Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Almost dead
Almost dead... Caught a cold several days ago and had to stay at home rather than enjoy life during the whole weekend. It was still worse 'coz I was at my hometown and could not have an opportunity to see friends or do as much as I could. And now... terrible cough every 3 seconds, so that I could barely eat my lunch today, nose running and headache turning head into a brick. But still have to stay at work and ... work. AWFUL! I'd prefer to jump to bed as soon as I finish work, but I need to buy pills to stop this cough and pay for the Internet... Ah... so many things to do... Don't want nothing and noone... Wanna sleep and not to wake up, for at least one week... Ah ease my pain! KILL ME!!!
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
My 'nice' morning
What a ‘nice’ morning I had today! I was fast asleep when George started waking me up, “I think it’s time to get up, come on, come on!” Yesterday I told him to be more firm at doing that ‘coz otherwise I would never get up myself. He sounded very resolved, and I got up and forwarded to the bathroom, slightly rocking on my way. George was still lying in bed seeing dreams. Then I crawled to the kitchen, opened the fridge and took some things for sandwiches. And I was just about to grasp the sandwiches I made when I suddenly looked up at the clock. 3:59. Noo!!! I thought something must be wrong with the clock, and went back to the bedroom and looked at the clock in my mobile phone – same! It’s not difficult to imagine my next reaction, “GEOOOOOOORGE, I WILL BITE YOU!!!” Sure I crashed down to bed right at that moment…
He said he must have seen it in his dreams that it was time to wake up. Very nice, isn’t it? ;(
He said he must have seen it in his dreams that it was time to wake up. Very nice, isn’t it? ;(
Monday, October 22, 2007
Rrrr...
Rrrr... When I say, "No" - how can it mean "Yes" I wonder? And why should anybody take it as "Yes"?! I've been telling this word to him too many times in respond to his invitations, every time finding a reason not to go. If one's not a fool, he'd understand I don't want nothing with him!!! But this American keeps on calling and calling and calling me, worse than Turks who phone me too often with their invitations to Turkey (I think I need to delete my phone number from my HC profile). I don't know HOW to get rid of him, but I don't wanna start to offend, 'coz I'm bit of afraid, he really is sort of mad person... Right now he totally spoilt my mood for the evening... Hope the carpet cleaners will improve it. Or George. Well sure they will. Looking forward for the evening :)))
Stuff for home
I spent the whole weekend buying stuff for my apartment. On Saturday George and I returned home loaded with bags from IKEA and Ashan. On Sunday we went to HyperGlobus in Shchelkovo, a town in the Moscow region, 30-40 min from Moscow, to buy those things that we haven’t found on Saturday. It is such a pleasure to buy something for your living on your own money (even though I can’t afford buying beautiful expensive things that I certainly like), plan where you will put them, bring home and finally start using! As if these things open a new life before your eyes.You feel indescribable sensation washing them and finding a place for them. And you never feel tired when carrying them, no matter how heavy them might seem to you. Because they are YOURS! :) In Russia we use to say, "A burden of one's choice is not felt". The only sad thing is that I don’t have my own apartment, and every time I move to another one I will have to pack my things again and go. It’s the most important issue among all I face. The most complicated and the longest one. And it's almost impossible to solve this problem presently :(
STUPID
Forgot my glasses when hurrying to work (being late as usual). So now I am sitting in my computer chair stretching my neck as far towards computer as possible. But it doesn’t help much, ‘coz my working table is too wide :( That’s how it happens: you leave at home something to which you are accustomed, and in a rash turn into an absolutely helpless creature. Plus spoilt mood and irritation towards everything and everyone. Awful! Thank God, George is at home, and will soon bring me my glasses. I can’t start working normally until I get them. Maybe it’s time to think about contact lenses?.. Ah, why am I so disorganized?! :(((
Thursday, October 18, 2007
“We are the champions my friend!!!”
I still don’t believe that we won the match “Russia-England”!!! 2:1 WOW!!!
The match was held here in Moscow yesterday, selection to EURO 2008, seems like the whole Russia watched it (either at the stadium, or sport bars, or at home stuck to the TV box) and prayed for victory. But nobody actually believed we were capable to win, ‘coz everyone knows that Russia can’t play good football :)
However yesterday match was more like hockey! We were great in defense, aggressive, good combinations… What has happened?! Nobody knows, but everyone’s happy!!! It’s like a holiday for us today, everyone’s congratulating each other, and yesterday Russia partied all night long :)
Now we have 2 more matches – with Israel next month, and with Andorra. But the most “dangerous” competitor is defeated yeah!
In my office we banked for either Russia or England. Russia was 10 rub. England – 20, ‘coz it seemed to be the most possible result. I banked for England, too. And I lost. But I’m happy that I’ve lost!!!
The match was held here in Moscow yesterday, selection to EURO 2008, seems like the whole Russia watched it (either at the stadium, or sport bars, or at home stuck to the TV box) and prayed for victory. But nobody actually believed we were capable to win, ‘coz everyone knows that Russia can’t play good football :)
However yesterday match was more like hockey! We were great in defense, aggressive, good combinations… What has happened?! Nobody knows, but everyone’s happy!!! It’s like a holiday for us today, everyone’s congratulating each other, and yesterday Russia partied all night long :)
Now we have 2 more matches – with Israel next month, and with Andorra. But the most “dangerous” competitor is defeated yeah!
In my office we banked for either Russia or England. Russia was 10 rub. England – 20, ‘coz it seemed to be the most possible result. I banked for England, too. And I lost. But I’m happy that I’ve lost!!!
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Roller coaster mood.
The mood during the day is like on a roller coaster ride. One moment you feel high, and the very next moment you get smashed.
I was so happy to find Vova finally in Moscow! We got to know each other through Yar hub in spring, and used to chat a lot nearly every day. Then we both discovered that we’re leaving our hometown for the capital, it’s just that he left a bit earlier. And I lost all the connection with him, since he changed a sim card in his mobile, and then I moved to Moscow and didn’t have the Internet for almost 2 months. And yesterday I suddenly met him on ICQ, we exchanged phone numbers, and he phoned me, so that we could finally talk to each other for half an hour. I was really on top of the world to find this great guy, my very good acquaintance.
Then Mom phoned. I wonder why she always acts as if she’s the centre of the world and everyone should do what she wants to! I knew she’s coming to Moscow with her colleagues to visit a theatre this Saturday, and I told her many times during the last 3 weeks not to buy the ticket for me, ‘coz I won’t have an opportunity to join them. First I wanted to go to Rybinsk with my friend, now the weather changed and we decided to stay in Moscow, but I still have other things to do. “I knew you will finally give up this stupid idea to go to Rybinsk”, she says. /She always finds my every idea crazy and stupid, but I don’t care/ “So I bought a ticket for you”. – “Why Mom? I told you I have other plans!” – “Because you must go to the theatre, ‘coz I think if you went to the Variety Show Theatre /she considers it to be a non-serious place to visit./ then you will go to this theatre, too” – “Yes, I’d love to, but I don’t have time on that day, I told you!” – “Then we’ll lose the money spent on that ticket” – “But WHO told you to buy it? Why do you always act the way you wish to? Haven’t I told you I won’t join you?!” – “You’re a rascal!!! Don’t come to Yaroslavl any more, I don’t want to see you…” etc etc. WHERE IS MY FAULT??? AM I TO BE BLAMED??? WHY DOES SHE ALWAYS BEHAVE AS IF I AM HER PET???
Now I don’t know what to do… I wanted to go to IKEA and do some household things with George. But now I know I won’t have peace in my soul, ‘coz I will be thinking about that damned ticket and Mom upset for me (even though there’s no actual reason for that!)… Wish to phone Granny and talk to her. Really do wish to. I think I’ll do it today in the evening…
I was so happy to find Vova finally in Moscow! We got to know each other through Yar hub in spring, and used to chat a lot nearly every day. Then we both discovered that we’re leaving our hometown for the capital, it’s just that he left a bit earlier. And I lost all the connection with him, since he changed a sim card in his mobile, and then I moved to Moscow and didn’t have the Internet for almost 2 months. And yesterday I suddenly met him on ICQ, we exchanged phone numbers, and he phoned me, so that we could finally talk to each other for half an hour. I was really on top of the world to find this great guy, my very good acquaintance.
Then Mom phoned. I wonder why she always acts as if she’s the centre of the world and everyone should do what she wants to! I knew she’s coming to Moscow with her colleagues to visit a theatre this Saturday, and I told her many times during the last 3 weeks not to buy the ticket for me, ‘coz I won’t have an opportunity to join them. First I wanted to go to Rybinsk with my friend, now the weather changed and we decided to stay in Moscow, but I still have other things to do. “I knew you will finally give up this stupid idea to go to Rybinsk”, she says. /She always finds my every idea crazy and stupid, but I don’t care/ “So I bought a ticket for you”. – “Why Mom? I told you I have other plans!” – “Because you must go to the theatre, ‘coz I think if you went to the Variety Show Theatre /she considers it to be a non-serious place to visit./ then you will go to this theatre, too” – “Yes, I’d love to, but I don’t have time on that day, I told you!” – “Then we’ll lose the money spent on that ticket” – “But WHO told you to buy it? Why do you always act the way you wish to? Haven’t I told you I won’t join you?!” – “You’re a rascal!!! Don’t come to Yaroslavl any more, I don’t want to see you…” etc etc. WHERE IS MY FAULT??? AM I TO BE BLAMED??? WHY DOES SHE ALWAYS BEHAVE AS IF I AM HER PET???
Now I don’t know what to do… I wanted to go to IKEA and do some household things with George. But now I know I won’t have peace in my soul, ‘coz I will be thinking about that damned ticket and Mom upset for me (even though there’s no actual reason for that!)… Wish to phone Granny and talk to her. Really do wish to. I think I’ll do it today in the evening…
A talk with a Militia man.
It should have happened someday, but as usual it happened right when it was last thing you expected to occur. A nice couple came to visit me (a girl from Novosibirsk and her boyfriend from Hungary), plus George came after university, and we all went to the supermarket to buy something for dinner. And when we were walking downstairs we came across two men accompanied by the Boss of our house – one too wish-to-know-all-about-neighbours Granny.
The man asks me,
“Do you live here?”
“Yes”
“Then your documents, please”
“What for?”
“I’m your district Militia man, please, your documents”
“They are in the apartment, and I’m in a hurry, there’s another person there, she will show you the docs”
“NO, I need your documents, NOW”
“Aaaaalright…” I turned round and walked back to the apartment for the docs.
“There’s no need to act as if you’re doing me a favour”, says the voice from behind.
The Granny hurried to put a word in, “Ah, new neighbours – and a whole crowd!”
“We don’t live here, we just came to visit her”, George says.
The next few minutes I’ve been passed through an interview.
- Do you live here?
- Are you registered here on this address?
- What’s the purpose of your staying here?
- Whose things are all that?
And blah blah blah.
Finally he said, “OK, no more questions to you, you may be free” AS IF I HAVEN’T BEEN ONE BEFORE!!! SHIT!!!
But when I went out of the apartment I had to pass through another interview. The Militia men learnt that Imre was a foreigner, and he was not registered. F*ck, I hate our stupid system! Why can’t a person just come and visit the country?! Why do we, Russians, have to be registered in Moscow, the capital of the state where we all were born? We are also Russians, and we HAVE a right to move within Russia – what the hell?!
Everyone kept silence. I felt like I needed to say something to rescue the guys,
“They are just my friends who came to visit me, that’s all” I do all my best to smile drowning the desire to punch them at their faces (although I’m a girl and I’m not supposed to act like that, but damn all the prejudices, I really wished that!)
“Where did you get to know each other?”
“Through one international organization…” I tried hard to recollect the name of any organization
“Which one?”
“Eh.. MitOst” We never chanced to meet through MitOst sure, but it was the first organization that slipped from my tongue.
“What is this organization responsible for? Red Cross-type?”
“No, it’s an organization to unite Eastern and Western Europe and establish friendly ties among the states”
“Well ok, ok… I just need to know if it’s a sect or not”
“OF COURSE NOT!!! It’s sponsored by Reichstag!!!”
Ha-ha-ha it never was financed by Reichstag, but I simply stopped controlling myself :) Anyway the phrase sounded very impressive, and the Militia men gave up and set us free.
Imre was totally shocked. That was his first impression of Russia. We tried to calm him down as much as we could. And after that we get surprised with the world’s attitude towards Russia!!! When even Russian citizens born here are treated like undesirable guests in the capital having no right to anything.
SIMPLY NO COMMENTS.
The man asks me,
“Do you live here?”
“Yes”
“Then your documents, please”
“What for?”
“I’m your district Militia man, please, your documents”
“They are in the apartment, and I’m in a hurry, there’s another person there, she will show you the docs”
“NO, I need your documents, NOW”
“Aaaaalright…” I turned round and walked back to the apartment for the docs.
“There’s no need to act as if you’re doing me a favour”, says the voice from behind.
The Granny hurried to put a word in, “Ah, new neighbours – and a whole crowd!”
“We don’t live here, we just came to visit her”, George says.
The next few minutes I’ve been passed through an interview.
- Do you live here?
- Are you registered here on this address?
- What’s the purpose of your staying here?
- Whose things are all that?
And blah blah blah.
Finally he said, “OK, no more questions to you, you may be free” AS IF I HAVEN’T BEEN ONE BEFORE!!! SHIT!!!
But when I went out of the apartment I had to pass through another interview. The Militia men learnt that Imre was a foreigner, and he was not registered. F*ck, I hate our stupid system! Why can’t a person just come and visit the country?! Why do we, Russians, have to be registered in Moscow, the capital of the state where we all were born? We are also Russians, and we HAVE a right to move within Russia – what the hell?!
Everyone kept silence. I felt like I needed to say something to rescue the guys,
“They are just my friends who came to visit me, that’s all” I do all my best to smile drowning the desire to punch them at their faces (although I’m a girl and I’m not supposed to act like that, but damn all the prejudices, I really wished that!)
“Where did you get to know each other?”
“Through one international organization…” I tried hard to recollect the name of any organization
“Which one?”
“Eh.. MitOst” We never chanced to meet through MitOst sure, but it was the first organization that slipped from my tongue.
“What is this organization responsible for? Red Cross-type?”
“No, it’s an organization to unite Eastern and Western Europe and establish friendly ties among the states”
“Well ok, ok… I just need to know if it’s a sect or not”
“OF COURSE NOT!!! It’s sponsored by Reichstag!!!”
Ha-ha-ha it never was financed by Reichstag, but I simply stopped controlling myself :) Anyway the phrase sounded very impressive, and the Militia men gave up and set us free.
Imre was totally shocked. That was his first impression of Russia. We tried to calm him down as much as we could. And after that we get surprised with the world’s attitude towards Russia!!! When even Russian citizens born here are treated like undesirable guests in the capital having no right to anything.
SIMPLY NO COMMENTS.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Some good quotes
Today I was translating quotations for a training module, and several struck me personally:
“The one who causes anger is excused. The one who gets is accused”
(this applies to some of my (ex) friends, won’t specify)
“Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon… must inevitably come to pass!”
“You never get a second chance to make a good first impression”.
“We are our choices”.
“The one who causes anger is excused. The one who gets is accused”
(this applies to some of my (ex) friends, won’t specify)
“Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon… must inevitably come to pass!”
“You never get a second chance to make a good first impression”.
“We are our choices”.
Crazy morning
SHIT I missed the work-start by sleeping!!!
Yesterday I was so happy to return home and find no one there (which is such a rare thing, ‘coz there’s always someone in my apartment, my guests, or Katya’s). Didn’t have much time to enjoy my happiness though, ‘coz it was 1 a.m. already and I was hell sleepy. The Internet did not work, George did not send me the password to my lap top that he had changed, and I decided to give all the fluff and go to bed. Making plans for tomorrow morning…
The sms signal broke my dreams. I stretched my hands for the mobile, but I didn’t look at the sms text – what brought me to a standstill is the time: 8:47… Work starts at 9:00… Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!.. I don’t remember WHEN I got ready for work so quickly last time. No breakfast, no bed-making, just putting any more or less appropriate (for the office) clothes I found – and rushing out of the house at cosmic speed… Sleeping while running… But still late for 40 minutes ((( Now I have to sit in the office until 6:40 p.m. Which means I will have just 2-something hours to pack my things for Nizhniy (leaving at night for a weekend to visit Vlada).
And loads of work as a nice addition to this nice morning of mine (
The only 2 good news is that Mom has solved the problems with my mobile tariff and they will stop taking money for incoming calls, and that George will come and make a dinner for me to feed me while I will prepare for the trip ))
By the way, that magic sms that has woken me up was from Gabi))) Thanx friend, what would I do without you? ) JUST HUUUUUGE THANX FOR EVERYTHING!!!
Yesterday I was so happy to return home and find no one there (which is such a rare thing, ‘coz there’s always someone in my apartment, my guests, or Katya’s). Didn’t have much time to enjoy my happiness though, ‘coz it was 1 a.m. already and I was hell sleepy. The Internet did not work, George did not send me the password to my lap top that he had changed, and I decided to give all the fluff and go to bed. Making plans for tomorrow morning…
The sms signal broke my dreams. I stretched my hands for the mobile, but I didn’t look at the sms text – what brought me to a standstill is the time: 8:47… Work starts at 9:00… Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!.. I don’t remember WHEN I got ready for work so quickly last time. No breakfast, no bed-making, just putting any more or less appropriate (for the office) clothes I found – and rushing out of the house at cosmic speed… Sleeping while running… But still late for 40 minutes ((( Now I have to sit in the office until 6:40 p.m. Which means I will have just 2-something hours to pack my things for Nizhniy (leaving at night for a weekend to visit Vlada).
And loads of work as a nice addition to this nice morning of mine (
The only 2 good news is that Mom has solved the problems with my mobile tariff and they will stop taking money for incoming calls, and that George will come and make a dinner for me to feed me while I will prepare for the trip ))
By the way, that magic sms that has woken me up was from Gabi))) Thanx friend, what would I do without you? ) JUST HUUUUUGE THANX FOR EVERYTHING!!!
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Poem from childhood
Following the story about childhood I suddenly remembered a poem which I composed when I was 9 or 10. The poem about summer.
Лето, лето милое, подожди, постой!
Далеко уходишь ты - я иду с тобой!
Вместе мы на листике полетим туда
Сквозь моря, поля, озера, сквозь леса, луга.
Облака помашут нам белою рукой.
Далеко уходишь ты - я иду с тобой!
Лето, лето милое, подожди, постой!
Далеко уходишь ты - я иду с тобой!
Вместе мы на листике полетим туда
Сквозь моря, поля, озера, сквозь леса, луга.
Облака помашут нам белою рукой.
Далеко уходишь ты - я иду с тобой!
Old School
It’s gonna be a long story, but I feel like I NEED to let it out. You’ll be a hero if you read it up to the end )))
Once I was surfing one special site for Russians where they can meet their classmates and old friends who may now live in other parts of the country or the world. It’s a great place to meet your old acquaintances and recollect some moments of your childhood. There was a group on the site which caught my attention, “Old School 90s”. The people who gather there, are my age or a bit older who chanced to have had their childhood in the 90s. We were discussing all sorts of old stuff which made up our childhood years, and it made me sink into my childhood once again.
I know we all had the same and thus different childhood, ‘coz our geographies differ and cultures differ, too. And different things made us happy. My childhood years are related to the end of the 80s and the 90s, the period when Russia experienced a huge shift from the Soviet regime to what is now called ‘democracy’ (though I certainly argue it). It was the time when we suddenly started to get all that weird and fascinating (fascinating, ‘coz it was totally weird) Western stuff which we never had before.
I was 6 or 7 when that man from “Slave Isaura” perished in the fire. I remember how the whole Russia was weeping that evening. And I was eager to do everything my parents wanted from me, just to get a permission to watch “Santa Barbara” in the evening. And no one of us can forget how C.C. was lying in coma for more than a hundred series and then simply tore the oxygen mask off himself and rose from the dead :) My classmate even called her cat by the name of her favourite “Santa Barbara” hero – Mason :) Then years on my family used to gather in front of our old TV-set to watch “The Rich Also Cry” (with Veronica Castro starring), “Simply Maria”, >“Milagros” (on Russian TV it was called “Girl with the name of Fate” for some reason), “Perla Negra”, “Celesta” and all its sequels, “My Second Mama” and many more. This genre was totally new for us, and it was such a surprise to watch an “endless melodrama”. We seemed to follow the sufferings and doubts of the heroes, ‘coz we didn’t know what the end would be like. It’s now that I can watch the first series and predict the end which’s gonna occur in a year :). My Mom became a fan of Andrea del Boca, while I was dreaming of Gabriel Corrado and Osvaldo Laport! And YES – “Helen and the Guys” (a French TV series about students) – it was a real hit, a mania! Everybody was watching it, we discussed it at school, collected pictures and posters with Helen, Nicolas, Goanna, Christian, Jose, Sebastian and others. “Thunder in Paradise”, “Beverly Hills 90210” (I was crazy ‘bout Luke Perry!) - I can go on for ages :)
“Gammy Bears” was a discovery for us! We’ve never seen such colorful, bright, and well totally different cartoons. There was a time when we started neglecting our own culture under the pressure of loads of Western stuff, strongly prohibited before. We had to pass this phase. And we passed it. Now these things are viewed like everyday stuff and don’t astonish us any longer. We are returning to our own culture finally. But those days we all were singing “Chip, Chip, Chip, Chip and Dale rescue rangers, Chip, Chip, Chip, Chip and Dale where there’s danger” and “Can you feel the love tonight…” I think I was 10 when they showed “Lion King” on TV for the first time. There was a children program on our local TV channel “Gorodskoy Telekanal” (“City TV Channel” – now it has almost disappeared, and mainly broadcasts the programs of Moscow channel “CTC”) every Sunday when they told about some big Disney cartoon and broadcasted it after. All the viewers were suggested to take part in a contest with the prize if we gave the right answer to the question, “On which famous play is the cartoon based?” Mom guessed it in 10 min. I didn’t know “Hamlet” by that time, ‘coz we studied some English literature only when I was 12 or so. But Mom insisted that I should call and answer. I didn’t want to, ‘coz I was very shy at that time and was simply afraid to talk to that man in the TV set. She cried at me, and we quarreled. I don’t know why, but this episode never left my head years after. But I was fascinated by the cartoon, and it still remains one of my favourites, maybe the best one for me.
It was the time of first adverts to appear. It sounds silly, but those adverts were the best ones! That dancing camel from “Picnic” advert – he was just awesome! Or the advert with Suvorov (our famous general of the 18th century) sitting at the dinner table with the Emperor family and noble guests and the Emperor asking him, “Why don’t you start?” – “But it’s advent Father, we can’t start before the first star!” And yes, those funny chicken legs flying up and forming a line high up in the skies with the voice coming out, “It’s not cranes – it’s chicken legs flying”. It was my favourite. And sure the absolute hit of the 90s – “Everyone loves Mamba. And Seryozha also!”
Funny, but we were happy to drink those god-awful juices of powder – Zuko, Yuppii, and Invite (remember – “Inviiiiiiiiite, you just need to add some water!”). And everybody was collecting wrappers from “Love is…” (Bubble Gum of Love) you remember that chewing-gum? Oh God, how tasty it was! Why isn’t it sold anywhere now?? I LONG FOR TASTING IT ONE MORE TIME!!! I had hundreds of wrappers with all sorts of love definitions, and always wished to get that “Love is…” box, but I never had a chance. Then Kinder Surprises appeared, and we got hooked to them for several years. My first collection started with Lions. I remember how insatiable I used to be, and needed more, more figures, the whole collection. We used to bring our KS toys in parcels, dump them out during the break, and change one toy for the other which we lacked in our collection. Collapsible toys went 2 or 3 for 1 figure. Depending on the figure status. I have the whole collection of Lions, Dwarves, Penguins, oh who else was there? I remember I once stole a dwarf figure from my classmate. I needed this only dwarf in my collection, and Katya brought it to school with other KS toys. It was summer school camp after the 3rd grade. We went on an excursion by bus, and I was always holding this figure in my arms while we were sitting in the bus, and at first I didn’t intend to commit this ‘crime’, but Katya seemed to forget about the toy and I just took it home. I was afraid to look in her eyes the next day. I felt ashamed. But I never returned the toy. I knew Katya was then telling her friends that I had stolen her dwarf, but they didn’t believe her ‘coz I was a person of trust at school, and they even came up to me and told me that Katya was rumoring about me! I played like I surely was not guilty! Ah it’s the worst deed of my childhood… There were Crocodiles in KS, too, before Lions, and those KS were a rare thing in Russia. We somehow missed them. But some guys had crocodile figures in their collections, and it was a matter of definite pride. The KS mania started when I was 9. And I was almost 11 or 12 when tents appeared on one of the central squares with the figures of crocodiles and other KS specials at sell. This killed KS. We lost interest. Now everyone could simply buy any figure he wished to, without taking risks with a KS egg. WHY DID THEY KILL KS?? WHO ASKED THEM???
But we soon found a new collection object – stickers. It all started with “Barbie”. We bought sticker packs, each one contained 6 or 7 stickers and we didn’t know what stickers we were to get. We stuck them then into the special album with the space for this particular sticker. The aim was to fill the whole album with stickers. The more stickers you had in your collection the less chances you got to have all new stickers when buying a sticker pack. And again we exchanged stickers to finish the collection. I’ve got the whole “Barbie” album full. And in “Lion King” I miss only 1 – it’s such a pity! Then I had an “Animal World” and later “Helen and the Guys”. But at that time we were losing interest to this, and I think half of these albums are left unfinished. Those who had the “Barbie” album full could get a present from the company – a real Barbie! It was a dream, ‘coz we didn’t have many Barbies at that time in children stores. It’s now that you walk through the children store and see hundreds of Barbie and Ken dolls in all the possible dresses with all the furniture. We dreamt of it. I never had a Barbie. I’ve only got a Betsy, and a Cindy. And a Pamela - a nice teenage girl of the Barbie type, but twice shorter. One could find these toys in “Children World” in Moscow only, and the dream of every child living in the province was a visit of this big store and at least have a look at all those beautiful toys. Still I was happy to have these Barbie copies. I used to gather my dolls and come to my neighbour Lyuba where we played with both my and her dolls. There was also the time when small German baby dolls were popular. They were mostly sold two in a pack – all dressed in pink crawlers or dresses, mostly girl baby dolls. I had such a doll pair, and when Lyuba came to me, we took two old armchairs and designed them as 2-storey cottages. One for each doll. And then played the day of each girl. Sometimes they met and had a chat, sometimes their days never brought them together. We could spend hours playing this sort of game. We also loved to play “Monopoly” and “Manager” like everyone else – table games where we could buy this or that enterprise, sold and bought shares, got rich and went bankrupt, started from scratch. Lyuba had those games, and I came to her every evening to spend 3-4-more hours running the business of my dream :))
We didn’t have computers – we had Dendies and Segas. Sega was much cooler, and nearly everyone had a Dendy. When we visited someone’s Birthday party we most likely spent the after-dinner part playing Dendy connecting 4 to 6 joysticks to it. I still remember “Mario”, “Battle Toads”, “Contra” and “Chip and Dale” games. And the one which I adored “Felix Jerry”. I could chose a hero there – cat, bee and some unknown heroes, each possessing a special quality – and forward towards the end of the game. I never passed all the stages, but I was constantly practicing. Our stores were loaded with orange Dendy cartridges – in the same way as DVDs fill the video stores now. I remember Mom never let me connect my Dendy to a color TV-set in our living-room, and I used a small black-and-white TV-set for playing Dendy games which stood in my room. I always envied a bit my classmates who could play color Dendy games.
We also had Tamagotchis and Elektronikas. An Elektornika was a forerunner of Tetris. It generally showed time and functioned as an alarm-clock. But it never mattered anyone of us. What was important is that it had a game. Each Elektronika had its own game. In my game a “merry cook” (that was actually the name of the game) was tossing up sausages and catching them back with his pan. I scored records after hours spent in following the cook’s actions. Sometimes my parents started to shout at me, “Go and do your hometask instead of playing this stupid game!” “Yes, yes, Mom, I’m coming…” but I never did before I scored a new record. It’s funny, but I’m one of those rare persons whose Elektronika is still working. But I don’t play now, I simply use it as an additional alarm-clock (one is not enough to wake me up in the morning :) Tetris was the same, but had more games, and they were different. Snake, Tetris itself, others I don’t remember. My favourite was Snake. We can still play it in some mobiles. My Mom is crazy ‘bout it, and once spent 3 hours playing Snake in her mobile non-stop :) Parents bought me a Tamagotchi as a New Year’s present when I was 12. I was on top of the world! My tamagotchi was a panda. I never managed to grow him up till 100 years; I was a bad pet keeper. But I did my best, and every time he died again I promised I would treat him better next time :) It was impossible to sit at the lessons, because I was always thinking about him, how he was, maybe he was hungry or wanted to have a walk. The teachers were crazy about that, but they could not stop this mania :)
When I got older a cassette-recorder became my favourite toy. Zlata bought me a radio cassette player when I was 13. For over a year I was just listening to some favourite cassettes, winding the cassette to the needed place with a pencil or with a finger (our children will not understand this process already). “The Best From The West-1,2,3”, “E-Rotic”, “Filipp Kirkorov – I’m Not Rafael”, “Tatyana Ovsienko – Za rozovym morem”, “Ivanushki International – hmm… don’t remember the name of their very first album”. The 2 first items were extremely popular in the middle of the 90s. We all danced Macarena at the discos and waited till that handsome blond guy from the parallel class would invite us to dance a slow with him to “Even Though You Broke My Heart” or “Casablanca” or “Tuchi” (“Storm-clouds”). I first heard “E-Rotic” when I was in the summer camp. I used to be a total “home kid” in those days, who spent time with the family and my dear Granny (unfortunately she’s not here anymore) instead of walking with other kids in the street. That was why I didn’t know most of the music and movie tendencies and was a sort of “out-of-date”. In the summer camp I learnt a lot :) And used to sing the songs of “E-Rotic” until I got 14 or 15. Now when I listened to the songs of the album some months ago I was shocked about the text! Oh my God, if only I knew what I was singing!!! But when I was 11 I had no doubt that in “Dr. Dick” Dick was the name of the doctor who was somehow gonna help the female vocalist :))) At 14 I discovered that I could find radio stations on my radio cassette recorder. That was the beginning of my “education in modern music”. I could listen to the radio for hours recording my favourite songs of Hanson, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, N-Sync, Five, Ricky Martin and others. I started buying megapopular weekly magazines for teens of those days “COOL” and “COOL Girl”. It was 1997, spring, and we were cleaning the school yard. I have just watched “Titanic” and have completely fallen in love with Jack (or Leonardo?? no guess at that time I saw Jack in him, and Jack was my dream). And suddenly I saw a magazine lying on the porch with his picture on the front page! It belonged to one of my classmates, but I did not dare to ask her what sort of magazine it had been, ‘coz I used to be shy and diffident and was afraid that everybody would laugh at me because of my ignorance. However I took Granny out and went in search of this magazine. It was not hard to find, ‘coz it was everywhere. That was the first time I read a teen magazine. Since then I started buying “COOL” every week and learnt a lot of information about music and famous bands, actors, teen stuff, sex (yes, I learnt about sex through this magazine, ‘coz nobody ever told me about it among my relatives, and when I read the “love pages” in “COOL” for the first time I thought, “Woooooow…”). There was a great thing in each “COOL” – photo love story, one for several issues, like comics but about Russian teens and love. I could not miss an issue at least because of these photo love stories. I also loved to read the last page where fans were looking for other fans to have a mail correspondence (of course not e-mail, in those days we were wrote letters with a pen, as well as reports, essays and everything – just imagine a 20-pages report written with a pen! It took me a week to do it plus many hours in the library to find the information). I tried it several times but it actually did not lead to anything long-lasting.
We were talented. We composed verses. These masterpieces could be viewed all over the town – on the asphalt, walls, fences, windows (certainly somebody else’s). We constantly decorated the walls of our WCs with poetic and prosaic lines about all sorts of stuff – beginning with “Marina + Dima = Love” or “Igor is a nasty dirty f*cking freak” and ending with the teachers’ characterizations (usually of an evil kind). Vlada’s teacher of physics had the family name Kononov (when translated, “horse-like” or anyway it was derived from the word “horse”), sure he was given a nick Horse. I still remember a big line on her school wall, “Horse is goat” (“Kon’ – kozel”), “goat” here means a freaky person, somebody whom one strongly dislikes. But on the whole the phrase seems totally funny! It makes me smile even now, when I recollect the memories of those days :) It happened so that this man is a fellow-student of one of my Grannies, and until now when she talks about her friends, I ask her, “And what about Horse-Goat?” :)))
Grown-ups used to shout at us each time they found a new creation on the wall. And we knew it was no good to spoil the walls, but we could not restrain this soul squall. I remember one hit in our toilets made up of the quatrains in Russian across the whole wall saying,
“On WC walls to leave some notes
Believe me friends, it’s no hit
Among the shit you all are poets
Among the poets you’re a shit” :)))
Or lines like “It’s better all dead rats to eat, than to hear Alisa’s hit” (Alisa is a famous rock band of those days), or “Kurt’s not dead – he’s gone to smoke”, or “Who’s a fan of club Dynamo is a son of a blockhead mama” (Dynamo is a soccer club).
We liked to gather altogether in a yard and play games. Simple games with a ball: football or “square” (a football type game when 4 people draw a square with a chalk on the asphalt and divide it in 4 sectors, each of the 4 people is responsible for protecting his sector, and if the ball leaves the sector the person who kicked it scores a point; my friend Sveta (was my neighbour and best friend those days) and I used to play with the boys from our house, and we were constantly quarrelling simply because they were boys and we were girls – it was an everlasting fight until we all got 15 or 16).
There was a field in the neighbourhood used by Militia for training during the day, and in the evening we used it as a soccer field. Children from all the neighbouring yards joined us. I even met my first boyfriend Seryozha on the field during one of the games :) It was a relationship between 2 kids: I was 11, and he was 13. We exchanged love letters, and when I was at home because of homework he used to come up to my balcony, whistled, I took a rope, pulled it down to him, he tied sweets, chewing-gums, cookies and other tasty things to it, and I lifted the rope up again. So sweet! Ah where have those days of innocence and sincerity gone?! But then he beat my classmate black and blue just because he once came to me, and some other unpleasant moments, and it all was stopped by me. No idea where he is now. I used to meet him sometimes when I was passing his yard, some years after, when I was 15 and 16, and sometimes we even said, ‘Hey’ to each other, once he said, “Come sit with me for a while” but I said ‘no’, ‘coz he got into a bad company by that time, problems with Militia and alcohol. Then I learnt he was imprisoned twice. And then his tracks have completely disappeared.
Dodge ball – there were 2 types of it. One was traditional dodge ball when the crowd gathers in the middle between the 2 ball-kickers; the other was with one ball-kicker and the crowd stood at the wall, the “kicker” threw the ball to the wall aiming to hit someone. I remember I got a terrible head-hurt when we played it with a soccer ball, and this ball hit me so hard that I knocked against the wall.
“Squirrels-dogs” – a game when the people formed a circle and threw the ball to each other. And one was standing in the circle and tried to catch it. The others teased him, and he was running from one corner to another to get this ball.
“Odd man-out” (or “Third is odd” if we translate it word-for-word). Standing in pairs we formed a circle. One was a “he” (or “catcher” as you like) and also one was without pair. The catcher tried to catch that one without pair, and the latter had to stand up to one of the pairs, and the pair turned into a three-person line, third was odd, and now he had to escape from the catcher. Very active game with lots of running, shouting, and what not.
“Slow and steady wins the race” – I don’t know why it was called so. It’s just named by the first phrase in the phrasal unit that the he has to say, “Slow and steady wins the race, won’t miss anyone on your way, stop!” At the word “Stop!” everyone was supposed to stand still in the pose he was standing at that moment. And the he came up to everyone and tried to make him move – teased him, tickled him etc.
“Glimmers” – everybody was standing in pairs in a circle (one person in the pair after another) with one he. The he looked at the people in the front row and winked at the one whom he chose so that the back row person didn’t notice it. When a person saw that the he winked at him, he rushed to him, and the person behind him had to react and hold him, or he would lose the pair and become a he. I remember once my best school friend of those days Masha came to my yard (we lived at a one bus-stop distance from each other, and she usually played in her yard). We were standing in a pair. But then a boy, also Seryozha by the way, winked to me (he was the brother of one of my friends and liked me, and I liked that he liked me if I may say so, ha-ha in a couple there’s always one person who loves and one who lets the other love him – it’s a more widespread thing than two people hell in love with each other), and I remember Masha’s whisper: “I need to hold you, you know. But I’ll do it just one time for effect, and next time I will pretend and let you go” :))) And she did it. I was standing with Serg until the end of the game, and when somebody else winked at me and he did not notice I specially slowed to give him time and react ;) Ha-ha, how old was I? 11? 12? :)))
When we got older we liked to sit on the bench and play a quiet ball game named “Family”. One person was standing with a ball, and all the rest were sitting on the bench. The game-leader was creating a life story of each participant. He threw the ball to the first person, asking “Your name is…” and suggesting his variant. If the participant liked it, he caught the ball. If he didn’t - he didn’t. But suddenly the leader threw the ball shouting “Family” – and if the person caught the ball he could choose any name he liked. If he didn’t – the leader gave him any name he wanted. It might be a good name, or a dirty name (usually a dirty name, sure), and nothing could be changed. Then followed the questions like, “What is your boy/girlfriend’s name?” “Where did you meet?” “When did you have wedding” etc etc. It was funny when the story was created by the leader, coz he could make it so that the couple met at a dump. She was 6 and he was 99. They had wedding in the wood etc :)))
And sure some crazy deeds of ours like jumping from one garage to another (some fell down and hurt something, but these were rare cases) and climbing the trees (the person who planted the trees in front of our house used to come to the balcony and shout at us, “Get out of my plants you little fools!!!” but we never cared about it).
We also liked to call spirits, like The Queen of Spades and some home spirits – barabashka, domovoi etc (Russian counterparts of the English “brownie”). For that we had to gather in a dark cellar or just in a dark place and do some magic tricks, say magic words and wait… Usually it all ended with someone’s shout, “I see her/him!” – and we rushed out of the cellar screaming and crying :) When I was in the summer camp (I think I was 12) once we were calling some spirit (don’t remember which) in our ward. We did everything required, and said, “If you’re here, knock at the wall”. And we heard knocking!!! Ah we were so afraid, we ran out of the ward shouting, and were afraid to go back :) In the morning we learnt that the neighbouring ward heard it, and just knocked at the wall separating our ward from their ward :))))))
At home in our yard we found a hut and created a story that it was the home of spirits. Every day we chose one person who needed to go to the hut and talk to the spirits. The choice was made by the toss of the coin or a similar thing named “Rock Paper Scissors” (In Russian version it was actually "stone scissors paper";) guess you all know it: "Rock Paper Scissors - Tsu, Ye, Fa!"; rock wins against scissors, scissors win against paper, paper wins against rock). Everyone knew in his heart of hearts there were no spirits in the hut, but still everyone was afraid :) When he returned, he created stories about a talk with the spirits, what they said, and how he responded :)))
And another crazy game called “Sleep-sending”. One person pressed on the neck of another person, and that person had to fall asleep immediately. Most of us were pretending. After we woke up we were telling our dreams. We were small and did not understand that we could press on some artery and never wake up again!!! Cruel game of cruel kids of the 90s…
In winter we played snowballs, skied, skated, sledged and slid down the ice-hill. I remember my classmate Zhenya once broke my nose, because he stopped somewhere in the middle of sliding, and I slid after him and fell upon his boot. There was no blood, but the nose ached for a year and a half after that… We liked making snow figures, rolling snowballs (when the snow was not crumbly) and placing one on the other. When we were 9-10 years old a young man (for us he seemed a grown-up, but in fact he was just 16 or 17) used to come to our yard and play with us. I still can’t see the point of this coming. But maybe he just liked kids. We adored him! His name was Lyosha, but we called him Barabashka because of his family name – Barabanov. When he appeared we all jumped up to his neck and hang there – we were so happy! Our parents did not like it. They kept on saying, “This boy must be sick – there’s no sense in his coming and playing with you small girls”. But we never paid attention. Never was he a threat to us. When we grew up he disappeared. I sometimes met him afterwards when I was 15, 17, 19… He did not change. But of course he did not recognize me, and I never came up and start a chat.
I guess we were the last generation who liked to read. Until computers took all the time, but it happened only when we were in High School. Child detective stories were extremely popular in mid-90s. There were several series of such stories. One was a series of Hitchcock stories about a group of kids who solved crimes. The second was about 2 brothers – Frank (he was 18 and dark-haired) and Joe (a 17-year old blond) - this was my favourite series. And the third I also liked was about 5 kids (I don’t remember well, but I believe they were 5), 2 girls and 3 boys, and a dog. They were relatives, and met in summer, every time getting into an adventure. These books still stand in my bookcase, but it’s been a long time since I turned their pages last time. Of course we had to read a lot for school, but we never liked what we were supposed to read. It’s quite natural.
School… School… When I went to school in 1992 it was the last year of the Soviet school uniform. That usual one of a brown or black dress and a white apron (for girls) and dark-blue suits (for boys). We first had common Soviet schoolbags like the ones you see in old movies. But already at the end of 1992 colourful Western schoolbags started to appear. They cost a lot, and usually the richest kids were lucky to have such. When I changed the school the first memory of a new school was right connected with these schoolbags. In my old school only 2 kids had beautiful schoolbags. In the new school everyone had expensive colourful schoolbags. It’s a kid impression, but I liked my new school even starting with the way the pupils looked like :)
I also remember that the first day I came to the new class a boy held out a thick exercise-book to me with the words, “Fill it in!” It was the first time I saw this hit of many many years – Questionnaire. A thick exercise-book contained the info about its owner, and questions. There were dozens of questions about all aspects of life “What is your name?” “What is your favourite group?” “Who is your friend” “Whom do you love?” etc. The number of questions depended on its owner’s fantasy :) Usually at the end we had to leave some comments or wishes to the owner. Every one had a Questionnaire, some had even several Questionnaires, and they were filled in by hundreds of people. Of course we all were interested in the lines “Who is your friend?” and “Whom do you love?” Most often we left the first letters of a name and a family name of the person. Like Olga Kabuzova would look like “O.K.” :) The boy who gave me the first Questionnaire was the biggest hooligan of the class, but he liked me from the start for some reason, although I was shy (maybe because of that). In my Questionnaire that appeared several months after that he responded to the question “Whom do you love?” in the following way: “I LOVE YOU, YANA!” I think it was the first time when somebody said these words to me :))) It was he who had been beaten by my boyfriend Sergey a year ago when he just came to me for some book. Now he's playing solo guitar in one famous local band called "Leto na Marse" :) When many years after I was cleaning my drawer, I found several questionnaires of mine, grabbed them all and threw into the dustbin. How now I blame myself for that! What a fool! But what's done cannot be undone...
Reverting to what I was telling you about, when in the 7th grade I had to respond to the same question I didn’t know what to write. Well I liked one boy, and he was the most popular boy in our class, and he liked another girl. So I decided to name any other person to avoid rumors that I like Kirill he-he. And I chose his friend Rodik. Don’t know why. He was not popular. And I don’t know why I made up my mind to mention him. Maybe my intuition whispered to me that he was in fact much more interesting than his friend. I saw it years after when he grew up into a good-looking blond guy, very clever and straight-forwarded. He passed entrance exams to Moscow State University (the place where the most clever guys of Russia study), and left for Moscow. Now he graduated from it and probably stayed there as a PG student. But those days he was just Rodik :) I put his initials into the Questionnaire, and after some time I saw that he put my initials responding the question. That how it all started. For some time after that we were exchanging such mentions, then invited each other to Birthday Parties, danced slows (I think I still have a photo of us dancing somewhere in my writing-table) – were a pair? Who knows :) And then we just grew up… :)))
We were the last pioneers of Russia :)/a 'pioneer' is a famous Soviet analogue of a 'scout'/ The Pioneer Organization did not function properly already at that time, but we passed through the ceremony of dedication and received the usual attributes of the Pioneer Organization – a red pioneer necktie and a red cap. We never wore them, but we have them :) It is a legendary thing. There's not a single person in Russia and ex-USSR who does not know and remember it. Or at least know... It's so funny, when sometimes in the bus or tram there's a young boy or sitting on the bench and an old man or woman is standing beside him/her, and he/she does not stand up, you here 'Oh God, where the world's going... What kind of pioneers we're having now...' The Soviet kids lived according to the Code of Ethics, maybe partly because of that we used to be that 'Great Empire' :) "You, who are on the road must have a code that you can live by..." (Hanson)
We did… We were… So many stories… Can’t remember all… Can’t write all…
Hope it gave you some picture of what Russia of the 90s was like, and how average people were living in those hard transition days.
With love,
Me span>
Once I was surfing one special site for Russians where they can meet their classmates and old friends who may now live in other parts of the country or the world. It’s a great place to meet your old acquaintances and recollect some moments of your childhood. There was a group on the site which caught my attention, “Old School 90s”. The people who gather there, are my age or a bit older who chanced to have had their childhood in the 90s. We were discussing all sorts of old stuff which made up our childhood years, and it made me sink into my childhood once again.
I know we all had the same and thus different childhood, ‘coz our geographies differ and cultures differ, too. And different things made us happy. My childhood years are related to the end of the 80s and the 90s, the period when Russia experienced a huge shift from the Soviet regime to what is now called ‘democracy’ (though I certainly argue it). It was the time when we suddenly started to get all that weird and fascinating (fascinating, ‘coz it was totally weird) Western stuff which we never had before.
I was 6 or 7 when that man from “Slave Isaura” perished in the fire. I remember how the whole Russia was weeping that evening. And I was eager to do everything my parents wanted from me, just to get a permission to watch “Santa Barbara” in the evening. And no one of us can forget how C.C. was lying in coma for more than a hundred series and then simply tore the oxygen mask off himself and rose from the dead :) My classmate even called her cat by the name of her favourite “Santa Barbara” hero – Mason :) Then years on my family used to gather in front of our old TV-set to watch “The Rich Also Cry” (with Veronica Castro starring), “Simply Maria”, >“Milagros” (on Russian TV it was called “Girl with the name of Fate” for some reason), “Perla Negra”, “Celesta” and all its sequels, “My Second Mama” and many more. This genre was totally new for us, and it was such a surprise to watch an “endless melodrama”. We seemed to follow the sufferings and doubts of the heroes, ‘coz we didn’t know what the end would be like. It’s now that I can watch the first series and predict the end which’s gonna occur in a year :). My Mom became a fan of Andrea del Boca, while I was dreaming of Gabriel Corrado and Osvaldo Laport! And YES – “Helen and the Guys” (a French TV series about students) – it was a real hit, a mania! Everybody was watching it, we discussed it at school, collected pictures and posters with Helen, Nicolas, Goanna, Christian, Jose, Sebastian and others. “Thunder in Paradise”, “Beverly Hills 90210” (I was crazy ‘bout Luke Perry!) - I can go on for ages :)
“Gammy Bears” was a discovery for us! We’ve never seen such colorful, bright, and well totally different cartoons. There was a time when we started neglecting our own culture under the pressure of loads of Western stuff, strongly prohibited before. We had to pass this phase. And we passed it. Now these things are viewed like everyday stuff and don’t astonish us any longer. We are returning to our own culture finally. But those days we all were singing “Chip, Chip, Chip, Chip and Dale rescue rangers, Chip, Chip, Chip, Chip and Dale where there’s danger” and “Can you feel the love tonight…” I think I was 10 when they showed “Lion King” on TV for the first time. There was a children program on our local TV channel “Gorodskoy Telekanal” (“City TV Channel” – now it has almost disappeared, and mainly broadcasts the programs of Moscow channel “CTC”) every Sunday when they told about some big Disney cartoon and broadcasted it after. All the viewers were suggested to take part in a contest with the prize if we gave the right answer to the question, “On which famous play is the cartoon based?” Mom guessed it in 10 min. I didn’t know “Hamlet” by that time, ‘coz we studied some English literature only when I was 12 or so. But Mom insisted that I should call and answer. I didn’t want to, ‘coz I was very shy at that time and was simply afraid to talk to that man in the TV set. She cried at me, and we quarreled. I don’t know why, but this episode never left my head years after. But I was fascinated by the cartoon, and it still remains one of my favourites, maybe the best one for me.
It was the time of first adverts to appear. It sounds silly, but those adverts were the best ones! That dancing camel from “Picnic” advert – he was just awesome! Or the advert with Suvorov (our famous general of the 18th century) sitting at the dinner table with the Emperor family and noble guests and the Emperor asking him, “Why don’t you start?” – “But it’s advent Father, we can’t start before the first star!” And yes, those funny chicken legs flying up and forming a line high up in the skies with the voice coming out, “It’s not cranes – it’s chicken legs flying”. It was my favourite. And sure the absolute hit of the 90s – “Everyone loves Mamba. And Seryozha also!”
Funny, but we were happy to drink those god-awful juices of powder – Zuko, Yuppii, and Invite (remember – “Inviiiiiiiiite, you just need to add some water!”). And everybody was collecting wrappers from “Love is…” (Bubble Gum of Love) you remember that chewing-gum? Oh God, how tasty it was! Why isn’t it sold anywhere now?? I LONG FOR TASTING IT ONE MORE TIME!!! I had hundreds of wrappers with all sorts of love definitions, and always wished to get that “Love is…” box, but I never had a chance. Then Kinder Surprises appeared, and we got hooked to them for several years. My first collection started with Lions. I remember how insatiable I used to be, and needed more, more figures, the whole collection. We used to bring our KS toys in parcels, dump them out during the break, and change one toy for the other which we lacked in our collection. Collapsible toys went 2 or 3 for 1 figure. Depending on the figure status. I have the whole collection of Lions, Dwarves, Penguins, oh who else was there? I remember I once stole a dwarf figure from my classmate. I needed this only dwarf in my collection, and Katya brought it to school with other KS toys. It was summer school camp after the 3rd grade. We went on an excursion by bus, and I was always holding this figure in my arms while we were sitting in the bus, and at first I didn’t intend to commit this ‘crime’, but Katya seemed to forget about the toy and I just took it home. I was afraid to look in her eyes the next day. I felt ashamed. But I never returned the toy. I knew Katya was then telling her friends that I had stolen her dwarf, but they didn’t believe her ‘coz I was a person of trust at school, and they even came up to me and told me that Katya was rumoring about me! I played like I surely was not guilty! Ah it’s the worst deed of my childhood… There were Crocodiles in KS, too, before Lions, and those KS were a rare thing in Russia. We somehow missed them. But some guys had crocodile figures in their collections, and it was a matter of definite pride. The KS mania started when I was 9. And I was almost 11 or 12 when tents appeared on one of the central squares with the figures of crocodiles and other KS specials at sell. This killed KS. We lost interest. Now everyone could simply buy any figure he wished to, without taking risks with a KS egg. WHY DID THEY KILL KS?? WHO ASKED THEM???
But we soon found a new collection object – stickers. It all started with “Barbie”. We bought sticker packs, each one contained 6 or 7 stickers and we didn’t know what stickers we were to get. We stuck them then into the special album with the space for this particular sticker. The aim was to fill the whole album with stickers. The more stickers you had in your collection the less chances you got to have all new stickers when buying a sticker pack. And again we exchanged stickers to finish the collection. I’ve got the whole “Barbie” album full. And in “Lion King” I miss only 1 – it’s such a pity! Then I had an “Animal World” and later “Helen and the Guys”. But at that time we were losing interest to this, and I think half of these albums are left unfinished. Those who had the “Barbie” album full could get a present from the company – a real Barbie! It was a dream, ‘coz we didn’t have many Barbies at that time in children stores. It’s now that you walk through the children store and see hundreds of Barbie and Ken dolls in all the possible dresses with all the furniture. We dreamt of it. I never had a Barbie. I’ve only got a Betsy, and a Cindy. And a Pamela - a nice teenage girl of the Barbie type, but twice shorter. One could find these toys in “Children World” in Moscow only, and the dream of every child living in the province was a visit of this big store and at least have a look at all those beautiful toys. Still I was happy to have these Barbie copies. I used to gather my dolls and come to my neighbour Lyuba where we played with both my and her dolls. There was also the time when small German baby dolls were popular. They were mostly sold two in a pack – all dressed in pink crawlers or dresses, mostly girl baby dolls. I had such a doll pair, and when Lyuba came to me, we took two old armchairs and designed them as 2-storey cottages. One for each doll. And then played the day of each girl. Sometimes they met and had a chat, sometimes their days never brought them together. We could spend hours playing this sort of game. We also loved to play “Monopoly” and “Manager” like everyone else – table games where we could buy this or that enterprise, sold and bought shares, got rich and went bankrupt, started from scratch. Lyuba had those games, and I came to her every evening to spend 3-4-more hours running the business of my dream :))
We didn’t have computers – we had Dendies and Segas. Sega was much cooler, and nearly everyone had a Dendy. When we visited someone’s Birthday party we most likely spent the after-dinner part playing Dendy connecting 4 to 6 joysticks to it. I still remember “Mario”, “Battle Toads”, “Contra” and “Chip and Dale” games. And the one which I adored “Felix Jerry”. I could chose a hero there – cat, bee and some unknown heroes, each possessing a special quality – and forward towards the end of the game. I never passed all the stages, but I was constantly practicing. Our stores were loaded with orange Dendy cartridges – in the same way as DVDs fill the video stores now. I remember Mom never let me connect my Dendy to a color TV-set in our living-room, and I used a small black-and-white TV-set for playing Dendy games which stood in my room. I always envied a bit my classmates who could play color Dendy games.
We also had Tamagotchis and Elektronikas. An Elektornika was a forerunner of Tetris. It generally showed time and functioned as an alarm-clock. But it never mattered anyone of us. What was important is that it had a game. Each Elektronika had its own game. In my game a “merry cook” (that was actually the name of the game) was tossing up sausages and catching them back with his pan. I scored records after hours spent in following the cook’s actions. Sometimes my parents started to shout at me, “Go and do your hometask instead of playing this stupid game!” “Yes, yes, Mom, I’m coming…” but I never did before I scored a new record. It’s funny, but I’m one of those rare persons whose Elektronika is still working. But I don’t play now, I simply use it as an additional alarm-clock (one is not enough to wake me up in the morning :) Tetris was the same, but had more games, and they were different. Snake, Tetris itself, others I don’t remember. My favourite was Snake. We can still play it in some mobiles. My Mom is crazy ‘bout it, and once spent 3 hours playing Snake in her mobile non-stop :) Parents bought me a Tamagotchi as a New Year’s present when I was 12. I was on top of the world! My tamagotchi was a panda. I never managed to grow him up till 100 years; I was a bad pet keeper. But I did my best, and every time he died again I promised I would treat him better next time :) It was impossible to sit at the lessons, because I was always thinking about him, how he was, maybe he was hungry or wanted to have a walk. The teachers were crazy about that, but they could not stop this mania :)
When I got older a cassette-recorder became my favourite toy. Zlata bought me a radio cassette player when I was 13. For over a year I was just listening to some favourite cassettes, winding the cassette to the needed place with a pencil or with a finger (our children will not understand this process already). “The Best From The West-1,2,3”, “E-Rotic”, “Filipp Kirkorov – I’m Not Rafael”, “Tatyana Ovsienko – Za rozovym morem”, “Ivanushki International – hmm… don’t remember the name of their very first album”. The 2 first items were extremely popular in the middle of the 90s. We all danced Macarena at the discos and waited till that handsome blond guy from the parallel class would invite us to dance a slow with him to “Even Though You Broke My Heart” or “Casablanca” or “Tuchi” (“Storm-clouds”). I first heard “E-Rotic” when I was in the summer camp. I used to be a total “home kid” in those days, who spent time with the family and my dear Granny (unfortunately she’s not here anymore) instead of walking with other kids in the street. That was why I didn’t know most of the music and movie tendencies and was a sort of “out-of-date”. In the summer camp I learnt a lot :) And used to sing the songs of “E-Rotic” until I got 14 or 15. Now when I listened to the songs of the album some months ago I was shocked about the text! Oh my God, if only I knew what I was singing!!! But when I was 11 I had no doubt that in “Dr. Dick” Dick was the name of the doctor who was somehow gonna help the female vocalist :))) At 14 I discovered that I could find radio stations on my radio cassette recorder. That was the beginning of my “education in modern music”. I could listen to the radio for hours recording my favourite songs of Hanson, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, N-Sync, Five, Ricky Martin and others. I started buying megapopular weekly magazines for teens of those days “COOL” and “COOL Girl”. It was 1997, spring, and we were cleaning the school yard. I have just watched “Titanic” and have completely fallen in love with Jack (or Leonardo?? no guess at that time I saw Jack in him, and Jack was my dream). And suddenly I saw a magazine lying on the porch with his picture on the front page! It belonged to one of my classmates, but I did not dare to ask her what sort of magazine it had been, ‘coz I used to be shy and diffident and was afraid that everybody would laugh at me because of my ignorance. However I took Granny out and went in search of this magazine. It was not hard to find, ‘coz it was everywhere. That was the first time I read a teen magazine. Since then I started buying “COOL” every week and learnt a lot of information about music and famous bands, actors, teen stuff, sex (yes, I learnt about sex through this magazine, ‘coz nobody ever told me about it among my relatives, and when I read the “love pages” in “COOL” for the first time I thought, “Woooooow…”). There was a great thing in each “COOL” – photo love story, one for several issues, like comics but about Russian teens and love. I could not miss an issue at least because of these photo love stories. I also loved to read the last page where fans were looking for other fans to have a mail correspondence (of course not e-mail, in those days we were wrote letters with a pen, as well as reports, essays and everything – just imagine a 20-pages report written with a pen! It took me a week to do it plus many hours in the library to find the information). I tried it several times but it actually did not lead to anything long-lasting.
We were talented. We composed verses. These masterpieces could be viewed all over the town – on the asphalt, walls, fences, windows (certainly somebody else’s). We constantly decorated the walls of our WCs with poetic and prosaic lines about all sorts of stuff – beginning with “Marina + Dima = Love” or “Igor is a nasty dirty f*cking freak” and ending with the teachers’ characterizations (usually of an evil kind). Vlada’s teacher of physics had the family name Kononov (when translated, “horse-like” or anyway it was derived from the word “horse”), sure he was given a nick Horse. I still remember a big line on her school wall, “Horse is goat” (“Kon’ – kozel”), “goat” here means a freaky person, somebody whom one strongly dislikes. But on the whole the phrase seems totally funny! It makes me smile even now, when I recollect the memories of those days :) It happened so that this man is a fellow-student of one of my Grannies, and until now when she talks about her friends, I ask her, “And what about Horse-Goat?” :)))
Grown-ups used to shout at us each time they found a new creation on the wall. And we knew it was no good to spoil the walls, but we could not restrain this soul squall. I remember one hit in our toilets made up of the quatrains in Russian across the whole wall saying,
“On WC walls to leave some notes
Believe me friends, it’s no hit
Among the shit you all are poets
Among the poets you’re a shit” :)))
Or lines like “It’s better all dead rats to eat, than to hear Alisa’s hit” (Alisa is a famous rock band of those days), or “Kurt’s not dead – he’s gone to smoke”, or “Who’s a fan of club Dynamo is a son of a blockhead mama” (Dynamo is a soccer club).
We liked to gather altogether in a yard and play games. Simple games with a ball: football or “square” (a football type game when 4 people draw a square with a chalk on the asphalt and divide it in 4 sectors, each of the 4 people is responsible for protecting his sector, and if the ball leaves the sector the person who kicked it scores a point; my friend Sveta (was my neighbour and best friend those days) and I used to play with the boys from our house, and we were constantly quarrelling simply because they were boys and we were girls – it was an everlasting fight until we all got 15 or 16).
There was a field in the neighbourhood used by Militia for training during the day, and in the evening we used it as a soccer field. Children from all the neighbouring yards joined us. I even met my first boyfriend Seryozha on the field during one of the games :) It was a relationship between 2 kids: I was 11, and he was 13. We exchanged love letters, and when I was at home because of homework he used to come up to my balcony, whistled, I took a rope, pulled it down to him, he tied sweets, chewing-gums, cookies and other tasty things to it, and I lifted the rope up again. So sweet! Ah where have those days of innocence and sincerity gone?! But then he beat my classmate black and blue just because he once came to me, and some other unpleasant moments, and it all was stopped by me. No idea where he is now. I used to meet him sometimes when I was passing his yard, some years after, when I was 15 and 16, and sometimes we even said, ‘Hey’ to each other, once he said, “Come sit with me for a while” but I said ‘no’, ‘coz he got into a bad company by that time, problems with Militia and alcohol. Then I learnt he was imprisoned twice. And then his tracks have completely disappeared.
Dodge ball – there were 2 types of it. One was traditional dodge ball when the crowd gathers in the middle between the 2 ball-kickers; the other was with one ball-kicker and the crowd stood at the wall, the “kicker” threw the ball to the wall aiming to hit someone. I remember I got a terrible head-hurt when we played it with a soccer ball, and this ball hit me so hard that I knocked against the wall.
“Squirrels-dogs” – a game when the people formed a circle and threw the ball to each other. And one was standing in the circle and tried to catch it. The others teased him, and he was running from one corner to another to get this ball.
“Odd man-out” (or “Third is odd” if we translate it word-for-word). Standing in pairs we formed a circle. One was a “he” (or “catcher” as you like) and also one was without pair. The catcher tried to catch that one without pair, and the latter had to stand up to one of the pairs, and the pair turned into a three-person line, third was odd, and now he had to escape from the catcher. Very active game with lots of running, shouting, and what not.
“Slow and steady wins the race” – I don’t know why it was called so. It’s just named by the first phrase in the phrasal unit that the he has to say, “Slow and steady wins the race, won’t miss anyone on your way, stop!” At the word “Stop!” everyone was supposed to stand still in the pose he was standing at that moment. And the he came up to everyone and tried to make him move – teased him, tickled him etc.
“Glimmers” – everybody was standing in pairs in a circle (one person in the pair after another) with one he. The he looked at the people in the front row and winked at the one whom he chose so that the back row person didn’t notice it. When a person saw that the he winked at him, he rushed to him, and the person behind him had to react and hold him, or he would lose the pair and become a he. I remember once my best school friend of those days Masha came to my yard (we lived at a one bus-stop distance from each other, and she usually played in her yard). We were standing in a pair. But then a boy, also Seryozha by the way, winked to me (he was the brother of one of my friends and liked me, and I liked that he liked me if I may say so, ha-ha in a couple there’s always one person who loves and one who lets the other love him – it’s a more widespread thing than two people hell in love with each other), and I remember Masha’s whisper: “I need to hold you, you know. But I’ll do it just one time for effect, and next time I will pretend and let you go” :))) And she did it. I was standing with Serg until the end of the game, and when somebody else winked at me and he did not notice I specially slowed to give him time and react ;) Ha-ha, how old was I? 11? 12? :)))
When we got older we liked to sit on the bench and play a quiet ball game named “Family”. One person was standing with a ball, and all the rest were sitting on the bench. The game-leader was creating a life story of each participant. He threw the ball to the first person, asking “Your name is…” and suggesting his variant. If the participant liked it, he caught the ball. If he didn’t - he didn’t. But suddenly the leader threw the ball shouting “Family” – and if the person caught the ball he could choose any name he liked. If he didn’t – the leader gave him any name he wanted. It might be a good name, or a dirty name (usually a dirty name, sure), and nothing could be changed. Then followed the questions like, “What is your boy/girlfriend’s name?” “Where did you meet?” “When did you have wedding” etc etc. It was funny when the story was created by the leader, coz he could make it so that the couple met at a dump. She was 6 and he was 99. They had wedding in the wood etc :)))
And sure some crazy deeds of ours like jumping from one garage to another (some fell down and hurt something, but these were rare cases) and climbing the trees (the person who planted the trees in front of our house used to come to the balcony and shout at us, “Get out of my plants you little fools!!!” but we never cared about it).
We also liked to call spirits, like The Queen of Spades and some home spirits – barabashka, domovoi etc (Russian counterparts of the English “brownie”). For that we had to gather in a dark cellar or just in a dark place and do some magic tricks, say magic words and wait… Usually it all ended with someone’s shout, “I see her/him!” – and we rushed out of the cellar screaming and crying :) When I was in the summer camp (I think I was 12) once we were calling some spirit (don’t remember which) in our ward. We did everything required, and said, “If you’re here, knock at the wall”. And we heard knocking!!! Ah we were so afraid, we ran out of the ward shouting, and were afraid to go back :) In the morning we learnt that the neighbouring ward heard it, and just knocked at the wall separating our ward from their ward :))))))
At home in our yard we found a hut and created a story that it was the home of spirits. Every day we chose one person who needed to go to the hut and talk to the spirits. The choice was made by the toss of the coin or a similar thing named “Rock Paper Scissors” (In Russian version it was actually "stone scissors paper";) guess you all know it: "Rock Paper Scissors - Tsu, Ye, Fa!"; rock wins against scissors, scissors win against paper, paper wins against rock). Everyone knew in his heart of hearts there were no spirits in the hut, but still everyone was afraid :) When he returned, he created stories about a talk with the spirits, what they said, and how he responded :)))
And another crazy game called “Sleep-sending”. One person pressed on the neck of another person, and that person had to fall asleep immediately. Most of us were pretending. After we woke up we were telling our dreams. We were small and did not understand that we could press on some artery and never wake up again!!! Cruel game of cruel kids of the 90s…
In winter we played snowballs, skied, skated, sledged and slid down the ice-hill. I remember my classmate Zhenya once broke my nose, because he stopped somewhere in the middle of sliding, and I slid after him and fell upon his boot. There was no blood, but the nose ached for a year and a half after that… We liked making snow figures, rolling snowballs (when the snow was not crumbly) and placing one on the other. When we were 9-10 years old a young man (for us he seemed a grown-up, but in fact he was just 16 or 17) used to come to our yard and play with us. I still can’t see the point of this coming. But maybe he just liked kids. We adored him! His name was Lyosha, but we called him Barabashka because of his family name – Barabanov. When he appeared we all jumped up to his neck and hang there – we were so happy! Our parents did not like it. They kept on saying, “This boy must be sick – there’s no sense in his coming and playing with you small girls”. But we never paid attention. Never was he a threat to us. When we grew up he disappeared. I sometimes met him afterwards when I was 15, 17, 19… He did not change. But of course he did not recognize me, and I never came up and start a chat.
I guess we were the last generation who liked to read. Until computers took all the time, but it happened only when we were in High School. Child detective stories were extremely popular in mid-90s. There were several series of such stories. One was a series of Hitchcock stories about a group of kids who solved crimes. The second was about 2 brothers – Frank (he was 18 and dark-haired) and Joe (a 17-year old blond) - this was my favourite series. And the third I also liked was about 5 kids (I don’t remember well, but I believe they were 5), 2 girls and 3 boys, and a dog. They were relatives, and met in summer, every time getting into an adventure. These books still stand in my bookcase, but it’s been a long time since I turned their pages last time. Of course we had to read a lot for school, but we never liked what we were supposed to read. It’s quite natural.
School… School… When I went to school in 1992 it was the last year of the Soviet school uniform. That usual one of a brown or black dress and a white apron (for girls) and dark-blue suits (for boys). We first had common Soviet schoolbags like the ones you see in old movies. But already at the end of 1992 colourful Western schoolbags started to appear. They cost a lot, and usually the richest kids were lucky to have such. When I changed the school the first memory of a new school was right connected with these schoolbags. In my old school only 2 kids had beautiful schoolbags. In the new school everyone had expensive colourful schoolbags. It’s a kid impression, but I liked my new school even starting with the way the pupils looked like :)
I also remember that the first day I came to the new class a boy held out a thick exercise-book to me with the words, “Fill it in!” It was the first time I saw this hit of many many years – Questionnaire. A thick exercise-book contained the info about its owner, and questions. There were dozens of questions about all aspects of life “What is your name?” “What is your favourite group?” “Who is your friend” “Whom do you love?” etc. The number of questions depended on its owner’s fantasy :) Usually at the end we had to leave some comments or wishes to the owner. Every one had a Questionnaire, some had even several Questionnaires, and they were filled in by hundreds of people. Of course we all were interested in the lines “Who is your friend?” and “Whom do you love?” Most often we left the first letters of a name and a family name of the person. Like Olga Kabuzova would look like “O.K.” :) The boy who gave me the first Questionnaire was the biggest hooligan of the class, but he liked me from the start for some reason, although I was shy (maybe because of that). In my Questionnaire that appeared several months after that he responded to the question “Whom do you love?” in the following way: “I LOVE YOU, YANA!” I think it was the first time when somebody said these words to me :))) It was he who had been beaten by my boyfriend Sergey a year ago when he just came to me for some book. Now he's playing solo guitar in one famous local band called "Leto na Marse" :) When many years after I was cleaning my drawer, I found several questionnaires of mine, grabbed them all and threw into the dustbin. How now I blame myself for that! What a fool! But what's done cannot be undone...
Reverting to what I was telling you about, when in the 7th grade I had to respond to the same question I didn’t know what to write. Well I liked one boy, and he was the most popular boy in our class, and he liked another girl. So I decided to name any other person to avoid rumors that I like Kirill he-he. And I chose his friend Rodik. Don’t know why. He was not popular. And I don’t know why I made up my mind to mention him. Maybe my intuition whispered to me that he was in fact much more interesting than his friend. I saw it years after when he grew up into a good-looking blond guy, very clever and straight-forwarded. He passed entrance exams to Moscow State University (the place where the most clever guys of Russia study), and left for Moscow. Now he graduated from it and probably stayed there as a PG student. But those days he was just Rodik :) I put his initials into the Questionnaire, and after some time I saw that he put my initials responding the question. That how it all started. For some time after that we were exchanging such mentions, then invited each other to Birthday Parties, danced slows (I think I still have a photo of us dancing somewhere in my writing-table) – were a pair? Who knows :) And then we just grew up… :)))
We were the last pioneers of Russia :)/a 'pioneer' is a famous Soviet analogue of a 'scout'/ The Pioneer Organization did not function properly already at that time, but we passed through the ceremony of dedication and received the usual attributes of the Pioneer Organization – a red pioneer necktie and a red cap. We never wore them, but we have them :) It is a legendary thing. There's not a single person in Russia and ex-USSR who does not know and remember it. Or at least know... It's so funny, when sometimes in the bus or tram there's a young boy or sitting on the bench and an old man or woman is standing beside him/her, and he/she does not stand up, you here 'Oh God, where the world's going... What kind of pioneers we're having now...' The Soviet kids lived according to the Code of Ethics, maybe partly because of that we used to be that 'Great Empire' :) "You, who are on the road must have a code that you can live by..." (Hanson)
We did… We were… So many stories… Can’t remember all… Can’t write all…
Hope it gave you some picture of what Russia of the 90s was like, and how average people were living in those hard transition days.
With love,
Me span>
Avril Lavigne. October 5, 2007
The concert followed her performance at RMA Ceremony on October 4 where she won in the nomination “Best Foreign Singer”. It was held in a new club “B1 Maximum” specially built to organize concerts of famous singers/groups from abroad. “Chemical Brothers”, Brian Ferry, Marilyn Manson, Alice Cooper, East 17 (I didn’t know they still exist), and “Funeral For A Friend” coming soon, too.
I arrived 2 hours in advance hoping to get a good place (mine was entrance ticket to the dance floor). But when I came, I saw a queue to enter the club stretching for not less than a kilometer! Mostly students, some teenagers even accompanied by their parents. Behind me stood a girl and a father talking about music. The father is a typical representative of a hippy trend so popular here in the 70s. And although he looked now absolutely average, the traces of hippy past could easily be read in his every word and gesture. He said to his daughter, “I’m so happy that you listen to rock and not to some popsa” (“popsa” is an offensive name for pop music). I envied the girl. My Dad does not like music at all, and Mom understands only classics being a classical musician, and I’ve always faced hurts and opposition on her side when I went to some non-classical music concert or simply switched on a music radio at home. And never did any of them accompany me to any concert of modern music! Always alone or with a friend, but mostly alone, ‘coz none of my friends want to spend 70 dollars for a concert. And I can’t count money when it comes to music that I like. Or just music.
When I entered the concert hall I saw a crowd of people occupying the very middle of the club space. I first tried to squeeze as closer to the stage as I could, but then gave up these efforts and left the crowd. But I saw some vacant place to the right – and oh God! There was a place in the first row, but a bit to the right from the middle! It was absolutely no problem, ‘coz I could see the whole concert and Avril was very close. Besides most of the guys tried to get closer to the middle, and those standing in the centre of the first row suffered greatly. Some lost conscience, and some even broke arms-legs because of the guys pressing them from behind. I also suffered this pressure, but the only consequence of it was my aching body the whole day following the concert. But it was a trifle when compared to a great show seen :)
What is the English word for the performance of another group before the main performance of the main group/singer? We call it “razogrev” in Russian (“warming up” or “heating” the crowd). Some group showed up on the stage with a nice blonde to be lead vocalist. She sang a number of absolutely weird and loud songs so that everyone wondered who the hell could compose such queer things. Then rather a nice song was performed, and I thought it could be a hit. Anyway I was sure this group could be some more or less known one if they warm up the crowd before Avril’s concert. But no one knew it. The questions, “Who are they?” were heard here and there. And only when they reached the last song of their performance we all understood who was standing on the stage – “Masha i Medvedi” (“Masha and the Bears”), a famous rock band of the end of the 90s, and the song was a great hit. The only thing about it was that they all were totally bald those days (including the girl), and now she’s a blonde, and no one recognized her. “Masha, please, never cut your hair again!!!” some guy shouts from the crowd. Everyone nods and smiles. “Yeah you look great with this blond hair!”
And finally the main show started!!! There’s no need to mention the crowd bursting at the sight of Avril, screaming and shouting, cameras, journalists occupying the area in front of the stage for the first song performance. I waved my hand to all TV cameras :) The only problem’s that I don’t know where and when to watch me :))) She opened her program with “Girlfriend” dancing with her ballet. And during the whole concert performed most of the songs from her fresh album plus everlasting hits like “Complicated” and “Sk8er Boy”. She changed dresses thrice, and microphones, played the electro guitar in two songs, and at the very end went down to us and the first row (including me!) could touch her hand :))) She’s so small!!! I’m small, but she’s smaller than me – not taller than 155 cm!!!
When the concert finished Security did not allow the crowd to leave until Avril’s team left the club. And even after that they allowed the people to leave in small groups – 10-11 people at a time. Of course there was a mess ‘coz everybody wanted to get home and got furious. I did not hope to get home by Metro judging the crowd that gathered at the exit door. But when I squeezed somewhere from the right, Security guy looked at me and said, “Don’t let anybody. Only let this girl pass”. COOL! What was special about me I wonder?! But I was pleased much :)))
I arrived at my Metro station already at 1 a.m. I hate passing the selling tents standing here and there near the Metro. But I had to… “Girl, please stop, stop, where are you hurrying?” Oh nooooo, I knew it would be like that… Some drunken male figure forwarded in my direction. “Hello” – “I’m in a hurry” – “Noooo, wanna go to drink something with me, or may I see you off home?” – “NO! I am in a hurry, ‘coz I’m tired and I want to sleep!!!” – “No, stop, stop, let me talk to you for a minute”. – “You’ve got just 1 minute. Talk!” – “Eh eh… I was trying to catch you during 3 days. But every time you hurried so that I could not catch you…” – “Oh yes, especially taking into consideration the fact that all those days I came home from another Metro station, ah?!” – “I am a psychologist, and I read mistrust in your eyes” – “Happy for you. What else do you expect to read there?” – “I am a Militia man!” – “You said you are a psychologist!” – “I will show you my license!!!” Great! What next? I’ve fallen upon a Militia man, what a luck!!! :(((( “I don’t need your license. I need to go home. Or… I will phone home now and…” – “Nothing will happen to you and your family! I am a Militia man!” This talk-of-nothing lasted for half an hour, until I finally said, “It’s not a good time to get acquainted. Let’s meet tomorrow at 1 p.m. near the Metro”. He nodded with his drunken head, and left. I hate going home alone at night! It always goes this way!!! Sure I never came, this goes without saying :)
Here I need to put a full stop to the story about my going to Avril’s concert. Wish to put dots, but will she come again who knows? Singers come and go. It might happen that no one would remember her name in 2 years. We should value this very moment whatever comes next. And whoever.
I arrived 2 hours in advance hoping to get a good place (mine was entrance ticket to the dance floor). But when I came, I saw a queue to enter the club stretching for not less than a kilometer! Mostly students, some teenagers even accompanied by their parents. Behind me stood a girl and a father talking about music. The father is a typical representative of a hippy trend so popular here in the 70s. And although he looked now absolutely average, the traces of hippy past could easily be read in his every word and gesture. He said to his daughter, “I’m so happy that you listen to rock and not to some popsa” (“popsa” is an offensive name for pop music). I envied the girl. My Dad does not like music at all, and Mom understands only classics being a classical musician, and I’ve always faced hurts and opposition on her side when I went to some non-classical music concert or simply switched on a music radio at home. And never did any of them accompany me to any concert of modern music! Always alone or with a friend, but mostly alone, ‘coz none of my friends want to spend 70 dollars for a concert. And I can’t count money when it comes to music that I like. Or just music.
When I entered the concert hall I saw a crowd of people occupying the very middle of the club space. I first tried to squeeze as closer to the stage as I could, but then gave up these efforts and left the crowd. But I saw some vacant place to the right – and oh God! There was a place in the first row, but a bit to the right from the middle! It was absolutely no problem, ‘coz I could see the whole concert and Avril was very close. Besides most of the guys tried to get closer to the middle, and those standing in the centre of the first row suffered greatly. Some lost conscience, and some even broke arms-legs because of the guys pressing them from behind. I also suffered this pressure, but the only consequence of it was my aching body the whole day following the concert. But it was a trifle when compared to a great show seen :)
What is the English word for the performance of another group before the main performance of the main group/singer? We call it “razogrev” in Russian (“warming up” or “heating” the crowd). Some group showed up on the stage with a nice blonde to be lead vocalist. She sang a number of absolutely weird and loud songs so that everyone wondered who the hell could compose such queer things. Then rather a nice song was performed, and I thought it could be a hit. Anyway I was sure this group could be some more or less known one if they warm up the crowd before Avril’s concert. But no one knew it. The questions, “Who are they?” were heard here and there. And only when they reached the last song of their performance we all understood who was standing on the stage – “Masha i Medvedi” (“Masha and the Bears”), a famous rock band of the end of the 90s, and the song was a great hit. The only thing about it was that they all were totally bald those days (including the girl), and now she’s a blonde, and no one recognized her. “Masha, please, never cut your hair again!!!” some guy shouts from the crowd. Everyone nods and smiles. “Yeah you look great with this blond hair!”
And finally the main show started!!! There’s no need to mention the crowd bursting at the sight of Avril, screaming and shouting, cameras, journalists occupying the area in front of the stage for the first song performance. I waved my hand to all TV cameras :) The only problem’s that I don’t know where and when to watch me :))) She opened her program with “Girlfriend” dancing with her ballet. And during the whole concert performed most of the songs from her fresh album plus everlasting hits like “Complicated” and “Sk8er Boy”. She changed dresses thrice, and microphones, played the electro guitar in two songs, and at the very end went down to us and the first row (including me!) could touch her hand :))) She’s so small!!! I’m small, but she’s smaller than me – not taller than 155 cm!!!
When the concert finished Security did not allow the crowd to leave until Avril’s team left the club. And even after that they allowed the people to leave in small groups – 10-11 people at a time. Of course there was a mess ‘coz everybody wanted to get home and got furious. I did not hope to get home by Metro judging the crowd that gathered at the exit door. But when I squeezed somewhere from the right, Security guy looked at me and said, “Don’t let anybody. Only let this girl pass”. COOL! What was special about me I wonder?! But I was pleased much :)))
I arrived at my Metro station already at 1 a.m. I hate passing the selling tents standing here and there near the Metro. But I had to… “Girl, please stop, stop, where are you hurrying?” Oh nooooo, I knew it would be like that… Some drunken male figure forwarded in my direction. “Hello” – “I’m in a hurry” – “Noooo, wanna go to drink something with me, or may I see you off home?” – “NO! I am in a hurry, ‘coz I’m tired and I want to sleep!!!” – “No, stop, stop, let me talk to you for a minute”. – “You’ve got just 1 minute. Talk!” – “Eh eh… I was trying to catch you during 3 days. But every time you hurried so that I could not catch you…” – “Oh yes, especially taking into consideration the fact that all those days I came home from another Metro station, ah?!” – “I am a psychologist, and I read mistrust in your eyes” – “Happy for you. What else do you expect to read there?” – “I am a Militia man!” – “You said you are a psychologist!” – “I will show you my license!!!” Great! What next? I’ve fallen upon a Militia man, what a luck!!! :(((( “I don’t need your license. I need to go home. Or… I will phone home now and…” – “Nothing will happen to you and your family! I am a Militia man!” This talk-of-nothing lasted for half an hour, until I finally said, “It’s not a good time to get acquainted. Let’s meet tomorrow at 1 p.m. near the Metro”. He nodded with his drunken head, and left. I hate going home alone at night! It always goes this way!!! Sure I never came, this goes without saying :)
Here I need to put a full stop to the story about my going to Avril’s concert. Wish to put dots, but will she come again who knows? Singers come and go. It might happen that no one would remember her name in 2 years. We should value this very moment whatever comes next. And whoever.
RMA 2007 (MTV Awards Russia). October 4, 2007
Usually the most-expected October event here until it finally takes part for everyone to see once again that like always it’s total rubbish :) This time it was held in a new Ice Palace on Hodynskoe Field (Hodynka), specially built for the last year World Cup Hockey. Advertisements loading TV and radio, huge colorful posters all around Moscow…
I left work 1 hour earlier to be on time to see the stars getting out of their cars and walking along the Red Carpet. I did not see many of them, ‘coz I had a ticket to the show, and I had to choose – whether to stand in the rain and watch the stars coming, or have a glance at it and go and watch the concert. Besides there were plenty of young people and journalists crowding the passage to the Red Carpet, and there was no chance for us to get closer. We were looking down from the 2nd level passage, like from a balcony, but thank my digi cam, it has big amplification. There was a stage right in the street in front of the Palace where some of the artists performed before the show. I noticed Aleksa standing behind this stage with her dancers, waiting for their turn to come out. Then a pompous limousine arrived and a glamorous girl came out sticking her chewing gum to the limousine roof – brrr, disgusting! Somebody said it was Slava. Who the hell is Slava?? I don’t care. Then there was a grand ‘traffic jam’ before the Palace, and the stars could not settle who would be the first one to come. Some lost patience, and walked out of the cars far from the Red Carpet and came on foot. Such were “Fabrika” girls (they had a small photo session before it, right in the street), “Otpetye Moshenniki” (two of them actually – Sergey Amoralov with some girl, and Garik). Some good-looking young guy even came up to the fans standing behind the fence and spent some time on autographs. But few people paid attention to what he was doing. Probably because of that the poor lad decided to reach the fan space :) Only at the show I learnt that he was a newly-made MTV star, singer and actor, from some teen soap “Alisa’s Dreams” (“Mechty Alisy”) where he played the leading part – Alexey Vorobyov. He is no way interesting, ‘coz he’s just like all other sweet pop guys of whom everyone is completely sick and tired by now. We have Bilan and Lazarev. That’s more than enough. Everyone was waiting for HER. Paparazzi tried to guess the car where she was sitting, but their efforts kept on failing, at least when I was watching it. After 40-something minutes I left the Red Carpet area, and went to search for my seat.
The show did not start even 30 minutes after the fixed time, and everybody started worrying when it would start and thus be over, ‘coz many were to go home by the Metro and the Metro passages were closing at 1 am. “Mumiy Troll” opened the ceremony with a mix of old and new songs, every next text competed the previous one in the degree of senselessness. I just wonder how one can compose such lines, or in which state one can compose such lines, or in which state one has to be to sing what he has composed in the state he was then!!! :)) Finally closer to 8 p.m. (instead of 7!) the Palace saw the show leaders – Anna Semenovich (ex-“Blestyashcie” girl, and ex-figure skater, too) and Pavel Volya (“Comedy Club). Their appearance started a shocking stream of dirt which continued to increase with every new singer or group showing up. I still can’t forget the dialogue between Sergey Zverev (an epatage showman and a hair-stylist) and Irena Ponaroshku (MTV VJ): “I know Sergey you envy my hair-stylist ‘coz he’s capable to cut my hair in such a cool way!” – “What I know is that he’s absolutely incapable to cut the hair on your mink in a cool way!” AND THERE WERE CHILDREN WATCHING THE SHOW!!! During the whole ceremony they were discussing the boobs of Semenovich, and Irena even asked for her permission to touch them at the end of the ceremony. Well we are becoming more and more like Americans with their vulgar way of leading ceremonies… What I wonder now is whether they think we are such morons not to react to any cleverer joke, or they are morons themselves not to be able to write a wiser script for the ceremony?!
But I didn’t care. I came for HER like most of the people, and I was waiting for HER. In the middle of the ceremony I received an sms from Mom who was watching RMA through direct broadcasting: “How can you watch this shit? No voices, no culture, to say nothing about howlers of VJs! I’m shocked of your music taste!!!” Yes, I can understand her reaction. She was 100% right.
There was Bilan and with a premier of his song “Amnesia” performed together with Timbaland (not a bad one, by the way). There was some group “Boycott” performing a song with Turbo B. There were Maksim, Band’Eros, Stasya, Alexey Vorobyov, Chelsea. Talking about Chelsea, Volya said a cool thing: “These guys want fame so much that they even decided to name themselves after the favourite soccer team of a man whom you all know. Hoping to get money from him, too. But judging by the fact that they did not win in any nomination – he gave no money to them by this time!” GREAT! :) I also liked his commentary to the victory of Bianca in the nomination “Best Hip Hop/R&B Project” /Bianca does not rap, she sings very pop songs with some slight hints on R&B/ “Liga’Lize /a famous Russian rapper, probably one of the best ones here/ is weeping backstage, and the whole Russia weeps with him – the best HIP-HOP project is Bianca!!!” :))) Liga’Lize also performed somewhere in the middle of the ceremony. Also “A-Studio”, “Tokio”, “Serebro” and a big present for the audience was a performance of all members of “Blestyashchie” of all times (including Olga Orlova, Zhanna Friske, Anna Semenovich – they are all solo singers now, Friske is the most famous among them). Zhanna Friske introduced her sister Natasha who’s a new member of the group. Others I just don’t remember… AND FINALLY at the end of the ceremony they were greeting Best Foreign Singer – HER, AVRIL!!! And she was giving a small 15-20 min. performance. The only live performance among all!!! “Sk8er Boy”, “Complicated”, “When You’re Gone”, “Girlfriend”. This was her first and long-awaited by all her fans (including me) visit to Russia. Next day she was giving a solo concert in “B1 Maximum”. But that’s another story. I don’t want to deepen into detail descriptions of everyone and everything, just wanted to provide you with a brief overview of where I’ve been and whom I’ve seen. I left right after Avril’s performance. Could not stand the dirty jokes of the VJs. But anyway I was satisfied. I saw Avril, and felt like I was a part of something special for Russia, even if it was not a thing of a good quality. But where can you find quality when we talk about show biz? (Sure “Hanson” is the exception.)
What I thought about during the whole ceremony is that any of my friends could perform not worse (or even better) than all these girls and guys who chanced to get a powerful show biz rat promoting their mediocre songs. “We’ll be together forever ... Oh yeah… Just say ‘yes’!” (“My budem vmeste vsegda… Oh yeah… Skazhi tolko ‘da’) God! What’s this shit about?? No more comments… Russia truly needs an independent company that would forward independent singers and groups who are not lucky to be sons and daughters of rich papas, but who really love music and can do a good performance without dirt, flam and clownishness. Once we have it, we will be right to say, “Yes, we do have show business in Russia”.
I left work 1 hour earlier to be on time to see the stars getting out of their cars and walking along the Red Carpet. I did not see many of them, ‘coz I had a ticket to the show, and I had to choose – whether to stand in the rain and watch the stars coming, or have a glance at it and go and watch the concert. Besides there were plenty of young people and journalists crowding the passage to the Red Carpet, and there was no chance for us to get closer. We were looking down from the 2nd level passage, like from a balcony, but thank my digi cam, it has big amplification. There was a stage right in the street in front of the Palace where some of the artists performed before the show. I noticed Aleksa standing behind this stage with her dancers, waiting for their turn to come out. Then a pompous limousine arrived and a glamorous girl came out sticking her chewing gum to the limousine roof – brrr, disgusting! Somebody said it was Slava. Who the hell is Slava?? I don’t care. Then there was a grand ‘traffic jam’ before the Palace, and the stars could not settle who would be the first one to come. Some lost patience, and walked out of the cars far from the Red Carpet and came on foot. Such were “Fabrika” girls (they had a small photo session before it, right in the street), “Otpetye Moshenniki” (two of them actually – Sergey Amoralov with some girl, and Garik). Some good-looking young guy even came up to the fans standing behind the fence and spent some time on autographs. But few people paid attention to what he was doing. Probably because of that the poor lad decided to reach the fan space :) Only at the show I learnt that he was a newly-made MTV star, singer and actor, from some teen soap “Alisa’s Dreams” (“Mechty Alisy”) where he played the leading part – Alexey Vorobyov. He is no way interesting, ‘coz he’s just like all other sweet pop guys of whom everyone is completely sick and tired by now. We have Bilan and Lazarev. That’s more than enough. Everyone was waiting for HER. Paparazzi tried to guess the car where she was sitting, but their efforts kept on failing, at least when I was watching it. After 40-something minutes I left the Red Carpet area, and went to search for my seat.
The show did not start even 30 minutes after the fixed time, and everybody started worrying when it would start and thus be over, ‘coz many were to go home by the Metro and the Metro passages were closing at 1 am. “Mumiy Troll” opened the ceremony with a mix of old and new songs, every next text competed the previous one in the degree of senselessness. I just wonder how one can compose such lines, or in which state one can compose such lines, or in which state one has to be to sing what he has composed in the state he was then!!! :)) Finally closer to 8 p.m. (instead of 7!) the Palace saw the show leaders – Anna Semenovich (ex-“Blestyashcie” girl, and ex-figure skater, too) and Pavel Volya (“Comedy Club). Their appearance started a shocking stream of dirt which continued to increase with every new singer or group showing up. I still can’t forget the dialogue between Sergey Zverev (an epatage showman and a hair-stylist) and Irena Ponaroshku (MTV VJ): “I know Sergey you envy my hair-stylist ‘coz he’s capable to cut my hair in such a cool way!” – “What I know is that he’s absolutely incapable to cut the hair on your mink in a cool way!” AND THERE WERE CHILDREN WATCHING THE SHOW!!! During the whole ceremony they were discussing the boobs of Semenovich, and Irena even asked for her permission to touch them at the end of the ceremony. Well we are becoming more and more like Americans with their vulgar way of leading ceremonies… What I wonder now is whether they think we are such morons not to react to any cleverer joke, or they are morons themselves not to be able to write a wiser script for the ceremony?!
But I didn’t care. I came for HER like most of the people, and I was waiting for HER. In the middle of the ceremony I received an sms from Mom who was watching RMA through direct broadcasting: “How can you watch this shit? No voices, no culture, to say nothing about howlers of VJs! I’m shocked of your music taste!!!” Yes, I can understand her reaction. She was 100% right.
There was Bilan and with a premier of his song “Amnesia” performed together with Timbaland (not a bad one, by the way). There was some group “Boycott” performing a song with Turbo B. There were Maksim, Band’Eros, Stasya, Alexey Vorobyov, Chelsea. Talking about Chelsea, Volya said a cool thing: “These guys want fame so much that they even decided to name themselves after the favourite soccer team of a man whom you all know. Hoping to get money from him, too. But judging by the fact that they did not win in any nomination – he gave no money to them by this time!” GREAT! :) I also liked his commentary to the victory of Bianca in the nomination “Best Hip Hop/R&B Project” /Bianca does not rap, she sings very pop songs with some slight hints on R&B/ “Liga’Lize /a famous Russian rapper, probably one of the best ones here/ is weeping backstage, and the whole Russia weeps with him – the best HIP-HOP project is Bianca!!!” :))) Liga’Lize also performed somewhere in the middle of the ceremony. Also “A-Studio”, “Tokio”, “Serebro” and a big present for the audience was a performance of all members of “Blestyashchie” of all times (including Olga Orlova, Zhanna Friske, Anna Semenovich – they are all solo singers now, Friske is the most famous among them). Zhanna Friske introduced her sister Natasha who’s a new member of the group. Others I just don’t remember… AND FINALLY at the end of the ceremony they were greeting Best Foreign Singer – HER, AVRIL!!! And she was giving a small 15-20 min. performance. The only live performance among all!!! “Sk8er Boy”, “Complicated”, “When You’re Gone”, “Girlfriend”. This was her first and long-awaited by all her fans (including me) visit to Russia. Next day she was giving a solo concert in “B1 Maximum”. But that’s another story. I don’t want to deepen into detail descriptions of everyone and everything, just wanted to provide you with a brief overview of where I’ve been and whom I’ve seen. I left right after Avril’s performance. Could not stand the dirty jokes of the VJs. But anyway I was satisfied. I saw Avril, and felt like I was a part of something special for Russia, even if it was not a thing of a good quality. But where can you find quality when we talk about show biz? (Sure “Hanson” is the exception.)
What I thought about during the whole ceremony is that any of my friends could perform not worse (or even better) than all these girls and guys who chanced to get a powerful show biz rat promoting their mediocre songs. “We’ll be together forever ... Oh yeah… Just say ‘yes’!” (“My budem vmeste vsegda… Oh yeah… Skazhi tolko ‘da’) God! What’s this shit about?? No more comments… Russia truly needs an independent company that would forward independent singers and groups who are not lucky to be sons and daughters of rich papas, but who really love music and can do a good performance without dirt, flam and clownishness. Once we have it, we will be right to say, “Yes, we do have show business in Russia”.
Monday, October 8, 2007
Morning words
The paper sheet with these words hangs in my kitchen, and every morning when I'm having breakfast I cast a glance towards it:
'Every day think as you wake up, Today I am happy to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it, I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I am going to have kind thoughts toward others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others, I am going to benefit others, as much as I can.'
'Every day think as you wake up, Today I am happy to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it, I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I am going to have kind thoughts toward others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others, I am going to benefit others, as much as I can.'
Friday, October 5, 2007
Very first song
This is my first song. I started writing the text 5 years ago after the end of the 1st “Star Factory” (Russian version of “Pop Stars” or “American Idol”). It’s the song meant to be sung by the winner. I just imagined what song a winner of such project could sing. Then I gave up writing. And returned to it half a year ago just to get it finally finished. And composed the melody, too. This is non-format for me, ‘coz it’s 100% pop song, that’s why I post it here without hesitation.
Your Story
Have you ever though you would be here
On a stage among a million of beams
And the crowds crying out your name
Have you known of your strain?
Have you ever thought you’d win the game
Of creation every single day
And of much tension when they chose you then
And when you were saved again?
Whatever happens in your life
Don’t give up your starting
And one day the fading light
Will turn into the lightning
This is how comes glory
And always believe it’s for you
It’s your story
Have you ever thought it could be true
You’re now acting just like real stars do
Walking manners, dancing, singing skills
Have you known all these things?
You come out, to you they stretch their hands
You are living in some cloud land
When you see that who they need is you!
It lifts you up to the blue
Whatever happens in your life
Don’t give up your starting
And one day the fading light
Will turn into the lightning
This is how comes glory
And always believe it’s for you
It’s your story
Let troubles surround
And knock you down –
Don’t kneel to miseries
Let no one believe it
And uphold your spirit -
Take it as it is
Let tears appear
And bars bring fear –
Remember time will cure
Just don’t turn off your road
And trust one code
That I now know for sure
Whatever happens in your life
Don’t give up your starting
And one day the fading light
Will turn into the lightning
This is how comes glory
And always believe it’s for you…
Whatever happens in your life
Don’t give up your starting
And one day the fading light
Will turn into the lightning
This is how comes glory
And always believe it’s for you
And always believe it’s for you
And always believe it’s for you
It’s your story
Your Story
Have you ever though you would be here
On a stage among a million of beams
And the crowds crying out your name
Have you known of your strain?
Have you ever thought you’d win the game
Of creation every single day
And of much tension when they chose you then
And when you were saved again?
Whatever happens in your life
Don’t give up your starting
And one day the fading light
Will turn into the lightning
This is how comes glory
And always believe it’s for you
It’s your story
Have you ever thought it could be true
You’re now acting just like real stars do
Walking manners, dancing, singing skills
Have you known all these things?
You come out, to you they stretch their hands
You are living in some cloud land
When you see that who they need is you!
It lifts you up to the blue
Whatever happens in your life
Don’t give up your starting
And one day the fading light
Will turn into the lightning
This is how comes glory
And always believe it’s for you
It’s your story
Let troubles surround
And knock you down –
Don’t kneel to miseries
Let no one believe it
And uphold your spirit -
Take it as it is
Let tears appear
And bars bring fear –
Remember time will cure
Just don’t turn off your road
And trust one code
That I now know for sure
Whatever happens in your life
Don’t give up your starting
And one day the fading light
Will turn into the lightning
This is how comes glory
And always believe it’s for you…
Whatever happens in your life
Don’t give up your starting
And one day the fading light
Will turn into the lightning
This is how comes glory
And always believe it’s for you
And always believe it’s for you
And always believe it’s for you
It’s your story
Monday, October 1, 2007
The Day of the Interpreter
I have just learnt that yesterday was the Day of the Interpreter.
We were congratulating Lyubas, Nadezhdas, Veras, and Sofias on the day (the Day of St. Sofia and her daughters - Vera, Nadezhda, Lyubov), and nobody knew that I also had a holiday (nor even I!)
SO... I am eager to receive your congratulations!!! You are welcome to wish me all the happiness, luck, health, gloss, love etc etc that exists in the world!!! :)))
PS we will definitely correct it today having a small party with Lyuba and Yegor :)
PS2 there's another date today for me also - my Mom's having a Birthday
We were congratulating Lyubas, Nadezhdas, Veras, and Sofias on the day (the Day of St. Sofia and her daughters - Vera, Nadezhda, Lyubov), and nobody knew that I also had a holiday (nor even I!)
SO... I am eager to receive your congratulations!!! You are welcome to wish me all the happiness, luck, health, gloss, love etc etc that exists in the world!!! :)))
PS we will definitely correct it today having a small party with Lyuba and Yegor :)
PS2 there's another date today for me also - my Mom's having a Birthday
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