Learning from Experience

Rainy days

Tue, 29 May 2012 23:43:44 GMT

We only had a single day without any rain last week. I can't remember if we had any the previous week. We had almost a whole rain-free day today, and the streets were beginning to dry, when we were "treated" to an early-evening rainstorm.

Don't even start me on trying to dry laundry on the balcony! :P

I had very little space left on the memory card of my camera, so I couldn't experiment as much as I wanted with the photos of raindrops on plants, so... here is the best of what I managed.

23 May, at the bus stop:

28 May, on my way back home from the dentist, when the rain had finally stopped for awhile:

A totally soaked rose bush:

A fragment of the above photo:

Raindrops everywhere...

Arrests at Moscow Pride in Russia - more details

Mon, 28 May 2012 22:08:49 GMT

From what I managed to piece together from all the reports in Russian that I read, the police just arrested everybody who was wearing or carrying anything rainbow-coloured or a pink triangle button badge*, or was at the place of the unauthorized Pride event talking to the journalists, or carried a sign with anything written on it. Some "Christian activists" and "football fans" who were there to counter-protest managed to attack the Pride activists and start physical fights with them before the police interfered.

I don't know yet what happened for those who were arrested.

The "Church Banner Bearers" (I don't know how to better translate or explain their organization's name in English), who are already notorious for disrupting Pride events, got a very lenient treatment from the police - they were just asked to leave, so they went to the nearest church to pray (1:40-1:58) in the video. The police didn't arrest the Christian women in the kerchiefs either. The male Christian counter-protester who spoke to the journalists without holding a sign or anything got arrested too at 3:21.

You can see some "Christian activists" pestering the Pride participants at about 2:20 and telling them that "God hates sin". The guy in the blue T-shirt got sprinkled with holy water at about 2:50. Then things got really rude at 3:30 when a lesbian activist tried to speak, and one of the male counter-protesters tore the shoulder strap of her dress.

It is just obvious in the videos and photos that some of the activists are already used to getting arrested, and don't seem to think much of it.

Finally a report in English (the video inside is the same as above): http://www.xtra.ca/blog/national/post/2012/05/27/Violence-arrests-break-up-Moscow-Pride-march-attempt.aspx

Radio Liberty's report in Russian with a photo gallery and a similar video: The sexual minorities: from the Moscow City Council to the police vans. PHOTOS.

Some highlights form that gallery:

This woman identified as heterosexual, but came to support the LGBT cause, according to Radio Liberty. I don't know if she was testing the boundaries with those fiber pens, or didn't have anything else rainbow-coloured or what.

Lesbian activist Elena Kostyuchenko in the police van.

The God-Fearing Christian women. The white T-shirt on the guy with them says "I'm against AIDS, drugs and faggots". I don't know if he identified as a Christian, or something else.

UPDATE: Here is the Washington Post report: Moscow police detain 40 as gay activists demand right to hold parade, face Christian protest

Arrests at Moscow Pride in Russia

Mon, 28 May 2012 00:37:21 GMT

The article below is in Russian, but I thought that reposting it would be the decent way to share all those copyrighted photographs.

Here is my translation of most of the article (the details in the last paragraph won't mean anything to those who aren't familiar with the city, so I'm not translating it):

Several people were arrested on Sunday in front of the building of the Moscow City Duma, where gay-rights activists were holding an unauthorized action. The police arrested several Orthodox Christian activists, who had come to disrupt the "Gay Pride" event, and also a number of gay-rights activists.

The object of the discontent of Russian gays and lesbians was a law banning propaganda of homosexuality among minors, adopted in a number of Russian regions and under consideration in Moscow.

Besides that, as reported by Interfax, the organizer of the Moscow pride parades, Nikolay Alexeyev, was arrested later in front of the monument to Yuri Dolgoruky. He came near the City Hall, but did not manage to answer the questions of journalists, as he was immediately arrested. Alexeyev was taken to the police van. The police officers had to lift him and carry him to the van.

"Unauthorized" means that the organizers were refused a permit for their event by the city authorities.

The white sign in the fourth photo says "Moscow is not Sodom". The red sign says "The Eternal God kills off peoples for three mortal sins: 1. Legalized murder (abortions) 2. Legalized homosexuality 3. Legalized magic (occultism)"

I'll post links to whatever other materials I can gather, and piece together a more detailed report, in a separate entry tomorrow.

Originally posted by ridus_admin at У Мосгордумы задержали ЛГБТ-активистов и их противников

Несколько человек был задержаны в воскресенье у здания Мосгордумы, где гей-активисты проводили, несогласованную с властями акцию. Полицейские задержали нескольких православных активистов, которые пришли, чтобы сорвать «гей-прайд», а также ряд гей-активистов.

Предметом недовольства российских геев и лесбиянок стал закон о запрете пропаганды гомосексуалиализма среди несовершеннолетних, принятый в ряде российских регионов и находящийся на рассмотрении в Москве.

Кроме того, как сообщает «Интерфакc», позднее у памятника Юрию Долгорукому был задержан организатор московских гей-парадов Николай Алексеев. Он пришел к зданию мэрии, однако не успел ответить на вопросы представителей СМИ, так как был мгновенно задержан. Алексеева поместили автозак. Полицейским пришлось нести его в автобус на руках.

Первоначально организаторы планировали провести акцию в формате шествия по Мясницкой улице от Моспочтамта до Лубянской площади и последующим митингом на площади Революции, однако власти Москвы согласовать заявку отказались. Перед зданием Мосгордумы прямо перед началом «гей-прайда» начались ремонтные работы по укладке плитки.

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Linden!

Fri, 25 May 2012 17:29:53 GMT

No, this is not my favourite Silver Linden (Tilia tomentosa), but another species (Tilia platyphyllos?) that goes into bloom earlier. I noticed the first open flowers on this tree on 15 May, and I think it was still too early, but maybe that was due to the short period of almost-summer weather we had before the rains began. I didn't manage to get a single photo in focus back then because of that notorious wind that kept moving the the branches, so here is what I have of a later stage.

The leaves of this species don't have the silvery undersides, and the stamens of the flowers have so long! They smell different fro Silver Linden flowers too.

21 May:

A very original display of homophobia

Thu, 24 May 2012 23:55:14 GMT

Who would have thought that parading a huge plastic phallus around could save your city from the fate of Sodom? Srsly. This is exactly what happened yesterday in Riga, the capital of Latvia, as a protest against a Pride rally that is planned for 2 June, Mixnews reports (in Rusian, but you could just look at the photos if you don't understand the text).

"We don't want Riga to turn into Sodom. We are for normal marriage. This event aims to glorify the holy acts of getting closer of all Latvian women and men," the organizers explained.

They also added that the cross itself was a kind of phallic symbol, and therefore the plastic-foam phallus that they were carrying was also a kind of cross. The organizer also accused the City Council of Riga of not defending Christian values and permitting a parade of gays and lesbians. (my translation from Russian)

My translation of the conversation at about 10:50 of the video in not very good Russian (in between what I suppose is Latvian):

Reporter: Excuse me, what is the purpose of this action?
Organizer: To save Riga from the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Reporter: [...] from some kind of debauchery?
Organizer: Yes, of course, from homosexuality.

Now, my gentle readers, do you think that Christians who organize a phallic procession to protest against homosexuality are:

A) closet cases;
B) unconscious followers of some old pagan tradition;
C) just plain stupid;
D) all of the above
F) something else I haven't thought of?

*dies laughing*

(Thanks to dimet for attracting my attention to this story.)

To honour the national holiday

Thu, 24 May 2012 20:54:26 GMT

A little Bulgarian national flag in honour of the Cyrillic Alphabet Day on our balcony. It got drenched with rain when we got a little afternoon storm, but it was dry again when I took the photo this evening. :)

i didn't go to any public celebrations today, but I celebrated quietly in my heart.

I guess it's pointless to write in Bulgarian here *sigh*, but at least I can use the last minutes before the day is over in my time zone to congratulate my Russian-writing audience:

С Днем славянской письменности и культуры, друзья. :)

And other roses

Thu, 24 May 2012 01:22:22 GMT

These roses are in front of a cafe on the main street. I was so fascinated with them when I saw them in bloom that I kept returning to try to take photos of them on different days in spite of the wind that kept moving them just enough to get my photos out of focus.

Those marble stairs have been there as long as I remember (if I remember it right, of course), and I find the thought of that somehow soothing, although I don't have any remarkable childhood memories of them. They are just a little part of the presence of my home town around me.

13 May:

17 May
Something had eaten a bit of the top petal here. :)

The unexpected special effect of focusing in the wrong place :)

19 May

"Filter your Friends Page"

Wed, 23 May 2012 21:40:27 GMT

It's already official: switching between English and Russian on my Friends Page drives me crazy - especially when I get a perfect alternation of English in Russian entries, for my sins. :P

Seriously, sometimes it gives me a very physical headache when I'm already tired or otherwise out of shape. Not to mention that I keep forgetting to switch to the other alphabet before I switch to commenting in the other language.

So, I discovered that I can use the Filter option to read only separate custom friend groups on my Friends Page - it's the same concept as Circles on Google+.

Then I made two custom groups, which I named English and Russian, and it works. Now I can follow my English stream and my Russian stream separately when I don't feel like switching between languages all the time. The trouble is that I have to remember what I've read last in both groups to know how far back to go on my Friends Page, but that's still less inconvenient than any other random method I've tried to read (and now and then comment to) the English and the Russian entries separately.

Oddly enough, I felt tempted to leave my oldest Russian-writing additions steinkrauz and lipatriinu in my English stream because I'm already used to reading their entries in a stream that is otherwise in English, but I decided to be consistent. theorybunny is so multilingual that he doesn't belong anywhere, but I decided that I can live with him in my English stream. :P

P.S. I still allow comments in Russian to my own entries.

The virtual earthquake experience

Tue, 22 May 2012 15:00:15 GMT

There was an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.8-5.9 on the Richter scale near Sofia, the capital of my country, at about 3AM last night (just when I was preparing to go to bed - I know, I stayed up too late :P). I got the news in a surprise Skype message. Then the Bulgarian section of Facebook suddenly came to life with people exchanging links to what little news there was until there was finally a report on a national-range TV, checking each other up, and even sharing newly forged jokes about the earthquake. This early report didn't get it quite right - some of the population of Sofia still stayed stubbornly inside their homes. :) lI spent the rest of the night in front of the computer reading updates of the long series of (thankfully gentler) aftershocks on Facebook and Skype. Thankfully, there were no casualties. Here is a more detailed "technical" report on the earthquake itself (all the news sources I've linked to are in English).

The impact in my home town was so weak that I didn't feel anything myself. Everybody around me just kept sleeping.

Sofia was considered safe enough after the first quake, but one of my friends there, a 17-yer-old boy, has family in the town of Pernik and one of the nearby villages - way too close to the epicenter, where people were advised to stay outside of buildings. His home in Sofia was shaky enough, but he still managed to laugh at himself in between the aftershocks. I stayed on Skype with him for moral support until almost 7 AM, and then left him to his local friends (the major aftershocks were over at that time anyway).

Reading real-time reports from people I actually knew on on Facebook and Skype was a very weird experience. Thankfully, I was already too tired for a serious adrenaline rush ("That's just because you aren't here," my young friend wrote to me).

Well, it's time for me to return to the prose of everyday life and do some cleaning. :P

If Children’s Drawings Were Made Into Real Toys

Mon, 21 May 2012 12:32:33 GMT

I want the elephant and the doll with green arms and legs, and the dinosaur-like thing with a horn on its head... I'm not sure if the sheep is cute or scary or both. :)

Для тех, кто не понимает по-английски: кто-то сделал настоящие игрушки по детским рисункам. Фотографии здесь:

http://www.bitrebels.com/design/if-childrens-drawings-were-made-into-real-toys/

Irises

Sat, 19 May 2012 22:59:49 GMT

Still catching up with my spring photos. I think the irises are all gone now - too early in the year, but we had that almost-summer period early in May.

In the meantime, it was another cold rainy day. I can only hope that it's less rainy tomorrow because I don't want to get all wet when I go out with my friend. :P

3 May

5 May

6 May

IDAHO in Russia

Fri, 18 May 2012 22:16:38 GMT

The annual Rainbow Flashmob in Moscow yesterday. Just look at the policemen's faces when that girl tells them "[It's just] ordinary balloons" at about 0:42! :)

Alas, it didn't pass so peacefully in St. Petersburg, the second largest city (yes where they have that wonderful law against the "propaganda of homosexuality"). Here is a summary of what I managed to piece together from various Russian sources: the event did take place, in spite of the attempts of some 100-150 homophobic hooligans to disrupt it with homophobic chants, smoke bombs and occasional physical attacks when some of them managed to break through the police line. In the end the hooligans, by mistake or deliberately, broke into a bus full of migrant worker and beat them up.

Here is a photogallery with explanations in English to each photo - not embeddable, alas (thanks to frost_wyrm), and here is the the English version of shorter report on Coming Out's site with photos of the event itself. For those who understand Russian, there is a detailed report by a Russian blogger here and a series of link at the bottom of Coming Out's page.

UPDATE: Wow, the St. Petersburg event made it to Joe.My.God.! And one more report in English from the JMG link.

Here is also a video that I think is clear without any translation:

WARNING: Any obvious trolls who appear from the Russian section of LJ (or from anywhere else) will be banned.

A belated spring series

Fri, 18 May 2012 18:59:46 GMT

Because I finally got around to posting these photos. :P

I'm still getting used to the new photo editor of Photobucket, by the way. Is there anybody else here who has bothered with it before to exchange notes with me on managing the differences?

19 April:
Horse chestnut flowers

The last Judas tree flowers

Cropped-out closer view from the above photo:

A look at the same tree from below

A freshly planted maple tree (I'm not sure of the exact species)

3 May:
New greenery on a fir tree

A locust tree just beginning to go into bloom:

Geranium and periwinkle

The inevitable silkworm photos

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:36:08 GMT

Wow, I'm fast - I took the first three photos on 8 May, and I'm posting them now. LOL

These silkworms were all at their last larval stage (the 5th instar), but the one in the middle had only changed its skin two days before, and the other two were near spinning. I chose one of the whitest and one of the most coloured ones for this photo, and the Tiny White was just the last to change its skin. It's the last one still eating and growing now, and the other two are already in their cocoons.

The ruler is in centimeters.

A closer look:

And here are some cocoons still attached to the container and the improvised cardboard frame inside:

The fuscia

Mon, 07 May 2012 18:48:22 GMT

Here is my mother's latest addition (unless she's managed to sneak in something else I haven't noticed yet). This little fuscia is definitely too thin for this heavy burden of buds and blossoms.

At first the buds looked like tiny plastic ball. Then it turned out they had difficulty opening, except for the first one. Silly little flower! :)

27 April:

30 April:

A closer look:

1 May:

2 May:

A closer look:

5 May:

Surreal

Sun, 06 May 2012 22:42:46 GMT

Guess what I got on Facebook - an ad in Russian offering English lessons. Just how absurd is this?

Something out there has completely misunderstood my increased interest in posting or recommending links to articles/blog posts/videos in Russian. :)

Nobody has offered me Russian lessons in an ad so far. :P

The first roses in bloom this year

Sun, 06 May 2012 21:23:12 GMT

... or at least the first I've seen. :)

I think the leaves were so dirty because yesterday's rain smeared on them some cement dust from the (completely unnecessary in that particular place) sidewalk repairs.

So here they are behind the fence of that tiny restaurant/cafe/tavern/whatever:

This is one of the notorious Almost White Roses that are so terribly difficult for me to photograph with my camera. :)

This one is very close to my home. Today's rain didn't help much with the cleanliness of the leaves either, but this one just happens to be in a cleaner place.

The unexpected visitor

Thu, 03 May 2012 23:06:07 GMT

See who flew into the room unnoticed last night, and then awoke me with its fluttering at the already closed window!

I have no idea what this moth is.

I didn't waste any time looking for a ruler or measuring tape for scale, but it was definitely bigger than my silkworm moths. I just hurried to take a few photos while it had stopped in one place, so you are getting the only one that is (almost) in focus. Then I managed to get it to walk onto a piece of paper, carried it gently to the window and let it fly out.

It looked pretty scary to my sleepy mind with its black body and that bright yellow on its wings. LOL

Смотрите кто прилетел ко мне в гости прошлой ночью, но я благополучно выгнала ее обратно через окно. :)

More photos from the farm - flowers and cats

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:36:47 GMT

No, I didn't go to the farm again. These are just some more photos from the same day as in my previous entry.

Hey, leafshimmer, you wanted cat photos, right? :P

This hibiscus used to be at home, but there aren't enough space and light on our balcony for all my mother's flowers. It's now in the office of the my father's and my brother's agricultural company.

I know, too many objects that I should have removed. :P

A geranium flower.

You call these plants geraniums in English too, but they are actually Pelargonium in Latin. (Pelargonium zonale, I think).

A cactus preparing to go into bloom, and empty snail shells for decoration.

Last year's kittens. They are related, but not siblings.

The matriarch cat who is the mother or grandmother of all other cats in the territory. This is my shadow in the corner. :)

The young girl:

Oops, somebody here is not a shoe! :)

The boy kitty likes shoes too.

Hey, these are not Bantam chicks!

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 23:37:06 GMT

ivansim, а цыплята, которых я так ждала вылупиться, оказались не той породы! Наседке-бентамке подсунули яйца другой породы стандартного размера – смотри, какая миниатюрная она выглядит в сравнение с ними (да и на самом деле миниатюрная).

So, I went to the farm on Thursday (wow, it's been exactly a year since my last photo post from there) to see the new chicks - and what did I see? Standard-sized chicks instead of tiny Bantams, that's what. It turns out they "cheated" the broody hen, and set eggs form standard-sized local hens under her. Poor tiny thing managed to hatch only four out of eight - my brother said they were too heavy for her to turn over now and then, which is necessary for normal hatching. But now that they are hatched, she's a very protective mother.

I don't know if we'll see any Bantam chicks this year. The other broody hen was hatching "normal" eggs too, so we need a third hen (out of four) to go broody for that purpose, and they are all very young. My brother and the farm worker who brought the first generation of chickens to the farm decided that they wanted to start "normal" laying hens that don't lay tiny eggs, but now my father wants more Bantams. Well, we'll see. :)

The mother and chicks were afraid of me, so I didn't get inside their enclosure and I only managed to photograph them through two layers of wire mesh. Sorry.

So here are the chicks ate five days old. Yes, even non-Bantam chicks are cute! :)

See how tiny the mother hen looks next to the chicks - or maybe how big they look next to her? :)

A dish full of chicks:

"I'm walking out to see what Mom is pecking at now." :)

Just look at that hen's tail - the typical Bantam shape and relative size in proportion to the body. :)

Streeeetching! :)

Another inhabitant of the main chicken enclosure (the other one with the grown hens and roosters) - the male of a pair of pigeons. His head is under his tail, LOL. The female is white, but she was afraid of me, so I didn't manage to photograph her.

Mixed Content

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:52:32 GMT

Guess what I did to my Friends Page.

Surfing ~~the dark side of the Moon~~ the Russian section of LJ feels almost as exciting as my early surfing four years ago when I was still new here, and the mass migration of English-writing users to Facebook was yet to come. It's a whole new world to explore.

And of course I can't resist the temptation to add a Russian user now and then. Which means more and more Russian on my Friends Page.

When I open it now, I sometimes see perfect alternation of Russian and English in every other entry. It doesn't only mean switching between two languages (both foreign to me); it means switching between alphabets on my keyboard to reply. Then I make the same mistake that I sometimes make when I switch from Bulgarian to English on Facebook: I type meaningless strings of Cyrillic characters instead of English words in a comment, and then I have to delete it all and start anew. Argh!

On the plus side, my Russian is improving. :)

There is also the switching between the more life-sharing personal-bonding type of blogging that is typical of the English-writing section and the political/civil-rights discussions that are more typical of the Russian-writing section. Of course it's not so clear-cut in either section, and some people combine both kinds of content very successfully, but still there is a lot of readjustment going on in my head.

I sometimes read the Russian journals separately, one by one (I still have few enough of them for this procedure) and then read the English part of my Friends Page. I'm not sure this is the most efficient way to proceed though. Well, I'll figure it out sooner or later. :)

The lilacs in full bloom

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:28:45 GMT

Ugh, the new photo editor of Photobucket is so difficult that it's not easy for me to figure it out. So I'm now even slower with editing my photos than before. :P But wow, it's much better! :)

Anyway, here is a series of lilac photos I took in my heighbourhood on 19 April (wow, it's been a whole week!).

The leaves were so dirty because the rain on the previous night had covered them (and everything else) in sand from the Sahara Desert that some cyclon had somehow brought to us - or at least that's what they said in the news.

Too close together:

From a different angle:

Hidden. :)

A tiny baby bush. :)

And now OMG the white lilacs! I wish you could smell them.

Not a lilac and not in my neighbourhood: a bonus Judas tree.

Bulgarian Russian

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:19:10 GMT

No matter how carefully I try to express my thoughts in Russian, the result is somehow very Bulgarian.

Even if I manage the Case System from Hell, form my infinitives correctly, circumvent the lack of complex tenses, avoid slipping in Bulgarian words, and make it through most of the spelling traps that Russian present to the Bulgarian mind before I run the inevitable spell check... even if the result of all my efforts makes enough sense for a native speaker to understand what I mean, it still looks "foreign".

Should I take some patriotic pride in being so deeply and essentially Bulgarian, or should I feel frustrated? :)

Culture shock

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:45:08 GMT

It felt so odd to see the words "sexual orientation" on a street billboard in my home town! This photo features the Bulgarian version of the "Do you have to hide your sexual orientation at work?" poster of this EU discrimination awareness campaign.

I didn't notice any indignant citizens, or even curious ones. I wonder if anybody takes any notice of those billboards any more. Maybe they've just become "part of the landscape" and very few people are interested in what's on them right now?

(And no, I'm not going to translate every single entry into Russian from now on, but this one is just historic. :P steinkrauz, is my Russian right?)

Так странно было увидеть слова "сексуальная ориентация" на уличном рекламном щите в моем городе! На этой фотографии - болгарский вариант плаката "Нужно ли тебе скрывать свою сексуальную ориентацию на работе?" текущей информационной кампании Европейского союза o дискриминации.

Я не заметила никаких возмущенных граждан, или даже любопытных. Интересно, обращает ли кто-нибудь вообще внимание на эти рекламные щиты? Может быть, они стали уже «частью пейзажа» и нет много людей, желающих узнать, что сейчас написано на них ?

Old habits die hard

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:09:26 GMT

I keep turning my head to look at the wall clock although the monitor is right in front of my eyes. :)