Happy New Year!!!

You know that you've got babies on your mind, when you start typing 'Happy' New Year with the N instead of H :)

Just wanted to wish everyone a very happy and joyful time tonight with their friends, families, loved ones, close ones. Hope that you have a really wonderful night celebrating and meet 2010 in (with) top spirits!

Here in Novosibirsk it is just below -30 degrees, and we're expecting around -36 for midnight. We've been with my parents for the last week and a half, all of which I spent in bed with a cold (very unfortunate)... but the amount of care and love I've been getting from everyone around, has really made me feel incredibly special and loved. I feel much better today and hope to greet the coming year without a blocked nose! Jack has been thriving on the cold weather and been outside almost every day since last Saturday (having spend the first 5 days of our trip also sick with a cold).

Last night all of us were decorating the christmas tree, which was very very cool. It was a surprise that Mum had a lot of our old family tree decorations, and our very old Ded Moroz and Snegurochka... Ded Moroz is definitely older than me and Snegurochka is probably about the same age. The tree turned out to have a very tall neck, so we're calling it giraffe :)

* * * Happy New Year!!! * * *

First snow

Well technically it has snowed a little here and there for a while... but today is the first day when it is really properly snowing. Banjo is fascinated by it - he keeps sitting on the windowsills and looking outside with awe and amazement. I guess it is the first snow he's seen in his young life :)

Give me power!

According to today's Kommersant, Medvedev is trying to put a law through the Federation Council which will enable him to solely make decisions on activities of the Russian army overseas, without consulting the council first (which is the current law, and is apparently inconvenient, because he has to go to them for every "small" matter). Effectively this will allow him to wage war with anyone, whenever he pleases. And guess what?! The Council is all for it! Federation Council speaker Sergei Mironov said that such a law is vital, because "...in case of threats against our citizens, Russia should have the right and opportunity to defend them." The Kremlin is justifying this law with "the need to quickly solve problems, such as that associated with the seizure of ships by pirates." Need I say more? Dark days are coming - that's my prophesy...

The oldest old and the Tummy Tub

We're doing 'psychological disorders of ageing' this week in clinical psych. Here's a curious little quote from the textbook* that I found very inspiring: "When researchers have studied people over 95 years of age - often called the "oldest old" - they have been surprised to learn that these individuals are on average more healthy, clear-headed, and agile than those in their 80s and early 90s. Although some certainly experience cognitive declines, more than half remain perfectly alert. Many of the oldest old are, in fact, still employed, sexually active, and able to enjoy the outdoors and the arts."

* Comer R. J. (2010). Abnormal Psychology. 7th Ed. Worth Publishers; New York.

On a completely unrelated note, I was looking through a 'baby-stuff' catalogue last night, and came across what Jack and I thought was the funniest and weirdest thing - the Tummy Tub Bathing-Bucket. It is "das Babybad, in dem sich Ihr Nachwuchs sicher und geborgen fühlt. Ein Entspannungsbad mit vielen Vorteilen für Mutter und Kind. Ihr Baby ist bis zu den Schultern im Wasser und friert nicht. Sie halten Ihr Baby nur leicht am Köpfchen fest und es nimmt sofort eine embryonale Haltung wie im Mutterleib ein. Babys mit Schlafstörungen werden entspannter und ruhiger." (Engl. "the baby bath where your children feel safe and secure. A relaxing bath with many benefits for mother and child. Your baby is up to the shoulders in water and doesn't freeze. You hold your baby only slightly on the head and it immediately assumes the embryonic position as in the womb. Babies with sleep disorders are more relaxed and calmer.")

Need I say more? I mean apart from the fact that the whole thing just looks weird, the idea that you just hold your baby by the HEAD?! And of course babies become calmer and more relaxed - they're afraid you're going to drown them in that bloody thing! Oh... and the woman in the picture really looks like one mean and crazy mummy.

Soviets are naughty

At the moment I'm doing literature research for my bachelor thesis. Right now the title is: "Loneliness amongst older migrants from the former Soviet Union: the role of the social network." However it might still change, while I wait for 101 approvals...

While looking for statistics of how many migrants are there in Germany from the former USSR, I came across a curious publication called "Kriminalität von Aussiedlern: Eine Bestandsaufnahme" (Engl. Criminality of Immigrants: an inventory). It is a 61 page publication by the Federal Office for Migration and Asylum that outlines amongst other things percentage of crimes committed by foreigners vs. Germans. First of all, I was very surprised that something like this actually existed and has been researched. Second of all, just out of interest I searched for 'Soviet Union' and found this little statistic in relation to the land of Hamburg on page 17: "Die Kriminalitätsbelastung der Aussiedler ist im Vergleich zu allen Hamburgern geringer, wobei die Aussiedler aus der ehemaligen Sowjetunion unter allen Aussiedlern auf dem Niveau der Deutschen insgesamt liegen." (Engl. "The crime rate of emigrants is lower compared to all the Hamburgers, however the emigrants from the former Soviet Union out of all emigrants are together on the same level with the Germans.") It is heartwarming to know that we're not lagging behind the locals!

Teufelsberg and more autumn guests

Vika and Tim are visiting us from (well - many places actually)... here are some snaps from dinner and ... well ... trolley.

Last Sat we all ventured out to Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain). Something that Jack and I were meaning to do all summer. It is a man-made hill in the former west, where all sorts of rubble from WWII has been collected and piled up. Ironically since Berlin is naturally very flat, this hill is the tallest in the city.

Walking there along the Gruenewald forrest was very nice, as the path was covered in golden oak leaves. On top of Teufelsberg there were lots of people with kites, small model planes and gliders. And even a couple of people with paraliders. Those were not terribly successful and didn't really make it further than the bottom of the hill - a bit disappointing, considering that after a short flight like that they have to take all their equipment back up the hill again. It was fun to watch though.

Following Teufelsberg itself we made our way to the adjacent hill with the former US listening installation on top. On our way there we stopped and looked at a bunch of guys doing some downhill mountain biking - some of it looked a little extreme, but they were all wearing very big helmets and looked like they knew what they were doing.

The station has been abandoned after the fall of the wall, but I heard from a friend that you can still get into it, even though it's behind three (in some places) sets of fences/enclosures. The outside fence has been patched up in a lot of places, but without much effort we found a hole to get through it. The material left over covering the buildings is ripped and made very strange sounds in the wind - almost sounding like fireworks. There were quite a few other people there, too... the place is pretty unique... very surreal... lots of grafitti... lots of broken glass around (I think people who get up there throw down bottles from the top). We only went inside at the ground floor - briefly, as it was already getting dark, and you couldn't really see much of what was on the floor. So even though we didn't climb all the way to the top, it still made a very strange impression.

All in all - a very interesting day!

20 years since the wall fell

Today Germany celebrates 20 years since the fall of the wall between East and West. As I am writing this, the fireworks are going off at the Brandenburg Gate and I can just see them reflecting off the windows in the building opposite.

This whole year there have been many exhibitions and events documenting the time before, during and after 1989 (here are some photos from 1989 in the Spiegel). Finally came the big day - today - 9th of November. Berlin is welcoming various former politicians (amongst them Mikhail Gorbatchev), and current ones (Hillary Clinton, Sarkozy, Medvedev and Gordon Brown). Along the route of the former wall a number of TV screens have been arranged, transmitting live the speeches of politicians, music from various world-famous performers and also the fall of the domino stones. These are large domino-like pieces, which have been positioned all along that stretch of the former wall. They have been decorated by school children and were going to be pushed over tonight, symbolising freedom and unity. At the bottom there are some snaps of them still standing up.

When we just came to Berlin in 2006, we were somewhat overwhelmed by the (what seemed to us) very fresh history of the Berlin Wall, WWII and GDR and everything to do with it. I remember one day, when we were walking past the East Side Gallery (the largest remaining part of the wall that was painted over by various artists) we said to each other how amazing it would be to be able to celebrate 20 years of the fall of the wall in 2009, here in Berlin. Who knew that we'd stay here all that time and finally this day arrived.

Unfortunately it has been raining fairly heavily + being winter, it's been fairly cold, so we only ventured out for a couple of hours. But we did walk the 'wall' from Potsdamer Platz to (almost) Brandenburg Gate, together with herds of umbrella-clad freedom-loving public. Overall the spirit of the people seemed positive, although perhaps a little dampened by the weather. It is amazing though to be in this city on this day. It does feel like Germany has overcome something incredible and this new period is marked by a lot of hope for the future.

Hurray to FREEDOM!!!

The photo selection is somewhat scarce and doesn't do justice to the importance of this event, but we blame the weather and our oculus-eligo-phobia (aka my Latin invention for fear of people pocking each others eyes out with their umbrellas).

Domino stones:

Crowd under the rain moving towards the Brandenburg Gate:




And here is a news piece which shows the fall of the dominoes...

Autumnly Berlin

and two cats keeping warm on the windowsill.

What is the most random thing you saw today?

Me? Well it was definitely a driver in one of those green garden trucks, that ride around parks doing small things like trimming branches, etc. - he was sitting in his little truck playing bagpipes :) Oh, and then immediately after that stumbling upon an enclosure with two gorgeous, fluffy brown bears!

Germany, aka a country of religious discrimination

we all experience it all over the world and now, this morning in fact, Polina and I witnessed it today.

We were in the train on the way to school / work this morning when the ticket inspectors barged in, they were mean, they were hairy, they were loud. All signs pointed to trouble. We've seen them fine mothers with kids, we've seen them fine foreigners who have no clue, the poor, the old, the weak - all fined.

So how would the people dressed in religious attire fare? A fine for sure we thought, perhaps some mild beating as well.

But no - shock, horror! They let the nuns off with a *gasp* warning! No one ever gets off with a warning...

Unheard of, aghast with the shock of what has just happened the entire carriage stares at the slightly embarrassed nuns and everyone thinks to themselves - religious discrimination!

I love buses

I am reading a chapter on anxiety, and came across some interesting things that I thought I'd share.

The probability to:

- be killed on your next bus ride is 1 in 500 million
- die as a result of a collision between an asteroid and the earth is 1 in 500 000 (this made me think whether that's actually true, and I came across this page, which makes this seem true indeed)
- die in a tsunami is 1 in 500 000
- drown in a bathtub is 1 in 685 000

So - it is more probable to die from a tsunami, than drown in your own bathtub. And buses are super safe - unless an asteroid falls on top.

Also some more interesting forms of phobias, that I have not yet mentioned on this blog:

• Gamophobia - fear of marriage
• Phobophobia - fear of being afraid
• Hedonophobia - fear of pleasure

From Russia with stamps - or Halloween in Berlin

Below is a letter we got yesterday from Russia. It has to be the largest number of stamps on a single letter that I've ever received. Alltogether making an amazing 126.5 roubles! It came registered post and spent some time travelling around Berlin, because although the address was correct (in latin), the name of the receiver (me) was in cyrillic... and because in Germany letters don't get delivered to the address, but to a person, it got sent back with a fatal sticker markng it 'receiver not reached'... but then came the knight in shining armour and on the way back at some post office there happened to be someone (probably one from former East Berlin, where they had to learn Russian at school) who could transliterate my name, and put it in latin letters. Jack had lots of fun though at our post office trying to pick up the letter and proving that he had indeed the same surname in German as the one on the letter in Russian. The content ended up being our receipts from Ural Airlines for the tickets I purchased for us online. I have to say - they're pretty dedicated :)

In other news, on the weekend C&C brought us a pumpkin, that's now waiting to be cooked. It was sitting sadly on our outside windowsil and using Anya's idea I made eyes for it. Now it seems that there's a fifth creature in this household :)

Potsdam in Autumn

Last Friday Anya and I ventured out to Potsdam. I think we picked a perfect day for it, because it was very sunny, and not too cold (like today, when it's about 6 degrees and very windy). We did the usual tour through Park Sanssouci, and then had tea, cake and biscuits at the Russian Village of Alexandrovka. Then we went somewhere where I haven't been before - namely to the park Neuer Garten, where Schloss (palace) Cecilienhof is (that's where the Potsdam Conference of 1945 took place with Churchill, Truman and Stalin). The palace is very nice - actually it looks more like a large traditional German residence, than a palace. It had very many different types of chimneys and lots of pretty vines. The whole place (Potsdam that is) looks very pretty now in autumn - with trees being in many different colours, all of the fountains still working, and the whole place having a feel of something continuing and changing at the same time. Following the palace we made our way back to the train station along the nearby lake and then through the town proper. It was definitely a very nice trip - and we were pleasantly tired by the time we got home to a dinner made by Jack.

Some photos are the be seen here.

Banjo and the amazing flying mouse

Today we ventured out towards Brandenburger Tor to see what's happening. There were still many stalls left from the day of German unity. And lots of kids carrying around yellow balloons. So I decided that I wanted a balloon, too! They were being given out by the organ donation stand (good marketing right?!)... so we came up and procured one helium balloon. With this balloon we came home, and to the great excitement of Banjo we suspended his favourite mouse by its tail and alas - it became a flying mouse. Even now - a couple of hours later it provides immense entertainment :)

PS: here are two pics of the aforementioned (very full) storage room...

Autumn guest season is officially open

Anya arrived today all the way from sunny Melbourne. She picked the day of German unity to land in Berlin - although it was raining and very windy the whole day, so we can't report on any events that took place today at Brandenburger Tor (there was a curiour show of huge puppet figures). Lufthansa actually decided to be ahead of schedule, by about 10 minutes, which is unusual for an evening flight. As we were making our way to the airport we saw some planes landing in what were very windy conditions indeed. As Anya came out she reported that the landing was unfortunately pretty bumpy. But she's here, and with a nice selection of Tim Tams, and Lemingtons(!!!) for your humble authors - so all is very good.

In other home-related news, Jack has been wonderful and cleaned up our balconies for winter... and yesterday we sorted out our storage room. A couple of months ago in order to win back some space there I took buckets of paint that we have left over and put them on the small balcony. That required taking everying out of our 1m x 1m storage room (which is packed to the brim) and then rearranging it all back. I was very proud of my three hour effort. However, when Jack got home he very reasonably pointed out that it's not good to keep paint on the balcony, because it'll freeze in winter. Doh. So yesterday we played tetris again, and now the paint is back in the storage room, and instead it's all the old tiles and glass that's on the balcony this time. Phew...

Life trauma, Crisis, Depression

Such was the topic of the conference I went to on the weekend. The main topic underlying the somewhat tragic title was suicide, and suicide prevention. This was the first conference I went to, not counting the time when back in high school I came with Mum to Sydney to some sort of art history conference, but spent most of my time exploring Sydney and much less time being interested in all the presentations.

The conference was very interesting. There were a lot of different topics, and even one whole part dedicated to my two favourite topics of immigration and the elderly and the associated rate of suicide. Here are some (what I think) interesting facts that I took away with me:

GENDER DIFFERENCES

• women are 2-3 times more at risk of depression than men
• every 5th man, and every 3rd woman will suffer from depression at least once in their life
• men have a 3 times higher suicide rate than women
• women have 3 times higher rate of suicide attempts than men
• preventative programs (against suicide) work on about 90% of women, but almost never on men
• marriage or having a loving partner works as a protective mechanism against depression and suicide for men (that's why a lot of men can't get over the loss of their partners - rate of suicide amongst older men is much higher than in older women - see below), but for women, children (not partner) seem to be that protective mechanism
  

ELDERLY

• older men (men over 60 y.o.) have a 5 times higher rate of suicide than same aged women
• only 7% of people who call crisis hotlines are people over 60 y.o.
• out of 9402 suicides in Germany in 2008, 3993 were by people over 60 y.o. (2790 men, 1203 women)- that's almost 43% - however the number of preventative programs for older people is significantly less than for younger people, because suicide amongst the elderly is more accepted than that in young people
• the rate of suicide dramatically increases after 80 y.o.
• flexibility to changing life circumstances, acceptance of help, social support systems play a protective role

DEPRESSION AND SUICIDE

• in all people who get depression, in 85-100% it is likely to reoccur at some point in their lives
• of all people who get depressed, 12% have depression that lasts longer than 2 years
• out of all people who commit suicide, 60% suffered from depression (perhaps not so surprising... the interesting thing would be to look at the other 40% and see what was the underlying condition there)
• people with unipolar depression are more at risk of getting cardiovascular diseases
• people who have bipolar depression have a higher rate of diabetes than in general population
• 50% of people with anxiety disorders develop depression
• 340 million of people in the world suffer from depression

IMMIGRATION AND SUICIDE

• after immigration, the risk of suicide dramatically increases 10 years after arrival
• according to WHO, in Russia, 70.6 men (per 100 000 people) commit suicide, compared to 11.9 women (compared to 21.2 men, 5.1 women in Australia; and 20.2 men, 7.3 women in Germany)
• amongst migrants the rate of suicide is much higher in the second generation migrants than in the first
• in Germany the highest rate of suicide is amongst young Turkish women
• in Berlin, 23.45% of total population are migrants... out of these 40.7% are under 18 y.o.
• education seems to be one of the more important protective factors against suicide - along with religion, tradition, family and being able to speak the local language
• the rate of suicide amongst migrants reflects the rate of suicide in the country of origin (ie. the rate of suicide amongst Russian migrants in Germany reflects the rate of suicide in Russia)

YOUTH AND SUICIDE

• in Germany, 10% of young men, and 20% of young women have suicidal thoughts
  
• 10.1% of young men and 19.9% of young women physically harm themselves (eg. cut their arms, etc.)
• in 90% of cases of physical harm, suicidal thoughts, or suicide attempts, the parents have no idea
• in the USA, suicide is the most common cause of death amongst 10-19 y.o.

The very first presentation was about a British singer and songwriter Nick Drake, who committed suicide when he was 26. If you don't know his music (and to my shame I didn't before this presso), it's amazingly good :)

Resistance is futile

Banjo is so different to Unix. Unix is a softy inside and out - and if he does something wrong and you make him aware of it (by, for example, yelling at him), he'll put his tail down and run away to hide... and will be unlikely to re offend any time soon. Banjo is a completely different story. His rehabilitation period lasts about 2 seconds (if it ever exists). He re offends straight away and gives a hugely surprised look when he gets told off yet again - kind of in the art of "huh? why are you bothering me human?"

He became a big fan of the bathtub... may be it's a British short-haired thing, because Sommerset (my parents' cat) also loves anything to do with water - and spends hours a day lying in the bathroom sink. I don't like Banjo in the bathtub, because he keeps leaving black paw prints on it, and I'm sick of cleaning them before I can take a shower. No amount of discouragement seems to work. And recently it has gotten worse... on the side of the bathtub along with various shampoos and what-not, we have a sponge, that is used to clean the bathtub (from his very paw prints among other things). Well apparently the little devil doesn't have enough toys (of which there are about 10 lying all over the flat), and he decided that the sponge is also a toy. So now I find this poor sponge under the table, under the couch, next to his food bowl... *sigh* why, why, why?! I wish he could talk and explain to me his fascination with it, and just in general his desire to be naughty in ways I never thought were even possible...

Here's a little movie of him playing with a catnip toy mouse on a new cat tree that Jack put together for them.

Against falsification

Some of you might have seen in the news last week the verbal sparring that went on in Gdansk between Putin and Donald Tusk, about the actual "real and truthful" start of WWII. Polish were blaming the Ruskies, and Ruskies were blaming the Polish - it was all a bit of same old, same old. What is fascinating though, is that I found out today that as of May 2009 a new commission has been established in Moscow. It's goal: "to oppose attempts at falsification of history." Effectively this commission was established to make sure that the West and any Russian (erroneous) historians do not try to bend the truth and put Russia in a bad light. Especially seeing as there has been a lot of talk recently about USSR being at fault for Hitler starting WWII, as well as talk of Soviet soldiers being less than noble in Eastern Europe around that time. Either way it looks like this commission is just another Kremlin propaganda machine. The funniest thing is that two books have since been published by this commission, which address the roles of Poland and Baltic states in WWII. These books are composed from the recently-made-public secret German and Polish documents (which "apparently" came into posession of soviet spies at the time), which detail how very nasty all those countries were. Incidentally, no other copies of these documents seem to exist anywhere else. But that doesn't make the authors blink an eye: "Well the originals must have been lost when Germany cleared out polish archives in the start of the war" - or so they say... to end this post on a more philosophical question - can there ever be one absolute truth?

Fun with Sibir

We decided to fly to Novosibirsk for New Year celebrations, so I found myself looking for flights online. Normally I just fly Aeroflot, 'cos they're usually on time and have good planes, service, etc. Except this time they were very expensive, so I was forced to look for other options. Alas I found reasonably priced tickets with Sibir (S7). They had an on-line special on their very new and swish website with very good flight times, so I decided to book with them. As I was putting in my credit card details and clicking 'pay', a red message came up which said something along the lines of "You transaction could not be processed, please call our service centre... ". So I called the Moscow service centre and got told that since I'm trying to pay for tickets with an overseas credit card they need me to fill out a couple of forms, which will be sent to my email address shortly. Fine, I thought - not that I have a choice in the matter it seems... and it doesn't sound too difficult anyway. A couple of hours later an email came, where I was asked to scan and email the front and back of my credit card along with my passport and also fill in and sign an attached document, which said the following "I (name) wish to purchase (ticket details) with credit card (credit card details). By signing this document I hereby declare that I will not hold Sibir Airlines liable for any unauthorised transactions, should they occur." Hmmm... that was a bit too much for me, so we are now flying Ural Airlines instead (which, although having a pretty basic website, didn't have problems processing my German credit card in real time). I am still baffled by this type of service, even though it doesn't surprise me coming from Russia :)

Bachelorarbeit

So I'm looking for a topic for my bachelor thesis next semester. It's supposed to be around 9000 words, and we have to write it within 10 weeks after we get approval for our topic. That's about all the info that is available now - thanks to us being the first Bachelor of Psych at our uni. It doesn't sound like much time to me, to write it... but hopefully we won't have to do an experiment in that time and it'll just be pure research. Right now I have very few ideas, so I turned to the world wide web, and some very interesting topics for past psychology papers came out.

My favourites are: Effects of Prenatal Testosterone on Male Sheep. and Estrogen Enhances Object Recognition but not Recognition of Female Conspecifics in Castrated Male Rats. Umm... how is that exactly psychology related? I mean may be it's animal psychology?

Oh, and the best advice I read today for writing a paper is: "Whatever it is that you’re interested in the most (to write about) is what you should choose. If you’re not into writing it, no one else will be into reading it." Damn straight!

Feeling Lightheaded... again

My hair has finally gotten a little longer and today I went to the hairdresser and she cut all of my remaining blond off. It feels so nice - to finally have one simple "my own" colour. The haircut is pretty short, but my hair seems to be growing fairly quickly these days, so it doesn't bother me. I am hoping to grow it long again, unless I get sick of it prematurely. Last time that I had it this short (or even shorter I think) was in 2002, when I cut off all of my waist-long blond hair and it felt GOOOOOD. So here I am again - seven years later.