It was a great day today. Before the May holidays, almost all of our employees took a short vocations and were absent today in the office. Only some of us (real geeks), were working today instead on the next Monday to join it with other days off. The office was empty and silent. I hadn’t seen so productive atmosphere before, and it made me extremely enthusiastic. I’ve done a lot of important refactoring of the core API today. This significant changes had been delayed for a long time, and today I decided to perform it during a day. I thoroughly planned all changes step by step: classes, database, file storage, tests. Of course, I underestimated a necessary time, so I had to work without a lunch and left the office at 9.30pm. But after I committed everything to the SVN, and our Cruisecontrol eventually build it, I overcame with joy.
When I was walking down the Pecherskiy Uzviz street towards an underground station, I met a cute animal. It was a little hedgehog approaching the nearest bushes near the local school yard. I confidently and quickly took out my photo camera from the backpack and
took a picture. It was so sweet

Dear Sir or Madam,
I would like to introduce our cool guys who are willing to work as a Star Team Call Center:

Thanks to the great online image editor which was able to resize this animated gif’s to obtain reasonable file sizes.

This morning I took part in a flash mob for the first time. Spontaneously some of us decided to
dress in caps and headphones. Firstly, one of us sitting at the table and working, dressed is a cap while listening to the music in headphones. I saw him and made the same. The chain reaction was spreading across the office. Actually, it is nice idea to perform something like that once a week on Friday

Only one Sonopia Crewer didn’t understand what’s happening. It was scared and tried to escape

There are several botanical gardens in Kiev. People prefer visiting it when one of many kinds of flowers is blossoming. I know that the most popular are magnolias and lilacs. I’ve seen dozens of times a lilacs flourishing in the Central Botanical Garden. As I remember, it happens in May or little bit later. Families, teenagers, just friends meet there and walk down the long alley between beautiful lilac bushes colored in white, red and pink hues. It smells like grandma’s eau-de-Cologne or scented soap. Everybody touch flowers, take a smell at it, take photos.

Only a week ago, I saw a magnolia for the first time. This month, me and my little one used to going out a lot. We went across all central parks, and were in trouble not having where to go for a stroll. Suddenly, we recollected that we hadn’t been to Botanical Garden near Kiev Metro station “Universytet” for a year. Once we entered it, I noticed beautiful trees which were blossoming. It was magnolias. For some reason, I always thought that magnolia is a kind of flowers which is growing in the flowerpot, and should be small like tulip or even orchid. I was amazed that it was great and beautiful trees. If you have an opportunity to visit this place right now, do it without any hesitation.

This morning every programmer at Sonopia got a bunch of fruits on the table. This tradition started some weeks ago, and sounds like a great idea It’s healthy and natural. Of course we can go to the shop and buy it for ourselves, but as usually there are crowds of people at the shop in the lunch time. Organized fruits delivery to the office is much more handy. And if you buy fruits after the lunch, usually your stomach is full and you don’t want anymore. But eating it before the lunch definitely decreases your consumption desire.

Just now I got office where I’m working. I have spent all the morning standing in the queue to the Polish Embassy to apply for a visa. I’d like to write about it, because I feel strong desire to do it right now.
My wife and me decided to have a short break from work and spend a week in Krakow, Poland. We haven’t been there before, but we like such ancient cities with lots of cosy places and architecture masterpieces. Till this morning we had gathered all necessary documents including hotel reservation letter, insurance, photos and application forms. The only problem was that we printed the application forms in incorrect way. Yesterday evening we were filling out the forms, and figured out that we printed each page on the separate sheet. As we don’t have at home neither laser printer nor a xerox, we broke into Ivanka’s office at 7.40 and made there 6(for an emergency purpose) photocopies. The office security was interested in what we were doing, but we pretended that it was conspiracy theory. Then, we swiftly moving through old crooked ways got to the Embassy.

As we reaching the Embassy we were astounded by the number of people standing in the queue. There was a large crowd of people who were standing or walking along the street waiting for the open hours. Fortunately, there are two Embassies which are situated one near another. Another one is a Czech Republic Embassy. Therefore, only part of all people were standing in the right queue. At that time, near 8 o’clock, in the line were standing approximately 30 person. It’s not too many if the Embassy staff works fine. But this day, something was broken in the well tuned mechanism. It was expected that we would pass all procedures till 10 o’clock, but I had to wait until 1 p.m.
Ivanka had to go to work, so after she filled in the application form she left me. I was accompanied by few students who are planning to visit Poland by AEGEE program and a professional truck driver. We were socializing, mainly about Poland and Europe sharing our own experience. It was quite interesting and funny. But queue was moving extremely slowly which disappointed and irritated us. They started to let people in at 9 o’clock and processing around 5 person per hour from our line. The trick was in other entrance, or rather, another stairs. From that side were hanging
cute blonds from the tourist agencies with bunches of applications and well-connected people who trying to avoid standing in the public line. But what is worse, there are lots of swindler near the Embassy who always tries to insert another folk into the beginning. Some of their dummy people, usually old grannies or other loafers who want to earn some money, are standing all the time in the queue pretending that they are reserve place in the line for somebody else. When a swindler found anybody from real Poland visitors who don’t to waste time, and starting from 10$ you get the warm place in the queue instead of any idler who is near the head of the line. Everybody in the line knows what is happening, but only some of them are ready to argue and
to save time for honest people in the line. Another bad thing is that, the moneymaker violate even their rule and try to insert 3,4,5 people instead of one dummy person. It is so offensive to all people to behave like that. It seemed, that the Embassy security definitely knows about that cheaters, but for some reasons don’t pay any attentions on that. I’m not going to speculate on the supposing of any connection between the security and that guys, but I would estimate the behavior of the security as inappropriate towards people in a line. The security guys I’m talking about are Ukrainian soldiers. On the other hand, the Polish man from the security was extremely polite and cheerful. The office workers were excellent too without any complaints.
I can understand travelers who are not from Kiev and have only one day to get the visa. But what is more surprising, all that people don’t pay money to that guys, and exemplary stands in a row. Especially honest poor workers, who have to go abroad to earn some money for their families. There are lots of polite and high moral person. But between that who violates the queue rules always occurs very rude, offensive and bad-mannered individuals. They illegally pays money, push aside everybody, have an argument and irritate everybody. And what’s more important - they waste OUR time. In this simple game that businessman are earning money, that “smart” guy saves his/her time, and we, who came there at 8 o’clock, have to waste OUR time and loose temper. After seeing that, I’m not very surprised when Ukrainians are not welcomed to Europe. We have to learn how to behave in posh, unobjectionable way. Especially in public queues. I think that it is a litmus paper of any society.

If I could suggest to the Ambassador, I would definitely give him some advices how to improve that system. It is obvious that there are people who need an urgent appointment, why don’t improve the system allowing them to apply for money? It would be an organized process which could be managed not by street dealers. Or considering a huge flow of the people between Ukraine and Poland make more available rooms which receives documents.

Now, I’m trying to relax by eating a chocolate and drinking tea.

Some useful advices who wants Poland visa:
- you can apply for your wife/husband, your surnames have to be the same;
- write correct address of the hotel, and enclose a reservation letter;
- photo has to be with VERY large face, > 80%, they scan it;
- don’t panic

I like skiing and almost every year spend a week skiing. Unfortunately this year there are lack of snow and warm weather. And I have never been to any ski resort except of Slavsko in Carpathian mountains. So I decided to visit Slovakian Tatry.
A month ago I was encouraged by my friends who had already spent there their winter holidays and had appropriate experience to go there. I started preparing a two weeks ago, it means a month before approximate departure date (March 3rd). This period of time is quite enough if everything are done quickly.

Firstly, I asked all my friends who went there about what activity have to be done before trip and how and where to get an necessary information. When I knew all the basic information I made a brief plan I would stick to. I tried to repeat all successful steps described by my friends and on the skier’s forums and blogs. Originally I wanted to go with my wife and some of my class mates. But at the middle of his campaign I was joined by my co-workers, so we became a group of 9 young persons.
Therefore, my survival guide to somebody who plans to go to Slovakia:

Choosing a resort

You have to decide here are you going to ski. There are two major options: Nizky Tatry(Low Tatras) and Visoky Tatry (High Tatras). As I understood the first one is more developed and beloved by tourists. Since all my friends were only in Jasna resort which is situated in the Low Tatras I decided to go there too. One of the best resource dedicated to this place is basically its official site jasna.sk.

Accommodation place

As a result of high prices (~40eu / per night) in hotels which are mostly situated near the lifts, I started to look for a private cottage somewhere near Jasna. The main goal was to find an appropriate house with capacity for 9 people. The most large town nearby is Liptovsky Mikulas. All private houses are located in the villages near the road to the Jasna from Mikulas. It is very reasonable, because tourists have to catch the bus to get to the nearest lift. As a rule every cottage has a multilingual personal home page, where you can find an information about house capacity, provided facilities, location and prices. It seems that these sites are developed by the same company from the standard templates. Nevertheless, they have the main information you need - host or manager full contacts, including e-mail and phone. Also, there are dozens of listings of such home pages with search by region. To start from, I can recommend this resources:

• http://www.liptov.sk/ubytko.html
• http://www.slovakia-accommodation.net/jasna-demanovska-dolina-region/cottage-hotel-pension-spa/

It is useful to look at the map of this region. Fortunately, almost every cottage has a map on its site with a spot on it. My friends were staying here. It was the first site I visited, and despite of the fact that the cottage was fully reserved, I often visited it to look at the map of the Demanovska Valley region and to estimate how long it would take to get to the Jasna or bus station if I stayed in Bodice, Pavcina Lehota or another village.

Booking an accommodation

I wrote about 20 e-mails to the hosts of the cottages I liked to stay. Almost everyone ere the same- 2/3 floor cottages, with two-bed and three bed rooms. Usually there are kitchen with some utensils (kettle, microwave oven, fridge) which you can use to prepare light breakfast (muesli, cereal and another snacks). One or two showers and toilets in addition. Some of the landlords answered that the requested apartments had been already booked. Whereas, many didn’t answered at all or answered with huge delay. But considering the amount of letters being sent, eventually I got a message that Chata Jasna is available for this period of time. I started active conversation via e-mail about booking this apartment. To be sure that I would book it, I had to pay a deposit of about 30%. After payment I needed to get an invitation letter from the landlady to bring it to the Slovakia Embassy. The invitation letter is a simple fax where the host states that we are really going to stay at his/her house for given period of time. The Embassy checks this information to be sure that we are not illegal immigrants, but rather tourists who just wants to spent their time on a ski resort. The major problem in e-mailing with the landlords is the very rare (from office man point of view) e-mail box fetching. They usually have an ordinary work which is not related to being at home (nurse, driver, teacher, etc), so they usually check their mail only once a day - at night. Suppose you want to ask something and you send an e-mail. The answer could be delivered only tomorrow’s night. As a result of our hurry (we needed a fax with invitation letter), I phoned there using Skype. Actually, it was my first experience of making an international call. Furthermore, I phoned directly on the mobile phone. It costs to phone there about 0.20 euro, what is quite affordable. I reassured her (landlady) that we are going to book that cottage once more, and agreed about deposit payment way. I strongly suggested that Western Union would be the most appropriate way because of time restrictions and simple way of getting money from the bank. After I successfully transferred the deposit money and it was withdrawn by the landlady, the fax with invitation for our gang was received at my work office.

Traveling

The nearest city to Slovakia border is Uzgorod. Being aware of huge rush on tickets to Carpathian region of Ukraine, I wisely bought all 9 return tickets in advance.
When I were sure that I would have where to stay, I started fining a transfer. Translating from the tourist language it means that somebody have to deliver you from your last place where you get off from the public transport (in our case - train Kiev - Uzgorod) to the resort. Usually it is a bus with lace for ski equipment and with capacity for 12-18 skiers/snowboarders. And I needed to find such a bus private entrepreneur who would agree to get us from Uzgorod (Ukraine) to Jasna(Slovakia) and back. I

Visa

Visa we got without any problems because all our documents were all right. In or invitation as clearly stated contacts on the cottage owner and everybody had already been abroad and had marks in foreign passport. For Slovakia Embassy these two facts matter quite a lot.

Ski Equipment

I have got a ski equipment, so I just packed it. Also, this week I bought a mask - CARRERA CONAN/N. It seems to be quite simple and reliable. My sweet wife is going to rent a full ski equipment set directly at the resort for 10 euros per day. Also we hope on the big discounts for our ISIC’s

For the last two weeks I’ve been listening primarily to an amazing Georgian jazz singer Nino Katamadze. Her performances are just exciting. The music is mix of the classic jazz with ethno-music style. Listening to the clear deep mellow voice is a real pleasure (like a mug of Guiness beer in the Friday’s evening ). Also she improvises very inventive and non-trivial. You can listen to her singing at the official web-site.

This year we followed a tradition of the last two years to celebrate New Year with our close friends at home of one of us having a cocktail party. Usually, I choose drinks for a party because I do the drinks mixing job. This year we had four main ingredients which were mixed with soda water, juice, ice and ice-cream:

• Seagram’s Lime Twisted Gin
• Vana Tallin Cream Liqueur
• Baileys Irish Cream
• Curacao Bleu

I prepared all drinks guessing proportions without exact recipes. Everything was quite good and we had lots of fun that night. But if I had known about this great resource drinksmixer.com/ I would have definitely used it.

Happy New Year and Marry Christmas!

My blog has been commented by outside visitor. Actually he is my friend, but he has discovered my “secret” blog by himself. Now I feel that I’ve got a one seldom visiting reader. This feelings are very encouraging, and I’ll try to write little bit more not to disappoint him By now, I can state that my audience is growing smoothly!