Tuesday, January 13, 2009

7 things

I am flattered to be chained by Theo Schlossnagle by "7 things" tag. I hope these things will be interesting to know about me
  1. I used to be winter swimmer, ("морж" ,literally walrus in Russian). It was almost accident I started, - I had a skies walk with my friend in the winter forest. I did not know he was a winter swimmer until we get to the lake and he invited me to join him into the water, opened for swimmers in the ice.
  2. I liked to learn chemistry and had a lab in my home. Some of accidents I remember - once one of our neighbors was sitting and talking with my mother too long. I did not like her and decided to smoke her out. I quickly produced hydrogen sulphide. She run away quickly, but then we faced these awful smell in our home. I tried to precipitate it by releasing into the air a good portion of ammonia. I did not know these two chemicals precipitate each other only in solution.
  3. Another accident was thermit firework I did for my mothers birthday. Luckily it burned out only one hard wood stool. All other things were in reparable condition after this firework.
  4. I liked winter ski camping trips in the northern mountains, to the North from the forest boundaries. The most comfortable camp there is the caves in the snow hills, it takes about an hour for 3 men to dig a spacious cave for them to live in. Once we did such a cave about 5 meters up to the hill from the bottom of narrow valley, and during the night there was 8 meters of snow accumulation there. I realized something is going wrong because our primus stove consumed almost all oxygen from the air in the cave and the air became sour when primus went out. My friend Alexander Telpov saved our lives, he pierced the hole to the surface by ice-axe.
  5. I used to fast for the health since being a student at the college. Fasting was so popular hobby among the students, even dean office issued the warning to prohibit it. My longest period of fasting with just water was 31 days in the raw.
  6. I have studied and received official permit as a shoichet, - to kill chickens according to Jewish rules of kashrut. This means the bird should not feel pain or fear until it's last moment. I can't do it now, because I did not practiced many years, while Jewish law required to practice to sharpen the knife daily. And I think shoichet can't be vegetarian as I am.
  7. From age 12 to 15 I have spent 2 evenings each week trying to learn to play chess in boyscout chess section (in Kharkov center for youth and children creativity). I learned rules, notation, chess literature, but was not able to learn to win. And after 3 years I've got a very important lesson from this: there are things I'm not gifted to master.

I am supposed to tag seven people with blogs, but instead I'm tagging people without blogs, in hope they will start blogging. They are:

And the rules:

  • Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
  • Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
  • Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
  • Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

No comments:

Post a Comment