NOTES, COMMENT AND BUZZ FROM EUGENE KASPERSKY – OFFICIAL BLOG
July 4, 2023
Saint Petersburg walkabout – done.
Saint Petersburg roof-about – done.
Next up, Port Bronka (here) – the new, modern (i.e., deep enough for modern monster-sized ships) port of the city (not to be confused with the nearby older Great Port of St. Petersburg), which happens to be a customer of ours (for all things cybersecurity, naturally) and with which we have a great relationship…
June 30, 2023
Our guided walking-tour of St. Pete started out great. But things were about to be taken to the next level – literally! Rooftops, here we come. But first – a surprise: turns out most of the roofs are wooden (on the inside, under some tin sheeting)! ->
I have to say I wasn’t expecting this; from afar things like a lot more modern. Never mind. The main thing – the views from the roofs, not the (inner) roofs themselves.
June 29, 2023
And now – for one of my favorite tourisms: a city walkabout! Even better – the city is St. Petersburg! Better still – with a wonderfully entertaining tour guide! Even better yet – the itinerary of sights and sounds around the city was interestingly unusual!…
All righty; off we pop!…
So what can I say? Well, I’ll start off by saying that Saint Petersburg in the summer is simply… sainted! Perhaps the most convincing imperial “capital” (it was the capital of the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire) of Europe, if not the world.
But, as often happens, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start from the beginning – of our guided stroll. First place of interest: the Rimsky-Korsakov Monument ->
June 22, 2023
Greetings folks!
The other day I visited a most curiously interesting place – and it didn’t take a plane to get me there! Practically on my doorstep – Moscow’s Cryptography Museum, here. And I was reeaally impressed, to say the least: well thought-out, well laid-out, modern/futuristic-looking, and not just for math boffins – accessible for most everyone. In short – an amazing museum. Highly recommended!…
All things cryptography are exhibited at the museum: from ancient coding kit, via the later pre-digital systems, and through to today’s latest cryptographic systems…
June 14, 2023
It’s been long. It’s been winding. But finally, the (Nepalese) South Base Camp is no longer a long and winding way away: it’s just around the corner! After spending our last night on the trek in spartan surroundings in Gorakshep, we were up and out for our final push to the SBC!…
But once out of our lodgings, I couldn’t quite fathom the eager wonder expressed in the faces of my fellow trekkers. I couldn’t fathom it out since the weather was absolument merde (pardon my French). Ok, so the snow was falling from behind – but we had to come back down again later that day!…
June 7, 2023
Our trek up to the Nepalese Base Camp of Everest was all but complete, with just a little way still to go –from Gorakshep to the base camp itself. But before we get to the culmination, a brief time-out from all the extreme-trekking for a brief review of all the places we stayed overnight at on our trek. This is just in case you ever – and you really should – decide to give possibly the world’s most unforgettable trek a go for yourself…
I’ll pass on the potential first and last nights of any trek up to the South Base Camp: in Lukla (of world’s craziest airport fame), and in the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu. We didn’t stay overnight in the former, since we began our trek right from the airport (note: not a bad idea for you to copy folks!); and as to the latter – there’s any kind and standard of hotel you could wish for there, so there’s no “inside information” to speak of.
All righty, on to our first overnight stay. It was in Phakding – at the Sherpa Shangri-La Resort:
June 2, 2023
Hi folks!
Herewith, a brief interlude to my series of posts on our trek up to the South Base Camp of Mount Everest. Why? First, so you don’t get overloaded with all things Nepalese extreme-trekking; second, to keep you waiting for the best bit – finally getting to the Base Camp (which is just around the corner!); and third, because something unexpected occurred the other week that’s perfectly intermission-worthy: I scored myself a +1 to my list of countries I’ve visted in the world. And it’s hard to believe, but that country… was Belarus!
We were in Minsk for just half a day: I gave a lecture at the Belarusian State University (on the latest cyber-maliciousness and our cyber-poison against it, followed by a Q&A/AMA session), then there were a few important business meetings, and after that we hit the road and headed out into the Belarusian countryside for an ambitious (as in “would we have time to fit everything in?”) two-and-a-half-day round trip to: oversized dump-truck manufacturer BelAZ, then to the Pripyatsky National Park (strolling, snapping), from there to the famed Belovezhskaya Pushcha Forest (more strolling, more snapping), and then back to Minsk to grab our suitcases and back to the airport. Thus, all as per: intense, chock-full business-then-pleasure!
My main impression from the whole trip: an unexpectedly astonishingly positive one based on practically everything we saw there. Minsk is a remarkably smart, elegant city. We only drove through other cities and towns, but they too appeared to be neat and graceful. Even villages were clean, freshly painted and neatly trimmed!…
The first two pics below were taken from my hotel room in Minsk. Elsewhere things were a little less polished, but still most pleasant and easy on the eyes:
May 31, 2023
The “Long” in the title is spot on – we’d already been on our trek up to the Nepalese Base Camp of Mount Everest a full week – and we’d still a few days to go. And it was those few last days that worried me a little when I opened the curtains in my guesthouse room early on this morning. Now, of course, I’m no stranger to snow and fog, but I’m used to having to directly experience it just between my front door and that of my car, and between said car and office door. However, here… – yikes: we had a day’s trekking with low oxygen (from Lobuche to the next village of Gorakshep) – upward – out in this! ->
It made me want to go back down to the snooker hall and lay low there instead of forge ahead )…
I was comforted a little when I learned we had just four kilometers to cover this day, but still – this weather: what the actual fog?!
May 30, 2023
So far – so snooker…
And so on to day 6…
Setting out in the morning in Deboche we were at an altitude of 4400 meters above sea-level. Come evening we’d be at 4900m – in the small settlement called Lobuche, which sits upon a mountain of the same name. Ahead of us on this day were snow and fog, but earlier the weather and thus visibility weren’t so bad:
All the same – not quite up to what could have been: here’s the same scene on a brighter day, as depicted in a large framed photo on the wall in our guesthouse. Notice there’s even light cloud in the photo: I’m thinking cloud is inevitable high in the Himalayas – even on the best of days weather-wise… ->
May 29, 2023
One of the cultural shocks on our trek up to the Base Camp of Mount Everest was our seeing a snooker hall/club practically every day in a village we passed through or stayed at – no matter how small the village! (Just in case you’re not sure what snooker is – it’s a cue sport, kind of like billiards or pool.) Even in Dingboche, some 4400 meters above sea-level, there was a “Sherpa’s Kitchen & Bar” with snooker! Extraordinary. So extraordinary that I just had to find out a little more about this unanticipated Nepalese “tradition”…
In all I saw four snooker-playing establishments on our trek. The first one was in Lukla, where we landed (at the world’s craziest airport), on its main street:
The second time was in a small village not far from Namche Bazaar – the same village as where the supposed scalp of the Yeti is exhibited (in a Buddhist monastery):
Still not quite believing my eyes, I decided to go check up on the presence of an actual snooker table inside. And there one was. Full size too…
The green baize has seen better days, but it’s still perfectly usable:
// In Namche Bazaar itself I only saw a pool (not snooker) table (they’re smaller).
The next snooker hall we saw was in Pangboche. And that was at just under 4000 meters above sea-level ->
But the record was at 4400 meters in Dingboche – and as full-size and genuine and proper as all the rest!…
// Btw: what’s wrong in the above photo?
Sherpas in action:
And they turned out to be the Sherpas who’d just carried up our luggage and that of another group…
Remember – no transportation at all around here. Imagine the job they had getting this colossus all the way up here?!!
So, just how did snooker come to be so popular in the Nepalese mountains (and valleys, I guess). Some seem to think it’s down to the fact it was invented in next-door India by British Army officers in the mid-19th century; others reckon it’s only just gotten real big over the last ten years.
Sherpa-snooker in the Himalayas reminded me of another cultural shock in an indiginoius peoples’ village in Paraguay in 2006. Here are my travelogue notes from back then:
“Excursion along the Paraná River, which separates Paraguay from Argentina. Fun! We got out on the Paraguayan bank and were taken to a museum of an explorer. If lucky, you get taken a few kilometers further through jungle to a village of indigenous Paraguayans. Everything’s just like in the movies: short in height, traditional dress and body paintings, huts, lots of children, and… a soccer pitch! [that’s just the culture-shock hors d’oeuvres!] They offered to play music. We agreed they should; and out comes – a harp, which an elder proceeded to play eloquently! Culture shock! Guaraní + harp!”
And that’s all for today folks. Back in Nepal we were headed further – in an upward direction. But more on that later…
The rest of the photos from our trek up to the Base Camp of Mount Everest are here.
