A few words about me and where I’m from
I'm Ansar, and I'm from Kazan, Republic of Tatarstan. If you don’t know about this city, you can read my posts here. I think Kazan is incredibly awesome and feels like a European city. Therefore, you should visit it. And since I’ve told you a little about my city, now I’d like to tell you a little bit about myself as well. First of all, I want to start with my name because when I use it abroad, everyone is curious about it. So here is a short explanation. My name comes from Arabic (أنصَار, anṣār) and means “supporters” or “helpers.” This meaning connects beautifully with a well-known Tatar expression, “Iseme cısemene turı kilgän (Исеме җисеменә туры килгән)”, which means that a person’s name truly matches their character. I feel this fits me quite well, because I naturally tend to be a very supportive and kind person. Overall, I’m truly grateful that my parents and grandparents gave me such a unique name.
About my hobbies and what I like to do in my free time
A few years ago, I realized that I really enjoy traveling. No matter where I go, just traveling is enough to make me happy. Even if I am in my hometown and decide to visit another city, it's already fun and interesting for me. So far, I have visited countries across Europe and Asia. I have been to around 21 countries, and I don’t want to stop exploring. I want to keep expanding this list and discover even more exciting places. Here are some of the countries I visited: Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, France, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan and Indonesia. The full list of my countries or places can be seen here.
It's me — photo taken in Portugal, Porto.
May 20, 2025
However, in my free time, I also enjoy active hobbies: swimming, cycling, camping trips, walking, and driving my car. My quieter hobbies are photography, videography, and I like watching interesting videos on YouTube. All of these hobbies bring me a lot of joy and help me relax from everyday worries.
My experience with languages
Speaking of names and identity, another important part of who I am is my language. My native language is Tatar, and it's very dear to me because my grandparents spoke it many years ago and preserved it until today. Because of my love for the language, I also developed a very interesting and useful project in my native language 16 years ago to support it and help keep it alive. And now, after so many years, my project is still working, and the Tatar audience visits it every day to read poems and share their own poems too. At the same time, what I especially like about Tatar is that this language is very similar to programming languages, because I can use just two letters to make one word. Believe me, it’s very convenient and interesting.
I also know a little bit of Turkish because Turkish is very similar to Tatar and I lived in Turkey. But I didn’t continue learning it because I chose another path with English. English became my main interest, so I decided to study it. Now, I study English actively every day and have made very good progress. I’m currently at a strong intermediate (B1) level.
Learning languages has also helped me in my career path. When I graduated from gymnasium, I chose a very cool and interesting profession: a programmer, specializing in web development. If you ask why I chose this profession, I can tell you: while I studied, I did many IT projects, participated in contests, helped teachers, and did many other activities. In short, I actively participated in school life at my gymnasium and later during my university years. All of this eventually led me into IT. Now, I enjoy my profession and feel satisfied with it.
Why did I make this blog, and what is its main purpose?
In my opinion, I have a few main goals. First, I want to improve my English, so I decided to write posts every day. Second, this isn’t just a blog — it’s also my portfolio. Because I developed it by myself, wrote every line of code with my own hands, and can present it as my own project. And the last purpose is to share my life and travels. Of course, I’ll share all my posts only in English so that everyone can read and understand them. I hope my stories about my life or posts about my trips can help someone or that people can find something interesting or useful here.
If you care about my English, I would appreciate your help
Also, I want to say something about my English level. I might make mistakes or inaccuracies. If you find something wrong or unclear, please feel free to contact me. I’ll try to fix and improve it. If you have any thoughts, feel free to speak with me in real time or just by texting, you can leave a comment below or let me know in any available way. I really appreciate your help, and thank you very much.
