Hettie’s Reflections – Blog Posts

Albertina Museum In Vienna, Part 2

Paul Klee
Boris Grigorjew. A couple: Thief and Prostitute. 1917

Once again, I didn’t know anything about this artist, so I saved some notes from the exhibit:

Boris Grigoriev is one of those artists who, despite the omnipresent search for new forms of avant-garde expression in the contemporary Eastern European art centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg, stuck to figuration and the classical genres. A brilliant draftsman, he initially worked as an illustrator for magazines and made a name for himself as a recognized portraitist of well-known personalities. Self-Portrait with a Cigarette is one of these powerfully expressive portraits.

Grigoriev’s portraits thrive on a direct confrontation with the sitter and the exaggeration of gestures and facial features, as well as the expression of an emotion that captivates the viewer. In this sell-portrait Grigorier presents himself in a defensive posture: the raised shoulder and the skeptical, grim gaze suggest a defensive aloofness; in addition, the figure is viewed from below, by which the artist elevates himself while subordinating the viewer it is through such powerful means that Grigorier lends this traditional genre o modernity that a comparable and roughly contemporaneous with the visoalizations of Expressionism and New Objectivity. Not lost because of the criticism of his “European style,” the artist left Russia in 1919 and settled in Paris in 1921

I recognized Deineka, and was wondering how he could possibly paint a baseball game, and it turned out that he was “awarded” a trip abroad, including the USA, approximately at the same time as Ilf and Petrov
Continue reading “Albertina Museum In Vienna, Part 2” →

Random Notes From Vienna, Mostly Food :)

When we planned this trip, Boris was sure it wouldn’t be that cold in Vienna in January, definitely not colder than in Helsinki, and it will bw nice to walk around. As our departure approached, the weather forecast kept talking about “severe weather conditions,” and we couldn’t figure out what the fuss was about, since it was still showing a little below 30F.

Continue reading “Random Notes From Vienna, Mostly Food :)” →

Albertina Museum In Vienna, Part 1

On Sunday, we planned to visit both Albertina and at least some of the Hofburg museums, but we ended up spending the whole afternoon in Albertina (including lunch, which took longer than we expected for a museum cafe).

We started with the State Rooms exhibit, then moved on to Monet to Picasso and Fascination Paper.

This very unconventional piece of furniture was made for Archduke Carl, who got tired of the constant presence of the staff who didn’t allow him to do anything by himself. Having this very modern looking, and for his time, revolutionary, this stand allowed Archduke to put things on it and take them off independently (do not ask, that’s what the exhibit description says!)
And that’s how Archduke Carl looked
On the opposite side of practicality – a porcelain table
Continue reading “Albertina Museum In Vienna, Part 1” →

Travel

Now, trying to post in chronological order.

About the travel. British Airways decided to gift me a free business class upgrade, and they notified me when I was dropping off my luggage, not at the last minute. That was super-nice, because they are not my primary carrier, and I didn’t expect it. Also, that meant that I could sleep horizontally and try to get my sleep back on track. But now, I had a dilemma. Originally, I booked premium and planned to skip the meal and try to sleep right away, but now, there was some fancy food in sight, and at the same time, the flight was delayed even more.

I ended up having dinner, which was a mistake, because although we departed almost an hour late, the captain made up for it and we arrived almost on time, which meant I had less than four hours of sleep. My Apple Watch was going nuts about my lack of sleep.

I had a very long connection in London, which I was hoping to use to catch up on my community-related work, but I wasn’t super productive because I was so tired. My arrival in Helsinki was very late(as expected), and we had an early flight to Vienna.

To be done with the topic of sleep deprivation, we also had a late dinner with one of me peer on the first night in Vienna, and I finally caught up on sleep on Tuesday :).

I spent a very long time choosing a hotel to stay in Vienna, and it was OK location-wise, but there were several unexpected twists. First, although they said on the website they had a fitness center, it was… not really. To be precise, it meant a corner in their pre-sauna room, so you could technically exercise after you get out of the sauna, but not like you could come in the morning and do the weights. Second (and that was the first time ever I had such a problem) – there was no closet in the room. Nothing. Even a small one. Instead, there were two hooks with a bunch of hangers, and good luck hanging both the coats and the clothes! I would never thought I had to check for that!

Anyway, we survived, and are about to leave now, but I will definitely mention it in my review 🙂

Vienna On My Instagram

It might look like schnitzels, desserts, and coffee, and lots of entertainment, but this visit provoked a lot of thought about the parts of the history I didn’t know. I how I will have time to tell al about it, but for now – just my Instagram feed 🙂

Vienna Holidays

I will show more pictures shortly, but for now, just one. I am trying to spend my birthday in a new country every year, at least for another couple of years 🙂

Last Christmas/First Birthday Gifs

During the past week, two more gifts arrived by mail. The first one was presumably the last Christmas gift from one of my German friends:

The reason I didn’t post it right away was that I forgot to take a picture of the cookies, and then I kept forgetting, and the cookies kept disappearing :). I still have some left back home, but now I am traveling, and I thought it was not fair to wait till February :).

And on Friday, just a couple of hours before I headed to the airport, I received a package from my friend Lena form Ann Arbor:

And I am sure you guessed which one was my favorite: a kolacki ornament!

Thursday, Friday And Going To Vienna

Thursday and Friday were super-hectic because my time-sensitive project at work re-emerged with almost the same deadline, but now with me traveling. In addition, I needed to significantly modify both of my PGConf.dev submissions. I submitted everything more than two weeks ago, because I didn’t want to submit at the last minute, and I had to do it anyway, with the submission deadline being the EOD Friday.

With all of the above, I had very little sleep since Wednesday. Even though the show on Wednesday ended early, I couldn’t go to bed because I saw a new conference sponsor sign up, so I had to respond immediately and send a contract to sign.  For some reason, I could not fall asleep for a while after that, and this pattern has been going on since then. Usually, I can fall asleep immediately when my head hits a pillow, and that’s one of the reasons a short sleep is enough for me. Something got broken, and even though I was very tired, I couldn’t fall asleep, and since Wednesday, my sleep pattern is completely messed up, so my goal for the next several days is to get it back on track.

Since I was packing for my trip in a half-sleep mode, I was sure I had forgotten something. One thing I realized on Thursday evening was that I couldn’t find my new good presenter, and it was already too late to order a new one. Boris said he will lend me one of his, but I know it won’t be as good as the one I had, and I can’t figure out why mine was missing.

What appeared to be more critical was that it wasn’t until I arrived in Helsinki last night that I realized that I hadn’t pack any extra jeans. I am not sure how this happened, but now it’s a problem – we left for Vienna early in the morning, and we will come back late on Tuesday evening, so no shopping till Wednesday sometime. Unfortunately, airport duty-free shops have only super-fashionable jeans, and I do not like the wide-leg look that is now popular. And I do not want to spend time shopping in Vienna – we have better things to do!

To finish on a positive note, one of my Thursday accomplishments was moving the box with all cookie-related items back to storage. This box is huge and so heavy that I dreaded taking it down and putting it up on the top shelf, and I still do not know how I managed to do it, but I did!

Eureka Day

On Wednesday, I went to see the first show of the year of my Broadway subscription: Eureka Day.

This Timeline Theater production was performed at the Broadway Playhouse by the Water Tower. I have mixed feelings about this venue: it’s further from the Loop, so I need to plan for an almost 40-minute commute, including the wait (or walking for approximately the same time), and also, it is often very cold inside, but I really like the house layout (a better view from virtually any seat), and faster commute back home.

The plot is as timely as it can be. A private school in California, based on principles of consensus and inclusion, where no decisions can be made unless all Board members agree, faces an outbreak of mums. The events take place during the 2018/19 school year, when Zoom is still new and largely unfamiliar, and a quarantine decision is not taken lightly. And then comes the contradiction between parents who want to change the school rules to make vaccinations mandatory and anti-vaxxers, some of whom have deeply personal reasons to refuse to vaccinate their children.

I really liked how the Zoom message exchange was displayed on a big screen, revealing very common conversation patterns between the parties.

For those who have time to read the Behind-the-scenes booklet for Eureka Day, here is the link. There is a lot of interesting information about the history of vaccination in the world and in the US specifically. The most interesting part is that the play was actually written in 2018, before the pandemic, and now it’s hard to believe the choice of dates isn’t intentional!

Unfortunately, I didn’t find any video clips from this play. If you find any, let me know, and I will add them to the post!

The First Meetup Of 2026

On Tuesday, we had the first meetup of 2026, and it was such a great start to the new year! I was so happy to see many familiar faces, as well as first-timers. We had great attendance (one of those rare situations when I didn’t order enough pizza :)), and Ryan Booz, one of the speakers who never fails me, gave a great talk on configuring Postgres for effective logging and query-optimization analysis.
I liked the fact that we had thirty participants that early in the year, when people just start to get back to their regular activity level. More importantly, we now have a group of active members who not only keep coming to the meetups but also actively listen, participate in discussions, and stay long after the presentation ends, discussing what they just heard, sharing experiences, suggesting future topics, and talking about how we can make Postgres more appealing to application developers! I always have to remind the last group of people staying late that, as much as I love them all, I need to close the house, but those are my happiest moments!

On days like that, I have this strong feeling of community building happening right here, and all my work is not in vain.