Arun's Antics

Arun's developed quite a random new hobby. He gets random Russian words stuck in his head, and he spends the day repeating them.

Last week, he was stuck on the word "nyetho." And all day long, he kept saying, "nyetho" in a funny high-pitched voice and shrugging his shoulders. "Nyetho!"....over and over. Finally, I broke down and asked him- "Do you even know what that means?"

"No!" he said happily.... "Nyetho!"

He just thinks the words are amusing!

The other day, he started saying, "Null...Chitiri...Voseem...Null." He must have gotten the last four digits of a phone number from a radio advertisement stuck in his head!

Sometimes I actually translate for him and tell him what the words mean. But I've realized he doesn't really care, and he just likes saying the words.

All this is coming from a guy who makes fun of Ukrainians for listening to American music without understanding English! At least music has a beat you can enjoy!

New Year's Resolution

I generally have plenty of goals for myself. And of course, the New Year is a great chance to introspect and start afresh! This year, I decided on:

Learn Something New Every Day and Perform an Act of Kindness Every Day

So one of the things I have been learning, is of course, Russian. Can't share too much of that. But I can share the other passion of mine- photography.


I have been learning some great software tricks. For example: exposing colors in an otherwise B&W picture. This picture is from our trip to China. This was at the Bell Tower in Xian.
Another trick is using the color-exposure to display a subject. In this case, showing off the Napa landscape through my wine glass.


Most recently, I've learned to create a watercolor canvas effect. These are some horses I caught from our trip to Cairns in Australia.


There's the: now-you-see-it.... now-you-don't edit. I hated the park bench in this picture from Cusco in Peru.



I have some macro-photography (butterflies in Tucson, Arisona) while also working on some depth of field (blurring everything but the subject)


These two photographs are a couple of my favorites: Camels in Cairo and a B&W from New Orleans. They combine a few different techniques of photo-editing.



And finally- the time machine technique on a picture of myself dancing.

So what do you think? I would love to hear critiques, suggestions and feedback :) Like I said- I want to keep learning!

Work

I've been wanting to post some pictures of our work locations, but thought it would be rather drab and boring.... luckily, both Arun and I have had some office parties and so the pictures are now much more interesting!

Arun's work is just a five minute walk from our apartment. It's one of the reasons he chose this building. (That way, he can roll out of bed with 15 minutes to spare and get to work by 9 am.... yes- the workday starts at 9 here!)

His building complex is really modern and nice: it's called the Business Center. There's a cafe and restaurant downstairs.

There's a salon upstairs (the one we use!). There's round-the-clock security and an actual parking lot (so that people don't just plug their cars on the sidewalk wherever there's space like in the rest of the city.)

Arun's on the 2nd floor (and he tells me he takes the stairs most of the time... most... geez.)

I took out my camera to get a picture of Arun working at his desk. As soon as he noticed me, he grabbed the phone. Because good engineering involves phonecalls? Either way, don't let him fool you- that's a fake call! (Sorry Arun, I told!)

As for the work environment- here are some tidbits:

The Ukrainian local nationals are rather formal. Everyone greeted me, shook my hand, stood up when I entered a room. Didn't I say that chivalry exists in Ukraine? It's all rather nice!

Dress, is of course, fairly casual. No one's wearing tie and coat or business suits. I'm told that only happens for important client or customer meetings.

The Ukrainian workday is technically from 9am to 6pm.

Most local nationals bring their lunches from home and eat at their desk. The American ex-pats head downstairs and eat at the restaurant (prices out of reach for locals.) There are no such things as 'lunch specials' in Ukraine. The prices are constant throughout the day- whether you come in for lunch or dinner!

Anyway- I'll end with a couple of shots from my office Christmas Party. It was quite the spread, and a lot of fun. At one point, there was a lot of toasting, which I'm told is quite customary in Ukraine. Toast- drink- Toast- drink...

Arun's work party is on Saturday- so I'll post them soon!

Christmas Eve in Ukraine

Well, the strangest thing just happened to me.

The doorbell rang, and upon peering through the peep-hole, I saw a group of young girls.

I opened the door and suddenly, they burst into song! It sounded like a cheerful rhyme.

Then, they started throwing seeds into my house!!

I was baffled!

I just stared at them. They stared back. Then they started another song and threw more grain.

"Thank you!" I said, and shut the door quickly.

What the heck??!

So I hopped on google:

"Ukraine throw seeds".... nothing. Maybe it's Russian?

"Russia throwing grain songs"... still nothing.

All of a sudden, I realized it was Christmas Eve! So I typed in:

"Christmas Ukraine seeds tradition" SCORE!

Apparently, I've commited quite the social guffaw.

This is the Ukrainian equivalent of Halloween!

Apparently, during Christmas time, children go around their neighbor's houses (sometimes with fireworks, sometimes dressed up) and sing songs wishing people good health and 'abundant harvest' (hence the grain). I'm supposed to give them coins or treats in return.

They sing songs called 'Koliadky' :

"Radujsia zemle, radujsia. Syn Bozhyj narodyvsia." -- Joy, Earth, Joy. The Son of God was born.

"Dobryj vechir, Sviaty vechir. Dobrym liudiam na zdorovja." -- Good evening, Holy evening. To good people for good health.

Wow. Talk about culture shock!

(by the way- you may be able to spot the little grains on the floor by the door in the picture!)

Skiing in Bukovel

The Bukovel Resort was a DREAM destination for our first day of 2009.

Getting there from Lviv and traveling back to Odessa was a nightmare, but the location was absolutely, superbly, surreal. The reason traveling was terrible is because the resort is so incredibly remote, that public transportation takes hours. Of course, this doesn't really affect the uber-wealthy patrons of Bukovel who mostly rolled up in expensive four-wheel drive vehicles and jumped out in their designer ski-apparel and paid for exclusive chalets with piles of cash....

Alas, for us... it was a rough 7 hour journey from Lviv in buses and trains with little to no heating.

Once we got there, it was easy to put the journey behind us and settle into our cabin.

The minute we walked into the cabin, the smell of citrus-mint wafted through the air. It was so warm and cozy, it made you want to settle into the luxurious bedding and read Dickens or Frost or something. The bathroom literally had strawberry-scented toilet paper. I'm serious.

Of course, the first thing on Arun's agenda was to try out 3 of the 4 places to dine. (All in one evening, of course.) So we visited the two Ukrainian restaurants and a Pizzeria and stuffed ourselves silly.

The next morning, Arun awoke with dread. I insisted on an early-morning start to our ski-day. We were the first ones in line for breakfast, and we hired a ski-instructor. After renting our gear- we were off!

We learned some basic terminology and were instructed to get our bindings on... Arun was a quick study and I struggled! However, once Arun got his skis on, he immediately began to glide....backwards.
Panic washed over his face, and he soon found himself planted face-first in the snow. Unfortunately, this pretty much set the tone for Arun's skiing.

Luckily, all he REALLY wanted to do was get some great shots, and doesn't he look great with the gear on this shoulders? So confident! (and relieved that the skis were in his hands and not strapped to his feet!)

Now, I actually managed to stay upright the entire duration of our ski-lesson.... however, the minute our instructor left, all her teachings seemed to evaporate and I simply could not make the graceful turns down the slope that I had JUST learned. So I used my prefered method of slowing down- falling.

But as you can see- I DID enjoy myself! Arun had already turned in his equipment at this point, because he was DONE!

There were a couple of noteworthy moments with our ski-instructor. At one point, she planted Arun at the side of the mountain and instructed him to wait while she taught me some basic turns. After some success, she looked up and saw Arun gliding backwards into the woods. "Be Careful!" she shouted "...there are woods!" Arun just kept gliding and our instructor turned to me and entreated me to get him to stop. When we looked back up, we saw Arun sitting on the snow. Our instructor looked at me, shook her head, and with a tiny hint of despair sighed, "He has fell." And then she strode back up the slopes to save him. Poor Arun!

Arun later confided in me that our ski-instructor had told him that the disparity in our performance was due to the fact that I actually wanted to learn to ski more than him. I was also happy to hear that she asked him if I was a 'sportswoman' :) If only she saw my slowing-down-by-falling methodology later. I'll have to confess that I was very impressed by Arun's eagerness to try out skiing. This stuff is just NOT his thing, and he was an incredibly good-sport about it all. Here's to a year of trying new things!

Happy 2009!

Lviv on NYE

On New Year’s Eve, we had a very eventful day in Lviv.
We had a tour guide walk us through the city and we had a chance to learn the significance of many of the monuments, churches and historical sites of the city.

There's one thing we quickly picked up on- Lviv people are the Texans of Ukraine. They are VERY proud and nationalistic. As we talked to people, we kept hearing certain refrains:

"REAL Ukrainians are from Lviv."
"We speak only Ukrainian- not Russian like in Odessa or Kiev."
"Everything east of Lviv are a bunch of Russians." etc.

These are some proud folks!

Anyway- back to the tour.
As I mentioned, there are certainly some amazing churches in Lviv. We were told by Olya, that there are Eastern Orthodox, Greek Catholics, Roman Catholic and Armenian Churches. There were frescoes and murals, and sculptures galore! Olya provided information with such fine detail, that Arun later confessed to me that there were a few times his mind wandered....hee...

We then walked within the Old City. There were houses where people wrote gossip on the walls... there was a building where a restaurant exists in such secrecy that to this day- you have to knock on the door to be allowed in to dine... there were buildings that housed the first department store in Lviv...

Olya showed us the monumnet dedicated to the Virgin Mary. There is a cut-out halo behind her head so that no matter the weather in Lviv, she will always be lit. The sculptures on the base of the monument depict the struggles of the Ukrainian people against the Russians and the sacrifices of the people to gain Independence.

We went to the Pharmacy Museum, which still functions as an Apteka (pharmacy) even today! And we ended with a visit to the Ethnographic/Folk Museum.

After our tour, we headed back to the hotel. Lest, I do too much advertising for this hotel, let me provide a bit of a caveat. There is no doubt that it's a great hotel...but the staff? They were a different story. Don't get me wrong- they were very smooth, very polished, very professional. They were also lazy and would rather lie than work on customer-service. When we asked if there were any shows at the opera house, tha manager assured us that there wasn't anything playing since it was New Year's Eve. Arun went to the opera house anyway (it was 50 m away from the hotel) and sure enough- there was an opera playing! It's a good thing Arun didn't trust him!

We stood in line for tickets and unfortunately my Russian did not get us anywhere. However, for whatever reason, Lviv natives speak more english than we've found in Odessa, so with the help of some people in line- we purchased 25 gryvna tickets for the 6 o'clock show. We tried to figure out what the show was, but for $3 tickets, we decided it really didn't matter.

Our dinner program at the hotel started at 10pm, so we thought this would be a great way to spend the evening. Sure enough, it was a gorgeous interior and we had a ton of fun taking pictures. When we got to our seats, we were thrilled because for the first 30 minutes, the orchestra played some beautiful Schubert. Then... the opera started. And it turned out it was a Ukrainian operetta. So about 30 minutes in, we decided to head out.

Luckily, there was plenty of action around the main square, so we had fun walking around.

Then we had an evening of music and song and managed to meet some Ukrainian-Americans. Within the hour, they had moved to our table, and we were having a BLAST!

The most interesting part of the night, however, was when the hotel staff interrupted our singer to put on the annual Presidential Address. Yes- the president makes a speech just prior to midnight, which seems almost anti-climactic. I mean, it's nothing like a political speech to blow the energy out of a room! But I did have to take a picture of the screen- so here he is- Yashenko doing his thing in Kiev. [And yes- he spoke in Ukrainian.] We asked our new friends: Olek and Oksana what he said, and they retorted that there wasn't enough 'substantial content' worth translating. Hee.

He stopped speaking about 2 minutes prior to midnight. We watched the countdown and then lit some fireworks at our table (this would NEVER pass firecodes in the US!!) and continued partying. At about 1pm, our friends decided it would be fun to take some champagne out to the middle of the square and continue celebrating there.

So off we went- to the middle of the square and watched the ridiculous partying. Fireworks EVERYwhere... bottles of champagne.... you name it. By this time- it was already 3 in the morning and we were planning on getting an early morning start to head to the Carpathians [by the way- this did NOT happen.] Anyway, we headed in, but stopped at our friends' suite first. They were VERY helpful (unlike our hotel staff) and so they called and told us where to get the bus service to Bukovel (turns out- you have to transfer at Ivano-Frankovsk) but this was definitely a better option than our hotel manager who suggested we hire a taxi to take us the 250 or so km at a cost of "only $250 or so."

Suffice to say- we had a FANTASTIC New Year's and I'll end on our favorite pictures from Lviv. The first is Arun's favorite ("The Police are talking to Santa!! Take a picture !! Santa was NAUGHTY!") and mine (the B&W)

Lviv: Did You Know?

After an overnight train journey from Odessa to Lviv, we arrived at the Grand Hotel in the center of the city. It is a gorgeous hotel with a ton of history-built in the mid 1900's, it was the first building in Lviv to get electricity!

The hotel had the most incredible architectural details- the crown moulding, the staircases, the amazing chandeliers.

I'm not sure my photographs are doing it much justice.

Anyway, if you're interested- check out the website.

http://www.ghgroup.com.ua/en/house-of-grands.htm

We took a city tour, and learned all kinds of wonderful trivia. Lviv is the city of lions, named after Lev- the son of then King Daniel. Of course, there were beautiful churches, and a great center of town in which each and every building had meaning. However, I'll post some more obscure facts about Lviv.

For example- did you know that the gas lamp was invented in Lviv?

Yup.

And there's a monument dedicated to Jan Zeh and Gnat Lukashevych who discovered the oil chemical filteration and distillation system to create the gas lamp.

Also- did you know that the concept of masochism originated in Lviv?

The author- Leopold Von Sasher Masoch had written a novel about the concept (supposedly autobiographical) called Venus in Furs. It is said that he was furious that he would go down in history for the invention of masochism and not something more enlightened and grand. Fact is, he was the editor of a very progressive magazine that promoted women's suffrage and he also worked for years against local anti-semitism- but oh well! It's masochism he's known for-it's pretty hard to not be over-shadowed by such scandal!

There's a cafe with the statue of Leopold called Mazoks Cafe and Arun and I decided to have dessert there. The decor was incredibly interesting. The interior was bathed in red lighting and there were whips and chains and leather everywhere. When the waitress handed us the menu, she also handcuffed Arun. There were a ton of props laying around so people were having a blast taking pictures.

Us included!

Of course, Lviv has all the charms of a gorgeous Eastern European city.

It would be a shame to not mention that there is a beautiful Opera and Ballet Theater in Lviv...and the book market that surrounds the monument of Ivan Federov (a Russian typographer) ... and the fact that Lviv was home to Mozart's son (and many other composers).

Lviv is also an academic center- with many old universities including Lviv University which was a Jesuit establishment founded in the early 17th Century.

I should also mention that Lviv does have the history of being the site where the centuries old Jewish Community was desimated when Jews and the Polish intelligentsia were murdered in pogroms established by the NKDV and NKGB. Between the Soviets and the Germans, much of the Polish Roman Catholic churches and Jewish synagogues were destroyed.

Let's end on a few shots of Lviv: The Opera House and the Book Market.