Winter solstice

Tomorrow is the darkest day of the year. It’s the winter solstice. We only get about 4-5 hours of daylight. The day after tomorrow we start the the journey towards increasingly longer days. That’s good.

Also, we are approaching Christmas. That’s not so good. I’m not into the religious part of it, and the commercialism just makes me sad. I try to keep it on a very minimum. When I enter the malls with Christmas-pop-music on the loud speakers (Jingle Bell Rock, Santa Claus is Coming to Town) and people running around carrying bags full of stuff, it makes me feel sick.

The only place I feel fairly comfortable is the bookstore. So that’s where I try to do most of my shopping.

It’s been a rush at work as usual. Projects and reports need to be finished before the end of the years. Managers sitting with there Excel spreadsheets counting deliverables, worrying about the KPI’s.

If you don’t know what a KPI is, you’re lucky. KPI means Key Performance Indicator. That’s the measures by which managers can maximize their bonuses, by local optimization in their little pond, and private agendas. At the same time they usually harm the overall interest of the company. But who cares. This is competition. This is the wonderful capitalist world.

Whatever, it’s great with two weeks of vacation, skiing in the mountains.

I hope I get the book by Thomas Piketty for Christmas. If not, I buy it on sale in January.

Happy winter solstice >:)

(Picture from my archives, from a past Christmas, in 2010 or 2011 I think. We have less snow this year, but thanks to efficient snow making system, the skiing is not at risk)

Soviet retro style

The streets were dark and cold. It was winter in Siberia.  It was silent. No people around, except us.  The old brown log house was lit by only a weak lamp.

They brought us down in the basement.  Heavy brown chairs and tables.  Small bronze statues of working class heroes. The the red flag with hammer and sickle. Old pictures on the wall. Pictures of Yury Gagarin and Leonid Brezhnev, and the hockey team from 1985; Krutov, Larionov, Makarov, Fetisov and Kasatonov.  The best team ever, raised and trained under the red star.  An old TV set showing a classical Russian movie. Black and white.

We were back in the Soviet Union. Retro style.  Even the menu. Russian vodka and Russian beers. Traditional Siberian dishes. Fish from Lake Baikal. Steamed sig.  Frozen omul in thin slices, eaten raw with salt and onion. It’s called Stroganina. Siberian sushi. Sig and omul. That’s the Russian names. The English names of these species of fish I don’t know.  But the fish was very good.

After the food, we got a Soviet-style chewing gum. Made from resin. Tasting of pine. Quite interesting. Just like the chewing gums we made ourselves when we were kids.

(The pictures were taken at the restaurant, Unfortunately, my crappy cell phone camera takes bad pictures in the dark. Sorry about that. I need to get a new one.)

Game of Thrones over Siberia

We left Irkutsk this morning, on the Aeroflot flight back to Moscow. It's quite a long trip, more than 6 hours. Fortunately, we were flying on business class, which is a lot more pleasant than the packed rows on economy. We got comfortable seats, with plenty of space to stretch out the legs. The food is very good too.

There is an entertainment system on-board, of course. On the flight from Moscow to Irkutsk, I mostly watched documentaries, about the Kola Peninsula, and the province of Bashkiria. I never watch TV series. My Russian colleague isn’t much of a TV watcher either. But on the flight from Moscow, he started watching Game of Thrones, and got hooked. He recommended me to check it out.

I like to look down on the places we’re flying over. In the beginning we had a nice clear sky and a good view. But then we entered into clouds. There wasn't much else to do, so I decided to watch the first episode of the first season of Game of Thrones. I can tell you,  that I didn’t get  hooked.  It was pretty boring, and I don’t like watching violence.

The scenes with naked girls were nice of course. I have heard you can find compact compilations on the Internet with only the hot scenes from the series. I think I go for this option.

I still haven’t become a TV-series watcher, and probably I never will. I rather spend my time reading books and science papers, and watching girls. Just watching >:)

(I have the habit of taking pictures from planes. This is a picture I took today, cruising over the endless frozen Siberian wilderness.)

Siberia

So, I ended up in Siberia. It wasn’t too bad. It was very nice actually, except for the beginning

The jetlag is bad when going 7 time zones eastward. It’s still bothering me a little bit.

I arrived at the airport in Irkutsk a 4:30 in the morning. I traveled together with a colleague from our Moscow office.  I have seen the city only in the dark. But it looks very nice, with all the old large log houses in the city center.

We have been working all day, and only went down to the city center to eat after work. I’ve eaten lots of good food, mostly fish from the Lake Baikal. It was species of fish I’ve never heard of before, such as sig and omul. They are species that live only in Baikal.

We have been effective at work, so today we finished at noon and went for a trip to Baikal. It’s the lake of the lakes, 1600m (5300 feet) deep, and contains 20% of the (liquid) fresh water on earth.  

I really liked Siberia. I think I would like to go here for vacation some time,

Tomorrow Aeroflot will take me back to Moscow.

(Picture taken today on our afternoon trip to Lake Baikal.)

Sent to Siberia

Someone must have been telling lies about me. I knew I had done nothing wrong, but his morning I was sent to Siberia.

You may have recognized the opening already.  I borrowed and adapted it from The Trial by Kafka.

It’s true that I’ve done nothing wrong, as far as I know, nothing serious at least. We all do things we regret, and things we should regret. That’s the case with me too, but nothing to worry about. YOLO; that's what the kids say.

It’s also true that I’ve been sent to Siberia, by the company I work for.  I’m on my way to Irkutsk, close to the Lake Baikal.

 It’s such a long flight, so I was allowed to fly business class. Now I’m sitting in the Aeroflot lounge in the Sheremetyevo airport, waiting for my next flight. I kind of have a feeling that I’m surrounded by Russian oligarchs, people with expensive clothing and jewelry, and small dogs carried in expensive bags. Actually, many people look quite ordinary too, poor guys like me.

Whatever. The lounge is quite good. I get free food and drinks, and I can relax while reading and writing, but I wish they could turn down the volume on the TV.

  

It’s gonna be interesting to visit Siberia. I wonder if it’s very cold there now. We will see tomorrow >:)

(I haven’t been to downtown Moscow today, just waiting in transit at the airport. So I picked a picture from my collection, taken a couple of years ago, from the top of Moscow State University, one of the famous Seven Sister, built for the 800 year anniversary of Moscow. The big venue in the center of the picture is the Olympic stadium from the 1980 summer Olympics. The games were boycotted by most western countries due to the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan.)

Suicide (at the public library)

I made a quick trip downtown today, on my bike, to the public library. I was looking for books by Peter Handke.

After the controversy when he received the Ibsen Prize, I got curious. I want to read a couple of his books, to make up my own mind.

I wasn't the only one. All the books by Handke were out.

So, I borrowed a book by Stig Sæterbakken instead. He was one of our finest contemporary authors. I say was, because he died in 2012. He committed suicide at the age of 46. He often wrote about dark and unpleasant themes, such as loneliness.

I have always found authors who comitted suicide (for instance Hemingway and Bjørneboe) very inteteresting.

The French/Algerian author Albert Camus said that "the only serious philosophical question is suicide"

All animals and humans have a natural fear of death. Those who commit suicide are able to defeat the greatest of all fears.

Don't worry; I'm not one of them. I just find it interesting>:)

Handke and other jerks

Last week, the Austrian author Peter Handke was awarded the Ibsen Prize. This created a Hell of a lot of noise; demonstrations and protests. The reason for this was Handke's support for the Serbians during the war in ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Handke also gave a speech in Slobodan Milosevic's funeral in 2006.

Handke was awarded the Ibsen Prize for his plays, not for supporting Serbia. The question is, can we judge an artist's works independent from his actions and opinions?

We appreciate the novels by Knut Hamsun in spite of his pro-nazi attitude during the war. He met both Hitler and Goebbels in person. Hamsun was convicted for act of treason after the war, but was put in a hospital rather than jail due to his high age.

We enjoy the writing of Jean Genet (e.g. The Thief's Journal), even though he spent years in jail, for theft, robbery and gay prostitution. Jean Paul Sartre recognized Genet's talent as a writer, and helped him avoid a life-time sentence.

We can be entertained by Marquis de Sade's novels even though the sexual abuse he describes (e.g. Justine; The Misfortunes of Virtue) is horrifying.

I think I'm gonna order a couple of books by Peter Handke from Amazon, to make up my own mind regarding his work as an artist. I usually like books by people with twisted minds.

As far as I know, Peter Handke has done nothing illegal. He has just stated opinions that the majority of people don't like, just like Ibsen's Dr. Stockmann did ... >:)

(Picture of Peter Handke borrowed from Wikipedia)

Storm

This weekend we had the first storm of the fall coming in. It's been windy, cold and raining. It's the kind of weather when you would rather stay indoor reading a good book, or playing with your new toy.

Last night I was out in the yard to take down the kids' trampoline before the wind takes it. Sometimes these wind-borne trampolines end up in the neighbors garden, or smashing the neighbors car. I don't want that to happen, so better be precautious.

I made a quick visit to the town center today, to buy a new shirt. Commando shopping as usual; fast in and fast out, with a brief stop in the bookstore afterwards, In the streets people were hurrying from shop to shop or wherever they were going, dressed in raincoats,

All these nasty storms are coming in from the west, even though Russia is to the east. Just joking. I like the Russians. Many of them are very nice people. I always enjoyed traveling to Moscow. I just don't like Putin's aggressive politics, domestic and abroad.

By the way, after the opening of the iron curtain, some precious gifts from the east have come to cross my path.

This storm isn't too bad, actually. There are worse to come, I think. Whatever, we'll probably stay happy as long as there are good books and fun toys >:)

(Picture taken with my cell phone today outside the mall. Not the most interesting picture. I'l try to take some more exciting ones tonight.)