Amusing Stuff

I was in training for two days this week learning more about a software package that we use to do engineering calculations and equation solving.  When discussing that kind of thing, it usually necessitates discussing vectors.  Which reminded one of my co-workers of a movie his kids like.

Here is an excerpt from the "real video".

And here is a slightly doctored video that is also very funny and stresses the definition of a vector.  Both of these crack me up because they are nerdy!  Maybe if you're not into physics or engineering it's not quite so funny, I don't know.

During training the instructor was telling about one customer that wanted to use units of Megaseconds (which is about 11.574 days, by the way).  And then I had the idea to invent the unit of Kiloseconds (which is about 16.7 minutes).  Which brought to mind this movie clip.  If you're watching with children, watch out around 2:25 for one swear word.

That's your laugh for the day (hopefully)!

Ukraine Experience 2014: Part 4 (Final One)

Final Ukraine highlights:

8.  History lessons.  We got a lot of these.  And that's a good thing - to have a "culture adventure" as my boss termed it.  That's an apt description in my opinion.  We didn't climb any mountains or go skydiving, but we did learn a lot about a different culture.  And we learned a lot about WWII and found out that we didn't learn so much about world history in high school.

Did you know that Ukraine was oppressed by Russia before WWII (what Ukrainians call The Great Patriotic War)?  While the U.S. was depressed in the dirty thirties, Ukraine was depressed by the Russians.  The Ukraine crop was good, but the Russians took all of it and purposefully starved the people to better subdue them.  Millions died in what they call "holodomor" - death by hunger.  So when the Germans came, maybe some of them had a small glimmer of hope that things might be different.  Of course they soon lost that notion.  And then the Russians were back and established the Iron Curtain for about 45 more years.  Ukraine became free from Russia again in the early 1990's.

I think almost any American who has never been a soldier in a war and was born after 1945 probably can't imagine how horrific some of the things in history are.  But I got a little bit more of a vision of how cruel one human can be to another human by hearing some of the stories there and reading one memoir.  One person said when they first went to Ukraine they wondered why so many people clung to their large garden plot and one cow and couple chickens.  Why didn't they just get a good job and then buy their food at the market?  The answer was, "Because you can't eat money."  And many Ukrainians have learned that lesson the hard way.

Mill stones at the Famine Memorial in Kiev.  Not only did the Russians take the grain, but they broke their millstones and grinding wheels as well.

Statue at the Famine Memorial - an emaciated girl with 5 heads of wheat - the maximum the people were allowed to have in their possession without their life being in danger.

Famine Memorial in Kiev.  We were told the giant hole symbolizes hunger.

We also got to tour the Lutsk castle.  And I got to hear from Bert about the revolutionary catapult that Alexander the Great used to help defeat Tyre - this was sparked by seeing an example one at the castle.  It's always fun to unexpectedly see someone's passion for a subject suddenly come to light.

Entrance to Lutsk castle.  You can see the Ukrainian flag at the top.  Blue on the top half for sky, and gold/yellow on the bottom half for wheat.

Getting a history lesson from Bert.

Inside the Lutsk Castle.

Oh, and there are a lot of churches in Ukraine.  Many of them are Ukrainian Orthodox, but we saw a few large Catholic ones as well.  I'm not sure if this is 100% true, but one person told us that the Orthodox put the gold on the outside of the church (see previous post with all the gold domes), and the Catholics put the gold on the inside of the church.  I hope I continue to put my gold in a place where moth and rust can't get to it.

9.  Countryside.  It was enjoyable.  Peaceful.  We took a walk at least once a day.  I would describe the landscape there as similar to Iowa or North Dakota but with a bigger variety of crops.  Ukraine is known as the bread basket of Europe with their very fertile land and gentle rolling hills.  We saw potatoes, beets (some for sugar, some for cow fodder), wheat, barley, oats, mustard, soybeans, etc.  There were peaceful lakes.  And people bringing their cows in from the pasture back to the barn every evening. Near some places where there were a lot of flowers you could hear a huge buzz coming from all the bees in the area.  And poppies grow wild nearly everywhere there.  Uncle Bex was quite diligent at taking pictures of the various flowers along the road for her Ukrainian weed calendar.

See those large warehouse-like buildings in the distance?  Those are the old Soviet communal farming buildings - not really used anymore is what we were told.

Potato field blooming.

Poppies and crops.

Uncle Bex in the sunset light.

Flat MelBMarvis enjoyed the countryside too.

No words needed on this one.

Quaint perfectly matching farmstead.

I call this "Pastoral Scene."

10.  Heart being fed.  I saved the best for last.  For me, I think my heart was fed the best it has ever been in four days.  Probably for a lot of different reasons.  A week to help prepare my heart beforehand.  Fewer distractions because I wasn't thinking too much about my job or what was going on at home.  And maybe because we didn't speak the language, we had to spend more of our time feeling.  Whatever the exact reason, it was very heartening.

I enjoyed watching the care flow between two special ladies who had known each other in a different time and a different place in a different country a long time ago.  We also learned some good lessons about a culture that is still young.  We learned about enduring without fellowship for decades.  And hopefully we were able to help give back to some hearts there.  I think we also learned to appreciate more the freedom we have here in America as well.


Many people ask, would I go back?  The answer to that is, "Of course!"  Will I be going back soon?  Not necessarily.....there are so many places to see, so little vacation time.  But...one should never say never...which reminds me of a verse I read this week.  James 4:14-15:  "Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.  For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that."

I will now conclude with a couple pictures that didn't fit a certain category, but they were memorable enough that I felt I should post them.

"Bucket shower" - available in case the other "real shower" was occupied.  And yes, I did use it a couple times.

A fairly common setup of a Ukrainian shower room.  The toilet is in its own closet, and then the tub and hand-washing sink are in a closet.  Sometimes the sink and shower share a spigot as shown here.

Whoops - bad Americans!  Looks like our juice purchase supported Russian commerce.

Ukraine Experience 2014: Part 3

Another Ukraine installment......still listing the highlights of the trip.

5.  Fourth of July Celebration.  Our hosts were very tolerant and let us have a 4th of July celebration even though we weren't in the good old USA.  Charlie made potato salad and homemade garlic bread.  Someone went to the market that day and got some buns and meat (we think it was pork, but not 100% sure).  Someone also bought root beer syrup that we mixed with water with "strong gas".  Fresh lemons were bought so we could make fresh lemonade with mint.  We made homemade ice cream that we had to crank by hand (no motor assistance).  We grilled the hamburgers over the Ukrainian style BBQ and ate our supper outside just like it was a real 4th of July picnic.  And we sang the Star Spangled Banner for the Ukrainians at their request.  We asked them to sing the Ukrainian National Anthem, but they shyly declined.  We had some "getting to know you" conversations with our hosts (through an interpreter).  We capped off the evening with one firework, but that was really enough.  I'm not sure we could have taken much more excitement than one.

Some girls we got to know while we were there.

Our hosts with some of their family and friends enjoying homemade ice cream.

The Ukrainian BBQ.

4th of July picnic meal.  That's a burger with mustard on it in the lower right.  It was all delicious.

6.  Privileges.  We had lots of these.  Maybe not quite as many as Uncle Bex would have liked, but overall I thought it was a good balance of doing stuff and then going on a walk or taking it easy and reading a book or chatting with some of the other people.  We sewed (mostly with a machine, but a little bit by hand).  I hung a mirror.  We cleaned.  We helped do some cooking assistant tasks.  We did laundry of course.  We watched a bull calf be castrated (quite possibly the first one ever in Ukraine is what one person joked - because of the risk of tetanus).  We learned to be fairly expert at judging how many cucumbers or tomatoes or cabbage we needed to make 1 kilo.  We cracked eggs.  We cleaned up old dog vomit.  We cleaned up mouse droppings.  Just your standard stuff, really.  One day we were called cover girls (related to food, not magazines) and crackers (related to eggs, not our skin color or a crunchy treat).

This is where Bex schooled me in the Mother Mary Clothesline Commandments.

Lengthening some sheets.

Repairing a stuffed bunny that had an unfortunate accident at some point before we arrived.  Somebody almost knocked the stuffing out of him!

7.  Making new friends and seeing old friends again.  Some young, some middle-aged, and some older.  And maybe some of them we will never see again in this lifetime.  Maybe some of them we will - one never knows what life may bring.  Most of them touched our heart in some way - some big, some small.  But I liked what Dare Bear shared with us - that we can meet nearly every day at the throne of grace if we want to.

Aunt Eater, Uncle Bex, Mex, and Charlie.  You can tell we aren't native Ukrainians because we're wearing eyeglasses.  Apparently eyeglasses are not cool in that culture.

These guys gave us the idea.

Bex and I with a couple special girls we met there.  And they're not just special because of their height (they're using a bench for assistance).

A Ukrainian combine - for my readers whom I know will find it interesting.

Storks were all over the place - there was one living in a tree in the yard of the place where we were staying.

Afternoon milking session in the pasture.  Life as usual on the Ukrainian farm.

Here is a link related to Part #1.  If you're interested in seeing photos of some of the miniature stuff in the museum, check out this link:  http://microart.kiev.ua/en/galery.html

Ukraine Experience 2014: Part 2

Installment #2 about Ukraine.....

2.  Transportation experiences.  We may not have quite done it all, but I think we came close: airplanes, taxis (small cars and large vans for short trips and long trips), the metro, long distance bus (that can be more like a big van), city buses, country buses, personal vehicle, and even the night train.  We did NOT get to ride in a horse-drawn cart, although we did see one.  We were told that we did not get the whole experience because we didn't get to see the worst roads Ukraine has to offer.  We did use the oldest form of transportation as well:  our feet.

Nerd alert!  Watching the airline's media system re-booting because it was having issues.  Some of this was actually meaningful to me.

The Kiev metro is notable in that one of its stations is currently the deepest metro/subway stop in the world.  There is a station in Switzerland that, when finished, will be deeper.  In Kiev it only costs 2.5 hryvnia to ride the metro, which is less than $0.25.  You can ride as far as you want for each metro trip - it's a flat rate.  Because the metro is so deep, it could double as a bomb shelter if necessary.  Lucky for us it was not necessary.

Kiev metro (above ground as it crosses the river).

Riding the long escalator into the bowels of the metro.

The long distance bus is a whole 'nother experience.  It probably seated 15 or 20 people total and was kind of like a giant van with two seats on one side of the aisle and one seat on the other side of the aisle.  And lucky us, we got to ride in it for more than 5 hours as the Russian TV shows blared away and the air flow was moderate to small.  Like many Europeans, Ukrainians do not like drafts, so sometimes things can get slightly stuffy in taxis, buses, and other places.  The long bus ride did give us a good excuse to go to a grocery store and buy some LaVosh bread, Nutella, sausages, crackers, and cheese to sustain us during the ride.  The ride included one short bathroom stop as well.  With the "squat trough" style of toilets, not the usual sit-down ones you might be used to.

The bus station in Kiev.  We rode in a van about the size of the white vans near the upper left corner.

The night train wasn't as bad as you might imagine, but the night was still a bit short.  I managed to fall asleep for several hours, but it's not the most restful mode of transportation.  And we were thankful to have a place to go to in Kiev after disembarking where we could eat a hearty American breakfast, take a real shower, and take a nap.

The Lutsk train station around 10:00 PM.

In the night train compartment - it sleeps 4.  Thankfully we all knew each other.  Sometimes people aren't that lucky.

The Kiev train station.  The world's 2nd busiest McDonald's is just to the right off-camera.  But you can see the billboard for it in this picture.  :-)

Mosaics in the Kiev train station.  From my own observation, it seemed like mosaics are kind of a traditional craft for Ukrainians too.

The city buses were fairly standard.  People would pass their fare money from passenger to passenger if they get on in the back and couldn't easily make it up front to pay the driver.  On one bus ride we took, a guy boarded with a bag of live chicks that we could hear peeping.  We weren't on the bus for this event, but Bert was telling us that he got to ride on the bus one day when a child puked and the bus was really crowded.  That would be an experience, huh?

Seeing some people off on the country bus that goes into Lutsk.

Bex on the country bus going to Lutsk.

A very patriotic Ukrainian van

3.  Stomach being fed.  Boy oh boy, was it fed with many delicious things and some "interesting" things.  Our hosts for most of the two weeks live on a farm with a large garden, so we ate tons of fresh food there.  New potatoes, sweet cherries, apricots, tart cherries, blueberries, eggs from the chickens, milk fresh from the cow that day, fresh sour cream (kind of an oxymoron), black currants, cucumbers, zucchini, beet sugar from the farm, flour ground from their wheat, homemade jams, homemade peanut butter, etc.

The "usual" fruit salad at morning break.  They told us this is not a typical Ukrainian snack - this is more of an American thing.  The Ukrainians would just put some whole fruits out on the table, and you'd eat them is what one person told me.  I was happy there were some Americans in the kitchen to mike this.  :-)

Our hosts made homemade cabbage rolls twice, blueberry and cherry varenyky (similar to perogies) twice, and a green borsch (zelany borsch) once.  Green borsch is made with sorrel and potatoes and does not contain beets.  Since I always thought borsch had beets, I asked about it.  They said usually borsch implies that the soup is slightly "sour" with vinegar or lemon juice, and is not required to have beets although it quite often does.  In general we were told that Ukrainians like to eat a lot of soup.  We truly ate like kings and queens.  Incidentally, peanut butter is not usually sold in stores there, so nearly all peanut butter you ever eat there will be homemade.  We also ate a lot of cabbage slaw that usually included quite a bit of dill and a vinegary dressing.  It was pretty good.  We didn't eat any beets because they weren't in season.

Making varenyky (blueberry I think).  Here they were rolling out the dough and making little dough pockets filled with fresh fruit.

They are then boiled in a pot for a couple minutes and removed to cool.

Meat can be expensive there, so we did not eat large amounts of meat.  They raise almost no beef cattle in Ukraine, so most beef is either veal or old milk cows.  Thus, the usual meats were chicken or pork.

Ukrainians appear to drink a lot of compote, which is made by boiling dried fruit in water and perhaps adding some sugar if needed.  All the compote we drank did not contain any fruit chunks after the boiling - it was purely a liquid.  We had some very good homemade cherry compote, and we had some very interesting smoked plum compote at a restaurant.  At one restaurant I also ordered fresh squeezed carrot juice.  It came out with a good layer of foam still on it.  And, we must not forget the kvas.  I would describe the taste of kvas as something similar to taking a pop and fermenting it with yeast.  It has the carbonation and color of pop, but then has a very earthy/yeasty taste to it.  Methinks it's definitely an acquired taste.

And they have some very tasty Ukrainian chocolate.  Ukrainians are fond of rye bread as well, which most Americans appear not to be.  Ukrainians also drink a lot of tea.  Possibly in many places because they have to boil their water before they drink it.  Lucky for us, most of the time we stayed at one of the few places in Ukraine where we could drink out of the tap because they had their own, very pure well.

When we were browsing a store once, we found this interesting shape in which ice cream was packaged.

4.  Silliness.  Yes, there was some of this.  Including quotations of the bulbous bouffant skit.  And taking of pictures with copious of amounts of eggs and dairy.  Good-natured volleyball.  Speaking of which, I learned a new game to play with a volleyball that involves standing in a circle with people kneeling in the middle.  And hitting the people in the middle with the volleyball.  We had at least one chin-up competition.  And played some "jail".  And jumped some rope.  And tried to hula hoop (some were successful).  And had some laughs about life in general.

Quite possibly one of my most favorite pictures of the trip because it captures some of the silliness perfectly.  The actual picture taken was kind of an accident, but the thought bubbles were added very purposefully.

Bex and I just "hanging out".

Bex being a rebel in our sleeping area.  Why is it always so tempting to do this with skinny cylindrical objects?

Ukraine Experience 2014: Part 1

As I said in a previous post, Uncle Bex and I went to Ukraine for a little over two weeks.  Despite all the recent press that they have been getting about wars and fighting and shooting down passenger airlines in that country, for us it was a very enjoyable, calm, and safe experience.  However, we maybe saw a side of Ukraine that not many tourists get to see.  And we steered clear of the oblasts Donetsk and Luhansk where most of the fighting is happening.

I started to write about the Ukraine experience all in one post, but then I realized I was either going to have to cut out a lot of details, or else I was going to have to do this in installments to do things justice.  I chose installments, for better or worse.  It depends on if you like the reading as much as I like the telling.

It's hard to know where to start and how to tell about this vacation.  Last fall Bex had been invited to go there by her friend Kay, and then Bex asked me if I wanted to tag along.  Since my friend Charlie lives in Ukraine and I'm usually up for a travel adventure, I said, "Sure."  We booked our plane tickets in January, right before the trouble, rioting, and fighting started in earnest.  After the fighting started, we decided to wait and see what would happen by June/July.  I kept in touch with Charlie occasionally, and it seemed like the trip would probably still be possible.  So we trusted the advice of our friends living there, and we trusted in someone even greater and decided to go.

I wasn't feeling nervous about the trip at all until about a week before we left when people at work started very earnestly wishing me safe travels, etc.  Then I started to get a bit nervous because they seemed so concerned.  Both Bex and I weren't really sure what we were feeling as we headed to the airport in Chicago, but we were committed, so we pressed on.  And once we landed and got to our hotel in Kiev, pretty much all the nerves were gone (for me anyway - not sure about Bex).  It was shaping up to be some good days.

Flat MelBMarvis poked her head out of the luggage during our layover in Zurich on the way there.

It wasn't going to be a good trip only because this was in the vending machine in Zurich.  ;-)

One of our first views of Kiev as we rode in a taxi from the airport to downtown.

Of course all my readers are well-versed in geography, but just in case there are some "wanderers" on the web who are not, here is the general location of Ukraine shown in the picture below.  It's in eastern Europe.  The light green is the current disputed area of Crimea.  If you want more of a general overview, Wikipedia can give you a few more details.  And for a little more context, the large country to the north and east of Ukraine is Russia.  If we go counter-clockwise from there and list the countries that border Ukraine, you then have Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova.

Your frame of reference.

The major highlights of the trip, kinda-sorta in chronological order (not necessarily in order of importance) are detailed as follows, in the form of several installments.

The view from our hotel room in Kiev.

1. Kiev sightseeing.  We didn't see a ton of Kiev - only a day's worth or so.  But we saw a few of the must-see places.  St. Sophia's cathedral, St. Michael's monastery, and Pecherska Lavra.

St. Sophia's cathedral started to be built in the early 1000's (that's more than 1000  years ago).  It has fallen into disrepair and nearly been destroyed several times and is partially rebuilt - we did go into the church to check out the famous old mosaics there.  And we paid the fee to go up in the bell tower.

The bell tower from the outside.  In the lower right, also note the large painted egg.  That's a historic Ukrainian craft from what I understand (to make hand-painted eggs).

St. Sophia's Cathedral

The staircase to go up in the bell tower.  Yep, we climbed it.

Looking up into the bell tower. Because this kind of picture just makes an engineer's heart sing.

Panoramic view of Kiev from St. Sophia's bell tower.

We did not enter St. Michael's.  We took a few pictures of the outside and checked out some tire piles, flags, and tents that some protesters left nearby (no active protesting was happening at the time).  St. Michael's comes from around the same era as St. Sophia's, but the Russians destroyed it in the 1900's.  However, it was rebuilt in the 1990's.

The square by St. Sophia's and looking down the road at St. Michael's.

St. Michael's Monastery / Cathedral

Uncle Bex by the protester stuff near St. Michael's.

And then there is the Pecherska Lavra, which is another super-old church monastery that was originally in caves.  Now they have quite a bit of above-ground stuff too.  Charlie took us into one of the churches in the large complex there.  We observed part of a service/baptism they appeared to be having because it was a  holiday.  Interesting and very foreign.  And, we took a walk through the caves where some saints' remains are, and people stop to kiss the coffins and do some worship.  People carry candles, your head and shoulders must be covered, and the passages are very narrow.  Picture a fire marshall's worst nightmare.  Charlie said it's even more of a nightmare in the winter when everyone wears their fur coat into the caves while holding their candles.

Entrance gate to Pecherska Lavra

With our head gear on and ready to go into the caves.  Well, almost.  Uncle Bex needed to still get something to cover her shoulders.  *gasp*

And!  The Lavra complex contains a museum of tiny things.  Everything you look at must be looked at through a microscope.  It contained such things as a carved chess set that fit on the head of a pin.  And a flea with golden shoes.  We also had the opportunity to briefly see the apartment of a native Ukrainian.  And we walked along the bluff above the Dnipro (said nee-pro) River.  That's probably enough about Kiev for now, huh?

More of Kiev including the Motherland statue.

Looking east (I think) toward the part of Kiev on the other side of the Dnipro river.

More installments coming soon!