Sports update

Today I bought a gym membership from a nearby fitness center for 3 months. The membership wasn't cheap, 7740 rubles (~172 euros), but I guess it is still better to so some sports than do nothing. I have been feeling a bit sluggish lately, hopefully exercising will help me to get my energy levels higher.

Random pictures

Crossing the road Russian style: running.

Petrovskiy stadium, the home of Zenit St.Petersburg

View from the balcony.
Our dormitory.
Peterhof.

Apostilles, nostrification and a huge mess.

Hah, why I am not surprised? Last week we had to pay 10000 rubles for nostrification of our documents to Master's office at the university. This week, quite many of my co-students have gotten some part of that money back so I went to get my money too. But there was a problem, of course. The lady in the office first said that I haven't given her all the necessary apostilles during the previous weeks. Which I of course did. After a few minutes of discussion and "no you didn't - yes I did"-play she checked her bookcase and voila, there they were. Because of my "missing" apostilles she was not able to deliver my documents for nostrification process which just makes it longer for me.

Also, my apostilles are not good enough they say. The apostilles I gave her are originals and they include copies of my diplomas, which were notarized by Finnish lawyers. So really legal stuff. Many of my student colleagues have exactly the same kind of copies and they are okay. This situation does not make any sense, but let's see how this develops in the future. Oh, and the 10000 rubles I paid for the nostrification is not enough for them because my diploma + supplements have so many pages... Kjeh. I also had to give them my original diplomas earlier, just like all the rest of foreign MITIM students. I wonder whether I will even get my diplomas back and if so, when I will get them. I bet in the year 2011.

Интернет работает в oбщежитие!!!!

For you who does not understand basic Russian: Internet now works also at the dormitory! Finally, it took only about 6 weeks. The problems were:

• No connection in Shevchenko dormitory. Okay, I lived there only for 3 days so not that bad.
• After moving to Karabli, my computer was still registered to Shevchenko. I went to the office and informed them that we had moved. They changed our address to Karabli.
• In Karabli, my computer was registered to wrong room so it didn't work on my room. Also, it didn't work on the room where it was supposed to work either (reason below)
• The socket in the wall where the cable is connected was broken. We had to wait for a couple of weeks until someone came to fix that.
• After changing the socket, everything was okay for my roommates, but not for me. The reason was, that when they first took my MAC-address in the office during the first week in St.Pete they took the wrong one. That address was for WLAN and not for cable which resulted that I could not use my computer.
• Yesterday I went to the office once again (I guess it was something like 4th time in that office, I've also been in other offices at least 2 times each). I showed them my MAC-address, they changed it and now it works at the dormitory.

Basically everything was went wrong with this Internet-thing: the addresses, the physical equipment and incompetence. Well, now it works at least *knocks on wood*. There is still one problem what we have to address - there is 3 persons in our room and only one place for cable (logical, huh?). So today, after school we have to go and buy a router so we can all be online at the same time. Hopefully.

Russian language studies

I am starting to sound like Shot, but I don't like the way Russian language (and other language) studies are organized here in GSOM. I have no complaints about the level of teacher, who I think is good. My problem is with the fact that we have classes only once a week. 4 lessons in a row, which means 3 actual hours with a 15 minute break in the middle. Is there a person in this school that can cope with that? I don't think so.

It's not that hard to concentrate on learning stuff about economics or organizational behaviour for 4 lessons in a row, but languages are a different case in my opinion. Grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.. It takes time to ingest all that information. Like today, all of the students were already loaded with new information by the break and the second part of the class was quite painful for us. Luckily our teacher notices these things and won't push as that far during the second half.

Actually it is pretty cool how long we have come during one month from level 0. Now we can(?) describe our friends,family and surroundings, the weather, ask for directions etc. Maybe in a couple of months time we are actually able to have some discussions in Russian :) At the moment it's still pretty much impossible, aside asking typical 'how are you' and so on.

Hooray for hot water

Good news, we have hot water again at the dormitory. No more cold showers in the morning. At least for now....

Managerial economics

Today we had the first lectures of Managerial economics. The first surprise came when we entered the room - the professor is really, really young. Very likely 27 or so. I was a bit sceptical about her, but quickly I realized that I was prejudiced for no good reason. She really seems to know what she is teaching us. Okay, that was only the first lesson but still I was quite pleased with her. Her teaching style was pretty "normal" which is okay and she used a lot of chalkboard to draw some pictures, which made it easier to understand the concepts that she had put on the slides. Let's see how this course developes in the upcoming lectures.