Visit senior design partners

I met my colleague Igal this morning in Tel Aviv, after my first train ride.  As one might expect, it was very smooooooth.  And you would be proud because the automated announcements and readouts were off by one stop.  I realized that, so I wasn't fooled by the temporary lack of synchronization.  There actually was an announcement by a human explaining that the automated announcements were wrong, but I was already on top of it!  The train was about 90% full, largely of IDF soldiers.

Tel Aviv HaShalom Station

Our first stop was an active construction site (fairly close to Independence Hall in the White City neighborhood).  After the usual urban difficulties in finding a parking space, we met with the student and practitioner in the construction trailer office.  Hard hat was worn, and my steps were carefully chosen since I had on running shoes.  This site was highly-constrained because of historic buildings close (!) by.  They are building a high-rise office/apartment building, with underground parking.

Stop two was at another active construction site in Tel Aviv.  The existing 10-story, cylindrical office building is being expanded vertically to 40 floors (mostly apartments in the new section).  They took us up to the 31st floor which has a spectacular view (but it's still dusty and visibility precluded a decent photo), and we went to the 27th floor where they were preparing a concrete pour later today.  Very interesting.  This time, I had to really watch my steps because there were lots of discarded nails from the formwork on the floors.  But I escaped the site without stepping on a nail!  You would have been proud and surprised to see me on the 31st floor, in a hard hard, with the project manager (and the student and colleague), discussing the safety nets for debris, etc.  There were witnesses, if you don't believe me.

The third visit was in Rehovot, to a construction firm that specializes in laboratories and hospitals.  We only met in their office, but they made espresso for us.  The student is helping with the construction plan for a new building of the Weizmann Institute, that has to have an isolated foundation to prevent vibration.  There are very high-powered physicists, etc. at Weizmann that need those special accommodations.

Then Igal took me to a bus station in Rehovot so I could catch a bus back to Beer Sheva.  I knew it was a super-local, and it was.  As we left Rehovot, I saw orange trees bordering the street (with oranges) and a big orange at the city border.  Of course, we have olive trees and date palms bordering the big streets in Beer Sheva, but they're not bearing fruit right now.  I was surprised (why?) to see the orange trees.  But I arrived at home in time for a conference call at 7:00, so it's all good.