Honestly, I thought for a long time what topic to choose for this smoking room. After going through all the interesting options that seemed too thematic to me and worthy of a separate blog, I decided to settle on an experimental duo from Toronto, whose work has been inspiring me for a whole year now – please introduce you to Crystal Castles.

My story of meeting Canadian guys is quite short and simple: one boring July day in 2017, I came across a poster with "Crystal Castles", who were supposed to perform in St. Petersburg in a couple of weeks. Before that, I knew practically nothing about the group, so I was immediately filled with curiosity about what kind of dudes they were. But it soon became clear that there was only one dude in the group, and his name was Ethan Kat. But an interesting story happened to the second person in charge of vocals – until 2014 she was Alice Glass, but by a strange coincidence she abruptly left the duo and went solo. A year later, Edith Francis took her place and is currently the main voice "Crystal Castles".

One of the first tracks I listened to was Celestica… And after it, something inside me twitched strongly – I fell in love with the work of “Castles” completely and listened to absolutely everything that they have created since 2006.

In the tracks Crystal Castles there is melancholy melancholy, and crazy dynamics, and broken rhythms, and despair, and a glimmer of hope. In addition, the musicians are not afraid to speak out on serious and topical topics that are not so easy to notice under the crazy charm of their songs – here you have the problems of raising children (Child I Will Hurt You), and psychological violence (Fainting Spells), and, of course, the omnipresent LGBT* (Transgender). However, these topics are presented surprisingly unobtrusively, and if you don’t try hard to look for hidden subtext, then you can completely ignore them. But, perhaps, the most important advantage of “Castles” is that they never stand still in terms of sound – each of their new albums is different from the previous one, and this is incredibly pleasing.

Unfortunately, video game music Crystal Castles not used as often as we would like. The only pair of three titles where you can hear their motives: this Watch Dogs 2, PES 2011 And FIFA 12.

About Crystal Castles You can talk for a very long time, but this will require a considerable amount of text – perhaps even a separate article (why not, by the way). Therefore, I will not stretch the inextensible and will simply pass the floor to the rest of the blogging community.

Are you listening "Crystal Castles"? Perhaps among you there are as passionate fans as I am? And in general – write about everything that’s boiling over and what you want to share. Communication on diverse topics is welcome – you can even share your favorite performers, without whom you cannot imagine your existence.

* The activities of the international https://vlott88casino.co.uk/ LGBT social movement are recognized as extremist and prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation

Best comments

The computers are crap, there is constant overtime, the staff in the departments is great, but the management is complete crap.
The cutest and most harmless thing there is. You’re sitting there, picking up parcels. Carrying bags up to 30 kilograms. But there are some problems. Firstly, the computer can sometimes simply, for no apparent reason, delete the invoice with all the parcels from the register and then you need to enter, say, 40 items again through manual entry. What’s also interesting is that small packages from China in 80% of cases come with addresses stuffed into the computer. But it happens that the streets are clogged, for example “Kirgizskaya 18” – “aaaaAAAAAAKIRGIZSKAYAaaaaaaaaaAAAAAA181818” and you correct it. But parcels across Russia in 90% of cases arrive without addresses and you have to sit and fill them in. It’s strange how these parcels were even accepted. Huge parcels often arrive without invoices that need to be filled in manually. What is manual hammering?? This is assigning a parcel number through a separate menu, assigning it a place on the shelf and printing a notice. And all this separately, and not through one automated process as in the case of registration through an invoice. And the program also likes to produce random errors when printing notices, which is why you have to exit and then see that not a single package has been saved: 3 The printer constantly chews paper, markers and pens always disappear and are bought at our expense. But the work schedule is generally not bad – I finished everything and left. Mail is delivered 2 times a day. They also often bring parcels belonging to other departments, here you need to put a forwarding mark and there are no problems with it. But the return is hell. Often the computer is naughty and does not allow you to change the address after processing the return. Funny. And the Internet is often cut off, without which the program will not turn on at all.
But this is already… well, close to hell. Walking in the sunshine. With dogs that are trying to bite you when you want to throw a notice in the box or go into the yard to hand over a newspaper. I have my own interesting shots, in a couple of months I managed to take part in the call of Satan with one grandmother, it’s a pity that this is the only thing I remember. Well, the aunt to whom I explained for half an hour why she signs twice but receives only one letter. Previously, they paid separately for the delivery of receipts, now everything has been cut to the minimum. There is a plan for newspapers. If you don’t comply, you buy newspapers at your own expense. A couple of fans appeared who asked me out on dates. To some extent, they even raised my self-esteem, at least drunks might like me :DD
Never go to work for them in small departments. Seriously. You will be a cashier and sorter at the same time. Reception of letters and parcels – ok. There are Tuesday and Thursday – the days of organizations, when their representatives bring 50-100 letters to be sent. Custom made, of course. Sit and score, you merry fellow. We pay out lottery winnings, give out parcels and… the best part is a communal apartment. A bunch of pensioners who often don’t know how much they want to pay, which leads to incidents. I hated Rostelecom, which puts 300 numbers on the receipt. But also, in contrast to the screaming grandmothers, there are very nice people. It’s just a pity that these people bring 30 parcels 2 times a day 😀 Separate conversation – computers. If the boss’s computer freezes and he starts to reboot, then absolutely ALL computers in the department will freeze and there will be a queue. We do not accept card payments. If someone expects to pay with a card and then gets a bummer, then in 90% of cases he begins to frantically run to the car and again there is a whole queue. Periodic incidents of a technical nature. And a little about the organization: if you need to send someone from a department somewhere, they will send the most inexperienced. And now the story: one day Gazprom was looking for a postal employee who would ride around with employees with a cash register and telephone and offer to pay for gas. Of course they sent me. What’s funny: no one needs your services, and you just ride around in a stinking company car for 3-5 days,
bounce on seats and fight motion sickness. And that’s normal. But… it all started with the fact that they asked me if I could work on this telephone, I answered “No”, because.To. We don’t have this phone number in our department at all. They start shouting at me, “WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN TAUGHT FOR A MONTH?. “, to which I ask, “Why wasn’t I invited to study??». Upon admission they promise several days of training on everything, in reality – nothing. And this phone was especially fun. Firstly, trusting an important device to a person who sees it for the first time is at least strange. Secondly, I had to get through 2 vehicles before 9 am and have time to pick up this machine at the main post office, and arrive at the Gazprom building, and after a working day, return this machine to the department. Thirdly, every morning is hell in searching for this phone and the amazed looks of the workers “But they didn’t call us that you should come, wait a shitload of time please O_O”.
Overall, it’s fun 😀
Just remembered that I wanted to whine about this topic, because I have nothing else to write about in smoking rooms, and the need for communication makes itself felt.

“HELPING THE EDIT OF STOPGAME TO LOVE CRYSTAL CASTLES”

As requested above, I’m posting some facts about what it’s like to work at Alfa-Bank. Well, in general, a little about the bank from the inside. I put it in the smoking room so that it doesn’t shine too much anywhere, and since we’re already talking about it here.
To be clear: I have been working for a year now in the ODVP (department of remote distribution of products, read – delivery department). I started as a field specialist (please do not confuse it with a courier), but now I sit in the document management group (I prepare documents and cards for the same specialists as I was, and also archive all loan agreements). Why did I go to this particular department?? Only because you need to have much less contact with clients than in branches, but for me this was critical.

What can you say about the processes within the department??
THEY’RE ALL BITCH CURVES!
It would seem that Alfa Bank, one of the largest banks on the Russian market, seems to have to build an ideal system of work within itself. There must be cool software that works like a clock. I have never been so wrong..
A lot of “handbrake” (manual processes). Almost no automation. Everything is done in tons of Excel files, invented on the knee. When we launched the document management group (February of this year), we needed to keep records of the delivery of client files (yes, until that moment, no one in the department gave a damn whether the documents were archived or not. you could have easily lost your dossier and no one would have noticed). So, there was no downloading from the Courier software at all, and in order to compile the register it was necessary to copy and paste applications one by one (!!). And when there are 100-150 of them a day (at that time) – it’s not very fun. We were unloaded only in May..

The bosses look at everything to someone else, not very popular on the Internet but advertised here "Tinkoff". “Oh, look, they have more deliveries, we need the same,” and stuff like that. Everyone is increasing volumes. But for some reason they copied only this from Tinkoff.
No one thought that their route list was drawn up as compactly as possible (there are 15-20 cards for delivery from one specialist versus our 10, which spread across half of Moscow).
No one thought to increase the staff. Instead, part of the delivery is carried out by other companies, whose couriers generally don’t care about the client, he delivered it, signed the documents and moved on. There is no talk of any competent consultation. We receive a ton of requests for this every day.
No one thought about an internal application for field specialists, as QIWI has too. Instead, we use internal mail on IBM Verse and a bunch of crutches.

A lot of bureaucracy. The process of transferring me to a new position (and in fact it happened in February) has already taken six months. and the funny thing is, it’s not finished yet. Why did the bank owe me salary?. Not much, but it’s a fact.
Any innovation is stressful. If something is introduced by management, it is introduced immediately without discussion. Accordingly, this is done ill-considered and I and my colleagues have to figure it out. When we propose something, to simplify the work of the entire department – “Oh, no, this needs to be agreed upon.”. Well, I wrote about this above

What I immediately remembered, I wrote. I didn’t touch some points, because I still didn’t remember some little things. If you want to ask something, just ask, I’ll answer
P.S. I’m not afraid of getting fired for this comment/topic. And so I am writing a statement on my own)
P.P.S. I can also post cool stories about clients if you want

In the evenings, when I want to relax and before going to bed I begin to be covered with some kind of absolutely negative character. In terms of emotions. Hatred of myself, of life, the feeling that everyone hates me and a feeling of loneliness, thoughts that I have no future at all, fears of death, fears of moving away from my parents, thoughts that I’m a fool and my dreams of becoming a professional artist are idiocy, the desire to fucking disappear and end up somewhere else, thoughts that I’m not good for anything, anger at myself because of my mistakes and counting these mistakes in a day, a feeling the monotony and sameness of every day and… I think I listed everything. And this is already the second month that my leisure time has been ruined to hell.To. I can’t sleep and can’t escape from these thoughts either. Even if I turn on a movie or a game, my brain still eats up all this stuff first of all. And it’s not just “down”, a bad mood and so on, but some kind of panic and anxiety in which I want to tear out my hair, bite my nails and rush from corner to corner and even felt feverish a couple of times. I have this feeling that there is a house (my brain), I live in it calmly when I’m working or just focused on mental activity, but then the time comes to rest and then a snowball from all these thoughts crashes into the house with all its might. In general, maybe someone has gone through something similar, knows whether it can be overcome with time or what needs to be done, will give some advice.

It’s boring when old people come and everyone says the same thing, unable to contribute any fresh content, join local conversations, etc.n.

It’s just kind of boring and sad 🙁

Stsuko, I really scared my husband :-DDD Thank you :-DDD I have never regretted so bitterly that I don’t have a penis :-DDDDDDDDDDDD

I would add more degenerates with guitars to the likes. And in general, everyone who does not spend evenings at the computer, like all normal people, but like savages, they walk with friends and beloved subhumans.

But one of the positive things that was probably worth working there for is working with people. I have always been and remain a severe social phobe, but constant contact with people at the checkout, and the fact that I had people there with whom I could sit and talk about life while processing parcels, made me a little less fearful and my hands no longer shake and I don’t want to cry if something is wrong or people start getting angry and swearing. When I noticed that I had practically stopped breaking down in front of offices if I needed to go somewhere and do something, or I was no longer so afraid to call an unknown place on some issue, even some pride in myself began to burst 😀

Honestly, I love reading smoking rooms lately. No psychotherapy sessions or, even better, the first Google links to certain issues catch the eye like this. Previously, somehow no one gave a damn about anyone, but now people not only share personal problems tormenting them, but also receive help from others. Is this all due to the fact that one user is studying as a psychologist or there are other reasons??

Just think how much cooler it is to jump and wave your dick in front of a burning karaoke machine than in front of a mirror.

I haven’t tormented you with my drawings for a long time, really (because there really weren’t any, azazaz). I think it’s possible ^_^