The following are excerpts from a letter submitted by a graduate who wrote to tell us how he is doing. All grads are welcome to submit a letter to TECH NEWS. If possible, please include a photo. Letters should be sent to Cathy Kennedy, NEIT 2500 Post Rd., Warwick, RI 02886 or ckennedy@neit.edu.

Greetings from Israel!

Zack Rubenstein

     I finished my AS degree in Computer and Network Servicing Technology in September 1999. Before graduating, I had planned on coming to Israel on vacation and staying for about 5 weeks. I had spent a while here between 1994-1997 and hadn't been back since. It's a wonderful place to be, even with all the political instability.
      When I finished classes, I spent two months working in the States, and then left for Israel on November 29, 2000. I arrived in Israel on the 30th, after a long flight and stopover in Zurich, Switzerland. I was still planning to leave on January 5th at this point. After a week or two, a graphic designer friend of mine from Boston, who moved here in October, showed me a classified section of hi-tech jobs that comes out every Friday. The section was about 15 pages long! I looked through it and other papers with hi-tech ads, and decided that if I could make some contacts here and maybe find a decent job, I would stick around for a while. It was either look for a job here, or look at home, and Israel is a little more exotic, so I started looking (using all the wonderful job searching skills learned at NEIT!).
      I had some friends in hi-tech here, so I quickly got set up with a few interviews. One neat thing is that there is no need to wear suits in interviews here; the most formal I ever went dressed was in khakis and a nice button-down! Finally, a friend of a friend told me that a company called Hypernix Technologies was hiring and that I might be good for the position. I went to the interview and was standing outside of what I thought was the building. All of a sudden, a young looking guy with a cigarette and coffee walked out of the door of the building. I asked him if this was Hypernix, and he asked if I was Zack. It turned out that he was the interviewer! Well, to sit outside with him for a few minutes chatting before the interview, loosened me up a lot. It all went great and I started a week later providing online tech-support for their software (free from www.gooey.com) and helping with system administration. After about 4 months, in the tradition of so many Internet start-ups, they went bankrupt in April.
      I found another job in June 2000 at a company in Jerusalem, Meridian Translation Technologies (www.meridian-tt.com). They are a translation/localization company that basically translates such things as websites, software applications, operating systems (ie. Microsoft Windows Whistler) and tech manuals into other languages. We translate into about 30 different languages. I started out assisting the System Administrator, and in September 2000, he left and I am now the System Administrator of a 60-user Windows NT/2000 based network. It's progressing well and I'm learning loads of new skills daily, building on the great foundation I received at NEIT.

-Zack Rubenstein, Computer and Network Servicing Technology 9/99