WOW Russia!

You will have fun exploring this site!


Wow, Russia is the biggest country in the world. Aloha!

Yes, guys, it is. So everybody knows that there are two cities in Russia - Moscow and St. Petersburg. That is also true. The rest of the country is called Siberia. That's it. Pretty simple geography.

So what else do we have in Russia? We have bears, of course. Lots of different bears. Some of them wear lapti and play balalayka all day long, some of them drink vodka all the time, some of them can fly, some live on the Internet, some went into politics and some are just hanging out in the streets.

--Elena Marus


Go find out more and just try to keep from laughing and learning.

Tomorrow

The first day of the first job after college!

Inherited sarcasm

Yeah, I enjoyed meeting your brother. Now I understand where you got that terrible personality.

So you really owe your success to your sister's failure.

Girls: If you have older brothers, feel sorry for yourselves. You smile at guys too much.

Guys: If you don't have older sisters, feel sorry for yourselves. Girls don't like you as much.

Nope, you actually aren't a good listener. You were just forced into pretending you were because you weren't an only child.


What? That wasn't me, that was just my older sister coming out in me. You would have known that if you'd read the article: "The New Science of Siblings".

BG Answers

Thanks to this round's participants, Ma Hoyt and Derek!

Here are the answers, with the participants' intelligent guesses in parentheses:

progeggrammenoi -- marked out (I am a programmer, I am commanding)

zophos -- darkness (from the planet Zophos, wisdom)

despotayn -- master (I wish to be a despot, tyrant - Bingo! Both basically right!)

asteres planaytai -- wandering stars ("something about" stars, heavenly bodies/beings)

It's hard to say who was closer. Probably Derek, since Ma Hoyt took some elaborative liberties at the expense of single-word translation.

Derek, that zophos was confusing, wasn't it? Sophos would be "a wise man".

I was racking my brain trying to come up with a prize, till it occurred to me that of course I couldn't think of a prize to give someone who hadn't really won.


Now, in case you'd like to see those words in their Jude context --

For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand programmed for this condemnation, ungodly persons who... deny our only Despot and Lord, Jesus Christ (4)...
these are the men who are... planets, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever... (12, 13)

Balderdash Greek

Forget language classes. Learning another language is more like a game! I will prove it to you. Let's start with Greek!

Greek uses a different alphabet, which is very beautiful. But to make this simple, I will just use English letters.


Guess what these words mean:

progeggrammenoi

zophos

despotayn


And, just for kicks, a bonus easy one:

asteres planaytai


(Big Hint: These words are all taken directly from the book of Jude)

Forms never die

Today was another first: apartment hunting!

Guess what? Many landlords want you to fill out an application. You probably knew this already, but I didn't. So much for ever escaping applications. I suppose you have to fill one out to retire, too?

Speak up

Imagine you grew up in a place where everyone valued social harmony, not individual expression. Silence is much better than speaking. Asking a question of someone in authority is nearly unthinkable.

Then, one sunny day, along come reformers who tell you it's time to modernize and democratize. They put you in a courtroom to serve on a special kind of jury that questions the defendant and deliberates with the judge over the sentence to hand down. Suddenly you have to speak up, express your opinion (were you supposed to have one?) and perhaps argue with the judge.

How would you feel? Terrified, maybe?

According to the polls, 80% of Japanese are "dreading" (quote) this odd variation on the jury system, slated to take effect in 2009.

[Note: Unfortunately, the New York Times online is now only providing abstracts of archives, even for online subscribers. Hopefully this link will let you read the abstract.]

Maybe this will be a good thing, and everyone will quickly overcome their very natural fear. But it doesn't seem right to force a society to change cultural behaviors that have served them well for millennia, right into the age of technology and globalization. At the very least, it seems odd to jump into a jury system even more oriented toward public individual expression than, say, the American system.

Good news!

[This post has been specially adapted to make more sense and be less weird. Sorry for any lost comments.]

I have a job!

It is a temporary position, doing data entry. But it is a good start. This temporary agency works with DePuy Orthopaedics, a division of Johnson & Johnson. The project should run 6-8 weeks and perhaps a good bit longer.

Of course, definite employment does depend on passing the drug screening.

Overseen

Seen on the way down to Texas with Ardith (17 June):


Got Ego? Stroke It!

The Nice Law Firm

Marked Tree (name of a city - ask Ardith for the story)

Mid-South Community College

"Buckel Up. Drive Safely." (seen twice)

Tanya's Hair Affair

Back!, Part 2

[Read previous post first.]

And so the three of us went looking for a train that would take us in to the Chicago Loop. Just missing the Blue Line train gave us the chance to take the Pink Line, a new one even for the Chicago veteran with us. It seems to function fine, if you ever want to try it. We spent at least an hour walking through town, along the Chicago River, under the John Hancock building, up the nifty fountain in the Water Tower Place, past the Hershey's and Ghirardelli shops, and lingering over the exotic cars to get our fill of Lamberguinis, Ferraris and Bentleys. Now, I didn't learn to pick out anything besides a Lamberguini, but I did learn the names!

At this point in the story, it's important to understand that there were three parties: Zach and his family, the three of us, and the two others (the cement fetchers). Each party had at least one cellphone and all were aware of the plan to meet at Lou Malnotti's for pizza. Zach and his family arrived first and went ahead and ordered the pizza, since it could take up to an hour. Our threesome understood that we were to meet the twosome at Moody. They still were not showing up after several calls. Finally we discovered that they had parked some blocks away, much closer to the pizza place than to Moody, and it was up to us to meet them. Not that this hurt us any -- it just goes to prove that as far as cellphone technology has come, it has not yet removed the human factor.

(Sidenote: I plan on not acquiring a cellphone for as long as possible.)

After all that good visiting, accompanied by deep-dish pizza and a little dessert pizza to top it off, the five of us squished ourselves into a VW Bug that Loren had borrowed from someone and went back home. We considered renting a movie, but just couldn't work up the energy. We ended up sitting around Loren's apartment, occasionally talking about wedding pranks or other fun topics, before finally falling into bad.

Friday morning it was back up on our feet - not quite so early - to meet for breakfast, this time down in Zach's end of town, at the Valois. We didn't run into any of their previous notorieties, like Barack Obama or Jesse Jackson, but it was still good, quick, inexpensive food.

Having saved a church the day before, we headed back to the Apartment Rescue Mission to switch from OCD to OCC (from Operation Concrete Destruction to Operation Cement Creation).
An cement-experienced man from church drove out to join us that morning, and after plenty of planning and prep, everyone switched into full gear. Two operated the cement mixer, one directed the wheelbarrow up and down the narrow plank path, Clif shoveled and smoothed the cement, and I helped everywhere and took pictures (everyone seems to want pictures these days.) The cement mixing team soon called me up to train me in the water spraying department. Later I got sidetracked with helping pull the 2x4 floater and patch holes. I landed this particular job by proving I could execute it while balancing on the far edge of the form, a couple inches from the wall. Loren kept busy buying more cement. We polished off the first 40 60-lb bags before he got back, but fortunately he had been forced to buy stone instead of gravel. Stone went a lot farther.

And so the first quarter of the basement was successfully laid. We cleaned up, packed up, and took the scenic Lakeshore route out of town. One of our number kept us entertained with stories of how he had been kicked out of college for going to Wendy's and many other exciting stories of student life at his conservative Christian school.


Oh my goodness, look at the hour. It's 10:00 p.m. High time all little girls were in bed!

Back!

Come to think of it, three nights ago!

Perhaps once or five times a year, everyone should have a complete change of pace. Change of location, schedule, energy output, diet, company, access to technology, and overall lifestyle.

Wednesday through Friday, some of the church College & Career group (try not to feel intimidated) went up to Chicago as a "workteam". To work on what? Zach, a Grace grad who had attended our church, is starting an inner-city school and needs money. How do you get money? Fix up old apartments and rent them out.

We did work, mostly as planned. Accidentally arriving an hour early should have tipped us off. But you see, driving up to Chicago feels like driving up, not driving west, so that extra hour was left somewhere. For our Chicago friends, anyway!

That first morning we went to the apartment. It was a dump in relatively good condition, despite the termites. We tore out a lot of old stuff, such as the only toilet that worked, and plenty of cement, and well-aged fiberglass. If you think new fiberglass is fun to work with, try the old stuff. Fortunately, the guy in charge of the project (Loren - not my dad - from a different church but teaming up with Zach for this project) had stocked all the essentials: gloves, safety glasses, and face masks, which we used liberally. Someone even forgot the face mask which he had flipped up on his head and went looking for another, till we caught him and finally agreed not to lock him up for old age.

That night Loren showed us around his part of town. He lives right on the street separating two worlds: African-American to the north, Hispanic to the south. I got to use my first Spanish in weeks. His church is just across the street from his apartment, four-story, so we climbed up to the roof and took in the Chicago skyline at dusk and the far-off Navy Pier fireworks.

Thursday we all got up at 5:30 a.m. to have prayer with Loren's friends at 6:00 before heading off for breakfast with Zach. Some of the party had beans for breakfast for the first time ever. We didn't go back to the apartment, though, because an inspector had come by Loren's church the day before and informed them that those columns on either side of two doorways had to come down, since they were ready to fall at any moment and scared him just to look at them. Besides his feelings, there was the matter of the $4,000-per-day fine till they were down. Since Loren's pastor couldn't get workers in that fast, a few guys and ourselves took on the project Thursday. They went at the pillars with jackhammers and we went at them with sledgehammers. They had me take lots of photos of their superb prowess, which included spraying down hundreds of bees from that nest they accidentally found. Finally those eight solid columns that were on the verge of falling were pounded and smashed and torn down, mostly anyway, to reveal a delicate structure of brick cores with thick cement surrounding. The three of us who didn't have to go buy cement (for the apartment) spent an hour and a half tossing, pitching, finally heaving bricks and cement pieces into the dumpster. We filled it! Flushed with that success and having no more dumpsters at hand, we had no choice but to clean up and head off to Chicago early on the L (the train), to get in some sights before meeting up with the others for deep-dish pizza.

I really hadn't intended to drag on like this and here it is already 10:30, so you get to save some yawns for tomorrow night's exciting conclusion!

Analyzometrics

The porteños (descendants of the original European inhabitants of Buenos Aires) love to analyze and debate everything. Snow is no exception, though it is just a little harder to argue a topic once every century. I thought you might like to read part of this article, dated 10 July.


"When it floats, it's snow," said someone, as if, when happening upon the topic, to open a debate in which the majority of the porteños had never thought to participate... until yesterday. And once having set themselves to analyze whether this matter falling from the sky were actually snow, sleet (a more humid subtype), or ashes from some chimney, they pulled out all kinds of reasoning.

"It doesn't stay on the ground: it's sleet", fenced the doorman of a building in the street Santiago del Estero, in the heart of the Monserrat quarter. The man is from the province of Entre Ríos and had never, not even from a distance, seen this phenomenon which surprised the incredulous inhabitants of the city. Even so, he stated his opinion with an authority of expertise before the neighbors, who also tried to contribute something scientific. "The temperature didn't fall to zero [Celsius], so it isn't snow yet," offered a woman who had come down from the third floor to observe the still falling snow.

...[Brief scientific explanation]...

"The forecasts from Thursday and Friday were giving snowfalls in the Capital, but we hesitated to say this in advance, because a phenomenon that happens every hundred years is very difficult to announce...." said an inspector from the National Meteorological Service.

... For now, this experience of snow in the city... has turned into a challenge for the ever-ready "analyzometer" of the porteños, more accustomed to other kinds of debates.

Bastille Day

What happened 218 years ago? The Paris prison la Bastille fell, and thereafter the French have commemorated 14 July as the national day of independence.

Here is a short video of the day. If you'd rather not listen to the French, don't turn the sound up. President Sarkozy renovated the parade a little by inviting soldiers from European Union countries to march.

Gone

Vacation to do hard manual labor.

Breaking news from B.A.

Look! It snowed in Buenos Aires! For the first time in 89 years.

Some of the people I lived with had never seen snow, and others had only encountered it after traveling hours to the south and further inland. For the first time ever, the porteños have built snowmen and have had to clear off their cars in the morning.

Here's a brief rundown in English. If you visit this article of La Nación, and look at the links below, you'll see some entitled "Fotogalería" - visit these for pictures. A good one is the palm tree dusted with snow.

Of course, even one day's experience with snow is enough to start a heated porteño debate. I'll tell you about that if I find a little time later (or someone else can).

Your turn to do the math

Try this one: 8 articles of clothing with savings of $227.36. How much did she spend?

You'll never guess!!

Two

Two of the many simple joys in life, lately discovered:

Throwing wood blocks. That is, yanking or hauling little logs out of a trailer and throwing or heaving them into a stack. The best size is the size just too big to toss carelessly but not big enough to struggle over.

Ironing clothes. It is so much fun! This gives me a great idea for self-employment -- performing over-the-phone interpretations while ironing clothes for the highest bidder (and probably the customers willing to pay shipping).

$82 billion

Amazing, isn't it? Not the money, but the plans people come up with in order to use it, just because they want to and they can. People like Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, who's deciding to make Dubai the new hub of world aviation.

Of course, if I were one of the royal family of a very little country and had $82 billion sitting in my pocket, I'd probably do something to make my family and country extremely important and famous, too.

Showdown

Le Monde seems to be the only site having a current article on the latest news in Turkey: the Constitutional Court has ruled in favor of universal suffrage for presidential elections. However, this old BBC article (from when the reform passed the Turkish parliament) covers most of the same ground in English.

Basically, this is the story: the Islamic party AKP (Party of Justice and Development) and 'their' prime minister Erdogan failed to get their candidate elected as president, so they decided they wanted universal suffrage for future presidential elections, instead of seven people in Parliament making the call. But no, said the secular Turkish president, speaking for the supposedly secular Turkish nation, and vetoed it. When it passed Parliament again, President Sezer had a problem, since reforms can only be vetoed once. He had to request that the Constitutional Court get rid of it. Just today, six of the eleven judges on the Court denied this request (a surprise decision), which means the reform must go to a referendum. Now everyone waits to find out what happens in the referendum... well, that is, they wait to find out first of all when this referendum will take place, as the president has not yet set a date. We do at least know when it will not be. It will not be at the same time as the legislative elections scheduled for the 22 July, since he said this to the AKP back in the middle of June.

And now, on a much lighter and less politically tense note, it seems there is a particular trend in the style of sunglasses sported by the Turkish military (as seen in the above link to the Le Monde article) and the prime minister himself.

By the way, did anyone else notice that Le Monde catalogued that article under "Pacific Asia"? Is it just me, or is that halfway around the world?

4/7/07

From the Library of Congress online, here is the Declaration of Independence. You can get even higher resolution views by clicking on links above the document image.

And here is a History of the Fourth over the years. Did you know that 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time (14h00) is the hour that the Declaration of Independence was originally approved?

One of the last entries in this second source informs that in 2001, "From the International Space Station, astronauts proclaim 'We give thanks to our ancestors ... to all Americans, Happy Independence Day.' " I would like to close by saying, "I give thanks to God for this country, and to all my fellow Americans, Happy Independence Day!"

2 X Happy Birthday!!

Just ignore how completely remiss someone is regarding our two June birthdays.

Time for tributes to Nolan and to Kendra!

Nolan, now 8 (can that BE?) is a great kid. He pops out with the greatest comments. For example, when cousin Erica and Kendra and myself had begun a game of Dutch Blitz during the reunion, he came up to watch us and after a particularly rapid sequence, observed to Erica, "You're a fast woman." I really don't think he could have said it to any female cousin who would have appreciated it more!

Ten years farther along, Kendra is the Dutch Blitz champion and hair styling expert of our family; she organized and catalogued our entire VHS and DVD collection, meaning we're aware of our entire selection and can have even more stimulating family discussions over what to watch. Most especially, everyone should know that she and Jason were senior partners of the Keep-The-Family-Running home business that experienced extreme growth in the fall of 2004. And I have the honor to pass her the Grace torch this August!

What happened in Michigan

Last Friday evening I drove up to spend the weekend with my dad's cousin Ivan and his wife Kim and get in another first (besides Macs and Michigan) -- meeting my second cousins!

On Saturday, a friend of theirs from church had a high school graduation ceremony in the morning and an open house all afternoon and evening. The theme for the open house was "Tea from around the world", so they had some five or six tea stations, including Indian Chai, Southern Tea, and (of course!) Argentine maté. I helped Uncle Ivan with this last station... even though he did have some 20 more years of experience living in Argentina (he and Aunt Kim are heading there next February as church-planting missionaries, Lord willing). He explained the tradition of maté - slowing down and spending time together - and many people did indeed sit down to pass the maté around and talk. It was quite a good way to meet and chat with a lot of people, not to mention get your stimulants in for the day. Uncle Ivan and I must have had a least fifteen or sixteen rounds of maté each. We also had the opportunity to try some roasted maté, a new experience for us both. It is certainly milder. I also had a mango tea and a bubble tea (tapioca, ice cream and Earl Grey). However, I did try to stop drinking around 6 p.m., which must have worked, since falling asleep at 11 p.m. was no trouble.

Sunday it was time to get up and start making the cucumber sandwiches and other goodies for the bridal shower for Natalie, the girl marrying my second cousin John. At the same time, Natalie and John were busy finishing up mini muffins and fruit kabobs for Sunday School breakfast. It was enjoyable to share in the Sunday services at Countryside Bible Church, though Aunt Kim and I did have to wander around a while during offertory to find three seats left together. All the seats that looked open from afar were actually reserved with Bibles once we got up to them.

After church, it was back to the kitchen to melt the chocolate for fondue and attend to other (less important) preparations for the shower. It was a nice little shower. The fondue did start curdling, but some intelligent person put a spoon in near the end, so we could scoop plenty out on our plates. Then several people had the bright idea of having me write the gift list (since I knew everyone, of course).

We went home and crashed on the sofa for about an hour before heading off to the local park for a picnic and concert the church was holding there, through which they hoped to meet more of the community. They had homemade ice cream - yum yum.

Here's a link to a few photos. The last is a short video of one of the quartet's numbers.

Unfortunately it never occurred to me to take pictures till those last few hours, and then none especially of the Ivan Hoyts... but I'm sure I can obtain some soon.

After that it was off for home, with the last of the dark chocolate fondue to keep me company and alert, which it did tremendously well.

What's better to do on a weekend than take a road trip to visit family?

For my brother

In defense of his allergies to cats. Next they should study the idea that exposure to cats might create allergies.