I don’t know, for me it would be deadly boring to spend the whole holiday just lying on the beach baking myself to the point when people start thinking I am one of the locals. So we did not. As a matter of fact we were involved in many water and beach sports :) And I spent hours and hours windsurfing, which is my favorite activity when we go on the beach holiday for the last three years, but actually only this time I could master it a bit and take it to the next level (well, it’s more of a personal achievement and I am nowhere near pros or advanced surfers). And staying for two weeks helped a lot.

I must say, when I do something, I am quite passionate about it, till the point when it’s kind of childish. So the first week I was literally wearing myself out on the water, and the palms of my hands were a total mess, so I had to plaster all my fingers to be able to hold the beam. But I just couldn’t get enough :) The wind was a bit of let down for a few days (unlike the time when we were in Dahab, Egypt, when it was blowing non-stop literally days and nights), but we had good couple of last days when it was probably the strongest and I could test my acquired skills and fly with the wind with the fastest speed I could handle (well, and hurt myself a bit as well :) But hey, no pain no gain.

Wake-boarding was another attraction I enjoyed a lot. Couple of years ago we tried water skis and it was fun, so this time I moved on to the board, which I believe is even more fun :)

Man, now I think about that holiday, I start missing it … a lot :) But then again, no way I would be able to live up to the title of this post, so I will leave it to occasional breaks away from the usual life routine.

So, after the party was over and everyone was hugged (and kissed :), I spent a nice and quiet weekend, enjoying my freedom and packing for a holiday. Our beach holiday, finally! The destination is Turkey and this time it is for the whole 2 weeks! I envy our flat mates, I wish we could have the flat just for us for so long :)

4 hour flight and we are so far away from the depressing grayness and damp of London autumn to enjoy the sun, the sea (which water is still up to 25C) and light-hearted life of tourists.

Once we got into our hotel room I had a chance to see how well I packed my bag. Everything seemed to be there, but one thing, actually one tiny piece of a wardrobe. Let me give you a hint. When you are going to a beach holiday, what would be the most necessary, the most appropriate piece of clothes you take with? Yes, swimming trunks. Believe me or not, I forgot to take them :) Ironically, when I was doing my packing, I suddenly remembered about them and I said to myself, ‘Well, that would be so dumb to forget them’. And this is exactly what I did. Hehe… I spent a day moaning, and then bought a pair of them at the local store. They looked a bit pimpish, but hey, it’s not my fault that plain colours are considered boring there ;)

Though we tended to spent most of our time on the water and on the beach, working hard on our tan, we did a bit of cultural exploration as well. As a matter of fact, our neighboring town was a place called Bodrum, more widely knows as formerly Halicarnassus. If it still does not ring any bell, The Mausoleum of Mausolus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was there. So went to see it, I mean what is left of it. Not much, I must say. The 45 m tomb, build between 353 and 350 BC, stood there for sixteen centuries undamaged and spared during various wars, but then destroyed by the series of earthquakes. So what is left now is just some poor ruins with few stones and frescos. Not much of the former glory…

Another place to see in Bodrum was the castle of the Knights of Malta (where by the way, some stones from the ruined Mausoleum were used for the walls), which was quite massive. Yeah, we love castles (I am still dreaming of living in one of those).

We also visited a local bath, which is was quite interesting. It’s not very hot, just about 45C but very humid, so you sit and soak there, but the very best part of it is that you get washed and massaged by a ‘bath man’ (not sure if this is how you call him). Well, no one washed me in my life apart from my mom, and that was decades ago :) …

Apparently, 2 week holiday is just right, just enough time to get relaxed and refreshed and ready to go back to your work routine.

We definitely enjoyed the holiday and quite liked Turkey, it felt chilled and relaxed, even at the markets you are not hassled by shop-men as much as in some other Eastern countries :) And you can get a cheap bag with a famous label on it. Or a bracelet. Or even a ring with huge D&G. Well, they stamp designers’ labels on virtually everything :)

Today. In the London underground. Yes, even ultra-rich and famous use public transport sometimes.

Well, kind of. It was his lookalike, or maybe fake Steve, or maybe his brother, apparently less harsh version of Apple CEO.

Usually I hate taking pictures of people in the public places, but could not resist this time.
Why so blurry? Taken with iPhone…

The day has finally come. After almost 2 years and 9 months of my employment with pod1 I said goodbye to my employer.

These years were truly great for me. I was lucky to work with other people, who were smarter then me and I could learn a lot from them. It was also the time when pod1 was the fastest growing agency in the industry in UK, so, as you can imagine, in many ways it was a fantastic experience. I also made a lot of friends (I believe) whom I am going to miss, again a lot…

So what’s the plan? For the next few month I see myself doing contract/freelance work. At pod1 I was the head of Front End Development team, so will happily continue cutting up HTML/CSS templates, as well as carrying on freelancing as a web-designer and developer, something I was doing in my spare time during the last few years.

I have always been enjoying being involved in the creative side of things, not just technical, so it is something I hope to be doing a lot now :)

My leaving party was great and I just want to thank everyone who joined me. See that night photos below, I picked the nicest, the funniest and probably, the least controversial ones, hehe :) And I think it was KJ, who did the most of the job of picture taking. Can’t credit myself for that :)

Yes, that’s me :) Just turned 30. Kind of old mature now. Do I feel like being 30? Not really. I am a young soul and everything is just starting for me. Watch the space ;)

The pictures below are of my birthday cake (kind of obvious). I might look a bit sad there, but it was unintentionally, but then it was too late to re-shoot - the cake was already half eaten… By the way, the cake was very nice (thanks Veronika :* ), I think back home we call it a ‘Kiev cake’. Yummy.

So yes, I have no idea who and why built this monument, and though some stones earlier were merely taken by locals for their building needs (that was the funniest fact to learn) it is still impresive. Sure, not like Piramids, but still…

Well, it took me quite a while to get the pictures from our break in Bath sorted, but here we are.

It was our usual type of getaway on Veronika’s birthday, but this time we’ve missed an oportunity to go abroad, so opted for some quite local place :) And since Veronika loves all kind of bath-beaty-therapy-spa things, the choice of destination was not a hard one.

We stayed in Bath for three nights, so had enough time not to only explore the city and surroundings, but to actually relax. Our top highlights were the visit to the Bath’s famous thermae bath spa (very enjoyable, especially the open roof top pool, highly recommend :), a trip to the Stonehenge (interesting place, though no vibes for me… probably because it was too crowded there) and visit to the Roman Bath Museum (it’s quite amazing what Roman already could do and build in those ancient times).

A quiet and friendly (still a bit buzzy) town that borders with country-side with everything within a walking distance, has a clean air and even cleaner (must be mineral one) tap water. A really nice place for retirement ;) Anyway, returning to overcrowded, busy and smoggy London felt a bit weird and wrong…

Few more pictures you could also see on my Flickr account, as well as story continues here (the next blog post).

This weekend we took advantage of getting close this iconic London building, while it is still open to the public before its major reconstruction.

Who would think that power station could be that beautiful? Built in 1939, it is maaaaassive, reminds me of a huge ship (Titanic? ;), and it’s Art Deco all around (my favorite :).
It’s been out of use for decades and it is such a shame to see its decadence. Well at least it will not demolished, but will become a part of a new to-be-fantastic development. But for now what you see is an abandoned monster. Beautiful monster.

The next picture was taken on a completely different occasion, but I thought I would add it.