My 2007

My 2007 passed extremely fast. Celebration of 2007 seems to be so far away, so many things happened, so many places, people, emotions changed in my life.
I was sharing a lot of things that happened to me during this year, so if you want to know more details just read some of the previous posts. I want to mention here few most important aspects of the year.
Events that shaped my life in 2007
EuroEXPRO in Serbia, Weekend in Ivano – Frankovsk in May, Visa application, EBC 2007, LC visit in Naples, weekend in Rome, Exchange meeting in Rotterdam, 2 flights from Brussels, IPM CCP election.
People I want to thank for different things (even tough they might not realize that they’ve done something important for me):
My parents, Juraj Zdinak, Sveta Muzychenko, Slavik Lysak, Marinka Malkina, Tanya Mikhailyuk, Ira Legka, Nadya Lyubivaya, Anya Kovalchuk, Il’ya Boshnyakov, Cornelia Raportaru, Kevin Groen, Federica Rosi, Federico Caliri, Julia Khimchak, Olka Urina, Inna Kostyuk, Viktor Kryvenko, Matteo Orsi, Anabella Florea, Dora Salemi, Irene Sianard, Daniele de Lorenzo, Alba Cauchi, Dante Scognamiglio and his family, Giuliano De Marco, Michelle Gallant, Andrey Bezemchuk, Olya Kuznetsova, Gaspar Ndabi, Olka Semenyuk
Books that I loved:
“The tipping point” and “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell
“The world is flat” by Thomas Friedman
Places I’ve been to
Ivano – Frankovsk, Kharkov, Kiev, Belgrade, Milan, Prague, Roznov pod Radhostem, Ostrava, Olomouc, Zlin, Brno, Istambul, Lignano Sabbiadoro, Venice, Naples, Rome, Catania, Trieste, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Brussels, Brugge, Leuven, Verona, Pisa, Como, Lisbon.
My dreams that came true
Visiting theme park (Gardaland)
Traveling around Europe
I graduated finally
Quotes of the year
Life is not the amount of breaths you take. It’s the moments that take your breath away. Alex Hitchins
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely. Karen Kaiser Clark
Some other learnings and observations:
I learned to value friendship and maybe learned how to care more about people:)
I learned that my experience is what I make out of it myself and nobody else can be held responsible for that
I learned how to cook pasta:)

Pictures of the year

My 2007 was different: it was happy and challenging, full of troubles and surprises; I took few difficult decisions that have shaped or will shape my life and life of other people. I got to know myself better. I’m thankful for everything that happened to me, everyone I’ve met and I’m looking forward new discoveries and opportunities that 2008 will bring me.

Today's news

There are a lot of ways to express political will and promote your beliefs and views. A lot of them are illegal, and a lot are not very ethical. But there is one that is for sure not acceptable - killing your political opponents. Today world lost first female prime minister in and Islamic state - Benazir Bhutto. Not that I admired her or saw her as a panacea for Pakistan's problems , but she was definitely smart and brave woman. She did offer charismatic leadership at this crucial stage and she had the potential to provide Pakistan with the means of changing its ways.
It's sad to see such people being killed in other countries, but in our world...

Midnight thoughts

It has been already 4 days since I came back home to Ukraine for holidays!
Time passes by, I enjoy staying with my family, meeting my friends, eating food I love, walking down the streets of my childhood, everything is good, just can’t get read of some thoughts.
Comparison is something that I do hundreds of times each day, I know it’s natural and it’s kind of reintegration element (even tough I came for 2 weeks only).
So, firstly about my observations:
People’s appearance. In Vienna airport waiting for boarding to my flight to Dnepropetrovsk I finally saw a lot of Ukrainians in one place. My attention was taken by a girl wearing 12 centimeters high spike hills, jacket made from the fur of unknown animal. She had mop of perhydrol blond hair, huge blue eyes and pink lips. She was not prostitute, of course one can never know, but just my snap judgment (God Bless Gladwell for introducing me to this nice termJ), she was just typical, quite typical representative of Ukrainian or even post soviet beauty standards. I was shamelessly examining her for around 3 minutes, slowly realizing that I haven’t seen this kind of outfit for around 6 months. Observation number one: even tough I’m still quite shocked when people don’t iron their clothes, don’t make manicure and things like that, but I definitely got used to it to European casualness.
Fools and roads.
Roads and runways. Dnepropetrovsk might be not the best Ukrainian airport, but for sure is not the worst one, but seeing holes and cracks on the runways is not contributing to raising pride for my country.
Fools and attitude. I’ve traveled quite a lot in past 2 months and I was never ever asked anything about my visa, reasons of my stay in Italy. Never ever before arriving home and talking to a custom officer in DP. I had to spend 5 minutes explaining him in details what I’m doing in Italy, what is AIESEC and why the f… I came back home for New Year. In past few days I took hopper buses (марштрутка) few times and drivers were literally starring at me after hearing “Thank you” 3 times. After buying some of the gifts for New Year I realized that you can only hear thanks (especially from female shop assistants) after you buy something which costs more then 20 euros (in the shop with average price of 10).
And the last, but not the least, you always need to have wet napkins to clean your boots, because they’ll always be dirty.
That all is quite negative and pessimistic, isn’t it?
Those are random observations that practically don’t tell you a lot about the city, country and mentality, people etc. These are some random (yes, that is in the list of my favorite wordsJ) thoughts of a girl, who stayed some 6 months in the other reality and thinks that she has the power to criticize and judge something that she is too young to understand and evaluate. And that’s true. On the one hand. But on the other hand, the funny thing is that this criticism is only raising my feeling of patriotism that is properly “fertilized” by ideas taken from books that I recently have read.
Actually these kinds of things provoke me to think about what are the changes that my country needs, who are the leaders that have capacity, strong will and, moreover, belief in changes. I’m quite sure that country needs leaders, I’m quite sure that there are people capable of becoming such leaders, and there are people who can follow them. The question is how many people there need to be to create this critical mass that can turn this passive desire and dreams into kind of social epidemics that can in fact start the change. And the last – what can be my own contribution into that… I’m frequently coming back to thoughts of Raskolnikov from “Crime and punishment” about people who “the high and mighty” (власть имущие) or “weak people” (there is no literal translation I guess for твари дрожащие). All that thoughts not in sense of committing crime, but in the sense of being able and having courage to drive transformational change in Ukrainian society. Just a curiosity now whether I can really do something or whether I will give up as many others for having family, children, nice house, car, 24 days of vacations etc. which is in fact nothing bad, just ordinary… it’s not about being Mahatma Ghandi, Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa… It’s about few words: desire and courage to drive changes.
“Because people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who actually do”….. even tough I know that changes start from within.
So what is the change that you are able to make in yourself to change at least your local environment for better?

Creativity is out of the office

The name of the post is rather random - my creativity has a day off today. It'll come back in the office tomorrow, so maybe next post will have a more meaningful name:)

I started to write this post several times, but then something happened and took my attention, time etc. so I never posted what I wrote.
In brief, in previous month I traveled a lot, maybe too much. To be very short and specific:)
9 days in Catania: LDS – national induction conference for newbies. It was great to spend some time with Innok:)Conclusions: now I’m not easily motivated by conferences even tough delivered on a good level.
4 days in Rotterdam: Exchange meeting in AI – good content wise and very intense. It was good to see how AI works and lives. Conclusions: the funny thing is that I finally decided not to apply for AI.
1 day in Amsterdam: my first birthday outside of Dnepropetrovsk. Woke up in Rotterdam, spent day in Amsterdam, spent night in Brussels:) a bit crazy as for one day, but I liked it:) Amsterdam especially – it’s worth seeing, but don’t waste time for Sex museumJ Madame Tussaud’s is worth seeing, I loved it:) Red light district – nothing special – dark, almost naked girls in windows, and kind of church in the middle of it. Worth seeing only once in life, unless you go there for something elseJConclusions: need to come back to see the rest of the Netherlands. Who wants to go?:)
3 days in Milan: plan review, good ideas, reviewed plans and a lot of work again:) ah-ah, new table, chairs, cutlery and Christmas tree in our house:) looks great!
2 days in Trieste: lovely city, much better then I expected! Interesting local committee:) Next time I come to spend more money there and they promised to take me for lunch to Slovenia:)
2 days in Brugge, Leuven and Brussels: I was happy to be there:) Friends will be friends….:)
and now back to Milan – cool pajama learning circoletto yesterday with my team mates:) and heading for hospital tomorrow morning. Well, you know, I can’t live without using my insurance, bothering doctors and creating random problems. Yes, and having very strange and funny health problems
and then.. Lisbon this weekend (unless something bad happens tomorrow in hospital). I’ll see the ocean:)
Dnepropetrovsk in 1 week.. can’t wait to be there. I missed everyone there so much. Will be happy to come back for those 10 days:)
Yes, you know where to find my pictures, as usual here