Old Boars Eyes

Pulling Teeth and "The Way of the Artist"

2012-01-23T13:36:00.000-08:00

Once I had finished breakfast and the washing up, the next thing I did this morning was continue with pulling up the hedge stumps. For some reason I started comparing pulling the stumps up with pulling teeth. I find that a little strange, because; I'm not a dentist and I've only ever had three teeth extracted, and two of those were wisdom teeth which were removed in my late teens before they had time to cause problems.

After pulling my quota of stumps (I was aiming for 3, but actually achieved 4), I crossed the road to the garden centre and bought a roll of weed control fabric to use in London. Taking it with me will save me the trouble of locating a source when I'm over there.

I treated myself to a trip to Mallow. In some ways it was a disappointment because I didn't find the bookbinding materials I was looking for, but I found something which has proved to be a pleasant surprise. I was browsing in a bookshop when I spotted a book which a friend recommended to me a couple of years ago: The Artist's Way. I bought it, and have found the contents interesting. I think I may follow through what it recommends (12 week action plan), because it provides a structured way of doing some things I was considering anyway. For example, one of the things it suggests is writing "Morning Pages". By coincidence, the previous evening I had written a note to myself to "Write a certain number of words every day". Sounds like two ways of saying something very similar. And of course, writing this blog, and other similar activities all serve a similar purpose.

Going back to my roots?

2012-01-22T12:52:00.000-08:00

The hedge between the front of my property and the road suffered very badly during the severe winter last year. Most of the hedge died, so we decided to replace it. I removed and shredded most the dead stems during the autumn, leaving the stumps in the ground. The advice we have from the garden centre is that we should remove the dead stumps and prepare the soil before planting the replacement hedge plants. So, the task falls to me.

This week I started removing the old stumps. There is no particular hurry, so long as the job gets done before spring. I don't know if you have ever tried removing a small stump, but it is hard work. Even with digging it out and then levering at it with a pick-axe it still takes a while. I have other things to do (and I don't want this to be my only occupation), so I have set myself an informal target of 3 or 4 stumps a day. So far, I seem to be running slightly ahead of my self-imposed schedule. With any luck I will have finished removing the stumps before it is time for me to depart for England.

Property Maintenance

2012-01-05T10:34:00.000-08:00

I have tenants in the house I used to occupy in London. They have decided to move on at the end of the month. I've decided that I will "spruce the place up" after they move out. I don't think there is anything particularly wrong with the decoration in the house, but periodic planned maintenance is a good thing. If I live in the house then I will be able to work from early to late and should be able to get quite a bit done. I may also try to clear up the front garden for my old next-door neighbour.

Although this trip will cost me money, the pay-off for me is that I will be able to visit friends in the area.

"In pursuit of the uneatable?"

2011-10-25T06:36:00.000-07:00

"The English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible."

Oscar Wilde

I saw something unexpected today. Perhaps "heard" or "experienced" would be more accurate, because I didn't see very much at all. I saw (heard/experienced) a fox hunt. I'm not going to be drawn into the fox-hunting debate, either on the pro or anti side. "Hunting with dogs" is still perfectly legal in Eire, and I'm aware that there is at least one local "hunt". I've also learned that I don't always understand everything that is happening in my locality. Instead, I'm going to report what I saw, and leave it at that.

My house is a little over a mile from the town. When the mood takes me, as it did today, I walk down to the town. It's a pleasant walk, and today all I planned to buy was a couple of cartons of milk (whole and semi-skimmed) and the papers. That hardly represents a serious load, especially carried in a rucksac.

For part of it's route, the road runs parallel to the River Allow. On the way down, I noticed some unusual things. Cars parked at the side of the road in places where there are not usually cars, and a couple of small groups of men, all looking observant and some talking on mobile phones. I wondered what was going on.

Further along, the river comes closer and there is a steep wooded bank between the river and the road, as it passes through a small wood. As I entered the wood, I became aware of sounds coming from the wood. The sounds were: dogs barking and yelping, men shouting and cracking sounds (which I think were trees being struck with sticks). I crossed the road to look down onto the river. In the distance I heard the sound of a "call" (I'm not sure what the correct name for a the bugle or trumpet they use is). As I looked down at the river bank I could see a couple of hounds running around and sniffing the ground. While I watched, a man climbed up a track leading from the river bank. He said that they were trying to prevent the fox (I assumed they were hunting a fox) from crossing the road.

I continued to the town, and completed my errand. I wasn't at all surprised that there was nothing for me to see on the way home. When I was nearly home, I saw a car driving towards me, so I stepped up onto the verge. To my surprise he pulled into a field entrance a little in front of me, got out of the car and started talking on his mobile phone.

As I reached him, he finished with the phone,

"Did you get your fox?" I asked.

"Oh, we won't be catching any of those fellows today" he replied with a grin.

In the distance, I could here the sound of the dogs barking.

All I saw throughout the whole episode were two dogs and some men. No fox, no horses, nothing else.

Reflections on Siberia

2011-10-25T04:45:00.000-07:00

It’s now (25th October 2011) two weeks since I left Novosibirsk, and a week since I returned to Ireland. This seems an appropriate time to reflect on my trip and what I achieved.

Why did I go to Russia? I went with the objective of improving my Russian, and I have certainly achieved that. I wanted to experience living in a foreign country, and I have done that too. I wonder if I also had a desire to satisfy my “wander-lust”. If so, then the effect has been very temporary, because I’m considering another trip.

Why did I go to Siberia, and Novosibirsk in particular? Novosibirsk is the third largest city in the Russian Federation, and I had already visited Moscow and St Petersburg. It is the “capital” of a region which is larger than Europe. From a practical point of view, even after taking account of travelling expenses, studying in Novosibirsk was cheaper than Moscow or St Petersburg. Then of course there was the romance of visiting in Siberia! Novosibirsk is north of India on the map, mid-way between Moscow and Vladivostock (on the coast facing Japan). This is a long way from home, closer to China than Europe.

I need to emphasise that this was an “immersion course”. For four weeks I heard very little English. That was a strange experience in itself. A typical school day started with breakfast at 08:00. Breakfast could be all sorts of things: porridge (kasha), black bread and black tea were common, as was yoghurt, but on occasions I also had smoked eel and even spaghetti Bolognese! At many meals my landlady and I had fun trying to find words for the different things on the table. Sometimes we had guests for breakfast as well.

After breakfast I would walk to school. It was about a mile and a half. Travelling by metro was impractical, and although there were buses, trolleybuses and trams which went where I wanted to go, I enjoyed the walk. Once I had established my bearings I tried to vary my journey to and from the school and as a result saw a little more of the city.

The school is in rented rooms in a modern office block. Lessons started at 10:00. I usually arrived in time to make a cup of tea before we started. My lessons were always “one to one”. I had expected to be taught in a group, but got individual attention from one of three teachers. Each day would usually start with conversation about what I had done the day before. Then we would move on to new material, with reading, listening, and comprehension exercises. Understanding grammar is essential to learning Russian beyond a very basic level. For someone like me, who has never been taught formal grammar, this comes as something of a shock. One of the books I refer to is “English Grammar for Students of Russian”.

Lessons would finish at 1:00 pm and I would go and get lunch, usually with two of the other students. We usually dined in a local “Stolovaya” (dining room). The staff there got used to the strange foreigners who didn’t understand what things were called, and didn’t really know what went with what.

Most afternoons there was some kind of cultural excursion. This could be to a museum or an art gallery. Almost always the trip would involve a trip by public transport. That meant the adventure of dealing with Russian currency and buying tickets. By the end of my trip I was reasonably comfortable using all means of transport on my own, and even checking with strangers that I was about to get on the right bus. Most of the excursions were led by one of the teachers, but sometimes we were accompanied by a student from Novosibirsk University.

The school also allowed the students to use their facilities to complete homework and preparation for the following day.

One or two evenings each week, the school would put on a presentation and a film. The presentations were usually about some aspect of Russian life or culture. The films were selected for having simple plots and representing some aspect of Russian culture. At the school I saw: a comedy, an alcoholic redeemed, a Soviet noble worker, some beautiful animations and a modern fantasy about wishes coming true. At home, I saw: “2001, a space odyssey” (in English with Russian subtitles) and “Pirates of the Caribbean” (dubbed into Russian, with English subtitles).

After school, it was back home to finish any homework and preparation. My evening reward for completing my task was a bottle of beer bought from a local supermarket. My evening meal was usually at about 10:00 pm when after my landlady got in from work. Supper was even more varied than breakfast: boiled dumplings (“pelmyeni” or “vareniki”) and macaroni happened more than once, but there was lots of variety.

While I was in Siberia I visited a couple of churches. I stood at the back of one service, for a few minutes. Liturgical Russian is different from the everyday language, so I didn’t understand what was happening. There are no seats, the congregation stand, facing towards the front. The churches I was in were beautiful, in the Orthodox style. It seems that every surface is decorated, with icons and stylised pictures of saints looking down at the congregation.

Would I recommend going to Novosibirsk? The honest answer is: “it depends”. If you are learning Russian, then I recommend Novosibirsk. If you are going as a tourist, you may find that you run out of things to see quite quickly.

Novosibirsk, is a modern industrial city. Very few people speak or understand any English at all. Public transport is excellent, but you need to be prepared to walk, and sometimes the pavements are a bit uneven.

I have been told that in most Russian cities living space is in short supply. If you are living with a family, as I was, then you may find that you have been given someone’s bedroom.

I enjoyed my trip. There were times (especially when travelling) when I was confused, and even a little apprehensive. I am sure people found me strange, and a little odd. I have become used to being asked if I am German! I was shown great kindness, and made to feel welcome.

Teeth, a computer and an afternoon nap

2011-10-10T10:59:00.001-07:00

(Monday 10th October 2011, written same day)

The day didn't start all that well. A crown came off one of my teeth. There was nothing to be done but go to the dentist. Fortunately the dentist "fitted me in" and the crown was soon reattached. She suggested that I consider having two crowns replaced by a bridge, to replace a missing tooth and give the two teeth affected more support. I'll think about that when I get back to Ireland.

After the dentist, I phoned Andy (who I'd met in the pub last night). The eMail on his computer had stopped talking to the server. He has two eMail accounts. One of these is Hotmail, which is I have always found a little awkard. I managed to re-establish contact by installing an update to something required for Hotmail and re-entering the credentials for the two accounts. Everything worked fine.

I wandered home to Ashford and went back to bed. The travel, the time difference and the lack of sleep are still taking their toll.

At 16:00 I was awakened by a phone call from Andy, to tell me that his eMail was no longer working. I gave him some suggestions, but I will have to go and look at that again. Something odd has happened there, because I do not think anything he says he has been doing should have made any difference to his email.

Spent a little time in the early evening reviewing what I had learned in Russia.

Church, Oyster, visiting, recovering

2011-10-10T10:57:00.000-07:00

(Sunday 9th October 2011, written Monday 10th October)

Went to church this morning. The first hymn had the same number as my flight number into London the previous day. Coincidence can be strange.

After the service, I had lunch in a cafe in Feltham. Then I took the train to visit friends in Brentford. Something minor went wrong a the barrier at Feltham Station. Fortunately there were staff there. They checked my Oyster card and said that the machine had taken money from my card, but the barrier had not let me through. None of us understood what had happened, but it didn't matter because they let me through anyway.

It is nice to visit friends. I spent the afternoon in Brentford and then was given a lift back to Ashford.

In the evening I went to "The Shoes". Once again it was good to meet people who I hadn't seen for a while.

Head in Siberia, heart in Ireland, feet in London and suitcase in Moscow

2011-10-10T10:55:00.000-07:00

(Saturday 8th October 2011, written Sunday 9th October)

Today started very early and finished very late. There was a bit of excitement in between, but "what does not kill me, makes me stronger". By the end of the day I had experienced, survived and recovered from two of the hazards of air transport:

I nearly missed a connecting flight, and
I lost my luggage for a while.

I got up pretty early, at 04:00 am in the morning. The taxi was due to collect me at 05:00. My Landlady saw me to the taxi and we said our goodbyes. I would be pleased to meet her again. I had the same taxi-driver that collected me from the airport at the beginning of my trip. That seemed appropriate, a sort-of "closing of the circle". I believe the school had arranged it like that. What was interesting to me was that this time I was able to engage in a simple conversation with him on the way to the airport. That was a satisfactory demonstration to me of the progress I had made.

The driver to took me to the airport and made sure that I was delivered to correct terminal. I hadn't noticed, but Novosibirsk Tolemechevo Airport has two terminals: an International Terminal and a Domestic Terminal. I was going to the Domestic Terminal because I was flying to Moscow.

Check-in went without incident. They accepted my case without comment and checked it through to London and issued me with boarding cards for both the flights: Novosibirsk to Moscow and Moscow to London. More of that later.

The flight to Moscow was pleasant and uneventful. A little while before we landed I noticed that we were going to be about half and hour later than was indicated on my ticket. That gave me a little concern, but there was nothing to be done about it.

Once we had landed, and been disembarked by bus, I set off to find the departure gate. That had to be a priority. The departure area of Domededovo was a throng of people. When I had found my way to the correct departure area, the lady checking the boarding cards, said "time!" and for a short while I was afraid that I was not going to be allowed to board. Instead I was directed through "Business Class" and processed in double-quick time. I made it onto the aircraft and was in my seat barely 10 minutes before departure time. That is really far to tight and I was sweating from running and worry. I barely had time to send texts to England and Ireland, saying that I had made the flight, before the doors closed and I switched off my phone.

I'm still not sure exactly what happened with the flight connection. The connection was as specified by the carrier, but to me seemed far too tight. I'm not sure if the inbound flight was delayed. Maybe I missed an announcement. I would gladly have spent a few hours in Moscow and bought a few souvenirs.

The flight to London was uneventful. I like Transaero's cabin service. I also like the 737-800 aircraft they are using on that route. I don't know if Boeing have changed the fuselage in some way, but the plane seemed much more spacious than the aircraft (also a 737) I had just got off. One slightly strange thing, is that all their aircraft seem to be registered in Ireland.

Once in London (on schedule at 11:30), I found that my bag not made the flight! Baggage handling for Transaero in London is managed by BMI. The BMI staff were helpful, and located my bag quickly. It was in Moscow. So were the bags of two fellows from Middlesborough and two Russian ladies. I was actually able to help the Russians and the desk staff communicate sufficiently well to get their bags located as well. I filled in a claim form and was told that they expected go get my bag from Moscow at 16:00, and that they would deliver it to me, but given a number to call if the bag had not been delivered by 19:00.

I caught the bus to Ashford and was at Dave's house, drinking tea at about 13:15, exactly the time I had estimated in one of my eMails to Dave.

By 19:00, my bag had still not arrived, and understandably I was getting a little twitchy. I phoned the number I had been given. Nobody answered. I tried a couple of times, and then gave up. Tomorrow would have to do. Dave said he needed to go out to get something from a shop. A few minutes later, there was a knocking at the door. I assumed that Dave had forgotten his keys. Wrong! It was a courier with my case! He had bumped into Dave in the street, and got directions for the difficult last few yards. A quick check and a signature later, and I had my bag back. It was a few hours late, but undamaged and I hadn't had to lug it home on the bus!

I stayed up watching the TV with Dave, and eventually went to bed at 22:00. Apart from naps on the planes, I had been on the go for 24 hours!

Numbers, Poetry, Hurling, Ice-Hockey and Rain (and Cucumbers)

2011-10-05T10:37:00.000-07:00

(Wednesday 5th October 2011, written and posted same day)

I took a different route to work this morning. On the way I passed the "Academy of Water Transport", which is an impressive building and I assume has something to do with moving people and stuff around the inland waterways (after all, you can't get much further from the sea than Novosibirsk) and the offices of "Sibir Telecom" which have this interesting sculpture at the front. Notice the blue "phone box". It isn't a GPO original, but it is a close copy. Isn't it strange, how that design has acquired "icon" status.

A substantial bit of yesterdays homework was sorting "things" into groups and then writing the sentence "I have many ...things..." for each of the "Things". The sorting was fine, but the sentences are harder than you might think, because for technical reasons the form of the word "things" (which is in the "genitive case") changes. I did alright, but believe me, it isn't easy.

Another part of the homework from yesterday was to write a "Recipe for happyness". For a while this had me stumped, and then I decided that I know a "Recipe for Paradise", which for technical reasons fitted the bill. This "recipe" is a poem by someone called Omar Khayam (translated from Persian by Edward Fitzgerald in the 19th Century). Here's the poem:

A loaf of bread, a flask of wine,

A book of verse, and thou,

Beside me singing in the wilderness,

And wilderness is paradise (e)now.

To my amazement, I almost got away with it. "Beside me" got a bit mangled and "Wilderness is Paradise" needed adjusting, but I did pretty well (in the English, Fitzgerald tacks an extra "e", in front of "now", to adjust the rhythmn). And that led us on to a question and answer about poetry.

Another part of the lesson today was conversation. Diana (my teacher) asked me about what sports I was interested in. I said that I wasn't a "Sportsman" but that I watched some sport. I explained that Ireland has some special sports which are restricted to Ireland. Specifically "Hurling" and "Gaelic Football". For anyone who doesn't know, Hurling as a very fast field game played with sticks and a hard leather ball. To someone who doesn't know it (like me), it is a little like hockey, but only a very little! Then I have to explain to Diana what Hurling is like. I don't really understand Hurling, but we finish up with a Scotsman, explaining an Irish game, to a Russian, in Russian in Siberia! There was lots of arm-waving and a few diagrams (for the goal posts). I don't know if Diana is any the wiser.

After lunch, I set out on a expedition. I have been commissioned to buy a "Novosibirsk" Ice-Hockey jersey. Up until today, I had no luck but I finally succeeded. The expedition was to a part of town which I hadn't visited before. It took me a one trolley-bus ride and a bus ride to get there. The stadium was a little non-descript, but it is an indoor sport. There was a banner advertising "wrestling", but I'm not sure what sort of wrestling. It took me a little while to find the merchandise shop. It wasn't marked at all well. And then the negotiations started. There were two men in the shop. Both were helpful, but neither spoke any English. My Russian has improved, but this was entirely new territory, and I don't even know anything about ice-hockey (By the way, if a Russian refers to "Hockey", they mean Ice-Hockey). They didn't accept plastic, but they did direct me to a cash-machine. I wasn't that hopeful, because I haven't had very good luck with cash-machines, but I went and tried. We were in luck! I short while later, I left. Now the proud owner of a rather attractive Hockey Jersey (Front and Back). The journey home was a little bit of an adventure. I spotted a trolley-bus which said it was going to a suitable place. Then it took a turning I didn't expect! After frantic map-reading, I decided I was going in the right direction. A little later, the bus turned onto a road that I knew and eventually I got off very close to the school. I actually had an easier journey coming home, than I did on the way out.

Once I was back at the school, I got stuck into the homework. I hope I've understood it properly, and if I have, then I've done all I needed to.

At 5:30 today we had a presentation on the work of a film-maker called Alexander Petrov. He's an animator, and I'm afraid I hadn't heard of him before, even though he has won an Oscar. I don't even understand how he does what he does. The pictures are drawn somehow, but have a distinctive "grainy" appearance, like chalk, charcoal or pastels on a rough surface. We were told that it takes Petrova 2 years to make 20 minutes of film, so it's in the same area as "Wallace and Gromit". I will find out more about his work. The films we saw were:

"The Cow"
"Rusalka" (which doesn't translate, but I think is a bit like an mermaid in a river)
"The Old Man and the Sea" (based on Ernest Hemmingway's story)
"First Love"

I think the weather has finally turned. On the way home, it started to rain. It was only a few spots to begin with but then it started to rain pretty hard. A proper "April shower", except it is October. Even though it was raining a bit, I popped into a local shop to buy a bottle of beer. One has to have priorities. By the time I got out of the shop, it was raining a lot harder (by the way, the Russians use "verbs of motion" to describe weather). When I got to the courtyard of the group of blocks where I live, I was greeted by loads of red and white plastic tape. I hope it is there because someone is planning to re-tarmac the car-parking and access road, because if not, I've just crossed a crime-scene!

supper this evening was pork cutlet (minced, battered and fried), fried potatoes, and a fried egg, accompanied by cucumber. I wish you could experience how good the cucumbers and tomatoes are here. The cucumbers are short, 3 to 4 inches long. The kind that you might see as pickled gherkins in a chip shop. Only these are fresh. I can't get over how good they taste. My Landlady served them sliced thinly, lengthways. They're almost sweet, like melon! Either on their own, or with just a little salt, they are delicious.

The internet has stopped working (again), so I don't know when this will reach the internet. I have an exam on Friday (you didn't think I got off scot-free, did you?) and then I fly out of Novosibirsk a little after 07:00 local time on Saturday. That means there will be a taxi for me at 5:00 and I'm getting up at 04:00. Nice! Even if this gets posted, you may not hear too much more from me this trip.

Addendum 1: Try eating blini (pancakes) with melted butter. Zap the butter in the microwave.

Addendum 2: Just been taken on a trip to the shops at 22:45. It was a place called "Lenta". It's enormous - 35 checkout lanes, and open 24 hours. The stock is stored on racking above the shelves. Aldi/Lidl meets Wickes. Sells everything from car tyres to groceries.

Addendum 3: And a tour of Novosibirsk by night. This really is a 24 hour city, and not just for the clubbers.

Numbers, Art, Spoons and Trams

2011-10-05T10:35:00.000-07:00

(Tuesday 4th October 2011 written and posted 5th October)

The lesson today was about numbers. Numbers of "things" in Russian present special problems for a foreigner. The form of the word "thing" depends on the details of the "thing" (masculine, feminine, neuter, animate, inanimate) and the number:

One thing is "nominative"
2, 3 and 4 things are "genitive singular" (yes, I know that 2, 3 and 4 are plural), and
5 and more things are "genitive plural"
And the game starts again at 21, 22-23-24, 25+, 31, etc!

If someone really understands it, contact me off-line, you may be able to earn yourself a drink!

Another exercise was a lady telling me her recipe for happiness: "A dollup of this, 5 tonnes of that, a smidgin of something else". You can probably see how it relates to the earlier stuff about plurals. Part of the homework is to produce my own recipe.

After lunch I went on a trip round the a Novosibirsk art gallery with a lady called Nastia. The association of the name in English is completely wrong. She's a 21 year old Literature student, who speaks better English than my Russian, but won't while she's with me! We went round the gallery, and I learned about her taste in art (she likes paintings of the sea, and so do I) and she learned that I used to work in a steelworks (because there were Soviet era engravings of coke-ovens and a blast furnace). I enjoyed the trip and I hope she did too. We spent over an hour and a half in the gallery and I haven't concentrated so hard for a long time.

Then it was back to school to do some of the homework. I did formal "numbers of this and that" exerises I had to do, but just couldn't get to grips with the "recipe for happines".

Fed up with the Recipe for happiness (which was making me unhappy), and armed with a flyer I found at the school, I set off to find a souvenir shop. A bus ride and a short walk later, I bought some carved wooden spoons with painted decoration. I think they are very pretty.

On the way home, I decided to go by a different route and take a trip on a tram. The trams in Novosibirsk are pretty old. You have to climb a long way up to get into them. This one took me pretty much the whole way home. I could get it (the other way round) to the school, but I think that would be a waste of effort. (Minibuses cost 35 r, Metro 15 r, buses and trolley-buses 14 r, and trams 13 roubles). If you want the real, post-soviet experience, travel by tram.

Dinner was pork cutlet, mashed potato, tomato and cucumber.

Boosa is 12. She's getting pretty old. I hope the "accident" was an isolated incident, otherwise her days are probably numbered.

I still couldn't think of a suitable "recipe, so I "played hookey", and watched "Pirates of the Carribean" (in Russian), and had a bottle of strong beer (that's what is says on the label, and it is 7%).

Not Teachers' Day

2011-10-05T10:32:00.000-07:00

(Monday 3rd October 2011, written and posted 5th October)

It's amazing how quickly the memory fades. There is only one thing sticks in my mind. Maybe I will remember more and add more detail later.

I took my "Teachers' Day" card to school and was told that I was a little early, because some days are marked according to the old Julian calendar, rather than the modern Gregorian one! That's one more thing down to experience.

"Sarf of the River" and (Both) "End(s) of the Line"

2011-10-02T05:43:00.000-07:00

(Sunday 2nd October 2011 written same day)

It turns out I slept through supper last night! Still, the rest must have done me good. Breakfast this morning was good. For "Porridge" substitute "Rice Pudding". It's still nourishing!

My landlady tells me that the weather we we're experiencing is unusual. She says I have been very lucky. She also assures me that the first snow will come before the end of October. With that warning ringing in my ears, once I'd done the homework, I decided to explore some new bits of the city.

First stop was supposed to be another look at the "Birch Bark Museum". Unfortunately it is closed on Sundays, so I'll try to fit that in another afternoon. I paused to take a picture of a building I found interesting. Then I walked to "Oktoberskya Metro Station". On the way I crossed a large arterial road. Metro stations are pretty well signposted with a large red "M", like the ones in Paris.

Catching the train was no problem. A metro ride costs 15 roubles (0.38 Euro) any distance. I had a couple of minutes problem with the ticket machine, but soon worked it out. The metro stations here aren't palatial like the ones in Moscow, but they are clean. If London Underground decoration favours glazed ceramic tiles, then Novosibirsk Metro decoration seems to favour marble and terrazzo.

I went to the southern end of the Lenin Line, which ends at Karl Marx square. The area south (east) of the River Ob is more industrial and considered a little rougher. Karl Marx Square looked OK to me, but I didn't venture into the industrial areas. The square itself has formal gardens and an imposing statue of:

"Александр Иванович Покрышкин

Alexander Ivanovich Pokryshkin

Hero of the Soviet Union

Marshal Of the Airforce"

He's worth reading about.

From Karl Marx Square I took the Metro to the North end of the line at "Zaeltsovskaya".

Wandered home, buying some provisions (like beer!) along the way.

Hanging around (cue "The Stranglers")

2011-10-02T05:36:00.000-07:00

(Saturday 1st October 2011, written same day)

It has been a funny day so far. It's Saturday, so my landlady got up late. (Good for her). I'd already helped myself to watermelon and tea, but she asked me if I wanted breakfast. I said yes. Breakfast became:

Watermelon and black tea
Porridge,
Smoked eels,
Spaghetti bolognese (yes, you have just read that!) and
Chocolate cake.

My landlady and her boyfriend invited me on trip to "The Forest" this afternoon/evening. Naturally, I said yes. I hope I understood correctly. I'm waiting for the trip to start now (17:30). I had planned to go on a walking tour of "Historic Novosibirsk" in the afternoon, but after a text from me, and a phonecall from the landlady, I hope that has been cancelled successfully.

After breakfast, I went into the city. I had a number of objectives and met with mixed success:

Trip to the cash machine - Successful
Trip to a sports shop. I want to buy someone a "Novosibirsk (ice) hockey jersey". - Unsuccessful. Conversation went ok (broken Russian meets broken English), but this particular shop only sells Nike gear. They understood what I wanted, but didn't know where I could buy one.
Trip to shop to buy "Teachers' Day" cards - Success. They understood what I wanted, and pointed me to the display.
Trip to another shop (more of a stall) to buy fridge magnets as presents - Success. How do you translate "Fridge Magnet"? I used Russian for "Fridge" plus the English "Magnet", plus some pointing. It worked anyway.

Pretty good score.

Regarding "Teachers' Day": The first Sunday in October (today) is "Teachers' Day" in Russia. This is a carry-over from the Soviet Union. Tomorrow the kids bring their teachers (the ones they like, anyway) cards and flowers. I've bought one of the cards. With a little help from Google I translated the verse. It could be described as "Gushing and syrupy". Typical greetings card!

While in the centre of the City, it was a little quieter than it is during the week, so I took some pictures:

North up Krasny Prospect
North-West along Station Highway (you can see "Novosibirsk Main" station, on the Trans-Siberian at the end)
Here's a plaque commemorating the original tram-line in what is now Lenin Square.

I wandered home and settled down to the homework. This is a grammar test. I've struggled through a little over half of it. I've been using the books I have, and my notes and I still find it quite hard. It's all part of the learning experience.

At various times, the Landlady and her boyfriend, and her son have been in and out of the flat. It feels like something is going to happen, but nothing has actually happened yet.

Beautiful early evening here. I'm waiting for something to happen. I was offered a bowl of small, sweet, black, seedless grapes. I've eaten them, very nice. Meanwhile, a little later, I was eating a pear and the Alsation started looking at me and drooling. Hoping it was the pear she wanted, I gave her the core. Gone! Just like that. An Alsation that likes pear cores (and apples, come to think of it). Well I never!

Something happened about the trip. I guess plans change. I got on with my homework, which I found quite hard, and I've got most of it done.

Early to bed.

Lost track of the days, and 2001...

2011-10-01T04:58:00.000-07:00

(Friday 30th September 2011, written Saturday 1st October)

After the film on Thursday, I came home and fell asleep. I barely managed to complete the homework that I wanted to do for the next day.

At school, things are OK but I would have like to have memorised more of the "Perfective/Imperfective" pairs. I realised that I had lost track of the days. We were supposed to be going on a trip on the River Ob on Saturday. Unfortunately that has been cancelled, but I signed up for the substitute "Tour of Historic Novosibirsk".

In the evening to unwind, I borrowed a film from the Landlady's bookshelf. "2001: A Space Odyssey", with Russian subtitles. If ever there was a film which doesn't rely on dialogue, 2001 is certainly one. Released in 1968 I think. Actually I would have preferred it dubbed into Russian, with English subtitles. There was a surreal moment, near the beginning in the space station, when the American "investigator" meets a group of Russians, including one played by Leonard Rossiter. After the American leaves, Rossiter's character says a few words in Russian ("It's very difficult...", I think). I found that I understood the gist of what he said. I expect that Rossiter didn't understand himself, but just learned the few words from a coach.

After that, I settled down to sleep early, and slept like a log!

"Afonia", a Soviet slant on "Alfie"?

2011-10-01T04:55:00.000-07:00

(Thursday 29th September 2011, written Saturday 1st October)

Work continues. It's relentless. I find it interesting. but it's hard to describe except there are lots of exercises. I certainly understand Russian a lot better than I did. I find written easier than spoken, but that isn't surprising.

In the evening I watched a film called "Afonia" (1975). It's about a plumber who is a bit of a rogue, but by the end of the film it looks like he might be settling down.

It was described to me as "an industrial drama". I would describe it as more light-hearted than drama. As I was watching it I thought that the leading man looked a little like Michael Caine, and that there might be some parallels with the plot of "Alfie" (1966).

It is definately nowhere near as hard hitting as "Alfie". I still am wondering if there is some connection. The name of the film, and the dates, make it possible that the producers of "Afonia" were trying to make an oblique reference to "Alfie".

Eggs - Soft, Letters - hand and soft, Memory challenges - hard

2011-09-28T06:31:00.000-07:00

(Tuesday 28th September 2011, written same day)

Phew, that was a tough day. A good day, but a tough day. My head aches. It isn't over yet. Now that I've finished supper, I'm going to write up these notes as some light relief before settling down to learn some verbs (imperfective and perfective pairs).

The day started out well with a really nice breakfast. I don't know what this dish is called, but I liked it. I may try to produce something similar at home some time. Here is my attempt at describing it:

Take some rounds of french bread,
Remove some of the middle to leave a hole (but leave some of the bread as well),
Fry the bread.
When you're frying the second side, crack open small eggs (I think these were quails eggs) and drop one into each hole.
When the the egg is just set, serve with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese on the top.

Delicious!

After breakfast, it was time for school. I thought I had the "wrong" teacher yesterday. It turns out the one I should have had, had a cold, like me. Only I think hers must have been worse than what I had. We continued where the previous teacher left off yesterday. The school manage hand-overs very well. Before the lesson proper, we had more of the conversation "what did you do at the weekend/yesterday evening?" I'm getting better. After that, we moved on to more of the "imperfective", "perfective" stuff. It interacts with past, present and future as well. You can't have "perfective" in the present, but surpringly, you can in the future. That means that it is easy to say:

"I _finished_ reading 'War and Peace' yesterday.", or
"I _will have finished_ reading 'War and Peace' tomorrow.", but saying:
"I _have finished_ reading 'War and Peace' now." takes more words.

My homework challenge is to start learning loads of "imperfective-perfective" verb-pairs. That's what I'm starting shortly.

One bit of additional work I tried to give myself is a problem with pronounciation. There are two letter in the Russian alphabet (called respectively the "hard sign" and the "soft sign") which have no sound of their own, but with modify the sound of the letters around them. This is something I'm struggling to get right. It is hard for a non-native speaker to do, and hard for a native speaker to explain. The problem isn't really language, more "voice coaching". We'll see.

After lunch I did some homework exercises, and a little of the "learning". I also bought some souvenirs. Small icons. I think they're beautiful. I hope the intended recipients agree.

Then at 17:30 we had a presentation on the "Russian Character". Nothing really deep, but how not to offend people, or how not to be offended. All useful and interesting.

Then home. Supper was cooked by my Landlady's 17 year old son. It was good "Pelmeni", round ravioli stuffed with meat. Last night I had "Vereniki", pasty-shaped ravioli stuffed with potato and mushroom. Both are very good if you get the opportunity.

And so to verbs!

"Mamma's takin' us to the zoo tomorrow..." (today actually)

2011-09-27T18:51:00.000-07:00

(Tuesday 27th September 2011, written same day)

Today's lesson was more of the "Imperfective", "Perfective" stuff. It's strange but I like it. My teacher told me that it is a feature peculiar to Slavic languages. She mentioned: Russian, Ukranian and Polish.

One of the exercises was reading a passage about a man who has a very boring routine and who watches James Bond films in the evening. I think my Russian is still halting and clumsy, but the teacher and I actually had a conversation about the films. There is something pleasantly strange about having a conversation with a Russian about James Bond movies! She says they are popular in Russia as well. She knows about Sean Connery and Roger Moore (and my mind went blank about the others).

I guess the fantasy of the films is one that lots of us enjoy. I managed to make her laugh twice. The first time by saying that "The girls want to meet Bond, and the boys want to be Bond" (which I happen to think is pretty true). The second time I made her laugh was by telling her that, in the books, James Bond isn't English! It's true. He has a Scottish father and a Swiss mother!

After lunch, we went on a trip to the zoo. My teacher came along with us. The journey there was by trolley-bus. Novosibirsk has a metro, trams, trolley-buses and various kinds of buses. The trolley-bus is a quick and effective way of getting around. The zoo itself was good. I'm not a great fan of zoos, but the animals in this one seemed to have sufficient space. Some of the cages were interesting geometric shapes.

One of the stranger things we saw was a stag who still had "velvet" on his antlers. There were rags of flesh and a little bit of blood. I'd never actually seen that before. My teacher was a little bit perturbed, but I was able to reassure her (in English) that this happened every year, and what was going on.

We also saw a red squirrel. I'm not sure if this is the same species we have in Britain. This one was a native to Siberia.

He was such an acrobat, and so quick that there was no possibility of me taking his picture.

Photos:

Fountain at the entrance.
Dinosaurs
Eagle
Aviary
Liger explanation (in Russian!), Liger, more Liger
Spotty Cat
Polar Bear
Dear Deer
Black Wolf

Now that's what I call secure!

2011-09-27T18:35:00.000-07:00

(27th September 2011 - Not about any particular day)

The front door to our flat is impressive. Comparing notes (and keys) with the other students, the locks at least seem to be pretty typical. I don't know if Russians are particularly security conscious, or if there is a real, or perceived problem with burglary, but it seems most Russian flats have good locks on the front door.

You need three keys to enter my flat. To get into the building where I live you use a "button" key, which you touch to a socket on the intercom. I don't know how it works. I would be surprised it it was particularly secure, but it is only intended to protect the stairwell. This building front door looks like it was replaced fairly recently. There is an inner door which isn't locked. Once upon a time, I don't suppose the outer door was locked either.

The front door to my flat is pretty impressive. I think it would do justice to a small provincial bank! The door is made of steel and is fitted to a steel frame. I expect the frame is securely fastened to the building. The door opens outward and has hinge bolts. It is secured by a two stage lock. If you are "just popping out for a minute", then there is a night small key. Even this has more positions than the equivalent English lock. If you are really going out, then you use the larger key which operates a number of bolts, integral to the door, on the lock side (I think I counted 5) and the top. You then lock the lock with the small key! Hmm. I think that is secure. I believe some flats have an inner door whose purpose is to keep any draughts out. The space between the two doors is used for shoes and coats.

While we're in the hallway, the internet here has not been completely reliable. I'm not sure if this is the cause, but there is a junction box on the landing which has loads of wires hanging out of it. My untrained eye can identify; coaxial, "cat something-or-another twisted pair" and flat speaker cable, all associated with the same box. In this case I really do "know nothing". I'm leaving well alone!

Washing, Cleaning, Brushing, Peeling

2011-09-26T09:28:00.000-07:00

(Monday 26th September 2011 written same day)

I don't know when this is going to reach the blog. The internet at home isn't working at present. I've tried restarting the router, and I don't want to mess with anything more than that. The network diagnostics show that the router says it is connected to the internet, but every website I try to connect to times out. I will probably copy the text files of the blog entries onto a flashdrive and load them at the school. Pictures will have to wait.

Today started with mist. I wore an anorak for the walk to school. It was just a little chilly. I didn't think to look at what any of the buildings said the temperature was. I still feel a little groggy with the cold. The leaves are falling from the trees and everywhere you can see people sweeping them up and stuffing them into sacks and other containers.

The work at school today started with conversation. A review of what I did at the weekend. Unfortunately, the "cold" meant that wasn't as much as I had wanted, but there were still some things to talk about, like going to the shop and buying food. Apparently my choice of provisions counts as "healthy". I think there was rather too much dairy, but I think that just shows differences in attitude in different countries. I definitely think the Russian diet contains less meat than I am used to, and that is probably a good thing.

After the conversation, we moved on to the homework. My insight with the "cases" was pretty much correct. I am beginning to understand how to use the crib-sheet I've been given to work out what ending to use when a noun should be in a particular case. I'm making lots of mistakes but I've moved beyond randomly changing the ending of the word and hoping it is appropriate.

The new work today is more about variations on a theme of cleaning. I suppose when teaching a language it is easiest to have themes for different sections, and there are probably deeper objectives to choosing particular words which are not obvious to me, but sometimes it seems like the text-book authors have an obsession with something, in this case - cleaning. Today I had verbs for "washing" (the laundry), "washing" (vegetables, or the car) and finally "cleaning" (with a brush). This last one includes the sense of cleaning your shoes (with a brush), cleaning your teeth (also with a brush) but also (to my mind strangely), peeling or removing the skin from fruit or vegetables. Seems odd, but there you go.

More homework to do, most of which I did in the afternoon.

I had thought about taking a weekend trip to Tomsk. I think I've abandoned that idea. I like the idea of Tomsk, but the trip involves 3+ hours on a bus each way, it requires a night in a hotel and it will take up the whole weekend. It also works out a little expensive. I think I would rather save the money and save the effort. On the plus side, the school have suggested a trip on the river on Saturday. That is a nice alternative. If the weather is reasonable (and the forecast says it should be), then that will be something to look forward to.

I've tried running some diagnostics on the internet connection. Just tried "ping". As I thought, I've got a good connection to the router, but the router isn't talking to the internet, even though it says that is is. It seems highly unlikely that all the sites I've tried are equally broken.

It's 21:00 and my landlady has just arrived with the shopping. Goodness me she has a long day. And this is after the (looked like it was unplanned) trip to Tomsk which took up all of the weekend.

It's after 23:00 and supper was excellent! Sasiski (Frankfurter sausages) with rice, and sour cream and tovorak and the inevetable black tea plus... I've just drunk something and I'm not at all sure what it was. My landlady said it will be good for my cough. It consisted of milk which had been boiled with nuts in it. The "nuts" are about the size and shape of maize kernels but dark red-brown. I looked at the pot were it was prepared, and there's a cedar pine cone as well. The whole concoction tasted a little bitter. I'm feeling sleepy, but the internet's back, so I'm going to do the posting and then go to sleep.

Feeling Better, Cold Nose - Warm heart

2011-09-26T09:27:00.000-07:00

(Sunday 25th September 2011, written same day)

I woke up at about 07:30 feeling much better. Not perfect, but much better. Shortly afterwards, I found that Boosa (the dog) knows how to open the door to my room. Sniff, sniff. Face being licked by dog. "Good morning Boosa!" The dog then left and a little while later, my landlady's son closed my door. I think the dog wanted to "be taken for a walk". We all went back to bed. By the time I got up an hour and a bit later, the son had gone out.

I made myself breakfast from the remains of supper. Then I settled down to working through the homework. After I had completed most of it, I went out for a walk and had lunch. This time I tried a burger place called "Carl's" I'm going to check whether it is Russian or from somewhere else. I messed up my order, and got an extra portion of fries. These are the things you have to expect.

On my return, I got on with the rest of the homework, a fairly large piece of translation. I managed ok, but it takes me ages as my vocabulary needs to be bigger.

Once I had finished with this I started looking at a "graded reader" I have borrowed from the school. Once again, it's a pretty substantial translation job.

My landlady's son came back and asked me if I wanted him to make supper. Naturally I said yes. It turned out to be very good: pelmyeni (sort-of ravioli stuffed with potato and mushroom). While he was preparing the meal I had a look at my notes. I think I may have developed a slightly clearer understanding of how to use one of the aids I've been given. I'm not going to bother with it now, but I'm going to look at something again tomorrow. If I'm right, one of the "rules" (to do with the "Accusative case") may have become a bit clearer.

I would like to find a way of remembering stuff more easilly ("pomnooyou"), but until that happens there is no alternative to repetition, and making up little rhymes and strange associations. I'm trying all sorts of tricks, but still struggling with recall. It it was easy everyone would be doing it!

Time to settle down for the evening.

Interra, "Cold" in Siberia and a little shopping

2011-09-26T09:25:00.000-07:00

(Saturday 24th September 2011, written 25th September)

I woke up this morning, not with a hang-over, but knowing that I had a cold. I've suspected this for about a day, but it has caught up with me. I had planned to do a bit more exploring today, but I didn't feel much like it. I took some asprin, had a bit of a lie in and then went out for lunch.

I had a look at some of the Interra displays. It looked interesting, but my heart wasn't in it. I came home and went to bed. I dozed for most of the afternoon.

I woke up feeling much better and decided to go to a local supermarket and buy "the makings" of supper and breakfast. It all went to plan. I had one unsettling moment when I wondered if they had sold out of bread, but then I found what I was look for. Supper was cream cheese (Tovarok), black bread and tinned spratts with black tea, followed by one bottle of beer. It may sound a bit strange, but it's very similar to what I've been served for supper once while I've been here, and I've already been served spratts for breakfast. After all, sardines on toast used to be a popular "tea" dish.

I didn't do any homework. My head isn't in the right state for that. It feels kind of muzzy.

Off to bed early.

Half-way point. Testing times and a departure

2011-09-26T09:23:00.000-07:00

(Friday 23rd September 2011 written Sunday 25th September)

The homework last night was in two parts. I struggled with it a bit. I'm still trying to understand the "cases" situation. I feel I'm making progress but there is so much to remember. So often the thing I want to remember seems to be "just out of touch". It's frustrating but I suppose the answer is to keep on trying. Things do stick, and then there is one less thing to struggle with, so I can give more attention to something else.

Then I had a test. It was a comprehension piece about a Russian celebrity. Naturally I hadn't heard of her and the only bits which I remember now are that she is a singer and she has red hair. I don't know how well I did yet. I found it a struggle, but I think it was intended to be a challenge.

There have been three students at the school: Charles, a French skiing instructor who lives in Switzerland, Jardina, a Spanish IT manager from Barcelona, and me. Today was Jardina's last day. She leaves for Spain at 07:00 tomorrow and has an early taxi booked. The school gave use a small "tea" (buns and biscuits and tea). The school awarded Jardina with her certificate, giving the level she has achieved. Actually, they gave her two certificates, one in English and one in Russian. I'm pleased about that. I don't expect to achieve the same level as Jardina (she has been doing this for years), but it would be good to have some semi-official recognition of accomplishment. I keep on thinking of the Scarecrow and his diploma from "The Wizard of Oz".

After the tea, and sending a few eMails, Charles, Jardina and I went to the pub. The one we chose was "St Patrick's Corner". It's an Irish pub. Novosibirsk has several. It's quite a reasonable place (but it is not on a corner!). It's strange how close you can feel to people after only two weeks. The three of us have really only shared lunches and trips, but we feel we have shared the experience of being here in Novosibirsk. I hope Jardina had a good trip home.

One very funny thing happened. For the past two weeks, naturally, one of the topics of conversation between the three of us had been "language". The other two had asked me about the Irish Language. I had confessed to knowing very little and said that it was quite different to English and that they would probably find the spelling a challenge. I did say that one of the things I had been warned about was the labels on toilet doors: in Irish M (for "Mna" means Lady) and F (for "Fir" means Man). I didn't think about it any more. During the evening, Charles went to the toilet and said with a laugh that he had remembered what I had said and gone through the right door! The toilets in "St Patrick's Corner" are labeled in Irish! Russian toilets are usually labeled M for "Man" and a different cyrillic character for "Woman". You can probably see where this is leading. We wondered how the Russians would cope with this. The answer is, it confused them. It would probably confuse most English speakers as well. During the evening, we (the three of us, two men and a woman) encountered a number of confused Russians: men exiting from the Ladies', and a Woman coming into the Men's. So, the international pictorial lavatory signs do serve a useful purpose.

When I got home, I met my landlady, who announced that she had to make an unexpected business trip to Tomsk, and that she was leaving NOW! That was alright. I know now that I coped!

Have you finished reading?

2011-09-26T09:21:00.000-07:00

(Thursday 22nd September 2011, written same day)

There are no pictures today, and I'm afraid the weather feels like it is changing.

To my surprise, I did pretty well with yesterday's homework. I was all about the differences between "Seeing, Watching, Hearing and Listening", with a bit of the present and the past thrown in. It's reasonably reassuring. I'm making progress. I can ready stuff (from the text book) reasonably well now. I still feel awkward when speaking and naturally listening can be a bit of a challenge. If it's a recording, often I can work things out after a couple of hearings, but of course the real world doesn't work like that.

Today's lessons were a review of what happens to a word when it is the "object" of the sentence. The rules are complicated: it all depends on whether it is singular or plural, masculine, feminine or neuter and whether it is animate or inanimate. Some really strange things happen, not the least of which is that a corpse is animate! How I hate grammar! Then I listened to a recording of some drippy teenage go on about her crush on a rock-star. At least, thank goodness, the rock-star and the band are fictitious. At least, I hope they are.

Then came something, which although awkward, does make a kind of sense. If said "I read 'War and Peace' last night", could you be sure what I meant? If I said "I stopped reading 'War and Peace' last night", would you know if I had finished the book? Russian has a simple way round this ambiguity. The language technicians call it "Perfective" and "Imperfective". It's a pain, but useful.

After lunch I did some of did some of my homework, and then it was off to "The museum of the USSR". This was housed in what would have been a shared flat. It was very interesting and for me emphasised how things have changed. I bought my first souvenirs. Anybody want a fridge magnet of Lenin? I resisted the temptation to buy Stalin!

After that it was back to the school to watch a Soviet comedy titled "The diamond arm". It was about diamond smugglers, and actually really funny. I can smell dinner cooking, then I have to finish my homework.

Since writing this, I've learned that at the time the film was produced (in Soviet times), it was actually legal for Russians to import diamonds and gold INTO Russia (though I doubt they would have had the money). This adds a further layer of irony to the film.

Have you finished reading?

2011-09-22T07:38:00.000-07:00

(Thursday 22nd September 2011, written same day)

There are no pictures today, and I'm afraid the weather feels like it is changing.

For some reason, I found Monday depressing. Things have been improving since then. To my surprise, I did pretty well with yesterday's homework. I was all about the differences between "Seeing, Watching, Hearing and Listening", with a bit of the present and the past thrown in. It's reasonably reassuring. I'm making progress.

I can read stuff (from the text book) reasonably well now. I still feel awkward when speaking and naturally listening can be a bit of a challenge. If it's a recording, often I can work things out after a couple of hearings, but of course the real world doesn't work like that.

Then came something, which although awkward, does make a kind of sense. If said "I read 'War and Peace' last night", could you be sure what I meant? If I said "I stopped reading 'War and Peace' last night", would you know if I had finished? Russian has a simple way round this ambiguity. The language technicians call it "Perfective" and "Imperfective". It's a pain, but useful.

After that it was back to the school to watch a Soviet comedy titled "The diamond arm". It was about diamond smugglers, and actually really funny. My understanding was helped by it having English subtitles!

I can smell dinner cooking, then I have to finish my homework.

Museums and Pride

2011-09-21T07:40:00.000-07:00

(Monday 19th September 2011, written same night)

Something I forgot. On the way to school today, I paused to read the sign a the entrance to a small museum. The was a mongolian looking man outside who invited me inside. I apologised and said that I was on my way to school and that I didn't have time but that I would come back.

On the way home I saw him again. On the spur of the moment I greeted him and asked if the museum was still open. He said it was, I asked how much and he said it was free. I went inside and was glad that I did. It is a small place. Probably a municipal museum, or a citizens club with some funding. It covers the history of the "Central Rayon" (The "Central" Borough of Novosibirsk). There are only three exhibition rooms. There seem to be three staff; the gentleman, a lady and someone I didn't really see in an office. The lady was very helpful. She gave me a tour and explained the exhibits. There were:

"Heroes of the Soviet Union" who came from the area
History during the Second World War (Great Patriotic War). Novosibirsk was not the front, but was used for treating casualties. Children from Leningrad were evacuated there.
Soldiers who had served in Afganistan (recent conflict)
A WW2 fighter pilot who had shot down 100+ planes
Artefacts from peoples homes

All sorts of stuff from before the Revolution, up to much more recent. It was all about people. The curators were obviously genuinely proud of it (and were entitled to be). The took the time to explain it to a foreigner. I did't understand everthing, but I understood some. I signed the visitors book. I'm going to take my colleagues along (I did, today 21st Sept).

Almost next door, I popped into what I suppose could be described as an antique shop. Enormous range of prices. Interesting. I'm going back.

Akademgorodok "Academy Town"

2011-09-21T07:19:00.000-07:00

(Tuesday 20th September 2011, written up 21st September 2011)

Today was more irregular verbs. I struggle with learning all the words but it's necessary. While it is quite possible to communicate quite effectively speaking, or writing a limited vocabulary, it is absolutely necessary to be able to "receive" words without constantly going to the dictionary. It makes life hard, but there you are.

Today's exercises are around the words for "To see", "To pay", "To ask" (beg or beseach) and "To clean" (or peel, as in peel fruit). The homework exercise is around some strange character who seems to be in love with potatoes! Also, apparently, the Russian Army have potato peeling competitions!

I'm trying not to be a tourist (I have so much homework that can't afford the time), but it was such a beautiful day that I decided to join an excursion to "Akademgorodok". The weather was sunny and the indicators on the buildings said it was 24 deg C.

"Akademgorok" means "Academy Town". I want to say "City of Scientists", but that isn't quite right. It used to be a "closed" town which meant that most Russians weren't allowed to go there, and you had no chance as a foreigner. It is a few kilometers from Novosibirsk, and we travelled there as passengers on one of the many little buses. These are a cross between a bus and a taxi. Although they are badged "Gaz" (a Russian manufacturer), they are obviously Ford Transits (or perhaps derived from) and seat 15 passengers. They run a fixed route but have no timetable. The driver waits at the terminal stop until the bus is full, or he decides to go. They operate with a fixed fair (35 Rub = 0.88 Eur). They will drop you along the route. They definately have stops to pick up passengers. The road to Akademgorodok is a busy 6 lane dual carriageway (think motorway, but with very variable surface, and side roads). On the way our driver was stopped by the police and fined for "exuberant driving" (my words). None of the other passengers seemed the least concerned. Just one more experience.

The transit van taxi/buses are interesting. I said that there is a flat fare. That isn’t surprising, what is surprising is how it is collected. The fare is 35 rubles. All the passengers get on and take their seats and the van sets off (maybe that should be “takes off”). The passengers collect the money themselves, and pass it up to the passenger who is sitting with his/her back next to the bulkhead, who then passes it through to the driver (who is probably using a mobile phone). If you don’t have the write money, you trade with your neighbours to get the change you need. If that doesn’t work, the driver exchanges money for change until it is all sorted. The whole operation takes place in motion! Can you imagine that working in London? Or for that matter anywhere in Britain? I don’t want to think what would happen if you tried to take a ride without paying. I suppose it might work if you were a charity-case, but not otherwise.

Akademgorodok is essentially a University campus in the woods. Once you are inside the town the roads are fairly quiet. The main road in was pretty peaceful. If you look at a map, you can see that it is not a huge place. It's quite easy to walk round.

A man called "Lavrentev" is given the credit for founding the town.

The buildings are not particularly interesting architecturally. There is a "Hydrodynamic Institute" (anyone from Feltham remember the "Ship Tank"?), one of the main meeting buildings and library is known as "The house of scientists" and accommodation is provided in blocks of flats of various designs (nothing over 5 storeys tall). The streets have flower beds, and there are paths through the forest.

You can see it was autumn. The leaves on the trees are starting to turn. Akademgorodok must be a very pleasant place to live and work. I have been told it is popular, providing of course that you can find work there.

While we were there there was a market going on.They were selling all sorts of things. Cut flowers, potted plants, mushrooms and berries collected from the forest, fruit, clothes (felt boots, socks, jumpers), arty stuff, and loads of honey!

On the way home I stopped off near Lenin Square, and took a picture of this Compass monument in Novosibirsk. The heraldic animals are from the coat of arms of the city. There is one at each point of the compass. Around the base are the names of cities in Siberia. The message is "Novosibirsk is the centre of Siberia".

When I got home, I couldn't resist taking a picture of the entrance hall of my flats. It's not the most welcoming place, but it is clean. This is it on a sunny day. You can't see it, but the "nose" on some of the stair treads is worn down to the reinforcing bars.

Old Ladies help me cross the road, and a magic carpet ride

2011-09-19T09:33:00.000-07:00

(Monday 19th September 2011, written up same day)

Well that turned out to be more exciting than I expected. No pictures I'm afraid. There was nothing very visual anyway.

It's Monday, so it's back to work, not that I ever really stopped. Lessons started with me being asked about what I did at the weekend? In my case that meant: the walking tour of Novosibirsk on Saturday morning/afternoon, the trip to the Opera in the evening, Sunday morning trip to view the River Ob and afternoon trip to see Dali. I'd expected this to happen, so I'd prepared notes. I'm glad I did, but I was subjected to a gentle interrogation, which was directed not at finding out what I did (I'm sure the teachers don't care that much), but at how I could express what I did. The questioning soon guided be into uncharted territory, but I managed. By-the-way, there is a theatre in Novosibirsk called "Clockwork Orange", after the Book/Film by Anthony Burgess!

After "What did you do at the weekend" seesion, we moved onto my translation of the text "Granny's Birthday". This required my to summarise the decendants on Granny's family tree. This was followed by my answers to simple questions with yes/no answers, and then questions which required longer answers. This was all about developing my understanding of the "genitive case". Another way of putting this is "X is the _son of_ Y", "Q is the _wife of_ R" etc. We identified the imperfections in my understanding and moved on.

Then some exercises about negatives, "not having". This led to a tragic story of a begger who has lost everything. My homework (apart from doing the translation) is to provide an (imaginary) explanation as to how he lost everything. I did the homework at school, and that is a very good thing.

One of the things which worries me a little in Novosibirsk is that they drive on the right. I'm worried that my reflexes will take me the wrong way. As a result I tend to follow Russians and stay "down stream of them" when crossing the road. Hence I sometimes shadow old ladies. They help me cross the road!

I left school at a little after 17:00. When I got home, there was nobody in. I went out and bought a bottle of mineral water and a bottle of beer (purely to practice my Russian in a shop, you understand). When I returned home, I put them both in the fridge and settled down to do some drills involving "Not having" in Present, Past and Future tenses. I also tucked into some watermelon I'd been told to eat.

When my landlady came in, she asked me if I wanted to go shopping? I said yes. After all, it sounded interesting. It was interesting alright! I thought she meant groceries. I was wrong! The first surprise was when I was asked to get into the landlady's boss's car, which already contained her sons. Next stop, the place where she is living while her flat is repaired. We off-load the sons. Next _IKEA_ where she has ordered a carpet for something at one son's school. My job is to help with the carpet. We have dinner in the IKEA restaurant, then it's off to the school, where two young fellows are waiting in the dark to take the carpet inside. I get to see a lot of Novosibirsk by night.

Eventful and better than my language drills!

And so to bed.

Sun, Bridges and Dali

2011-09-18T06:52:00.000-07:00

Bridges, Sun and Dali

(Sunday 18th September 2011 written on same day)

Today was officially a day off. I walked south to Rechnoi Vakhsa (River Station). It was a beautiful day again. I didn't see anything to indicate the temperature, but I'm sure it was over 20 deg C. The River Ob is very wide. It is spanned by a road bridge, a metro bridge and a railway bridge. There is a park and amusement park along the river bank and I spent some of the time trying to read the various signs. Sometimes I succeeded, sometimes I didn't.

The city art museum is a very short distance away. In the afternoon I went to went to an exhibition of Salvador Dali lithographs. I like Dali pictures, but they don't make any more sense to me with Russian captions!

On the way home from the exhibition I noticed a travel agent listing places the could fly you to from Novosibirsk. Here's the list in English: Egypt, Tunisia, Greece, Spain, Italy, Goa, China, Cyprus, Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey, Cuba. Russians like the sun too!

When I'd returned from Dali, I finished off the homework exercises. First, questions on a short story (eg "Whose wife is a good cook?", "Who are Natasha and Julias parents?", "Who studies physics at university?". Then I have to compose a number of sentences about my own family. Not very exciting, but I can see that it serves a useful purpose.

Flying Solo: Food, Water, Beer and Opera

2011-09-17T10:09:00.000-07:00

(Saturday 17th September 2011 written up same day)

What a fantastic day! I have literally walked miles, on a self-conducted tour of Novosibirsk. I've held (simple) conversations with people, bought things and been to the opera!

It's my day off! Except it isn't! I had to fly solo for the first time. If I hadn't been able to speak, I wouldn't have been able to eat, or drink. Apart from "enjoying the experience", I set myself the objectives of:

Buying a decent meal in somewhere new,
Buying something in a shop, and
Buying a beer in a bar.

I "exceeded requirements" on all objectives.

My tour started by looking down one of the side-streets near my home.Wooden houses are typical of Siberia and of Novosibirsk. When this place started out in the late 19th Century, it was a construction site. The most readilly available material was lumber. Here are a few photos of some old houses I noticed:

I walked North into town. When I got to "The Centre of Russia", I noticed a wedding party. I paused for a look and realised that couples come there to have their photos taken. Some seem to have arranged for a blessing as well. It was a Saturday, and the sun was shining brightly. A great day for a wedding. Winter is coming too. I passed the church several times during the day and saw several parties. Here are a couple of photos (Two Weddings and Another Wedding). Apparently the church is not that old. The original was demolished during the Soviet era and this replica was built only a few years ago. It seems that God and maybe tradition are stronger than governments.

I was looking for a place to have lunch. This is it "Sunny Bake": salad and a cutlet and green tea and bliny. If you get the opportunity, you must try Russian blini. They are pancakes or crepes. Excellent! Mine was served with melted butter and smetana (sour cream) but there are a wide range of fillings both sweet and savoury, including smoked salmon, mushrooms, sugar and chocolate (not all at the same time, I hope). I ordered it all with words, not just point and shoot.

After lunch I went for a walk in "Central Park" (in Novosibirsk, not New York!). It's a really attractive place, with fairground attractions, rides for the kids, a stage for bands. From this view along one of the paths, you can see how sunny it was. It was warm but you can also see the leaves are changing colour for Autumn, and they have started fall.

Next stop was "Novosibirsk Glavniy" (Novosibirsk Main) Station. This is on the Transiberian railway, half way between Moscow and Vladivostok. From Vladivostock you can get a ferry to Japan, via Korea. There is an enormous paved area in front of the station. The station clock and another one nearby said that the temperature was over 20 degrees C. I was thirsty. Russian street vendors were selling cold kvass (weak beer) from little tankers. How civilised! I bought a half-litre from a street vendor (17 rubles= 0.42 eur). It was excellent! The lady asked if I was German. I told her I was English. We both laughed. My Father would be horrified, but it's easier to say that than bring in another two countries. Kvass is very weak beer, they say it is "brewed from bread". I don't quite understand that. It is so weak you would give it to your children, like bottled shandy. It has a slightly acid, almost lemony taste. Good for a hot day. Just off the square, I went into a shop and bought a litre bottle of mineral water (as in "Perrier" or "Evian" 35 roubles = 0.88 eur).

I walked back from the station by a different route. On the way I saw this restored church, which is right next to the Circus. I'm not sure if if there is something a little odd going on here, because in Russian the two words are very similar: Circus = "Tsirk" and Church = "Tsirkov". Then I went along Gogol Street to join Krasny Prospect. I passed a Russian bar. I would have stopped for a beer, but I already had a plan. It would have been cheaper if I'd had the beer in the Russian bar.

Close to the school is a bar called "Old Irish", which I had already found on the internet. I popped in there for a drink. The bar is nice enough, but the price (290 rub = 7 Euro)! The price of 1 pint was more than all my other purchases. I won't be spending much time in there, but I will probably have a pint of Guinness on "Arthur's Day" (sometimes I'm a mug for advertising). It just shows that prices can vary a lot and you have to be careful in foreign countries. I just put it down to experience.

On the way home I couldn't resist taking a picture of these fountains. The building in the background is the museum on Lenin Square I visited on Wednesday.

I got home, bumped into my landlady, and just had enough time to post pictures onto Facebook before it was time to go to the theatre. The school had booked me a ticket so I felt obliged to go.

The Novosibirsk Ballet Opera is the largest in Russia. It's not the sort of place I would normally go to, but I'm glad I did. I have some pictures of the inside on my phone. It is a magnificent building. I'll post them when doing so won't cost me an unreasonable amount of money. The opera was "Iolanta" (by Pyotr Tchiakovsky, which is unrelated to "Iolanthe" by Gilbert and Sullivan. That had me confused too.). The opera was entirely in Russian, with no "titles". Strangely, I started off hearing only music or babble, but by the end I was hearing words. I didn't understand it, but I probably wouldn't have understood it in English either. It was a magnificent spectacle, and the staging was really interesting, making use of backlighting and projections. At one point I really thought it was raining on stage.

After the show I went home to Dinner. It was good. Vegetable stew, with pureed veg and ratatouille, served with dark brown bread and green tea. My landlady probably thinks I'm mad about food. I'm not, but it is easy to talk about: "I like this", "this is sweet", "what is this?" etc. I've found some interesting problems eg they have one word for both vegetable marrow and aubergine! I've also been served three entirely different things, all called "Kasha" (porridge) for breakfast. One of them was rice pudding! Good job I'm a true omnivore.

The landlady had some music on while she was doing the ironing. I thought I recognised it and checked. I was right. It was "Enigma". Some things travel well.

Writing done, I'm going to post this.

And so to bed!

Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Bus Tickets, Pleasant Peasant Dinner

2011-09-16T10:55:00.000-07:00

(Friday 16th September 2011 written on same day)

How things change! Yesterday dinner was; early in the evening, with the upper classes in a fancy restaurant, watching an Italian chef (called "Fabio") make pasta dishes, throw pizzas around and make ice cream with liquid nitrogen. Today dinner is eaten after 10:00, and (something like) cottage cheese, black tea and brown bread. All in Siberia.

And with a clear sky the temperature changes from hot (walk around the streets in your shirtsleeves) during the day, to cold (brr) at night.

My landlady just arrived and it's time for dinner (after 22:00 at night). I'll describe dinner first and then the rest of the day.

Dinner this evening is "Slava" (Tvorak (cream cottage cheece), Smetana (sour cream) and sugar mixed together), pureed vegetables (carrots and I don't know what), several kinds of bread and black tea. Delicious!

This morning I found that I'd "got away with" my translation. I could answer all the questions (verbally) and the only significant mistake was that I can misunderstood one word and turned a desire into a reality (and future into present tense). Not too bad considering it was done under pressure.

Next was more grammar: Nominative, Accusative and Genitive cases. You don't want to know!

After lunch, which was "you know where" all three students set off down to the bus station to give moral support to one of our number (the Spanish lady) who is making a weeked trip to Tomsk. Good for her! Mission accomplished we returned to the school, and I got on with my homework.

It was really pretty hot outside, providing you are in the sun. On the way home I took photos of the Opera House at the back of Lenin Square, and the base of the Novosibirsk Architecture Preservation Organisation (or something like that). I'm going to the Opera tomorrow.

Then I did some more homework, and fell asleep. I was thinking about going to bed when my landlady arrived.

Verbs, a Mammoth, Films and Pizza

2011-09-16T10:33:00.000-07:00

(Thursday 15th September 2011, written up 16th September 2011)

Now that was a busy day! There are no photographs because, although there were some interesting things to see I didn't have my camera with me at the time. I didn't have time to write things up at the time, because I didn't finish working until nearly midnight, by which time I was well and truly ready for bed.

The internet connection in the flat isn't working at present, so there may be some delay before this actually gets recorded.

At breakfast I was told that I was going out to dinner. I was told that the place we were going was "Rimski Caniculi". At the time I was told this meant "Roman Holiday". I have to confess that at the time it took a little time for exactly what I was being told to sink in, but I got it in the end. By the time I left for school I knew where the restaurant was, and what time I was to be there (Krasny Prospect 42a, for 19:00). Fortunately the address is near the school so I was able to find the building and the restaraunt on my way there.

The morning was spent with lessons on verbs. Lots and lots of verbs. I think at the time I was told there were about twenty. Even a day later it has become a bit of a blur. There were lots of new verbs, and before they had time to settle in my mind, lots of exercises requiring me to find the correct conjugation for a verb in a particular situation (I run, She runs, They run...)

This was followed by a game where there was a standard sentence and using cards drawn from the 3 different piles (Subject Gender: Masculine/Feminine/Neuter/Plural,

Verb and Location) I had to provide a "Subject". The objectives of the exercise were to put the (new) verb into the correct conjugation, provide a suitable subject, put the subject into the "Accusative Case", and put the location into the "Locative" Case. There's also another little wrinkle, in that you have to be "in" some locations and "at" or "on" others. There are a few which can be both (you can be both "in" and "on" the sea). Don't worry if you read this and don't understand it, I not sure I do either! If you read it and _really_ understand it, explain it to me some time.

As you can imagine, some of the results were a little strange, if not surreal. One that has stuck in my mind was:

"It" (=Subject) "waits" (=Verb) "toilet" (=Location; this is the room by the way)
to which I added "Service" (=Object), so after some changes to the component words we got:
"It waits for service in the toilet."
I really don't want to dwell for too long on what that might possibly mean!

The result was often a bit like David Bowie or Brian Eno lyrics. Sometimes it made real sense, sometimes it was complete nonsense and sometimes it had a slippery quality which made me think that perhaps there was some peculiar message hidden in the sentence.

(by the way, my landlady has just come it. It's 22:00 and time for dinner!)

Homework was a comprehension exercise. I had to translate a passage and answer questions on it. I was given the passage as a sound file for my computer, and the passage text is in my textbook. The teacher made sure I understood the questions before we finished.

After this, it was time for lunch (thank goodness). Lunch was our now favourite (only) restaraunt, "Vilka-Lojka". Apparently, not only is there a chain of Vilka-Lojkas, but there is a class of restaraunts known as "Staloviya" (dining room).

After lunch, there was an opportunity to visit a museum in town with one of the teachers. I wanted to visit the museum but that created a possible problem with the homework, because of dinner.

The museum was the "Novosibirsk history and natural history museum" (I'm not sure of the correct title. I may update thisket). It's situated in a hundred-year-old converted metro station just off Lenin Square. Admission is cheap (For us. 200 rub = 5 Eur). Like many Russian public buildings, you are expected to leave your coat and bag in the "garderobe". The first thing that meets you when you enter the exhibition proper is the skeleton of a mammoth. You're probably already aware that from time to time they did up mammoths in Siberia. The museum contains sections on:

Natural history
Native cultures - Siberia has a number of peoples somewhat like the native americans and inuit.
The way people lived at various times the Russians were colonising siberia.
The Revolution
The Second World War (or Great Patriotic War)
Artistic material

The contents are interesting, but it's difficult to explain the intensity of the experience of really trying to understand what the labels of the exhibits say in a foreign language. At least I was able to tell the teacher who was acting as our guide that the motorcycle in the middle of the "Revolution" section was a Norton and that it was made in Birmingham, England. And that was before I read the label!

After the museum we returned to the school and so I go stuck into the comprehension. Rather than listen to the passage (which was difficult at the school), I decided to translate from the text first and then listen later. It was a good job I did, because otherwise I would have run out of time. In the mean time I attended a presentation on "Soviet films" (which was pretty interesting). I had completed about three-quarters of the translation when it was time for the school to kick me out, and me to go to dinner.

The restaurant ("Rimski Kaniculi" (Roman Holidays), use your web browser to translate) was only a short distance away. I spent a little while trying to look inconspicuous waiting for my hostess to arrive. My hostess is my landladies employer (I think) she was accompanied by two of her sons: Ivan (12) and Anton (9). They arrived just a few minutes late. My landlady was delayed. I was struck by Ivan wearing a military uniform. He attends a "Officer School" and the uniform was for the "Siberian Cadet Corps". Wikipedia has an article of the historic Siberian Cadet Corps. I'm not sure about any associations between the modern and historic organisations, but I know that "the cadets" are significant in Russian history. Both sons spoke a little english and we were able to converse, me speaking Russian, and them speaking English.

Dinner for me was an extremely good lasagne. As we dined we were entertained by an Italian chef (named "Fabio") demostrating how to cook a couple of pasta dishes. Later he demonstrated making ice-cream using liquid nitrogen. Later still, he demonstrated tossing pizza bases to the music "Love, Sex, American Express" (?!). The Russian word for show is "spektakl" and this was certainly spectacular! All we drank all evening was several different varieties of black or green tea. At the end of the evening my hostess gave me a lift home at about 22:00. It was a thoroughly good evening.

I got home and had to get down to work. I had the translation completed before midnight, and so to bed.

Work, lunch and money

2011-09-14T10:01:00.000-07:00

(Wednesday 14th September, written same day)

Today was a straight "work day", so not many photos. Lessons in the morning, administration at lunch-time, homework and prep in the afternoon, presentation on "Siberian Cities" in the late afternoon.

The day started with a lady friend of my landlady's arriving for breakfast. She spoke some English, but we spoke Russian. It wasn't an exciting conversation, but we communicated. I used my pre-prepared stories, she told me a little about herself. I'm starting to understand things. It's limited, but I'm improving.

School was more individual work. This time I had a man teacher. I think it is good to move between different teachers. Different tones and vocal styles help my understanding.

The first exercise was about Ireland! It was conducted in Russian. At first I didn't really understand what was happening, but it was very good. The objective was to teach me, what I knew already about my home country, and how to express that in Russian.

How big is Ireland?
How many people?
Famous people?

To my surprise I found I was holding a conversation, in Russian, about a subject I hadn't prepared. You wouldn't call it "fluent", but I came away with a resource sheet, which I had completed, in Russian which I can use as the basis for small talk. The exercise was useful, and the product was useful. I also learned the equivalent facts about Russia.

Then on to more grammar. More on personal possessive pronouns and Nominative, Accusative and Locative cases. Don't worry if you don't understand, because I'm not sure if I do. I do the exercises and I think I'm learning, but it isn't clear yet.

This is followed by an exercise in aural comprehension supported by written comprehension as well. It's all about some ghastly little boy's plans for his birthday. The boy may be horrible, but the exercise is good. Part of the homework is finishing off the written translation and checking/completing the answers to questions.

The rest of the homework is conjugating verbs (don't worry...) and the prepositional case (...).

When the 3 students escape from their lessons, we all go to eat in Vilka-Lojka. This is the McDonald's meets a works canteen. It's good and cheap.

After lunch we go back to the school. One of the other students has the same problem as me, his cards won't work. With the help of the school we identify another bank to try, and also go armed for my "Plan C", which is to exchange some of my emergency stash of Euro's and Sterling.

We're in luck! We find a bank which accepts our cards. We have access to money. We can eat! The other student suggests a celebratory beer. I think that's an excellent idea. So we do. Half a pint of (keg) London Pride, with a Frenchman in an Irish themed pub in the middle of Siberia. And it feels great! I haven't felt so good about getting the equivalent of 25 Euro out of a cash machine since I was a student (and they didn't have cash machines, I cashed cheques)!

Back to the school where I spend the afternoon doing the translation and answering the questions.

Then we have a presentation on "Cities of Siberia". The teacher giving the talk has an excellent style. Not slow, but clear as a bell. Even though I can't understand it all, I can make out the words. After the presentation, I explain that two of my reasons for being interesting in the City of Tomsk. One is the name: it stands on the River Tom. The other means that I have try and explain "The Wombles" to the Russians! It got a few laughs anyway.

After the presentation, I went home by a new route. I took a photo of the roof-line.

At home, after tea, it was conjugating verbs.

Then write up the journal, and so, to bed.

First Real Day. And Locomotives.

2011-09-14T09:31:00.000-07:00

(Tueday 13th, written up on Wednesday 14th)

Beautiful autumn day. Here is the view from my window. On the way to school I saw a poster advertising an exhibition: "Siberia through Chinese Eyes".

This was the first day of real work. I don't know if something has gone wrong (or right), but I'm getting something more than I expected. I (thought I'd) booked group sessions with some additional tuition. What I seem to be getting now is individual attention. There is no escape! No hiding at the back while the class swat answers all the questions, or while the naughty student distracts the teacher. There is only me. It's relentless, but rather fun!

The morning was spent doing revision exercises. Revision of what I've covered, or maybe not covered, in other places:

What questioning words correspond to answers to which parts of a sentence (who, what, where, whither, what-kind-of...)
Plurals
Parts of the head (hair, eyes, nose, mouth...)
Parts of the body
Months and Seasons
Animals
Antonyms (North-South, Morning-Evening...)
Posessive pronouns (my, his, her, our, their...)
Choosing the correct question to elict something about an object or person (difficult to explain in English)
This and that (but for different genders: masculine/feminine/neuter)
Cardinal numbers

My head is spinning!

Then there is a load of homework to be done by tomorrow.

It's a beautiful day outside, so I decide to go on a trip, organised by the school to the "Transiberian Railway Museum". I uploaded the pictures yesterday. Only just managed after the homework. It was a terrific day: Metro trip (15 Ru = 40c), Mini-bus trip (35 Ru = .87c), Admission (200 Ru = 5 Eur), Bus-trip home (14 Ru = 35c). That's an afternoon out for 7 Euro.

By the way, "Euston we may have a problem here". A money problem. It's not that prices are higher than I expected, but the credit card I planned to use to get money doesn't seem to work, and the back-ups don't work either. Time to try plan's "C" and "D". No point in worrying yet.

The metro ride was what I expected: clean, efficient, fast. I will go back when I have more time.

The minibus ride to the Museum was exciting. The roads are busy.

The museum is just amazing. There were just the 3 of us: 2 students (including me) and our teacher/guide. The entrance is a the side of a busy road. Our teacher bought the tickets, but we paid.

Once inside there are loads of things to see. These are just a sample:

Impressive locomotives
Industrial equipment (reminding me of my time working for British Steel)
Snow clearing equipment
Soviet motor cars and trucks and tanks and tractors.
Wagons for carrying prisoners, or first class passengers
An "Elektrichka" local electric train
A maintenance wagon (can you spot the motorcycle engine to drive it?)
A metro train
Even refrigerated tanks for carrying wine. The were great to hear about but boring to look at, so no photo.

That was just a fraction of it. I expect any train-spotters are drooling. All you have to do is come here!

The ride home was exciting as well. A crowded bus in the rush hour!

From the bus terminal in Novosibirsk I decided to walk home. Partly to save money, partly because it was such a nice day and partly to explore a new bit of the city which I had seen from the internet. On the way home I passed an interesting looking church. Later research shows that it is dedicated to St Alexander Nevski.

Just when I thought I was safe, I get home to find that my landlady's boyfriend is visiting. While she cooks my tea, he tries to engage me in conversation. He is friendly and helpful. This is what I came here for, but boy is it hard work! I'm relieved when they go out.

Then it is time to do the homework, which takes almost all of the rest of the evening. There is only time to upload and annotate the photos.

And to bed.

First day at school

2011-09-12T06:07:00.001-07:00

(12th September, written same day)

I woke up this morning and found that I had overslept. Everyone else had gone to work. Raced to the office and got there just in time! Here's a picture of the outside of the office. The sign advertises offices and cellars to rent.

Today was hard work. There are three students in my group: A spanish lady, a french man and me. I'm the oldest, then the frenchman, then the spaniard. We started with some assessment tests and then moved on to a lesson where we listened to people introducing themselves and saying what they do. My homework is to list professions and where those people work (eg doctor in a hospital). Thankfully I've completed the homework already.

Even lunch was an adventure. The three of us went out to lunch. "A Frenchman, A Spaniard and A Scotsman went to lunch in Siberia" sounds like the introduction to a chauvanistic joke, but isn't. We each spent about 3 Euro for a meal in "Fork and Spoon" (a Russian cross between MacDonalds and a canteen) and then paid the same or more for a coffee/tea in "Coffee House" (which is equivalent to Starbucks). Confusing isn't it?

On the way home from the office I walked through Lenin Square. Novosibirsk still has Soviet names and Socialist Realist sculptures. The square has statues of "Soldiers", "Lenin" and "Workers". In the workers, the man is holding a flaming torch, and the woman is holding corn. I'm sure the symbolism is obvious to those who know. It seems to me to have something to do with industrial and agricultural workers but there may be other levels as well. After the square I pass a church which is the symbolic geographic centre of Russia. I'm not sure what it is called. It's very small. Its floor area would fit inside Christ Church in Feltham. I visited briefly yesterday and I'll pop in again when I have more time.

Just before I get home I pass an art gallery/museum which is advertising an exhibition of paintings by Salvador Dali. I'll try and visit that as well. I'm sure Dali would approve!

Finally, my flat is on the 2nd floor of one of a group of buildings looking out onto a courtyard. The Russians count floors with "1" on the "Ground". I will too while I'm here. You can see my bedroom window in the shade.

Welcome to Siberia - A tour of the city, the cat has a lucky escape and a visitor

2011-09-11T14:01:00.000-07:00

(11th September written up 12th September)

At 3 o'clock Diana, one of the school staff, came to the flat to take me on me "excursion" - tour of the city centre. I think the tour had three objectives:

to show me how to get to the school on Monday,
to show me some of "the sights" and give me landmarks
to informally assess my knowledge and skill with Russian.

It would be tedeous to describe exactly the route we took, or what I saw (especially if you do not have access to a map of Novosibirsk). Alyona's flat is about a mile south of the city centre. Diana and I set off north up Krasny Prospect ("Red Prospect", one of the main thoroughfares), towards Lenin Square. During the tour I saw: the school, one significant church, several cultural buildings, a Metro station and a couple of parks. As I expected, (based on what I saw) Novosibirsk is not an especially beautiful city. It contains some interesting and beautiful buildings, but most is functional, some stark or even a bit "brutal". The tour lasted an hour and a half. Diana returned me to the flat and we said goodbye until tomorrow.

Alyona and Gleb were out. My bed is a fold-away divan. I had converted it into its divan form before going out. It is covered with a loose sheet. I sat down, to type up some of these notes into my laptop, when to my surprise the sheet beside me moved! Moosa (the cat) was underneath the sheet. I was relieved that nothing bad had happened but quite amused. As there was nothing wrong, I went on with what I was doing, and left Moosa beneath the sheet (See the photo).

When Alyona came back, I told her what had nearly happened and showed her the bump. I deliberately used the word "Catastrophe" (which is almost exactly the same in Russian). She found this incident very funny, and said that she had a favourite movie (a British comedy of manners) where a woman accidentally sits on a small dog and kills it!

A little later, "Slava", a lady friend of Alyona's came to visit. I am introduced. We have tea together and they include me in some of the conversation. It is very hard work both for the guest and the host when you have limited command of the language, but we get by. One of the issues I have with Russian is that it is possible to change the meaning of some words by changing the stress. Naturally, I often put the stress in the wrong place! You mustn't do this sort of thing unless you are prepared to have people laugh at you (in a friendly way). I ask Alyona to tell Slava about the incident with Moosa. Slava finds it funny too. A little later, Alyona gets me, and herself, supper (roast chicken and macaroni). She has found the film she referred to on YouTube and we all watch the relevant clip together. I don't recognise the film, but it is very funny (even with the dialogue in Russian), and the entirely appropriate. I'm glad no harm came to Moosa, but the incident has certainly "broken the ice".

A little while later Alyona goes out and leaves me in the flat. I am left to tell Gleb to have chicken and macaroni for tea! I do my journal, revision and preparation and eventually go to be. I'm writing this at 3am because my body clock is still a bit haywire!

Welcome to Siberia

2011-09-11T13:52:00.000-07:00

(Sunday 11th written up in the afternoon)

I arrived at Novosibirsk-Tolemechevo airport at 5:40 local time. It was dark and wet. Once again there was a part of the airport where there were old aircraft (often with empty engine housings) awaiting dismantling. And also once again disembarkation was by bus. Of course, now there was no customs or immigration. As usual, I worried a little about whether my bag was going to emerge on the conveyor, especially when the conveyor stopped and it still hadn't appeared. The reassuring thing at that moment was the number of other people who were also waiting for their bags. The Russians have introduced one innovation that I hadn't come across before; as you leave the baggage reclaim room, there are security guards who check that you have the counterfoil for the bag you have claimed attached to your bourding card. If you do, they take it from you and let you pass. I don't know what they do, if you have a bag and no matching sticker.

Once I had emerged from baggage reclaim I had to find my taxi driver. He was standing behind the crowd of "touting for business" drivers and had a clear sign with my name (in Roman characters). We confirmed identities and he handed me a "welcome pack" from the school (probably more of that later). He was rather older than me, had a walking stick and obviously had "a gammy leg". Naturally, I pulled my own case. It's on wheels, and my cabin baggage is a small rucksac, so it was no trouble really, but I didn't expect him to have parked a few hundred metres from the airport building to avoid paying parking charges. It's a reasonable thing for him to have done, but with limited language in common, it was only when he got to the car that I understood what was happening. The drive to my new home was through the "Leninsky Rayon" which is an industrial area with a number of large factories. "Rayon" translates directly as "Region", but the usage in English implies a rather large area. For the Russian application, thinking "district" might be more appropriate.

We crossed the River Ob (which is really impressive) and turned into a residential district. After a couple of missed turns we found the group of buildings which contained my flat. Russian street addresses can be a little confusing because although the buildings are numbered, the buildings can be arranged around a square containing parking and other shared amenities, so on occassions you can see one number (and know you are in roughly the right place) but not see the number of the individual building you actually want. The main roads seem to be easier.

The driver spoke with my host on the phone, got me to the door of the building, got the host to open the door and then left me to climb the stairs to the flat (I don't blame him, even though it's only on the 2nd floor).

My host has left the front door open, and I came in to be greated by a friendly alsation, a black cat, and my host Alyona. Alyona lives with her son "Gleb", dog "Boosa" and cat "Moosa" in a flat about a mile from the centre of Novosibirsk. And that means, at least traditionally, the centre of Russia! I don't know if the flat is typical. It's small, but comfortable. You might find the layout strange (it is to my way of thinking). The rooms are multipurpose. For example, the washing machine is in the bathroom. I think my presence is responsible for some rearrangement of who sleeps where, but I'm not sure.

Alyona prepared me some breakfast; bread, tea, cheese and little salami sausages. After a little conversation I had a shower and went to bed. Alyona went back to bed too. I didn't see Gleb at this time but after all, it was 7am on Sunday! I didn't get up again until after 11:00 local time.

Once both Gleb and I were "up", Alyona made breakfast for us all: blini (pancakes), smetana (sour cream), tvorak (another semi-solid milk product, hard to describe, but good) and, of course, tea. Just like the hobbits, I had a second breakfast. I sorted out my clothes and things and then went for a walk "around the block". I really did stick to "round the block" too. I didn't want to get lost, especially before my orientation excursion later in the afternoon.

In transit: Heathrow, Moscow and Novosibirsk

2011-09-11T07:43:00.000-07:00

(Saturday 10th Sept - Written up Sunday 11th September 2011)

10:50 Settled at last! All right so far.

I had a poor night's sleep last night. I was plagued by the cat flea bites. I fear that I may take some of them with me to Russia. I wonder if they will count as illegal immigrants?

I got up earlier than I had planned to, but was itching so much that it seemed better to move around and do something to distract myself. That at least allowed me to do some surfing and send "I'm moving" eMails to Noreen and Exlinguo.

I was at the bus stop in Ashford in good time. Dave carried my rucksac out for me and waited until the 555 arrived. There was one other passenger who was going to Heathrow Central. She was on her way to the West Country. At Terminal 4 we "met" and Australian couple who unfortunately had missed their flight (back to Australia). They left us at the Ariel Hotel and seemed cheerful enough.

I had to look quite hard for the check-in desk. There are some new areas in Terminal 1 and Transaero is in "K", which is one of the new areas. The queue was full of Russian schoolchildren going home from an English course at "Harrow House" in Swanage. I exchanged a few words with the (english) representative. He said that this was him finishing for the year. These were all departures and that typically he had 200 to deal with! I guess that must be "inbound" plus "outbound", but I'm not sure.

Checkin went OK. There was no problem with the weight of my bag. Transaero seem to have a code-share with BMI (British Midland) (UN444 = BD2901). I think that the check-in staff are BMI (or BMI outsourced) as well. Security was the usual irritation, but no problems and I was through by 10:30. One minor annoyance is that I will have to retrieve my bag and clear customs in Moscow. Still, maybe that will make Novosibirsk easier.

Since passing security; I've bought whisky, water, and sent a confirmation text to Dave. I'm waiting for the Gate number to come up. There seem to be a number of British wheelchair athletes in the lounge. I don't know if this is anything to do with the (para) olympics or not.

14:00plus

My flight departed from gate 5(d?). It was delayed by 30 minutes due to a delay to the inbound flight. The aircraft is a very new 737 _800_. I noted that it has very large upswept winglets. The flight is pretty full. I heard one Irish voice nearby but did not speak to him. Service from the cabin crew is very good. Certainly not the old Aeroflot stereotype. We were offered sweets for take-off and landing. Drink and the choice of two meals (Fish and rice or chicken and pasta), with a glass (plastic beaker) of wine if you wanted it. I chose the chicken. It came with a pickle starter and a carrot and something spiced side dish. It was all quite decent, if a bit on the small side. Aircraft made up time and landed on at the orignal scheduled arrival time.

The flight was uneventful. Arrived in Domodedovo through low cloud. There was steady rain and the temperature was rather warm.

Taxiing would have been a planespotter's dream! There is an area of apron where superannuated aircraft are waiting to be scrapped. There were lots of models I recognised (even if I can't name them) and plenty more I didn't. Ages ranged from Soviet era, to much more recent and included at least one 747. The airport stands were the same with airlines and aircraft I did not recognise.

Disembarkation is via a bus. I've been warned that I have to clear emigration, collect my bag, clear customs, check in again and clear security to go airside again (I hope everyone was following that). It makes sense, because Russia has many regional airports which are never going to justify having immigration and customs.

Immigration was a long queue. When eventually I got to the head of the queue, I didn't like the way the officer seemed to be picking at the visa with her nail. She referred it, and me to her supervisor, but it was all right in the end.

Baggage collection was the usual cause for mild concern as I wondered whether my bag was going to imerge, but the bag was there in the end.

Customs was straight through the green channel.

I had to be careful not to go outside the terminal building and had to fend off the taxi drivers who were gathered touting for trade. Once I was back at a check-in area, I had to find the appropriate check-in desk. Signage was good and I had no problems. There was a reasonable queue at check-in, and I was fortunate that the young man at the one I chose spoke English. He gave me clear instructions where to go. I had no problem identifying the gate I needed using the screens which alternate between English and Russian (or at least Roman and Russian). The signage is mostly bi-lingual. Security was ok. With the immigration etc, I had forgotten that I had put my duty free whisky into my rucksac. Security detected this as liquid, but once identified as duty-free (in a still sealed duty free bag) this wasn't a problem. I expect they get absent minded people like me all the time. One good thing regarding security (at least at Domodedovo) is that the Russians have seats before and after security, bins for you to dump bottles of water in and supply little plastic booties to wear after you have taken your shoes off!

Gate change. Board via bus.

This time time the aircraft is a much older 737-500 with no winglets. The furnishing of the aircraft is the same (except for the signage) as the 737s on the LHR ORK route. This is hardly surprising.

The trip was uneventful. Once again the food was surprisingly good. Choice of beef goulash or chicken something. I had the beef.

During the trip I spent some time looking out of the window. I noticed from time to time there would be what seemed to be a bright flash on the ground which slowly subsided. It took me a time to realise that this was in fact the full moon being reflected in water (not sure if it was lakes or rivers) on the ground, and then being obscured by the clouds. It was a strange and rather beautiful sight.

Ready for the off?

2011-09-09T04:03:00.000-07:00

(9th September 2011)

I hope I am. The bag is repacked and reweighed. I am close to the limit but not over it, and there are a few heavy items which can be moved to hand luggage if that is necessary. I'm just off now to get something to put in sandwichs for tomorrow.

Sandwich material has been purchased, as has a tube of ointment for insect bites. I've been eaten by cat fleas!

The Welshman, the guitarist and the ambulance driver

2011-09-09T04:01:00.000-07:00

(Wednesday 7th Sept, written up Friday 9th Sept)

Gosh, that was a laugh! Impromptu jam session at "The Shoes". Guitar courtesy of Jason was good (maybe even great), my part of the singing was poor (though I did contribute to the lyrics), the other singing was ok. Good humour and good craic! Not at all what I expected.

The evening started predicatably enough with me calling on friends who now live in a house where I used to live. Once again, nice to just chatter. Again, predictably, Colin and I wandered down to The Shoes. The place was almost empty, but eventuall we became embroiled in the music. Silly and fun!

Arrivals and Departures, visiting and teeth

2011-09-09T04:00:00.000-07:00

(Written on 9th September 2011)

I've had a pleasant week in Ashford. Most of the time has been spent relaxing and meeting friends. I've seen some people in their homes and others I've met in the Pub, or at Church.

Starting from the beginning:

I arrived early morning on Saturday (3rd Sept). I did very little during the day, except doze. The bus may be an effective and economical means of transport, but sleep on the bus does not seem to satisfy the body. I'm not sure if it is because the sleep is constantly being disturbed, or because the body is cramped, although I usually sleep at least some of the time, I always feel tired afterwards.

On Saturday evening I arranged to meet some of my friends at The George in Staines. A good time was had by all!

On Sunday (4th Sept) morning, I took the bus from Ashford to Feltham. I had breakfast in Jenny's. I probably shouldn't have had the "English Breakfast" but I used the excuse that I was on holiday and I certainly enjoyed it. After that, it was time for Church.

At Christ Church it was a Worship-group service. I enjoyed that, and I enjoyed meeting the other members of the congregation. I made a point of introducing myself as a visitor! I wonder if I will manage to go to church when I am in Siberia? So far, I have identified one church (cathedral) in the centre of the city.

Caz arrived from Belfast today, en-route to Slovakia. She leaves on Wednesday, so I've let her have the spare bed and, for the days she is here, I get the sofa.

Monday (5th Sept), I set of early for the Dentist! The detached crown had been preying on my mind and I wanted to get it fixed if at all possible.The dentistry proved to be a very simple undertaking. The Dentist still had my records, fitted me into the schedule and cemented the crown back. I left after three-quarters of an hour with a replaced crown, a strange taste in my mouth and a slightly lighter wallet.

I phoned my old next door neighbour to see that he was in. I called on him. He is okay I suppose, but the years are obviously taking their toll. I was surprised and pleased to find that my old tenants had cleared his front garden for him. It's only a small thing, but certainly to their credit.

In the evening I went to visit friends in Brentford. I had a really nice time. It is good to meet up like that. I wish there were more opportunities to do it.

Tuesday (6th Sept), the "task of the day", was to go into town and meet up with Dick near Waterloo. Another pleasant afternoon. In the afternoon I went to the quiz at The Shoes. I'm not sure how much of a contribution I made to my team.

The interminable journey from Cork to London!

2011-09-07T09:50:00.000-07:00

(Written 2nd September 2011)

Some random comments in my notes have been included in brackets (), some is just a record of where we stopped, and some is a bit stream of consciousness.

Sitting on the bus to London in Cork. It is due to depart in 25 mins. The case is in the hold, the sleeping bag is at my feet and the rucksac is under my elbow. The bus is not very full (yet?), so why have the couple with two small children, one of whom is ordering his mother about in a shrill voice, decided to sit in the block of 4 seats across the aisle from me? Never mind; deafness has advantages. I will switch him off later. I will also loosen my boots.

The day so far has been eventful. Everything was sorted and the case, bags and coat were at the door. I had a sandwich for lunch and... found a hard bit in my mouth. A crown had come off. With less than an hour to go there was no prospect of getting it fixed in Ireland, so I will pop in to see my old dentist in Feltham next week.

The taxi arrived exactly on time. Got to Mallow in good time. It's funny how people talk to you in the bus queue. Anyway, the bus turned up. I thought it was a bit early but it said "Cork" on the front, and the bus driver was happy with my ticket, so I got on. A little while later I was sorry that I did, but I'm not now. I'd got on the "stopping bus" (241?) and I was booked on the express. I still arrived ahead of the express but I was worried for a while. I had a real tour of the back roads north of Cork, taking in Whitechurch and a couple of stops I couldn't really identify as places, like "The Log Cabin" pub. Still, everything is fine now.

Engine running.

Looks like there are 11 or 12 people on the bus. I recognise the driver from a previous trip.

We're off! Just ahead of scheduled departure at 16:00.

Middleton 16:25 +2 passengers
Youghal 17:05 + new driver

Interesting looking old fashioned town.
Tidal mud flats
Ghosts of rivers
Creeks
Ruined jetties, tidal inlets
Estuaries
Narrow entrance leading to open seas.

Dungarvan 17:32 +3 passengers, yotty haven

Angelus on radio at 18:00

Waterford 18:27 +19 or 20 passengers. Change driver.

(Pub names: The case is altered, The ballot box, The struggling monkey)

Waterford has an interesting quayside if there are good ships or boats in. Today there is one square rigger (jst.org.uk) registered in Southampton.

Leave Waterford at 18:30.

(write down location "4th row, Right-hand-side, window" to remind myself when I get off the bus)

New Ross 19:03 +2 passengers
Wexford 19:37 no change

Castle, seaside

("freedom from the occupier")

Rosslaire arrive 20:01 +1 passenger, -1 passenger, no net change

Bits of the town look like they are struggling a bit.

I now have a boarding card in the name of "Mr Eurolines". At least he is an adult male!

Due to sail @ 20:45
Moving on board 20:22

(Broken windows plugged with rags and newspapers)

(Saturday 3rd September)

Pembroke dock 00:55

Non-event. No Customs or passport check.

In motion 01:16am
Kilgetty wales +1 passenger
Carmarthen 02:02 +3 passengers
M4 02:26
? (not Newport) Services 03:10
Leave 03:30
Cardiff Gate 03:45 -2 passengers
Bristol 04:24 -1 passenger

Leigh Delamere 04:57 - 05:25
Reading 06:23

Marble Arch "Arch to Arc" Cycle race
Victoria 07:25

08:00 Bus back to Heathrow (and it's going on to Penzance!)
08:55 555 bus to Dave's
Arrived safely in Ashford at 09:30.

Ticking things off the list

2011-08-31T10:15:00.000-07:00

And "the phone call" came and went. One more thing sorted. All the scanning I'm going to do has been done (I think). Going to run a back-up (remember those?) on the PC. The list is definitely getting shorter! :-)

My daughters are doing "The Merchant of Venice" in English. Reading through it last night, this speach by Portia caught my eye:
"...The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree; such a hare is madness the youth to skip o'er the meshes of good counsel the cripple..."

Background for the forthcoming trip to Siberia

2011-08-29T13:18:00.000-07:00

History and Geography

Novosibirsk is the 3rd largest city in Russia. It has a population of 1.5 million. That makes it a little bigger than Dublin and a little smaller than Birmingham.

Novosibirsk was founded in 1896 at the point where the Trans-Siberian Railway would cross the River Ob. It was originally called Novonikolayevsk in honour of both Saint Nicholas and Tsar Nicholas II. At first the town grew rapidly. Following the Russian revolution in 1917 there was a period of great instability. The town suffered a great deal during the Russian Civil war (1917-1923). There were epidemics and for a while the population declined. In 1926 the town was renamed Novosibirsk (New Siberian City).

Novosibirsk underwent a period of rapid expansion on either side of what we call the Second World War, and the Russians call the Great Patriotic War. The town was not directly involved in the fighting, but became home to heavy industry and many refugees from the war.

Modern Novosibirsk is still growing rapidly. Some of the residents discribe it as "Chicago of Siberia". It is a modern industrial city. It has skyscrapers, a metro and a well-developed public transport system.

Why Am I doing this?

I learned Russian Feltham School (what is now Feltham Community College). Over the years I continued to be interested in the language and the country. Now that I have time, I have been improving my Russian, but had reached the stage when living in the country for a while seemed the most effective way of making further progress.

I chose Novosibirsk precisely because it is not a tourist destination. It has a language school, but relatively few people there speak English. It is also somewhat cheaper than Moscow or St Petersburg. Further reasons for choosing Novosibirsk were the romance of going to Siberia and the opportunity to visit some nearby places like Academgorodok (Academy Town).

How am I going to get there?

I am going to fly from Heathrow (T1) to Moscow (Domededovo), change planes and fly to Novosibirsk (OVB). The code makes more sense when you know that the airport is actually in the town of "Ob" (same name as the river).

Status Report

2011-08-26T12:57:00.000-07:00

The tax return is completed and posted

The bus ticket is bought
The bag is trial packed and weighed
The taxi is organised and costed but not actually booked yet

I've tried out the photograph features in Facebook, so here's a link to confirm that I can put a link back from here to Facebook. So here is Tiny the Rabbit

Forms and loops

2011-08-24T00:27:00.000-07:00

My Plan for the day

The sun is shining. Laundry day today. And send off the passport forms. And complete a Tax form. And drop the twins at a friend's house (farm) for a last day of real freedom. And re-weigh and re-pack luggage. Want to get the weight down further and will sacrifice shirts for text-books (and I'm cutting down on them!). And, and, and... Energising and fun! :-)

Loops:

Last night I showed the children how to make Mobius loops, draw lines round them and cut them down the middle. They're bright enough not to take it at face value. I don't think I've had such good value out of two sheets of A4 and two pens for a long while!

I announced this to the world on Facebook and to my surprise, some people were interested. The interest turned into a "stream of consciousness" exchange which I thought I would edit into something a bit more coherent here.

"Mobius loops" are much easier to make than explain. Take an A4 sheet of paper and cut it half length-ways. Tape the 2 pieces end to end so you have a long strip. Now give one end a half twist, loop it round and tape it to the other end. You now have a twisted ring. This is a Mobius loop. Now the fun starts. Place it on the table and draw a line round the middle of ONLY THE INSIDE of the loop (like the dotted line in the middle of the road. You may be surprised by what happens! Now, take a pair of scissors and cut along the line you've just drawn. You may be surprised again. Now repeat the last two steps; line (if you want to), and cut (essential). You may be surprised yet again! Try it yourself. This involves weird mathematics and even has practical applications, but most important, is just fun! Has been used to entertain; small ones, teenagers (my two) and middle-aged men (me). Ever so simple. Seems like magic, even/especially when you are doing it yourself. See the picture here.

Everyone seems to find them truly amazing. Found another surprise... Try this: Make your loop. Draw the line in the middle "round the inside". DON'T cut! Remind them, or ask them what happened last time. Now draw a second line, between the middle line and an outside edge. Get them to examine what they've done. Now cut around the second line. Surprise! When they've got over that, draw a line around the second loop and cut along that. Surprise! How did that happen? You're right. Perfect for a wet day anywhere. All you need is paper (and not much of that), sellotape, scissors and a pen. The trick is to get "them" to do the work. To start off with, they think they are doing something wrong (especially when I say "I told you to draw the line on one side only!"). Have fun!

This is an activity for all ages. Well worth trying it out by yourself, even if you are an adult. Perfect for an evening with half and eye on the TV. They really are amazing. And so simple. The explanations are much more difficult than the actual doing. Some of the time it actually FEELs like you're doing magic. I know what I'm doing and still don't really understand what I get!

Banks, bills and passports

2011-08-19T04:26:00.001-07:00

Today was an admin day. The plan was to start with arranging to move a bank account, then move on sorting out passport applications for the children, and finally clear some minor action items from my eMail inbox. As things turned out, I have been pretty successful.

Moving the bank account turned out to be straightforward. In the end all it really amounted to was signing a form. This was made just a little more complicated by me having to provide a copy of my passport which had been certified as a "true copy".

My daughters passports will run out in the not too distant future. The forthcoming trip to Russia has prompted us to check various bits of documentation, and we found that it was time to renew them. Since some recent (2008) changes in the legislation, applying for a passport has become more complicated. I think the objective is to prevent fraudulent applications.

Filling in the forms (one for each daughter) took a little while. And once the forms had been completed all four off us had to go to the Garda (Police) Station, to get the forms witnessed.

Each passport application requires: a signature from each of the parents so say they don't mind the child having a passport. Each of these signatures has to be witnessed by the Garda. Presumably, this is to stop one of the parents taking the children without the other's knowledge. Then the applicant has to sign the application and the Garda has to sign that. And the Garda has to write application numbers on the back of the photographs, and sign them as well. And the Garda has to log this whole palaver in a book. Bear in mind this all has to be done twice, and we are all being careful that we don't accidentally mix up the photos and application forms of identical twins. I think the lot of us, parents, children and garda were a bit frazzled. I don't think Irish policewomen (or men) are all that keen on passport applications, and I think they are entitled not to be.

In between filling in the forms and the trip to the Garda Station, I did a little ironing. I don't do much ironing, but I did some today. I've literally been laundering money (in a legal way). I needed a few single dollar bills (good old greenbacks) for emergencies on the trip. The ones the bank supplied me with were really scruffy, so I've ironed them. They're much better now. It was a surreal but strangely satisfying experience.

I addition to all this, I reduced the number of items in my inbox. So, progress on all fronts. The passport forms will be posted tomorrow.

My heart is all a flutter

2011-08-18T08:47:00.000-07:00

Heart all a flutter! No, not A Level results. My Russian visa arrived this morning. It is quite different to the last one I had many years ago. It takes up a full page in my passport and includes a big holographic stamp.

That means I am definitely fully committed now. I still have a few things to do before I am ready to depart. One of the vital ones is to arrange transport for the first leg of the trip, from Cork to London. I think I will travel Eurolines, it's cheap, I have the time and somehow it seems appropriate. I will break my journey for about a week in London. It will be an opportunity to adjust my body clock and see friends.

I shall be in Siberia from 2nd week in September for 4 weeks. I shall start travelling at the beginning of September, because of the visiting in London. Novosibirsk (which is where I'm going) is about as far from the sea as it is humanly possible to get. I've see pictures of road signs showing distances of nearly 3000km! Find India on a map of the world, head north. when you reach the middle of Russia, stop! That's where Novosibirsk is, give or take a 1000 miles.

I've exchanged "progress all right so far" notes with the people in Russia, and spent part of the day buying pills and potions for the trip. I'll settle down and do things in a more organised way tomorrow.

Seek and ye shall find

2011-08-09T12:34:00.000-07:00

One of my jobs today was trimming the hedge. This is quite a task. Fortunately I have an effective petrol hedge trimmer which is up to the task (even if I may not be!).

Anyway, part way into the job quite suddenly the handle on the trimmer felt "peculiar". After stopping the engine, a short inspection revealed that a screw had fallen out and that the handle was now well and truly loose. The trimmer was now dangerous to use. My how I cursed!

Before I went to the bit box, I decided to have a look around on the off chance that I would find the missing screw. And... fortunately I found it. So, the proper screw is fitted. It and its mate have been tightened. The hedge has been trimmed. And I have learned that I need to do more than a visual inspection of the hedge trimmer each time I put it away (and get it out to use it).

No harm done, and a nice optimistic story.

Floor heave and rising from the dead!

2011-08-09T12:21:00.000-07:00

(Mass was on Saturday 6th August 2011)

I attended mass on Saturday evening and heard, and saw, the most extraordinary thing.

In the announcements, the Priest announced that there had been a problem with "floor heave" and that the baptistry (a part of the church to one side of the alter, where the font is located) was now out of bounds. It is expected to remain so for some time.

After the service, naturally a lot of the congregation went up to have a closer look at what had been described to us. What we saw was quite astonishing. The effected area of the floor was a rectangle at least a metre wide and a little longer. It had risen several inches above the normal floor level. On of the younger lads said it looked like "someone had been trying to rise from the dead". I think he can be forgiven the blasphemy, because that is exactly what it did look like.

The area in question is floored with quarry tiles. They have been arranged in a geometric pattern. The upheaval has broken quite a number of them. That's right - has broken thick quarry tiles. Some of the other members told me that this had happened during the week when a service had been in progress and that the noise (of the tiles breaking) had been frightening. I can quite believe it.

All I can say is, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would find it hard to believe.

The visa is on its way

2011-07-31T10:16:00.000-07:00

I've been told by the agent that my visa is on its way and should be with me by 17th August. I'm going to delay buying the bus tickets until a little closer to the date.

In the meanwhile, I have found something interesting which might turn into a different job. I will find out more on Wednesday. There is a slight problem in the the "new job" and the "Trip to Russia" overlap a bit. Still, these problems are there to be dealt with. Should be fun anyway.

Applying for a visa can be stressful

2011-07-26T01:01:00.000-07:00

I definitely committed now.

Main booking: I've transferred the money to "the Russians" in Siberia. That makes it pretty difficult for me to back out. It means that I have lessons and accommodation for a month.

Transport: The instructions for applying for a Russian Visa say that I should not book my flights until I have a visa. On the other hand, the requirements for applying for a visa say that I need to have a fixed itinerary (that means airline tickets). Anybody spot the circular argument here? As usual, the answer is to take the risk oneself and pay the money, so I've bought the plane tickets; Heathrow to Moscow Domodedovo to Novosibirsk (LHR --> DME --> OVB). I'm flying InterAvia all the way, so at least I'm not changing carriers, there is plenty of time for the change, and the change all in the same airport, which is the most modern of Moscow's several airports. In for a penny, in for several pounds!

Visa: Always a bit of a challenge. In my case things are complicated a little by being a UK citizen who doesn't live in the UK. Things are also complicated by me not having a regular job. However, with a bit of help from an "agent" and a certain amount of original documentation, I think I have surmounted that obstacle. I hope I will know shortly because I sent the documents, the application forms and my passport registered post yesterday. If things work as I hope, then I should have the passport and visa back in a couple of weeks. It will be all right if it takes a little longer, but I will be biting my fingernails!

The only thing left to do, apart from pack my bags, is organise transport from Ireland to Heathrow. I expect I will use my old friend Eurolines (cheap, and effective but interminable) and stay for a few days in the area to catch my breath.

I think I'm off to Russia - A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

2011-06-23T04:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm really off. Forgot to complete and post this entry, originally dated 23rd June 2011.

Agatha Christie on "sociopaths"

2011-05-06T00:29:00.000-07:00

More from Agatha Christie's autobiography. Of course, she doesn't use the word "sociopath" (or "psychopath" , or "personality disorder"), but I think that is what she is referring to:

Let us face the thought that what we regard as defects were once qualities. Without ruthlessness, without cruelty, without a complete lack of mercy, perhaps man would not have continued to exist; he would have been wiped out quite soon. The evil man nowadays may be the successful man of the past, He was necessary then, but he is not necessary and is a danger now.

(Christie, Agatha; An Autobiography, Collins, 1977, isbn 0-00-0-216012-9 p439 )

There is much she says which I don't agree with, or is debatable, but she is thought provoking.

"Point of view" from Agatha Christie

2011-04-30T02:41:00.000-07:00

Agatha Christie was, and is, an extremely successful writer. Few would argue that she had a certain amount of insight into the behaviour of humanity, even if it was the behaviour of a particular class of people.

I was surprised to come across the following passage in her autobiography:

Point of view. The point of view of a child. We all knew it once but we've travelled so far away from it that it's difficult to get back there again. I remember seeing my own grandson Mathew when he must have been, I suppose, about two and a half. He did not know I was there. I was watching him from the top of the stairs. He walked very carefully down the stairs. He was muttering to himself, saying: 'This is Mathew going down stairs. This is Mathew. Mathew is going down stairs. This is Mathew going down stairs.'

I wonder if we all start life thinking of ourselves, as soon as we can think of ourselves at all, as a separate person, as it were, from the one observing. Did I say to myself once, 'This is Agatha in her party sash going down to the dining-room.' It is as though the body in which we have found our spirit lodged is at first strange to us. An entity, we know its name, we are on terms with it, but are not as yet identified fully with it. We are Agatha going for a walk, Mathew going down stairs. We see ourselves rather than _feel_ ourselves.

And then one day the next stage of life happens. Suddenly it is no longer 'This is Mathew going down stairs.' Suddenly it has become _I_ am going down stairs. The achievement of 'I' is the first step in the progress of a personal life.

(Christie, Agatha; An Autobiography, Collins, 1977, isbn 0-00-0-216012-9 p65 )

I am surprised, because of the insight I think it shows. I won't attempt to relate it to any of the theories of child development or the human psyche, I think that would be to miss the point. Christie says:

"The achievement of 'I' is the first step in the progress of a personal life."

and I think she has a point.

I wonder if the next steps are:

"Becoming aware of 'I' and assessing its behaviour and it's effect on others"
"Taking conscious steps to influence how 'I' think and behave."

It's amazing where one can find insights! Maybe regaining the "child" point of view has even more point than I thought?

"Communication is a problem to be answered"

2011-04-23T03:17:00.000-07:00

and I'm sure 10cc were right, even if they didn't mean communications between computers!

Noreen bought a new laptop yesterday. Ironically enough, it was purchased because the old one had a faulty wireless adapter and had a problem somewhere in the comms software stack. Being old, it seemed like it was better value to replace it (and get all her data streamed across) than spend more money on a 4 year old machine.

Connecting it to the router was no problem (enter the "key" and that was it). Connecting to eMail was no problem either (having all the details in a "little black book" helps. And if anyone wonders, isn't black, it isn't a book, and I'm not going to tell you what it is, where it is or what else it contains!). I noticed that the wireless connection "dropped" once, but put it down to gremlins. Connecting to the existing wireless printer proved much more of a problem. The instructions say that I may have a problem with the firewall. Well, that may be so, but I disabled it for the installation. I also noticed that the wireless connection is "dropping" quite a lot.

Yesterday evening, Noreen and the girls were using the internet on the new machine. Everything works well, when it works which isn't all the time. The signal strength is reported as varying from "Good" down to "Poor". Other things (like this laptop) connected to the same router have no problems. I guess it's back to Anthony, the fellow who supplied the laptop, on Tuesday, after the break.

Setting up eMail accounts - capchas

2011-04-20T08:11:00.000-07:00

I've just finished helping my wife set up some eMail accounts. Well, I did one and she did two after I had shown her. Such a simple task, but a little tedious. I'm glad I don't have to do loads of them. And of course, it's made that bit more tricky by having a "capcha" in the middle to prevent bots from creating loads of accounts automatically. I understand the need for them, but I do find them irritating. My character recognition doesn't always agree with the machines!

Cleaning, exam marking and contemplation

2011-04-18T08:02:00.000-07:00

The two tasks today have been spring-cleaning and marking exams.

Spring cleaning is something that we do traditionally at this time of the year. It's a chore, but it can be fun. It's important to realise that things are scruffy and that clearing them up is a good thing.

Marking exams was just one of those things which needs to be done. It earns an honest shilling and I'm good at it (though I do get bored).

And contemplation... it's a beautiful day. I think I will go for a longish walk this evening. I've also realised that some pent-up anger I was feeling towards some people really served no useful purpose. Unfortunately, it was being angry about something else that made me realise this. Anger is such a useless emotion (except perhaps when it leads to immediate action). I'm not saying I've got rid of the feelings, but I think I am on the way to disposing of them.

A new affirmation

2011-03-25T16:36:00.001-07:00

I don't know why, but I decided to change my "affirmation". The new one is:

I am:

Competent,
Confident,
Successful,
Achieving my goals,
And Happy.

Part of a New Year's resolution achieved - That's satisfying!

2011-01-26T05:50:00.000-08:00

The last year has been very disrupted for me. I changed (or lost) as job and have moved house (country). As a result of "the move" I still have lots of possessions (mostly books and papers) in storage boxes. This in itself is not really a bad thing, but it has created an opportunity for me to put-off some administrative work that I really should have done.

At the same time, I've taken up improving my Russian. I already had a number of textbooks, and I found (or rather didn't find) that the Russian-English dicitionary I wanted was in one of the boxes I had not unpacked. In a funny indirect way, that was the trigger for me to start sorting out the accumulated admin work.

Once I had started I found the task, that I had probably been avoiding, went more quickly and more easilly than I had been expecting. The apparent volume of the papers shrunk when I removed the envelopes and unfolded the papers. The actual sorting took relatively little time.

It was at this point that a little serendipity crept in. I went to the computer to print out the manifest which lists the contents of all the boxes (in a basic sort of way) and noticed that one of the three boxes standing next to it said "Russian" on the label. Sure enough, the Russian dictionary was in there! I printed the manifest anyway, I expect I'll need it in the next few days.

None of this was a "New Year's Resolution", but it was all on my "List of things to do". All in all quite satisfactory!

Learning a new language - Russian

2011-01-18T01:36:00.000-08:00

Part of my New Year's resolutions - write something in the diary every day. This is a start.

For the past week I've been warming up my Russian. It's years since I used it at all, and I was expecting to get nowhere. Actually I've been pleasantly surprised. Bits are coming back to me, and not just the numbers and standard phrases that everyone seems to remember. I'm remembering the patterns for the regular verbs.

The thing I find most difficult, is listening to people speaking Russian. I have some software which has a good number of examples. I expect (hope) that the producers used native speakers. Anyway, that's the bit I find hardest. I seem to be making progress. It's as sort of "tuning in" process. My hearing or understanding is becoming more attuned to listening to Russian.

And for the rest of the day, I have some ECDL (European Computer Driving License) scripts to mark. This has been delayed a little because there was a mix-up with the exam papers and the CD containing what the students had done. I was given the wrong CD, and so had nothing to mark. Still, no harm done and it shouldn't take me too long to work through them.

Outside the sun is shining, and reflecting off the frost on the grass. A bright, pleasant day. I may take some of it off to go for a walk.

Does it get any better than this? - Count your curses!

2010-07-21T12:50:00.000-07:00

(Written off-line on 3rd July 2010 and added after the event.)

Hint. Only do this if you are feeling pretty confident already!

Today is the first, or maybe the second (depending count) day of my holiday this year. Some things have gone well. Some things have gone less well. It's 11 o'clock in the evening, and I thought I would review the day. Being in a slightly perverse frame of mind, I thought I would look at the things that are not as I would wish them to be:
1) The lock on the tail-gate of my newly purchased car is not working as it should. This gave me an unpleasant surprise when I found it would not remain closed, never mind lock!
2) We arrived too early at the holiday cottage we had booked.
3) When we eventually got in: we found that the cottage does not have a microwave in the kitchen.
4) ... in some places the beams are so low that my head brushes them (and I'm not over average height).
5) The batteries in both my hearing aids decide to give out when I was out this evening.
6) The vilage has only three pubs!
There, I've got that off my chest. It's a reasonably short list...

Let's address them one my one...
1) This is a nuisance, but within a few minutes of realising that there was a problem, I had identified a temporary work-around. A few minutes later, my host had shown me how to make the lock work for the duration of my holiday. The problem can be fixed when I get back to base and I talk with the people who supplied me with the car. (and it isn't a problem they would have known about anyway.)
2) ... so we went and had a look at Cardigan, which is a wonderful town. My wife did some "essentials" shopping and I found two interesting places to eat while she was doing that.
3) ... so we'll (maybe even I'll) have to re-learn how to cook!
4) ... and it oozes character. My wife thinks it is marvelous, and so do I!
5) ... and I've just changed them ...
6) ... and there isn't a dud among them. In fact, it was a quiet night (odd for a Saturday) so I was able to talk with some of the locals. The beer is good too.

Now on the positive side:
*) The village (Cilgerran) has several things which I find really pleasant: It has a castle (pictures, more pictures), and I took a walk down by the river, and then I persuaded the family to come down there as well.
*) The cottage is growing on me already. I shall spend a little time working out how it has developed over the years. Definitely 100 years old, the question is how much more?
*) The garden is great...
*) ...and there are bats! Great!
*) ...and the pubs are really, REALLY good (if you want a quiet drink).
*) ...and there are Ordnance survey maps of the area in the cottage
So I'm really looking forward to tomorrow!

Q: Does it get any better than this? A: It could, but not much.

Postcard:
Hope you are well. Having great time in Wales. Love, OB!

The Batchelor, the Chinaman and the Solicitor...

2010-06-28T15:25:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of jokes which start out "An Englishman, Irishman and a Scotsman were..." (you can substitute other nations if you wish). This evening I set out to walk down to the town and watch the second half of the Brazil versus Chile match in the pub. Even before the half-time whistle blew, it seemed fairly clear that Brazil were in control, so I set off a little before half-time itself.

Walking along the road, I noticed that the front door of the house of one of my neighbours was open. I hadn't seen him for a while (not since before Christmas, I think), so I called in. Anyway, a glass of whiskey, a bit of conversation, and an re-introduction to his one-eyed cat and her kittens later, I was on my way. (He's the batchelor, by the way)

It's a fair walk down to the town, so the second half and started by the time I got to the pub. The place wasn't busy, so I bought my pint, pulled up a stool and started to watch the match. A little later a new fella came in. Obviously "not from round here", but equally obviously well known. He was given a packet of crisps, without him asking and he too sat down to watch the match. I'm not sure, but I think he has something to do with the Chinese Restaraunt a couple of doors along. (...the Chinaman...)

Once the game was finished, with the expected win for Brazil, the Chinaman left, I finished my pint and so did I. It seemed a bit early to finish the evening, so I decide to have one more in the wine bar on the way home. The place was empty except for the barman, a man I'll choose to describe as "The Solicitor" and me. The Solicitor was finishing his evening mean before going home.

There's no "story" to this. No punch line. But it is rather nice to see people who catch your eye in the evening. I wonder if they noticed me? Possibly not, but then it doesn't matter all that much either way.

Does it get better than this?

2010-06-26T14:55:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe not. I'm sure I have been much more excited, but right now I feel very peaceful.

In the last couple of weeks I've completed a pretty substantial change in my life. I think most people would describe moving ones home from one country to another "substantial change"! I feel much less unsettled than I expected. The weather since I arrived has been unexpectedly settled and hot... and then this evening it rained briefly. The air smells fresh and green with that "after the rain" smell.

The sun has set. I'm sure I saw a bat flit across my field of vision a few moments ago. It's often hard to me sure with bats. They have a peculiar ephemeral property. There are clouds in the sky and from time to time the (full) moon is revealed, and then hidden.

The past seems to have faded, and be fading further. Right now I'm going back to reading my book (News from Tartary), a great travel book, by an interesting man, also describing an intersting woman.

New week, new country, new life...

2010-06-15T01:44:00.000-07:00

Between Friday and Saturday I moved from one country to another. Immigration takes time you know! By some standards it wasn't such a large move, from England to Ireland, but for me it is a big thing. There is no "going back" any more, because there isn't really anywhere to go back to. The feeling is unsettling, but also exciting.

I'm very fond of the book The man who planted trees, and here is an article which suggests that the idea improves lives in the real world as well.
BBC: How fruit trees in India save girls' lives

Magic and magicians

2010-01-02T07:11:00.000-08:00

Arthur C. Clarke is quoted as saying: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Some people think I'm a magician; I make things they don't understand work. I was reminded of this just after Christmas when I watched a toddler trying to make sense of a simple radio controlled car. He understood the "forwards" and "backwards" bit, but getting it to turn left and right was beyond him. Of course, once it disappeared from sight under a chair, then it became even more confusing! He seemed impressed when I could direct it to do what I wanted, but in the end he didn't get as much from the toy as we would have hoped.

Anyway, all of this got me thinking. Thus far, I've spent a lot of my working time specifying, designing and fixing computer systems. Often I concluded that the people who were my customers didn't really understand what they were asking for, and certainly didn't understand the characteristics or limitations of the computers on which "the thingy" was going to work. More recently I have found myself simply explaining how to use very common applications (Word processors, spreadsheets, that sort of thing). A problem when you're cast as "magician" is: how do you explain that something is difficult, or impossible, or that there is a better way of doing something? After all, "magic is magic"! Surely as a magician all I should have to do is tell them the right incantation and everything should work, even if they are pushing a spreadsheet to do more than it should (the use of spreadsheets as "trackers" and replacements for small, or even large, databases seems to be a situation where this happens quite a lot). An odd by-product of this, is that it can put the ignorant, or the outright charlatan at an advantage - all they have to do is say "yes" and then avoid actually explaining how to do it! Hmm, must think about his a little more.

Different precipitation(s)

2009-12-30T02:27:00.000-08:00

The weather in North Cork has changed significantly. The temperature has risen (according to the thermometer), but it feels much colder! Yesterday we had rain and just a little sleet. Today it seems to be rain only.

The birds (large and small) seem to be less active today. There was one crow perched on the ridge of the garage roof, but even he is gone. There is no sign of the small birds on the patio. I'm going to check the bird-feeders in the front garden and then leave a handful of seeds on the patio. Perhaps the birds have eaten all the seeds that were there (there's no point in them visiting a restaurant that doesn't have anything on the menu!). And as if to taunt me, a robin has appeared!

More on ice: as a lubricant and as an adhesive

2009-12-26T02:40:00.000-08:00

It's now St Stephen's Day (26th December or "Boxing Day" England). Christmas night was very cold here in Ireland. The thermometer in my car indicated -7 degrees Celcius, and the one associated with the house (which has a rather sheltered external sensor) said -5. Whichever way you look at it, that's darned cold.

Although we had no snow falling, Christmas day started out "white". Then the air temperature started to rise and the rain started to fall, softening and washing a way most of the snow that was lying on the ground. Unfortunately the ground temperature did not rise that much, and in places the rain turned into sheets of ice, making any movement outside potentially hazardous. My mother-in-law (who lives a few miles away) reported that it took her nearly one and a half hours to return the 3 or so miles from Mass because during the service the roads had become to treacherous.

Today we woke to find that it had rained again in the night and that the drive and any paths around our house were covered with a thin film of ice. This is bad enough where the ice is visible and appears slick. In places like that, the need for caution is obvious. Much worse are the places where the ground appears to be clear of ice but is in face very slippery. Conditions under foot could reasonably be described as "treacherous". A further surprise awaited me when I tried to open the garage door (roller shutter), to bring some peat briquettes in for the fire. The door was completely stuck! Once I had freed it (with the help of a kettle of boiling water), I found that the rubber seal at the base had been stuck to the ground by a film of ice (and only for a foot or so of its length. It just shows how strong ice is).

In conclusion; it's nasty outside, it's warm inside, I'm staying put for the rest of the day!

Ice Crystals

2009-12-24T03:54:00.000-08:00

It's still cold here. The sun is shining and sky is clear, except for a few wispy high-altitude clouds, and is that pale blue colour I associate with intense cold.

While digging coal from the bunker earlier this morning I noticed the snow had changed overnight. I can see where moisture has condensed direct from the air and extended the crystals, froming little whiskers, some a couple of millimetres long. It's very pretty to look at close up, and gives the snow a sort of "knobbly" appearance from a distance.

When on a walk down to the village a little later I started thinking about "why does traffic turn snow to slush?" (assuming no use of salt). There seem to be two candidate explanations:

The traffic gives energy to the snow, raising its temperature briefly,
Increased pressure decreases the freezing point of water. This is sometimes demonstrated by the "wire passing through the block of ice" experiment, and is given as the explanation for why ice skates glide over the surface of the ice so well (but there is some debate about whether this is in fact correct).

I doubt I will bother to do the sums over Christmas.

Birds

2009-12-23T03:51:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting in my usual (warm) spot, looking out of the patio windows. It's amazing how much separation double-glazing can create between us and the outside world. According to the thermometer, the inside temperature is +18.5 Celcius (which is ok, but not warm for living space) and the outside temperature is -1.5 Celcius (which is probably considered tropical in some parts of the world, but I think is darned cold). That means there is a 20 degrees Celcius temperature difference across two panes of glass and the intervening 1 cm of dry air, or whatever it is. I've just reached out to touch the window. The glass is cold, but not expecially so.

There has been no new snow for the last couple of days, though I thought I saw some flakes falling a few minutes ago. There has certainly been no thaw! The air temperature has been around zero and the snow has remained but it has now become a crisp crust which covers almost every surface.

We feed the wild birds in our garden. It is quite surprising how much they consume. I can almost see the level of seeds and peanuts falling in the bird feeders we have suspended from a tree-branch in our front garden. I remember reading somewhere that a small bird (sparrow or similar) can lose a significant part of its body mass in one winter night, so they need a substantial input of food to sustain themselves. One of my daughters decided it would be a good idea to scatter a handful of seeds and nuts on the patio. I have been watching the birds gathering them up. I'm not sufficiently knowledgable that I can identify them all, but I have seen a robin, several sparrows and two or three other different species, not counting the two varieties of crow, who are reluctant to approach the house. The birds are so confident that they will come to within inches of the window. They make an entertaining spectacle.

Winter evening, and a book review of "Flow"

2009-12-22T11:49:00.000-08:00

It's evening and I'm taking a step towards making regular updates to this blog. If I succeed then this will be a public part of regular journal writing and "reflection", all part of my new life. Wish me luck!

The evening meal is over and my family are sitting around, each doing their own activities: two reading, one drawing a cartoon strip and one (me) writing a journal (this). The television is chattering away in the corner, providing background noise, but otherwise being ignored. The fire is glowing warmly in the grate. For those of you who are not familiar with it, the smell of burning peat is particularly evocative.

This morning I walked down to the village again. I decided to exercise a pair of boots I haven't used for several years. These are heavy leather boots, as opposed to the light canvas ones I have grown used to using. At first they felt rather stiff, but as time passed they became more supple. I think I need an extra pair of socks though. The winter weather has made the wild birds bold. On my way to the village I saw two robins and two wrens, all of which came within an arm's length.

I've spent some of the day "re-making connections". I've sent out several notes and updated stuff in Facebook and LinkedIn. I suppose I should get in the habit of doing this regularly.

And finally the "book review" ("Flow"). I'm in the process of reading this. For anyone (like me) interested in psychology, and particularly "Positive Psychology", this is a really interesting book. The blurb on the cover over-sells it a bit - "The classic work on how to achieve happiness", and makes it sound like snake oil. It isn't like that at all. "Flow" is a state of mind achieved when I am giving my complete attention to an activity and the challenges it presents are well matched to my skills. This state is associated with happiness and personal growth. The author describes the state, why it is desirable and activities (some of which might be surprising) which can be used to bring it about. It's an accessible mix of academic and popular writing.

Oh dear! Christmas came early for the turkey!

2009-12-21T05:13:00.000-08:00

I live in rural Ireland and we had snow last night. Today was bright and fresh, so I went for a walk down to the village before lunch. The road conditions are very slippery. The minor roads here have not been gritted at all and in places are covered with ice. On my return trip I was met by a surprising sight, a 50 or so yards short of my home.

As I came round a bend, and approached a dip in the road, I could see two large pick-ups at the side of the road, both with hazard lights flashing. I assumed (rightly) that there had been some kind of incident, but I couldn't have guessed what I would find. As I got closer I could see several crates in the road, so I thought that perhaps one of the pick-ups had shed its load. When got to the actual scene I found something rather different. Between the two pick-ups, and still attached to the front one, was a small horse-box, lying on its side. The horse-box had jack-knifed. Had the pick-up been a lighter vehicle, I expect it would have been turned over as well.

The crates were the load which had been being carried in the horse-box - live turkeys for Christmas, on their way to slaughter. As you can imagine, being upended like that had not been a good experience for the turkeys! Some of the turkeys were alive and unharmed but looking a bit puzzled, some were dead and some were injured. The people in the pick-ups were in the process of separating the living from the dead and dispatching the seriously injured at the side of the road. Everything was under control, even if the scene was a bit chaotic. Fortunately nobody seems to have been injured. I don't know how they are going to right the horse-box, but I'll check on progress a bit later.

All in all, not a nice experience for the turkeys, and not a good start to the Christmas period for those involved... and my wife has already ordered and paid for our turkey!
---
And a brief update on Christmas Eve:
This even made it into the local press. The Corkman (Wednesday December 23rd, 2009) has an item "Turkeys killed" on page 2. The story says there were "at least 40 turkeys in the trailer" and a Garda (Irish Police) spokesman is quoted as saying "The rest of the turkeys were fine, but four didn't make it". I'm disappointed that he didn't say that the rest were on the critical list, and not expected to survive the week. Unfortunately the story didn't make the front page, or a mention online! I suppose the editor was using it as "filler" (or maybe that should be "stuffing").

Planning changes - and a white field of view

2009-12-21T02:27:00.000-08:00

It's happened at last. The end is in sight. I can see the objective (metaphorically) but I can't see that far into the distance (literally).

I'm writing this looking out of my patio doors across the garden in the direction of the other side of the valley. The ground is covered with a light dusting of snow (not more than half-an-inch or 1 cm) and there some fog which limits visibility to 100 yards or so. Sometimes in the fog I can see the ghosts or shadows of trees. According to the digital thermometer, the temperature outside is just below freezing. I slightly distrust an instrument which declares "-0.5 degrees C", but I'm sure it's right, at least within the limits of its own accuracy and the location of the sensor.

I'm now in Ireland and planning to remain here. I have been persuaded to retire from full-time employment, so there is no longer any real need to base myself in the UK. I need to return there in the New Year to tidy up some "loose ends" but after that I will be in Ireland (unless of course I decide to travel elsewhere! ;-) ). The tidying up will be very literal and practical. I have a house which I have effectively moved out of, but which still contains remnants of my possessions, and just plain junk.

The prospect of impending "retirement" is both challenging and liberating. Challenging; because it represents a major change in my life, and a change in income. I shall have to watch the pennies for a while. Liberating; because I have exchanged money for time, less money (or less certain money) but the freedom to use time as I choose. The question I'm working with, is: "What to do next?". As if as a omen, the fog has cleared, and I can see the other side of the valley. The sky is blue, even if a little snow is falling. Somehow everything looks brighter. A plain white canvas on which to write or draw something new!

Beltanes cheer!

2009-05-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

Here I am sitting in an office in Central London taking a pause from a busy day. I have a lot that I want to finish today. I got presented with the challenge of a job which was started late, but the customer still wants to finish on time. I'm making progress, but the results are not going to be all that pretty.

Outside the sun is shining, and I am really looking forward to some things I'm going to do over the weekend. Wish me luck!

Everything changes: It only hurts when I laugh (or cough or sneeze)!

2009-04-02T07:19:00.000-07:00

Oh dear woe is me (but it is funny, providing you are not me). For several years I have had what my doctor describes as an "umbilical hernia". It hasn't troubled me, and apart from making me take care when doing certain things it hasn't inconvenienced me that much.

I've got a slight cold and yesterday I sneezed (loudly). Anyone who knows me, knows that I sneeze very loudly, almost violently. It's something I can do nothing about, and which I seem to have inherited from my Father (who also sneezed loudly). Anyway, one sneeze seems to have undone years of care - now I'm in pain, and after a sleepless night, I visited the doctor today. "I'm afraid you need surgery", he said; "nothing to worry about", he reassured me. Well, I am reassured, I'm not worried, but I am in a little discomfort, and waiting for a secretary to ring me back about an appointment with a specialist. All because of one sneeze!
Regarding the title; it hurts all the time, but it hurts more when I laugh, or cough or sneeze.

Focus, focus, focus...

2009-03-18T07:57:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking about two things right now:

How do I focus on finishing the report I'm writing?
How do I get a client to focus of the issue we are trying to address, while showing empathy and avoiding trying to dominate the conversation? (they keep on rambling off in other directions).

Must go and do that &*()ed report!

Rev Nettleton, not "Down a silver mine"

2009-03-15T13:47:00.000-07:00

A little while ago I wrote about "Minor Miracles". I followed up with a little more research in the same place and found this from the clergyman I'm interested in:

THE Rev. Joseph Nettleton recently addressed a meeting of scholars on missions in Fiji, and described one of the chiefs who had seventy or eighty wives. The chairman catechised the children, and asked how many wives a man ought to have. " One, sir," was the ready answer. " Now," said he, " I always teaoh youto give a Scripture reason for all your answers. Can you give me any text to show that a manought only to have one wife?" There was a long pause, and a little boy stretched out his hand. " Well, my boy, I thought some one could give a passage of Scripture. What is it !""Please, sir, ' No man can serve two masters.' "

(The Brisbane Courier, Saturday 23 March 1878, p3)

Now I wouldn't call that the funniest thing I've ever read (or even heard from the pulpit), but there is something touching about reading something like that which is over 130 years old.

By the way, because of an accident in the way the text has been subdivided, the story about Nettleton is attached at the bottom of another unrelated piece called "Down a silver mine"! (the other article is interesting, but nothing to do with my project)

Helping someone with creativity

2009-03-11T09:27:00.000-07:00

I have an interesting hypnotherapy commission. The client (can hardly call them "patient" in this context) is a creative person who would like to be more successful at bringing the things he conceives to a successful conclusion. I think you might say that he wants to reinforce the "completer finisher" aspect of his personality. This should be an interesting challenge. In particular defining the "goal" in useful terms may be difficult.

How to assess without any criteria

2009-03-10T16:34:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting little challenge I've been presented with:

Imagine someone has found they have two computer systems which do very similar things (how they got into that situation is too long a story to relate here)
They would like to rationalise this into one system (for the obvious economic reasons)
Let's say they assume that they want to keep "System B", because it seems to have more function
However they want to understand what they might lose (or have to redevelop) by moving from "System A" to "System B".
Neither "System A" nor "System B" have formally documented requirements, but both have long lists of Features (should that be "Feechurs"?)
Of course, because the systems were created independently, the terminology they use is different.
And of course the assessment has to be done quickly!

The outline of the method I've come up with is:

Develop a simple model that can be used to describe both systems
Use the components of the model the classify the high-level features of "System A" (the system we expect to remove)
Ask the question "why do we have this feature?" this gives us a "Reason or Purpose" (which becomes a proxy Requirement). System1-Feature --> Reason-or-Purpose
For the Reason-or-Purpose, ask the question "what feature in System 2 addresses this need?"
This should identify the equivalent features, and any gaps (efficiently?), providing the list of Features is reasonably complete
Which will then identify whether the move is a good idea and what changes are needed.

It's still going to be an interesting problem.

On call, waiting for the phone to ring

2009-03-09T06:14:00.000-07:00

My current situation is "betwixt and between". One task has come to an end a little sooner than anyone involved expected (so I'm looking for other opportunities). Another project is coming to a close. I'm not directly involved, but I've been asked to remain available, just in case they want me for something. This is a minor problem, because it means that I should (and will) avoid driving anywhere.
While I've been waiting I've re-typed and edited a couple of hypnotherapy scripts. The process was good for me because I surprised myself by remembering substantial parts without reading them (the good old unconscious mind doing its stuff). It was also interesting to review the structure of the scripts and notice how the suggestions they convey are built up, repeated and presented in different ways. One demonstrated some interesting use of; past, present and future which I had not noticed before.
And now, having had a brief rest and looked out of the window for a few minutes, I'm going to get on with something else.

Uncertainty - one of the products of the "Credit Crunch"

2009-03-04T05:15:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to ramble on about how tough things are. I'm probably better equipped than most to weather the current economic storm, but am facing a minor problem which gives me a little sympathy for those who are more vulnerable than I am.

In my "day job" we were engaged by a Customer to do some work, which we were assured they wanted done by the end of March ("to use this year's budget", does that sound familiar?). Anyway, work being scarce, we set about it with a will. Now, we are part way through (but with nothing tangible "delivered") and the customer is delaying making decisions. They are satisfied with what has been done so far, but are taking a very long time to authorise the next step. The problem is, this means we have people idle, or shortly to be idle, and we're all wondering whether we should be looking for other work. Naturally most of us are. I hope the situation reaches a resolution soon, and certainly before we reach a point where I suddenly have two jobs! I've got to sympathise with the Customer as well. Things aren't easy for them either.

Transference and Counter-transference

2009-03-02T07:33:00.000-08:00

I've just been writing a few lines about the above subjects in response to some training questions. I'm not going to repeat what I wrote here but "it makes you think, doesn't it?". In this case what it makes me think about is, the way, we react to people:

Based not on what they are, but on who they remind us of,
Based on the role we've put them in,
Based on the way we think they are acting towards us, or the way we expect them to act.

The terminology used to describe these phenomena can be confusing, and downright strange, but there is no doubt in my mind that they partly explain some behaviour I have seen in myself and others.

My name is "Prawo Jazdy"?

2009-02-20T01:33:00.000-08:00

I keep on meaning to fill in this blog, and then I forget, but I just couldn't resist commenting on this news story from the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7899171.stm?lss

OK, it's harmless, and amusing, but it also prompted some more serious thoughts.

The first, oblique one, was the scene at the end of the film "Spartacus" where all the captured slaves shout out, one after another "I'm Spartacus!" in order to show solidarity with the real Spartacus.

The second, is that although it is tempting to poke fun at the Garda, we should remember that Policemen are not recruited on the basis of linguistic ability. The words really don't look like anything recognisable in English or Irish, so if you have two people who don't speak a common language trying to communicate using something written down, then misunderstandings will occur. And to make matters worse, in this case the Garda aren't really that interested in the details of the driver, and the driver isn't really that interested in being identified.

The problem is made worse, because people from Western Europe have a sort of word-blindness for things written in Eastern European languages (even if they are written in Roman script).

Third, this got me thinking: with the global nature of communication (where are you, dear reader?), we have to be careful about the assumptions we may make when reading what someone else has written. "Driving License" becomes "Prawo Jazdy" and goodness only knows what it becomes if it is written in Cyrillic (Russian Script - see how twitchy one can get!) or, even more extreme, something Asian, like Chinese.

There is an English saying "It's all Greek to me", meaning "It makes no sense to me". This is all very well, but just look at it from the point of view of a "Greek"!

And it's nice when something goes right

2008-10-21T04:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had a slow, and rather shaky start to the day. "Groan. I don't want to do this..."
Then I had to rush to get some stuff into the state I wanted it to be in.
And then, it all worked out as I had hoped it would. In fact it worked even better. That's very satisfying. I guess it emphasises how optimism is a healthier emotion to feel than pessimism. Both tend to be self-fulfilling. Life is full of ups and downs, but if you can work through the "downs", then sometimes the reward is there in the end.

Minor Miracles

2008-10-18T12:53:00.000-07:00

It's always nice when something goes right. Take a moment to enjoy it.

In my case I have been doing some research on the career of a missionary 150 years ago in Fiji. Just think about that for a moment...

With a little help from the Fijian High Commission in London and a couple (I'm now not sure if they are in Fiji or Australia) I've located a letter by the man himself, published in an Australian newspaper (and apparently "The Times") 135 years ago. I have the text of the letter. Isn't that amazing!

Here's the letter from Nettleton (the missionary): http://ndpbeta.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/1327848 (I'm the anonomous editor)

Ownership, irritation and dissociation

2008-10-17T02:29:00.000-07:00

Do you take pride in what you do, in the things you make? I do. This sort of pride is sometimes described as: "feeling ownership", feeling that something is mine, even feeling that something that I have made is "part of me". This feeling is generally considered to be a good thing. It increases job satisfaction and motivation.
However, as with everything like this, there can be a down-side. What happens if someone criticises your work? My day-job at present involves creating design documentation for changes to an existing computer system. That means that I have to produce and take responsibility for a mixture of documents, some new (I created them) and some old (I updated them, or even some which I haven't touched). I've just received a bunch of comments and, for just a moment, the "feeling of ownership" meant that these comments felt like an assault on me!
This is a common enough situation, the question is: what to do about it? In my case, the answer was to take a short walk and "dissociate". Imagine the problem; all these comments, from different angles.

From the point of view of the person who made the comment - well intentioned, no thought of attacking me.
From the point of view of an interested third party - the objective is to produce the best possible product.

Then I imagined myself updating someone else's work. I've separated myself from the emotional attachment (which was getting in the way). By-the-way, I've also divided the work into easy chunks, so I can concentrate on getting each "chunk" done, rather than worrying about how big it is (I've delegated that task to another part of me!). It has worked, and so must I! I'm off to get on with dealing with a boring but necessary task.

For those of you who are interested, I'm going to update this with some references to the relevant theories later. For now "transactional analysis" will have to do:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_Analysis

Nostalgia - a heady potion

2008-10-09T09:58:00.000-07:00

I've just spent a very pleasant afternoon with some old colleagues. Old in the sense that many of them are now retired, and also in the sense that it has been a long time since we worked together. We had a great time!

Naturally an event like that got me thinking about "nostalgia". Naturally, it can be nice to think about good times in the past, but it also gives us an opportunity to revitalise ourselves, by reminding us of the skills and abilities we had then, and still have but had forgotten about. The negative side of nostalgia is that it can allow us to wallow and only think about what we have lost.

Does this project the right message...

2008-10-08T08:29:00.000-07:00

... for a hypnotherapist? The idea was to identify some of the problems or things I help people with, and associate them with colours:

Relaxation = Sky blue,
Performance = Green = Go,
Phobia = Fear =Yellow
Anxiety = Red
Habits = Purple

I've also used the colour wheel and mixing to give the order.

At some time in the future, when I've got more money and time, I may invest in a more natural style of flower and add hot-spots to the petals. In the meanwhile you can see the real thing, live, here: http://www.duhallowhypnosis.net

It's all a question of image

2008-09-29T06:34:00.000-07:00

For most of my life I've been concerned with the nature of things, rather than how they make people feel. As an engineer I was interested in whether something "worked" (met its specification). In the IT (Information Technology) business, likewise, I am interested in whether something "does what the customer wants", although it has to be admitted, ergonomics, useability or "human factors" have a role to play here.

But now, maybe for the first time, certainly for the first time in ages, I'm most concerned with how something makes people feel. I'm in the process of starting up a small (probably very small) business. Tomorrow I'm going to talk with a graphic designer about the design for a company logo. Now, I'm not going to start waffling on about "brand value". When you are starting up a "one man band", that sort of talk shows you have your priorities wrong. But, I want a logo that does the right things. I want something that catches the eye, is recognisable (and distintive), and that makes people want to be interested in my product. The product in question is "Hypnotherapy".

I have ideas about what I want. I hope they are clear ideas. I can even justify why I want what I want. The question in my mind is: how do I guess what will work with the Customers (that is, my (potential) customers)?. In this context, whether I like something is irrelevant. What matters is the way the customers react to it. Now if I were a "big boy", I'd probably hire someone to run some focus groups (or something similar) for me. But I'm not a big boy, I don't want to invest that sort of money. So, is it just going to be me, me the wife and the kids or something else. How will I decide? For the next exciting (?) installment (and possibly a sneak preview), watch this blog!

Procastination: an incideous problem and a dangerous enemy

2008-09-22T05:13:00.000-07:00

Towards the tail end of last week I got round to doing something which I had been putting off. During the process of "getting round to it", doing it and then afterward, I did some thinking about the problem of procrastination.

None of this is particularly original, but I noticed a few things:

The (irrational) anxiety which was present while I was putting the task off,
The tension which I felt when trying to force myself to do it, and
The way the resistance increased as I tried harder and harder (The "Law of Reversed Effect").

You'll be pleased to hear that I got the task done, and that it was less of a challenge than the anxiety I felt implied. In fact, part of it turned out to be a complete non-event.

The techniques I used to help myself over this particular little incident (which really was not that serious), were:

Simple "Self-Induced Relaxation"
Dividing the problem into very small parts, and then starting one!
Using the momentum gained to propel me into making further progress
Congratulating myself (with positive "self-talk") as I completed each part
Rewarding myself with something at the end.

A fool with a piece of paper...

2008-09-16T07:57:00.000-07:00

...yup, that's me. A fortnight ago I received the letter telling me that I had passed my Diploma in Clinical Hypnosis. It has taken me this long to get round to advertising the fact. Now I can really, and honestly invite people to "look into my eyes."

Seriously, I'm proud of the achievement. It cost a considerable amount of effort and I look forward to being able to help people improve their lives.

Standing on the escalator

2008-03-19T06:36:00.000-07:00

How often have you been given the advice: "stop and take time to smell the roses" (or something similar)? I know that I keep on telling myself to do just that. And how often you ever stand still (physically)?

Today something happened which surprised me, and made me pause for thought. The office where I work has escalators (that's moving stairways for anyone not familiar with the term) which join the various levels. As I joined the escalator on the ground floor, I noticed a maintenance man working with an "emergency stop" button, but paid no attention. Normally I walk up the escalator (you know, "always in a hurry", and in any case you should try walking down an up escalator) but today I just stood there. My excuse is that I was holding a cup of tea and I didn't want to spill it.

Naturally, I just stood there, and, lost in thought, I waited to reach the next floor. Unexpectedly, suddenly, I found that I was not going up. The feeling was strangely disorientating. Then I felt I shouldn't be standing there, with all those other people behind me (who were doing exactly the same thing).Of course, what had happened was that the maintenance man had inadvertently stopped the escalator. I don't know if he pressed the button, or did something else.

The thoughts which this minor incident prompted were:

That "standing on the escalator" or similar (in)activities gives a great opportunity to stop and gather your thoughts, and
That the sensation I had when the escalator had stopped was most peculiar.

Take time to smell the roses! Or meditate or whatever...