All right, now let’s turn on my English. After all, currently I am living in an English speaking country. So continuing expressing my American impressions (expressing impressions – not bad, a?) I’d like to write about TV. Unfortunately I don’t have TV yet but I noticed that several my friends, colleagues and acquaintances also have no TV at their home. At the beginning I was little surprised because it was hard to imagine Americans who don’t watch TV. However, these individuals are mostly scholars and fully live in their own specific world. Sometime when they want to see some TV news or shows they just go to Internet. Obviously more and more people can live without TV but not without Internet. Perhaps in the future we will see a new development of Internet-TV – a child of TV-mother and Internet-father (or vice versa). But I am sure even ten or fifty years from now there will be some extraordinary individuals who would enjoy life free of TV and Internet. And it is great to have such a human diversity and freedom of choice. Coca-Cola? No, thanks, just a glass of water. 

Why often academic (scholarly) literature is so boring? No doubt, there are many excellent academic writings but here I mean the aesthetic pleasure of reading the scholarly articles and books. I am a scholar myself but sometime I consider reading academic materials even in social sciences as dreadful practice. Contrary, good fiction or non-fiction needs an elegant style and offers for a reader a pleasant experience. Of course, somebody could say that in a scholarly literature the most important, the essential thing is an argument and logic but not a beauty of wordings. Well, yes, indeed, the argument, the logic and a strong, formalised style help to make a clear scholarly point without unnecessary eccentricities. But yet again, such a rational piece of writing often provides just unexciting portion of reading. It might give a powerful intellectual but not emotional enjoyment.

So is there any way to combine a beauty of a literary style with the argumentativeness of an academic smartness? Yes, perhaps. But I guess the number of graceful scholarly texts is at least twice less than the number of just fine literary or good scholarly texts.

Now imagine the combination of Aristotle with William Shakespeare or Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel with Vladimir Nabokov.  Not bad at all, ah?

In mathematics adding A to B and adding B to A are the same, I guess. But in life adding raspberry jam to tea and adding tea to raspberry jam are the two different things: I like the first and hate the second.

Nazokat Faizullaeva

THE KEY TO LIFE IS HONESTY AND HARD WORK

Omonulla Fayzullaevich Fayzullayev was my grandfather’s name, for us his grandchildren he was our beloved dodajon.

When I remember my dodajon, the first thing that comes to my eyes is the way he used to welcome us. Sitting in the garden when the weather was good or in his chair when the weather was cold, he always used to start clapping as soon as he saw us, getting extremely happy that we came. Continue reading “The Key To Life Is Honesty And Hard Work” →

Rashod Faizullaev

MY GREAT DODA

A scholar, veteran and a self-made man with formidable amount of energy, my grandfather Omonulla Fayzullaev was a brilliant personality possessing some incredible ability to remember things from his life. Knowledge and life experience are not the only things that my grandfather should be remembered by. It is ultimately his discipline, unbound energy and his hard work that we came to associate him with. For me, some of the lessons he taught only became apparent years later. As I share some of them with the readers, it will become apparent that my grandfather was, without a doubt, the wisest man I have come to know in my life who significantly shaped my personality while I was growing up. Continue reading “My Great Doda” →

Khurshid Faizullaev

YASHANG!

Probably like the majority of people around the world, I always thought that my grandfather was one of the strongest and the smartest of all grandfathers. It turns out I was quite right. His oomph was unequalled, his mind as clear as a newborn’s until the end of his days.

The first thing I think of when I remember my grandfather was the strength of body and soul. As the stoic of our family, he was the standard bearer of ethics, morals and lifestyle. Continue reading “Yashng!” →

My father, Amanulla Faizullaev, died in December 2008 at the age of 87. In a few weeks from now (April 5, 2011) he would be 90 years old.

My father was a great man with many amazing qualities. In my next postings I would like to publish three small essays of my children about their grandfather. All three essays were published last year in a book dedicated to my father.

I’ve just finished reading Isaac Asimov’s memoirs. I like reading all kinds of memoirs but most of all ones of writers. I liked Asimov’s science fiction stories and novels very much and I read many of them in Russian long time ago. Now I had an opportunity to read him in English. To be honest, I was not impressed by his memoirs – too much just description of life events and not enough (for me) reflections. However, I am impressed by his very simple and clear style. I’ve learned that he was criticized for his simplistic style, but I really enjoyed it. And, of course, it is just fantastic that he wrote more than 500 books.  That is even more fantastic than many of his fantastic stories.

Comparing different TV presenters and talk-show hosts in different countries and languages, I noticed that the American TV stars are the most confident ones. They speak more freely, with less tension and have bigger smile. Perhaps that is a part of a culture and represents a role model behavioural pattern. Any way, that kind of a TV behaviour is helping the American TV programs and shows to be more attractive for may people (first of all for Americans, of course).

Sports played a huge role in my life. I very much enjoyed and still enjoy doing  sports as well as watching sporting events. Earlier in my life I was engaged in more than 10 sporting disciplines, and I reached a “Master of Sport” level in fencing and some other merits in boxing, volleyball and tennis. In short, sports were a big part of my life and played an important role in the development of my personality and character. This is why I appreciate sports so much.

However, recently I catch myself criticizing certain aspects of sport – particularly its winning obsession. Winning is almost everything in any sport. People may enjoy movements, skills, mastery, techniques and the team-spirit of sportsmen, but still for the majority of people, sport is all about winning.

Who is the winner? That is a Hamlet’s question in sport. Even at amateur levels, among ordinary members of a sports club, the most vital thing is the defining the winner or winners. Everybody is primarily interested in one matter. Sometimes sportsmen destroy themselves physically or mentally, enter into a severe interpersonal or intergroup conflict trying to achieve the result – to win.

Regrettably, the glory of winning overshadows all other sides of sports including its beauty, improvement of health, confidence building as well as the loss of fear of competing. But in a social sense that is not too bad at all: it is better to allow people to fight in sports than in wars. At professional levels this also affects the business: winning in sport can bring money and big winning could create a big fortune. Furthermore, winning also brings prestige including a national prestige.

Though this is understandable, the winning mania of sport is still a bit bizarre for me.