how wishy washy can you get?!

Reading an article on organisation communication... Although a psych subject, it really reminds me of the Human Resource Management subject I've done in my good old Melbourne Uni BComm. days - and exactly like that subject, this one seems to be full of great complex theories and big-word concepts trying to put some structure to real common sense things. And yes I know that common sense is the least common of all senses. In any case, the point of this post is to present one of the most pointless and vague sentences I've read in a while:

"the production and reproduction of social life depends upon the knowledgeable human subjects tracing out routinised paths over space and through time, fulfilling particular projects whose realisations are bounded by structures of interlocking capability, coupling and steering constraints" (Gregory, 1985)

On Age

This semester we're doing developmental psychology, which for the commoners among you means "the scientific study of systematic psychological changes that occur in human beings over the course of the life span." (thanks Wikipedia). As part of this course I've taken a seminar on successful aging, which is something that has interested me for the last couple of years.

I have to do a presentation in this seminar, and the topic I picked is "layman's ideas on what successful aging is". So far I've read five different studies and here are some findings that I thought were very interesting (I am not going to give direct quotes, because they won't make sense without also giving all the statistical data, which will take ages, so I'm just going to summarise in my own words):

• most people over the age of 65 consider themselves as ageing well or very well, and most report being actually happy
  
• people who are miserable in their old age are usually so due to a physical impairment, which prevents them from doing things. This is not as self-explanatory as it sounds though... a lot of people even in wheelchairs are happy and see their wheelchair not as an obstacle, but as something that actually helps them move and be independent. So the people who are not happy are the ones who are either completely bed-ridden, or haven't found anything positive in their situation.
• 40% of people, having reached "old age" found it to be better than what they expected (as in what they expected it to be when they were still younger); with 52% saying that their earlier (younger) perception of "old age" hasn't changed, and 8% said it was worse.
• people who keep mentally active in their older years are a lot less likely to suffer from dementia
  
• physical appearance is still important in old age. This was interesting, because many young people think that older people don't really care about what they look like, or don't try to look attractive.
  
• being happy in old age does not only depend on being healthy, but on many other factors, such as financial status (having enough money), being able to do things for oneself, and one of the very important aspects is having social relationships and being able to help others.
• even quite a few people with chronic conditions were happy in their old age, as they were able to find things (compensate) which they were able to do instead and take pleasure from that, rather than looking at things that they couldn't do anymore.
• when asked what age would be the "ideal" age, most people considered middle age to be the best age.
  
• Men and women understand what it means to be "successfully ageing" in identical terms, and there is no great difference in gender and how happy they are in their old age
• even though in general our bodies don't function as well in older years, cognitive losses are reversible... so we don't have to forget things "forever"... with training we can still do calculus even if we're 90

The reason I find all this so interesting, is that for some time now I've been thinking about what it will be like to be old. Of course it worries me, and makes me wonder whether I'll be happy or how not to be scared of it. But reading all this really opened my eyes onto the fact that the majority of old people are actually quite happy, even in the cases of those who are very ill. A lot of people found old age to be better than what they expected. On top of that something that we always talked about in my immediate family is that cognitive function is very important in order to prevent dementia and not to be "out of it" - and now I have some "scientific proof" that this indeed is the case. So really being old doesn't sound all that different to being young... it sounds like it's just about adapting to what life throws at you, and taking things as they come. Ahhh... I think I still have a lot to learn :)

"One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it's such a nice change from being young." Dorothy Canfield



For fear of breaching copyright, here is the list of articles where my summaries are from :) ...

1. Rowe, Kahn "Successful Aging" 1997, The Gerontological Society of America
2. Knight, Ricciardelli "Successful Aging: Perceptions of adults aged between 70 and 101 years" 2003, Aging and Human Development
3. Charbonneau-Lyons, et. al. "Opinions of college students and independent-living adults regarding successful aging" 2002, Educational Gerontology
4. Phelan, et. al. "Older Adults' Views of "Successful Aging" - How do they compare with Researchers' Definitions?" 2004, JAGS
5. Bowling "Lay perceptions of successful ageing: findings from a national survey of middle aged and older adults in Britain" 2006, Eur J Ageing
   

On Dogs and cussing

Dogs - they are our friends and companions. Germans LOVE their four legged pets and bring them pretty much anywhere and everywhere - to bars, into shops, to work... Yes. We realised this weekend that both Jack and I have dogs at our work. In my case it's a female manager who ended up with her "friend" after a divorce and in Jacks case it's the boss' girlfriend who brings it to work. My work dog Bonnie used to spend most of its day running around the office and yapping like crazy, but now it came down a bit and you don't hear it as much. Jack's work dog seems to just be a canine form of Unix... lazy, sleepy and relaxed. But I ask you - is it really appropriate to bring your dogs to work?!

As some of you may know after turning 27 I took a vow of "no swearing". The main reason behind it was a realisation that I really lack adjectives in my life. And I must report that I have been doing rather well, spiffy, excellently, not too bad at all. The occasional curse word does get in occasionally, but is quickly shadowed by an abundance of non-curse synonyms :))

THE STRANGER : "Thankie. . . Just one thing, Dude. 
D'ya have to use s'many cuss words?"

The Dude looks at The Stranger as if just now noticing
how out of place the cowpoke is.

DUDE : "The fuck are you talking about?"

The Stranger chuckles indulgently and pushes off from the bar.

One of the best

gotta be one of the best video clips of all time that wasn't mentioned on this blog...

Rediscovering Music

Over the last couple of years I've been listening to a very selected number of albums... and mainly thought that everything out of the 40GB of music is getting rather old and boring. But sometimes I turn on smth that I haven't listened to in ages and realise that this bit of music is actually pretty damn good. This happened to me this morning, as I was half asleep on the train going to uni. I switched on Grace by Jeff Buckley remembering it as a quiet-ish melancholic album. And then Eternal Life came on. I mean if I knew how to play guitar, this is something I'd play day and night. What a beautiful and powerful song. Needless to say I didn't sleep for much longer and walked into uni bobbing my head up and down like a silly rapper. Go Jeff! ... pity he's dead...

catbag

For quite some time now Unix has become a big fan of the purple beanbags that I made. This is all well and good, except that he has just a tiny amount of hair on him, meaning that the nice purple velvet beanbags over a couple of days become a nice shade of grey. No matter how much or how often I vacuum them, they still look like yet another cat. Thus today I decided to put an end to it all and made a cat beanbag for him, especially rubbed in catnip too. We're yet to see whether he'll actually prefer to sit on his own, or still would like a human beanbag...

Let there be light

The festival of lights is on again at the moment in Berlin. Every autumn they light up landmarks and interesting buildings for a couple of weeks, so yesterday we went and had a look around at some of them.

The world would be a perfect place if...

there weren't any people who:

• go up the stairs in front of you in the metro and then stop on the very top step suddenly to look at where they need to go
• listen to their music on their phones really loudly on public transport (they're exercising their right of freedom to listen to music, but what about my right not to have to listen to it?)
  
• force you to sit really close to smokers at work (can one get lung cancer from passively smelling a smoker?)
• work in the Ausländerbehörde (Foreign Office) and who lack any kind of emotion, empathy, feelings and who make sure that you experience utmost misery if you try to deal with them, let alone get them to do something as a human being to another human being. Or who give you a phone number (or four) to call, and no matter when/how often you try no-one EVER picks up.
  
• wear their pants REALLY low down exposing their underwear (what about my right of freedom not to be forced to be confronted with eeky underwear?) Since when did belts go out of fashion anyway?
• just can't accept no for an answer!

oh... and all this happened to me just this morning! Feel free to add to the list...

Tempelhof

Some time ago the Berlin authorities decided to build a whole new airport, which is due to be completed in 2012 near Schönefeld. Part of the bargaining agreement was to close some of the existing airports (of which there are currently three) and one of them being Tempelhof. It's closing its normal air operations in the end of this month, and given its importance in Berlin history we got ourselves onto a tour on Saturday.

This airport is located in the centre of the city and was used in the Luftbrücke, the Berlin Airlift in 1948-49 when the allies brought food and necessary daily goods into Berlin. Back then it must've been one of the largest air operations ever - they had planes landing and taking off every 90 secs... which is now the amount of traffic that Frankfurt airport is receiving. Along with that it's the third largest building in the world (square meters area wise), and largest outside the United States (after Pentagon and smth else).

Something ridiculously small like 10% of it is currently used, and no-one really knows what's going to happen to it in the end of this month when it's no longer going to be used as an airport. The tour was quite interesting and the guide told us quite a few facts about how it was built and reconstructed over the years. For example, underneath the airport there's a huge system of channels for air/water/what have you... some crazy amount of kilometres, which gave birth to a number of legends about the dark forces living beneath the surface. As part of the tour we were also taken onto the roof, where we could see the field and various old school planes. There are flight tours that one can do on some of the old planes that were originally used in the air lift... the Rosinenbombers... literally Raisin Bombers, because the pilots used to throw down candy and sweets for the kids around the airport in little parachutes.

We also went down into the bombproof bunkers underneath. On some of the walls there were quite nice paintings but sadly there wasn't really enough time to work out what they were or why they were painted. These bunkers were one of the most solid built, and were fairly well planned... for example each room had a latch which controlled air pressure. Should the pressure drop below a certain point, the latch opens automatically to let more air in (pic. 1). One of these bunkers used to have, what they think, the Nazi film archives during the war (pic. 2)... because they were very solid and very well protected (a huge metal door at the entry). So when the Ruskies got to Berlin and got to that door they either needed to have the code or blow it up... guess what they picked? Sadly the blast caused all film to catch fire and nothing could be recovered.

1. 2.

It's fascinating finding out new things about the city you live in. More pictures here.

From Novosibirsk with love

Dad was here for a week. It was so wonderful to see him and show him our flat... which he approved. :) Unix also got an extra pair of hands for patting.

While he was here we walked around Berlin quite a bit and even did a trip out of the city to a town called Belzig, which has precisely 11808 people (according to Wikipedia). That's something we can't really confirm... but then again who cares. It was a really nice little town with its own fortress and tiny little German houses. Being autumn also helped because all the trees were beautiful shades of red, orange, yellow, gold... On the way back we got off at Zoo and walked home through Tiergarten, which was also incredibly beautiful.

Dad and I visited the Old Museum and looked at the Niffertiti and various other wonderful old statues, mummies, clay pots, etc. Another day was spent in the Technical Museum... which is huge... and definitely worth a visit even if you're not an eight year old boy. I got very excited pressing various buttons and making stuff move. One evening the three of us went up to the Fernsehturm and had a drink at 207 meters... very nice. And yet another day we walked to my uni... it took just over three hours and we had nice coffee and cake in between. Uni is looking really nice right now dressed with all the autumnly trees. Dad was also impressed by the campus and the libraries.

Now that he's gone back to Siberia a feeling of sadness descended... as usual. But I'm hoping I'll be able to go and visit in March... so all's well.

Some more pictures here.

A delayed happy birthday to me

For my birthday much earlier this year a group of people lead by my sneaky wife got together and surprised me with gift voucher. It wasn't for socks either it was to do a stuntman course at the Filmpark Babelsberg with their resident stuntcrew. Mainly we were training and doing the stunts inside the Volcano where they do a regular show based on Mad Max.

There are videos from this little adventure too, I'm out of disk space right at the moment so can't edit them, After all I need to remove all traces of me squealing like a little girl. Will try and post them later on today if I get a chance.

We got to climb over their "set" and see what it looks like to jump off the places where they do it. Sure is a great view from the top of that 40m mast, pity the air cushion looks like a hanky and there's about 6m of sharp painful looking metal stuff that you have to cross horizontally before you reach it. Needless to say they didn't let us jump from the highest points.

Most of the first morning was learning how to fall and roll, forwards and backwards. Got a bit boring but is probably better than breaking your arms, legs or neck later on ;-)

White man can't jump, but they can fall. It was falling from a modest height of 2.3m (left photo) to start with - effective fall to the mats about 1.7m. Nobody else in the group wanted to be first, so in order to actually get on with it I scrambled up the ladder. It isn't a great height, the mats are soft so there's no drama right? Well the mat is only about 50cm wide so you shouldn't miss or it's concrete for you. Also to jump you are supposed to kick up one leg thus swinging you forwards and tilting your body back so you land flat on your back. This has the disconcerting feeling of letting you think you will bash your head on the rusty metal platform. Thankfully that didn't happen.
Then it's time to go again, in the same order - so me first again only this time it's from 4m (right photo) effective fall 3.4m. A 50cm wide mat from hear does look a bit more like a postage stamp. That and I think all those years in SES where you were supposed to stay on whatever it was you were on combined to make it a bit harder to get off of this one. Though I did actually manage it the landing didn't feel any different to the shorter jump - some very nice softish mats they've got.

You're on fire baby - The first day ended as all good days do with a nice little fire. The difference here was that it was us that were on fire. Unlike the big fat guy I did manage to fit into the heat proof racing suit, over which is a glass fibre outfit, then a blanket doused in petrol. Just add matches and you're practically cooking with gas. The disappointing thing was that wearing all that stuff you could hardly even hear the fire, let alone feel it.

On the second day we got to release some of the days frustrations by beating each other up, this tall muscular guy didn't stand a chance...

Then we did some abseiling, about 35m. Nothing unusual and always fun.

And to finish a nice quiet ride home into the sunset

A huge thank you to everyone who put in to get me this gift it was great fun and definitely a top present.

Jack...

What's on the t-shirt

On my way to work there's a t-shirt shop. Normally I don't pay much attention to it, 'cos I ride my bike. But this week still feeling somewhat sick with a cold and the weather being very Very rainy I'm taking the U-Bahn, which means there's a little stretch of Friedrichstraße that I have to walk along from the station to work. Which brings me back to the shop...

It's an "all-natural fabrics" store, and t-shirts happen to be their major assortment. Along with many regular t-shirts they also produce some with their own writing. This one keeps catching my attention the whole week - it says "Born to chill. Forced to work." :)

Here's the website.

Don't book online with Czech Airlines

We're going away over new years, so in our hunt for cheap tickets on dates that actually suit us we discovered Czech Airlines.

We booked a couple of flights online, just as you would at any other airline around the world these days. Annoyingly the prices of the tickets went up during our booking, and we ended up doing two bookings one for Polina and one for myself this way one of us still got the cheap flight. Booking completed we didn't get E-Tickets straight away which was a bit odd, we got reservation numbers and a thing saying "Payment Pending". It was the middle of the night on a weekend too so we didn't think too much of it. Checking the next day our credit cards have been charged roughly the right amount, so we think everything is good.

A couple of days later, still no information the link with the reservations no longer works so we call them up. Nope sorry your flights were cancelled as you haven't paid. Um hang on - we can see the money is missing from our credit card. Back and forth back and forth over the course of three days, they ended up refunding the card money, and issuing us new tickets at a new price of course. Through dint of much persistence and "can we speak to your supervisor" they finally dropped the service fees and allowed us to pay in US dollars letting us get the tickets at almost the same price we had booked them for originally.

The best part is that at least three call centre staff told us that their online booking system doesn't work *sigh*. If you can't manage an online booking system outsource it to someone who can, or get rid of it!

The moral of the story? If you want to fly with Czech Airlines (we'll keep you posted if the actual flights are any good) then you definitely don't want to book the tickets online.

Call the call centre and get them to do it for you, don't forget to ask them which currency it's cheaper to pay in as well ;-)

Happy Travelling from a now much less stressed Jack and Polina...

on emails

It's something that's been on my mind for quite some time now. I know with this whole electronic, extra-fast, extra-conventient modern age we all have less time even though we have more appliances to make our lives easier and to have more time. Everyone knows it, but no-one is doing anything about it.

Certainly I've complained to many of you how I miss writing letters (real paper letters that one can touch, feel, put next to oneself and know that the authors hands also touched it), and I really do miss writing long emails. Somehow nowadays whenever I write to people it's a lot more goal-oriented, such as - organising a get-together, organising a phone call, asking for a specific favour or advice... I find myself very rarely writing an email/letter for the sake of writing one - to share my thoughts and feelings, to ponder some questions that's been on my mind, to find out how the other person is... And whenever the opportunity presents itself I am usually thrilled.

An easy way would be to blame the world and to say that people don't reply to me when I do write longer emails... which is partially true. But I guess I've also given up on it and when before, whenever I gotten an email I would reply to it almost straight away... now I usually leave it for a couple of days or weeks even, before I find the time to respond. Sometimes it has to do with time... but sometimes I just feel that very intense, regular communication is something to be avoided for fear of "not sure what". It's been a self-reflective weekend so far, you see...

A part of me realises that when everyone is so far away, everyone has their own lives to live and not much time for anything outside that. However it's not just an issue of geographical separation. Even when we lived in Melbourne I found that we would all see each other a couple of times a year, sometimes more often... so I think it's not just to do with everyone being in the same place, although that helps.

I believe this age of emails, googles, facebooks is on one hand doing a great service for people to be able to stay in touch... but is this "staying in touch" the same quality as the old fashioned "staying in touch"? It feels like trying to compare on one hand sitting in a little cafe on a piazza in Venice on a warm evening, sipping wine and overlooking one of the canals, and on the other sitting in an italian restaurant somewhere else in the world and looking at a photo of a venetain canal on the wall. Both might be pleasant, but it's only that one is that so much better.

What every man (apparently) needs

This is what every man (according to English Russia) needs. It has good and bad points as you may notice - the best part for my money is the completely absent reactions of the passers by...

Holiday plans and to-do lists

As you may or may not (if you're using a blog-reader) have noticed, I've updated the blog template. I gotta say - I don't like the way Blogger doesn't really provide an easy way to alter the HTML and CSS, other than in a single xml file which is incredibly hard to work with. I guess it's mainly targeting non-IT people. Oh well - in any case... there's still a few things to clean up/add, but the main work is done.

That has taken up most of my weekend. As with many previous holidays I've made myself a list of things to do, and surprisingly this time around I am actually on track to complete all of them prior to semester start. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that I was realistic and didn't make any plans like "read all psychology literature at home", or making a decision to work only three days a week on holidays dedicating the rest of the time to doing things around the flat and relaxing. It's been a very enjoyable holiday thus far.

The world up above

Back in Berlinski I've been spending my days organising things around our humble abode. This involves planting a herb "garden" on the balcony, organising all the sewing that needs to get done, cleaning after our trip, some other things and a fair amount of cooking to Jack's great delight... yesterday's dinner included honey chicken, roast potatoes with home-made(!) Spanish tomatoe sauce and Sharlotka (Russian biscuit apple cake)... yep I'm boasting - but I don't get to do this very often, so I'm happy to report when it does happen.

Unix has been very friendly since I picked him up from his "cat hotel" on Monday... I actually think he missed us. To his grieve disappointment he got brushed, de-clawed and washed all in the same week... poor cat. But now he's not as scratchy and silky smooth. The washing didn't really help with the amount of shedding that's happening at the moment... I think he still must be too warm in his coat. Here's some pics of the herbs (yes I know I made a spelling mistake with parsley... BUT it was in permanent marker, so I'm not changing it ok?!), and cat and cat hair.

The world down under

WARNING: long post!

It is now officially the Friday after... our return, and I thought that if I don't write a post now, I will probably forget all the wonderful experiences and it would be such a shame.

Most of August we spent in the southern hemisphere, visiting Eugene in Singapore and then our home in Australia. First things first... Singapore was humid, hot, sticky and full of amazing food. For a minute I even thought that it had the perfect climate and atmosphere for me - but that was before we stepped onto Aussie shores. Eugene is a great host and showed us the town and the good life. My experiences of Asian big cities are pretty much limited to Bangkok, Hong Kong, some cities in Japan (when I was about 9 years old) and now Singapore. Out of these cities I have to say that Singapore struck me as most relaxed. Of course the fact that we were there on the weekend and on public holiday might have something to do with it.

Even though I really don't like the whole business of hot and humid outside and freezing air-conditioned inside, I love tropical climates. Being able to go out in the evening without taking a jumper is just so so nice. Did I mention the food? Along with many servings of dumplings our cuisine for the weekend included chili crabs, yummy buns on the go, Chinese fried chicken, some strange but yummy cold blackish-greenish jelly stuff (very refreshing), and many more that I can't even quite remember. Eugene also took us for Singapore Sling cocktails at the Raffles hotel which was a great idea because a) they were very refreshing, and b) the hotel is a good example of colonial architecture which I find completely gorgeous, so I was double happy. Along with seeing the town we also managed to find Jack a new phone and drop by to Eugene's office.

Sat evening we also spent on the roof of our hosts' penthouse apartment watching the fireworks for the national day of Sing and drinking champers. This was afterwards followed by a walk along the red-light district where the girls are organised by their nationalities along various street corners (Germany take notes) and lastly we bought a durien (sp?) which is this spiky funky fruit that I kept on wanting to try but in the end got more than I bargained for, because unlike being watery and refreshing (what I was actually expecting) it was more like a mix between banana and avocado... very very creamy and rich. But Eugene helped me out and we even managed to finish this gigantic piece of Gods creation.

There definitely needs to be a "next time" in Singapore!!! Some photos can be found here :)

And so after these two lovely days we took a Qantas flight 06 to Melbourne. Arriving at an ungodly hour of 4am on a Monday morning we went through security very quickly to our great surprise and were met by Emmi on a cold rainy and pretty miserable morning. The climate change was so dramatic that I spent most of Monday curled up in front of the heater in the lounge room while Jack was getting Lady out of the garage.

Since we decided to send some of our stuff over from Melbski to Berlinski it meant spending some time in the shed pulling apart boxes, containers and various pieces of old student furniture which we kept on wondering "why did we ever decide to keep it?"... it probably took us a good four to five days to find everything (well almost everything) that we wanted to take with us and to actually ship it. Hopefully it should arrive to Berlin sometime in the middle of October. Our shed adventures also included locating four dead mice... and no - these little chaps didn't die in the name of science... but more in the name of rat-sack... shouldn't have been so curious! Overall we were happy with the fact that aside from mouse crap all of our things (especially books) were ok... oh and there was one box where ants decided to nest, but we evicted them and that was fine.

Next on our plan was to go to the Grampians and celebrate our 5 year wedding anniversary. Quite a few of you were surprised that it has been that many years... well it's pretty surprising for us, too. I mean it feels only yesterday that we met... but it's not. Five years... hmmm... yes - they have been an amazing, wonderful, happy, great, grand, magnificent five years :) In any case we went off to the same place where we got married and aside from the fact that it was cold, miserable, rainy, the car's back breaks breaking on the way there, me having a cold it was a really good time. Nah - it was actually very nice to be back there and to get away from it all. We saw much wildlife and fed kangaroos outside our doorstep... and reminisced in the time gone by as well as booing our Olympic commentators. A selection of photos for your viewing pleasure can be found here.

The rest of our time was spent catching up with our families, friends and Melbourne itself. I must've had the most coffee's this whole year there. I think my grand total was five latte's in one day... but it's SO good!!! We also squeezed in a trip up to Adelaide to celebrate Axel's 40th birthday and catch up with the gang there. Another day was spent driving around the Dandenongs with our folks... even though the walking tracks were very muddy we still did some walking, spotted a Rosella and two Kookaburras and had enormous ice-creams at Miss Marple's Tea House. We had a big catch-up with everyone at Prudence and a get-together for my birthday at Ginger. To my great disappointment they stopped selling the alcoholic ice-creams, but the cocktails were great anyway, so no complaints there. There was one evening spent visiting Mr Marvin and having dinner with his foster parent Paul. All in all, as usual, not enough time for everything and everyone... but we hope to be back for good at some point in the future and then we'll have the rest of our lives to spend together. I think now this needs a quote about something like "the stream of life"... but I really can't be bothered searching for one... you know what I mean! Some photos here.

oh ok, fine! this is roughly what I was looking for:

George Eliot: "The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone."

ahhh... birthdays

yes... they happen every year and the little two-digit (for most people anyhow) number increases progressively and our health decreases. But hang on - that's a pessimistic outlook. Personally - I love birthdays! Love with a big "L". So being lucky enough to be able to celebrate it with my very closest family today is a real treat.

The post though is not about lovey dovey moments - it's a quickie about these "closest families". Yep you guessed it - it's going to be a sarcastic one.

Amongst SMS'es and StudiVZ congratulations, and of course a wonderful present from hubby I get an email from my Grandma this morning (the one in Nsk)... and it says... I quote:

"happy birthday! wishing you happiness and successes! I wish so much that you have a boy!" umm.... hmmm.... yes... well.... ummm... so my reply was something along the lines of "thanks Grandma! but I'm not pregnant, so your wishes are somewhat premature"... I mean I have two questions to the audience... if one is not pregnant and your family probably wishes that you were... wouldn't they wish that on THEIR birthday, as opposed to on mine?! And then wishing for a baby of a specific sex... aren't all babies wonderful?

allright - I'm done and off to have meself a breakfast!

Goodbye and hello

Talking to Grandma this morning and she told me that in Moscow early on Monday died Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This kind of struck me... he was nearly 90, so it's not that surprising, but on the other hand he was one of the voices of modern Russia who was unashamedly against the disgusting behaviour of the government and many people called him "the Conscience of Russia". It just seems that there are less and less people out there who are prepared to speak their mind. Apparently the "president" and his cohorts are using his death to their advantage... to show how different things are now. Great man, terrible times... RIP, and I hope that his afterlife (should there be one) will be less turbulent than his real one.

Tomorrow evening we're leaving European shores and flying to our home down under. We're going to stop off in Singapore on the way and say hello to Mr Eugene. I can't tell you how excited we are about this trip - so much looking forward to seeing everyone. *big hugs* to whoever is reading this and see you all soon!!!

some sort of blog post title

My exams are officially over. As of this Wed. So far I know the marks for three out of five... and passed all those. Not with flying colours... but I passed and that was my aim this semester. Mainly just 'cos I'm making excuses for not doing better, etc... but I'm happy, and it's sunny (look at the gorgeous sunset that we get), and Julia is here... who is still snoozing at 10:17 on a Friday morning!!!! well after I'm done with this post I'm gonna go wake her up :)

In the meantime I've made a bit of an effort (mainly putting some seeds in the ground and watering 'em) and planted two pots of plants on the balcony. One is a pot with herbs... and I successfully managed to grow some parseley, mint, and coriander there... the one big hope of mine - the onion, didn't decide to grow for some reason. And I mean I grew onions in a jar of water on a windowsil back in Russia!!! Must be some weird sort of German onion that didn't like the caring Russian hand.

In the other pot is a selection of what I think are field flowers... Jack calls them weeds... but basically it was an assortment seed packet and I have no idea what any of them are called. I just like 'em 'cos they're all really different and colourful. So here are some snaps... excuse the quality... I haven't gotten the hang of macro on the camera yet...

And last but not least... I'm back to basics :)

actually speaking of Julia she just got up... so now we're off to breakfast and then to parade on the town!