by Galina Antonova , GE Digital Energy, Canada
Figure skating & music
hobby
94
Keeping the
glare going
It is amazing how many
of the colleagues that
we meet at conferences,
seminars or committee
meetings have a hobby
that reveals a very
different side. You just
need to ask them and you
1
Galina Antonova
- not just an engineer
suddenly realize that this
is not just an engineer,
but a multi-dimensional
person - like Galina.
PAC.AUTUMN.2008
Early Dreams
For as long as I can remember
myself, I only wanted two things:
to play the piano and to figure skate.
This is all I could dream about as a
child, while growing up on the
White Sea, 3 degrees south of Arctic Circle, in a small apartment overlooking a year-round lit sign that
read: “Our Goal is Communism”.
Like in a fairy tale off any bookshelf that I touched, which looked
even remotely like a piano, it produced acoustic sounds in the right
tone and tempo in the ears, or rather the mind of an inspired child. My
parents had no choice but to send
me to a music school and even find
a private teacher in kindergarten to
teach me to play and write music
before I learned how to write.
Later in my night time dreams,
Rachmaninoff himself was giving
me piano lessons. Piano has always
been something holy for me and I
feel privileged that I could touch Its
keys, talk to It, tune into It, so that
together we could express what
words cannot.
I was equally excited about figure skating, but apparently there
were no skating clubs or coaches
in our small town. So, we taught
ourselves how to skate and do
fancy moves from spirals to Waltz
jumps. I remember returning from
our outdoor skating rink at below
–30C and crying because of my frozen toes, then going again the next
day and the day after.
Many years later in Canada I
joined a Figure Skating Club and
95
2 Chilliwack Competition 2005
learned about edges, turns, twizzles. I progressed well with ice
dances, as I’ve been pursuing my
childhood dream. I have been taking lessons from the best professional coaches, passed a few tests
with flying colors and even got
to dance with Victor Kratz! It still
seems like magic to me that one can
balance so gracefully on such a small
area of one sharp edge… It’s like
balancing on a sharp knife blade
I will never forget my first Gold
Medal in an Adult skating competition where I received a great
comment from a small boy. He saw
the stuffed animals I received for
dancing, and asked if I got them.
After hearing my “yes” he rolled
his eyes full of admiration and said:
” Wow!!!!!!!!”. Nothing in the world
could make him happier than such
prizes!
On good or bad days
as soon as I come to a
rink I feel happiness
and joy, which we
share among skating
enthusiasts.
4 2005: Gold Medal in an Adult skating competition
3 Gold Medal in an Adult skating competition
PAC.AUTUMN.2008
Galina
Antonova
has been with
Lentronics Group
of GE Digital
Energy for 10
years, where she
is responsible
for the design of
Ethernet cards for
JungleMux SONET/
SDH multiplexers.
In the last 4 years
she got involved
with IEEE standards development and became
a Canadian member of IEC TC57
WG10. Galina
received her M.
Sc. degree (1993)
and a Ph.D. (1997)
in Data Communications from the
State University of
Telecommunications, St. Petersburg, Russia.