Thursday, January 29, 2009

Is this about sport?

While lots of important events happening all over the world – the US inaugurating the new president (actually, nice photos, but they won`t open the new page, sorry), and Russia choosing the new Patriarch (which somehow became the event for the whole country, even for its non-Orthodox parts) – what`s about my modest life?

Christmas holidays finished. Job began. The office looks like a burrow full of rubbish – boxes, cables and stuff all around, the window view is still great.

This is my present director Tatyana. My work space looks almost the same. That is NGO for you, working non-profit, managing educational programs.

The French center is still being visited on regular basis. The new musical attended - “The Count of Monte Cristo” to be precise and it was rather fun, full of vigorous music and energetic moves.

Was doing some sports. In reality it all happened in one day – we had five birthdays in the office, so that was the treat. Some quality time together. Cake in the office and the skating-ring after. The plan was to enjoy real ice, but the weather being unpredictable (read: warm) has put real puddles on real ice (read: outdoors), which didn`t look like winter-ish at all. So we opted for the closed space (read: skating-ring with artificial but still a bit melted ice).

As I said here is a warm winter, but we couldn`t afford any risk so provided several thermos flasks with Gluhwein (my dictionary says that in English it is “mulled wine”, challenging to guess, but perhaps that`s correct).

Most of us were doing some skating in early years (read: in deep childhood), but there were several of us for whom it was the first ice experience. Anyway it was fun. Somehow I managed never to fall down – a was totally prepared for that, because you can`t skate without falling down. That was in the Gorky Park (perhaps the name of some post-Soviet music group pretending to do some “Rock from Russia” is still in somebody`s memories).

As usual, the photos are seriously resized to avoid any privacy issues, just in case.

General view with not me in the center.

Then, full of sporting enthusiasm we moved home (to one`s home). The crowd has been divided. We had several of us ready for walk - no underground taken to enjoy the city center. I happened to go in somebody`s car (because there was a car), and that was the way to enjoy traffic in the city center.

And then there was boxing, virtual one though – with holding something in your hands and watching the screen. That`s how the actual fight looks like. The “young Brad Pitt” fighting with me is our office manager Sasha (Russian short for Alexander). I won and I was won, and then I had a fight with Pamela and she was the best.



There also were tacos quickly made out of quickly defrosted meet and martini-based cocktails quickly drunken, and that is the end of sports for some time. Game over. Ciao now!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

How many cats?

For half a month I had a chance to change my Moscow location. The friend of mine, the colleague actually, offered me to live in her place while she was in Ireland. So I moved from my tiny room to the whole real separate apartment on Nakhimovsky avenue (*Nakhimov was Russian admiral in the 19th century). It`s also on the south of Moscow, like my place, and there are a lot of sea-region-based names there: the Sevastopol boulevard, the Warm Camp and Southern metro stations etc.

Of course there was some idea there, and that was to take care of her cats, trying to replace the happy owner (happy because of Dublin).


It`s three of them. All three names are ended with softening endings (the Russian thing, special diminishing suffix - you can put it to the end of any name and the name will obtain a nicer kinder meaning :)

Actually they were (well, they are) pretty nice, moderately jovial, quite independent cats preferring to get up at approximately 5am for a small run around the apartment.

Feeding them made me feel very important, refilling all their plates (the whole line of several plates with different cat-food).

One of my supporting friends even gave me the book about how to speak with cats. A bit of theory never hurts.

The apartment was pretty noisy by the way - the big avenue full of cars all 24 hours. Machinery ready to clean the snow, which was late this year. With all my luck their meeting point was below my windows at 2am, and they do make the noise.

My Windows (c), part 3


Other news: the new year`s come, I met it on the Red Square - the best and unique point for that because the main state clocks are there, on one of the Kremlin towers; I also went to Vladimir (my native town) for couple of days; now back to work… Well, today I was going only to tell about the cats and to boast how I managed them :) All is sort of fun, got a minor cold though. Bye now, all the best!

Once again - have a great year!