Snowy Almaty

* on the way to free wi-fe cafe :)

* love name of streets in Almaty!

* happy me, skating :)

* hospitable people in LC Almaty

Servant of the Tsar

In the end of the busy day in Almaty Maya (LC president), Andrey (ex-president) and me decided to go to the cinema. Andrey guessed our desires and bought tickets for a marvelous movie “The servant of the Tsar” (“Слуга Государев”).

The story begins in Russian army when soldiers are discussing a recent issue, case with black horseman who already killed many people. It’s a time of way between Russia & Sweden, besides France pretends to play a supervisory role. In the beginning we get in France where young queen is unhappy in relationship with a king and finds a lover from the guests of king’s ball. Right after the occasion during cards game envious man challenges him to a duel. Then, a king finds out about the duel he writes letters to Swedish & French kings and sends 2 offenders in the epicenter of the battle…

3 moments that caught my attention:

*scene with burglary of Russian village, one of the saddest moments of the movie. Innocent village people were robbed by Polish partisans and Swedish army just because of the fact that some time ago a Polish village was destroyed by Russians. Revenge doesn’t know concrete people, and you become responsible for actions of your country’s citizens.

*speech of Peter the Great 1 min before the final battle with Swedish army started. He said: “I don’t care what will happen with my life, the only thing that matters is our country, Russia”. In contrast, operator shows us the king of Sweden, who lies on a sofa with broken leg and shouts on doctors: “Do you really want a king to be an invalid?” Then, again, in the culmination of the battle, it was Peter the Great who galloped in front of his army in the fire place and all soldiers went right behind screaming patriotically. And it was Swedish king who chose to escape from the battle being afraid to harm himself…

*French soldier and Grisha (Russian solgier from Peter’s amusing shelving) fight together against Swedish. They went through a hell, and suddenly Grisha notices that his friend fell on the ground. Grisha does his best to help him survive. They traveled to Russia many kilometers. They speak different languages and don’t understand each other. However, human values and feelings are common for every human being, no matter which nation you belong to.

This movie is about bravery, mutual trust and support, true values and true love to the people and the country. I’d definitely recommend you to watch it and discuss with your best friends.

***

Film finished after a midnight and we appeared in a wonderful snowy Almaty in night!
Thank you so much, Maya and Andrey, for a meaningful evening and exciting excursion around the city!

Training our intuition

Every week we get the economic magazine called 'Sekret firmy' in our MC-office.
Having took one of the issues with me, I found a very interesting article that catched my attention immediately.

I will use the space of this blog to outline the main ideas, as I really want this information to stay in my mind.

The article is about intuition.

First question is pretty clear: "While making business and personal decisions, should we rely on our intuition or our logic?" The answer is almost obvious, they say that intuition doesn't come from anywhere, however it is a result of our experience. Therefore, making a decision, even if we think like 'oh, it's a sign!' or 'I feel I need to do this, not that' we actually compare our past experiences and make connections.

Yet what I was really impressed by in that article is an advice on how to train your intuition.
The main idea is to learn how to connect your inner state with weak signals of external environment.

The author suggest following 3 steps:

1. Learn to describe your inner feelings. You may say: "I feel like a lion" or "I feel like a cat on a sofa". This method helps first to discover yourself and also to choose "whom to be" in a specific situation. For instance, when you are speaking on public informing about difficult situation, you would probably want to be a lion, not a cat on a sofa.

2. Learn to find positive signs of external environment (as you usually have just some parts of information available and known). To practise it you may put a minimum volume on your radio and guess what they say. Another one is to remember objects' bounds on a high speed. Or - to draw the clear some object's bounds when you can't see them correctly.

3. Learn to make a forecast. To do this you should connect your inner feelings to the weak signals - just what I have told about in points 1 and 2. To train this ability, you may guess the end of the story watching a movie or reading a book, finish a picture started by someone else or play improvisation.

It's amazing that we can really train such quality as intuition with these simple methods.

If you are interested, read the whole article (unfortunately, it's only in Russian).

La science des reves

Masha and me planned to watch this movie 2 weeks ago, even before my trip to Chelyabinsk, yet that day there were no tickets any more, so we went to another one.

Yesterday we booked the tickets in advance, and became two of these lucky happy people who saw this wonderful French movie… :)

The story begins when a young design’er OR inventor (how he calls himself) from Mexico comes to Paris, the city where his mother lives. His beloved Mexican father died from cancer, French mother got married for the second time. She promised Stefan (the name of young man) he would have a creative job in France.
So, now he in the country of love! His mother rents a house with many apartments, and he lives in one of the rooms. In his first day in a new city Stefan went downstairs and suddenly becomes a witness and helper for 2 guys carrying piano on the upper floor. Piano falls down, Stefan hurts his hand and has to bandage a wound in the flat upstairs where he meets beautiful girl Zoe and her female friend Stefani. He immediately falls in love with Zoe, however it seems she doesn’t care, just the opposite to Stefani who does like the young designer…

Stefan knows a science of dreams. It was he who in the very beginning told us what all dreams are made of: a piece of day’s doings, adding some memories from the past (portion for 2 people!) and unhappy love.

However during next several months he will experience the real essence of dreams and reality appearing to be a dream…

You have an amazing opportunity to watch Stefan’s dreams mixed of exaggerated memories of the day and sometimes even guess whether it’s a reality or still a dream! :)

Sweet thing about the movie is its ingenuousness! Each of the characters is so unique, but at the same time all the people are different from what we call ‘a normal person’! Crazy employees from Stefan’s company are talking only about sex, boss calls them lesbians (why? – noone knows:) his beloved Stefani makes hand made toys and objects, our dear Stefan is the funniest personage himself as he invents 1 sec time-machine, and other strange devices!

…

Movie finished, Masha and me went out to the street and I started to tell her something about the broadcast I heard on the radio that morning. And you know what, I realized that I was not sure any more if it’s true or I dreamt it!

You start to feel that you became a bit strange as you now can’t define what is your dream and what your reality, what happened with you and what is the story of someone else… such a funny feeling!!!

It reminds me “Khazars’ glossary” (or how is it called in English?) and other books of Pavich, glorious Serbian writer. Pavich's characters also traveled across their dreams... :)

I think that each person is strange to some extant. This marvelous movie helps us to find this strangeness within ourselves.

The movie is a MUST WATCH to everyone no matter what sex, age, religion and creed you are.

Thank you, Masha, for taking me to the cinema yesterday!

Effectiveness

Today I found the key to effectiveness :)

In the morning, if you first do the most important job and only after that check your email, you will achieve twice more!

Why? Just because :)

Done!

***
State exam passed. Studies are getting to the end.

***

Oh, this exam! Of course, it couldn't go without challenges, because this is me :)

Look, they divided us into 2 groups. I am Khaletskaya, so I was supposed to go in the second part, which starts at 12.00. So, I decided to come a bit earlier, to 11. Woke up at 8, slowly dressed up and went to the university. It was 10.40, when my dean called me screaming: "Katya, where are you? State exam is getting over, you are the only one who left!" Can you imagine?

I am running to the classroom, taking a card and uff... Meanwhile my groupmates can't help smiling - "Katya, you are so funny, as usual". They still remember me coming to exams with a huge bag, because in several hours I am flying to Almaty.. :)

So, excellent mark and it's really over now :)

***

On my way back home I was thinking about my 5 years of studies.
I came up with the idea that during these years I've been following 3 main principles:

- Not to use cribes.

- Love what you study.

- Take much more care for what you really learned, and not for which mark you got. Well, I will put it differently. Of course, I wanted to get excellent, but only for the subjects I liked.

I realized that professors like when a student shows that he/she adores the subject.

I remember one case when I was passing exam and was asked a question about taxation for medium enterprises. While answering, I said something like: "Yes, I was also interested, why it is so..." I saw my professor smiling when I said "interested". I can imagine how rarely they hear these words from students..

This is the thing that often made me upset during my university years. Why do the people study? Just to get diploma?...

One more case. Once I was taking exam on economic analysis. It was my favorite subject of that semestr and I was so excited to study and learn! However professor said he's going to give me "4".

It was the last exam of the session, I could be deprived of stipend if I didn't pass. Yet I told that I was not going to have "4" on my favorite subject and I would re-take the exam. I did it! Although being refused of stipend 6 following months, I was happy to have "excellent" mark for the subject I liked.

Another case. During my 2 months in Siberia this year I was supposed to do 3 university projects for 3 different subjects. I spent a month for the first one - "Investments in regional economy", however (I am almost sure!) professor even didn't read it. I spent 1 week for the second one - "Taxation for medium and small enterprises". Those 2 ones I really loved. And I spent 2 nights for "Finance of the firm" despite it is the main subject on my faculty...

Not sensible enough? OR Choosing what makes me happy?

One-year Flight

There is a saying: where you meet a New Year, you will spend your year in this place. Quite an old saying, almost a joke nowadays.

I met 2007 at the airport.

Did I intend to meet anyone there in the night? - No.

Did I plan to fly far away from Moscow? - No.

Did I forget about the-most-important-celebration-of-the-year? Not at all :)

It was my mother who was so anxious to find out - WHAT is happening at the airport during the New Year night.

And it was me who was away from parents' house for more than half a year, and so much willing to be with them during this magic night, therefore didn't care about the place.

***

We came to Domodedovo (international airport, the closest one to my home town) half an hour before midnight.

Almost no one there :)

A sudden announcement: "Dear passengers, aircraft XX with flight number XXX from Egypt has just landed in international airport Domodedovo..."

"If someone asks us who we are and where we are going, lets tell them that we are meeting our lovely relatives coming from Egypt" - my idea seems to be sensible :)

Yet people here don't care much about crazy Podolsk citizens.

Everyone has its own deals and thoughts:

- waitress in a cafe, regretting for a misfortune to work in a new year night... probably she has a boyfriend who has to be alone or with friends, but not with her... because she is here at the cafe serving visitors...

- poor passengers waiting for a flight to Ashkhabad (Turkmen airlines), which is delayed for 4 hours...

- a group of sleeping people spending night in the airport before their 6am flight to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (in some hours they will start a cross over 1/6 part of the world...)

... And near all these scenes... my family and me drinking coffee with cheesecake, taking pictures and laughing as we are aliens from Mars :)

***
Meanwhile it's getting to 23.59. The most important moment, the culmination of a trip, the beginning of the year!!!

What will they (=airport personnel) wish to their guests?!

"Dear guests, we congratulate You with a New Year of 2007! ... We wish you happiness, cosiness and nice flights with Domodedovo company" (actually in Russian it was even funnier: "уюта и приятных полетов с компанией Домодедово")

I wonder how these two things could go together :))) look, guys, your clients are waiting for 4 hours to get a flight which is delayed and you are wishing us cosiness with your company?!

I am just kidding - you can't imagine how much I was grateful to these greetings of a nice woman on the airport radio :)

... The passengers who had been sleeping suddenly woke up ...

... Clients of Turkmen airlines switched on a TV (yes, they a mini-TV set with them!!) listening to New Year speeches of a President (Which country? :)

... Male young waiter from another cafe opened a bottle of champagne and, screaming and rushing around, friendly embraced the waitress from our cafe ...

... We clinked glasses of filter-coffee, ate up the desserts and went home :)

***

While going to the exit my brother and me took some pictures...

Parents couldn't help asking: "Why are there so few people in the airport??"

My brother: "Mom, why for a normal person to go here in the NEW YEAR?"

I am smiling and thinking - WHY not? :)