Since March they closed everything. No marshrutkas, the trolleybus only for doctors, checkpoints at the city exits. I am at the dacha with permission from the cooperative chairman (he wrote me a paper that I am "agricultural worker"). Only me and the cat.
Dima calls every evening on the video. He is in Surgut now, an engineer. He says in Russia the same. The whole world sits at the dacha.
Dima suggested to keep the smog diary. I took the school notebook and each morning write the number from the application of the Gidromet and the colour. October: 14 days "orange", 3 days "red", 8 days "yellow", the rest "green". November is only starting. The best part of the notebook is the weather of my chest: I wrote "cough" on 11 days.
The doctor Zinaida Markovna told me to buy the mask. I said, I worked at the refinery for 38 years, I am the mask. She looked at me for a long time and wrote "mask" in the paper.
Dima sent me a present from Novosibirsk with the post: a smartphone, a plain one, with a big screen and a leather case. I resisted for a week. Now I have the "Tulpar" on it, which Dima installed, and I look at the news and the weather and the price of petrol, and, truthfully, also at the pictures of cats.
My first message there was "Hello". The answer came after eleven seconds: "Hello, uncle! Welcome!" from somebody called Svetlana N. in the Nurzhan room I did not know where to put my hands. A strange feeling: in 1959 we sent the telegrams, and now a stranger welcomes me and I did not even pay.
Again this week you could not see the refinery chimneys from our balcony, and I can see them always, 3 km. It is the inversion: the cold air sits on the Chu plain like a lid, and everything from the heating plant, the cars and the stoves of the private houses stays under it.
The radio says: "unhealthy for sensitive groups". I am a sensitive group, 78 years. I stay at home and read. Dima sends masks from Novosibirsk.
Dima writes from Novosibirsk, where he is doing the second degree, that he has a girlfriend, Katya, from the same faculty, also from an oil family (her father works in Surgut). I asked the usual question: is she a good cook? He said: "Ded, she is a petroleum engineer." I said: this is not an answer. Then he sent the photograph, and I see that she is smiling like a person who can cook.
We will see. A grandfather does not interfere. I send a jar of the tomatoes for the family exam.