My Opinions Are Important

This isn’t the 5 best in Melbourne, you understand - it’s simply the 5 I visit most regularly.

Parkers Cafe - Parkers Rd, ParkdaleBest coffee in this part of Melbourne. Food is also excellent. Open evenings, and free water for dogs.

Kafe@Chelsea - The Strand, ChelseaFinally, somewhere with decent coffee in Chelsea!

Coffee Traders - MorningtonWow. I’m not worthy. This place is up there with the best inner-city cafes. The coffee will rock your world, I guarantee it.

Espresso Hit - Charman Rd, CheltenhamNew mini cafe in Cheltenham that ticks all the right boxes.

Beach Box - Nepean Hwy, BonbeachNot as good as the others listed above, but 10 times better than the place next to it, making it the best cafe in Bonbeach. Very comfortable chairs, friendly service and drinkable coffee.

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Which city does better service - Melbourne or Sydney? Have your say at Sydney Coffee Reviews, where the debate has commenced.

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I’ve been thinking about writing a post about all the Russian music I’ve been discovering since I’ve started learning that language, but I’m not sure that anyone would read it. So if you are, please say so, or else it might not happen.

Found at Confessing Evangelical and thought I’d join in.

Do you snack while you read? If so, favourite reading snack?No I don’t, generally speaking, but I might have a coffee.

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?No I don’t. Even in my Bible I don’t underline or make any marks whatsoever. I’ll write my name on the first page and usually not even that.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?I was, before I saw the light, a page-folder. Now, being more enlightened, I use a bookmark, but like the blogger at Confessing Evangelical, it tends to be a piece of scrap paper or old train ticket, rather than an actual bookmark. Does anyone actually use proper bookmarks?

Fiction, non-fiction, or both?Mostly non-fiction, simply because I prefer to read books that might actually teach me something. I occasionally read fiction. On my honeymoon a few weeks ago we stopped at a bookshop and bought about seven fiction books. So far, I’ve read none of them.

Hard copy or audiobooks?I’ve always found audiobooks to be lame, slow and boring.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?I devour whole books at a time, and can only be distracted by explosions or earthquakes.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?That happens a lot when I’m reading Russian, and yes, I do look it up straight away.

What are you currently reading?I just finished a book about the German WW1 raider ‘Wolf’, that sank ships and caused mayhem over 15 months in the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Fascinating stuff. I can’t remember the author’s name, but the book’s name is probably ‘Wolf’.I bought ‘Wolf’ as a present for my dad, gave it to him, and then read it at his house over the course of two visits. He hasn’t read it yet.

What is the last book you bought?A nice Russian-English dictionary to replace the crappy ones I’ve been using up until now. It actually lists perfective verbs separately - sweet!

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time? Usually one at a time, but I’m not monogamous when it comes to books.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?Not particularly. If I’m engrossed in a book, I’ll read it anywhere, anytime.

Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?.Stand alone, unless it’s in a series, or vice versa.

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over? I bore people by talking about my music way too much, but not so with books for some reason.

How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?) That question assumes that I organize my books! Which isn’t quite true. Most of them are on bookshelves - does that count?By the way, I’ve been having problems with text formatting on this blog, and I don’t know why. So if it looks funny, rest assured that I am aware of the problem, even if I’m not doing much about it.

I’m simultaneously excited and nervous, since this week I’ve had two job interviews for a job I want. Apparently I’m a good chance - there is only one other candidate for the role. Plus the role pretty much has everything I want. The money is much better than my (very low paid) previous job; it is well-located, so no long commutes; and it gets me back into development, which is what I want to do.

The job is an unusual hybrid role - it is primarily tech support, but the product is mainly used by website designers and developers, so it is far beyond the standard “try checking if the caps lock is on” level. Plus there is the promise of .Net development down the track. Sweet!

AFL Grand Final starts in an hour. I will be watching, if only because everyone does in this town.

Now, to Russian language learning. Language learning takes up an awful lot of time. I will look rather silly if, at the end of it all, it is of no use to me. I hope that doesn’t happen. I’m not as fluent as I’d hoped I would be by this point. There are various reasons for that - I might elaborate on them in a future post. For now, I’ll just throw some links your way in the off-chance that anyone is interested.

http://anaitiss.livejournal.com/617975.html - Ever wanted to have a young, beautiful Russian careerist hack political activist on your Skype contact list? Maria Sergeyeva, Putin cheerleader and YouTube star, has publicly posted her Skype username on her blog. No idea if she speaks English.

Putvedev’s faith-based initiatives - Discussion of vacuous speech by the just-mentioned Maria Sergeyeva at Scraps Of Moscow (in English).

Cheburashka - Children’s claymation cartoon from Soviet times about a monkey-like creature whose best friend is a crocodile that plays the accordian. The linked YouTube playlist has several episodes, all subtitled in English.

Long-suffering MOAI fan: Markk! Long time no see! What you been up to?Markk: Getting married, coffee-ing, learning Russian, looking for work.

Married, eh? Congratulations!Why thank you. Sorry you didn’t score an invite.

No worries. Looking for work, you say? Why is that? Did you lose your job?Unfortunately, yes. The company was in a very bad way, so they could no longer afford to keep me.

So what you looking for?Programming. Microsoft dot Net ideally. But I’m not fussy. You need someone to clean bins with their tongue for minimum wage? I’m your man!

OK - and you say you’ve been learning Russian? Why is that?I actually started that last time I lost my job, to keep myself sane. I needed an intellectual challenge, and I’ve always wanted to learn a language, so off I went. It’s quite difficult though. My Russian is still quite плохо*.

But why Russian?I find Russian history and culture interesting. Not sure why, but there you are.My long-running obsession with Communism might have something to do with it.

So, you actually going to blog regularly this time?Don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.

And how’s the coffee-ing?Wow, you just used the word ‘coffee’ as a verb! I like it! But I’ll answer that question - in my next post.* Russian word meaning ‘bad’.

Now this is funny. Can’t believe it took me six months to find it:

When I was younger, I had a recurring dream. In this dream, I would be browsing at a music shop, and while rifling through the CDs, would find 9 or 10 CDs by my favourite band, some of which I’d never heard of, and all on special at unbelievable prices!

That was then - but something happened the other day.

I was at a music shop, when guess what happened - I found several CDs by my favourite band, including some quite rare and hard to find items, all marked down to ridiculously low prices!

“Wow!”, I thought. “This only used to happen to me in dreams, now it’s happening in real life!”

Then I woke up.

Damn.

I just found the most awesome website ever - Rolcats - which takes Russian LOLcats from http://kotomatrix.ru/ and gives English translations - except the “translations” are just Soviet Union jokes.

There is usually a translation of the original Russian in the comments; sometimes these are just as hilarious if not more so. For example:

Here is Rolcat’s “translation”:

-The air is crisp, like fresh spring leaves.

-Do you know the time in Zurich?

-It is you! no one believed you would survive.

-We have little time, you must get these microfiche of the sub plans to Moscow

A more faithful translation is as follows:

“I see it all in your eyes.
You’re lost. Did someone throw you out?
Come to me, I won’t bite.
We’ll share the cold, the hunger and the pain…”

This appeals to my sense of humour greatly; and as a Russian language learner, I now know how to say “I won’t bite”. Gold!

I know it’s been a while, so for the sake of those interested, here is an update on latest goings on in my life.

First of all, wedding preparations for Marjorie and I continue. We are organising bridesmaids dresses, invitations and countless other wedding-related miscellany. But we are not the only ones getting married; my sister was married last Saturday, my brother will be married six weeks after me and my best friend a week before that; so it’s all happening!

Second of all, I am learning Russian! This is partly inspired by my brother, who learned a language himself recently. I picked Russian because of my interest in Russian history. I’d like to travel to Russia one day - and many other countries as well; I just want to travel!

Добрый день to any Russians reading this.

Hopefully I’ll be back blogging more regularly soon. So many times I’ve come across something I’d like to blog about.

Until then, I leave you with something I discovered today: Leningrad Cowboys and the Red Army Choir performing Stairway To Heaven:

I am pleased to announce my engagement to my girlfriend, “Marjorie”. We will be getting married next year.

My brother recently quit his job in order to take a trip to Spain, that he’s been planning for a long time. Good on him.

Back in 2006, he got me a job. I was fired in June 2007.

Why was I fired? Because of this blog! You see, in June 2007, there was a work-related disaster that killed 11 people - while I was on shift. Like most employees, this made an impact on me, so naturally I blogged about it. My mistake was mentioning the company I worked for.

The day after publishing the post, I was pulled aside by management and asked to delete it. I complied immediately, and thought that would be the end of the matter. I was wrong.

The day after, at the start of my shift, I was pulled aside again. This time, I was asked to hand in my security pass. I was told that a decision had not yet been made on my continued employment, but that they would call me later. This was a transparent lie, but I didn’t call them on it. I also didn’t feel the need to tell them about the other pass I had that they didn’t know about. (I arranged to have this returned at a later date.)

All in all, it was a rather shabby affair.

Fortunately I was able to find employment shortly afterwards at another company, where I remain today. They shall remain nameless.