Personal Development Blog

Next week I plan a two-week Bulgaria vacation. I usually go there every year, and enjoy its beautiful country full of sun, sea and hospitable people. Even though Crimea is near, and I can reach Yalta or Miskhor in less than 12 hours by car, I prefer to go abroad.

So the first reason is:

1) Hospitable People

Do you know Soviet style type of service? Oh, I experienced it just yesterday. We needed a sanitary technician to fix a small problem in a toilet in one of our rented apartments. We called house management and listened to harsh language. It seems they do not care whether we are satisfied or not, very rough. After a few unsuccessful attempts to reach them we called a professional service, and a man agreed to help for 35 USD. He came and fixed the problem in two minutes. We still paid him, and he was polite for such an easy money. So in Crimea the staff is rarely polite, and the prices are skyscraping.

In Bulgaria I feel many people preserved a natural hospitability. I do not say that Ukrainians are not hospitable but many people who provide services are not motivated not trained to do it well. Bulgarians are more friendly.

I do not hear Russian swearing in Bulgaria. It spoils the feeling of vacation. Russian so-called MAT (rush abusive language) is rarely to be heard in Bulgaria.

These people are so hospitable and I respect them! Thank you, Stoyan, thank you, Polya!

2) Nice Seaside

Sozopol, a little town on the southern part of Bulgarian seacoast, is located on a small peninsula being washed by Black Sea on three sides. Whenever you go, you see nice sand or rocks, and blue water. There are two beaches, Central and Harmany, the first being shallow, and the latter is wider and deeper.

3) Nice Cheap Food

To dine in a restaurant does not usually cost more than 5 EURO. You can see this here:

4) Nice Cheap Accommodation

The room with all necessary equipment, fridge, bathroom, balcony in New Town cost about 15 EURO a night.

5) Architecture and Environment

I love rambling in Old Town seeing all these old houses.

Come here and enjoy!

Viktor Frankl is quoted by Stephen Covey as a great character, a man who survived Nazi occupation and suffered in camps. When faced by death itself, he discovered that a man can choose his reaction to any stimulus, and this reaction is what differs a man from an animal and what makes one a great man who is in command of his life and his happiness and what makes another one completely dependent upon surrounding circumstances. 

1. How to Discover the Meaning of Life

“The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected.”

“A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how.””

“What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.”

“We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a value; and (3) by suffering.”

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

2. What is the Greatest Secret of Human Thought

“A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth-that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and is love.”

3. How to Answer Questions of Life

“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”

4. What is the Main Concern in a Man’s Life

“Logotherapy…considers man as a being whose main concern consists in fulfilling a meaning and in actualizing values, rather than in the mere gratification and satisfaction of drives and instincts.”

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”

5. How to Achieve Success

“Don’t aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run - in the long run, I say! - success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.”

Jolly Fellows

This movie was created in 1934! Yet in our childhood we saw it many many times. Our TV had only three programs, and we did not have much choise. This optimistic song of a shepherd about influence of a jolly song, the tune that stays in one’s heart, you know. I have not found any extracts of this movie on YouTube, so maybe I will upload it some time later. Here is a concise plot of this movie from Wikipedia:

Yelena (Mariya Strelkova), a wanna-be singer who is unable to hold the tune, mistakes shepherd Kostya Potekhin (Leonid Utyosov) for a famous conductor of a jazz orchestra and invites him to an elegant party. He plays his pan flute, which attracts the herd of animals from his kolkhoz to the dining tables. Yelena’s servant Anyuta (Lyubov Orlova) falls for Kostya. Anyuta turns out to be an excellent singer.

Twelve Chairs

There were two main screen versions of this classic novel by Ilf and Petrov, one with Gomiashvili and Philippov, and another one with Mironov and Papanov. I give my vote for Gomiashvili, even though Mironov-Papanov duet proved to be successful in other comedies… but not in this one. Gomiashvili in a role of the most famous schemer Ostap Bender is incomparable. The plot is well known. I will quote Wikipedia:

In the novel, a con man Ostap Bender meets dispossessed nobleman Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobianinov. Vorobianinov has just discovered, during the deathbed confession of his mother-in-law, that a set of jewels had been hidden from the Bolsheviks in one of the twelve chairs from the family’s dining room set.

Those chairs, along with all other personal property, had been expropriated by the government after the Russian Revolution. Bender forces Kisa (Vorobianinov’s funny childhood nickname preferred by Bender) to partner with him, which ultimately helps Kisa who lacks Bender’s charm and street-smarts. Kisa and Bender set off together to locate the chairs and recover the fortune, but are stymied by a series of false leads and other trying yet humorous events.

As I like to quote actual extracts from the movies from Youtube, I will do it here, too. Here is a collection of famous quotes. I can’t translate all the text here, but the beginning phrase is The Ice Has Begun to Break So I Will Be In Command of the Parade!

Kidnapping, Caucasian Style

Oh, Kunakis, Comrade Saakhov, Bambarbiya-Kergudu, famous characters, phrases and music. Definitely a classic movie.

“There are only two outcomes are possible: either I will lead her to civilian registry office to marry her, or she will lead me to public prosecutor to put me in jail!”

“Speak slower… I am writing it down!”

“She is so nice… sportswoman… Young Communist Leaguer… a cutie… And I ask only twenty-five rams for her… ”

“You perception of the world is limited. You look to the world from the window of my personal car.”

A kind, yet naïve, student named Shurik (Demyanenko) goes to a place in the Caucasus to learn the ancient customs of the locals. He falls in love with a girl called Nina (Varley), her uncle (Mkrtchyan) sells her as a bride without her knowledge and arranges to have her kidnapped by the eccentric trio: Coward, Fool and Experienced. After a failed attempt, the uncle decides to trick Shurik into helping with the kidnapping - telling him that it is a traditional custom and that it was Nina’s own wish. Shurik goes through with the kidnapping, and does not figure out what has really happened at first, but with the help of a friend he manages to rescue Nina from her captors.

 I already quote this movie here in my Russian Jokes Blog.

Here is a popular song in this movie “If I were a sultan”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYG6lw7tJZw

“If I were a sultan I would have three wives and would be surrounded by triple beauty. It if not bad to have three wives… But from the other side… it not bad to live without a wife so if I were a sultan I would be a bachelor!”

The Diamond Arm

I refer to the Wikipedia article for a handful of best phrases from the movie, you can see them here. The plot is as follows: common Soviet citizen goes abroad and by chance becomes involved in smuggling of diamonds that are buried in plaster on his arm. Miscreants try to use every tricks to ensnare their victim but every time he is rescued by lucky circumstances. It reminds of Pierre Richard’s character of Grand Blonde.

Ivan Vasilyevich: Back To the Future

The summary is here from Wikipedia:

The movie begins in 1973 Moscow, where Engineer Shoorik (Aleksandr Demyanenko) is working on a time machine in his apartment. By accident, he sends Ivan Vasilevich Bunsha (Yuri Yakovlev), an apartment building manager, and George Miloslavsky (Leonid Kuravlev), a small-time burglar, back into the time of Ivan IV. The pair is forced to disguise themselves, with Bunsha dressing up as Ivan IV and Miloslavsky as a knyaz of the same name (who everybody thought was executed by the tsar). At the same time, the real Ivan IV (also played by Yuri Yakovlev) is sent by the same machine into Shoorik’s apartment, he has to deal with modern-day life while Shoorik tries to fix the machine so that everyone can be brought back to their proper place in time. As the police (tipped off by a neighbor who was burgled by Miloslavsky) close in on Shoorik, who is frantically trying to repair the machine, the cover of Bunsha and Miloslavsky is blown and they have to fight off the palace guards, who find out that Bunsha is not the real Ivan IV. The movie ends with Bunsha, Miloslavsky, and Ivan IV all transported back to their proper places, although the entire thing is revealed to be a dream by Shoorik.

Well, as there were 60 million tickets sold for this movie in the year 1973 everybody knows it. But when I ask my friends who originally wrote a script hardly anyone can answer, and this is Mikhail Bulgakov! Yes, it was written in 1930-es and then made into  a movie to represent 1970-es with more modern surronding and a few jokes related to modern appliances being weird to a Russian Tzar who happened to come to the future through centuries.

I have already put a small article on that in my other blog.

Here is a nice song from this movie:

And I was thrilled to see THIS VERY NICE add-on (there is no episode in the movie itself, I do not know about where this comes from but it is like from inside the movie!). Enjoy THIS nice nice romantic song, starring Selezneva and Pugovkin:

“People lose each other, pass each other without noticing and then do not find again.”

Irony of Fate

To say frankly, I am not a great fan of this movie. It is more lyric and relates to inner problems in cross-gender relationships. A lot of music. Drunken man goes to a wrong city and mistakes another lady’s apartment for his own. The memorable phrase that comes to my mind: Every year I and my friends go to sauna! (That is the outset of the plot)

The captioning data is in French language so if you know it you can understand what he sings. The song is called If You Do Not Have an Aunt. Catch the lyric mood of this movie. It is broadcast EVERY new year on all Russian and Ukrainian channels, like a standard Christmas movie that you cannot miss, you know…

Gentlemen of Fortune

Masterpiece. No doubt. The plot is as follows:

Gentlemen of Fortune (1971) (Russian: Джентльмены удачи, Dzhentlmeny udachi) is one of the best-known Russian comedies of all time (filmed at Mosfilm). The stars of the film include famous Russian actors such as Savely Kramarov, Yevgeny Leonov, George Vitsin, and Radner Muratov. The movie follows the story of a man named Troshkin that looks exactly like a criminal called Docent that has stolen Alexander the Great’s helmet during an archeological mission. After the police puts him in with the real criminals to get information, he must pretend to be the actual criminal to find the missing helmet. The film was the leader of Soviet distribution in 1972 and had 65.02 million viewers.

I will put a melody from this movie along with a small extract of the movie at the end:

There is a whole movie on Youtube cut to 9 episodes so if you understand a little Russian you can watch the whole masterpiece youself!

I hope you enjoyed my little overview and I am always glad to see you back on my website.

This is the song The Love And The Poverty. 

This video could be meant for my Russian Jokes Russian Humor Video blog, but I decided to put it on my main site and refer to this later on. I installed a couple of video processing software programs but do not have everything necessary to make these nice little extracts from my favorite classic movies myself. The good news is that I can find almost anything on Youtube. Of course there are episodes that are to be cherished again and again and that are not there yet.

This awesome movie is the best appearance of the great actor Alexander Kalyagin. Here he plays a man who dresses as a woman to avoid being captured by police and who is mistaken for a rich lady who is to be arriving this day at the house. The inhabitants of the house, after disclosing the true nature of this person, decide to keep the game on to help them achieve their plans. Many relatives and visitors in the house become involved, and the scenes are memorable. A lot of music, many Soviet era stars like Jigarhanyan and Gaft, make it a real classic film. Many phrases from this movie became household humor phrases. A few quotes from the movie:

(this man “The Aunt” addressing his male admirer) Ok… I will kiss you… later… if you will want me to do it…

(The Aunt) I am from Brasil where in forests there are a lot of wild monkeys…

(The Aunt about her so-called deceased husband) There is no lack of Pedros in Brasil.

At the end of this clip the Aunt says - To Don Pedro (in honor to Don Pedro). By the way, in Russian such names as Hulio and Pedro have funny sounding as relate to swearing Russian words.

Do you like servant to serve you in a hotel room? The Radisson SAS Astorija Hotel Vilnius offers all kinds of servants:

That is a mistake due to similarity of word spelling of SERVANTS and SERVICES in Russian. We had a lot of laugh in our office when trying to imagine how all these servants fit into hotel room interior. One of them brings slippers, another opens the door, still another rubs your back with a brush.

Account Not Active

An AdSense account does not exist for this login, as it is associated with an unapproved application. For more information about your application, please review the message we sent to the email address you provided with your application.

Hey, I got this message, guys! I have been using AdSense for almost three years!

Do you want to see the screen?

Sad news, as I never made anything against their TOS, to the best of my knowledge.

Dear Google team,

Today I saw that I cannot login to my AdSense account. As nothing was amiss, and this came absolutely of out a blue, I would like to explain my position.

My name is Alex Radich, and I have been working on a network of sites, blogs, with Google Adsense as an only means of monetization for my sites. We   use AdWords for business with decent budget, Analytics, etc. I have also propagated a Firefox with Google features on my multiple blogs lately, with more than 20 signups only for the last week. I integrated Adsense in my new Personality Development and Russian Jokes sites, too. As I am very persistent, and have been very loyal to Google for years, it is a kind of frustration that I got this kind of treatment. I am sure this is a mistake that can be quickly solved as I have not violated any Google TOS, my sites are full of great content, visited by many people, and of course no click fraud (and I see that I have a pretty low CTR).
Thank you for your cooperation, and I hope to see my Google AdSense back soon.

Best regards,
Alex Radich.

It was quite a frustration from the beginning, when you understand that many things depend on other people’s decision, and I read about Kumiko Cash Quest  about her being banned from AdSense. She explained that she used to take part in some clicking programs, and that could afford for the misfortune. But let me see what occures with me. As far as I read, my case is not final according to the message. I wrote a letter explaining my point.

Let me see what I can lose. At the moment I earn 100-150 USD a month from AdSense, and only from referrals to Firefox I made 25 USD in last week. I think I can make more than that with my 5,000+ page impressions per day in my blog network.

I am pretty sure I can make 3,000 USD a month within one or two years, and it can be any advertizing network, direct sales, affiliates, information selling. I will keep you informed about this entertaining and thrilling story.

When I was a web developer, I created dozens of forms using PHP and JavaScripts. There were a lot of checking items, like name, phone, email. We installed HTTPS for secure transactions with credit card details, too. Every time we came to develop a form, it was a headache, many things to think about. But now with the new era of blogs and accessibility of web publishing, you do not have to think much about it. Let me explain what to do.

The whole deal is to install a plugin from here.

After inslalling the plugin and activating it on your Plugins tab, you go to the Options tab, select Contact Form, and enter your options, like email, and main phrases.

You have two important features:

1) Secret question to prevent spam.

2) Options can be added for qualifying user’s feedback.

After finishing with these options you will have to create a new page and insert a code of %%wpcontactform%% .

That is all. Put a link to this Contact Form on your blog and enjoy real feedback free from spam!

It seems that Technorati takes care when anything goes wrong. I posted Technorati Tricks With Blog Page article recently explaining what was amiss, and now the problem is solved as you can see from the following screen:

And that is the letter itself.

Hello Alex,

Please accept my sincerest apologies for the delay in getting back to
you.  We’ve been experiencing a backlog in support and are working hard
to address everyone.  I’ve taken a look at the issue regarding your blog
not being listed in the Blog Directory.  After making a small
adjustment, I’ve sent our spiders to revisit your page and your blog
should be listed in the Blog Directory successfully from now on.

http://technorati.com/blogs/www.alexradich.com

Everything now appears to be working as it should, but please let us
know if you experience any problems in the future.  Do not hesitate to
contact us if you have any other questions.  We apologize for any
inconvenience.  Thank you for using Technorati!
Best Regards,
Lev Plaves
Customer Support Specialist
Technorati

Today Technorati sent me the following letter:So after more than one week I am back on the index with authority of … about 290! Wow!