Day 286 (conference)

Bit behind in the blogging, are we? That's because the busier I am, the less time I put aside for El Blogo. I just jot down notes and save it as a draft, and as Aunt L80 can't actually tell you, because she hasn't received either of the two emails I started, my drafts tend to sit around for a quite a while.

So on Day 286, which was, I believe a Tuesday... Yes! It was a Tuesday: I remember because our local "branch" of the Ministry of the Interior is only open on Tuesdays. ANYWAY.

This morning, Husbinator, Babinator, and I made our way at long at last to the Ministry of the Interior representative to apply for interim Israeli Passports. We're only leaving for the US in just over a week-and-a-half, and at last we had everything we needed to apply. (It's a short list: government ID, completed 1-page form, passport photos, cash. It took so long to assemble due to cognitive dissonance, I suppose.) So we got that done.

Afterward, I dropped El Babo at daycare and Husbinator at home, and I drove to Airport City for a semiconductor conference. Who decided that casual mixing is a good way for engineers to network? Huh? Huh? I spoke to a few people at booths, and sat at a table with other people for the presentations, and that was the extent of my networking. Oh, well. I did learn something, though: virtually all manufacturing and physical tests of semiconductor devices happen outside of Israel. Israelis design, but it is far cheaper to outsource the actual product. I already knew that, but it wasn't fun actually having someone choke off a surprised laugh when I asked her if her company did any of the physical work in Israel.

Still, it was good to feel professional again, and good to hear Indian and Asian accents again, and good to see slideshows with graphs and thermal maps and SEM images again.

It was also good to actually drive over 60mph again. I looooove highway 1. It is wide and flat and straight and has a speed limit of 70mph. (And since the speed limit is posted as 110kph, it feels even faster.) I like driving on good highways that aren't congested. Ahhhhhh.