MARINA SOKOLOVA

Avatar 3D.

I think that pretty much every blogger has posted about Avatar already. I will join the crowd and write: I saw Avatar in 3D. I haven’t been to cinema in a very long time, but for 3D I changed PJs for jeans and dragged my butt out. I enjoyed this movie a lot. It is beautiful and, in my opinion, has a good plot.

Avatar also reminded me about my old post, where I mentioned that people in the 60s and 70s used to believe that by the year 2000 we would have towns on other planets. This movie made me feel a little bit sad for the future we never had.  Unfortunately, after the collapse of the USSR, cosmos exploration not only did not progress, but seems to have regressed. I guess it is because for now it is purely a socialistic and idealistic science. It is not commercially feasible, as it does not provide quick financial gain. Money is spent simply on learning. Instead of towns on other planets, we have now smaller individualistic products, such as personal phones, PCs, ipods, etc. Instead of expanding into the cosmos and possibly meet other civilisations, we are becoming more introvert. We are locking ourselves in homes individually and expand into virtual reality. How many towns have you built in PC games? Lots, right? Me too. Although, judging by what happened in the movie, maybe it is for the best. Maybe, while humans confine themselves voluntarily in their cubicles and shoeboxes they do less harm to other possible civilisations.

Shepherds’ art:

Chinese music day in my blog.

Update on my small claim.

As I mentioned in the older post, I am involved in litigation with one former client. I decided to simply follow the instructions on the court’s official websites and they hired a solicitors firm. I decided to file with online claims service first as it is cheaper. I also did it as an individual against an organisation case, so if they choose to defend themselves, the case would get transferred to my local court and I wouldn’t have to travel too far for the hearings.

I filed my claim for about £750.They filed a counterclaim for £5000 (£50 000 reduced to £5000 – oh, how nice of them (sarcasm)) in response to my claim, claiming that I caused them damages, because they couldn’t publish my articles with adverts alongside. This is for the reason that their sales person quit her job as she allegedly got frustrated with me and they were unable to replace her. Then they invented a name for her forgetting that I know her, because they introduced us …in writing. I couldn’t believe that they put this on a formal statement, which includes an oath of truth. After she stopped laughing when I told her the above, she signed and posted me a witness statement in my favour. The court hearing is in April in Southampton County Court. Wish me luck.

Work.

I am in the process of publishing my first book using POD technology with one of Amazon’s subsidiaries. I was planning to get it all done by this month. I was at the last stage, where I needed to approve a proof and the book would have been released for sale on Amazon. Today I received a proof copy, which I was eagerly awaiting for weeks. I unpacked it, took it in my hands, and flipped through it. I liked it. Then my brain registered that something is wrong with it. I flipped through it quickly couple more times thinking. Then I realised what it is. There is no page numbers! I simply forgot to insert them when formatting the manuscript. This means that I cant approve this proof, I will have to replace the files and start all over again. And the book will not be released for another month or so. The good thing though is that I noticed it now rather than later.

Proof copy:

No page numbers:

Movie: Slumdog Millionaire.

I was shocked by how characters portrayed in the movie treat each other. No respect for each other’s rights or feelings whatsoever. No laws, no hope. I wonder if this is entirely fiction or this work of art is trying to portray an actual mentality that exists in the slums. I mean, if torture happened in USA’s prison in Iraq then it can probably happen in some other parts of the world. If this movie portrays the attitude and lifestyle that exist in slums like this then I wonder what came first the chicken or the egg. Do people tend to live in poverty, because they treat each other like this and there is no order? Or do they start to hate each other and everything becomes chaos, because they struggle to live? Or may be they don’t even feel it as struggle and are actually happy?

Photos by Leonid Shyeglov.

Counting other people’s money.

I wonder if it is true that Katya Ivanova has been paid, according to some bloggers, 150 000 for participating in CBB. If it is, then it means she was earning over 10 000 per day. And despite this, she didn’t seem to care about playing in it much.

I just discovered another reason why Russian housing is so much warmer than British housing. It is not just much thinner walls and insufficient heating in UK, but lack of snow. Turns out that even a little bit of snow makes a building noticeably warmer. I guess it insulates the roof. Although I suspect not many people need the warmth around here. It is still shocking for me to see how many people in UK are capable of living in January with open windows and very little or no heating. I branded them cave people jokingly, because they don’t need the comfort of heating or closed doors and windows, basically they can just as well live in a cave. I also noticed that a lot of them don’t need winter clothing and walk about in shorts and barefoot in flip-flops. Or alternatively they dress warm themselves, but deny that pleasure to their babies and drive their barefoot and naturally very snotty babies around in the prams in the freezing cold.