Brighter Days
From the time I moved into the Great Twitya Pad to the time I left, there was always something going on. Life could’ve been much worse though.
updated: 3 March 2026
By May 2008, I found myself back at Hayarkon hostel, Tel Aviv:
Then, after pondering what to do, I decided to return to acting so I took these headshots and sent them to CU-Agency – the talent agency who had already spotted me in Jerusalem in 2005:
This led to my first extras role since my original 2005 role as a Roman soldier for a History/NatGeo documentary (Mount Zion). Sharon ran the agency:
At the hostel, another Australian guest took issue with me living at the hostel even after making ‘aaliyah.’ Regardless, I found myself wanting to leave anyhow.
Soon after I found the Great Twitya Pad while literally walking up the street (just after dark) with my bags after grabbing a newspaper. Whoever picked up my phone call first had my business. I was so keen to find brighter days.
On the corner of Levontin and Allenby, many people door knocked. I rarely answered because they were strangers.
Outside my door was another door into a corridor and groups would congregate, chatter, unlock the door and then close it behind them. So it was noisy but it didn’t matter. It was far better than nothing at all.
During my time at the Great Twitya Pad starting in mid 2008, I returned to Tsfat and also attended a few tech events, including iDrink #9:
[ 26 Aug 2008 ] [3rd photo: Ohayon] [shown right-most: Yaniv Golan]
and Mobile Monday.
One recollection I have of iDrink #9 was following up with a few people afterward and getting zero email replies. I didn’t drink – was that the problem? Covert social violence is mentioned in this post (if relevant.) On that note, I was somewhat surprised to see Mr Golan present at that meetup as I hadn’t seen him on the list of attendees for that event on the event page at idrink.ning.com. Am I remembering it correctly? Eurekamp was 6 months later, which I remember well as having people attend but not having any mention on the public guest list such as Mr Golan’s friend, Mr Dibner.
I really liked iDrink – but I was missing the white lounge suit and offshore Scarab for a quick getaway.
Strangely, soon after iDrink, I launched a jobs portal using JobberBase: Happy Zion Job Board. I was able to find jobs behind a login and on email lists and reproduce them publicly.
[ src | 2 | 3 ]
I did have a few job interviews around that time with none leading to a job offer. One interview involved handwriting CSS (and Javascript?) on paper in an empty room for an advertising startup, Kontera. I also had an interview with Kampyle.
Golan wasn’t much help here. Note above the posting source of each tweet was Twitya – a twitter client and browser I developed myself and seeing those tweets gave me a sense of confidence and credibility. 3rd party Twitter (X) apps were simpler to create back then due to the absence of Oauth.
[ v1.0 – 20 March 2009. ]
– While scrolling down the page, the 1st and 3rd columns would float into view (with fresh user data) whenever a user was selected within the middle column. As elaborated upon here, Twitter itself redesigned around this style but used a floating 2 column layout instead of 3. Also Youtube around this time implemented a “show more” button at the bottom of video comments, leading to today’s doomscrolling that avoids clicks altogether. This, I suspect was taken from Twitya which did away with pagination. I probably could have patented a “show-more auto-extending comment timeline” in hindsight, and made $$$ instead of just good(?) karma. Infinite Scroll had existed since 2006, but not noticeably in social media until 2010. (src) At least I survived to tell the tale!
So I probably should have worked harder on Happy Zion but I think I was jaded, or quickly getting there while in Tel Aviv. If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, then my enemies made a whole lot of new friends. But where is the hostility actually emanating from, and why? Really, they should have been more fixated on Iran than me. As of 2026, I am still not sure what happened and more about this has been written elsewhere on this site. I also got no feedback from job applicants using the site. Incidentally, there is an Israeli jobs blog (relevant to a global audience) that launched in 2007 that went into hibernation at the end of 2024: JobMob. Perhaps I could of started writing articles for job seekers as well and promoted them through the Happy Zion twitter account which ended up getting over 700 followers at its peak before I renamed it @lpijobs.
In hindsight, it’s interesting thinking about the damage narcissism can do to a patriotic country: the more patriotic you are, the more attention you bring to yourself, and the more antipathy you draw from patriotic narcissists even though you have the same or similar vision. Thus the narcissism is counter-productive. Adding xenophobia and racism to that doesn’t exactly help either.
“You wanna wrap yourself in a flag? Better be ready for war buddy, you’re hogging my jam and how do I know you’re legit!” I am also of the position that much of Israeli patriotism and nationalism starts wholesome but ends up a ruse. Jews need the lost tribes to galvanize, and vice versa. I have mentioned elsewhere on this site that I think Israel is misnamed. Religious Jews call on the messiah to bridge the gaps.
“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” (Johnson, 1775) Not sure if that applies here – maybe the last refuge of the naive.
Anyway, so back in Tel Aviv, I’d also go rollerblading to Tel Aviv port and the skatepark.
I ended up in a number of film, TV and advertising productions including Bena and David and Kamal. I also acted with a small dog in a Chevrolet advertisement.
In February 2009 while working diligently on Twitya, there was a callout to do this supermarket TV ad. It was a welcome break (and brake) to my train of thought!
The Al Foster Quartet even played up the road:
These activities continued into 2009 before I left to Jerusalem in early 2010. By that stage I had lost hair and developed adult acne in that apartment, which all soon dissipated. I had real trouble with Hebrew but I felt I was moving forward regardless. I had learned Hebrew at King David School for around 5 years, so I could speak, read and write it pretty well but not converse in it, strangely. It was also my least favourite subject.
So in terms of Brighter Days:
Seek, and you shall find – Luke 11:9
[April ’10]
I stopped working for CU agency because my roles would remain non-speaking as my Hebrew wasn’t good enough to progress. Regardless, I kept getting call-outs because I was almost always successful in auditions, and I eventually changed my phone number in order to put an end to it.
✓ 6 months ago ago
