Sunshine award from the award bouquet

My dear friend-blogger Ajay kindly nominated me for the whole bouquet of awards that included the Sunshine Award. Thanks a lot, Ajay. Much appreciated. Check out Ajay’s inspirational blog with lots of wise quotes and beautiful images.

So, what is the Sunshine Award?

“The Sunshine Award is an award given by bloggers to other bloggers. The recipients of the Sunshine Award are bloggers who positively and creatively inspire others in the blogosphere. The way the award works is this: Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them. Answer questions about yourself. Select 10 of your favorite bloggers, link their blogs to your post and let them know they have been awarded the Sunshine Award!”

What inspired you to start blogging?
I started my blog as an online collection of sayings, images, stories, poetry and songs that I like. Initially it was like an online treasure box for me that I could refer to whenever required. Over time however I discovered the pleasure of interacting with other bloggers so now blogging for me is more about exchanging ideas and experiences with other bloggers in the blogosphere – a long online conversation with amazing people from all over the world.

How did you come up with the name to your blog?
Otrazhenie means reflection in Russian language. That is the essence of my blog, which is a reflection of everything I see, feel or read.

Otrazhenie/Reflection also reflects my multicultural experience. I was lucky to live in different cultural environments and be part of a multicultural family. That allowed me to overcome some prejudices and stereotypes and get a deeper understanding of the values and beliefs that form the basis of those cultures. I learned to appreciate cultural differences as well as discovered some common core values that gave me the feeling of ‘oneness’. I realised that the core values in all cultures are very similar, as they underpin the survival of humans and ability to function in a group (e.g. family values – taking care of your family and children), while cultural differences can usually be explained by the environmental factors that shaped those cultures.

All cultures develop over time to match changing environment and people like me, who are living in multicultural families, have a unique opportunity to critically examine those cultures and preserve the best values and beliefs from each of them for future generations, while living behind all outdated cultural practices, which are irrelevant in the current environment.

What is your favorite blog you like to read?
Very hard to choose as I like a lot of other blogs. At first, I tried to follow all the blogs I like, which started getting a bit overwhelming, as I like so many of them. A few days I got an idea from Alistair of starting a new page with a list of blogs I like. I’ll set it up once I get a bit more time.

Tell about your dream job.
Blogging in the comfort of my warm and cosy bed would be my dream winter job, while tramping and sailing – my dream summer jobs. Unfortunately, none of these pleasurable activities brought me any income yet, so I’ll need to keep dragging myself out of the house every morning to a less-inspirational job to feed my family. I don’t mind it much however as without  a real job and interactions with real people I would probably lose my inspiration very quickly. I feel very lucky to have a dream work-family-fun-inspiration balance in my life. Hope to be able to keep it that way.

Is your glass half empty or half full?
Half-full so I could keep adding to it. And it is bottomless as well so I’ll never run out of space. 🙂

If you could go anywhere for a week’s vacation, where would you go?
I would not go anywhere as I’m already here. I’ll just keep exploring my wonder land New Zealand. Don’t want to go anywhere else yet.

What food can you absolutely not eat?
Raw oysters, frog legs, snakes, caterpillars and any of those crunchy, slimy and squishy stuff consumed by Bear Grylls in his ‘survival kitchen’. If I ever get lost while tramping, don’t add insult to injury by sending this guy to my rescue.

Dark chocolate or milk chocolate?
Dark with lots of nuts – you can have the chocolate back once I pick out all the nuts 🙂

How much time do you spend blogging?
Less than I would, more than I should 🙂

Do you watch TV, and if so, what are some of your favorite shows?
Very rarely. I mostly watch documentaries. I like ‘survival in the wilderness’ shows like ‘I should not be alive’ or Bear Grylls’ adventures. I like a practical side of those films – how to avoid getting into a tricky situation in the wilderness and what to do if you got into one. Talking about a ‘practical’ side, I even got a flint after one of Bear Grylls’ shows and tried to make a fire with it for cooking dinner during one of our tramping trips. An hour of sparks and finally – whoosh, I got the fire going. I was very impressed. Unfortunately, my hungry family was not. Have not seen my flint since that dinner, cheeky rascals. 🙂

My nominations:
I was planning to nominate 10 bloggers, but as some of you might be too busy to participate, while others might have been nominated for that award already, I decided to leave it up to my awesome followers to self-nominate themselves. I nominate for this award the first 10 of my followers, who are keen to play by the rules outlined above.