Alexey Smirnov's blog

In August lots of forest fires were burning in Russia. Luckily, I spent this time in countryside far away from any fires. But to begin with, here is a video that describes the situation. Basically, this is what it looked like in our region of Nizhny Novgorod even though I guess the video was shot in south of Russia.

On July 29th I went with my parents to a summer camp at Vetluga river, approximately 150 km north-east of Nizhny Novgorod. Because it felt extremely hot in the city because of the heat wave that stayed in Russia for 3 months, it felt very refreshing in the camp. We have enjoyed our stay in the wooden houses during those two weeks when people in cities and certain villages suffered a lot. Every morning we were swimming in a lake and then after breakfast in Vetluga. Road trips were another activity that we enjoyed.

The summer camp is situated near Varnavino, a small town nowadays which was a monastery in 1600s. St. Varnava has founded this monastery. I guess it was rich and joyful area before October revolution. But then lots of destruction happened and people fled away. What is remaining nowadays are either ruins or stones which are put in place of destroyed churches.

It is quite unusual that despite the wide-scale efforts to restore old churches and monasteries in Russia, there are still lots of ruins in this particular area. I guess this is because it is quite far away from the center of our region and not too many people are living there nowadays. However, this area looks so beautiful that it is possible to justify restoring the destroyed buildings, for example to attract more tourists. There are lots of abandoned homes in the villages, there are also lots of homes that were acquired as summer homes of people living in cities. To me it seems that life there has not recovered yet after Big Bang of the revolution, almost 100 years after it happened. I don’t have the pictures of abandoned country-side life there but it looks very impressive and makes you think of those people, their lives, and what happened to them.

We have visited Svetloyar lake which is famous for its invisible Kitezh town. The story goes that there was a beautiful town 1000 years ago. However, it has collapsed into the lake to prevent its capture when Mongols have approached it during their conquest of Russia. There are a number of theories nowadays of how the lake was shaped, from volcano to meteorite strike to who knows what.

The people’s belief is that you have to walk three times around the lake praying to get your sins forgiven. In other words, this remote place is deeply connected to our history and culture. But we have not walked around the lake, instead we were only swimming there. Also, there are a number of trails out there going to the burial site of three monks respected for their saint lives. Also there is a stone which the saying goes has a footprint of St. Virgin Mary.

There is a village Vladimirskoe next to the lake. It has beautiful museum where local craftsmen are building beautiful things. I have noticed that this whole area of north-east of our region is abundant with crasftsmen – for exapmle Khohloma in Semenov, ceramics in Svetloyar, etc. To me this culture looks like traces of old civillization that we have so little evidence of nowadays. We can only come more often and try to learn more. It is because of the significance of this area that great Rimsky-Korsakov has written opera dedicated to this area.

This year I have already attended so many concerts as I never attended before when I was living in Tampere or on Long Island in the US. One reason is that the music played here is indeed world-class, for example Marc Minkowski is a famous French conductor, Anne Kauppi is one of the best Finnish pianists and is possible one of the best in the world. Most concerts are priced very cheaply at 10 Euros, there are free concerts as well.

I have noticed that French composers are very popular these days. It is a new trend I guess. While I was educated in music school in Russia we have been listening to Bach and Mozart, that is mostly German composers as well as of course lots of Russian music of Tchaikovsky, etc. but I don’t remember any French composers. Therefore, this year I have discovered Marcel Dupre, Gabriel Faure, and we can think of Frederick Chopin as a composer of French ancestry. Their music is not inferior to that of major classical composers, but it is very different. We definitely need to take a closer look at the French composers.

Marc Minkowski was a guest conductor at a YLE Radio Symphony Orchestra. The venue was the Stone Church. Quite traditionally, the churches are used as concert halls in Finland. It is interesting that this concert was sold out! Fortunately, I got my ticket one week in advance. Apparently, concerts on Friday nights are very popular. The concert included three parts. First, Symphoni #3 of Schubert was performed. Then after a short break Requiem of Gabriel Faure followed. It is an amazing piece of music. Traditionally, a requiem is performed when someone dies. Therefore, it should convey sadness. But this requiem is very different. It has quite optimistic tunes which are attributed to human’s acceptance into the Paradise. In the final part of the concert a trio of Mendelssohn was performed. A trio for piano, violin, and cello is a type of composition that keeps me thinking for a long time. Earlier I listened to a piano trio of Tchaikovsky thus now I think that trio is a major composition form on par with symphony or concert. But it is neither one of them. A concert is a competition between a solo instrument and the orchestra. A symphony involves too many parties. In terms of the meaning that a symphony conveys it is often related to a large-scale event or the destiny of the whole nation, something global. It might seem surprising that I attribute verbal description to any piece of music but as Picasso once said there is no abstract art. A painter has always an idea in mind and his/her abstract painting is the result of expressing the idea in this particular way. Therefore, a musical trio also conveys an idea and we can compare it to a certain type of painting. To me a trio is a conversation happening within a close group of friends who know each other very well. They might discuss various happenings in their life, the present and past. The only question is why is this worth depicting? I don’t remember who was saying that but the idea is that only great events constitute the true art, they convey a message to the next generations. What is that message in a afternoon-tea conversation of three people? Answering to that question would reveal the meaning behind a musical trio, it will make its art value measurable. But I still don’t understand what is the position of a trio among various composition forms such as symphonies, concerts, etc. This question is intriguing me a lot.

Another interesting event was Kirkko soikoon, a festival of church music which included classical music as well. It continued the whole week and included tens of concerts. During this festival I have bought a few CDs displayed above. Here is a brief description of the concerts that I have attended:

• Jan Lehtola performed Marcel Dupre in Kallio Church. There were two parts in his concert. Le chemin de la croix op. 29 was performed in the first one, Symphony for organ #1 “Passion” was performed after that.
• The next concert was in Helsinki Cathedral Crypt – a small hall that did not have even a stage. The grand piano was located very near the audience. It was very interesting to watch Anne Kauppi playing as I was sitting in one of the first rows very closely. This year people mark the 200-year anniversary of Frederick Chopin. A number of his etudes and ballades were performed. Gorgeous concert!
• On Friday there was another amazing concert – a 4-hour vocal marathon in the Old Church! The singers were signing along with organ or piano. Helsinki has lots of very nice voices!
• During weekend I went to Mikael Agricola Church located near my house. An youth ensemble called Higher Ground Band was performing there. I was surprised to see lots of families with children attending this concert. Typically, the audience of church concerts includes very few youth which I think marks the generation gap in the society. These energetic young people bridge the gap between younger and older, as well as between different religions. Traditionally, singing modernized songs is attributed to Baptist church. Finnish people belong mostly to the Lutheran church but they still attend Baptist concerts and sing along with them. The audience was raving, it was such a great concert! Below is a video, it is quite long. Watch it till the end to see how exciting the concert was!

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Cities are notorious for their limited number of parking places. But during the winter things get even more complicated. The main problem is not finding a place to park your car but actually getting out of the parking. Here is a video that illustrates these words. In fact, this is not the toughest case that I saw out of my window. A couple of days ago a few guys spent half an hour trying to free up their entrenched friend.

I have celebrated New Year 2010 in Helsinki just as last year. But this time I was able to record a better video of the fireworks. Here it is.

This Saturday I saw camels in the center of Helsinki. They were being fed near a store that sold carpets. I wonder if it was possible to order a carpet made of this particular animal.

That ski-jumping facility actually works!

I decided to celebrate New Year in Helsinki. Previously, I was celebrating it in New York, so it was interesting how these two will compare. My initial expectation that Helsinki would not deliver was wrong – there are a number of ways in which New Year in Helsinki is better than that in New York.

I arrived to Helsinki at 8PM. Near the train station there was ice skating stadium. I spent a couple of hours there. Skating in the city is so nice!

Then I grabbed a snack and went to celebrate the New Year at Senate Square. There was a big stage with live concert going on. Because there were not too many people at 11PM I was able to get quite close. Screens were available as well.

The live concert included performances of the best Finnish singer Jore Marjaranta. Can you imagine a top-notch singer in New York’s Times Square? I think it is impossible.

Right before the New Year there were speeches of Major of Helsinki and Bishop. After that, Finnish anthem was performed. The fireworks started immediately the New Year has begun. It was quite short but powerful, eye-blinding. There were fireworks going on over the Baltic Sea before the New Year and after it, but those were single shots with long pauses in between.

Then I walked in the city for a couple of hours. I went to the bus station to find out that there was a bus to Tampere at 3AM. Initially I was planning on catching the earliest train at 6:30AM. So it was the first New Year gift that I received. I was quite happy with my celebration. I did not freeze while waiting for the New Year even though it was -10C. I went to Ice Park upon arriving to Helsinki. Then I was running around the city mostly and spent only 1 hour staying at Senate Square.

It looks like nature has celebrated New Year as well. On Jaunary 1st the temperature has finally decreased after a 3-months stay at 0 centigrade. Nowdays, the temperature is around -10C which is quite normal even though I thought it is colder in Finland. I talked to people and they were quite happy with this weather because they were saying last year it was raining in January.

So the year started quite nicely. I have lots of plans and expectations from this year. For example, I am going to become ACM Life Member.

In addition to video below, I have taken pictures.

I am opening up a project that I was working on in my spare time during last month. It is called Weather forecast on the homescreen of a Nokia mobile device.

The homescreen of a mobile phone is designed to list upcoming meetings and to-do notes. However, there is extra space that is often empty. It is often necessary to get certain information such as weather forecast. Placing it on the homescreen allows to access it immediately.

The idea behind the implementation is to add an RSS feed with weather forecast to user’s Google calendar. After that, the user will use a synchronization software that inserts the entries to the mobile’s device calendar. They appear as to-do notes which are displayed on the homescreen automatically.

As of now, the project generates weather forecasts only. But it is possible to display any type of information such as train schedule, stocks, top stories, etc. using this approach.

http://weather.alexeysmirnov.name

As a friend of nature and squirrels in particular, I present the next movie in the series of squirrel life. This squirrel was trying to shake hands with me. Seriously, I guess it was expecting food. The other day I went to supermarket on my way home and got green apples among other things. Then when I was walking through the forest I saw a couple of squirrels, I guess the one that was featured on this blog earlier. I tried to attract them using cereal which I also got at the supermarket. After disposing a certain amount of corn balls I realized that they were of no interest to squirrels. Then I tried apples – first small bites then the whole apple. The weight of the apple was greater than the weight of the squirrel but it managed to move it in its mouth to the top of a tree where I guess it has its nest. So I do not feel ashamed that I am taking pictures of squirrels without giving back to them. In fact, they are getting friendlier every time, probably they are getting used to me.