Amazon order statistics

Ordered on 2004-06-13:

501 Italian Verbs $10.47
Merriam-Webster's Spanish-English Dictionary $13.97
Sonic Youth - Corporate Ghost: Videos, 1990-2002 DVD $12.28
Sonic Youth - Sonic Nurse CD $12.99 - 2$ discount for buying with the DVD = $10.99

S&H $18.95 - $1.40 gift certificates, Total: $65.26

Shipped on 2004-06-14

Arrived today, that is on 2004-06-24

Amazon's dedlivery estimate was Jul 7, 2004 - Jul 20, 2004! I love Amazon. Really. And as if the quick shipment is not enough, the breakdown of the price is as follows: $65.26 = 295.25 NIS. How much would i pay if i bought this stuff in Israel? CD costs 45 NIS in Jerusalem's "Hatav Hashmini" and 501 Verbs costs 89 NIS at the Academon which leaves us with 161.25 NIS; I haven't seen the DVD or the dictionary here, but DVD would cost at least 80 NIS and the dictionary at least 140 NIS, so i saved at least about 50 NIS.

Reviews of at least some of the above items to follow.

Change

From now on i'm gradually changing the way i write dates. It is actually quite a principal decision and that's why i'll elaborate on it now for a minute. I'm sick of VMS-style dates. They are lovely, but i need a change in my life, so there. From now on i'm going for the Japanese style YYYY-MM-DD, because when you come to think of it, it is the one which is best-suited for technical purposes, as it is the easiest to sort. Thanks for your attention to that.

Family 2004

My bigger sister Zhenja, her daughters Sasha (11) and Dasha (4) and my other sister Olga's son Nikita (12) are here. Olga is coming too on the 18th. I've been waiting so long for them. Family, afterall. Nikita, in a way, would be my smaller brother. I wonder how much i missed this as a lone child. And i admit that it's a little awkward. I hope not to disappoint anyone, especially myself.

After looking for stuff to talk about i finally got to the simple things -- i'm explaining them about Israel and Jews and Hebrew, and why are there so much people speaking Russian here, especially the cashiers. Sasha thought that they all just learnt it, because hey -- everyone knows Russian, it's so easy...