Here's a video of me and Lindsay playing the piano and my parents singing for you:

http://www.galchenko.com/vova/videos/WH1.mov

Posted by Vova at 01:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Humans make plans. Plans to have a family, walk the dog, get a job, play piano... all kinds of plans. Making plans helps us get things done in a thought out, organized manner. In addition to making short-term plans, some humans make long-term plans. Some humans make 5 and even 10 year plans. I don’t believe anyone actually sticks to long-term plans they make. Life is so unpredictable that it is impossible to make plans that are going to stay relevant for as long as 5 or 10 years. Hopefully people’s plans change as they acquire new data and circumstances change. 5 years ago I could not even think of ever getting to where I am now, as I had no idea I was going to be fortunate enough to meet people I met who helped me and guided me along. I adjusted my plans accordingly.

That said, I do think it’s a good idea to make long-term plans. Though my long-term goals will change as circumstances change, they give me something to work towards for the time being. In 5 years in addition to being financially independent, I would like to have some money invested in real estate. They say finances are not everything, and I agree, but it is obvious, that finances are very important. At this time I like the idea of juggling for a living, however, I would also like to have something else to rely on for income, when I cannot or do not want to juggle for a living anymore. This leads us to my educational goals. In 5 years I would like to have a Bachelor’s degree. I’m not sure what I would like to major in. Things I would like to study include math, physics and video editing. I am currently planning on going to a community college for a couple of years to figure out what I want to do and then later transferring to a four-year college to pursue education in whatever I choose to study. It seems to me that my personal goals are pretty much limited to my juggling ambitions. I am not sure how good I will be at juggling in 5 years, but hopefully I will be a lot better than I am now. I have no family goals at this time, unless my goal of not starting a family within the next 5 years counts.

Posted by Vova at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

My dad's been occasionally going to my practices and taping some stuff. He's gathered a bunch of footage from that. I've also had some older footage laying around. So I put together some of that footage that hasn't been put out yet. Here it is, hope you like it:

http://www.galchenko.com/vova/videos/RandomFootage.mov

Posted by Vova at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

This blog entry was inspired by my experiences with spoiled American teenagers who think their life is so very hard and complicated. There are surprisingly few American teenagers who actually act content with their lives. So few that it almost seems that the easier people's lives are the more unhappy they are. You hardly ever hear about a kid from Africa bitching on and on about social pressures.

In this blog entry I'm going to talk about something that I heard spoiled American teenagers (I will further refer to them as SATs) say a lot. How many times have you heard an SAT whine about having "low self-esteem"? I know I've heard that way too many times. "Ooooo, poor me, the society's so cruel to me, it's making my self-esteem low!". Usually statements like that very clearly lack any kind of factual basis. But even if the SAT's self-esteem WAS low, would it be possible for the SAT to determine it. The basic question I'm going to try to answer in this blog is, "Is it possible for a person to know whether their self-esteem is high or low?"

Self-esteem is basically your estimate of what you're worth. To say you have low self-esteem is to say you're worth more than you think you're worth. But it's absolutely absurd to say you think you're worth more than you think you're worth. It's just not something that a person can determine. It makes some sense for a person to attempt to measure someone else's self-esteem, because it does make some sense to say "I think he's worth more than he thinks he's worth."

Now if you say what I just typed to an SAT, you might hear them say something along the lines of "well, other people have told me my self esteem was low." Unfortunately for the SAT, it still makes no sense to say him/her self-esteem is low. Believing a person who tells you your self-esteem is low is equivalent to instantly acknowledging you're worth more.

So really, as far as each one of us is concerned our self-esteem is normal. Saying your self-esteem is low is trying to trick people into thinking you're actually worth more than you give yourself credit for. How pathetic is that!

Posted by Vova at 01:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)