On my holidays in Finland

Here you can learn about me as a person: my interests and views, family and friends, my preferable food, as well as my character and name.

These facts, though more or less stable, are not set in stone — I try out new things and ideas, meet new people and cultures, and I'm constantly looking for personal development.

Other pages: Personal, Biography, Diary, Photo Album

Interests

Reading: I mostly read non-fiction in foreign languages. I also like to read Russian classical literature.

Cinema: I prefer films of high artistic quality. For me it's mostly European and Russian cinema. My favourite genre is tragicomedy.

Mass media: In Russia I read democratic newspapers, which were few, and listened to foreign radio stations. Later I used Internet for listening to radio and reading newspapers. I still read Russian press and closely follow the developments in Russia. As for TV, I watch it rarely because of too much advertising (in Canada) or high cost of licence (in Finland). Nowadays, I can see news and documentaries on the Internet and films on DVD.

Internet: I am an avid Internet user. The sites that I use most often are

• Wikipedia, for which I've written articles in Russian, English, French and Swedish
• Russian news sites
• the Swedish television
• LiveJournal, where I write as ybelov
• Google and Yandex (a Russian search engine)
• Multitran, a Russian online dictionary, in which I add English and French terms with translation into Russian.

See more in links.

Travel: The countries that I visited not long ago, and liked very much, are Sweden, Italy, Germany and Finland. I'd like to travel more in Europe, and especially I wish to go to Greece and Spain.

Countries and places where I lived: Russia (Novosibirsk, Moscow region, Novomoskovsk in Tula region), Mongolia (Ulan Bator), Turkmenistan (Ashkhabad, Nebitdag), Sweden (Delsbo), Canada (Québec City) and Finland (Tampere, Pargas).

Music: I prefer music from films, Russian romance, jazz, folk songs and classical music. You can listen to my favourite Russian songs.

As a child I went to a music school where I had classes of the piano, solfeggio, chorus and music literature. Now, even though I forgot most of it, I sometimes play the piano.

Sports: For many years I have been jogging in the mornings. I bike whenever possible and go to swimming pools. In Sweden I also went horse-riding.

Animals: I have a positive attitude to all animals, even though I find some more attractive than others. I prefer cats to dogs. I had a cat in Russia, and in Quebec I took care of my neigbours' cats.

Gadgets: I have a desk-top PC (bought in Canada in 2003), a digital camera and a desk mp3 player. In Finland I started to use a mobile phone (here practically everyone carries one and public phones have almost disappeared).

What I do NOT have: a car, a portable PC, an iPod... and other things that I'm probably not aware of.

As for a car, I decided to live without it. Automobiles are the biggest cause of the environmental pollution. They kill people. They also take too much time, money and space. The enormous number of cars and the car-driving lifestyle is one of the main things which I do not like about North America.

Views

I value democracy, culture and environment. Consumption, to the extent that I observed it in North America, does not interest me. That is why the region of my preference is Europe.

Politics: I'm much more pro-Western than an average Russian — that was one of the reasons why I emigrated. I'm strongly against Putin's government and the war in Chechnya. In my opinion, Putin's regime is undemocratic and terrorist.

Environment: I think that people, in particular in Russia and North America, do too little to preserve the environment, and we all see the consequences — global warming, environmental polution, and the accelerating extinction of rare species.

I live without a car, recycle as much as possible (for myself and for my flatmates) and economise resources. As you can see on this chart, my greenhouse emission is about 7 times less than that of an average Canadian. I want to do more for nature, and in 2005 I joined the Russian branch of Greenpeace .

Shopping: When I buy goods, I follow my principles. I boycott goods made in China (it wasn't easy in Canada!) to protest China’s brutal occupation of and repression in Tibet, its human rights violations, and its hostility to freedom, democracy and religion.

Click on this banner to make the same pledge:

I also avoid the following:

• food made in the USA (because of factory farming, heavy use of pesticides and genetically modified crops);
• food containing soybeans, corn, and canola. A large percentage of these crops is trangenic. Unfortunately, in Canada, like in the USA, labelling for GM food products is not required.
• food made in distant parts of the globe (because transportation contributes to global warming and foodstuffs have to be treated with chemicals to preserve their freshness);
• shopping in Wal-Mart .

Religion: I was brought up in non-religious surroundings: my close relatives were non-believers and in school I was taught atheism and materialism.

Then, during my university years, I used to interpret for various Christian missionaries, who came in big numbers to Moscow in the early 1990s to rescue Russians from an idealogical vacuum after the fall of communism. I read parts of the Bible, studied religious terminology and also took a course in the study of religions given by a British professor at Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies.

While I studied in the business school (1994-95) I discussed religion a lot with my friend, a student from America, who was then a Mormon follower. (Seven years later, he found me through this site).

In Sweden (1999 - 2000) I worked in a religious organisation, Staffansgården, though not quite Christian.

I do not believe in the God of the Bible, but I feel that there should be a positive force that governs the Universe.

Family and friends

I'm not married and have no children. My relatives live in Russia.

I do not have many friends - about five. In Québec and now in Finland I have been keeping in touch with Russian-speaking immigrants and also with a few locals.

I've had several romantic relationships, which greatly influenced my life. Most recently, during my first year in Québec, I lived together with a French-speaking Canadian girl.

Now I'm looking for a girlfriend again. I'd like to meet a kind, attractive and non-smoking woman, somewhat younger than me. Please write if you are interested.

Food and beverage

My eating preferences are quite simple: I eat healthy and inexpensive food. In the morning it's usually porridge, sometimes some other Russian kasha (cooked cereal) or musli. For lunch it can be borsch (a soup made of cabbage, beets, etc), fish or mushrooms with salads. In the evening I usually eat cheese, kefir or bliny (pancakes). Of fruits I consume quite a lot of apples — I can't live without them. Recently I started to eat much less meat, replacing it with fish.

Some other Russian dishes that I'm fond of: pelmeni (meat-filled dumplings), vareniki (dumplings with other fillings), tvorog (cottage cheese, I cannot buy it in Canada because of the preservatives), sauerkraut (that my mother used to make, not sold in the shops), okroshka (this is a kind of salad with kvas), seledka pod shuboi ("herring under a furcat", a multi-layer salad of herring, vegetables, eggs and mayonese) pirogi, chebureki (pies stuffed with minced lamb meat and spices) and shashlyk (the latter two are Caucasian).

In Canada I used a special mushroom I make kefir. In Russia and Scandinavia kefir is sold in food shops, just as milk. In Canada few shops sell it, and it is extremely expensive, but it is possible to find kefir grains by word of mouth and on this kefir site.

Of alcoholic beverages I drink wine (usually red) and beer. It has now been established, that "the moderate consumption of alcohol, including beer, is associated with better health and greater longevity than is either abstaining or drinking heavily" (Wikipedia). So I'm a moderate drinker and enjoying it!

I do not drink vodka, so I'm not a typical Russian! :-)

I almost never eat out, except when there's a good company.

Habits and character

Habits: I do not have really bad habits, but I think I am a bit lazy, and it is sometimes difficult for me to stick to my plans. I've never smoked (I am vehemently against smoking and I hate tobacco companies) and never used drugs.

My character: Since I often moved from country to country, I have a problem of finding friends and it makes me feel lonely. I am not very talkative and sociable (introvert). On the over hand, I consider myself honest, reliable and caring.

According to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, I am an ISFP. My Holland code is SIA. (These codes denote personality types and are used mostly in career planning).

My name

My first name, Yuri, which is pronounced ['ju:rij], is a close relative to the name Georgy (George in English). In different languages it is spelled differently: Юрий (Russian), Yuri or Yury (English), Iouri or Youri (French), Jurij (Swedish), Juri (Finnish) ...

In Russia most names have diminutive equivalents (Alexander — Sasha, Maria — Masha, Natalia — Natasha, etc). For Yuri it's Yura, but there are also about half a dozen of other — jocular — variants of my name :-).

My surname, Belov [be'lof], is a derivative of the word bely which means "white". You can read more about this surname and people who bear it on www.vgd.ru (in Russian)

As all Russian people, I also have a patronymic (a "middle name" derived from the father's first name), but I prefer to use it only for legal purposes in Russia.