Sunday, October 22, 2006

That Greek salad... Bullets. Winter coming.



Yesterday evening we had a good round table wondering how to make things better in Russia.

Russia. Our favourite hobby. Main topic. Top of the pops. Neverending story.

Luckily we had a Russian with us, for a change! AN is a film director, and used to know Anna P., too. What a pity we never met when Anna was around.

Our hostess, HH, is a Finnish parlamentarian, and very interested in Russian politics. PH is a senior politician, currently working for the UN (that abbreviation equals the huge organisation the Secratary-General of which is Kofi Annan. I was not referring to any other mysterious friend of mine!)

The center item on the table, Greek salad, was there because of our journalistic friends, TN and NF, are Greek freaks. (But I am just envious: how come is it possible that some get to be interested and have energy to dig into other cultures besides North-Eastern Europe?)

KM was there too. She is a cultural journalist. Loves Russian stuff, especially theater.

Actually, all of us, including miss Funnybunny and mr HP, used to be friends of Anna Politkovskaya and always hanging around when she was visiting us.

I was thinking about that when I listened to the new piece (Uuden ajan kynnyksellä, "In the Beginning Of a New Era") for memory of Anna (and for human rights), composed by Kerkko Koskinen, and lyrics by Terhi Kokkonen. They sing:

"The one telling the truth
in an elevator she gets a bullet in her forehead.
They don't know about you yet.
They don't know about me yet."

There are more of us. But hopefully the eagle with two heads will run out of bullets soon.

(GO AND GET THE SONG HERE: www.voima.fi)



It was raining today. Winter is coming. But there was some magic in the air, look: outside the railway station it was all blue. (Play misty for me.)

I like the predictable fact that there will be snow soon. Aaahhh, winter... Playing in the snow with Miss Funnybunny. The smell of food in the owen. Mulled wine. Candles everywhere, all the time, all day. Not seeing the bellybuttons of every woman under 40. Winter IS good.

I like going to work in the morning when it's dark (sure, it is dark the whole day, but nonetheless...) and lighting a candle as the first thing. Even before my first sip of coffee.

And reading Doctor Zivago. I read it in every fourth winter, and soon it will be time time time.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thank you for interesting blog! It was a pleasure to read your thoughts. And this combination of funny comments and serious analyses - I liked it much!

I remember Chernyshevsky’s book “What is to be done?”.

It was the first book among the big number of books on philosophy, electronics, mathematics etc. we got on the first day of our student life (1st September 1989) in library of our Azerbaijan State Oil Academy, where I have been studying and then working until the time (exactly a year ago) when I made decision to leave it and to relocate to dear Mr. M.S. ;))
So, since that time I ask to myself the question “What is to be done???” quite often ;)

My 2006 was not bad but it was not good either. I’m an active person but I didn’t have possibility to act much. It was just pure adaptation period in new country ;) but nothing was happened really great. That’s why in 2007 I would like to put efforts to act as much as possible for not to feel sad of lost possibilities. Even if I’ll make many mistakes ;)

Iida, do you like jazz as much as Mr.HP? Here I have something for you then http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/music/AudioPages/Aziza/aziza.html
It is one link to music compositions of one our jazz musician. She is a piano player and likes to combine jazz and folk music. Click there Vagif in “Always”, it is one of my favorite ;)
All best from Sabina S.