cycling

there is another thing which is not allowed to do in this country ... to be drunk when you are cycling !!! ....
(c) Suket

Cycling is considered the same as driving the car ... so be careful if you are after a couple of pints and you are cycling home ... if you are stopped by the police, they can take your real driving licence ...

I was to the local student pub yesterday evening ... and I have heard a plenty of stories ...
it was really lovely evening !!!

by the way .. if you think of it ... usually in the Pub here you ask for a "pint" of beer ... the UK pint is 0.56826125 litres ... while in Israel you ask for a half of the liter ... 0.5 liters .... so apparently you get more value for your money ;-)

It was a lovely story; for the first time for the pub here, I asked for a "half" .. and I thought it will be Half of a Litr ... but they brought me a really small glass ... the reason is that in their meanings, the "half" is ... half of pine ...... like ours 1/3 of liter ....

Nickname for "pound" ?

Anybody to know how is Pound(Money) named on street ? the slang name ;-)



"Quid" = "Pound"

So when I first heard it, I didn’t know how much is that .. and it took me literately a month to figure out the real meaning .. I couldn’t check the meaning on the web, coz I just misspelled it. Now, my English teacher gave me the spelling ... so here I am writing you about this !

a bit of explanation I had found here :
http://www.businessballs.com/moneyslanghistory.htm

quid = one pound (£1) or a number of pounds sterling. Plural uses singular form, eg., 'Fifteen quid is all I want for it..', or 'I won five hundred quid on the horses yesterday..'. The slang money expression 'quid' seems first to have appeared in late 1600's England, derived from Latin (quid meaning 'what', as in 'quid pro quo' - 'something for something else'). Other intriguing possible origins/influences include a suggested connection with the highly secretive Quidhampton banknote paper-mill, and the term quid as applied (ack D Murray) to chewing tobacco......

delay

Dear readers, unfortunately my supervisor has pushed me to finish the presentation
which should be ready by tomorrow ... so there wasn’t any post yesterday, today and probably tomorrow .... but the next post will be about Mr.Litvienko the Global Problems and Idea for the Personal Island ….

the first slide from my presentation ;-)

Before and After - exclusive water mixer !

Yesterday I was pissed off with the water problems ... I was trying to shave and I couldnot stand it anymore .... one side is very hot water ... while the other side is very cold one ....

so I have decided to try the Bialiks idea for the water mixer ... the bottle with three holes ...

It doesnot get the best mixing results because now you feel that part of the water is hot and part is cold. Probably if I put something inside the bottle, ie small plastic balls, the water passing through will be better mixed .. Anyway, I am very pleased with the current results !

Thank you all for the ideas ;-)

Autumn in London

Have you paid attention that it is almost end of November ....
In Europe, the trees should be without the leaves and it should be very cold ...

unbelievable, the trees are still green ! While the feeling here, something
like the end of the summer ... I compare it with my child memories :-)

By the way, it reminds me a bit of Beersheba at the evenings for it temperatures ....





Golf stream is making miracles here ... it will be disaster if it changes its direction …

birthday

Guys thank you very much for the wishes ! It is really great to receive so many surprises on one day :-)

I didn’t post anything yesterday because I hate (as probably most of the people)
the birthday ... yesterday it was really strange ... it was first time
and hopefully last time in my life that I had no friends around ... it was a bit sad.
But my cell phone was working extra hours :-)

The day has started from a huge surprise, when I come to my office on the morning,
there was a SKYPE call waiting for me .. it was Gidi, he asked me to turn on the web cam ... after I did it ... he turned on his web cam and suddenly I saw something like 20 people, most of my friends from the BGU University ... on the other side ! It was so funny and unexpected that I was speechless ! They had sung me the happy birthday song and even eat my cake !!! I suppose it was organised by Gidi and Taniya ... thank you all very much :-)))

During the evening I was a bit working .. and then we had a meeting with my
supervisor ... so no partying ... but I went for the first time here to the
swimming pool. The funny thing is that when you come first time to the swimming
pool, they ask you for your birthday day .. and apparently it was the same
day, so the clerk asked me if I have decided to start a new life because
of me getting older ... :-)

Anyway, Do you know anybody who was born the same day as you ?
In my case ... I know personally three persons ... and I have heard of four more whom were born on the 23 of November ...

Ice skating

Guys, thank you very much for the warm comments on the last post,
I will keep writing :-)

My recent news are that my father was visiting me here for the last couple
of days, unfortunately, today he went back home to the states.

Now I would like to take your attention to the Ice Skating which was
opened nowadays near the National History Museum. It is near my
college, on the way home ....

This place is really nice and beautiful, ie music and the lighted trees. But yesterday, when I was taking the photo, it was really cold ... around 4 degrees .... see these almost naked guys ... :-)

by the way ... the ticket price is expensive ... 12£ ... If there is still somebody thinking of ice skating .. think doing it in some other country ... !

my blog usage

are you wondering if anybody is actually reading my stuff ???
see this nice statistics ...


all you can understand from it; that nobody actually cares about me on weekends !!!
while on the other days, people are so bored at the work that they have
time to see my stupid diary ;-)

the other question still remains .. I have got few comments on the posts ...
what should I change ?

the food photos

see the prices for the food ... it is very expensive !!!
taken at Sainsbury supermatket ...

pub names ...

They have a really unique pub names ... see this one for example ....
Anybody to check it out with me ??? ;-)

Theater ... Knee Surgery ..

Two days ago I with my supervisor went to see a number of real surgeries.
The first one was simple arthroscopy and the second one was a bit complicated knee fixing ...
It was done in one of the private hospitals here in London ... we have arrived there at 8am on Saturday (weekend)... by the way .. the surgery room for some reason is called Theatre ...

to make it easier for you and not to shock, published only the picture of me during the surgery ...



And if you have ever wondered what kind of screws are usually inserted in the bones in order to keep things on place .. … have a look ..…. they are not titanium …. ;-)

Bond ... James Bond ....

I have been yesterday for the first time to the movie here ....
9poinds per ticket ... very expensive ...
no place reservation .. first come first served ..
and the movie has started with 20 minutes delay !

I went with my dad who is visiting me for a couple of days ...

check out the picture of the name of the movie ;-)


yep .. Casio Royal ... 007 .... bond ... tfu ..tfu ... tfu ... yack ...
brr ... discussting !!!

so I didnot like the movie for the following reasons:
1. they made him a human .. he falls in love .. he makes mistakes ...
2. no super technology ... nothing unreal ... everything you can buy in the shop...
3. the first car he drives is Ford !!! have you ever seen Bond driving Ford ?
4. the Bond girl ... I had better ones ... ;-)

the only thing I liked; is the advertising for the Jack Daniels ...
by the way ... 700ml bottle is 17pounds ...

my best friend

I have decided to post a picture of my friend here in London,
it is one of the best pictures I have ever seen ....

the English language

Today I was explained why it is so difficult to understand the English street language while it is relatively simple to read academic stuff.

I don’t know if its true story ... I will check it later on ... but this what
we have been tolled on the English class:

The story starts many years ago ... when in Britain were living only Anglo-Saxons...
they were very simple people with small vocabulary ... and most of their words were very short ....
In order to get new meanings to words they were adding something to the familiar word to get a new meaning ... for example take word "get" ... open a dictionary
you will see many ideas like :
get up
get away
get by
get in
... etc ....

The things have changed as soon as England was taken by French people. In France that time two languages were popular, the French and the Latin. These languages were spoken by the upper class society. Because of the other languages, they had a bigger vocabulary and had a different meanings to many English words.

From those times, the street language is a bit different then the vocabulary used in the books and academics. Because of that, people usually studying the high level language while the other language is still spoken on the streets ….

for example; the animals called by working-class herders, tended to have Germanic names (cow, lamb, pig), while the finished products served up on the aristocratic table had names derived from French (beef, mutton, pork).

p.s my photo coming from the conference …

Daughter

The recent news are that daughter was born today to Felichka and Linochka ;-)
wow, unbelievable ! If anybody to talk with them, send them my greetings because
Felik doesn’t answer his phone ...

Never Happened to me ...

Yesterday happened something which is never happened to me ...

I got lost :-)

I have been to a friend and on the way back , instead of taking a bus, I decided to take a walk ... it supposed to be a half hour journey.

I could go the main streets, but to make things shorter I entered the small
streets ... without any map ... the streets led me a couple of times to the blocked ends ... it was really late, so there was nobody out to ask ...

another reason for getting lost is that the streets are tiny and the side buildings are closing all the view, so when you go, you have no idea which direction you are going ..

after three hours I managed to come home ....

aaa, one more thing ... through my walking, I found a pound and a half !
of course I spent it on a drink ;-)

snow

I have just received this picture from one of my friends in Russia(Nijniy Novgorod).
Taken as you can see from the window ...

Simone Birthday Party

As you probably know, when I come here, I was introduced to lovely family.
They have helped me a lot at the beginning and still I call them on any question.



Their daughter had birthday last week, so she invited everybody to the pub to celebrate it! The place was really nice with music and a plenty of space to sit. Some of her friends have arrived. There were many arguments and talks about everything, most of them are studying philosophy in UCL. It was really great evening!



On the other hand, it was very hard evening for me. I was involved in the conversations, and its really hard to make the conversation exciting if you understand 60% .... trust me on that ;-)

Now, I want to take your attention to the following lines which are quoted from the email conversation : “
S: “My birthday is coming up soon and I will be celebrating it on the 8th of November in Babble Bar”
Y: “Is there any special way of dress required ? sorry, I am not familiar with the local rules :)”
S: “I think they have a no jeans, trainers, baseball cap and football shirts policy - standard thing.”

The life in London is changing ..... see the following picture; do you recognize anybody with this policy ????

P.S The Research

Following the questions of the previous post :

1. It will be a simulator for touching/feeling the organs/bones with surgical tool. Nowadays, the existing simulations doesn’t have a real haptic feedback. We want to make a real feedback … so you will be confused if this is simulation or a real surgery ;-)
2. There are many ways to implement the force feedback, most of them are direct DC motors. But many other applications exist; it depends on the size of the force and the speed rate which is required. All of the feedback systems have some advantages and disadvantages …. Currently, there is no perfect system.

The Research

Some of you are asking, what the hell is he doing there ? … so I will tell you …
My research topic is Virtual Reality Haptic Simulator for Orthopaedic Surgery. Haptic means force feedback.

By putting together Haptics and Virtual Reality, the system can actually give you the feeling of real objects. For example, if you touch something in Virutal World, this will be reflected by a force to your hand in Real World, indicating that you have touched something … is this understandable?

So I will build a virtual reality system for the young surgeons to practice their surgery skills. They will feel actually that they are doing a real surgery, but it will be on the computer.

By the way, for building something people don’t get a degree here, so my research is to prove that virtual reality system can teach and actually improve the surgeon skills.

- For the first year we need to improve the system which is already exists.
- The second year we will give new surgeons to make the virtual surgeries on this virtual haptic device while I will measure their performance.
- The third year will be processing all the collected information into some conclusions.

p.s …. hmm … it will be interesting after three years to read these lines again and to see if it really went like that …

p.s.s …. on the photo near me is the Da Vinci surgical system … you can read about a bit more here : http://www.forbes.com/2004/02/18/cx_ah_0218robots.html

Welcome Newcomers

My colleague, Andy, who is also a Ph.D student in our laboratory was doing some googling and found my blog. I just wanted to welcome him and everybody else at my small diary and to ask to write some comments. If you have any questions about London or UK, just let me know, I will write about it.

Things not to do in London

From the experience of my friends I will tell you what not to do in UK.

So first thing is not to - fight. For example you kick somebody’s ass because he started but you were stronger, finally he goes to police .. they just put handcuffs on you, and put you in jail. The trial can be after a couple of months and probably you will be putted in jail for some time and then kicked off the country. Its really simple here, they just cancel your VISA. They don’t want to deal with somebody who was involved in anything.
The solution is very simple, don’t try to defence, just run away .... :-(
[I have a friend who was almost kicked out of the country for giving back a fight]

Second not to do, don’t start messing with girls. If later, the girl going to the police, you are in a big trouble. Once again, the police come, put handcuffs and you spend some time in jail. In my friend’s case, as he tells me, he was doing nothing! Did not even touch the girl, but he spent a week in jail. He will have a court trial in a month and hopefully he will get out of it … if not … just kicked off the country...
The solution is very simple ... stay away of girls – trouble ... :-)

Quotation

I liked this one :

Помни, Господь все видит. Живи так, чтобы ему было интересно!

anybody to make a good translation of it ?

a couple of days

I didn’t have time to write for the couple of the last days ... it was so many things to do!

First of all I spent almost a day with the guys from BBC. Sasha, whose place I stayed at the beginning, asked me to help him selecting computer .. so we went to John Lewis shop on the oxford street. Its a huge shop were you can buy anything. This shop provides a very good service and warranty, as a result many people from the middle class prefer buying there.
After selecting computer which he bought later on, we went to the London Film Festival with a couple of his friends from BBC. It was a bit strange Chinese movie named “Still life”. This movie is describing the story of two people and the changes which are taking place in China.

Second of all, I have started teaching! Have you ever heard of Assembly language? It is low level programming language which is the basics of any programming language. So from now on, I am working as a GTA or Graduate Teaching Assistant. It will take me something like three hours a week, on Fridays. The first lesson was yesterday; The students are sitting and trying to solve some problem which was given to them by the professor. If they don’t understand something or have any question they ask me for help. To tell you the truth, I was really scared for the first hour and it was really hard to explain anything …. But later on, the last two hours went very good!

There should be some fireworks in London tomorrow, but I don’t understand the reason for that …. Somebody tolled me: “Remember, remember the fifth of November” … what is this all about ?