Here’s the first one. Do you think aliens left it? What are they trying to tell us? Or me? I hope it’s not ‘A’ for Apocalypse :)

And now the second one, a bit more controversial, I guess :) This time I didn’t even want to decipher it. And don’t worry, I am not a psychiatrist, this is not an inkblot test, and you are not a sexual maniac. It is exactly what you think it is :)

If you think it is some sort of graffiti, think agan. I wouldn’t even be bothered to take pictures of street vandalism. This is something more subtle, something you can only see at certain time of a day and with only specific type of weather. I’ll give you a hint. You need sun :) I believe you got it by now. It’s a shadow from a bridge rail. And you will be even more surprised to learn that it is not some dodgy bridge in town suburbs, but the Westminster bridge, in the center of London, next to Big Ben and The Houses of Parliament.

So now I wonder who the designer of the Westminster bridge was, for I refuse to believe the it was a design mistake. After all, it’s a British design :)

As a matter of fact, I should have done it quite a long time ago, like some of my more dexterous friends did when they were in the same situation, but I could not do it earlier because of one small, but very important thing: the name. I did not have one yet. I knew that choosing one wasn’t going to be easy, but who could expect it to be SUCH A pain! :) And the lack of decent and half-decent domain names also did not help.

I literally spent 2 months thinking and brainstorming, hehe. I ran through many many names and variations, but still could not choose the one. Even on my holiday, during not so frequent moments of lying on the beach I tried to come up with some good name, but still no results (I don’t know, actually I am not so good at brainstorming when I am on holiday, hehe).

But once I came back to London, the next morning while sitting on the tube, I had that ’snappy’ moment. I was playing with the name in my mind during that day and decided to go with that. That night I registered the company. SKRINSHOT Ltd.

So now I am involved in all sort of formalities and paper work : getting an accountant, opening a bank account, registering for various services, etc. Quite busy, but enjoying it so far (I mean, this legal, ie boring part). Well, I am excited, for it feels like nursing a baby, and actually it is one, my new-born baby. And I am a proud father, ie Director of my company:)

Good luck to me. Extremely busy times ahead. And.. we are open for business! Pretty much 7 days a week :)

P.S. Here are some names I came up in the process (they might look a bit random, but each of them had a history; oh, who am I am kidding, some of them are random indeed) :

• - totally unkool
• - bad hair day (love this one, but it was already taken)
• - prosto (means ’simple’ in Russian. Absolutely loved loved loved that one. But to be fair it sounded a bit like ‘prostate’, and though possibly catchy, but still not sure if I like the association :) Again, this name was also taken, even the domain in .co.uk belonged to some, surprise, surprise, Russian IT company)
• - zeppelin (my favorite dish of all time, but no one cooks them better than my mom)
• -stereotype b
• - uncommon sense (great name, but a bit complicated, and taken)
• - Bigfoot
• - less ordinary (naaah, sounds like I am trying too hard)
• - in constant use
• - whysoserious (well, too obvious reference)
• - smena 8m (childhood nostalgia)
• - freshly painted (too arty ;)
• - simplocity (well, not that simple, I guess)
• - creatively challenged (why not? I am still not a design genius :)

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.

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 :)

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…

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 :)

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.