Posts from Temka Vegtamchik'a

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Vissy, you're so slow.

And it's not just him... I have a tiny shop, just a few square meters. We made an agreement with a cafe, and we held game nights there...

I understand.

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We also used to gather in cafes or other places with our club in Murmansk.

I had enough to eat and could potentially arrange another meeting with the café for a specific occasion.

now try to get out of it

And now we'll be there every Sunday. They'll also start advertising us in December.

Many people wanted to share their thoughts during this time. I'll write down whatever I remember.

RUNA Board Game Club

The last message here on this topic was about our first game night. And as of now, we have held as many as 18 of them. These include: a demo game of "Fury of Dracula" (this is a must-see), a "Svintus" tournament, a "Munchkin" tournament, and a game night at City Orphanage No. 2. Also, during this time, we moved to another cafe that is more suitable in terms of location, clientele, and pricing policy.

If anyone is interested, I constantly post photos on the club page. We also have our own website on ucoz now—it's pretty quiet there; I'm the only one posting game night reports and various articles in the blog.

Books

"Monday Begins on Saturday" and "The Tale of the Three" by the Strugatsky brothers. I liked them very much; they are almost unlike anything I've read before. The book made me laugh sincerely. "The Inhabited Island" by the same authors is waiting its turn on the shelf. 9.5/10

"Dracula" by Bram Stoker. An excellent piece, although I don't like this narrative style—quotes from various characters' diaries. 8.5/10

"For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway. 9.5/10.

"The Time Machine" and "The Invisible Man" by H.G. Wells. I especially liked the first one. It's quite interesting to trace where modern sci-fi comes from. 9.5/10

"A Clash of Kings" by George Martin. The sequel to "Game of Thrones." New main characters have appeared through whose eyes the story is told; there are more different perspectives on the events, which continue to spiral into a rapid whirlpool. I'm thinking about searching for the next books in the series. 9/10

I'm finishing another seven-volume series; I'll write a big post about it once I'm done.

Movies

"Battlestar Galactica" series
I learned about its existence thanks to the same-named board game and started watching in October. By the way, I picked up the game itself from the mail in January; we've already played 4 games, and I will definitely write about it on the club website and here.
The pilot episode tells of twelve human colony-planets that worship Greek gods. Their scientists invent robots to help them; the robots rebel against their creators, and after a long and bloody war, the robots fly away to a neighboring arm of the galaxy. Then, forty years later, they return and destroy all twelve colonies. Only a hundred civilian ships and one star cruiser, "Galactica"—which was supposed to be solemnly decommissioned that very day—manage to escape. And then, over four seasons and seven dozen episodes, they search for a new home for humanity, while fighting robots and solving various problems.
Here's the twist: over forty years, the robots developed humanoid models that can only be distinguished from humans by the results of a complex test lasting two days. And there are many such models among the 50,000 surviving humans.
The series is full of paranoia, mysterious prophecies, and unexpected plot twists, all of which increase exponentially with each subsequent season. However, I was slightly disappointed by the finale. By the way, this is the first and only series I've watched, not counting short anime ones. I'll give it 9.5/10

"The Matrix"
Literally a month ago, I watched this famous film in its entirety for the first time. I think there's nothing to comment here. 9/10

"Life of Brian" by Monty Python
I finally watched the fourth film by these crazy Englishmen. The main character was born in the same place and at the same time as Jesus, only in the neighboring stable. The film tells the story of this man's life and, like all Python films, mocks many problems of modern society by bringing events to complete absurdity. I enjoyed the song of the crucified Jews—"Always Look on the Bright Side of Life." If you appreciated their other films, watch it; you won't regret it. If you haven't watched anything yet, it's better to start with "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." 9/10

"Kin-dza-dza!"
I also watched this masterpiece very recently. I won't say anything either, except that the Violinist is not needed. 10/10

"The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec"
Ordinary adventures with a happy ending. You can watch it when you're bored. There is one historical inconsistency at the end. 6/10

"Beyond Reasonable Doubt"
Now this is an interesting, non-Hollywoodized piece. A film about an unusual journalistic investigation—a journalist wanting to expose a dishonest court that plants evidence creates evidence against himself along with a friend, but indirect evidence, while filming the process of creating the evidence on camera. You'll have to watch further. 8.5/10

Dreams

I didn't remember most of my dreams during this time, but just today I saw and remembered one interesting one.

The dream was clearly inspired by yesterday's story about a student at a magic university located in the middle of Kyiv (no 7 3/4 there, just in the city). Here it is, if anyone is interested. Yes, that's where I quoted from regarding vampires in Klove. The author was 16 at the time of writing, so the spelling suffers and it's written simply, but some very interesting ideas slip through.

Also, the dream was two-layered. In a second-order dream, I was studying at a university of magic; some story was clearly happening there, somewhat similar to what I had read. Only in the dream we lived in a dorm as one small group together; I also had a good friend who was a rune mage, but he was expelled. I don't remember anything else from those adventures; I forgot everything in the first-order dream. I only remember an episode from the dream-within-a-dream: I'm sitting, reading, preparing for an exam, and a female classmate practicing divination magic is walking around the room. She comes up to me, shows me a piece of paper where it's written in pencil that she got a four on this exam; she says she foresees such a grade (the classmate looks like Starbuck from Galactica O_o). Somewhere here I wake up into the first-order dream and go into some room. From that room, I remember only one corner—there, behind a small podium-lectern, stands our head of the Department of Geology, Geography, and Geophysics, enthusiastically digging through papers lying before him. I greet him and try to tell a joke about how, probably in a university of magic, on a divination exam, a student is given the grade they foresaw for themselves. The department head hears nothing; he's completely absorbed in the papers. I address him again; he looks at me seriously, but as I retell the joke, he smiles more and more. Then, with the words "And how do you give a grade for a geophysics exam using this table?" (he taught us general geophysics previously), he shows me a table with the results of our group's psychological testing on inclinations toward various fields of knowledge (we didn't have such tests). And I just stand there and stare blankly at this table for ten seconds.

And then I wake up (literally fly up) because an SMS arrives on my phone, separated from me by ten meters and a door, with a quiet melody, suggesting I find out the address of my polling station. Despite the abrupt waking, I remembered quite a few details.

Instruments

In early November, a package arrived from America with two new whistles—Clarke D Celtic Tinwhistle and Clarke C Sweetone Tinwhisle (only not black like in the picture, but unpainted metal)

In January, my father brought a Salamur from a business trip to Georgia—a Georgian wooden flute with an octave hole and eight more above. However, I'm afraid I won't start mastering it until I buy and master a recorder.

Miscellaneous

Session
The hardest and most terrifying exam session of my life, coinciding in time with illness and heavy stress. It was a miracle that I passed it to keep my scholarship. In volcanology, I logically guessed what I didn't know. In hydrogeology, I first submitted overdue practical work and then took the exam last, showing a bunch of graphs. And I took the final credit test in the middle of the session. My classmates had it even worse; half are still submitting.

Maslenitsa
Festivities were held in the city center, but I didn't go, knowing perfectly well what would be there. Friends who went confirmed what I already knew—free pancakes that ran out immediately, kitschy folk, and gloom. Except, they say, the snowboarders' performances were interesting.
In the evening, my friends and I gathered at my house, made pancakes, and went to burn Mara. We had saved rags in advance, took rope from my house, and found suitable sticks on the way. We climbed higher up where there are almost no people. But the wind was strong that day—gusts up to 40 m/s. At the top, we suddenly realized we didn't know how to light her. We found a solution—we gathered newspapers in the hallway, crumpled them, and filled the shirt and T-shirt that became Mara's body. To light it, we made a torch; for about five minutes, the four of us surrounded it trying to light it. Finally, it caught fire—and boy did it!—and easily set Mara ablaze. The strong wind provided a constant flow of oxygen; even our sticks burned to embers in five minutes.

Heroes
Over the last month, we gathered several times and played Heroes III or V on one computer. It takes very long (6-12 hours for 3-4 players). Fortunately, you don't spend all that time at the computer, and there's plenty to do between your turns. I actually do better in same old Heroes III; I have more experience.

I had a dream over a week ago; I kept forgetting to write it down here.

In the dream, I flew to visit a classmate in Khabarovsk (he's studying there now). He led me into what seemed like a dorm room. I remember it was evening, the room was about twelve square meters, with a table in the middle and sofas on either side of it. There were also cabinets in the room. The window was wide, wooden, Soviet-era, and there was a balcony door next to it.

The first clear moment – it’s dark outside, the light is on, and I’m sitting on one of the sofas. A small girl is sitting to my right; it seems we are celebrating her birthday. On the sofa opposite, a short-haired guy is leaning on his fist, looking at me, listening, but not understanding anything because he has already had too much to drink. I remember eating a sandwich with smoked cheese.

Fade out.

I wake up early in the morning, around seven o'clock, and it’s already bright. As it turns out, I slept on the same sofa where I sat yesterday, and that guy is sleeping on his sofa. I get up and walk over to the balcony – all the windows are frosted over, and you can’t see anything through them (but it’s warm inside). Suddenly, a crow starts pecking its way through the double pane of the balcony door. The crow is somehow suspended in mid-air in the center of the glass on the other side and methodically pecks at the glass, leaving a neat round hole exactly the size of its beak, which expands with each peck.

Fade out.

I am renovating this room. I order plastic window frames by phone to replace the wooden ones, and I ask for the window to be made smaller in height. Then I look at the finished window; it became smaller due to a strange large cavity made of metal. It’s for kittens. Orange and striped ones. And there is no longer a balcony, although there is still a door leading to it.

The picture is attached: before and after the renovation.



I woke up, jumped out of bed, grabbed a pen and notebook, and quickly wrote down everything I remembered.

How do you manage to sleepwalk? I've never done it.

Greedy. They will sleep during the day just to have the illusion that they are getting better rest!

No, you can just sleep longer. Dreaming within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream ~ you get it, right? Only you would understand. x)

It happened that I woke up three times in my dream, and on the fourth time, I woke up in reality.

Oh, I had something similar happen to me once. I was lying in bed, unable to fall asleep for a long time, it was awful, just pure insomnia. And then it turned out that I was actually dreaming it.
Well, that's completely off-topic.

Vegtamchik, where are you?

Yeah, where is my best friend!