Heating system

In Russia we can afford to do many things in an ineffective way.

We don't worry too much about spending resources because we think we have plenty to spare.

Among such things though there is the one that is very special.
It's our heating system.

We have to heat up a lot of buildings, with huge square, and we have do it for a long period of time, like 6-10 months per year.

Another factor is that in many cases people lives crucially depend on that system.
If during the winter the building gets frozen, people wouldn't be able to live in it until next summer.

The system consist of a few parts.
The first one is a plant that produces hot liquid.

Usually it has several redundant sources for making energy, usually it is piped natural gas + reservoirs with oil or store for coal.

It can work and produce warm for a long time autonomously.
Also, for redundancy there are several such plants, so if one of them stops, others can do its work.

After warming in such a plant hot liquid pumps in to well-insulated pipes.

and goes to the buildings and homes.
Despite the insulation, those pipes are pretty warm, so many animals like them, and vuild their nests above them.

Inside the room we have radiators like this one:

We have them in each room under the window.

The radiator is a very simple devices with a tap to adjust it's temperature.
The system is good in general, redundant and cheap.

I pay about 50$ a month for that heating, which is much cheaper than producing  heat with a small gas radiator or wood stove (I do that at my country house and it 10 times more expensive).

Our people love to have hot temperature inside houses, usually it 26+C inside, and since I live in the block apartment it happens that I never open taps of radiators in my rooms, because I have enough heats from neighbors.

How do you keep warm in your home?
What is the temperature in your home?

LEWWWP and Holly

The LEWWWP will be closed in few days.

I trust Holly has some strong reasons for that, so nothing to do.

I have a lot of feelings about that, but I’m going to leave them in 2016, and start a new life in 2017. Traditionally it’s what those “New Years” are serving for.

I was a member of that awesome community for more than a year, and I want to share some my thoughts, not about LEWWWP as community though (I believe we will continue) but about Holly.

She was a soul of the LEWWWP for eternity, and for me personally she is the face of the LEWWWP.

I believe Holly taught me enormous amount of things and many of them without even my awareness.

I’m going to share only a few most remarkable of them.

First of all it’s confidence. When I came to LEWWWP I was confident enough to write a few sentences in English, but wasn’t ready to say them aloud, for the audience, for recording, for being published publicly.  But all of that comes to me fast and naturally because of way how she encouraged me.

I can’t but mention her persistence with fighting for  my pronunciation. My helpless tries with “courage” will be our private joke forever.  Her “transcription” classes were my the best hour of the week.

Almost every day I was astonished by her attentiveness to details, one has only to mention or show some challenges and in most cases Holly will help with that immediately or later.

She has given me so many positive feedbacks with many improvements to my writing that I must count her as co-author of my blog.

As an IT guy I used to expect from users simple questions about IT, but it doesn’t work with such a tech-savvy person as Holly is. If she asked you something about IT, you should be prepared that she’s already known about the subject all what you can google about it.

It’s a challenge to be on par with her.

I know for sure we meet her again and again on other sites and in different circumstances, and it will be our “new page”.

Intercultural communication

I used to attend a MOOC course from Shanghai International Studies University, which was called "Intercultural communication".

I haven't finished it yet; in fact after I finished week 3 out of 5, I had decided that I lost something.

Hard to describe what exactly I lost, but it began to seem for me that I was missing the point, and I decided to take a break and to start again later.
But something I already found interesting.

In those three weeks they showed many challenging cases of miscommunication and they described the reasons.

I also liked a few tricks which they show too.
For instance, a simple question, who are you, can lead to many different types of answers:
- I am Ivan, I am from Russia
- I am a christian
- I am a sculptor

And it shows us different approach, different balance between commonality and differentiation from people of different cultures and origins.

As far as I noticed, they didn't mention the language barrier too much, they set it out of the box.

In ideal circumstances when the language doesn't lead to misunderstanding anyway our different background is enough reason to make a problem.

Since we are intercultural community without any borders, it might happen with us too.

Do you have some fun or educational example of such cultural misunderstanding? Can you share it?

Halo

These days we can see a scenic effect in the sky.
It's Halo:
Halo  is the name for a family of optical phenomena produced by light interacting with ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. Halos can have many forms, ranging from colored or white rings to arcs and spots in the sky.  
Wikipedia: Halo_(optical_phenomenon)
 

These photos are not mine, I copied them from the local community website, because it's too hard to take such  a photo with my smartphone.

Please share your favorite sky effects, polar lights, ellipsis and so on.

Can the politeness be excessive?

I've been listening to my morning podcast this morning when I run into the question "Can the politeness be excessive?", mostly because of this dialogue in it:









The dialogue starts at 11:51 and finished at 17:57, so its length is about 6 min.

What happened in this 6 minutes? Well one girl asked one boy return her i-pod back.

If I were here, and was an author of that scene it would be:

- Hello, Luke, give me my i-pod back please.

- Sure, here you go.

Something for  2-5 seconds long.

Also I mentioned a lot of hypocrisy or/and direct lying in the original dialogue.

For instance, girl was telling him:

- Actually, I can't remember, did I lend my i-pod to you

But it's a lie, she can remember, she is here because of that, and she knows that exactly.

How it's possible that this lying is polite and fair directness is not?

If you are lazy enough to listen to the podcast I can give your another example.

The scene:

The teacher is trying to manage multi-user conference call for a class.

One of the student has really bad sound, deafening noise which prevents communications for everyone.

From my point of view, it's polite, to disconnect that student rapidly, giving him/her a chance to realize that he/she causing a problem for many others, and probably fix it and connect back quickly, and thus save time for everyone.

Simple arithmetic works here for me, causing problem to a group of people is inappropriate  (old communist habit?)

But I have seen another picture, when the teacher trying to explain the problem to that student, waiting for a long time when this student will leave the class by himself/herself.

Since, I don't feel it might be a pleasure to hear that noise, probably there is another explanation , I reckon it must be politeness.

My questions are:

1. Are there limits for politeness? When we should stop trying.

2. The thing definitely related to the culture, but is it related to language?

3. What do you think what is the current trend for such things now, are they changing, do we simplify rules or vice-versa ?

Jeremy Clarkson about politeness

I've read a good text here: https://bashny.net/t/en/103153 (Jeremy Clarkson on the Russian)
It's a short one, but in case if you don't want to read that all, I'll show you a few quotes:

...

Our obsession with good manners means that we feel a duty to discuss the weather with the postman and leave with a hairdresser. We are writing to laugh long thank-you letters to people who have already thanked verbally.

...

When the British Top Gear fan, wants to take a picture with me, he spent hours explaining how his son watches the show on the channel «Dave», and how he can parody me and everyone in the house "pray" for our transfer. In Russia, just say, "Photo".

...

For the British it all quite wildly. But some time later, I began to realize that incivility saves a lot of time and nothing you do not need. When someone is spending your evenings on every empty-headed nonsense, just say that they are wrong and walk away.

...

Already at home, at the airport "Heathrow", I came across a pretty sociable immigration officer. "For a long time went?" - He asked politely. I saved two seconds, not bothering to answer.

It looks like for one week we defect this guy.

It looks like he already knew that excessive politeness is a burden, but he just wasn't brave enough to make this conclusion.

Human a social animals, and it's a hard thing do something opposite to common behavior.
My favorite video in that regard:


My questions:
1. Do you think that you could survive in the society where the rules of politeness quite opposite to what you got used too?
2. How fast we can get new rules?
3. Which direction is easier to adapt? To the excessive politeness or to the brevity?
4. Are there "wrong" and "right" way about that topic?

Grandfather Frost

In this post I'm going to show you some info about Russian version of Santa - Grandfather Frost.
There are a few differences in appearance:
He wears :
- A fur hat,
- Long fur coat that usually red
- Long white felt boots
- Warm gloves
His beard is thicker and longer.
He doesn't have elves and wife, only his granddaughter Sniegurochka  (snow-little-girl) accompanies him.
He doesn't wear glasses, doesn't smoke, and he is really old.

There are a few differences in his behavior:
He never uses chimney or something like that.
People who waits him are awake and they keep door opened for him.
Usually granddaughter comes first, and all together loudly invite him to come in.
Children expected to report him how their acted this year, were they good boys/girls and so on.
Then they declare poems to him aloud (because he is old and doesn't hear well they should do that aloud), they sing to him.
Usually all the children and granddaughter dance together traditional way around fir-tree.
He never stay in one house for a long time, there are many houses in the country, and he supposed to visit all of them in one night : New Year eve.

His transport
There are a lot of ways for him, it could be a fancy sleigh or a normal sleigh.

Sometimes we says that she went by skies.
I think there is nothing special about where he lives / how he moves, that's why we don't have only one version for that.
The gifts
He has a big red sack with him. He never allows someone to touch it.
When children finish their show he gives gifts to them.
Usually it's something what child asked in their letter, but it is not mandatory: it can be anything.

Do you have your local version of Santa?
What are the differences?

The early bird catches the worm

The early bird catches the worm - they told.

I waked up early, and since it's still my Ski-December I went to the ski path.

And there was almost no path!

The new snow covered it.

Perhaps skiing through is a good exercise, but it's too much for me.

Three kilometers later I gave up and went back.

Because of outside cold and intensive working/breathing my face got some frost:

And when I came home, my younger son was impressed but this my new look, and laughed a lot.

Sledding

Skiing is not the only winter entertainment. Sledding is not bad either.

I like the variant of sledding when the sled is pulled by dogs.
Dog sledding is sometimes called "mushing", and a person who travels by dog sled is called a "musher".

Because my dog is small, I made my own sled.
I made it from titanium, it's a very lightweight metal.
And because of titanium, the whole construction weighs about 3 kg.

I polished the runners, and I coated them with varnish, so now they can slide easily.
I have a few sets of runners also: for hard snow with ice crust, for fluffy snow, and for something in between. They differ in the width and in construction.

All members of my family like this sled, excluding maybe the dog only.

When we need spring water, we take a canister in the baggage rack and we are ready for a small trip.
The well is close enough, something like 1 km from our house.
A good reason to walk, a good exercise for the dog.

Chess in my life

Family

I got acquainted with chess at a young age. I was 5 or 6 years old when I saw my father playing chess with my grandfather. I asked them to teach me, and my grandfather did so.

He liked to play with me, we played huge amount of games.

He almost never let me win on purpose, he thought that there is no place for fake wins. 

I used to cry a lot because of that, but now I agree that facing real troubles is the best way to learn.

When I grew up a little bit, he stopped to play with me, and only many years later I understood that he was just not a good player, and he strongly dislike losing a game. So when I was mastering the game better than him, he lost interest playing me.

However, he was my the best teacher me, I wouldn't say he was "unbeatable" but it was hard to beat him. And it was exactly what I needed.

I am very grateful to him for all those games. He was patient, he explained me the things again and again, and he bought and read me some books about chess.

My father was a better player, and so I rarely played against him at that time. Only when my grandfather started to have excuses not to play with me we started to play. 

We don't do that regularly, perhaps 3-4 times per month, and for long period I have almost no ability to develop my chess skills.

School

At the age of 12 I changed schools, and I was lucky enough to become a member of a school class which had about 8 good chess players. 

We played a lot after our classes. We managed tournaments, and were passionate about chess.

It lasted for approximately two years before we opened a "bughouse" game for ourselves.

Bughouse is a variation of chess, a team game. After we ran into the "bughouse", we fell in love with it, and never played ordinary chess anymore

Bughouse chess ended up playing a huge role in my future life, I made friends, I acquired skills, I even got my job because of it.  I'm going to write a blog about it sometime. 

Children

Now I'm not developing my chess skill anymore. I play rarely on freechess.org, I have rating around 1700 for long time. (2700+ champion of the world, 800 beginner).

Now my opponents are my sons. 

I started to play with the older one when he was only 2 years old. 

I play with him regularly, and I let him win from time to time.

I've tried to replicate the methods I used to learn chess.

I can't see any progress, but what's even worse is that I don't see very much interest.

I am ready to give up as a chess teacher.

That's why on the last week we both went to the local chess school. 

I read in the news about a local event - a chess tournament - held at the chess school, and I wanted to show it to my son.

It was a good solution, first of all I could talk with the best teachers of our city, because many of them were judges during this event.

The second good thing that the boy was impressed by number of people who play.
He was curious about rules, table of results, and so on.

The thing which surprised him a lot when a slender little five-years-old girl defeated big adult man.

He can't believe that, he asked me how it's possible, and I could see how new this thought for him.

Luckily, in my city we have plenty of good coaches, and some of them works only with young children. 

We made an arrangement with coach for my boy. We will see soon what he gets from it.

Our chess school is very good, for instance their student Volodar Murzin who is only nine years old already plays for Russia and he is in top 10 chess players of his age.

That's why it's better for my son be trained by them instead of me.

Dec 1: The Beginning Of The Winter And Ski-Sember

Despite the fact that we were already having temperature down to -30, and 2 meters of snow for last month, officially, the winter starts only today.

Because our country is huge and have many different climates, we don't use any special days as begin/end of season, just the calendar.

So today the winter is started for me, who hardly survive under snowstorm last week, and for Sochi people who have +10 and rain.

I try making any December to Ski-sember, by doing my best in trying skiing each day.

There is the last year picture from my sport tracker:

As you can see only a few days missed.

That's why I greeted December on the ski road today.

After a long pause it was not an easy thing for me, but looks like I still can!

Hope I will be ably to beat my record and I'll make this December the one without days-off.

Help me with that! Please do remember me that I have to ski every day