Is there life on "Mars"?

“Brrrrr” has been the only sound you could notice people to produce on the European territory of Russia for the past week. Well, provided you could find at least a single human being walking in the street. Most of people here thank God for giving them a place to live and warm up.
It’s been exceptional coldness in the European part for the past 20 years at least. Well, I don’t myself remember such a cold winter for the whole time I’ve lived here, which has been my whole life actually. From the phone conversation with my uncle I learnt that last time the temperature went down to negative 43 was in 1985, the year I was born. He also told me that the day it was -43 he went hunting!
The weather forecasts don’t seem optimistic at all. They say, it’s going to stay this cold for the next week too! To be specific, on Monday it was “warm” – about negative 25, but I could stand it and even got to the town centre almost alive, though my nose was going to leave me halfway. A note: negative 25 in the European part where I live is the maximum coldness I personally can bear, when I can intermediately go out to a store or to walk the dogs.
On Wednesday the temperature went down to negative 30-32, and severely blowing wind appeared. Humph. Fine. On Thursday night it was negative 40 and today it was 35-37 plus the wind.
Well, if you think that I’m complaining about the weather, you may be right, because it's ruined all the plans about going out to meet with some of my friends, have my trainings at the sport centre located in another part of town, or simply going shopping, which I’ve been dreaming about for the whole month! Plus my poor nephew’s still waiting for me to come and “sit” (he wont let me sit anyway ;) ) with him, as for these two frosty weeks I have my winter holidays!
Yesterday, I learnt from the news that there were 3 people without a specified place of living who got frozen in houses’ basements, which are their most favorite places to spend nights. As far as I understood, different social organizations are now working on accommodating such people in specially organized buildings. Bad news on the whole, but hopefully this people wont have to wait for the help to come as long as they had freezing in the Atlantic ocean after the Titanic shipwreck.
The Russian Government seems to be full of either comedians or fools; I haven’t worked that out yet. So, obviously none of them expected temperatures to fall down “dramatically” on practically the entire territory of Russia. Well, they actually meant especially cold times in the European part, but taking in consideration the fact thar the rest of Russia are Siberia and Yakutiya, where winter temperatures are always “dramatically” low (negative 40-50 is all right for them), it's now wonder our heating and electric systems work on their maximum. There have been a few accidents with heating in Siberia, if I’m not mistaken. So, our desperate government has not been prepared for such a "blow". There’re two main questions we always try to solve: “Whose fault is it?” and “What to do?” Well, I don’t want to sound sarcastic, but the way they solve heating problems expresses the whole idiocy and incapability to rule the coldest/biggest country in the world. I’m talking about our governor, who swam in the ice hole with a bottle of cognac yesterday. That was all because of his bet with another governor who did that the day before but without a bottle of something heating his blood. It all seemed so stupid to me. What did they try to prove? They probably think they’re supermen now having the whole country watch them in their swimwear running to and jumping right in the ice holes! Do they hope to awake a common sense of inspiration, or do they simply try to attract people’s attention to their ugly freezing lard and share their “optimism” instead of having the heating system work and share their loot money with the rest of the country crying and moaning with their breast children sleeping in temperatures slightly above zero?
If you go out you wont notice any cars around, there’s only public transport and a few taxies. My father and brothers had quite a problem with starting their cars, so nowadays there’s only one possible way to get somewhere – public transport, which is a rare thing now just like passengers in that public transport. Ordering a taxi beforehand is also a way out but it doesn’t work that well, as there’s a problem with starting an engine. For example, today in the morning my brother was late for a meeting because he was waiting for his taxi ordered beforehand for an hour!
The whole cold winter thing drives me crazy! I’m an active “out”-like person and staying at home 24/7 is too much! I feel like I’m in a prison, and the only possible way of communication with the outside world is the telephone. Thanks Alexander Bell, now my days are not so alike and savourless, and I have something to talk about.
Well, spending the whole two weeks of winter vacation in sitting at home like way is not the dream of my university life, but being an optimist, I get the most of it: reading Dostoevsky’s “Brothers Karamazov”, writing my course paper, doing all kinds of cleaning/washing, learning to cook from what I have in the fridge, which is quite a problem, as going to the store doesn’t seem to be that exciting;) and finally preparing parents, especially mom, for going to all kinds of birthday parties.
Besides, I’ll definitely have something to tell my grandchildren about in “It was long time ago when you granny was a young girl, just like you’re now…” way.
Have someone to make you warm and stay warm inside whatever the weather is like outside.