Tag: Pets

Revisiting Antalya: 25 Years Later and Family Bonds | September 15 2025, 15:56

I’m back from Antalya. I was there last time 25 years ago. This time I met up with my mom (she’s from Russia) and showed her Turkey №2. Turkey №1 was last year (Istanbul). Here are some photos from this trip. All taken on an iPhone (I brought a camera too, but was too lazy to carry it around).

Russian pop music is no longer blasting from every speaker, but Modern Talking and similar genres are everywhere, until midnight. I was lucky to rent a hotel just 9 steps away from a night bar that quiets down at midnight, but no worries, we got used to it quickly and the music is decent. The city has many Russians, not only because it’s easy to get there, but also because Turkey offers citizenship for $400K — a sum many Russians can afford for a “passport”. But there’s really nothing to do there. You can tour all the natural sites within the first year or two, and then it’s just a very boring city. No museums, no cultural activities, except for more Modern Talking from the bars. So, at a minimum, you need not only to go there for the passport but also actively use it to live somewhere else.

My mom did great, handling all those hills and boats, and had a lot of impressions. Actually, she has only been abroad in Riga and twice in Turkey, last year in Istanbul and this year in Antalya. I really hope for her 80th birthday next year we’ll go somewhere else where Russians don’t need a visa.

Yuki’s Dinnertime Dilemma: When Appetite Meets Mood | July 30 2025, 21:04

4pm. Yuki hasn’t eaten anything since morning. I take a piece of organic chicken, cook it, cut it into small pieces. He turns away. No, he’s not sick, that’s just normal for him, he won’t even eat cheese if he’s not in the mood. Well, alright, I mix it with his food, leave it.

And there’s the cat, already on duty by Yuki’s bowl, fishing out pieces of chicken. The cat is on a diet, so it won’t be long before he starts eating the dog’s dry food as well.

Yuki sadly watches his own food gradually disappearing from his own bowl and slowly tries to formulate his stance on whether to eat or not. But appetite inevitably arrives during the meal, especially when the food is from someone else’s plate.