at without spending big money. What needs to happen now is to have a real campaign to go after technical issues in a statistically relevant manor. The scary thing about statistics is when the underlying data is uniform, it does not take many samples to prove or disprove a thesis, but when the underlining data is a mess it takes a lot of work and proof to prove something.
The issue with the project is that we do not now need to find customers, or solve shipping issues, we need to run a clean technical program to either solve or not solve the technical process issues. The thing is I know about as much geology as I know Organic Biology so I am not the right person to run this program. We really need a partner and if we do not get one our highest value is probably to leave the project on the shelf.
I like days where I have to work on something that is clean, give me a problem and frankly I will do the research and come up with a solution and I can do that on a range of issues. The issue is when the problem is significantly technical and in an area that I am not an expert, I become a fish out of water unless I am willing to spend the 6 months to 1 year to understand the issues and the solutions.
There is time when I think I should be able to change the world, do great things and never hit a road block. This last 8 weeks has shown how small I really am. I am back to looking at a small apartment, we are driving older cars, and we are doing our own laundry and dishes (I am going to try to hire a maid next week). In many ways we are going through a rebirth and that means that I have to be able to understand that I might not make as much money, but we have done such a good job of slashing expenses that we can afford to make less.
Life here is easier in some ways then America, Gan for our kids is excellent, everything in the grocery store is Kosher, there is a minyan every 5 minutes, and did I mention the excellent parks. It is an easy life here, and the cost of living by world standards is cheap. We would pay for our apartment in London in an equivalent neighborhood (Hendon) 300 pounds per week, or just about what we are living on here. The apartment would be 4x more expensive. I can live on 20-25,000 pounds a year here and live a good middle class life style. That is an amazing thing.
Shabbat Shalom and may we have a peaceful weekend.
Benjamin
Now it is time for reflection on where we are going. I am working on the book store idea and we will launch the first store in January, but it is not going to be a full time job for me. It is going to be a venture that will use a day maybe 2 days a week.
Iris is working at her firm and it is going okay, it is taking time for her to make sense of the speed of the process and frankly it is taking time for her to get used to Israel. Some days we really miss home, other days it is perfect here.
I should continue with Ulpan, but I think I have ventured way out of my comfort zone with languages. I broke down crying today in class and frankly it is hard to deal with the pressure of the class. I really want to get back to work.
I helped a friend yesterday work through the issues of buying a helicopter for a business she works with and frankly doing stuff like that where I have a problem and I need to find a solution is what I live for. I need to get a job, and I need to do it soon for sanity.
I could go back to what I was doing, but it very hard to work on a project without an end game a way to see where you are going. I like starting companies, but I need to be able to have mile stones and when I do not meet them I need to figure out how to either change the goal or admit that I am over my head.
On my last project for three years I pushed at all the angles that I could push at without spending big money. What needs to happen now is to have a real campaign to go after technical issues in a statistically relevant manor. The scary thing about statistics is when the underlying data is uniform, it does not take many samples to prove or disprove a thesis, but when the underlining data is a mess it takes a lot of work and proof to prove something.
The issue with the project is that we do not now need to find customers, or solve shipping issues, we need to run a clean technical program to either solve or not solve the technical process issues. The thing is I know about as much geology as I know Organic Biology so I am not the right person to run this program. We really need a partner and if we do not get one our highest value is probably to leave the project on the shelf.
I like days where I have to work on something that is clean, give me a problem and frankly I will do the research and come up with a solution and I can do that on a range of issues. The issue is when the problem is significantly technical and in an area that I am not an expert, I become a fish out of water unless I am willing to spend the 6 months to 1 year to understand the issues and the solutions.
There is time when I think I should be able to change the world, do great things and never hit a road block. This last 8 weeks has shown how small I really am. I am back to looking at a small apartment, we are driving older cars, and we are doing our own laundry and dishes (I am going to try to hire a maid next week). In many ways we are going through a rebirth and that means that I have to be able to understand that I might not make as much money, but we have done such a good job of slashing expenses that we can afford to make less.
Life here is easier in some ways then America, Gan for our kids is excellent, everything in the grocery store is Kosher, there is a minyan every 5 minutes, and did I mention the excellent parks. It is an easy life here, and the cost of living by world standards is cheap. We would pay for our apartment in London in an equivalent neighborhood (Hendon) 300 pounds per week, or just about what we are living on here. The apartment would be 4x more expensive. I can live on 20-25,000 pounds a year here and live a good middle class life style. That is an amazing thing.
Shabbat Shalom and may we have a peaceful weekend.
Benjamin
posted by Benjamin Cox at 7:32 PM
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