first impressions of israel

I arrived in Tel Aviv, Israel, last Friday for a one week work summit. Upon returning to San Diego after leaving Singapore I joined a group that is partnering with another R&D site just south of Tel Aviv. So today concluded my first business trip to Israel but I still have tomorrow for sight seeing in Jerusalem before a late night flight back to San Diego. The view from my hotel in Tel Aviv just after checking in last Friday

The work week is Sunday to Thursday here so we also had last Saturday for sight seeing so some of us hired a guide to tour around the North near Galilee. We mostly visited the main sights of Jesus’ life, his home while living with Mary and Joseph in Nazareth, the sea of Galilee near where he gave the sermon on the mount, the rock he and peter cooked fish and peter built the first church beside the sea of Galilee, Peter's Family house and the river Jordan where Jesus was baptized.
For lunch I had one of the fish the guide told us was still left over from after the sermon on the mount. Fish and chips, Israeli style.

We also had a work team building in Jerusalem Tuesday night at the Tower of David- a light show covering the history of the city over 3000 years. Before coming to Israel I didn’t know exactly what to expect. I'd heard stories of everyone carrying guns around the city but I couldn't really believe it. People always exaggerate what they don't know and it turns out it's not true, but couldn't help but notice our guide did have a pistol tucked into his back pant waistline and two other people not with our company that had joined our group- who I later found our were part of the security for our group. I can say that this is the first time I've had armed bodyguards looking after me (well, for our whole group actually).

The Tower of David at night

oh, yeah, one other interesting thing was the government started passing out gas masks to all the citizens while we where there- one of the distribution sites was at our office. Actually, only adults get gas masks, the children and babies get small gas tents to protect them in the case of chemical attack. I may have seemed strage to me but to the coworkers this was not that big of a deal...


Actually, I like it here a lot and it seems much safer than I'd imagined. Even walking around at night, the streets are still full of people and it feels surprisingly safe. Especially after spending the last three years in Singapore it's amazing to be around so much history intertwined with normal life. Just a few minutes walking south of the hotel is the port of Jaffa- one of the oldest in the work at about 4000 years and the place Jonah headed out to sea before being swallowed by a whale. The old neighborhoods are so cool to walk around night, full of character, life, bars and restaurants. The food is really fresh and healthy- literally I've never seen so many different types of salads in my life- and the people are friendly. I had never even considered coming to Israel before this but now that I’ve been here I am really excited about coming back and seeing more of the country. It will be nice to get home to san diego on saturday though.

iron pour

On Saturday night I was at Christmas party with some of the glass blower friends and found out an iron pour would be held the next day the crafts center. One of them was running it and some of the others had prepared molds for the pour so I decided to drop by and watch. I'd been to one pour at San Diego State University a few years ago and it’s pretty interesting to watch the process- fire, heat, white hot molten metal and beer (for the spectators). Since I’d left to Singapore they’d started up the equipment for iron casting at the studio here and have been holding a few per year following a mold making class. So all the prep work for the molds is done in advance then when the day comes they’re filled with molten iron leaving you with a chunk of iron in the shape of your design that will last literally almost forever.A fire is started in a special furnace using coke as fuel which is continuously stoked by an air blower. Eventually the temperature gets high enough to add in scrap iron which will melt and flow down to the bottom of the furnace. At this point a port is broken out from the side and the iron flows out into crucible at about 3200 degree F – at that temp the color is literally white hot and it flows out just like water. The crucible is carried over to the prepared molds and poured. After the iron had cooled and solidified the molds are broken apart revealing the cast pieces- not having seen and of the mold making it was fun to see what came out of all the molds at the end of the day.It’s really amazing to think people were doing this over a thousand years ago and basically the only difference is they didn’t have an electric air blower to stoke the fire. The air stream was supplied by hand pumped bellows! In this world with everything moving towards higher technology and virtual representations of reality it’s remarkably stimulating to participate is this kind of low tech activity and to actually make something real with your own hands.after the metal cools the molds are broken apart to release the form

rain and planes

It’s been a week in San Diego and so far it's a lot of rain. On my first day here last Saturday San Diego had the first measurable rain in 163 days, and today it's been pouring all day long. People in San Diego don't see much rain so when they do, they drive really crazy- I noticed the roads don't deal with the water, allowing it to drain off quickly, as well as the Singapore roads. The first rain days of the season see literally hundreds of car crashes on the roads throughout the county since the roads are at their most slick state when wetted after the long dry period.

Over the weekend I flew up to Sacramento for my brother's swearing in to the Bar Association. It's a quick flight up to Sacramento and was pretty routine until after we landed. After we reached the gate and the seatbelt sign was turned off things got very strange. Nobody got up to grab their bags, stand in the aisles and push to the front to get out first. This is so common and almost second nature to me after being on flights in Asia so long that I really had to fight the urge to keep seated and wait for the people to deplane in such an orderly manner. It's actually pretty nice, and doesn't take any longer to get off the plane.

In Sacramento we also had a turducken for dinner Saturday night. a turkey stuffed with a chicken that is stuffed with a duck which is stuffed with ... stuffing. First time having it and it was pretty good. Coined "The Trinity of the Fowl" by our grandfather. The turkey part exploded during the cooking splitting it in half It was a bit of a mess to cut and ended up as a huge plate of fowl and stuffing

Back to San Diego

Today was my first official day back in the San Diego office- My three year Singapore contract is up and the terms to stay on longer locally weren’t that great so I’m back to San Diego for a new job with the same company. The original role of my group had changed a lot since I started in Singapore and the work wasn’t as interesting as it first was when I had arrived. I feel that staying on longer would have been interesting because of the local travel opportunities around the region but not for the actual work which had become pretty boring.

Actually I got back to California last week in time to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with family which was nice. The last two months have been hectic with friends visiting, last minute traveling and packing/preparing for the move so I’ve been very negligent at keeping these postings updated- well it’s been that way for most of this whole year really.

I can’t believe how fast these three years have gone. It’s been a blast and a lot of times felt more like vacation than actually working here. I’ve been lucky to see a lot over SE Asia and meet some really great friends. I still have a lot of trips to write about and pictures to post from this last year so I’ll keep updating this site.. but my first priority now is to find a car (since you can’t get around anywhere in San Diego without one) then a house.

Always something

Singapore is a city that is constantly changing, always with something new going on- somewhere. Over the last few months I’ve been away for two separate 2-3 week trips and coming back into the city afterward you really notice how much and how fast it changes- some entire buildings could be gone, or an intersection redesigned- new buildings going up. Even without the construction, the city has so much more going on beneath the surface that takes time and effort (and a desire) to see- the remaining jungles, smaller islands, the different ethnic neighborhoods, Little India, Geylang- really, a lot of Singapore is not as clean as it’s made out to be and I’ll never see a lot of it.


Last Sunday I took and aimless walk around my neighborhood- ending up near the Singapore River, and just before reaching the much built up waterfront I had to do a double take. I heard some scratching in the rocks that didn’t register and on looking back I saw two chickens and a rooster pecking for food in the gravel just off River Valley Road. I stopped to watch for a minute- I hadn’t even given it a second thought at first but then kept wondering where they were from and how they’d got there. I’d seen some before way outside the downtown area but never right in the middle of it. For as modern as Singapore currently is, it’s not that long ago that this would have been a much more common sight as even some friends the same age as me grew up in some of the last kampong fishing villages 30 years ago. Singapore’s always got something going on…

Yogjakarta, Java, Indonesia

A holiday weekend meant a chance to get out of Singapore for a short vacation. The destination was Yogjakarta, Indonesia. This is a place I've wanted to see for a few years and recently it's become much easier to reach since one of the budget airlines started up a direct flight to and from Singapore. In 2006 there was a large earthquake causing damage to many of the buildings and historic temples- it also coincided with massive mud slides and an eruption of Mt. Merapi nearby.... direct flights from Singapore were stopped making the trip a little more involved and difficult to see over a weekend. There's a lot of interesting places to see in Java- from cities, historic sites and temples, and volcanoes. The main reason people travel to Yogja is for the Buddhist and Hindo temples of borobudur and Prambanan. The damage from the earthquake at Prambanan was still evident as about half of it was still closed off and under repair.

Horse and carriage is still commonly used for transportation around Yogja, alongside cars, bikes, and scooters

Wile walking around the city we came across a group of kids customizing their bikes on the street- these were like low-rider bikes I'd see in San Diego- you never know what you'll come across in Indonesia


We had a better view of Mt. Merapi from the city.... after driving all the way up the view point we found it completely clouded in and raining with no view to the peak at all. You should see a giant volcano where the cloud is



Borobudur - A Buddhist temple build somewhere around 750AD and used for many centuries. It was eventually abandoned then rediscovered in the early 1800's by Raffles during his posting in Java. Souvenir hunters looted the temples for artifacts - many of the Buddha heads have been stolen- for years until a effort was launched under UNESCO in the late 1970's restoring it to it's current form.






The holiday weekend happened to Vesak, a Buddhist holiday celebrating the birth, enlightenment and passing of Buddha. As Borobudur still functions as a Buddhist temple, there is a massive pilgrimage there over the holiday. We decided to see the temple the day after the holiday as over 10,000 people are usually expected to visit during the festival.

Prambanan, a Hindu temple from the similar time period around 800AD- it's also a UNESCO site and had been extensively restored by the mid 1900's only to be seriously damaged again during the 2006 earthquake. Even though about half of the complex is still closed for repair it is an impressive site none-the-less.

Italy trip 2009

The whole trip in Italy was short- just one week in total. Three nights in the Cinque Terre along the coast, two nights in Venice and the last two nights in Verona before flying back to Singapore.

The Cinque Terre area in northwest Italy is a national park made mainly of five small towns along the coast, all connected though a network of hiking trails. It's a beautiful area full of limoncello, pesto, focaccia and fresh seafood. Unfortunately a huge storm hit all of Northern Italy for the whole trip so it was cold and wet the whole trip and only did one short hike between Monterosso where we stayed and Vernazza, the next town south. The view from the hotel in Monterosso
Riomaggiore- the town furthest south
A small limoncello production setup in Monterosso


After Cinque it was a long train ride to Venice and though this was my third time to Venice it was the fist time actually staying there on what's considered the main islands. Just as I had always suspected, it's a pain walking with your luggage trying to find your hotel in the maze of the Venetian streets... especially since it was also in the rain. It's not difficult and actually fun to wander around the city using the main markers for Rialto, Academia, etc. for reference but when you try to find a specific address... that's where it gets difficult. Eventually, theorecically, with enough time you can find any place in Venice (at least one time), and if not, it's best to just enjoy walking around or stopping at a cafe on a square to have a spritz and watch the tourists go by (there's something cilivized about this drink I like but could never find it in Singapore). On the second day we took the boats out to Murano and Burano islands.
St Mark's Square in Venice
The Rialto Bridge- used to be the center of finance and power for Venetian trade.


From Venice, it's a short ride to Verona on the way back to Milan. Verona is the location of Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet. It's also home to the Romans third largest arena at the center of the city which is still used today, mainly in the summer for a season of outdoor opera performances.
Juliet's Balcony- said to the location of the Capulet family house where the balcony scene in the play took place, though in reality it was set up to attract tourists who forget that it was actually a play and not reality where the scene occurred. Still, it's one of the biggest attractions in the town......and below the balcony is the statue of Juliet where a tradition of rubbing her breast (and having someone take your picture while doing it) began long ago. It's not unlike the tradition of rubbing the foot of St. Peter statue in the Basilica at Vatican City... though that tradition has been going on so long the foot has been replaced several times after gradually being worn away with every touch.. What will be the fate of Juliet's breast which has already been polished to a shine?... of course there's a boob job joke coming up in the future.

The Verona Arena- Completed in 30AD and still used today, it's the 3rd largest Roman arena built- the Colosseum in Rome being the first.

Night scenes in Verona