First of all, I've been to quite a few countries and I would say similar videos and articles could be made about any nation. It's easy to interview hundreds of people, edit out reasonable people's responses, keep the most outrageous ones and make the whole nation look silly. As a matter of fact, I've seen such clips on Russian television about Russian youth.
Second of all, even if the majority of Americans was confused about geography, politics and arithmetics (which I suspect is not the case), I wouldn't call that a sign of stupidity. It seems more like apathy to me. I believe the majority of Americans is impartial to all three (geography, politics and arithmetics). Maybe it's a little selfish, but I see no stupidity in this. In America, there are computers to do arithmetics for you, so why would Americans want to be able to multiply 3-digit numbers in their heads. Most Americans will probably never need to know what the capital of some far-away country is and the fact that most Americans don't care to do much research before voting in a presidential election is a clear indication that the American government is set up in such a way that who the president is won't have a significant impact on an average American's life.
Specialization is what makes a society work. When living in a society, it's important that everyone can do their job right and I would say that Americans are generally competent to do their job. As long as I'm doing my job right, who are YOU to say whether it's Paris Hilton's latest adventures or Zimbabwe's gross national product that's a smart thing for me to follow in my spare-time?
]]>Quite a few people helped Olga and I out with our immigration stuff. This never would have worked if it weren't for them. It's crazy, because some of those people aren't on very good terms with each other, and they were still willing to put their differences aside to help out Olga and I. I'm going to go ahead and list some of the people who tried hard to help us with our immigration issues in appreciation of their efforts:
Vasili and Tatiana Galchenko
Alan Belanger
Jason Garfield
Peggy Reuss
David Deeble
Arthur Lewbel
Andrew Conway
Scott Seltzer
Penn Jillette
Jon Wee
Owen Morse
Masaki Nishikawa
Tim Furst
Benji Hill
Barry and Sue Bakalor
Mark Bakalor
Erinn McNeill
Oprah Winfrey
I'm sure that Oprah lady reads my blog religiously, so I had to mention her. She helped out quite a bit in the final stages of the immigration process.
]]>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74KaCwdPrBs
]]>http://www.galchenko.com/vova/videos/WH1.mov
]]>http://www.galchenko.com/vova/videos/RandomFootage.mov
]]>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!
]]>Most of my time is currently spent having relatives come over and stay over and tell them about Olga and I. That's been nice at first, but then it got fairly annoying. It seems like it's now finally dying down and I'm slowly becoming old news and finally getting a chance to get something done.
I've been refreshing my math and physics skills a little bit. That's been nice. I've been juggling quite a bit (though not as much as I expected to). My dad goes and tapes some of the things I work on every once in a while. I think he's been putting some of that out on youtube, but I also think he hasn't released a bunch of cool stuff. I'm sure either me or him will put it all out at some point. Sue (Bakalor) suggested I work on my writing skills, so I wrote a 300 word essay the other day in response to the following question I found among college essay topics:
"How would you describe yourself as a human being? What quality do you like best in yourself and what do you like least? What quality would you most like to see flourish and which would you like to see wither?"
If any of you wonder how I answered those, here's my essay:
"There are many qualities to each human being and I am no exception. However, there is one quality to my character that is very important, when attempting to understand who I am. It gets me ahead and sets me back, it hurts and heals, I would like to see it flourish some times and wither at others.
The quality I am talking about is curiosity. Be it science or religion, economics or human relations, AIDS in Africa or genetically engineered crops in developed countries, I’m curious about everything. There are two sides to my curiosity.
On one hand, my curiosity helps me. It makes me acquire knowledge and keeps my world view evolving. My curiosity took me all over the world to Japan, France, Great Britain, Argentina, Israel, Germany and others. It makes me ask “But what if..?” after saying “I understand”. One of the biggest things curiosity has done for me was prompt me to learn about the immigration law of the US, helping my sister and me to leave our family in Russia and get situated here in the United States.
There is a downside to my curiosity though. It motivates me to get into things that are none of my business, many times creating awkward situations and making my life and others more difficult, than they have to be. I am often curious about things that people are hesitant to talk about. One of the more awkward moments caused by my curiosity occurred when I asked my close friend who has been happily married for 37 years if he had ever even considered getting a divorce, in front of his in-laws.
When used correctly, I think curiosity is a great quality. It is what has led humans to where we are at now. I would like to see my curiosity flourish without going overboard and getting into other people’s personal business."
Hope you enjoyed it. Please critique my writing, as it would help me improve it.
Thanks
]]>Life's been good here in Russia. It looks like my arm's pretty close to healing at this point. I restarted practicing again 2 days ago. It's been interesting. I've only been juggling for 2 days after a 2 week break and it looks like my juggling's already almost back to where it'd been before the accident. My club and ball juggling skills still aren't 100% back, but my ring juggling is (probably because it was at such a low level that there wasn't that much to recover).
Anyway, I made a video of the recovery of my juggling skills after the accident. I didn't feel like spending that much time editing it, but it's got some cool, in my biased opinion, juggling. Enjoy.
]]>Firstly, there’s the GPA golfer, Jesper Parnevik gig. That was on Monday (October 16th) near West Palm Beach, and it was a lot of fun. Jesper had a sponsorship party and contacted me on Saturday (October 15th) about doing a 20 minute show at the party. Mark arranged a deal with him and that Monday at 3 am I was in the car driving to the airport to fly to West Palm Beach. Exhausted from getting up early I got to the party at around 7 pm. That was my first ever corporate gig and I’d never done a 20 minute show all by myself, so I was a little nervous about it. I ended up doing real well, in front of some rich and influential people that were there. They seemed to have liked me a lot, and the coolest part (for me) was that I did 20 catches of 7 clubs on the first try in the show eventhough the ceiling was so low that I had to crouch a little bit and juggle lower to do it. Due to some misunderstandings I didn’t get to the hotel until about 1 am and I had to wake up at about 4:30 or so to catch the flight. So eventhough the gig was fun and it went well, it started the theme of not getting enough sleep that week with the average of like 3 hours a night.
]]> Then there was my surprise going-away party on Saturday. Olga put it together. It was awesome. A whole bunch of people I know and 2 I didn’t know came over from all over the country to say bye to me before I left for Russia on Monday (October 23rd). The only problem was that so many people were there at once that I didn’t get to hang out with anyone as much as I would have liked to. Lindsay was staying over Friday through Monday, and I ended up spending most of my time with her. We didn’t sleep much at all.All depressed about a whole bunch of things including Lindsay leaving, and having to leave the country that day, I drove Lindsay to the airport at about 4:30 am on Monday morning (October 23rd). We hadn’t slept that night at all, and after saying our goodbyes at the airport I got in the car and headed back home. I talked to Lindsay for a little bit on the phone as I was driving, so that kept me up for a little bit. After I was off the phone with her, I gradually started dozing off, I then woke up barely avoiding an accident. I then considered pulling over to take a nap, but ruled that out, as I was flying to Russia later that day and I still had to finish packing, so I had limited time. That was a bad decision. Barely avoiding an accident also woke me up a bit making me feel like I’d be able to make it home alright. I started dozing off again gradually... so gradually that I didn’t even notice I was dozing off, until I woke up from the feeling of the car being airborne instinctively pushing the break pedal. Next thing I knew the car flipped over and landed on its roof and hit something. I was shocked. Fortunately I didn’t hit anyone. I was hanging upside down on my seatbelt for some reason thinking I had to get out of the car quick. I wasn’t thinking straight as I unbuckled my seatbelt, broke the driver’s window with my left arm and crawled out of the car. I felt no pain. I looked at the car – it was totaled. The Buick I used for the past 6 months, and we jokingly referred to as chickmobile was dead. I then saw a bunch of blood on myself and the pavement. I wasn’t sure exactly what part of me it was coming from, but the sight of blood made me sick, so I sat down. A whole bunch of people stopped to help me out. The lady that drove behind me called 911 and Barry and Sue. Some other guy had a first aid kit with him, and was able to make me feel a little less sick and made the blood stop flowing from my forearm. The ambulance and the police showed up. They strapped me down to this board. I couldn’t move any part of my body. That made me start thinking I must have hurt myself pretty bad. I tried asking where they were taking me and what was wrong with me, to which they said they weren’t sure, but regardless of what’s wrong with me they aren’t supposed to let me move due to “the mechanics of the accident”. I later found out they strap pretty much everyone who gets into an accident to a board, just in case their spine or neck is hurt. I fell asleep in the ambulance car. I woke up still strapped to the board as I realized I was being rolled across a hospital floor. They put me and my board on the bed, where a doctor did some tests to make sure it was ok to let me move a little bit. Turned out I was pretty much ok except for my left arm. They took me off of the board, and put me a little lower on their priority list. Barry and Olga showed up. They saw my wound on the left arm. They indicated that it looked pretty horrible. I didn’t look. Olga started crying and hugging me. I started crying too. The doctor assigned me some nurses and they made 5-7 injections right into my wound to numb it. That freaked me out some more. Now to understand the full extent of how freaked out I was at the moment you need to know that before this incident, I would faint at the sight of blood at a blood test. I’ve always been bad with blood and any kind of needles. Olga and Mark left and Barry and Sue stayed with me. That helped a great deal. A few hours later, I ended up walking out of the hospital with about 20 stitches in my arm and a badly bruised elbow and hand. We’re assuming I acquired those injuries when I broke the drivers window and crawled out of it. Here are some pictures and a video of the car after it’s been towed away from the accident site:
http://www.galchenko.com/images/IMG_3984.jpg
http://www.galchenko.com/images/IMG_3982.jpg
http://www.galchenko.com/images/IMG_3981.jpg
http://www.galchenko.com/images/IMG_3980.jpg
http://www.galchenko.com/images/IMG_3979.jpg
http://www.galchenko.com/images/IMG_3978.jpg
http://www.galchenko.com/images/IMG_3977.jpg
http://www.galchenko.com/images/IMG_3976.jpg
http://www.galchenko.com/images/IMG_3975.jpg
http://www.galchenko.com/images/IMG_3974.jpg
http://www.galchenko.com/images/MVI_3983.avi
We’re still puzzled as to where the dent on the front of the car came from. I must have hit a tree or a pole or something.
I got home at about 1 pm that day. My flight to Russia was at 6. Mark, Olga, and Barry helped me pack, and I took a one handed shower (which is way more complicated than one might think). It was one crazy day. I had thought of how I wanted to say goodbye to Mark, Barry, Sue and Olga many times, but when the time came, I was so thrown off that I forgot everything I wanted to say. But oh well, I’ll see everyone soon enough. Probably as soon as January-February. I’m now at my parents apartment in Penza, Russia, seeing my parents for the first time in over three years. It feels good. Can’t wait for my arm to heal, so I can start practicing big time.
Later.
]]>Lindsay, her sister Jen, and I
]]>The other notable thing about sweaty underwear is that it remains wet as long as you don't change it. So sometimes when I have to go do something immediately after I practice, and I don't have time to change my underwear will remain wet for hours, to the point where it actually makes me cold.
Does anyone else get that? Any solutions for the problem, other than blowing underneath your underwear in attempt to cool yourself off?
]]>"...It comes down to confidence. If you believe you can do something then eventually you'll be able to do it - given enough practice time. Anthony Gatto is as good as he is because he's insanely confident to the point where he actually thinks he's superhuman or something (seriously, he once said he sees things in slow motion). Some people never learn a trick despite practicing it a lot more than someone else who learnt it much quicker because at some level they don't think they can do it."
]]> I definitely agree with that. You really don't have to be so delusional that you believe to see things in slow motion to be confident though. How's SEEING things in slow motion supposed to help one juggle anyway... but I digress.You know how sometimes you run an X ball/club/ring pattern and everything is going fine, UNTIL you start thinking, "hmmmm, this has been a long run, I think I'm getting a little tired... and when I get tired my throws become inaccurate..."? Before you know it you make a horrible throw, everything collides, and you just stand there watching everything fall around you feeling like a complete douchebag. I know stuff like that happens to me a lot, when I start questioning my ability to do a certain move or run a certain pattern.
Confidence leaves the juggling to muscle memory, and makes sure your mind doesn't interrupt and screw things up. Nothing helps my juggling more than thoughts like, "the pattern's looking fine, everything's falling right into my hands, it seems easy, now all I gotta do is just keep doing what I'm doing now".
The problem is that it's hard to be confident in something you haven't done before. What I often do is try to break moves down to elements that I've done before. I have on multiple occasions tried to do something thinking of it one way and failing and then thinking of it in a different way and succeeding. That's even more true when working on combos.
Breaking moves down and learning the smallest components of them before trying the actual moves helps a lot with confidence. That way when you try to do the move you don't just chaotically throw stuff all over the place and hope it lands where you want it to land. Instead you know you can do all the components and all you need to do is put them together.
So don't think of it as whirlwind - think of it as a single, double, quad and three 360s with catches inbetween. Don't think of it as 97531 - think of it as one way the hell up there and a 7531 underneath. Don't think of it as (8x 6) - think of it as (6x 4) with 7.
Stuff like that helps me a lot with my juggling. Try applying that to yours, it might help you.
]]>Though most creationists seemed to have abandoned the "irreducible complexity" argument, some still use it and get away with it mostly because people aren't fully informed of the evolution of the eye and blood clotting. That's upsetting... very much so.
On the other, juggling-related note, I encourage everyone to go to the WJF website and check out the preview of the WJF 2006 video.
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