I woke up today. It’s sunny, cold (around – 15 °C), snowy & cloudy in Moscow. The winter has come. Finally! There was no snow & it was around +5°C (or even more) degrees recently. In DECEMBER! But just before the New Year zima returned to Moscow.

I’d like to thank everyone who reads my blog for your time & support. I wish your 2016 will be better than 2015.

It was not an easy year for me. It should be noted that I really can’t remember an ‘easy’ year. I think the last one was in the late 80s-early 90s when I lived with my family in New Delhi. The rest is history… The collapse of the Soviet Union; tanks shelling the Russian Parliament in 1993 while I was playing Mario Bros. on my 16-bit Nintendo; Yeltsin’s “ya ustal, ya ukhozhu” (I’m tired, I’m leaving) phrase on December 31, 1999, when he addressed the nation with a ‘common’ New Year speech; the rise of Putin… It feels like a second.

2016 will be a hard year for Russia, a crucial one. The iOil (i.e. iPhones-for-oil) quasi-colonial model stopped working but where’s the new one to replace it? As the saying goes, pozhivyom – uvidim (we’ll live & see).

S Novym Godom! Happy New Year!