Since this year I am on WP more than on other platforms, I think it will be a good idea to extend my “Christmas Cookies for All” campaign to this blog. Here is how it goes every year:
I love sending and receiving Christmas cards from all over the world. If you want to exchange Christmas greetings with me, please send me your postal address in the contact form. Will be happy to send a card to any place in the world:)
I am baking tons of Christmas cookies and sending them also pretty much all over the world, although sometimes I have to put a limit on the total number of parcels sent. If you are interested – let me know 🙂
Just to give you an idea – that’s how my house looks before Christmas –
In 1971 my Mom bought a movie camera and started making home movies. We both enjoyed the process a lot. She soon acquired a magnetic board with letters, and we began to add captions to the films.
I do not remember what happened to the movie projector, but it disappeared a long time ago, and I was wondering whether I will ever be able to watch these movies again. Fortunately, nowadays, many companies can digitize your old movies, and several years ago, I sent the first two reels to convert them to mp4. I liked the result, and now that Mom brought several more back, I finally sent them to the same company, and I liked the results even more.
Today, I am posting the first reel, which covers the time from early spring early summer 1971.
Apparently, if I spent enough time, I should be able to add captions to this movie, but I do not have time neither now, nor in the next several years, so let me just briefly mention what it is about.
The title says “Lialia’s school break.” Lialia was my nickname, and a break was a spring break in the first grade.  Everything was filmed in Saint-Petersburg (back then – Leningrad) and near suburbs.
By episode:
I play with a big doll, which could “walk,” when you hold her by the hand. Her name was Walking Nina.
I am walking around in the city center, close to the Church on Blood, not restored yet back then.
In the Zoo
In the courtyard of my home, playing “classes” on the asphalt.
A canary named Solka. That was an amazing story – one cold November night, he flew inside our apartment when my aunt opened a window leaf for a minute. We tried to find out whether he was a runaway but didn’t succeed. Then we had to buy a cage and some books about canary care:).
Waking at the Strelka – the edge of Vassilievski Island, then on the roof of the Peter-and-Paul Fortress, and then inside the fortress. Then I take a camera and record Mom.
At Strelna, a near suburb. We are there with Mom and Grandpa Fedia, and it’s hilarious how he is trying to help me to climb on a tree, and then helps me to get off, and this all happens three times in a row.
Walking along the Neva River, and then taking a trip on a small boat
In the Alexandrovskiy Park, close to the St. Isaac Cathedral, and by the river again.
Later in spring. Since we see balloons, it should be May 1 or May 2 – we didn’t have balloons on regular days, only for big holidays, and May Day was one of the occasions when kids got balloons. Mom is filming, and I am there together with Mom’s friend Alla and her twin daughters Sveta and Lera. They were three or four years older than me. As a prank, we attach our balloons to the teeth of one of the Griffons on the Neva embankment.Â
All of us are back to my house, and we play with a collie puppy in the courtyard (he is not my dog, somebody else’s).
Later in spring, probably mid – May. Mom and I are in Central Recreational Park. First, everybody is casing a squirrel – they are unseen in the city.Â
Then – intensive rope-jumping:)
We are visiting an exhibit, which is called “Made in Poland.”
My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.
Recently most of my days are very intense, and I continuously feel that I am completing only about half of the tasks I need to complete. But today, it was even worse.
I worked from home (which I do not like that much these days) because I had myl physical in the afternoon. I’ve started my workday earlier, at 7-30, hoping to be mostly done by 2-15, when I had to leave for the doctor. I had a long work to-do list, not mentioning my still-in-progress training.
And I ended up doing zero in course of these seven hours. Absolutely nothing productive. OK, I’ve reviewed two commits. I’ve dialed in three meetings, but just about 20 minutes total of them were somewhat productive.
Several people were reaching out with the questions, which took harder to get resolved from home. And when you have twenty minutes in between things, it’s nothing you can do.
I was mad. And I thought that nothing could make me feel better. And guess what I did then. “Then” – after I went to the doctor, went to my Mom, and finally got home.
There was one thing which was on my to-do list for several weeks, and I was keeping postponing it and avoiding it. There were several forms which I needed to download from the Russian consulate website and help Anna and Vlad to fill them in. I was saying for weeks that I didn’t have time, but in reality, I was pushing this activity back.
So when I came home, under the motto that I am late with everything anyway – I did it! And I felt soooo good about doing it, that suddenly the whole day didn’t feel like wasted!
One of the items with deadlines for the past weekend (when I was six hours short) was cleaning the back porch from the rest of the fallen leaves and putting away the rest of the flowerpots (I managed to put away the garden furniture and to fold and cover the umbrella the weekend before that). I knew I had to do it over the weekend, because on Monday we had tons of snow, and today we have an arctic cold wave.
Last weekend, I measured exactly how much time I needed to complete all the tasks on my list. I was six hours short. And it’s not anything “nice to have,” which could be postponed for the next weekend. All those were the tasks with deadlines; there were reasons why they should have been completed before today. Unfortunately, I am also 100% booked during the workday today, and I am entertaining important guests of the Postres community after work. Thereby, I do not even have my usual extra two to three “grace” hours on Monday to complete unfinished weekend tasks.
That’s what you get for taking too much on you:). And if I even had any slack time past weekend, it would be no more than an hour. And I do not include in these six hours a couple of my family history post I planned to write.
Most of my friends are aware that out of my multiple vision-related issues, the most annoying is my double vision. I went for years without any treatment until about five years ago, I got special prism-only glasses to address to issue. I can’t wear these glasses all the time, but I use them for driving and while in the movies or other shows. It helps a lot.
Recently, however, it became worse, and at my annual checkup, I’ve complained to my eye doctor. She gave me a referral to the specialist, who is primarily dealing with that particular problem. That other doctor examined me and told me that she can work with my double vision, but first, I need to have my cataracts operated. That was news for me; I didn’t know I have cataracts, but that explained a lot about how I felt recently.
What else were we doing as students except for the studies? There were not many sports. Actually, among nerds it was not cool to do any sports, it was a strong presumption, that only people who can’t use their brain for anything productive, do sports. And the only sport I remember somebody was doing was our gymnastics team. If there were any other, they wouldn’t have any visibility.
There were obligatory political activities. There ere mathematical clubs in schools, which were called YMSCH – Youth Mathematical Schools. They were clubs, after-school activities, but we called them “schools.” And I will write about them at some point.
One of the highlights of student’s life was the Math-Mech Day. I can’t recall now, what was the way of choosing a date for it, but it was some time in spring, far enough from the finals. Later, it was transformed into the Math-Mech Week with different activities every day. But back then, it was not even a day, but just a performance – a student play, written, staged and performed by students, undergrads, grads and postgrads. That was probably the only one informal gathering I can recall from the Soviet era, definitely the only one in the University.
I’ve got a new iPhone 11 Pro! For the past several years, I am on the FlexLease plan with Sprint, which means I can get the next version of the iPhone each time it appears (every 12-18 months) for virtually no extra cost. I have to admit, the plan itself is expensive, but I know what I am paying for. It’s an ability to be connected anywhere in the world, any time, with no switching to anything. And for always having a hotspot to connect my computer anywhere in the world. Also, I have my Mom and my sons hooked to the same plan (they all pay for their lines, but I pay a lion share of the bill). This is just to say, it is not the best option for everybody, but the best option for me, with my lifestyle.
That’s why I ended up with the new iPhone 11 Pro the other day. By now, I know the fastest way to get upgraded. I always order a new phone online, when it arrives, I wake it up and allow it to absorb information from my old phone and iCloud, and then next day go to the Sprint Store, which is two blocks from my work to perform the activation.
This time it was by far the most seamless upgrade, with a very short time it took to sync with the iCloud. Also, this time, I was able to retrieve from the iCloud all my passwords, which was great since I have a hundred applications installed. Even my Bluetooth scale recognized the phone, or rather the new phone was aware of the scale :).
And the main attraction – three cameras! I didn’t get a chance to play with them long enough since I work non-stop for the past two weeks, and especially for the past three days. But still – this is a picture of my room taken in complete darkness, except for two candles and a desk light behind me, which is not directed towards the room. Same shot with two cameras.
On Friday, I attended the Booth Women Connect Chicago conference. Our CEO asked all the women in the leadership position in our company, whether they want to attend. All of us said – yes! Ten of us for the 60-employee company – I think it’s very impressive!
There were opening remarks and a keynote, which we all attended. Also, there were four sessions when we could select one out of eight different workshops to attend. Choosing was extremely difficult!
I liked the keynote by Ann Curry. As for the sessions, the first one I’ve attended was a panel, “The Future of Work.” It sounded fascinating, the abstract said:
The transformations facing the future of work will feel like tidal waves disrupting all industries and, subsequently, all career paths. These transformations will span organizations and most of their roles, and all types of business models will be disintermediated. In this panel, we aim to raise awareness of what is happening, why, and how to empower us to be proactive with learning transformations.
So, let’s together redefine “work”! A one-size-fits-all workday is a thing of the past. Automation, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies are bringing a world of new products, methods, and experiences to our doorsteps that are far more efficient, but unpredictably disruptive in their impact.
How do individuals empower themselves in the face of all of this change at work? How can we turn this period of technological and human change into an occasion to create more rewarding jobs and build better learning systems and career pathways? How might companies embrace flexibility in a structured way?
Join us for a lively discussion around how technological disruptions have transformed global labor markets, impacted gender parity in the workplace, and created opportunities to redefine what work is. We will share cutting-edge research and discuss how organizations whose employees are empowered to be a part of this citizen-led automation will be the winners of tomorrow. We’ll aim to have you return to your organization better equipped to make your workplace work for you, your colleagues, and your clients.
I always say that I never been unemployed for a single day, which is only partially true. There was a day when John called me to the hallway and fired me on the spot.
I mentioned earlier that it was virtually impossible to fire anybody in the Soviet Union. It continued to be the same in Russia on our “official jobs,” which were holding our “labor booklets.” But our official jobs would pay very little for most of us, including me. Urbansoft was probably the only place of work in the whole city, where you would be paid on time, and that money made most of my budget.
G. was in a sort of leadership position in the company. He was the one to call me to say that I am hired. As it turned out, he lived in a house next to mine, which is why he was a person who installed a modem at my place. He would also bring my code to the office on a diskette when I was not able to come to the office.
Hettie's Reflections 