Happy Umbrellas

I'm sitting outside enjoying my day and a cup of tea.

"It's the first day of December" I think. "It must be snowing in Siberia now."

"Just a moment! What the heck is this?"

A white snowflake flew in front of my nose. 

"IS IT SNOWING???"

Two more snowflakes, and more, and more...

"But it CAN'T snow here in plus 22C!"

The glass table next to me is covered with white SOMETHING...

Ash... Somehow flakes of ash managed to make their long way from the forest fire on the hill and down here, to the sea coast.

The illusion of snow was so bewildering and so nostalgic... 

One side of a motorway is the city itself.

The other side is a desert.

Our plane landed in Dubai at about 2 am. When we got out and onto the steps there was a heat wave which I first put down to a plane engine doing its work. But I was wrong. It was Dubai’s plus 29 at night.

Metro in Dubai is quite expensive – 11 dirhams per a return trip. It’s 88 roubles against Moscow’s 60. There are special carriages in each train for women and children. I was travelling in a common one. The amount of women there is about 5%, mostly foreigners.

We’ve been to the Dubai Mall, the one with a huge aquarium in it, near the Burj Khalifa skyscraper.

We spent half of the day there because it was raining outside - not really the best weather for sightseeing. It was almost the same mall as Moscow’s Zolotoi Vavilon, but… there is a special girl in ladies' toilet who cleans cabins after a lady comes out of it!!! Can you imagine? This means that that girl is ALWAYS there.

A funny photo from the mall:

  We had a meal at Iranian restaurant – YUMMY!!! I had a strawberry-mango-guava-avocado-banana-milk mix. It was the best drink I’ve ever had in my life!!! The one to die for! The main course was white rice with yellow rice over it and tiny red berries on top. I don’t know what kind of berries they were but the dish was absolutely delicious.

 The mall has special rooms for prayers. Right now, lying in bed in the room of our hotel I can hear the call to prayers. Moreover, on the ceiling of the room there is an arrow pointing the way to Mecca. The arrow also shows where you have to face when praying.

 Christmas spirit was all over the mall – Christmas trees, snowmen, decorations, etc. This is the photo of French gift shop. I liked this particular one because it gave me the spirit of good old European Christmas spirit. Each chocolate or biscuits shop like this offers different things to taste. So if you are hungry, just come into one shop after another and express surprise: ”Wow! What is it? It looks lovely!”

There are lots and lots coffee shops in the mall. Passing one of them I saw quite a view: all tables there were occupied by young Arabic girls wearing black burkas.

And finally the highlight of the day, BOOKWORLD shop :))) It was enormous! I got a number of treats for myself and for my best friends. Books are as expensive as in Moscow’s Biblio Globus. But the ones I got were worth buying. Here:

While I was walking around shelves with Miyazaki’s Totoro, Kiki, Howl, etc. I noticed an Arabic girl (all in black) who was interested in the same books as me. I asked her about an Art book of Howl’s MovingCastle, she replied, we started talking about Ghibli’s, drawing, art schools in Dubai, so on. She was about 23-27. She said she was an artist who needed that kind of books for her work. WOW! She had perfect English! Most of young Arabic people are well-educated, intelligent and polite. So far I have a very good impression of the city and its people.

November's cracked in the middle

As ripe as a tangerine

Picked from a tree

Sweet autumn in tangerine jam

Aretê comes back to the ancient rhetoricians of Greece, the Sophists. By this word they meant QUALITY. In later cultures Victorians used it as a synonym of "virtue".

But ancient Greek was not the original language, it descended from the Proto-Indo-European language, the original language for Sanskrit, Greek and English. Today a Proto-Indo-European dictionary contains more than a thousand entries with derivations extending into more than one hundred languages. 

The Proto-Indo-European root for Aretê was the morpheme rt. Other derived "rt" words are: arithmetic, aristocrat, art, rhetoric, rite, ritual, wright, right (correct) and right (handed). Almost all of these words contain QUALITY meaning. In "aristocrat" and "arithmetic" rt means first. In "art" and "wright" it means beauty, created. "Ritual" suggests repetitive order. Both "right" words mean correctness. Right hand has been always considered to be the right one :)) Even today when legal oaths are taken or military salutes are given or people shake hands or a president is inaugurated it's always about the right, not left, hand. 

Linguistic patterns of the Proto-Ondo-European language were carefully preserved by the Hindu priests, so Sanskrit is the most faithful to the root. Sanskrit Rta meant cosmic order of things or what holds together.

It's interesting that even Hebrews arhetton means the ONE and was considered so sacred that it wasn't allowed to be spoken. 

My point here is: from the old days people aligned their lives with Aretê, or QUALITY. The sense of QUALITY is what stands behind all world religions and human morality. Aretê is righteousness that rules the Humanity. 

I had my best score today!!! :))) 536 with 72 arrows, 20 metres, small target 6 to 10, no 1 to 5. I can't say i'm proud of it but it's the best i've ever had on this target. 

Next month we're having a postal competition. Teams from Cyprus, New Zealand, England, Australia and Falkland Islands are taking part. Each team consists of six people. I'm one of the best in our club, so i'm in.

We'll be shooting 60 arrows, 20 sets by three arrows. Targets are small at 20 metres, so if you shoot six instead of three there is very little space on a target and you can damage arrows. 

Last Wednesday i was shooting 50 and 30 metres and had 478 points at those, the best score at the range. It's a nice feeling - to be the only woman in the club and have best scores. Now i'm not a beginner but the girl who all the guys from the club respect and like ;)))

Cyprus is a wonderful relaxing place to live. In the middle of November there are 2.5 daylight hours more here than in Siberia. Lebenstempo (life pace) is slow and meditative. People are nice and polite. Even dogs are well-behaved. 

BUT...

You can't have a hot bath here :((( My sad bath experience took me one hour of emerge heater on and eight kettles of boiling water just to keep me alive in a SLIGHTLY WARM water of a half-full bath, let alone my boyfriend's annoyance after having carried those eight kettles from the ground floor kitchen upstairs into the bathroom. I also have to mention how awfully cold i felt getting out of the bath and drying my poor shivering body with a towel. All my friends in Tomsk and Seversk, always enjoy EVERY BATH YOU TAKE (Sting-like verse :)) in well-heated bathrooms of yours!!!

Second thing i miss is a lack of large shopping malls where you can get literally ANYTHING - from medicine to furniture. You can watch a film in a cinema and have a good lunch there as well. Shops here are scattered all over Paphos :((( It took me ages to get a nose peg for swimming underwater, whereas in Seversk it would take me ten minutes to walk to Marmelight's sport shop and buy it there. My next challenge is to find proper bookshelves. The largest "Italian" furniture centre doesn't know what bookshelves are :((( It only provides you with beds and kitchen items at astronomical prices. 

Bus service here is precise and expensive - single ticket is €1.5, all-day is €5.0 but buses are very rare, sometimes one in an hour. The first bus from where i live to Paphos is at 9am, the last bus from Paphos is at 16:30. Everyone has a car. I don't even have a licence :((( Here's a photo of a Cyprus bus:

last tiny "and"

Waking up to the loud lion's roar at half past five every morning (Paphos Zoo is seven hundred metres from our home) Lion's waking-up is followed by roosters, dogs and monkeys. 

Walking with the dogs past the zoo to see a flock of peacocks running at you :)) First time i saw it i shouted to my dogs "Come on! Kola, Kerry, run for your life!" Poor innocent birds were misinterpreted :))) They only want some food from you and are very friendly creatures. Now we are good friends with them. But it's still weird to see huge beautiful birds walking free.

Swimming in the pool and sunbathing in November.

Not having to change your clothes when go shopping. Same flip-flops, same short skirt and a T-shirt as i wear at home. Big Lebowski thing :))) I'm DUDE :)))

Getting oranges, tangerines and lemons from the tree each time i want them.

It's been my second time i've visited Cyprus Astronomy Club (CUC)'s meeting last night. It's a monthly event which takes place on Wednesday night at a remote taverna in the mountainous area. Why remote? Why mountains? Well... to see the stars BETTER :))) The event consists of two... No! THREE parts: a report on any astronomical matter following with a nice dinner, and later a star watching, when members go out to the parking lot, set up a telescope or even two and look at the stars, planets and the Moon... A laser pointer is used to point at a proper star or planet in the night sky. It's so exciting when you are standing in the pitch dark night with billions of stars over your head, listening to a smart guy who points at the Big Dipper known as Charlie's Waggon in England giving out  the names of the stars it consists of: Alkaid, Mizar, Alioth, Megrez, Phecda, Merak, Dubhe from the handle to the bowl. I felt the spirit of exploration... I felt infinity and awe :)))

There are about twenty-five people present at every occasion. About a third of them are really keen on astronomy, while the rest are just fond of meeting new people, having a chit-chat with their mates as well as a really good meal for a really good price. That's why keen astronomers call less keen ones Cyprus Gastronomy Club (CGC) and look a little bit down at them, as people usually look down at their pets. I want to think i am a member of CAC rather than CGC but i have to admit that last night's dinner was very YUMMY ;))

Yesterday we heard a report on how big the universe is. We watched short videos after that which i enjoyed a lot. Here is the link to them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NU2t5zlxQQ There are much more of them (called minutephysics) on youtube answering different curious questions. For example, is it better to walk or run in the rain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MqYE2UuN24 or where is the TRUE North Pole: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Roq20IV4yP0 Watch these brilliant videos and you'll gain a lot of scientific knowledge in almost no time as well as you'll just enjoy watching the easy way of explaining most complicated matters. 

Another useful thing about last night's astronomy was learning how to write our "universe address". Just in case you get lost in vast spaces and meet an alien who asks you same old question "Where are you from?" Siberian people may give this:

Tomsk

Siberia

Asia

Earth

Solar System

Milky Way Galaxy

Virgo Supercluster Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex

This will be our address only in the observable universe, beyond which there are unobservable regions. Unobservable means no light from those regions has reached the Earth yet, so no information about those regions is available. This is what i learnt from yesterday's astronomy report.

After dinner there was no hope to see stars because the sky was overcast. The moon is growing these nights, changing its shape from a tiny thin crescent to a full shiny circle. Beautiful...

I made friends with the club chairman who's normally in charge of the scientific part of each meeting. His name is David and i usually see him twice a week at our archery trainings. He's a man of encyclopedic knowledge. He knows about everything. We were lucky to have him at our table last night. During the dinner he told us how they'd built a telescope, about Schrödinger's cat experiment, about Thomas Young's experiment and many other things. It was double benefit to listen to him - learning new things (fair to say bringing back well-forgotten knowledge from my uni time) as well as seeing how to put the scientific terminology into the subject i've always discussed in Russian only.