"Yeah they were all yellow..."

Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And everything you do,
Yeah they were all yellow.
(c) Yellow by Coldplay

Story about my yellow nails

Having a garden back home and loving to cook I know that doing something with carrots will color your hands in orange, working with tomato plants will make your hands black, doing something with apples will turn them dark orange, but doing whatever with cucumbers is safe, unless you are not cooking something with Vlasic original dills.

I’ve cooked a salad today with Vlasic dills. The result: salad is great; my left hand including nails is yellow. What??? Yellow? From cutting pickled cucumbers? I even put my nails into lemon juice for few minutes – it helps even to dissolve all the things that makes your hands black after working with tomato plants. Didn’t help in this case. I’ve polished my nails and still you can tell the difference between nails on different hands. Yeah they were[are] all yellow.

I was sure there was something wrong with those dills. I was so right. Just look at the ingredients: cucumber (fine, the main ingredient), water, distilled vinegar, salt (all fine with me, my mom and grandmoms use cucumbers, water, vinegar, salt and other spices – and that’s it.), calcium chloride (have no idea what that is, but I’m sure it would not give me yellow color), alum, natural flavors (yeah, having genetically modified cucumbers you need flavors), polysorbate 80 (what?? Do I really need this in dills? 80?), yellow 5 (Here it is, the reason for my yellow nails).

Yellow 5… I wonder what that means for my nails. From unsuccessful experiment with lemon juice I can conclude that it is very chemical. Now I’m thinking that everything inside my body is yellow… “And it was all yellow” just like in Coldplay’s song.

squirrels: can you see the difference?

I love squirrels, I think they are cute, I thought they were cute before I saw squirrels here. I would not say they are ugly, they are just so different. They have so much less fur and look like naked. Just look at the pictures. The first one is from home and this little squirrel still not completely in winter colors, but look at the ears! And look at the fur in general. I guess cold climate gives you genes with better, nicer, more beautiful fur. Unfortunately you cannot really see her tail on this picture, but it is usually so pretty.

reasons to attend a church

While talking to my “back home” boyfriend I’ve mentioned that I’ve missed the church service today. His reply was: “do you think that [going to a church] will help [save] you?” Here it is – the difference in how we perceive reasons for going to the religious services. While here people go there to learn something new, to communicate with others, to straighten their beliefs, etc, back home people go there to pray for forgiveness of sins and to show that you are true believer. People do not go to the church to communicate, to meet others from the local community. Moreover, you are not really allowed to talk in the church, other than praying. It is totally different and I have to admit that I like churches here more. They truly give you a feeling of belonging to the community, they address issues that you face in life; churches here are more people oriented.

shopping

We happened to be in the mall yesterday and my friend went to get 2 pairs of slacks. Me and two more other girls decided to go to the lady’s department. We had just 15 minutes.

When we got back to the place where we’ve decided to meet we found that that guy bought 2 pairs of slacks as he was planning. And 2 girls out of 3 also bought something, they didn’t plan to buy! So, the math is pretty simple: no recognized need + 15 minutes = spending money. :))

As usually, although I was not really planning to get something, I got myself one really nice item. I guess shopping for girls is more than just getting what is needed, it’s more of an emotional thing: want it – get it. I’m pretty much sure that a lot of things that girls buy are not being worn quite often.

There is a concept of calculating price of the cloths. You just divide the price of the item by times you wear it. I’m pretty much sure that the average price of girls’ stuff calculated this way is higher, even if you adjust for difference in the initial value of cloths for guys and girls

Super Bowl or new concept of TV

I "watched" Super Bowl last Sunday... not really watched, just paid attention to some commercials.
Usually there are not a lot of commercials and you watch some show with ads pauses, not in the case of Super Bowl. It was mostly advertising with short moments of the game. Apparantly US does not have any limitation on ads time. Back home we have maximum of 12 minutes per hour. Here it was 12 minutes of game and 48 minutes of commercials... or so. At least commercials were cool. I guess paying 2.7 billion per 30 seconds you don't want to show some lousy ad that would not catch attention.
Another interesting thin: people do not seem to be disturbed by those commercials, because they are so cool. And Super Bowl is not only about game but also about commercials.
Isn't that what advertisers were dreaming about? People actually do love their commercials. (Although I'm not sure about effects of those commercials on purchase behavior)

milk with ice

Americans drink everything with ice - tea, coffee, soft drinks, juice, water, alcohol. They even drink milk with ice!!! Obviously all this is still weird to me, although I'm getting used to it... slowly.
It's not a part of their culture to drink hot drinks.

ER

I was always so fascinated by ER series, mostly because of Clooney. Isn’t he hot? The manly man in Hollywood? (too bad he’s too old now). In those series emergency services were truly fast.

Few days ago my friend was really bad and I had to give him a ride to the emergency room at the local hospital. We got there, I went to park and he went inside. I was sure by the time I get inside he’ll be in some back room getting professional medical help. Nope! They first need to fill out all the information on the patient. Then the patient goes to the back room to fill out more documents. This time it’s about insurance.

I guess the help you’ll get (even when it’s urgent) depends on your insurance.

There are two things that are weird for me: 1) It was not as fast as in ER series (I know, I know… Hollywood lies a lot, but everything in ER should be fast anyway); 2) You should not care if the person is insured or not in case of emergency. Otherwise that means that society values not people as social beings, but people as wallet holders.

Even if it’s like that, why don’t you come up with some system, that once you’ve identified yourself, system would be able to find information on whether you have insurance or not?