A happy event

A happy event for me: my girlfriend Katya and I decided to move in together. Actually, she is the one moving in, and me, I just sit and wait. Katya comes from Moscow, she is smart, pretty, lovely, sweet, she reads my blog, she wears green and I wear orange, and I am sure we will be very happy together. She arrives tomorrow.

As you see, we both blend in pretty well, and we look very happy.

As part of the deal, her dog Urmik will also move in, and I am looking forward to him coming as well. I think I'll be better with a dog than I was with the fish and the rabbit. At least I should be able to pet him. If we can't manage, I'll send Urmik to Ian and Nikki who do a good job at rehabilitating pets I have traumatized.

In her new job in Novosibirsk, Katya will travel over Siberia a lot so I expect to have interesting stories to tell.

A lesson about hockey

It's been about 7 weeks now that I have started playing hockey regularly. It is time to make a first assessment of my skills.
For the people who don't remember the colors of my outfit, and who have never seen me skating, I am attaching this little movie to show that you don't need a camera with high resolution, or you don't even need to see my face to recognize me on the ice:

As you can see, my style is quite eloquent: I skate as fast as I can, forward, straight, and I use the walls to stop. Still, to help you spot me in the other movies: I have a red shirt, blue shorts, a white helmet, and usually I really have to fight hard to get the puck because my teammates don't pass it to me.

Now, there are times when the same set of skills -skating straight, not stopping- can give a good impression.

That's pretty much the coolest move I did in 7 weeks. I call it the "Big Dive". A word of caution: don't overuse it. The "Big Dive" becomes predictable, and therefore much less effective, once you do it 3 times in a row or more.

So, to me, hockey is mostly about falling at the right time, without too much damage.
A last little movie to show how I can handle the puck when I get it:

Well, OK... That movie was taken during the warm-up, before the game started... but it is promising, no? Note that I got back to a leftie stick after I hesitated between a rightie and a leftie for the first few sessions.

Thanks Natasha for the movies. Next movie is my first goal... Stay tuned (for a long time).

The japanese garden

Fall is a beautiful season to wander around the gardens of Akademgorodok. All trees seem to compete to expose their nicest colors for a few days, before October swallows all red, yellow, orange nuances and wraps the whole nature in a gray veil. So there was no better time to go and visit the japanese garden by the botanical institute. Actually, there would have been a better time... since the garden closes at 4pm and we arrived there shortly after 4pm. However this time, the security guard was nice enough to come out of his little shack and let us visit the park for 50 rubles.
The visit of the garden is well worth 50 rubles. And, contrary to other national parks and places where you wonder if they really need the money, here, it is obvious they need the money. It must cost a pile to keep building up their collection of empty alcohol bottles and buying the old steel bed frames, that are the main recurrent themes of the garden. Past the handful of bonzai trees that give the park its name, one can tour the main part which I guess is built around the theme of "post-war Nagazaki". There are a few signs saying :"Smile, you are on camera" are displayed prominently, just in case you had an impulse of steeling a cement bag or an old tire from the park.

So overall... if I were writing a guidebook I think I would give this park a nice little symbol that says:"to avoid". It is not better than on the other side of the fence, outside the park, where you don't have to pay to walk in the landfills.