Hello

I was born and raised in Kibbutz Yagur in Israel, the 2nd of 4 siblings, a sandwich between my older sister and my two younger brothers. Growing up in the 70s-80s in a kibbutz, children spent the evening with the parents but slept during the week, except on Fridays, in dormitories. Every kindergarten and school class had their own home, with bedrooms of 3-4 children in each room. Kind of special, not necessarily bad, even though I wouldn't repeat it as a parent. We had lots of fun together too, and like siblings, it was nice at times, and other times - not very much so. Nothing serious happened, we simply experienced group dynamics, for better or worse.

Though neither utopian, nor "Lord of the Flies" type of interaction.

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During school years, 5th grade and onwards, I worked mainly in several agriculture branches - in the little zoo corner, with horses and various animals, in the plant nursery, in a greenhouse, in the cow milking facility (just for fun,  even walking in deep shit), and in the field crops branch. After finishing school, before enlisting in the army, I spent half a year in Kibbutz Beit Haárava near the Dead Sea, as a facility technician.

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In the army, I joined the Marine Commando, and like many others there, was discarded after about a year, with broken bones and dreams. Then I joined "Orev Golani", an anti-tank unit in the Golani division for the remainder of the 3-year military service. Service in the Golani division alternated between 3 months' training in the Golan Heights (with excursions in the Negev desert), and 3 months in the Lebanon front, in South Lebanon.

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After the army service, I continued working in agriculture, in my home Kibbutz Yagur, as well as other seasonal work elsewhere as a skilled machine operator/technician, and then went abroad - to Sweden, then on an excursion to Australia, with 3 weeks in New Zealand.

 

In autumn 1996, we (my Swedish girlfriend at the time and I) sent the application for a resident permit in Sweden, and I had to stay off Sweden for a few months, until the application was processed, during which I worked in Israel for an agriculture contractor (a previous employer).

In 1997 I was back in Uppsala again - officially “imported” to Sweden.

 

I learned Swedish, by taking a driver's licence, reading books and a couple of honest months in class, "Swedish education for immigrants". After completing my nature science grades (high-school years were dedicated to spending time off school, working with tractors, the machine workshop and bikes/scooters), I applied to Academia and was admitted to the master program in mechanical engineering, firstly 2 years in MDH (Västerås), then the rest at the KTH in Stockholm, where I completed the Master of Engineering program.

 

I took the chance of writing my master thesis at Daimler-Chrysler in Esslingen, Germany, where I met several other Swedes, and after finishing my master thesis, I decided to find a job in Germany, and started working at Bosch Diesel System in Stuttgart-Feuerbach. As a calibration engineer, I worked mainly with Volvo Cars, a part of the Ford concern at the time.

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In 2013, I moved back to Sweden again, to Eskilstuna (a small city, about 100 km west from Stockholm) with my wife Agnes and my son Noam (born in 2010), and worked as a function developer at Volvo Construction equipment. In 2014, we got our 2nd son, Jonatan. In 2019 I switched departments to work with the Human Factors' team.

During 2020, the Volvo upper management decided on reducing (by seemingly an almost random selection process) the white-collar workforce by 10%, and my employment, among the other 10%, was ended by the end of 2020.

 

As of becoming unemployed for a period, longer than ever previously in my entire life, due to strange things happening in the world, I have been continuously building myself - not only professionally (Agile/Lean, project management and leadership in general, to name the main topics of interest), but also by treading forward in becoming more conscious, loving human being. Every day is “training day” and my own development has a rather high priority, and my core values lead the way, as they should.

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But as we are independent from any particular place, we might be moving elsewhere in a flash of flashes and feel at home where we park our car (or spacecraft, as the case might be in the future). My close, beloved family is a subset of unique souls - each born in a different country, and we are not afraid of geography.

 

After living in Eskilstuna for the first 10 years of our small family in Sweden, we moved to the west of Sweden, to the countryside, not too far from the metropol Gothenburg, with the hope of getting a fresh new start in the area. 

 

As the world getting more bizarre by the minute, we as a family are excited to explore the possibilities at the other side of Sweden.