Design a Computer

Design a computer…

That’s the job I found in Haifa… Elbit Computers was a start-up whose ambition was the design a commercial mini computer… by using DTL chip technology… Having zero experience in chip based design… my boss gave me a book on logic design to read… it was practically the first technical textbook in English I had to read… and understand… Since I left Egypt… all technical literature I had read were in Italian… with this book I managed getting back to technical English… actually I liked the subject… I found it very interesting…

As for the languages I used… it is in itself a story…
When I was born, the first language I learned was Italian… I still count in Italian… When I was four, my mother (at the advice of my great uncle Edmond) put me in an English kindergarten, called the Home-Craft House… at age six I went to the British Boys School and stayed in that school until I left Egypt…
English became my principal language from age six to fourteen… I multiply and divide in English… which became my mother language… also because I spoke English with my mother…
Italian remained my first language… but as time passed… and at my school (BBS)…in Egypt, they taught French as second language… and Arabic as third language…

I read my first Italian book when I moved to Italy… what I lacked was a basic grammatical knowledge of the Italian language… but that was overcome…

English was quickly becoming my surrounding’s language of choice…
Later on, when I was in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem… I noted that practically all the textbooks were in English…

My knowledge of English helped me at the kibbutz to understand and decipher Bob Dylan… LP records (now called vinyls) at that time lacked the lyrics in the back of the record… I ended up being an expert in deciphering Bob Dylan’s intonations…

After the kibbutz, as I spent more time in Haifa, where I developed my knowledge of Hebrew… while reading books and weekly magazines in English…

Life in the kibbutz was totally new to me, it was village life… but a different type of village… the children in the kibbutz all live in a dorm till the age of eighteen,… when they go to the army… They then move to the young single’s section… where they live either in single or dual occupancy apartments… till they get married and move to the married section…
Another difference between European village life and life in the kibbutz is the level of education of the kibbutznik (a person from a kibbutz)… The people who settled, and founded a kibbutz, were ideologists who made it a lifetime goal to found a Jewish state. .. Most of these members had one or more college degrees… very pleasant and interesting people. Other older members were liberated from Buchenwald concentration camp,.. and they had also very interesting stories to tell…
The younger members (my age) had all finished high school, and were very interested in world affaires.

One event which I remember… occurred in the mid sixties when a retired Israeli general, Moshe Dayan, visited South Vietnam… at the invitation of general Westmorland… Dayan went as a journalist… He ended his report with one question… If the USA asks Israel to send Israeli troops in Vietnam… would you go and fight… I remember the hours we spent discussing this hypothesis…

Years later I was reading David Ben Gurion’s (the father of the State of Israel) memoir… and there was a section where Ben Gurion was in Paris discussing France’s support of a Jewish state… He was staying on the top floor of a small hotel in Rue de Rivoli… In the room next door was another guest of the French government… Ben Gurion and this gentlemen spent hours discussing their mutual problrms… At the end of their discussion, the gentleman said to Ben Gurion… “If you run out of luck with the establishment of your Jewish state… I will give you a piece of Vietnam”… the gentleman was Ho Chi Minh.

Kibbutz

Kibbutz

Arriving in Israel, I took a bus to Tel Aviv and went to the kibbutz organization and asked to join a kibbutz… For how long they asked and I frankly said, I imagine a few months… I came this far (from Milano…). So they sent me to Kibbutz Netzer Sereni, which was an Italian kibbutz, i.e. had a percentage of Italian members who founded this kibbutz…

Here I am after having lived in big cities all my life… learning how to be a farmer… wake up at six o’clock and on to the fields, or orchards, till three in the afternoon… with only half an hour for lunch… in Italy we had two hours break, while in Greece we had a four hour siesta… Eventually I got used to it… and I made some lasting friends…

Language wise I spoke mostly English… Italian with a few… and French with others... but there were some members who spoke neither… One day I ended up pairing with Mordi, who spoke only Hebrew… we were working with the bee hives… I got suited with a mask on my face, and so did he, but his hands were gloveless… he was telling me something in Hebrew which I failed to understand… after some time my hands were itching… but I ignored it… we ended early and I went back to my room and crashed…
When I woke up, I noticed that both my hands were swollen… I saw Mordi in the dining room that evening and he laughed saying… I told you to wear gloves… at that point I decided to learn Hebrew…

Life in the kibbutz is very sheltered… sheltered from the hustle and bustle of the big city.
Life in the kibbutz is like a vacation from the preoccupations of career, money, etc.,
In the kibbutz the concept of money is lacking... if you need something you go to the store and get it, whether it is cigarettes or tubes of paint for a portrait…
The kibbutz protects you from all that…
But in the kibbutz you live with thirty to three hundred people… and these are the only people of the village… coming from the city it was very hard for me adapt to this village life…
I lasted almost two years in Netzer Sereni.

Greece

Greece…

Greece, the birthplace of democracy… it’s good to be back with history… yes I know there was lots of history in Italy… both Ancient Roman and more modern… but having been born in Egypt… and having lived most of my life across the street from the Museum of Antiquity in Alexandria… antiques are a sign of history… and history is life…

The Greeks live their life with history omnipresent… with any act they may perform… they always remember history and mythology… it is fascinating to be surrounded with history people… all the time…
With the possible exception of the French (and the Bostonians)… the Greeks are the only people who believe that they “are history”…

Other than admiring the beauties of Greece, as in feminine beauties… I started looking for work… and through some persistence and good luck, I found a job with the Univac agent… as a computer operator… which, in those days was very important… After a month or so of doing nothing… I finally was given a “very important work”… I needed to print a list of all Greek owned cargo ships… to collect the data I was given two books, which contained about half the data… the other half were hand written notes… and newspaper clippings…
The first part was data collection… to create a punched card for every ship… and then there was the various tables of data to print…

I was told that the work was needed in ten days… I said impossible… I’ll need that much just to punch the data… so my boss intervened and assigned me two typists for that… so I figured that I would try and make it…
During that job, the customer (working for an insurance company) was keeping putting pressure by asking me is it ready… is it ready…
On the review date of day twelve I decided to surprise both my boss and the customer by presenting him with the complete work…
I remember saying to him… “I hope you are satisfied” he laughed and said
“Yes thank you, but I meant thirty days when I asked for ten days.”

I had just finished reading Exodus by Leon Uris… and for once I felt something inside me… Zionism…

I quit my job, and took the first ship to Haifa, Israel.

At IBM

At IBM

Here I was in the world of IBM… It felt like entering the holy temple of IBM… In the orientation class they speak about Senior Management as if they were Saints (with capital S)… and Saints in Italy were considered the genii of the holy cross…
There were two signs on almost every wall… the picture of Thomas Watson… and THINK, the company motto.
This extended family is one you belong forever, even after you leave the company.

It had been over twenty years since I had worked for IBM, and I visited IBM Florida R&D facility for a meeting… At first they were very cold and formal… but after a few minutes I tried breaking the ice and told them that I had worked for IBM Italy as a CE on the 632… I noticed a much more relaxed atmosphere during the rest of the meeting.

Living in Milano offered numerous diversions… and I roamed in various districts until I found one to my liking… it was called Brera, name of the art academy next door. I found much more affinity with the people there… also artists, or wannabe artists, were much more open… especially if I compared them to the IBM crowd I was working with…
Leading a conservative life during the day… and follow it with Bohemian nights was fun, but was getting strenuous… Lack of sleep forced me to take wake-up pills… Metedrine.
I took these pills during the week and slept on week-ends… that lasted for a while…

At work they trained us to write down the time we started a job and when we finished. I remember starting a job, and marking the time, and when I finished I looked at my watch and discovered I had spent two hours on that job… that job usually took twenty minutes…
I realized it was the effects of the Metedrine pills (the precursor to Metanphetamine, or speed), and I had to stop this life… I went to the office and handed my resignation, telling everyone that I was going to Greece on a long vacation… I spent the night celebrating till the wee hours… it was around three o’clock in the morning and I was exhausted… as I was close to a park, I found a piece of cardboard and went to sleep amongst the bushes…
It was some bird tweaking which woke me up… I opened my eyes and saw a few birds about five centimeters away… they were looking at me, as if to say good morning, how are you today…

Two Years

Two Years…

Yesterday at noon I went to Horizon South Detox Center for a meeting… there was a weekly meeting and a Chip meeting… And when asked who had two years sobriety, I proudly stood up and got my two year Chip…
This was particularly important for me, especially since the past weekend I had my (Cyborg II) generator broken and I was shaking all over… it would have been impossible for me to go anywhere, especially at Horizon South…
Looking beyond this generator incident… it has been over TWO YEARS that I have been without drugs… of any kind.
During my addiction, before I realized that I had a compulsive behavior, I was so apathetic that I tried a variety of “highs”… but (luckily) they left me as indifferent as before… so I stopped everything but Crack cocaine… until my Neurologist took me off the medication which caused my compulsive behavior (called Requip and Mirapex)… and thus ending my drug addiction.
Two Years…
Happy Birthday, Ivo

I Remember

I remember
Once I came to see you and you were awake with your eyes open… so I read you goodnight moon… showing you the pages… those colorful pages of that wonderful book.

You were soo happy to see these colors, following every page with attention… you broke my heart my sweet little Tikva… I felt you so close that our hearts touched each other…
Rest in peace my little angel…
You will always be in my heart… in your Nonno’s heart… forever

Seven Years

Seven years…

Seven years is the time I was made Italian… or to be precise…
Seven years is the time I was made Milanese
Ninety three… that’s the number of ties I have in my closet… proof of my Milanese identity…
When I was in Milano I realized that life needed passion… and although I had my share of adventures they lacked that “je ne sais quoi”…

One afternoon I was in the “centro” (downtown) and I stopped by a flower vendor and bought a rose, a single beautiful red rose…
I then walked around the centro looking for someone to give it to…
I saw an elegantly dressed woman in her forties window shopping…
I told her that I bought this rose because it was too beautiful to be alone…
Would she accept it… she was hesitant but she accepted and… thanked me with a big smile… I gave her the rose and left.