Author: Rauf Aliev

Passing through the settlement fallston joppa

Driving through Baltimore in the rain. Counted five vagrants/homeless people – sleeping on benches, rummaging through bins. In McLean/Vienna and surrounding areas, I haven’t seen a single one in two weeks. A good neighborhood really does make a difference.

Hooray!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP89Uefobcs

from the US Traffic Rules (studying): “…Researchers estimate that between the hours of 10 PM and 2 AM, three out of every ten drivers are drunk…”, “…You must yield to funeral processions…”

“…In your lifetime, there’s a 50-50 chance that you’ll be involved in an alcohol-related crash…” (oh)

Some English words are oddly formed. For example, it’s clear how to build nouns from nouns by adding -ship, much like with -hood:

friend – friendship

member – membership

censor – censorship

there are quite a few of these (http://www.morewords.com/ends-with/ship/)

But then dealership – dealer loses out (because dealer is already taken).

Or take the verb to pass on the road, it seems like it means “to let pass,” but it actually means “to overtake.”

(I study traffic rules in the evenings. Looks like I have an exam on Saturday)

UPDATE: on Tuesday. I have a conference in Philadelphia on Saturday. And they have holidays on Friday and Monday!

Please provide the content you would like translated.

The application for a local driver’s license begins with the checkbox “Yes, I would like to remain or become an organ, eye and tissue donor”

Chewie, we’re home!

Went to Walmart to stock up the fridge. Here are the prices for part of the “grocery basket” that closely overlaps with mine. You can estimate how this correlates with local salaries in order to project these prices onto ours here: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Location=McLean-VA/Salary From the salaries on the link, subtract 28% and divide by 12 to get monthly values. If renting a place in the same area, subtract about $2300 from the calculated monthly income.

For example, if the table states that a project manager here earns $93000, this would translate to about $5580 net per month.

According to http://habrahabr.ru/company/it_dominanta/blog/133558/ in Moscow, an average PM earns 100000 rubles. With an exchange rate of 76 rub/dollar, this is about $1315. A two-bedroom in Moscow costs about 40000 rubles or $526. Thus, after rent, $789 remains. Here, in McLean, after rent, $3280 remains for the same average PM.

That results in a coefficient of 4.15. In other words, prices here can be 4.15 times higher than those in Moscow when adjusted for currency and units. Next, we need to decide which should be the reference point – if it’s the prices here, we can interpret Russian prices as “cheaper or more expensive than here”. If we take Russian prices as the baseline, then we can evaluate prices in the US.

I’ve compiled all the figures into a table and converted them into common units. This is something I need myself to estimate the grocery budget, and it might be useful to someone else. I remember my expenses in Moscow, now I have something to multiply them by to estimate expenses here.

Bought tomatoes at Walmart on January 2nd, and they’re still as if they’re alive. The milk is still good, too. What on earth are they making this stuff from?)