Personal Development Blog

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.

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.

This is basically a part of my blog net ambitious project of 20 active blogs being commenced and supported by the end of 2007. I have started 4 third-level domains with blogs on www.alexradich.com . I do not register dot com names as I consider these test projects, and as soon as some of them show more success and interest from readers, I will buy corresponding domain.

You know it is sometimes difficult to keep track of many domains, and there are people who will steal your domain as soon as it expires. I read an article about this dirty domain business, even wrote a little article about that in Russian, and this week my friend announced that one of our business domains, http://www.eastongroup.net/ , has been stolen and now it hosts an MFA site. So, guys, this is real, real threat. You have to be careful.

And now about my project, Russian Jokes . To tell you the truth, I am anecdote fan, I enjoy witty sayings, proverbs, and whenever there is some festivity, I tell lots of anecdotes to entertain my coworkers. I consider Russian humor to be very creative and worth distributing to the world. So I start here with Russian Jokes .

 The blog starts with my favorite Conan Doyle series of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. For us, citizens of former Soviet Union, Sherlock Holmes means actor Vasiliy Livanov with his outstanding voice and great charisma. Here is a picture of Livanov in a role of Sherlock Holmes.

I would like to write down my technics at remembering digits. I use my memory to keep 100+ phone numbers, and my colleagues frequently use me as a phone book. Many years ago as I read a lot of Sanskrit books on Vedic wisdom, I memorized Sanskrit shlokas. It is a challenge to a mind, and I learned by heart more than 500 of them.

Now I want to share my technics of remembering numbers. To experiment, I took my cell phone and wrote down 7 numbers of my contacts starting from ‘A’ letter that I did not know before. Here they are:

• 8-050-334-15-21
• 8-096-726-56-53
• 8-044-536-11-58
• 8-044-406-72-25
• 8-067-403-85-20
• 8-067-460-28-39
• 8-050-632-83-25

I took my watch, and after exactly 12 minutes I wrote those numbers on a separate paper. This time I already wrote them down without reference to the paper or cell phone.

As it may be not so impressing for people who remember 100-200-500 digits of a time (having phenomenal memory - the joke goes at the end of this article), nevertheless most of my friends refer to my ability as outstanding. So let me reveal some secrets and technics.

First Number

Let us start with the first number. It is UMC cell phone operator number starting from (050) code. The key digit here is ‘3′. It begins like this 3, another 3, then a little more - 4. So we have 3-3-(and up)4. Then we need to memorize two more numbers - 15 and 21. These numbers are 3 multiplied by 5 and 3 multiplied by 7. So we go again with the same digit ‘3′ but multiplying it by next simple numbers - 5 and 7. Thus, in my mind the sequence looks like:

‘3′ number from UMC - 3 and 3 and (3+1) then (3*5) then (3*7). First adding 1, then multiplying by next simple numbers 5 and 7.  So 8-050-334-15-21.

Second Number

(096) seems like a new Kyivstar number. They have 067 and 097, and possibly 096, so let us think that this is a little less than (097).

The logics for this number is not straightforward (maybe I could find with a larger time span). But let us think that the key digit is ‘7′, secondary digit is ‘3′. Thus starts the number. After that we have 26. So we take the secondary digit, ‘3′, and raise it to the third power, 3*3*3 = 27. But we remember that initial operator code is a little less than common (097-1=096). So we make it the same (27-1 = 26). Then we start playing with the secondary digit again, at first adding it to the first digit of 26, 2 and 6, (2+3=5) and 6, and at second substracting it from the second digit of the second number… Let me demonsrate you how this appears in my mind:

New Kyivstar Number Primary ‘7′ Secondary ‘3′ 

First part - (097 - 1) 7 (3*3*3 - 1)  making (096) 7 (26)

Second part - (26) is transformed to (56) by adding 3 to the first digit of 26

Third part - (56) is transformed to (53) by substracting 3 from the second digit of 56.

So the number goes 8-096-726-56-53.

Third Number

Easy - Kiev city number - (044). First we have 536 - this number is the same as our office mobile unlimited number. Then we have 11 - two digits of ‘1′, Then we take 36 (last digits of 536) and add 11 two times. 36+11+11 = 58.

Thus we have a very simple Kiev number 536 - 11 - 58. The keys here are ’same as our office number, and 11 two times’.

So the number is 8-044-536-11-58.

Fourth Number

This is again Kiev city number with (044) code. Then we have a rising 2*2 and 2*3 number with ‘0′ in between. Then we have a mountain and cavity digit chain of simple numbers 7 and 5 (descending) with two ‘2′ in between. So we remember 7 (22) 5, down.

So we start with upwards 2 multiplied by 2 and 3 succession with ‘0′ in between, and then 7(22)5 - downwards simple numbers with two ‘2′.

The keys for this Kiev number is 2 increasing, and simple numbers 7 and 5 decreasing, with 0 and 2 in between.

So the number is 8-044-406-72-25.

Fifth Number

This is a Kyivstar number (067), followed by a familiar sequence 403, thus start our another office phone (also Kyivstar), then we have slightly modified Pareto numbers. 80-20 transforms to 85-20 making 105 percent. So we take that 85 percent of useless activity result in 20 percent of income.

So the key for this Kyivstar number is Office phone and Pareto numbers with 5 up for low-effectiveness activity.

So the number is 8-067-403-85-20.

Sixth Number

Kyivstar (067), then goes (2*2), (2*3) and 0.  We already had 406, now we have 460.

Then we take a 3 cubed plus 1, making 28, and add 11 (we already had this number). Thus 39.

There is another way to remember (I have just seen this). 6 and 3 and 2, then 2, then 2 in the 3rd power, then 3, then 3 in the 2nd power.

So - (2*2) -(2*3) - 0 - 2 - (2 in the 3rd power) - 3 - (3 in the 2nd power). The key is Kyivstar with keys ‘2′ and ‘3′ , then 0, then keys in the opposing powers.

So the number is 8-067-460-28-39.

Seventh Number

The UMC number (050). Then we have 6 (3*2) broken into parts 3 and 2. Then we go again to a slightly modified Pareto numbers. They are 83 and 25. The total is 108, a powerful sacred Indian auspicious number. This sequence is similar to what we had with 5th number.

So the keys are UMC number, 6 broken into parts, descending, Pareto numbers with total 108, the last being 5 in the power of 2 (5*5 = 25).

So the number is 8-050-632-83-25.

Of course my explanation can appear far-fetched and difficult to grasp, but that works perfectly well with me. So I suggest following:

- when you hear or read a new number, think about whether you will need it often in the future. Are there any chance that you will utterly need it. Is it worth remembering?

- use images for numbers, or music. It can be the sea, city, forest;

- try to find logic in every number. Some numbers are golden, they are sold for 30-100-1000 USD, and many users of cell phones choose their number, so if they found logic, it should be on the surface. If you are experiences, you can find logic in every number;

- find similarities of numbers to other numbers that you already know;

- percept number as a whole, not as a mere sequence of digits.

Conclusion

I had a friend who assigned each number to a musical note, so he had a tune for each phone number. I prefer little mathematics with multiplying, simple numbers, powers, adding and substracting, up and down. In my head this is like an entity with certain characteristics. Although I can occasionally forget this or that number, they are easily remembered again after refreshing once in a few months. And now goes a joke.

In the circus master of ceremonies announces ”a boy with phenomenal memory”. Then a boy appears and starts to pee on the spectators from the first row. After that he disappears. The audience is puzzled. After a few more performances this boy is announced again. Spectators from the first row start to flee to other, safer places. The master of ceremonies announces “There is no use in sitting in a different place. I announce again. The boy really has a phenomenal memory!”. :-)

Gmail  Paper is a new Google project aimed at those who are bored sitting in front of a monitor staring at blicking screen. If you prefer reading paper mail only, just register at Google Paper, and they will send you your email properly printed on fine paper.

 Do they do it for free? Yes, because the opposite side of a sheet is used for contextual ads printed in 36 pt san-serif. If you have picture attachments, they will print them on photo paper, do not worry! No MP3 printouts, though, sorry.

http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/more.html

This news is no more than a witty Fool Day’s joke by Google. I had fun, and you?