birdkiwi

Only in Russia ...

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 05:53:30 GMT

I've just had delivered a washing machine and haven't paid a penny. Delivery guys didn't know it's a web purchasing so they didn't have any necessary documents - they went away to come with them again. Funny!

Rain

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:51:58 GMT

The weather held a new record - earlier this day it was raining (yes, on the third of December). Usually at this time of year we have a temperature around 10 degrees below zero.

High Temperature

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:34:49 GMT

I've been sick for roughly a week. Five days my temperature was above 38.6 degrees Celsius. I've no idea what was that - since the only symptom of my illness was a temperature.

Only yesterday I got better and visited my parents. My mom looked very bad, she didn't go out that day since she felt a terrible pain in her leg (probably it's her knee tumor). She described an attack of rheumatism she had at the age of fourteen - she spent sixty eight days in a hospital unable to walk. Onset happened at her home, she fell on her knees and couldn't walk. Her mom beaten the hell out of her but she couldn't stand up, only then her mom called a doctor. Her doctor told her she would suffer till the end of her life. Later at the age of twenty three she had an attack again spending this time eleven days in bed. If I haven't put it in words yet, mom has massive problems with her eyesight nowadays. Her diopters fell to minus thirteen-fourteen range and she has a permanent veil of fog in front of her eyesight.

Incomprehensible

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:24:43 GMT

I've just watched the Memento movie and I didn't get it at all. I've read the plot written in Wikipedia both in English and in Russian and I still don't get this movie. I have some people around me who literally loved this movie, but I don't get it.

I don't f*cking get it! Could someone please spell the plot out for me?

P.S, This f*cking sicko slept for just two hours today. Too sad, I'm talking about myself.

My movies rating (for friends only)

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:30:46 GMT

Here it is. It's stored as a picture, so that nasty search bots couldn't index it :)

At the center of the Sun

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:33:48 GMT

I was semi-fired on November 7th, on the same day when Vladimir's wife gave birth to their child (damn, I don't even remember if it's a girl or a boy). On November 4th I was three hours late for work, then went missing for three more hours, so I spent only three work hours out of eight. On Friday when I came to work, I discovered that all my SSH consoles died and I couldn't login anywhere (in fact I tried the only server). Instantly I understood everything. I didn't try to justify my Wednesday behaviour, because I knew that the real reason of my dismissal was different. I just hadn't carried out a lot of work assigned to me for quite a long time.

In the middle of this week K. learnt that they would have a week off due to the flu quarantine. I tried hard to find a tour to Egypt for us both, but since I started really doing that only on Thursday, there were no free plane tickets and yesterday K. went to her her parents.

For a whole week I haven't done anything, except some random earnings by configuring and repairing different people computers'.

Last night I almost didn't sleep because I went to bed at 7am and I was woken up at 11am due to repairs of neighbour apartments (on the top of mine).

Winter

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:34:40 GMT

This year's winter began on Saturday with a heavy snowing that lasted the whole day. For last three days temperatures kept below zero and snow doesn't want to melt at all. Most likely the winter has come for a long.

Around two months ago K. and I had a very bad quarrel. We went for a horse riding but the first horse given to K. was hyperactive and K. could hardly curb it. So till the middle of our ride we were walking instead of galloping or running. I couldn't bear that any longer so I asked our lead to swap her horse with K.'s one. They did that. That could have helped our ride but it didn't - K. was too tied, she rode for the first time in her life and she wasn't really ready for galloping. To take the edge off of the spoiled riding I stopped frequently, waited till K. and the lead got enough far away from me and gallopped to them.

In the end when the owner of stud-farm asked K. if she enjoyed the ride, K. said the she liked it a lot. That answer infuriated me. Instead of galloping we were walking all the time and to my taste it wasn't a horse riding at all. On our way back to my home we busted up. It took three hours for us to reconcile.

Israel

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 08:26:47 GMT

The night we went to Israel I didn't sleep at all. At first, in the evening I wanted to send an SMS message to K. via my brother's laptop but he refused me to do that. I became angry and went out the room and rambled around the hotel. Around 2 a.m. I returned to the room but I couldn't fall asleep and at 3.30 a.m. we were awoken by a call from the reception. At around 4.10 a.m. we went to the Antalya airport. If my memory serves me well our flight was assigned to 7.30 a.m. and we took off at this very time.

Upon arriving to Tel Aviv we were given 0.5 liter of bottled water and moved to Jerusalem. On our way there we visited a lousy open air restaurant where we were fed with some shit. Kebab was disgusting, the only thing that I could eat was flat bread cake. I also took four more cakes with me since I didn't know when or whether we would be fed again.

Our tour guide as many others was a mildly greedy person so before we arrived to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre we visited a Christian store where many Christian related thing were sold like crosses, icons, etc. I should mention that prices for all the items were over the top. Simple wooden little crosses (20cm) were sold for 15-45 bucks. Some people left over $200 there, insane people I should say (or maybe they were just rich).

Then we arrived to the aforementioned church. Right before that I left my photo camera in the bus so I had no shots of those two places, the second one was the Western Wall (which funnily sounds like the Wall of Weeping in Russian). We spent more than three hours there. Our tour guide made us hard believe two gravestones in that church were genuine and that Jesus Christ was indeed buried on them. People were all so excited I couldn't believe Christian can be so devout.

The Western Wall was it ... a wall. We were notified in advance that we could feel some inconceivable emotions upon touching it, but, well, I touched it and fell absolutely nothing. The funniest thing about these two places was of course a great number of Jews males which worn very funny clothes - no matter the weather is they always were black trousers, a black jacket and a black broad-brim/fedora. One thing I've forgotten to mention is that a heavy shower met us when we just left the bus to go to the church of the holy sepulchre. My brother spoiled his foreign passport a bit, because it was in a pocket of his shirt.

Then we went on the bus to the Church of the Nativity. Jews want to argue it was built exactly in the place were Jesus was born ... but a known fact is that no one knows were Jesus was born.

Then we proceeded to the most fascinating and the shortest part of our trip - we went to the Dead Sea. We were swimming there for just 50 minutes because we needed to get back to the Tel Aviv airport. I like that most of all, we were swimming like pigs - you cannot sink there - your head and your feet are always above the water/sea surface. It was a lot of fun.

We arrived back to out hotel around 2 a.m. so I spent on my feet roughly 38 hours. I was very tired when we came back but the Dead Sea was incredible.

Turkey

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:37:28 GMT

Yes it did happen, for the first time in my life I visited a foreign a country. My brother and I left our city on Tuesday 29th of September and arrived to our hotel at 7am local time. We flew for four hours. We were immediately placed in our room and went to the beach.

These eleven days were quite remarkable - never in my life I've eaten so much - smorgasbord leaves you with no choice. I tried hard not to overeat but nevertheless gained probably up to a kilo of fat (I'm not sure since I did not weigh before departure). BTW, I didn't much like the fact that melon was unripe, watermelon while looking red-ripe wasn't very tasty, apples were uneatable, grapes were given just three times and weren't eatable either - they were sour and hard. We were not given dried fruits at all. That's all kinda sad since from people we were flying back with I got to know that even in four stars hotels different dried fruits were given daily. Yet another upset was the fish - all eleven days they cooked the same sort of _river_ fish (you may guess it was with a lot of bones).

One day we went to the nearest surroundings to see how the locals live, we saw their dwellings (quite big two storey neat brick houses), local vegetation. There were almost no animals, except some domestic ones like cows, chickens and very few dogs.

Several times at the beginning of our time there me and my brother played table tennis, at the end we played (big) tennis exclusively (since it was included and granted to us).

I tanned like never before.

Tomorrow I will write about the rest of the vacation and about out one day trip to Israel.

Despair

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 17:22:55 GMT

I've just come back from our dacha. Mom briefly cried when we were sitting at the train station waiting for my train to come. She said "I don't want anyone to go away" meaning that she wanted all our family to stay together.

She told me a new story of her horrible youth. When she was living in a railroad dormitory some neighbors-girls heisted her and took all valuable things including her new very expensive shoes which costed 32 rubles. That's the third part of an average wage of that time. Mom didn't want to tell anything to her mom (my grandma) so she decided to earn enough money to buy everything back. She and her friend Kotel'nikova started working in the central neurological-surgical hospital. They worked daily from 8 pm to 7.30 am and then went back to the(ir) studies. Two faint girls often had to carry dead bodies to the nearest morgue. People who came there couldn't feed themselves, couldn't even pee or shit on their own. It was a nightmare. Mom didn't tell me for how long they'd been working there, but she worked a lot, didn't sleep, and ate almost nothing. That of course led to dizziness and a couple of times she even lost consciousness. She even mentioned that she lost consciousness at opera rehearsals she took part in. Her supervisor was very infuriated and threatened to deprive my mom of her scholarship but later that women got to know the truth and never bothered my mom any longer.

That hospital is the worst hospital ever. Most its visitors come there just to live their last days or even hours, most often with sever head injuries. One of the women who found herself there in that hospital was a young 17 y.o. girl who fell in love with a married man. Once his wife caught them together in their 9th storey flat and flew into a rage. She said to that girl - either I kill you with a knife or you jump out of the ninth story balcony. The young girl chose the latter. She broke almost all her bones including the spinal cord. The doctors told my mom that girl had just a few days left before she dies. Luckily the spinal cord returned back to its place and the girl survived, remaining completely paralyzed.

My uncle's daughter is shocking. My mom hand me over such words: "Mom, don't worry, you will soon find another husband". I'm astounded.

And now the most important thing which I wanted to write down. Mom's twice bumped against the wall since yesterday. She didn't pronounced that but she definitely had a strong concussion of the brain. God, with her eyes problems she absolutely shouldn't get into troubles like this ...

Why? Why? Why? She's the kindest woman in the world, who helped hundreds of people, some even could survive only thanks to her advice ... This world is absolutely unfair.

Impasse

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 17:59:24 GMT

Sometimes I literally stop to a halt. Like in the last few days. I don't know what I want, what I am living for, why's everything the way it is. I was planning to go on leave quite soon, maybe as soon on the next week ... but lately I started questioning myself - whether I go there (to the sea) or not, what it is for? I'm questioning even my own rest.

Damn, I'm totally perplexed.

BTW, I long hesitated whether to share with everyone my personal movie rating. You can enjoy it by clicking this link.

Farewell

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:49:11 GMT

A funeral was it, a funeral, however even this event was spoiled - my uncle's son was dressed like a rapper with dreads instead of a decent haircut (I suppose even being hairless would have fit better into that ceremony). A visitation took place in a little church near my uncle's flat. A lot of people came to bid farewell (and everyone from my family too). After I left the church I started quietly crying, few other men were crying too. Uncle didn't look quite right, his face had an appearance of a mummy - almost white and totally lifeless - it was the third day he died. Mom told me a day before the funeral a body looked as if he was still alive. He was buried near the city, near his father who died just two weeks before his son's death. A tragic sequence, let's hope the last male of their family won't keep on with this death row. I didn't attended the funeral repast since I wasn't sure if my parents would go there and I didn't feel like discussing my uncle with people who I don't really know well. Besides I'm just not into that.

Later my mom confessed that the day before the funeral she stayed for four hours with the late and his family (our relatives), but she didn't feel like they are really our relatives, she said "I felt like they were strangers to me".

Sorrow

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:17:59 GMT

On Sunday my uncle (a husband of my mom's sister) was accidentally shot to death. I have a strange feeling I could divert that horrible event but now it's just too late for such deliberations. My mom dissuaded him from going to that very district where he and his friends went for fishing - as if she felt what would happen. He was around forty-five years old, his younger daughter is just thirteen. Insurmountable shit happens ...

Yesterday after my work I went to them and stayed there until 1:15 a.m. His daughter was sitting on my legs for some quite time. There were a lot of people there, mainly women. One women told my aunt that her husband was killed because of his sins. What a bullshit! Another man said "Live over it" as if anything was required to utter at all. I wished they all just shut up and sat nearby her without saying a word. This evening my mom told me that they are just a special kind of friends, envying and hating kind. I have no words.

I have to stop playing any computer games now and forever. It's now almost 2 am and I could went to bed as early as at 9 pm. Stupid boy! All the time after my work I was playing Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Las Vegas.

Silly records

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 12:26:11 GMT

Today I've slept for 14,5 hours, however I'd have better slept more on the week (when I slept for 5-7 hours daily with no particular reasons).

This summer is crazy. Right now it's just 11C and slightly raining.

Clarification or probably not that awful

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:45:24 GMT

A dermatologist told me these two spots are just a sting of some terrible fly or blackfly. So I will live. This week otherwise has been a slow news week. The only aspiring news piece is that on September 21st, Mika will release his second album.

Awful things

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:16:59 GMT

In the end of the day two bright red spots have appeared on the inner side of my right calf. I'm f*cking scared. A visit to a dermatologist tomorrow is strictly required. A medical insurance policy and my passport too.

Nazis of our own country

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:36:09 GMT

People keep on disseminating bullshit how wonderful Soviets used to be and how horrible is our current life/government is. The problem is that they bullshiting you and everyone else. Soviets were only a tiny bit better than we are now.

Only two days ago I finally got to know from my mom why my brother has underdeveloped chest and lungs. When he was just an year old he and seven other babies were deliberately infected with streptococcal pneumonia as a part of ongoing experiment for people survival when facing new, never known before kinds of diseases.

Out of those eight babies my brother was the only survivor thanks to the impossible efforts of my mother who then gave consultations to Moscow medics on how to treat this contagion.

Mother argues that I shouldn't pay for us both (me and K.) - I want to go on vacation and K. doesn't have a penny. I'm torn apart since I don't wanna go alone, or better say I wanna spend my vacation with my girlfriend and I don't want to upset my mom. K. parents don't take me seriously so I cannot expect them to cover even a quarter of my expenses. Vladimir said it is entirely my own choice and I should have my own judgement.

This trip to our dacha was quite calm. My only grief is that mom scratched her leg badly when we were were walking in the neighbourhood. She was bleeding for at least ten minutes (she had almost 1cm scratch below the knee where skin was missing).

F*cking with Linux

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:31:42 GMT

Yesterday I tried to move data from my old semi-broken HDD to a new shiny 1TB HDD. That was a really fucking day.

No matter what I tried to do GRUB didn't want to boot my Linux kernel. Fuck knows why I decided to format my root partition as ext4 (it's always been formatted as ext3), but grub doesn't support it. So I installed GRUB loader on my /home ext3 partition. Then I suddenly realized that my custom kernel doesn't support ext4 at all. So I rebuilt it and added ext4 support.

As soon as grub tried to load it, my computer rebooted. I tried to boot it in a VMWare virtual machine. The same song, but VMWare reported General Protection Fault, i.e. something is really fucked up. In the end I gave up, wiped out my new root, formatted it as ext3 and now everything works. I'd spent four hours trying to defeat Linux kernel or GRUB. I fucking lost.

Since Friday I felt like shit. Some people from our city plumbing department decided it was possible to cut off cold water supply for two days! Imagine my rage when I couldn't wash for all this time. This morning I didn't want to go to our dacha at all, but since I woke up an hour before it was necessary to get up (even though I went to bed around 2:30 am) I made myself go.

Mom was stroking my back and my hands all the time when she was beside me. She told me it is a magic moment to have someone loving you near you. It's so true, it's so true. Forgive me, mom, for being such an asshole. You deserve a better son ...

Rambling thoughts are not necessary

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:11:26 GMT

I've decided not to write anything on the topic of K. trying to hand over documents which are required to get a foreign password. In two words it's red tape and bureaucracy at its best. Anyway on July 20th she made everything to get her pass to the outer world.

This is no English day. A part of my mom's reminiscences will be posted in Russian since it's the language which fits my purposes better (or maybe because my English still sucks).

Хватит английского на сегодня. Только что вернулся с дачи, поссорился немного с мамой – она начала рассказывать про бабушку с надеждой на то, чтобы показать мне, что в этой стране делать нечего, а затем добавила, что хотя бы год хочет прожить в стране, где к ней будут относиться как к человеку; где государство о простых гражданах по-настоящему печётся.

Рассказала как тяжело пришлось её бабушке, единственному человеку, который в детстве её любил и о ней заботился. Мой прабабушку звали Дарья. В годы, когда СССР воевал с немцами, она помогала русским партизанам, носила им еду. Кто-то из русских её заложил, её поймали немцы и стали пытать. Ей протыкали ляжки раскалёнными шампурами, потом ещё очень долго и методично разламывали голову. Тем не менее, она не выдала расположение партизан. Её поволокли на виселицу. По дороге у неё выпал из рубашки крестик, немцы увидели это и спросили верит ли она в Бога. Дарья продолжала молчать. Так или иначе немцы «сжалились» и решили не казнить её, «простив» её за то, что она верующая.

Через русских немцы позвали трое моих бабушек (её дочерей), чтобы те пришли забрали её полуживое тело. Дочери взвалили её на сани смешками и кое-как потащили её домой (дело было летом). По дороге у Дарьи вываливались на землю не то кусочки черепа, не то сами мозги, – мама уже не помнит, что ей говорила про это её мама (т.е. моя бабушка).

Какая-то бабка-врачевальница из деревни пришла к ним, кое-как поставила разбитые костяшки черепа на место, увы, всех костей не хватало. Голову замотали полотенцем, так и оставили лежать, «выздоравливать». Вскоре в голове завелись белые черви, их с трудом победили. После того как пробоина зажила, на голове все ещё оставалось место, не закрытое черепом, и если на это место надавить, то можно было почувствовать биение пульса внутри головы.

Затем мама вновь вернулась к своему голодному действу. Нет слов, чтобы описать какое оно было голодное. Как-то раз моя бабушка (её мама) ездила в Москву и привезла пшено, так мама увидев его, спросила, что это такое – всё действо она буквально помирала от голода, они почти всё время ели свёклу, приготовленную разными способами. От свёклы маму иногда тошнило настолько, что изо рта шла белая пена. В эти годы из их деревни всё продовольствие забирали на восстановление Украины, люди в деревнях … умирали от голода (мама это видела), на дворе стояли 60гг – прошло 20 лет с окончания войны. Всё это происходило в 200 км. от … Москвы, многие люди в деревне жили в … землянках.

Переехав сюда на Урал, в Верещагино, мама подивилась тому, как сытно здесь живу люди. Она впервые в жизни увидела и попробовала … вермишель.

Вскоре после окончания войны Дарью … посадили в тюрьму за то, что её не казнили немцы. Политзаключенная она пробыла за решёткой до амнистии, случившейся после смерти Сталина. Человек, который выдал её немцам, был сослан ка Колыму на 20 лет, однако, уже через 10 лет после войны вернулся на волге с 80 тысячами рублей ($300 тысяч по сегодняшним меркам). Дарья назвала его Иродом, на что он цинично возразил, а кто теперь лучше живёт – ты или я? Где он нашёл себе красивую жену хохлушку, но прожил он недолго, жена продала дом и уехала на Украину.

Дарья после тюрьмы вернулась прямо на свадьбу моей бабушки. Вероятно, она сразу распознала моего деда и сказала, что брак будет несчастливым и всячески отговаривала бабушку жениться на Василии. Та не послушалась и сказала Дарье возвращаться откуда пришла (т.е. в тюрьму). С этих пор те никогда больше не были близки.

Дед мой во время войны попал в жуткую передрягу, которая впоследствии сгубила всю его жизнь. Он всё время курил и для скрутки сигарет ему нужна была бумага. Как-то над местом где он жил летали самолёты советских войск и разбрасывали листовки с призывом не сдаваться и сражаться до конца. Он набрал этих листовок, чтобы впоследствии сделать из них сигареты. Он запихал бумажки в свою рваную одежду и затем по дороге домой выронил их на дорогу. Немцы увидели это и решили его расстрелять. Они привязали его к столбу и начали беспорядочно стрелять ему под ноги. Видимо, день был хороший, и его оставили в живых. Дед весь «переописался и пересрался», вспоминала мама. Василий, придя домой, потребовал самогону, иначе он пошёл бы повешался. Его мать кое-как нашла алкоголь, и дед всё выпил. С тех пор он стал алкоголиком и алкоголиком в одиночестве помер. Это не помешало ему закончить высшую партийную школу, ум у него был отменный. [Последние свои годы он доживал в Кирове. На его похороны никто из родственников не явился.]
Тут вмешался отец и сказал, что вместо того, чтобы ехать в Таиланд и тратить бешеные деньги бесцельно, лучше бы я поехал с целью (эмигрировать из России). Я закричал: «хватит мне промывать мозги» и забежал на чердак.

And there are some very famous people in Russia who still dare say that the Soviets was a nice place to live. Fuck them, I hate them.

A saturated weekend

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:55:44 GMT

Last Friday K. came here from her suburb to spend a weekend with me. On Saturday we went to see the shitty Harry Potter 6 movie, then visited an "Italian" pizzeria where I bought two pieces of two different pizzas (K.'s one was much more tastier as I ordered a Hawaii's one which turned out to be rather tasteless). Then we went home and in the evening of the same day I showed K. The Illusionist movie which she greatly enjoyed (in the meantime I was doing some pick-up PC related work).

We went to bed quite late, so next noon I was feeling sleepy and didn't really want to go anywhere or to take K. anywhere. Anywhere is of course my parents dacha. Then suddenly I changed my mind and we rushed to the train station. Upon arrival my mom wasn't very happy since I didn't buy chicken fillet thus spelling a hunger on everyone. There was one piece of bad news which saddened me a lot: mom told that she lost two more teeth. (She hardly had more than five teeth and now there are almost no teeth in her mouth. I'm feeling bad.)

Later we went to pick raspberries and we were doing that for almost two hours. Then I grew tired and bored of that and suggested K. to go visit our nice black turfy lake located in the middle of the nearest marsh (mire). She put on a swimsuit and we moved. Upon arrival I suddenly decided it was worth swimming but since I had no swimming clothes I decided to swim stark naked (there were only two more people at the lake - seemingly a mother and her daughter). I got completely undressed and plunged. Then K. lost all her modesty and joined me ... stark naked too. We swam for about ten minutes, K. even managed to catch my dick under the water and lightly pulled it. She was laughing and I was scared since I'm not a good swimmer and that lake doesn't have any kind of bottom. She also had plans to have seks :) with me right in the forest, i.e. in the mire but weather and time didn't really permit that kind of fun.

Besides this summer weather is nothing pleasant and the lake hasn't warmed up a lot, so the top layer (around meter) is warm but everything below is very cold so you can easily catch a seizure, lose your breath and sink promptly. Anyway I helped K. to get out, then I emerged.

At this time it started pouring and suddenly it became much colder. We arrived back to dacha wet to the skin, K. literally froze to death. At this time it was around +16C and she worn the swimsuit only.

We rushed to the train station, but we were late. We returned back, drank green tea, K. spoke to my dad a bit (later she told that my dad is witty, very handsome and looked young). When we just came there she spoke a lot to my mom. So now K. is introduced to my both parents and she's my first gf to ever visit our dacha. On the next train we arrived back to the city. In the evening K. baked a lot of delicious pancakes. We went to bed around 2 a.m. In the morning K. went to get her foreign passport but that's a separate story to be told next time.

Joy and sorrow

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:02:59 GMT

I met Vladimir yesterday with the intention of trying to help him to set up wifi nic on his Linux server. Alas, I didn't have enough time to finish and then he, his wife and i went for a walk. She's pregnant with a girl (they had known that just a few days before I came). Around 12pm we parted and then I got home almost instantly (we walked near my apartment, because Vladimir drove all of us there).

I was glad I'd spent time with my only friend, however it's not really enticing that everyone around me is a family person, while I'm not even sure whether I'm honest with K. or not. She loves me a lot, but I just like her. Everyone keeps telling me that appearance is not the paramount thing (anyway everyone ages and even a super beauty will become just an average woman in her forties or fifties) but I'm still kinda flippant and dreamy dreaming of Aphrodite having a human incarnation. Well, I've met such a girl once in my life. It happened in year 2003, her name was Marina from the PSPU. I met her twice or three times after our first prolonged meeting when we spent three days in the same training camp devoted to training of the future PR specialists/journalists/etc. And there's one more thing: my mom used to be the most beautiful girl in her native city. I'm not exaggerating like most devoted sons do, I just share the facts of my life.

I'm also not that happy thinking about mom every passing day. Instead of helping her by at least making her dreams come true (she's eager to leave this goddamned country) I'm just moaning and feel depressed.

My uncle Sergey, who I last saw last summer, has recently texted me congratulating me on getting my diploma. Fuck knows how this quite useless thing will help me in the future ... what future? I have no impetus, I don't know what for and why I live and speaking frankly I don't want the future to come at all. Thoughts of my mom getting totally blind and thoughts of her bad health don't really reassure me, they just fill me with sorrow and anguish.

I'm restless. And I keep slowly killing myself by not sleeping enough, on average I sleep less than 8 hours a day and in days I walk like a somnambulist.

Shopaholic

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:22:26 GMT

In the last two weeks I've brought a new 1TB Seagate 7200.12 HDD (my current one is failing so I need to transfer data somewhere before I get a refund or a new one) and a brand new microwave oven. The microwave oven by Sharp was a real bargain - its lowest Moscow price is currently over two hundred dollars and I bought it for $125. I tried to boil some water in it as soon as I unpacked it and washed it using hot water and soap (it's made of stainless still, so everything's just fine). However instead of boiling the water exploded two times leaving the internals of the MVO all wet and hot. I thought my MVO is broken and started googling. Luckily I found out that this problem is due to MVO design. One should never boil a purified water in a glass - there are (almost) no centers of simmering so the water can heat up to very high temperatures. Then the water may just blow up if such a center materializes.

Yesterday in one Russian social network I found my old classmate named EF. While I was browsing her profile I quickly browsed to some of the people who left messages on her public wall. Of those people was a girl and that girl had a photo album with photos of my first school graduates having party together. That party held place last year and it was devoted to the tenth anniversary of graduating. I wasn't there and no one called me to come there (at least I don't remember anyone calling me). Also if my memory serves me well there were only fifteen people on photos so half of my school class was missing.

Probably subconsciously I felt somewhat upset because last night I dreamt about participating in this party and talking closely to IO (there were three very beautiful girls in my first class EF, IO and AP). I cuddled IO closely and enjoyed that moment a lot. And her face was the same face as I saw 18 years ago. Of course, she has changed a lot and I saw her new photos in the same social network. Nowadays she's nowhere near beautiful as she used to be. OF also changed a lot, but on some photos she's still beautiful. BTW, OF married last year. She now lives in Moscow or in St. Petersburg ... I'm not sure.

K. and I have some longstanding issues with our healths and she badly needs to go to a hospital but this week her parents hasn't let her come. She will probably come next week but that's not very exciting. I will go to a doctor on Monday.

All this week I've been actively (literally) jerking off and I didn't even find time to go to a bank and move my salary savings to a deposit. My money has been laying intact in my salary account for last year and a half and I've already lost up to 40% of it due to inflation and due to a fact that there's a zero interest rate for it. Damn! That means I've been working half a year for nothing.

A. meet dirt, dirt meet A.

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 12:35:23 GMT

On this Friday morning on my way to work a SUV flung mad at me. I turned dirty from my top to my bottom, alas, I didn't even try to memorize this SUV number so that I could later find its driver and tell him what bastard he is. Anyway I came back home and washed my blazer and trousers. Then I went to my work again, I was late for an hour.

Later that evening I finally fell ill as probably in the middle of the same day I also ate an ice-cream. How stupid was I considering that for the whole day I couldn't warm and my boots were wet and cold (they are not water proof in a place where the leather adjoins the sole). They are produced by some Polish (Chinese?) motherfuckers who call themselves Ergo & Corvin (CORVIN Fabryka Obuwia S.c. Marek Kruk, Zofia Kruk ul. Banacha, 117, 26-600 Radom, tel.: 048 385 73 40). If I lived in Europe/USA I could probably sue them for this shit but here in Russia I've got zero chances.

Yesterday even with my heightened temperature I went to our summer garden. On my way there Vladimir called me and asked where I was going. During our conversation he almost insisted coming to me to have a shashlik party. I couldn't say no, so two hours later his company (his wife and four other people who I hadn't seen before) arrived on his car. We lazily spent time and around 7.30 p.m. they departed. I left my parents an hour later. Mother insisted that I took some of bliny she cooked in the meantime, some strawberries and a jar of strawberry jam.

Today is Sunday and I still feel like shit.

The fact that I lost my USB stick depresses me. I don't care about its cost but I care about its contents - there's some information I don't wanna everyone to ever see. My next flash drive will be partitioned into two partitions, where one of them will be encrypted using a high-grade encryption.

A long story cut short

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 11:54:23 GMT

On April 7 I came to my university with an idea of finally finishing eleven years business of getting my higher education. The first person I asked if I could reinstate as a student was a secretary of my university department. He answer was discouraging - she said I was too late and suggested coming next year.

I left the department room and called K. saying that I hadn't the ghost of a chance. She was upset too. Suddenly I saw our dean going out to the corridor and entering a room next to my department. After some time he left it and headed back to his room. On his way back I approached him and asked if I could renew my contract and finish my studies. He said it was indeed possible and told me to immediately pay a contract and do whatever it was needed. But before I could renew my contract he asked to get unqualified approval from TIK - she is a head of my sub-department. Next day I met TIK and we had rather long conversation about me and my wishes. I promised again (like a year before) this time I wouldn't fail and she agreed. Also I promised that I would pass all educational arrears before starting writing a graduation work.

Two days later I finally collected all required signatures and autographs and payed the contract. So, on April 9 I became a student again. Since the last time I studied I still had five educational debt - I had to pass an examination and a term paper in the Russian language linguistics and two examinations and one pass-fail exam in journalism.

The professor of the Russian language linguistics is the same woman whose subject was a reason of my failure six years ago. It was her subject term paper that I didn't wrote and that subsequently caused my expulsion from the university. This time it wasn't any better. She asked to write a term paper for which I only could write a theoretical part. I lost my courage again. Then K. told me she had a girl who was good at humanitarian sciences. With her invaluable help (valuable indeed but not something I care at all) I got mark four ("B" as for the US educational system). For the examination the professor put me satisfactory mark (the lowest positive mark) and that was it.

The professor of journalism was a tougher guy. At first he told me to write a news piece, an interview and a report. I made them all. Then he said the news was bad, the interview wasn't good enough and the report wasn't what he really liked. Besides it turned out he meant that I did any of these works, not all of them together. So, we decided I would write three more news pieces. That was a tough task. Everything I sent was harshly criticized (and rightly so) - but I hadn't done that ever before. In the end (around May 7) my sub-department head (TIK) probably called him and told him to have mercy. Next day he gave me excellent mark for everything.

Now that I had no debts I approached TIK again and we decided on my graduation work title. She also appointed a research supervisor to look after me. The research supervisor and I developed a structure of the work and my work turned into full swing. Everything was almost fine except my work presentation which happened on June 24.

I hadn't rehearsed my speech even once so I when my appearance time was over (8 minutes) I only finished half of my speech. Of course a head of a state examination commission asked me to conclude. I finished quickly and very roughly. Then the commission members asked me a few question and I didn't answered on one them properly. They asked if my work included the evaluation of the results I got and I said that no, it would be a topic of the future works. However, in fact, I had that evaluation. No matter what I even managed to joke once making everyone lough for the first time during the whole process (there were nine orators before me). Then everyone except members of the commission left the room.

After a short counsel everyone get back to the room and the commission read out the results. All females got an excellent mark ("A") and two males (one of them was I) got a good mark ("B"). My research supervisor looked very disappointed with my bad answer, bad speech and not excellent mark. Later that day I bought a box of sweetmeats (Rafaello) for her and delivered them to my chair. Unfortunately she was gone by that moment. A few days later I've learned that she refused to take them citing that such things should be done vis-a-vis.

At the end of a ceremony of presenting certificates of degree I met my research supervisor, asked her pardon and she agreed to take my present (which still resided at the chair at another location).

This is how everything ended.

Some things to remeber

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:14:18 GMT

Well, yesterday/today I've finally got my higher education.

On June 30 I lost my 16GB flash stick. It was last seen around 19:34 when K. came to my work so that I printed some of her documents. Then we went back to my home. Then I don't remember what happened. Then I delivered some of K. bags to her dormitory. Then I changed my mind and discovered I had no flash drive. It was around 21:00.

So, in this interval I lost it. It is not at home. It is not at work. People at work vow they didn't see it. I don't remember if I took it to my home. FUCK FUCK FUCK Where is it???