iPod

iPod, iTunes, iPhones - everyone is talking about them. iPod is almost an icon of young generation. Why? Is it nice? smart? I just think it's a fashion thing - to demonstrate how cool you are.
I used to have fake iPod (a friend of mine bough it for me in China), unfortunately it didn't work properly lately so I had to change it.
I got myself 80Gigs and up to 30 hours of playback in a form of a black little box. Looks nice. I love the touch control panel, but I don't like that it or iTunes are stupid. iTunes searched for music on my computer in "My Music" folder - but all the smart people, who know that when Windows crashes all the windows folders get destroyed, do not use these folders. I just had my Winamp playlists there. Anyway, somehow it found all the music files on my computer... and even more... several pdf files and some other staff... Maybe iPod is smart enough to play those?
Ok... fine... That's not the problem.
I keep my music very organized on my computer - all in different folders, iTunes apparantly doesn't care... as well as my iPod, so now I have 20Gb of music all in one folder on my iPod.

I've decided to create several playlists.. and of course some songs were present in more than just one playlist.. and you know what? When the song is present in more then one playlist, it is present on my Ipod more than once... kinda stupid... I guess everything arranged by playlists on iPod.
So as a result I have thirty something Gb of music now on my iPod...

Is that smart? or is that iSmart which equals iStupid?

Nevertheless, so far i like my iPod... it works better then the fake one. Although the fake one was smarter... real smarter.

stripping down for Halloween

Halloween is approaching and people are so concerned about what to wear.
Isn't Halloween a wonderful chance to experiment with an identity without harm for your image and status?
For some reason the majority of girls would be dressed as sluts, bitches and prostitutes. Personally, I like it - pretty much free striptease. I just wonder why costume of a prostitute is so popular? Is it because of moral norms of society that tell that sexy dress is not acceptable and demonstrating your [sexual] desires and intentions is bad? And don't we always want something that is prohibited? Isn't it like in Japan, where talking about sex is not acceptable and they have so many [sometimes illegal] cartoons and magazines about sexual practices. Actually the majority of Anime is sexual content.

And when I said prostitute or slut costume I actually meant all those very open dresses, which basically do not cover, but push/open certain body parts. Even Cindirella (which is really innocent fairytale hero) would look extremely sexy and bitchy. Basically there will be lots of similar costumers - short skirts, push-up bras/tops and tights - with little attributes/indicators of who you are (red hood for red-hood girl, wand for a witch, wings for an angel).

So is Hallowing public stripping day?

hiking

Second day of Fall break. We went to Tallulah Gorge SP today. I've been there before and decided to show it to my roommates. We got there at around 10.
In order to access ground flour you need to get a permission - some paperwork and some oral instructions from several quite nice and handsome guys. Anyway, this is not the point. The point is who goes hiking there. At some point before we arrived there some other people had already gotten their permissions and went hiking.
Me and my roommates have accent so those guys started asking us about where we were from. Well... post-USSR countries. It turned out that other people who had already registered were from Great Britain and somewhere else. There were no a single American till 10.30 (but the day was nice).
Why?
Do they sleep to much? or hiking is not quite popular? I don't know.
Although when we went hiking in Utah this summer we met more Germains and French people than Americans I believe...

And one day later I need to share my observations about how people do hiking/camping in the US (not only Americans).

How are you?

As Wikipedia says 'politeness' is cultural thing. What is considered polite in one country can be rude in another.
My cultural background is the root to my confusion.
When people ask "How are you?" how come they expect to hear something like "good," "fine," "ok" or any other form of saying that things are ok? What if they are not?
Like today, a friend of mine is not really happy, he's miserable (as he said), but whenever someone calls he says "I'm good."
So how close you should you be to a person to stop lying about things?
Or this question does not have any meaning and used not to learn something, but just to "play" conversation according rules of the society? I guess that's how it is.

Still... if people do not really care why would they ask? Wouldn't that be more polite not to ask at all if you don't care? I guess that would be culturally unacceptable.

Pumpkin pie

The other day my friends and I decided to carve the pumpkin. We did it a little bit early but there was a good reason for that - my good friend was leaving the country and she really wanted to experience this pumpkin carving thing.
So, as the person who does not mind cooking, I was responsible for making pumpkin pie.
It was kinda weird from the very beginning. 1) When I've started looking for recipes I found several that mentioned cloves (for example this one). Are those garlic cloves??? If there's garlic, than it's not a dessert anymore. I understand when you use garlic for garlic bread, but not for a cake!!!
Anyway, I found another recipe and it worked quite well for me.
2) it's not as easy as I though to get pumpkin "meat" out of pumpkin. You cannot just cut it off. It peels . I'm not a pumpkin lover and never cooked anything with it before, but I'm sure pumpkins back home are different! And then it was not easy to puree it even after cooking it according the directions. So I end up using a tool for pureeing garlic or garlic grater.

The pie was awesome. Carving was a difficult process. An American guy who was doing it had hard time.

When we finished carving and baking it turn out to be that we don't have candles, so some of us went to Wal*Mart around midnight to get candles. Then it turned out that we didn't have a lighter or matches... Well, though it was late I went to ask my neighbors if they had it... those who were not sleeping didn't have anything (... we live in a non-smoking place).

Well... don't wanna tell how we did it, but we were able to light the candles!!!

"I'll let you go"

Apparently some Americans think that "I'll let you go" at the end of phone conversation is polite. Maybe... Not for me with my cultural background.
I would use this phrase only in a situation when I really need a person (to talk, to do something together, whatever) and the person really does not have time and needs to leave and I'm basically making her/him to stay. Then, at some point I may let this person go. That makes sense to me.
But when you call me and then talk to me and you know that I don't mind talking to you, don't say "I'll let you go now."
If you are busy - just say that. Be true and nice to me, instead of pretending like you've been holding me for so long and I didn't want to. If there's something I don't like - I just tell that. So if I was talking to you on the phone for so long, I guess I didn't mind...
Seems logical to me...