A few determined individuals who have been following this blog since its humble beginnings would recognize this diagram. This is a very precise diagram, by the way, since for all senses and purposes we live in the same area that we left for London. If you imagine yourself…
When our children were born, we did not exactly bother to research what the names we were giving them meant. (Or, if we did at the time, my memory did not record it.) But yesterday, Kimmy came across a naming book in our library and decided to figure out what…
With a tip of the hat to Jason and Konstantin, here is my own confession on having seen too much TV. I’m changing the rules slightly, thinking that my approach provides a better “classification”: Italics if I had enough interest in the show to see a few episodes. Bold if…
It’s been almost three weeks since I, in one of the occasional troughs of my blogging “career”, asked my faithful readers for help in generating content in this space. Since then, by force of circumstances, I managed to ignore the resulting questions (although, coincidentally, a large portion of my recent…
Becky and I were engaged in our regular competition of making silly jokes out of what the other person says (Her: “Hey, I know how to copy a URL – I got good grades in ICT”. Me: “Fine, but what about your grades in I see Fanta?” … Get it?),…
Two great memes are going around among my online friends. The first one, started by Jeri, simply asks a willing participant to post childhood/youth pictures of oneself. Several people already happily obliged. I would love to take part in it as well, but my pre-digital photo archives are all stored…
I can always count on Jason to pick somewhere a meme that I find hard to pass by (especially, when I lack inspiration to come up with a gripping narrative). Here is the two-part new compendium of facts about yours truly. (If anyone is so inclined, the old compendium is…
I count myself firmly amongst owls when it comes to sleeping habits. I am not exactly a nocturnal creature – I value having eight hours of sleep every night too much for that. But I can stay up late into the night fairly effortlessly. And I am so not a…
Reading through the backlog of my blog aggregator, I came across a meme that I could not pass by, courtesy of Jason. The instructions: Copy the list into your blog or journal, including these instructions. Bold all the items you’ve eaten. Cross out any items that you would never consider…
Back in my twenties, I used to like coffee. Drank it quite regularly. Natasha and I even joined one of those mail-order coffee clubs. Several times, as a matter of fact, so that we could keep getting their free-if-you-join stuff. A couple of coffeemakers and several cup-and-saucer sets, if my…
A fun meme that I ganked from SamuraiFrog (as always, Jason was ahead of me in terms of ganking). 1. Go to photobucket.com 2. Type in your answer for each question into the PhotoBucket search bar. 3. Choose your favorite photo to represent your answer. 4. Copy the html and…
There is this blog called Stuff White People Like, which some people find funny. The big idea of generalizing the preferences of white folk is as sensible as predicting British weather – any arbitrary guess has a chance of being 50% correct. I am pretty sure that a Harward-educated WASP…
Taking a relay baton from Jason, here are a few tidbits about me that you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask. Bought everyone in the bar a drink? For a reluctant pub-goer such as myself, that would be way over the top. Swam with wild dolphins? No,…
Say my last name out loud in its anglicized pronunciation. Now, transliterate it phonetically into Russian. What do you get? Right – Бёрлак – which is exactly how it appears on the visa issued to Natasha by the Russian embassy in London. I suppose I can’t imagine a Russian embassy…
Unlike my friend Brian, who writes his blog when he really should be sleeping, I tend to value a good night’s sleep well above many other seemingly worthwhile endeavors. Which is why I often find myself unfamiliar with concepts that other bloggers have long mastered. One of those concepts is…
I took a curious personality test at work the other day and figured it’s worth describing in a post. The test is called Keirsey Temperament Sorter and aims at identifying your temperament from amongst four standard types, and then further detailing it into one of the sixteen common “characters”, or…
For those of you, who know us well, feel free to skip this post. For the uninitiated, here is the context: My wife and I are relocating to England. We have spent the last 15 years of our life in the great United States of America, became rather assimilated (I…