Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

In the morning, my brother and I went for a perilous journey. We had to drive a really old car (”don’t live the city borders in the piece of machinery” type) in heavy rain and limited visibility conditions to Larnaca airport, where we had to pick up an unknown guy, who we had to bring back to Limassol and make and exchange with. This poor soul was a yachtsmen. He had to get to his team and we were his only hope. Team’s coach had a valuable posession for us. It was a package from my father.

Overcoming obstacles one by one, which were many by the way, we managed to succeed in our quest and get the package. In it, there was plenty of stuff. Most of it was for Maxim - books and a giant polar bear. Soft. And huge. He was exactly the size of Maxim.

Maxim showed a more than average level of excitement. He played with the bear, talked to him, and took him for a walk. He even wrestled him to the ground and than picked up into the air - that was a particularly hard thing to do, which you can witness from the pictures in the album.

Thanks Dad - very much appreciated. And vodka too, by the way.

Album location: /photos/2006/2006-02-08_POTD

Here is more about Christmas, since I’m still in the spirit.

One of the cool things about living in a mutlicultural environment (like Cyprus) is that you can enjoy the best of all worlds. Originally, we were celebrating only the New Year with Ded Moroz (Russian Santa Claus) being the main character of the holiday. But now we enjoy Christmas too. And we get more presents from Santa Claus and Agios Vasilis (Greek Santa Claus).

The definition of “begin good all year” can also be interpreted in different ways, which pretty much guarantees presents from at least one of the three magical Christmas grandpas…

Olga was very good this year and Santa Claus gave her a camcorder for Christmas. That means that even more content will be posted to this website in the coming year. So far you had plenty of texts and loads of images with occasional audio. Video clips were rare. Now they’ll be more often. (Stay tuned for the upcoming New Year Eve filming with me performing as Santa Claus).

We’ll just need some time to study the camera and how the whole process of filming, ripping, and optimizing for web works. Any hints are more than welcome, as usual…