Are you counting?

This was originally just meant just for a FaceBook rambling (posted August 22) to get some thoughts out of my head. However, it is apparent that it is more than that. So, I decided to share it here as well. 

I purchased a new watch that uses mechanical movement, instead of the typical quartz movement. Of course, this requires me to wind the watch each morning. Two days ago, the second day of having to do this as part of my daily routine, I became painfully aware of the limited time I have in a day. It was as if, each morning, I place a deposit in the time bank as I wind my watch. The same as when we start counting money, or anything else of value, I realized how quickly this deposit runs out.

So, every morning, I turn the crown of my watch and deposit my time for the day. The first day I was allowed 12 turns before my account was full. Yesterday, I had 15 turns. Today, I only have 13. Every day, I deposit turns, or opportunities, into my time account. These opportunities are incredibly limited. Now, my days consist of 12-15 small twists on the crown of my watch. That’s all I get each day! Once I realized this, it made me think of how I use these opportunities. I have a finite amount of turns to do something different in an effort to improve myself or my surroundings. How I will use those turns is unclear to me now. But, what I finally recognize is, just like all things that are taken for granted; I have been wasting my turns for far too long.

Yesterday was my first day of tracking these turns. 15 opportunities to do something differently than I usually do. I made sure not to count simple things that are normal or usual, such as holding a door for someone. Although this is exceedingly rare in this environment, I don’t count this. To me, this common courtesy should be part of my everyday life, regardless of the environment I live in. If I cannot live up to a simple moral code, which includes treating other living things with love and respect, I have no hope in using my daily turns to improve my existence.

Maximizing my time deposits is not changing the world. I take an extra five seconds to give Danielle a proper hug and kiss good-bye, instead of rushing out the door yelling, “Bye, love you”. I took the stairs to my fifth floor office, instead of using the lift. I chose fruit instead of ice cream at lunch. I’m not moving mountains here. However, now that I am conscious of my limited opportunities, I find that I am increasingly aware of my actions. If I get angry about something, this new awareness forces me to think about how my actions affect my daily deposit. Does this reaction maximize my opportunities? Even though some of my efforts don’t “count”, as I expect they should be a normal part of my life, the mere consciousness of my actions has changed my experience so far.

I bought a watch. I never knew that a simple purchase rooted in fashion, vanity, pride and nostalgia would have caused such a paradigm shift in my daily thinking. Each day I have limited turns. Just as before, I won’t cure cancer, house the homeless or feed the hungry. I probably won’t even succeed at making each turn “count”. However, the simple fact that I am cognizant of my actions and of the time quickly slipping away has changed me. Time even ticks away faster with a mechanical watch versus a quartz watch. In a mechanical watch the second hand ticks away in a sweeping motion; similar to the watch on the opening segment of the TV show 60 Minutes. Tick tick tick tick tick tick. A quarts movement watch’s second hand moves in small increments, with a slight pause in between, as it counts the seconds. Tick…..tick….tick….tick….tick. The seconds are the same. But, now, time dissolves faster. Sometimes, I can even hear the second hand ticking away, reminding me that I still have turns in the day to improve myself and that my daily deposit is quickly melting away.

Today, I have 13 turns and two new eyes to view the world with. Hopefully, for at least one person who has taken the time to read this, sharing my experience has “counted”. I won’t be perfect and I will most certainly not maximize every daily turn I am given. None the less, I will work to make every turn count.

Raketa Website

Danielle's First Impressions of Sochi

My very first look at Sochi was at night after our 29 1/2 hour train ride. Mark's generous boss picked us up and drove us around a bit before taking us to see our flat for the first time. The first thing I remember is driving down one of the busy streets and noticing how beautiful this place is. The amount of trees was surprising. Many of the streets in Sochi center are covered with tree canopies. They are lit at night and it creates a beautiful ambiance. Remember, this was my very first impression of Sochi and I hadn't spent any time here yet.

We have been living in Sochi for almost three months now. It is a very interesting place. Out of all of the places we have been, we describe it as a mixture of three: Doha, Thailand and Mexico. Doha because of all of the ridiculous construction going on and the way it makes everything dirty. Thailand because of the sub-tropical foliage. There are evergreen trees right next to palm trees with squirrels running from one to the other. There are also magnolia trees, fruit trees and bamboo  growing everywhere. And, it's like Mexico because of all of the wares being sold on the street and the pushy people selling them. You name it, you can probably buy it on the street. We really thought of Mexico when we passed a couple of huge outdoor marts off of the side of the road selling ceramic crap. You could buy anything from garden gnomes and piggy banks to a life-sized horse or tiger and a gigantic ice cream cone. There is also an element of unsavory characters that reminds us of Mexico and is the first time we experienced it since living in Russia. This requires us to be even more aware of our surroundings than we did in Moscow.

Sochi has little flat ground. You are either going up or down a hill. This makes for some good work outs walking around town. What makes this place suitable for the Winter Games is how it goes from the sea to the hills to the mountains in a matter of 2 or 3 kilometers. This terrain makes it challenging to get around. We were told that last year there was snow on the palm trees by the sea. We will see how our first winter in Sochi plays out. So far, we have just had some rain; just enough rain to still love the rainy days. It has been quite pleasant so far.

The traffic in Sochi is unbelievable! We thought the driving and traffic was bad in Doha. It doesn't even compare to what we experience here. The infrastructure is just not enough to handle the amount of cars on the road. Plus, the quality of the roads is atrocious. There is a road that leads out what we call the "back way" from our apartment. We were driving it the other day and there was a stretch of about 150 meters that was literally under at least a foot of water and it hadn't rained in days. We were lucky to make it through. People park and drive wherever they want. If you double park and block someone in, it's ok; just leave your phone number on the dash. That makes it fine that you just inconvenienced someone by parking behind them. It is a free-for-all sometimes. Lanes are merely a suggestion around here.

If we had to choose one thing that we could really do without, it is the fact that we lose power so often. Some weeks, we are without power every other day. The longest we have gone without power consecutively is 2 1/2 days. We have been told that occasional power outages are normal. However, the outages that we are experiencing are not. We live on the thirteenth floor of our building, so losing power so often becomes very frustrating. The girls are starting to really hate walking up and down thirteen flights of stairs. And, so are we.

The people in Sochi seem to mostly be more accepting than what we experienced in Moscow. With the language barrier, we have had a lot of people try to help or just laugh at the awkward situation of not understanding each other. We don't get the attitudes toward us that we did in Moscow and this is genuinely appreciated.

All in all, Sochi is an interesting place. I am sure it will bring many adventures while we are here.

We Moved to Sochi

We moved to Sochi on September 13, 2012. We made the decision to take the train from Moscow to Sochi instead of flying. A couple factors went into this decision. Mark had quite a few business trips to and from Sochi before we moved. He discovered that the planes are very small and usually hot. We didn't want the girls to have any issues in the baggage area.

We had moved a lot of our stuff down to Sochi before we actually made the final move with help from some friends and a few business trips. Mark would bring down a bag or two each trip. With the help of our friends, we were actually able to get quite a lot down to Sochi. However, there is just some stuff you can't send weeks in advance so we still had a bit of luggage. We would have had to pay a lot of money in extra baggage, had we flown.

Financially, the plane vs. train options came out to about the same. We had to buy out all four berths in the train because of the dogs. However, since we did this, we had  a lot of room for the rest of our luggage. Even with buying all four berths, we paid about the same as we would have if we paid for two plane tickets, the extra fees for the dogs and all of the extra luggage fees. Plus, we had been wanting to take a train, so this was our chance!

Danielle booked the train tickets through Express to Russia www.expresstorussia.com. They were extremely helpful. Danielle started out by using the chat feature on their website to ask all of her ridiculous questions. Then we communicated via email and phone to do the actual reservation. Everyone she talked to spoke great English and were very happy to help. We would recommend this website to anyone wanting to purchase train tickets in Russia.

 Our Berth

The train ride was 29 1/2 hours. We got on the train at Kurskaya Station. The conductors assigned to our train car were very nice. They spoke less English then we do Russian but we managed to get on and get settled. We made sure to have the schedule of stops we would make in advance (provided by Olga from Express to Russia). The schedule showed where, what time and how long each stop would be. This allowed us to plan out which stops we would get out with the girls to let them do their business.

Our berth was very nice. We were in a second class berth and we were pleasantly surprised at the size and cleanliness of the train. They provided clean sheets and blankets, towels and a little travel kit which included a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb, wet naps, cotton swabs, a shoe shine tissue and a shoe horn. We were very happy with the quality of the train.

The train left right on time and we were on our way. Our first stop was 2 1/2 hours after we left so we made sure to feed the girls dinner before then and were ready to jump out and explore our first stop. There were also a couple of girls who came around taking orders for dinner. We were surprised that there was this option as we had planned on eating the instant borscht soup mixes that we had packed. We were happy that there was an option for a hot full meal so we took advantage of it and ordered dinner. For train food, this was very good and again, we were pleasantly surprised.

We chugged along making our stops and dashing out with the girls, grabbing a coke or a beer from the local vendors on the platforms. We loved the train!! Our experience from beginning to end was excellent and we can't wait until our next train adventure.