Many years ago, I have developed a simple strategy of facing compliments, because they have always made me uncomfortable: it does not matter whether I believe what is being said about me, it only matters if I believe that the person who compliments me is sincere and genuine. If they are, then it is an honour to be seen in such a way through their ( Read more... )

Давайте поиграем в небольшую экологическую игру.

1. В любом помещении, в котором вы регулярно пребываете (на работе или в любой комнате дома, например) посмотрите вокруг и посчитайте, сколько вы видите пластиковых предметов (не нужно открывать шкафы и заглядывать в ящики столов, - просто на поверхностях). Смотрите внимательнее - некоторые ( Read more... )

Сегодня впервые в жизни звонила пожарным. Из принципа, увидел горящий мусорный контейнер - позвонил, даже если ты с этим сообщением десятый (а вдруг первые девять не позвонили, потому что подумали, что кто-то уже это сделал?) Не представляю, как там операторы работают. Моя ситуация была некритичной и не особенно срочной, и то мысли бегали как ( Read more... )

A short comic is floating around online these days*. In it, a stick figure is crawling up a mountain, which is drawn like a ragged line that almost, but not quite, reaches the top of the panel. "Getting there," says the figure in the first panel titled "high school". "Almost done," it mutters as it approaches the top in the next frame labelled " ( Read more... )

After you do something repetitive, you would often dream about it at night or see its image superimposed over whatever else you do during the day.

During school summer breaks, I would often dream of strawberries and blackberries after my mother, brother and I would spend half a day in the woods, bringing back several litres of berries each.

At exam ( Read more... )

"Salad days" is a Shakespearean idiomatic expression meaning a youthful time, accompanied by the inexperience, enthusiasm, idealism, innocence, or indiscretion that one associates with a young person. In Anthony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra says, "...My salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood..."

~Wiki

When I was young and my granny ( Read more... )

Content warning: some period talk ( Read more... )

Today at work, I chaired the meeting of the Scientific Council of our department.The Council is a part consultative, part self-governing body. It determines the direction of the research carried out by the department, discusses the PhD and Dr. Sci. theses presented to us for review, ascertains that the PhD, Master and Bachelor students doing their ( Read more... )

Tsundoku is acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them.
~Wiki.

In the Russian higher education system, there is no tenure or "professor emeritus" status. There is also no age of obligatory retirement.

One of the best professors I have ever had, a sunny, wise, knowledgeable "grandfather", who was once ( Read more... )

When you are a child, your life is easy, because it has a purpose, or at least a lack of understanding that you need one.

My childhood purpose in life, implicitly set by my parents, was simple: grow up, study, get an education, find work... and then all will be good and proper.

I followed this road, only somewhere along the way, I discovered that ( Read more... )