Category: memoir

Lifelike

Life is what you make of it …or paint of it!

(updated: 17 December 2025)

I saw my late maternal grandmother, Ina Rose at the Tel Aviv Hilton in November 2009 with my mum. I recorded an interview with her during the morning of the 25th. I saw her again that night after TechAviv after a lift back there from Boris.

In our discussion, she describes her meeting with Albert Einstein in the USA sometime between 1945-1947. It was her being an artist that sparked Einstein’s interest to meet her.

During the war, Ini was freed from an internment camp and ended up hiding in Toulouse, France. There she learned French and followed the painting style of French Impressionism. Ini went to the USA after the war to meet her mother and sister.

[ Einstein ’46 | Ina’s WWII story | Australian naturalization ’56 | Marriage to Frederick ’47 in Melbourne ]

Ini mentions Fred (my grandfather) and Toulouse in her 2000 postcard to Luke and I below:

They met in Toulouse and even spoke French to each other at home in Australia as the norm. My mother, Jacqueline, speaks French very well to this day. I learned it for 3 years but struggled with it, unfortunately.

Anyway, my immediate family actually lived in an apartment down in the dip of Washington Street (but before I was born) before we moved up the hill to #38 that was sold in 2006.

[pic 2 – 2006 | pic 3, 4 – early 2000’s]

Continuing, Ini’s second home in Melbourne overlooked the ocean in Alimar Court (she actually named it after her children), Brighton, where she lived for many decades.

I have fond memories of going there a lot as a child.

Watching National Lampoon's Vacation in late 80s (Wally World)

I rode a two-wheeler bike there for the first time – in an Austrian ski helmet, ghostbusters tee, no socks and sweat-band watch.

[ 1984? ]

… I ain’t afraid of no ghost!

Ray Parker Jr. - Ghostbusters - Iris Face Remaster

So the house was filled with her art and that was her main line of work for many years.

She held a couple of exhibitions over the years, one even well into her nineties.

The last time I saw her was in July 2013 back at the Hilton (below left) and to her, Israel was fantastic and that was a great realization. She had gone to Germany a few years prior and that really stirred up negative memories.

Also, the first and only time I met her mother, Elizabeth Kaplan was in January 1986, in Boca Raton, Florida.

Elizabeth had a concentration camp number tattooed on her forearm and survived it by being enslaved as a translator for the Nazis. Also, that trip took us to Disney World and EPCOT in Orlando, which was a very fortunate experience to have.

17 years later in 2003 I reconnected with the late Stewart Springfield again in New York City who was Elizabeth’s grandson from Ina’s sister Rita, and a really nice guy – at least he was to me. He was walking with a limp but I didn’t ask him about it.

Wait, isn’t that VP Kamala Harris schmoozing Hillary Clinton behind me? That’s not a photoshop either.

In the 80s he sent us a box of sunglasses for no charge as that was his line of work.

In 1986, Stewart told me that his mum was listed in the phone book as “R Springfield” and ended up getting a lot of phone calls from female fans looking for Rick Springfield and he ended up hanging the phone up on a few.

But ladies were checking Stewie out anyhow down at the beach when I went down there with him in Florida, and he popped off his shirt too. Later in the day he showed us cable TV and we settled on WWF.

Stewart’s mother was Rita (blue pocket below, and striped shirt) and father was Steve.

I think he committed suicide around 2010, but in truth, I don’t know the full story as yet. I may be out by a few years too.

src [ link inactive July  2025 ]

[ late 2012 wearing Carrera glasses sent from Stewart in early 2000’s ]

Anyway, at Venice Beach on Superbowl day, (26 January 1986) some sort of street comedian pulled me out in front of a crowd and said I looked like Dan Quayle (“Who was that?” I thought) and then people cracked up laughing because I was Australian. I was an instant hit.

[src]

The wild thing was that as a result, Andrew saw me and came over and said hello, and he was in the extended family (below, red tie.)

The four of us only had 2 nights in LA waiting for a connecting flight and the Challenger space-shuttle blew up around the time we were leaving the country although I’m still somewhat perplexed as to the final sequence of cities eventually reached.

I remember it being really cold in Florida and being told to “put on layers,” and that the weather ended up taking its toll on Challenger.

But in LA, we also saw Runaway Train that just came out, and I slept through most of it in the large, red reclining seats – the screen barely visible.

Earlier in the trip I also slept through Cats (but will need to double check) on Broadway. Our friend Ted from 72nd street took us there in a limo – I think straight from La Guardia airport.

There was some type of miscommunication or flight issue. Back in Melbourne, I also slept through all of Gandhi (1982) around that time too – just to kickstart the unconscious.

Really nice spot in NYC staying with Ted – a short stroll from central park. My dad really liked WBLS radio and there was a really cool computer games store nearby, possibly Electronics Boutique but I’m not sure why the address is not listed in the catalogue.

17 years later when I arrived in New York, I heard Joe Budden absolutely blasting out of a car.

[ shoes: Gravis ]

This was right about the time it was released.

Joe Budden - "Pump It Up" Live (2003)

Anyway back to Jan 1986, on that trip at either Vail (Westin) or Copper Mountain (Club Med,) someone pulled out a dollar bill and showed me the “All Seeing Eye” and warned me about it, yet I didn’t really get the gist of all his fear.

It was a lot for a young guy to take in. He could’ve given me the dollar bill too, I would’ve taken it.

[ 1993 ]

I also met some guys making a ski movie in the lounge and they wanted me to intro “Teton Gravity Research” or some words very hard for me to remember and I kept messing up as they filmed me. Was TGR even a thing back then – it couldn’t have been that!? I might’ve ended up on a bloopers reel.

This was a few seasons before China Bowl officially opened to skiers – but perhaps backcountry skiers made the trek as I saw badges and T-shirts for sale with that name on it.

It may be worth mentioning that a couple of years later I met some Americans in India – there was Maximilian, a few years older than me, an only-child and with his single mum, ranting about how Def Leppard was the best band ever and Pour Some Sugar on Me was the best song and he mimed it on a dancefloor and attracted a bunch of girls after demanding the DJ play it… something like that anyway.

Def Leppard - Pour Some Sugar On Me - (In The Round In Your Face (HD/1080p)

I ended up buying the cassette. Okay, so they weren’t Metallica.

In the dining room I met a manager from Chrysalis Records, he asked me “What bands do you like?” I told him “Huey Lewis and the News” and a couple of others. He went beserk. He rattled off some other names and I said I knew them. He also mentioned Was (Not Was.) He was so thrilled he ended up sending a box of 30 CDs back to Melbourne for us to play on our new CD player including the entire Huey collection up until Small World, David Sanborn, The Proclaimers, Vinnie Vincent and The Pursuit of Happiness. Very generous and cool guy – a lot of kind people in the USA – great with box shipping too! It could’ve also been guerilla marketing.

Anyhow, back to Venice Beach – the fellow that took us to Venice Beach was an African-American guy who was waiting around the airport working as a city guide: quite a random encounter. I don’t remember much of Venice Beach except for Muscle Beach.

Danny Trejo on Muscle Beach 1986

But I also remember a large T-shirt shop with screen printing which was new to me. It was wall-to-wall with different t-shirt images. I may have even encountered Sky Ferreira’s future dad there – did his shop exist then? Was he old enough? I think there were a number of t-shirt shops in a row. Whoever he was, he demonstrated in front of my eyes how to run a flood-and-stroke T-shirt print.

Our tour guide’s name was Michael – I remember because I personally knew another Michael at the time and of course MJ. Strange stuff. I have my old passport somewhere so I Don’t Forget.

Don't Savanna (2017 + 2022)

So, a couple of years prior to Ini’s passing in 2015, she made this toast after relocating homes – but her art (and husband) came with her!

My mother now paints, and I’m starting to get restless hands myself!

[~’92 | ’93, grandfathers Fred and Oskar | ~mid ’00’s after leaving Brighton]

pics
www.pinterest.com.au/pin/164311086394226917/
✓ 3 days ago ago

Launchpad Israel: The Aftermath – 2006 and Beyond

– part 1 of 5: Beyond Blacklists: EXPOSURE!

updated: 13 June 2023

In Israel, I believe or rather know that I was “downranked” within that society in late 2006 via extensive personal observation. This continued for many years. It is a conscious effort to neutralize someone’s influence in society… and quite possibly much, much worse within an “orange-ray emotional blockage” context.

This was done utterly unfairly, I feel, and corresponding to my experience street-drumming where gangs could “start on me,” I think it was a way to assert dominance. This “downranking” was done from the top-down and of course unbeknownst to me. The judge, jury and executioner never knew me, or barely, with lies probably making up for solid information – if they even had any.

It’s also worth noting that:

“Absent a basic document protecting human rights (Israel has no written Constitution), the Supreme Court is considered by many as the last bastion protecting the civil rights of citizens (and non-citizens, including Palestinians) against government actions and laws.” – src, 2023

The country is in the Middle East after all. So the key to assert power over someone is to keep them blindsided of hostile intent so they can’t bring it to court. And those courts are in the process of being weakened anyway.

The place can easily resort to Jew-on-Jew thug life based on social and economic violence. I have even said elsewhere:

“I have a hypothesis that the only character trait that Israelis have that extends beyond their toughness is their idiocy.”

So shouldn’t those protesters be yearning for a bill-of-rights? Wouldn’t that garner more positive international attention? How does a brute un-brute him/herself? The God of the Torah can be very vicious too, unless someone is reaching deeply into the Kabbalah. Those secular protesters probably have a lot of self-righteous indignation and they’ll lose that fight. It could be a good time to start a new political party – The Judges Party, People First or Reversal.

Regardless, I suspect this downranking came after a series of 3 blog posts (from late 2006) I wrote about interactions with VCs that I had had at the time. They weren’t critical blogposts I feel, more “matter-of-fact here’s how my experience went that day.” The posts might’ve been something like you’d find on thefunded.com (launched early 2007) – but in reality much less innocuous.

I don’t even think they were critical at all – but people can believe what they want to believe. The main, or rather only reason the posts went up was to create new content and to write something from a boots-on-the-ground, fresh perspective. The Launchpad Israel (LPI) blog was unpopulated at the time. If I visited or spoke to a VC about my startup, why not write about it?

Moreover, the blog posts came in context with the work I had already started in Melbourne in 2003, for which I had even previously met a VC firm there – Momentum VC. I met 3 individuals at that firm at the time, with the main contact being Tim Ingram. I also met Ron Finkel very briefly and also saw Doron Ben-Meir who many years prior was my tennis coach.

source

And I retained this vision into my Israeli VC meetings a few years later, and below are screenshots of the VC-specific vision I was working toward in 2003: Awarenex.

[1] [2]

Phase 1: Awarenex is a venture capital brokerage firm utilising the Web to match opportunities with investors. Essentially, AwareNex aggregates startup investment opportunities and matches each one to its network of angel investors. Startups companies pay AwareNex a commision for each investment made by any angel in its network. 

Phase 2: Awarenex creates and manages a venture capital fund that pools its investors' money over the web from a cartel consisting of high net-worth individuals who are clients of Awarenex's alliance partner banks. The fund partners with top-tier, venture capital firms to co-invest in their syndicate deals.
 
~ source

Part of the problem in Melbourne was that the VC scene was practically non-existent, perhaps Awarenex could’ve changed that. Also, perhaps it was a mistake to mention Awarenex in Israel with VCs as that would invoke rivalry – I was meant to be an entrepreneur and not coming in from a financier’s perspective. Often I wasn’t sure if I should be pitching GrooveTip, Awarenex, LPI or simply for a job. I pitched both GrooveTip and Awarenex to Tim Ingram and his suggestion for Awarenex was to start with a newsletter and with GrooveTip to first find revenues.

Launpad Israel wasn’t Awarenex, but it was aimed at adopting this vision specifically for the Israeli VC scene after funding and customized software development. LPI had multiple functions with a blog being only one. It was also meant to become a database of companies, people and events.

Another site, StartupIsrael.com started very soon after LPI launched. However, according to this post (and shown below), StartupIsrael launched first – in November 2006 – but I dispute that. LPI launched in October as already mentioned here and shown below [see post]. I also don’t consider it a competitor.

TechAviv, a still-running startup community which I joined, even began during LPI’s operation.

I listed one angel investor on LPI who was based in Monterey, California and he said he received multiple leads after being on it. I think he made two investments because of his listing, I am not sure. My concern was that after seeing MySpace take-off, I realized I missed that opportunity because GrooveTip used off-the-shelf software and really needed proper custom development to integrate its components – which I was looking to do anyway, but I wasn’t a hardcore programmer.

Continuing on, I even removed the most controversial post – the one about Mr Dibner (with its one sentence about being rejected)  after I was queried on the post by Jon Aizen (JA) who later said in an email “The issue was dropped when you removed the post.” However, it turns out it wasn’t the case. Removing the post and even taking down the blog in hindsight was really the mistake. It was never about the post… I think it was about me.

So once I took my LPI blog and twitter down, I was much more open to slander and misinformation. And even if this is an unjustifiably paranoid statement (I don’t think it is,) it’s still true regardless, whereby if  one removes their online presence, and others don’t like your presence as a whole, then alternative narratives can more easily arise without proper information to counter those narratives – especially if one doesn’t know about what’s happening.

After this, JA and his CEO Eran Shir uninvited me (and someone else) to his startup’s (Dapper) NYE party and I had been providing solid feedback to them up until that point. Perhaps JA was even interested in having me as an early employee. Over email, JA asked me for an apology for Mr Dibner, but instead I just removed the post about him (and the other 2 VCs) about 4 days later. I didn’t apologize on that day because I didn’t believe I did any harm to Mr Dibner, nor did I intend harm. And whatever I apparently did to him (ie nothing,) over 15 years later it has never stopped him from launching 2 VC funds.

To this day, I have never met JA in person, or even spoken to him verbally and lost contact soon after. I know nothing about who was involved in this “request for apology” and the merit or consequences that it entailed. I also felt it was strange to have JA used as a messenger boy for victim consciousness. I didn’t even know what JA looked like… he had no online profile picture. Yet more importantly I don’t think I did either (or videos of myself,) and did that make me somehow less credible as a person and rather more as a potential target-for-life?

Straight from victim to villain-by-proxy!

Must one be in the corridors-of-power to have any power?

Being uninvited to Dapper’s NYE party was the watershed moment for me. My blog even received around 80 visitors in the space of a few minutes while the VC posts were up – Israeli visitors. The posts had caught the attention of people – negative attention I suspect.

pic

And when I finally left Israel in late November 2018 with my belongings, I received many visitors in a very short period of time at the beginning of the month.

Those photos were posted on the 5th of November and taken at the Dizengoff center. The influx of visitors probably had nothing to do with me leaving. Or was it because the Ormus King was escaping with his life?… nahh.

Continuing, Dapper was acquired by Yahoo in 2010. And as with Yedda and Moshtix that were also acquired in those years, with all 3 I had been providing solid feedback and help to those firms in their startup period only to be eventually ignored – or worse. But if nothing’s in writing, that’s part of business I suppose… to a certain extent.

Interestingly, my twitter account @bitrific (since renamed @adrianboron1) I feel was instrumental in promoting Bitcoin in its earlier years, with content drawn from Hacker News.

source 2

Hackers and other users were using this account to chime in on conversations about Bitcoin on Hacker News.

Also, my other @btcprice account linked every tweet to the following price page that I created especially for that account (although the first June 2011 tweet did not.)

1 2 3

I was in contact with Meni Rosenfeld and Vibhu Mohindra back then too.

At the same time, a couple of years earlier in 2009 I had setup some very pro-Israeli (and US) unofficial twitter feeds including the all important debkafile and a number of others including israelnatnews,  israelnatbriefs, israelnatopin, investisrael, lpijobs, globesbiz, stratforintel, globesec and amthinker. I still run these to this day.

In 2009 I also wrote an interesting piece on regime change in Iran (and also on the Two State Solution.)

source | 2

I was in contact with the editor at American Thinker for the Iranian essay, but for some reason it was never published there after some emails. Perhaps my heart was in the right place, but my vision was not. Maybe I was “checked out” beforehand. Today, in 2021, with barely any real changes to each of these wars, I am more of the view that they are staged for political gain or armament sales – aren’t many wars?

Also, while I was developing Cleanzap.com in 2007/08 as a business directory for the CleanTech space to run alongside its own blog, Crunchbase was also launched as a directory to run alongside the Techcrunch blog, with both acquired in 2010.

CleanZap started as the next iteration of LPI to be a database alongside its blog – just as Crunchbase became to Techcrunch.

pic 1: 23 July 2008

So it was like I was doing R&D for Michael Arrington:

Who got crunched?

Also, in March 2009 I built and launched Twitya.com – a twitter browser and client.


Twitya was a “Better Twitter than Twitter” for me to read news as I disliked the “river of feeds” on Twitter home. I think amongst other things spammers used it to discover meaningful interactions of any given user.

I may well have been first to invent the “show more” drop-down list.. soon after used by YT for their video comment sections. I should’ve patented it. This evolved into Infinite Scroll. Twitya also used a client-side 3-pane floating interface Web 2.0-style. Perhaps I should’ve patented that too. I strongly suspect this was emulated in September 2010 by Twitter itself with its client-side driven floating 2-pane floating interface:

[ pic 1 | 2 | 5 ]

further info here

In view of all this copying, I am not surprised Disney used Ormus King as a starting point for The Rise of Skywalker which I elaborate upon here. That film had a box office of $1 Billion, and I suppose it could’ve been much worse without its emulated vision.

Interestingly, I don’t think I was the only one that experienced such a “downranking” thing. It must be part of Israeli life. At a tech conference, a fellow sitting next to me pointed out another person literally following him around and talking – ie spooking – everyone he spoke to almost immediately afterward to turn them off him. He described some sort of bizarre situation that led him to that one, and I quizzed him, “but why don’t you confront him on it?” and he said “then there’d really be trouble.”

During another situation, at Entrepreneur Perspective as a VC (7 October 2010,) the speaker (Eden Shochat) asked if there was anyone that preferred English, and I raised my hand, yet Mr Shochat  still ran his talk in Hebrew. The slides were in English. There was another person that only spoke English at the front of the room. Someone (from Intentia.co.il) gave me a lift home and said it was really odd.

My blog (Launchpad Israel) was removed from the blogrolls of Daniel Cohen (Dec 2008 -> Jan 2009) and Roi Carthy (Feb 2009 -> July 2009.) But by that time, my blog wasn’t in the same form as it was when originally launched.

By mid-2007 I was back in Melbourne living with my mum (after ~1.5 years in Israel) and helping Jeremy Rich and his solar startup with SugarCRM customization. We also went to Mount Buller together.

[pic 4: business process diagram: 17 Jul 2007]

Rich’s firm (Energy Matters) was eventually acquired in 2014.

Interestingly, during this period I also worked for a small Israel/Europe VC firm for 3 days but the spreadsheet work wasn’t at all creative. I covered the firm’s launch on LPI and this led me to the job – which I tried so hard to like – but at least I did it though. By the end of the year I had started a new site, “Adrian Wajsbrem Blog” that covered similar topics to LPI but with more music and hobbies.

[pic 3]

During this period in Melbourne I was always thinking about returning to Israel. I started reading Torah everyday. I also held Skype conversations (one recorded) with a couple of Israeli entrepreneurs including Nir Kouris (eCampIsrael) who I later met in Tel Aviv with his co-founder, and the other with Dudu Mimran for his blog-search site (strategicboard.com.)

I eventually returned to Israel in early 2008 after going through Canada for further Heartcarve research, which continued at Mount Buller in 2007 and started in 2002.

Carving Blackcomb 2008

Lastly, my trouble could well have been related to non-conformity whereby I documented here “Price Tag” activism sprayed on a wall near to where I played drums in 2016. In decrypting it years later, I realized I could have (and could still??) “DISAPPER.”

Playlist: Different ones

One reason this whole drama is pertinent today is related to the Trump de-platforming:

"I think there has been lots of deplatforming of conservatives and I always think that the actual censorship that people talk about is just the tip of the iceberg and the real problem is the downranking. One of the top Google executives used to always say 5 or 6 years ago we never sensor anybody we just downrank people and the downranking was the far more insidious way to sort of tilt the playing field of the discourse. But there has been outright censorship, outright deplatforming and when you do it with the President of the United States, that does feel like you really crossed some kind of rubicon where you know I’m not sure you declare war on half the country but maybe a third, forty percent of the country and that seems really crazy. When you have Angela Merkle and Obrador from Mexico saying that the tech platforms have been too anti Trump, too mean to Mr. Trump that tells you you have probably really overreached.

Peter Thiel - vid here

So with my 2006 “Israeli downranking” (or worse) – and I have vast notes* on what took place with those starting off as unpleasant memories – the problem is that a sort of war on liberty is declared with everyone who once knew me, or wants to know me. Someone is telling them: you can’t freely associate with that person, you might have to deplatform yourself or even go into hiding in order to elicit a response from the target that we can then ideally prosecute. That is, legal prosecution; or alternately execution. And even if you disagree with all this, do it anyway.

* The notes were first taken in Australia and based on memories from Israel and I jotted them down because I had trouble sleeping and not out of vindictiveness – just like this set of articles.

Mossad is responsible for intelligence collection, covert operations, and counter-terrorism. It is separate from the democratic institutions of Israel; because no law defines its purpose, objectives, roles, missions, powers or budget, and because it is exempt from the constitutional laws of the State of Israel, Mossad has been described as a deep state. Its director answers directly and only to the Prime Minister. ~ Wikipedia

 

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And so then that person becomes submissive (or faces the same fate.) So the question becomes, is all this top-down fear justified, is it healthy? Will a society like that even survive long-term? Why do it?

Perhaps it was because I was Australian and I could be used as a whipping boy (hurt me to hurt an untouchable other) or just as some type of scapegoat. For example, during the British mandate period, 1917-1948, members of the Jewish underground were imprisoned in Jerusalem in the Russian compound (below center and right, Ormus King 2) and then executed in Akko.

In this way, the Union Jack could (sometimes) be seen as a blessing to Israelis, but also a curse – due to the Balfour Declaration. However, if I were to resent something, it would be that Israel is referred to as a State (מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל‎) and not a Country, and this reinforces my view that Israel could be renamed to “The State of Israel-2B” – but to eventually be called “The Kingdom of Israel.” And to assist with this, I created an epic tale (documented here) that takes Israel in its current form to this idealized Kingdom which Jews around the world yearn for in their daily prayers, as enabled by a black messiah with his sidekick Adrian Boron.

So the reason for the downranking in 2006 could’ve been anything – or nothing. It was likely used for self-gain or sick sport. In the end, I started my startup BopGig in 2010 with American talent. “Too Bad” – and that’s the key phrase that no one seems to know how to use within this situation. And perhaps ironically, Indiana Jones actually saved me.

 

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✓ 3 years ago ago

2016: Go for Groove, not Wreckage

(updated: 2 October 2025)

Usher - Yeah! (drums switcheroo) (2004 + 2015)

In Jerusalem, when playing drums on the street, occasionally early teens would “start with me” – for a variety of reasons, and in the most extreme situation, a gang once formed against me – but a couple of friendly guys formed for me as well. It just happened, there was tension – and then it dissipated. It was beautiful and I was grateful. That has shaped my understanding of war and service. To me, gang warfare is a teenage activity – and ultimately it should stay that way.

Drop Bombs – Wisdom Bombs

I recently read a quote along the lines of:

“you create what you are, not what you want”

and a Confucius quote:

“real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”

After having read an article about Itzik Saidian, a 26-year old ex-solider suffering from PTSD in Israel who recently set himself on fire as a protest against his treatment, I am of the view that Israel should aim for voluntary military service.  Also, solider salaries should then be raised, especially if enlistments drop.

Perhaps all defense forces should operate this way, not just in Israel.

The Art of War is the Art of Surrender

According to WorldMask, on the battlefield, King David fought knowing that God was directing the battle down to every last sword stroke: he just had to flow with it.

Is this not the same as the flow of a great artist?

Thus, the real war is first waged against the egoic self to increase that flow – and that first takes surrender. Then, master warriors can successfully protect master artists, and the artists can support the warriors.

Peace With-inside is Peace With-outside

So what’s the point of removing national service? The point is to stop forcing people into fighting who don’t want to be part of that culture. There are natural born warriors – let them be warriors. Also, people can become warriors over time. Recruits should be able to enlist at any time. Itzik Saidian is why over the long-term, conscription should be abolished.

Abolishing national service from this paradigm is a sign of strength and wisdom and not of weakness and ignorance.

I’ve always said weakness is provocative. And if we show weakness to the Chinese or they perceive weakness on our part, it could actually provoke them into attacking Taiwan. And then it leads to all of the myriad of problems the Secretary pointed out and potentially war. The best way to prevent war is to be prepared for it and that’s the policy we have to pursue.- Robert O’Brien - vid below
Peter Thiel on US-China Relations at the Nixon Foundation

Young guy plays video game – killing is fun and social:

 

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✓ 5 years ago ago

Adidas Samba Millenium: February 2016 – April 2021

“Don’t judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes” … or kicked or danced!

In 2013, I was wearing Adidas Gazelle shoes. They were too hot but they looked alright.

I wanted a new pair.

Then one night in the Rivlin(?) square in Jerusalem in early 2016,  I chatted with a religious fellow, Yaakov(?), wearing Adidas Samba. This friendly, agile chap liked his shoes, and so did I.

He appeared to be playing footbag too!

 

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Soon after I bought a pair from Ebay. Interestingly, while he wore Samba, I chose Samba Millennium instead.

map

At that time I started to teach myself the Melbourne Shuffle. I wasn’t very good, but I felt obliged to do so given I was from Melbourne and Party Rock Anthem had been big for a while at that point.

LMFAO - Party Rock Anthem ft. Lauren Bennett, GoonRock

Designed for indoor soccer, the shoes were too heavy for easy dancing. The leather stayed in good shape because I regularly used Sno-Seal on them, even enabling me to use them successfully at Mount Buller in May 2020.

The shoes held together really well until April 2021 when I retired them to the trash because ultimately the soles gave out.

At least I outlived them and they didn’t outlive me!

 

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✓ 5 years ago ago

2016: Living Dangerously with Billboards and Posters!

People may ask: “What’s your angle?” My reply: “The Right angle!”

(last updated: 7 April 2023)


And eventually someone was bitten!

 

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✓ 4 years ago ago

Never Say Pink!

Due for termination?

(last updated: 10 April 2023)

To this day, I am unsure of the underlying message of this graffiti.

“Sometimes the different ones become the same and the same ones disappear.”

And I even pondered the phrase that night.

Graffiti Question (Aug 23, 2016)

Up until that point, I had already seen it frequently due to it being opposite to a place I played drums, but I didn’t pay any attention to it.

New Drum Stand (Aug 28, 2015)

I presume it is part of Price Tag activism (for want of a better term.)

Regardless, I do not condone or participate in vandalism (including graffiti) or hate crimes.

Lately, I have devised my answer: it’s about conformity vs non-conformity.

Playlist: Different ones

[2 takes, 29 October 2020]

So what now?
One year later…. never say pink!

[24 August 2017]

Aerosmith - Pink (Live on 2 Meter Sessions)

related:

But where’s JB’s flag or gun? The antic may have very vague resemblance to a Nazi march, and even then wouldn’t it be satirical, and seemingly unintended?

HITLER ON PARADE AT BRAUNSWEIG

 

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src: instagram.com/alessandro_michele (Nov, 2020 | 1 2 3) >>

 
✓ 10 months ago ago

Hate rears its ugly head too!

While travelling, anti-semitism is always a thing, but can be overcome.

(last update: 22 April 2024)

Vancouver, November 2005.

I was staying at The Dodson * in a troubled neighbourhood in a single room. In the room next to me (on the desk side, see below) was a man who appeared to have two prosthetic legs. I think he had black hair but was semi-bald – maybe 45-50. He was a permanent resident.

[pic 2 source]

* – owner notified

His walking style was very, very cumbersome. He came across as a loud, somewhat friendly (and charming) robot but with little to no empathy. He was speaking to almost everyone in the hallway who came his way and most people would slip away from him when they had a chance. He might have been a war veteran (or that was at least the lie he put forward?) – I only overheard him say something about his legs.

Spotting a Psychopath - When The Mask Drops
Spot a psychopath when the 'mask of sanity'/ 'presentable image' / 'persona' they normally project to you sporadically drops and it gives you a hint of what their real underlying character is. Over time, all psychopaths will begin to give themselves away through little clues and signs of their real underlying personality leaking out.

So I spoke to him briefly in the hallway and I told him about my travels and he asked if I was Jewish and I said ‘yes.’

On one of the following nights, I heard him engaged in the sexual act with someone. The walls were very thin. There were screams, groans and strange sounds, but most disturbing of all was the horrific anti-semitic abuse being directed at his partner in a stream-of-consciousness style. Vicious, unrelenting hatred against anything and everything Jewish for around 35 mins and possibly longer as I lost track of time.

Once the noises stopped I heard his door close and I opened my door slightly and saw what appeared to be a male prostitute in the hallway still strapping his belt and getting ready to leave.

I couldn’t sleep and lay awake. Then I heard the guy’s door open again.

I somewhat panicked. I snuck up to my own door. It was unlocked. I didn’t want to lock it as that would make a noise. Instead, I pushed my hand strongly against my door above the handle.

I saw the door knob rotate and felt pressure against my hand. He was outside my door trying to get in – or at least seeing if that was possible. I might even have been saving my own life! Did he want another orgasm at my expense? Was he carrying a knife and intent on entering my room? I don’t know.

A war veteran (and convert) murdered my friend Tony Rose in 2014 in a premeditated attack with an 18cm commando knife so it’s certainly possible. The chap knew I was Jewish from a few days earlier and I also have mentioned here the notion of Nazis gaining sexual pleasure from the usage of gas chambers. So it’s not a perfect analogy, but it’s reasonable to suggest I was in serious danger that night.

Perhaps I should have opened the door to see what he was holding but I think that would’ve been too risky. He had a cumbersome walk, but he could’ve had a slingshot ready or a taser if that was his intent. He might have acted nonchalant and lunged at me the following day – I wasn’t going to find out. If he was a war veteran, using a head torch, he could’ve thrown a knife at me and dropped a suicide note by my side if I was asleep… or just shot me.

Moments later he went back to his room and I locked my door properly. It took me a while to get to sleep and I propped something against my door as well. As a permanent resident, he may have known ways to overcome the locks or had a skeleton key (excuse the pun.) On the other hand, he may have wanted to brag about “the Jewish guy who left his door unlocked who I could’ve killed if I wanted to but didn’t so I must be a hero.”

The next day I told the (Asian) receptionist about what had happened and he said “That’s bad” and ideally the hostel should’ve installed CCTV in the hallway after I mentioned it. Anyway, I walked out never to return:

* The exact photo I took when I stepped out to leave for good – and feeling good about it! (see on Google maps)

A few days earlier the receptionist had supplied me with a small oil heater when I complained about the room being too cold and this was due to the in-built building heater not running. The heater he supplied was too small for that room – he probably wanted to keep running costs low and I didn’t say anything further about it:

So after leaving the Dodson, I found myself at the Samesun.

Prior to the Dodson I was staying at the Cambie Seymour Hostel which I had left  because I wanted a private room for less expense than what they were offering. It was also cold there.

[left] Dorm at the Cambie Seymour with its heater.
[middle left] Michael Buble at the Cambie.
[middle right] The same Cambie TV room in 2020 source.
[far right] At Malone’s Taphouse that is part of the Cambie building.

In another similar scenario, some months earlier in July 2005 in Donegal, Ireland, I remember leaving the Dooey Hostel under similar circumstances. I felt like some type of lynching was about to take place when I overheard late one night people talking about some “Jew who had come from Israel.”

It was hard to tell what was going to happen – I definitely may have been wrong. Regardless, I left very early in the morning when everyone in the dorm room was still asleep and left behind 3 paid nights. Sunrise was at about 5am at the Hotel California.

The Irish are some of the friendliest people I’ve met (if you can understand them) – including the owners of that hostel – but I think the whole Israel vs Palestine thing can be taken too personally at times and misunderstood. At least I heard what people were saying – the hostel can’t control who comes in.

Interestingly, on the same trip in Dublin there were some Poles staying in a dorm room with me and in the middle of the night I looked down to see someone rummaging through my backpack. I think the chap then pretended to think it was his backpack.

A few months later, I had a lot of things stolen from my bags in a hostel room at Jaffa port, Tel Aviv, including this favourite t-shirt that I had worn in Canada:

[At Painted Turtle Guesthouse, Nanaimo, drinking bottled water and generally calming nerves. I was happy to have picked up that jacket for $50 at a second-hand store even though it was basically new …jealousy is a curse.]

People also do things out of jealousy too and I only learned about this in my mid-20s! Perhaps I presumed good things came pretty easily to everyone. Jealousy is a foreign emotion to me – could it even be idiotic?! I’d help anyone who was jealous of me – as long as it was caught early enough. That said, sometimes it’s never reciprocated, and being kind to the cruel makes one cruel to the kind.

Speaking of jealousy, in Victoria BC in late September, I met an Israeli (/ American?) chap (Gideon??) in a mixed dorm and I could’ve been a good wingman for him (even though I didn’t and don’t drink alcohol,) but he was determined to be some type of alpha male or at least be seen as one, and this was also part of his pickup-style it seemed.

That’s the impression I got and to the point where I couldn’t have a normal conversation with him at the Ocean Island Inn:

But he still was a friendly and likeable guy, no doubt, and at least he didn’t try to steal my stuff like the person from Poland did. But I think that’s much more a ‘broke backpacker’ thing than anything else. By this, I’ve also had a pair of optical spectacles stolen at a hostel in San Francisco in early 2003.

At this hostel (Fort Mason) I met a young German woman who had just completed a thesis on the act of doing an “About Face” in international relations.

Surprise, surprise, it happens and one should be prepared for it. It’s a nice step as well.

Interestingly, when I arrived I walked into the dorm room and there were two gay guys going at it, so I did an about-face, went back to the desk and made a complaint.

Anyway, Gideon noticed the Kenvelo (“yes and no” / כן ולא) t-shirt I had on too and knew some history of the brand. Sort of sums up the acquaintance. But isn’t machoism a part of Israeli culture? What did I expect? Lead or be led. Whatever the case, hopefully age has mellowed him out and good luck to him! Travelling isn’t always easy, even for the best of us!

In Ireland, I met a female ‘Orly’ who I saw again in Haifa some months later as she was Israeli and I even went to her place by the sea. She was genuinely nice and along with a few of her friends, we went to Caesarea and one friend told me she thought Netanyahu was ‘shifty’ and he had just won Likud chairmanship at that point. Orly had studied English literature and wanted to become and an advertising copywriter. One trick at work when dealing with problematic characters (for whatever the reason) was to “go around them.” Speaking of which, up at the university, an Arab fellow followed me and gave me hostile looks for under a minute as we walked down the same path. Did he want to intimidate me, beat me up or was he gay and signaling dominance? If only I was part of a group.

“Safety in numbers.”

I am pretty sure it was at that uni where I spoke to someone with Orwell’s 1984 sticking out of his backpack telling me that “it is the future.”

[pic: 27 Sep 2020]

Or should that be “Danger in numbers!”

Regarding dominance signaling, at a bus terminal in most likely Haifa in ~2006 (Tsfat below,) I spent many hours sitting at a table playing Civilization IV on my laptop with all the bustle around me. Addicted, I skipped a few bus trips to keep playing. When it quietened down and into the night, a cleaner of the building came up to me and started yelling loudly. I was surprised but then he wiggled his head a few times to show me his solitary earing. I thought the bus station was closing and he was telling me to get out, but I later learned it was not. What did he really want? Ahh, the civility.

In any case, a fellow at my recent reunion made the observation that the Israelis he came across while traveling fall clearly into either two categories: cool dudes or total douchebags – or words to that effect. But wasn’t that too harsh? Why pick on Israelis: they live in a permanent state-of-war? But why not if they don’t give you a chance? This fellow, a year above me, presently works as a researcher for public policy. We didn’t speak for long and I hadn’t spoken to him since school. Really, I think countries and people sympathetic to the Palestinians should absorb them into their societies. The money they donate doesn’t have much effect – it funds personal Swiss bank accounts, right? Countries should have a “Palestinian Migrant Quota” to fill.

Nevertheless, in Whistler a few years later I spoke with a man from the US who was hateful against Israelis and I told him that all you have to do is think of one positive thing to say to free your mind. He did and days later he was a changed man and very friendly.

Anti-semitism in the diaspora is a double-edged sword where you can run, but you can’t hide… for long. It can separate people, but it can also bring people closer together.

Graves, trenches or foundations, it’s a digging contest!

see holding bottle –

 

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pics
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✓ 2 years ago ago