Time to Learn and Time to Give

This is a place holder, where I would like to describe my meeting with Georgi (Jora) Ivanov as he and his wife and daughter were visiting with us in the last weekend of August.

Jora is an extraordinary fellow. He is a theater actor and director in Brussels, Belgium. We are related, as his sister Natasha is married to my uncle Oleg, my mother's brother. Natasha deserves a post or two by herself. Suffice it to say that she is one of the kindest, warmest, best people I've ever met. She is also mother to my beloved cousin Zhenya.

One of the things that Jora said to me that especially touched me was "There is time to learn and time to give."

This Week's Accomplishments!

This week (August 15-21) I've done a lot of cycling and meditation:

• 2h 15min of meditation (including walking meditation, sitting meditation and body scan meditation)
• 2h of spinning
• 2h 25min (61km) of cycling training
• 5h 30min (101km) of just-for-fun cycling with Anne Sophie

I also spent a lot of time with Anne Sophie (played games with her, went with her to the beach, to the playground and to visit friends), and finally finished reading Primo Levi's 600-pages long book.

Biking the Route des Legendes in the Belgian Ardennes

Last Sunday my months of bike training were put to a severe test. With a bunch of Flemish friends I travelled to Remouchamps, south of Liege, Belgium, to bike the Route des Legendes, which is a 100km scenic route consisting of two loops of 70 km and 30 km, with numerous climbs and descents and beautiful views to enjoy.

We had a perfect bicycling weather as we started biking at quarter to 10 in the morning. The first climb, which lasted a couple of kilometers was quite a shock. Although by now, having biked up the Alp d'Huez, the Grossglockner and the Mont Ventoux, I should know what climbing is, nevertheless the first few climbing kilometers are still quite a challenge. But I felt that my training has been paying off big time!

This was followed by many more climbs and descents, with some slopes reaching up to 17%. Initially, we stopped quite often in order to keep our group together. I enjoyed the nice views of the countryside and the neat little villages that we passed by.

The second loop started with a long 5km climb, which felt like it would never end. But overall it was much easier than the first loop.

Back at Remouchamps, we set out for the final, but also the most challenging ascent, that of the infamous La Redoute, in which you climb 161 height meters over the distance of 1.7 km. This means 9.5% on the average, with a maximum of 20%! This was absolutely the most difficult climb I have ever done!



In total I biked 105km (and more than 1500 height meters) in 5h45min. I got home very late and tired, but it was a great day and a great training for the upcoming conquest of Passo dello Stelvio!

30 Hours of Exercise in July 2011!

Although this past July was quite a rainy month, I managed to do almost 30 hours of sport activities, including:

1. 9 long training bike rides (450km in 18h 30min)
2. 4 hours of spinning
3. 6 hours of strength training
4. 1 hour of squash
5. 1 hour of inline hockey

Although my plan was to do 2 spinning hours a week, I only managed to spin once a week instead. Let's see if I can do better in August!

With my wife and daughter back from their holiday, this may be quite a challenge. But I set out to bike with Anne Sophie on my city bike, sometimes accompanied by Luda. This doesn't go quite fast, but still it's a good exercise!

Tomorrow I'm going to bike the 100km Route des Legendes near Remouchamps in the Belgian Ardennes with a few Flemish friends. That should be quite a challenge!

30-Day Meditation Challenge

I've been on and off meditating and wanting to meditate for years. There are many benefits to mediation, which I will not discuss here. Suffice it to say that it can be good for both your physical and mental health and for learning more about yourself.

In order to develop my meditation into a lasting, daily habit, I am embarking on a 30-day meditation challenge and I invite you to join me! The rules are quite simple: meditate at least a few minutes every single day for the coming 30 days. In fact I already did this once last year, and I really enjoyed the challenge, but the habit didn't take root at the time.

Because different people understand different things under meditation, it's up to you to choose your meditation technique. I'll be using non-religious, but Zen-Buddhism-inspired meditation techniques developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn as part of his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program. In essence, it's about sitting mindfully, following your breath and taking mental note of what's going within your mind and body.

So if you wish, please join me in this endeavor and share your experiences!

To help you start, I've shared a number of guided meditations by Jon Kabat-Zinn:  https://docs.google.com/#folders/folder.0.0B2tp0bSwDZS4ZWM2Y2VkMTItMGRmNy00OTEyLWI3OTAtYWYxNTkxOGE1YjI5
These meditations explain what it's about and guide you in how you can meditate in various ways. Good luck!

Watching Dutch TV

After not having watched TV for a couple of years, and with my family on a long holiday in Ukraine, I spent a few hours this rainy afternoon watching some Dutch television. I was really impressed by the Dutch major public channels Nederland 1 and 2, which one can watch without any cable subscription, which we deliberately gave up 2 or 3 years ago in order to have some more quality time for ourselves and our little daughter.

So today there were a number of top-quality Dutch and Flemish productions definitely worth watching:

1. The Philosophical Quintet http://www.filosofischkwintet.tv/): a philosophical debate about the rule of law and religious freedom;

2. A programme about Shostakovich and how the realities of life in the USSR were reflected in his music;

3. A documentary about the controversial issues of development help in Africa;

4. A really great film The Bardsongs about the ancient wisdoms of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam (http://www.bardsongs.com/);

5. A Flemish documentary The Way to Mekka (De weg naar Mekka: http://www.nederland2.nl/programmas/3043-de-weg-naar-mekka) about Islam in the present-day Iran;

6. Beagle Revisited: a wonderful documentary that reconstructs Charles Darwin's 5-year trip, but this time in the course of one year on board of a Dutch clipper Stad Amsterdam: http://beagle.vpro.nl/#/talen/item/12/

And I am still looking forward to the late-night documentary Homeland by the Jewish-Dutch-French film director George Sluizer, in which he follows two Palestinian refugee families: http://www.hollanddoc.nl/kijk-luister/documentaire/h/homeland-.html

So it's good to watch some public television from time to time, just skip the ads in the beginning and the end!

Biking to the Corner of Holland, thinking about my Grandma

After the exceptionally bad weather of the last couple of days with storm and rain pouring in buckets non-stop for more than 24 hours, today's crisp sunny weather was a welcome relief! Because I did some overwork earlier this week, I took the afternoon off and set out on a training bike ride. Due to the pretty hard western wind, I first biked against the wind westwards to Wassenaar and then south-west along the coast to the Hoek van Holland.

Biking in the dunes is sublime. It's good to smell the sea air, the flowers now in full blossom, the occasional pine trees that smell of home and my childhood summers in the woods of White Russia. From the dunes of Meijendel one suddenly emerges into the urban world of Scheveningen with its numerous cafes, hotels, casinos and busy traffic. But quickly, the city is left behind and is replaced by the dunes of Kijkduin. From there, there is a long beautiful ride through the wide, green dunes of Westland, then past the many green-houses to the Hoek van Holland, literally translated as the Corner of Holland. It is indeed an almost right angle formed by the coast and by one of the major arms of the river Maas, which serves as entry to the port of Rotterdam, the largest port in Europe.

I stop to admire the huge cargo ships entering and leaving the port. The waves are pretty big and there are some surfers around waiting for a perfect wave. I start biking back along the same route. It is nice to bike with the wind! I feel like going for a swim, but most of the beaches are too busy for my taste. I finally stop at the beach of Meijendel. There are no people around and I plunge into the sea naked. The water is pretty cold, but I feel invigorated, with every cell of my body alert and alive with wind and waves.

Last 16 km through Wassenaar, Voorschoten, and along the Vliet canal are not so hard. It's 82 km in less than 3.5 hours, not too bad!

Today is my late Grandma Sonja's birthday. It's good to remember her. She would have turned 97, but she died 5 years ago. I was always a bit afraid of her, to tell the truth. I probably thought she was too strict, or actually too distant. I always said "Вы" to her, never "ты" (respectful "you" instead of casual "you").  But at the same time, I liked to visit her, liked her dinners and her compotes. Of course, I came also to visit my Aunt Natasha and my dear cousin Zhenya, who lived together with grandma. Rest in peace, dear grandma.