Biographical Information of Omer Zak

[PICTURE]
NAME:
Omer Zak
AGE:
61
OCCUPATION:
Digital Electronics and Software Engineer (see my resume)
HOBBIES:
Science fiction, software writing.
HEARING STATUS:
I am profoundly deaf from birth.
I was mainstreamed during all my years in school.
FORMAL EDUCATION:
B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Technion, Haifa, Israel.
M.Sc. in physics from Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
FAMILY STATUS:
I am divorced, no children.
COMMUNICATION STRATEGY:
I carry around pen and pieces of paper. They are the most reliable method of communication which I use. When I and the other party get used to each other, we shift to lipreading mode (which is faster than writing, when it is successful). If the other party doesn't speak Hebrew or is not lip-readable due to any reason, we stick to pen and paper method. The above applies to normally-hearing persons whom I encounter on my job.
With my deaf friends, I use mixture of mouthing, signing and finger spelling.
Sometimes, during my conversations with hearing people, there are phrases which defy lipreading. Then after 2 unsucessful tries (or sometimes after first try, if I feel like that), I ask the other party immediately to write the phrase in question. Then we resume oral discussion.

When I was as tiny as your thumb, my father used cued speech to communicate with me.

THE WORST THING ABOUT DEAFNESS IS:
Communication problems and the resulting social isolation.
(I hope Roy Miller doesn't mind my stealing the above two lines from his biographical sketch. I just couldn't express it better.)
THE BEST THING ABOUT DEAFNESS IS:
When my coworkers express their envy of my not being affected by the prevalent noise pollution.
MY MOST IRRATIONAL FEAR IS:
Whether people would refuse to deal with me if I stand on my rights.
IF I EVER BECOME HEARING:
I'd get some recordings of Johann Sebastian Bach's music, and find out whether what Douglas R. Hofstadter wrote about it is true.
PERSONAL HEROES:
I am very unloyal to my personal heroes and change them each few years. At the moment, it's Menachem Begin who prevented, in the 1940's, another repetition of the Jewish tradition of engaging in civil wars at moments of crisis.
WHAT AM I INVOLVED IN:
  1. Helicon Books EPUB3 reader.
  2. Volunteer at המקור עמותה ישראלית לתוכנה חופשית ולקוד-מקור פתוח (ע"ר).
  3. Technology for helping deaf-blind people to communicate when they are too far away to touch each other.
E-MAIL:
Internet:
w1 at zak.co.il
WWW HOME PAGE:
http://www.zak.co.il/