Memories of Music

I started playing the violin when I was ten. This is quite a late age for such an endeavour, but it was then that I got my first violin, straight out of a factory in Russia. I didn’t know, then, that this was possibly the worst kind of violin that you could get.
That was more [...]

A Walk in the Park

Last Friday, I worked from home. On Sunday, I developed a mild cold. On Monday night it turned into an extremely painful ear infection. By Wednesday evening, the infection was under control and I had been on sick leave for three days, and away from office almost an entire week. I was feeling apathetic and [...]

It’s a Dog’s Life - Part 3 - Cassie

We got Cassie when I was in my early teens, and entirely at my insistence (we already had two). From the start, Cassie was My Dog. She was a mongrel, the youngest of an unexpected litter of the Dachshund pet of a friend of ours. She grew up to be rather squarer and taller than [...]

It’s a Dog’s Life - Part 2 - Steffie

It’s not easy to eat properly, if your ears keep falling in your plate. This is what usually happened to Steffi. And Steffi loved to eat. She would eat just about anything - specially raw vegetables. If you were shelling peas, she would eat the shells; cutting cauliflower and she would BEG for the stalk; [...]

It’s a Dog’s Life - Part 1 - Blackie

In my growing up years, at my parents’ house we had, over quite a long period of time, three dogs. These were (in order of appearance) Blackie, Steffi, and Cassie.
Blackie was for a long time thought to be a Tibetan Terrier, but after many years of thinking him so, we decided (for reasons unknown) that [...]