Happy New another Year!

     Better late than never! Happy New Year to everyone. May YOUR new year be different from the past one at least in the degree of happiness (I certainly talk about the increase of that degree) and if there are some tears in your life, may them be the tears of joy!

     Talking about the New Year and of course some "new life" people promise to start every year, I just wanted to think of the resolutions we (including me somewhere at the subconscious level) make every single new year. Are they really going to be followed by us? As far as I remember, I used to have about 1-2 resolutions for the coming year. The 1st one was to lose weight (I used to have 'some' extra weight) and the 2nd - to find my love. And nothing could shake my firm opinion that these 2 things are closely interconnected. Then, when both of these things happened to me, I never had an idea it had had something to do with those funny resolutions! I believe that if not ANYTHING depends on us, SOMETHING, though a very tiny something, does. And this 'something' is our belief in ourselves, in our personal potential and in something else.
     I'm a fatalist, I think... And if there's some book somewhere in the Universe which contains all possible chains of events, I'd like that book to be hidden from us as long as possible to let us make those resolutions (in case of becoming reality) and be proud of ourselves that they did happen that year as "WE" had planned them to be. 

     So... I don't even know why I am writing all these things... My point is I'd like you to enjoy just another year which has been given to you for SOME REASON (though these things might sound better when it's someone's birthday, anyway...). May one of your resolutions be 'to live, to be thankful to someone up there in the sky or whereever, to enjoy the process of living no matter what'. And as a happy ending of my useless train of thoughts I'd like to share with you the quote I liked. May be it was a motivation for me to write this stuff. Anyway, it made me think about the Eternal which is a rare moment:

I understand (I think) that life depends on death. That we cannot have a planet in the first place without the previous deaths of collapsing stars; further, that in order for complex organisms like you and me to inhabit this planet, for there to be self-conscious and self replicating life, an enormous sequence of evolutionary mutations has had to be tried out and discarded. I can see this, and when I ask 'Why is death happening to me?' I can applaud the theologian John Bowker's crisp reply: 'Because the Universe is happening to you'. 

Nothing to Be Afraid of by Julian Barnes  

Why do Russian girls always and everywhere wear high heels?

     I didn’t think about this question a lot before I started working with people from other countries. Then this question was quite often under discussion among them but I haven’t discovered yet their attitude to it. Anyway, I started thinking about it and I started to notice that there are so many girls and women in the street wearing high heels in any weather and on a daily basis. I’m not a good heels wearer, they hurt, and they are inconvenient to walk in (many girls will agree with me) and personally for me sometimes even just to stand! Nevertheless I do wear them and I do want to wear them even though it hurts. Why? I don’t feel comfortable, but I feel more beautiful, feminine and confident in them. Besides, I believe I look more serious and professional when I’m wearing heels to work or any other occasion. I also like wearing flat shoes or sneakers when I’m on a trip or when I go shopping. I never wear heels in summer because it’s really killing me and I don’t wear them to places like beaches, forests etc. Once I had the following dialogue with a guy (not Russian):

He: How was your weekend?

Me: It was good and yours?

He: Very bad L

Me: Why?

He: I went on a date with a girl to the forest… L

Me: And how could it be bad then? :-D

He: She was wearing high heels and on the way back she was very tired and constantly complaining about how bad they hurt.

Me: Why was she wearing heels TO THE FOREST???

He: I don’t know. She probably wanted to be Russian… 

@ dog

There happened an interesting thing. One of my med students asked: "What's the Russian for the symbol @?" I replied without even thinking: "Собака (sobaka = dog)". All of ther present students looked at me in surprise: "A dog?!" Yes, a dog... They were laughing and asking why dog??? And I really didn't know why! Having come home I decided to investigate the case. With the help of the blessed internet I know the truth now... 

There's a version that the symbol resembles a coiled up dog (personally I find it weird because I dont see any dog... may be the problem is in my poor imagination). The second version is that the English pronounciation of the symbol "at" resembles the dog's barking... still... not very convincing. The most suitable story is... Once upon a time when the computer games era was just starting (at least in Russia) there was a game called Adventure which happened to be a text one. In this game a player was supposed to travel along the labyrinth and fight with the evil creatures. As the game was a text one all the creatures, walls of the labyrinth, treasures and a player were pictured as text symbols ("!", "?", "-"). The thing is that a player had a companion, a dog, which was marked as @ and perhaps this is why the symbol was called СОБАКА.

       Best wishes and keep an eye open for this weird world =)

Intro to my illogic mind...

Hello, everyone! I have always been a poor diary keeper and usually my idea of keeping a diary-like thing would end up in wasted paper or in forgotten blog logins. I have some info for those who by any chance would like to be my follower (i doubt this fact very much but who knows...). I'm not a native english-speaker, so please forgive my possible mistakes and try to be patient if you want to read these random thoughts of mine. I'd like to share some info about myself. I'm from Russia. My name is Catherine (English version) or Katerina (Russian version). I'm a postgraduate student and I work with foreign students (mostly African) of med school which I find very useful and helpful for the language practice (despite the bunch of all possible accents and dialects they speak). I've always been interested in the cultures and not just in the traditional way of getting to know a culture... if it makes any sense =) I like to pay attention to the smallest details which might seem unimportant at first but which I believe really make a culture. And if there's somebody out there reading these lines, I'll be more clear in the coming (I hope so...) posts. So, actually I haven't figured it out yet what I'm going to write about but on the whole it must be some thoughts on the random topics and events of my life. I hope my posts will be more culuture-oriented but... I never know and as my scientific adviser says almost about all my ideas "they lack logic". So don't be surprised if my posts do not have some common topic or connection between each other, they are random as, I think, the name of my blog implies...

                                                 My best wishes =) Be patient.