moving

I've decided to move my blog to my own domain, so you can now continue reading my posts at the new address: http://blog.gkamin.com

See you there,

G.

On a home-made Pad Thai

I'm a bit sick of the usual Pad Thai recipe. It's not that it isn't tasty. It is. However, it's always nice trying something new. So here are a few things I threw in:
3-4 minced coriander stems and leaves (directly from the planter on my window - I always use little amounts of coriander, and it's a waste buying lots of it in the supermarket and throwing most of it away - it's much better to grow these things yourself).
3 minced lemon-grass stems (that leave a wonderful aroma on your fingertips) from that same planter.
0.5 cup chopped garlic.
a few chopped shallots (you can also use one half of a small onion).
A little sweet chilli sauce.
3 tbsp. nam-pla (thai fish sauce) for saltiness.
1 tbsp. sugar.
4 tbsp. tamarind sauce.
5 tbsp. lime juice.
0.5 cup crushed peanuts.
1 small chilli pepper, thinly sliced.
0.5 big red pepper shreds.
300 g. chinese sprout.
A few mushrooms cut in quarters.
50-100 g. sliced chicken breast (or pork, or beef).
1 can of coconut milk (at least 60%).
1 pack of thai rice noodles (300-330 g.).
0.5 cup canola oil.

The most important thing when stir frying, cooking oriental food, or cooking in general, is keeping things tidy. Especially when stir-frying, when everything has to happen so fast, you should have all the ingredients handy, and ready to use. You can't start slicing something when you already have something inside the wok.

By the way, a wok isn't really necessary. Especially in a home kitchen, where the flame usually isn't high enough to take advantage of the wok's shape. However, in most cases, the wok is larger than the usual frying pan we have at home, thus allowing us to prepare the dish at once, not have to prepare it twice just because we chose to use a small pan.

Soak the noodles in hot water for about 15 minutes, and then soak them in the coconut milk.

Heat the wok, add half of the oil, and fry the onion and garlic. Then add the peppers and the noodles, and stir fry for about 2-3 minutes. Take the content of the wok out to a large bowl.

Add the rest of the oil to the wok, and stir fry the vegetables, lemon-grass, sprout, coriander and chicken. After one minute, start adding the sugar and the "liquids" - nam pla, tamarind, lime juice and the sweet chilli sauce (it's also possible to marinate the chicken in the sweet chilli sauce, to add a nice glaze to it). Stir fry everything until the chicken is done.

Then add the noodles from the bowl to the wok, and stir fry for another couple of minutes, until everything is ready and hot.
Add the peanuts and serve in deep personal bowls.

It's a refreshing (thanks to the lemon-grass and lime), creamy (thanks to the coconut milk) and light (you can also try using cream, but what's thai about that?) dish.
Most important, it's very easy to make.

Bon apetite!

On the right to strike

I'm not a jurisprudent. I never wanted to be. Although at the time it was very popular, I never wanted to go to law-school. Not even as a kid, after watching LA Law on TV. Especially not after seeing my friends get home late at night, as young apprentices in law firms.

However, for my professional needs, I occasionaly read some rulings, laws and interpretations emerging from them.

Since in this case, things are a bit obscure, I'm asking for some tips (I know that for anything other than tips I'll have to pay more than I'm willing to at the moment) from anyone that has some knowledge on Israeli labor laws. Coming to think about it, why not any labor laws, from anywhere around the world...

Our subject today, as you probably guessed already, relates to the student's strike, and the right to strike.

To all of you who don't know, after several days of strike during the current semester, and following the public debate on the Shochat committee for the reform of hight education, another student's strike is expected this coming tuesday, supported again, by the senior and junior university staff organizations.

This brings up a few interesting legal questions, and I'd like to have some clarifications on the subject.

First, can we even call what the students are doing as a strike?
A strike, as far as I know, is defined as an action taken by workers against their employer. In this case, the students aren't employed by the university. This is not a strike. It is, at best, a weird situation of clients boycotting a service supplier, after having already paid for the service (kinda stupid, huh?).
If it isn't a strike, we can say that the students have decided not to attend classes, and now they are asking the staff not to teach, fearing that if classes are held as usual, it will be an incentive for students to attend classes which they will be tested on at the end of the semester.

If the students aren't really "striking", can we call the staff strike a solidarity strike? A solidarity strike is a strike held by the employees of company A as an act of solidarity with the struggle of the employees of company B, even though they have nothing against their employer at company A. Since there's no students' strike, the staff's strike isn't included in this narrow definition.

Now, if the only real strike held in this case is the staff's, can it be legaly justified? The staff has no dispute with the university, so they have no reason to strike.

Is there anything students can do to prevent this absurd strike?

By the way, according to the press, the students' strike is supported by the staff and coordinated with the staff union. A staff's strike isn't mentioned anywhere. Is the staff allowed not to teach without declaring an official strike? How can the university authorities deal with this?

On democracy and elections (or when can we doubt a democracy even though elections are held)

When do people leave their homes and go to vote? Many scholars have dealt with this question, and tried to formulate an answer that will justify the very action of voting, presenting it as a rational action, since if so many people are involved with it every 2-4 years (at least in Israel), it must be a rational action.

The basic idea is to see if the voter benefits from the act of voting more than the cost of the very same action. If the cost is lower than the benefit, we can say that voting is a rational thing to do.

According to the formula, the benefit of the voter is consisted of the impact of his single vote on the outcome of the elections, and the benefit of the voter from the fact that his favourite candidate wins the elections.

How can we measure the impact of a single vote? There are several factors to consider.

First, the size of the voting body. The impact of one out of 12 residents in the house committee elections is much greater than one out of 3 million votes in the general elections for the Israeli Knesset.

We must take into consideration the size of the voting body which is influencial to begin with. In Israel a candidate party needs 30,000 votes to gain a seat in the parliament. The single voter can regard himself as one out of 30,000 who managed to put a parliament member in the knesset, rather than one out of 3 million voters.

We also have to examine the gap between the leading candidates. When the race is very close, every voter can see himself as one of the few voters to determine the general outcome. That is why the candidates tend to tell us that the gap is really small in the last few days before the elections, to recruit all those supporters thinking about staying at home on elections day (that was one of Olmert biggest mistakes during last year's campaign, when he announced his victory 3 weeks before the elections).

The cost of the voting action is consisted of several parameters as well.

A good description of one of them can be found in the opening chapter of "Seeing" by Jose Saramago, but to sum it up we can say that inscribing in the voter's card, getting to the ballot, standing in line, leaving the house in an unpleasant day, missing working hours, understanding political information and making a decision are all parts of the cost of voting.

In Israel, much is done to lower these costs as much as possible: All eligible voters are automatically inscribed, there are many ballots all over the country, and every one can find a ballot very close to his whereabouts, the weather is usually nice, election day is a sabbatical day, and the propaganda is meant to deliver the principles of the agenda suggested by each party.

However, it is still possible that the formula will result in an unfavorable manner, since a large voting body reduces the benefit to a minimum. That's why scholars seeked another way of showing the rationality of voting, thus decided to add to the benefit factor the personal benefit of the voter from the very act of voting. There are many socialization agents making sure that we vote on elections day. By voting, we see ourselves as part of a larger and important group, deciding over the fate of our nation. We all remember what happened to Stan Marsh, when he didn't want to vote for a new school mascot (He was exiled from South Park)...

So, apart from the fact that I taught a course in political economy, why am I telling you all this?

Yesterday I got a copy of a correspondence between a math student and Gil Goldenberg, head of the information department of the Tel Aviv University Student's Union, in which Mr. Goldenberg claims that the reason the last elections for the student's body looked the way they did, is that the union is doing a hell of a job, and there's no need for an opposition.

This might be the place to explain how this year's elections looked like.

Out of 30,000 students, only 2,500 voted (8.3%), and sent 75 representatives to the student's council. The elections were won by the "New Generation" party (indentified with the Israeli Labor Party). The same happened in 19 out of the last 21 years!!! 35 out of the 75 representatives got in the council without elections, since they were the only candidates from their faculties.

Now let's try to examine the elections day in light of the theory I summarized above.

Let's begin with the cost side of the equation . Every student who is a member of the student union can vote, and the ballots are all over the campus, so this shouldn't be much of a problem.

However, it is clear that not all students are present on campus on elections day, and I can't really figure out why won't they prolong the elections and hold them for an entire week. It doesn't cost much money (as it does with the general elections which is a sabbatical day), and even the Italian general elections are 2-3 days long, to allow everybody to vote. The probability that a student that doesn't have class on elections day will come especially to vote is extremely low.

There also isn't any significant elections campaign, and in many cases (especially in faculties with only one candidate), the candidate decides to run for the elections in the last minute (mostly after massive persuasion efforts by the serving members of the council), so most of the voters have no information regarding the agenda of the candidates and the benefit expected from their being elected.

This brings us to the other side of the equation - the benefit. And we'll begin with the influence of the single voter on the outcome of the elections. Being part of a voting body of 30,000 people is much better than a voting body of several millions, and the students should consider themselves very influential, however the huge difference by which the labor party has won the elections for the last 20 years makes the students understand that the gap is impossible to close, and there's no point in voting, since the result is already known.

Moreover, the student can't really see the advantage of one outcome over the other, since all the candidates offer exactly the same things: cheap photocopies, text books and class summaries, representation of student's interests in different academic committees, a happy student's day, free beer once a year, and of course, an eternal fight against the politicians aiming to raise the tuition.

If every candidate offers the same things, why whould a student even bother? The students are indifferent to the identity of their council members (this can be related to Anthony Downs' theory on elections, on which I will not elaborate here).

The only differences between candidates are sometimes the political organization with which they are identified, but since general politics have little relevancy to campus life, it doesn't mean anything.

The only student's party with an "outside" agenda this year was the "green" party, who managed to put 4 representatives in the council, bringing an environmental agenda.

Regarding the added benefit from the very act of voting, in this case we can assume that since there aren't any socialization agents making sure the students do vote, the only ones bothering to do that are the candidates' friends, interested in promoting their friends' political career (and maybe later enjoy from their connections with council members that can help them get another free disk-on-key or whatever free stuff the student union gives away at the beginning of every academic year).

Well, it is easy to understand that the successful composition of the current students' council isn't really the reason of the unfortunate semi-democratic situation of Tel Aviv University's campus.

Why semi-democratic? Here we must address Keneth Arrow's impossibility theorem, examining the essence of democracy. Arrow defined a decisive set as a group which when selects a candidate, this candidate wins. If this set is the majority group, there's no problem, but when a decisive set is a minority or a single person, the rule of non-dictatorship seizes to exist, and therefore we have a less democratic situation.

The fact that democratic procedures are practiced, doesn't assure us that we live in a democracy. This is something that the students' bodies fail to understand.

What can they do to change things? Coming to think of it, why should they? the current situation guarantees that next year the same people will continue to serve...

Let's give some advice anyway. Maybe some day someone will read this and will try to implement a better system.

As I suggested above, prolonging the elections for a few days, or even up to a week, will make sure that every student is on campus on an election day, thus raising the probability that most students participate.

Also, a better branding of the candidates might as well assist us in increasing participation levels (although when almost all of the candidates are from the same party, it is hard to think about proper branding of candidates).

In addition, we must consider changing the structure of the council and the elections' system to one which will enable us to practice general campus elections. Why can't a history student vote for an environmentalist candidate from med-school if there's no environmentalist candidate in the liberal arts faculty?

The logic behind "regional" elections (every student can vote only for candidates from his or her faculty) is clear - students want someone who they can specifically go to when they have faculty internal problems.

However, there are general issues, especially concerning students activities as an organized body towards the government or general campus activities, and this is a sufficient reason to allow students to vote for any candidate they want, no matter where he comes from. This will also prevent the absurdity of candidates making their place in the council just because there's no alternative offered in the faculty.

Splitting the council into a general decision making body, and a committee dealing with internal faculty issues will let us enjoy the best of both worlds.

On the "exploited" conference

As every year in the last 7 years, the "exploited" conference, or formally known as the "social justice" conference, took place in front of Tel Aviv's David InterContinental hotel, manifesting against Israel's Business Conference which was held inside the luxurious hotel.

The conference is considered as a summit of all social activists from most of Israel's left organizations, whether economic or political left (on this problematic coupling and its internal contradiction in another post), as well as organizations whose relevance to this kind of activities is beyond me, as Tel Aviv University's students council or Green Course, which is an environmentalists organization, whose joining this solidarity might prevent possible future coalitions with the business sector in cases which both sides' interests are similar.

On the conference website there are many references to the linkage between capital and politics and the inevitable outcome of this linkage - corruption. I have written about it in the past, but I will mention again the contradiction in the economic left idea - you can't expect the government to be involved in every aspect of our lives (including our economic lives), and in the same time limit the government's power. When the governments dominates the economic activity (just as the protesters in the conference want), it is natural that private sector people will network with politicians, since they can benefit from this relationship. I guess some politicians have true friends, maybe because they are nice people, but many of their relationships are interest-based, which result in nepotism, cronyism and other sorts of corruption.

Anyway, today I read an article about the conference on "Ha-Ir", a wide spread Tel Aviv local weekly. I will refer to several chosen quotes by the participants answering the question why they think Israel's situation is so bad as they claim it to be:

"They won't give anymore unemployment allowance to people under the age of 28" - can anyone explain to me why should we give unemployment compensation to people who are young and able? Lucky me, I'll be 28 this year, so can start planning my retirement...

By the way, this subject of young labor is a huge deal in other countries too. It seems young people don't want to work no matter where they live. See what happened in France a few months ago, during the students protest against the CPE (Contrat Première Embauche), a reform suggestion, making it easier for employers to fire employees under the age of 26, during their first two years on the job.

Firing someone is a long and painful process to the employer in France, and changing this status quo, is of course bad for the young people, that can suddenly find themselves jobless, without the aid of their union. Is that really so?

The result of this status quo is that employers prefer to hire experienced workers, with a proven record in the labor market. This way they know exactly who they hire, and what they get for the money they pay. Hiring a university graduate with no experience is a risk, since if he or she aren't suitable for the job, firing them isn't an easy task as I mentioned, and the employers are "stuck" with employees they don't want.

Unemployment rates in France are relatively high, compared with other developped countries, but when focusing on young people, unemployment rate jumps up to 25% - every fourth young frenchman is unemployed.
So you might say the today's situation doesn't benefit the young people of France, and the suggested reform, which isn't guaranteed to give the best solution to the problem, might have encouraged employers to hire young people without fearing that they won't be able to fire them if they need to.

"They cut budgets to 'development towns' - an interesting name, development towns. I think they should call them depravedness towns, since nothing has developped there along the years whey enjoyed government support.

"The 'Wisconsin' plan (a welfare to work program) is still running" - OMG! they make people look for a job as a condition for recieving social welfare. I don't know when the guys at the labor party or at the youth movement "working and studying youth" forgot the principal value in their names - work, work and work!

The one I liked best is "The economy is sick - I wish it was dead". It's obvious that the economy is some seperate organ, which has nothing to do with us, and has everything to do with businessmen, exploiters, corrupted ministers and parliament members and evil employers. It will be so good if the economy dies, and takes with it all those plotters and schemers. This way we'll be able to live quitely in a world with no money, no trade and no need to work at all.

4 days in Barcelona

well, last week I've spent 4 days in BCN with my dad and my brother-in-law. Tried to get some tickets to see Barcelona vs. Chelsea, but not willing to pay 1000 euros per tickets sent us straight to a nice bar with lots of big screen tv's.
anyway, I've decided to post only a one pic here, and the rest you can see on my flickr pages (check out the badge here on the side bar).

So, first thing is first, me and Eyal (my b-in-law) took a two hours long city tour on a segway! for the tourists among you, it costs 60 euros per person, and you have to book in advance - just call Edgar (take the number from here): www.barcelonaglides.com. they also operate these tours in Madrid and Paris as far as I know.

















It's one of the greatest things ever invented. for the laziest people...

see you next time...

Jerusalem Night Photography

We decided to take a night photography class in Jerusalem. Started at the YMCA building:






Then left to Nachalat Shiv'a and Ben Yehouda St.





And after the class we continued on our own to Mishkanot Shaananim, to take some pix of the illuminated walls:

Nova's Film

So, we decided to shoot a film about what Nova does.
Here are a few pix of the process - most of them in Ashkelon, where there's a workshop for people with special needs, who make beautiful things:

and one in the store where they sell the stuff, which is in Home-Center in Gaash:

Want to read more about NOVA and what we do there? check out the link on the right...

4 days in Madrid

So, last week I was in Spain for 4 days, as a translator for a very nice high-tech company, called Itemfield.
It was a course on their product for a company in Madrid, and there wasn't much to do there except translating the powerpoint slides, and do very little simultaneous translation, since the Spanish guys understood the lecturer's English.

We had the nights off, so we took the time to walk the streets of Madrid, and went to see a Champion's League game between Real Madrid and Olympique Lyon. The game it self wasn't that good (1:1 draw), but it was a nice evening, and I never say no to a football game.

yes this is zidane (and girls, I have some beckham pix too if you want):

The metro in Madrid is pretty good:







And here's a very nice book stand in the street, with a scary seller, that wanted to shout at me for taking the pic, but I already ran away with my camera…

That's all folks. Now I'm back home, with a little cold (it was cold in spain this week), trying to get the usual things done...

Gaby

Last post from Buenos Aires

Well, here we are, about to leave this beautiful place, and return to our rutine of work, study and not eating anything good, or not eating anything at all for 3 months because of our new diet...

Anyway, our last few days in Buenos Aires were pretty intense. Besides meeting with my family, and going to eat with them in different places, we also paid a visit to the real holy land - La Bombonera - which is Boca's stadium (this way, yael could see what a real stadium looks like).



So, after giving the press conference, we left the stadium to Recoleta cemetary, the city of the dead. It's an exclusive cemetary in Buenos Aires, where all the famous people are burried (including Evita of course), but each grave is like a little house. A very unique place.



Yesterday we went to the Colon Theater, which is the most beautiful opera house here, and one of the most important in the world.

Last night we went to eat in the best meat restaurant in Argentina, called Cabaña Las Lilas - for those of you who don't know the place, just so that you know that they grow their own meat... I got Yaeli to admit again that steaks can be really great even without sauce. Strike two...

After that we went to see a Tango show, which was an excellent one (at least the dancers were), to conclude a traditional argentinean cultural evening.

Today, apart from a visit to the latin american art museum (really cool stuff), the main activity was shopping.

So here we are now, packing our stuff and preparing for our flight back homw tomorrow.

See ya there,

Yael and Gaby

Back to Buenos Aires

So, we're back here, in Buenos Aires, enjoying the last days of our dream vacation.

This morning we went to an antiquities bazar, and had a great time over there.




After that we went for lunch in an excellent restaurant, and I got Yaeli to admit that a staek without sauce can be really really really really great (I have won myself a place in heaven already...).

From there we went to a religious experience. We went to see the greatest match of them all: River vs. Boca - the Superclasico of world football.
The atmosphere was electrifying, as you can see Boca's fans:



and also River's:



Now, it's hard to believe that this was the first football match yaeli ever went to.



We had great seats (given to us by Adidas) - the problem was that Adidas is the sponsor of River, and we were in the middle of their ugly, disgusting and smelly fans. So I had to sit still and quiet all the game, not able to sing and jump with Boca's fans.

Anyway, the match itself sucked, and ended in a 0:0 draw. Never mind. It was a wonderful experience anyway.

OK, that's all folks (at least for now).

Love,

Gaby

More Villa La Angostura

Since it was SOOOOOO beautiful here, we give you another peek of our last few days in this paradise.

Now this next picture was taken with a 30 sec. exposure at midnight from our cabin porch:


Our first two days here were pretty rainy, but we decided not to be lazy, and took the car to a little ski town 120km from here, called San Martin de los Andes.



The road there is called The 7 lakes road (7 lagos), and it goes around a few beautiful lakes, each with its characteristics (mirror lake, the hiding lake, etc...). The road isn`t paved along 80km, and the driving is pretty rough, but when it started snowing on us, nothing really mattered.

Beacuse of the rain, we pretty much stayed in, ate, slept, watched TV, decided to get married, took some more nice pix of our cabin and just rested...


Our second day started with a bit rain too, but since it cleared rapidly, we left on the same road, and stopped along some of the lakes.

On the afternoon, we went to a place, recommended to us by a friend that stayed at our place a few times (she was 9 months in israel, studying in Jerusalem) - the place is a tea house, run buy this girl`s father`s aunt. She makes the best cakes, and a really good hot chocolate. The place is a wood house, with two cats sleeping on couches by the fire. a really perfect place (called La Casita de la Uma, in case any of you gets here...).

Yesterday morning we took a catamaran trip on the lake to a place called the Arrayanes wood. The place was what inspired walt disney to make the Bamby movie, and it was really lovely. We decided to walk back the 12km way to the village through the forest, and it was pretty cool (apart of the climbing parts...).

Now we are in Bariloche, about to eat some more chocolate before we take our flight back to Buenos Aires, for the last week of our trip.

Love you all,

Yael and Gaby

Bariloche and Villa La Angostura

Well, here we are, in Villa La Angostura, which is another name for Heaven. this place is amazing. I don`t remember having a place to sleep in such a pretty place ever in my life.
First you can see a picture of me in a chocolate store yesterday in Bariloche.



We took a car this morning, and started driving in this beautiful road, full of trees, mountains and lakes, until we got to the little town called Villa La Angostura, which is on the shore of lake Nahuel Huapi, north of Bariloche.

This is our cabin:



And this if the view from our porch, and our bedroom:



We`ll be here `till saturday, and I`m sure after seeing these pix you`ll forgive us for not writing for a couple of days...

Love and miss you all,

Yael and Gaby

Peninsula Valdés

Hey all. Yesterday we had an amazing day.
It started Saturday night, when we left my family at the Bahia Blanca bus station, and took the night bus to Puerto Madryn. We got there around 6 a.m. and were picked up to a whole day tour.
First we got on a Zodiac (rubber boat) in a place called Puerto Pirámide, and went for whale watching.



It was an undescribable experience - the best was when a 16m. whale went below our boat, and then lifted her tail on the other side, while her baby whale (only 8-10m.) rose to water level just on our side, and gave us a shower while exhaling from the back of its head.







Apart of whales we saw seals:



cormorans:



gulls:









Penguins:







Elephant seals:





and also guanacos, maras and even a blond skunk.

It was a really beautiful day, and everything was perfect.
At night we got back to the bus station, saw Argentina beat Peru on TV, and left for a 14 hours ride to San Carlos de Bariloche (a.k.a BARILOCHE).

That`s it for now. I have to go eat some chocolate.

Love,
Gaby