“Have you ever gone cliff jumping? I feel a little bit like you do when you take a look over the edge, take a few steps back, then—after a pause—put your first foot forward and start running.”

There had been indications since mid-July that my feet were experiencing a slight drop in temperature. But I never expected what would happen once I got to Brooklyn.

My last day at uShip coincided with the annual river trip. I opted against going to dinner after the conclusion of tubing, which I felt would only lead to goodbyes that were longer than necessary. I had always felt a bit fraudulent returning to uShip’s Austin headquarters in July after the goodbye I received in March (signed greeting card and all). Like Huck Finn viewing his own funeral. I said a few quick words to a few select colleagues and I was soon in a car on its way to Austin.

I got home and I’m ready to start packing when I get an IM from Jo. Jo’s a future librarian who speaks quickly and with energy, loves the Muppets and Star Wars, and is going to Barfly’s with her roommate to meet with others from the Information School. Would I like to join, she asks?

How often do I get to drink with a bunch of future librarians? Of course I want to go.

Jo’s roommate Jamie joins us on our bike ride to the bar. A 23 year old from Utah, Jamie’s acute in conversation. She’s been in Cuba for most of June and this is my first time meeting her.  I mention to her the upcoming move to Brooklyn and she asks, “Do you have a place to live when you get up there?”

“I don’t. Not yet.”

“Where are you staying when you get up there?”

“That’s a good question. We don’t know yet.”

I had meant to figure this out. I really had. I just assumed that this would fall into place.

“I have a friend who just moved to Brooklyn. He’s helpful and he loves meeting new people. I can introduce you to him.”

This is things falling into place.

The night finishes not long after. I quickly say goodbye and bike home, ready to leave Austin.

Queso

Frito pie

Lone star

Chicken fried steak

Diet Dr. Pepper

My bike

Barton Springs

My travels began, of course, in Austin. Packing became hectic, as it always does. My last day at the uShip office–I’ll continue to do contract work from Tel Aviv–came on a Monday and my father was arriving to pick me up on a Tuesday afternoon, so time was short. I made sure to get in one final visit to the Mr. Gatti’s buffet near my apartment, so I had my priorities in order.

From Austin was a three hour ride with my father back to Bay City. He really doesn’t understand the reasoning behind the move. This certainly isn’t a criticism of him. There have been days when I can’t understand it myself. He did make clear, however, that he was proud of me, so I’ve got that going for me.

The next couple days were fairly boring. I flew out of Houston Wednesday afternoon and went to O’Hare first. A few observations:

Is there anywhere in the world with more insanely rude people than this airport? And this is where many people come into the US for the first time. Hearts and minds, people, hearts and minds.

I’ve had bad luck with airport pizza before (see: Uno’s in McCarran International) but the pizza here was fantastic. I know, I know, it’s Chicago, it’s supposed to be, but I was still taken aback.

The international departures terminal is the place to be. Families packed cheek by jowl seeing off their loved ones is wonderful.

From Chicago I took an overnight flight to Warsaw via Lot Airlines. After that was a ten hour layover in terminal 1 of Chopin Airport. Chopin is gorgeous and a good introduction to Europe. Clean lines, good design, graceful women, and gray-haired men–it was as if Poland decided to ease me into being outside the US by hitting on all the stereotypes.

Next was another overnight flight, this one my last, taking me into Tel Aviv. On this flight I learned that while kosher food can be tasty and airline food can be passable, kosher airline food is nothing of the sort. On landing is where the real adventure started.

I had taken a dozen steps off the flight when I spotted two Israeli soldiers. With a look of recognition in her eyes,  the woman walks up to me.

“Passport.”

“What are you doing in Israel?” she asks as I hand her my passport.

“Just exploring.”

“How long do you plan on staying here?”

“A little less than three months.”

“And what do you do for a living?”

“Online marketing.”

“And they just let you leave for that long?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty nice, huh?”

I think my final answer pacifies her, as she returns my passport and I’m free to go.

Next up is the line to get my visa. This woman doesn’t appear to recognize me, but provides me with the same level of questioning. She seems pleased with my answers as well, provides me with my visa, and I’m off to get my luggage.

Except it isn’t that easy.

Another soldier asks to see my passport. I dutifully provide it once more, he looks at it, and hands it to another solider. Who then pulls me aside for another round of questioning. If you’ve lost count, that’s three rounds of questioning within fifteen minutes of landing. It’s the Israeli way.

Finally I get to my luggage, where I realize I made no effort to differentiate it from any other off-the-rack black piece of luggage anyone may have. I tell myself that everyone else has differentiated theirs and that I’ll just look for the unadorned luggage. Surprisingly enough, it works.

I made it to my new apartment somewhere around 630 and encounter my doorman. My Russian-speaking, Hebrew-speaking, non-English-speaking doorman. Thankfully my Fodor’s has the phrase, “Where is a public telephone?” tucked into the back.  And I had the good sense to write the phone number of the woman who was holding my key.

The apartment is nice. Small, but I’m only one person so I don’t need a ton of room. And it certainly feels more spacious than my apartment at Red Oak–or for that matter on David St. It’s in Florentin, which I think is most analogous to East Austin, but not as gentrified. South Tel Aviv is a different creature than North Tel Aviv, much in the way that South Austin is different than North Austin.

After getting my key at 7.00, I made the mistake and took a nap, except my nap lasted twelve hours. I’ve been paying for it since with jet lag, but it was helpful in allowing me to go out later in the night. I was immediately taken aback by both the late hours enjoyed by the young in Tel Aviv and the cavalier approach to PDA. You’ll routinely see a handful of couples making out in the sidewalks on any given night, and the rate increases dramatically after 2.00.

The jet lag has worked to my advantage in this regard. I’ve been able to go out every night and even at 4.00 be fine staying out longer. I’ve stuck largely around South Tel Aviv, discovering the many bars in Florentin, eating breakfast on Rothschild, and spending large amounts of time at Cafe Tachtit, with The Smiths on repeat. I’ve routinely pulled into my Hebrew–which is expanding rapidly–for one major phrases. “Ani lo mevin,” which means “I don’t understand.” It’s been uttered dozens of times and likely will be dozens more.

That’s about it for now. I’ll check in soon with more.

When you search for something online (and, let’s be honest, you’re usually using Google), you often see ads on the top and the side of the search results. Something like this:

When you click on these links you’re taken to a landing page that, if crafted well, is clean, to the point, and gets you to fill out your information and move to the next page. The golden rule of landing pages is that you can always get a higher percentage of people to do what you want them to do. You should always be making and testing changes to your pages.

These are usually tiny changes–for example, a button that may have said “Submit” now says “Get Started” or you ask a prospective customer to fill out three input fields instead of 7. If you test one change at a time, you’re doing A/B testing. If you want to test multiple things at a time, you’re performing multivariate testing.

Sometimes, in our–um–committee, we see improvements of 150% for one small change. Sometimes, though, we only see a 20% or 5% improvement. Or we run multiple tests and get results that are exactly the same as our original page. At this point, making small changes on the existing page is returning only incremental improvements, so we decide to start with an entirely new design.

The Referendum

Five months ago, Tim Kreider wrote a post titled “The Referendum” on the Opinionator Blog from the Times, that particularly resonated with me. Kreider discusses the phenomenon that is prevalent in middle-age where people have chosen their path in life and look to their peers to see where they stack up. Inevitably it leads to judgment.

I’m not to middle-age just yet, but I am at that point where choices are starting to be made. Important choices. Few people are at a stage where they are locked into their current life and the choices are endless. From, “The Referendum”:

Friends who seemed pretty much indistinguishable from you in your 20s make different choices about family or career, and after a decade or two these initial differences yield such radically divergent trajectories that when you get together again you can only regard each other’s lives with bemused incomprehension.

I’ve noticed this type of subtle–and sometimes obvious–judgment amongst my peers. Friends that once went out three times a week suddenly seem glued to their couch and their significant other. Exciting adventures that two years ago would have been undertaken immediately now require planning and inevitably never happen. The fear of being locked in to a place, a job, a relationship for sixty more years goes against the fear of never finding a spouse, a fulfilling job, or a place that again feels like home.

Why am I moving to Israel?

When we test new landing page designs against old designs, sometimes the new page wins and sometimes the old page wins. The only way to know what’s best is to take our best assumptions, actively test them, and take what knowledge we can from the results.

And that, ultimately, is the reason for this move. I love Austin. It’s my favorite place I’ve ever been. But it has also been a very comfortable place for me and a place that feels increasingly tapped out. There are few places to get lost and be out of my comfort zone here. I have never had the experience of being in a city in which I knew no one and in which I had no safety net.

Perhaps I’ll hate Tel Aviv. Maybe I’ll love it. The only way to find out is to test it. Because as Kreider points out,

The problem is, we only get one chance at this, with no do-overs. Life is, in effect, a non-repeatable experiment with no control. In his novel about marriage, “Light Years,” James Salter writes: “For whatever we do, even whatever we do not do prevents us from doing its opposite. Acts demolish their alternatives, that is the paradox.” Watching our peers’ lives is the closest we can come to a glimpse of the parallel universes in which we didn’t ruin that relationship years ago, or got that job we applied for, or got on that plane after all. It’s tempting to read other people’s lives as cautionary fables or repudiations of our own.

Go to a UT sports event (I attended my first football game this season, though I’ve been tailgating for years. I had an absurd amount of fun, even if the game was a blowout by halftime.)

Bob Bullock State History Museum

State Capitol (It took me about five years to get here, but of all the things on the list, it’s the one I visit the most. It’s often on my bike ride home and sometimes I’ll walk home from downtown just to go through. It’s a shame that heightened security might make it a less inviting place, but I suppose it is necessary.)

Good BBQ in Elgin and at the Salt Lick (Although I’m not entirely crazy about the Salt Lick, I will deeply miss Elgin. I have made it a point to stop at Southside Market every time I go through Elgin. And with how much I love their sausage, that basically means any time I head east.)

Uchi (This one likely won’t happen.)

Golf at Hancock (Neither will this one, though I do pass by it whenever I go to the grocery store.)

Golf at the Pitch and Putt near Zilker (Had the opportunity to do this with uShip, but my sister’s graduation was that day. Plus I’m not sure how good I would have been with a broken leg.)

Peter Pan Mini-Golf (This has been on the list for nearly eight years. And it will happen before I leave. It has to happen before I leave.)

Canoeing on Lake Austin

Ride the train around Zilker

Lady Bird Wildflower Center

Go to Shiner, Texas

Snow’s BBQ (This is another one I need to make happen.)

Top Notch (as seen in Dazed and Confused) on Burnett

Spend the night at the Driskill

Pancakes at Kirby and KirbyQueso…at 3 am

Buy groceries at the Wheatsville Co-Op

Drink free beer on Tuesday at I Love Video

Go to the top of the UT Tower

Spend the day at Hamilton Pool

What am I missing?