2 December 2005 (1 Kislev 5766)
Since this October I have been taking a certain course in Jerusalem for my spiritual and intellectual nourishment. Not only does the course itself interest me, but also am I intrigued to see how the participants, who were total strangers before, gradually become closer to and socialize with each other.
When we are put in a group of people none of whom we know, the first ones we get acquainted with and become closer to are generally those who happen to sit next to ourselves, simply because the more we speak about ourselves and get to know each other, the closer we generally come to feel toward each other. We, at least I, seem to have ambivalent attitudes in the beginning toward strangers we are supposed to meet regularly; on the one hand, we are afraid of them as we know nothing about them, but on the other hand, we seem to have an instinctive desire to be understood by them. By speaking with each other for a certain amount of time this fear disappears, which in turn helps us open our heart to them. This process is generally an upward spiral. Whither this spiral leads depends on what and how many common values and interest we can find in each other.
When the group is small, let's say, consists of several people, we can speak with all of them, but if it is bigger and the seats are fixed, two or more "local" groups are formed, and conversations are generally confined to the "local" group where we happen to find ourselves. The next stage is to go beyond this boundary. In an interactive class like ours one does not always have to be physically close to someone in class in order to see, though after a while, whether one may have a common language with him or her and approaches him or her. It seems that our class in transition to this second stage.
Almost everyone, except for extreme introverts, can start the first stage of speaking to those who happen to be near him or her, but not everyone can reach the second. Although I used to be very poor at initiating a conversation with total strangers, the experience of meeting people with various cultural backgrounds and having to get along with them has improved my skill of socializing with others. Nevertheless it is still more common that someone else approaches me than vice versa, and this also seems to be the case with my new classmates.
I really appreciate this wonderful experience of making friends with total strangers, which I may not have had for so many years. I also enjoy listening to what they have to tell about their own lives. Life is stranger (and far more interesting) than a novel.
9 December 2005 (8 Kislev 5766)
About one third of those in Israel who write my name for the first time misspell it, i.e., cannot even copy it from where it is correctly written without making some spelling mistake or other. I used to think that this was because my name is unfamiliar to them, though I do not understand what is so difficult to correctly copy combinations of as few as 27 characters (including five allographs) of the Hebrew alphabet; incidentally, one of the characters used in my name in Japanese is quite rare, but few people misspelled it in Japan. I am more and more convinced that such frequent misspelling of my name is not only because of its unusual combination of Hebrew characters, nor is the misspelling restricted to my name or other uncommon words, but rather it is a manifestation of some sociocultural symptom in Israel.
Since this November I have to receive email messages from a group of some 30 people here on a weekly basis. I have asked them to write a certain English expression on the subject line so that I may filter and classify their messages automatically. I am really perplexed to find that about one third of the messages I have received from them for the past several weeks have a misspelled subject, though the expression I chose consists of fairly common words in English. And some do continue to misspell it in spite of my repeated request to correct it once and for all. Observing this and wondering why this happens have confirmed what used to be just an impression for me.
To paraphrase WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), a famous computer term, this phenomenon can be described as WYTYSIWYW (what you think you saw is what you write). What has been impressing (or "impressing") me, for better or for worse, about so many people in Israel in comparison with those in Japan is their self-confidence. Sadly, this self-confidence is not always sound and justified, as it is sometimes based on inaccurate or insufficient knowledge, which in turn leads them to a wrong conclusion. Misspelling is an example of such a wrong conclusion in the area of written language. Taking a glance at a word that is not totally familiar to them, they already think that they know it, then write what they think they saw without checking it carefully.
16 December 2005 (15 Kislev 5766)
[no update due to sickness]
23 December 2005 (22 Kislev 5766)
At the beginning of this month I experienced the worst system crash I had ever had on my PC. I was left with no choice but to reinstall and customize Windows itself and numerous applications, thus wasting two whole days. I still do not know what the reason was for the problem, but I do know that it had nothing to do with a virus. When I apologized to my students later for having been unable to answer them by email, I said jokingly that I hoped the owner of this PC would not be infected with a virus. I seem to have opened a mouth to the Satan, as we say in Hebrew: a week later since then, or two weeks ago from now, I caught a terrible cold; I lost five kilograms of my weight in one week as well as my voice. I had to cancel a lesson and go to a doctor for the first time in the past 30 years because of this sickness last Thursday. I started to feel much better physically by the middle of this week, when two incidents happened that impaired my intellectual and mental health respectively.
This Tuesday my notebook PC, which served me for about five years, died physically. Actually, I was thinking of purchasing a new PC in a year or so when Windows Vista is planned to be released, but this old PC could not make it into its sixth year as my workhorse. Considering the fact that I reinstalled everything only three weeks ago and the possible nuisance of installing a new version of Windows on a PC with its older version, I was rather reluctant to purchase a new PC now, but I had no choice; a computer (with an Internet connection) is a sine qua non for my life, be it private or academic. Having wasted two days in reinstalling and customizing all the applications, I am back to normalcy now.
Another incident that became known to me the day before yesterday rather disappointed me. Actually, the incident did not surprise me but has only confirmed what I already knew: childishness of quite a few students (vis-à-vis a minority of the intellectually mature) here in Israel. It seems to be based on their misconception about a university and misequating it with a kindergarten. A university or at least a research university, as I understand it, is and must be an elite institution of higher learning that is not obliged to accept everyone who does not meet its academic requirements or to lower its academic standards just in order to make sure that everyone understands everything. Intellectually mature students would demand more from themselves than from anyone else, including their teachers, without waiting to be fed in a palatable manner. Admitting that they do not understand would be the last thing their intellectual pride would allow them to do. Instead, they would spend hours to improve their understanding, of course without boasting to their colleagues and teachers of the amount of their intellectual investment. What motivates them is intellectual thirst for truth and more knowledge, and generally scores follow as a result.
Childish students à la israelienne, on the other hand, are motivated first and foremost by the scores they get (the highest possible scores with the least investment). The day when they receive less than 90% (often with good reasons of which only they themselves are unaware) is the most tragic day in their lives, and this is a good reason for blaming teachers who had the "chutzpah" to spoil the object of their worship. They are not ashamed to complain to people in power such as head of the department or dean of the faculty that certain courses are too difficult and/or course requirements are too stringent without first asking their teachers questions. There is an apparent contradition here between their admission of failing to understand and their often exagerrated and unsound self-esteem to believe that they always deserve at least 90% of the score.
30 December 2005 (29 Kislev 5766)
When I was still in Japan, I taught 12 courses a week, which naturally left me little time for my own studies during the weekdays. Now I teach only four courses a week at Bar-Ilan University, but strangely I somehow feel I have even less time for myself. This is probably because almost all the courses I taught in Japan were language courses, while what I teach now are lectures on various aspects of Hebrew linguistics. So I generally have to spend two whole weekdays, when I do not teach and work at home, preparing four lessons every week. It is true that I have more time before and after the courses I teach now, but I seem to be wasting these fragmented pieces of time.
Unlike money, which is distributed unequally, we are all equal as far as time is concerned. But they seem to have one thing in common: just as a person who wastes small change cannot save money, one is left with little time for oneself if one does not make the best use of fragmented pieces of time. And herein seems to lie a fundamental difference between those who accomplish a lot in life and those who do not, assuming they have the same ability.
The biggest challenge I face now is how to "defragment" these fragmented pieces of time for my own benefit. Ironically, the main obstacle to this is my perfectionism, which can otherwise be a positive character. I often find it difficult to start something unless all the conditions are ripe. This may also explain why it took more more than ten years to finish my doctorate. Another obstacle is the fact that it often can take me a long time to get ignited, as it were.