The Ukraine as with much of Russia suffers from extremes of weather. The winter starts to kick in around November and the temperatures can quickly dive. It can become very cold minus 20 or 30 centigrade! The cold weather normally runs through until about the end of March, when the temperatures can then rise quite rapidly and reach even the high 30,s in July, August. In recent years the weather has become noticeably less predictable.

Travelling this country in May or June can be very pleasant and with maps at the ready I set off from Odessa, destination The Crimea. A cautionary note on Ukraine maps. It is advisable to have 3 maps of the country, yes 3! The first should be of the English translation of the Towns and Cities. The second the Ukrainian translation and the third in Russian!!! The actual road signs, what few there are, ( road signs are clearly not a priority in the Ukraine right now) can be in any of these languages and the variants can be quite confusing.

Leaving Odessa I took a logical, but wrong turn. I was following what seemed on the map to be a decent road that skirted The Black Sea and would take me to Nikolayev the next major city, but found myself in a very poor and depressing suburb of Odessa. Driving through these areas and most of the big cities have them it becomes very clear that this country has serious economic problems.

The scenes I encountered were really of poverty and squalor. Endless tenement blocks dating from the Soviet era and seemingly not maintained since that date and outdoor markets everywhere selling cheap plastic goods and other cheap products. For these people life is clearly not so easy.

One of the most noticeable oddities for anyone visiting, or travelling this country is that within these depressing areas are the famous and very beautiful ladies of Ukraine and so many are incredibly well dressed. It is really is quite odd. I am told that whilst these ladies dress very stylishly and elegantly much of what they are wearing is market bought and at very low prices. For me this was irrelevant, they really look quite stunning, all the more so because of their surroundings.

Having retraced my steps I found a better road and proceeded to my next stop Nikolayev. This area of The Ukraine is very flat and there are many estuaries and rivers. I did not stop in Nikolayev, what I saw was a big city, but did not pause long enough to see much, time was passing and I still had some distance to travel to my destination. Simferopol and the Crimea.

Kherson was the only other city of any size on my journey and looked to be an interesting city and I marked it as worth visiting, for a future trip. Arriving at Simferopol at sundown I headed straight to a Hotel I knew from previous visits, The Hotel Ukraine. If you have read my previous articles you will know that the quality of Hotels can vary hugely. Well this Hotel is well up the list of good value, good service and quality. It’s a beautiful hotel carefully restored by the current owner and equally important the staff are very friendly and helpful, even offering me the odd lesson in the Russian as I struggle to learn the language.

Simferopol is the administrative centre of the Crimea and also a University City, so it is a bustling and lively place, well worth a visit. There are many pleasant bars, restaurants and cafes and all within a relatively small area in the centre of the city and one of the advantages of staying in the Hotel Ukraine is that all is within walking distance.

I should point out that the Crimea is one of the Russian speaking areas of The Ukraine (yes I know, very confusing) and it unlikely you will hear the Ukrainian language at all on your travels here. A forty five minute drive from here is Yalta. The Ukraines San Tropez. We will visit in my next article.

Terrence Aubrey is the CEO of an online International dating agency based in The Ukraine. He has written many helpful articles on the subject of both the ladies of this country and the country itself.
He has learnt much about both the country and it’s ladies through both his business and his extensive travels within The Ukraine and has developed both an admiration and a strong fondness of the country and its people. http://www.confidentialmatchmakers.com

I recently delved into some research about a 2-day certification course I will be attending that helps high school level and junior athletes discover what it is they really want to get out of the sports they are playing, and how to help them train to attain the goals that they set for themselves. One of the trainers said, ‘The problem that most of our students have in sticking to a training program is that they focus on the process instead of the reward.’

I had written an article on this very subject two years earlier, and found it fascinating that the same exact ‘truth’ would rear it’s head again. (That’s the way it goes with the truth - it will always cut through and define problems and point to solutions with extreme clarity.) Anyway, I would like to give you an example of what this trainer was talking about and how it applies to your tennis training. Here’s the Scenario:

Meet Jessica. Jessica is a nationally ranked junior tennis player and is getting ready to graduate high school and accept a scholarship to a NCAA Div. 1 university next year. While she has done well, she really wants to improve and possibly play pro tennis someday. She, along with her coach, agreed that in order to do this, she must spend an additional 5 hours a week on the courts working solely on the areas of her game that they both agreed need improvement. This is in addition to the 12 hrs a week she is putting in on the courts just to maintain her game at its current level. She’s been doing it for two weeks now, and doesn’t really know if she’s making any ‘progress’ on those weak areas of hers, but she tells herself she’s going to keep slugging it out.

The alarm goes off at 5:00 am, and Jessica does not feel like going to the courts today. She thinks about it, and realizes that it’s raining, it’s cold, and she has to fight a ton of traffic just to get to the courts. Then, she’ll have to do her warm-up work, stretch and do the dreaded drills that have not been going so well for her over the last couple of weeks. On top of it all she got to bed late the night before anyway and has homework she didn’t finish. Jessica hits the snooze button, pulls the covers back up, and drifts back to sleep…

Meet Sarah. Sarah is a varsity level high school player and has never even thought about going on the pro tour. However, several colleges have been watching her and if she can make it to the State Tournament this year, her coach has told her that at least a partial college scholarship is all but certain. Sarah has thought long and hard about this, because her parents are not wealthy and she really wants to get an education. Sarah’s been working on improving her weaknesses for two weeks. She slowly, but surely, has been seeing some improvement.

Her alarm goes off, and Sarah does not want to go to the courts. It’s raining, it’s cold and she’s facing all the same challenges that Jessica is in regards to getting her morning training done. Sarah reaches over, turns the buzzer off on her alarm clock and…goes to the courts and gets in her morning training.

Now in this example…what’s the difference? What is the magical ingredient that courses through Sarah’s veins that makes her get to the courts? Sarah is not the nationally ranked top junior player that Jessica is. What makes Sarah go to the courts and what makes Jessica stay home? The answer may not be what you think. Believe it or not, these two girls are very focused, but in opposite ways. Remember what the trainer I heard said? ‘The problem that most of our students have in sticking to a training program is that they focus on the process instead of the reward.’ I have come to the conclusion that this trainer got it about 50% right.

Both these girls were focused on the process and the reward, but in different ways. The reason that Jessica hits the snooze button is precisely as follows:

Jessica, the girl who slept in, was focused emotionally on the process, and logically on the reward. In other words, Jessica was focusing her emotions on how difficult it was going to be to get the workout in, the weather, the traffic…and focusing her logic on the reward (i.e. ‘Yeah, so I may make it to the pros someday, but is doing all this really worth it?’)

Sarah, on the other hand, focused on the process logically and the reward emotionally. (i.e. ‘Well, I might as well get in there and get this workout done…I just know it’s going to feel so great to make it to the State Tournament and start getting scholarship offers!’)

The lesson for you here is this: Focus your emotions on the reward, and focus on the process logically. Sarah has (perhaps unknowingly) figured out one of the secrets to getting what she wants from the game of tennis - and so have you!

To Your Massive Tennis Success,

Coach Kyril

Kyril Popoff is a former NCAA Div1 All-Conference Tennis Player, Instructor, Coach and Author.

His books include THE TEN LAWS OF TENNIS SUCCESS and FOCUS & WIN: WHY YOUR TENNIS GAME ISN’T WHERE YOU WANT IT TO BE, & WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT!

You can sign up for Coach Kyril’s Tennis Lessons, Tips & Tricks newsletter at:
http://www.coachkyriltennis.com

Reading from a screen is much different from reading a paperback book.

With your paperback book you can settle back in your favourite armchair and get right into you book.

If you’re reading on screen, you’ll probably be reading at a desk with your screen in front of you. Despite all the ergonomic advice that people in work are supposed to follow, it isn’t always adhered to, and at home, it’s highly unlikely to be followed. It is possible that you’ll be in you favourite armchair with laptop, but holding a laptop is not the same as holding a paperback: heavier, no flexibility, probably resting on your lap - you won’t be holding it up like a paperback.

That’s not to say that reading from the screen is uncomfortable. People are getting more used to doing it. A few years back it was the norm for people to print off documents and read them on paper - it is what they were used to. Now there is more awareness of environmental issues, and fewer documents are printed in that way in order to avoid the waste of paper. So people are trying to get comfortable reading from the screen.

And people that produce things to be read from the screen are getting more knowledgeable about how people like to read. For example, an e-book looks quite different from a paperback. A paperback has single spaced lines, and there are usually around 330 words per page. An e-book usually has at least one-and-a-half spacing, and there are often about 200 words per page. The watchword of e-books is ‘white space’. This gives the read a cleaner, clearer feel to reading on the screen. If it were like a paperback book, then the reader would feel the page to be cluttered and reading it would be too much hard work. E-books also have less width to the page than a paperback book, which again reduces the words per page.

In an e-book it is very easy - with PC multimedia capabilities - to put in a picture, and of coursed one of the great benefits of an e-book is to be able to embed a link to another website. This is something that a paperback could never achieve, of course, and allows an e-book to open up its window to the world.

Author: Garry Pierrepont

Tried an e-book? Fancy reading something new? Take a look at http://www.ebook-library.net and see what you’d like to read.