100!

She is 100! She is granddaughter of Sholom Aleichem! And she speaks Russian! It's unbelievable.
This interview was done 10 years ago, when she celebrated 90. I can not imagine, that her Russian as good as ours, even better. She was born in Germany and spent most of her life in America, but she remembers and speaks Russian very well. It's quite interesting effect.
Living in America, usually many RECENT immigrants begin to mix Russian and English words creating a strange slang. You cannot say the same thing about those who came many-many years ago. They try to save Russian language as a GIFT. Recently Russian TV aired a mini-series about prominent Russian dynasties, which left Russia after revolution 1917. Their kids were born out of Russia and never had possibilities to exercise their Russian language as we do. Most of them learn language from parents and speak Russian enough well even in years. I was really impressed how well they speak Russian. I think, Russian is a real GIFT for all of us!

Happier...

Question: When are we happy?
Possible answer: We are happy when we ... (endless list of life conditions).

A new study published by Canadian researchers in a National Bureau of Economic Research confirms that
Americans are significantly HAPPIER on the weekends than during the work week. Almost all of that extra happiness can be attributed to the 1.7 hours of extra socializing people squeeze in on weekend days than on work days.

The same study shows that women are slightly more happy than men during the work week, while men report feeling happier than women over the weekends.
Moreover, workers who reported that their supervisor is more like a "partner" than a "boss" showed a much smaller happiness jump over the weekends,
suggesting that their jobs are more enjoyable. Here I would like to make a stop. I think, that's enough ideas for HEALTHY discussion.

How many of us view a boss as a partner? I'm not going to be wrong, if I say: "Just few of lucky us can say something truly friendly about boss." It's difficult, but it's possible. Being in IT industry, I had seen and probably will see many bosses. What can I say?.. I have good and bad experiences. Do I want to talk about good or bad ones? Have I learned THE lessons? Definitely, I learned a lot and would like to share 3 things:
1. A boss creates fear, a true leader confidence.
2. A boss knows all, a true leader asks questions.
3. Where there are bosses, there are crazy bosses. It's nothing new.

I wish each of you the best work-partner ever!

Casting spiel

Do I have to write about it?.. We even don't know what the future for the show. It's just in Hollywood plans. The main question is do Jewish bachelors even deserve their own show... We already had and have some matrimonial ones on TV. Why do we need one more about Jewish single men?.. We just have to wait and vote/watch it, maybe new idea will work out. Truthfully speaking, I'm intrigued.

First of all, Hollywood must choose a right ones for casting. Who are they? Are they the best of the best ones?
For a second, who is going to choose them? How to pass a difficult requirements of Hollywood gurus? Do they need a SINGLE women-judges?
Who will decide who is right and who is wrong?

Definitely, I would like to know as much as possible about show. Maybe my
FB-friend Josie Goldberg will help me. Let's talk to her.

Single

Recently Piers Morgan aired the interview with Charlize Theron, where she announced that she is 35 and SINGLE.
Last statement sparked many questions, at least, in my head. SINGLE?.. How long does she want to be single? Is she happy to be single again? What is she going to do to find a man? Does she want to be married? Who might be a next one for her? What kind of romance she wants? I think, I'm ready for a LONG and DETAILED interview.

Since I can not interview one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood, I would like to present some of my thoughts. First of all, strange things happen to Hollywood celebrities. For us, who are never going to be in "most beautiful" and "most talented",
even awkward to hear about ups and downs of those who should be the happiest people on Earth.

Actually, they are NORMAL people. They can be unhappy, lonely, sick and so on. Despite of their fame and distinction, they experience the same type of feelings as we do. Money don't buy happiness and respect. It's quite interesting how they solve the problems. How long it takes for them to feel happy. I'm really interested what going to happen with Charlize...
Who is a next one?

Equation

I dedicate my spiel to all immigrants, who care about their careers in America.

Just days away from July 4th, I want to write something patriotic... I don't want to question myself about my patriotism, I just want to write about
something really AMERICAN.

Equation is a mathematical statement that asserts the equality of two expressions. Today my talk about highly controversial and complicated
equation - employment one, where one expression is employers, another one is employees. One is hiring, another one wants to be hired.

Couple weeks ago I noticed a very challenging article on CNBC.
It's about new hiring effect. According to Eric Spiegel, chief executive in the US for Siemens, the German engineering group, "the problem exposed weaknesses in education and training in the US. Siemens had been forced to use more than 30 recruiters and hire staff from other companies to find the workers it needed for its expansion plans, even amid an unemployment rate of 9.1 percent." Finally, someone began to talk about education and training. O, yes, immigrants workers need to be trained and educated more than anyone else.
But who will provide training opportunities for us?..

Being an IT professional, I feel a pain of many workers who can not find a real job without additional training and education. IT workers must train and retrain themselves constantly. It feels like an endless, sometimes chaotic process: more you know, more you have to learn. Most of recruiters and hiring managers DO NOT care who will train and educate workers. From my personal experience, IT folks train themselves using many different sources such as free software, tutorials, videos, forums, books, local user groups. And I think, it's not enough nowadays. I was contracted with Siemens for 1 year and was surprised how they used to choose full-time employees and contractors. Moreover, I did not notice training classes for full-time employees either. Most of work was done by well-qualified contractors. As I was told, hiring contractors saves a lot of money for company. Therefore company tries to save money on training and education. I'm not surprised, Siemens used 30 recruiters to find a right people from OTHER companies for certain positions. Siemens is not only one company which choose cost over the training and education.
How to find a right company which used to invest into training and education?

It's quite difficult question for most workers especially for immigrants. We're looking for companies, where we can be trained, educated and accepted as an immigrants.
I'm not a first or last person, who writes about difficulties of integration into American life. I'm sure, that most of us are doing the best job as possible, but we still immigrants. What I know for sure, we need more attention than regular American workers, and we deserve it.
Is America still land of opportunity?

Is he Jewish?

Nowadays everything is possible. Yesterday one of my FB-friends pointed my attention to Mikhail Prokhorov bio-facts.
According to Wikipedia, "His maternal grandmother, Anna Belkina, was a microbiologist and was JEWISH"... I was quite shocked. Prokhorov is Jewish?.. He is. Actually not many Internet sites talk about it. Usually talks about Jewish roots of Russian oligarchs take a lot of space in cyberspace. I'm surprised only couple websites mentioned about his Jewish background. One of the English-based sites defined him as a "quarter-Jewish." I strongly disagree. If his maternal grandmother is Jewish, his mother is Jewish. Therefore he is Jewish. I know, he does not feel Jewish at all, but still it's a great pleasure to introduce new face to our tribe. Welcome a nice bachelor!

Pictures from Picnic.

US Senator Al Franken

US Senator Al Franken and my mom