A Need For Christmas Wonder

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It's on a way :)

What Do They Teach?

Donetsk is really a city of the funsters. Or the сlowns - name them as you wish. Now they decided to refuse using the standard school handbooks of the Ukrainian history. Instead of the varified and tested by the famous scientists, they prefered to establish the 'local' handbooks which describe the country's history in a 'right' way. 'We received the numerous apeals from the parents who were indignant about the way their kids are now taught,' - said a guy with a typical 'regional' (meaning a 'Party of Regions') face. - 'We need to change the situation when the criminals are pesented as heroes.' 

That's so Soviet. I never know how to speak to the people like him. In fact, the reason here is not history but politics. And everybody in UA understand whose money are talking with his mouth. Still, as a reult we will have a generation of two-minded young people without a strong national identity who know - easy money are there - to the North and East.

CMS

I have a very boring job to do - I need to get acquanited with a newly designed Control Management System for a special purpose. I thought it would be an easier thing to do. However, the cart's still  there. I need money, and I have a work to do. So, why am I blunt? :) Ok, I don't have time to write this, bye! :)

You Need It

I always wonder how people can ignore the things they don't like. I can't. Though it is usually difficult to get rid of of those annoying sad thoughts, you always need to find the way out. I'm trying. You need to be an optimist, I need it.

70 Years to Learn the Lesson

Poland fell in autumn like this. Its Army was unable to withstand such an unexpected and cynical aggression of the united aggressive regimes of Germany and USSR. The ‘civilized’ Western nations closed their eyes and gave Hitler Czechoslovakia. They were to afraid. Great Britain, France – they were afraid of the possible new big war, afraid of the inevitable changes in their lifestyles. Meanwhile, the aggressors just made the preparations. And the partition of Poland became the first action in a long movie.

The divided Europe – especially its Eastern countries – could say big ‘Thank you’ for the Western standards in quieting the aggressive political regimes. They welcomed the Red Army as a liberator in 1945, they drove them out as an occupant in the 1980s. The Eastern Europe nations suffered the most from that conflict and were so happy to return to the democratic standards in their lives.

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact no more seems to be a warning for the modern Europe. One could notice the same sounds as in 1938 in the EU modern behavior. The comfort of living is a too big seduction. Who will care about a country with a constants mess in all spheres of life?

Today, the representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia called for the USA, Great Britain, France and China to convoke an International conference to secure the real guaranties of our country security as the Budapest memorandum doesn’t work any more. They asked the Western countries to be principal when Russia wants to interfere in our internal life once again.

As for me, I have no hope the West will hear them as we know too much examples when history doesn’t teach anything.

We got visas

We waited for three weeks and finally received them. They give us no garancy of going to England tomorrow. At least, they make an inspirition for thinking about going there. Sometimes it looks like an absurd - our country is not developed enough for us to be considered as the 'reliable' person. It is funny - big nations suffer from their own mistakes. So does Great Britain. At such moments I'm happy about living in Ukraine.

Hot 25 of the 25-years' life

They'll come in a week, my 25s. I just started realizing they underline a period in my life. Not that big and still important. How they say in their thick scientifical books - "the major achievements of the age?" Doesn't matter. I know, you understand what I wanna say. Well, they just say something to you. If you would hear them. To be a boring weeper who regrets for the past is the last thing I want to. I'd rather look on my life as a series of the funny snapshots. The ones you can find in the Year's Final Magazin with the photos from January to December. With all their smiles, crimes, weddings, disasters and victories. 'Then why funny?' - you can ask. 'Take it easy, my boy' - I would answer with Al Pacino's voice - 'Thay are all funny when you can talk about them with your friends.'

So, Mykhailo Ivanov's Top 25 Life Snapshots according to their significance are available just now

1. I was conceptioned. As my mother told me, she saw a dream of the aliens giving her a tablet :)
2. I was born with 4,7 kilos
3. I started writing before I could read what I wrote
4. I sat in a newly painted 'car' in my kindergarten. That was the first and the last day of my cool new suit and the first time from the many when I coloured my hair
5. I studied singing with an old man with bayan. He thought I could sing :)
6. I studied judo, karate, circus and swimming
7. I met Pavlo Ivanovych and thus stuck in TV for almost 10 years
8. I met my best friends. I really miss all of them
9. I tried beer for the first time and liked it
10. I didn't enter the university
11. I entered the university
12. I tried vodka and hash for the first time and didn't like it
13. I changed my lifestyle
14. I visited my first football match with 'Dnipro'
15. I've got new friends in University
16. I used to the toilets in a dormitory
17. I've been to Kyrylivka for the first time :)
18. I drank at 'Europe' with Frid
19. I was an active 'orange' in 2004
20. I travelled to Lviv with my friends for the first time
21. I started 'Nichna Zmina'
22. I met her
23. I kissed her
24. I married HER...
25. I'm gonna be a Godfather

The questions I ask

We need friends...
How often you miss this idea. We DO need friends. At the same, we MUST have a courage not to leave them. You change your place of living, you change your job. Are these the reasons to stop calling 'em?
Did you ever count them? Did your ever realize you may be alone without them? Strangely enough, isn't it? The world is small, in fact, and cruel. No, it won't be easy with them. You can not be a good guy for the many. You can BE, though. I hope, I AM not only here, in the flat I work in. Not only for the guys around me.
I always miss them... They are far away, they are in a 5 min's walk. I need to know they sometimes miss me, too.
I haven't been calling my best friend for six months... I forget their names... I want to expirience the moments of that closeness once again altough It's impossible.

Am I dissolving for them?...

Burn, Metalist, Burn! :))

The Dnipro's Break Through

Again football. Or - it is better to say - my nerves again. While testing them during the FC Dnipro games I used to establish a regrettable tradition as long as this team entered its streak of bad luck the year 2008.
It is always difficult to explain smbd why do you go on the stadium when the team's game worths virtually zilch. However, there is something in this sport you cannot explain. It happens when a set of the well-payed players becomes a part of your life, when a stadium transforms into the most visitable place in your city and the result of the game itself matters less then atmosphere on the arena. So, frankly speaking, I just felt - they will win this time.
How could they lose when at least a thousand of fans organized a spectacular procession along the central city streets? The march was planned beforehand, still, in a view of the current Dnipro's results it seemed as an expressive demonstration of the supporters' will to see their club's real strength. As a crowd approached a stadium shouting 'Dnipro' & 'Dnipropetrovsk', everybody undersood - It seemed to me - smth gonna happen.
Overtime. 90 + 1 min. Maksym Kalynychenko scores a goal with his head. Stadium roars.
Was that a Break Through we all waited for?

The Battle Ukraine has never seen before

It was literally historical evening. The two Ukrainian football teams competing in the 1/8 UEFA Cup final. The two antogonistic forces, the two unfriendly camps of the supporters - they all met that night in Kharkiv.
03/19/2009. 6 PM. An overcrowded 'Metalist' stadium. After a regrettable defeat to Dynamo in Kyiv, Metalist form Kharkiv was believed to tumble over itself to gain a desired win. The point is that this team have never achieved such results in its history. The real heyday came to Metalist last year, when a new football specialst - Myron Markevych - was appointed a head coach. The result came at once. This team started showing a game of a quite well level hereby becoming a kinda 'third force' in a domestic Championship (with Dynamo and Shakhtar, Donetsk). Though it was not enough time and possibilities to make the level of the team really competitive on a European football scene, Metalist hitched its wagon to a star. UEFA Cup's greenhorn, they was a bad surprise for the teams like Sampdoria and Beshiktash who undervalued them and were bitten.
Thousands of fans filled the stadium and saw a big show each time. And may be some of them really believed their favorite team is just invincible.
However, there were another thousands of fans. The Dynamo fans. A Ukrainian Premier League traditional leader, this team has the most urdent supporters in this country. By the way, did I say the both team fans hate each other?
Logically, when It came to the game with Metalist, the passion run high. When Dynamo won the first from the two games in Kyiv 1:0, it was the moment or truth for Metalist and almost a jackpot for Dynamo.
The Dynamo fans came to Kharkiv to see the victory while their opponents propelled the players not to give up. And they didn't. Though a win 3:2 was a Pyrrhic victory for Metalist, this night will enter the Ukrainian sports history for sure. Although Dynamo goes forward to the next level without Metalist, Ukraine still has its two representatives in the Cup (do you remember Shakhtar? They overcame Russian CSKA). And the highest UEFA index this year.

A gulp of optimism

It is ofthen connected with smth bad whan you watch the news from Ukraine now. For the ordinary citizens, it usually causes the two types of reaction. As the TV News dotrine doesn't recognize the positive signs, the first one leads to the nervous breakdown risk increasing. The second type of the people reaction is a gradual decline of the News watching and concentrating on a small but really positive moments in their life. Talking about my family, we are rather somewhere between the two of them. Having worked on TV for some time, I'm not so dramatized about what they are showing there. So, when a chance for us to abstract from the constant economical reports mastication happened, we didn't hesitate long. A 'TIK' band - on of my old passion - gave a concert in Dnipro. Very positive, folk and dancing, they always charge you with that everlasting energy coming from a nation that overcame so many evils in its history. How can you stay emotionlessly during the rousing songs devoted to ... an alcoholism, or a teacher from a remote village, or a police senior sergeant? Funny and very much senseless, they can do more for you mental health than the thousands of PM promises. ...Joyful and tired, we came back home at night, and when I fall asleep, the words for the song 'Sveta' were still spinning in my head.

The Olesky Sands

Ukraine. Open it! This is a motto of the project I'm currently working in and - I must say - the project I'm really enjoying. How amazingly It may sound for the Ukrainian natives, their country is much richer for the outstanding places and people they may imagine resting on their enslaved consciousness and washed memory. Traveling around this big European (underline!) country, my collegues and me, we had a lot of memorable moment that we try to deliver on our openit.com.ua site.
Here, I want to tell you about our trip that hadn't enriched the collection of the project site. Doubt that many of you know the place where the only real desert in Europe situated. This is a small village near Olesky city Kherson region, Ukraine.

Here you can see the map of the Sands location

Просмотреть увеличенную карту

On a sunrise, we started our way from Dnipro. It took us about 5 hours to get to the estimated destination point. However, the dunes didn't rise in front of our faces. In fact, the way to the factual 'sands' was the most complicated part of the trip. In spite of our expectations, the inhabitants of the Nova Mayachka village - the closest to the desert - are seemed not to be interested in it at all. Logically, they all pointed us the different directions and finally drove us into the complete end of civilization where the sands still appeared the same 'far away' place. Luckily, one guy from a roadside pull-in said we are actually here, and the desert is only separated by a forest belt planted to stop the sands spreading in the area.
Emmobilzed by a poachy sand, our car is left on a forest edge. While two of my collegues stay there to watch over, our group of three is aimed to a cutting. Without a map, a way in a forest is quite complicated - imagine a still air and a 2-hours walk over the sea-shore with a temperature of 37 degrees celcium. But a result was worh it...

Hello world! Dnipro calling...

Hi there guys! It is high time for me to start my own blog. At least, I think so. Hope, I have something to share with you.