Yossi Vardi’s billion dollar suggestion

June 2, 2008 by · 3 Comments
Filed under: General, Technology 

Yossi Vardi is the most public face of Israel’s internet industry. Vardi has been a player in the Israeli hi-tech sector for years but solidified his status as the godfather of Israel’s internet scene when he sold ICQ for over 400 million dollars.Yossi Vardi

He is a doer, a connector and by many accounts incredibly generous with his money, so he is also a dream fulfiller – giving seed money to a myriad of young Israelis with big ideas. He’s put his money behind successful startups such as Answers.com, Speedbit and FoxyTunes, which was recently acquired by Yahoo.

Vardi doesn’t lack his own ideas, that’s for sure. Case in point: The revelation by Google founder, Sergey Brin, that Vardi helped inspired Google. “Yossi invented for us the magic formula,” he said with a smile. “He told us to devote two thirds of the [internet] page to original results, and a third to advertisements, and that is what we did.” As quoted by Ha’aretz in an event at GarageGeeks, a venture capital funded space for techies to get their geek on.

Well isn’t that the cherry on top of the malabi: On top of all of Israel’s contributions to hi-tech, we’ve also invented Google.

Kind of.

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Chicken pox? Head straight to the doctor

June 1, 2008 by · 13 Comments
Filed under: General, Life 

My two year old has chicken pox.

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This time, I was determined to get it right. My first boy had chicken pox fairly lightly. He was grouchy for a few days, and then the spots popped out. Not too many and apart from one that he scratched rather too vigorously – no scars either.

Then my next boy caught it. He was running a high temperature for several days before hand and was really sick. When the spots came out, they came out everywhere – in his hair, up his nose, in his mouth, down his throat and a whole range of other unmentionable places that I didn’t think you got chicken pox spots in.

We told him not to scratch, so he slapped the spots hard every time the itching got too bad. Despite his extraordinary willpower, several years on, he still has scars all over his chest and back.

With our third boy, we decided we’d spare him. As soon as I heard it was chicken pox season, I rushed off to the doctor and asked for a prescription for the inoculation. She handed it over promptly, and I prepared to buy it the next day.

But then he got sick with an ear infection. So we left it for a week.
The first day he was better my husband went off to buy the drug. No, they told him, you have to bring your child too and have the inoculation on the spot.

So we decided to take him that Thursday. Wednesday afternoon I picked up from his kindergarten.

“He’s got chicken pox,” the ganenit (kindergarten teacher – it’s so much easier to say in Hebrew) said, and lifted up his shirt to show me the spots. “Tamar, Daphna, and Gur came out with spots today too.”

In the days since then, the spots have erupted everywhere, and it’s even worse than my second child. I started counting the spots on his face yesterday, but gave up at 100. His skin hurts, he can’t sleep, he can’t eat because of the spots in his mouth. Seeing his beautiful soft skin marred by all these horrible spots, is just so miserable.

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(This was yesterday, they’re even worse today…)

That was my last chance to get it right. But maybe you can do better. If you hear the words chicken pox, rush your child off to the doctor for an inoculation and save yourselves and him a miserable couple of weeks.

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Nostalgia Sunday

June 1, 2008 by · 5 Comments
Filed under: Art, General, Israeliness, Pop Culture 

The song “Yehezkel” about the prophet Ezekiel was a major hit for 60s group The High Windows and remains an Israeli classic. This black and white TV version features band members Shmuel “Shmulik” Krauss and his then-wife Josie Katz, but Arik Einstein had apparently already split. What a bummer.

By the way, Josie Katz was a new immigrant from the US (!) and an inspiration to thousands of American-Jewish girls on how to be groovy in the land of Israel. Her life has had ups and downs, she’s been away and come back, but she’s kept on truckin’ and lives in Tel Aviv.

The original recorded version of the song can be found here. This is the one that is burned into my brain – my Israeli mother bought it and delighted as her three little miniskirted American daughters played it on the Hi-Fi and GoGo-ed away.

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