Spent the last week somewhere in the south of Israel, training with my unit. Army reserve is really the only place I can see a sunrise, since I’m more of a night person than a morning person. But when you wake up before the sun (5:30 am), there’s a good chance of catching the sun waking up, roughly an hour after you…
Couple of things worth mentioning, if you plan to go army training anytime soon:
- don’t take too sophisticated phones to a place with sand and high winds. My N95 will remember this past week for a long time – luckily I found a very powerful air pump at the base, that cleared any memory of the sand…
- there’s never, never, such a thing as enough warm cloths. We had the privilege of sleeping outdoors at the coldest night of the year in Israel. Temp was 0 (zero)! I slept with everything I had, including 4 small warming bags – nothing helped. F#&king cold.
- Bring snacks. We got 3 meals, no complaints there, but since we were in the field all week, breakfast, lunch and dinner were at odd hours.. snacks are always welcome.
- Facebook. Other than updating my status, facebook and social networks were a very popular discussion during the long days and nights. Only 1 of the soldiers didn’t know what facebook is, although he did hear about it.
- Thanks to my cellular provider for covering Israel with good signal. 3G was on and off, but GPRS was good enough to get the scoop Dec. 30th (3 days ahead) that IBM will acquire XIV (Hebrew)- a storage technology start-up from Israel, for $300M. XIV will keep its existing development center in Israel, and will be part of IBM Storage Division.
More pictures and videos (captured with my N95 – superb) will be available later on Flick and YouTube. See you soon…
