I will ruffle your hair

~ Veselin ~ 4 Comments

The text at the very top, after being censored, means “I will ruffle your hair”. I really wonder about the thought processes that produced this copy. Perhaps it meant something else and got redacted. The redacted part must’ve been offensive.

Aksakov street, Sofia.

Reading in January

~ Veselin ~ 7 Comments

I spent more time reading this month than I normally do. Had a vacation during the first week of January and had some good luck with book finds.

Many of the books I read were written by Alexandra Marinina – a Russian crime/thriller author. Her novels are taking place in Moscow from the early 1990s. These years were turbulent and Russia had some resemblance of freedom, with people acting like communism never happened. It had similarities with the early 90s from my own country, although quickly diverging as the series progresses. The 4 books I read were great. Not Michael Connelly great but I liked them and will get back to the series later.

Best Books

  • The Dungeon Crawler Carl – this was the overall clear winner as it was engaging, fun, and the print was superb. The book had a hole in the cover, who does that?
  • Alexandra Marinina’s Circumstances – book one of Marinina’s series about detective Kamenskaya.
  • Hugh Howey’s rushed ending of the Silo series comes third.
  • Alex Kosh’s Medium on Call is the final highlight for the month. Alex Kosh needs to find a way to translate his work. I have no idea how he manages to provide translations in Bulgarian but not in English. The quality of his work deserves thousands or tens of thousands of ratings on Goodreads, not 8.

I was lucky and didn’t read any bad books this month. There’s one DNF but I won’t mention it because I may be able to complete it in February. All 9 of the covers above were at least 4/5.

Cats, Cakes, and Skyscrapers

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

I had a chaotic walk this morning, here’s a bit of Sofia and my path for the day.

Skyscrapers

I walked past 3 of the tallest buildings in Sofia. The first photo shows Capital Fort (147 meters) and Sky Fort (202 meters, with parts of it disappearing into the clouds). The second shows the Millennium Center’s tower 2 and 3 (~112 meters). By height, these rank as the city’s first, second, and third tallest buildings. The final photo is one of the tallest socialist buildings, which looks like a dwarf next to the Millennium Center, despite standing at 70 meters.

What the first 3 buildings have in common, apart from being tall, is that they all got stuck and remained unfinished for a long time. Capital Fort and the Millennium Center were eventually covered in glass and put into operation, but Sky Fort still lacks windows on its top four floors, which may take years to resolve.

Cake

The goal of my walk was to get a birthday cake from Vila Rosiche. Somehow, they’ve survived the gentrification and the enshittification of the city center brought on by the ever-growing number of tourists, and they’re still baking excellent cakes. Dropping a casual recommendation, as for whatever random reason, people find this blog on Google, searching for local experiences.

Looking for well-kept secrets in Sofia? Have a cake in Vila Rosiche. They have a small and well-hidden garden, which makes them fine for tourists as well.

Cat

This little fellow wanted to explore the internals of my car. Thankfully, she eventually came out for some pets and let me take a photo.

Complaining

~ Veselin ~ 6 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What do you complain about the most?
View all responses

My region is known for cultural complaining. Gather people from the Balkans around a table, and it’s like a championship in complaining. I suspect this bad habit has Ottoman roots. You shouldn’t stand out, to not gather unwanted attention. Misery as camouflage.

For me – not sure. At one point, I read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Carnegie is strongly against complaining. He thinks nobody enjoys listening to that and he’s a smart person. I suspect he’s at least partially right. So I’ve been putting some significant effort to not do that, or at least not as much. Also, some of the most popular subreddits on Reddit are all around people complaining about their relationships. So maybe at least some people find diving into other people’s problems a good use of their time.

Overall, I think have a good capacity to complain, and also a strong desire to not do it. Here, I let myself complain about cars, which I believe are bad for everyone, and about AI overviews of websites, which I believe are unfair use of other people’s intellectual property.

Speaking of heritage, here’s a Sofia classic. Pickled food and cats