8.5.10
I returned from Europe a few hours ago. It's good to be back, and not so. I'll not have slept here one night before feeling like I never left - not a bad thing, since Rostov has its perks; but maybe it shows that my vacation could have been a little bit longer.
I left Rostov for Prague on the second of May. I flew through Vienna and arrived in Prague to meet my parents that evening. They escorted me from the airport to the shuttle, on the metro and through the cobblestone streets of central Prague to a really nice hotel across from the wax museum.
I was in Prague initially only that night and the following night. I went walking both mornings before breakfast, but didn't manage to explore as much as I would've liked to. During my first day in Prague we went on a guided walking tour of the old part of the city. I couldn't help noticing the guide's shortcomings in spoken English. Her grammar was pretty good, but her pronunciation of 'a' and 'r' was often off. That is, I didn't register them as either British or any other type of English pronunciation. Furthermore, she couldn't say 'th' to save her life, which is a common problem. Be that as it may, I wish I could say I speak a second language as well as she. I have my own problems to worry about, grammatical and otherwise!
On the tour we saw the capital castle, where the president was currently working, as indicated by the hissing flag. We spent over half an hour standing in line for some important cathedral, which was very impressive, if not also extremely reminiscent of Notre Dame in Paris.
We went to Berlin the following day. The train ride was typical of European trainrides, that is, awesome. My parents got me into first class with them; they had bought some sort of Europass that gets them five first class train rides anywhere throughout Europe. We got a quad seating area with a small table between us. We didn't have any cards, but the table was useful for service from the restaurant car. We got a platter of chess and another of veggies, and round of beer to boot.
The scenery was beautiful. We drove from Prague along a river past the German boarder to Dresden. I don't know the name of the river. It ran through small rocky hills. After Dresden there were fields basking in the spring season. Everything was green. Then there were fewer fields and more buildings, and then we were in Berlin.
The hotel was closer to the station than the route we took, but we got there without too big a detour. When we found the hotel, we also found G and G, some relatives of my father who live not far north of Hamburg. They had just arrived too. They had parked illegally at the hotel to have someone take their luggage. Funny, at first the way they had parked didn't strike me as unusual. You see cars parked on curbs and sidewalks all the time over here. I suppose it wouldn't have been long before someone gave them a ticket for disrupting the order on the German streets.
We entered while they left to find a parking place. We met up later for dinner.
The following morning my parents and I went to the train station to rent bikes. They had suggested going on a guided tour, you know, with a real guide, but I objected, insisting that I had seen enough in the half day I was there five and a half years ago to qualify me as a guide for at least a few hours. They gave in, and we set off for the zooligischer garden, a place where, little to my clients' knowledge, I had never been before.
I didn't hide that fact for long. We biked slowly through the garden in random directions. The conditions could not have been much better. The sky was clear, the sun bright, the birds were singing, the flowers blooming. Everywhere there was green. Finally we came to a street where a sign indicated the Reichstag in the opposite direction I had expected. We turned back and eventually came to the street of the 17th of June, named after some sort of people's revloution in the 1950's. Across the street there was the soviet monument, a place that had particularly caught my attention on my previous visit.
That day in early November 2004 I was in Berlin to take the GRE exam for my graduate school applications. I finished the exam in the morning and had until that evening to explore the city. I was on foot when I walked down that street, past the Column of Victory towards the Brandenburger Gates, when I came to a monument that had Russian written all over it. I took several pictures of it. Anyone who saw my laptop might remember seeing it on my desktop in the following years. There are seven columns, three on each side of a larger central column, on which a giant Russian infantry soldier poses, slowly marching forward. The central column has cyrillic text which I managed to read without too much difficulty. It says something like, "Praise to those who fell in battle with the fashist invaders for the security of the Soviet Union." The other columns say similar things, where each column is dedicated to specific members of the different divisions of the Red Army, the infintry, airforce, etc. Before the columns there is a square with steps leading up to it. On each side of the steps there are models of soviet artillery and tanks.
The day of my GRE exam was a dreary, rainy day. I have a picture of the square in front of the monument wet with rain and a huge dark cloud over the soldier's head. It seemed to fit the soldier's mood, as though he was thinking, "I'll march through a blizzard of a million fashists if I have to. I'm not stopping until I've reached Berlin!" A few days ago amidst sunny spring weather, one can only wonder if, under the shadow of the soldier's helmut, the grim face managed to smile at the favorable conditions.
We went under the columns and rode our bikes further to the capital building, the Reichstag. Workers were fertilizing the field before the entrance so that it was impossible to get a picture of the entire building, which is a shame because the Reichstag is quite impressive in my opinion.
From there we biked by a big demonstration for disabled peoples' rights, went through the Brandenburger Gates, biked on the streets to Checkpoint Charlie, had some hot chocolate at Einstein's cafe, biked back to the Gates, conicidentally passing a new monument dedicated to the Holocaust. I would like to have walked around, but I was outvoted, and we quickly biked back through the garden to the Column of Victory, which we had missed after wandering through the gardens the first time. We didn't have much time before we were supposed to meet the G gang, so it was lucky that the column was being renovated, and the gates for the underground passage to the island, around which deadly traffic waits for no one, were closed.
We raced back, biked through the Gates back to the former East, crossed a canal and found the meeting place without too much trouble and only a four-minute delay. We had a small meal together, then went into the historical museum.
The museum was stuffy. After the food I found myself wanting to take a short nap. I realized it was only from a lack of oxygen, and overcame my weariness by occasionally touching my toes for a few seconds. Bloodflow to the brain woke me up consistantly, and I was able to follow the exposition with interest. I was disappointed to hear that the others didn't feel like staying any longer. I don't think they had tried touching their toes! We hadn't even gotten to the twentieth century yet, but I didn't object. My legs were ready to get back on the bike, and the beautiful weather had not let up.
We biked slowly back through the garden to the train station. My parents gave up their bikes and went their own way. I used the remaining hour of the rental to bike around in search of a book store. Finally I found one called something like "Hugendubel" which had a lot to offer.
By the end of my stay in Berlin I ended up buying several books published by Reclam. I like this publisher for one reason because their books are very small. They don't take up much room or weight in your suitcase, they even fit easily in a coat or jacket pocket. The publisher also offers a lot of classical literature. I almost bought Part II of Faust, but restrained myself, since after all these years I still haven't completed Part I. I bought several books of poetry, some of them as presents for other people, some of them for myself.
I'm not much of a poet, and have not been much for reading poetry either, but I have come to at least respect the genre. I think poetry has to be read more slowly than a novel. It requires interpretation and reflection and all that bunk. I call it bunk only because I'm not good at it. I need to practice. Good thing I found that bookstore.
I also bought a collection of tales by Hermann Hesse. I read these tales first when I lived in Germany, then was lucky enough to find them in Bloomington, and didn't hesitate to buy the book, big and heavy as it may be in comparison to the Reclam editions, when I saw it at Hugendubels. I also bought, after some deliberation, a collection of stories by Edgar Allan Poe. I usually prefer reading original German rather than German translations, but I find Poe's writing so interesting in English, surely at least some of that charm gets translated into other languages as well.
In short, I came back to Rostov with more books than I expected. Now comes the hard part: findinng enough time to read what I bought. Furthermore, who knows how I'll get all of these home this summer? I'll probably leave a few books with some friends, either for good, or until I come back.
We spent the afternoon of our second day in Berlin in a castle where Sophia Charlotte once lived. My parents and I went through the museum with audio accomponiment, which made the stay much more interesting. To be fair, I don't remember much from all that information I heard, except that Charlotte had a new bedroom made after returning from somewhere and learning that Napoleon, while charging through the area, had slept in her bed! I was in a room where Napoleon once slept. Cool!
That evening I wanted to go to a movie, but I turned left when I should have gone right, and when after turning back and then wandering through the streets trying to find the combination I had taken earlier to get the theater, I finally found the theater, but had missed enough of what I wanted to see that it was no longer worth seeing. I could've gone to Iron Man 2, but I'd already seen it, and as German as it would have been, I didn't feel like watching it a second time. I returned to the hotel dejected and wet from the nightly rain.
The following morning everyone went their separate ways. I escorted my parents to their track from where they were leaving for a small city near Mainz, then returned to the hotel to collect my things for my train ride back to Prague, from where I was to fly back the following day. I said goodbye to my Uncle G and Aunt G and headed back to the train station.
I got to Prague, remembered which metro to take to the old town, then blanked on how to get to the hostel I had visited before leaving a few days earlier. Some would scold me for not being better prepared. My mom had taken a map for me, but I had no idea where I had put it. I would have taken a taxi, but when I asked a driver how to get to my Hostel, he said there were many by that name, and I didn't have the exact address. I reached familiar territory when I came upon a bridge across the river. Karl's bridge was the next bridge over, not a kilometer away. I reached Karl's bridge, from where it was easy to get to the central square, from where I could easily reach the hotel we had stayed at previously, from where I remembered how to get to a particular tower, not far from which I knew the hostel was located. Thus I eventually made it to my accomodation, and I wasn't too tired to return to the streets after packing my things away.
After getting lost on the way back a second time, I was pretty tired. Central Prague changes very much when the sun goes down. (My mom must be chuckling right about now.)
Thanks to all the walking that night, and some heavy street-vendor's cuisine, topped off with a course of Ben and Jerry's ice-cream, I slept relatively well, especially considering the noise on the street and in the hostel, where I was sharing a room with many other people. I had carefully studied a map before going to bed so that early the next morning, I found the metro station without too much trouble.
I got to the airport with over an hour of spare time to read a short story by Bernard Schlink, the German author who wrote "The Reader," which was made into a movie not long ago. He's a bit easier to read than some other authors. Maybe it's because he's lived in New York.

I'll post some pictures of my trip for those of you without any imagination. I'll post some pictures of Rostov in my last entry, which at the rate I'm going might already be the next one!

Regarding those pictures, my internet is too weak. We'll have to wait a few days at least...

29.3.10
My political orientation has changed a little. I used to be all for big government. I liked the idea of free education and free health care and the high taxes required, and I still do. But I have to admit, I'm not being fair to many of my countrymen. Tough as it is, I must try to understand that there are Americans who don't appreciate, for example, higher education. For them it's rather pointless to pay taxes to support other people's interests.
It occurred to me that a big government can't function well in such a multicultural society. The governments I dream about seem to function fine in smaller countries, like Denmark or Sweden. Maybe it's because those countries' interests are more unified than the interests of Americans. Indeed, it's reasonable that people who live close to one another have similar interests: the smaller the area, the more similar the culture and the problems it faces.
It might make sense for us Americans to turn not to our nation but to our respective state for government. A person like me could then move to the state with super high taxes, but good health care and educational provisions, whereas a farmer who couldn't care less about Galois theory and foreign languages could look for a place where the agricultural industry is well supported.
That's all easier said than done. Many people have settled down and don't want to move anywhere. What do we do with California, which is both an educational and agricultural powerhouse? (No wonder it's bankrupt.)
Regardless, it seems more efficient to exact taxes more on the state than on the national level. California is a state which should have very high taxes. If you don't like taxes, then don't live in California!
Whereas if the nation as a whole has high taxes, where are stingy Americans going to go? Thus, maybe governmental programs like national health care are not a good idea after all. I took note of one Republican's objection to the bill, which claimed that expensive health care was good in that it encouraged Americans to stay healthy: Health care won't be expensive for you as long as you take care of yourself. And that's the way it should be!
What was I thinking when I said that I wanted to live in a place with free health care. I hate hospitals! It'd be great if I can live a long life without ever having to visit them more than once a decade. And even if I pay hundreds of dollars to talk to a doctor and have my blood tested every few years (to give credit where it's due, my parents paid that bill last summer), it still might not amount to as much as the taxes I would continually pay for other people's liposuctions.

I had plenty of time off last week. I went to the theater three times, which is good, because I might not have time in the near future. They've got me working six evenings a week, today till seven thirty, Tuesday through Friday till nine fifteen, and Saturday until six thirty. Of course, I'm have many mornings off, so I can't complain too loudly, even if I don't see why they can't give me just one evening.
I'm pleased to say that I understood most of what was said at the theater. Somehow, I've managed to make some progress on that front. Hopefully speaking and writing will follow.
I played four games of tempo chess yesterday, and won twice! That's a pretty good percentage for me. The first match was against none other than Gilbert Godfrey. He quickly took advantage of a careless opening on my part, haughtily announced check mate, and began muttering something I couldn't understand, judging by the tone something like 'what the hell were you thinking?' An old man who frequents the club without ever playing or even watching the games glanced at me with a sympathic eye from where he was sitting nearby. I shrugged my shoulders after Gilbert charged away and the old man muttered something I couldn't understand. It could have been anything from 'don't pay any attention to him' to 'what the hell were you thinking?’.
I played another old man in the second round. We laced our pawns about each other with an advantageous position for me in the center. Waging battle on both fronts, I sloppily managed to gain the upper hand, but wasted my time finishing him off. I should have simplified when I had the chance.
I played the third match against an equally skilled opponent. I made a stupid mistake and gave up.
I think I played down to the level of my fourth opponent. I got lucky with a combination which won his queen. He gave up, and I got out of there. I would have continued playing, but I had tickets to the theater.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.