Today was the birthday of my dear wife. Firstly, she had a little party at her new work during the lunch time. Then we celebrated it with our closest relatives(all parents) at home. Since we hadn’t had enough time to cook enough, we decided to make an exotic dinner. We ordered delivering of some Japanese national food – sushi from a restaurant. Everybody were delighted with that delicious sea food.

I finally uploaded all interesting photos I made during our May vacations. If you have some free time and you are interested in Krakow, I strongly recommend you to skim through the Krakow, May 2007 photos. Actually, I’ve been adding photo by photo during last week and it turned out to be the largest topic in my gallery. The total number of photos is 245. Enjoy!

http://www.wrigley.com/wrigley/products/products_eclipse.asp
Must chew for every Java programmer! Moreover, the last one on the page is branded in the same colors as Eclipse IDE. I’m eager to taste it.

I did. Despite of nippy evenings, I opened my annual running season this evening. I’ve been doing it for 5 years. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep doing this healthy exercisers more then a month any year. I’m not going to make predictions about this summer, I just started it with hope not to give up as long as I can. I prefer to run accompanied by a friend. But today I was alone, and I made up for it listening to the radio in my mobile phone.
Some statistics:
- route length: 4.2 km
- time: 25 min
- on the Google map: April 5th running
- on the pedometer: route
To draw a path, I used a new feature of Google Maps – My Maps. There you can draw a lines on the Google map, assign captions and save it. Fascinating, but I feel a lack of necessary function – calculating the length of the drawn path. After I spent a few minutes searching the right tool to perform it, I bumped into lots of mashups – sites which combine plain Google maps with additional business logic, like calculating different paths which are generated by GPS devices or entered manually. You can find out what kind of useful functionality could be created using this modern Web 2.0 technique here.
So, to calculate the length of my running route I chose Gmaps Pedometer site. Everything was similar to what I did before on the My Maps service. I chose a check point tool, and marked all corners I passed. The length was summed up automatically.

Thanks to my friend I discovered an interesting site which can guess your character by your birth date. It seems that it works quite reasonable
The results:

Your Birthdate: March 6

You tend to be a the rock in relationships – people depend on you. Thoughtful and caring, you often put others needs first. You aren’t content to help those you know… you want to give to the world. An idealist, you strive for positive change and dream about how much better things could be. Your strength: Your intuition Your weakness: You put yourself last Your power color: Rose Your power symbol: Cloud Your power month: June

Yesterday, we met with my university mates to congratulate our friends with their first child. We went to the Kiev Botanical Garden and spent there a couple of hours. I’d never been there in such an early spring and was amazed by how it was beautiful even not flourishing. There were dozens of young families with children who came there to enjoy a fresh air breeze. Walking across alleys was so tranquil and relaxing, then I almost fell asleep on the way home.

It’s time to get on with summing up everything I missed to write here during March.
About traveling. During a week at the beginning of the month I had a ski vocation with my co-workers and my beloved wife. The brief photo report is here. Besides having fun skiing and teaching my wife to ski, I celebrated there my 24th birthday. My cell phone didn’t work because there weren’t any convenient automatic roaming. Since I was cut off, I’d like to apologize for not receiving your, my dear friends, greeting SMSs.

About culture. When I came back to Kiev, I received an invitation to attend an opening night of the film in which was shoot by my school mate, and good friend. This film has its own page on the lj – S Taburetom do Okeanu (To the ocean with a stool). The film has been shot during the non-profit journey through Eastern countries like Mongolia, China, India (7 countries) of an amateur theater which was performing in different places and for different people. The genre described by authors is a musical-documentary with some humor. I consider this outstanding movie as the most astonishing masterpiece of the year.

About job. I’ve been substituting my team lead, who went to the Java conference provided by TheServerSide for two weeks. Its a great experience, because I’m participating in the project development in a much more extent. I become involved in project planning, team handling and recruiting process. There are more responsibility, but more excitement as well. I experienced being from the other side of the wall – being interviewing somebody else. In other words, I was inspired by this temporary role a lot.

About cuisine. This month I tasted a delicious Ukrainian soup poured into the hollow bread. Eating this soup you don’t need an additional bread, because you are scraping the “bread plate” with your spoon from inside. For a dessert I had a fancy cake served on a plate which was painted with jam and liquid chocolate.

About family. March 23th was our first significant major date in our family life. This day we were celebrating a half a year of our marriage. We went to a Susi bar and ate various sea food. It was quite delicious, but expensive of course. Parents made a present for us – silk decorated bedclothes, and now I feel myself as a Duke:)
About education.
Finally, I managed to visit LSE to get my FCE certificate. Also, I arranged getting an JSDP certificate as my self-development goal at work for the next quarter.

About sport.
Thanks to my friend me and my class-mates from the University went together to the park to roller-skate. I hadn’t skating on my old true Rollerblades for a year, and it was a fantastic happening. In spite of having only three roller-skates, everybody from us tried it on the ground.

About pets.
I bought a cat hair glove, which make cat hair dressing quicker and safer for me. It looks like a worker glove with rubber pins which gather old hair.

Three months ago I started this post, but now there are no any good reason to finish it. I decided to publish a short part of the whole story as it is now, without any completion, because a month ago I received oral (not official yet) results. This draft was annoying me during all this time since I took the exams, and today I release it. Fly away!

begin>>>
This weekend I was taking an FCE exam. You can read a lot about it on the its official site.

Before I took it I had been studying for 2.5 years in the LSE in Kiev. I started from the Pre-Intermediate level and were gradually taking over English till the Upper-Intermediate level. One year more I spent preparing to the FCE.

- What is better School or Tutor(controversial feelings)
- Last year studying was pointless
- Courses at work will help to maintain the current level
- Tasks were tougher than we expected and trained to do in class
- Winter exams are more difficult (general rule or brake in the Summer)
- Most frightened assessment – Speaking (I’ve read a lot before)
- Wasted weekend (slept briefly)

A the first day we had a Reading, Writing and Use of English parts. The most annoying thing was that we had to arrive there at 9 o’clock in the morning to register. During the whole day we were told not to bring our mobile phones in the class. … During the lunch I met this famous person:

end>>>

Today morning I did a 30 minutes Yoga training for beginners. It became boring just to do a morning exercise inventing new body movements. I decided to try a well developed system called Yoga. I bought a book and downloaded some great Yoga video guides for beginners. The book is more about philosophy, and video guide is very good to repeat exercises watching a tutor.

Congratulations to everybody who is fallen in love! I spent this day with my beloved in the Vitamin3 bowling club. Generally I lost, maybe because of consumed beer or what is most probable because of throwing a heavy ball during 1.5 hours. The maximum score was 170 (my wife). Anyway, it was a great fun. In addition to the drive music there was a MC who was trying to involve everybody in celebrating this day.