Volf Messing

This morning I finished reading the book about Volf Messing. I used to read a lot when I was a kid, and often stayed up until the wee hours of the morning captivated by some volume. Lately though I read mostly technical information on-line and unfortunately have no time left for non-technical reading. But this book... I "swallowed" very quickly. Read half of it in one day and finished the other half over a few subsequent days. Totally mesmerizing!

The book is about the life of Volf Messing, the man who possessed an unusual, rare, and little understood gift. He could read thoughts of other people, he could telepathically instruct people do certain things, and he could see the future. He foretold Hitler's death and the fall of Germany if Hitler takes his military campaign to the East. He announced the exact month and year of Soviet victory in World War II when Russian forces were still retreating in 1942. As tests from the authorities, he walked out of and re-entered highly secure buildings in downtown Moscow and received 100,000 rubles at a bank using nothing more than just a plain sheet of paper. The book is packed full with similar examples of his unique ability. He touched the lives of thousands of people in many countries and helped many.

The book is captivating and reads as a detective story. But it also makes you think. How can someone be able to read the thoughts of another person? How does that work? I suppose if you know someone really really well and have spent a lot of time with them, you might be able to "read" that person a little better than anyone else, and often guess at what that person wants, or is thinking about, or is going to do. But that does not work with a stranger, with someone you've never seen before. And Messing was able to read detailed and complex thoughts of complete strangers.

I certainly don't understand how Messing read people's thoughts, and I doubt that anyone does. But I am sure that we still have a lot to learn about humans and, in particular, about the abilities of our brains. And so I can imagine that perhaps one day this extra-sensory ability may be researched and understood much better than it is today. What puzzles me a lot more than Messing's ability to read people's thoughts is his ability to see people's past and future. Even if he can somehow read what a person who is standing right in front of him is thinking at this precise minute, how can he know that person's name, or what happened to that person in the past? And how can he see the various events that will take place in that person's life, or in the life of an entire country, years later? How can he know the exact date and time of someone's death? How can he know what had happened to someone whose photograph he is holding in his hands? How can he see that? And, as near as I can tell, being able to predict the future events does not mean that they can be changed, as some popular movies would have us believe.

Is everything already predetermined? Are we all just actors in some movie that will play out exactly as filmed? And only very few people have the ability to rewind and fast forward at will, and watch any portion of it? Will we all be able to learn how to do that at some point in the future? If so, would it really be a good thing or is it better to not know? Perhaps there's a good reason that most people don't have Messing's abilities. Sounded to me like he was quite miserable all his life. And would it really make a difference if more people had such abilities? If you can only see the future but have no influence over it?

Driving Etiquette

At my previous job, I worked from home. I had no commute. It was nice. Now I have a 45-minute commute. Each way. Every day. It's not as nice. I've had that commute for a couple months now and, pretty much since day one, I wanted to write about one particular aspect of American driving.

The entire world drives in the right lane by default. Not folks in this country. For some reason, folks here have to be different---and difficult---and drive at a pace of a dead cat in the left lane, even when the right lane is completely free and open. What's with that?! Unfortunately, I see this every single day: someone gets into the left lane and just sits there, going below speed limit and forcing everyone to pass them on the right side. Most of the time, the left-lane driver is completely oblivious to everything that happens around them, and even the fact that numerous people have just passed them on the right side does not, apparently, serve as a hint that maybe they should move over and make everyone else's life a little easier...

Driving in the left lane has become the norm here. The left lane is no longer for passing slower moving vehicles---the right lane is used for that now. I can only imagine the experience that such drivers would have somewhere... oh, I don't know... in Germany, for example. You're staying in the right lane and approaching a slower moving car, going maybe at 100 miles an hour. You check your rear view mirror and don't see anything for as far as you can see the road. You switch into the left lane and start passing the car... when, suddenly, someone from right behind you starts flashing their lights---get out of the way! What? How? Where did they come from? And sure enough, it's some Mercedes or Audi or Bimmer flying at 200 km/h... good luck to the person who is used to crawling in the left lane. There will be more than just flashing lights. They may just get plowed off of the road all together. Maybe that will teach them to drive in the right lane?!

A while ago in Newton Center I noticed a rare thing: a car with a bumper sticker written in Russian. It said something like: "Щас, всё брошу и перестроюсь в правую полосу..." (which basically means "Yeah, right, like I'm going to drop everything I'm doing right this minute and move over into the right lane"). So true.

Lady Bugs

Today is October 20, 2009. It's been a long time since I posted anything in this blog... Back in August I started a new job and now have little time to write anything. I keep hoping I'd post something new "soon" and that day never comes. Finally decided to force myself to write a bit.

Today was a gorgeous day, sunny and quite warm. I don't have a window in my cubicle, and so, a couple times during the day, I walk out of the office building into the parking lot and walk around a bit, enjoying the weather, fresh air, and nature. Ha! Nature?! You'd say. What kind of nature are you talking about?! There's no nature in a parking lot!

Actually... not true at all. You just have to look a little better. In fact, sometimes, you don't even have to pay attention all that much, because nature just happens to be right there in front of you. This happened today. Something that I frankly cannot recall seeing before! I was about to walk out of the building when I noticed that the entire glass door and the thick concrete column just outside of it were covered---that's right, literally covered---with a ridiculous number of lady bugs! Wow! What's going on?!

No idea. Yesterday, on Monday, I didn't see any bugs. Today, on Tuesday, I didn't notice anything unusual in the morning when I came in. But in the early afternoon, tons of lady bugs, covering the entrance to the building and part of the brick wall like a carpet. Dozens and dozens of lady bugs. Some with numerous black spots, some with very few, and some with no spots at all (must be the young ones?). They were everywhere! They were crawling, flying, buzzing, moving, and just being everywhere. Some people walked in and out of the building completely oblivious to the presence of nature. Others paused and curiously looked at the bugs, with puzzled looks on their faces. One of my coworkers seemed to know something about this phenomenon, and said he had seen huge amounts of lady bugs a few times, usually in the fall.

Don't know why they were gathering in such large numbers all over the entrance to the office building. Must be a good reason for that... But that was a nice encounter, and a nice break from work for me. Wonder if I'll see them tomorrow. I sure hope so! Nature is all around us, even at a parking lot. And you too can see it, if you just pause and pay attention. You may just get rewarded.

A New Ferrari

I have not written anything for a couple weeks... Things have been busy. One week we spent a lot of time looking for a new car. Sold the old Lexus on Craig's List and eventually bought a Mini Cooper. I wrote about the old Lexus in an earlier post and showed a picture of a random Mini Cooper there... well, that turned out to be the exact model and color that we bought! Cool little car! I also started a new job and now I have a pretty long commute which leaves little time for much else, including blogging. Hence a 2-week delay. I'll try to continue writing though!

A few days ago I was talking on the phone with my friend Jonathan. Somehow it turned into a pretty long conversation and we kept jumping from one semi-random topic to the next. I don't know how it happened, but we started talking about Ferraris. Yeah, I have no idea... Obviously, when people talk or think about sports cars, they discuss speed, acceleration, and how fast sports cars can go. In that context, I recalled a segment from an old issue of the CBS Sunday Morning show where they interviewed a famous actor who owns a Ferrari. In the interview, he described the evolution of his understanding of how one should drive a fancy sports car. He said that at first he thought you're supposed to drive really, really fast, reaching the limit of what the car is capable of. But later on it occurred to him that the entire point of having such a car is completely different. You're supposed to drive a fancy sports car very slow, so that "people can see you in it!" And that actually makes sense.

Based on this evolved understanding, Jonathan and I came up with an idea for a new Ferrari! Since people will be driving this new model very slowly, having a 12-cylinder engine isn't really necessary. We can get away with a little and cheap engine. But, we will also install a powerful sound system and play recorded sounds of an actual Ferrari engine. That will effectively produce the same results for a much lower price. I think this is a brilliant idea! We should go ahead and patent it.

Right To Dry

I finally watched the CBS Sunday Morning show which I recorded two weeks ago, on July 12. The show was pretty good and, as a special treat for me, there was a segment by Bill Geist, who always reports on unusual, weird, strange, offbeat topics. This time he flew to Oregon, to a very nice looking (I would even say upscale) subdivision, with beautiful homes and gorgeous views. Apparently, there is a feud going on among neighbors... the feud over clothes lines and using them to dry clothes.

One resident started drying her clothes outside, in her large and wooded yard, on a clothes line. She is taking advantage of sun light and wind instead of using her dryer. Cheaper for her, saves energy, and good for the planet. But her neighbors are all up in arms and cut her clothes line in the middle of the night twice. The first time they just cut it in one place---she tied the two pieces together and hung the line again---the next night someone shredded her line into multiple pieces. Neighbors are extremely concerned that laundry hanging outdoors is diminishing the value of their property, and have threatened with legal action. Everyone moving into that development agrees to a set of rules that govern the overall appearance of their property. People agree to not paint their homes bright yellow or pink, and also not to dry clothes outdoors. So, technically, that woman is breaking the rules.

In Vermont, on the other hand, there's a new and growing movement, called Laundry List, advocating the use of outdoor clothes lines instead of indoor dryers. People have the Right To Dry! but in many places around the US, just like in that development in Oregon, people simply are not allowed to.

It's strange to think about this issue... During the Soviet times we didn't have dryers, and everyone had a clothes line somewhere outside, near their house or apartment building or on a balcony. Dried clothes were often stiff and wrinkled and almost everything had to be ironed. Many folks in Russia now own dryers, just like in the US, and Americans are starting to move towards clothes lines. Interesting trend... Come to think about it, we always carried our own highly-reusable grocery bags and now many grocery store chains in Russia have switched to single-use plastic bags. While in the US, many stores are now selling and promoting reusable bags, and many people are starting to use them. Were we actually on to something smart back in the Soviet times?

Варёные Поганишки

Как-то сегодня у меня не получилось поехать с моим другом Энди сёрфинг в Род-Айлэнд. На велосипеде чего-то не хотелось, на байдарке тоже. Но на улицу все таки надо было выйти, и я решил пойти бегать. Начал прямо от дома, вдоль реки Чарльз, мимо нового квартирного комплекса и небольшого бизнесс-парка, через реку и по кругу внутри большего по размеру бизнесс-парка. Машин мало, зелени много, птички поют. Одним словом --- красота да и только. На обратном пути я решил проверить тропинку в перелеске прямо около реки. Прошлой осенью там было много подберёзовиков, и мне было интересно оценить грибную ситуацию после наших многочисленных дождей.

Ситуация очень простая---все мокрое, грибов нет, я вот комаров тьма-тьмущая! Думал хоть какой гриб найду и фотографию сделаю, так ведь совсем ничего нет! Нашел всего один гриб странного цвета, весь какой-то корявый и совершенно не фотогиничный. Даже толком и не смог понять, что это было такое. Видел также несколько полусгнивших и почти полностью потерявших форму поганишек. Зато очень, очень много растений, которые и на растения-то не очень похожи. Они известны под несколькими разными названиями: Индийская трубка, Растение-призрак, и т.д. Нравятся они мне почему-то...

Ну а с поганишками у меня с детства особые отношения. Сразу вспоминается Эстония, озеро Пюха-Ярве, где мы отдыхали каждое лето, начиная с конца 1970х, мого лет подряд. Грибов было море, просто море, собрать невозможно. Придем из лесу, сгибаясь под тяжестью набранных грибов, обработаем их, и варить или жарить. Мамы наши на кухне, на огромной кирпичной печке с грибами потеют, а мы с приятелем Димоном тоже не отстаём: по-быстрому наберем кучу поганишек около кухни и тоже их на печке варим в консервных баночках из-под молока сгущеного. Ох... то ли было время... Так и пошла с того времени фраза: Вы чего там делаете? Поганишки варим!

Cheburashka

I climb at Metrorock on a regular basis. Rock climbing has gotten exceedingly popular over the last few years. When the gym first opened, it was fairly empty. That was some 5 years ago. Now the place is packed every night.

With so many people, it's not really surprising that once in a while you see an interesting T-shirt that attracts your attention. Some are funny. Some are puzzling. Some are obscene. And some are simply unexpected. I've seen a lot of different T-shirts at the gym over the years, but there was only one that really caught my eye.

That T-shirt was on a short and very skinny Japanese girl. The T-shirt was white with a picture on the front. The picture showed Cheburashka (Чебурашка), a cartoon character from the Soviet times, and there was some kind of inscription... in Russian! I must have had a stunned look on my face because she noticed I was staring at her shirt. Completely unexpectedly for me, it turned out that she bought that T-shirt in Tokyo. Even more unexpectedly, she said that Cheburashka is a hugely popular character in Japan, especially among girls in their 20s. People buy Cheburashka toys, videos, and clothes. It's been months since I first saw that T-shirt at the rock gym, and I am still a little puzzled by all this. Apparently, a few years ago, somewhere in the early 2000, Soyuzmultfilm (Союзмультфильм) sold film distribution and merchandising rights for Cheburashka to a US company for 30 years and, for some reason, Cheburashka became a huge hit in Japan.

I also have a ton of different T-shirts that I wear to the rock gym, but only one of them always catches people's attention. I constantly see people staring at my chest when I am wearing that T-shirt. I usually stop and straighten the shirt out to make it easier to read. People continue staring for some time and then look at me all puzzled and start asking questions. The shirt is black with white lettering which simply say United States SWIFT National Group SIBOS 2007 Boston. It's beyond me why this particular shirt attracts so much attention...