28.2.10
Like I said before, I'm torn as to what to do with myself. If I let myself reminice, then I start to miss mathematics. The other part of me says I could continue teaching just as well, if not for the job itself, which has its ups and downs, then for the sake of living in different places in the world - I don't think I'll ever miss living in America. Meanwhile, at night I dream of being a professional athlete, usually a soccer player. I wasn't so well acquainted with any other sport.
Fortunately, the Olympic games haven't had too much a negative effect on my sleep. I didn't stay up too late or get up at all early to watch the events that I would've liked to see. A few weeks ago I watched some heats of short-track speed skating. What a sport! Speed skating, regardless of the distance, is pretty cool, but especially in the short-track events where they stuff five or six skaters on the track. Whenever someone loses their balance and falls, they sometimes take out a few other skaters with them, and the flailing legs and arms are reminiscent of a bowling alley as they crash into the wall on the side of the track.
I saw an American named Apollo Ohno race on the short track. He was pretty impressive. In the first heat, he hung back until there were two or three laps left. Then in the span of one lap, he just flew by everybody. It was as though the other skaters were moving in slow motion. He would've lapped a few people if he had continued his sprint all the way through the final lap.
In the finals of the same event, the competition was a little tighter for Ohno. He started out in behind, then slipped into fourth place with a few laps to go. The three skaters in front of him were all from South Korea. They would've swept the event if it were not for the third Korean, who was either greedy for a silver medal or was thinking "Oh no!" because of the American tight on his heels. This Korean fell on the very final turn of the event and took out his comrade in front of him to boot. The first place Korean got away, Ohno took second, and another American took third place. The Korean who was going to get second must have been pretty angry.
I'm also a cross country skiing and biatholon fan, as well as hockey. I never was too fond of hockey, but then I saw the first period of the semi-finals, where the US team creamed Finland. The final match is in a few hours. I tried to convince my students to cheer for America, especially because Canada knocked Russia out of the tournament. Many of them were supportive, but some refused to think about hockey.
I saw a ballet performance of Hamlet this evening. I stopped by the theater randomly to see if there were any tickets left, and I got a pretty good seat on the first row of the balcony for about eleven dollars. Then I stopped by the chess club to watch the weekly tournament until the start of the performance. I hadn't been to the chess club for a few weeks. I wasn't too motivated to occupy myself with the game until I actually started watching. John Candy, Gilbert Godfrey, Stoneface, Christopher Lyoid and Robin Williams were all there. Dustin Hofman was absent. Stoneface lost to both Godfrey and Lyoid. I don't know how that happened. Gilbert Godfrey beats just about everybody, but even I have beaten Christopher Lyoid, if only once out of the upwards of ten parties we've played.
The ballet wasn't as impressive as Romeo and Juliet. The musical accompaniment was by Shostakovich, which I enjoyed good at times, but occasionally I didn't like the dissonance. Shostakovich doesn't beat whoever composed the Jugernaut's Lied!
15.3.10
My father often asks me if I believe in free will. I say I believe it completely, since the only perceivable alternative would be fatalism, which I refuse to accept. I prove my claim with the fork experiment: if I hold a fork out in front of me and start to count to three, then on the count of three I can decide to either hold or drop the fork. It's my decision, hence free will exists. Of course, dropping a fork is a bit extreme, and it's tough to say if we can equate dropping a fork with spending years of your life thinking about something in the annals of Algebraic Topology or dropping everything and moving to another country.
Perhaps more importantly, you wonder if dropping a fork is your decision if we add outside influences into the equation. My brothers influenced me greatly when I was younger. What if before I drop the fork, my brothers declare that I must hold the fork at all costs. Then when I drop it, is it my decision? Maybe I was just spiting my brothers.
Perhaps that's another reason why I left my homeland. I wanted to spite my culture. I wanted to escape anyone and anything that was telling me what to do. Here I can do whatever I like without any cultural reprimand. I am free here. I am more myself than I have ever been.
Whoever that is, I'm still not sure. Having rejected any cultural formula which tells us to get a good job, then get married, then start a family, then retire etc., I am living in limbo. I have to make my own formula, and that's not so easy.
Regarding anal flatulence, it occurred to me that it's criticized not for any natural reason, but cultural. Again, it's a question of nature versus nurture. I remember when I was a toddler, I would take a deep breath whenever I heard or otherwise sensed another family member had farted. For some reason I enjoyed the smell. Maybe I was proud to learn that these adult people couldn't hold it all in either, or maybe I hadn't yet been brainwashed into cringing at that methanic stench.
The latter seems to make some sense, especially considering the fact that one's own flatulence doesn't smell as bad when one is alone as it does amongst other people. When people in a crowd fart, it smells so bad because of the presence of many people. In a crowd. our cultural upbringing kicks in and tells us to gag at the smell, whereas when we're alone, there's nothing to worry about and the odor is quite natural.
My father often tells me of a time he saw me dancing as a toddler. Maybe it was to "Bad Boys," or maybe to something else. He says I was as graceful as a toddler could be. Back then, I danced as freely as I farted, but now I dance only after several drinks, and break wind primarily as I walk along Pushkinskaya. They say a child loses their innocence after exposure to the real world. I say it's culture that robs us of our innocence. To what extent is what we call the real world is a man-made façade?
Maybe I would do well in a nudist colony.
Of course, to bring the argument home, I should've started with a few positive things to say about human's culture. I can't think of anything positive. If you're reading this, maybe you can remind me of all the good things culture gives us.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Sunday, February 14, 2010
8.2.10
There was another factor to my leaving the PhD program behind. Namely, I was becoming someone. Not necessarily someone that I didn't want to be, a mathematician, but regardless of who, my self was being determined.
Becoming someone is a frightening process. I'm twenty seven years old and still letting go of my childhood. As an American in an upper-middle class family, I had the opportunity to become anybody I wanted. As time goes on, I've been having to let go of whatever potential I've ever had and actually become someone. Even though in my opinion as an English teacher I'm not becoming anybody, which perhaps is one of the things that has appealed to me about the job, I'm nevertheless losing my potential.
I've seen two movies in the theater since I got back, neither of which is worth much mention, except the Book of Eli sends a message I don't quite agree with. At the end of the movie, Eli achieves his goal, and then dies peacefully. I suppose the idea is that we all have a certain purpose in life, after the fulfillment of which we can die happy. But maybe I missunderstood this idea, or the Russian, because then I think the young girl declares with the confidence of someone who's found their purpose in life that she's going to return home. What's she going to do then? Die peacefully?
There was an advertisement on TV about a film of a group of young people, Americans I think, who made a list of one hundred things they wanted to do before they died, then quit their jobs and set off to do the things on the list. Maybe the idea is that you shouldn't just let life go by working in an office for several decades. But making a list of things you want to do before you die is the another extreme, because again, what do they do when they've finished the list?
14.2.10
That's not right about not becoming anybody as an English teacher. To some extent, I have found myself in this profession. That's not to say I'm happy with my job, but that I have become someone. I could potentially continue this line of work for the rest of my life and in doing so, I don't think I would change very much as a teacher. I could lead a normal life, making shy of fifteen hundred dollars a month teaching English in Russia. Why don't I do that if I love living here so much?
Studying math became a sad story after awhile. I was like the main character from the novel Flowers for Alginon. I seemed to get more and more retarded as time went on. The more I studied math, the less attractive it became, the less I was able to understand it. It was as though I had become fluent in mathematics through the first year of graduate study, and then I began to lose the ability to understand it. It was as though I had mathematical alzheimers.
I like to hope that I didn't lose the ability as much as the motivation to study further. I like to think I was a classic case of a burnt out graduate student. Indeed, I know there were other students in the program who studied just as despairingly as me. I remember one of the Chinese students declaring that there was nothing else for him to do, his only chance was to continue studying. At that time, I could have said the same thing, but my experience in Germany was calling me, bidding me to leave the country again.
The year I spent in Germany was a pandora's box for me. It has made my life very interesting and very complicated. Or maybe I'm the only one who complicates things. Regardless, had it not been for Germany, I think I would've said the same thing as the Chinese student. I would have had faith in the idea that there was nothing else for me.
There I was, retarded in my math classes, and excelling in a few Russian classes that my advisor let me take. Spending half the effort it took to learn about K-theory, I seared through Russian declination tables like a hot knife through butter. Studying Russian, the wind was at my back, and studying math became more and more like running into a brick wall. My fate had been decided, I only needed to find the American Home to realize it.
Russian hasn't lost its appeal. However, I think it will after awhile. If I continue learning at the current rate, I would estimate that with another year here, my listening and speaking proficiency in Russian would reach between seventy and eighty percent of my corresponding proficiencies in English. (Put in such a way, maybe that's not saying much. Let's not even mention writing proficieny...) That's a big if, whether I will continue at the same rate. On one hand, the more Russian you understand, the easier it becomes to learn more. On the other hand, the more you understand, the less motivation you have to learn.
You have less motivation because something is lost when you learn a language. At first it's like beautiful music. And then you start to understand it, and it turns from music into a tool. I ask my students sometimes if they think English is beautiful. Some of them say yes, but they can't explain why. I don't see any beauty in English. For me, it's only a tool.
Only now does it occur to me how the nature of languages differs from that of mathematics. First, unlike language, Russian and German at least, it's not the case that mathematics becomes easier as you go, if anything it's the other way around. Second, like languages, mathematics is also filled with tools, or is a tool itself. Nevertheless parts of it are remarkably beautiful. Furthermore, beauty comes only when you understand mathematics. If you don't understand it, it's complete jibberish, not beautiful music, as may be with languages.
There was another factor to my leaving the PhD program behind. Namely, I was becoming someone. Not necessarily someone that I didn't want to be, a mathematician, but regardless of who, my self was being determined.
Becoming someone is a frightening process. I'm twenty seven years old and still letting go of my childhood. As an American in an upper-middle class family, I had the opportunity to become anybody I wanted. As time goes on, I've been having to let go of whatever potential I've ever had and actually become someone. Even though in my opinion as an English teacher I'm not becoming anybody, which perhaps is one of the things that has appealed to me about the job, I'm nevertheless losing my potential.
I've seen two movies in the theater since I got back, neither of which is worth much mention, except the Book of Eli sends a message I don't quite agree with. At the end of the movie, Eli achieves his goal, and then dies peacefully. I suppose the idea is that we all have a certain purpose in life, after the fulfillment of which we can die happy. But maybe I missunderstood this idea, or the Russian, because then I think the young girl declares with the confidence of someone who's found their purpose in life that she's going to return home. What's she going to do then? Die peacefully?
There was an advertisement on TV about a film of a group of young people, Americans I think, who made a list of one hundred things they wanted to do before they died, then quit their jobs and set off to do the things on the list. Maybe the idea is that you shouldn't just let life go by working in an office for several decades. But making a list of things you want to do before you die is the another extreme, because again, what do they do when they've finished the list?
14.2.10
That's not right about not becoming anybody as an English teacher. To some extent, I have found myself in this profession. That's not to say I'm happy with my job, but that I have become someone. I could potentially continue this line of work for the rest of my life and in doing so, I don't think I would change very much as a teacher. I could lead a normal life, making shy of fifteen hundred dollars a month teaching English in Russia. Why don't I do that if I love living here so much?
Studying math became a sad story after awhile. I was like the main character from the novel Flowers for Alginon. I seemed to get more and more retarded as time went on. The more I studied math, the less attractive it became, the less I was able to understand it. It was as though I had become fluent in mathematics through the first year of graduate study, and then I began to lose the ability to understand it. It was as though I had mathematical alzheimers.
I like to hope that I didn't lose the ability as much as the motivation to study further. I like to think I was a classic case of a burnt out graduate student. Indeed, I know there were other students in the program who studied just as despairingly as me. I remember one of the Chinese students declaring that there was nothing else for him to do, his only chance was to continue studying. At that time, I could have said the same thing, but my experience in Germany was calling me, bidding me to leave the country again.
The year I spent in Germany was a pandora's box for me. It has made my life very interesting and very complicated. Or maybe I'm the only one who complicates things. Regardless, had it not been for Germany, I think I would've said the same thing as the Chinese student. I would have had faith in the idea that there was nothing else for me.
There I was, retarded in my math classes, and excelling in a few Russian classes that my advisor let me take. Spending half the effort it took to learn about K-theory, I seared through Russian declination tables like a hot knife through butter. Studying Russian, the wind was at my back, and studying math became more and more like running into a brick wall. My fate had been decided, I only needed to find the American Home to realize it.
Russian hasn't lost its appeal. However, I think it will after awhile. If I continue learning at the current rate, I would estimate that with another year here, my listening and speaking proficiency in Russian would reach between seventy and eighty percent of my corresponding proficiencies in English. (Put in such a way, maybe that's not saying much. Let's not even mention writing proficieny...) That's a big if, whether I will continue at the same rate. On one hand, the more Russian you understand, the easier it becomes to learn more. On the other hand, the more you understand, the less motivation you have to learn.
You have less motivation because something is lost when you learn a language. At first it's like beautiful music. And then you start to understand it, and it turns from music into a tool. I ask my students sometimes if they think English is beautiful. Some of them say yes, but they can't explain why. I don't see any beauty in English. For me, it's only a tool.
Only now does it occur to me how the nature of languages differs from that of mathematics. First, unlike language, Russian and German at least, it's not the case that mathematics becomes easier as you go, if anything it's the other way around. Second, like languages, mathematics is also filled with tools, or is a tool itself. Nevertheless parts of it are remarkably beautiful. Furthermore, beauty comes only when you understand mathematics. If you don't understand it, it's complete jibberish, not beautiful music, as may be with languages.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
25.01.10
I probably spent almost as much time travelling over the holidays as I did home with my family. I traveled from Rostov to Moscow knowing that Aeroflot had cancelled my flight to Washington, not knowing if there was a substitute route available. That's a little nerve-racking. I had contacted Aeroflot a few days before leaving Rostov. They told me to contact my travel agency. I bought an international phone card, which luckily functioned probably, and contacted the travel agency in America. I was calling Maryland, but for some reason a person with a strong Indian accent picked up. I struggled to clarify my problem for him. He said he'd get back to me via email. He never did.
I emailed the agency just before leaving. I heard from them again after arriving home. They told me that Aeroflot was obligated by some airline law to get me to Washington. This they had done as best they could: they gave me a first class seat from Moscow to Amsterdam, and an exit row seat on the long flight from Amtsterdam to Washington. And I had been thinking as I approached the Aeroflot desk at two in the morning amongst a crowd of angry Russians, all of whom had had flights cancelled, that Aeroflot would give me their sincerest apologies and wish me better luck next time. It would have been another 'welcome to Russia' moment. But no, Aeroflot did their job in first-class fashion. To be fair, I think any airline would've cancelled a flight with so few passengers on board - at least I presume that's why the flight was cancelled; how many people want to fly to Washington on New Year's Eve; any sane American is already home by the twenty fifth!
They couldn't help it that the flight from Amsterdam to Washington was delayed. It was a KLM flight. We had gone through gratuitous security, probably because someone had tried to blow up a plane in Detroit on Chrismtas a few days before, and had taken our seats on the plane when the captain announced that there was a small technical matter that would require an additional halfhour before takeoff. A halfhour later he said it would be another ninety minutes. An hour after that he announced that we would switch planes. I arrived in Washington on the evening of New Year's Eve several hours after my connecting flight left for Oakland. Fortunately, there was a very helpful man at the Jetblue desk who arranged for a discount hotel room at a local Sheraton, and let me make a phone call home to announce the delay.
I was pretty happy in the hotel room in Washington. It was nice to have a bed. I was exhausted. In preparation for the time change, I deprived myself of normal sleep the night before my trip, and had gotten by on cat naps through one night at the airport and on my flights. I slept well on New Years Eve and flew home the next morning without a problem.
I wasn't home for long before it felt like I had never left. That's good because without such a feeling I don't think I could ever bring myself to leave that place.
Flying back to Moscow was fun. I flew San Francisco to Denver and Denver to Houston on United, and then Houston to Moscow on Singapore Airlines, which I highly recommend. I was on a plane where each passenger has a computer in front of them on which they can watch a variety of movies, or play logic games. I watched Ratatoullie, The Golden Compass, and a German movie about a guy who loses his memory in an accident, and slowly remembers that he took part in a cyber crime. I also played a game called Caveman, where you, the caveman, have to push rocks in the right places in order to escape a cave before it's filled with lava. Because of this variety of entertainment, and intermittent naps, I hardly felt the eleven hours it took to get to Moscow.
I was in Vladimir for a few days. I saw some old colleagues, students and friends. I met a few of the new teachers at the AH too. One of them is G, who I found similar to myself in a way. When discussing why someone would do such a thing as come to Russia to teach English, we simultaneously declared that there was nothing in America to keep us there. It was a bit frightening for me, since G is much older than me and I didn't think there were middle-aged men who reasoned like I do. He's actually on the other side of a long career, was married and has children who have grown up. Perhaps it means that I could potentially feel some sort of longing for living abroad throughout my entire life. It doesn't go away. It hasn't yet, and I was kind of hoping it would. It would make things simpler for me.
I was thinking about math recently. I was trying to evoke any and every feeling I've ever felt about math. There was the enthusiasm I felt up through my first year in Bloomington, and then there were the long days of despair I experienced toward the end of my studies. Those times are almost two years past. It's long enough ago that it's not easy to remember how I got along with math. Maybe I could say that any psychological wounds have healed, or maybe the day I go back to a math program is the day I want to start learning another language instead of math. In any case, on that recent day I came to the conclusion that it would not be a bad idea to study math seriously again. But that was just one day's conclusion. On another day the conclusion may have been different.
My grandfather passed away over the Christmas holiday. He was one hundred years old, and ready to move on with his life. I didn't always appreciate what he brought when he came to visit, be it obligatory prayer before dinner or a reminder of starving children in China when I didn't eat my asparagus. I'll remember him because he really helped me learn how to play chess. Were it not for him, I may never have come to appreciate the game as I do today. Maybe it was no coincidence that I played so well the other day at the chess club. Grandpa was with me in spirit.
So many people had come that the tournament was structured not so that everyone plays everyone else, but so that winners play winners and losers play losers. I played well enough to be eventually slotted against Gilbert Godfrey, who checkmated me in a few moves, followed by Stoneface, who, after a big exchange, somehow ended up a bishop up. For the exception of those two and a few others, I held my own that day. I'll have to remember Grandpa more often when I visit the chessclub on Sundays.
I probably spent almost as much time travelling over the holidays as I did home with my family. I traveled from Rostov to Moscow knowing that Aeroflot had cancelled my flight to Washington, not knowing if there was a substitute route available. That's a little nerve-racking. I had contacted Aeroflot a few days before leaving Rostov. They told me to contact my travel agency. I bought an international phone card, which luckily functioned probably, and contacted the travel agency in America. I was calling Maryland, but for some reason a person with a strong Indian accent picked up. I struggled to clarify my problem for him. He said he'd get back to me via email. He never did.
I emailed the agency just before leaving. I heard from them again after arriving home. They told me that Aeroflot was obligated by some airline law to get me to Washington. This they had done as best they could: they gave me a first class seat from Moscow to Amsterdam, and an exit row seat on the long flight from Amtsterdam to Washington. And I had been thinking as I approached the Aeroflot desk at two in the morning amongst a crowd of angry Russians, all of whom had had flights cancelled, that Aeroflot would give me their sincerest apologies and wish me better luck next time. It would have been another 'welcome to Russia' moment. But no, Aeroflot did their job in first-class fashion. To be fair, I think any airline would've cancelled a flight with so few passengers on board - at least I presume that's why the flight was cancelled; how many people want to fly to Washington on New Year's Eve; any sane American is already home by the twenty fifth!
They couldn't help it that the flight from Amsterdam to Washington was delayed. It was a KLM flight. We had gone through gratuitous security, probably because someone had tried to blow up a plane in Detroit on Chrismtas a few days before, and had taken our seats on the plane when the captain announced that there was a small technical matter that would require an additional halfhour before takeoff. A halfhour later he said it would be another ninety minutes. An hour after that he announced that we would switch planes. I arrived in Washington on the evening of New Year's Eve several hours after my connecting flight left for Oakland. Fortunately, there was a very helpful man at the Jetblue desk who arranged for a discount hotel room at a local Sheraton, and let me make a phone call home to announce the delay.
I was pretty happy in the hotel room in Washington. It was nice to have a bed. I was exhausted. In preparation for the time change, I deprived myself of normal sleep the night before my trip, and had gotten by on cat naps through one night at the airport and on my flights. I slept well on New Years Eve and flew home the next morning without a problem.
I wasn't home for long before it felt like I had never left. That's good because without such a feeling I don't think I could ever bring myself to leave that place.
Flying back to Moscow was fun. I flew San Francisco to Denver and Denver to Houston on United, and then Houston to Moscow on Singapore Airlines, which I highly recommend. I was on a plane where each passenger has a computer in front of them on which they can watch a variety of movies, or play logic games. I watched Ratatoullie, The Golden Compass, and a German movie about a guy who loses his memory in an accident, and slowly remembers that he took part in a cyber crime. I also played a game called Caveman, where you, the caveman, have to push rocks in the right places in order to escape a cave before it's filled with lava. Because of this variety of entertainment, and intermittent naps, I hardly felt the eleven hours it took to get to Moscow.
I was in Vladimir for a few days. I saw some old colleagues, students and friends. I met a few of the new teachers at the AH too. One of them is G, who I found similar to myself in a way. When discussing why someone would do such a thing as come to Russia to teach English, we simultaneously declared that there was nothing in America to keep us there. It was a bit frightening for me, since G is much older than me and I didn't think there were middle-aged men who reasoned like I do. He's actually on the other side of a long career, was married and has children who have grown up. Perhaps it means that I could potentially feel some sort of longing for living abroad throughout my entire life. It doesn't go away. It hasn't yet, and I was kind of hoping it would. It would make things simpler for me.
I was thinking about math recently. I was trying to evoke any and every feeling I've ever felt about math. There was the enthusiasm I felt up through my first year in Bloomington, and then there were the long days of despair I experienced toward the end of my studies. Those times are almost two years past. It's long enough ago that it's not easy to remember how I got along with math. Maybe I could say that any psychological wounds have healed, or maybe the day I go back to a math program is the day I want to start learning another language instead of math. In any case, on that recent day I came to the conclusion that it would not be a bad idea to study math seriously again. But that was just one day's conclusion. On another day the conclusion may have been different.
My grandfather passed away over the Christmas holiday. He was one hundred years old, and ready to move on with his life. I didn't always appreciate what he brought when he came to visit, be it obligatory prayer before dinner or a reminder of starving children in China when I didn't eat my asparagus. I'll remember him because he really helped me learn how to play chess. Were it not for him, I may never have come to appreciate the game as I do today. Maybe it was no coincidence that I played so well the other day at the chess club. Grandpa was with me in spirit.
So many people had come that the tournament was structured not so that everyone plays everyone else, but so that winners play winners and losers play losers. I played well enough to be eventually slotted against Gilbert Godfrey, who checkmated me in a few moves, followed by Stoneface, who, after a big exchange, somehow ended up a bishop up. For the exception of those two and a few others, I held my own that day. I'll have to remember Grandpa more often when I visit the chessclub on Sundays.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
15.12.09
A week ago my internet wasn't working. I tried to connect with my USB modem, but the system reported the very same error that had come up the first time I tried using the modem. I stopped by the shop where I'd bought it, and asked them to tell me how to fix the problem. They asked me if I had money on the account. I said yes. Then they said I needed to dial such and such number, wait fifteen minutes, then dial some other number. They had done this on the first day. It reneued something that for some reason wasn't working. After getting the phone numbers, I went home and tried them out. It didn't help.
Turns out, there wasn't any money on the account. I was over a hundred rubles in debt to my internet provider. Fortunately, I figured that out on my own, so I didn't have to go back to the shop with my computer to have them tell me how mistaken I was.
I paid my internet provider, MTC, five hundred rubles, and ever since they say that I have three hundred and fifty on the account (five hundred minus the debt). My credit is suspiciously not going down, even though I'm using the internet rather freely. I expect any day now that I'll get the same error message and discover that I'm a few hundred rubles in debt to MTC.
I was happy I had internet last week, since it allowed me to follow some Champions League matches online. I didn't watch anything live online, but I could follow commentary on several matches and see who scored when. At the same time, I was watching the champions of the premier league in Russia, Rubin, lose two to nothing to Inter Milan. Rubin takes third place in the group thanks to Barcelona, who on the same evening beat the fourth team by enough points to put them behind Rubin. I was very disappointed to observe Manchester United come back against Wolfsburg. Wolfsburg had tied up the match at one to one, but within the final minutes Michael Owen scored two goals, excluding Wolfsburg from further champions league play. The other team from that group to continue is ZSK. I blame myself for this unfortunate turn of events. I went to see A Christmas Carol on the night that Wolfsburg played their away match against ZSK in Moscow. They lost two to one, I think because I wasn't there to watch. Now I'll never get to see Wolfsburg play.
Things were as usual at the chess club two days ago, except I played well. I only had two victories out of ten, but that's twice as good as two out of twenty! In fact, there were at least two other games that I could have won, one of which I lost on time, the other I lost due to once again overseeing my opponent's only possible attack, which unfortunately happend to be full-blown mate. There's something about covering my tracks in chess that I can't seem to grasp. They say that if ever you gain material, you should then stabilize your position so as to not lose the new-found advantage. Sometimes I get carried away. I play full steam ahead, forgetting what I've so often seen, that patience is what wins the match.
With an odd number of players, there was a by round for each player. On mine, it so happened that Gilbert Godfrey and Stoneface were playing against each other. As I came to their table towards the end of the match, it seemed like Stoneface was winning, but pressed for time, he screwed up somehow and Gilbert got the upper hand. With seconds left, Stoneface raced his lonely king to the center of the board as Gilbert queened his last pawn and turned to attack. Hands raced from board to clock and back in a chess tango at presto tempo. Had Gilbert run out of time - he had only seconds left - Stoneface could've declared a draw, but he ended up resigning instead.
I didn't get a chance to play either of those players. I guess at the tempo tournaments, with fifteen minutes per side as opposed to five for blitz, the winners play the winners and the losers play the losers. It just occured to me, but probably that's why I played so well. My last opponent was a young man who gave himself somewhere between ten and fifteen minutes at the start. I pointed out that he hadn't set his clock properly, but he shrugged his shoulders, saying he had alloted plenty of time for another loss. He had had a bad day I guess.
I went for a walk today. I needed to buy some groceries. I also wanted to look for some souveniers to bring back to America. I found a few things which might make interesting presents, among them a ceramic dish with a cathedral on it. I didn't recognize the cathedral by name, but it sure looked familiar somehow. Had I seen such a cathedral in Rostov? I left the shop without buying anything and took an unknown street towards the central market, where I usually get my food.
It was cold enough that my hands were beginning to go numb, but I had enough layers on that the important body parts were comfortable, as long as I didn't stand still for too long.
As soon as I passed Voroshilovski Prospect, the street became a bit more familiar. I had reached the eastern border of the central market, where merchants were selling anything from mens' underwear to contemporary foreign literature. I stopped by one of the book stands and glanced at a few of the Russian classics they had, but I didn't buy anything. I continued down the street and finally reached a large cathedral with light-blue colored roofing supporting the characteristic golden domes which you see on many cathedrals in Russia. I crossed the street, went through a New Year's tree patch and viewed the cathedral from the front. I was standing closer than I should've been, but it was enough to recognize the building I had seen in the ceramic. I think it'll make a nice present because I can say that I have lived not a five-minutes walk away from that place.
I bought four heads of garlic, one and a half kilograms of onions, many apples, five persimmons, and a loaf of bread. I've started eating persimmons again. I use to eat them as a child, but since then I've never eaten them regularly. There's some sort of resin on them that leaves your mouth feeling like cotton. That takes some getting use to, but otherwise they're delicious.
A week ago my internet wasn't working. I tried to connect with my USB modem, but the system reported the very same error that had come up the first time I tried using the modem. I stopped by the shop where I'd bought it, and asked them to tell me how to fix the problem. They asked me if I had money on the account. I said yes. Then they said I needed to dial such and such number, wait fifteen minutes, then dial some other number. They had done this on the first day. It reneued something that for some reason wasn't working. After getting the phone numbers, I went home and tried them out. It didn't help.
Turns out, there wasn't any money on the account. I was over a hundred rubles in debt to my internet provider. Fortunately, I figured that out on my own, so I didn't have to go back to the shop with my computer to have them tell me how mistaken I was.
I paid my internet provider, MTC, five hundred rubles, and ever since they say that I have three hundred and fifty on the account (five hundred minus the debt). My credit is suspiciously not going down, even though I'm using the internet rather freely. I expect any day now that I'll get the same error message and discover that I'm a few hundred rubles in debt to MTC.
I was happy I had internet last week, since it allowed me to follow some Champions League matches online. I didn't watch anything live online, but I could follow commentary on several matches and see who scored when. At the same time, I was watching the champions of the premier league in Russia, Rubin, lose two to nothing to Inter Milan. Rubin takes third place in the group thanks to Barcelona, who on the same evening beat the fourth team by enough points to put them behind Rubin. I was very disappointed to observe Manchester United come back against Wolfsburg. Wolfsburg had tied up the match at one to one, but within the final minutes Michael Owen scored two goals, excluding Wolfsburg from further champions league play. The other team from that group to continue is ZSK. I blame myself for this unfortunate turn of events. I went to see A Christmas Carol on the night that Wolfsburg played their away match against ZSK in Moscow. They lost two to one, I think because I wasn't there to watch. Now I'll never get to see Wolfsburg play.
Things were as usual at the chess club two days ago, except I played well. I only had two victories out of ten, but that's twice as good as two out of twenty! In fact, there were at least two other games that I could have won, one of which I lost on time, the other I lost due to once again overseeing my opponent's only possible attack, which unfortunately happend to be full-blown mate. There's something about covering my tracks in chess that I can't seem to grasp. They say that if ever you gain material, you should then stabilize your position so as to not lose the new-found advantage. Sometimes I get carried away. I play full steam ahead, forgetting what I've so often seen, that patience is what wins the match.
With an odd number of players, there was a by round for each player. On mine, it so happened that Gilbert Godfrey and Stoneface were playing against each other. As I came to their table towards the end of the match, it seemed like Stoneface was winning, but pressed for time, he screwed up somehow and Gilbert got the upper hand. With seconds left, Stoneface raced his lonely king to the center of the board as Gilbert queened his last pawn and turned to attack. Hands raced from board to clock and back in a chess tango at presto tempo. Had Gilbert run out of time - he had only seconds left - Stoneface could've declared a draw, but he ended up resigning instead.
I didn't get a chance to play either of those players. I guess at the tempo tournaments, with fifteen minutes per side as opposed to five for blitz, the winners play the winners and the losers play the losers. It just occured to me, but probably that's why I played so well. My last opponent was a young man who gave himself somewhere between ten and fifteen minutes at the start. I pointed out that he hadn't set his clock properly, but he shrugged his shoulders, saying he had alloted plenty of time for another loss. He had had a bad day I guess.
I went for a walk today. I needed to buy some groceries. I also wanted to look for some souveniers to bring back to America. I found a few things which might make interesting presents, among them a ceramic dish with a cathedral on it. I didn't recognize the cathedral by name, but it sure looked familiar somehow. Had I seen such a cathedral in Rostov? I left the shop without buying anything and took an unknown street towards the central market, where I usually get my food.
It was cold enough that my hands were beginning to go numb, but I had enough layers on that the important body parts were comfortable, as long as I didn't stand still for too long.
As soon as I passed Voroshilovski Prospect, the street became a bit more familiar. I had reached the eastern border of the central market, where merchants were selling anything from mens' underwear to contemporary foreign literature. I stopped by one of the book stands and glanced at a few of the Russian classics they had, but I didn't buy anything. I continued down the street and finally reached a large cathedral with light-blue colored roofing supporting the characteristic golden domes which you see on many cathedrals in Russia. I crossed the street, went through a New Year's tree patch and viewed the cathedral from the front. I was standing closer than I should've been, but it was enough to recognize the building I had seen in the ceramic. I think it'll make a nice present because I can say that I have lived not a five-minutes walk away from that place.
I bought four heads of garlic, one and a half kilograms of onions, many apples, five persimmons, and a loaf of bread. I've started eating persimmons again. I use to eat them as a child, but since then I've never eaten them regularly. There's some sort of resin on them that leaves your mouth feeling like cotton. That takes some getting use to, but otherwise they're delicious.
Monday, December 7, 2009
7.12.09
I talked with mom yesterday. I told her I'd had a bad day at the chess club, and she replied that she thought every day at the chess club was a bad day for me. But it's clear to me now that I'm not looking for victory during the Sunday tournaments, otherwise I would've stopped going long ago. I'm happy if I lose on time with an advantage in material or position. That shows at least that I can play. Yesterday I didn't get so far in half of the twenty matches.
My first of two victories was against someone who wasn't having a very good day either. If fact, I played against him like most of the other players play against me. He made mistakes repeatedly, and I pounced every time. I went to Georgi Vasilitch to announce my victory, but, for it was my first victory after eight loses, expressed myself a little too loudly, not seeing my disgrunteled opponent behind me. He then told George that he'd had enough for the day, and took off, crestfallen. I felt bad for him. I know what he was feeling very well. He and I were like crippled horses at the races. I ran with three legs, while he tried to get on with only two. The other horses ran circles around us as we nostalgically remembered better days when it seemed like we knew what we were doing.
My last victory came surprisingly with my last match of the evening. I was well on my way to losing when my opponent made a serious blunder which cost him practically everything he had. He still might have beaten me on time, had he not given up in despair. Maybe he was just tired. It was the twentieth party of the day.
If only other players made such mistakes when they played me. Alas, I am most often the one who leaves pieces unguarded and oversees the simplest of traps. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing blindfolded, I make such stupid mistakes.
I was in a pretty bad mood yesterday, not so much from chess as from roudy teenagers causing me grief during discussion lessons the previous day. Chess was one thing that could've cheered me up, if only I'd managed to play a little more skillfully.
The linguist is one of the weaker players at the club. He and I warmed up before the tournament started. He wanted to show me his new super system which supposedly works every time. After hearing him say the name several times, I understood that he attributed the position to Capablanca. We played two or three matches. He beat me every time with his new technique. NevertheIess, I wasn't impressed. He usually beats me anyway. I asked him to let me know how he plays during the tournament. He didn't have an especially good day either. After each match he came up to me and jokingly blamed Capablanca for his hair-brained method, but stuck with it until the end.
He escorted me most of the way home. He likes speaking German. It's enough for him if it at least seems like you're listening. I often don't care to hear what he has to say. I think he knows this, but sees that I tolerate his rambling and rambles further.
Last week I went to a school in Aksai, a suburb of Rostov, and lead a discussion lesson for teenagers. Another Language Link teacher drove me there and left me with one of the full time teachers at the school. She and I had almost an hour to kill before the first of two lessons. We talked about why an American would do such a silly thing like come to Russia. When I agreed to have some tea, she left the room and came back fully loaded with crackers, chocolate and some English black tea. I'm surprised she didn't have cake on hand. Maybe she mistook me for a Brit. I would've been happy with just a glass of water, flavor it however you like.
I gave my war and peace lesson to the first group. That went fine. The second lesson was visited only by tennage girls who had never seen a real live American before. I felt like a celebrity as I answered random questions for fifty minutes. Then, since I didn't have the music, I read them "Imagine" out loud and asked them if such a world were possible or even desirable. They didn't have any good answers. I told them it was homework.
I talked with mom yesterday. I told her I'd had a bad day at the chess club, and she replied that she thought every day at the chess club was a bad day for me. But it's clear to me now that I'm not looking for victory during the Sunday tournaments, otherwise I would've stopped going long ago. I'm happy if I lose on time with an advantage in material or position. That shows at least that I can play. Yesterday I didn't get so far in half of the twenty matches.
My first of two victories was against someone who wasn't having a very good day either. If fact, I played against him like most of the other players play against me. He made mistakes repeatedly, and I pounced every time. I went to Georgi Vasilitch to announce my victory, but, for it was my first victory after eight loses, expressed myself a little too loudly, not seeing my disgrunteled opponent behind me. He then told George that he'd had enough for the day, and took off, crestfallen. I felt bad for him. I know what he was feeling very well. He and I were like crippled horses at the races. I ran with three legs, while he tried to get on with only two. The other horses ran circles around us as we nostalgically remembered better days when it seemed like we knew what we were doing.
My last victory came surprisingly with my last match of the evening. I was well on my way to losing when my opponent made a serious blunder which cost him practically everything he had. He still might have beaten me on time, had he not given up in despair. Maybe he was just tired. It was the twentieth party of the day.
If only other players made such mistakes when they played me. Alas, I am most often the one who leaves pieces unguarded and oversees the simplest of traps. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing blindfolded, I make such stupid mistakes.
I was in a pretty bad mood yesterday, not so much from chess as from roudy teenagers causing me grief during discussion lessons the previous day. Chess was one thing that could've cheered me up, if only I'd managed to play a little more skillfully.
The linguist is one of the weaker players at the club. He and I warmed up before the tournament started. He wanted to show me his new super system which supposedly works every time. After hearing him say the name several times, I understood that he attributed the position to Capablanca. We played two or three matches. He beat me every time with his new technique. NevertheIess, I wasn't impressed. He usually beats me anyway. I asked him to let me know how he plays during the tournament. He didn't have an especially good day either. After each match he came up to me and jokingly blamed Capablanca for his hair-brained method, but stuck with it until the end.
He escorted me most of the way home. He likes speaking German. It's enough for him if it at least seems like you're listening. I often don't care to hear what he has to say. I think he knows this, but sees that I tolerate his rambling and rambles further.
Last week I went to a school in Aksai, a suburb of Rostov, and lead a discussion lesson for teenagers. Another Language Link teacher drove me there and left me with one of the full time teachers at the school. She and I had almost an hour to kill before the first of two lessons. We talked about why an American would do such a silly thing like come to Russia. When I agreed to have some tea, she left the room and came back fully loaded with crackers, chocolate and some English black tea. I'm surprised she didn't have cake on hand. Maybe she mistook me for a Brit. I would've been happy with just a glass of water, flavor it however you like.
I gave my war and peace lesson to the first group. That went fine. The second lesson was visited only by tennage girls who had never seen a real live American before. I felt like a celebrity as I answered random questions for fifty minutes. Then, since I didn't have the music, I read them "Imagine" out loud and asked them if such a world were possible or even desirable. They didn't have any good answers. I told them it was homework.
Monday, November 30, 2009
30.11.09
I usually have Mondays off, but today I gave a lesson for about an hour. I lead a discussion for a group of English teachers. The discussion was what I’ve come to title “War and Peace,” where we discuss the army in American and Russia, the American military budget, and then move into John Lennon’s Eutopia as described in his song Imagine.
Last Saturday I had discussion sections with my interesting classes, but they hadn’t given much thought to how we could achieve John Lennon’s world. I think it was still more or less undecided if a world where there are no countries, religion, and possessions would be a nice place to live. Maybe it would be peaceful, sure, but it might also be boring as hell. Maybe we fight wars to keep ourselves entertained. Living in America, sometimes I get that impression.
They dragged me in last Wednesday morning to help a random student prepare for a job interview. The student was planning to take a job in Moscow with an American company. I wasn’t in the best mood at nine o’clock that morning, having done nothing more than eat and sleep since leaving the school after my last lesson the previous night.
Nevertheless I warmed up to the student after a few minutes. You can’t help but feel like a celebrity when you speak English with a student who hasn’t spoken to a native speaker for a long time. After asking her some random general interview questions that I’d printed out the previous evening, I mentioned some mistakes that she had made and had better avoid, then wished her luck. She’s going to need it. If the position requires a candidate who knows English well, then she’s toast. Or maybe she knows some people. That always helps in this country.
I managed to cancel my last lesson on Wednesday, which gave me time to visit the German club at the library. When I arrived, they were playing memory with pictures of famous German people, many of whom I‘d never heard of before. After that, we did pair dictations about three of the famous Germans. I worked with the linguist from the chess club on a person named Lubido, a former soccer player evidently. The linguist had an article with holes in it, and I had the same article with different holes. He had the information that I needed and vice versa. We were supposed to dictate to one another to complete the article. The linguist didn’t care to take dictation, so I listened to him and wrote as he read his broken article in broken German.
After the German club, I exited the library with the linguist and some other old Russian men. We talked about random things. One of them, Sergei, was very delighted to speak with me. He had a certain respect for foreigners. I think he took me for German at first. It’s not hard to fool a non-German sometimes. I declared myself American after he asked me where I was from, and he maintained his enthusiasm, allbeit maybe just for show.
The Russians and I parted ways, and part of me wanted to go home and catch the Champions League match featuring ZSK and the reining German champions, Wolfsburg. Unfortunately, I’d made plans for the movie theater earlier after stumbling out of my second lesson that morning, too exhausted to remember the football match.
I didn’t regret going to the movie theater. I saw the Russian edition of A Christmas Carol. The story has become one of my favorites over the past few years. It has the Christmas spirit, and some spooky ghosts. What could be better? I remember watching it ever year around Christmas time on TV when I was younger, and seeing the play at a small theater in San Francisco with my family, and finally reading the original last Christmas as I was proctering final exams.
The movie was a cartoon in 3D. The glasses didn’t hurt my eyes too much, as they had in the past. It was very entertaining, honestly one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. How is it that some of the best movies I’ve seen over the past few years are cartoons? Among them are The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Those movies are good because they fulfill their purpose. You watch them with the desire to be entertained in a certain way, and they deliver. How many scary movies are actually scary? Only the good ones, and that’s not many.
It turns out that Wolfsburg lost to ZSK in Moscow two to one. They’re not out of it though. I later learned that they had already played in Germany, where Wolfsburg won three to one. As it stands, ZSK, Wolfsburg, Inter Milan, or a fourth team could win the group. I guess the last game decides it all. I don’t know who Wolfsburg is playing, but I hope they take it.
I usually have Mondays off, but today I gave a lesson for about an hour. I lead a discussion for a group of English teachers. The discussion was what I’ve come to title “War and Peace,” where we discuss the army in American and Russia, the American military budget, and then move into John Lennon’s Eutopia as described in his song Imagine.
Last Saturday I had discussion sections with my interesting classes, but they hadn’t given much thought to how we could achieve John Lennon’s world. I think it was still more or less undecided if a world where there are no countries, religion, and possessions would be a nice place to live. Maybe it would be peaceful, sure, but it might also be boring as hell. Maybe we fight wars to keep ourselves entertained. Living in America, sometimes I get that impression.
They dragged me in last Wednesday morning to help a random student prepare for a job interview. The student was planning to take a job in Moscow with an American company. I wasn’t in the best mood at nine o’clock that morning, having done nothing more than eat and sleep since leaving the school after my last lesson the previous night.
Nevertheless I warmed up to the student after a few minutes. You can’t help but feel like a celebrity when you speak English with a student who hasn’t spoken to a native speaker for a long time. After asking her some random general interview questions that I’d printed out the previous evening, I mentioned some mistakes that she had made and had better avoid, then wished her luck. She’s going to need it. If the position requires a candidate who knows English well, then she’s toast. Or maybe she knows some people. That always helps in this country.
I managed to cancel my last lesson on Wednesday, which gave me time to visit the German club at the library. When I arrived, they were playing memory with pictures of famous German people, many of whom I‘d never heard of before. After that, we did pair dictations about three of the famous Germans. I worked with the linguist from the chess club on a person named Lubido, a former soccer player evidently. The linguist had an article with holes in it, and I had the same article with different holes. He had the information that I needed and vice versa. We were supposed to dictate to one another to complete the article. The linguist didn’t care to take dictation, so I listened to him and wrote as he read his broken article in broken German.
After the German club, I exited the library with the linguist and some other old Russian men. We talked about random things. One of them, Sergei, was very delighted to speak with me. He had a certain respect for foreigners. I think he took me for German at first. It’s not hard to fool a non-German sometimes. I declared myself American after he asked me where I was from, and he maintained his enthusiasm, allbeit maybe just for show.
The Russians and I parted ways, and part of me wanted to go home and catch the Champions League match featuring ZSK and the reining German champions, Wolfsburg. Unfortunately, I’d made plans for the movie theater earlier after stumbling out of my second lesson that morning, too exhausted to remember the football match.
I didn’t regret going to the movie theater. I saw the Russian edition of A Christmas Carol. The story has become one of my favorites over the past few years. It has the Christmas spirit, and some spooky ghosts. What could be better? I remember watching it ever year around Christmas time on TV when I was younger, and seeing the play at a small theater in San Francisco with my family, and finally reading the original last Christmas as I was proctering final exams.
The movie was a cartoon in 3D. The glasses didn’t hurt my eyes too much, as they had in the past. It was very entertaining, honestly one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. How is it that some of the best movies I’ve seen over the past few years are cartoons? Among them are The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Those movies are good because they fulfill their purpose. You watch them with the desire to be entertained in a certain way, and they deliver. How many scary movies are actually scary? Only the good ones, and that’s not many.
It turns out that Wolfsburg lost to ZSK in Moscow two to one. They’re not out of it though. I later learned that they had already played in Germany, where Wolfsburg won three to one. As it stands, ZSK, Wolfsburg, Inter Milan, or a fourth team could win the group. I guess the last game decides it all. I don’t know who Wolfsburg is playing, but I hope they take it.
Monday, November 23, 2009
23.11.09
I went looking for some audio books today. I knew there was a large store in town, larger than the one of the same chain in Vladimir, and I figured they’d have a good selection.
The challenge was getting there on public transport. I didn’t know which bus to take, nor did I know what street it was on. So I had to ask. I asked a marshrutka driver. I asked the woman at the newpaper kiosk. Nobody knew where the store M Studio was.
I took the only bus I knew well to the soccer stadium. Coming back from Shachti I’d always driven first by the stadium, and then shortly thereafter by M studio. I got off at the soccer stadium, asked a woman at another kiosk if she knew were the store was, but she’d never heard of it either.
I started walking along a big prospect in the direction I thought it was. Not long and I came to a sign for the store. It wasn’t called M studio, but M video. Hopefully that was the only thing stopping people from understanding me.
The air, however cool, was filled with smog from all the cars driving by. I passed a person wearing a mask and I wondered if it was to prevent the swine flu or black lung. The sun was going down. After walking a little over a mile, I reached the store. They didn’t have any audiobooks.
I had finished listening to a story by Bulgakov called something like “Fateful Eggs”. I listened and read at the same time. It worked out all right. If I listened without the text, I didn’t understand a thing. If I read without listening, then it took me ten minutes to cover a page. Somehow by doing both at the same time, I got through the story quickly and managed to understand something, allbeit rather little.
I see the story in my head as though it were a dream; it has so many holes in it. There was a professor. His name was Persikov. He discovered some sort of beam. It was special, I don’t know why. Then chickens started dying, which was bad because people wanted eggs. But Persikov got his hands on some eggs. I think they were struck by Persikov’s special beam (intentionally - he was doing an experiment), but it turns out they weren’t chicken eggs, but reptile eggs, or maybe the beam transformed them. In the end many people were eaten by giant anacondas and Persikov and his assistants were murdered by an angry mob.
After checking a few more stores on the way back to Budionovski prospect, I stopped by a rather small video store which I walk by every day on my way home from work. It happened to have a few interesting audiobooks. I got some works of Gogol, to which I already have the text, and something by a guy named Turgenev - a Russian author whom I had heard of, but whose works I had never read nor heard. I can always get the text off the internet if the stories sound interesting.
While I was trasferring the audiofiles from the CDs to my computer, I saw some advertisements for online stores on the CD containers. I visited them (from the comfort of my own flat). It turns out, I could have downloaded everything from the internet that I had bought at the store, and it would’ve been cheaper too. I remember I was looking for such websites years ago when I was in Bloomington and started to focus more attention on learning Russian. The best thing I could find then was a disfunctional website from which you could order a CD in Russian if you managed to complete the order before explorer closed itself for some random reason.
For all those Americans out there, you might not have heard the latest news from the soccer world. For the second year in a row, Rubin, the team from Kazan, has clenched first place in the Russian premier league, whose season will come to an end next weekend. Rubin will continue to play in the champions league. I forget who they play next, but the game is tomorrow night. The other Russian team playing in the champions league, ZSK from Moscow, is going to play the league champions from Germany on Wednesday, Wolfsburg. I’m looking forward to that match, since I’ve heard a lot about the Wolfsburg team, but have never seen them play.
Internationally, I’ve heard that they’re forming the groups for the World Cup next summer. The Russian national team suffered a crushing loss against Slovenia last week, losing one to zero, thus giving the Slovenians the slot in the World Cup. You could feel the disappointment in the streets the next morning. The normally hard faces were especially gloomy. It was enough to stifle the good mood of any happy-go-lucky American.
Elsewhere, France won a trip to the World Cup over Ireland. The winning goal was assisted following a blatant hand-ball by one of France’s star forwards, Henri. The referee and linesmen seemed to be the only ones not to see anything. After the match, Ireland protested. Henri didn’t deny the foul, but blamed the referee for not seeing it. Even President Sarcossi apologized that France had won in such a way, but didn’t offer a rematch. Henri’s play has been compared to the famous goal scored by Maradonna in a world cup final when allegedly the “hand of God” was at work.
The first two discussion sections were in Schachti last weekend, as they are every other Saturday. We hadn’t yet talked about US government spending or John Lennon’s Eutopia, so there was nothing much new regarding how to achieve the perfect world or how people differ from animals. But we talked about it in a class of teenagers back in Rostov. I was surprised that there weren’t many students who claimed that people were more than animals. One student suggested that people were the intelligent animals, which I thought was almost a fair assessment. We can say that cheetas are the fast ones, whales are the big ones, and we are the smart ones (whatever that means). I’ll have a chance to talk about it with my interesting class next Saturday.
Regarding nature versus nurture, I asked my students the extent to which nature determines a person. In situation one, where mom and dad both weigh five hundred pounds, and where the child is also grossly overweight, the students insisted that nurture was at play, not nature. In situation two, where both mom and dad are math geniuses, and the child also excels at math, for some reason a few students hesitated to give nurture so much credit. However, one student discounted nature even in situation two, insisting that both his parents excelled at math, while he struggled at math and prefered literature.
I went to the chess club this week, but I don’t have time to go into detail. Suffice it to say that despite a strong showing against the Turk and the Parisian, two victories and one draw are hardly enough sustinance for such a competitive character. I’ll continue to go, although it’s clear that by playing merely every week, I’m not getting much better. It’s tough to enter that room knowing that you’re in for such a beating. Something has to be done.
I went looking for some audio books today. I knew there was a large store in town, larger than the one of the same chain in Vladimir, and I figured they’d have a good selection.
The challenge was getting there on public transport. I didn’t know which bus to take, nor did I know what street it was on. So I had to ask. I asked a marshrutka driver. I asked the woman at the newpaper kiosk. Nobody knew where the store M Studio was.
I took the only bus I knew well to the soccer stadium. Coming back from Shachti I’d always driven first by the stadium, and then shortly thereafter by M studio. I got off at the soccer stadium, asked a woman at another kiosk if she knew were the store was, but she’d never heard of it either.
I started walking along a big prospect in the direction I thought it was. Not long and I came to a sign for the store. It wasn’t called M studio, but M video. Hopefully that was the only thing stopping people from understanding me.
The air, however cool, was filled with smog from all the cars driving by. I passed a person wearing a mask and I wondered if it was to prevent the swine flu or black lung. The sun was going down. After walking a little over a mile, I reached the store. They didn’t have any audiobooks.
I had finished listening to a story by Bulgakov called something like “Fateful Eggs”. I listened and read at the same time. It worked out all right. If I listened without the text, I didn’t understand a thing. If I read without listening, then it took me ten minutes to cover a page. Somehow by doing both at the same time, I got through the story quickly and managed to understand something, allbeit rather little.
I see the story in my head as though it were a dream; it has so many holes in it. There was a professor. His name was Persikov. He discovered some sort of beam. It was special, I don’t know why. Then chickens started dying, which was bad because people wanted eggs. But Persikov got his hands on some eggs. I think they were struck by Persikov’s special beam (intentionally - he was doing an experiment), but it turns out they weren’t chicken eggs, but reptile eggs, or maybe the beam transformed them. In the end many people were eaten by giant anacondas and Persikov and his assistants were murdered by an angry mob.
After checking a few more stores on the way back to Budionovski prospect, I stopped by a rather small video store which I walk by every day on my way home from work. It happened to have a few interesting audiobooks. I got some works of Gogol, to which I already have the text, and something by a guy named Turgenev - a Russian author whom I had heard of, but whose works I had never read nor heard. I can always get the text off the internet if the stories sound interesting.
While I was trasferring the audiofiles from the CDs to my computer, I saw some advertisements for online stores on the CD containers. I visited them (from the comfort of my own flat). It turns out, I could have downloaded everything from the internet that I had bought at the store, and it would’ve been cheaper too. I remember I was looking for such websites years ago when I was in Bloomington and started to focus more attention on learning Russian. The best thing I could find then was a disfunctional website from which you could order a CD in Russian if you managed to complete the order before explorer closed itself for some random reason.
For all those Americans out there, you might not have heard the latest news from the soccer world. For the second year in a row, Rubin, the team from Kazan, has clenched first place in the Russian premier league, whose season will come to an end next weekend. Rubin will continue to play in the champions league. I forget who they play next, but the game is tomorrow night. The other Russian team playing in the champions league, ZSK from Moscow, is going to play the league champions from Germany on Wednesday, Wolfsburg. I’m looking forward to that match, since I’ve heard a lot about the Wolfsburg team, but have never seen them play.
Internationally, I’ve heard that they’re forming the groups for the World Cup next summer. The Russian national team suffered a crushing loss against Slovenia last week, losing one to zero, thus giving the Slovenians the slot in the World Cup. You could feel the disappointment in the streets the next morning. The normally hard faces were especially gloomy. It was enough to stifle the good mood of any happy-go-lucky American.
Elsewhere, France won a trip to the World Cup over Ireland. The winning goal was assisted following a blatant hand-ball by one of France’s star forwards, Henri. The referee and linesmen seemed to be the only ones not to see anything. After the match, Ireland protested. Henri didn’t deny the foul, but blamed the referee for not seeing it. Even President Sarcossi apologized that France had won in such a way, but didn’t offer a rematch. Henri’s play has been compared to the famous goal scored by Maradonna in a world cup final when allegedly the “hand of God” was at work.
The first two discussion sections were in Schachti last weekend, as they are every other Saturday. We hadn’t yet talked about US government spending or John Lennon’s Eutopia, so there was nothing much new regarding how to achieve the perfect world or how people differ from animals. But we talked about it in a class of teenagers back in Rostov. I was surprised that there weren’t many students who claimed that people were more than animals. One student suggested that people were the intelligent animals, which I thought was almost a fair assessment. We can say that cheetas are the fast ones, whales are the big ones, and we are the smart ones (whatever that means). I’ll have a chance to talk about it with my interesting class next Saturday.
Regarding nature versus nurture, I asked my students the extent to which nature determines a person. In situation one, where mom and dad both weigh five hundred pounds, and where the child is also grossly overweight, the students insisted that nurture was at play, not nature. In situation two, where both mom and dad are math geniuses, and the child also excels at math, for some reason a few students hesitated to give nurture so much credit. However, one student discounted nature even in situation two, insisting that both his parents excelled at math, while he struggled at math and prefered literature.
I went to the chess club this week, but I don’t have time to go into detail. Suffice it to say that despite a strong showing against the Turk and the Parisian, two victories and one draw are hardly enough sustinance for such a competitive character. I’ll continue to go, although it’s clear that by playing merely every week, I’m not getting much better. It’s tough to enter that room knowing that you’re in for such a beating. Something has to be done.
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