by Adam Smith
I had my life mapped out in a logical order, it was a matter of time before I got what I actually wanted.
The drive back home was a nap with half closed eyes. Could say that the rest were feeling the same way. Funny thing to go to bed when most of the country just arrives to work.
Anyhow, I got back home to open the door and see the landlord running around with his typical errands. "Morning!"
"Morning, Adi! Are you coming back or going out?"
"Just got back."
"Oh, well then have a good sleep"
"Thanks"
I went upstairs to my room and just brushed my teeth before I fell completely unconscious into my single person sized bed.
The dreams were not coming up this morning, but I woke up somewhat satisfied with my situation as a whole. Slowly stretching and getting up onto my feet to brunch with scrambled eggs and corn was one of the most routine ways I used to spend my post sleeping time. I call it post sleeping time because in such dynamically changing schedule, you never knew if it was morning, night or middle of a day. Your biological clock got completely out of order. Well, as a young man, my body could sustain it, but coworkers who were far past their prime made really serious efforts just to keep up. Can't blame them though, if that's the only way you know to bring money to the table then you simply do it without questioning the price of the sacrifice.
There are way worse things people do to make a living. So, from an Ethical standpoint, they are doing just fine.
Once I got talking to an elderly lady about my plans to become an attorney, she listened carefully and mentioned that her son is a System administrator in Munich, Germany. While her daughter finds interest in languages and plays guitar well. She is a post-USSR immigrant, or as we say it an Israel she had made an Aliyah. She has high education in music and had over 8 years’ experience in teaching the piano and the guitar. Yet now, all she did is to work in the cosmetics department of the firm, as a sales rep.
It wasn't the first time I encountered a person with high value doing a low-class job, there are plenty of stories like this in our country, and people aren't being evaluated properly. It's a flaw in the system that no politician takes care to fix. Why? I guess it isn't sexy to help people who need it the most.
While getting physically and mentally ready for a night out in a very long time. Well, being a bachelor isn't always fun, you do have some down day and ponder too much into the meaning of your own existence but you know a walk into a bar full of single girls may ease your mind a bit.
The clock was ticking and I did not know what to do with the time I had left. I decided I will continue with The Makers. After all, it seemed Perry Gibbons was getting a divorce with Lester and Suzanne wasn't helping much either.
After about an hour and a half, my eyes got so exhausted that I felt obliged to walk away from further eye simulation and simply closed my eyes. I listened to the sounds around me and it appeared that the world was moving in very peculiar way this day. Some birds twittered outside, cars were producing usual mechanical noises. The leaves and the wind, oh, the leaves they have such a pleasant rustle over the wind. It makes you feel humble and want to observe the life periods of plants without interruption. Just to enjoy the entire process from a side.
For ten minutes, I've been laying in my bed, eyes closed, watching my breathing. Inhalation, exhalation... slow process of taking the oxygen into your body. The sound of the pumping heart, that beats slightly faster than the usual due anticipation of a date and the heated weather. I almost fell asleep when I heard the phone ring. I saw the name on the screen, it was Smadar.
I picked the call, and said "hey!" She replied with "hey" as well and been silent for a brief two seconds. "I have to tell you something" she began. I could say by the nature of that opener that there was no good news in this call. "I'm listening" I followed with as much of neutrality in my voice as possible. "You see Adi, our date, I can't make it today. I'm too tired." I relaxed and countered with "How about next week?" "Let me check my schedule" she checked her schedule and put the phone on speaker. "I'm free on Wednesday next week, my mother has a birthday that day". How unfortunate I thought to myself. I wasn't yet that confident that I would like to have something serious with this girl, so naturally, I did not want any family from either side involved.
"Okay, so go ahead and have a good time with your mother next week and we will see how it goes later" "I’m so sorry Adi, I really have been looking forward to this, I just don't feel too well." "I understand. See you later!" "Bye!"
I hung the phone, a slight sense of frustration crawled through my nervous system, but it has evaporated when I consciously noticed it. It takes time. Chinese wall wasn't built in one day. Not even the Kotel.
I approached the table and booted Lana. I really should stop shutting her down. There is no point in rebooting, to save money on electricity, it just takes too much time start the system. However, there was a possibility of someone breaking in and messing up with my data. Thanks to the tutorials though, I knew about a cure and it was as simple as tying the laces on your shoes.
There is a software you install and configure it so that the system is accessible while a flash drive is in a USB socket. When you pull it out, the system becomes inaccessible and requires the aforementioned flash drive and a password confirmation. The only technical downside is that one USB socket is always occupied during the use of the system. Well, technically, it wasn't a problem. Lana had enough of those.
Once the system was up, I just wanted to find a relaxing music and continue reading the Makers, there was no point in working on the Trojan now. I had to open an offshore account first to test the entire procedure and make sure its execution was successful. And that my friend required money. I could and try to take a loan and just you know, let it be. However, I decided upon a more secure approach of waiting and earning the sum needed through hard work.
There are so many approaches to different problems in life be it scientific, technical or social. Each tactic has its own place on the map of the brain action, I can say for sure, hypothetical solutions do not work 100% of the times. As in, anything in this world, you can't be 100% sure of the outcome of your actions. As long as the overall condition evolves even within one's own mind, it is secure to say that amount of failures on the road doesn't matter as much as the achievement of the final result.
I found an interesting song on YouTube, by a band I've never heard of before. Iron and Wine. Grace for Saints and Ramblers. "It all came down to you and I" it started and went with gleeful melody and supporting that vibe lyrics. I turned on the auto play option on my YouTube account and returned to bed. The book was going well with this band playing in the background.
Finally right around 9 PM, I decided that I'm done and I do need some human interaction after all. Or at least a glance at it. I dressed up in casual clothes, then went up the Sokolov Street.
Everything was closed at this hour of the day, and I could say that only a few stalls were open and filled with the graceful presence of minimum wage slaves browsing through their high tech expensive smartphone or watching some rubbish reality show on the TV. And yet, there are two bars on Sokolov, one is mainstream were soccer fans and people who like expensive meals and beer hangout. You can observe young local university students hanging out there or small groups of friends passing their time over a beer and a live stream of a game.
I didn't like this place. However, for my convenience, there was another bar. Sokolovski. Young alternative bar with acceptable prices and friendly bartenders. Needless to say, I'm not a regular visitor in places of such nature, however, I had some lonely evenings and taking a ride to Tel Aviv would be absolutely inconvenient. So, I simply would drop a visit there.
Some shady characters from time to time, perhaps even myself, some easy to get not so good looking girls, and more alternative folks hanging out. By alternative, I mean their music taste. The music at the bar is always western wit
h an exception for some Spanish songs, from time to time, which I didn't mind.
This evening, I did not feel like talking too much or drinking too much either, after all, next day was a regular working day. I've ordered a chaser of whiskey, listened to a couple of songs by Tool. Overhearing conversations of folks around is another hobby of mine. There were two fellows talking about some subculture term "woke" that as one of them explained to another was something about counter believing commonly accepted belief. Anyhow, I paid for my drink and was about to make my way out.
Anyhow, I paid for my drink and was about to make my way out, when suddenly the bartender said: "Hey, do I know you?"
"Only if you been flying lately" "No, I wasn't" "So, I thought". I finally made my way out and back home. Contemplating why this fellow thought he knew me, and if he wasn't flying lately... What are the chances he would know?
Even in Computer Science, there is a condition with a recognition, so basically, when a computer tries to recognize a pattern of any kind it checks for chunks of information that are identical to the search query. When human brain tackles the same problem, it may misinterpret some pictures with some other that it has seen before. For instance, when I saw an actress dressed as Mona Lisa, but have never seen the painting itself, and when I see it the first time in my life, some neurons connect the perceived information and recognize the pattern. Finally, connecting the experience of seeing the actress with original Leonardo painting. Although the actress doesn't have the same face structure as the woman on the painting, the pattern algorithm connects the rest of the information as adequate and confirms that both are, in fact, related.
After much contemplation, I came to think that the man might have seen some other man who has reassembled me in my appearance, and that caused a sense of Deja vu in him.
Sleeping was challenging, so I took a painkiller and turned to Healing meditation on Lana. It was fine to fall asleep with a smile on my face.
It was challenging not to cancel everything and stay indoor throughout the whole day but the fact that a couple of cashiers were fired, for not showing up during the past month, made it clear that it is not an option.
Finally, when I got up and sucked up all the negative thoughts running through my head, I did what some psychologists recommended and grabbed a pillow, put it on my face and screamed into it. To be honest, it doesn't work, don't try it, it only makes the pillow wet
Chapter 5
The meditation music was still playing, the track is 9 hours long. Lana was functioning properly without booting or rebooting. I had an hour before the deployment time.
I was puzzled as to how to spend this time properly. I grabbed The Makers and finished the book just 12 minutes before I had to be at the pickup point. The day was sunny and I felt uplifted when I was approaching the transport. Another day worth living for.
The crowd at the airport was mild, and I wasn't hurrying as I use to during the first month of the employment. It is fun to watch the kids at age range between 5-10, laughing and running around and enjoying the wide space of the airport, to think only that about a hundred years ago nobody would believe if you'd tell them that a kid at age of 5 would transport from Middle East to the UK in under 6 hours. Yes, life is an amazing thing if you stop for a moment to look around and understand that it is a ride, the final destination is only where you want it to be.
Once at the employee room, I scanned my finger, put my bag on a shelve, grabbed a piece of paper to dry my eyes, in case, of their watery response to long hours of screen starring and went to serve my duty to the people, in the name of Duty-Free.
Coworkers this day consisted mainly of unknown people to me who were majorly elderly women of unattractive appearance. However, some polish female tourists were very well groomed and attractive to the point that my crotch got moving towards them on its own. Thank God there were pants, and a table to cover the action down there. That was the moment I decided, I want to learn polish.
Anyhow, after about six hours of action, I got my well-deserved break and went to eat some beans in tomato sauce. It was fine, I thought as I swallowed little bits of it and tried to figure out what was the best way to start learning Polish. Thank God and to CERN, there was such a little thing called Internet. I've Googled for "learn Polish fast for free" and the mightiest search engine on the net presented me with a variety of results. Among them were Duolingo and Fluent in three months. Duolingo turned out to be a very awesome thing. It is a free system to learn languages in a step by step way.
And the Fluent in three months is a blog by Benny Lewis, an Irish polyglot who has mastered multiple languages in decently succinct time periods. Impressive. I put the phone into my pocket and looked at the watch, it was obvious I had to go back to my favorite number six and continue working. I stopped in the middle of the corridor, recalling that there were no phones allowed at the cash boxes line. I had to sprint back to the dining room and stack it inside one of the pockets of my bag. There is a zipper on this pocket, so I did not worry about my phone disappearing.
Sprint back to the corridor and then a swift walking pace to the cash boxes line made me sweaty but not the sweaty kind you would get after exercising rather slightly sweaty. Continuation of the service wasn't long, it took just about three hours more. Once at home, the feeling of fatigue took over my body and it was only the teeth brushing that separated me from falling into a deep sleep after work.
While putting the paste on the toothbrush and looking at the mirror, I realized how weird that my face had no facial hair. The army forbids any facial hair for most of the soldiers. However, my workplace did not forbid any of that. So, I decided I might give a try to a short beard and a tiny mustache. By putting a check mark next to this assignment in my mind, I made it to the bed and fell into an unconscious rest for the next 7 hours.
The morning was stress less which I liked very much. Single thought about fixing myself a cup of a fresh coffee with milk and two teaspoons of brown sugar made it even brighter. The calendar made it clear that today is 21st of May. Which I didn't mind very much. The night shift was expecting me to be as cool and as clean as the ice. I had myself a couple of hours before all that usual work routine. The fact that the execution of my plan was delayed due underfunding made it clear that I have to resist any idea of bailing out of my place at The Firm. I resumed reading some of the guides on Hacking acquired on the Dark Web previously. It was fun to concentrate on the work instead of dreaming about result.
Next thing I was doing is trying out the connection at the airport's inner network. Not so surprisingly, it was encrypted and protected by passwords. However, there are ways to go around even that.
For example, one might just use a script written and tweaked for the description and brute force attempt at the password for the network. The crafty IT guys of The Firm are not silly men. They are good at their work, however, I suppose they are undervalued by most, and therefore, don't try too hard to exceed the expectations of the management. My little guides thought me much of the dark side. However, they were not enough to accomplish the necessary. I had to craft and tweak some of the codes and algorithms to bypass the security the way my plan required.
The day did not pass without an additional warm cup of coffee and scrambled eggs. The cauliflower rice and fish were digested a long time ago. I did like that meal. It was enjoyable, I must admit. The more I think of healthy food and its consumption, the more it looks appealing. I might be it is a psychological thing or might be just a good marketing, but I started to think about more recipes from that book.
I find it amusing how one tiny stroll and an encounter with a book out of print may affect your diet for an entire life. The clock showed that I had to go and have an additional nap before I attend the pickup point and make it to the workplace. Some may think it is silly to saw a branch you are resting on, however, it is not the case, if you are tied at your waist to the remaining side of the tree and willing to test the gravity
on yourself for physics sake. There are, indeed, better ways to accomplish that. But it wouldn't be as fun to come with a safer theory. Besides, I might not be able to tackle the reason for one's purpose behind sawing the branch on which he sits on, however, you might come up with something.
My eyes really got worse, I had to appoint a visit to the oculist or at least, have more breaks between reading and coding. Anyhow, that was the last thought that visited my mind before I fell into another blissful sleep.
The dream that appeared to me had been a suitable reminder that a man and the universe act in sync. I saw a star in a distant celestial body, shiny, spinning around in the vastness of the cosmos. The view suggested that I was getting closer and was about to land upon this beautiful star. Its light is not as bright as of our Sun, however, it was still bright enough to lighten up the darkness surrounding it. I don't how but the host of my soul and mind in this dream allowed me to land on a star. I did not feel any temperature changes, however, the star spoke to me, it said "Time to wake up Adi! Time to wake up!" and I woke up to our reality realizing that was the most beautiful dream I had up to date.
Dressed up and groomed as I needed to work, I made my way through the early morning to the new pickup point upon the driver's request. It was silly to swap drivers every time, however, if you do think a bit about it, it does make sense. They have to sleep too, you know.