In the countryside (nostalgia)

Last Friday I went to the place where I used to spend summers in my childhood. My family has a house in a village not far from Mozhaysk and Borodino (the fields where the famous battle between the Russian troops headed by Kutuzov and the French troops headed by Napoleon Bonaparte took place), it's to the west from Moscow. The house is actually abandoned, nobody lives there in winter and very few people very seldom go there in summer. I hadn't been there for some 3-4 years and this time took the keys and went there alone. It was upsetting to finally come and see what I saw. I can say it's the place I loved most in Russia. And when nobody takes care of the land and the house you can easily feel it.
We used to plant paprika, tomatoes, a lot of cucumbers, strawberries, peas, zucchini, pumpkins, marrows, but this time I saw only one row of cucumbers, carrots, onions, garlic, several square metres of potato. When I was a kid my family had several beds of potato at least 1 km long each! No wonder we never bought potatoes. The apple trees in the garden are so old now, but still bear fruit. The raspberry bushes when not taken care of start to dominate other plants, and it is exactly what's happening in one part of our vegetable garden. Poor bushes of gooseberry and black currant, all surrounded by raspberry bushes. Yellow raspberry grows where it used to. In other parts of the vegetable garden the same old black and red currant bushes appeal to the eye. I remember one cold rainy summer day when my relatives lost me. They found me sitting under a black currant bush hiding from the rain and eating berries :)(Heard and liked the phrase: In Russia there are two winters - one white and one green).
It's a pity it's only several times a year but still it's so good to eat something directly from the bush =) They say the real good from a vegetable/fruit comes only the first 15 minutes after we pick it (tear it off) because only then the fruit is "living", the energy of Life is still there. It tastes better for sure =) And I fully enjoyed it that day in my garden. I really want to live in the countryside and grow my own vegetables and fruit, as we used to do years ago.

Prices at the Preobrazhensky market

July is a wonderful month! It's warm, the daylight is long, and there are so many yummy things at the market. I've been focusing on fruit and berries recently.

1 EUR ~ 44.5 RUR
Cherries: 40-50 RUR a kilo
Sweet cherries: 50-80-100-120-150 RUR dark, pink&yellow. Yellow sweet cherries from Armenia 200RUR (my favourite)
Peaches: from Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, the Crimea (Ukraine). 40-70-80-100-150 RUR, my choice is 80 RUR
Nectarines: 40-80-90-120 RUR
Blueberry: from Vladimir, Murom (regions in Russia). 70-80-90-110 RUR a kilo
Raspberry: from different Russian regions. 100-120-150 RUR a box (~700gr)
Melons: Astrakhan, Uzbekistan. torpedo, kolkhoznitsa (varieties). 40-50-80 RUR a kilo
Hazelnuts: South Ossetya. a new harvest, those milky hazelnuts, sold still covered with the green part, love them. 150 RUR a kilo. Sold only at one stall.

Why not Economics any longer

Listen to yourself. What is it what you really want to do in life? Not those goals imposed by the society or even very caring relatives. I'm still struggling with my mum, she has her own vision of my life, she still thinks I belong to her when I can belong to myself only. My university mates are buying flats in Moscow and good Japanese cars, and my mum wants me to make a lot of money as well. But my view of the world is different, I don't want to be striving for money all my life, I am grateful to and for what I have now.
Do I want to be an office rat? Work long hours inside concrete buildings with poor ventilation stare at a PC? Or work for a company that is one of the leaders in doing harm to the Earth? No. The first step is to realise what I don't want. Done. The next step is to realise what I do want. I started to move in this direction. I believe that doing something with languages (translating, teaching) will minimise my own negative impact on the environment.
There're many books by those who realised 1) how beautiful the world is 2)that we human beings are (supposed to be) its co-creators 3) that abundance is here, we must only see it 4) that the power of our thoughts is limitless, and dreams&wishes do come true, with a lag in time 5) that love and gratitude do miracles 6) that giving (love) is better than taking (love) 7) that we are not human beings having a spiritual experience but spiritual beings having a human experience, etc etc etc ........ Many authors are of the late XXth century, still alive and writing more. Many cite Bhagavad Gita, the Torah, the Bible, the Qur'an. Many cite other modern authors, usually healers, naturopats, psychologists. I've read quite a few. Many books are very interesting, well-structured and the ideas are so simple and I've heard them so many times, that it's surprising how come I've never really processed, so to say, those thoughts myself.
It takes time and effort to become aware of the negativism of our thoughts, the many stereotypes we automatically absorb while growing up. But once you start tidying up your mind :) you find it very exciting! You gain that independence in thoughts that many of us really dream of. In my life only the last couple of years brought me this new perception of myself, so I am quite new to this self-improvement field. But those several gleams I've had so far were really amazing! I absolutely agree with somebody who said that if you recall only one prayer a day let it be "thank you". Being grateful not only in words, but really feeling it is a marvellous inner experience which opens doors to abundance in the physical facet of our world as well.
Economics is about decisions on allocation of limited resources. In Microeconomía by Michael Parkin (I have a Spanish edition) I read: "Todas las preguntas de la economía surgen de un hecho sencillo e ineludible: no siempre se puede obtener lo que uno quiere. Vivimos en un mundo de escasez". And this is exactly the idea I don't support any more. The universe has everything a human being might need, and it's a matter of time to receive it (let's not think of what time is for now). How much time is needed depends on the person's qualities, openness to the abundance etc. But beware! Be careful in wishing something! You will get it, and what will you do then? ;)

Fasting and week-day names

Do you speak Irish? Maybe you know several Irish words? I don't know a word in Irish myself but I've just learned one curious thing: the days of the week Wednesday and Friday are called fasting and Thursday is the day between fastings. Wow! In the Orthodox Christian tradition Wednesday and Friday were banian days as well, although in Russian the meaning of the names is different (Wednesday sreda means middle, Friday pyatnitsa means the fifth day of the week).

Sweet cherries

At least 1/3 of my current diet are sweet cherries, mainly dark-red ones.
Countries of origin: mainly Uzbekistan, but some are from Azerbaijan, Moldova and Armenia
Prices: 80-280 RUR a kilo (1 EUR ~ 44 RUR). 120 RUR is the most common price for dark-red and red sweet cherries at the market I go to (Preobrazhensky). 80 RUR is the evening market price for pink&yellow sweet cherries there. One of my favourite kinds is the yellow sweet cherry from Armenia, they cost 150 RUR a kilo and it's quite hard to find these. Extra large very dark sweet cherries cost 220-280 RUR a kilo.

July

Busy again. From early morning till quite late at night with several free hours at noon. Sleep about 5 hours a night, not enough for me. Move a lot, by mainly short distances in polluted areas (15 minutes on foot to the closest underground station). Spend a lot of time in metro and in concrete buildings, surrounded by crowds of people or working with people (not with a PC).
The cherry period will come to an end soon so I'm eating as much as I can afford every day. The prices are reasonable at the market, but I don't have time to go there often and have to buy fruit next to metro stations.
Bingo, I drink at least two mugs of water every morning.

June

The entire month of June I was very busy, slept less than I needed, spent almost all my time inside, was nervous because of lack of time - not really a healthy way of life. Strangely enough the monorawfoodism aspect was ok. I ate small portions of fruit and vegetables during the day, so the absolute majority of my meals were fine from the mono perspective. But in the evening I couldn't avoid mixing everything. Now that I'm quite free again I eat a lot again and mix even fruit with vegetables, uff. Drinking water is still a big issue, just can't drink it.

I read one monorawfoodist's diary. He's mono since some 8 months ago and he's tried mixing stuff recently. He says he felt the difference in clarity of his mind although the body reacted ok. As my reasons for rawfoodism are related to both physical and non-physical (spiritual, mental) aspects of life I'm even more convinced to switch to a 100% mono now.

It's the season of sweet cherries now. I'm a big fan of those and taking advantage of good prices at the Preobrazhensky market. 3 kilos of dark, pink and yellow sweet cherries a day? Easily! And with pleasure =)

Linden trees are in their full blossom now. They smell so good that I enjoy my morning walk to the metro station as there are a lot of linden trees on my way.
Good olfaction can cause some inconveniences as too many people smell bad and the air quality in many parts of Moscow is really poor.