Day 626 – They’re Russian over to help us

Hmmm. This is.. interesting.

Indeed:

“An IL-76 of the Russian Emergencies Ministry has been loaded with Rospotrebnadzor’s (the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing) mobile laboratory mounted on a Kamaz vehicle at Volgograd’s airport and is heading for the South African Republic. There are virologists, epidemiologists and physicians of Rospotrebnadzor and the Russian Health Ministry along with an Emergencies Ministry task force on board the IL-76,” the ministry said.

Why?

Having had the world singing the praises of our scientists for the past couple of weeks, why do we need a mobile Russian virology lab and mobile Russian virologists in Cape Town?

The flight is performed by order of Russian President Vladimir Putin, following the request of his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa. On Friday night, it departed from Moscow to Volgograd, where the laboratory was loaded on the plane.

Curiouser and curiouser, Comrades.

Russian away

Ugh. You know those days when it all starts with meetings and appointments and spreadsheets and telephone calls and ends with about 24 hours to get your stuff together and get on a flight to Russia for a few days?

Yeah. Those ones.

Well, I didn’t have one of those days yesterday, but my wife did.

Obviously, a luxury tour to Moscow and St. Petersbeagle is not something that I would be at all interested in, so I’m not even a little bit jealous.
[Clearly, I’m being tsarcastic here.]

I never learnt lot of Russian, but in case you’re on your way over there in the near future, here are the basics/essentials as I remember them:

Please – pozhaluysta
Thank you – spasibo
Hello – gonchaya
Goodbye – do svidaniya
Yes – da
No – net

Have fun!

 

* although there was some excitement, lol. 

Snowy Russian Graveyard

But not for people; for old Soviet stuff.

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Herewith the photography of Danila Tkachenko, which is engaging firstly because of its subject matter and the context thereof:

Tkachenko sees the Soviet Union’s aspirations and failures, and a rejection of the pursuit of political and technological utopias. “My project is a metaphor for post-technology apocalypse,” he says.

I would say that a lot of my photography is simply a reaction to pseudo-Marxist predispositions noting the currency of revolutionary recognition, together with the symbiotic link between national liberation and social emancipation. Or, at other times, because I think a flower looks pretty.

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Secondly, I found this line interesting:

After identifying a location, Tkachenko would wait for fog or snow before shooting with a Mamiya 7. He favoured a small aperture and long exposure to create a dreamy, otherworldly feel.

You can do lots of things with exposure time and aperture size if you’re a good enough photographer (no, not me). But even that skill wouldn’t work were it not for the prevailing weather conditions. The combined results are stunning – depicting an monochromatic oxymoron of futuristic relics, lost somewhere in the clouds.

You can see the other 31 photos in the project here.

Nice selfie

We’re living in the age of the Selfie:

a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.

And you might think that the selfie you took last week was the best thing ever: it caught your good side, you were in focus, interesting background, nice colours etc etc. But you were wrong, because this one takes the proverbial biscuit when it comes to great selfies:

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I don’t know how he got up there, I don’t know why he got up there, but the fact that he took a selfie while he was up there means that your effort last week is now worth NOTHING.

*heads off to wipe sweaty palms*