8:30am
Wake up to pure darkness (via the magic of blackout shutters). Drink a glass of water, brush teeth, and change in work clothes - usually some flowy pants from Zara, a blouse, and a pair of comfortable walking shoes.
8:50am
Walk to work. It takes about 25 minutes to walk through the busy streets, and I usually think about what I want to accomplish at work that day and jam out to my Israel playlist.
A couple years ago, I decided to make a playlist for every new place that I visit. The playlists have about 100 songs and include new songs that I hear in the country and also just songs I am into at the moment. I listen to those select songs consistently during my time in a new place, and that way, I experience a huge resurgence of time-and-place-associated feelings and memories when I listen to that playlist again in the future.
9:20am
Say “Boker Tov!” (good morning in Hebrew) to the folks already at work. Make breakfast in the kitchen. This past week, its been mashed avocado on seed crackers, yogurt with honey, and a cup of tea.
9:40am
Get to work. For these next two weeks, “work” consists of completing the Stanford CS231n Convolutional Neural Networks course online. It’s a great introduction to machine learning and neural networks, and the concept of “training” a neural network already seems less daunting.
10:30am
Observe the dog(s). One of my coworkers brings his white lab to work every other day and another brings her husky. When there’s a dog in the office, the day is always better and the rate of distraction is always higher.
11:55am
Lunch time! We all head over to Sarona market just next-door to the company. The market is foodie heaven. Sometimes I’ll get a plate of hummus with chicken shawarma, sometimes a salad, sometimes a falafel pita - the options are endless and the lines are…long. We all take our food to-go and eat on the patio or the big meeting table together.
1pm
Back to work. More watching lecture videos. More programming backwards propagation, SVM loss, and batch normalization. Soon, I’ll be taking on a mini-project to put my skills to use, but for now, it’s all about listening to Justin Johnson lecture about CNNs. Most days, I’ll reconvene with my mentor to review the higher level concepts and look deeper into the bugs in my code. Also I sit right under the air vent, and so now is usually the time when I put on a cardigan.
3pm
Coffee break. The kitchen has a Nespresso machine and a thing that whips up milk in a nice way, and I’ve been treating my brain and taste buds to a caffeine-boost every day so far (for better or for worse). The office sometimes orders desserts and snacks for the group, and today there was a box of dates and a block of halva (sesame-based dessert) on the counter top.
5:30pm
Work is over when I want it to be over and that usually is around now. I’ll pack up my laptop bag and maybe grab a nectarine on my way out. The walk back to the apartment is more relaxing - the day is over, the weather is cooler, and I usually call a pal or home to hear a familiar voice.
6:30pm
Exercise. Working out becomes a whole lot easier when the view of Tel-Aviv is from the 27th floor. Hoping that exercising after work will be a consistent thing, but what do we know about consistency.
7:30pm
Eat something delicious. There are too many good things to eat in this country, and I hope to try a new restaurant or cafe every day. Today, I had a burger with hazelnut, brie cheese, and plum jam with sweet potato fries + lemon zest and a strawberry basil lemonade.
9:30pm
Shower and wind down. Our apartment does not have WiFi at the moment, so I’ve been retreating to the lobby to answer texts, scroll through social media, and update this blog. The doorman always greets me with a big “Shalom!”, and today there was a mosquito dangerously buzzing around my legs.
12am
Sleep and repeat (for the most part).