Roo on the loose

I’ve got out of bed, turned on my laptop. I am going to be even more tired tomorrow than today (more dead? is there a comparative for the word “dead”? don’t think so) but I had to satisfy an itch for writing. I haven’t had it for such a long time that I am excited and cannot quite believe that this is happening – I actually want to write something and not just to let someone now how awesome a place where I went to on Friday was. I know what it is – a friend told me about a book, I started reading it and the desire to write washed over me just like that.

I am reading several books at once now. They are all quite interesting, it’s just that when I come home I am so exhausted these days that I read for a few minutes and then my thoughts start wandering. It used to happen before when I was listening to podcasts or audiobooks; it happens now when I watch “House”, or read. I blame work. This book feels different though, it has already given me something and I am only a few pages into it. It is obscene, ironic and it was also recommended by a friend; in other words, it is bound to be good. I will let you know if I get disappointed but I have big hopes at the moment. I am such an optimist.

I am in Sydney, and the Internet is expensive at my hotel, so a friend of mine let me used his laptop in his apartment. He’s Japanese and shares the apartment with 9 or 10 other Japanese people. I used to have this idea of the Japanese that they are very tidy and organized. Forget about it – the place is messy! Loads of comics, a basketball, a drum, snacks and empty bottles were all around the place. They also have a cat who looked at me unchalantly and never let me pet itself. On the other hand, I did have a chance to use Japanese Windows. I also asked Atsushi whether he saw “Japanese Story”, an Australian movie about a Japanese guy who comes to Oz (and dies there). He said he did and he was very embarrassed for the guy as he was so clumsy. Atsushi himself is nothing like that, he is muscular and tanned and laughs a lot. He also can surf (as opposed to me).

I am getting used to my room here little by little (it’s tiny!) but I still can’t wait to get my own place. My guess is, it’s not going to be as conviniently situated but there will be more privacy (and as it turned out, I like that!) and of course more Internet at a reasonable price.

Ok, so I'm in Turkey right now and we are living in a 5 star hotel which is quite fancy and since it's all inclusive we get most things for free. At dinner, waiters bring drinks some of which are free and other ones cost a few liras. For some reason, I prefer drinks you can get at the buffet (no service). Anyway, yesterday a waiter came up to me and asked me whether I wanted something and when I asked him to list the options, he started with vodka and went all the way down to Cola. Seeing that I didn't look particularly interested he finally said something about wine and I said, OK, I'd like a glass of red wine. "You can get it over there, he said. Sans service" and went away.
That made me mildly angry. Why say anything about the wine when there's no service for it? It sounds silly now but then I was disappointed in everything Turkish for awhile. 5 minutes passsed, and then the same waiter appeared carrying a glass of wine that he didn't have to bring, looking very serious and busy. Now THAT was nice and made me love Turkey even more. :-)

I once read a blog entry in which its author complained that he didn't know what to do on long weekends. Well, we're having one again on account of July 12 (I don't know the official name of the holiday but it has something to do with patriotism and Russian spirit), and it seems to be busier than some work days. Then again, maybe it's just me. True, I had to code for a few hours but most of my days are filled with something that has no relation to my everyday work. For starters, I'm trying to jog every day now, even though sometimes I'm too darn sleepy for a decent workout. Then I'm trying to write formal letters which I will need for an English exam. While I have no difficulties whatsoever with personal letters, I just hate formal ones. All those "in regard to" and "I regret to inform you" make me slightly sick. I'm also trying to get to know Microsoft Dynamics Ax (former Axapta) which looks quite different from Microsoft Dynamics Nav (former Navision) and doesn't appear to have a huge inviting smile written all over its face. And all kind of thoughts and worries keep whirling in my head - for instance, I'm sure it will be very funny if I fail my English test. I've been trying to push this particular thought out from my head for quite some time but if I listen close enough I can still hear it saying quite distinctly "I ain't going anywhere yet".

So yes, if you don't know what to do on a long weekend, I feel sorry for you, and envious at the same time. Please lend me your time if you have some to spare.

I'm living in the northern part of the city, and strange as it may sound I enjoy commuting to my school on a daily basis. I got used to seeing some people every day on my bus already, and it's strange when they don't show up (like today, for instance, a few fellow commuters just weren't there - is Friday as day off in Australia or what?) It's so cute when guys in business suits wear backbacks, and I also saw a woman in a suit and flip-flops. Too bad they don't have their surf boats with them! Speaking of which, I'm going to take a few surfing lessons, after all. Not on Bondi, though, since it's such a tourist trap - hundreds of people and all of them seem to be foreigners, and everything is so expensive. What I'm going to do instead is to head off to Moroubra after my classes which is about to begin in a couple of minutes. Gotta run now, g'day everyone!

Do you know a surefire way to make a person stay up all New Year night, even if the person in question hates parties in general and normally goes to bed at 12 p.m.? I know. And it works for everybody, no exceptions whatsoever. In fact, I even tested it myself, although it was certainly not intentional. The answer is simple. Toothache.

These two days have been extremely entertaining as you may guess. It's not at all funny when a year starts with a toothache (toothache is rarely funny when it's you who has it) but imagine that you have to go away to an extremely remote country in two days after that. I doubt that you'll be able to sleep even a little bit. Anyway, thank God for dentists. I mean, sure, they take away our money and torture us but still, sometimes they save our lives, or at least our teeth, even when a year has just started. That's what happened to me – I had this toothache that wouldn't go away, so I went to the dentist and had a few moments of real pain even though I didn't feel half the face, but overall it wasn't that bad. I'll have to go there again after I'm back from Australia but for now I'm ok.

The toothache did two things for me. First, even if I worried a bit about my long trip I sure as hell don't worry as much now. Comparing to a toothache, a flight to Australia is easy! And second, it made me think of nature's mysterious ways. What good does a toothache do? I mean sure, it's a signal that something is wrong, just like any pain, but why make this kind of pain so intolerable? When people didn't have dentists, what were they supposed to do? Go kill themselves? I actually read lots of stories about toothache on the Internet, and I was horrified how many people actually don't go to the dentist when they can afford it and have an acute toothache. Some people take painkillers for months just because they're afraid of dentists in general. I myself even liked my experience at the dentist today, most of it anyway. Note to myself: never postpone a dentist appointment, no matter what.

And yeah, I almost forgot: Happy New Year, everyone.

P.S. I'm going to Oz tomorrow! Wow!

Merry Christmas! Well, it’s not a big deal here in but it smells of New Year here already. And in case you don’t know, New Year smells like mandarins in Russia, even though I don’t think mandarins grow here. They say that there are no vitamins in mandarins but I choose not to believe this and am peeling another one right now.

Merry Christmas

I hate hardware manufactures. After several years of peace I decided to upgrade my desktop computer. Not to buy a new one, mind you, but to upgrade my old one. Of course, it meant buying a new motherboard and a new processor… and something to put all this stuff into. I decided to keep my old RAM, one of my hard drives and all the input devices. How naïve I was. Somehow I managed to miss the moment when DDR I went out of circulation. And I mean completely. So I had to buy DDR II. Then of course it turned out that I couldn’t use my PS/2 keyboard with my new laptop, so I bought a new one (a keyboard, not a laptop. I first tried a PS/2 to USB connector but that didn’t work). The new keyboard is twice as wide as the laptop itself, and it looks bizarre but also neat, in a way. I was also able to restore some data from my old big hard drive (podcasts and audiofiles mostly), and I have a new big hard drive to copy it all to. Even so, right now I’m stuck with my old desktop computer since the motherboard seems to hate the DDR II module I bought even though it is officially supported. Thank God for my new laptop that doesn’t need any tweaking…

I also bought a new mike. It is extremely cheap (10 times cheaper than my old one, in fact – $2), and even so it seems to work way better than my old one. It’s made in Russia and I was touched to see that “it is IBM PC compatible” – haven’t heard this one for a while. The reason for buying a new mike was simple enough – we had a Skype conference with a few people from efl.ru, a place that most crazy Russian learners of English seem to love. It was not a total success, although it was great to hear many people I had only read before. Amazing, but all of them have nice voices! A friend from London joined us out of curiosity so one of the guys kept asking who the hell Sydney was. We didn’t have any topic for discussion, what we had instead was a few technical problems. The most frustrating one to me personally was that most people couldn’t hear me at all because of my poor mike. I just can’t stand it when that happens so I had to buy a new one. And fast. We also had a person who kept breathing loudly (or was it a wind in his apartment?) and munching carrots. This person wasn’t identified although there were some suspicions… We’ll have another conference again, I hope, and maybe it will happen before I go to Oz.

These days are also full of work I have to complete before I go away for a month, and a week ago I bought a new bag with wheels so I’m running out of reasons not to start packing for Australia. People keep telling me to take a rain coat with me, so I may even pack my red umbrella.

P.S. I don't know why but when I pasted this text from Word into Vox, the word "Russia" disappeared everywhere in the text, so I had to restore it by editing the text. Talk about conspiracy theories...

Oh bliss, I'm writing this on my new laptop, MSI S271. I used to have an old cranky laptop quite a while ago and it was ok for writing stuff but this one is so much cooler, I can actually use it for work. So far I've been using it exclusively for pleasure though, and boy, am I loving it. It's quite small so I can carry it around and I think I'll take it to Oz with me.

Speaking of Oz, I got my passport back today with the Australian visa in it, it's red with a kangaroo and all. Overwhelming. Now my trip there feels so much more real, I can even start packing anytime now. Got my summer shoes already but remembered instantly that they used to rub my feet so I decided to get used to them beforehand and started wearing them at home. Didn't want to get blisters though so I put my socks on as well. It looks great, so I'll post a picture here - that's how we wear summer shoes in Siberia. Or not.

Shoes and socks

I also got in touch with my host family - it's actually a woman who lives alone, and she sounds really nice. Said I could use the swimming pool in the building any time, no problem. I wonder if you can surf in a pool. My plans right now include feeding a koala (Taronga Zoo?), having a cup of tea in the Sydney Tower, taking a hundred pictures or so, meeting a friend who lives in Melbourne (and her husband), not running out of money but still - hopefully - visiting Gold Coast. And no, I haven't forgotten about improving my English. I just hope that I'll pick up an Australian accent, do I want too much? Please, Santa, I haven't been so bad this year, have I? Please make me sound like an Aussie... Or at least don't let my shoes rub my feet anymore.

Brutal honesty

We talked about cultural differences with an American guy today. The parents of his wife gave him a present he didn't particularly like but he didn't let them know that. Instead he said that it was just what he wanted. Later his Russian wife accused him of lying: “You Americans are liars, you never tell the truth. If you didn't like the present why didn't you just say so?”

“I guess it's a cultural thing”, - Jeremy said. “We Americans don't want other people to feel bad. I think in general Russian take criticism better than Americans.” He also said that it is impossible to imagine an American saying “Your English is horrible” while he heard people say that someone's Russian was awful.

That got me thinking. Well, I'm not sure it's just the difference between Russians and Americans. True, kids here are taught that being honest is important but who isn't taught that? It's another thing that brutal honesty seems to be highly characteristic of some Russians I know but maybe it's just that I know much more Russians than Americans.

I myself don't believe in always telling the truth. Far too often people are being brutally honest just because they don't care enough about other people's feelings, no matter what they say. The main excuse for saying unpleasant things is usually something to the extent of “I can't lie to you because you are so important to me.” And what do they say after that? Most likely something unpleasant, like “You're getting fat” (never heard that but I don't want to get too personal here) or “I fell in love with someone half as young as you are” (haven't had a chance to hear this one yet either) or “I don't like your hairstyle” (for a change I actually heard that a couple of times – you may have read my long hair speech). Come on, why do you really say that? Maybe you are just too lazy to come up with something more pleasant or hide your feelings? Did you ask me if I wanted you to be always honest with me? Maybe you're just taking a perverted pleasure in saying unpleasant things to me?

Mind you, I'm not saying you have to necessarily lie instead. More often than not you can just phrase unpleasant things differently or avoid the conversation altogether. But sometimes you just have to. Lying is a skill that can be as important for a relationship as telling the truth, and of course you gotta learn the latter, too. It's just that we are always told how important it is to tell the truth and almost never are taught that lies can be equally important. The thing is, you have to be brutally honest in important things but in small things it's better to lie sometimes. Some people think that it's not about lying but rather about not saying everything but at least be honest with yourself – keeping silent is just as bad (or as good in some cases) as lying. There's no difference apart from feeling better about yourself, unless you are under oath or something.

Returning to Jeremy's situation, I'm not sure I'd lie gracefully but I just wouldn't have the heart to say that I don't like the present. What would you say?