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My vacation honestly couldn’t have started better. I already managed to explore the city a bit and now I’m mentally ready for my next destination—Tokyo. I’ll write about Tokyo tomorrow though. For now, I just want to capture how fascinating and surprisingly smooth today turned out. When I booked my flight, Turkish Airlines included a free Istanbul tour program, so from 4 pm until 9:30 pm I joined this really well-organized excursion—with dinner included. And not just any dinner, but proper Turkish cuisine. What made it even more interesting was the company: I ended up at a table with a family from California, so I got to hear real, natural American English in conversation.
The river doesn’t have snow anymore. In this post, you can see how it was covered before
Today, I began my day with cloudy and foggy weather. I especially noticed the fog during my trip to the tire service, as the road was covered in it and visibility was quite low. Honestly, it didn’t bother me; I arrived safely at the tire service, where the work feels familiar to my people. There, I changed my winter tires to summer ones because the weather was already warm and the roads were no longer icy. Even though there are still some patches of snow in certain places, I decided it was time.
The process went smoothly without any issues. It took around thirty minutes, maybe even less, as three workers operated quickly and in good coordination. For the service, I paid 2000 rubles (about $24.90) for my 16-inch radial tires.
I started the day with a cloudy and foggy morning. The fog was extremely heavy and completely covered the city. From the window, I couldn’t see the hill at all — it was fully hidden and seemed to vanish into the fog. The last time I experienced something similar was during a winter blizzard and a few times in autumn, but today the fog felt much heavier than usual. Around the river, it was especially dense and almost perfectly white. I first noticed it from the window, but when I observed it from a distance, it looked even more beautiful. It felt as if a thick layer of fog was floating above the river, while other parts slowly spread across the hills and trees.
In this post I already mentioned my work results, but today during the monthly meeting there was another discussion about our productivity. The CEO talked about the most important things that happened during the first quarter and said that the quarter was unsuccessful for the company. Honestly, I don’t remember that the main plan was not completed successfully during January, February, and March. In fact, the company achieved about 97% of the plan. Of course, it’s not 100%, but I don’t think it’s that bad. They also reported revenue of more than 110 million rubles.
I got completely stuck on a task and didn’t manage to finish anything. This was already my third full day working on it, and I’m starting to feel a bit unsure about my situation with my team lead. He might ask me, “Where are your results?”, and although I do have some progress, I’m not confident in it. The task itself is quite specific and involves working with a Google API, which makes it more challenging. Honestly, it made me feel a bit down. Just yesterday, our CEO was talking about productivity, and today mine was extremely low. That didn’t make me feel good at all—if anything, it made me stressed and annoyed.
Today I spent around two hours in a meeting where our CEO said he’s not satisfied with our results and overall productivity. He actually mentioned this at the beginning of the year, and today he brought it up again. The first half hour of the meeting was calm, and we were just discussing our tasks, but after that he shifted the focus completely and spent the rest of the time talking about productivity.
Today was my mom’s anniversary, so everyone spent the day preparing the table. When I woke up and walked into the kitchen, I saw a bit of chaos—everyone was rushing around trying to finish their tasks. Some close relatives had already arrived in the morning to help. So my morning wasn’t calm at all—it was busy and quite loud. Still, there was plenty of food, so I had no problem finding something for breakfast.
Today I spent the weekend at home. My relative arrived early in the morning, which made the start of my day a bit noisy and unusual. The weather was cloudy but warm, around +10 degrees. I’m used to seeing the sun every morning, so it felt strange when I woke up and noticed the sky was grey. I was still lying in bed when I heard someone talking loudly in the other room. At first I didn’t understand what was happening, but then I realized it was my relative. Even though I didn’t get up, it woke me up completely.
While driving back from my relatives at around 5 pm, I noticed my neighbors by the roadside. They were heading toward the city and still had about 4–5 kilometers left to reach their destination. I couldn’t just leave them there, so I pulled over and offered them a ride. The distance wasn’t short, and they were walking along a dusty highway with heavy traffic, which made the situation seem quite dangerous.
Honestly, it feels like a huge relief to have some free time again. Up until today, I was pretty stressed about it because I got stuck on a few tasks, and it ended up taking over all my free time after work. I just couldn’t figure out why my code wasn’t working, so I spent an extra four or five days trying to fix it. My client started getting concerned too, asking what was going on and when I’d finally be done. And yeah, that was on me — we had planned to finish everything in early March, but now it’s already the end of the month.
We decided to replace our furniture, so we gave away our old pieces for free through a charity organization. Since everything was still in good condition, it felt like a waste to throw it away. The organization sent two movers to pick it up. However, when they came inside, the whole room immediately filled with a strong smell of alcohol. It was really unpleasant—I can’t remember the last time I smelled something that strong. Fortunately, despite that, the movers behaved professionally and finished the job quickly without any issues.
This chunk of snow has been worrying me the last few days. It’s +10°C outside, and it’s still hanging on the roof!
Today I woke up earlier than usual, around 8 a.m. The sky was cloudy, but the temperature was warm enough. As always, I looked out the window and saw that huge chunk of snow still sitting under it. Honestly, it’s melting so slowly because the sun never reaches that side of the house. I’m not even sure when it will finally disappear. If it somehow lasts until the first days of summer, I wouldn’t be surprised—but I really hope all those icy hills melt soon.