Appearance on the TV
Out of curiosity and willingness to experience what it’s like to speak on the television, I went to talk about anti-money laundering and Salv on the “Morning Coffee” programme on ERR. This is a local TV station broadcasting in Russian.
I had about 5 minutes of fame during which my heart was beating like crazy, yet after watching the recording myself it looked like I was absolutely calm.
On few occasions I got asked how I got there, so here’s the short story… I know the host of the show, Jelena, who taught me public speaking. One day I pitched her idea of talking about this particular topic, and she seemed interested. It took a bit of back and forth to find the date that suited them, myself, and Salv which has a certain PR cycle that I had to squeeze in with my interview.
After the date was set, together with my colleague Tiina we went through things I could talk about. Things like when Salv was founded, why, our clients, future plans. Since I was to talk about part of the product that I do not really touch in my day to day work, there was also a brief technical chat with a fellow engineer (and it proved very useful).
The day before the interview I was sent a list of questions that I might get asked. We went through these with the PR agency that Salv is using and also practiced these. It’s one thing to think through these in your head and another one to actually talk.
Overall there has been quite a lot of preparation for my few minutes of air time, but I’m extremely thankful as all of it actually helped me to feel more confident (or at least look that way) while on camera.
Books
I am planning on writing a separate post on these books, but still want to mention that after moving to a bigger place I started slowly buying physical books again. This is such a joy in holding these and reading.
In March I also finished listening “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke which will also get a separate post.
Shaving
It’s weird to mention this in a blog post, but this is a huge milestone for me. I’ve changed the way I shave for the 2nd time in my life.
I first started shaving using the typical Gilette razors and a regular foam that you get by pressing the button on dispencer. Can’t remember exactly when I started shaving, but that first stage took the longest. There wasn’t anything bad in shaving that way, but at some point I decided a change was needed. And so I decided to switch to a classical shaving razor and a brush that you have to work hard to foam the soap.
My facial hair doesn’t grow that quickly, plus often times I am too lazy, and so I shave once a week or ever rarer. There a few problems with that:
- First you get occasional cuts becase the skin is not conditioned
- Second is it takes a fair amount of time to shave
At one point I decided that it’s enough. And so I bought a fancy electric razor that one can use without the foam. It takes just a few minutes to shave that I can now do every other day. No cuts, no working out your hand for 5 minutes trying to foam the soap, and no spending 30 minutes of your life doing somethign you don’t enjoy. Win, win, win.
House
We spent half of the March in a new house. So far the only thing that I can comment on is that it takes about an hour to get to work: need to drop off kids in different locations, and then enjoy the traffic jam to the office. The process repeats on the way back home.
Since the weather has been cold and snowy, there hasn’t been an opportunity to do any barbeque or try and explore the woods around.
We’ve been slowly getting furniture and settling in…