Aquarium and my favorite fish

Found photos of my recent trip to Turkey, including that of my favorite fish - favorite to look at, of course, I wouldn't like to meet it in the water.

And another photo show tiny creatures we're not used to see... alive. Guess what those are.

Ladies' room sign in one of the Kyiv restaurants

Mildly offensive or humorous?

old and new - old "commercial" district of Kyiv

To the left - building of the high end and modern business center, right in front of you - remnants of "old" city of Kyiv.

abandoned kindergarten building in Kyiv

This abandoned building stands in one of the central districts of Kyiv.

foods

lately I've been sick with flu and had to stay home most of the time. 

I felt so sleepy at times, that had to take showers in the middle of the day so that I won't sleep on my keyboard. 

strangely, cooking also helped to maintain awareness. I've cooked many things, mostly easy-to-do ofc. like roasted chicken, pilau, chilli, fried noodles, omelets... yes, those are easy-to-do in my book, and I love chilli and pilau - not only for flavor, but also because you can leave them be and they'll practically cook themselves. 

this later transformed into a meal: 

I'm a fan of spicy food and in our company I can tolerate the most hot pepper. even though I've been treated (with tablets) for early stages of appendicitis several years ago. figures, my appendicitis doesn't like seeds of strawberries and other such things, but doesn't mind spices. at least not as much as it minds strawberry seeds. 

this photo is just... wrong

don't know about you, but this photo scares me a bit.
it's so unnatural, who would pick it as CD cover?

Turkey, photos

some photos from my vacation:

by the way, I loved their newly-built (well, it was newly-built then ^^) aquarium. I loved walking their underwater tunnel. and their exhibitions were great. as someone interested in marine life from childhood, I was happy to have been there. and maybe I'd return after several years to see new additions to their collections. they also must allow swimming in the pool with sharks by that time :)

this is a beauty, no matter how you look at it:

and... cats.
Turkey and cats.
I can write a long post about it.
in short, in Turkey cats are everywhere and do what they want. they are very clean and well-fed and usually lazy.

[the cat sleeping on the marketplace wares was photographed by my friend, thanks ^^]

something about Turkey

since I had no opportunity to have a vacation this year, I've been going through photos of previous years and found a stash of photos made in Turkey. 

I could have posted some of them here, but not many I think.

anyhow, as someone born in Kiev, and even more so - someone who graduated from school in Kiev, I've been stuffed with prejudice about Turkey. 

well, you know, 'classic' Ukrainian literature is very prejudiced against Turkey, and our 'mutual' history has enough blood spelt, therefore 'relationship' between nations.schoolchildren are bound to swallow is ... rocky. 

there's even a proverb about 'Turks', that tells us that whoever you call a member of Turkish nation must be stupid. generally, it means someone barbaric or unaccustomed to Ukrainian ways. 

just so we'd be clear - it's not my point of view, only the way tings are. Ukrainians were used to make fun of Turkey and its people. 

nowadays, having visited the country and spoken to lots of its inhabitants before and after my visit, I can say that Turkey is much more civilized than Ukraine. they have many reasons to make fun of Ukrainians. and that is the truth.

I won't go into details here, because there're simply too many things to say that illustrate how backwards-thinking we are compared to our neighbors. I'm not even mentioning Europe - Western Europe, to be precise. 

of course, Turkey has its own internal issues. but hell, they have self-respect and pride. they are willing to fight for their freedom and work for their living. they are more open-minded and welcome to strangers than 'customarily hospitable Ukrainians'.

instead of reading stupid old books in school and laughing at silly old jokes, repeating prejudiced statements, I urge everyone to go and see with their own eyes how thing stand now. 

TES

A glimpse into what TES 5 can draw.
Quite appealing, though they say the game itself is just another Oblivion.

Real-life image of Saturn

Real-life image of Saturn

The shot is taken by NASA's Cassini robotic orbiter and was captured from the dark side of Saturn as the Sun's bright rays illuminated every piece of dust and debris circling the planet.

Cool eh?

Original size here

Happy BD me...

As you may know few days ago I turned 25. 

Can't believe it either. Seems that school was just yesterday :P

But this sounds like a rumbling of an old... man. Woman. Whatever. 

I got a nice new photo camera as a gift, but can't really evaluate it yet. Got questions about 'why the quality of photos differs so drastically from day to day?' One day you set it up and it works fine, next day it sux. 

Oh well, I couldn't guess why it was having so much noise on BD party, but then when I looked through the photos at my PC I saw that quality of pictures in general setup was changed from 14Mpix to 5Mpix (who did that?)... that explained something.

Another straightforward thing is that we've got insufficient lighting in the living room. Yes, we know about that... And I hate shooting with flash... 

Anyhow, while we still have 14 days I should test this camera and see whether its lens are ok. Once before I had to exchange a phone bought from rozetka, so another time may also come (though I verified serial with manufacturer).

One pic

You know where it was taken, right?
Was experimenting with zoom at the time.