Company meeting on Rosh Hoshana.
Rosh Hoshana. Company meeting. Street dance. Kurdish food.
Today is Rosh Hoshana, or New Year's Day by the Jewish Calendar, which goes by the moon instead of the sun, I've been told.
Today at work there was a company meeting. Everyone gathered in the largest open space in the building, which is around a circular counter that serves as the copy/scanning area. There were dishes with sliced apples and honey on the countertop. Michael, the director of Superstudio, got in the middle of the circular counter and gave an overview of the products that everyone had worked on this year. He congratulated people for their hard work and successes, and then asked a young man in the crowd to come forward and say some sort of blessing. The young man then took an apple slice, dipped it in the honey and ate it. After he finished, everyone else dug into the apples. They told me the apples and honey are served to bring in a "sweet new year".
Next Kenny presented a demonstration of the Internet Project that I've been apart of these past three weeks. It went off without a hitch, and everyone seemed to like it. I still can't say much about what it is, but it will be released soon.
Since my sister is coming tomorrow, and my work on the Internet Project is essentially complete, today may be my last day at Superstudio. For two weeks I plan to vacation with my sister, though part of that vacation may be in the Jerusalem area, so I may stop into Superstudio again if I'm here. If I need to make any substantial changes to this website, the internet connection there is much faster and less expensive than using a dial-up connection to my service provider in the United States.
After Angie leaves September 26th, I'll evaluate if it is useful for me to work another week at Superstudio, or if I should return to California.
Since I am not certain that this is my absolute last day at Superstudio, my goodbye was rather weak, and I hope to see everyone there again before I leave.
After work that night, a group of guys at Superstudio played a computer game called Warcraft II. We had five players, including Kenny and Marom. I like to play the Orc side rather than the Humans. I made the mistake of building a barracks instead of a Great Hall at the beginning of the game, which cost me some precious production time. In addition, one of my two gold mines was right near a river, and my little peons took a heavy toll from the cannon fire of passing enemy ships. Eventually, Kenny's yucky humans overwhelmed my little island.
After the game, Zeev and I went to city center to find a restaurant again. We passed a street dance along the way.
I spotted a sign for a Kurdish restaurant, and we followed it down an alleyway, around the corner, and up the stairs the a place with where a young woman handed us a menu. Zeev was convinced she was Russian (like himself), but it turned out she was Czechoslovakian. We sat down and ordered. Zeev got the "GiriGiri - Heart of Lamb with rice,almonds and pine nuts". I ordered the "Shardane - Lamb stuffed with meat and rice". We also ordered a salad.
The salad was quite good, and contained cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, shredded carrots. It also contained cooked red peppers, walnuts, and grapes.
Then came the main course. To Zeev's surprise, the "Heart of Lamb" was indeed, a heart of a lamb. To my surprise, my dish was served with a pair of scissors, "for the strings".
As much as I teased and taunted, I simply could not get Zeev to eat his heart. I tried a piece of it. The meat is very lean, and a little dry at first - I liked it. But after about 20 seconds there was a distinctly liver-like aftertaste, which I did not enjoy. Zeev turned to the rice, almonds, and pine nuts that accompanied the heart.
I concentrated my efforts on the Shardane, which was a mixture of rice and meat tied up in a ball of skin, sewn together with some sort of string. I managed to finish it, but it is not one of my favorite dishes.
Personal conclusion: Kurdish food includes good salads, but the meat dishes can be challenging.