Привет Женя!
Давно не писались! Мне очень хочется узнать, как твоя жизнь в эти дни. Как работа? А как семья?

Есть что-то новое у меня. Я расскажу об этом в следующий раз.

Кстати, я все еще не пробовал зубную пасту "Новый Жемчуг". Я очень хочу попробовать её когда-нибудь.

Hello Jenya:

Goodness gracious. It's been ages since I last heard from you. How have you been?
Have your colleagues kidnapped you and demanded that you tell them the true identity of "The Chinese man" ? If so, tell them nothing.

I've been very busy with various "things".... you know, the "things" that a Chinese man would be busy with.

I look forward to good news from you.

Hello Jenya:

Good day to you!
Kazan. I encounter that name quite often on this site, and might even have talked to a few people from that city, but I didn't realize it is the capital of Tatarstan republic, as well as the capital of "most beautiful Tartar women" in the world :))

Well, reading your description of the show "Field of miracles", it sounds very peculiar, and I really can't think of any show here that's similar. On the subject of game show, I can tell you that in recent years the most popular game show is "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire". The show is featured in the Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire (2008), and has many regional versions around the world, even one in my hometown Hong Kong. But the longest-running game show that I'm aware of has to be "The price is right". Even when I was a teenager in Hong Kong I already saw that show on TV.

I just got myself another gadget to add to my gadget collection. This one, unlike many others in my collection, has very practical use and I expect to be using it a lot. It's a robotic vacuum cleaner. I don't know about you, but the thing that bothers me the most about vacuuming is the noise. It drives me crazy. So I'm just going to set my robot to do the cleaning while I'm not home, so I don't have to put up with the noise.
While vacuuming, if the robot senses that it's low on battery, it'll go to its charging station to recharge itself, and then it'll continue vacuuming where it left off. Quite a clever fellow.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Neato-Robotics-XV-21-Pet-Allergy-Automatic-Vacuum-Cleaner-w-Charging-Dock-/321836753227

I liked the joke about the Muscovite girl riding in a Leningrad tram. The joke clearly implies that Muscovites are rude. Do you share the same sentiment about them?
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I did actually come across a Muscovite lady on here who admitted that her fellow residents were less than courteous. But ultimately I think that's just a typical symptom of any large overcrowded city.

Unfortunately I didn't understand your last joke. Why did the Chukchi say "and now he is on skates" ?

Good day to you, Jenya.

You had to work extra shifts. That's very good. Extra shifts=extra money=extra vacations in exotic locales like Hong Kong, Fiji, Rio de Janeiro.... Or Canada :)))
Wow, you're very knowledgeable about various personalities in the comedy field.
I haven't really seen many of Robin Williams's movies. I think it's because I don't watch many comedy movies. His most memorable performance, to me, was actually in a serious movie Insomnia (2002) in which he played a dark, sinister role of a murderer. The movie was directed by the famed Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Inception), with Al Pacino in the lead role as a police inspector who was afflicted with severe insomnia while investigating a crime in Alaska. Al Pacino was so good (in portraying the mental torture he was going through), that I started getting a severe headache while watching the movie.

I don't know how common "standup comedy" is in Russia, but it's pretty big business here in North America. Strangely I can never seem to get used to that type of comedy, myself being from the Far Eastern culture, where such thing is almost non-existent. Anyways, the reason I brought up standup comedy is that my biggest idol in comedy started his career as a standup comedian. He's Jerry Seinfeld, best known for his TV sitcom "Seinfeld". Although production of "Seinfeld" stopped in 1998, there continues to be high demand for the (original) shows. Jerry is now richer than other much bigger names in show biz like Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, etc...

Extinguishing a fire with water on magnesium. Now that sounds quite funny. ( But of course it wasn't so funny for the poor firemen.) I wonder if using foam on such fire would make any difference. I've seen foam being used by firemen in plane crash. Is it indeed a safer substance to use in certain situations (not necessarily with magnesium)?
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Wow... thank you very much for the page about the most beautiful Tartar women. Now I know if I look for a wife, I need to look no further than the Tartar population in Russia. Please, tell me, where about in Russia is the Tartar population most heavily concentrated? LOL..

Hahaha... a team of dogs towing a truck around all day. That's a very very funny scenario. Now I'm beginning to like the Chukchis for their funniness. More Chukchi jokes from you will certainly be welcomed.

Recently I realized I neglected to mention a very special laptop in my email to you about my collection. This one was truly my "baby", one that I was deeply obsessed with for quite some time. IBM Thinkpad 701C, also affectionately nicknamed the "IBM Butterfly", was introduced in 1995. I like to describe its design as "going where no man has ever gone before, and no man would dare go ever after". The design was never repeated again in any other models, not even among IBM's own laptops. Here's an old TV commercial of Thindpad 701C back in 1995:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_RQp2aoLDs

Hello Jenya:
Very sorry for the delay. Such delay means that I must have been super busy, or terribly low in efficiency; most likely a combination of both. Did I tell you that I'm a very low-energy, low-efficiency person?

Your Chukchis jokes are quite good. I'd love to hear more. The photo suggests that they do in fact look like Eskimos, who also look like Mongolians. As you know a common theory is that eons ago Mongolians crossed the Bering Strait when there was still a land bridge, and that's why we find them in North America today. Chukchis, Eskimos, and to some extent American Indians, they all came from Mongolians. Or so the theory suggests.
By the way, do Tartars also look kind of like Chukchis (their facial features)?

So Chukchis like to say the word "however". Well that's quite a bizarre and funny habit. But then they may have a reason for doing that. In the sample joke you gave, the Chukchi said: "There are, however." I suspect he meant "There are some shops; however... (you'll never get to them. Mua ha ha ha...)"

Speaking of the wild north, have you been following the news about those giant holes they found in Siberia? When I first saw them, I thought: "Uh-oh. Visitors have finally landed on our planet."
http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/news/n0127-dozens-of-mysterious-new-craters-suspected-in-northern-russia/

Thank you for your information about the guar gum and cellulose gum contents in hard-to-melt ice cream. I didn't know Walmart's ice cream sandwiches are also hard-to-melt - I should get some of those. My biggest problem when eating ice cream is it melts too fast and I make a mess. Do you like ice cream and/or yogurt? What's your favorite dessert? Lately I've fallen in love with rice pudding. I'm going to learn to make it myself at home, because I found out, to my disappointment, that the supermarkets don't have rice pudding in 100-liter size. LOL....
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Well since you're a funny person and like to tell jokes, I'll assume you're at least slightly familiar with the better-known Hollywood comedians, and you're probably aware that Robin Williams committed suicide a few months ago. I just read an article and found out his official autopsy report said he had "Lewy Body Dementia", which might well explain why he took his own life. What a shocking revelation!
http://www.salon.com/2014/11/13/autopsy_robin_williams_had_lewy_body_dementia/

I look forward to reading your "Amazing and funny anecdotes of a chemist in a margarine factory".

Hello Jenya:
Thank you for your wall post. I'm somewhat busier than normal, but I should be able to write you within the next 2 days or so.
Hope you're having fun with margarine or sodium or whatever leftover alkali metal that you have.

Hello Jenya:

"my English is not well, and I'm not working hard in that business."
I know you're extremely busy with work, so that is quite understandable. I hope you'll find more time later on and continue your study. You have lots of potential. Speaking of work, I forgot to remind you: if at the end of each work day, your factory tends to accumulate a fair amount of scrap metals (I have a special interest in alkali metals, something like cesium would be good), please don't throw them away. Save them up for me; I think I can use them. (If they're radioactive cesium, that's even better.)
Mua ha ha ha...

Chukchi. I looked it up in a dictionary. It's "a member of a Paleo-Asiatic people of northeastern Siberia" - not very informative to me. Perhaps you have something to add to that?

"Дело в шляпе". Thank you. I've added that to my secret vocabulary. The English equivalent is "in the bag". The Chinese equivalent is "囊中之物" (literally: something in the bag). (^.^)

The boiled condensed milk in that picture reminds me of caramel (and most likely tastes like it too). In fact, the 2 may well be very similar in their chemical constituents. So this is basically homemade caramel.

Here if you buy a scoop of ice cream they'll likely put it in an ice cream cone (which is of course cone-shaped and is edible), or in a disposable (usually paper) cup. But the picture you showed seems to be cups made of ice cream cone material, not paper. I've never seen that so it looks somewhat amusing.
Oh, btw, this is something that should interest you as a chemist: a few years ago I bought an unusual kind of ice cream in a movie theater. It was a "difficult-to-melt" ice cream. I held it in my hand (it was in a paper cup) during the whole 2 hours that the movie lasted, and it never melted. But of course it melted normally in my mouth. Do you know how they make it difficult to melt?
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