Rinse and repeat.

Before I came over here, I had heard native Israelis described as “sabra.” Cactus pears. Sweet on the inside and prickly on the outside. So far I’ve seen more of the sweet than the prickly–illustrated by what’s probably my favorite story so far.

During my first full week in Tel Aviv, I stopped at Takhtit for some coffee and to get work done. I seemingly made a wrong turn on the way home, because I ended up in a part of town I didn’t recognize. While trying to find myself, a girl asked me a question. Responding that I didn’t know Hebrew, she asked again, “Do you know, em, how to get to the central bus station?”

I told her, sorry, I don’ t know how and she asks if I know of any bus stops nearby, because if she gets there she can get to the bus station. The problem, I’ve discovered, is that she doesn’t want to walk to Central. After dark it becomes a fairly shady place and this girl doesn’t seem like the kind who is well-equipped for dealing with the prostitutes and dealers that make that their grounds come night.

Although I didn’t know any nearby bus stops, I figured that I would surely pass one before I found where I was going and I invited her to come along with me. Seeing an opportunity to “practice” friendliness in a new country, I asked her about herself and found out that she was in Tel Aviv studying for the SAT. Her name is Lior, she wants to go to art school in New York City and she commutes every Thursday afternoon from the suburbs into the city so that she can take a class that will help her with her score.

We finally crossed a bus stop and she told me that she thought she was at the right one. I told her that I wanted to make sure she got on the right bus safely and waited there with her until the bus came, seeing her off about ten minutes later before making my own way home.

A week later I was walking home again from Takhtit (the right way this time) and across the street is Lior. She waves me over and says, “I was thinking when I got on the bus that you said you didn’t know anyone in Tel Aviv and so if you want, maybe we can be friends?” Yes, Lior, of course I’ll be your friend.

I have been making other friends, of course. Right before I ran into Lior that second day I had just left Takhtit (it’s like the Epoch of Tel Aviv, only with nicer furniture, better food and with the good sense to follow the Smiths with Ke$ha). For some reason I had decided it was a good day to wear a bowtie. As I’m walking up, a table out front says something to me. Again I counter with “Ani lo mevin Ivrit.” They respond that they liked my bowtie and invite me to sit with them.

In this group there were three: Nimrod, Asaf, and Renana. After discovering my provenance, Asaf mentions that his friends are in a band that played SXSW. Had I heard of them? Their name is Terry Poison and I hadn’t heard of them. But, fortunately, they’re playing a show the next day so I decide to go.

The show is at a club called The Cat and the Dog. In my research before the show, I find out it’s one of those places where the bouncers pick who comes in and who doesn’t. Gulp. Austin hasn’t prepared me for these kind of places. But I switch out my black American Apparel T with a dark gray button-up and my sandals with a pair of Vans and I imagine I have a pretty good chance.

Fortunately I don’t have to find out because I’m on the guest list. I get inside and don’t know anyone. The music is at approximately 120db, so I can’t even talk to anyone. From what I can tell, the Cat and the Dog is very different than bars I’m used to attending back home. When people describe Tel Aviv as New York meets LA, this is LA.

Terry Poison goes on and is great. I hang around a little bit longer and on my way out I see Petite, who sings and plays keyboard. I tell her the show was great, to which she responds “Are you Dustin?” Turns out Petite is Asaf’s girlfriend and the reason I’m on the guest list. I tell her I am and she says that I have to meet the rest of the band and they’re going to get pizza and then to a party and I should come. So I follow her, but not before a guy comes up and says to “Watch out for her, she’s a princess.”

I hang out with Petite and Asaf–during which I gain the nickname “Dr. Cowboy”–and then with the rest of the band at a bar called Taxidermy. (Supposed to make me feel at home because of the animal heads on the wall. And, to be honest, I did feel a little bit like I was back at Longbranch.) Anywhere you go you tend to run into a handful of people that really just surprise you with their friendliness–in a good way–and Asaf and Petite definitely fall within that camp.

I’ve become a lot more outgoing in the previous few days. It really isn’t about getting a phone number, making friends, or even learning the other person’s name. As I’m sure you remember, being in Austin I would have no qualms at all talking to someone I didn’t know, but moving to Tel Aviv has made me trigger-shy–even minor pleasantries such as “How is your day?” are unused.

The great thing I’m finding about talking to people without any goal outside of talking to people is that they aren’t any different than those back home. If anything they’re friendlier. And, really, what do I have to lose? If I embarrass myself (hasn’t happened yet), it’s not like that will spread through my social circle. Plus I’ve been told I have the “foreigner advantage.” I still can’t imagine my American accent–weak as it is–gives me much of a boost, but I wouldn’t pass it up.

In Jerusalem I went to the Old City, to the shuk (market) and to the spot where Jews first lived outside the walls. Within the Old City, we walked around a lot and ventured inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and stopped by the Western Wall.

The Church was certainly gorgeous, though if I did it again I would get a tour guide or take a paper guide with me. Everything was amazing, but I didn’t know what anything was. The Western Wall was much larger than I had anticipated. At the same time, it felt much more modern, as well. I hope this isn’t sacrilege, but I felt the same way at the Wall as I did my first time at the Alamo.

Being among all of the tourists was interesting. I sometimes see people here in Tel Aviv that I know are tourists, but as I go throughout my days, I’m generally the only American and the only gentile. I’m certainly not Israeli, but I don’t feel like a tourist, either. Tourism implies something very fleeting, necessarily brief. I’ve pushed back against that idea–I want to set roots here, not just have a story to tell back home. In fact, I’ve noticed that I’ve been very insistent on using the word “move” when I refer to this. That is very much in the air and will be much harder than I originally anticipated, but I feel that if I start to refer to it as something temporary, it will be more likely to become that thing.

[Removed some mentions unrelated to my move, but I think this next line is relevant.] The homestretch is always the hardest, I feel, because all of a sudden this becomes very real. And then it happens and you think, “Wait, aren’t I supposed to feel something here?” But there’s always something new to work on, to focus on, and to take your attention.

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.

With any significant change like this, the questions come fairly often and usually the same questions.

“I’m moving to Israel on March 24.”

“Wh-”

“Trying to find a job. I’m hoping to go and stay until I feel like coming back. If I feel like coming back.”

“Are y-”

“No, not Jewish.”

“Then why?”

“I don’t know, I guess I’m looking to get my young male adventure out of the way while I’m still a young male.”

This move is coming up on me quickly.