Developer Melon

I already wrote once that many projects with my participation turned into adventures. Here is one of the stories.

This was about 18 years ago. An Israeli company came up with an idea for a new project – to create a marketplace. The word “marketplace” itself was not yet in use, and there were no marketplaces themselves in the form they are now. But the Jews saw through all the prospects and sought to become one of the first in this market. The architecture and prototype of the project were ordered from an American company, the search engine and database for the products were made ourselves, and for everything else they decided to hire three Russian developers (so that they could do everything, but were inexpensive).

Work in Israel

The project started in Israel. In the resort town of Herzliya. The Americans brought there their marketplace prototype, and the Russians brought sparkling eyes, absolute interest in everything and unique experience in creating one of the largest distributed systems in the world. The Jews listened to everyone attentively.

Communication was in English. Sometimes it was not very easy to present an idea to the Israeli part of the team. We sometimes discussed it among ourselves in Russian, drew diagrams, and then told them about it. The Jews listened attentively. Then they also discussed something in Hebrew and told us about it. This went on for several weeks until one evening we went back to the office to call a taxi. In the office we heard such normal Russian speech. It turns out that without us they spoke Russian. But they didn’t reveal this to us because they wanted to know what we were talking about among ourselves. Cunning people. Everyone then smiled silently at each other. I helped set up the config in MySQL and rewrote a couple of SQL queries for them. After that, all discussions became much simpler, friendly and in Russian.

“Hurry up the next day and go back to work.” – these were approximately the thoughts I had at the end of each working day. This was actually one of the first loud “Wow!” in my life. Near our office there were such giants as Freescale Semiconductors, Texas Instruments, Nokia Siemens, RSA Security, Microsoft. In the evening after work, we swam in the sea on giant waves (it was the month of March, it was cool, but we couldn’t pass by). The locals said something about Rip Current and turned on a spotlight on the shore when we entered the water. The coast was constantly patrolled by police on ATVs; Sometimes military helicopters flew right over the waves.

This photo best conveys the impression of the country:

Relax, but even the tear-off leaves are safe, behind the glass inside the car.

Overall, everything was a little strange, but very interesting and friendly.

Way home and melon

It's time to return from the promised land. The office warned us that it was better to arrive at the airport a little early, 3-4 hours before departure, just in case. That's what we did.

At night, on the way to the airport, our taxi was stopped a couple of times by people with machine guns, who shined a flashlight in our faces, flipped through our passports, and asked the driver something. “Special operation, looking for someone.” – the driver explained. But then we entered the airport building. The huge, half-empty, bright Ben-Gurion Hall and we, tired but happy, go. Me with my bag, and two colleagues with suitcases. In the middle of this beautiful hall, security officers approached us and asked to show our documents. They looked at my passport especially meticulously. And they looked askance at my bag.

“Why is the bag so small?” they ask me. “You’ve been here for quite a long time, and the bag is small. This is not normal. What’s inside?”

As a lover of minimalism, a small number of things was enough for me, which is what I told them. I remembered how items of clothing are called in English: “T-shirt, shorts, sneakers”; tried to improve this enumeration with gestures. There was something in my story that the guards didn’t like, and the Egyptian visas in my passport completely ruined their mood.

“Why did you go to Egypt? Who did you communicate with there? Who did you communicate with here? Why do you have a map with our power plant printed on a piece of paper? What is this diagram with arrows? What is in your luggage? Who collected it?” – a whirlwind of repeating questions began. I answered tiredly, and their enthusiasm only intensified.

After some time, all three of us were escorted to the luggage X-ray machine. My colleagues' suitcases passed successfully, but my bag stopped in the middle. The beginning of general panic was felt. The inspector called somewhere on the phone. People were asked to take their things and leave. And they started asking me harshly: “What do you have in your bag?”

I tried to understand what it was about my things that could alarm them so much. I remembered, I remembered. At this time, a special forces detachment came running in armored armor and with machine guns. They surrounded us on all sides. Shields were placed around.

“Melon!!!” – I remembered and exclaimed.

“Melon???

At gunpoint, the remnants of my fatigue disappeared. I decided not to start with the background that I was interested in steganography, data packaging mechanisms, and talk about my ability to “shove in the unfit.”

“At the bottom of the bag are sneakers. On the right is a laptop charger. On the left is a phone charger, a camera and a cradle for it. Everything is in antistatic bags. Between the sneakers is a melon, really big. And wrapped around the melon are various cables for equipment and wires from chargers – so they take up less space. A few metal souvenirs. The rest of the space is taken up by clothes, everything is rolled up into tight tubes.” – I began to tell.

“Open and show!” – the officer demanded. And he said something else to the machine gunners, which made them less formidable. No one was smiling, but there was a mixture of surprise and interest on their faces.

I started posting things. The items in the bag, measuring approximately 25x25x40 centimeters, took up three large plastic trays. Of course, I packed it all so tightly in the hotel.

“So many things are normal?” – I asked.

“Wait a minute.” – they answered me and rolled out some kind of device with a probe. They shook everything up. Every key and every coin in the wallet was checked to ensure that they were not sharpened on the edge. They asked to remove the battery from each device (fortunately, everything was easy to disassemble in those days). The shoes were generally taken somewhere.

Then they asked me to put everything back into the bag. Archiving things wasn't very fast. I looked sideways at the operator with the probe. I was glad that I had avoided another type of inspection, and for some reason I suddenly remembered the old Fidosh joke “Oh, doctor, I see you!!!”

Probably my happy and smiling appearance at that moment did not fit into the picture of what was happening.

“Stop! Put it back!” the security officer wheezed. “You’re very suspicious.” And again he began to check my passport and things. And this time his attention was attracted by a green shirt with traces of stripes.

Well, yes, it was an American military shirt. It was comfortable and I really liked it. I don't know why I took her with me. The chevrons were cut off, but the “US Air Force” imprint on the buttons seemed to say I wasn't one of the bad guys.

All this lasted for several hours. In the end, the officer decided that I wasn’t much of a terrorist, but that I was a smiling moron. My colleagues and I were escorted to the required gate. We were allowed through each post without queues, which continued to please me. They brought me in and ordered me to sit in one place – wait for the plane and fly away from here. And they left. Naturally, no one was going to sit still.

After

After returning, we worked remotely. It was a wonderful project. One of the best in my life. An ideal international team, absolute understanding with the manager. We did everything. But suddenly the project was closed overnight. They didn’t explain anything to anyone, they sold everything. And after some time, the Taobao marketplace appeared.

Every time I see a melon, I live this story over and over again.

And that melon tasted like an unsweetened vegetable.