Author: Zoia

Zoia Eliseyeva is a native Russian, born in Soviet Union. She got a Bachelor’s degree in English and Literature from Latvia State University in 1989, and a Master’s degree in Education from California State University in San Bernardino in 2002. Zoia is an author of an autobiographical-immigrant book “The Girl from California” (Burkhart and Sproesser are Zoia’s last names by USA marriages), that was published in Russia and in USA, and a few Dual-Language (English-Russian), Trilingual (Russian-English-Spanish), and Multilingual books (English-German-French-Spanish-Russian) - introduction of World Classics including Tolsoy, Dostoyevskiy, and Chekhov. Zoia has been published since 1996, and she provided professional language services in USA since 1997. Being an optimist who walks through life with a smile, through years Zoia has been appreciated by her students of Russian, English, and Spanish languages in Europe, USA, and Mexico.
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Fraud

I had a repeated message yesterday from the bank about the suspicious activity around my accounts and that they are blocking my access until clarification.
I did not use the 800-telephone number they recommended. Instead, I went to my local bank in person. When in the bank I waited for a bank employee (not a teller at the window) to finish his conversation with a customer and shared my story with him. He was a young, bilingual (English-Spanish) man.
He called their security department and he said to me that there was an attempt from Los Angeles to access my account. Then he showed me one of my personal phrases that dated to 18 years ago and said that it was my ID. I replied, “No, it isn’t. That ID I used many years ago.” And I showed him my current ID. After about 20-25 minutes of him speaking to their department, we created new phrases, IDs and passwords.
Of course, today we have a wonderful tool, a personal cell, through which an instantaneous digital code is sent to the owner of the phone. Unless the owner is kept hostage, the code remains the last unbreakable barrier which is very smart because of its short life. However, for the hostage situation, let your friends know about your whereabouts frequently, or leave a comment on a public profile that people around know about your latest activities or shared thoughts.

       Dear friends, as a matter of fact, my password for the bank was the same for 16 years.  And it was a very short phrase without any capital letters or special signs.  After 16 years a hacker got to my ID and password and tried to access my banking.  And, by the way, banking of a part-time educator is not a big catch so why they bothered - who knows. 

       I wish everybody stayed secure, and could clear out, desirably in person, all obscurities that come your way today. With AI developing fast there will be more and more fakeness for real human beings to figure out in all possible shapes - pictures, texts, videos, people.
       I yesterday saw a short (video) where they showed an Asian country and a robot - a young girl with eastern face features and white complexion, dressed in 2024 fashion, - so the robot was walking out of the grocery store and big crowds of people were watching.  The robot had a very unnatural appearance - the features were the fantasy of its creator - eastern features with not matching complexion. The movements were regular robot's movements. She was cautiously stepping out of the market and down from the curb to the road while surrounded by a lively crowd of people, who observed her.

       I believe we will have more and more of all of these kinds of creations almost every new day.

       And fraud is never asleep. Who brought up those people? Why they have this ugly occupation of stealing from others? Who taught them? What culture made them crooked? How they skipped all good and valuable what each culture has? Why they are not ashamed of themselves and continue engaging themselves in pathetic criminal wrongdoings?

       Let's fight fraud by exposing hackers' ways and sharing stories of fakeness and fraudulent activities, and how to stand against them - so our friend, relative, or neighbor is always on alert what can happen.

Zoia Eliseyeva on June 16, 2024, from CA, USA

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Evaluation

There was an evaluation of me, an instructor at a community college.
One of 17 students anonymously wrote that I spoke with accent, and I guess, based on that, my total grade was “satisfactory”.
Well, the choice of grades is very poor.
One has to choose Excellent, or Satisfactory, or Unsatisfactory.
How about if an instructor performs very well? It is wrong to call a good performance just “satisfactory”.
“Satisfactory” is also the grade that just slipped by one point, or a fracture of the point up from “Unsatisfactory”.
Should I be angry? Should I complain? Should I keep silent?
I have to admit that the class I teach now consists of people who are very fresh newcomers to the USA. When you ask them how long they have been in the country, you may hear “2 months” and “4 months”.
I would say if they do not like my accent, they 1) have a wide choice of other classes 2) can ask me to repeat the explanation – the suggestion I make quite a few times during any given class. Specifically from this class I have heard not very many questions. So, I guess, they are shy to ask a question, but they (just one particular person) was not shy to complain on an official paper.
People, people! Who brought you up? Did not they teach you ask for help before complaining? And this is what I do all my life – I help people. This is what my profession is about.
Of course, there were other students’ remarks, one of which said that I was the best teacher he (or she) had ever had, and that they liked my website very much.
The college processing chose 2 positive answers and one negative – out of 17. The Peer Observation Review was almost 100 percent for 5.0 grade. All other points were also higher than 4.0, many of them – quite higher.
And yet, the total grade is “Satisfactory”.
27 years of experience in USA and 5 years before USA. “Satisfactory” because I speak another language, and of course I speak with accent.
As a matter of fact, the class is 99 percent Spanish-speaking, and I know Spanish grammar and I can explain and compare English with Spanish grammar.
And the point of my article?
2 wishes that will remain just wishes, and that is OK, because we “cannot jump higher than our own heads” (with the analogues for this saying in other languages).
My 2 wishes:
I wish the student who became a reason for my low grade asked me questions first.
I wish the final grades were more developed than just PLUS, MINUS and one poor “Satisfactory” grade. An experienced instructor who loves her job deserves better than “Satisfactory”.
It makes me feel like that: “Ok, so I have worked all my life devoting myself to my teaching profession, and I am performing just “satisfactorily”.
That much for self-evaluation, self-identity, and self-satisfaction.
However, of course, there is just simple general truth about working with people: “One cannot ever be good to everybody”. There will be someone who will not like you.
In Russian culture we also have a proverb “A tiny spoon of machine oil will spoil a barrel of honey”.
My translation of the proverb is not perfect but readers will understand the sense of that perfectly.
Thank you, everybody, for reading me!
Zoia Eliseyeva
April 25 2024 California
PS
Maybe I should have mentioned that from my childhood I was schooled with the grades “5” for “excellent”, “4” for “good”, and “3” for “satisfactory” with the latter hardly keeping on the surface of the performance. And my regular grade was mostly 4, “good”: I had almost never reached for “excellent”, nor I had such aspirations. I do not think it is good or bad: it is just about how high aspirations each person has for achievements.
I have the other story to share just to the point, however I will tell it some other time, just to keep myself strictly to the topic of this particular standard college incident.
😀

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Joke of the Day – March 20, 2024 or The Modern Mammoth’s Survival

I wanted to say a joke, but came up with a little story.

Here it is.
I wonder, how long a modern “mammoth”, who resists using
downloadable aps through codes, can survive?
They (codes, offers, ads) are coming from all directions, I’d say in a more aggressive way, almost every day.
The mammoth may just not be able, for example, to see that button F11 to exit the Full screen feature – because s/he is 1) of a mammoth’s age and because 2) s/he is writing in the darkness of the night. All today’s youngsters will be that age one day, even if they do not realize it now. Time is non-turnable. It only moves in one direction: to future.
I was in a European big city airport in 2021 and at the check-up counter they made me download the code-reader app in order to read their app.
When I flew to the next European capital city, a few hours later, the other fellow-traveler-mammoth, who spoke only one European language, asked me help her around the airport because she had heard me talking the language actively at the check-up counter of the previous city. Yes, that’s true, in a European capital city, in its big airport, for some reason, nobody was willing to understand the second of the 6 languages of the world communication: the language spoken in Europe and widely in South America. I helped her all the way because I am always happy to help other human beings with what I can. This is how we were brought up back in my native culture, and this is what today, I think, is more important than ever.
It seems that not knowing a popular foreign language will be the smallest challenge for a human being in the near future.
Well, a mammoth with the knowledge of a few popular modern languages may choose to resist the pressure of imposed codes, apps, and other downloads. However, if it becomes as necessary as it was the transfer to a cell service a few years ago, then, I guess, the mammoth will adjust and survive during its remaining life.

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