Blindness

This is the story of the total breakdown of society following a natural disaster, an unexplained epidemic of blindness that affects an entire city (or nation, it’s not clear). People start committing every sort of despicable actions, but are also capable of acts of generosity unheard of before the epidemic.



Obviously, the story is very relevant today, when we think of possible consequences of a possible mutation of the H1N1 (swine) flu to be very deadly (like the Influenza of 1929).
But in general, I liked the story back when I read the book in 2001, and yesterday when I watched the movie, because firstly, it gives an amazing example for what humanity, leadership, team work, and responsibility are, secondly, my grandparents were among the very few survivals of the Holocaust and the story describes similar situations to what they had to handle with.
Maybe the most important reasons is that, unfortunately, I believe that our society is still blind in many ways.

I recommend.

* The movie is very good, but if you can, try to read the book itself.
http://www.amazon.com/Blindness-Harvest-Book-Jose-Saramago/dp/0156007754

Free Rice

Play at FreeRice -
1. Click on the right answer in the middle of the page (you can change subject to learning another language, such as Spanish or Italian, you can learn about Arts, and more; You can also change the starting level).
2. If you get it right, you get a harder question. If you get it wrong, you get an easier question.
3. For each answer you get right, FreeRice donates 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.

(*) WARNING: The game may make you smarter. It may improve your speaking, writing, thinking, grades, job performance... (more)

About FreeRice
FreeRice is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program.

FreeRice has two goals:
1. Provide education to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

Here is the link: http://www.freerice.com
A 2 mins video:

Anna Wintour's tale: Vogue editor to appear in 'real-life Devil Wears Prada'

I loved the movie.
The inspiration for it is very interesting to me.
Anna Wintour is such a strong business woman. Amazing. The real figure has many aspects that should give inspiration for the younger generation.
Here is the 2:30 mins trailer for her story that will be covered on September Issue of Vogue:

Cube - New Mobile Device

I like this commercial and wish them all the best luck with this new product!
Great Product Marketing-Management Work!

מעט ורעים היו ימי שני חייו

* "Short and sad were his two lives"

Michael Jackson - A child and an adult. Amazing creator. His recent years were crazy, for sure, but it's still very very sad that such a talented man left our world today.

Jackson 5 first tv show -

Back then - his father, apparently, didn't let him have a childhood..

Michael Jackson Became A Star as a Teenager. Since then - the paparazzi didn't let him have a life -

The next parts - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6IzRz1pD6M&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOnAFOrGRyE&NR=1

With great sadness, Michael's life ended today -

An Entrepreneurship for a Cause

Entrepreneurship is about recognizing a problem and an opportunity and providing a solution, right?
Below I describe a huge problem, the opportunity (or why now), and two small, amazing, and successful entrepreneurial programs that give inspiration and option to get involved.

The problem:
There are more than 1 billion children around the world who live in a terrible conditions. The problem is that they won't know how to change their situation when they will grow up to be adults because they don't get the tools now.
This situation is a ticking bomb for our next generations.
What's new?
While a century ago these children didn't know that there is another kind of world out there, now they do. This is because of many reasons, one of them is that traveling became a commodity and x10 more tourists visit their lands (e.g. Africa).
The consequences of this were ugly presented in many cases in the past in New York and other cities:
People that are aware of the strong and known differences between their lives and the life that they could have, and their lack of resources to change the situation, brings very ugly crime. Not only inner-countries crime, but for sure - a great out-of-county crime (where the money and the resources are).

Imagine that only 1% of these cute children will get to the situation that I described.
Today:

In 10 years:

1% of 1billion = only 10 million hopeless people out there.

So why did I take a break from my crazy schedule this week in order to write specifically about this one NOW, especially when there are so many other bothering 'trending topics'?
Because there is no better time, and because if not now.. It may be too late. The opportunity will be gone (I don't like this situations in business, so in this case... I like it much less).
Today this danger can still be controlled. This problem is still a new one. These children are still children.
We can still protect these children and our next generations if we act now


The Solution:
Entrepreneurs are building projects to give these children some resources. Small ones for us. Huge ones for them (and for our future).

There are two programs that I like, and I will definitely participate in them in some way. Please feel free to comment and add more.

1. Mama Kellie - www.obrienschool.org
A GREAT article about this program - by Alexa Jenner
http://www.chicagoparent.com/article.asp?aID=0728802.2654795.77350.03956202.7483011.964&aID2=5941

2. TOMS Shoes - http://www.tomsshoes.com/content.asp?tid=273
Watch the 4 mins video and get inspired -

Iran - 30 Years of suffer. The Iranians and the world say - Enough!

I pray that it will work.

Great Application for Web Conference

I recommend you to try to use DimDim if you are looking for a web-conf tool to share your screens and presentations.
Below is a 4mins intro.
Some personal notes:
1. Sign Up and Getting started - very simple, quick, and easy. You just configure your user/pass and you are signed. Afterwards, you can immediately Host a new meeting.
2. Invite people - they don't need to have a dimdim user or anything like that.
3. Free - if you have a conference of up to 20 people the service is FREE and is not limited on time.
* Notice - I used it 4 times until now. 3 times it worked perfectly, and one time not...
Enjoy!

http://www.dimdim.com

Opera Unite

Some details:
Take control of what you share online
Opera Unite allows you to easily share your data: photos, music, notes and other files. You can even run chat rooms and host entire Web sites with Opera Unite. It puts the power of a Web server in your browser, giving you greater privacy and flexibility than other online services.

Share with other Web browsers
What if you use Opera at home, and a different Web browser at work? Opera Unite services can be accessed from any modern browser, including mobile browsers! At home, just select what you want to share, and you can view it later using your work Web browser without any problems.

Integrated and extendable
Simply enable Opera Unite when you start Opera, and you are ready to go. Find and install services with one click from our online catalog or easily create your own by using Web standards like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SVG and AJAX.

To read more - http://unite.opera.com/

Dead Grasshoppers Give Life to Social Media Marketing Campaign

A nice video, and a creative campaign:

Read more about the campaign itself here:
http://mashable.com/2009/06/15/grasshopper-campaign/

Holocaust Museum Death, Facebook, and Advertisers

I find this article to be very interesting -

Holocaust Museum Death Won’t Change Facebook’s Mind On Hate - But Advertisers May Be Able To
TechCrunch, Michael Arrington, June 12, 2009
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/12/holocaust-museum-death-wont-change-facebooks-mind-on-hate-but-advertisers-may-be-able-to/?awesm=tcrn.ch_3lk&utm_campaign=techcrunch&utm_content=techcrunch-autopost&utm_medium=tcrn.ch-twitter&utm_source=twitter.com

Earlier this week a Holocaust denier shot and killed a guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. Facebook didn’t change its policy on allowing Holocaus denial groups, even though one group quickly put up a cartoon mocking the event.

If attacks on Jews by Holocaust deniers won’t be enough to sway Facebook that this is all hate speech, perhaps angry advertisers will do the trick. Brian Cuban has been trackingadvertisers who have insisted their ads don’t show up anywhere near Holocaust denial pages on Facebook, and at least one who doesn’t want ads to be placed on profiles of people who are members of such groups.

Vodafone, Tesco, American Airlines and Domino’s Pizza have pulled advertising, says Cuban.

Domino’s Pizza’s Social Media Specialist Phil Lozen wrote to Cuban saying that “initially, Facebook was pushing back on their ability to block ads” from some of the pages. But as of today even pages showing search results for hate groups won’t have Dominoes ads. He also says that Dominoes would not have purchased ads at all if they knew of the possibility of their ads appearing near Holocaust denial pages.

What we really need are a set of large advertisers to boycott Facebook entirely until these groups are banned. There’s a reason why eBay and other private companies won’t let this kind of hate speech on their sites. It’s bad for business. And as soon as Facebook realizes that, they’ll change their policy. Then look for lots of talk from Facebook employees about how proud they are that their company did the right thing - [insert current policy here].

And for those of you who will argue that the best way to handle hate is to shine a light on it, debate these people openly, and generally assume that reason will prevail: you’re wrong. Read this USA Today opinion piece that is talking about the steady rise of hate groups in the U.S. - “the Internet gives formerly isolated racists, whether individuals or small groups, a means to stoke one another’s smoldering anger. With the ready availability of weapons, even a single person can do enormous harm.”

Palm Pre vs. iPhone. Should we even bother?

If at first the user experience of the iPhone was the most attractive thing about it, today, the strength of iPhone is the huge range of amazing applications that were developed for it.
Now, when more phones that give a slightly better user experience than iPhone are in the market, iPhone is not competing in the same field anymore. Today, iPhone brings a great added value (the applications) that can't be easily competed by none of the others.
BUT - the Palm Pre does give a nice fight on the user experience side and has a comfortable OS for app. developers (see a review below). So, I spent 5 minutes to learn more about it.
Enjoy the Palm Pre review -


(* BTW, personally, I am waiting for the next phone revolution to buy my next phone. So - 99.9% that my next phones will be - 1.modu and 2.one of the coming Android phones. modu for its hardware platform that will create an amazing eco-system and an Android phone for its software platform that will let application creativity extend into new levels).

What is webOS?
webOS is an embedded operating system developed by Palm for the Pre smartphone. It’s based on the Linux 2.6 kernel and features a tight integration into social networks and Web 2.0 APIs. As an example the Universal Search feature accesses your contacts, and then crawls content provided by Google, Google Maps, Wikipedia and even Twitter.
The operating systems has a touchscreen-based graphical user interface and ships with a set of typical smartphone applications, like an address book, calendar and task manager.

Read more here -
Get up to speed with our Palm Pre extended executive summary
Written on June 6, 2009 – 9:09 pm
Ralf Rottmann, Serial Mobile Entrepreneur, Apple Addict
http://thenextweb.com/2009/06/06/speed-palm-pre-executive-summary/

Aviary

The photos on the Hall of Fame have captured me...

In general - Aviary is a collection of online powerful graphic design and editing tools.
It seems to be a very nice and helpful tool, which has a lot of potential to help us edit photos, create cool images, and have fun.
Try it here - http://aviary.com/dashboard
For an elaborated recommendation-

Happy B-Day Tetris

25 years ago - June 6th, 1984 to be exact - Alexey Pajitnov created a simple puzzle video game where you moved blocks around (called tetrominoes) to create horizontal lines of blocks to eliminate rows and gain points.

-- Thanks for Google for reminding (see google.com)
-- Thanks to Ben Parr for being the first to update about every interesting thing! (http://mashable.com/author/ben-parr/)
Read more about Tetris here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris

Big Bing or Bing Bang or...

The commercial is too complicated for me, and I didn't understand yet how Bing can help me make better decisions than before.. But... Bing is here and the promise is that it will be a Big Bing.
Enjoy!

Google Squared Goes Live Today!

Many times we need to find something by searching the web, and after we find it, we want to compare it to other things that are available.
Google Squared vision is to do it automatically for us and arrange everything in a very intuitive way - spreadsheets.
The Beta was released today and obviously, it is not perfect yet. Together with that, the service can already be very helpful for easily comparing restaurants, stores, movies, gadgets, and more.

A usage for example: as a product manager at modu, I was occasionally building comparison tables for available handsets. The new Google Squared Search engine could have helped me save a lot of time by automating at least some of my work...

Take a look at this search: "mobile phones":

http://www.google.com/squared/table/agyoK6a0nieaiqftw1n6y78w

I was also searching for fashion stores and restaurants in different areas of Chicago - Take a look -


http://www.google.com/squared/table/agLoMdyLZKdsfWp0G9KL4pqg


http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=restaurants+chicago+"gold+coast"

This technology is by no means perfect. It is only the beginning... But it is SO Intuitive, SO Clever, and already VERY Helpful.
I recommend to check it out - http://www.google.com/squared

Exciting - Project Natal for future Xbox

It looks imaginary or something that will be in the market only in years from now.
So... No. I know that it's for real. Trust me... Or don't.
Project Natal is a revolutionary new way to play: no controller required. See a ball? Kick it, hit it, trap it or catch it. If you know how to move your hands, shake your hips or speak you and your friends can jump into the fun -- the only experience needed is life experience.
I just can't wait to do kick box training with one of the fighting games... It will be SO MUCH FUN (anyway - better than a class in the gym ;)
-- Thanks to Michael Shaulov for sending me the video.

The Big Picture - India's massive general election

The Big Picture is a photo blog for the Boston Globe/boston.com. It is intended to highlight high-quality, amazing imagery - with a focus on current events, lesser-known stories and, well, just about anything that comes across the wire that looks really interesting.



India's massive general election
By Alan Tylor
May 22, 2009

On May 16th, 2009, the Election Commission of India announced the results of its recent month-long India-wide election for their lower house of Parliament - the largest democratic election in the world. An estimated 714 million voters (from a population of 1.2 billion) were eligible to cast their vote in one of five separate phases at over 800,000 polling stations, starting on April 16th. Logistically difficult, massive in scale, and opposed by various rebel groups, separatists and protestors, the elections still managed to be held with minimal disruption, with an average voter turnout of greater than 56%. The big winner was the the Indian National Congress party, which will form the new government under the incumbent prime minister Manmohan Singh. As with any photo story from India, it is impossible to capture every aspect in just a handful of pictures - collected here are only some of the scenes that played out across the nation over the last month. (40 photos total)



for many more AMAZING pictures and stories - http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/05/indias_massive_general_electio.html

Blip.fm - a new one - a good one

Enjoy the song, and the new week -

The Brothers Bloom

Clever and Funny. I really recommend!

A Beautiful Word in the English Language

Humility (= humbleness, modesty, unassuming nature)
May 2nd, 2009 by Bruna Martinuzzi



Many years ago, one of my university professors mentioned that “windowsill” was voted the most beautiful word in the English language. Being an armchair linguist, this factoid naturally stayed with me. Words have enormous power. They can make us erupt into laughter or bring tears to our eyes. They can influence, inspire, manipulate and shock. They can build and destroy. Some words have different effects on different people. One such word is humility. It is one of those words that are seldom in neutral gear. Some, like me, love the word and all it stands for. Some almost fear it and interpret it synonymously with lack of self-confidence or timidity.
The dictionary defines humility as modesty, lacking pretence, not believing that you are superior to others. An ancillary definition includes: “Having a lowly opinion of oneself, meekness”. The word “humility” first struck me in the context of leadership when Jim Collins mentioned it in his seminal work Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t. In this book, Collins examined companies that went from good to great by sustaining 15-year cumulative stock returns at or below the general stock market, and after a transition point, cumulative returns at least three times the market over the next 15 years.

Keep reading here - http://www.increaseyoureq.com/blog/?p=81

The advertizing budgets are low this year - BUT

Maybe, that's why the commercials are funnier than before. Or maybe it's just the summer...
Enjoy -

Blue Ocean vs Red Ocean

In the last few days I've discussed and presented this concept a couple of times, and I thought that will interested you too.

What is Blue Ocean Strategy?
Companies have long engaged in head-to-head competition in search of profitable growth, but today, competing head-on often results in nothing but a bloody ‘red ocean’ of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Blue Ocean Strategy contends that although most companies compete in these red oceans, this strategy is unlikely to create strong profitable growth in the future.



Tomorrow’s leading companies will probably better succeed not by battling competitors but by creating ‘blue oceans’ of uncontested market space. These strategic moves - termed ‘value innovation’- create leaps in value both for the firm and for buyers, creating all new demand.

To learn more - http://www.slideshare.net/jessestarmer/blue-ocean-strategy-summary-61974

I LOVE animated movies!

These days the animation, graphics, and general production of these movies is just AMAZING.
We just saw Bolt and enjoyed it very much.
Here's the trailer -

Reducing Fat - A Great Marketing Concept

And it can be helpful before the summer -
If you gained weight along the winter, most of the chances are that you will stand and by that, burn some calories :)

There Must Be Another Way - Eurovision 2009

Israel was 61 years old today :)

Hi,

Here is a 3 minutes video taken from one of the funniest Israeli-parody-movies that is always on TV in Israel on our Indepenence Day.  This video has English subtitles, so you can enjoy it even if you're not an Hebrew speaker. 

Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

At Dr. Z's class today of Marketing Strategy we were discussing pricing methods for the marketing manager. 

Our discussion reminded me of this great article from WIRED. 

I, BTW, totally believe in "freeconomics". 

Enjoy!

Short preview: 

Thanks to Gillette, the idea that you can make money by giving something away is no longer radical. But until recently, practically everything "free" was really just the result of what economists would call a cross-subsidy: You'd get one thing free if you bought another, or you'd get a product free only if you paid for a service.

Over the past decade, however, a different sort of free has emerged. The new model is based not on cross-subsidies — the shifting of costs from one product to another — but on the fact that the cost of products themselves is falling fast. It's as if the price of steel had dropped so close to zero that King Gillette could give away both razor and blade, and make his money on something else entirely. (Shaving cream?).

Once a marketing gimmick, free has emerged as a full-fledged economy. 
Offering free music proved successful for Radiohead, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and a swarm of other bands on MySpace that grasped the audience-building merits of zero. The fastest-growing parts of the gaming industry are ad-supported casual games online and free-to-try massively multiplayer online games. Virtually everything Google does is free to consumers, from Gmail to Picasa to GOOG-411.

The rise of "freeconomics" is being driven by the underlying technologies that power the Web.
Just as Moore's law dictates that a unit of processing power halves in price every 18 months, the price of bandwidth and storage is dropping even faster. Which is to say, the trend lines that determine the cost of doing business online all point the same way: to zero.

To read the article: Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

Or you can start with this video:

The views 2 minutes walking from our home at the beginning of February 2009

January 2009 - pictures and story

On January, after 9 years of working without a break... I had a 3 weeks break. Luckily, my good friend Eleonora (Eli) was also on a job-break with me, and we went to explore the city together (finally).

This is the view of Lake Michigan at that period of the year:

And here is the amazing skyline of Chicago.

In this opportunity we were in the Aquarium. As an evidence you can see the Anaconda that is behind me...

My Patents!

5 of them can be found under my name (Hagit Perry) on Google now! Yeyy!

You can also find them here - http://www.faqs.org/patents/inv/325896

Defiance

My grandfather was only 13 years old when the Nazies and their helpers attacked his villege in Belorussia and killed 99% of my family and his villege. 

After this, instead of going to school, playing with friends, and imagining what he will do as a grown up, my grandfather was living in the woods, trying to survive from one day to the other. As a part of his survival efforts, he joined the Bielskies and inside the group, he joined the fighters. He wasn't with them all the time because he was afraid of being a part of a big group, but he did find a shalter there, which definately helped him survive the 4 years of death horror.

When I was 12 years old, my grandparents took me to Belarussia to see everything. 

I saw the villeges and the forests and I have many stories from there. 

One view that is burned inside my head is the long-long rows of short green hills. 

I really recommend you to see the movie. You can start with this great trailer - 

Caution - Kids on the way

*** Purim in Israel (the Jewish Halloween)

And we were definately kids this year - 

I must recommend Google Chrome

I'm using it for the last few weeks and I enjoy it so much. You must try it.

http://www.google.com/chrome/index.html?hl=en&brand=CHMA&utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-bk&utm_medium=ha

Resume Attached... to the body?!?!? And more...

(CNN - By Jessica Ravitz) -- If finding a real job evades you, now may be the perfect time to just pretend you have one.

ResumeShirts.com, launching Tuesday, will allow customers to print their resumes on customized T-shirts.

Fake employees, corporate seat-fillers, are reportedly being paid by New York advertising agencies to dress and act like they work in firms so prospective clients visiting the offices will be instilled with confidence.

Sound crazy? Not to Jeremy Redleaf, the 24-year-old founder of Odd Job Nation, a Web site scheduled to officially launch today.

"Seriously! I have friends who do this," Redleaf says, before rattling off some of the other "exclusive odd jobs" he's compiling. "We want to be the resource for the new growing army of part-time opportunists ... You've got to hustle life before life hustles you."

There are more odd things that the new industry of unemployed created... Well, it is better than doing other crazy things... 

3 of the nicer sites are -

www.resumeshirts.com, Laid-off Dad,  Recessionwire

To continue reading - http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/24/recession.web.sites/index.html?iref=hpmostpop#cnnSTCText

Siftables - The Smart Blocks

What are Siftables?

Siftables are cookie-sized computers with motion sensing, neighbor detection, graphical display, and wireless communication. They act in concert to form a single interface: users physically manipulate them - piling, grouping, sorting - to interact with digital information and media. Siftables provides a new platform on which to implement tangible, visual and mobile applications

To learn more - 

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_merrill_demos_siftables_the_smart_blocks.html

Personally, I think that the potential for mobile applications with the concept that they are presenting is huge! 

The introduction of Apple Macintosh (1984) - still the best Super Bowl spot for me

Intended message:
Adelia Cellini states in a 2004 article for MacWorld, "The Story Behind Apple's '1984' TV Commercial":
Let's see - an all-powerful entity blathering on about Unification of Thoughts to an army of soulless drones, only to be brought down by a plucky, Apple-esque underdog. So Big Brother, the villain from Apple's '1984' Mac ad, represented IBM, right?

According to the ad's creators, that's not exactly the case. The original concept was to show the fight for the control of computer technology as a struggle of the few against the many, says TBWA/Chiat/Day's Lee Clow.

Apple wanted the Mac to symbolize the idea of empowerment, with the ad showcasing the Mac as a tool for combating conformity and asserting originality. What better way to do that than have a striking blonde athlete take a sledghammer to the face of that ultimate symbol of conformity, Big Brother?[8]

However, in his 1983 Apple keynote address, Steve Jobs made the following comment before showcasing a preview of the commercial to a select audience:
It is now 1984. It appears IBM wants it all. Apple is perceived to be the only hope to offer IBM a run for its money. Dealers initially welcoming IBM with open arms now fear an IBM dominated and controlled future. They are increasingly turning back to Apple as the only force that can ensure their future freedom. IBM wants it all and is aiming its guns on its last obstacle to industry control: Apple. Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry? The entire information age? Was George Orwell right?[13]

Some poetry -

Instants
By Jorge Luis Borges

If I could live again my life,
In the next - I'll try to make more mistakes, I won't try to be so perfect.
I'll be more relaxed,I'll be more full - than I am now.
In fact, I'll take fewer things seriously,
I'll be less hygienic,
I'll take more risks,
I'll take more trips,
I'll watch more sunsets,
I'll climb more mountains,
I'll swim more rivers,
I'll go to more places - I've never been,
I'll eat more ice creams and less (lime) beans,
I'll have more real problems - and less imaginary ones.

I was one of those people who live prudent and prolific lives -each minute of his life,
Off course that I had moments of joy - but,if I could go back I'll try to have only good moments,
If you don't know – that’s what life is made of, don’t lose the now!

I was one of those who never goes anywherewithout a thermometer,
without a hot-water bottle, and without an umbrella and without a parachute,

If I could live again - I will travel light,
If I could live again - I'll try to walk bare feet at the beginning of spring till the end of autumn,
I'll ride more carts,
I'll watch more sunrises and play with more children,
If I have the life to live -
but now I am 85, and I know that I am dying...

--Thanks Mijal Kogan for sending

Only in Israel

Israel is a young country, just 60 years old. The population of Israel were gathered from a wide range of countries and brought to the country many different traditions. That is the reason for Israel to include a range of so many tastes, experiences, and cultures, in such a small country. Below is a text that shows that for everything in Israel the culture of a different culture is favored, and it is very funny one. I'll try to translate it in the next few days for the favor of my non-Hebrew speaking friends...

--Thanks to Itay Gliksman for sending

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

הכי נחשב בישראל זה כש...

במטבח:
הפיתה- היא עיראקית
הקפה- טורקי
הגבינה- בולגרית
הסנדוויץ'- טוניסאי
הפיסטוק- חלבי
הזיתים- גם סורים וגם דפוקים
הלבנה- דרוזית
המרק (והצעד)- תימני
הסלט (והסוס)- ערבי
האורז (והחתול)- פרסי
השניצל- וינאי
סלט הגזר- מרוקאי
הנקניק- רומני
ארוחת הבוקר- קונטיננטלית
הקבב (והכבוד)- מזרחיים

מקומות:
המושבה- גרמנית
הגבעה- צרפתית
השכונה- בוכרית
הכרם- תימני
הגן- בהאי
הבוסתן- ספרדי

אופנה:
השיק- פריזאי
הנעליים- איטלקיות
המכנסיים- ברמודה
הבושם- צרפתי
הסנדלים- תנכיי"ם

חפצים:
המפתח- שוודי
השעון- שווייצרי
הסיגר- קובני
התריסים- ונציאניים
הכיפה- בוכרית
הפסנתר- רוסי
הקבקבים, הפרה והרחוב- הולנדיים
המכונית, החלקת השיער וסכין החיתוך- יפניים

אנשים:
המטפלת- פיליפינית
המאהב- לטיני
האמא- פולנייה
הדוד- מאמריקה (או ליתר דיוק 'אין לנו דוד עשיר באמריקה'- משפט אופייני להורים, שמגיע מיד לאחר התובנה העמוקה 'כסף לא גדל על העצים'- וכל זה נאמר אם חלילה לא כיבית את האור בחדר שעזבת לרגע)

שונות:
הדייקנות- יקית
המסאז'- תאילנדי
הטוסיק- ברזילאי
ההומור המשובח- בריטי
הקרקס- רוסי
הצמות- אתיופיות
היופי- אקזוטי
המוזיקה- אתנית
לוח השנה- גרגוריאני
הנימוס- אירופאי
הפצצה- אירנית
ההתנהגות- אינדיאנית/ברברית
החושך- מצרים
השיר אהבה- בדואי
המילים- מהמקורות
הלחן- עממי
ביידיש- זה נישמע יותר טוב

והחוצפה? ישראלית!!!"

יש פה מישהו שלא מסכים עם זה?

So true... :)

-- Thanks to Itay Gliksman for sending.

Our life here in the past 4.5 months

On one of the first days at Evanston, I was invited to a really funny "get together" students' show at Kellogg. This is one captures of it -

Then we met wonderful friends -

Of course, in this opportunity I must mention the amazing group of friends we already had from the KWEST trip to Mexico -

With whom we continue to party every now and then -

A cute raccoon we saw on the way back from a party in Chicago. It is like a small zoo here with many different cute animals like rabbits, chipmunks, and more.

Costco... Everything in the U.S.A is sooo big!

Luckily - we have many tastes from Israel :)
Not that we are so lonely... We have many friends from Israel that are with us here -

On November I was called to urgently come to Israel for some modu issues... On the way back I stayed with my good friends, Roman and Liad, in New-York.

New-York is so inspiring. Here is one view from the 36th floor viewing the Columbus Square -

This is one result of the inspiration -

When I came back to Evanston it was really snowing, and this is a photo from my desk next to the window from home. I think it looks like a dream! I enjoy the snow - everyday - like a little girl!

Then Christmas came . While Oded visited Israel, I was invited by our lovely new family, through Kristen, Oron's wife (my cousin), to come for Christmas with them, in their home in Dyer, Indiana. They live next to the forest that is on the border of Illinois and Indiana, in a lovely neighborhood. Here is a picture.

With all these deer, don't you think that only Santa was missing?

Look at this Christmas tree in the mall, next to our home...

This brings us to January 2009.

Well, now it is really snowy... But we were in the army - so the snow is a small obsticle, and we don't let it change our way of life (until now). And anyway, meanwhile, as I already mentioned - it is so new to us, and we love it!