thoughts

I love China

I have realized something today. I love China. I never thought I do. Actually, I never thought on the subject. Neither about China, nor about any other country. (Well, maybe Cyprus, but that doesn’t count since I am living in this country).

Before you start looking for a different blog to read, let me tell you that I have never been to China. Nor have I read any books about China. I have met a few Chinese people, but I haven’t been really close with anyone of them. At this point you might be wondering how did I arrive to the conclusion.

Well, I was sitting there doing nothing when this Chinese girl popped up in my ICQ. Her English was good enough for us to talk so we did. She asked me if I ever visited her country or if I knew anything about it. I started thinking. And here is what came to my mind.

I am one of the greatest fans of Chinese martial arts movies. There is a special place in my heart for all of them collectively and few of them individually.
I really enjoy Chinese cuisine. Of course, all those places that I have tried might have nothing in common with the real meal in China, but as far as I went and as far as my imagination can take me, I really like Chinese food.
I like Chinese art. Especially paintings, but anything works. Some of the best decorations that I have seen were embroideries on Chinese silk. And, of course, the china porcelain dishes. Those are really cool, though I haven’t seen many of them. But I liked those that I have seen.
I like Chinese dragons. Dragons have a special place in Chinese culture and I totally dig them. Dragon dances, pictures, fairy tales and all the other dragonware – I like it.
I like Chinese architecture. I haven’t seen any in real life, but those that come on pictures and in the movies look really cool. If you can’t think of any, I’ll remind you of Imperial palaces, Great Wall of China, and monasteries.
I like Chinese people. I met a few. I didn’t get very close to any of them, as I have already mentioned above. But all of them seemed like decent people. What I liked about them was that they knew how to have some real fun without crossing too many of cultural borders. This is a rare quality, if you ask me.

I was surprised by myself. First of all, I never knew that I knew so much about China. Secondly, I couldn’t believe that with all these positive emtions towards China I never thought about the country or culture separately. Strange. I am really glad I discovered all those feelings. Now that I’ve done that, I put a visit to China on my todo list. It is one of the first things to do after I fix my financial situation.

Blogging is officially in the mainstream

I was suspecting that blogging is getting more popular than some people want it to. But today I got two reasons to belive that blogging is officially in the mainstream now.

The first reason is my mother. She usually tries to stay as far from technology topics as I try to stay out of business discussions. Today though she was aksing me all about blogging. We spend about two hours talking on the subject with me giving her an overview of the general concepts as well as the demonstration of practical side with LiveJournal. She was very interested. She made a whole bunch of schemes and notes in her notebook (the paper version). I have a strong feeling that she will join the blogging world in the near future.

The second reason is “Cosmopolitan“. If you were living under the rock for the last few decades, “Cosmopolitan” (or “Cosmo” for short) is one of the most popular magazines for women. It covers a broad range of topics modern women may be interested in – fashion, sex, travelling, housekeeping, getting married to a rich guy and stuff like that. From time to time one can find technology articles in “Cosmo”. They are usually on a very basic introductory level, but deep enough for a number of women to go out and try things. The latest issues of “Cosmopolitan” has an article about different ways of communicating in the Internet. It talks about emails, instant messaging (ICQ, MSN, etc), forums, and blogs. While emails and instant messaging don’t surprise me at all, blogs do. Not only it shows how to use LiveJournal (LiveJournal is one of the most popular blog services in Russia thus it is very logical to find an article about it in the Russian edition of “Cosmopolitan”), but it introduces readers to some parts of netiquette and terminology.

All of these lead me to believe that blogging is interesting for way too more people than I could have thought. Some people are in such a need of a diary software and means to share their thoughts and experiences that they are ready to overcome technology difficulties and laziness. Who would have thought of this five or ten years ago?

On meaning of words: console

I am not a native English speaker. I’ve learned most of my English in high shool. A big part of my vocabulary also comes from my Computer Science education. Somehow, many words in computer terminology come with the only true meaning to me and I don’t even bother checking them in the dictionary. Sometimes, years later after I have learned the word I see it in a different context. Looking it up in the dictionary and thesaurus never stops to amaze me.

Until today, the word “console” was only a noun to me. It meant the command line interface to a computer program. I never suspected it that it had any other meaning. But today I saw it used differently in the sentense:

I tried to console the old man.

This sentense was used in a rather sad story about the victims of Asian tsunami at the end of the last year. The story is as far from the computers as it can get. So I looked it up in the dictionary.

console – To allay the sorrow or grief of. See Synonyms at comfort.

Not only I saw the synonyms at comfort, but I’ve also checked the thesaurus for console. And it is exactle where I started to get really amazed.

Several words that thesaurus suggests for console (as a verb) sustitution are: calm, cheer, encourage, and untrouble. The amazing part here is that very often experienced computer users would switch from slow, limiting, and complicated graphical user interface to text mode console to solve some problem. And what console will do to them is: calm them down, cheer them up, encourage them and untrouble.

I really the connection now between console verb and console noun. But wht I find interesting is that text mode consoles were among the first user-to-computer interfaces. They were definetely before slow, limiting, and complicated graphical user interfaces. This leads me to believe that user interfaces that were before consoles were a real mess.

Now, can anyone remind me what were these interfaces? My memory doesn’t go beyond punch cards. And these were really ugly if you ask me…

Christian baptising

Many people ask me when are we going to baptise Maxim and if we have selected his godparents. I am sorry to disappoint you all, but we are not going to baptise Maxim. Olga and I are agreeing on this. We think that the choice of religion is his own choice to make. We are not very religious (read: very not religious) and thus the issue is not so very urging for us.

The same goes for the choice of godparents. He will be the one to choise. If he asks me, I can make a suggestion or two, but I won’t go in it any deeper.

Some people have noticed to me that with age people get more religious and that I might change my mind in the future. This is true. Especially, as some of you know how easy I can change my mind. So far I speaking as things stand. We are not planning on baptising Maxim. Maybe this will change. Maybe not. But not now for sure.

Pity and pride

Maxim makes me have a lot of feelings and emotions throught the day every day. These are mostly new to me, so I’ll try to blog about them. This will help me understand myself better and might even provide some entertainment for you.

The most common feeling by now is pity. I feel enourmous pity when something is wrong with Maxim. When he has a running nose or when gases in the stomach give him pains or when he can’t go to sleep – all of these make me feel miserable. I would wish for anything to happen to anyone in the world, even to me, but not to him. Every time I try to cope with this pity thing and every time it gets all over me.

Today I’ve got a new feeling – a feeling of overwhelming pride. Maxim had pains because of the air bubles in his guts. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t calm down. He was in pain. I took him in my hands and was massaging his belly for about an hour. I gave him a sip or two of the special tea. I warmed him up a bit in my hands. He calmed down and fell asleep. He was comfortable. He felt good. I put him back to bed and he didn’t even wake up. When I saw him sleeping in the bed with a half smile on his face I felt a lot of pride. It was like I singlehandedly won the First and Second World Wars.