Alexandra Soroca 🎹 @SeventhMagpie@mastodon.art

Revised #introduction to reflect the state of my languages. 😋

I'm an amateur classical #pianist. Started learning properly at 34 and still going strong. Love Frédéric #Chopin. Admire Arthur #Rubinstein and Emil #Gilels, and am trying to model my playing on them (arrogant, I know 😅).

I love #cats and am enslaved to two of them. Love #sea, #sailing ships & books about sea adventures. #NaNoWriMo & fountain pens enthusiast.

I speak #Russian, #English, some #Romanian, and now study #Italian.

Dear neighbours. Anyone else, operating phrases like "Russian trolls", "kremlinbots" and other general dehumanising concepts, please step forward, so I could block you. Thank you in advance and sorry for the inconvenience. I'm not having this shit again here. There's Twitter for that.

My next door neighbour is listening to Aerosmith. It's 10 past midnight. That's probably his retaliation for Schumann. Or Brahms. Or both.

Sposobin's "Basic music theory" is waiting for me. It will be the third attempt. Hopefully, three is a charm. #NewYearResolutions

So, here I come with a fun story about phrasing in piano pieces, only to discover that I've been reported for a misconduct.

Don't know, who the moderator is now. The tone of the message was rather threatening, but it's your server & your rules. I feel humiliated. That'll teach me not to touch murder enabling snowflakes crying: "SW!" over toots about American war crimes, so that victims stay a statistics, not persons with names & faces.

I'll deal with it when I'm back home. That's enough.

I remember V. once telling about a woman she interviewed for a job.

V. said that she had instantly stood out from the rest. While other unmarried applicants put their marital status as "not married" on their CVs, this woman wrote she was "free".

I think this is the ultimate assessment of self. You can be negative ("not married" as if something is missing or incomplete), or you can be positive about the state of personal affairs. :)

I don't know if they hired that woman, but I hope she's fine.

I have two old mailboxes with #Gmail: a personal address back from the fandom days, and a legacy G Suite (formerly known as Google apps) address on a family domain.

The personal Gmail address is the only one out of all my addresses I'm having difficulty connecting to with #Thunderbird over VPN.

Google has been making lives of 3'rd party apps' users difficult for some time now. But it seems to absolutely detest VPN.

I wonder if it's deliberate?

There's one question left, though. Whose bright idea it was in the first place? Who thought that concentration camp images are well fit to become Christmas decorations?

Modern America seriously frightens me.

Amazon pulls Auschwitz-themed Christmas ornaments - BBC News - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50625558

Pharmaceutical corporations need to be controlled somehow. Eyedropds that I have a prescription for life keep going up in price, year to year. Same for other life critical drugs other people I know use.

And it's not like it's some new stuff. Most of them have been developed long ago. Corporations have no moral right to raise prices for such drugs, when people have no choice, or else they die or go blind!

They need to be stopped by the law, if they have no conscience of their own.

Can't say the hotel is warm.

Got woken up today at ~4:45 by an employee from back home with an "urgent" question (that she should have sorted out back on Monday, btw).

She was surprised to know I was on a business trip 7 timezones away, despite the notification letter I sent out to all office employees, and an away message in Outlook, and also my notifying of the office assistant in person in Wednesday.

Next time I won't even bother with informing people of my away time. I'll simply turn off the phone.

Also, Twitter is still as toxic as it was when I left it. I wish I could read ISU account through Mastodon without all the comments these stupid fans write.

Have I recently mentioned how I hate #FigureSkating fangirls these days?

I just need you to see this. Hardcore moldovenesc. 😆
https://youtu.be/oWZ_Q2PRfWI

I need to remind myself more often that my colleagues are just that - the colleagues. Not friends, not family, not someone whom I can fully trust.

Every time I forget about this, every time I start making friendly gestures such as bringing souvenirs or a box of chocolates, every such time someone of them will do something to harm or humiliate me.

I missed airports so terribly, that the Fate has sent me a business trip to head office. But I'm not really sure I want to see them. At all.

Having #cats in the house means regularly finding fresh scratches on various body parts, and not even remembering getting them.

Now I imagine how in the evening, sitting at the dinner table with their family, somebody will tell them about the day: "So, today on a bus there was a weird woman, who was constantly humming the Italian anthem."

@pollomostro È l'ora di lingua Italiana! :)

Could you please explain the difference between "camera" and "stanza"?

I have to admit I was probably never meant to be a concert pianist anyway. Bright artificial light grates on my nerves, so stage lights would have been driving me up the walls.

Funny thing is that I actually love bright light, but only when it's natural sunlight (preferably outdoors). It's only artificial light indoors that is a problem.

How come that Google and Facebook are now everywhere? How did we not notice it happen?