creepers!?

so... weird thing happened
after going food-shopping I was putting in the combination to open the outer door to the house (it leads to this hallway-staircasey type area where you need the key to get into the individual apartments.. well you get the idea...) but yeah; I was putting in the combination and I saw a flash. A camera flash, like someone was behind me.

I know for a fact that this isn't paranoia, since my dad saw it too. My dad then checked upstairs, but all he found was that the window was open. So... WTF? The picture was obviously not taken so that they could get the combination, since the frigging window was open. If it was for hogosh,-pretty-girl-let's-take-a-picture-of-her reasons then why from the back? My dad thinks it's because I got into МФТИ... meaning... creeper paparazzi??? Dunno how plausible that is... but yeah...

Someone went through a lot of trouble to take a creeper pic. That much is certain.

Magic Pot

Yeah. Magic Pot. I have it.

And I'm not talking about - that... I mean, I litteraly have a magical pot; a tea pot, to be precise. (What else could it be?) It is a small tea pot, made for 2 cups of tea, and it makes the tea magical. this is how we found out it's magical properties: we bough tea and it was AWESOME! It was just your generic blend of black teas flavored with some bergamot, but it tastes extremely yummy, and even a little bit like there's lemon in it. it's an epic cup of tea <3.>The Question: What could affect the brewage of tea?

Theory #1: Peak Temperature
the peak temperature could be different. The glass tea pot hold a higher temp, so it could denature some of the awesomeness of the tea. Plausible, but since tea doesn't have proteins in it idk what could denature...
Theory #2: Cooling Rates
The kettles let the tea cool at different rates, so weird stuff happens inside. Weird stuff is... weird...
Theory #3: Surface Area
We filled the little kettle up to the very top, but filled the large one only 1/3, so the large one gives the tea a much larger surface area to interact with the air. Weird stuff could happen that is both temperature and chamistry related.
Theory #4: Magic
The small kettle is simply magical, so it makes awesome tea infused with awesomeness, so that you can never get enough of the stuff.

I personally think it's Magic.

(and yes I'm a tea-snob/ tea-crazy/tea-fanatic/etc.)

Tea is nom-land. And I like being in nom-land :D

pain and agony

Ugly old ladies are overly fond of transparent clothes.

So there's this saying: Moscow has everything, you just have to cough up the money. which is very true, considering that you can really get anything you can think of in this city. However, the first part (and oh dear god probably also the second) I want to focus in a little more coupled with the understanding that, as Einstein once said,

Only 2 things are infinite: the universe, and human stupidity (though he wasn't so sure about the first one.)

~~~

Well, as you can probably guess by now, when in Moscow your eyes will periodically be burned by the sight of some 46-year-old-blubber-woman in a lace top. And by lace top I mean ONLY LACE. Meaning you can see EVERYTHING (thank goodness these people usually wear bras... oh, the horror if it were otherwise...) This display of... I don't even know what to call this... on their part, prompts me to ask: Do they really think it looks anything even remotely related to 'good'? I, for one have NO IDEA why anyone would ever do such a thing, but I hope that maybe some day they will grow a brain and start wearing camisoles under transparent clothing. No matter how fit you are, or how good looking, unless you're on a beach and it's over 25C no sane person will approve of that

(on a horrible, terrible side note:
I've seen old men do this too... can someone come save me and my eyes before we burn to death?)

how I got into college

This is the beginning of a very long story (believe me it really is a VERY long one.) So, way way back in the beginning of senior year, I applied to QuestBridge, this thing that lets you apply to universities for free, and gives you money if you get in, which (obviously) is great. I wrote 5 essays, filled out countless pages of various information and pestered many teachers for recommendations.
Result: got the QuestBridge scholarship, but didn't get into any of the schools.
Meaning: waste of time.

A few months later, I went onto our dearest friend: CommonApp, just like everyone else, and applied to 7 Universities, which included writing about 7 essays (about one per) and countless short answer forms, etc. you know the deal. then there were, of course 2 colleges that hate their students, and won't use CommonApp: PSU & Schreyers. So that adds another 3 (really hard, since you usually can't recycle things) essays to the tally.
Result: I only got into PSU.
Meaning: HUGE-ASS waste of time!!!

A few months after that ordeal, I found out we're going to Russia
Meaning: WHY THE HELL DID I DO ALL THAT WORK?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

And, of course, once in Russia I have to apply to the university there.
good news: no essays
bad news: lots of running around

here's the story:

We went to the university, which is pretty close to our house (1.5 hours by metro & local train thinghy), and there we went to the Dean's office, but he wasn't there, instead his replacement (a guy with a rather disturbing mustache) took us to talk to the Secretary of the Admissions Committee, and we talked, for quite a while. Turned out that I'm essentially an outlaw, as in - I'm outside of the law, as in they have no idea what to do with a Russian citizen who graduated in the US. For Russians to be admitted they need to have really good ЕГЭ (the Russian equivalent of the SATs) results in Math & Physics, but I obviously don't have that.
Anyways... after that we went around and talked to 4-5 of my dad's various friends who are still at the institute and went home with the promise that if we call on the 20th we will have an answer as to whether or not they will allow me to apply. Great...
We call on the 20, and the secretary man tells us the decision will be made on the committee meeting on the 21st since I'm particularly weird. OK.
We go there on the 21, wait for the comittee meeting to end (it should have supposedly been at 12pm, but ended up being somewhere around 1:30.) We talk to person #1, they say they didn't talk about it. Then go to person #2, they don't know anything either. Person #3 - bla bla bla. You get the idea.
In the end, they figured it out: my SATs & ACTs become the ЕГЭ for math & physics with a score of 95, which is ABSURDLY good (and by absurdly I mean 85 is already OMG-YOU'RE-A-GENIOUS-level), and I'll have to take a test on Russian language for the Russian-language-ЕГЭ. Have I ever mentioned that i can't actually write Russian, I forget letters when I do, and they expect me to take a TEST on it??? Really people, it's not that funny of a joke. But no. They were Actually serious... great... just great... oh yeah, and the punch line: the test was the day after tomorrow at 10 am. peachy...
Well, we went and bought 3 books on Russian grammar and I completely finished one of them in a day. That was the most fun I've ever had... except not. I'm pretty sure I was sleeping half the time...
get up at 7 leave at 8 arrive at the institute at 10, take the exam, wait till 12. a miracle occurs: I get a 69%... WHAT????? How in the world did I not completely fail that? I blame the good-luck charm Liz gave me...
Next step(happened today btw.): something they call собеседованя (sobesedovanya), which is a kind of interview type thing. The interviewers are the Dean of the faculty you're applying to, and various other hellishly important people. They can ask you pretty much anything they feel like, and they have however much time they need to do it. So basically... I'm DOOMED!
I dug out all AP books I could find and read through ALL of them. My dad and I went through all possible questions we could think of etc. etc. etc.
So today we get up at 7, leave at 8 arrive at 10 (it's really bothersome... although it's so 'close'). And we're called in one by one to talk to the peoples. For whatever gosh darn idiotic reason they put 3 faculties into the same auditorium. First up was ФУПМ (it's something mathy, I believe...) and first up they read a list of those people who have absolutely no chance of getting in whatsoever and ask them to leave... peachy...
Since no one left, it seemed that those people hadn't even bothered showing up... peachyER...
Well we all wait for about one and a half hours for those people (including a girl who looked like a 30 year old) to pass the committee. Then: HALELUYA! The other two faculties are split and each gets their own room. We assemble in front of our door that was proclaimed to be room 112, but was actually room 113, joined by a guy who looked like he should be in his mid-life-crisis (he was starting to go bald... poor boy). First person called: wasn’t present/ second person called: ME! Yay! No more standing!!!
I walk in, see that I know each one of those old guys present (which is kinda sad if you think about it for more than half a second.) The conversation lasted about 30 seconds, and consisted mainly of the dean saying this: "We all know about your case. There's nothing really left to talk about. You're in."

And that's the long long story of how I got into college. (Oh yeah, and it's MIPT btw, or МФТИ if you prefer... WHICH IS EPIC!)

So True

IM is really the loneliest way of communicating. It eats your soul. You can't see each other. You can't touch each other. You can't hear the other person's tone: Not the joy in their laugh, not the gentleness in their voice, nothing. I mean it's pretty much the best we've got nowadays, and it isn't so bad when you know you'll see whoever in a few hours, or days. But it's when that's not the case that you realize this: IM-ing makes you feel a little sad and a little lonely.

dreams part 1 & 2

I think, if you have the same dream thrice within 15 minutes, your subconscious is trying to tell you something. You see I've been dreaming a lot recently. I've had countless dreams involving people I know back in SC - one of them involving Steve, Roone, and a red remote controlled car in a tunnel - anyways: this one particular dream I meant was one about my goodbye party. I had to register it online, and so I went to the computer, to open the party registration page. that page asked me whether there will be older men and younger girls at the festivity. And since I wanted to invite Henry (I have no idea who that is, but his name was Henry, and I believe he was analogous to the aforementioned Steve, since he was the oldest, I believe, at my farewell party, but that's just me guessing) and Henry was in his mid 20s, and there would be Allie, who, in the dream, was 15/16. So, I said yes to that particular qestion. Well, I click finish, and they fine me $200 for "being a pervert." Peachy. Just peachy. and that same dream repeated itself twice more. The odd part though was that the repetition got me so confused that I actually believed that I owed $200 for perversion...
Thanks Henry...

------~~~------

That which we don't know fascinates and enchants us: Like a flower cut just before it blossomed captures our immagination, it is that which didn't come to pass haunts our memories forever.

------~~~------

It's a truth. Humanity will always search for answers to questions, we'll always seek to explain things around us, simply because of our fascination with the unknown. but what does this have anything to do with dreams? Deams in their purest form are the embodiment of our desires, fears, and obsessions. Yet at the same time, we don't understand them, we don't understand ourselves.
Last evening, sitting on my bed, I realized something: in that moment something broke; a door closed; As much as I would want to, I will not dream about SC anymore. And that night I didn't.

SC feels more and more like a distant dream, a fantasy, too good to be true. It's like I'm in a different world now, one that has nothing to do with everyone I left behind. I guess this is where my new beginning truly starts...

So it begins

So it begins. Or rather so it began, since the beginning is a while back now. After just barely making it to our first flight across the Atlantic, which was then filled with many uncomfortable seats (224 of them), small children screaming, and a cat going ballistic (you know you would too if someone suddenly put a tight thinghy around your neck, stuck you in a small bag, that kept wriggling around, and put you in a weird place that stinks, is hot, and dry.) and to top it all off, my so-called window seat was more of a the-seat-behind-you-has-a-window-seat-fyi-we-hate-your-guts seat.
Anyways I believe my broken internal clock completely lost its last working detail rendering it completely and utterly useless somewhere around the western coast of the British isles. Which brings me to my first idiot. The security guy at the Düsseldorf airport. He tried to take my stark-raving-mad-cat out of her bag. Bad idea. The only way to appease a stark-raving-mad-paranoid-11-month-old-pms-ing-cat is tuna. And he did NOT have tuna. Ergo: BAD IDEA! He got to bleed for his mistake. kitteh scratched his hand. Tee hee. Well I'm sure you're happy to know that I did have tuna, so we appeased the creature once well out of the way of any and all disturbances.

Once on the second plane I was naturally dead. It was bright outside, yet somehow, it was also supposed to be 1 am in my world. Weirdness of the brain ensues which ends ultimately in me sleeping in the uncomfortable seat. I was just happy that I wasn't my dad, who had to deal with a rather large man sitting next to his left… he had trouble fitting in the seat. But that's not all: it turns out the man was a Jehovah's Witness, and better yet: returning from an international conference… wait. Back up. An international conference for Jehovah's Witnesses??? What the heck? Oh yeah, and did I forget to mention that they're illegal in Germany, where that conference was held? Remember that weirdness of the brain I mentioned earlier? I'm pretty sure I was not the worst case on that plane… (points to Jehovah's Witness.)