Author: Rauf Aliev

Hooray, I passed the written exam at the local DMV, tomorrow is the road test. The written exam consists of two parts – signs and everything else. You can choose to take the exam in Russian. You can’t make a single mistake on the signs. For the rest, you need to score at least 80% correct. Yesterday, I made a mistake on the signs, somehow assuming I knew them.

Here’s the sign where there were four answer options, two silly ones and two like this (I’ll write ~): 1) if you are driving in the right lane – reduce speed, 2) if you are driving in the right lane – switch to the left lane.

The retake costs 2 bucks, and you can retake it the next day. After three unsuccessful attempts, they send you to driving school to study the theoretical material.

Some questions from the second part are smart, some not so much. For instance, a sign of a cyclist in a yellow diamond and the question – what is this, with one of the four options being a sign involving a cyclist. But there are some tricky ones. Like how many seconds should you count at speeds of 45-70 mph to estimate the braking distance. Or how many feet should you drive with low beams at night, instead of high beams (subsequently with some numbers, close to each other).

In preparation, this really helps: http://driving-tests.org/ It works with a different interface on mobiles, really convenient.

At the DMV, there’s always a queue to the load balancers, reaching up to 40 people. If you arrive in the morning – you get your electronic queue ticket first. I arrived 20 minutes before opening and was first in line. They ask for proof of residence, SSN, two documents, and consider Russian driver’s licenses (without them, the procedure is different). The electronic queue directs you to one of the tables, each equipped with a vision test device, and a tablet for signing. At the DMV, they not only issue licenses but you can also buy a cool license plate number for yourself, for example. It seems they also offer extras like registering births and voter registration.

By the way, dealing with the proof of residency is tricky. Despite having lived in a hotel all January, and the hotel providing a certificate, for the DMV it’s not really a valid document. But utility bills or a lease agreement with the landlord are quite acceptable documents.

So, without looking it up on Google, does anyone have an answer to the puzzle from the second paragraph?

Learning to play the piano is like learning a new language. The skills are the same. There is an alphabet – the notes. There are “phrases”. There is a coherent “grammar”. There is a specific “accent” unique to each person-instrument pair. There are various dialects – styles. There is a simplified language, and there is the “literary” one. The “language” itself changes over time and this is distinctly audible. There are its own “Pushkins” and “Shakespeares”. There is a “written language”, and there is a “spoken” one, and knowing one does not mean knowing the other.

I’ll go play something.

Today it took me over fifteen minutes instead of just five. Because we have a snowfall. Cars are driving 10-15 miles per hour. I have all-season tires, but by the time I start moving at the traffic light, it turns red. I know that now Muscovites will show me what a snowfall is, but for you to understand what it’s like here, let me quote a letter from a realtor:

Will your family need to delay their travel to the U.S. due to the blizzard we are expecting? I think so! All of the airports will certainly be closed! : ( CRAZY! We had a Christmas Day with temperatures in the 70s and now this! : )

Indeed, it was 21 degrees Celsius warm here on Christmas. And when it snows, everyone just patiently waits for it to stop. There are no trucks with salt or other chemicals, the city just stops. 😉

Such darlings! I come home and there’s a gift on the table: nuts with dried fruits and cold tea.

Today, I asked the hotel to prepare a document for the traffic police, proving that I live there (proof of residence), but they were a bit slow with it. It happens. It took them an hour and a half. It needed the signature of the main manager.

They provided the document and made my evening very pleasant.

About the fences around local houses. Here is Alexander Ovechkin’s house, it’s about 5-6 minutes from my work.

http://goo.gl/9P7EGL

P.S. By the way, I went to the cinema at the Verizon Center just yesterday at the very same time as the Washington Capitals-New York Rangers game was starting. Five-two in favor of the Capitals.

Conducted an interesting experiment. Watched a movie in the theater while holding a subtitle player into which I had pre-loaded subtitles.

Just so happens I chose a very “fortunate” movie for this. Of course, I didn’t regret it at all, the movie “The Revenant” with DiCaprio is simply superb, but the English spoken in it is very indistinct—usually muttered with blood in one’s mouth—making up about 40% of the dialogue, another ten percent is in the Arikara language with subtitles, and the remaining 50% showcases music and wild nature. Well, nearly three hours of run time—normal, the experiment was successful. It’s amazing how subtitles are available even before the film is released on disk.

You’re in a real American movie theater if on the left there’s a mega bucket of popcorn, and on the right, a girl is reading comics.

Visited a huge central library. Several floors, large bright halls. Took a couple of music scores home. The photo doesn’t show them, it shows Wagner in compact format. I can’t understand how people use them.

Interesting system. You arrive, choose what you need as in a bookstore, and I will return them in my village. One of the music score collections came with a disc.

Almost took a great jazz tutorial too, but it turned out to be the second link on Google in PDF. Eventually, I left it there.

At Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington D.C., DC

https://www.swarmapp.com/r_aliev/checkin/569bfc85498ea2a1bad65830?s=FaNgxvo34TzYRnbRM1YCnYVuX1w&ref=fb&source=openGraph

Writing from a fairly average library.

It takes about one minute to get a library card. Russian driver’s licenses and any proof of address, such as a letter addressed to you showing your surname, will work. The library card is valid in any of the city’s libraries, and there are definitely more than twenty of them.

In the library, you can borrow books (both physical and audiobooks), movies, music, including digital versions. Books, music, and audiobooks can be borrowed for 21 days (with up to 10 renewals, if no one else has them reserved), while DVDs, music CDs, VHS tapes, and vinyl records are for seven days.

You can return books at any city library, not just the one where you borrowed them. There are 23 more scattered around the city. You can borrow up to 50 books at a time, along with 10 DVDs and 10 CDs. To renew, simply log into your account and click a button. You can even return books at night – there’s a special drop slot in the doors. You can also find and reserve books online from home; if someone has them, you’ll definitely get them after their 21-day period expires.

Now about the electronic books. There’s a special library app, Overdrive. It’s available for iOS/Android, Nook, Kindle, Mac, Chromebook, Kobo, Windows, Windows Phone, and it even supports some MP3 players. It has a huge catalog of ebooks. In general, this service supports 30,000 libraries in 40 countries. Sure, not in Russia. Here, books and audiobooks can be borrowed to your device (protected by DRM). They are also returned automatically, and the system keeps track of rentals. This makes reading (and listening to audiobooks) free.

There’s a scanner-printer-copier. Scanning is free, except they charge for printing and copying (15 cents for black and white, 30 cents for color). Fees also come into play with fines: $5 for a 30-day late return, 15-20 dollars for 60-days late or damages on average. For lost items, the fine starts from $40 and may lead to a possible card blockage. No fines are imposed on children at all.

There are programming classes, and they teach video production. Just like hobby groups in community centers back home, here in the libraries, for instance, they offer something like English language courses (group discussions with a local coordinator to correct mistakes) which run two hours a day from Monday to Wednesday.

For kids, there are Fab Lab courses where they tinker with 3D printers, laser cutters (I don’t know the Russian word), and such interesting devices: DI-Wire http://www.pensalabs.com/ automates the creation of 3D-items from wire.

P.S. There is no Russian keyboard layout here, nor am I allowed to install it, so the text was typed using http://winrus.com/keyboard.htm. Quite convenient, by the way – might be useful for someone in internet cafes abroad.

P.P.S. It’s funny that the library computer’s Windows complains it’s not activated. It threw a bunch of warnings at me.