Michael Stepanoff has sent me the link to an annoucement about a few books. There are a few books in English and in Russian about programming with Open Source Software. Things like GNU toolchain, PHP, and Linux are covered.
Month: April 2005
Paperwork logistics
My mother-in-law is going to come to Cyprus this Sunday. She lives in a far far away town of Mezhdurechensk, which is the Russian Sybiria. In order for her to come, there is some paperwork to be done.
Firstly, she needs visa. In order to get visa she needs either to get an invitation from someone in Cyprus or she needs to buy a tourist package, which is kind of expensive and not necessary. An invitation can be send to her by anyone who is legally resides in Cyprus. That is either a local or a foreigner who has a pink slip (residential permit). Neither I, nor Olga have pink slips at this very moment, since they are being renewed, but that’s OK, since my good friend Lev is helping me with this issue. With the invitation in her hands, she needs to apply for visa in Cyprus Embassy in Moscow. It will take them a couple of days to process the application. Meanwhile, she also needs some tickets to fly in and out.
In order to minimize the organizational time and expenses of this trip, my mother is helping, who lives in Moscow.
And now for the interesting part. The logistics. The path that information travels and people involved in the process, so to speak. Olga called her mother (that is my mother-in-law) by phone and instructed her to send her papers to my mother in Moscow. Papers travelled by train. I than called my mother and she gave me all the passport details and stuff like that needed for the invitation. I than emailed these details to Lev. He downloaded the invitation form from the web, filled it in. He went to certify the invitation and than faxed it to my mother in Moscow. My mother picked up the fax and went to the Embassy to apply for visa on behalf of Olga’s mother. She also arranged for tickets.
The funny thing here is that in order for Olga’s mother to come and visit us, the only people moving around are Lev and my mother. In other words, people who won’t benefit from the trip. Olga’s mother and we didn’t have to do much except for a couple of phone calls and emails.
Also, I find it interesting how information travelled around the world. All sorts of different media were used – phone, email, web, fax, and even a train. The whole thing took about two days to complete. Now this is globalization at its best!
Day to day growth
It is really difficult to see how Maxim growth from day to day. A bit here and a bit there are unnoticable when being busy with all the baby needs. It is only when something concrete is getting measured or changed that I notice how fast he is progressing.
One of these measures is, of course, the weight. Picking Maxim up and holding him in my hands at least 10 times a day doesn’t help in noticing every gram he gains. When he gets half a kilogram in one week I can only say that I think he grew a bit. But when the same half a kilogram is measured by pediatrician, I go all “Wow!” and “Cool!”.
Today there was another noticable milestone – Pampers size. We used the last of size 2 today and went onto size 3. It seems that only yesterday we decided to upgrade from 1 to 2. But in fact it was more than two weeks ago.
Time flies and things get forgotten. This blog is an excellent memory helper. I just hope I won’t forget to blog about size 4 change, when it’ll occur.
Also, today was the first time I went for a walk with Maxim. Until today he was outside with me only when on a trip to doctor’s office or back from there. He was outside without me. That was when his grandma was here. She used to walk him every day. After she left, all outside walking Maxim was getting included few hours of sleep on the balcony. But today it happened. He and I alone. We were walking for about half an hour only. Just to the bakery and back, in a very slow motion.
Other fathers were telling me that the first walk will feel wierd. Well, it was to a certain degree. I mean I am definetely not used to walking around with the cradle and the sleeping baby in it. Am I holding it right? Where is the wind coming from? Is that sun shines straight to his eye? Is he sleeping? What if he will ask me for food? What if a crazy car comes from around the corner? These were the things running through my mind. Fortunately, nothing extraordinary happenned. We just walked down the street about one block, bought some bread, and returned home. Maxim slept through most of the walk like suggesting that I should do this more often. Probably I should. Probably I will.
Hitch
Once in a while I have to watch some recently released movies. Just to keep up, you know. Today I managed to see “Hitch“.
Directed by: Andy Tennant
Genres: Comedy, Romance
Cast: Will Smith, Eva Mendes, Kevin James, Amber Valletta, Julie Ann Emery, Robinne Lee, Nathan Lee Graham, Adam Arkin, Michael Rapaport, Jeffrey Donovan, Paula Patton, Philip Bosco, Kevin Sussman, Navia Nguyen, Matt Malloy
IMDB raintg: 6.8
My rating: 8.0 [rate 8.0]
Maxim’s ultrasound examination
The magic rays of ultrasound are helping doctors all over the world to find and troubleshoot health problems. While Olga was pregnant, she was ultrasounded a lot. Maxim, inside her, was studied extensively too. Luckily they had no problems.
Today we took Maxim for his first standalone dedicate ultrasound examination. The head, the heart, the liver and abdominal area were inspected pretty fast. Leg joints followed too. Than he was overturned and layed on his belly (something he really doesn’t like). Dr.Simos inspected his kidneys.
He was spending more time on kidneys than he on the entire body. That started to get me worried. While looking at the screen he asked how many ultrasound examinations were done on the baby while Olga was pregnant. That was a really obvious sound that something is wrong. I started sweating.
Sweating in the silence is not the most pleasant thing to do. When noone speaks and nothing happens, it is not so easy to distract myself from the sweaty thoughts. And the more thoughts I had, the more sweaty I got. Jez. I just hate times like that.
Few minutes later, Dr.Simos confirmed my fears to some degree. Not everything is in place. He spent so much more time on the kidneys because he couldn’t find the right one. When he said that I alsmot lost my conscious. Fortunately, he found it. It is there and is doing fine. It’s just that it is lower than it should be.
Maxim’s left kidney is in place. But his right kidney is few centimeters lower and is hidden in his upper pelvis. Dr.Simos assured us that it is not a big problem and that we shouldn’t worry. The best thing about it is that we discovered it early. We will have to pay closer attention to it. If everything goes good, Maxim will never feel anything wrong about it. Otherwise he might be getting pains in his stomach, back, and digestion problems caused by the kidney pressing on the other organs and veins and everything.
In order to make sure that the situation is really non-dangerous we will have to be examined by a neuropatologist nephrologist. The good news are that it is possible to do in Cyprus. The bad news are that there is only one clinic where we can do it. It is in Nicosia. We will have to make an appointment, but because of the queue there it won’t be earlier than June or July. Of this year.
Anyway, I feel pretty confused now. On one hand, I am totally devastated by the news. I really want Maxim to have everything best and perfect and lowered kidney is kind of screwing around with my plans and wishes. On the other hand, I am glad that there will be more investigations, that these are possible around here, and tha the doctor was pretty calm about the whole thing.
Obviously I’ll be doing lots of Googling in the meantime. But this is in the future. Presently, I can only thank those people who made ultrasound such common, cheap, and powerful technology. Thank you.
Update: with all the worries I forgot to mention that Maxim is gaining more in the weight department than he is doing in the size department. He weights 5140 grams now, which is to say he passed 5 kilograms mark. His size remains the same.
Update: thanks to Lev who helped to clear the confusion with the doctors.