Renovation Halftime Celebrations

Today we celebrated the opening of the first half of the renovated lab.

The day started by a trip to the Market to buy cheeses, bread, fruits and vegetables. We started by buying breads at Teler Bakery, which is considered the best in Jerusalem, and one of the best I know.

We then moved to Basher's Fromagerie. This is best Fromagerie I know outside France, maybe competing with The Cheeseboard in Berkeley. Eli Basher, the owner, is a very welcoming man, who puts on a show for recommending cheeses, cutting samples with the big knife and giving customers a taste.

We asked Eli for his advice, and he sent one of his workers to check prices for wood-boards to serve the cheese on. We then went through a long (and tasty!) project of tasting and choosing cheeses. Eli recommended serving them with Kava and fruits. So, we bought some Kava bottles from him, and then he packed the cheese.

My respect for Eli's professionalism, which was already high, reached new heights today. His estimate of what is needed was right on target, the cheese and the wine was sufficient with a bit left over, but not excessively so.

After buying fruits and serving dishes we returned to the lab. With the help of Drorit we arranged the place for a reception.

At one o'clock the place was empty, and I was getting worried that we will have to eat all the cheese ourselves. But in few minutes the room was packed. We raised a toast, and then cut the improvised ribbon that Avital and Ayelet prepared (picture credit to Zohar Markovich).

The room was packed with guests and seemed like everyone had a good time.

I gave a tour of the lab to the visitors from Computer Science (I seem to be a tour guide quite often lately).

After the party, we stayed to enjoy the aftereffect and the remains of the cheese and wine. Some of us were in elated mood. Avital claimed a desk and made sure it was her's.

Not to waste any time, we started the move. The first item to move was the Singer RoToR. Avital and I secured it, as per instructions, and then with the help of few neighbors we moved it to its new temporary home.

An hour later we called on the same neighbors to help move the cabinets. To get a sense of the action, see the follow stop-animation taken during the move:

By the end of the afternoon we were very tired, but managed to move quite a bit into the lab, and now it starting to look like a real lab.