Quite possibly, one of the most useless things sold are bookmarks. I haven't yet had the need for fancy bookmarks, having satisfied myself with a sheet of paper or tissue, or right now, a small packet of wet wipes. Sure, they come in different sizes and shapes and some look heavily decorated, but since I never read more than one or two books at a time and always finish them, they end up being a completely useless part to decorate.

Next to bookmarks, I'd put picture frames - seemingly the default gift alongside candles and scented bath oils. There appears to be so very few picture frames in use at any one time at my house, that I look at them with a view of disdain. They take up my space! They take up precious space for books. Useful things!

Game expansions without the main game are a major source of disappointment out there, simply because you can't use it immediately out of the box. Without the main game, it's as useless as... a very useless thing.

Попросила синий цвет, он мне намного ближе, чем желтый.
Итак, фото в студию второй раз:



1 - Terry Pratchett - Один из любимых авторов. Пишет сатирически, саркастически, смешно.

2 - Studio d A2 - Эта книга разделяет меня от цели поступить в Гамбургский университет.

3 - Чернила - Обажаю.

4 - Супинаторы - Из за небольшого плоскостопия, вынуждена периодически носить стельки-супинаторы.

5 - Кисточки - Любимых фирм!

6 - Ноутбук - Купленый для поездки в Лейпциг, я не пожалела, что взяла его с собой! Не представляю, чтобы я потом делала по вечерам, дома.

7 - Кольцо с топазом - Подарен родителями нв 16-летие, это камень моего зодиака.

8 - Ожерелье - Люблю бусики.

9 - Влажные салфетки - Долой микробов!

Напросилась в дневнике Тигренка-86 на моб. Выдали желтый цвет - ну совсем не мой! Еле нашла, и то только 8 предметов. Следующий цвет должен быть более популярным.

Итак, фото в студию:



1 - Желтый кошелек, одна штука - Подаренный папой, кошелек оказался очень удобным. Не надо складывать деньги, чеки кладутся очень аккуратно, кошелек стал стильным аксессуаром под руку.

2 - Тетрадь - Сжульничала, она оранжевая, что хоть боком идет к желтому. Олицетворяет мою любовь к хорошим канцтоварам.

3 - Помощник к кроссвордам - Памятная покупка в Лейпциге. Думала, что купила словарь. Купила, да. Только не тот, который надо.

4 - Виниловый дрыщь - Кукляха, купленная наугад.

5 - Евро - Первая поездка за границу!

6 - Гривна - Вторая поездка за границу и на родину!

7 - Карточка накопления для мороженого - Купи 5, 6 мороженое будет бесплатно. Очень вкусное мороженое, кстати.

8 - Любимый напиток - Lipton Ice Tea Lemon.

Стоит только попросить цвет и флешмоб может быть продолжен и вами.

Закончила-таки! It's all over now...

Вот проехалась сегодня, по фотографировала.









More here.

In this world, I am adrift on a small bed of security that is my family. Tight-knit, with its own problems and knots, but still a family that I know is all I got in this tiny country. For the most of 14 years, I learned to get by with just these three other people in four walls.

I have a small extended family in both Russian and Ukraine, but it's been only a year since having regular conversations with my cousin, for instance. This virtual isolation left a mark on my character, I suppose, I had to make do with the people closest to me for comfort. I don't have the luxury of having fives, tens of cousins, aunties, uncles. Our families all grew up to be rather small, typical of small Western families. Grandmom, aunt, cousin with her husband and my baby niece. Grandmom, aunt with a husband, teenage cousin. I do not keep in contact with my grandmom's sisters, brothers.

I found this guy on ICQ... He doesn't speak English, only German and Arabic. That looks like the perfect setting to practice some Deutsch. :)

1. Если погода, то… хорошая.
2. Если оружие, то… револьвер.
3. Если фрукт, то… персик.
4. Если металл, то… сталь.
5. Если дождь, то… зонтик.
6. Если ягода, то… малина.
7. Если дерево, то… стройное.
8. Если музыкальный инструмент, то… кларинет.
9. Если время года, то… весна.
10. Если ветер, то… прохладный.
11. Если запах, то… резкий.
12. Если танец, то… танго.
13. Если море, то… спокойное.
14. Если напиток, то… вода.
15. Если алкогольный напиток, то… коктейль.
17. Если месяц в году, то… 10.

I signed up at Goethe Institut for German lessons! Yay me! Now, I can enjoy a tutored lesson twice a week, two and a half hours, lasting until 10:30 pm. It's a little late, I admit, but what sacrifices aren't justified on my way to the goal?

I'm happy that some of the learning I did at home paid off; I didn't go to the beginner level, but got to skip three courses. I'm at the end of A1 right now, so it's super! End of September, I'm hoping to start A2 quickly, then learn my own way through the textbook they'll give me and try to jump to B1 as soon as possible. The quicker I learn my way to C1, the better. A lot of it is in the speaking, I admit, which I had virtually no practice of. Ich bin Sekretarin von Beruf... As it turns out, learning German for two and a half hours makes time pass like crazy!

I have many different age groups, nationalities and professions in my class with me, a total number of 7 people. Tanzania, Australia, Poland, Sri Lanka, Russia, Syria and myself, Ukraine. Age ranging from 20, making me the youngest there, to around 37-38. The Polish man is a teacher himself, and the rest are a marketing manager, saleswoman and so on and so forth - well, actually I just don't remember their answers, just as much as their names.

Next lesson is Tuesday, I better bring some sort of coat with me, they sure love their air conditioners.

I stopped writing in my paper diary a while ago, it has been at least a year. I remember writing in it every night, prior to going to sleep. Now, all I can think of is sleep and how I have no energy left to devote myself to narrating my day - which was no different than the one before it.

I think the key isn't just in going to sleep early. That wont solve my lack of enthusiasm to write about routine things. The key could be in doing something new every day. Isn't it so?

But what can you find every day, that'll be enough to brighten it up and make it worthwhile? This is a long question I hope I'll figure out. Making a list, while fun, is not enough. Doing something completely random isn't it either, that's actually the most boring thing you can do.

I suppose, and this is a temporary fix, that I could do a thorough cleaning of the house, documenting my progress. It's both an energetic activity and highly practical. Plus, it'll be nice to track the progress I've made.

Starting with the kitchen, the bane of my existence. I just don't like it, it's greasy droplets that will come back no matter how much you scrub, its pots and pans, its condiments in mysterious hiding places only mom knows about. Time to familiarize myself with it - and finally stick that plastic sheeting mom bought for it, to brighten the place just a tad.

I doubt I'll stick to a paper diary though. It'll probably be this place, or my other website. Or maybe my laptop.

1) Went to see a band live - Coldplay, Viva tour
2) 1st year experience at a job. Running on my 2nd!
3) Visited a different country - Germany and Ukraine.
4) Seen Cirque du Soleil.

Не понимаю смысла скатертей. Хотя есть милые, красивые, роскошные, нежные, удобные и практичные - в моем будущем доме им не бывать. Уж лучше сама поверхность стола, с которого можно вытереть разлившуюся жидкость. Если прольешь красное вино, стол не посыпешь солью, все гораздо проще. А вот кидаться и быстро начинать стирать скатерть, где вероятность, что пятно так и не отстирается...

Скатерти никогда не будут покрывать у меня обеденные столы. Я оставлю им тумбы для завоевания. А может, их действительно не будет. Только пыль собирают, красивые.

Следовало бы запастись конфеткой на случай ночного жора, да так получается, что подходящих не продают. Были бы такие, на один прием, на развес, чтобы можно было купить одну или две и они меня бы не мучили своей сладкой, манящей материей.

В комнате у кровати горит одна тусклая лампочка. У стола бледным свечением отдает монитор. Нестройно гудит оконный кондиционер, но его почти не слышно, разум закрывает себя от монотонных слухов. Еле еле доносится стук по клавишам, когда ошибка затирается очередью по кнопке удаления. Удалив слово, пальцы снова возвращаются на исходную позицию, создание нового параграфа продалжается.  

Вот так я уталяю свой писательский голод.

All weather changes in UAE are lazy, slow and barely noticeable over a short period of time. Everything, apart from the winter cooldown, appears to be chaotic - the humidity, the sandstorms and strong winds, the occasional dry air. You cannot see much, unless you have gardens, how these changes affect plants, if at all. The only thing that appears to be causing a change is the hot that comes with the summer, causing my tomatoes to wilt and dry.

What surprised me the most during my Kiev visit is the rapid plant changes with respect to temperature. Heck, the jumping of temperature itself was surprising! Clouds came and went during the day, temperature soared and fell. When I arrived in the very start of May, everything was abloom, the trees were just showing its blossoms. By the end of my two-week stay, they flowers were mostly gone and the streets began to be filled with willow seeds, making it look like snow. But what caused this? Surely not simply temperature, as the case may be with our plants.

I cannot say I was surprised, I expected flowers to bloom and go, but I didn't expect the changes to be so rapid and so short-lived. It is truly a magical moment.

Last week I gave in almost all of my documents for AUD application and their only non-local scholarship available. Let's see how I do. I'm going to go to school tomorrow to get some additional documents stamped by them and give those in as well. Shouldn't take too long, if I make it there on time.

But anyway...

These two languages are deeply intertwined in my daily interaction with the world, with myself. My internet is bilingual, it is twice the size of an English speaker, or a Russian speaker. My work is Russian, yet the surrounding is clearly English - and mostly, broken English at that. I write, then I translate, then I convey the translated to my boss.

In my mind, it is very difficult to say which language I think in. It depends on the time, the situation. Sometimes, I think I think in pictures, rather than words, when I imagine situations, concepts, derive results from something or the other. Other times, it's as clear as day. 

 Я не хочу ограничивать себя каким-то одним языком, думая, что половина читателей не поймет половину написаного. Это их дело. На крайний случай, есть и translate.google.com

Английский для меня - родной. Как и русский, но я считаю себя более сильным носителем английского, нежели русского языка. Школа дает свое.

In my notes at work and at home, I am bilingual. Something is simply better written in a certain language.

I try to define things for myself to make it easier for me to have an idea of what they are. I can read up on what design is (and that's what I'll do), but before that, I want to see what I think of it myself.

Design is the solution to a problem, an addition or subtraction from an item-concept-idea, which will improve it and serve a purpose. It can be visually pleasing, in fact, it is usually how design is used, to create something pretty... Taking furniture, for instance.

Recently, a designed created a set of cutlery with an inner cavity, making it buoyant, thus, solving the problem of having to reach into dirty, soapy water in the kitchen sink to get all the knives, spoons and forks.

It sounds ingenious, although it doesn't cater to people, who prefer to let the cutlery soak before washing it - and you'd have to reach into the water to remove the plug anyway. Admittedly, a design feature for just one kind of consumer, making it quite useless for others, but a design feature nonetheless.

Let's see what Wikipedia tells me about design:

The term is often tied to the various applied arts and engineering (See design disciplines below). As a verb, "to design" refers to the process of originating and developing a plan for a product, structure, system, or component with intention. As a noun, "a design" is used for either the final (solution) plan (e.g. proposal, drawing, model, description) or the result of implementing that plan in the form of the final product of a design process.

And here are what some definitions Google got me:

- plan: make or work out a plan for; devise; "They contrived to murder their boss"; "design a new sales strategy"; "plan an attack"

- the act of working out the form of something (as by making a sketch or outline or plan); "he contributed to the design of a new instrument"

- plan something for a specific role or purpose or effect; "This room is not designed for work"

- an arrangement scheme; "the awkward design of the keyboard made operation difficult"; "it was an excellent design for living"; "a plan for seating guests"

I am more of a mobile phone kind of person, but if there's a landline, I try to use it, it comes out cheaper in the long run.

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