The Belstaff Bouncers

Whilst writing about 'Egged tales', I realised that I had never written anything about 'The Belstaff Bouncers', which were - how can I put this? - a large part of my life during 1975-7.

The beginning was in September 1975, when my friend Simon the drum and I were asked to perform some songs at the party to be held for the Habonim members who were emigrating from Britain to Israel. Quite why we chose to write songs about motorcyclists is something that eludes my memory, but for us, it was a hot topic. There were several motorcyclists in our ranks - I had just joined the club - and so it must have seemed sensible at the time. We sat down one afternoon and in short order wrote the lyrics to four songs: the songs were old rock'n'roll ones (e.g. "Breaking up is hard to do", "That'll be the day") but the lyrics were new. We performed them with Simon singing into one of my microphones (connected to my tape deck, connected to an amplifier) and me accompanying him on acoustic guitar with the other microphone placed inside the sound hole. A Belstaff jacket is a heavy duty leather jacket intended for motorcyclists which keeps its wearer dry; I don't remember where the 'Bouncers' part of our name came from.

We must have been well-received, for the next thing that I remember was discussing with Simon, along with Jeremy the bass, the possibility of forming a group. Simon said that he played drums, which surprised both Jeremy and I. When we found someone selling a drum kit, we gave Simon an 'audition', and believe it or not, he really could play. At the time I was working at Schweppes and so had a large amount of spare money; I paid for half of the drum kit. At the same time, I bought myself an electric guitar and an amplifier.

As all three of us were living at the time in the communal house in Hampstead, we used to rehearse in a shed at the bottom of the garden - far enough from houses in order to make a racket without disturbing anyone. I have a suspicion that we may have played at winter camp, 1975; we definitely played at a party in Southgate for Valentine's Day, 1976. This was termed "The Valentine Day's massacre", and we played some horror songs (anyone remember 'The monster mash"?). We continued practising throughout 1976, but in September of that year, Simon and Jeremy moved to a separate house in Ilford (?) and the days when we could go to the hut and rehearse (or just bash about) were over.

I'm certain that we played at winter camp in 1976 and at the Purim fancy-dress party on March 1, 1977 (I remember the date as this was St David's day, the patron saint of Wales, and so I dressed as a Welsh rugby player with a leek sticking out of my pocket). This was an excellent gig: I remember feeling that I couldn't play as loud as I wanted (and we were very loud).

Jeremy was due to emigrate in September 1977, so we decided to 'go out with a bang' before he left by making a professional recording. First, we went over the songs which we remembered and chose what would go on our record and in what order. We rehearsed them thoroughly, and during these 'sessions', Jeremy came up with a new, original song entitled "(It's your) Bike I like". As we didn't have much time to rehearse this, I created a minimal arrangement of strummed guitar and drums. Then, on the Saturday of this musical week, Jeremy and I went to the music shops around Charing Cross Road in order to buy him a 'proper' bass guitar - until now, he had been playing a no-name copy with a dreadful sound; he bought a Yamaha bass with a lovely sound.

On the Sunday (18 September 1977), we reconvened, along with Jeremy's brand new wife Carol and another friend/singer, Lorraine, in what might be euphemistically termed 'a studio' in Hendon. We had been looking for a studio in which we could record our modest songs, but not having much of a budget, we had to settle for something simple. We found this man (Mr Warren) who advertised a studio whose price was within our reach; it turned out that it was the front room of a normal semi-detached house, although it was a large room and there was a little control booth at the end.

We set up the instruments and finally we had proper microphones: one for Simon, one for me and one for the girls. There was also a mike on my trusted amplifier and presumably an overhead on the drums (or maybe not - there was enough spillage to obviate the need for the drums to be miked). As we were recording direct to mono with no overdubbing, we decided that we would play each song as many times as needed until we were satisfied. We all had headphones so that we could hear a balanced mix, but it took some time to get used to this and so the opening song required three takes. After listening to the first take of one song, someone remarked that the best thing about it was the count-in; it was me who counted the song in, and I broke down laughing when we tried the next take. So we had a 'cinema verite' moment with me counting, corpsing, Mr Warren breaking in on the control mike, and then me counting in again.

One of the songs was called "Takeaway", a parody of the Beach Boys' "Breakaway". I had suggested to Simon that instead of writing the lyrics together, he would write the first verse and I would write the second. This worked well; also, the writer would sing the words that he had written (i.e. Simon the first verse, me the second). For some reason, it was decided that I would sing both verses, something which we had not rehearsed before, so my singing was definitely rough on the first verse (something which these days can easily be corrected). As all of our songs were based on our memories of the original songs, our version is somewhat different (although the verse and chorus are recognisably the same as the original). Don't forget that in 1975-7, the only copyable medium that we had was cassettes: someone had to have the record which could be taped. So we worked from memories and improvised what we didn't know.

The finale was our version of "The sun ain't gonna shine any more" (The Walker Brothers), which in our warped version became "My bike ain't gonna run anymore". Mr Warren really enjoyed this and kept adding more and more reverb to my backing vocal once he heard what I was singing. This required only one take! So we were done: about three and a half hours of recording and listening from which we had 24 minutes of unforgettable music. Mr Warren also offered duplication services, so we ordered two or three acetate records (!) as well as forty cassette copies for sale. We sold all the cassettes to friends quickly and so recuperated our recording costs.

Probably a week later, we played a truncated set (certainly "My bike ain't gonna run anymore") at Jeremy and Carol's emigration party, which completed the circle started at a similar event only two years beforehand.

This is where The Belstaff Bouncers' story should end, but there is a continuation. About ten years ago, I transferred the recording - probably from the cassette and not the acetate - to my computer; at the same time, I digitised some of our rehearsal recordings along with one disastrous live recording. We had set up to record a performance at a party when suddenly the segue from our opening song into "Takeaway" was interrupted by someone shouting "Simon, Simon, it's smoking" - my amplifier's fuse had blown and apparently smoke was coming from it. We closed down very quickly! Listening to the recording now, I am surprised by how good it sounds - Simon's drumming was really good, something which passed us by at the time.

I often wonder what I would have done had we had better recording facilities - I would leave almost everything the same (although of course, the recording would have been in stereo) but I would have added an overdubbed rhythm guitar in a few places. But hey! this was 1977! The summer of punk! We could have appeared as a punk group, had we been prepared to put up with the spitting. After all, we were the same age as the Sex Pistols, the Clash, etc. On the other hand, I don't think that they would have been too enamoured of three Jewish university students; as my review of the record started, "The question is not whether white men can play the blues, but rather, can white Jewish ex-public schoolboys play the blues?".

To the best of my knowledge, below appears the only extant photograph of the Belstaff Bouncers (from the Purim Party, 5/3/77). The picture is effectively glued into a photo album so I was unable to remove it without damaging it. So a picture of the black and white picture will have to suffice; the warping is not in the original. I'm on the right, in case you couldn't guess.

Egged tales (more stories from 40 years ago)

1978 marked the golden jubilee of British Habonim (the movement spread to other countries a few years later); it was decided that we would mark the event by putting on what might be termed a 'musical' which was named 'Egged tales' (on the basis of the Canterbury tales; Egged is the name of the national Israeli bus company). I wasn't involved at the very beginning, but I was roped in shortly afterwards (either late December 1977 or early January 1978) to be the musical director of the show. One movement worker had a strong background in theatre, the wife of our shali'ach (an Israeli family sent to Britain to help run the movement) had a similar background, and there was one young man who thought that he was Danny Kaye.

In true Habonim style, there wasn't a written script initially; the musical would be built on scenes developed through group improvisation (but then formalised) and songs. As usual, the songs were adaptions of existing songs with new lyrics. For obvious reasons, we (I became part of the production company) were limited to using members from London; a message went out inviting anybody who was interested to attend rehearsals. I developed a group consisting of two brothers from Ilford (guitar and bass), my friend Debby (clarinet - I didn't know that she could play!), one youngster on violin, an even younger youngster on percussion (I bought him a pair of bongoes) and myself, playing mandolin and lead guitar.

Throughout January, my group worked on the songs which we had to play; I wrote what might be termed an overture, whose tune was based on the Israeli national anthem, but this got discarded at some stage. The opening song was  'The Deadwood Stage' from the film  'Calamity Jane'; whilst I might have been vaguely familiar with the tune beforehand, I think that I learnt it - and taught the others - from a cassette version prepared by the Danny Kaye wannabe. I don't remember now what the other songs were, although the finale was a song from 'Joseph and the technicolour dream'.

In February I had to curtail my involvement in the musical in order to devote myself to my university studies: we had final exams at the end of the month. When I came back, I found my group of musicians well rehearsed.

We took the show 'on the road' during the Spring holidays. After a final rehearsal in London one Saturday afternoon, we took the scenery apart and loaded everything into a truck which headed north to Manchester. A coach was hired to take all the youngsters, but I travelled separately in a car with my fellow producers. As far as I remember, we appeared at the Free Trade Hall (or maybe the Lesser Free Trade Hall) in Manchester the following day. I confess that I remember nothing of the performance. After the show, all the youngsters stayed overnight with their counterparts in Manchester, whereas we stayed in the Habonim building at Upper Park Road, Salford: a very familiar location for me.

The next day, we made the short trip to Leeds, where we set up in some hall (this might have been the Habonim building there but I don't think so) and performed again. Once more, the youngsters stayed overnight before setting out for Glasgow, whereas my cohorts helped pack everything then set out immediately for Glasgow. I remember falling asleep quite quickly then waking up somewhere north of the border. When we arrived at the hall, I set up the audio equipment half asleep; I remember being pleased that we had an eight track mixer but that's all I remember. The show went in a flash - although nominally awake, I was asleep. It's like when we used to go on night walks at summer camp - I would walk and have no memories of a few hours. Fortunately after this show, we had a few days rest.

One week after the Manchester show, we reconvened at the Savile Theatre in London's West End - or at least I think that it was the Savile. The Wiki states that the theatre was turned into a cinema in 1970 which makes me wonder where we did appear. I did a little busking in the street in the afternoon, not that anyone stopped and gave me money. As usual, I remember nothing of the performance, but two things have stuck in my mind from that day. At some stage, the cable from my electric guitar to its amplifier caused problems, so I had to play one extra song on mandolin; I think that during the interval we got the guitar/amplifier working again for I certainly played 'stinging lead guitar' during the finale. After the show, I met my old girlfriend G, this being our final meeting. It wasn't too much of a surprise as her youngest sister appeared in the cast but always the fool, all I could talk about was the problem with the guitar and not about anything about her (like how she was, what she was doing, etc).

I had recorded one show with two microphones and my trusty stereo cassette deck; I invited the man who ran a home studio in Hendon to record the London show, but I had left it too late and he was busy that day (my friends and I recorded 'an album' in his 'studio' (his front room!) in 1977, but that's another story which seems not to have been written about here). So I tried again to get a good recording from the London show. Eventually with the help of Mr Warren (the Hendon man), we were able to patch together an audio souvenir of the show. I have a cassette somewhere, but haven't heard it for years; I don't have the means to listen to it now, even if I wanted to. 

I have just dug out the cassette from its hiding place; the 'liner notes' say that the show was recorded in Birmingham, 9 April 1978. Birmingham? It seems that I had the itinerary wrong - we must have appeared first in Birmingham on Sunday, then travelled further north to Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow. Maybe we didn't appear in Manchester? My mind is a blank and these memories aren't likely to return. 

A year later, some of the senior participants would relive the show when we took part in the celebrations for 50 years of Habonim in Israel. Although I vaguely remember the atmosphere, the only real memory I have of this event was meeting the then president of Israel, Yizhak Navon.

[Edit from a year later] I am fairly certain that the order of shows was Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, home for a few days, Birmingham, a week off, London.

Nothing much to write about

In case anyone is wondering why it's been nearly three weeks since I last posted anything here: I'm fine, I simply don't have anything which I particularly want to write about. I've been fairly busy at work and I've also been fairly busy consulting, so outside of these two activities, there hasn't been much spare time.

I have discovered a series of police procedurals set in Venice 'starring' Commisario Brunetti; having spent a bit more time in Venice than the average day tourist, I can remember several of the places mentioned and have an idea about the geography. It's like DCI Banks has moved to Venice, although at the moment I don't think that author Donna Leon is as good as Peter Robinson, who writes the Banks books. The first four books which I have read are competent but not more so; to be honest, the early Banks books weren't that good either. One noticeable difference is that in the Banks books, normally two detectives interview people (so that there is corroboration) whereas the Brunetti books almost always have Brunetti solo. Maybe the series will improve - there are 23 books to get through.

DBA news

There's been nothing on this blog about my doctorate since the end of November when my research proposal was accepted. I was informed who my new doctoral supervisor would be and then ... silence. After a month of hearing nothing, I asked the DBA administrator what had happened. It turned out that the supervisor had been ill with a pulmonary infection. Eventually we started swapping emails.

During this period of silence, I started work in converting my research proposal back into the opening chapters of my thesis. This was based on the 'original' version which I had written in May, but of course, since then there have been changes in the direction of the research, in an attempt to make it more palatable for a business degree. So there was a certain amount of material which had to be thrown out, replaced by new material on engineering change management and benefits realisation management. I completed a reasonable version of the 'intermediate submission' then sent it to my supervisor for scrutiny.

After another period of silence, we have been corresponding more frequently. Fortunately, working with this supervisor is much easier than the mentor which I had for the research proposal. His remarks have been with regard to the topics which I am discussing as opposed to correcting my English.

Last week, I wrote that I felt that I was close to completion of the current stage but that I was lacking for the literature review papers which discussed the human element in terms of developing enhancements. I asked if he could suggest some keywords which would be relevant to what I wanted, intending that I would do the searching. To my surprise, I received a letter on Friday morning with a list of about eight papers which he considered to be relevant (one of which he wrote himself). Armed with his references, I started hunting the papers via Google Scholar, then reading them.

It seems that most of the papers that he suggested were not what I was looking for, but inspired, I found some recent papers which are much closer to what I want. After printing them, I began reading them and considering what use I could make of them. In the evening, I spent about an hour and a half reading two or three papers closely and adding them to my literature review.

This morning I found one of the papers mentioned as a reference (with the unforgettable author list of Wu, Fang, Wang, Yu and Kao) but decided - so far - not to use this. Although this paper is about engineering change management and ERP, it's about recording engineering changes in ERP and not about appropriating the techniques of ECM for ERP. Writing up another paper led to me searching for the term "cross-functional cooperation", i.e. people in different departments cooperating. This is very important, for the type of enhancement which I intend to research usually benefits one department, possibly at a cost to another department (of course, the best enhancements are when everybody wins). I found one recent (2014) paper which is about cross-functional awareness, SMEs and ERP, so it hits many buttons. I haven't read this yet, but will probably do so this evening.

The work of the past few days has widened my literature review; I also included a portion which was in my original thesis, about user resistance. I would like to finish up all this work by the end of the week and send an updated version to my supervisor, but I doubt that is going to happen: Tuesdays through to Fridays tend to very busy these days, either with the day job or with consultancies (I have two new pupils). I think that I will take this last paper with me and read it on the train tomorrow and on Wednesday; I doubt that I will have suitable conditions for writing about it, though. 

Left joins in Priority

I landed a new consultancy gig yesterday, helping improve a programmer who is currently at intermediate level. It's much easier working with someone who already knows a fair amount of Priority programming as opposed to working with someone who is new to the subject. During the course of yesterday's session, we came across a subject which is slightly complicated, left joins. I feel that I didn't explain it very well yesterday, but this morning, when walking the dog, I found a much better way of explaining.

The standard definition of a left join is the LEFT JOIN keyword returns all records from the left table (table1), and the matched records from the right table (table2). The result is NULL from the right side, if there is no match. The Priority programmer's bible (aka the SDK) calls this an outer join and explains it thus: An outer join is represented in Priority’s syntax by a question mark (?) following the table ID:

SELECT ... FROM FNCITEMS, FNCITEMSB ? 
WHERE FNCITEMSB.FNCTRANS = FNCITEMS.FNCTRANS 
AND FNCITEMSB.KLINE = FNCITEMS.KLINE;

As opposed to regular joins, an outer join preserves unmatched rows. Thus, if there is no join record, a null record will be retrieved from the join table and the query will succeed. Is that any clearer?

I explained it by saying that when we need a join to a second table but we are not sure that there is a matching record in the second table, then use the question mark. Here is an example: in one of my company's divisions, use is made of the status of an order line, whereas in other divisions, the order lines do not have a status. As the order line status is not stored in the order lines table but in a secondary table, we cannot be sure whether there is a matching record in the secondary table and so every join to this table should use a question mark. The above syntax is fine in an SQLI step but isn't suitable when programming a screen, and of course yesterday we were programming a screen.

All the above is about as clear as mud. The explanation which I hit upon this morning requires the use of two concepts which Priority skirts around: primary keys and foreign keys. In Priority-speak, a primary key is normally the auto-unique key of a table, but in some cases it can be two fields taken together (this of course is what we had yesterday evening). Priority doesn't have the concept of a foreign key which is defined in standard SQL as a field (or collection of fields) in one table that refers to the PRIMARY KEY in another table. For example, an order line has a field PART which refers to the primary key (part) in the parts table; from the point of view of the order lines table, PART is a foreign key.

What does this have to do with left joins? I'm glad you asked. My insight this morning was: whenever we join two tables, there is no need for the question mark (left join) if we are joining between a foreign key from the 'home' table (e.g. order lines) to the primary key of the joined table (e.g. ORDERITEMS.PART = PART.PART). If ORDERITEMS.PART has 'no' value (i.e. its value is 0), it will match the zero record in table PART and so everything is ok. But if we are doing the reverse - in which we join via the primary key of the 'home' table to a field in the joined table (normally this field will be part of the joined table's primary key) - we have to use the question mark (aka left join) syntax as there is not necessarily a record in the joined table which matches the primary key of the 'home' table.

Here's an example: the PART table contains many fields, some of which are foreign keys and some hold values of the given part. There is a table called PARTEXTFILE, which contains the names of external files connected to the part; in other words, there exists a 1 to many relationship between PART and PARTEXTFILE.  The primary key of PARTEXTFILE is the part number and a counter for that part; if that counter is -1, then the external file is a picture of the given part. There may be no picture for a given part, so we need to use a left join when using PARTEXTFILE; put another way, we are joining on the basis of the 'home' table's primary key to a field in the joined table, which means that we have to use the question mark.

So why not use the question mark in every join, I was asked. Using the question mark where it is not called for will join many records which should not be joined otherwise. I'll sum this up with a little table to make things as clear as I possibly can:

Home table	Joined table	Join
Foreign key	Primary key	regular
Primary key	[Primary key]	LEFT

More headphones

Yesterday I finally got around to 'ripping' some songs from a singer's cds to mp3 format so that I could hear them on my 'regular' headphones (not the noise cancelling ones). I extracted the memory card from the headphones, put them in an adapter and connected it to the computer in order to copy the mp3 files. Easy as pie.

The problems started when I went to put the memory card back into the headphones. This is always a tricky operation as the memory card has to be inserted in one specific way and I can never remember which way that is. This time, when inserting the card, it slipped from my fingers and fell into the innards of the headphones. I tried to extract the card but it seems that my efforts only made things worse by pushing the card further into the socket (or into the space around the socket). I tried widening the socket opening with pliers but again, my attempts to do so only worsened the problem.

Why was it so important for me to extract the memory card, even at the price of trashing the 'phones? After all, a new memory card would cost less than another set of 'phones. Well, as it happens, I have a spare set of 'phones doing nothing, so their cost is effectively zero. Also, the price of a memory card does not take into account all the time and effort I have spent in ripping songs to the card (there are something like 64 directories on the card, where a directory can hold between ten and a hundred files, so we're talking about a few thousand songs).

Somehow my wife managed to extract the card using nothing more than her nails. I popped the card very carefully into the spare set of 'phones and I was set. As I wrote before, the controls are harder to access than the trashed 'phones, and these don't fold, but then I don't intend to take them on train journeys.

One huge advantage which the traditional mp3 players have is that the USB socket has two functions: it both charges the internal battery and allows access to the file system of the memory card. In all of the mp3 headphones which I have bought, the USB socket is used solely for charging; one has to extract the memory card in order to add (or delete) files. 

On the basis of this experience, I am going to be very careful if I ever extract the memory card from the new headphones.

Yoni Rechter and the Philharmonic

I went to concerts held in what was the Mann Auditorium (and is now the Charles Bronfman Auditorium) several times in the 1980s. I remember concerts by Randy Newman, Leonard Cohen and Don McLean, as well as one by Matti Caspi. There may have been more, but if so, they have been washed away from my memory by time. I saw most Israeli acts at the concert hall at nearby kibbutz Kfar Menahem, but again, I haven't been there for years.

By chance, I happened to hear on the radio a few weeks ago that Yoni Rechter is playing two concerts at the Charles Bronfman Auditorium along with an orchestra. I wasn't too sure that I heard correctly (I wasn't exactly listening to the radio, but I heard it) so I checked on the maestro's facebook page, and sure enough, two concerts were listed, on the 7th and 8th of February. After a small amount of dithering, I booked seats (which are very expensive, as far as I am concerned: 350NIS each, which these days is equivalent to nearly $100 each); I haven't got tickets but rather a QR code on my telephone which I hope can be bartered for seats. I suppose that the price can be explained by the orchestra and also the few special guests who will be appearing: all of these people have to be paid for their time, both in rehearsal and in performance.

We left home early for the concert (which is to start at 8pm) so that we could collect tickets and have something to eat at a nearby cafe. The box office is well organised, having about eight queues, each for two or three letters of the alphabet. I approached the 'N' queue, stated my name and waited for the tickets. The box office girl couldn't find them, so I repeated my name. Again, she searched but to no avail. After a few minutes of hopeless searching, a supervisor came over. I showed him the receipt on my telephone, but still no tickets. After some searching with a computer, the supervisor told me that my tickets had been for the previous night's concert (Wednesday)! Too say that I was taken aback would be an understatement. I wasn't bothered so much about the loss of the money as to the fact that I would miss the concert. Fortunately, the supervisor was able to find a pair of tickets for the Thursday concert, at a 20% discount (and paid over three months), seating us almost at the same place as we would have sat the night before. The evening was saved!

After a small pre-concert meal in a nearby cafe (which actually took reservations), we made our way into the concert hall. This time, there was a merchandise table but I didn't have to buy anything (as I already own most of the products displayed). Our seats were towards the back of the second floor, but this hall is very well designed such that we had a good view of the stage, and of course we could hear well. Two large screens had been erected on either side of the stage which showed close-ups fed from at least one camera. I think that I spotted one camera but I couldn't figure out where the others were.

The picture on the left gives an idea of what the stage was like (the screens can be seen on both sides). This picture was taken before the concert started, so there are only a few musicians warming up.

The concert opened with what might be termed an orchestral overture, which wove several tunes into one. The sound of a full orchestra is amazing: I think that I have never been to an orchestral concert in my life. The tune of 'Atur mizhech' (a song which several years ago was voted the best Israeli song of all time) emerged from the overture which is when Yoni took the stage. He played the tune whilst the orchestra played the accompaniment: this was breath-taking. This was the only non-vocal piece of the evening, which is possibly a shame.

Then the songs started: the first few were slightly obscure pieces from the repertoire, but as the show progressed, more and more familiar songs were played. The guest vocalists helped but didn't necessarily make a huge contribution. To be honest, I found the orchestrations to be conservative: they added but not as much as they could have done. As we say in Hebrew, the enemy of the very good is the excellent; here, Rechter and Ilan Mochiach (the conductor and arranger) played safe in order to achieve the very good.

Whilst looking for some background material, I came across this interesting interview with Yoni about progressive rock. The interviewer had picked up - as had I - what sounded like influences from progressive rock on a sequence of songs from Yoni's 2004 disc, "Another story". It seems that he does not listen very much to this genre, although he singles out Gentle Giant as an example.

Yoni also mentions that Danny Sanderson - the brain behind the first Kaveret album - also had progressive tendencies, which could be heard on "Despite everything" on their debut album and "Crowded in the ear", the title of their third album but only released on a collection from 2014. It was very interesting to read a little about the process of arranging material for Kaveret.

It would have been intriguing to hear that 'progressive' sequence of songs from "Another story" played with the orchestra: this would have been more challenging and more successful. But it seems that the organisers were conservative with the selection of tunes and resisted the opportunity to stretch out. One of the encores - "She's here again" - was played without orchestra, which is ironic as the original recording from 1979 features strings!

I wonder whether the performances were recorded, as it would be a shame not to enjoy them again and save them for posterity.

[SO: 4692; 5, 22, 44

MPP: 1165; 1, 6, 7] 

Edit: Someone posted a clip filmed (with a smartphone, so don't expect high quality) at this concert. Each singer sings in a different language: Russian, English, Polish, and of course Hebrew. I can't identify in which language Yoni is singing. Here's another song from those concerts.

Travelling to Karmiel with my new headphones

As my grand-daughter would say, "Wow!". It would appear that these noise cancelling headphones are worth every penny which I spent on them. Ambient noise was reduced to almost nothing, allowing me to hear music at a very low level and not 'encourage' the high pitched white noise which I seem to hear all the time (aka tinnitus).

The noise cancellation was less good in the open air (specifically at the Tel Aviv University train station): there was definite muffling of noise, but it was still present. I used to turn off my headphones when at the station as the noise level was far too high; yesterday I could still listen to music despite the noise.

My only gripes are the cable connecting the headphones to the mp3 player (the cable itself is a story in itself: I tried two cables at home, neither of which worked well, before trying the cable which came with the headphones) and the mp3 player itself. Once upon a time, it used to remember what song was playing when it was turned off; it would resume in the same place when turned on again. Now it starts from the beginning every time. Maybe resetting the device will cure this problem. [Edited 02/02/18: Downloading and uploading the firmware fixed this problem]

I spent several hours on the train reading Tom Clancy's "Sum of all fears", a book which I seem to have never read before. This one goes on and on and on, although the amount of editorial writing seems less than in others by the same author. I think that I'm about half-way through the book but I'm not enjoying it very much.

Noise cancelling headphones (2)

After my original post on the subject, I did more searching on the net and eventually decided to purchase a pair of Sony MDR-ZX770BN headphones; these have received good reviews and are not too expensive.  I could have bought a pair from an Israeli supplier at what appeared to be a slightly higher price than the British supplier from whom I bought, but once other factors such as shipping and customs charges were taken into account, it looks like I made a poor decision regarding the vendor.

As these are proper headphones made by a very reputable manufacturer, the packaging was extensive: not just a plastic bag, but a box which fits inside a box which fits inside another box! There are also legible instructions in about fifteen languages (although Hebrew does not appear to be one of those). 

As seems to be the norm with such headphones, they receive their music via Bluetooth or via a cable. For the time being, I'll have to connect the headphones to my old (but good!) mp3 player via the cable; it might be possible to tape the player to the headphones. I have ordered a Bluetooth mp3 player which accepts a memory card, so I won't have the cable problem in the future. These are not the outcomes which I wanted but they are acceptable.

I used the accompanying USB cable (the same as my Kindle cable) to charge the headphones. A red light did come on to show that the headphones were charging; presumably it turned itself off when the battery was fully charged (I'm not sure about this). A press of a few seconds on the power button turns the headphones on; I think that a press on the 'nc' button turns the noise cancelling function on. I can't hear any difference at the moment but then I'm sitting in a quiet place.

The real test will be in two days' time when I travel to Karmiel. Will I hear extraneous noise? Will I hear my music at a reasonable level? All will soon be answered.

Braised beef

I don't normally cook beef, for several reasons: I don't like the taste or texture, it costs much more than chicken, and I've only rarely cooked beef to the satisfaction of my wife. On Friday night, however, things changed.

I get some of my recipes from this site, which is in Hebrew and sometimes in French; the recipe which I followed is here. I asked my wife to buy 1.5kg beef which we call 'number 8'; I don't know what it's called in English, but one can see from the accompanying diagram that it comes from the upper part of the cow's front legs. This is the cut which I use sometimes for cholent; as I wrote there, this cut is ideal for stews as it contains a large amount of collagen which is broken down to gelatin during the cooking process.

On Thursday night, I placed the two large pieces of meat into a pot, covered them with water and added two quartered onions. I then cooked the meat on the gas for an hour and a half; afterwards, I stored the meat and the liquid separately in the fridge.

On Friday afternoon, I prepared an evil mixture of soy sauce, salt, pepper, parsley, paprika, soup powder and garlic; the recipe says to mix these ingredients together, then press them into the flesh of the cooked meat. I put them directly into the same container which held the beef, but I should have mixed them first in a separate bowl before pouring the mixture onto the beef and massaging it. I sliced sufficient raw potatoes to cover the cooking pan, then placed the beef and the marinade on top of the potatoes, as well as the original cooking liquid (plus onions). Finally, I covered the pan with aluminium foil. Cooking time was one hour at 200°C and a further two hours at 175°C.

All the carnivores of the family were very appreciative of the dish. I think that I got a lump of unmixed soup powder on my plate, as the meat was too heavily spiced for my liking. I received approval to cook this dish again in the future, but to reduce the quantity of the marinade. The dish is maybe twice as expensive as chicken dishes, so maybe I'll cook it once every six or eight weeks (my daughter, son-in-law and grand-daughter eat with us on alternate weeks).

---

I'm adding  a new tag to these posts: SO will mean that the post includes my 'scores' from Stack Overflow and Music Practice and Performance.

[SO: 4662;  5, 22, 44
MPP: 1105; 1, 6, 7]

Art turns into reality

Many of the story lines of tv series "Madam Secretary" seem to have no connection with reality. Thus it comes as quite a shock when two story lines seem to have been influenced by reality, or possibly the story lines have influenced reality.

A few weeks ago, there was an episode (S4E4) which had in its background a government shutdown. As a result, most of the State Department employees were sent on unpaid leave. The same thing is happening today in real life.

Even more disturbing was the episode that I saw yesterday - S4E12, aka 'Sound and fury': this episode has the president acting more like a dictator, ignoring the advice of his National Security team and firing the Defense Secretary who refused to carry out an immoral order. The highlight of this was the statement which I paraphrase as "I am the strongest man in the world. This is what I want and you will do it". Eventually the cabinet held what might be termed a mutiny (mutiny is for enlisted personnel, barratry is for offices), insisting that the president stand down until his medical condition is evaluated. It transpires that the president has a growth which is pressing down on his frontal cortex, causing his personality and decision making functions to change. A short course of anti-steroids and he's back to normal! (Although he will have to undergo surgery to remove the growth.)

Does this sound familiar - except for the absence of a growth (the real-life US president had a medical check about a week ago)?

Fortunately I am not an American, so I can view these events in an objective manner.

I wonder whether real-life Americans talk about the constitution as much as their fictional counterparts do.

Noise cancelling headphones

When I travel by train, which I do about one and a half times a week, I listen to music via headphones. This is partially to mask the sounds of the train itself and partially to mask the sounds of other passengers - Israelis are not the type to sit quietly! I have noted that I really have to crank the volume up, to listen at a much higher volume than I would prefer.

As a result, I have started to suffer from tinnitus, which manifests itself as a wash of white noise at a high frequency. Fortunately, it comes and goes; it's barely present on the days when I don't travel. I would like to reduce the volume in my headphones when travelling, which is what leads me to noise cancelling headphones. These should allow me to listen at a much lower volume whilst shutting out all the extraneous noise.

Being slightly old-fashioned (these days, this means a year or two behind the times), I prefer to store my music on a TF card as opposed to storing the music on my telephone and transmitting to the headphones via Bluetooth. After searching on Ebay for noise cancelling headphones which can accept a TF card, I ordered one such device for the princely cost of about $25. The headphones arrived very quickly, but before I could use them, I had to photocopy and enlarge by 50% the very small user instructions. Thus armed, I could understand what I needed to do in order to play music stored on the memory card.

The initial volume was extremely loud; after pressing on the correct button to reduce the volume, I tested the noise cancelling functionality ... which did not seem to be present. I got in contact with the suppliers, who very quickly responded that another purchaser had asked the same question recently. It turns out that there is no noise cancelling, which is why some of their advertising material does not mention this (but their headline does). In other words, these headphones are functionally the same as the ones I already use. The new headphones have bluetooth and make announcements, but the controls are harder to access and I couldn't see how to fold them (the picture on the left is not of the model which I purchased).

In other words, I was duped. I will keep these headphones in reserve for the day when my main headphones cease working, but otherwise I'm back where I started. Looking again at Ebay listings, it would seem that any decent pair of noise cancelling headphones is going to cost over $100 and will be made by a respectable manufacturer, eg Bose or Sennheiser. None of the models which I have found accept TF cards (I wonder why), but all have either Bluetooth or the ability to connect to an external mp3 player. I shall continue looking ....

Business rules in Priority which do not apply to specific users/2

In my previous post on this subject, I wrote at the end The only problem with this is that the above uses one of the business rule's three conditions, and there may not be a condition to spare. A simple solution to this problem occurred to me today.

Let's say that a rule has all three possible conditions defined, and that one of them is "branchname = 400" (I have several rules like this). All I need do is leave the "branchname = ', part and define the expression

(SQL.USER IN (1, 205) ? 'A' : '400')

This condition kills two birds with one stone: if the user number is 205 (me), then the expression will return 'A' which means that the condition and thus the rule will fail. For a regular user, the value 400 will be returned; if this value matches that of 'branchname', then the rule will execute (preventing the user from doing something), but if the branchname is not 400, then the rule will fail. Which is exactly what happens now.

At the moment, I can't see how I can use this technique if the condition is something like 'order type <= 007', but I'm sure that at least one condition out of the three per rule will be testing equality. One only has to choose the most suitable condition for this technique.

[Edit from 07/01/18]
One rule which I needed to change had a condition 'and order.branchname not equal to 200'. I was stumped at first how to change this condition so that it doesn't affect me, but after a few minutes cogitation, I found this solution:

(SQL.USER IN (1, 205) ? :$$.BRANCHNAME : '200')

Or in English, if the current user is either 1 or 205, return the value of 'order.branchname', else return 200. For me, the condition then becomes 'and order.branchname not equal to order.branchname', so of course the condition fails and the rule does not apply to me.

[SO: 4632; 5, 22, 44

MPP: 1065; 1, 6, 7]

Business rules in Priority which do not apply to specific users

I've written a few times about business rules in Priority, and it seems that thinking about these rules has opened up a few possibilities. A business rule is inclusive: one defines for which users (or groups) the rule is effective. This sometimes means that the same rule has to be defined several times, once for each group of users. There is no way of defining a business rule to be exclusive, i.e. it applies to everyone except a few users.

... Or is there? After a little creative thinking, I realised that I could define an exclusive rule. The way to do this is to define one of the three conditions that business rules allow in the following manner: the document's date is equal to the following function:

(SQL.USER IN (1, 205) ? 01/01/88 : :$.CURDATE)

This piece of gibberish, when translated in English, means that if the current user's number is 1 or 205 (1 is the system manager, 205 is my user number), then return the value 01/01/88, else return the document's date. If the current user's number is 6, then the condition will be true (document date = document date) and so the business rule applies to this user. If the current user's number is 205 (i.e. me) then the condition will be false, and so the business rule will not apply to me.

Convoluted logic, but it works. The only problem with this is that the above uses one of the business rule's three conditions, and there may not be a condition to spare. It might be possible to chain the above logic, but I suspect that it won't work.

End of an era

For the past twenty years or so, our tv satellite provider, Yes, has broadcast the international channel "BBC Entertainment" (or its predecessor, "BBC Prime"). This is one of my favourite channels, and through it I was able to enjoy series such as "Cold Feet", "Teachers", "New Tricks", "Scott and Bailey", "Sherlock", "Silent Witness", "William and Mary" along with many others, especially the weekly medical drama/soap, "Casualty".

No more. As from midnight, the channel will no longer be broadcast in Israel. I wrote a letter to Yes, asking about this; their reply was that the content of the channel is old-fashioned, and that many suppliers around the world are dropping it. They claim that they will be broadcasting quality British programs taken from BBC, Sky, Channel 4, etc. over the coming year.

I'll believe that when I see it. Where am I going to see the coming episodes of "Casualty"? Probably nowhere.

Sheet music

No, that's not a reference to 10cc's second (and probably best) album, but rather referring to two PDFs which dropped into my mailbox yesterday evening. I wrote a few days ago that I spoke with Yoni Rechter after his show on Thursday night, and that he offered to send me the sheet music to one of the songs on his new album 'Svivenu' ('around us'). I sent him (or his facebook page) my details on Friday, and yesterday the music arrived! True, it didn't come from Yoni himself, but from someone in his production company.

One file contains music for the vocals whereas the other is for piano.  Looking at them makes me wonder whether Yoni (or a copyist) prepares such files for all his songs, for those playing with him.

I've chosen to display a part of the piano score which is probably the most interesting: the song starts in A minor, 5/8 time. In bar 26, there is a modulation to A major; bar 28 is in 6/8 but bar 29 is back in 5/8. Again, bar 33 is in 6/8 but bar 34 is in 5/8. The song returns to A minor at bar 44 (not shown). As it happens, I have yet to hear the song and follow it with the score, but I'm sure that will happen soon.

When we came home on Friday, I looked at the previous Yoni album, a live recording from 2011. To my surprise, almost all of those who appeared with him on Thursday also appeared on the 2011 recording; the only differences are the backing singers. The set list hasn't changed that much from 2011, either. I haven't looked at the musicians on the most recent album, but again, I would not be too surprised to see there some familiar names.

[SO: 4622; 5, 22, 43

MPP: 1027; 1, 6, 7]

1,100 blogs

Another 100 blogs have flown by in just under a year (one blog every 3.5 days), and it's time to look at what occupied me this year. No surprises for first place.

Position	Tag	Count
1	DBA	16
2	Priority tips	14
3	Personal	13
4	Holiday	7
5=	Guitar	6
5=	Rodos	6
7=	ERP	5
7=	TV series	5
9=	Grandfather	4
9=	Musical instruments	4
9=	Obituary	4

The first two subjects are the same as last year (13 and 9 blogs respectively). Last year there were nineteen subject with four or more blogs whereas this year there are only eleven subjects with four or more. The total count of all the above is 84, although every blog about Rodos would also be marked as Holiday, and I imagine that most blogs about music instruments were also about guitars.

Two important subjects are missing from the above: health (only two blogs) and songwriting (0). Obviously this year I've been healthier than previous years. Disappointingly, I have created absolutely no music this year. I might have remixed a song or two, but apart from that ... nothing. I haven't felt the urge at all.

Who knows what will occupy me in the future.

Celebrating the Winter Solstice with Yoni Rechter

Several weeks ago, our daughter surprised us by saying that she had booked us a Thursday night/Friday morning stay in a boutique hotel, including a performance by Yoni Rechter. That's the way things happen: I haven't stayed in an Israeli hotel for over ten years, and then it happens to me twice in a few weeks.

The boutique hotel is situated in the top four stories of a ten story building in Rehovot; it is strategically place between the train station and the Science park, thus providing an ideal location for visiting scientists, investors and collaborators to stay. Quite how we ended up there is an unknown; I suspect that the hotel management noticed that they had a very low occupation rate for that night and so offered to their consumer club a deal with the Rechter concert (held in a winery some twenty miles away) as a sweetener. Supposition again, this deal was offered to my daughter who knows my fascination with Rechter along with my wife's upcoming birthday, so she decided to surprise us.

We arrived at the hotel just after 12pm; our room was ready - in fact, we had been upgraded (giving further strength to the under-booked theory) to a large room with a sofa and chairs as well as the double bed. Once we unpacked our few clothes, we descended to find somewhere to eat - an easy task. After a reasonable meal, we once again ascended in order to have a little rest.

Upon arising, we went to the hotel's tea room; it was 5 o'clock and my body was screaming for its daily fix of tea with milk. The hotel has a 'business lounge' open from 2-10pm, which serves hot and cold drinks, cakes and even light meals (potato latkes, noodles, salad): all free to hotel guests. So we had a cup of tea, a piece of cake, another cup of tea, a piece of a different cake, a third cup of tea and a biscuit. By this time, I was sated and knew that I wouldn't need to eat supper.

My wife, though, wanted to eat. I pointed out that the meagre information that we had about the show said that doors open at 8:30pm and that the concert begins at 10pm, implying that food was to be served. Despite that, she decided to have something to eat at a nearby cafe.

We set out for the winery, which is situated about half way between Rehovot and where we live. By the time we arrived at 9:30pm, the hall was almost completely full of people who had been eating well. This was not a concert hall with ramped seating, but rather a very large room filled with round tables and chairs - what we call a function room - with about 400 people. We were shown to one of the few tables which still had some room (the maitre d' maintained a list of who was to sit where) and turned our chairs to face the stage. I had very good sight lines of the stage (at least, when everyone sat down).

By counting microphones and instruments, I could see that Rechter would be accompanied by a four piece band (guitar, bass, percussion and drums) and three backing vocalists, although there were another two microphones and two guitars set up. At 10:01, the band came on and proceeded to play exquisitely for an hour and a half, followed by another fifteen minutes of encores. As I had guessed, there were the four piece and three singers: one of the singers spent half her time at the front of the stage (one of those microphones), and a guest singer/guitarist took the other place.

The set list was quite interesting: along with several Rechter standards, which he is almost obliged to play, there were also five songs from his new album (released two months ago) and some rather obscure material which first appeared on a live album in 1991.

After the show, we waited outside by the group van for the master to appear. We spoke to the percussionist and we spoke to the drummer, both of whom noted that the van couldn't go until Rechter turned up. Although there was quite a crowd hanging around at first, most of them disappeared quite quickly which is when we discerned that only about eight people were waiting for the man. Eventually Rechter came out; it transpires that he knows two of the girls who were waiting to speak to him. Then he spoke to a couple of boys from a nearby settlement, one of whom was clutching a book of Rechter's music; my wife took a picture of them with Rechter. One of the boys reciprocated and took a picture of us with Rechter, which unfortunately is somewhat blurred.

Then it was our turn; I mentioned that we had met with Rechter twenty years ago when he came to our kibbutz. He surprised me by saying that he had been there the night before (i.e. Wednesday night); when we asked how this was so, he said that there had been an orchestral evening held (true) for a friend of his and he had come as a personal favour and as a private person. I offered him the new album booklet for an autograph, joking that this showed that at least someone had bought the album (he had made a joking reference to a non-existent merchandise table during the show). I also asked about one of the songs on the disc (not one which was played, by the way), as to whether it was in a 5/8 rhythm all the way through; I had tried counting and got lost in the middle. No, he said, the time signature changes here and there. He asked if I read music, and when I said yes, he kindly offered to send me the sheet music! So I left a message today on his Facebook page, reminding him of my name, my kibbutz and my request; let's see what happens.

We then returned to the hotel, arriving at around 1am. It was hard to me to fall asleep (because my back had gotten cold while we were waiting outside), and noise from the railway station woke me in the early hours. We had breakfast in the hotel - the breakfast at the Dead Sea hotel was better - packed, and then headed home. All in all, an enjoyable 24 hours!

More on Delphi 7/Hebrew/Win10

After writing up my exploits from Saturday night, I took the dog for a walk - always a good time for thinking and reflecting. It occurred to me that maybe I don't have to rewrite the library program from scratch: I can take the original version, add in strategic places the two lines of code which handle the locale, and hey presto! I have a program which displays Hebrew in Windows 10. 

It was too late for me to check this idea on Saturday (unlike the stereotypical programmer, I don't like working at night) so I had to wait until I finished work on Sunday before trying out this idea. Unfortunately, it didn't work. There must be some extra magic in the TNT controls which sets up the Hebrew.

So I quickly finished the menu structure in the unicode program and checked that it worked properly both on my laptop and on the library's laptop. It does work properly.

When I get some more free time, I will try and find what the minimal amount of change is required in order to create a Hebrew/Win10 program in Delphi 7.

Delphi 7/Hebrew programs running on Windows 10

Several years ago, I wrote a program for the local children's library so that they could keep track of all their books and see who had borrowed what. This is a classic database program, and like all of my programs, it was written with Delphi 7. Until recently, the library had an old PC which was running Windows XP, so there were no problems with my program (in terms of displaying Hebrew characters correctly).

A few months ago, their computer crashed and burned. Recently, the lady who runs the library (and who is also a neighbour of mine) got in touch: someone had donated an old laptop computer to the library, and she wanted me to get the program running on this new computer. Some of the data had been saved, some lost; she was prepared to compromise on this issue. When she showed me the laptop, it turned out that it was far from an old computer - it was running Windows 10!

I knew from experience that my programs would display as gibberish under this operating system, as it uses Unicode, whereas my programs are non-Unicode. In the past, I converted one of my programs to a unicode version, using the TNT components, so I wasn't too worried about this conversion ... until I started work on it.

The program which I had converted uses labels and edit boxes, but it doesn't use menus or data grids, which is what was required for the library program. After a great deal of faffing around yesterday, I discovered how I could implement menus and grids in the program - all the time, I was copying the program to my own laptop (running Windows 8.1) in order to see what had been converted successfully and what not.

I was having great difficulty with the data grids: they were showing gibberish despite the fact that they were TNT components. A database manager installed on my laptop displayed the Hebrew perfectly so I knew that the problem was not with the database. After a great deal of looking around on the Internet, I found one suggestion which seemed a little strange: set the computer's locale to display Hebrew (the question was about Hebrew, as it happens).

I copied the code (two lines) into my program, compiled it then tried it out on my laptop. It sort of worked: at first, the menu displayed in Hebrew and from right to left, but after I opened one of the forms which I had converted then closed it, I noticed that the menu had reverted to gibberish. Encouraged by this, I added the locale code at the form creation event and at its closing. On the laptop, the data grid displayed gibberish the first time it was displayed, but the second time, it displayed Hebrew! I then discovered that even forms which I had not converted displayed in Hebrew!!

So I added a little code which displayed this form before immediately destroying it. This should mean that everything would now display in Hebrew ... and it does! Just to make sure, I copied the program onto the target computer, and it worked perfectly the first time. I still have to hook up the menu to the various forms, but for all intents and purposes, the program has already been ported to display Hebrew on Windows 10 - seemingly without the TNT components.

Here is the magic code which seems to make the difference

SetThreadLocale ($040D);
GetFormatSettings;

Dead sea, part 2

Whilst I was in the warm pool this morning, I remembered that in the 1960s, my family often traveled from Bristol to the nearby city of Bath, where we would bathe in the roman baths. The water was very warm and buoyant - maybe less so than in the Dead Sea - but very similar. As I remember it, we were allowed about 30 minutes in the water. The picture above seems similar to the pool in which we used to bathe, but I'm certain that there was a roof, unlike the picture above.

In the 1998, when on a trip to Britain, my young family and I visited Bath and we walked around the baths. What we saw didn't match my memories (apart from the Pump Room), so when asked the guide, I was told that people are no longer allowed to bathe in the water for safety reasons. This matches what is written in the Wiki entry. I note that it states that the newly constructed Thermae Bath Spa nearby and the refurbished Cross Bath allow modern-day bathers to experience the waters via a series of more recently drilled boreholes.

So once again, people can enjoy the warm water of Bath, although I doubt that I will ever return there.

Trip to the Dead Sea

Every year, the company for which I work holds a 'fun day': all employees are transported to a site - normally a country club or a coastal result - for a day (or at least, several hours) of relaxation, mixed with a short speech by the CEO and the awarding of 'Employer of the year' certificates (along with a 500 NIS bonus). One year we went rafting on the River Jordan, twice we went paddling in the Mediterranean. I get the feeling that I've never written about these events, probably because there isn't much to write about them (even though last year I was one of the employees of the year). I often have mixed feelings about these events; even though I know more employees than most (because I travel between all four company sites in Israel), I work with no one closely and so am not friends with anyone. My introverted nature doesn't help much either.

This day is normally in or around September, when it's still very hot but after most employees have had their annual holiday. This year, September came and went with no mention of the fun day; I was wondering whether it had been cancelled when we were informed that we would be traveling to the Dead Sea in December. Not only to the Dead Sea: we would travel on a Thursday, stay overnight in a hotel and return the following day. Those that can do the arithmetic will have realised by now that I came back from the Dead Sea today.

I know that I visited the Dead Sea in (or around) 1992: a day trip for the company (before the merger, when everyone worked in the factory situated in the kibbutz, so a day trip was possible). I'm fairly sure that we visited the area in the mid 1980s, although I'm not sure whether we actually stopped by the sea itself. I cannot recall for the life of me whether I visited the Dead Sea in the summer of 1972 or during my gap year (1973-4);  I imagine that we did as it's not far from Masada and I definitely remember visiting there twice.

Employees from my home factory were the first to arrive yesterday at about 10am, not surprising as we had the shortest distance to travel (about 1.5 hours). After an hour, the coach from Tel Aviv arrived and finally one from Karmiel in the far north. The coach from Haifa had broken down and the people traveling in it arrived only at around 3pm. This delay caused the postponement of the CEO's speech and awards from 11am to 5pm. We would receive the cards to our rooms only at 3pm, which prevented us from certain activities. One person organised a trip by jeep to a nearby historical site, but knowing how much I 'enjoy' riding in a jeep (see our trip to Hersonissos), I passed on this opportunity.

After lunch (fish and rice) in the restaurant, I went for a walk on the promenade, where I took the pictures accompanying this blog entry (I look a bit worried on the left as this is the first time I've ever taken a selfie). Then I went to lie down by the swimming pool for an hour, falling asleep and only awakening a few minutes before 3pm. Once I had the card to my room, I could change clothes and put on my swimming costume. First I swam a few lengths in the hotel pool (it was warmer in the water than out of the pool) and then went to the sea (which was only about 20m from the hotel).

I waded into the water (which was slightly on the cold side) but wondered how I could lie down. There was a metal framework to my side, so I walked over to it, held on and let my legs float up. I was floating on my back in an instant. I drifted around for a few minutes, but realised that I was very tense, so I decided to come out. It was very hard to get from a prone position on my back to having my legs back on the sea floor! A bit of kicking and acrobatics, and I could walk. The sea left a silky feeling on my skin (the Hebrew word normally translates as oily or greasy, but that doesn't really describe the feeling) so naturally I had to shower in my room.

After a cup of tea and some reading, I went to the company meeting, which finished shortly before dinner. After another meal of fish (sea bass fillets), I went for a walk around the hotel area and discovered a row of tatty shops. Coming back, I spent some time in the hotel lobby, talking with my colleagues, then went to bed.

This morning I woke at 6:15, and as silently as possible, got dressed then walked briskly for half an hour on the promenade. By this time, it was possible to have breakfast: I was one of the first people in. After a long breakfast including several cups of tea and chocolate milk, I waited in the lobby until I saw my room-mate; I hadn't wanted to go to the room and make noise, if he were still asleep. Again I changed into my swimming costume then went to the hotel spa: they have a pool which is filled with warm (37 degrees) Dead Sea water - I needn't have bothered going into the sea the day before. This pool is the closest one can get in terms of  'returning to the womb'; I held on to the bar running alongside the pool edge, lifted my legs - and straight away I was floating on my back.

I stayed in the pool for about 25 minutes, which were very relaxing, but this turned out to be a mistake: one shouldn't stay in the pool for more than 15 minutes. After showering and packing, I went down to sit in the lobby; by this time, I was feeling very washed out, which I attribute to my long stay in the pool. Shortly afterwards came the coaches, and by 12pm, I was home. This was definitely the most enjoyable 'fun day' that my company has held.