#liankasdiary Archives - Chasing the adventure

February news-2, Tomsk, Russia

On Saturday I saw one of my long-time subscribers.

And I was just ashamed that I haven’t been writing for a long time.

The situation must be fixed, here we go..

I decided to see what’s going on in the world.

First I looked in Russian news:

How to find and lose a friend in 1 day? The mission is possible!

In short – accept a friend request and refuse the services from that “new friend”.

The story:

One recent morning, I got a friend request (on FB) from a lady named Tatjana.

I like an expression that I learned here: “Sorry, I am not sorry”.

The expression from me is “I was surprised, but not surprised.”

Lately, I started getting friend requests often, almost daily.

And I don’t do anything special: I don’t advertise myself, I don’t sell anything, I don’t write posts. However, sometimes I share photos/posts from Instagram / Telegram.

In general, FB and its younger brother IG are not my favorite platforms.

There is a joke: I like people who like me. They have good taste.

Christmas Eve Thoughts

conversation with the seller:

-Are you Russian?- the seller

-Yes, – I

-I have a Russian sister-in-law. She has the same accent. I don’t understand her sometimes. But her English is pretty good and so is yours.

-Thank you. Tell her … – I tried to tell something nice

-She has a happy life with my brother in Сalifornia…near the ocean..- she couldn’t stop talking

Don’t bake like me

I baked a cake on Sunday. The weather was inviting, rainy and damp, though warm.

In rainy weather, I want to read, with a cup of tea and a piece of cake or at least a pie.

The choice fell on the Zebra cake. I have loved it since childhood for its simplicity and unsweetened taste.

You need to mix all the ingredients. Divide the dough into two parts. Add cocoa powder in one of them. Then pour the white and black dough, alternating, into a baking dish. This will give the cake a nice marble look.

There are two disadvantages in my recipe: there is little sugar and all the ingredients are measured in “faceted glass”.

September – extended summer

The capital of Mississippi is facing numerous water problems — there’s been too much on the ground after heavy rainfall in the past week, and not enough clean water coming through the pipes for people to use.

And there is not even a Tomskvodokanal* there.

Since the pipelines are very old and worn out, pipe breaks occur constantly. In the summer, Tomskvodokanal is trying to perform at least some repairs. Therefore, the water in Tomsk is turned off often and for a long time and not always in accordance with the shutdown schedule. Tomskvodokanal publishes information about where and when cold water will be turned off.

Hot Summer 2022

August 1, 159th day of the war

Gasoline has become cheaper, water (water bill) has become more expensive, creative projects hardly help not to get bogged down in the swamp of everyday life and not to go crazy from the horror of the news.

I’ll start with a pleasant one: gasoline has become cheaper. On Sunday, I paid $4.19 for a gallon (at BJ’s). Sweet.

But the water bill went up a lot. It’s all about the long heat and lack of precipitation. We have to water everything: vegetable’s gardens, lawn, trees. Daniel bought a sprinkler. He moves it around the garden every 15-20 minutes. This way we save time but spend money. I do not know how these water bills are compiled. But for some reason, sewage in the bill costs twice as much as water supply. Hopefully it will rain soon.

While we have a drought in New Bedford for how long… last two-three weeks?.. There is a lot of rain in Tomsk. My friend complained that she could not (or did not want to) walk through the rainy forest to her dacha. My sister complained about huge water paddles everywhere in the city. This made her journey to work long and unpleasant. Here in the USA, we often complain about the roads. Well, Russian roads and sidewalks are often much worse.

By now, the rain has stopped in Tomsk. But another regan is under Emergency mode due to floods.

Flood waters flooded 1,747 residential and country houses in Chita and five districts of the Trans-Baikal Territory, rescuers evacuated 285 adults and 38 children. This was reported on August 1 in the press service of the regional Department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations.

Chita is a city in the south of Eastern Siberia, located on the Trans-Siberian Railway route.

I will leave a link to the article under the post. The article is in Russian but there are a couple of photos.

I am glad that there are no such big and serious problems in Tomsk. It’s a little different there. In some areas of the city, there is no hot water in apartment buildings. In some (about 500 buildings) there will not even be cold water during the day in mid-August. But who knows… this one day can turn into two days or longer.

The infrastructure in Russia is very old. Tomskvodokanal* repairs it every year, but it seems there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

COVID-19 is still with us, although people talk less about it.

The number of new COVID-19 cases in the city of New Bedford is growing, and in the week from July 21 to 27, the state Health Department reported 267 cases.

In the Tomsk region, 52 residents contracted the infection during the day on August 1.

Russians have stopped wearing masks almost everywhere.. Rospotrebnadzor** recommended that citizens from risk groups wear masks in crowded places and on public transport.

And The New Bedford Light published a promising article about Dartmouth’s Toxic facility. The link is here.

Briefly, The Tonix Dartmouth plant is developing live viral vaccines against COVID-19 and monkeypox and is increasing its production. A human trial is scheduled for 2023. It will probably be convenient to have such a plant locally.

Monday’s word of the day is nostalgia

…On Monday, I worked nostalgically at the Lawler branch, chatted nostalgically with a former colleague and regular patrons, even the rain on the roof sounded nostalgic...

Nostalgia can be different: for work, for young age, for the motherland, for … simple life (does anyone else have such a thing?).

Nostalgia for the motherland, youth and simple life I treat with old Soviet detective films, thanks to YouTube.

Recently, once again, I watched the Village Detective based on the works of Vil’ Lipatov.

The main character of the books /films is an elderly village policeman who knows the life and customs of the people of his village.

Here is a link to the movie. I doubt there are English subtitles. But you can see the Siberian Soviet village, houses, roads, and how people dressed.

My grandmother, aunt and uncle lived in a very similar village, only on a small river, so they didn’t have a pier like in the movie.

One day, when I was visiting my uncle, his cow came home from the pasture. And that’s good, right? But she started chewing on my almost new white T-shirt drying on a rope. We took the t-shirt away (or out of her mouth). But there were green grass stains on it (the cow chewed the T-shirt along with the grass, it probably tasted better that way) and holes from teeth (she used to chew thoroughly). 😂

As a city girl, I’m afraid of cows, I don’t miss them at all.

Evening notes, 4, Boston

How to spend a vacation without being excruciatingly painful?

Make a to-do list, do almost everything from it, get tired.

One of the action items was a trip to Boston. Beautiful Boston… always beautiful Boston.

The decision to travel was spontaneous, as always. But there was also a plan – to go to a Russian store and meet with Dan’s sister and her husband. But they couldn’t make it to Boston at the last moment. So I spent the whole day alone with Boston and a backpack with trophies.

Friday morning in Boston was overcast. The day was partly cloudy. Temperature – I don’t know. It’s warm in the sun, but it’s uncomfortably cool in the shade of even a small tree. Spring. It’s still spring. And in spring, cold winds often blow on sunny days.