марта 18, 2008
Articles (first two)
3/18 19:07, Pushkin time
I finally got the time (and got around to it) to get a couple of the better articles-that-have-come-out-so-far scanned and formatted and so forth.
This first is more about the trucks, from the major magazine, AutoReview (translated, of course). These are the guys who tore apart the dump trucks we made several months back -- not that it was anything to horrible; the magazine has a reputation for being reliable in large part due to how harsh they can be; so the compliments we got in that issue, though few, were sweet. With that as a baseline, the smaller piece they put out for our opening is practically glowing. They make a few rude comments about the age of the truck model, and the fact that the spec we are building is a bit 'budget'. Plus they have an irrational bias towards European trucks (also accounted for). So we're actually pretty happy with that first article.
Here's that one (it's big, ~3MB)
The second was a little blurb in the Business Petersburg (again, translated) newspaper. They put out that day a twelve-page insert specifically about the automotive factories that are being brought to life all around Petersburg. And we got a whole page of that (more than Toyota!). Of course, most amusing for insiders is the photo at the bottom center-left, identifying the plant manager. The question of, 'which one is he?' has already started to get old for everyone except all the people I show the article to. But that's cool. L got to be in the paper, so we'll keep a copy of that for him.
Here's that one (just <1MB)
I finally got the time (and got around to it) to get a couple of the better articles-that-have-come-out-so-far scanned and formatted and so forth.
This first is more about the trucks, from the major magazine, AutoReview (translated, of course). These are the guys who tore apart the dump trucks we made several months back -- not that it was anything to horrible; the magazine has a reputation for being reliable in large part due to how harsh they can be; so the compliments we got in that issue, though few, were sweet. With that as a baseline, the smaller piece they put out for our opening is practically glowing. They make a few rude comments about the age of the truck model, and the fact that the spec we are building is a bit 'budget'. Plus they have an irrational bias towards European trucks (also accounted for). So we're actually pretty happy with that first article.
Here's that one (it's big, ~3MB)
The second was a little blurb in the Business Petersburg (again, translated) newspaper. They put out that day a twelve-page insert specifically about the automotive factories that are being brought to life all around Petersburg. And we got a whole page of that (more than Toyota!). Of course, most amusing for insiders is the photo at the bottom center-left, identifying the plant manager. The question of, 'which one is he?' has already started to get old for everyone except all the people I show the article to. But that's cool. L got to be in the paper, so we'll keep a copy of that for him.
Here's that one (just <1MB)
марта 14, 2008
Big day for Z's class
3/14 18:45, Pushkin time
Last week at the plant we turned out 5 trucks; this week, 4 (Monday was a holiday). So we are officially now at our 1/day target. The bigger articles from the opening are starting to come out, too. My intention is to spend a bit of time scanning them and to put them up, too, before too long.
Anyway, today A got caught in traffic coming back from the store and called me to say that she wasn't going to make Z's ordinary noon pickup time. So I rushed over to get him, which was fortunate, as he had neglected to mention to us that today was a big celebration day for the 1st-classers. They make a big production out of the kids finishing with their penmanship books all the way through the 33 letters (in capital and lower case). Singing, dancing, and so forth. And if it hadn't have been for some bureaucrat deciding to take a drive through Pushkin, A would have gotten to see it instead of me (as it was, she ended up seeing more than half of it). Everyone turned out -- most kids' parents were clearly taking time off work to come by; A's friend T's husband was there; И's neighbor C; pretty much everyone we've met in town seems to have a kid represented in one of the three 1st class groups.
At the beginning of the celebration, the director of the school put the question to the parents, how many of them remembered their 'literacy celebration'. Most, of course. As it was remarked, this has been one of the traditional rites for Russian schooling for many, many generations. It was gratifying the be able to pick up all of the puns and plays-on-words that made for the bulk of what they did.
Z got to sing, among other things, the Russian alphabet song. I couldn't place the tune at first, until just now when he repeated it for his little brother. It's done to the "Welcome to Duloc" tune from Shrek (which is almost certainly from somewhere else, but that's what I relate it to).
And at the end, the 4th-classers got to present the freshly-penmanship-literate kids with bookmarks they had made to go with the very first books they will be jumping into for the "reading" class that is half of the replacement for the "penmanship" one just completed (the other half is, of course, "Russian Language" -- as in grammar, spelling, punctuation... the standard fare). The book the freshly-literate will be starting with? Золотое Руно [That is, The Golden Fleece]. Apparently, the starting book is different every year, but always something from the Greek classics. Z is pretty stoked.
Last week at the plant we turned out 5 trucks; this week, 4 (Monday was a holiday). So we are officially now at our 1/day target. The bigger articles from the opening are starting to come out, too. My intention is to spend a bit of time scanning them and to put them up, too, before too long.
Anyway, today A got caught in traffic coming back from the store and called me to say that she wasn't going to make Z's ordinary noon pickup time. So I rushed over to get him, which was fortunate, as he had neglected to mention to us that today was a big celebration day for the 1st-classers. They make a big production out of the kids finishing with their penmanship books all the way through the 33 letters (in capital and lower case). Singing, dancing, and so forth. And if it hadn't have been for some bureaucrat deciding to take a drive through Pushkin, A would have gotten to see it instead of me (as it was, she ended up seeing more than half of it). Everyone turned out -- most kids' parents were clearly taking time off work to come by; A's friend T's husband was there; И's neighbor C; pretty much everyone we've met in town seems to have a kid represented in one of the three 1st class groups.
At the beginning of the celebration, the director of the school put the question to the parents, how many of them remembered their 'literacy celebration'. Most, of course. As it was remarked, this has been one of the traditional rites for Russian schooling for many, many generations. It was gratifying the be able to pick up all of the puns and plays-on-words that made for the bulk of what they did.
Z got to sing, among other things, the Russian alphabet song. I couldn't place the tune at first, until just now when he repeated it for his little brother. It's done to the "Welcome to Duloc" tune from Shrek (which is almost certainly from somewhere else, but that's what I relate it to).
And at the end, the 4th-classers got to present the freshly-penmanship-literate kids with bookmarks they had made to go with the very first books they will be jumping into for the "reading" class that is half of the replacement for the "penmanship" one just completed (the other half is, of course, "Russian Language" -- as in grammar, spelling, punctuation... the standard fare). The book the freshly-literate will be starting with? Золотое Руно [That is, The Golden Fleece]. Apparently, the starting book is different every year, but always something from the Greek classics. Z is pretty stoked.
марта 06, 2008
Peter Spring
3/7 08:08, Pushkin time
It's been snowing pretty much straight the last ten days (with a tiny sunbreak yesterday for a couple hours -- enough to grow some cool icicles everywhere). February in all was hardly even cold enough to rate a decent autumn, but March is coming off so far at least a bit closer to normal. We're not getting anything particularly cold (I think minus 7 was the furthest it got one night), but cool-and-snowy is at least considered expected for this time of year.
The biggest trouble in keeping writing regularly is finding a way to set aside time on a regular basis. Since the plant got started, the three of us who constitute 'management' (that's myself, personnel guy П К, and our quality guy С С) have seen a pretty much unbroken streak of business. For me it's gone so far as to have brought on a new guy back at the main office to work under me (though for now actually supervised by Е П, since I'm hardly ever actually at the office) to take care of the dealer-related stuff that I was doing prior to the factory launch. So once I'm ready to let him start doing some of that stuff himself, I get to swap my "trainer" hat for a "head of Training Department" hat. That is, to go with my "Plant Manager" hat and my "Project Engineer" hat (and the often-used, rarely advertised "Guy-Who-Speaks-Good-English" hat). Which is all kind of funny, since I only ever actually wear my orange hunting hat; and for this past winter, it's been warm enough that I haven't really even used it that much.
G is doing well with the reading and writing at his preschool, as well as with the reading (though a bit slower with the writing) in English at home. He recently got invited to come over to a new friend's place; A took him and said they both had a very good time -- the new friend's mom is a dentist, and they had lived for a few months in San Francisco not too long back, so she may be the first friend A's made who can actually sympathize with the language and culture issues and have a good idea of what to do to minimize them.
Z's class have finished the alphabet in their penmanship and are now doing words and sentences (much of it poetry -- we do live in Pushkin, after all...). His vocabulary is exploding. They've also passed out recorder-type instruments and he's gotten into making music.
L is not quite walking yet (A figures it's because we don't have carpet, so he is terrified of falling and bonking himself), but is getting into things at a walking-level. We've decided to take the route we did with G and start him communicating in sign-language so he can have at least some way to communicate with us until he gets to talking. And he's picking the signs up just as quickly as G did.
In other things, С С yesterday at lunch finally declared 'Enough' and took the time to teach me how to hold my spoon properly (that is, properly for Russia). It's something everyone is taught in preschool here -- G does it right -- and it just got to be too much for him to have an adult conversation every day with a person who didn't even use his utensils properly. I will say that using a spoon in a different manner is significantly more difficult than taking to chopsticks. Most likely, because I had no 'wrong' way to unlearn with chopsticks. But give it a few more days and I will eliminate one more barbarian mannerism from my regular habit.
It's been snowing pretty much straight the last ten days (with a tiny sunbreak yesterday for a couple hours -- enough to grow some cool icicles everywhere). February in all was hardly even cold enough to rate a decent autumn, but March is coming off so far at least a bit closer to normal. We're not getting anything particularly cold (I think minus 7 was the furthest it got one night), but cool-and-snowy is at least considered expected for this time of year.
The biggest trouble in keeping writing regularly is finding a way to set aside time on a regular basis. Since the plant got started, the three of us who constitute 'management' (that's myself, personnel guy П К, and our quality guy С С) have seen a pretty much unbroken streak of business. For me it's gone so far as to have brought on a new guy back at the main office to work under me (though for now actually supervised by Е П, since I'm hardly ever actually at the office) to take care of the dealer-related stuff that I was doing prior to the factory launch. So once I'm ready to let him start doing some of that stuff himself, I get to swap my "trainer" hat for a "head of Training Department" hat. That is, to go with my "Plant Manager" hat and my "Project Engineer" hat (and the often-used, rarely advertised "Guy-Who-Speaks-Good-English" hat). Which is all kind of funny, since I only ever actually wear my orange hunting hat; and for this past winter, it's been warm enough that I haven't really even used it that much.
G is doing well with the reading and writing at his preschool, as well as with the reading (though a bit slower with the writing) in English at home. He recently got invited to come over to a new friend's place; A took him and said they both had a very good time -- the new friend's mom is a dentist, and they had lived for a few months in San Francisco not too long back, so she may be the first friend A's made who can actually sympathize with the language and culture issues and have a good idea of what to do to minimize them.
Z's class have finished the alphabet in their penmanship and are now doing words and sentences (much of it poetry -- we do live in Pushkin, after all...). His vocabulary is exploding. They've also passed out recorder-type instruments and he's gotten into making music.
L is not quite walking yet (A figures it's because we don't have carpet, so he is terrified of falling and bonking himself), but is getting into things at a walking-level. We've decided to take the route we did with G and start him communicating in sign-language so he can have at least some way to communicate with us until he gets to talking. And he's picking the signs up just as quickly as G did.
In other things, С С yesterday at lunch finally declared 'Enough' and took the time to teach me how to hold my spoon properly (that is, properly for Russia). It's something everyone is taught in preschool here -- G does it right -- and it just got to be too much for him to have an adult conversation every day with a person who didn't even use his utensils properly. I will say that using a spoon in a different manner is significantly more difficult than taking to chopsticks. Most likely, because I had no 'wrong' way to unlearn with chopsticks. But give it a few more days and I will eliminate one more barbarian mannerism from my regular habit.
