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.
Monday, November 30, 2009
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.
Monday, November 16, 2009
16.11.09
I didn’t go to the chess club this week. Instead I went to see a ballet performance of Romeo and Juliet. It was the second ballet I had visited in Russia, the first being Swan Lake at a famous theater in St. Petersburg about a year ago. The Rostov ballet didn’t match the one in Petersburg. Juliet wasn’t quite as fluid a dancer as the head swan, but I’m not picky when it comes to ballet.
Unlike Swan Lake, I was very familiar with the story of Romeo and Juliet, and it was fun to see it again in a new genre. The best scenes were when the stage was full with the two fueding families (the Capulets and the Montegues, if I remember correctly). In the beginning, there was a fight with many people dancing around, waving and thrusting swords at one another. Then, after intermission, just after Romeo took revenge on one of the main characters from the other family, there was a scene with members of both families mourning their loss and cursing their enemies at the other side of the stage. It was remarkable how they managed to express everything through dance.
To top it all off, one of the main musical themes was a classical peace that I like very much. I’ve written about it before, though not so recently that it’s been included in a blog entry. It starts with tubas sounding two full beats alternating at the lowest two notes, and then violins come in at I think eight beats to a measure with a rather macabre melody. I forget what it’s called, but I think the title has something to do with witches. I’ll call it the Jugernaut’s lied, beacuse the first movement is especially fit for an omnipotent entrance. It was used for the party at one of the family’s places, where Romeo and Juliet first met. For the first movement the family enters their dance hall and starts the ritual dance. Then the second movement comes in, much calmer and more soothing than the first, and that’s when Juliet enters and begins to dance. By the end of the party, the main theme sounds again as the stowaway Romeo is discovered.
I worked a lot last week. Saturday brought some interesting discussions. The previous evening I had somehow decided on the topic of war and peace. I found a chart of the US federal spending in 2008 on wikipedia and shared it with the class. I expressed my disapproval that, according to the chart, the governement spends ten times as much on war as it does on education. I posed the usual question after telling a little bit about America: how does it work in Russia? Nobody knew. They said that the government kept that information secret.
Here’s a naive thought that I shared with my students: when it comes to making progress, a society does best by investing resources in education and research. This is how society comes up with things like computers, mobile phones, the cure to polio, etc. By investing in the military (and military research), society takes a step backwards: the only use for a bomb is for destroying something. What’s the point of that? No student had anything to say. Maybe they were too afraid of bursting my peaceful bubble. A few students did point out that societies without militaries don’t last very long. I don’t disagree. Look at the Native Americans.
Taking the discussion even further in a eutopian direction, we listened to John Lennon’s Imagine, after which I asked the students if such a world (without religion, countries, the need to kill…) is possible, and if so, what needs to be done to achieve such a world. The younger students said that John Lennon was singing about Eutopia, and anybody knows that such a world is impossible. Many of the adult students felt the same way, although there were some who weren’t so readily dismissive. One student suggested that people have to change their souls. I asked for clarification. Russians use the word soul very often. I think the student might have expressed herself clearer by saying that people must change their nature. I found this very interesting. We ended class with the question of how people must change their nature in order to live in John Lennon‘s imaginary world.
I think it was a good note to end the class on. It’s not often that we have something interesting from which to start the next class, but that people should change their nature leads well into a discussion on nature versus nurture, as well as the extent to which a human is not an animal, a topic on which I should probably tread lightly so as not to offend people by suggesting that the difference between a person and a dog is the same as the difference between a dog and a cat - that it is no more than physiological.
What is the difference between a human and an animal? (“Here we go again,” my family members are groaning, but let me share my heathen thoughts with others in the audience.)
Religious people might say that humans have souls whereas animals do not. I think that the existence of a soul is as axiomatic as the existence of a God. Furthermore, I find it axiomatic to say that animals don’t have souls. In short, the religious explanation strikes me as what many religious explanations do: an axiom; it just is so.
Less religious people have suggested that people are intelligent and animals are not. This doesn‘t say much, for why is intelligence more important than the hundreds of qualities that humans lack? After all, the cheeta is the fastest, and the whale is the biggest; why are they considered animals and we not? Most recently someone suggested that animals either don’t feel pain, or somehow feel it in a different way. I contorted with the following thought experiment. Take a dog, a bear, an eagle, several other animals, and one human, impale them all with a spear through the belly and observe that all creatures react in pretty much the same way. How is pain perceived differently for the non-human creatures in the experiment?
Maybe there are other reasons why people are not animals. Please let me know, they might be useful in the discussion. Indeed, if the discussion developes, I should be familiar with all sides, so that I spur them on by disagreeing with everything!
I bought a USB modem yesterday, and am sending this entry from home for the first time. The word processor doesn’t have any spell checking in English. Would you have been able to tell the difference?
I didn’t go to the chess club this week. Instead I went to see a ballet performance of Romeo and Juliet. It was the second ballet I had visited in Russia, the first being Swan Lake at a famous theater in St. Petersburg about a year ago. The Rostov ballet didn’t match the one in Petersburg. Juliet wasn’t quite as fluid a dancer as the head swan, but I’m not picky when it comes to ballet.
Unlike Swan Lake, I was very familiar with the story of Romeo and Juliet, and it was fun to see it again in a new genre. The best scenes were when the stage was full with the two fueding families (the Capulets and the Montegues, if I remember correctly). In the beginning, there was a fight with many people dancing around, waving and thrusting swords at one another. Then, after intermission, just after Romeo took revenge on one of the main characters from the other family, there was a scene with members of both families mourning their loss and cursing their enemies at the other side of the stage. It was remarkable how they managed to express everything through dance.
To top it all off, one of the main musical themes was a classical peace that I like very much. I’ve written about it before, though not so recently that it’s been included in a blog entry. It starts with tubas sounding two full beats alternating at the lowest two notes, and then violins come in at I think eight beats to a measure with a rather macabre melody. I forget what it’s called, but I think the title has something to do with witches. I’ll call it the Jugernaut’s lied, beacuse the first movement is especially fit for an omnipotent entrance. It was used for the party at one of the family’s places, where Romeo and Juliet first met. For the first movement the family enters their dance hall and starts the ritual dance. Then the second movement comes in, much calmer and more soothing than the first, and that’s when Juliet enters and begins to dance. By the end of the party, the main theme sounds again as the stowaway Romeo is discovered.
I worked a lot last week. Saturday brought some interesting discussions. The previous evening I had somehow decided on the topic of war and peace. I found a chart of the US federal spending in 2008 on wikipedia and shared it with the class. I expressed my disapproval that, according to the chart, the governement spends ten times as much on war as it does on education. I posed the usual question after telling a little bit about America: how does it work in Russia? Nobody knew. They said that the government kept that information secret.
Here’s a naive thought that I shared with my students: when it comes to making progress, a society does best by investing resources in education and research. This is how society comes up with things like computers, mobile phones, the cure to polio, etc. By investing in the military (and military research), society takes a step backwards: the only use for a bomb is for destroying something. What’s the point of that? No student had anything to say. Maybe they were too afraid of bursting my peaceful bubble. A few students did point out that societies without militaries don’t last very long. I don’t disagree. Look at the Native Americans.
Taking the discussion even further in a eutopian direction, we listened to John Lennon’s Imagine, after which I asked the students if such a world (without religion, countries, the need to kill…) is possible, and if so, what needs to be done to achieve such a world. The younger students said that John Lennon was singing about Eutopia, and anybody knows that such a world is impossible. Many of the adult students felt the same way, although there were some who weren’t so readily dismissive. One student suggested that people have to change their souls. I asked for clarification. Russians use the word soul very often. I think the student might have expressed herself clearer by saying that people must change their nature. I found this very interesting. We ended class with the question of how people must change their nature in order to live in John Lennon‘s imaginary world.
I think it was a good note to end the class on. It’s not often that we have something interesting from which to start the next class, but that people should change their nature leads well into a discussion on nature versus nurture, as well as the extent to which a human is not an animal, a topic on which I should probably tread lightly so as not to offend people by suggesting that the difference between a person and a dog is the same as the difference between a dog and a cat - that it is no more than physiological.
What is the difference between a human and an animal? (“Here we go again,” my family members are groaning, but let me share my heathen thoughts with others in the audience.)
Religious people might say that humans have souls whereas animals do not. I think that the existence of a soul is as axiomatic as the existence of a God. Furthermore, I find it axiomatic to say that animals don’t have souls. In short, the religious explanation strikes me as what many religious explanations do: an axiom; it just is so.
Less religious people have suggested that people are intelligent and animals are not. This doesn‘t say much, for why is intelligence more important than the hundreds of qualities that humans lack? After all, the cheeta is the fastest, and the whale is the biggest; why are they considered animals and we not? Most recently someone suggested that animals either don’t feel pain, or somehow feel it in a different way. I contorted with the following thought experiment. Take a dog, a bear, an eagle, several other animals, and one human, impale them all with a spear through the belly and observe that all creatures react in pretty much the same way. How is pain perceived differently for the non-human creatures in the experiment?
Maybe there are other reasons why people are not animals. Please let me know, they might be useful in the discussion. Indeed, if the discussion developes, I should be familiar with all sides, so that I spur them on by disagreeing with everything!
I bought a USB modem yesterday, and am sending this entry from home for the first time. The word processor doesn’t have any spell checking in English. Would you have been able to tell the difference?
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
9.11.09
It’s quarter to five and already pretty dark in my apartment. I think my psyche was feeling the lack of sun-light earlier, or that might have been from a relatively restless night last night - not that it was very restless, but up to then I had been sleeping very well. Strange, since I went running for the first time yesterday in over two weeks, and I had always thought that exercise improves sleep. Or maybe it was the fourteen loses I took at the chess club. The four victories and one draw were too few and far between to vanquish my suffering ego.
Never before had there been so many people there. You would think that more competition means more fresh meat for those starving for a victory, but alas, you end the day wondering where the hell all those chess players came from. There were three young guys, each maybe about twenty years old: one Asian looking fellow, and two others who appeared to be brothers.
As I played the first brother, he might have noticed some uncertainty in my attack. After some of my moves, he would declare the move correct, until finally, with no declaration necessary, he took my rook for free and I ran out of time trying to make up for the loss. The Asian guy didn’t show many signs of weakness. After abolishing my queen side he muttered something to me which I didn’t really understand, I think that I should’ve protected one pawn over the other.
Gilbert Godfrey tied my pieces one to the other as usual, and smirked at me when I managed to pin and doubly attack a piece in front of his queen. There was blood for the next three moves and I surprisingly came out of it only a bishop down. He also muttered something after the end of the match, but I didn’t understand him.
Another player, who I’ll call John Candy, although he looks a lot more like the jungle scientist from Garry Larson comics, I beat for the second time in my career. He’s a good player. I think he plays a little easy on me. He’s true to his name, Dobravolski, which I think denotes wishing well.
I played the Turk for the first time. I don’t know where he’s from, but he looks Turkish, and he won the tempo tournament last week. I gave him a good game for ten moves or so, then lost a piece and collapsed. I lose pieces all the time, regardless of whom I’m playing. The people I beat are firstly those who take too much time thinking about how to finish me off and secondly those on whom I might manage to make up a lost piece if they‘re not careful. The Turk doesn’t doesn‘t fall into either category.
I don’t know if I remember correctly, but I think I saw stoneface lose a game yesterday. Or maybe it was a dream. Regardless, I think he won the tournament.
I had an easy week last week. We were supposed to have the 4th of November off. It was some holiday that Russia started celebrating a few years ago. Now they celebrate some event long ago the significance of which many Russians seem to not know. I understand that Russia used to celebrate the October Revolution in the beginning of Novermber, but for some reason that holiday has been officially replaced with this other one.
I only had one lesson on the fourth, and it was early in the morning, so I had time to buy tickets to the theater that evening and check out one of the gyms. At the gym I asked a woman at a counter what I needed to do to go swimming. I needed shoes for the gym, a swimsuit and towel, and a note from a doctor. It was the latter that troubled me most. It turns out, they had a doctor at the gym who gives people the notes they need. I paid a dollar for the note, a dollar to borrow some shoes, and five rubles for a plastic bag to contain my real shoes.
Evidently, on the door to the doctor’s office was written that you should knock before entering. I had seen the note, but not understood, and barged on in without hesitating. There was only one small room, like an apartment, and the doctor was sitting in the corner, eating lunch and watching TV. He was upset that I hadn’t knocked, but I explained that I hardly understand Russian and he calmed down. He had a look at my back for some reason, and in between my toes to see if there was fungus growing there, then he signed my note and said do svidania. I left the gym foolishly without going to see the pool. I didn’t have my stuff with me, so I figured why bother. At least now I can go there and swim if I feel so inclined.
The thing is, I haven’t felt extremely inclined. In Napa, swimming was a nice complement to other things that were occupying my time. Here, it doesn’t feel so necessary. I was telling my mom the other day: what exercise was to me in the past, music has become.
I play on the guitar when I get the chance. I’m learning slowly but surely. There are several Russian ditties I can play with no sharps and no flats, but after awhile they all start to sound the same. I found a new song with a key signature in two flats. It gives a fresh new flavor of music.
I think of the violin from time to time. I really went at it for a few weeks over the summer before my brothers came home, playing some really hard Bach sonatas that I’d been listening to over the course of the year. My efforts didn’t amount to much, but I tell myself that it’s not as important how it sounds as how you think it sounds. When I played, I didn’t hear the slipped cords and the off notes, I heard Joshua Bell playing Bach’s Violin Sonatas.
There are times when you listen to music that you wonder how nice it would be to be able to create those sounds yourself. There are passages in classical music that just blow me away with their beauty to the extent that no modern music ever has. Some music comes close. Some works on the classical guitar affect me almost as much as the famous European composers, but other than that, music has lost something over the years, hasn’t it? Why would anyone want to listen to pop?
Anyway, I miss the violin again. I’m glad I rented one over the summer. Had I not rented one, I‘d never have known that I‘m still capable of something. I haven’t completely forgotten how to play, and at times, I can play it close enough for my imagination to take over.
As I said above, the days are getting shorter. Accordingly, tomatoes are getting more expensive. I made the switch over to the carrot and beet salad that I ate so often last winter. So far it consists of boiled carrots, beats, diced raw garlic, and plenty of kefir. The kefir adds a nice touch, not just to cool the garlic off, but it also complements the veggies quite well.
In the carrot and beet salad, kefir comes across like sour cream, except it’s less creamy and more sour. Now who would ever think to use sour cream with cereal? I don’t know, but kefir goes very well with muesli. It’s almost the blandest thing you’ve ever tasted, which I’ve come to really appreciate. The lack of flavor is also a flavor, isn’t it? Indeed, kefir takes blandness to a new level, where it’s not just a lack of flavor, but even an anti-flavor.
Kefir is cleansing somehow. It reminds you of what other things taste like. Try tasting an apple after drinking, for example, coca-cola. The sugar content nukes you taste buds and the apple feels like paper in your mouth. But the pureness of kefir leaves you ready to taste the sugar in even the bitterest of green apples! I love it.
It’s quarter to five and already pretty dark in my apartment. I think my psyche was feeling the lack of sun-light earlier, or that might have been from a relatively restless night last night - not that it was very restless, but up to then I had been sleeping very well. Strange, since I went running for the first time yesterday in over two weeks, and I had always thought that exercise improves sleep. Or maybe it was the fourteen loses I took at the chess club. The four victories and one draw were too few and far between to vanquish my suffering ego.
Never before had there been so many people there. You would think that more competition means more fresh meat for those starving for a victory, but alas, you end the day wondering where the hell all those chess players came from. There were three young guys, each maybe about twenty years old: one Asian looking fellow, and two others who appeared to be brothers.
As I played the first brother, he might have noticed some uncertainty in my attack. After some of my moves, he would declare the move correct, until finally, with no declaration necessary, he took my rook for free and I ran out of time trying to make up for the loss. The Asian guy didn’t show many signs of weakness. After abolishing my queen side he muttered something to me which I didn’t really understand, I think that I should’ve protected one pawn over the other.
Gilbert Godfrey tied my pieces one to the other as usual, and smirked at me when I managed to pin and doubly attack a piece in front of his queen. There was blood for the next three moves and I surprisingly came out of it only a bishop down. He also muttered something after the end of the match, but I didn’t understand him.
Another player, who I’ll call John Candy, although he looks a lot more like the jungle scientist from Garry Larson comics, I beat for the second time in my career. He’s a good player. I think he plays a little easy on me. He’s true to his name, Dobravolski, which I think denotes wishing well.
I played the Turk for the first time. I don’t know where he’s from, but he looks Turkish, and he won the tempo tournament last week. I gave him a good game for ten moves or so, then lost a piece and collapsed. I lose pieces all the time, regardless of whom I’m playing. The people I beat are firstly those who take too much time thinking about how to finish me off and secondly those on whom I might manage to make up a lost piece if they‘re not careful. The Turk doesn’t doesn‘t fall into either category.
I don’t know if I remember correctly, but I think I saw stoneface lose a game yesterday. Or maybe it was a dream. Regardless, I think he won the tournament.
I had an easy week last week. We were supposed to have the 4th of November off. It was some holiday that Russia started celebrating a few years ago. Now they celebrate some event long ago the significance of which many Russians seem to not know. I understand that Russia used to celebrate the October Revolution in the beginning of Novermber, but for some reason that holiday has been officially replaced with this other one.
I only had one lesson on the fourth, and it was early in the morning, so I had time to buy tickets to the theater that evening and check out one of the gyms. At the gym I asked a woman at a counter what I needed to do to go swimming. I needed shoes for the gym, a swimsuit and towel, and a note from a doctor. It was the latter that troubled me most. It turns out, they had a doctor at the gym who gives people the notes they need. I paid a dollar for the note, a dollar to borrow some shoes, and five rubles for a plastic bag to contain my real shoes.
Evidently, on the door to the doctor’s office was written that you should knock before entering. I had seen the note, but not understood, and barged on in without hesitating. There was only one small room, like an apartment, and the doctor was sitting in the corner, eating lunch and watching TV. He was upset that I hadn’t knocked, but I explained that I hardly understand Russian and he calmed down. He had a look at my back for some reason, and in between my toes to see if there was fungus growing there, then he signed my note and said do svidania. I left the gym foolishly without going to see the pool. I didn’t have my stuff with me, so I figured why bother. At least now I can go there and swim if I feel so inclined.
The thing is, I haven’t felt extremely inclined. In Napa, swimming was a nice complement to other things that were occupying my time. Here, it doesn’t feel so necessary. I was telling my mom the other day: what exercise was to me in the past, music has become.
I play on the guitar when I get the chance. I’m learning slowly but surely. There are several Russian ditties I can play with no sharps and no flats, but after awhile they all start to sound the same. I found a new song with a key signature in two flats. It gives a fresh new flavor of music.
I think of the violin from time to time. I really went at it for a few weeks over the summer before my brothers came home, playing some really hard Bach sonatas that I’d been listening to over the course of the year. My efforts didn’t amount to much, but I tell myself that it’s not as important how it sounds as how you think it sounds. When I played, I didn’t hear the slipped cords and the off notes, I heard Joshua Bell playing Bach’s Violin Sonatas.
There are times when you listen to music that you wonder how nice it would be to be able to create those sounds yourself. There are passages in classical music that just blow me away with their beauty to the extent that no modern music ever has. Some music comes close. Some works on the classical guitar affect me almost as much as the famous European composers, but other than that, music has lost something over the years, hasn’t it? Why would anyone want to listen to pop?
Anyway, I miss the violin again. I’m glad I rented one over the summer. Had I not rented one, I‘d never have known that I‘m still capable of something. I haven’t completely forgotten how to play, and at times, I can play it close enough for my imagination to take over.
As I said above, the days are getting shorter. Accordingly, tomatoes are getting more expensive. I made the switch over to the carrot and beet salad that I ate so often last winter. So far it consists of boiled carrots, beats, diced raw garlic, and plenty of kefir. The kefir adds a nice touch, not just to cool the garlic off, but it also complements the veggies quite well.
In the carrot and beet salad, kefir comes across like sour cream, except it’s less creamy and more sour. Now who would ever think to use sour cream with cereal? I don’t know, but kefir goes very well with muesli. It’s almost the blandest thing you’ve ever tasted, which I’ve come to really appreciate. The lack of flavor is also a flavor, isn’t it? Indeed, kefir takes blandness to a new level, where it’s not just a lack of flavor, but even an anti-flavor.
Kefir is cleansing somehow. It reminds you of what other things taste like. Try tasting an apple after drinking, for example, coca-cola. The sugar content nukes you taste buds and the apple feels like paper in your mouth. But the pureness of kefir leaves you ready to taste the sugar in even the bitterest of green apples! I love it.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
2.11.09
I always keep at least a few thousand ruble at home in order to avoid having to frequently visit the bank where I can get my money without extra charges. I’m down to my last twenty five hundred ruble at home, so I’ve finally got to go back to the bank.
I was there yesterday, but it was closed. I had just bought a book at the store next to the chess club. I was waiting for the tempo tournament to start. After returning from the bank, I fished for loose change in my backpack to come up with the fifty five ruble tax for idiots who think they can win the tournament, and, after entering, had fewer than ten ruble on me - not enough for a bus ride home.
Of four or five matches, I won one and lost the others. Most of the loses were not so terribly played, but one in particular really jived me, mostly because my opponent was the peppiest, smuggest Russian I’ve yet seen. He was dressed like a Parisian businessman and made his moves (especially the last two) in such a manner as though he were taking out last week’s trash. I had spent a third of my time thinking about my previous move and after all that time overseen what cost me the match.
The room where we were playing was really cold. I found myself nearly shivering although I had a long sleeve sweater on under my winter jacket. I should’ve gotten up, walked around and looked at some other games, but I hardly ever put my opponent in such a position that he spends time thinking about how to reply. Usually I’m the one thinking about the next move. So yesterday I sat and thought and froze. After three hours there were still several matches left in the tournament, but I had had enough. I got out of there and walked home.
The city turned on the heating a few weeks ago. Up to last night, whenever I came home, I usually opened the door to the balcony to let some of the cool night air in. Last night was the first night when I really appreciated the warmth I felt as I entered my apartment. I took off my jacket and put some beans on the stove before taking a seat with the book I bought while waiting for the chess tournament to start, Преступление и Наказание. I had glanced at it before buying it and was pleasantly surprised at how much I understood just by reading random segments. However, reading from the beginning proves to be more difficult than expected.
I’ve been to the drama theater twice. On both occasions I ended up buying a ticket on a whim. The first time, two weeks ago tomorrow, I was walking along Pushkinskaya through Revolution Park. I had to get back in time for a lesson, but I figured since the theater was right there, I’d stop in to see if there were tickets available for Romeo and Juliet that weekend. There weren’t. But I left with a ticket to the show that evening, called “Expecting a miracle.” I had no idea what it was about, but I didn’t care. If I wasn’t going to go that coming weekend, then I would go that evening - when would I have the chance again?
The play was a teeny-bopper love story, about a young man who just returned from obligatory service in the army and whose mother encourages him to study engineering, disapproves of his aspirations to be an actor, and directs any young woman she likes his way. The young man then falls in love with his best friend’s girlfriend who declares that it would take a miracle for her to fall for him. In the final scene the young man delivers with a funny and rather touching clown act - fitting, since the girl, who was an actress, had mentioned she would prefer to be in a circus.
The second play I saw was called “Lessons for Sons and Daughters”. It was based on some classical literature. In one act, two daughters fall for a poor Russian who disguises himself as a Frenchman, apparently to deceive someone out of some money. In the second act, a rich young man needs to get married. He falls in love with just about anyone he meets, and it’s supposed to be funny.
Maybe it was too, but I just didn’t understand enough.
Speaking of understanding, I understand more and more Russian every day. That really isn’t saying much. For me, learning a language means taking 1.01 steps forward followed by 1 step backward. It’s a very slow process. Some people say that there’s a certain moment after which everything becomes easy: You understand and are understood. I’ve never had any such moment, nor do I think there will be one for me. I’ll just plug along at a snails pace and end up hopefully at a more or less proficient level.
To be fair, few normal people learn a language quickly, not even their native language. Indeed, be it your first or your fifth, if you want to learn a language well, I think it takes years. Looking at it that way, it’s interesting to compare one’s mastery of their native language and a foreign language. I started learning Russian four years ago, and have studied it seriously for around two years. I would say that in some ways, I can speak Russian better than I could speak English when I was four years old.
Is that a fair comparison? After all, you have to give a toddler some credit for its youth -they say it’s easier for a young person to learn a language than for a person my age, which I think is contentious. I contend that the circumstances play a huge role: the young person, whether it’s learning its native language or a second, goes to school where they speak the language all the time; after school the young person plays with its friends and watches TV in the language. In order to claim that younger people learn languages easier than older people, a scientist would have to put an older person in the same environment as the young person is in; otherwise it’s just not fair. Have scientists performed this experiment? I almost doubt that they have, for what person my age or older would volunteer to move to a land to speak and listen and learn a completely foreign language day in and day out? Besides myself, I can’t think of anyone crazy enough for that.
A scientist might not let me volunteer either, because if I were to take part in such an experiment, I would put in more effort than anyone twenty years younger could possibly muster. Maybe that’s the kicker: young people can learn a language without any effort. I can’t say that I’m not making an effort to learn Russian. Indeed, in my position I could very easily not learn any Russian at all. I wouldn’t be the first such American here.
I said above that I want to be at a proficient level by the end. The end won’t be for awhile yet. I don’t miss home. I think I’ll spend another year in Russia. Next year, I want to attend a university here, if for nothing else than to take an internationally recognized exam to certify my level in Russian. I could study a few other things as well.
This morning it snowed for the first time this year. I took a thousand ruble and set off for groceries. At twenty five ruble to a dollar, one thousand would be forty dollars; at thirty to one, one thousand ruble equals thirty three dollars with change. Currently the exchange is upwards of twenty nine ruble to a dollar. I spent five hundred ruble for two liters of kefir, a kilogram (2.2 lbs) of pearl barley, a kilogram of buckwheat, a kilogram of raw peas, five hundred grams of black beans, ten apples, a lemon, three heads of garlic, seven small tomatoes, nine bell peppers, a loaf of dark bread, and five frozen chicken breasts.
I loaded up on kefir just in case I’m getting sick. It seemed to me that I was coming down with something nasty yesterday. Maybe it was from sitting in the cold playing chess for so long. I came home to my warm apartment and ate a few raw cloves of garlic. My stomach not being what it was back in the day, I had to down a few glasses of kefir to sooth the burning in my mouth and belly. Raw garlic and kefir are an excellent combination for a snack, and I suspect they pack a punch for any diseases that you might be hosting.
I baked the chicken this evening. It was a success in that I didn’t have a smoky apartment after using the oven, but I wouldn’t mind having a better marinade. I tried honey and mustard with rosemary and red wine. It wasn’t too bad. Maybe I should have let it soak in the fridge longer. Let me know if you have any suggestions on marinating chicken.
I always keep at least a few thousand ruble at home in order to avoid having to frequently visit the bank where I can get my money without extra charges. I’m down to my last twenty five hundred ruble at home, so I’ve finally got to go back to the bank.
I was there yesterday, but it was closed. I had just bought a book at the store next to the chess club. I was waiting for the tempo tournament to start. After returning from the bank, I fished for loose change in my backpack to come up with the fifty five ruble tax for idiots who think they can win the tournament, and, after entering, had fewer than ten ruble on me - not enough for a bus ride home.
Of four or five matches, I won one and lost the others. Most of the loses were not so terribly played, but one in particular really jived me, mostly because my opponent was the peppiest, smuggest Russian I’ve yet seen. He was dressed like a Parisian businessman and made his moves (especially the last two) in such a manner as though he were taking out last week’s trash. I had spent a third of my time thinking about my previous move and after all that time overseen what cost me the match.
The room where we were playing was really cold. I found myself nearly shivering although I had a long sleeve sweater on under my winter jacket. I should’ve gotten up, walked around and looked at some other games, but I hardly ever put my opponent in such a position that he spends time thinking about how to reply. Usually I’m the one thinking about the next move. So yesterday I sat and thought and froze. After three hours there were still several matches left in the tournament, but I had had enough. I got out of there and walked home.
The city turned on the heating a few weeks ago. Up to last night, whenever I came home, I usually opened the door to the balcony to let some of the cool night air in. Last night was the first night when I really appreciated the warmth I felt as I entered my apartment. I took off my jacket and put some beans on the stove before taking a seat with the book I bought while waiting for the chess tournament to start, Преступление и Наказание. I had glanced at it before buying it and was pleasantly surprised at how much I understood just by reading random segments. However, reading from the beginning proves to be more difficult than expected.
I’ve been to the drama theater twice. On both occasions I ended up buying a ticket on a whim. The first time, two weeks ago tomorrow, I was walking along Pushkinskaya through Revolution Park. I had to get back in time for a lesson, but I figured since the theater was right there, I’d stop in to see if there were tickets available for Romeo and Juliet that weekend. There weren’t. But I left with a ticket to the show that evening, called “Expecting a miracle.” I had no idea what it was about, but I didn’t care. If I wasn’t going to go that coming weekend, then I would go that evening - when would I have the chance again?
The play was a teeny-bopper love story, about a young man who just returned from obligatory service in the army and whose mother encourages him to study engineering, disapproves of his aspirations to be an actor, and directs any young woman she likes his way. The young man then falls in love with his best friend’s girlfriend who declares that it would take a miracle for her to fall for him. In the final scene the young man delivers with a funny and rather touching clown act - fitting, since the girl, who was an actress, had mentioned she would prefer to be in a circus.
The second play I saw was called “Lessons for Sons and Daughters”. It was based on some classical literature. In one act, two daughters fall for a poor Russian who disguises himself as a Frenchman, apparently to deceive someone out of some money. In the second act, a rich young man needs to get married. He falls in love with just about anyone he meets, and it’s supposed to be funny.
Maybe it was too, but I just didn’t understand enough.
Speaking of understanding, I understand more and more Russian every day. That really isn’t saying much. For me, learning a language means taking 1.01 steps forward followed by 1 step backward. It’s a very slow process. Some people say that there’s a certain moment after which everything becomes easy: You understand and are understood. I’ve never had any such moment, nor do I think there will be one for me. I’ll just plug along at a snails pace and end up hopefully at a more or less proficient level.
To be fair, few normal people learn a language quickly, not even their native language. Indeed, be it your first or your fifth, if you want to learn a language well, I think it takes years. Looking at it that way, it’s interesting to compare one’s mastery of their native language and a foreign language. I started learning Russian four years ago, and have studied it seriously for around two years. I would say that in some ways, I can speak Russian better than I could speak English when I was four years old.
Is that a fair comparison? After all, you have to give a toddler some credit for its youth -they say it’s easier for a young person to learn a language than for a person my age, which I think is contentious. I contend that the circumstances play a huge role: the young person, whether it’s learning its native language or a second, goes to school where they speak the language all the time; after school the young person plays with its friends and watches TV in the language. In order to claim that younger people learn languages easier than older people, a scientist would have to put an older person in the same environment as the young person is in; otherwise it’s just not fair. Have scientists performed this experiment? I almost doubt that they have, for what person my age or older would volunteer to move to a land to speak and listen and learn a completely foreign language day in and day out? Besides myself, I can’t think of anyone crazy enough for that.
A scientist might not let me volunteer either, because if I were to take part in such an experiment, I would put in more effort than anyone twenty years younger could possibly muster. Maybe that’s the kicker: young people can learn a language without any effort. I can’t say that I’m not making an effort to learn Russian. Indeed, in my position I could very easily not learn any Russian at all. I wouldn’t be the first such American here.
I said above that I want to be at a proficient level by the end. The end won’t be for awhile yet. I don’t miss home. I think I’ll spend another year in Russia. Next year, I want to attend a university here, if for nothing else than to take an internationally recognized exam to certify my level in Russian. I could study a few other things as well.
This morning it snowed for the first time this year. I took a thousand ruble and set off for groceries. At twenty five ruble to a dollar, one thousand would be forty dollars; at thirty to one, one thousand ruble equals thirty three dollars with change. Currently the exchange is upwards of twenty nine ruble to a dollar. I spent five hundred ruble for two liters of kefir, a kilogram (2.2 lbs) of pearl barley, a kilogram of buckwheat, a kilogram of raw peas, five hundred grams of black beans, ten apples, a lemon, three heads of garlic, seven small tomatoes, nine bell peppers, a loaf of dark bread, and five frozen chicken breasts.
I loaded up on kefir just in case I’m getting sick. It seemed to me that I was coming down with something nasty yesterday. Maybe it was from sitting in the cold playing chess for so long. I came home to my warm apartment and ate a few raw cloves of garlic. My stomach not being what it was back in the day, I had to down a few glasses of kefir to sooth the burning in my mouth and belly. Raw garlic and kefir are an excellent combination for a snack, and I suspect they pack a punch for any diseases that you might be hosting.
I baked the chicken this evening. It was a success in that I didn’t have a smoky apartment after using the oven, but I wouldn’t mind having a better marinade. I tried honey and mustard with rosemary and red wine. It wasn’t too bad. Maybe I should have let it soak in the fridge longer. Let me know if you have any suggestions on marinating chicken.
Monday, October 26, 2009
26.10.09
On Thursday one of the secrataries took me to a radio station. The company needed someone to say “Do you speak English?” without a Russian accent. That’s what they told me anyway. Allegedly a few of them had tried, but it just didn’t sound like it should.
I was a little disgruntled at first for being dragged away on a busy day for such a ridiculous reason, but as soon as we left the building, I welcomed the interruption. It was sunny and temperate with about another hour of daylight. It made for pleasant walking to and from the bustops.
The radio station wasn’t far from where I lived, only one stop along Bolshaya Cadovaya past Budionovski prospect, which is my street. At the station, they took some foam padding which you often see on the walls of recording studios, folded it into a tunnel shape and held it around my head as I intimately asked the microphone if it speaks English.
We had to hurry back to the school. The secretary had some business to finish, and I had to get ready for my last lesson of the day. It was one of my group lessons, which in my experience require a lot more preparation than individual lessons. However, as we got off the bus we noticed a small rally going on at the region’s capital building, and I convinced my escort to wait with me for a few minutes to listen.
Evidently, there’s going to be some sort of election in November. I don’t think it’s an important election, otherwise you would notice more advertisements. Maybe it’s not an election at all, and there are just a few propositions to vote on.
We listened for a few minutes to a man from the KPRF, Russia’s communist party, speak about political problems and solutions. He used some vulgar language to describe some of his opponents from other parties, calling them dogs and ‘svolatch‘, which I think Sasha once told me means peat, but which is generally used to describe a person and which I figure is about as rude as ’dickhead’ or ’prick’ in English.
I asked my colleagues how the KPRF can expect to gain any credibility if they’re speaking with such language. They didn‘t have much to say about it. Maybe that language isn’t so vulgar after all.
I went to a soccer game last night. Rostov was playing against the champions of the Russian premier league, Rubin, from Kazan. I had watched Rubin play FC Barcelona in the Champions league the previous Tuesday. Rubin won that match against all odds. Out of the three shots they had on goal the entire match, they scored two, whereas Barcelona, despite their overall domination and many scoring opportunities, managed only one goal.
I didn’t think Rostov would control the match last night as Barcelona had. On the other hand, someone had told me that Rostove had the reputation of beating the stronger teams and losing to the weaker ones. Rubin was definitely one of the former.
Rostov lost, two to one. Neither of Rubin’s goals were really hard-earned. Had Rostov been a little more careful, either or both could have been avoided. The first one came after Dominguez, an Argentinian forward playing for Rubin, intercepted a pass across the center and scored easily. The second happened just before half-time when a Rubin defender stole the ball in Rostov territory and managed a shot, which however well-struck and aimed, the goalie should’ve blocked without too much trouble.
Rostov scored right after the second half started. The goal resulted after a long ping-pong rally in front of Rubin’s goal, so long as to keep the crowd gasping in repeated expectation and disappointment until the ball finally sailed out of a barrage of feet into the net. It was pretty uplifting. There was plenty of time for Rostov to score a second goal, but the opportunity never really came. Rubin also had a number of opportunities, but Rostov mangaged to fight them off somehow. Rubin’s offense was very strong, lead by Dominguez in the center, and a short, stout, and really fast balding guy on the flank.
It was Dominguez who assisted the balding player in the second goal against Barcelona. It was a beautiful goal. Barcelona had, like a computer glitch, lost the ball at midfield and all but three touches later Dominguez had delivered and the short guy had scored. It was remarkable that the two attackers could maintain their composure so well. They hadn’t possessed the ball the entire half, and they wouldn’t possess it again for the rest of the game. Together they had one chance and they capitalized. That’s something Barcelona can’t claim. That made all the difference.
I also watched part of another Champions league match, ZSK, from Moscow I think, versus Manchester United. ZSK is one of the better Russian teams which Rostov has beaten twice this season. The match against Manchester United wasn’t as one-sided as the Barcelona Rubin match, but the British were victorious nonetheless.
All this soccer makes me want to be in a smaller country, where the games are easier to visit. I shouldn’t complain that in Rostov I can only see Rostov play, but if I were in a European country, England, Spain, Italy or Germany, I could travel relatively short distances to see many different games. I learned recently that Milan even has two professional teams: AC Milan and Inter. I asked the Italian who works at the school here, the only other foreigner besides myself and the other American, if Italian people speak English well. He said no. That’s interesting.
Then again, there might not be such high-level chess in Europe. I need to recognize a good thing when I have it!
On Thursday one of the secrataries took me to a radio station. The company needed someone to say “Do you speak English?” without a Russian accent. That’s what they told me anyway. Allegedly a few of them had tried, but it just didn’t sound like it should.
I was a little disgruntled at first for being dragged away on a busy day for such a ridiculous reason, but as soon as we left the building, I welcomed the interruption. It was sunny and temperate with about another hour of daylight. It made for pleasant walking to and from the bustops.
The radio station wasn’t far from where I lived, only one stop along Bolshaya Cadovaya past Budionovski prospect, which is my street. At the station, they took some foam padding which you often see on the walls of recording studios, folded it into a tunnel shape and held it around my head as I intimately asked the microphone if it speaks English.
We had to hurry back to the school. The secretary had some business to finish, and I had to get ready for my last lesson of the day. It was one of my group lessons, which in my experience require a lot more preparation than individual lessons. However, as we got off the bus we noticed a small rally going on at the region’s capital building, and I convinced my escort to wait with me for a few minutes to listen.
Evidently, there’s going to be some sort of election in November. I don’t think it’s an important election, otherwise you would notice more advertisements. Maybe it’s not an election at all, and there are just a few propositions to vote on.
We listened for a few minutes to a man from the KPRF, Russia’s communist party, speak about political problems and solutions. He used some vulgar language to describe some of his opponents from other parties, calling them dogs and ‘svolatch‘, which I think Sasha once told me means peat, but which is generally used to describe a person and which I figure is about as rude as ’dickhead’ or ’prick’ in English.
I asked my colleagues how the KPRF can expect to gain any credibility if they’re speaking with such language. They didn‘t have much to say about it. Maybe that language isn’t so vulgar after all.
I went to a soccer game last night. Rostov was playing against the champions of the Russian premier league, Rubin, from Kazan. I had watched Rubin play FC Barcelona in the Champions league the previous Tuesday. Rubin won that match against all odds. Out of the three shots they had on goal the entire match, they scored two, whereas Barcelona, despite their overall domination and many scoring opportunities, managed only one goal.
I didn’t think Rostov would control the match last night as Barcelona had. On the other hand, someone had told me that Rostove had the reputation of beating the stronger teams and losing to the weaker ones. Rubin was definitely one of the former.
Rostov lost, two to one. Neither of Rubin’s goals were really hard-earned. Had Rostov been a little more careful, either or both could have been avoided. The first one came after Dominguez, an Argentinian forward playing for Rubin, intercepted a pass across the center and scored easily. The second happened just before half-time when a Rubin defender stole the ball in Rostov territory and managed a shot, which however well-struck and aimed, the goalie should’ve blocked without too much trouble.
Rostov scored right after the second half started. The goal resulted after a long ping-pong rally in front of Rubin’s goal, so long as to keep the crowd gasping in repeated expectation and disappointment until the ball finally sailed out of a barrage of feet into the net. It was pretty uplifting. There was plenty of time for Rostov to score a second goal, but the opportunity never really came. Rubin also had a number of opportunities, but Rostov mangaged to fight them off somehow. Rubin’s offense was very strong, lead by Dominguez in the center, and a short, stout, and really fast balding guy on the flank.
It was Dominguez who assisted the balding player in the second goal against Barcelona. It was a beautiful goal. Barcelona had, like a computer glitch, lost the ball at midfield and all but three touches later Dominguez had delivered and the short guy had scored. It was remarkable that the two attackers could maintain their composure so well. They hadn’t possessed the ball the entire half, and they wouldn’t possess it again for the rest of the game. Together they had one chance and they capitalized. That’s something Barcelona can’t claim. That made all the difference.
I also watched part of another Champions league match, ZSK, from Moscow I think, versus Manchester United. ZSK is one of the better Russian teams which Rostov has beaten twice this season. The match against Manchester United wasn’t as one-sided as the Barcelona Rubin match, but the British were victorious nonetheless.
All this soccer makes me want to be in a smaller country, where the games are easier to visit. I shouldn’t complain that in Rostov I can only see Rostov play, but if I were in a European country, England, Spain, Italy or Germany, I could travel relatively short distances to see many different games. I learned recently that Milan even has two professional teams: AC Milan and Inter. I asked the Italian who works at the school here, the only other foreigner besides myself and the other American, if Italian people speak English well. He said no. That’s interesting.
Then again, there might not be such high-level chess in Europe. I need to recognize a good thing when I have it!
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
19.10.09
I had one day to rest after my arrival in Rostov before I started teaching. At the time, I would have appreciated a little longer period to adjust, but looking back, I think that I could only adjust after starting work, so in a way it was good to start so soon. Right after my first lesson, I walked triumphantly into the teacher’s office only to find my colleagues thrusting textbooks in my face declaring that another teacher hadn’t shown up and I was the only one available to cover him.
Up to that time, my experience teaching English had involved meticulous preparation for every lesson. I had poured my blood and sweat into inspiring my students to learn English, I had spent countless sleepless nights calculating the words I would use to explain some complicated structure to people who, on a good day, understood fifty percent of whatever I said.
And there I stood, on the first day of my new job, walking into an unknown classroom with books I’d never seen before in hand, with a faint idea of the topics recently covered in class, trying to think of instructive things to do for the next two hours and fifteen minutes. In the back of my mind I wondered if I was being watched from another room where they had popcorn and beer. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a camera in the classroom.
It turns out that the students were rather advanced. It was easy to start a discussion. We reviewed some previous material, spent some time comparing education in America and Russia, and in the last twenty minutes or so, we finally turned to our books and practiced the passive voice. Who knows if I actually taught them something? I was happy that nobody had fallen asleep. In any case, I left the classroom somehow feeling like a teacher.
Almost all of my students are more advanced than the ones I taught a year ago. I think the company won’t give me beginners because beginners need to be spoken to partly in Russian, and having an American speak Russian is such a waste! I agree, as far as teaching is concerned. I speak nary a Russian word to my students during class. If you consider language as a form of music, note that you can’t teach a violinist to play the cello by using a violin. Or maybe you can use a violin at first to illustrate the various analogues, but eventually you’ll have to use a cello! So I don’t speak Russian in class.
I’m happy to report that the administration has been rather lenient in their request that I speak English outside of class. There have even been a few occasions when my boss addressed me in Russian. While I usually address her in English, I speak freely (though not at all fluently) with my colleagues in Russian. I think it might bother some people, so every once in awhile I utter an English sentence or two to appease the disgruntled ones.
Of nine or so matches yesterday, I only won two of them. My first opponent was Gilbert Godfrey. He didn’t mind playing quickly, even though we both had fifteen minutes. Maybe he thought it was to his advantage to play quick. It didn’t take ten moves before I found the position going more and more in his favor. A piece down, I held my own for the next few moves before a grandiose collapse and my resignation.
I lost the second match too, but in the third match I faced an Asian looking fellow who, although beating me on time the previous week, I had found at least as amateur as myself. Maybe it was a reflection of my first impression of the man’s play, or maybe his attacks and parries really were a bit less effective than those of the other players. Playing black, with pawn to h6, forcing his knight back to h3, followed by knight to d4, driving his queen back to d1, I managed to gain momentum and the queen side all to myself.
I will paint a clearer picture for any chess audience out there (I hope mom can share this with grandpa). I had pawns on e6,e5 and d5, a bishop on d4, my queen on b6, a knight on f6 and rooks on f8 and d8. The king and remaining pawns were where you might imagine them to be. He had pawns on f3,e4, d3, c2 and b3, his knight on f2, bishop on d2, queen on d1, and, having just castled so to protect (and pin) his knight, the king on g1, and rooks on f1 and b1. If I described the position correctly, then I think black is set to win at least the f2 knight. It’s black to play. If you have a board on hand, set it up. I’d be interested in hearing what you’d play.
After winning the knight and forking the queen and rook, I won that match. The Asian guy ran out of time. I didn’t want to chase down all his pawns, so I called it a match. I won the next match too. My opponent had orchestrated a stealthy attack, but as luck would have it, I had coincidentally moved my bishop out of the queen’s way so as to protect the pawn which, unbeknownst to me, had been under attack during the previous few moves. I won a piece in the exchange, only to give a piece away shortly thereafter. My opponent blundered in turn, giving me his queen for nothing, and I notched my second point of the day. The match after that was going in my favor too, but I blew it, as I so often do. The rest of the day for me was downhill from there.
The winner yesterday was the guy whom one of the young women almost beat at table seven during the tournament which took place during my first two weeks in Rostov. I’ll call him stoneface. I don’t think he knows how to smile. Or maybe the nerve endings to his mouth have atrophied from playing too much chess. Why waste the brain power on facial expressions? He is a computer personified. Maybe his only weakness is playing against young women. I would love to see him play the champ, who didn’t take part in the tournament yesterday, but arrived only to watch the last few rounds. The grandmaster was also there.
Walking home on Saturday evening, I encountered some of the chess crowd at Gorkii Park. Among them were the grandmaster and an acquaintance with whom I converse in German. He doesn’t want to speak Russian with me any more than I want to speak English with him - he speaks broken English too, and is eager to practice more. I confirmed that I had gotten his message about the German club meetings, and was about to leave when a random guy interrupted us, inquiring if I spoke English. He explained happily that he was an artist, that he had a friend in New York and was dying to meet someone to converse in English with. I said that I wasn’t looking for any more work, and he replied by repeating what he had said in an even more jubilant manner. After repeating this three or four times, he took the hint and left. I chatted with the linguist for a few minutes, and continued on my way home.
I had one day to rest after my arrival in Rostov before I started teaching. At the time, I would have appreciated a little longer period to adjust, but looking back, I think that I could only adjust after starting work, so in a way it was good to start so soon. Right after my first lesson, I walked triumphantly into the teacher’s office only to find my colleagues thrusting textbooks in my face declaring that another teacher hadn’t shown up and I was the only one available to cover him.
Up to that time, my experience teaching English had involved meticulous preparation for every lesson. I had poured my blood and sweat into inspiring my students to learn English, I had spent countless sleepless nights calculating the words I would use to explain some complicated structure to people who, on a good day, understood fifty percent of whatever I said.
And there I stood, on the first day of my new job, walking into an unknown classroom with books I’d never seen before in hand, with a faint idea of the topics recently covered in class, trying to think of instructive things to do for the next two hours and fifteen minutes. In the back of my mind I wondered if I was being watched from another room where they had popcorn and beer. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a camera in the classroom.
It turns out that the students were rather advanced. It was easy to start a discussion. We reviewed some previous material, spent some time comparing education in America and Russia, and in the last twenty minutes or so, we finally turned to our books and practiced the passive voice. Who knows if I actually taught them something? I was happy that nobody had fallen asleep. In any case, I left the classroom somehow feeling like a teacher.
Almost all of my students are more advanced than the ones I taught a year ago. I think the company won’t give me beginners because beginners need to be spoken to partly in Russian, and having an American speak Russian is such a waste! I agree, as far as teaching is concerned. I speak nary a Russian word to my students during class. If you consider language as a form of music, note that you can’t teach a violinist to play the cello by using a violin. Or maybe you can use a violin at first to illustrate the various analogues, but eventually you’ll have to use a cello! So I don’t speak Russian in class.
I’m happy to report that the administration has been rather lenient in their request that I speak English outside of class. There have even been a few occasions when my boss addressed me in Russian. While I usually address her in English, I speak freely (though not at all fluently) with my colleagues in Russian. I think it might bother some people, so every once in awhile I utter an English sentence or two to appease the disgruntled ones.
Of nine or so matches yesterday, I only won two of them. My first opponent was Gilbert Godfrey. He didn’t mind playing quickly, even though we both had fifteen minutes. Maybe he thought it was to his advantage to play quick. It didn’t take ten moves before I found the position going more and more in his favor. A piece down, I held my own for the next few moves before a grandiose collapse and my resignation.
I lost the second match too, but in the third match I faced an Asian looking fellow who, although beating me on time the previous week, I had found at least as amateur as myself. Maybe it was a reflection of my first impression of the man’s play, or maybe his attacks and parries really were a bit less effective than those of the other players. Playing black, with pawn to h6, forcing his knight back to h3, followed by knight to d4, driving his queen back to d1, I managed to gain momentum and the queen side all to myself.
I will paint a clearer picture for any chess audience out there (I hope mom can share this with grandpa). I had pawns on e6,e5 and d5, a bishop on d4, my queen on b6, a knight on f6 and rooks on f8 and d8. The king and remaining pawns were where you might imagine them to be. He had pawns on f3,e4, d3, c2 and b3, his knight on f2, bishop on d2, queen on d1, and, having just castled so to protect (and pin) his knight, the king on g1, and rooks on f1 and b1. If I described the position correctly, then I think black is set to win at least the f2 knight. It’s black to play. If you have a board on hand, set it up. I’d be interested in hearing what you’d play.
After winning the knight and forking the queen and rook, I won that match. The Asian guy ran out of time. I didn’t want to chase down all his pawns, so I called it a match. I won the next match too. My opponent had orchestrated a stealthy attack, but as luck would have it, I had coincidentally moved my bishop out of the queen’s way so as to protect the pawn which, unbeknownst to me, had been under attack during the previous few moves. I won a piece in the exchange, only to give a piece away shortly thereafter. My opponent blundered in turn, giving me his queen for nothing, and I notched my second point of the day. The match after that was going in my favor too, but I blew it, as I so often do. The rest of the day for me was downhill from there.
The winner yesterday was the guy whom one of the young women almost beat at table seven during the tournament which took place during my first two weeks in Rostov. I’ll call him stoneface. I don’t think he knows how to smile. Or maybe the nerve endings to his mouth have atrophied from playing too much chess. Why waste the brain power on facial expressions? He is a computer personified. Maybe his only weakness is playing against young women. I would love to see him play the champ, who didn’t take part in the tournament yesterday, but arrived only to watch the last few rounds. The grandmaster was also there.
Walking home on Saturday evening, I encountered some of the chess crowd at Gorkii Park. Among them were the grandmaster and an acquaintance with whom I converse in German. He doesn’t want to speak Russian with me any more than I want to speak English with him - he speaks broken English too, and is eager to practice more. I confirmed that I had gotten his message about the German club meetings, and was about to leave when a random guy interrupted us, inquiring if I spoke English. He explained happily that he was an artist, that he had a friend in New York and was dying to meet someone to converse in English with. I said that I wasn’t looking for any more work, and he replied by repeating what he had said in an even more jubilant manner. After repeating this three or four times, he took the hint and left. I chatted with the linguist for a few minutes, and continued on my way home.
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