Belly picture

Some of you have asked for a belly picture. This one is a little bit older now (from 22 weeks, and it's now 26 weeks)... but it's the only recent one I have. From New Years. I want to make more at some point soon, so when those are done, I'll post some more.

Another Wintery Sunrise

Wintery Berlin

Beautiful sunrise this morning over snow-covered roofs...

Barrel on legs

That's the current nickname for Banjo. After we came back from Russia we discovered that our "little kitten" is not so little anymore. In fact, he is bigger than our "big kitten" in every direction. So we decided that it's DIET TIME!!! Here are two snaps of the fatty grey creature at his favourite pastime:

Spreadn' the Word... with convenience

It's -10 outside. It's cold. Even for me - the siberian one. I'm waiting for a bus this morning... A car pulls up just in front of the bus stop... a window winds down, and a woman (W1) calls out to the nearest "person waiting for the bus", who happens to be a middle-aged woman (W2). W2 approaches the car and W1 hands her some brochures. W1 next calls out to me (as the only other person at the bus stop) - motions me to come up as well. I motion 'no'. So she's starting to drive off and W2 tries to throw the brochures back into the car window. She fails, and proceeds to throw them into the nearest bin. I ask her what the brochures were and she says "something Christian". Ahhh... isn't it nice - to be driving around in your little warm car and spreading the word of God to the cold freezing people out on the streets! I mean seriously!?

1461 days = 35064 hours = 2103840 minutes = 126230400 seconds

All those numbers also equal four years. It's four years today that we've been in Berlin. In a lot of ways a lot has changed since we came here... I think we see the world somewhat differently now. In a lot of ways I am not the same person, who came here on the 24th of January 2006. Perhaps Berlin has made me more introverted and more focused on our little family.

After coming back from Russia this time around I felt at home here - in this city. I guess the same way that I feel at home in Melbourne and in Novosibirsk. It is comfortable, familiar and safe in many ways. I feel at home in our flat. This is a first since the apartment in Russia when I was a child growing up before we immigrated to Australia.

It has been a good four years. 2009 has been the best so far for me. We had a good mix of time travelling and being here. We had some wonderful people come and visit. We found out that we're going to have a baby. The summer was warm and sunny, which always makes us happy.

All in all Berlin has been very kind to us and we're very lucky and grateful to be here how we are.

Stating the obvious

I have a lot of respect for psychologists. As such I wouldn't be studying it, if I didn't. But I do think that some of the research that gets done these days is really unnecessary, because it really does point out simply the very obvious things. Like this article Serious Emotional Disturbances Found Among Children After Katrina. I mean - isn't that really obvious?! To me it's like saying - people who survived the Holocaust had various emotional disturbances afterwards. Isn't it more interesting, and perhaps useful to look at how these can be avoided, or minimised, or what therapy methods work best during crisis situations and thereafter. Simply stating that - yeah, some kids were disturbed after seeing their homes destroyed and dead bodies floating on the streets, doesn't really do much, does it?

The joys of flying Ansett in Siberia

Confused? Don't worry it happens to the best of us. We've recently spent some time in Siberia with Polina's parents and to get there we flew in an Ansett Airlines plane!

It certainly came as quite a shock to me,
after the shock of having a food trolley rolled over my foot and through my knee,
I decided to get up and go pee.
There I did find,
I was on Ansett Airlines!

In a word - do not fly Ural Airlines, no matter how cheep the fairs ;-)

Another funny thing - silly pengiuns in a German shop:

Sorry nothing deep and meaningful today. Hope everyone's well though!
Jack...