Mistery House

I've chosen an interesting mystery story to tell you. It is the story of a real life full of unreal events and tough experiences, the story about Sara Winchester and her famous “odd” hobby. I found the information about them on the http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/ after I visited her famous house-maze.

The life of Sara Winchester wasn't easy even though she was incredibly wealthy (her earnings were near $1000 every day). She experienced two great shocks that very much affected on her life.

The first shock was losing her infant baby daughter because of unknown at that time disease. Sara could not recover from the child’s death to the end of her life and was in a deep depression for almost 15 years.

The second shock was the premature death of her lovely husband, who died because of tuberculosis. Mrs. Winchester couldn't mentally endure that, and soon she became “too sensitive” to spirits. She blamed bad spirits in her grief and started visiting spiritualists. One of them told her that she is followed by spirits, who are the souls of people killed by rifles created by her husband, and those souls would have never let her be in rest. The spiritualist also said that there is one way to hide from them. She should have moved across the country to the west and should have found a place for building a house. He said the good spirits will make her a signal where to stop and build, and while the sound of hummers would have been heard the spirits could have never find her. Several days later Sara was already on the way to the West. She stopped in Santa Clara, California and was building there a great house to the end of her life. Sara wanted to confuse bad spirits, so her house was built like a maze. There are some doors open to walls or ceilings, windows from one room look to another, plenty of stairs and tiny hidden corridors. Furthermore, every night she slept in different rooms to escape from the spirits.

What is interesting, nobody knows what really she was thinking building this house because she had never been interviewed about that. She died at about 80 years old, but her house is still kept as the museum. Everybody can get a tour on the house, garden and back yard and feed their curiosity about the life of this woman.

Drinking Coffee at Starbucks

Kate Couric began the interview with Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks by asking him why he didn't call coffee sizes commonly like other people did (small, medium or large) calling it “doppio espresso” and other. He said that visiting Italy once he just saw those names and got the sense of that. He also said that Starbucks customers have ordered coffee calling it by thousand of different ways.

Than Kate asked Schulz about his financial problems. Because of the crisis or some other reasons Starbucks had to close 600 coffee shops around the United States and to cut 1000 jobs. Schulz tought it was^T related to Starbucks very fast growth and some mistakes that were made while the company was developing. He also add that if they had known that there would be this problem with economy they would have gone by different way.

The next Couric's question was about the Starbucks business plan. She wanted to know if they had a plan for the current “severe recession”, and Schulz answered they didn't have because the Starbusks was “recession-proof”.

The last question was about bringing prices down. She asked if Schoulz was planning to reduce prices. His answer was interesting; he said Starbucks has sold more than a cup of coffee. Anyway he said they would have offered discount cards and some less pricey coffee, but he has regretted that they were buying more efficient espresso machines and were replacing coaches to sale more and faster because the customers had blamed on Starbucks service speed. He also added that his clients wouldn't notice if he changed something like the transportation costs or waste reducing because people had came to Sturbucks for human communication.

Reading this article I had very different feelings. At first, I should mention that I am a very sophisticated coffee drinker, so I can't drink Sturbacks coffee, and can't even call these drinks coffee, so I was thinking that it is not weird that Starbucks is getting less popular. The old roasted and low quality coffee, which might stay in the shop for months or even years, a burned until bitter test milk and espresso that is being cooked against all standards don't make the coffee good. A lot of vanilla, chocolate, banana and other souses are used to give some a little nice taste to a coffee, but in reality they only make it sweet. This coffee has so many calories that you shouldn't eat all day after one drink if you are concerned about your weight. The only good point about Starbucks, which by the way made its coffee popular, is the speed of making coffee. I think now, when Starbucks is so widespread, Schulz needs to think about changing the idea of his company on something different. For example he might try to make an accent on healthy organic coffee and fast but well made coffee. He should pay attention to quality but not quantity now. Coffee that is roasted no longer than month ago and competent coaches who monitor barista's work are able wholly change the current working process what will attract more customers who are concerned about quality but not the size of cup and taste of sugar instead of taste of coffee. Maybe if Schulz had paid attention to these points the problems with his company would have been solved or reduced.

I also want to add that even though I don't like Starbucks' coffee and don't go there I like Schulz's attitude to some other things. I was impressed by his help to farmers, AIDS victims and specially by his “responsible capitalism” regarding all his employees. I think it says something about his personality. Plus I loved his phrase “if you are entrepreneur, you've got to dream big and than dream bigger.”

Barack Obama vs John McCain

Barack Obama and John McCain seem to be totally different people to me, so it is hard to compare them and to choose between them. It is like finding difference between coffee and milk, when there is only one similar thing - both are liquids. The same things are with Obama and McCain. They have totally different political ideas and behavior. It is very interesting how one says that his decision-making style is “instinctive, often impulsive” and “I don’t torture myself over decisions. I make them as quickly as I can, quicker than the other fellow if I can.” The other says that making decisions is his impulse "for control translates into a kind of deliberative restraint", and he also "resists making quick judgments or responding to day-to-day fluctuation".

I am really wondering, how could these two totally opposite men happen to fight against each other for the president chair. I don't think it has naturally happened. And I don't think that something would be different if Mr. McCain had won the election. I believe that there always exists some group of people who rule the government, and our presidents are only "faces" or representatives for this group. I don't believe that these presidents really rule a country or make some decision. I think they always follow somebody's commands. Nothing has really changed since Obama became the president. I think he might be a specially chosen person, who had to take all "crisis problems" on his shoulders and to be not able to bear those and as a result to be blamed by people. This theory seems natural to me, even though it would be a lie. The word "politic" isn't associated with word "true" to me, so maybe that was a real reason for Obama's election and next on the president chair would be a republican.

livejournal.com

I found this website a couple of years ago. It is wide spread all around the world, and it has been used by most of my friends who like to express their thought and ideas using the Internet. At first, it has started in the United States and became popular everywhere else, but finally lost its popularity here. So, mostly people from Europe and Russia are using this website now.
Different life stories, photos, lyrics and a lot of different communities (like design, art, languages, cars, news, etc) are collected on this website in blogs of thousands of users.
It is easy to upload photos and videos, and to be connected with people all around the world by using this website.
I use livejournal to write about my life and adventures on another side of the earth. Monitoring this site, my friends are always notified about what is going on in my life. My photos with stories of our travels are collected on my page, and my friends and family can see them there and write comments to me.
For those people who like to write and read this website might be very interesting.

Hello everyone!

My name is Yulia, and it is the third quarter at Foothill for me.

As many Russian women I came here with my husband, who got the relocation from a small and beautiful Siberian town named Tomsk to the huge and sunny Silicon Valley.

I've already finished a University in Russia, and I'm taking a lot of English classes now because I would like to improve my English as soon as possible. I've been also involved in Students Government at Foothill as an Activities Coordinator. I love communication and being among people, so I'm very happy working at Students Government and spending a lot of time on campus with people of different nationalities. My hobbies are reading, dancing, snowboarding, rollerblading, drawing, studying, partying and more, more, more.

If you want to know something else about me, feel free to ask because I love people and communication with them! ;)

Have enjoyable quarter, guys!!!