Skip to main content

Samara River

This is a page from my latest book called "Time Traveller". I visit random places around the world through the internet and write about that place.

__________
Time : 316am Wed 7th May 2025
__________

The Samara river is located in Russia. Interestingly, the river lent its name to the city of Samara, located at the confluence of the Samara and Volga rivers, and even to the ancient Samara culture. There is an asteroid named after the town of Samara. The name Samara likely comes from the Indo-Iranian language and likely meant "summer water" because it froze in winter. There are other suggestions for the origin of the name though. Samara region is forest-steppe region. A steppe is flat grassland with semi-arid climate and hot summers and cold winters. In the language of the Turkic steppe nomadic tribes, Samara meant "steppe river".

I read that the village of Shiryaevo (in the Samara region) is famous for its large-scale museum complex, which is dedicated to ethnography and the famous artist I.E. Repin. Ethnography is the study of people and their cultures by observing them in their everyday lives. In simple terms, it is like being a "people watcher" who lives among a group, listens, takes notes, and tries to understand how they live, what they believe, and how they interact. It is often used in anthropology and sociology. I was curious if there were other rivers in the world named Samara and I learnt that there are at least three rivers that share the name: one in Russia, one historically in France (now the Somme), and one in Ukraine.

Through Google translate I learnt that I could say "Privet. Menya zovut Khassan, I ya puteshestvennik vo vremeni." This translates to, "Hello. My name is Hassan and I am a time traveler." Samara in Russia is eight hours ahead of my time in Trinidad. I tried to see if there was any connection between Trinidad and Samara in Russia and I found an interesting and indirect (very indirect) one. From 1995 to 2001 LADA (Russian made vehicles) were being marketed and sold in Trinidad and specifically the Samara model which was named after the Samara river. Also Trinidadian footballer Sheldon Bateau played for Krylia Sovetov Samara football club.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How do we fix this world?

It is 4:39 pm and I have decided to write. It is a peaceful and quiet day. I am thinking about God, and how this life is a test. There is so much happening in this world that could make us sad. But we do not have to remain in that sadness when we put our trust in God. God wants good for us. God wants us to experience peace, and even happiness, despite what surrounds us. How do we fix this world? My friend Chatty suggests that maybe a better question is: What kind of person do I choose to be in this world? Because when enough people answer that question well, that is how real change begins. I want to be the kind of person that God is pleased with. Someone guided by God, not by ego. Someone who chooses patience over anger, humility over pride, and sincerity over appearances. I am doing reasonably well, but I am not perfect. And maybe perfection is not the goal. Growth is. Awareness is. Returning to what is right, again and again, is. I want to grow, and I will keep adjusting myself when ...

Hobby project - Store and view exchange rates

The next step in my project was to test out being able store and display the rates in a database. I decided to use nodejs and supabase for this. Everything worked beautifully. Only hickup was the following error due to my package.json not being correct. SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module Added this to package.json   "type": "module" This works beautifully. Right now I am just testing fragments of what could be part of a bigger system to see what is possible and what works and how easy to code on a mobile. There is no fully functioning integrated end to end system just yet. This is also what I tested. A serverless append-only database using GitHub + Actions + Pages. That’s basically a lightweight backend system. This was the ChatGPT prompt I used. Guide me through each step. This is what I want. A manually run github actions that adds to docs/data.json with the current date and time. docs/index.html displays all the entries in data.json. Make s...

Mundane

It is 123am and I have decided to write. I have this new idea for a book called Mundane. It would be me writing about the ordinary. We chase the extraordinary but there is beauty in the ordinary. There is beauty in the simple. There is beauty in the everyday. What about God? We often think about God in grand terms. But what if God is simple too? What if God is mundane? What if we look for God in the everyday moments? I sit in this dark room with the air conditioning on. The fan is also on. The curtain is down but I imagine the moonlight shining on the grass outside. The cats are probably sleeping. I wonder if anyone else in the neighbourhood is awake at this hour? Is there another writer around who is also writing about the mundane? The fan breeze helps the air conditioning cool me down. These nights are warm otherwise. A mosquito flies across my screen. Hello friend or foe. I cannot quite decide which one. If I had a swatter you would be gone. I check my notifications and there is an ...