Artem Prygin's Posts

Trip to the future! It's 2554 in Thailand

Posted by Artem Prygin on January 9, 2012

Hi. everybody!

Want to tell you a few words about our (my and my girlfriend's) trip to Phuket, the famous island and resort of the country of Thailand. It's lying 800 km south of Bangkok and it's very popular among Russian tourists thanks to its numerous beaches, rich nightlife and wonderful nature. We began our trip with 8-hour train-moving to Moscow. It's rather weird, but it's much more exprensive to fly directly from Saint-Petersburg to Phuket, than from Moscow, so we decided to visit our capital again. Boing-747 took us on its board and gently carried us to Phuket airport. We chose the Patong city to stay at - it's the center of the island nightlife: numerous clubs, shows and entertaiments everyday. But, unfortunately, the Patong beach was too dirty.. Imagine hundreds of boats all over the shore and you'll understand why. So we decided to swim at the beaches nearby - Karon and Kata. It was rather cheap to get there by "tuk-tuk" taxi - about 300 baths (10 $) for round-trip. "Tuk-tuk" business is the most popular commercial at Patong.. It was IMPOSSIBLE to walk anywhere without a dozen of offers from tuk-tuk drivers to get in and move somewhere out. By the way, Thais aren't very fond of walking, they use bikes even to get to the nearby market-shop. So, they find us, foreigners, very strange - they don't understand HOW we can walk SO much :) Thai people are very kind.. They always smile, they never yell or get angry (thanks, first of all, to their religion - Buddhism). They love their King, and their King loves them. I think that I fell in love with this nation.

As about entertaiments, we chose bike-driving, rafting, elephant riding, diving and 2-day trip to one of nine Similan islands (Thailand national reserve). Bike-driving was some kind of extreme :) First of all, we don't have international driving license and were lucky for haven't being stopped by police.. Secondly, in fact, there're not any real road rules in Thailand - everybody drives as he likes to drive. But, anyway, it was too much safer to drive there, than here, in Russia. We visited different beaches and view-points of Phuket and finally were very happy and satisfied to come back to our hotel with all our bones unbroken.

The last, and the main Thai impression was connected with our 2-day trip to Similan islands. As I have mentioned before, it's Thailand national reserve of 9 islands located in the Andaman sea. Only 2 of them are inhabitable - but the "inhabitance" concerns only Thai island staff, several dozens of people living there constantly, like those in "The Beach" movie with Leo di Caprio. As about tourists, they are allowed to stay at one of those two islands no more than for 2 days and 1 night. And so did we - living that night in a tent closely to the sea shore. So it was amazing to fall asleep to the sounds of the surf. At 5 o'clock we were waked up by the bats. They had returned from night hunting and were arguing about the best places to sleep on the trees above our heads. I felt myself like a savage. In the morning we had a great and tasty breakfast on the board of our pleasure boat and, then, moved closely to other islands of archipelago for snorkeling. Our captain awared us not to go to islands' beaches or the big money penalty would be imposed: the matter is that turtles lay their eggs there, and human being could surely break them.

The next day we were buying suvenirs for our friends and relatives. 24 hours later we were sitting in the plane, flying back to Moscow and chatting with our new friends. It was a lovely journey and the words are not enough to express everything we got through during it. The part of my soal was left there. And, hope, somewhen I'll be ready to move to Thailand forever.

Thank you for attention!

Don't waste time

Posted by Artem Prygin on January 10, 2011

Benjamin Franklin used to say that "if you like your life don't waste your time because it's the material your life is made of". I totally agree with this quotation, it's one hundrend percent true. Unfortunately, very often we waste our time by sleeping too much, doing needless things or just sitting in front of computer serfing global net without any aim (it's very actual for the XXI century). Turn your head back to your past and answer the question: was your time been spent in the most useful and practical way or not? Most of all will choose the second answer, and so did I. Thoughts about minutes, hours, days, months and even years of time-wasting makes me sad, and the only person to blame is myself.

But, as the famous Russian proverb says, "late" is better than "never". Imagine your life organised with maximum quality, you always have time and prohibility to do anything you want, every second of your daily routine is under control. The thing that was feigned to help us is called "time-management". It is not actually a science, but it has very much in common with psychology and sociology. You can hardly find a person who has never heard about it, but you can twice hardly find a person who uses time-management postulates in his everyday life. Book stores are nowadays full of publications devoted to time-management, so it wouldn't be a problem for you to find, read and chew one or several of them.

The main piece of advice I want to give you (according to the books) is "planning". Remember, that successful man is well-selforganised man. Begin to plan your daily deals, problems and cases beforehand - it'll bring you at least 2 hours of freetime every day. Let daily books and electronic organisers be your best friends from this moment. Write everything you want to do, should do and must do in your diary. Roughly speaking, if you always forget about cleaning your teeth before going to bed, write it in your diary with remark: "the most important problem. Solve it for sure", - soon cleaning teeth wil become such a habit for you as breathing.

The second piece of advice is waking up as early as possible. As another Russian proverb says: "Who gets up early is rewarded by God". The most successful businessmen and other celebrities wake up even at 5 or 5:30 AM. What for? They have at least an hour more to think about forthcoming day than to-sleep-lovers! Every second of their workday they are awared about what they have already done, what they are doing at the moment and what they will do two hours later. Their efficiency is unbelievable, it seems that they are some kind of superheroes, but in fact they are merely well-organised human beings. Is it necessary to compare them with unorganised and nervous people like ourselves?

And I want to finish with the third piece of advice: it is called delegation. Don't be scared to delegate some of your problems to other people, especially if they are your subordinate colleagues. Have you ever seen your director doing something that every fool could do? Very rarely, I think. Every smart manager delegates most of his work to others, and, so he has more time to solve the most important and complicated problems (or just think about the gift to donate to his wife, how to spend his vacations and what is the main sense of life).

Good luck!

P.S. My friends, Happy New Year to all of you! Best regards :)

Yours sincerely,

Tyoma

The problem #1 in Russia

Posted by Artem Prygin on September 20, 2010

Hello to all!Today I want to tell you something about russian "tradition", that actually made us famous and.. hm.. unpopular all over the world. Of course, I talk about drinking alcohol, especially Russian vodka. Someone thinks it's normal, someone finds it funny, someone doesn't pay any attention to it. But facts are sad.Russians drink about 18 litres of alcohol in an year per person. The number of 8 litres per person is fatally dangerous for the nation, so the Russian nation has more than a double-chance to disappear for eternity. You think this is silly and stupid, don't you? But think about 135 million of russians nowadays instead of 150 in the 1990-s. We have lost about 15 million of people in the invisible war with an enemy supposed to be our best friend.. I mean alcohol. Heart diseases, lethal problems with brain, nervous sistem, liver and stomach, different kinds of cancer - you can find the reason in this word.. Drinking beer, vodka, champagne, vine and other kinds of alcohol almost every week or even every day (Russians always find the reason to drink!) makes the person weak, ugly and even stupid,.. this person has no future until he will say "NO!" to drinking this poison and will start the new life.We have the law that doesn't allow the sellers to sell the alcohol (and cigarettes, by the way) to people less than 18 years old. But who cares - they will sell everything to everyone to gain more money! Almost every middle-school disciple finds it very cool to drink cheap beer and smoke stinking cigarettes during the break. They have only one small step to try drugs and destroy their lifes in the bud - yes, we have hundreds thousands young narcomaniacs in Russia, too!As about girls and women - 1/3 of children in our country are born with inherent defects connected with health. I think now you know the reason - the pregnant woman found it normal to drink alcohol (and smoke!) during the period of pregnancy. The embryo of this "mother" grew in extradirty and unnormal conditions..As for me, I used to drink beer (vodka, gin, etc..) with friends and used to smoke like the locomotive very often (poorly, almost like every teenager in Russia)- it was several years ago. I had some problems with my health and nervous system and didn't care about them. I'm really very proud of myself to say one day "no" to all this stuff - I chose the way of healthy lifestyle. It doesn't mean, that I'm a great sportsman or smth like that. But I feel myself excellent! And, by the way, wasn't ailing for about 2 years - I forgot such words as "to catch a cold", "flu", "quinsy" and others ;)European people, Asia nations, Americans.. all of them have the thing that is called "the drinking culture". Russians don't. If the Russian man starts drinking alcohol, he won't finish until great vomiting at the WC or great snoring under the table. And we have to deal with this fact and choose the road without this poison on it.Thank you for attention! ;)

Cyprus. The island of Love

Posted by Artem Prygin on September 13, 2010

Good morning/afternoon/evening to all! :)I want to share with you my feelings and write a few words about my recent vacations on the beautiful island of Cyprus with my sweetheart. It was our first experience of travelling abroad (I don't count Ukraine as it is just the country of the former USSR).Our trip started in Moscow, we went there by train to visit famous Ostankino Tower, one of the highest buildings in the world (height of about 550 metres). After an exurcion we stayed at the Izmailovo Hotel for a day and then, early in the morning, went to the Domodedovo airport. The registration took about 3 hours and so did the flight..At the Cyprus airport there was great queue of russians to the passport control, in spite of autumn had come, there was no place to apple to fall - a lot of tourists! Finally we found our to-the-hotel-bus and spent another 3 hours in it, listening to the guide. She had been telling us about the history of Cyprus before we at last got to our hotel called "Marina", it is located in the city of Ayia-Napa. The city is so-called "The Cyprus Ibiza" as there're a lot of clubs and disco-bars here. And, so, it's very popular among young people.The sea view from our room was amazing! I had never seen such a beauty before :)Our ten days in Cyprus we spent, of course, swimming both in the hotel swimming pool and in the Mediterranian sea. The sea, by the way, is very salty :) too much saltier than the Black sea. But the water is so clean and blue.. that it's hard not to fall in love with it! In the mornings we had a breakfast in the hotel (the buffet), during the day we ate in the local pleasant restaurants and cafes. The meal is rather expensive there, but the portions were much more bigger than, for example, in Russian restaurants, actually for the same price. So 15 euro per person is enough to satisfy hunger for a long time.We didn't go to the parties, we had been bored with clubs-raves-discos-stuff before. So, vice versa to the 99% of Ayia-Napa's tourists, we slept in the nights and had a good time in the daylight :) Among our activies were diving and paragliding.The day before leaving we spent on the wonderful exurcion on jeeps and boat travelling to the Aphrodite Bay (where the goddess of Love is said to appear), Blue Lagoon (with such a blue water like that in the fairy tales!), Aphrodite Baths (rather cold pool of lime water - about 8-10 degrees C) and other famous places of interest of the island.Very pleasant and polite people, fantastic water, marvelous beaches, sunny weather with the temperature about 35-40 degrees above zero, beautiful nature and.. I'll never forget it and advise all of you to visit Cyprus if you haven't done it yet :)Please, enjoy glancing over my album devoted to our trip:http://my.englishclub.com/photo/albums/cyprus-the-island-of-loveI'll add photos every day (the limit of 7 per day, you know..), hope you'll like them. Unfortunately, many of photos will not be approved by the moderators - the girls in the swimsuits couldn't pass the strong wall of the site censore:)))Thank you for attention!

12 steps to achieve your aim by Brian Tracy

Posted by Artem Prygin on August 28, 2010

Ok, you want to start your own business or just have an idea to improve your life level. A lot of questions haunt you - "What thing is to begin with?", "What would I do if I fail?", etc.Brian Tracy, famous Canadian business consultant, has worked out twelve most important steps to achieve your aim - they have helped thousands of people all over the world and will probably help you too.Here they are:Step 1. Make yourself wish achieving your aim a lot. It's a great motivational power.Step 2. Make yourself believe, that you're able to achieve your aim.Step 3. Write your aim on the paper. It's important to use pen or pensil (no buttons of keyboard!). Actually you make your aim turn from idealistic wish to materialistic reality after writing it on the sheet of paper.Step 4. Write the complete list of advantages you'll receive after achieving your aim.Step 5. Think about your today's state - who are you and how much do your knowledge, authority and abilities cost.Step 6. Fix the time limit, when your aim should be surely achieved.Step 7. Write the complete list of obstacles between you and your aim to overcome.Step 8. Decide what extradata do you need to achieve your aim: learn foreign languages, watch useful documentary movies, attend business courses, etc.Step 9. Write the list of people, who can help you in achieving your aim (friends, relatives or even celebrities)Step 10. Probably, the most important step. Make a complete plan in every detail and in chronological ordering: what do you want to achieve, how it could be achieved, why it should be achieved. And, of course, write it on the paper.Step 11. Use the visualization: imagine, that your aim has already been achieved. Imagine it every hour, every minute. Close your eyes and enjoy. Your mood will make better, and everything on your way to the aim will seem to be so easy to overcome.Step 12. Say to yourself aloud, looking in the mirror: "I'll never retreat!".And, so, nothing in the Universe could stop you to finish your way.Good luck!