Mission To Moscow

A Reply

2011-09-19T14:53:00.002-04:00

After closing down this blog earlier this year, it came to my attention that my post "50 Facts About Russians" was discussed on a Moscow radio show, and afterwards I received hundreds of emails and many comments.

Half of the emails were positive responses and half were negative, and a few were quite hostile. I decided that, despite shutting down the blog, I owe it to readers to reply to their comments.

First, thank you everybody for your emails and comments. I published the choicest ones on the page and deleted the more obscene and ignorant ones. Most were good but I just did not have the space to publish all of them, or the time to reply. However, know that your messages were read.

Second, these "50 Facts" were written with humour and sarcasm. Many people understood this, but many did not. For those who didn't understand this, well, please don't send me emails.

Third, during my time in Russia I fell in love with the country. Now that I'm back in Canada all I can do is dream of returning to Russia. There is a "feel" and a deep spirituality in Russia that feels more human than in the West, more personable, and I miss it. However, there are downsides, such as the disintegrating roads, the corruption, and the horrible, horrible customer service that I can personally do without. It is my hope that Russians will get these things under control without sacrificing their culture and history.

Fourth, to reply to some specific comments, the crowds on the Moscow metro ARE insane, and I got hit repeatedly every single day. I was pushed and jostled and squeezed, had my toes crushed and my ribs elbowed...every day. The person who said this isn't true has obviously never been on the red line at 4 in the afternoon on a Wednesday.

The customer service in Russia IS horrible. There are some decent establishments, but 90% of the shops, restaurants, kiosks and everything else are cold and impersonal, and it seems the customer is an inconvenience to the clerk/server.

Not all Russians are alcoholics. After reviewing my "50 Facts" I realize that this post came off sounding this way. Many of my students didn't drink at all, and a couple of my Russian friends also didn't go near alcohol. In fact, there's a movement in Russia calling on Russians to "put down the bottle!". The Russian government has been taking steps to curb the sales of alcohol, and people are aware of the social problems associated with drinking. However, those Russians who do drink, can REALLY drink!

When Russians DO drink, they tend to do so in the kitchen with many friends, and have lively philosophical debates about life. At least, in my experience, the experience of my Western friends, and from what my Russian friends, students and wife have told me.

I would personally rather walk down the streets of Moscow, around Fili or Kurskaya, Kitai Gorod or even Yaroslavski Voksal, at 3 am then any street in any American city at the same time.

Russia IS incredibly beautiful in the winter. It's almost a real-life fairy-tale, with the white snow and trees and Orthodox churches, people fashionably dressed in warm furs and the smell of delicious food on the still winter air.

Feminism began in ENGLAND, not Russia (as one commenter tried to inform me). It spread to America very quickly after that. Nothing like political feminism ever really appeared in Russia until very recently.

Being a reporter during the Chechnya conflict was a lot more dangerous than during the Vietnam conflict. More than 22 journalists were killed or went missing in Chechnya, while only 8 were ever killed in Vietnam. After the conflict many Russian journalists who had criticized the Russian government wound up dead or missing.

Fifth, I could write a similar list of somewhat funny Canadian stereotypes, but I don't need to. Plenty of people have done so already (Read "Why I Hate Canadians" by Will Ferguson). However, I encourage any Russian person who has lived in Canada for longer than 1 year to submit a similar list, and I will gladly post it on this blog. You can email me at : ate_the_pain@live.ca

My First Time, and My Last

2011-04-03T09:47:00.010-04:00

I've been lucky in my travels so far, having been to such places as South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Austria, Russia, Sweden and England. But before I had set out to tramp through distant lands, I also had the opportunity to explore my own backyard. I've been up and down the eastern seaboard of the United States as well as Washinton and Oregon states, and I can say with some authority that South Carolina is the friendliest place in North America.

I've also been able, by sheer good fortune, to travel from coast to coast in my own country, Canada.

In 2002, one year before I first set out to South Korea, I took it upon myself to make my way from my college town of Hamilton, Ontario to the Pacific Ocean. My fourth year was coming to an end and my girlfriend of two years had broken up with me. She claimed that our lives were heading in different directions, but really I knew it was because I was doing copious amounts of drugs by that point. I took stock of my life, not knowing what to do after college, having no money and a sudden largess of personal freedom. I decided to head to Banff, Alberta.

Banff is a National Park nestled in the Rocky Mountains. There are a couple of resort towns and the Trans-Canada Highway (Highway 1!) that make up this otherwise unspoiled rugged landscape, and the town of Banff is where I was heading. Searching online, I found a job as a fine-dining waiter at Johnston Canyon Resort and applied. Within a few days I had the job. It only paid $8 an hour, and a chunk of that pay was taken off for accomodations and food, but I didn't care. It wasn't about the money for me.

Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

In May of 2002 I landed in Calgary and caught a greyhound to Banff, a few hours to the west. It was the first time I had really travelled, and even though it was within the borders of my own country, for me it was an exhilarating and exotic adventure. The Rocky Mountains towered above me on either side of the road as the bus wound its way along the Trans-Canada and deposited me at the Banff bus depot. I was the only person getting off at this stop, and as the bus pulled out I stood on the platform with my single suitcase and took in the awesome beauty of Canada's untouched wild west. From that moment on, my travelling fate was sealed.

I met in girl in Banff; a blonde co-worker who did roomkeeping at Johnston Canyon Resort, and we fooleded around from time to time but unless it was night and she was feeling frisky we ignored each other. There were about 20 staff there, and on weekends we would all car-pool into town and hit up the local pubs, of which there are three or four. On one occasion the girls declared a "girls night" and so the guys retaliated with a "guys night". I was against this line of thought, arguing in favour of hanging out with girls rather than having a sausage fest, but I was alone. We guys went to a basement pub and proceeded to drink away our measly earnings. After a few hours I managed to convince my male coworkers, now drunk, to crash the girls night. Our female colleagues were drinking in a much fancier bar across the street.

We grabbed our pitchers of beer and set out across the street. Unfortunately the bouncer at the bar across the street saw me with my pitcher trying to get in and yelled "Hey! You can't bring that in here!" I don't know why, but I turned and bolted. Like a dog, the bouncer ran after me. I ran and ran across a parking lot, laughing like an idiot the whole time while beer from my pitcher sloshed across my chest. Finally, out of breath and laughing, I stopped. Then I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. It was the bouncer. "Give me that!" He ordered, trying to get the pitcher from me. "Fuck you! Go get your own!" I defied. He seemed confused and said "You're banned from [***] Bar. And he walked back to his position at the front door.

That was fine with me. I saw the kitchen door to the bar was open and went in that way, emerging from behind the bar in the busy establishment. Nobody seemed to notice me, even the bartender had his back to me, so I casually walked over to the long table where all my co-workers, girls and guys, now sat. I still had my pitcher.

It was that night that I met the young woman who would later become the catalyst for my travels to Asia and Europe, first to Asia because we both wanted adventure and later to Europe because she broke my heart. Another blonde, from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, she was funny and pretty and personable and smart and very, very drunk. She had just arrived to work at Johnston Canyon and we got to know each other over the next few days, specifically because we worked together as servers in the restaurant. On many nights it was just the two of us, wearing white shirts and black pants, serving customers sitting at tables in candlelight, with views of the night time mountains all around while the same damned CD of Ella Fitzgerald played, night after night. Needless to say it was romantic in the extreme, and it wasn't very long before we were fucking.

We hooked up fast. X (because she's my ex), and her girlfriends she shared a room with, bought 1987 Honda Civic from a man with no hands who they nicknamed "Stumpy" for $600. This car had a great body for being over 20 years old, the result of using sand on the roads in the winter and not salt. There was no radio in the dashboard, only a big black hole. It was a manual transmission, and X was the only one among her friends who could drive manual. She began to teach me on those mountain roads in our time off. We also used the backseat of that car for other things...

Needless to say that I was hopelessly in love with X. We would spend every waking moment together, mostly making love but also driving around and talking and drinking wine by campfires in the mountain nights.

I had signed a contract with Johnston Canyon Resort to stay on until the tourist season ended in October, but by August working there was grinding on me. Management had a tip pool policy, which is great, except that the owners of the resort were included in the tip pool. All the hard-earned tips that the low-paid staff made was also pooled to the owners and their children! One of the owner's sons was a University professor in Calgary. He would stop in every weekend and collect his little envelope of tip money that the staff had earned. This was extremely unfair and everyone was bitching about it, but X and I bitched the loudest because, as the only two servers in the fine-dining restaurant, we were pulling in the most tips (people would order $200 meals, and Americans, who made up the bulk of our guests, are wonderful tippers).

I admit that I attempted to forment a mutiny at Johnston Canyon Resort, but some so-called friends had different loyalties, and one day, while sitting in my room between a split shift, the owner's son came up and said "Come outside. We need to talk." Those are words people never want to hear. I followed him outside, with the big pines and towering mountains enjoying the August sun. He turned on me. "You have 2o minutes to get your things and get the fuck off my property. You're lucky I don't beat you!"

I stammered back. "What? Why? You have to tell me why you're firing me!"

"I don't have to tell you shit! Get off my property!" He shouted.

Then, before I could recover with any type of clever comeback, he stormed off. I did as he said and a friend drove me into town with my suitcase.

I deposited myself at a restaurant and ordered coffee and tried to figure out what to do next. I had left a note with a friend before I left, slipping it into her hand, that read "Tell X I've been fired and will be at [*****] Restaurant (I forget the name)". I waited and waited. Finally, after two hours of sitting at the restaurant, X walked through the door. "Hi." I said. "Hi." she replied. "I got fired too!"

All she had with her was her suitcase and the Honda Civic we had bought for six-hundred bucks. As it turns out, it was all we needed.

We decided that it was time to head home. We didn't have very much money; just enough for gas and food to get us from the Rocky Mountains to her home in Cape Breton. We set out on the Trans-Canada heading east. We made sure to pick up a little batter-powered radio for the journey, and set it on the dashboard with it's antenna fully extended to pick up what stations it could (mostly CBC).

As the mountains receded in the rear-view mirror, we took in the landscape of Albert. East of Calgary the land is mostly desert, part of the great desert that stretches through America from Texas and Mexico. Most of the land in Alberta has been irrigated for agriculture but the odd cactus and desert brush gives away the secret. The Trans-Canada took us across this great desert to the prairies of Saskatchewan, where fields of wheat in high-bloom swayed in the wind. It's a unique phenomenon but some people actually get sea-sick on the prairies. We were lucky as neither of us get seasick.

The Canadian prairies

Saskatchewan and Manitoba are part of the great plains of North America, and the Trans-Canada took us all the way through towns with names like Medicine Hat, Swift Current and Brandon. As dusk set on the first day we made our way through Saskatchewan's capital, Regina, a small tree-lined city that pokes up from the otherwise unchanging prairie. We found a side-road in some trees east of Regina and parked the car for the night. We didn't have any money, so we were forced to sleep in the car. It was late-August and the temperatures were still warm, but the mosquitoes in the prairies tormented us all night with the windows down. We rolled up the windows and wrapped ourselves like sausages in what clothing and small blankets we could find (X had been smart enough to snag a couple of small blankets from Johnston Canyon).

Mosquitoes continued to buzz around us all night. Even with the windows up and the vents closed, they found their way in. As I was sleeping I would hear the high-pitched buzzing get closer and closer to my ear, until it was a deafening treble and then, just as suddenly, it would stop. That's when I knew I was being feasted upon. Every couple of hours I would wake up and go on a mad mosquito-killing rampage in the car.

It was a fitful and uncomfortable first night in the Bad Boy (as we named the car), but we woke up with the sunrise and set out on the road again. Saskatchewan fell away behind us and Manitoba opened up in front of us. The Trans-Canada through the prairies is a big 3-lane highway and flat as a board, so you can see it stretch over the horizon in either direction. Neat fields of wheat and barley stretched out for eternity to our left and right (a local saying is that in the prairies you can watch your dog run away for two days). We roared through Manitoba in the Bad Boy, doing in excess of 130 km/hour, until, when evening set in, we reached Winnipeg. The "Paris of the Prairies" is a large city with a bustling population that pops suddenly out of the sparsely populated prairies like the Emerald City. We splurged and took the exit into the city, just to check out one of Canada's famous landmarks, and sat down in a swanky bar for a beer.

We went over our maps and realized that, at the current rate, we would make Ottawa the following night, so I found a telephone and placed a collect call to my mother. My sister answered. "Hi!" I declared. "It's Paint!"

"Hi!" she answered, chipper as ever.

"I'm in Winnipeg!" I informed her.

"That's random." she replied.

We made arrangements to crash for a couple of nights at my family's place in Ottawa, and then set out in the Bad Boy again. It was late, maybe after 1 am, when we crossed the border into Ontario, and we pulled the car over in a parking lot behind a warehouse in some northern-Ontario hick town (the kind where the general store and hockey rink are the two biggest buildings in town). Some kids with mullets and baseball caps in a pickup truck followed us around for a bit, but we shook them and parked. Again, on our second night in the car, the mosquitoes tormented us to no end and at dawn, having barely slept, we set out.

A portion of the Trans-Canada Highway, Highway 1

Northern Ontario is part of the Canadian Shield, a solid-rock formation filled with nickel and other raw materials, covered in massive forests that stretch to the Arctic (part of the great Taiga that wraps around the northern hemisphere of the world) and the Trans-Canada was blasted through it. As a result the wide-open highway of the prairies turns, quite literally at the Manitoba-Ontario border, into a winding single-lane highway that snakes through tunnels and between cliff-faces. The Trans-Canada was built during World War Two to bring troops and supplies to the Pacific theatre and, more importantly, to Alaska. It has been modernized in most places but it seems Northern Ontario has been left out of the budget.

The Trans-Canada in Northern Ontario

As we wound our way through forest and over rivers and past lakes, I made an error in calculation. I saw that the highway splits at Thunder Bay, with one part heading south through Sudbury and Sault-St-Marie and on to Ottawa, while another, seemingly shorter route, curved up just south of Hudson's Bay and then stuck down directly to Ottawa. What I didn't notice was that on the page for the northern route, the scale of the map changed. My bad. We took the "shortcut" north, and ended up driving through desolate, poverty-stricken First Nation's reserves and slept in some tiny town with a name that completely escapes me. The good thing was that this far north, only a few hundred kilometers from the perma-frost line, the mosquitoes didn't bother us.

It took us two days to cross the prairies, and it took another two days to cross northern Ontario, but on the night of our fourth day since we had left Banff, we arrived at my mother's place in Ottawa. We were dirty and tired (although we had managed to shower at a truck stop), and we slept like the dead that night. We spent a few more days resting up, and eating, in Ottawa before getting back into the Bad Boy and making for Nova Scotia.

Ottawa is on the Ontario-Quebec border, so immediately upon leaving we were in "la belle province" on the big divided highway to Montreal (Autoroute 20). Montreal is a crazy city to drive in, as the 20 is almost always under construction (in Canada we say we have two seasons: winter and construction) and French-Canadian drivers are notoriously reckless. After Montreal we drove along the 20 for a few more hours and then came to historic Quebec City, where we crossed the St. Laurence and ended up in a suburb, Levis, which was actually quite nice. After Quebec City there isn't much civilization until Moncton, but the geography of eastern Quebec is stunningly beautiful.

With the St. Laurence to our left and very small and narrow farm plots to our right (Quebec follows the civic code of law, whereby fathers divy up their property to their sons, and over 400 years, as subsequent generations were given property, those plots have become very, very narrow but very long).

We reached the Gaspe Peninsula in the early evening and turned south at Riviere-de-Loups, into New Brunswick. We were in the Maritimes!

Here we made another mistake in calculation, and chose to go through a provincial park rather than stay on the main highway to Fredericton. The park went on and on and on, travelling on a single-lane road surrounded by a dark forest as the sun set in our rear view mirror. The gas gauge crept lower and lower. For some reason, on our little dashboard radio, Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer" started to play, a fitting soundtrack to our dilemna. We both couldn't help but roar with laughter. As the needle hovered over the "E" on the gauge, we finally emerged from that damned park and a gas station was the first thing we saw.

After filling up with our last $30, we made our way on to Moncton and St. John and finally crossed the border into Nova Scotia. A gigantic Atlantic fog bank rolled in as we passed through Truro, rendering visibility to almost nothing, but we continued to drive. It was late now, but we were only 3 hours from Cape Breton so we pushed on, and around 3 in the morning we pulled in to X's home, a beautiful old house set on 100 acres of seaside property. We had travelled from Ottawa to Cape Breton in about 15 hours!

It had taken us 5 days to cross Canada, from the Rockies to the Atlantic, with little food and no money for hotels, but somehow we had pulled it off. We stayed in Nova Scotia for about a month and then drove back to Ottawa and found work, apartment, etc...

The next year we set out to South Korea, and after a few years there we landed back in Ontario, but then, this time in a much newer car and loaded with a lot more money, we drove from southern Ontario to Victoria, British Columbia in a little over 4 days (staying in hotels and eating at restaurants...it wasn't nearly as fun). Two years later she left me for another guy and I began to make plans for more travel, which brought me to Russia.

That one summer, in 2002, was my first taste of travel, and, like a drug, all it takes is one to get hooked. Now, as I attempt to settle in Halifax, I greet the end of my youthful travelling days with a mix of sadness and relief. It's not easy living such a life, and while I look back upon my adventures with fondness, I am glad that I can begin to live a much more settled life. I'm sure that I'll have more travel, but from here on in I'm looking for the all-inclusive resort variety. I've had my time living out of a suitcase, and as I reach my mid-30s I feel the need to plant roots somewhere.

That is why, as I'm no longer in Moscow and I'm working on getting settled here in Halifax, I've decided to end Mission to Moscow with this story of how it all began. I hope everyone has enjoyed the blog I started three years ago. I appreciate all the emails and comments and online friends I've made, and everyone who followed along, through good times and bad, fun stories and boring.

The good news is that my writing is not all finished. I'd like to announce that I've successfully signed a book deal (with only 1% royalties) and my book, a semi-fictional account of my life, will be on sale in 2013. Look for Moscow Cowboy by N. A. Drescher in Canada in two years, if you remember, or online at Amazon.

With that, I end Mission to Moscow. As they say in Russian, paka!

Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch...

2011-03-31T17:54:00.008-04:00

For those of you who enjoy my stories of playing with currency, lapdances by drunk Russian strippers, treks through Thai jungles for mushrooms, redneck rampages and run-ins with corrupt police, you won't like this next entry.

My home and native land, Canada, is in the midst of a political crisis that runs much deeper than current media can display. The effect of this crisis is the fifth federal election in ten years, but the symptoms are seemingly terminal.

This political situation in Canada has come about because of widening polarization among the people in Canada, and this current election is turning out to be one of the ugliest in Canadian history. The election campaign is only in its fifth day, yet I have witnessed arguments break out at work and even while waiting in line at a Tim Horton's coffee shop! Even our hockey games have become politicized (candidates are declaring which hockey teams they support)!

Canada is a very regional country, encompassing vastly different outlooks on life. The maritimes and Newfoundland are predominantly social democrat in outlook, while Ontario is mainly centrist liberal. Manitoba and Saskatchewan tend to lean towards left-of-center while Alberta and British Columbia are hardcore conservative bastions. Quebec remains a primarily nationalist province with strong left-wing tendencies. Federal elections tend to be decided along these lines.

To understand it more, we need to look at how a British-style parliament works. Basically, the group of MPs (Members of Parliament) that enjoy the support of the House (the House of Commons) form the government, with the leader of that group chosen as Prime-Minister. In this case most groups of MPs are assembled into political parties, although there is nothing in the constitution that mentions political parties.

* It should be noted that Canada's constitution is not a clean one-page document like in America, but rather a large collection of legislation, treaties, orders-in-council, declarations by past monarchs and Supreme Court decisions all stuffed into the large Parliamentary Library...the sum total of all this is Canada's constitution.

Currently in Parliament there are 304 seats up for grabs and, under the parliamentary system, the "group", or party, that wins the most seats in an election forms the government (there is a seat for every 100,000 voters).

The problem is that there are also five political parties: the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, the New Democratic Party (social-democrats), the Bloc Quebecois (Quebec nationalists) and the Green Party (environmentalists). The Conservatives and Liberals are by far the biggest parties, and the two historic parties of Canada.

For 75 years of the 20th Century, on and off, the Liberal Party governed Canada, and produced such political heroes as Mackenzie King, Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien. Like it or not, the Liberals have styled themselves "Canada's natural party". The Conservatives, on the other hand, have enjoyed temporary greatness followed by stunning defeats. Brian Mulroney lead the old Progressive Conservative Party from a sweep of Parliament in 1984 to a shattering implosion in 1993, and after that the Conservatives were hard-pressed to gain even 4 seats in Parliament.

In far-right leaning Alberta a party rose up to challenge the Liberals and even the Conservatives, who they thought were too left-leaning. The Reform Party began as a protest party but managed to gain quite a few seats in Parliament to offer significant political power. Our current Prime-Minister, Stephen Harper, was a member of the Reform Party in its birthing heyday.

The Reform Party attempted to run candidates across the country in 1996, but its stance on gay rights, abortion, privatized medicare and young offender justice terrified the rest of Canada (which is much more left-leaning) and Reform was utterly swept in the elections and Jean Chretien's Liberals won the biggest majority they have ever enjoyed (Jean Chretien even quipped "Thanks, Reform!"). The Reform Party fell apart, but not completely.

Under the careful guidance of an elite circle of hardcore conservatives, including Stockwell Day and Stephen Harper, the party renamed itself and changed its image, and appeared again in the 2000 elections as the Canadian Alliance Party. It did a little bit better in those elections but the fact of the matter was that the right-wing votes were split between the old Progressive Conservative party and the Canadian Alliance party, thus handing the Liberals a third-straight majority in Parliament.

The Progressive Conservative party was in dire straights, not winning any more than 4 or 5 seats since the days of Brian Mulroney. Membership was down and the party was going bankrupt. Luckily for them, the Canadian Alliance Party was looking for one more image change to give itself more legitimacy in otherwise Liberal Canada. Stephen Harper, who had helped birth the Reform Party and morphed it into the Alliance Party, stepped in and, in a historic deal, merged the Canadian Alliance with the Progressive Conservatives, renaming it the "Conservative" Party.

Around this time, in 2002, Jean Chretien's 10-year reign as the most popular Prime-Minister in Canada was coming to an end. The "little scrapper from Shawinigan" (a reference to his hometown in Quebec and his fiesty, combative political style and, ultimately, to his habit of grabbing hippy protesters by the throat and/or punching them in the face) was nearing 70 years in age, and his right-hand man, Finance Minister Paul Martin (who had made Time magazine's "Man of the Year" in 1999 for engineering Canada's economy so that it became the first G8 country to balance its books and declare a fiscal surplus) made a play for the top spot. In a Liberal convention Paul Martin attempted to get himself nominated leader of the Liberal Party and oust his mentor and friend (and boss). Martin managed to get 52% of the Liberal delegates' votes, enough to topple Jean Chretien but also enough to drive a deep rift in the ranks of the Liberal Party.

In 2004 Canada went to the polls, and Paul Martin and his Liberals won a minority government; that is, they were the party that held the most seats but the other three opposition parties combined held more seats. The Liberals would be forced to compromise on every issue in order to gain the support of the opposition. The largest of the opposition parties was none other than Stephen Harper's Conservatives.

In Canada, when a governing party loses the confidence of the House the government falls and a new election is declared. All fiscal issues put forward by the governing party are considered confidence issues, so the annual budget must pass the House of Commons or the party is considered to not have the confidence of the House and a new election is called.

In 2006 this is precisely what happened. After 2 years of ineptitude and a paralyzed Parliament Stephen Harper and his Conservatives (still called "Tories", the old British name for conservatives) got the socialist NDP and separatist Bloc Quebecois on board and defeated the budget. Paul Martin and his broken Liberal Party fell and the country went to the polls.

Stephen Harper won the election, but, like Paul Martin, only with a minority government. Unlike Paul Martin who could have counted on the support of two other left-leaning parties in Parliament, the Conservatives were now facing an opposition united by ideology, the Liberals, NDP and Bloc. For the next two years they found themselves making compromise after compromise on every issue in order to stay in power. In 2008 the Liberals and NDP joined together and threatened to form a coalition, which would have made them combined the largest group of MPs to enjoy the confidence of the House and power would have shifted back to the Liberals. The country went to the polls again.

The 2008 election returned Parliament back to almost exactly the same state: Stephen Harper's Conservatives hanging on to a minority government while the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois opposed them from across the aisle.

From 2008 until now, 2011, the Conservatives hung on to power not because of increased support from the electorate (Tory support has never risen much beyond 38%) but because of dissatisfaction from the voters with the Liberals. After the Paul Martin affair the Liberals chose as their leader Stephan Dion, a life-long Quebecois bureaucrat who could barely speak English and whose mere presence on television annoyed the hell out of the average Canadian. The Liberals ditched Stephan and, in a quick convention, chose Micheal Ignatieff to lead them.

Micheal Ignatieff is the son of Russian immigrants who fled to Canada following the 1917 Revolution in Russia. He has been a professor of politics and economic theory at Oxford and Cambridge and more recently at Harvard University. He returned to Canada in 2007 to teach at University of Toronto when he was approached by the Liberal Party to potentially lead them. He has written 14 non-fiction books and was a personal friend of US Senator Ted Kennedy.

Unfortunately for Ignatieff, the Liberal Party he took over was a shambles after Paul Martin and two consecutive electoral defeats, and "Iggy", as the press calls him, has had to work hard to not only get Canadians to know him and take him seriously, but also to unify the party and turn it back into the "mean red machine" it once was. Harper and the Conservatives have wasted no time attacking him as being unpatriotic for living outside of the country for so long (as a distinguished academic who has taught at the world's greatest schools and given lectures at the UN). In fact, the Conservatives have been using age-old Canadian self-confidence issues to potray Ignatieff as an evil American-lover, while Ignatieff has publicly said "Yes, I do love America, and I love Canada, and I love the unique relationship our two countries share."

It was Micheal Ignatieff who, in 2008, attempted to form a coalition with the NDP to topple the minority Conservatives, and the Conservative response has been an attack campaign calling a coalition an "undermining" of democracy and "reckless". However, what Conservative supporters are not looking at is the fact that coalitions are perfectly legal means of government in a parliament, so long as they enjoy the support of the House of Commons. If a coalition between parties produces a majority that, then, is the confidence of the House.

Another thing that the Conservatives have kept quiet is the fact that in the bad old days of the Reform Party Stephen Harper wrote a paper explaining why coalition governments are needed and how the Reform Party should go about leading one to take on Jean Chretien's Liberals. In a 1998 interview with TV Ontario Harper said he endorses coalitions as being the most democratic means of governance in Canada. In 2004 he attempted to form a coalition with the NDP and Bloc Quebecois to topple Paul Martin's minority Liberal government. Now, when the Liberals are doing just the same to him, Stephen Harper is suddenly attacking coalition government as "undemocratic".

The fact of the matter is that minority government is, by definition, undemocratic. The Conservatives enjoyed the support of 38% of the people in the last parliament, while the Liberals and NDP combined had the support of over 52%, making a coalition between the two the actual voice of the majority of voters. Thus, a coalition government is the most democratic form of government possible in Canada.

The most recent election came about after a stunning confidence vote in Parliament. The Conservatives were found to be in contempt of Parliament by the House for refusing to give financial details over plans to purchase 130 F-35 Stealth fighters from the USA. The allegation is that there was no competition and that General Electric, who produces the aircraft, padded Conservative Party coffers to get the contract with no questions asked. The deal will cost the Canadian taxpayers over $30 billion over the next 10 years. This finding of contempt of parliament triggered a non-confidence vote and last Friday Stephen Harper and his Conservatives were toppled by a united opposition. The election was on. The fifth in 10 years.

Oh yes, finally, being politicians, I'm sure they've all had lap dances from Russian strippers.

Nova Scotia vs British Columbia: The Eastern Trump Card

2011-03-19T10:26:00.017-04:00

Why did I choose to settle in Nova Scotia and not British Columbia? This is a difficult question to answer and I'm still not sure of the reason myself.

Both have stunning beauty aplenty, although I give British Columbia an extra point for the Rocky Mountains. British Columbia also has a better job-market and better salaries. British Columbia has better weather (along the coast, at least). British Columbia has more people (4 million compared to Nova Scotia's 900,000), thus more of a tax base, thus better government services and infrastructure. British Columbia, a younger province by 3oo years, has nicer architecture and cleaner cities.

So why the hell didn't I head out west like I originally planned?

Because British Columbia isn't Nova Scotia.

Nova Scotia has an abundance of culture going for it, and the people are absolutely amazing. Walk the streets of beautiful Victoria and good luck looking anyone in the eye. In Halifax, people strike up conversations with complete strangers while waiting at the crosswalk. How can you beat such friendliness?

Here are some more Nova Scotian peculiarities:

The Nova Scotia license plate reads "Canada's ocean playground"...PLAYGROUND!!!! All BC has going for it is "Super. Natural." Point to Nova Scotia!

Nova Scotia has REAL beaches. Sandy, sunny beaches (in the summer at least) with seagulls and beach cottages surround the province on all four sides. In fact, although Nova Scotia is only 900 square kilometres, it has 7000 km of beaches! British Columbia, on the other hand, has only 2,300 km of beaches, and 90% of those are rocky and covered in seaweed. Plus the water of the North East Pacific is too cold to swim in at any time of the year. Another point for Nova Scotia!

Cape Breton Island beats both Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlottes hands down. The rolling hills, the small Gaelic population in quaint little towns, the vibrant culture and the stunning coastline beats out the redneck-infested western islands where the brush is so thick you can't stray off the roads.

Nova Scotia was the end of the line for the Underground Railroad, and by 1865 over 8,000 runaway slaves from the southern states had settled around the province, bringing a vibrant and musical cultural heritage with them. Today their descendants are an integral part of Maritime society. BC doesn't have that. They didn't even exist at the time!

Nova Scotia is home to songs, ballads, odes, shanties, books and poems about love for this land. Farewell to Nova Scotia is about a soldier leaving home for the battlefields of France in 1914. British Columbia has Brian Adams and Nelly Furtado. 'Nuff said.

Nova Scotia hosts the annual Tall Ships festival, showcasing old galleons, frigates, cutters and yachts from all over North America and Europe. They even have mock sea battles in Halifax harbour, firing cannons at each other while tourists eat lunch on patios! BC hosts container ships, trawlers and oil tankers.

Atlantic lobster. Can't find that in the Pacific!

Lunenburg, Peggy's Cove, the Annapolis Valley, the Bay of Fundy...these historic towns and regions date back to the earliest colonization of North America and for the most part have been preserved in their original state. Lunenburg (pictured above) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Most towns in BC didn't exist before 1890.

The Royal Nova Scotia Tattoo, an international festival of pipe and drum drill bands from around the world, happens every year in Halifax. British Columbia hosts the annual "Save The Whales" festival. Which one is more exciting?

For those who can't get enough of pipe and drum marching bands, Halifax wins hands-down!

Cape Breton's Gaelic culture. More people speak Gaelic in Cape Breton than in Scotland, and it is home to the world's only Gaelic University. BC has nothing on that!

What's Nova Scotia without the intense cultural inheritance of Cape Breton? While many of the fiddles and step dances and ceilidhs (kitchen parties) are put on for the tourists in the summer, these things are still part and parcel of many Cape Bretoners lives. British Columbia can only boast of draft dodgers and pot smokers. And even Nova Scotia has a fair share of those...

I'll let this video from Nova Scotia Tourism say it all...

The Fallacy of North America

2011-03-12T13:30:00.004-05:00

It seems like ages since I left Russia but I'm really only coming to the end of my third week back in Canada. In 3 short weeks I've got a car, a job, a bank account and begun looking for a place to live (34 and staying with my mother may be alright in Russia but is so not cool in Canada).

Despite all this hectic activity, I haven't had time to really adjust to life in the Maritimes. I still feel stuck somewhere between here and there, and the reverse culture shock is unsettling. I've gone through periods of "I love it here!" to "I want to go back to Russia!" I definitely miss some things about Russia, namely, the chaotic freedom, the architectural aesthetics (of Moscow, at least), the beauty of the people (mainly the women) and the feeling of doing something wonderful with my life.

Here in Halifax I feel only the crunch of time and finance. I have a full-time job and it pays better than my English Teacher's salary but it doesn't offer the kind of financial freedom that living rent-free did in Moscow. My schedule is also heavily regulated by work, and I can't be late or negotiate or enjoy long breaks throughout the day.

One thing that really bugs me about life back home is the complete ignorance of the Canadian people to life outside their own little bubble. I can't relate at all with anybody, and when they begin in-depth conversations about what was on TV last night or how much interest they're paying on their mortgage or their car financing, I switch off. How could I ever possibly explain to them the wonders of Moscow, the history of St. Petersburg, the vastness of the steppes, the feeling of standing on Mamaev Kurgan? How could they even care about the wonders of the Moscow Metro or the absolutely mesmerizing femininity of Russian women or the chaos of gypsy taxis? The fact is, they can't.

I found Russians to be much more engaging in conversation, and much more intelligent about the world around them, then Canadians. Russians were always polite and interested in different places, whereas Canadians have that irritating North American smugness. I also find Canadians incredibly dishonest and feel like everyone is out to rip me off. In Russia, I KNEW everyone was out to rip me off but those I counted as friends I could trust 100%.

In many ways Russia is superior to Canada. Canada's infrastructure is stable, the air is clean, the society well-organized, democracy and the rule of law is healthy and the economy is sound, but the culture really sucks. The exact opposite is true for Russia.

This is mainly the effect of reverse culture-shock, and with time and patience I'll become numb to the glaring hypocrasies I see around me, and eventually I'll become another ignorant dumb-ass Canadian. I do love living in Nova Scotia, however, and ultimately this province is superior in many ways to snooty British Columbia (and the beaches here are better). For me, however, there is no difference right now between people from the Maritimes and people from the west coast, or people from Florida or Wisconsin for that matter. That North American attitude is really grinding on me, and I miss the deep cultural wonder and beauty of Russia and Europe.

50 Facts About Russians

2011-03-05T21:26:00.004-05:00

1: Russians distrust anything cheap.

2: The English word "bargain" can not be adequately translated into Russian.

3: Although Russians distrust anything with a cheap price, they are fine with freebies.

4: A Russian who reaches high levels of power feels it his his/her duty to put down those who don't.

5: In Russia you need to call the lazy waitresses over by aggressively yelling "Girl!"

6: One needs skills in hitting people with your elbows on the Moscow Metro.

7: In Russia you can drink beer on a park bench without getting arrested.

8: Russians gather in the kitchen and stay up very late, talking about "life".

9: Russians usually avoid talking about work.

10: During any reception in Russia people are immediately separated by gender.

11: There are a lot of police in Russia, most of whom do nothing.

12: Russians never throw anything away. Ever.

13: However, if Russians throw out half of their things, nobody notices.

14: A Russian stranger is likely to call you with familiarity, like "man" or "woman".

15: Russians don't usually say "please" or "thank you".

16: The Russian proverb "Arrogance - the second happiness" cannot be adequately translated into English.

17: Russians drink a lot of vodka. It's not a myth.

18: You don't have to fear for your life when walking the streets in Moscow alone at night.

19: Russian men are convinced that feminism has led to the collapse of the West, and Russia's historical mission: resist.

20: A myth within a myth: Russians believe that Americans believe that bears walk the streets in Moscow, but this myth of a myth is a purely Russian invention. Americans actually believe all the bears in Russia are dead.

21: Russians simply do not understand it when a foreigner from the west applies for permanent residence in Russia.

22: Dentists are very surprised when people show up for a "routine" check-up. So are doctors.

23: Russians drink tea with a centimetre of sugar on the bottom of the cup.

24: All Russians, from young to old, abuse emoticons.

25: The number of brackets in an email or sms infers the importance of a message. For instance - Birthday party tonight ) means a birthday party, but Birthday party tonight )))))) means a fantastic blow-out extravaganza.

26: Moscow has the best subway system in the world.

27: Despite having the best subway system in the world, there are millions of Muscovites who refuse to ever take it, and spend half their lives stuck in traffic.

28: A Russian will use the slightest reason to bring everyone gifts of chocolate. "It's your birthday in four and a half months? Wow! Chocolate for the entire office!"

29: Anyone who speaks a language other than Russian is automatically suspect.

30: On New Year's, don't surprised if you are invited out at 11:30 pm, drink champagne and cognac until 6 am, eat herring under a fur coat and olivia salad in a kitchen, and then party in a flat for three more days.

31: The only alcohol-free zones in Russia are McDonalds.

32: Smiling for no reason makes Russians angry.

33: Borscht, cabbage rolls and pirogies are actually Ukrainian.

34: Russians don't send their elderly to nursing homes or make their children leave after 18; instead they all live together in the same 1-bedroom flat.

35: Despite the small roads and the frustrating traffic jams, Russians still buy giant SUVs.

36: Sushi is more popular in Russia than in Japan.

37: In fact, Japan is more popular in Russia than in Japan.

38: Russians are extremely friendly if they've known you for more than ten minutes. If you've known a Russian for at least a week, you will be invited to meet their family.

39: Russians are also extremely emotional and passionate, and although they don't show emotion in public, they cry and laugh and shout and play more than Italians.

40: Russians care more about the philosophical side of living than the material, and have a folk song for every situation.

41: Most Russians are very superstitious, and new-age superstitions are en vogue.

42: Russians are passionate lovers, and will quarrel like bitter enemies and make out like porn stars in public.

43: Russians love to criticsize their own country, but will be offended if a foreigner does.

44: If a cashier manages to not break anything while scanning your items, they have provided good customer service.

45: Russians love McDonald's, KFC, Subway and Burger King more than Americans.

46: Russians spoil their kids rotten, and then magically expect them to behave responsibly at the age of 18.

47: Although Russians eat more fast food than people in the west, Russians are still healthier.

48: Russians cannot do anything that requires putting a car in reverse. It can take the average Russian driver ten minutes to parallel park (I've seen it countless times).

49: Winters in Russia are actually quite beautiful, and Russians are fantastic winter drivers.

50: Russians are actually freer than westerners; there are less laws and social constraints, and yet the crime rate is lower than in the US or UK.

Ask A Man With A Russian Accent Trying To Convince You To Go To An Ecstasy Party

2011-03-03T19:54:00.002-05:00

From The Onion

http://www.theonion.com/articles/ask-a-man-with-a-russian-accent-trying-to-convince,19354/

Dear Man With A Russian Accent Trying To Convince You To Go To An Ecstasy Party,
My next-door neighbor has something of an in-house menagerie. Between his three dogs and several tropical birds, things can get pretty noisy. I very much believe in "live and let live," but sometimes late at night and early in the morning, the squawking and barking can just get to be too much. What is a firm but neighborly way to let him know that his pets are causing me distress?
—Going Wild In Washington
Dear Going Wild,
Look, what is problem? You meet me, you meet Sergei, we are all friends now. Wait, hang on…please! Another drink for my new friend! Anyway, like I say, is one hour maximum drive only. I take you in my car, no problem. Is BMW five-series. We take pills on way, you feel very, very good when we arrive. Like on fire, but nice. You know? Vanya is also my friend, he is very good DJ. He is spinning best house music and we will dance all night. Best music, best pills, best girls, best champagne, everything the best. We go now, okay?
Dear Man With A Russian Accent Trying To Convince You To Go To An Ecstasy Party,
A very good friend of mine recently lost his job and is now struggling to make his mortgage payments. I'm by no means wealthy, but I'm certainly comfortable enough to lend my friend the money he needs until he gets back on his feet. The problem is, he's very proud of his self-sufficiency. How can I offer him a loan without hurting his feelings and jeopardizing our friendship?
—Just Trying To Help
Dear Just Trying,
Over there—is your girlfriend? Very pretty. She will come too. We will all feel very nice and dance. The pills, they will not cost you nothing. Is my brother's place, everything for free. Is heated pool, is bar in basement, is, ahh…is home theater, is craziest sound system—everything you want. But we go now. Is late and I tell Yuri—Yuri, he is my brother—I tell Yuri I am coming there half hour ago. Get girlfriend now. We go.
Dear Man With A Russian Accent Trying To Convince You To Go To An Ecstasy Party,
My wife and I like to have cookouts every couple of months during which we have friends and family members over for steaks. However, every time my brother-in-law attends, he dominates the grill, insisting that he alone knows how to properly cook the meat. What is the best way to let him know that I think he's being obnoxious without causing too much friction between myself and my wife's family?
—Gearing Up To Grill
Dear Gearing Up,
You know what is your problem? Is too much thinking. You will never do nothing you're whole life, just think. What is to think about? Take pill, dance. Simple. You think you know everything, but you don't know nothing. I have Breitling watch like this because I am thinking all day? No. Because I am doing. You would not believe me if I tell you things I have seen.† Crazy, crazy things. But maybe, you think, you are better than me. Are you thinking you are better than me, my friend? That would not be—hold on, is my mobile. Da? Nyet…nyet…nyet…da…nyet…nyet…da, dosvedanya. Is Yuri. You see, my friend? You are making us late. Sergei, you go now. I stay for little while longer and talk to new friend.
Dear Man With A Russian Accent Trying To Convince You To Go To An Ecstasy Party,
I've never considered myself a very religious person, but I certainly don't begrudge others their beliefs. My sister, however, married a very devout man and has taken up his faith; she now seems determined to also convert myself and my two daughters. How can I let her know that her proselytizing is unwelcome without my kids losing their aunt?
—Preaching To The Choir
Dear Preaching,
You know, If you were not such my good friend, maybe I am getting angry now.
Dear Man With A Russian Accent Trying To Convince You To Go To An Ecstasy Party,
With tax season fast approaching, I am for the first time thinking about hiring an accountant. I have traditionally prepared my own taxes, but after seeing in the past year a significant increase in my personal income due to switching from a salaried to freelance position, do you think it is worth the money to hire a professional?
—Taxed In Tucson
Dear Taxed,
You do not understand me, my friend! Please, do not go! Sit! Sit! Here, let me buy you drink. Relax, and we talk. Look, I only want for you to have good time, so why you resist? You hurt my feelings…here, drink. Good! Here is mine, too. Yes, very good. Now, why not you come for little while, and if you don't like, you just leave, no problem? I take you back myself. Please, go talk to girlfriend. I wait for you here.
Confidential To Fed Up In Phoenix,
Ah, yes! Now you see! You will not regret, my friend. It will be night of your life, is my promise. Whoa! You almost fall over, my friend! Ha, ha, ha! Is no problem. We get you pills, you be okay. We go now.

Nova Scotia

2011-02-27T13:09:00.011-05:00

A Breath of Fresh Air

2011-02-22T15:39:00.007-05:00

I've been in Halifax for just over 1 week, and in that time have decided to stay here, begun looking for a job, scored 3 interviews, acquired a car (a nice 2000 Volvo) and started looking at apartments (mostly on the Dartmouth side). I've also managed to not spend all my money I brought from Russia!

Not bad for one week! The job market in Halifax is actually very, very healthy. There are literally thousands of jobs and, when coupled with the very affordable housing prices, it makes living here seem like a no-brainer. The area is scenically beautiful; different than British Columbia, with it's soaring mountains and placid Pacific coastlines, but beautiful in it's own rugged, unspoiled north-Atlantic way. It's the people here that put Nova Scotia miles above British Columbia.

Friendliness is everywhere. People stop on the street and say "Hello". They make eye contact here and smile. They do it all with a laid-back, confident style. The people are extremely helpful. Just yesterday I was driving the new car with a temporary license in the window (waiting for new plates to be made) and a cop pulled me over. It was my first pull-over in 2 years! Anyways the cop, a young guy, approached the car behind the driver window (and I kept both hands on the wheel so he could see them) and then said "Sorry."!

He continued. "I didn't see your temp [temporary plate]. If I could have your license and registration and insurance, I'll just run a quick check and then you'll be on your way."

After a few minutes on the computer in his car, he came back and handed me a license, and then apologized profusely for pulling me over! I felt bad and said "Hey no problem."

In comparison, people in British Columbia, especially in Victoria, are stuck-up and snotty. Many don't bother leaving their province ("We live in the best place on earth. Why go anywhere else?"). Compared to Russia, Nova Scotia is absolutely refreshing. After all this time it's surprising that I hadn't put more thought into settling here.

Then there is, of course, the wonderful Maritime culture. I'm not talking about the grating, better-than-thou Celtic culture of Cape Breton, but the deep-routed historic culture of New England and the Maritimes.

In one week I've firmly established a beach -head, as it were, here in Halifax, and from here on out it's all easy sailing.

The Year Was 1778

2011-02-16T12:59:00.007-05:00

My dreams aren't really worthy of any Freudian psycho-babble analysis. Usually they involve beer, the occasional fuzzy slipper and a cheeseburger or two. Which is why it was so strange to have a more meaningful, realistic dream like the one I had two days ago.

In this dream I had left Russia, kissing Katya farewell in the doorway of her flat in Schyolkova and climbing into a taxi at 2:30 in the morning. Then I was on a flight to Halifax, Nova Scotia. 12 hours later I was in Canada's maritimes with my mother and we were (typical for my dreams) drinking Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale and eating bacon cheeseburgers.

Then I was sitting on a warm sofa (again, with a beer in my hand) in front of a gas fireplace watching Criminal Minds in HD on a large flat screen television in my mother's living room, while outside the nearby ocean boiled in a sudden windstorm that had blown in from the Atlantic.

After that my dream switched to driving across the impressively-large MacDonald bridge that spans the Halifax harbour between Halifax and Dartmouth. The naval yards were to my left and to my right were the tall glass buildings of Scotiabank and the Halifax Casino, lit up in the night and giving the city a feeling of grandeur. From the bridge we ended up on the highway all the way to the town of Enfield.

When I awoke, it all had seemed so vivid, and so real. The part about leaving Katya behind in Russia while I found employment and prepared for her to arrive in Canada was particularly painful. But when I looked around, I wasn't in Katya's bed with my wife warm and sleeping beside me. I was in my mother's spare room. I was in Halifax!

It wasn't a dream, although it still seems like it isn't real. Unlike the last time I came back for 5 weeks, in September, this time it is a permanent move. I was originally planning on heading to Victoria and starting work as an At-Sea-Observer, a job I didn't particularly want but was a means to an end. Due to family reasons, and the fact that I've always loved Halifax and Nova Scotia in particular, I decided to stay.

So my Mission to Moscow is actually over. It doesn't seem like it. I still expect to wake up back in Russia at any moment, but here I am in Canada. I feel at ease now, knowing I made the right decision in choosing Halifax.

This blog won't be finished yet, however. New adventures await me and it will be interesting to switch the focus from my perspective on living in Russia to Katya's perspective on living in Canada.

Here I am. My new and, hopefully, permanent home. Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada!

Hot Russian Women

2011-02-11T05:59:00.010-05:00

Sometimes I get a lot of emails about this blog; most times I don't. Here's a sampling of the emails I have received:

"I'm going to Moscow next month on a business trip. Can you recommend any ways to meet Russian girls?"

"...you're a pussy. Why don't you have more pictures of Russian chics [sic] on your blog?"

"...if I were you, I would'nt have got married and would have been spending the last year banging Russian babes...."

"I take great offence at the portrayal of womyn on your blog. As a womyn myself, I believe that you represent the majority of men who are dull-witted, pig-headed chauvinists and the propoganda on your blog is nothing more than blablablabla...."

(I wonder how entries like "A Brief History of Mytischi" makes me chauvinist...the fact of the matter is that most of the emails I receive are concerning one specific entry, about a time I drank vodka with two Russian strippers. The fact that this femi-nazi is concentrating on this particular entry shows a certain amount of interest on her part, as it is this sexualized entry that she focuses on and not the more mundane life I've lived in Moscow, which makes up 99% of this blog.)

"At first I thought you were just another uninformed American, but after reading your blog I realized that you are an uninformed Canadian. You spew out garbage and misinformation as fact and you obviously know nothing about Russia. Your display of women is particularly disgusting."

(This was from a Mr. J. Malandjer, obviously a fanatical academic, and I would invite Mr. Malandjer to not only come to Russia and see for himself what I've been writing about, but to also act like a better-than-thou douchebag to my face.)

It is true: Russian women are generally stunning. Most of the fashion magazine models in the world are Russian, and most of the girls in Moscow could be fashion magazine models. They are filled with a mysteriously powerful femininity, charming flirtatiousness and have great fashion sense (at least in Moscow).

With so much interest, both positive and negative, concerning my blog and Russian women, I've decided to finally post what I've been seeing for the past couple of years, mainly, seriously hot, sexy, beautiful women (take that feminists and academics! Welcome to a man's blog!).

Redneck Rampage

2011-01-31T02:54:00.007-05:00

Not every fun thing has to happen overseas. Think back to your childhood: you were perfectly content getting into all sorts of mischief at home (at least, I was). So with nothing happening at all in my life in Moscow (all the good times have come to an end, and I feel that I have worn out my welcome in Russia), I think back to my life in South Korea, and beyond then to my life in Canada.

One incident in particular stands out as the best weekend I've ever spent.

A national public holiday in Canada is Queen Victoria Day. It is officially on May 24 every year but always falls on the weekend closest to the 24th. A case of beer, with 24 bottles, in Canada is called a two-four, and Victoria Day is likewise called May Two-Four. No coincidence there.

In 2001 I was living in the industrial factory city of Hamilton, Ontario where I was attending school. I lived off-campus in a bungalow with five other guys, but three of my friends practically lived there too. My oldest and best friend (until he married and disappeared a few years ago, and cut out all his friends from his life quoting that we weren't in his "circle of trust"), Doggawar, was attending film school in Toronto, about a one-hour drive from Hamilton. He spent nearly every weekend at my place.

Doggawar was always a real brat, with an incredibly quick sense of humour and a horseshoe shoved far up his ass to boot. He was a big guy with a big beard and leather jacket. As an example of his wit, one time we were cooking steaks on the barbecue and another friend of ours walked up to the grill, found the biggest, juiciest steak there was and spat on it. "That one's mine" he pronounced, to which Doggawar, without hesitating, also spat on it. "Have it." He replied.

Another friend, who I met in Hamilton, was Nailbomb (he liked the death-metal group of the same name). Nailbomb, with is his long black hair and thin, pointed face, was a punk/death metal/fuck-the-man kinda guy (and also the best driver I've ever met) who took great delight from mischief and building things. One time Nailbomb and I went to the woods around Hamilton and, using bungee cords from his Jeep Cherokee, built an actual working trebuchet and proceeded to hurl giant boulders down an escarpment. Good times.

Then there was the fourth member of our little group: Mojo. It is difficult to describe Mojo. To this day I haven't figured out if he was truly slightly retarded or if it was an all an act. Whichever it was, Mojo operated on the premise that the least amount of brain power necessary to get through life is the best amount of brain power to use. Unlike me, the slightly preppy, athletic guy, and Doggawar, the big beard and biker-style guy, and Nailbomb, the punk rocker bad-ass guy, there was Mojo, who wore incredibly big bell bottoms and trendy snowboarder sweaters and liked to ride BMX bikes. Mojo, with his shoulder-length curly hair, once made a pair of bell bottoms out of duct tape and then wore them to the club, where he was immediately harassed by a group of black guys. When he started to try and talk in Eubonics with them, it was all over.

The May Two-Four weekend of the year 2001 was to be a special long weekend. The four of us (originally three but we agreed to let Mojo come along provided he fetched us beer, cooked us food, etc...hence the name "Mojo") planned a trip to Owen Sound, on the stunningly beautiful Bruce Peninsula between Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. Owen Sound is mine and Doggawar's hometown, and in the summer offers beaches, girls, alcohol and sunshine. Unfortunately we were the wrong group of people to partake in such pleasures. It seems as if though every time the four of us, unlikely comrades all, got together the gods that be were incredibly annoyed.

Nailbomb, the superb driver that he was, drove us the 2 hours to Owen Sound. By "good driver" I don't mean he was a law-abiding driver. Rather, he would plug into his car and then proceed to act like a fighter pilot in a dogfight, swerving at high speeds between traffic, dodging every obstacle that got in his way (he once drove home from my house completely in reverse, using back roads...it was a 20 minute drive). I never once felt in danger with Nailbomb's driving, because he was always in complete control.

We were nearing Owen Sound, blazing along country roads ringed by quiet farms, blaring hard rock and smoking cigarettes and making fun of Mojo when all of a sudden a cop shot out of nowhere and, with lights blaring, pulled us over. 100 miles back Nailbomb had passed an elderly driver...on the gravel shoulder, and some other drivers had called the police. It took nearly an hour for the cop to catch up to us. Because the officer couldn't fine Nailbomb for an incident where he didn't actually witness it, but had pulled us over nevertheless, he had to find some other reason to issue a fine. After running Nailbomb's license through the computer in his car, the officer issued a different ticket. Nailbomb was driving without glasses, and the terms of his license said that he was supposed to be wearing glasses when behind the wheel.

Nailbomb's three comrades immediately broke into laughter. The famous, hard-edged, fuck-the-man punk-rocker Nailbomb had to wear glasses! The cop took his license and made Doggawar drive instead, and issued Nailbomb with a fine. We went on our way, and even Mojo joined in making fun of Nailbomb, who was visibly embarassed.

After another hour we finally arrived in Owen Sound and went to Doggawar's girlfriend's house (she left him soon after this weekend). Her parents had a huge, two storey home on 10 acres of forested land. The house was beautiful and the vast forest of maples and birch were in full bloom in the late May sun. While Doggawar went inside to greet his lady, Mojo, Nailbomb and I immediately popped the trunk of the car and cracked open the two-four of Molson Canadian we had brought from Hamilton. After our long drive we decided a nice beer was due us, then we would unpack our bags and settle in.

One hour later Doggawar found us deep in the woods, throwing pinecones at each other's heads, surrounded by empty beer bottles and completely drunk. "What the hell?" He cried out in deep annoyance. "You drank ALL the beer?!!?" We looked around in shock. "Noooo!" we protested. "There's lots left! We couldn't have...." But of course, the three of us had drank an entire case of beer in an hour. Doggawar was pissed. "Damnit! Come on. We're going into town. You owe me a case of beer." He turned and stormed back to the house, and we stumbled after him.

As we stumbled and laughed behind our visibly angry friend, Nailbomb pulled out a mickey of Jagermeister. "One for the road!" He decreed, and we immediately began chugging back the sickly-sweet alcohol. In the few minutes it took us to reach the car, we had polished off the Jagermeister, as well.

We all jumbled into the car and with deep annoyance Doggawar screeched out of the driveway and we headed into town. At The Beer Store (one of my favourite Ontario retain chains) Nailbomb and I bought two more cases of beer, and Doggawar ran into his brother in the parking lot. They started talking and catching up so Nailbomb and I staggered over to the nearby river, where, without warning, I threw up. It was so sudden and so violent that my vomit projected over the river bank and into the water, followed by a sudden uproar of quacking and honking. A mallard duck, covered in vomit, flew angrily into the air. Quite a shot, if I do say so myself. Nailbomb was laughing so hard he had to sit down.

We rejoined Doggawar and Mojo at the car and as Doggawar chatted with his brother I sat cross-legged on the pavement, the world spinning around and my stomach feeling like heaving again. I began muttering incomprehensibly, trying to say that I needed to sober up but instead mumbling "I need conditioning. I need conditioning." (I barely remember any of this). Nailbomb, the helpful friend that he was, took his lit cigarette and extinguished it on my forehead. "Aaaah." I sighed with relief. "That's what I call conditioning!".

A few hours later we were back at Doggawar's girlfriend's house (along the way I instructed Doggawar "don't make any turns, don't stop, just drive straight"). As Mojo, Nailbomb and I were sobering up at this point, we cracked one of the new cases of beer and immediately resolved to get Doggawar drunk. Everytime Doggawar took a drink from his beer one of us would immediately give a new toast. "To the weekend!" "To us!" "To booze!" etc etc. After three beers in ten minutes Doggawar was crying out for mercy. "For god's sake!" Within half an hour he was as drunk as us and once again we were a team. This time, with a new great idea.

Grabbing shovels and pick-axes we made our way into the forest and proceeded to build a bunker. It took us two hours and another case of beer but finally we had something reminiscent of the Mannerheim Line protecting Doggawar's girlfriend from the invading Red Army. For the roof we employed her father's chainsaw and some trees. Needless to say that, upon seeing us emerge from the woods with shovels and chainsaws, drunk and covered in dirt, she was immediately suspicious. "What the hell were you guys doing?"
"Nothing. Building a bunker."
"What???!!!??"

She immediately banned us from using any wood to make a fire, a rather weak attempt to control us, the uncontrollable. So we used her father's jerry can of gasoline instead. She banned us from using the chainsaw, so we grabbed her brother's pellet guns and starting shooting each other instead. With a gas fire blazing (and we cooked bacon wrapped around sticks in it...quite delicious, if I remember) and guns shooting and bottles being emptied quickly, she had had enough. "Get the hell off my property, you..you...savages!" she cried. What a downer.

We took a taxi to Doggawar's mother's house instead.

It was a good move, because after a day of recovery (and a lot of his father's pot, bless his soul), we set out into the woods around Doggawar's house with pellet guns and beer and whiskey, and proceeded to have a little, painful war. It was Nailbomb and I versus Doggawar and Mojo. We stalked each other through the woods for some time until we came across Doggawar laying in some bushes with his air rifle pointing down the path we were about to stumble across. Nailbomb and I sat down behind a small ridge and strategized. Because I had a quick-repeater Daisy bb gun, I would run out, blazing away and draw Doggawar's fire while Nailbomb, with his single-shot powerful crack-open gun, would draw a bead and shoot the foe.

I ran out, firing from the hip and dodging between trees. Doggawar opened up on me, splinters of tree bark blasting away around me from his barely-missed shots. Nailbomb, unseen, standing and taking careful aim with his rifle, let off a shot with a terrific CRACK and Doggawar screamed in pain. Nailbomb got him right in the ass. I dove down behind a log and lay there panting for breath for a few moments, before the three of us set out to hunt down Mojo.

We found him submerged in a crevace, only his head and rifle showing. He actually took us by surprise and laid down a barrage of bb fire that kept us pinned. Unfortunately he had nothing protecting his flank so I made my way around to his left. We had a rule "No shooting each other in the head" and Mojo thought he was being clever by only exposing his head. But all is fair in love and war right? Especially when you're drunk. I took aim and nailed him the skull, blasting his baseball cap completely off. Game over.

That night Doggawar's neighbour, a girl a few years younger than us, had a party. There were a hundred people there, listening to pop music and drinking Mike's Hard Lemonade, laughing and dancing and being, well, normal. Nailbomb pulled his car into Doggawar's backyard and started blaring Sepultura. We built a fire out of wooden skids soaked in gasoline. The four of us began hooting and hollering in drunken extacy. Soon, some of the people from the other party started drifting across the lawn to our inferno. They were eating grilled vegetables, so we offered charred meat on a stick. They were drinking vodka coolers, so broke out rounds of tequila from the bottle. They were playing cards, so we offered them pellet guns. Needless to say that soon her ENTIRE PARTY had relocated to Doggawar's yard. There were nearly a hundred people running around the fire, shooting guns, eating meat, yelling and acting like barbarians. Doggawar's neighbour, poor girl, sat in her yard with one or two friends and stared in anger at our Roman conflagration.

The firing from the pellet guns became so intense over the course of the night that as people crossed the yards (No Man's Land, they soon called it), they would yell "Don't shoot! It's me, Dave...we met ten minutes ago. Remember? Hey! Wait! Ow!" Of course, Dave would then take his turn shooting other silhouettes in the firelight as they ran the gauntlet. At one point a little brunette girl with a tight shirt (I remember that much) started up a chainsaw and cut some wood for the fire, before another girl shot her in the ass. I myself was hit at least twenty times. Nobody was safe from the flying barrage of pellets and bbs, whether running for their lives across the yard or sitting around the fire roasting bacon on a stick.

The next morning I woke up under Doggawar's back patio with a brown-haird girl draped over me. I had no idea where I was for a few minutes, but twenty or thirty painful welts all over my body (including one pellet imbedded in my back that had to be dug out by tweezers) quickly reminded me. I had no idea who the girl was but one of her hands was down my pants on my backside. I pushed her off me and she groaned in her sleep and curled up in a ball on the mud, and I scrambled out from under the patio. The yard looked like the battlefield of Gettysburg.

People lay in all manner of positions, while a cloud of white smoke hissed into the sky from the firepit. Rifles and shoes and bottles littered the grass all the way into the tree line that surrounded the yard. A few brave souls stumbled about in hung-over pain, looking for personal effects. I couldn't see Doggawar or Nailbomb, but I found Mojo draped over the side of the roof of Doggawar's bungalow. "Hey!" I shouted. "Wake up, Mojo!" He raised his head in pain. "Huh?"
"Go find the others." I ordered. He scrambled down, monkey-like, from the roof and began poking bodies with his toes. I was determined to get out of there. The long weekend was coming to a close and Doggawar's parents were due back any moment that day.

After a few hours of clearing up (actually, Mojo did almost all the cleaning while the three of us sat in the kitchen and nursed our hangovers and dug pellets out of each other's skin) we packed up the car and headed, much more slowly and listening, I believe, to Rod Steward on low volume, to Hamilton and back to regular college life.

No Time For Fun

2011-01-31T02:36:00.003-05:00

Life in Moscow these past 4 months has been incredibly boring. My time-consuming, energy-draining schedule persists. Wake up early in the morning, get on the bus to Moscow (1 hour), take the metro (30 minutes), walk to my first class (30 minutes), after that walk back to the metro (30 minutes), take the metro to my next class (30 minutes), get on a marshroutka bus (20 minutes), after that class get back on the bus and back on the metro, walk again (20 minutes), and after that take the metro to the train station and take a train home (1 hour), then another marshroutka (30 minutes).

By the time I walk in the door it's around 11:30 at night. My wife, who has to wake up around 6 am to get to her job in Moscow, is usually asleep by the time I get home. I have just enough time to slam back a cup of tea and then crawl into bed to do the same thing the next day. Day after day after day. The worst part is that I'm making as much as I made with Language Link last year, but working 40 hours per week and travelling almost as much, instead of the 28 hours I worked before. Add to that the fact that Language Link provided an apartment, and all my classes were in one central location, and I'm actually getting burned with my current schedule.

Because of this schedule, I have not had time to meet up with any friends or make any new ones, or visit any museums or interesting places, or party, or go clubbing, or anything like that. So I have no new stories about life in Moscow to share.

A year ago I was in love with Russia and with Moscow. I was captivated by the overall sexiness of this great country, and the deep and rich history and the incredibly funny people and the laissez-faire attitude of living here. Now I've turned completely against Moscow and Russia. As Katya told me: "Now you see what life is REALLY like here." I miss the rose glasses I was wearing a year ago.

So with no time to enjoy myself, and no interesting stories to write about, and a growing annoyance for everything Russian, I will be heading back to my home soon. It's too bad, because it used to be so great here. Oh Russia 2009/2010, I miss you!

Stupid People

2011-01-25T02:48:00.008-05:00

Please excuse the red and yellow fonts in this text. Blogspot is being stupid and won't let me change them, no matter how many times I attempt to edit this post.

Deep in the human brain four stages of our evolution can be identified, like the rings on a tree. Near the brain stem, making up a lump of brain mass, is the somatic brain, which is the oldest and most primal of our 4 brains and offers stunning testimony to the behaviours of some of the simpler creatures on our planet. This brain does nothing but control the ability to eat, breathe, reproduce, etc.

Around the somatic brain a different brain grew, over the course of millions of years! This is the reptilian brain and is almost identical to the brain the dinosaurs had, evidence of which can be found in modern day crocodiles and other left-overs of earth's distant past. This brain is responsible for territoriality, aggression, visual response and other more primal behaviours.

At some point between the last days of the dinosaurs and the rise of the mammals, the limbic brain evolved, which we humans share with all the other mammals on the planet (it should be noted that all the other mammals also have the before-mentioned two brains), and is what gives us emotions, particularly towards the creation and care of young. The limbic brain is so well-fused with the reptilian brain that researchers aren't sure if the two are indeed separate brains, although modern-day reptiles and birds have only the smaller brain.

Finally, separating us from all other species on the planet (whales and dolphins aside, which have an extra brain on top of the four humans have), is the neocortex. This brain is responsible for all the remarkable achievements humans have performed over the past 8,000 years. The neocortex gives us speech, logic, art, intelligence and the ability to deal in abstractions. The neocortex is truly an awe-inspiring brain.

Unfortunately for we humans, the other three brains, particularly the reptilian brain, continues to hold much sway over the way we think and behave. The feeling of revenge for a slight or a threat is a great example of the power the reptilian brain holds over our neocortex, which should, if given full control of our heads, come up with a much better response then "I'm gonna kill you, muthaf**ker!"

Scientists and psychologists, who have been studying the brain and its workings for a long time (Egyptian and Greek doctors in antiquity had detailed descriptions of the human brain, unfortunately, many of those documents were lost when the Great Library of Alexandria, the storehouse of classical knowledge, was destroyed by religious zealots), have been keen to keep an emotional distance from their studies, which is a good thing when conducting any scientific expirement. Unfortunately they have left certain theories up to philosophers. Today, some of those theories are considered politically incorrect although there is a great deal of evidence to support them. Nobody wants to offend the (so-called) sensibilities of those who might fall into a certain categorization. Nobody wants to be called "stupid".

Thank goodness for the internet, however, because now I can present to you my own theory on stupidity, although unfortunately it won't stand the test of intense peer review. I am well-aware of the scientific method; the development of a hypotheses, the application of expirement to see if the facts fit the hypotheses, the anylisation of the results, and the disciplined need to shelve any theories where the observed evidence doesn't support the hypotheses. Science is not the exclusive realm of a few elite, but the natural inquisitiveness of all humans to understand the world, and the cosmos, around them. When a baby first learns that gravity can make her fall down, and she begins questioning how, she is conducting science. When a happy couple stare at the stars in a telescope together, romantic indeed, they are in fact observing the nature of the universe and are conducting science. And when I'm on the Moscow metro and observing the people pushing and jostling and falling down, and developing a hypotheses as to the workings of stupidity, I am conducting science.

The Hypotheses

Originally I wanted to show that there are people who are innately stupid, and then there are every one else. First I had to come up with a working definition of "stupid", which, for the purposes of this expirement, means "slow to understand, lacking intelligence, permanently confused and prone to repeatedly making incorrect decisions".

My test was to see if people were indeed organically, biologically stupid, and for this I needed a control group of those I considered intelligent. I would then apply the same observations of my control group to the rest of the people I was observing (neither the control group nor the test subjects were aware that they were under observation). For my control group I chose a mix of people from different cultural backgrounds; one American male, one British female, one Korean male, two Russian males and two Russian females (as the test subjects would be Russians in Moscow, it was important to gather lots of information about Russians from my control group).

After two months of study of the control group*, I found that they all had the ability to think clearly even under different stresses, and when alcohol was added to the equation the level of clear, intelligent thinking diminished at different rates for different individuals (but that, of course, is a different study that is well documented). The American male was, for example, able to keep a clear head when using Moscow's notoriously over-crowded public transit system, and thought ahead of seating arrangements and other details. The Brit was able to maintain a calm and clear and objective demeanour even when imbued with alcohol. The Russian control subjects showed themselves to be no different in behaviour than Americans or Brits, either when sober or when alcohol was introduced.

*Of course, I didn't know I was actually performing a control expirement on my friends until AFTER I decided to test a hypotheses about the infinitely stupid.

After looking at the information I had about my control group and then applying their behaviours to those of the general public in Moscow, I quickly found that my original hypotheses, that there are the naturally stupid and then normal, thinking people, was grossly simplistic. I had to shelve the theory and develop a new one. Basically, I believed there were varying levels of stupidity that could be categorized, but I wasn't sure what they were. After nearly a year of studying both intelligent people and idiots, in Moscow, London and Ottawa, I have come up with a theory to categorize stupid people.

Category 1: The Involuntarily Stupid

These people make up a large mass of the human population, and usually come from countries where access to education and/or intelligent upbringing is denied them. They are not biologically stupid, as if given the opportunity to shine C1 (Category 1) stupid people would be quite succesful. Instead, culture, institutions and official carelessness has forced these people into a certain level of stupidity, and many have no idea that it is so.

Example behaviours of C1 stupid people include extended use of the reptilian brain (perhaps because the neocortex was not stimulated properly during development), resulting in aggressive behaviour. The intimidating and uncouth behaviour of many central-asian immigrants to Moscow and the many young Russian males in the city can be attributed to C1 stupidity. With different options in their lives, these people could be quite different. Thus, C1 stupidity is created by society, and is not a natural stupidity.

Category 2 Stupidity: The Voluntarily Stupid

At first I didn't even consider that people could choose to be stupid, but the evidence was overwhelming and I had to include C2 stupidity in this theory. Voluntary stupidity applies to those people who, for some reason or another, choose stupid behaviours even when all the tools to overcome stupidity are available to them. C2 stupid people are overwhelmingly found in advanced democratic states such as England, America, Canada, Western Europe and Australia. They can also be found in advanced cities like Moscow. Where educational programming, prestigious institutions, public internet access and a culture that emphasises knowledge is readily and easily available, some people just choose to be morons.

An example of C2 stupidity from my observations can be found with people who have no mathematical ability, or knowledge of history or geography, and usually claim "I'm good at the arts but not at math". Math, like all knowledge, is not a natural ability but is learned. If someone is good at one thing they can be equally as good at another with discipline and effort. A more extreme example of C2 stupidity is when people readily believe, without questioning the evidence or using their natural logical capabilities, the tall claims of politicians (such as when the Bush administration duped half the American public into the WMD threat posed by Iraq). These people refused to even question the claims themselves, and eagerly chose to be stupid.

Category 3 Stupidity: The Inately Stupid (or Biological Stupidity)

Not everyone, I observed, is forced by society or willingly chooses to be stupid. Many people are just biologically incapable of intelligent thought and behaviour. In large urban centres all over the world the phenomenon of C3 Stupidity is easily observed. For my own observations I was in Moscow, and was able to study C3 Stupid People up close and personal on the public transport system.

C3 behaviour includes walking into another person, or scrambling like a frightened animal to get a seat without regard to personal dignity or the others around (usually with wide eyes and flailing limbs). The best example of Biological Stupidity can be found in any person who is hit by a train. For an intelligent person, it would take a supreme effort to be hit and killed by an extremely powerful and heavy machine that rides on tracks which covers only three feet of space, and makes a lot of noise and light hundreds of yards before reaching the victim. For someone who is naturally an idiot, it tends to be rather easy. Simply review the Darwin Awards for other examples of C3 stupidity.

It is apparent in C3 stupid people that most of the brain functions are not working (evidenced by the way mammals stay out of the path of oncoming trains, although birds and insects are regularly killed by large vehicles). With effort, sometimes supreme, a C3 stupid person can fire a few neurons in the limbic or neocortex brains, but for most of their day they walk through life in a sort of unthinking daze, reacting (sometimes) to the various stresses and stimuli they are subjected to. It would be interesting to study if C3 stupidity is biologically passed on.

C4 Stupidity: The Divinely Stupid

Unlike the C2 stupid who choose to follow the authority of their leaders, C4 stupid people have no choice. For some reason, these people are biologically unable to question appeals from so-called "higher" authorities. There is a great mass of humanity that are divinely stupid, and although they show intelligent functions in other areas of their lives (thus not relegating them to C3 stupidity), the appeal of authority immediately cows them.

Examples of divinely stupid people include religious fanatics who come from intelligent, logical societies or upbringings (such as many of the evangelical Christians in America). Many Catholics, particularly in latin-European countries such as Italy, France and Spain, are C4 stupid. This level of biological stupidity doesn't only apply to religon, however. People who follow politicians blindly (without making the conscious effort to do so), are C4 stupid. The key here is that a C4 stupid person will always, for all their lives, maintain this behaviour yet show intelligence in other aspects of their lives.

Divine stupidity is also common among the followers of New Age religions, conspiracy theories, UFO-oligists, people who recycle old ghost stories and Loch Ness sightings (purported as "evidence"...many C4 idiots like to mask their biological stupidity with appeals to science) and, in extreme cases, cult followers (Jonestown may have been a mass removal of C3 and C4 morons from the gene pool).

Poli-Stupidity

There are some special cases that display traits of 2 or more of the categories of stupidity. A person who is both forced by society to be stupid, but when put in an environment where opportunities are easy to come by for improvement, finds they are unable to learn (or chooses), is poli-stupid.

An fantastic example of poli-stupidity can be found in Republic Senator Joe McCarthy during the 1950s, who displayed traits from all four categories of stupidity. The jury is still out on George W. Bush, as only history will decide if he was actually intelligent and conducting a policy of extreme stupidity for personal gain (which would make him quite smart), or if he was truly stupid. Chances are he knew what he was doing, and was exploiting the varying levels of stupidity in the electorate to pursue personal goals. He wouldn't be the first leader to exploit human stupidity.

There it is, my theory of stupidity. Naturally it may be completely wrong, but I do have lots of observed evidence to support it. More than likely some categories will need altering, and others added, but I'll leave that in the hands of science.

Error Bar: +/- 1.5

Halifax or Victoria?

2011-01-19T03:43:00.010-05:00

Victoria, British Columbia or Halifax, Nova Scotia; that is the question. As Katya and I prepare to file her permanent resident visa application to Canada, one question plagues me: where will we live?

The choice of location is only one small box on the visa application, but it is a very important box. As the sponsor, I must show that I can support my wife for three years, which means that I must show I have a job and a place to live. If we write "Halifax" on the application, and I then change locations to Victoria before the application has been completed, we must start the whole process anew.

The decision is entirely up to me, as Katya reminds me every time I think aloud about it. "I don't know these cities, you do." she says. There's a great deal of responsibility on my shoulders in this matter, as I am determined to find one permanent place where we can settle down and never move from again. I am tired of travel and I have been living out of a suitcase for over two years now. I miss having a place that is mine, things that are mine, a stable and steady income and my own car.

The choice of city must meet several criteria that I have thought long and hard about. These are as follows:

1) Job market must be healthy enough to provide meaningful work.
2) Housing prices must be in line with salaries.
3) The city must be comfortable, clean and aesthetically pleasing.
4) The city must have the necessary culture and energy to allow both of us to be happy.
5) Facilities, infrastructure, commerce, government, services and safety must be high (although that will be easy to find in any city in Canada when compared to Russia).
6) The city must be near the ocean and have pleasant scenic views.

Basically, where can Katya, a new immigrant to Canada, and myself live a happy and comfortable life? I was originally thinking of Guelph, Ontario (my original hometown) but have since dropped that from the list of contenders, and it is now down to either Victoria or Halifax. I keep Katya's perceptions in mind as much as I can when making this decision, as I know what it is like to live in a foreign land and I want her to be as happy and comfortable as possible. So here is my comparison of Victoria and Halifax.

Halifax, Nova Scotia

Halifax is a beautiful and historic city. As one of the older cities in North America, it boasts a rich historical tradition that is on display everywhere. It served as the main British naval port in North America during the American Revolution, and its massive fortress, The Citadel, dominates every point of the city.

As one of North America's biggest natural deep-water ports, Halifax sees a lot of international shipping and trade every year and the provincial government has been wise over the past decade and has attracted a booming IT and communications sector to the city and thus, the job market is very healthy. A search for "jobs Halifax" brings up page after page of help wanted advertisements, satisfying my first criteria for a city. Score one for Halifax.

Another point in favour of moving to Halifax are the incredibly affordable housing prices. 2-bedroom apartments rent for around $750 a month, and a small starter home in one of the sattelite suburbs can be bought for under $100,000. "Mini-homes" in Nova Scotia, homes that are not trailers but not full-sized houses (2 or 3 bedrooms, kitchen, living room, patio on the side...actually they can be quite nice), can be purchased for under $50,000, including a small plot of land! Halifax scores big on the housing front.

When it comes to my third criterion, the comfort, cleanliness and aesthetics of a city, Halifax doesn't hold up as well. There are beautiful parts of the city, particular near the touristy harbourfront and along the roads that lead to Citadel Hill, but other parts of the city can be downright trashy (especially near the shipping docks and the large naval base). The winters in Halifax are famous for dumping six feet of snow in one night, and during the late summer the hurricanes that batter Florida and the Caribean every year smash into Halifax and die out over Nova Scotia. All told I think Halifax doesn't get a point in this department.

Halifax does have culture and energy in abundance, however. A strong Celtic tradition that has been succesfully promoted by the descendants of the first Scottish settlers is every where. During the touristy summer season, fiddles and bagpipes create a cacaphony of noise throughout the city, and then there is the immensely popular annual Halifax International Tattoo..a big military drum and pipe festival that showcases marching bands from around the world. I'm not so sure how Katya will take the constant sound of bagpipes. Being from Russia, she has never heard one before in her life, let alone 100 blaring in unison. Nevertheless, Halifax meets the criteria in this department.

Halifax is a fairly safe city, depending on where you go. Like all cities there is a fair amount of crime and some parts of the city are best avoided all together. Traffic can get bad in Halifax, especially over the two bridges that span the inner harbour during rush hour. Nova Scotians are, by and large, the friendliest and wittiest people in Canada but in their governance of Halifax's infrastructure it sometimes seems they can't get their act together (it might help Katya feel more at home). Halifax meets some of this criteria but not all.

Finally, my mother lives in Halifax and would be able to help out with our initial relocation, but this is a double-edged sword as anyone who knows my mother can attest to.

Of the six criteria I applied, Halifax meets 3.5 of them. It would be a nice and comfortable place to transition to life in Canada, but not necessarily the place to live, raise a family, retire, and die.

Victoria, British Columbia

Nestled in on the extreme south end of Vancouver Island, Victoria is a young, vibrant and modern city. Stunning panorama views of both the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean create a dreamy quality to this deceptively peaceful city. Victoria is actually a bustling hub of traffic, commerce, construction and yuppy do-gooders.

The job market in Victoria is not as good as Halifax. A search for "jobs Victoria" brings up lots of openings in part-time service roles (waiters, hotel staff, etc) but not many jobs in anything meaningful or well-paying. The company I worked for in Victoria before I came to Russia has been advertising as they prepare for the new fishing season, so there is a chance that I could find well-paying work there. Barring that, a lack of a Masters degree in Marine Biology or Public Policy Planning pretty much relegates the average joe like myself to waiting tables in Victoria, which scores negatively in my search for the perfect city to live.

Also scoring against Victoria are the incredibly insane housing prices. A small 1-bedroom apartment in Victoria rents for around $900 a month! Of course, outside of the city, in communities such as Sooke and Duncan, prices are more reasonable but I must always think of Katya, who will be unable to get around easily while I am at work. Therefore public transportation is a key and neither Sooke nor Duncan offer easy transport to Victoria. Forget buying a house in Victoria, the average price of a starter home is near the half-million-dollar mark! Victoria fails miserably in my second criterion for a good city to live.

When it comes to comfort, cleanliness and aesthetics, however, there is nowhere better on this planet than Victoria. This city is a beautiful testament to man's ability to blend modern life with nature. Although the city is young, modern buildings are designed with an eye to classical Victorian beauty, and the streets are well-planned. The inner-harbour is a peaceful and relaxing place to watch the sunset over the mountains and into the Pacific. Pods of orca whales glide around off the beaches, seals and otters playfully splash water at passerby's on the docks and eagles glide overhead. Because Victoria is situated in a sub-tropical environment, palm trees and tropical flowers bloom all year round (average winter temperature in Victoria: +8)...yes, Canada does indeed have palm trees!

Talking about weather, Victoria can sometimes seem a paradise for someone like me (who abhors both heat and cold...I'm a room-temperature kind of guy). Temperatures in the summer rarely peak +28 and never drop below zero in the winter, and most of the rain skips past Victoria to fall on her unfortunate and much larger cousin, Vancouver. When it comes to the third and fourth criteria, Victoria scores incredibly high.

The culture in Victoria is not nearly as loud (and some would say irritating) as Halifax, but there is a vibrant energy that is easy to feel the moment you enter it. Incomes are higher in Victoria, and a large population of well-to-do yuppies inhabit the scenic outskirts. Retirees are also found in abundance, as old farts flock from Canada's much colder eastern climates for the warm shores of the west coast. Unfortunately, this has also brought in waves of drug-addicts and homeless vagabonds, who find it easier to survive February in Victoria than in freezing Toronto. Crime in the downtown core and in areas such as Esquimault (another naval base) can be high, particular with smash-and-grabs and the occasional mugging at night, although Victoria has so far been spared the rash of gang-related shootings that has plagued Vancouver. Nevertheless, there is a warm, comfortable and cozy culture in Victoria and thus it scores high.

In total, Victoria meets 4 of my 6 criteria, just barely outperforming Halifax. Of course, in the end this means nothing if I can't find a job and a place to live. The choices seem very unfair: be homeless in a paradise city or have a good job in a more trashy city.

As I countdown to my return to Canada (which is soon, so we can get the visa process moving along...plus I've pretty much worn out my welcome in Russia), the decision of where to live looms larger and larger in my thoughts. Some nights it's all I can think about. Ultimately I know Victoria would be perfect, but I want security, a good salary and good housing, too, things that Victoria doesn't offer in abundance. I hope Katya hasn't placed her trust in a fool...

Plug In, Fill Up, Turn Off

2011-01-11T03:54:00.004-05:00

Although Christmas was kind of crappy this year (actually non-existent), and New Year was just another day with the added exception that I was sick with a head cold, I immensely enjoyed the 10 days off, doing nothing. Katya and I watched a lot of Amazing Race and Hell's Kitchen (I have turned her into a reality-TV junky. Best of all, she watches them in English). I visited a Russian banya for the first time, and resolved to never do that again.

Going back to work in Monday was exceptionally painful, and it immediately put me into a foul mood. As I resumed my normal schedule, I thought about the end of the day and the 2 hours of travel just to get home. It is a routine I call "Plug in, fill up, switch off". Basically it involves finding a seat and plugging in to my ipod, then, once that is accomplished, filling my stomach with a schwarma or whatever food I found, and when I have completed that task I go to sleep until I reach my stop.

The problem with finding food to eat is that there is so much crap in Moscow and, even worse, shitty customer service. I can even put up with bad food if the service was exceptionally good, but I can't tolerate bad food AND bad service. It seems to me that Russians just don't understand how a free market works. I do, and I continue to crusade against bad businesses by not giving them a kopeck of my money, and by remaining a loyal, paying customer to those businesses who make the grade.

To keep organized, I've compiled a little list of businesses that pass or fail. This is by no means comprehensive (duh).

Burger King: FAIL

I have only visited the Burger King location at Metropolis shopping center at Voykovskaya, and on both occasions I went there I left not only disappointed but filled with anger (a the wrong emotion to instill in one's customers). The people at the serving counter were so completely rude, even demanding exact change like some babushka at a produkty. I watched as the staff clawed over each other to be the first to grab fries or burgers that had come up as if they were on the metro at rush hour, instead of working together as a team. My fries were soggy and my whopper had been sitting under a heat lamp for hours, and both times I went the cashiers treated me with such contempt that I resolved to never eat at any Burger King in the world again.

Every Produkty in the Moscow Oblast: FAIL

These stores make absolutely no sense to me. Go to one counter for your bread, pay. Go to the counter next to that for your milk and cheese. pay. Go the counter across from that one for your meat and pay. Go to another counter for a beer and pay. Why? Why not one counter?!? This isn't rocket science!!!

It has been explained to me that this is because several owners operate the different counters, and being Russian they don't trust each other with division of the profits if there was only one cash. As a consumer that isn't my problem. It's theirs. Adding to the difficulty in picking up a few items for the house is the incredibly bitchy and rude customer service that is encountered at every produkty in this country. Exact change is always demanded, and I've even been refused service for not having 20 kopecks. I resolved to never spend a rouble at any produkty again.

Hesburger: PASS

This fast-food burger chain from Finland has become my favourite fast-food joint in Moscow. They are dotted all over the city but I find the quality and service is fairly consistent. The customer service is outstanding, especially for Moscow, showing that Hesburger is committed to training their managers and supervisors correctly (unlike Burger King). The food is also fantastic, and I love their menu. The Mega Burger and the Hess Burger are two of the best fast-food burgers I've ever tried. The restaurants are kept in good, clean order and, best of all, the prices are cheap and fantastic! I continue to be a loyal Hesburger customer!

Moscow Oblast DPS (Traffic Police): PASS

Despite rampant corruption, racism, incompetence and thuggery, the DPS earns a pass mark from me for several reasons. First, they have been cracking down on unlicensed drivers throughout the oblast over the past month, resulting in nearly 6,000 arrests and 12,000 fines and making Moscow drivers a little bit more afraid of the law (which is a good thing in this lawless land). The DPS has always fought very hard against drinking and driving, and most drivers in the region don't dare get wasted first and then go cruising around Moscow. Finally, and I saw this one with my own eyes, two little girls wearing backpacks and obviously coming home from school exited a bus and tried to cross the street at a crosswalk, where who I assumed was their mother was waiting. Traffic, however, wouldn't allow either the girls or the mother to cross, as the drivers were ignoring the lights and simply driving through (including my bus driver).

One of the girls was crying, but just then a DPS car turned on his lights and pulled up to the two girls. One cop got out of his car and walked into the middle of traffic and brought everything to a halt, while the other cop took the girls by their hands and calmly walked them across to their mother. Then both cops got back into their car and drove off into the sunset, a display of humanity and generosity I have never seen in a police force, not even in Canada. Kudos to the DPS (for now).

That's my list of compliments and complaints for today. I'm sure I'll think of more on the elektrishka tonight when I plug in, fill up and turn off.

Best of 2010

2011-01-11T03:38:00.003-05:00

Here is my annual list of the things that will remind me of 2010, if any body cares.

Movie: Cool Runnings

I spent a large part of January and February watching this film with my classes, fitting in nicely with my Vancouver Olympics-themed lessons (which were happening at the time).

TV Show: Peep Show

This hilarious British show was introduced to me by Quagmire and Ms. Australia, and I brought it back to Canada in September where it was an instant hit with those I showed it to. My favourite episode remains the one where he eats the dog...

Musical Artist: Sloan

Riding on the marshroutka nearly every day in 2010, and for some strange reason the same song by Sloan would be shuffled into play on my ipod. Now, every time I hear any song by Sloan, I'm reminded of a Russian marshroutka.

Book: The Master & Margarita (by M. Bulgakov)

Definitely hands-down the best book I read in 2010. I gobbled it up while I was deathly ill in July and loved not only the satire and the bashing of the communist elite in Russia, but also the way the author switches back and forth from Pontas Pilot's dealings with Christ before the cruxifiction to the comedic devil and his trio running amuck in Moscow.

Song: Say Hello (by Deep Dish)

This song will always remind of me three things: Moscow nightclubs, Moscow girls and the Moscow Metro, and I don't know why, but as I listened to each song I had nominated to represent the song of 2010 for me, this song stood out above all the others of conjuring up the most memories and images of that year.

Canned Christmas

2010-12-28T02:59:00.011-05:00

Christmas, as we understand it in the west, isn't celebrated in Russia on December 25. They reserve that for New Years, thanks in large part to the Russian Orthodox Church and the Communist regime Russians lived under for three-quarters of a century.

The Orthodox Church never changed from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, meaning that they remained about 13 days ahead of Europe (who changed to the modern Gregorian calendar a few centuries ago). So while, technically, Christmas is celebrated on December 25 in Russia, it is in actual fact January 7.

The Communists, on the other hand, in their war on religion, set out to destroy the Russian Orthodox Church (which was a HUGE part of Russia's national make-up) and in addition to demolishing historic churches and arresting clergy, they also banished Christmas. They recognized that the people needed something to celebrate, so they moved Russia to the Gregorian calendar and made New Years the big celebration in Russia. As a result, after three generations of forced celebration on December 31st, New Years is today the big holiday in Russia.

New Years has all the trappings of Christmas, including "New Years" trees, "New Years" gifts and cards, Grandfather Frost who brings gifts to children on "New Years Eve" and everything else one would expect on Christmas, with the added tradition of drinking until one nearly dies.

Because I am from the west and December 25 is still the biggest day of the year in my mind (and soul), I decided to celebrate Christmas as best as I could. Katya and I travelled to the historic town of Suzdal, about 280 km south-west of Moscow.

We both took Friday (Christmas Eve) off work and boarded a train bound for Lake Baikal, in Siberia, for the three-hour journey. There were only second-class seats left but we felt like splurging so we forked over 500 RUB each and found our car. Two army men were sitting in our compartment (2nd class on Russian trains consists of a private compartment with 4 bunks for 4 people).

At first Katya and ignored the two soldiers, who had a dignified air about them, and we chatted away in English. On Russian trains one cannot use the toilet until the train has left city limits, so after thirty minutes, when the train had departed from Moscow and the jungle of apartment blocks and rusting factories had changed to snow-covered birch and pine forests, Katya left the compartment to find the little girls room. I sat in silence with the two soldiers.

Suddenly, one of the soldiers, a young man with a soft face and two silver stars on his shoulder boards, turned to me and in perfect English asked "Where are you from?" I was surprised and answered "Canada. And you?" He looked at me in a strange way for a moment and then began to laugh. "Russia, of course!" he answered. "I'm Anton, and this is Sergey" He motioned to the incredibly large young man sitting across from him with piercing blue eyes. Sergey must have been at least six-foot-four and was bulging with muscle, even in his baggy camouflaged army uniform.

By the time Katya returned to our compartment the three of us were swapping jokes and laughing and acting like old friends. Katya looked a little confused but sat down anyways (she later admitted she thought she had entered the wrong compartment). Anton was a lieutenant and he was taking Sergey, a private who had just finished boot camp, to his first posting in Siberia. They had a 3-day journey and then once Lt. Anton had safely delivered his young charge, he had a 3-day journey back to Moscow. Anton was a true slavophile, who told me numerous time that he "loves Russia" and held his hand on his heart every time.

When I asked about the black panther patch on their uniforms, he told me that they were internal military security forces. "In Stalin's time we were called NKVD" he informed me, and then pulled out a bottle of vodka and a sausauge and some bread, and we all began to drink. "I like Canada" Anton explained to me. "I thought you were American at first, and didn't want to talk to you." As he drank more vodka, he began to repeat "I love my country. I like Canada. I don't like America."

When the train reached the city of Vladimir, mine and Katya's point of debarkation, we gathered our things and said our goodbyes. "Wait!" Anton exclaimed, and he pulled out of his duffle bag a big box of Russian army rations. "Merry Christmas!" he said and thrust the box at me. "Umm" I stammered, not sure what to do. He was drunk and would probably miss them later, and I also had no room to carry 2kg of canned food around with me. His gift was thoughtful and he was genuinely being kind, however. "Thanks!" I replied. "Merry Christmas to you! And S Novom Godom (Happy New Year)!"

Anton smiled proudly. "Nobody will believe that I was drinking with a Canadian!" he declared.
"Nobody will believe I was drinking with NKVD!" I replied, and we both laughed. Then the kind and drunk security lieutenant gave me a big Russian bear hug, and Katya and I left the train.

With our own bags and a bulky 2kg box of powdered and canned army rations under my arm, we struggled through the snow of Vladimir until we found the bus station. There is no train station in Suzdal itself. so we had to take the train to Vladimir (another historic city and once the capital of Russia in the 15th Century) and then a 1-hour bus ride to Suzdal.

Suzdal is a Russian showpiece. The town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so it is completely devoid of factories and highrises and highways. All the houses are little and ornately decorated in rich carvings and colours, in the traditional Russian way. More brilliantly still, there are nearly 150 bright Orthodox churches in the town and surrounding country side, so hundreds of multi-coloured, multi-shaped steeples poke up into the air from Suzdal's skyline. The roads were small and tree-lined and with a rich blanket of thick white snow, the town had a fairy-tale quality to it. Best of all, the rude and aggressive crowds of assholes that is Moscow were far behind us. The entire town was silent.

Katya and I spent two nights in Suzdal, exploring the churches and museums. On Christmas morning I awoke to find a small, luggage-sized Christmas tree with one sock under it. Katya, knowing Christmas is my favourite time of year (she calls me Clark Griswald), had packed a little tree and begun knitting me socks, but didn't have time to finish the second one. Across the small street from us was a huge convent surrounded by a big white wall. This convent is where the Tsars sent unwanted wives.

We spent Christmas Day walking through the town, and visited the Suzdal Kremlin and the Museum of Wooden Architecture (a big, open-spaced museum where wooden buildings have been reconstructed and period-actors roam about).

One problem with Suzdal is that it is pretentiously over-priced. The service is no better than in Moscow, nor is the quality of the food at restaurants, yet the prices were 20% higher. One restaurant was decent, however. Sokol, on the main street, has a nice little bar tucked into a corner of the second floor and they serve food from the restaurant upstairs. The barman is friendly and courteous, although the prices still suck.

Our hotel was wooden and the room was made of big wood logs, in the Russian tradition. We were the only guests in the hotel and the staff even went home at night, so on Christmas night, after a day walking through the town, we got drunk at the bar and sat in the lounge listening to music and playing chess, eating kalbasa and cheese on crackers.

On Boxing Day, December 26, we took the bus back to Vladimir and caught an elektrishka back to Moscow. I was hoping for another train, with it's comfortable bunks and drunk soldiers, but there were none that day, so we were stuck with a Moscow commuter train, complete with asshole babushkas and panhandlers who crowded and annoyed us for 3 1/2 hours.

On the elektrishka my stomach began to growl. We hadn't had time to eat that day, and we had just barely made the train so didn't have time to pick up food. With no prospect of sustenance for five or six hours (after arriving in Moscow we had to take another elektrishka to Shyelkova, and then a bus to Katya's home), and beginning to feel positively famished, I did the only thing I could think of. I opened the box of army rations the friendly NKVD officer had given me.

Inside were cans of preserved meat, packs of preserve jams, vacuum-sealed high-energy crackers, packets of vitamins, powdered juice and tea, and four little burners to cook food with. There was also a can of buckwheat porridge, which I immediately resolved to NEVER open.

One of the cans had a picture of a cow on it, so I picked that one out of the box and opened some sealed crackers. There was a little thumb-sized metal blad with a tiny notch in the handle which I assumed (correctly...I think) was a can-opener and so, surrounded by idiots and assholes on an uncomfortable wooden elektrishka seat, I began to saw away at the can of preserved beef.

I was surprisingly succesful, as I slowly but surely pried the lid off the can. A putrid sweet odour from the can spread throughout the elektrishka car, and people began looking over at us (especially the fat old woman sitting next to me) as I hacked and sawed. Fatty, oily juice sloshed over the sides of the can onto the floor and seat. Finally I opened the can and peeled back the tin lid.

Inside were big, disgusting chunks of brown and grey beef, with a thick layer of waxy white fat on the top. Katya looked at me in a strange way, knowing how picky I am about food. I was starving (and a little hung-over) and I had just gone through so much to open the can, so I was committed at that point to eating it. I grabbed a cracker and jammed it into the disgusting cesspool of meat and fat and oil I held in my hand, and scooped up a big, dripping piece of what I assumed was beef. And I ate it.

I ate the whole can of it, in fact. It was absolutely putrid. It ranks high on my list as one of the most disgusting things I've ever eaten, next to steamed silkworm larvae (Korea) and baked bat (Thailand). It was filling, however, and after I had eaten the can, fat and all, I threw it in a plastic bag and resolved to never eat that stuff again. Later that night my stomach revolted and I spent spent several hours running to the toilet, which begs the question "How do soldiers eat this and perform their duties"?

On Monday I returned to work, and so ended my second Christmas in Russia.

2010 In Photos

2010-12-21T03:28:00.011-05:00

2010 was a very interesting year for me. The moment it started, in the early minutes of January 1st, I was greeted by a cacaphony of noisy fireworks, and the year progressed in much the same manner. Below is my 2010 captured in photographs, from the cold snows of wintery Moscow to the epic history of Volgograd to the brilliant colours of an Ontario autumn.

Industrial-sized fireworks being lit in Shyolkova. January 1st 2010

Quagmire, Mr. Irish and Mr. Irish's friend. January 1st 2010

During the New Year holidays Quagmire and I did a drinking tour of Moscow, and despite getting extremely drunk (and spending all our money) we saw some interesting sights. January 2010.

Park Pabyedi (Victory Park). February 2010

In the metro going to the Moscow Ballet Company. February 2010

Winter Wonderland! Shyolkova, February 2010

Watching the Olympic gold-medal hockey game between Canada and the US. Katya made these mittens herself. February 2010.

Quagmire and Ms. Australia. Their uneasy relationship is easy to see. March 2010

Surrounded by beautiful women at one of our house parties. April 2010

Dutchie, Katya and Q in Volgograd. May 2010

The mighty Volga River. May 2010

The Rodina Matr statue on the top of Mamaev Kurgan. Volgograd, May 2010

The flour mill memorial to the fighting at Stalingrad. Volgograd, May 2010

Sexy girls and interesting fashions. Volgograd, 2010

On the train from Volgograd to Moscow. May 2010.

Victory Day celebrations in Moscow. May 9, 2010

A Russian wedding: Sasha and Galya wed. June 2010.

My "handlers", Olga and Vlada, at our end-of-school-year party. June 2010.

Wonderpants' last night in Russia. The two of us got incredibly drunk alone together and sang sea shanties. June 2010.

Smoke from the burning peat bogs and forest fill Moscow, adding more misery to the +42 degree heat. July 2010.

Katya and I get married in ZAGS in Moscow. August 2010.

Thatched-roof pub in Daventry, England. September 2010.

Quagmire and I did a drinking tour of London, and despite getting extremely drunk (and spending all our money) we saw some interesting sights. September 2010.

Beautiful autumn near Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. October 2010

My sister and brother in Ottawa. Over the past few years I have grown closer to my family and it was such a joy to spend two months with them in the fall. October 2010.

First snowfall of the new winter. Katya in Shyolkova. November 2010.

Doing something. I don't know what. Shyolkova, December 2010.

Kill Me...Please

2010-12-14T06:06:00.004-05:00

It has been a greuling month for me so far, and one that I will take measures to prevent from happening again.

As I'm now off-contract and fully-independent, I have worked very hard to build up a good schedule of private clients. While I have been succesful it is a lot more difficult to actually work that schedule than when I had a comfortable school to hang out in. Add to the fact that I'm living outside of the city and it takes nearly 2.5 hours to get to Moscow, and I have very long days. Language Link didn't help when they scheduled one of my Russian classes on Saturday afternoons, thus giving me only 1 day off per week.

I wake up between 7:30 and 8 am, Monday to Saturday, and spend 30 minutes on a marshrutka (mini bus) and then over an hour on the elektrishka, Moscow's commuter train system. Then I spend between 30 and 45 minutes on the metro and on some days have to walk another 20 - 30 minutes from the metro station to reach my class. After the class I'm back on the metro and do it again for the next class. After that I repeat the whole process again.

As most people want to study at 7 pm this means that I don't finish work until 9, and then it's a 2.5 hour ride back home. I get in the door around 11:30 every night, go to sleep, and wake up and do it again. I have no time to visit friends or enjoy a dinner or go to a bar. I spend every day fighting with the incredibly bitchy and stupid babushkas (I call them "babitchkas") on Moscow's public transit. I do this 6 days a week.

Katya also works in Moscow, and although she doesn't have to spend hours riding the metro and walking in the freezing snow with a pair of sneakers that are falling apart, she is out the door by 6:30 every morning and isn't home until after 9. This means we only really see each other on Sundays.

Sundays should at least be a relaxing day, except that we are living with Katya's mother, and on Sundays her sister and brother-in-law and her father come over and everyone has dinner and speaks very quickly in Russian I can't understand. There is no rest. Katya and I are both at our breaking point with only the promise of 10 days of peace during the New Year holidays in 3 weeks to keep us going.

In the new year we are getting a flat in Moscow, probably in February, and hoping and praying that she can get her Canadian permanent residency visa soon. The moment she has that we are off to a more relaxed country, where we will have a car to get around and regular work places that pay well and a comfortable place to live in.

Until then, we have no choice but to slug through our increasingly dreary existence and enjoy the few minutes of time we have alone together every week.

The Tikkanen Incident

2010-12-06T03:46:00.007-05:00

Living overseas in South Korea and in Russia would seem like two completely different experiences, and until now they have been different, until two of my students took me to a Korean restaurant last week.

Meeting these two students is in itself a strange coincidence. They are a young man and woman, and they both study Korean language at University. The young man spent some time studying Korean martal arts at a Buddhist temple in Incheon and Seoul last summer and the woman is going there in the spring. They have an intimate knowledge of Korea and we have been swapping stories and comparing life there with life in Moscow.

When we walked into the Korean restaurant, about four blocks away from the last metro stop on the bottom of the red line, it was like I had been transported back to another period in my life. The restaurant was complete with in-table Korean barbeques, menus in Korean, Russian and English (and the awesomely hilarious Korean attempts at English, like the "Fried Friend Dumpling") and Korean, or possibly Chinese, staff who barely spoke Russian or English. We ordered delicious dwae-ji kalbi and it came with generous servings of kimchi, lettuce, pickled carrot slices and big chunks of fresh garlic to cook with the meat. There was also that delicious orange-brown chunky sauce that goes on the meat.

As I sat there eating kimchi and kalbi with metal chopsticks, I felt transported back to Korea, and I began replaying adventures and incidents I had enjoyed there in my head. For some reason, perhaps because I am in Russia, which is a hockey country, and perhaps because Moscow is only a 10-hour train ride from Finland, my mind settled on one particular incident: the Tikkanen Incident.

There's a bar in the Itaewon district of Seoul owned by two Canadian brothers. It's called the "Rocky Mountain Pub" and is an homage to Canadiana, complete with license plates and 24-hour hockey replays. It is a popular spot as it serves up delicious western food with proper western customer service, and is one of the few places in Korea where one can buy Molson Canadian on tap. Needless to say that my colleagues and I spent a fair amount of time there.

On one occasion a group of us, including my ex, her sister, our friend Mr. Korea, a friend named Mr. San Diego and a couple of other English teachers, were sitting at the most comfortable piece of real estate in the joint, a corner table sunk low in the ground with windows to our backs and big blue cushions. The waiter approached us and asked us to move to a different table, as there was a VIP coming and he had requested that particular table.

We obliged, not without grumbling, and relocated. Then the VIP walked in. He was a large man in his late 50s and he had with him two healthy-looking young blonde men who stood over six feet tall. I didn't recognize him right away, but Mr. Korea did. "It's fucking Esa Tikkanen!" he declared.
"What?!?" everybody answered.

Esa Tikkanen is a retired NHL hockey player from Finland. He played for the Edmonton Oilers alongside Wayne Gretzky and later the New York Rangers. He was on two Stanley Cup championship winning teams and was known as an enforcer (a goon in layman's terms) who led the league in penalty minutes during the 1980s. Indeed, his record for spending the most time in the penalty box has yet to be broken. And here he was in the Rocky Mountain Pub in friggin' Seoul, South Korea.

"Tikkanen!" Mr. Korea shouted out to him as he and his entourage sat at our recently-vacated table. "Hey!"
Tikkanen looked over and smiled and shouted back. "Hello!"
Mr. Korea, as excited as I've ever seen him, grabbed the waiter by the arm. "Get that table a round of tequila shots and a pitcher of beer, on me." The waiter, one of the Canadian owners, shook his head. "It's not a good idea to get Tikkanen drunk." he warned us.
"It's fine! Trust me!"
"I'm really trying to warn you, DO NOT GET ESA TIKKANEN DRUNK!"
"Just do it, okay?" Mr. Korea pleaded. With a sigh the waiter/owner shrugged like Pontas Pilate, as if to say "Okay, but it's your crucifixion, not mine." and he went to the bar.

When Tikkanen and his two companions received their drinks they seemed delighted. "Where are you from?" Esa called out to Mr. Korea. "Canada!" Mr. Korea answered. "Well, don't just sit there, come over here!" Tikkanen called back.

We changed tables, the girls not as enthusiastically as the guys, and were soon seated at our own table, this time with a washed-up, although still impressive, sports celebrity. We cheered with our tequila shots, poured a round of beer and then began talking.

Tikkanen had been contracted to coach South Korea's first ever hockey team in the newly-formed Asian League Hockey, which consisted, at the time, of one team from South Korea, four from Japan, six from China, and two from Russia (who creamed the Asians in every game and won the championships every year). Tikkanen's companions were Finnish hockey players who played in the Russian KHL and on Finland's national team during world championship and winter olympics events. They were all there to get Korea's hockey team up and running.

The conversation was lively and interesting, and Tikkanen, despite his bad-ass reputation and massive bulk which even at his age still rippled with barely-concealed muscle, was a charming and funny man. He loved Canada, he told us, and enjoyed his time in Edmonton and Toronto much more than in New York where, he told us, the beer wasn't as good. When he had heard there was a Canadian bar in town, he had gone there immediately and since become a regular.

More tequila shots followed, and more pitchers of beer. People became rowdier and livelier.

If anyone reading this has ever drank with English teachers living overseas, then you know that we are a fairly retarded bunch when we drink. Only overseas do we feel at liberty to do things we would never dream of doing back home. In this case, there was a small metal pail on the table filled with peanuts. Like at home, the concept is to munch on them and throw the shells on the floor, but somehow us ESL teachers in Korea had taken to whipping the peanuts, shells and all, at each other's heads when we were drunk (I won't bother explaining Mortal Combat Frisbee). Naturally this happened.

Tikkanen, red in the face and talking loudly and more aggressively after four pitchers of beer and three rounds of tequila, started to say "Hey, stop that." every time a peanut whizzed close to him. It didn't deter us degenerate teachers, however, and we continued to throw peanuts at each other while we chatted. In hindsight, Tikkanen had become silent, but nobody noticed it at the time.

Then my ex, a small blonde girl of about 100 lbs, whipped a badly-aimed peanut at Mr. Korea but nailed Esa Tikkanen square in the forehead by mistake, and Tikkanen snapped.

"DO YOU THINK THAT'S FUNNY???!!!??" he screamed at my ex. Veins were bulging on his massive and balding forehead. "IS THAT FUCKING FUNNY??!!??" My ex sat calmly and stared at him, saying nothing.

Tikkanen, red in the face and filled with rage, stood up so he was towering over her at the other side of the table. "YOU WANT TO FUCKING HIT ME IN THE EYE?" he screamed. The whole bar had gone silent. The waiter looked at us as if to say "I told you so". Tikkanen seemed to be getting angrier by the moment. "YOU CAN FUCKING KILL SOMEONE WITH ONE OF THESE! WELL? YOU WANT TO FUCKING KILL ME???" he screamed at the small girl, who sat and stared at him defiantly, no look of fear on her face.

Mr. Korea, trying to restore the table to the former joviality we had been enjoying, stood up and patted Tikkanen on the shoulder in a friendly manner. "Okay, let's just all stop throwing peanuts and calm down." He picked up Tikkanen's beer. "Here, I'll buy you another one."

Tikkanen turned on Mr. Korea, his massive body shaking in fury, looking for all the world like an angry bull. "SIT THE FUCK DOWN!" he hollered at Mr. Korea. "Okay!" Mr. Korea responded, and quickly sat down again. Tikkanen turned back to my ex. "YOU THINK THAT'S FUCKING FUNNY?" He shouted again, apparently the only phrase he knows when he gets drunk. She just calmly stared at him, saying nothing.

One of the young Finnish players grabbed Tikkanen by the arm and said something in Finnish to him (probably "Let's go") and Tikkanen, still fuming, allowed himself to be dragged away from our table. "FUCKING STUPID BITCH! IT'S NOT FUNNY!" he continued to holler. The other Finn joined them and they put their jackets on left the bar, Tikkanen still hollering like a madman. The bartender came over to our table. "More beer?" he asked, and we all started to laugh.

People from other tables came up to us. "Was that Esa Tikkanen? What did you say to him?" We had become minor celebrities ourselves, and I personally found it funny that my girlfriend was almost in a fist-fight with the feared Esa Tikkanen.

Naturally the next weekend we all flocked to the Suwon hockey stadium to see Esa lead team Korea in a game against Japan. The Tikkanen influence on Korea's team was obvious, as Korean players continued to smash the Japanese players into the boards, and despite having players spend nearly half the game in the penalty box, they came out on top. It helped that Tikkanen and the two Finns would occasionally hop onto the ice themselves during a line change, pass the pack through the legs of the opposing players and fire it into the Japanese net while the goalie dove for cover.

We went to a dozen more games, and in true hockey fashion, heckled the players to no end. "Tiiiikaaanen! Tiiiikaaaanen!" We would chant, to which Tikkanen, probably with no idea that we were the same people he had wanted to kill, would bow to us with a big goofy grin on his face, no doubt reliving his glory days when he played, and fought, alongside Wayne Gretzky in the NHL.

Tikkanen leads Team Korea to a bone-crushing victory

Adventures In Speaking

2010-12-01T03:58:00.003-05:00

Taking Russian classes in Moscow has been both interesting and exciting. For me, learning to speak Russian is a source of great interest, and adds a third language to my linguistic abilities.

As I've mentioned before in this blog, Russian is a difficult language to learn. Navigating the grammar is a constant source of headache yet is vital to the language. Russian is a grammar-heavy language filled with feminine/masculine/neuter nouns, pronouns that must agree with the subject and case endings for the verbs that vary depending on the context.

Living with Katya's mother has helped, as she is only just learning to read the Latin alphabet and thus can't speak any English (except for the words "good" and "happy"), so I am forced to speak to her in badly butchered Russian. Yesterday she told me to smoke in the kitchen and not the balcony, as temperatures have dropped to -18 centigrade. I declined and told her the balcony was fine, and then explained to her, in Russian, that in Canada I can't smoke anywhere BUT outside, so smoking on the balcony in Russia is a treat. I was quite relieved when I actually got the sentence out without mistakes, complete with proper case endings!

Russian is a very emotive and poetic language, and I personally find it sexy, but it wasn't always so.

When I first arrived in Russia I was completely unable to communicate with anyone. I had learned to read Cyrillic before I came, which helped, but even the stock-phrases I had practised were pronounced wrong and came in very little use. After a few harrowing run-ins with bitchy clerks at the stores, I was terrified to open my mouth in public. Thankfully I had Quagmire and Ms. Australia.

Quagmire had a commendable ability to bully his way through any situation in English. He went to the hair salon and in English demanded a haircut. When the hairdresser said "Shto?" (What?) he pointed repeatedly at his head and told them "What the hell do you think I want? A taco?" or something like that. He got his hair cut. He could aggressively cow any Russian service worker into giving him what he wanted.

Both Quagmire and I, however, always had problems at the deli counter in grocery stores. We would both point to what we wanted and say "Moizhna kilogram" (Give me a kilogram). The clerk would do as requested and then ask us something in Russian. For some reason, we both always thought they were asking if that's what we wanted, to which we would reply "Da". Then the clerk would yell at us.

This happened for many months on many occasions, but then after talking to Katya about it, we realized the clerk was asking us "Do you want anything else?" To which we were replying "Yes" and then standing there like idiots.

Ms. Australia was also entertaining to watch with the Russian language. Unlike Quagmire, she made attempts to speak in Russian, and had studied some Russian with a tutor in Perth before coming to Moscow. Her problem, however, was that somehow she managed to import her Australian accent into her Russian speech, a phenomenon even I could hear. It confused the hell out of Russians.

One time Ms. Australia and I walked to the local produkty to buy some chips and drinks. Ms. Australia asked the clerk "Moizhna Red Bull banki bolshoi" (Give me a big can of Red Bull), but the clerk looked at her in puzzlement. "Shto?" came the inevitable reply. "Red Bull...banki" Ms. Australia asked. "Ya tebya nye panamayou" (I don't understand you) the clerk said. Ms. Australia, getting frustrated now, tried the same phrase but in a louder voice. "Red Bull! Banki!" The clerk just stared at her in amazement.

I interjected and repeated the exact same phrase as Ms. Australia. "Moizhna Red Bull banki bolshoi". The woman's face lit up. "Oh! Red Bull banki bolshoi!" and she gave Ms. Australia her can of Red Bull. Ms. Australia glared long and hard at me while I laughed. It wasn't my fault that while she has a strong western Australian accent, I was born with a plain North American one.

Since I've met Katya her English has gone from a pre-intermediate level to an upper-intermediate level, with no formal lessons. She has even begun talking in her sleep in English, and her mother has remarked how we speak to each other a lot faster in English now than we did a year ago. It is my hope that my Russian classes combined with some gentle conversations in Russian with Katya and her family will eventually have the same effect on me.

Until then, however, I will continue to stumble and bully and, ultimately, laugh my way through in Enlish.

Meatballs

2010-11-22T02:42:00.006-05:00

When I woke up on Thursday morning and prepared for my day, a new thought entered my head that would lead me on a mission in Moscow. The thought stayed with me throughout the day, tormented me with such a clarity that it caused me to salivate. I thought of a meatball sub from Subway.

When I had lived off-contract and taught privates in my second year in South Korea, I had made it a tradition every Friday to stop in at Subway and order a meatball sub. I like them a certain way: tomatoes, green peppers and olives, all warmed up in the microwave so the layer of cheese at the top melts over the saucy meatballs. As I brushed my teeth that Thursday morning in Moscow, I realized that I was doing much the same thing here in Russia as I had done in Korea, and there were indeed Subway restaurants dotted around the city.

Part of the reason for the fanatiscism with which I set out to sink my teeth into a meatball sub was because I hadn't had one in over a year. Another reason was because I had eaten nothing for 3 days.

Katya and I are at the end of our money for the month, and we've both been waiting to get paid. In the meantime, we have run out of food. As a Russian, Katya is quite happy eating a bowl of salty buckwheat gruel every day, and her company feeds her lunch every day. I personally won't eat buckwheat. I hate the stuff. In 1812, as Napolean's Grand Armee marched towards Moscow, living off what food they could force from the peasants, many French soldiers died of starvation because the only food that could be found was buckwheat, and the French refused to eat it and starved to death instead. I can now sympathize with them.

But just the day before I had been compensated by some students and on that day, I was going to get a meatball sub, and I knew just the place. To the left of the place where Old Arbat joins New Arbat there is a Subway Sandwiches. As Arbat lies on the blue line, and I was travelling on the blue line that day, it seemed like fate.

I set out full of joy. It felt like Christmas, I was so excited to eat that delicious sandwich with it's dried-up balls of processed pork-like meat product, which have sat in a slowly fermenting pool of tomato sauce all day. Mmmmm, delicious!

It had began to rain and snow when I emerged from the metro. Although it was only 5:30, it was already dark, and fat drops of rain intermixed with swirling snowflakes fell down across the street lights. Arbat was its normal bustle of business men, people handing out Mir Tattoo flyers, beautiful women in skirts and heels, and buskers playing guitars and even one on a trumpet.

I made my way to Subway. It wasn't very busy. There were two big young guys in black leather jackets sitting and eating, and an older lady was arguing with the girl at the counter about the process of making her a sub. The normal Subway decor was there, complete with a map of the New York subway system, the yellow walls and fake plants, and the L-shaped counter where one orders the sub and pays for it at the end. But as I perused the menu, I realized with a sinking feeling that in Russia, they DIDN'T HAVE THE MEATBALL SUB!!!

With an inspection of the different toppings to make sure I wasn't reading the menu wrong, it was confirmed. There were no meatballs bobbing about pathetically in disgusting (yet delicious) tomato sauce, usually with a silver ladel sticking out of one side.

"Can I help you?" The woman, a large creature with a heavy mongoloid face and jet-black hair, was staring at me. With her white t-shirt covered by a black Subway apron, she looked a lot like a penguin "Umm.." I replied wittily. Glancing over the menu, I saw the Subway staple. B.M.T. "Moizhna bolshoi Bay-Em-Tay. Bilayi hlyeb (Give me a large B.M.T. White bread)".

The penguin grunted her response and grabbed a long white baton from the oven-thingy and began making my sub. Apparently in Russia one doesn't choose which toppings you get, however, because she just started piling on lettuce and other useless vegetables. *

*I hate lettuce. It serves no function. It has no flavour, nor does it even contain any nutritional content. It is mearly a leafy decoration and I would probably get more satisfaction out of putting hay on my sub.

"Wait a moment. No lettuce, please." I instructed. The penguin gave me a hard look and then barked aggressively at me in Russian I didn't understand. She started piling lettuce on (ah, Russian customer service). Then she went for the onions. "Nyet!" I cried out, and the large Mongol woman literally snarled at me. After she had placed the lettuce and onions on, and refused to put green peppers on it as I instructed, she turned and put the sub into the toaster. "Nooooo!" I cried out. If I wanted toast, I would have gone to Quiznos! Except there are no Quiznos in Russia, thank god (I also hate Quiznos, with their cheap 1 ounce of meat and vegetables and stale bread that always burns).

I sat down dejectedly with my half-burnt BMT and the toasted pieces of lettuce and onion sticking out of the sides. Thankfully it was still wrapped and I was hungry enough to actually eat it. Just then a soft female voice said, in English "Excuse me, but maybe I can help you?" I looked up to see a red-haired angel. She was tall and slim and curvy beneath her white wool sweater, with beautiful long, thick red hair flowing down her back. Her face was the typical soft, small Slavic work of art and she had such lovely brown eyes that my stomach tightened when I saw them. Or perhaps that was the third day of hunger setting in?

"Umm, well, its too late now!" I replied. She giggled. "I guess." She had that cute and sexy Russian accent that all women who speak English here have. Sometimes I think they practise it from James Bond films.

Remembering my manners, I stood. "What's your name?" I asked. She smiled warmly. "Masha." Then, noticing my wedding ring, she said "You're married?" I suddenly felt very guilty, for I am indeed married but instinct had, when presented with such a beauty, automatically gone into flirting mode. What to do? Lie? Tell the truth? Pursue? Back off? Eat my sub? I took the noble path. "Yes, I'm married!" I exclaimed with pride. This seemed to please Masha, who patted my forearm and said "Good for you. Married men are such good men." And she smiled and stared straight at me. I gulped.

Just then one of the guys in the leather jackets who had been eating when I walked in shouted and leapt to his feet. He barelled straight at us. "Oi! Ti bla-bla-bla-bla-ka!" He was quite pissed off. Maybe Masha was his girlfriend? She apparently didn't know him because she shouted angrily to him in Russian. He ignored her and, standing a few inches from me he continued to shout. I understood a few of the words, including the word "foreigner" and "American".

So this was it. Russia has always been torn between two camps, the Westerners, who want Russia to embrace the rest of the world and be more progressive, and the Slavophiles, who believe Russia has their own thing going and should be the cultural and political home of the Slavic peoples. There is a long history of paranoia towards all foreigners in Russia, and under Putin and his United Russia party, the passionate power of the Slavophile camp has been harnessed. This young man in front of me, then, was obviously the neo-nazi version of a Slavophile. How to explain that I am a friend of Russia, that I love the Slavs and their culture and hope to see Russia take its rightful place in the world?

I didn't have time because the Slav-nazi jabbed his finger into my chest as he screamed a torrent of abuse at me. I was still wearing my heavy black winter coat so it didn't hurt, but my pride was injured and, forgetting that this guy could probably kill me I placed my sub down on the table and prepared to hit him square in the nose.

Just then a large grey uniform pushed its way between us. We were both forced apart and I saw two men in uniforms with fur caps and gold double-headed eagle badges. The militsia! I looked around. Masha was nowhere to be seen. The penguin, who had obviously run out and flagged down the police during the altercation, was rambling away excitedly to the cop and pointing at me. The nazi was standing there while his eating companion quietly slipped out the door, probably the same way Masha had gone.

The cops looked bored and patiently listened to the penguin, who was very excited but seemed to be full of spite towards me. The cop who had pushed us apart pulled out a notepad and began to take notes. The nazi, realizing nobody was paying attention to him, did a little side-step to the door and then ran off. It was only me, the penguin and two Russian militsia.

I have, in 14 months, managed to stay out of trouble and have not once been harassed by the police in Russia. Stories aboud about unprovoked document checks of foreigners (everyone must carry their passport, visa and registration in Russia at all times), followed by the remark that something is out of order with the paperwork, followed by a heavy bribe to make "everything" in order again. Katya and I don't have a lot of money and I had just spent 200 roubles on a nasty sub, which I was determined to eat.

As the penguin rattled on, following, it seemed, the anti-foreigner attitude of the nazi, the cops scribbled notes and looked at the ground. They were obviously not very interested. I realized that in the past minute or two since their arrival, they had hardly glanced at me. Not waiting for the inevitable "Dokumenti, palzhasta", I did a little sidestep towards the door. Nobody noticed me. I took another step and stopped. My heart was pounding. Nobody even looked at me. The door was only one more step away. Like a crab scurrying sideways along the beach, I did a quick shuffle to the door, slowly opened it and stepped out into the rain and snow along Arbat. I was free!

I walked briskly for about ten seconds, aiming for the metro past the underground walkway when I suddenly remembered my BMT. I had left it on the table!

Perhaps it was hunger, or the feeling that I had so far gone through too much to simply leave it behind. Perhaps it was guilt at spending the little money we had left. Whatever the reason, without much thought I turned back towards the door to Subway.

It was only a few feet away from me and I could see that the penguin was still talking, pointing at the bread ovens now, and the cops were seemingly sleeping. I quietly opened the door and slipped inside, then did a little side-shuffle back to the table. My sub was still there. One of the cops, perhaps noticing movement, looked over at me with an inquisitive look, but I just stood there and smiled stupidly. "See?" I tried to tell him with my face. "I'm just a stupid foreigner!" He looked away. I quickly shot my hand out and grabbed my sub, still wrapped in wax paper which made a small crackling sound. Nobody noticed. Then I repeated my earlier escape.

Once outside I beelined as fast as I could for the underground walkway that crosses noisy New Arbat. My heart was pounding fast. Surely they would give chase? I glanced behind me as I walked double-time but saw only the usual crowd of people. When I reached the metro station I took a last look, but apparently I wasn't worth going after. Surely they had noticed me missing by now, but I really had done nothing wrong, the nazi had disappeared and the penguin was complaining about bread. For the cops it must have been a relief to see me gone. Case closed. Let's go sit in our car and smoke.

As I rode the metro to my evening class I laughed heartily to myself (in my head, so as not to seem insane). I had evaded trouble! I had nearly fought a nazi! I had escaped from the clutches of corruption not once but twice! Haha!

When the train came to my stop I stepped off, still laughing. "Haha! You'll never catch me, coppers, see?" I made my way to the long, steep escalators and as I rode up I continued to think of my daring escape. "I can't believe I went back for the sub!" I thought to myself. "And now I am going to enjoy it even more!" I looked down at my sub, except it wasn't there. "No!" I actually shouted out.

I had left the damn thing on the train.

The KHL

2010-11-17T03:34:00.016-05:00

As an avid hockey fan (the Canadian stereotype is true) I have enjoyed going to a couple of KHL games in Russia and watching quite a few on television. The KHL is home to a lot of hockey talent, many of whom end up in the NHL in North America.

Hockey superstars from Russia such as Alexei Ovechkin, Marion Hossa, Alexander Eremenko, Z'Dno Chara and Alexandre Yashin all came from the KHL. Indeed, Russia has always been a hockey super-power, and the Soviet Union won gold in every competition until 1972 when, four years before the Americans did it (and took all the credit..."Miracle On Ice" my ass...more like "We Finally Managed To Do It After Canada Did It Twice And Sweden Once...On Ice"), a team of plucky young men from Canada defeated the Soviets in game seven of a nail-biting international series.

The KHL has 23 teams divided into two conferences, east and west. In May of every year the two teams left standing after a grueling playoff season compete in the Gagarin Cup (named after the famous first man in space). One thing I've noticed from watching KHL games is that there seems to be a no-checking rule in place, much like in Olympic and women's hockey. As a result there is a greater emphasis on puck-handling and passing, although the strategic element of running roughshod over one's opponent is lacking. The stadiums are also much smaller than the gigantic colosseums of the NHL, and as a result I find the NHL, with it's good balance of skillful European skating and bone-crushing North-American hits, much more entertaining.

The teams of the KHL are as follows:

WESTERN CONFERENCE

Nizhny Novgorod Torpedo: A decent team and home to the Soviet goaltending legend Viktor Konovalenko.

Yaroslav Lokomotive: Founded in 1949, Lokomotiv has since spawned a football club by the same name. In 2002 and 2003 they won the Gagarin Cup.

Moscow Spartak: Founded in 1946, Spartak (Spartans) is also the name of a rough-and-tumble Moscow football club whose fans are famous hooligans. The hockey team attracts the same following by sake of the name alone.

Spartak has not won a Gagarin Cup since 1991.

Chekhov Vityaz: The Vityaz (Knights) were founded in 2004 and have not yet won any championships. Nevertheless, their fans are quite passionate and they are one of the only KHL teams to consistently sell-out seats.

Cherepovyets Severstal: Founded in 1956 and owned by a large steel company, they won the cup in 2000.

Minsk Dynamo: The first and only team from Belarus to join the KHL in 2008, Minsk Dynamo is also the current team of up-and-coming NHL draft pick Jordan Henry, a Canadian playing in Minsk.

St. Petersburg SKA: SKA (Sports Klub of the Army), despite it's Soviet-era name, is no longer a military club but owned by Gazprom. They won the championships in 1970, 1971 and 1977, but have since fizzled. They are, however, home to Minnesota Wild right-winger Maxim Sushinksi.

Moscow CSKA: Like the St. Petersburg team, CSKA was a Soviet-era army club but has since gone mercenary (ie: private). CSKA has won more Russian championships and European League cups than any other team in history; 33, all told. Since 1989, however, their star has waned. Between 1975 and 1989 CSKA played 36 games against NHL teams and won 17 of them.

Mytischi Atlant: Formed in 1998, the Atlant won the cup in 2007. They are now the current team of disgraced NHL goaltender, former Ottawa Senator Ray Emery. In keeping with his reputation he earned while in the Stanley Cup finals between Ottawa and Anaheim in 2007, Emery has since, in Mytischi, attacked his coach and been suspended for cocaine use. The Atlant are also the home team of next year's probably first-round NHL draft pick Sergei Mozyakin.

Riga Dynamo: Founded in 2008, they are the first team from Latvia to join the KHL. They are the home team of hockey legend Marcel Hossa. Both Riga Dynamo and Minsk Dynamo were formed at the same time, and by a strange coincidence both teams chose the same name.

Moscow Dynamo: Formed this past year in 2010 and taking the same name as the famous Moscow football club, they have yet to achieve anything other than to add a third Dynamo to the KHL's western conference.

EASTERN CONFERENCE

Khabarovsk Amur: Founded in 1966, the Amur are named after the nearby River Amur. They are the most isolated of the KHL teams; the nearest team is 3000 km away! Nevertheless, they manage to continuously win games and took home the championships in 1986 and 2006. They also had NHL veteran Nolan Pratt playing for them for a while.

Khanti-Manskisk Yugra: Since their foundation in 2006, Yugra has continued the tradition of providing top-notch Siberian teams to the world of hockey. They are likely contenders for the 2010-2011 Gagarin Cup.

Novokuznetsk Metallurg: Another fast and powerful team from Siberia, Metallurg won the championships in 1964 and 1966.

Chelyabinsk Traktor: Founded in 1947, Traktor is one of the only teams in the KHL to have beaten Moscow CSKA in the championships. Traktor has also played in the International Hockey League and won it twice. They are currently coached by former NHL veteran Andrei Nazarov, who was born and raised in Chelyabinsk.

Astana Baris: They played their first KHL game in 2008, and I can find little other information about them.

Kazan Ak-Bars: The current super-team of the KHL, the Ak-Bars have won the past three Gagarin Cups and have yet to lose a game in the European Hockey League. Founded in 1958, the Ak-Bars (Tatar for "Snow Leopards") carries on the tradition of it's Mongol namesake by being one of the roughest and fastest teams in the KHL. NHL superstars Alexei Kovalev and Alexei Morozov have played for the Ak-Bars, and the NHL asked Canadian Ak-Bar defenceman Ray Giroux to sign on, but he refused and has stayed loyal to this tough team from Kazan.

Ufa Salavat Yulaev: From the city of Ufa, in southern Siberia, Salavat Yulaev has won 66 of the 77 games they have played, and are likely contenders for this year's championships.

Nizhnekamsk Neftekhimik: From the Russian republic of Tatarstan, the Neftekhimik (Petrochemists) have yet to achieve anything spectacular.

Yekaterinburg Avtomobilist: The "Automobilists", despite their incredibly silly name, are a top-notch hockey team with a lot of high-scoring players who we may eventually see in the NHL.

Omsk Avangard: Established in 1950, the Avangard (Avante-Guarde) won the championships in 2004 and then the European Cup in the same year. In 2009 they signed NHL superstars Jamori Jagr and Stanislav Chistov. In the spring of 2010 they were involved in an on-ice, bench-clearing brawl that went viral on YouTube, partly because it was a fight amongst fellow team-members jealous over the ice time Jagr was getting.

Novosibirsk Sibir: The Sibir (Siberians) were formed in 1947 after Russian sports writer Ivan Ivanovich brought the first Canadian hockey stick to Novosibirsk and showed the people what ice hockey was. Fittingly, the Sibir were the first Soviet hockey team to import foreign talent...all of them from Canada.

Magnitogorsk Metallurg: There's something fishy about the large number of teams in the KHL that have the same name, but the Metallurg from Magnitogorsk are the more famous team after they played the New York Rangers in the Victoria Cup and beat them 3-0.

That is the KHL, the second largest hockey league in the world after the NHL, and home to nearly 40% of the NHL's talent, including a long list of hockey superstars whose names are household items (in some houses).

Conservative Logic

2010-11-12T04:15:00.002-05:00

It was with great frustration that I learned this week that the Canadian government plans to introduce reforms to the immigration system. This comes on the wake of two very big media events concerning immigration.

The first was when a container ship landed in Vancouver with over 2000 Sri Lankans hidden aboard, all claiming refugee status (in Canada a refugee claim grants the claimant the right to reside in the country while their case is reviewed, which can take between 3 and 5 years). As the RCMP filtered through the refugees, over 20 suspected Tamil Tiger terrorists were discovered.

The second big event, perhaps spurred on by an already hyped-up media, was the case of a young Canadian man who married a Phillipino girl and brought her back to Canada on a Permanent Residency visa (the only visa available for foreign spouses). Under the "family sponsorship class" of visa, the sponsor is financially responsible for the claimant for three years. Well, immediately upon arriving in Canada, the young man's wife promptly left him to join up with her Phillipino husband who lived in Toronto! The couple then immediately began defrauding the welfare and employment insurance systems, as well as taking out bad loans in the name of her Canadian husband. The banks and the government then sued the poor Canadian guy for over $2 million, as he was financially responsible for her!

These cases illustrate the worst that humans can do, but by no means represent the vast majority of immigrants to the nation. Like the US, Canada was founded on immigration and as the baby-boomers all stampede to retirement at the same time, it will be immigrants who stabilize the economy.

The proposed immigration reforms will include 3 year waiting periods for visa applicants of the family sponsorship class, heavily increased fees (already they hover over $1200 per application), and increased penalties on sponsors if the applicant defaults. In addition to this, the government announced plans to cut back the Ministry of Immigrations' budget!

This all bodes ill for me and my wife, as we are about to launch a family sponsorship class visa application!

The main issue here has nothing to do with immigration, and everything to do with politics. Right now in Canada's parliament the Conservative Party leads a minority government. This means that although they constitute the most seats of any one party and thus form a government, the three opposition parties (the Liberal Party, the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois) outnumber them. Under Canadian law if a government motion is struck down in Parliament, it is akin to a vote of no-confidence and a new election must be called.

With the Conservatives outnumbered and the opposition parties constantly threatening to vote down their bills, the Conservatives have been scrambling to curry favour with their conservative voting class. The recent immigration scandals in Vancouver and Toronto and the over-hyped media coverage that ensued have whipped the public up into an somewhat anti-immigrant fever, and the Tories (as the Conservatives are called) are hoping to cash in on that. Thus the sudden reform proposals. While polls show that the Conservatives may win a majority in any election, the opposition wouldn't dare topple them.

So here I sit in Russia with my Russian wife, hoping to hell that we get her visa application in before any changes are made (everything is confusing enough, and there is already a 3-14 month waiting period). So many documents need to be collected, translated and notarized. Money paid to various government agencies. 82 pages of forms filled out and couriered to Toronto.

If the Tories get their way to curry political favour, I will be stranded in Russia for 3 years, instead of having two tax-paying and home-owning citizens living in Canada. That's conservative logic for you.

Mission To Moscow Joins The Mile-High Club

2010-11-09T06:23:00.004-05:00

It is with great joy that I announce that Mission to Moscow has gone sky-high! That's right. This blog is now being introduced in in-flight magazines!

In October the Russian airline Aeroflot featured an article in their in-flight magazine about inter-cultural marriages, and Mission To Moscow was featured and quoted in this article. Fittingly, I was the last to know about it.

The new hits to this blog skyrocketed and I received over 100 emails. For the past few weeks I couldn't figure out where all this traffic was coming from, until I walked into Language Link for my first Russian language class.

It was a strange feeling, returning to the school I taught so many English classes but this time as a student. Many of my colleagues were still there, sitting in the staff room, and I exchanged banter with them but felt uncomfortable crossing the threshold from the hallway into the room. After all, I am no longer a teacher at this company. Some were surprised to see me return and others not so interested. For me, it was nice to see everyone again, particularly Gem who joined me for a few beers at Kruzhka last week.

It was the Russian administrators of the school, however, who not only seemed very happy to see me again (I always had fun conversations with them), but treated me as a minor celebrity. Then one of them pulled out the Aeroflot article with my picture and my blog in it. "What on earth?" I queried myself. Suddenly, all the traffic and emails began to make sense.

When I got home I opened the ate_the_paint@live.ca email account and began reading through all the messages. Many of them were none too flattering (not everyone shares my sense of humour), but three of them stood out. Those were requests for articles about Moscow from competitor in-flight magazines!

Naturally I responded positively and then opened Word to begin pounding out Pulitzer-Prize worthy articles, but instead I sat there staring at the blinking cursor. I actually don't have anything to write about! In the end I sent off a few manuscripts concerning points of interest in Moscow and general advice about travelling here...you know, the same old stuff you can find in any travel guide. Two of the three airlines accepted them and I'm still waiting to hear from the third.

After nearly two years of sharing personal experiences, drunken ramblings, historical analysis and plain stupid entertainment, I'm finally making money with this blog (something I stumbled into and didn't set out to do). Who knew there was such a market with in-flight magazines? Mission To Moscow has joined the mile-high club! Now, if only its author could do the same...

Russian Subtitles

2010-11-03T02:46:00.003-04:00

After 11 hours of flying and one stop-over and the painful memory of the in-flight movie, Toy Story 3 (painful because I actually enjoyed it), I landed at Domodyedova International in Moscow. I stepped out of the airport and it immediately began snowing, heralding in the earliest snowfall in Moscow in 27 years. My super-natural ability to cause all sorts of natural mishaps wherever I travel is in fine shape.

Two buses, three metro station changes, one elektrishka commuter train and two hours later, I was back in Katya's living room sipping on wine, eating crackers and delicious Russian cheese, and watching The Wedding Singer with my wife.

Since meeting Katya, more than a year ago now, I have discovered a whole new world of manipulating movie files to add subtitles to them. Most films in Russia are dubbed, a fact that annoys me to no end. Dubbing is stupid and lazy and nearly all of the emotion of the actors is lost. The quality of dubbing in Russia varies, but most of the time it is very, very poor. I once watched Role Models on DVD that was dubbed using only one man's voice for all the characters, including children and women. He read it in a very monotone, factual fashion and I only made it thirty minutes into the movie when I demanded it be turned off.

Other times the dubbing is so sloppy that you can hear the original voices underneath it, creating a confusing mess of speech that is more difficult to concentrate on than the actual images on the screen.

Myself, I would much rather watch a foreign film with subtitles, and I can't understand why Russians opt for the crappy voice-overs. Movies are supposed to be entertaining and relaxing and, hopefully, informative. Concentrating on foreign languages and suffering through a painful news anchors voice reading a script doesn't meet those criteria, which is why I demand that when Katya and I watch films, we use subtitles.

It took me a while, but eventually I figured out how to find, download, adjust the frame rate and apply the subtitles to almost any film we are watching.

I use VLC media player because it will play movies in any format, but Katya prefers Windows Media Player because it is sparkly. Both of these players require different methods to watch subtitles.

First, I go to yandex.ru or google.com and type in the name of the film + "russian subtitles" (eg: The Wedding Singer Russian Subtitles). A whole bunch of links to sites will appear. For Russian subtitles, which are harder to find, subtitry.ru and allsubs.org are two of the better ones. For other languages, subscene.com, all4divx.com and podnapsi.net are great (but suck for Russian files).

Subtitle files are usually stored in .zip format and they are very, very small; a few kilobytes at the most. Simply download the file, making sure to put it in the same folder as your movie file.

That was the easy part. Getting the subtitles to play at the same speed as your movie can take some work. If you're lucky, which I am from time to time, it will already be perfectly synchronized, but 80% of the time it won't be. You need to test it first.

If you are using VLC Media Player, open the player and click on "file>open" and in the form load your movie file. Underneath that is a box that says "Use subtitles". Check that box and a new form will become available. Load your subtitle file and click on "Advanced". You need to load the language, as VLC will automatically play it using Latin letters. If it is Russian, you need to fool around with the different options (MacCyrillic, Ukrainian, and a bunch of numbers. I find ISP1250 to work best). Click "OK" and your film will automatically start.

If you are using Windows Media Player you need to fool around with the actual file first, although not too much. Simply ensure that the subtitle file has the exact same name as the movie file, but ends in ".srt". It is very important that the subtitle file and movie file are in the same folder. Open the movie file in WMP and the subtitles will play automatically.

At this point, regardless of which player you are using, you need to first check to make sure that the timing of the subtitles is in synch with the movie. If it is too slow or too fast, it will only get worse as the movie plays. The frame rates are accumalitive, so if a subtitle is playing 5 seconds too fast at the beginning, after two hours it will be playing 125 seconds too fast by the end, making for very confusing watching. You need to change this.

I did a simple search on google and found Subtitle Workshop 4.0. It's very easy to use, is a small file and, best of all, it's free!

Open Subtitle Workshop 4.0 and click on "file>load new" and find your wayward subtitle file. The program can only read Latin letters so if you have a subtitle file with a different alphabet, such as Cyrillic in my case, it will show only a bunch of non-sensical characters. That's okay. We don't care what's written there, we only care about when it will appear.

After you've loaded the subtitles, go to "Movie>load movie" and add your movie file. Now it's important to have either a piece of paper and a writing utensil or NoteNote open, because you'll need to record the start and end times of the where you want the subtitles to be.

In Workshop, watch your film and see where the first subtitle should appear. Some subtitles appear for every written word on the screen (actors names, etc) while others only start with the first spoken word. Almost all show the name of the film. You'll need to figure that out on your own.

When you've decided where the first subtitle should appear, write down the time (under the movie on the left). Now skip to the end of the film and figure out where the last subtitle should appear and write down that time.

Go to "Edit>Timings>Adjust>Adjust Subtitles" and enter your new first and last times. It will automatically adjust all the subtitles to these new parameters.

Because you're probably smarter than me, you'll figure out to save the newly-adjusted subtitles at this point, and not try to load it in the film without saving it and expecting it to magically work. Like I did. The first four times. I called the wrath of the gods down upon my computer before I realized I hadn't saved the file.

Once I did that, however, it worked like magic, and after a long flight and 8 time zones and reverse-reverse culture shock, my wife and I were comfortably giggling away to Adam Sandler in the Wedding Singer, with her enjoying the perfectly synched subtitles and me enjoying hearing the actors voices. My next project? Toy Story 3.

Back To The Rodina Matre

2010-10-25T01:48:00.003-04:00

Visa: Check.
Train ticket to Toronto: Check.
Flight to Moscow: Check.
Suitcase full of gifts: Check.
Last $10 To My Name: Check

It appears I am ready to head back to the motherland (well, not my motherland but it's catchy) for who-knows-how-long this time.

It's a little bitter-sweet leaving family and home behind, again, but at least this time I know what I'm getting myself into. The rather intense reverse-culture shock that I experienced when I returned to Canada has long since worn off and I have enjoyed the past month or so, particularly hanging out with my siblings.

Last night one of my sisters and I joined my brother and 8 of his guy friends for a night of drinking at a trashy dive of a bar in Ottawa's Little Italy district. Following several shots of Moscovskaya Vodka (even here I can't escape it!!!) we proceeded to down pitcher after pitcher of beer. There were three hockey games on and the Phillies-Giants baseball game, and after 4 or 5 hours of steady drinking we were all sufficiently inebriated to not notice the $350 bar tab we had run up. Oh well. Good times never came cheap.

I'm off to Russia again where, despite my strong love of Moscow and the Russian people, I will miss being surrounded by English and, surprisingly, I'll miss TV here. I don't watch a lot of TV, but when I do I love some of the programming, particularly the culture that revolves around CBC's Hockey Night in Canada. It reminds me of evenings cuddled warmly in my house sipping on drinks while the snow falls past street lights outside. Workplace conversations revolve around "the game". Complete strangers at Tim Horton's will begin discussing it when waiting in line. Won't see any of that in Russia.

So, once again, adieux, Canada. One day I will return to your snug, comfortable, hockey-crazed beer-loving free-health-care embrace. For the time being I'm off to drink vodka, stammer away in a language I can barely pronounce, lose hair to the polluted rainfall and dodge insane drivers and furious old ladies.

Masochistic Love of Russia: Check

Tom Brokaw Explains Canada to Americans

2010-10-19T14:28:00.008-04:00

As the US congressional elections heat up the closer November 2nd gets, Republicans have started throwing a lot of mud towards America's northern neighbour, Canada. Most of it is complete nonsense, like a lot of the garbage spewing forth from the mouths of the far-right in the US.

For instance, take the T-Party backed GOP candidate for Nevada, Sharon Angle, when speaking to a group of latino high school students. Her campaign ads focus on illegal immigration and show scene after scene of Mexicans jumping over fences. The latino students challenged her on this, to which she replied that the scenes portrayed, in not so many words, terrorists hopping the border from Canada.

Fox News recently described Canada as a "wasteland haven for terrorists intent on attacking the USA". Ann Coulter has said "..Canada is lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent as us" and, when discussing the end of Canada's Afghanistan mission next year, she insulted the thousands of soldiers who have fought, and the hundreds who have died, alongside American soldiers as "...a bunch of gays wearing colourful uniforms who wouldn't know what a rifle even looked like".

Pat Buchanan described Canada as "Soviet Canuckstan" (actually that one is funny and probably the most clever joke to ever come out of that douchebag's mouth). When Canada refused to partake in the illegal invasion of Iraq, despite walking side by side with America in the War on Terror, Tucker Carlson said, on Fox, "Canada is basically Honduras, but less interesting" and "What Canadians need are a few US bombs dropped on some of their families to bring them into line."

All this despite not a single 9/11 terrorist ever having set foot in Canada (they all came from other countries on US visas issued by INS), despite over 5500 troops (nearly 1/3 of our military resources) serving in a combat role in Afghanistan, despite being America's largest trading partner (more trade crosses the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit in a single month than all US trade to Japan in a year) and despite being America's safest, closest and friendliest neighbour. It's a great way to treat one's friends.

George "Double-ya" Bush broke NAFTA by imposing tariffs on softwood lumber, despite three NAFTA rulings and one world court ruling. In 2002, American F-16s accidentally bombed a Canadian military convoy in Afghanistan, killing 4 soldiers and wounding 7. The US government refused to apologize for this, and added insult to injury a month later when a Marine Guard of Honor hung the Canadian flag upside down during the Prime-Minister's visit to the White House. A reporter (for BBC) asked George W. Bush about this a week later, to which he replied "They should stop being babies about everything." Babies? You killed our troops and insulted our Prime-Minister!

Obama has only helped to worsen relations by repeating the myth that "Canada is a haven for terrorists" and, following his last visit to Ottawa, by saying that "I enjoyed my visit to Toronto".

Canada has recently begun drawing away from political and economic trade with the US. New deals with the EU and the "emerging" countries has seen an 8% drop in Canadian resources going to the US and a 7% rise in those same resources going to other countries. Canadian tourism to the US, which made up 72% of tourist dollars to the US before 2003, has declined by 21% since then. Anti-American sentiment in Canada, traditionally a pro-US country, has risen dramatically with 76% of Canadians saying "I really dislike America" in a recent Gallup poll compared to only 24% ten years ago. Hell, there's even a public boycot on goods that say "Made In America", something unheard of before 2003.

All this is very reactionary to basic US idiocy/ignorance of America's largest trading partner, closest neighbour and most loyal friend. After a decade of abuse by what used to be our best friend, Canada is slowly but surely flipping the US the finger and finding new friends in the world.

It was very relieving, then, to come across this wonderful presentation by NBC's Tom Brokaw, titled "Explaining Canada to Americans". I have included it here for your viewing pleasure, because Mr. Brokaw has summed up in 3 minutes everything Americans SHOULD know about Canada.

OSAP

2010-10-17T17:40:00.003-04:00

If hatred is caused by fear, then I have an abnormal fear of telephones. When a telephone rings the hairs on the back of my head stand up and my stomach tightens up into a knot. The irritating, grating sound of ringtones and bells and digital alerts causes me no small amount of stress.

A telephone conversation with me is most usually one-sided. I issue a lot of "Yups" and "Uh-uhs" and "Hmmms" with not much else to say, despite being a good people-person when face-to-face. I am, however, a great third-party conversationalist. If somebody else in the room with me is on the phone I can carry on a lively conversation with the caller through an intermediary. "Who's that?" "Tell them I say hi!" "What are they up to tomorrow?" etc etc.

With this fear of talking on the telephone I rather surprised myself when my sister's phone rang and I answered it. Call display showed an unknown number and the phone was conveniently located near me as I drank a beer and watched the Toronto Maple Leafs on CBC's Hockey Night In Canada. It was about 8 in the evening.

"Hello?" I enquired upon answering.
"Yes. Can I speak to Mr. AteThePaint [not my real name]?"
"Speaking."
"This is Beth at National Credit Centre. You have an oustanding OSAP loan."
"WTF?"

OSAP stands for Ontario Student Assistance Program. In short the Government of the Province of Ontario issues low-interest guaranteed loans to students for post-secondary education. I enjoyed four years of living it up on what I viewed at the time as buttloads of free money.

My first year I spent a lot of time at The Keg, sampling different cocktails and scallop-bacon-garlic butter dishes with a variety of interesting college girls. In my second year I appropriated a black leather Lay-Z-Boy and a TV. In my third year I enjoyed Toronto's nightlife quite a bit and in my fourth year...actually, I don't remember my fourth year all that much. There was 9/11. And a house with six guys renting rooms. And a foozball table that saw the invention of "Flaming Foozball" (plastic balls and lighter fluid...fun). I barely remember some more college girls, and a lot of whiskey and marijuana.

After I finished school I ignored my OSAP loans with all good intentions (my intentions basically being "If I can scam a free education, I will"...I'm also notorious for cheating at Monopoly). Thankfully I managed to pay it down some with the occasional large cheque, most often at tax-return time.

Then I spent a few years in South Korea and Russia. I've been staying at my sister's place for a month while I await a new visa to Russia. I haven't used my credit card or bank card or opened a mobile phone account or anything, really. Basically I've been laying low and might as well not even be in the damn country. Not only that, but my sister just recently moved to Ottawa from North Bay, so her phone number has only been in existence for a couple of months.

So when credit collectors somehow tracked me down to this very number I was utterly speechless. I said the only thing that came to mind. "Wow. You're good!" The woman on the other end (Beth) actually laughed. "So, about your debt."
"Hmmm...how much do I owe? I forget."
"You owe [X amount]. You need to pay it all now or we'll take legal action."
"Oh. Okay. I'll send a cheque tomorrow."
"That's good."
"Thank you. Have a good evening."
"Wait! Don't you want our address?"
Click.

No wonder I hate the phone.

Autumn In Ontario

2010-10-13T21:28:00.008-04:00

Despite its faults, Ontario is absolutely beautiful in the autumn. The whole province explodes into a multitude of dazzling colours as the trees shed their leaves. Reds, golds, yellows, browns and even some shades of green light up all 1.2 million square km of the province.

Growing up here, I have fond childhood memories of Octobers past, complete with spooky, pumpkin-filled Halloweens and corn-field mazes and multi-coloured forests and haunted hay-wagon rides.

Today I went for a hike in the maple-covered hills that surround Ottawa and revelled in the crisp October air and maple and birch forests. Here are some pictures of a good Ontario autumn!

Below are possibly the best jack-o-lanterns I have EVER seen!

The Trouble With Canadians

2010-10-11T04:35:00.005-04:00

"The three great themes of Canadian history are:

1) Keeping the Americans out.
2) Keeping the French in.
3) Trying to get the natives to somehow disappear.

These three themes represent the social/policital mission of Canadians. Americans: out. French: in. Natives: invisible. If Canada were a hockey team, this would be our chant.

These three forces push and pull us; they haunt us with doubts, they enrage us, they engage us...they are us.

There are other minor themes as well: Sucking Up To The Royal Family; Waxing Poetic About Nature While Huddling Inside A Shopping Mall; Electing Boneheads; Trusting Authority; Avoiding Extremes; and Resenting Success. All of which are played out against the larger myth of Being Nice.

Of these three great themes, the Americans are first. Why? Because without the Americans there would be no Canada, at least not in the political sense. The people living on the northern half of this continent would be an odd, introspective, stir-crazy bunch no matter what course history had taken, but the fact remains that two nations were created by the American Revolution.

Bloodied but still standing, the U. S. of A. - last of the superpowers - is at once obnoxious and enticing. Love them or hate them, and Canadians manage to do both better than any other non-Americans in the world. Americans are impossible to ignore.

Which brings me to the famous Skis on the Car Roof Mentality. Memo to any Canadian nationalist muttonheads out there: No American has ever - ever- shown up at the Canadian border in July with skis strapped to the roof of his car, asking "Where's the snow?"

I must have heard this stupid story a million times in my life and if I hear it one more time I'm going to punch somebody. So the next time some idiot Canuck starts in with the old "Skis On The Car Roof" story, I reserve two boots to the head.

And while we are at it, Americans do not think we all live in igloos. No one thinks we live in igloos. These folk legends reveal more about Canadian insecurities than they do about American ignorance. The fact is that Americans don't think about us at all!

Our feelings towards America are complex, but they can be summed up in the following five axiomatic propositions of Canadian nationalism:

1. Boy, we hate Americans.
2. We really do.
3. Really.
4. I'm not kidding. We really hate them.
5. So how come they never pay us any attention?

It's a classic love/hate relationship, and it defines us in ways we can never transcend. We measure ourselves against Americans. We crave their attention and their approval, we revel in their ignorance of us, and we take masochistic glee in slights, perceived or real. It is a form of neurosis, one step away from a compulsive high school crush. We pout, flirt, pass notes and talk maliciously about the object of our fears and desires. And they ignore us.

Canada's intense preoccupation with America is like one of those old black-and-white movies from the 1940s where the heroine beats her fists on the man's chest, sobbing "I hate you. I hate you. I hate you." only to collapse into his embrace.

America is sexy. It is exciting, dangerous, crass, brash and violent.

The problem isn't that America is screwing us regularly - which they are - but that they never send flowers or call afterwards. They barely remember our name. "See ya around, doll. Here," as they toss us a coin. "buy yourself somethin' nice." It is intercourse without foreplay, when all we need is a little respect (cue the sobbing, chest-beating litany of "I hate you's").

As the United States careens by like a parade on crack cocaine, amid fireworks and gunplay and racially-motivated riots, we watch from the sidelines, thankful we are not caught up in it and yet - and yet, somehow, wishing we were.

So why should we care? There are many quiet, backwater countries that have attained a degree of civility and respect that Americans can only dream of. Sweden comes to mind. So does Switzerland. The problem is that Canada is still very much a North American country; we are a frontier-bred people and we will never be satisfied with mere comfort and security. We are nagged by dreams of greater things, of something more. It is a state of mind we share with Americans.

We worry far too much about America.

Why should we give a damn about how we stack up? Whether our gun laws are more civilized than theirs or whether our medicare is more human doesn't really matter. We have nothing to gain by using the Unites States as our yardstick. We should be setting our standards by who we are and want to be.

Let us put an end to the wailing, woeful lamentations about our impending Americanization. That we share many similarities with those foreigners to our south is not a cause for despair. Given the simalarities in geography, history and background, the surprising thing is that we are different at all. And we are. That Canada exists at all is remarkable. It is one of the enduring, and endearing, miracles of North American history. That we have made a damn good show of it, despite all odds, is even more impressive. We will always be something more - and less- than American."

-Will Ferguson, "Why I Hate Canadians"

Maple Leaf Forever

2010-10-05T22:38:00.004-04:00

When I got home to Canada I brought along with me a suitcase brimming over with gifts. Matryoshka (aka: nesting) dolls for my cousins, sisters, mother, and niece; vodka, Red Army hats from Volgograd, a Red Army field manual that was actually a drinking flask for my brother, traditional hand-made shawls for my sisters and little colourful Orthodox church christmas tree ornaments with brightly-painted onion domes. An illustrated book of Russian fairy tales. A calendar featuring traditional Russian recipes. Somehow I fit it all in my bag.

Going back to Russia in a couple of weeks will be no different, but this time I will have a bunch of Canadian crap. T-shirts with "Canada, eh?" logos, a warm white Team Canada Olympic hoody for Katya, a dream catcher for her mother, maple syrup in a bottle shaped like a maple leaf, a Canadian flag umbrella. A box of Red Rose tea.

This is a problem that Canada has. We don't have anything really unique to claim as our own aside from, maybe , a hockey puck. Instead we take any cheap product produced by child labour in Indonesia and slap a big ugly red maple leaf on it and pawn it off to tourists for $20 a pop.

Russia is also filled with gawdy touristy trinkets, but they come from history and culture and a sense of being a unique place in the world. What the hell does Canada have? Maple syrup? We've gone over-kill on that one and most of the rest of the world has maple syrup, too.

I need to find something really meaningful to bring back to Russia. It has to be something that will automatically make a Russian think of Canada, and it would be wonderful if it didn't have a blaring red-and-white maple leaf symbol on it.

A Mountie hat? Too big and without the red uniform and the horse it means nothing. A hockey stick? A case of Molson? A painting from the Group of Seven? A moose? Pierre Trudeau's shrunken head? A box of poutine?

There's something incredibly bothering about trying to look for meaningful trinkets that sum-up Canada. There are plenty of magnets that say "Canada". Oh look, a baseball hat that says "Canada". Over there a rack of t-shirts that say "Canada". Wait! There's something different! It's a spoon that says nothing! Never mind. It has a big Canadian flag on it. Oh, and it does say "Canada" in case you couldn't figure out what the flag meant.

I needed to find Katya one meaningful gift that can summarize everything there is to know about Canada. Something that conjures up the way I feel about the true north, strong and free. One gift that conveys the place Canada holds in the world. Running out of ideas I settled on something for Katya. Something that will remind her of Canada everytime she sees it. A white pair of sexy little boy-short underwear. With a big Canadian flag across the ass.

A Great Russian War Documentary

2010-10-03T21:52:00.004-04:00

In the lead-up to the big 65th anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War, a series of documentaries were made in Russia covering almost every major battle of the war. I saw some of the episodes on TV and liked how they did them (and I am a war documentary connoisseur), my only problem was that I didn't understand most of what they were saying.

So it was with great joy that I came across the same shows on Youtube, complete with English subtitles! Although the grammar in the translation is horrendous it still gets the message across.

This show, called "The Great War", is broken into several series which are more akin to episodes. Each episode is 50 minutes long so is broken into 10-minute segments on Youtube but they are all lined up together so when one ends just click on the next one in line.

Here's a link to the first part of the first episode, covering Operation Barbarossa (the German invasion of the Soviet Union). Enjoy!

Friends, Photos and a Passport

2010-09-29T12:22:00.007-04:00

When I had first set out for Russia, just over a year ago, I had no intentions or expectations, nor did I have a valid reason for giving up a life of considerable comfort on Vancouver Island. The weeks and days leading up to the hour I would leave for the great unknown were filled with excitement and dread, although I had no long-term plan. I began to have second-doubts and the well-intentioned critiscisms of my family and peers didn't help.

Why had I given up a $50,000 a year job in a quaint little harbour town on Canada's stunning west coast? Why wasn't I taking that time to further develop my future opportunities? What about savings? What about student debt? What about all the communists and criminals I would find in Russia?

As I left for Russia these thoughts swirled around in my head. I had given up everything I owned in exchange for a couple of suitcases and a few facebook pictures. When I set out for Moscow I literally owned nothing.

One year later I have returned to Canada with the same suitcase, albeit with a lot more facebook photos. And a lot of quality friends from all corners of the world. And a beautiful wife whom I adore. And, perhaps most important, without realizing it or even trying to, I acquired myself along the way.

It was in Russia and particularly after arriving back in Canada that I realized that I am not cut out for Canada's middle-class. Nor am I cut out for the upper or lower classes. I am of a different class altogether. This class is an international class of semi-homeless people who roam the world with a bag and a passport. This is a new class of people as the ability to roam the globe and establish lives in far-flung places is relatively new in human history. There are quite a few of us in this class but in proportion to the overall population we are quite a small group. Most of us teach English for a living, although a few us manage to roam around doing other jobs and a very fortunate minority, the upper-echelons of this classless class, get to do it all without a day's labour.

Because we share experiences and mindset and, usually, a common language in foreign places, the members of this class tend to form very close bonds very quickly.

Not everybody who travels can claim to be among this small global group of people; there are those who only travel for a few months with a backpack. They don't count. There are those who travel for a year but bitch about every thing that is different from "home" and only aspire to return from whence they came. They don't count, either. There are those who travel only for flesh and vice. They have their own class and can keep out of ours altogether. International students, expats working at American-owned companies on big payrolls, diplomats and their children as well as researchers are not part of this class as, by definition, they have their own classes back home as well as the luxury of secure financing.

The people in this internationalist class are a different breed and we can spot one another right away. We are not elitist in any way; in fact, we are quite humble and laugh at ourselves for the very lifestyles that bring us together.

I have met and immediately bonded with most of my compatriots who have lived the same lifestyle as me, that is, overseas with no real end-goal and limited financial means but a deep-rooted desire to see the world in this lifetime and make the best of it. Many of these people I have not met, but I have done my best to include their tales on my blog. To the right you can see a list of other great travel blogs which, I feel, are quality examples of this globe-trotting class of people.

It was in Russia that I realized that I was much happier, much more fulfilled and much more confident of my place in the world when I'm out in the actual world, and not slowly dying day by day in the middle class of North America. Physically, emotionally and even spiritually I felt awed and rejuvenated in Russia, much as I did in England, Thailand and, to some extent, South Korea (although the last few months of life in that country became unbearable, but that's a different story). For sure the summer was nearly intolerable, what with the heat and smoke of Moscow, but as soon as it all cleared up life was back to normal.

As I read the blogs of two particular young women who have taken my place (as well as Wonderpant's, Ms. Australia's and Quagmire's places) in Mytischi in the new year, I am brought back to those first few months in Russia when I immediately fell in love with the country and the people and myself for choosing to go there despite the fears and critiscisms. Having already met one of the bloggers, who runs The Rheal World, and reading through the blog of another one, The Devushka Diaries (both blogs have fantastic names and both these woman are incredible writers with good spelling...rare in North America), I immediately recognized members of my class and feel a longing for Mytischi and the Russian autumn that impacted me so strongly a year ago. I can't wait to return in a few weeks.

Being home in Canada has been depressing but, more importantly, eye-opening, as I've come in to sharp contact with a former life which, due to the sum of all my travels, I now fear and loathe. Nevertheless I am glad that I returned here. It has ultimately provided the final piece of the puzzle in my identity and philosophy.

One day I know I will settle back here (although not in Ontario, or "Onterrible" as many call it) and will be forced into a middle-class lifestyle. It happens to everyone. Passports and visas expire on everybody. Nevertheless, this is my one shot at life and I am happy that I have not wasted it by grinding away in a "normal" North American existence.

It was going to Russia that I can thank for all this. For the memories, for the photos and the friends, for the loving wife and, ultimately, for myself.

Now, in celebration, I'm going to go get drunk in Ottawa and flip off all the hard-working yuppies who have never left their province. Za S'droviya!

Principles

2010-09-28T19:06:00.003-04:00

The streets in Canada are much cleaner than most of the cities in Russia, but the architecture is definitely a lot more boring. As a complete couch-surfing bum, I've been bouncing around from sofa to sofa, mostly with my family, while I await a new visa to Russia, and so life has been fairly boring.

With a plague of boredom, dwindling reserves of cash and clean streets, I decided to wander aimlessly around Ottawa for old time's sake.

First I went up Bank St. to Parliament Hill, a good starting point for any Ottawa excursion, and then wound over the Rideau Canal to the Byward Market where, I was hoping, a good pub with Alberta beef burgers and pints of draught would await me. Alas, most of the pubs in the Byward Market have closed down save for a couple of bigger ones. Part of a new "Alcohol-free zoning" initiative undertaken by city hall with the help of concerned citizen's groups. Nevertheless I found one decent-looking pub and stopped in to enjoy a burger and a pint of over-priced Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale.

The pub was filled with people, most of them wearing business-casual and most of them middle-aged yuppy baby boomers. I couldn't help listening in on their conversations, alone as I was, and that's when something profound occured to me. I hate my own people!

One woman was regaling her table of colleagues about her friend or sister or somebody. "Her therapist told her to take herbal sleeping pills and she got a week off work. Hitting that cat on the side of the road was very traumatizing for her." All the fat old woman high on themselves nodded in agreement. "Oh yes. Yes."

Another table consisted of two guys, one of whom, at least, was Quebecois, as well as two women. The French guy had closely-cropped greying hair and tiny round spectacles. Under his polo shirt he couldn't have weighed more than 160 lbs. He was spewing out a story, in very accented English, about the evils of eating meat. "Ourr boday's cannot deegist eet und wee prodoose carbones as a reesult, soo it iz bad four de environemant" His compatriots nodded in sheep-like agreement.

Disgusted with people, I quickly chugged back the last quarter pint of beer and asked the girl for my cheque. After paying I left the pub and walked outside, where I lit a cigarette. Immediately, before I had even finished putting my lighter back in my pocket, another middle-aged woman was in my face. "You can't smoke within five metres of a door, mister!" she barked at me. "Oh, sorry." I replied, and took a few steps away from the door (I think in feet, not metres, so wasn't really sure how far that was supposed to be). "What are you going to do? Flick your cigarette on the ground?!?" She snarled. She was flushed red with anger at my smoking.

I stood silently for a few moments, staring in utter amazement at this slug-like creature. Then, without saying a word but never breaking my hard stare, I lazily took a drag off my cigarette.

I can't help it, but being back in Canada, with all these vegetable-eating non-smoking better-than-thou idiots around has made me extremely reactionary. My sister and her fiance made burgers the other night and offered me one. I was starving and my mouth watered at the mention of the word "burger" so I leapt at the chance but, with a sinking heart, I was informed that they were veggie-burgers. One of their friends, who was visiting, doesn't eat anything that has touched meat.

"Oh, sorry." I told them. "I don't eat anything that has touched vegetables."

If we're not supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat? And since when did anybody have the right to stick their nose in other people's faces and preach to them about what they can and can't do? If some yuppy preaches to people about the ills of smoking, or the ills of eating meat, or the ills of oggling women, or anything else, how do they know that they won't get stabbed in the eye? Really it's a sense of sudden, furious pain that kept people in line, but in our modern society that fear is gone and people are beginning to behave like mindless animals, despite believing themselves to be progressive enlightened thinkers.

With a huff my fat ugly yuppy assailant waddled away like an overweight penguin, and I stayed in that spot and smoked my cigarette. Then I flicked the butt on the ground. Out of principle.

Home, Home, Where Art Thou?

2010-09-21T01:08:00.006-04:00

What is this place I call home? Who are these well-meaning people who I don't understand anymore? I recognize these symbols and flags, yet they touch no chord with me. The language is free-flowing and easy; it surrounds me on the street and in the restaurant, and I comprehend but I don't understand. Why has home ceased to be home?

Better yet, why the hell have I fallen in love with Moscow?

What is it about Moscow that has seeped into my heart and attached itself like the root of a weed? Is it the stunning array of architecture from 1200 years of history, lit up in soft spotlights in the evening, that leaves an indelible impression? Certainly there are few buildings in Canada to rival the purity of history that can be seen in Moscow. Old and new are intertwined in Moscow in beautiful Slavic glory.

Is it the Moscow Metro that I miss? That monument of human achievement which no other city can rival? The crowds at rush-hour are certainly easy to miss, but the peace of the metro in the evening, as it carries the last few stragglers of the day along chandelier-and-frieze-and-marble guilded platforms, is wonderful. At each stop another citizen, whom I will never see again, leaves the train while one or two more get on. Some read books (and how Russians love to read!), some listen to their ipod and stare at their feet, while in the corner two teenage girls yap away at each other. At the far end of the car a man is passed out drunk. I love the Moscow Metro.

Perhaps it's the constant parade of beautiful people I miss? The city is filled with gorgeous women and handsome men, and almost everybody is dressed in European fashions (save for the odd Adidas track-suit and mullet). The women glide by gracefully in stilletos or, if enough of them are running for a train or bus, clatter along sounding like a cavalry charge. Now that I'm in Canada, I notice that there are so few beautiful people in this so-called home of mine. Fashions are non-existent and people walk around with a smug air of superiority, rather than the calm confidence of Moscow, yet they are overweight and wearing jogging suits. I even saw one woman at the supermarket wearing her pyjamas, her hair a tangled mess, and she sported an extremely better-than-thou look on her face and in her demeanour. That would be unheard-of in Moscow!

Is it the feeling of freedom and hedonistic abandonment and, strangely enough for such a large city, collective experience that I miss about Moscow? In Moscow, nobody scowls at or nags strangers for smoking. In Moscow, nobody pesters people about the sins of eating meat. In Moscow, one can drink a beer in a park. In Canada the police would treat a public beer-drinker like a hardened criminal. Nightclubs and bars in Moscow are a haven of flesh and touching and flirting and grinding. When I'm on the Moscow Metro at rush hour, and babushki are pushing me with their big purses and everybody is sqeezing onto the escalators, there is a feeling that EVERYONE is going through the same thing. I can make a joke to a Muscovite about Moscow, and they will instantly understand. In Canada everybody lives in their own individualistic bubble. In Canada women think you want to rape them if you try to talk to them. In Canada making a joke could result in a lawsuit, depending on what side of the political spectrum the recipient sits. How I miss Muscovites.

What is it about the underlying current of spirituality that persists in Moscow? Surely its not only the thousands of Orthodox churches that fill Moscow, their beautiful round spires and onion domes and bright colours giving proof to the thousands of years of influence the church has had on Russian culture. Compare those to the dreary gothic architecture or tacky new-age slabs of our churches. No, there's more to it than just the churches. There is an energy to Moscow, that can be felt in every park and pounding nightclub and grouchy produkty, and seen in every random firework and bad parking job and random beautiful face. Moscow is strangely powerful on the soul.

Why does Moscow feel more like home to me? Is this just a strange transition, a normal effect of reverse-culture shock, that I am suffering through? I feel like a foreigner, uncomfortable and uncertain in my own country. Do I love Moscow simply because it was my home for so long? Would having my own place again in Canada cure me of this melancholy? I'm living out of a suitcase in a spare bedroom, at the mercy of my family's generosity while my wife trudges through her workday alone 5000 miles away. Perhaps I just need a home again.

It is all these things combined. My home (wherever that is), the energy, the freedom and warped community, the beauty and the history of Moscow all have caused me to fall in love with the city. But ultimately there is one thing I miss. I didn't realize it until I went for a walk around the Rideau Canal in Ottawa today, and that's when it hit me. The one thing that is missing from Canada, but which can be found outside any metro stop or on any corner or in any park in Moscow, is this:

Trash cans on fire.

End of Act I

2010-09-14T11:38:00.009-04:00

Returning to Canada after a year in Russia and a week in England was, to say the least, anti-climatic. The past year that I spent in Russia was one of the most eventful and interesting years I've ever had and Canada just feels, well, boring. It's like I never left.

This fact could be attributed to being in Ottawa, the city that fun forgot. If I had returned to the west coast things would have been much different but, as it stands, my family lives in Ottawa thus I am in Ottawa.

My week touring around England may have helped to buffer some of the reverse-culture shock, as everyone there speaks English, has the same culture as my home and living standards are high, although driving on the left remains confusing. Also, customer service in England is only a few shades brighter than customer service in Russia, and I have yet to experience exceptional Canadian customer service (to be fair, the best customer service in the world is south of the Mason-Dixie Line in states such as South Carolina and Georgia).

One interesting thing about my visit to London stands out in my mind: meeting up with Quagmire!

A few days before I set out for the UK Quagmire emailed me and said he was passing through London on his way to a new destination. I told I was also passing through London at the same time! We arranged to meet at the stone lions at Trafalgar Square at 1 pm and on the specified day we met up.

The last I had seen of Quagmire was after he was canned in Mytischi for missing classes. Wonderpants, Mr. Irish and I had chipped in some cash to give Quagmire as he didn't have enough for a flight home and Language Link was cancelling his visa. He took a train to Kiev, Ukraine, and for a week or so stayed in touch but then vanished. That was in March. Now, in September, in London, England, Quagmire and I were sitting at a British pub eating steak and ale pies and drinking British Imperial pints of bitter.

Quagmire had been arrested in Ukraine for teaching illegally at a language school in L'viv and had spent some time in a Ukrainian prison, and then an immigration detention centre and then was finally booted out of the country. Naturally the police kept his laptop, cell phone and cash for themselves. He's now found a new job in Sri Lanka and while he was stopping in London on his way east I was stopping in London on my way west.

London is filled with tour companies; it is the fourth most-touristed city in the world, so Quagmire and I bought tickets for a hop-on/hop-off bus tour called "The Big Bus Company". They have open-top double-decker buses and follow a bus route which snakes through Westminster and London, stopping at every interesting site. The ticket is good for 24 hours so anybody can hop and off and catch another bus. They come by every 10 minutes.

In January Quagmire and I had conducted a beer tour of Moscow. It started when we got stinking drunk at a cafe in GUM (possibly the only idiots on the planet to get drunk in GUM) and in 12 hours saw us visit over 10 different bars and cafes and clubs. For old-times' sake, armed with our Big Bus tickets, we did it again in London. Piccadilly Circus! Drink! Soho! Drink! Whitehall! Drink! Big Ben! Drink! The Tower of London! Drink! Buckingham Palace! Drink!

At 9:30 the following morning I made my way to Heathrow and caught a flight back to Toronto and then a connecting flight to Ottawa, where it has been nice to see my family but completely lacking in anything resembling excitement, and thus the anti-climax of an epic year.

The good news, for me at least, is that I decided to return to Moscow but this time as a student of Russian. Katya and I paid for the first semester of courses and my Letter of Invitation is being processed in Moscow right now. In four weeks I'll fly back and Katya and I will rent a flat on the (cheaper) outskirts of the city, so the wonderful year I just experienced has, after all, a sequel!

Quagmire enjoys a pint of British ale

Russia to Sweden to England

2010-09-07T05:58:00.008-04:00

I flew out of Moscow on Saturday afternoon and touched down in Stockholm two hours later in what turned out to be an anti-climactic departure. With all my business with Language Link tied up including receiving my final pay-out and flight reimbursement (which all went rather smoothly), I said my goodbyes to dear friends and colleagues and boarded a Scandinavian Airlines Airbus at Sheremyetova International.

Stockholm was not as exciting as I was expecting. This centre of Scandinavian culture and history, as well as the capital of one of Europe's most prosperous and advanced countries, was surprisingly small. I never was able to get an exact population figure but it couldn't have been larger than 200,000 people. I'm too lazy to look it up.

I only had 18 hours in Sweden before my connecting to flight to London so I took the fast airport express train from Arlanda International to the city centre and walked around. By following a couple of the canals that snake through the city I was able to see a few interesting sights, such as the pictures below, but unfortunately I couldn't find my way to the Royal Palace where the King of Sweden lives.

From Stockholm I continued on my journey to London, England where I landed around 10 pm local time and my cousin and her husband, The Roberts', were waiting for me.

There was an interesting moment at the British Immigration desk at Heathrow when I was nearly denied entry to the United Kingdom. All non-EU passport holders have to fill out an immigration card and one of the questions on this card is "The address, including postal code and telephone number, of where you will be staying during your visit." I had no address and no telephone number for The Roberts', so I simply jotted down "Daventry". The woman at passport control didn't like this.
"Why don't you know where you're staying?" She asked me in a very accusing tone.
I shrugged.
"Let me see proof of a flight out of England." She demanded.
I handed over my e-ticket voucher for my flight to Canada.
"I need an actual ticket!" She barked.
"This is all I have." I replied and, for some reason "Look, I have a Union Jack and a crown on my passport, and it is issued in the Queen's name!"
She looked at me for a long time in uncomfortable silence while I stood there with an idiotic smile, and then she sighed and stamped my passport.
"Ok. Don't do it again." She advised me as I walked through the turnstile. I was in England!

I've been relaxing for a few days at my cousin's house in the rural English town of Daventry and spent yesterday picking blackberries in the rain, driving on the left side of the road (driving standard with the gear shift on my left was a strange experience but I quickly mastered it; the most difficult part I found was negotiating the ridiculously narrow British roads) and drinking true Imperial pints of bitter ale at true British pubs.

This is a ROAD, not a footpath!

I'm here for a few days and then I'm off to tour around London on my own and then flying home to Canada.

And then in October I'm returning to Moscow for more adventures.

The Really Big Shawn Burger

2010-08-30T01:56:00.008-04:00

I love burgers. The more cheese and bacon and other tasty garnishes that are added to a burger, the better it is in my opinion. Rarely can a burger claim to defend itself against my predatory need to consume beef patties smothered in cheese, but in my life I have found one that can kick my ass: The Really Big Shawn Burger.

The Really Big Shawn Burger is the showcase piece of the Moscow "Starlight Diner" chain of restaurants. These classic American-style diners are dotted around Moscow with my favourite one at Mayakovskaya Metro station. They have an extensive menu of delicious American food, including the best milkshakes in the world, red-leather bench seats and 1950s silver tables and the walls are covered in classical advertising for petroleum, 1960s Chevy cars and Route 66 signs. Plus most of the staff speaks English (and they have English menus!).

Despite the delicious fare offered at Starlight Diner, it is The Really Big Shawn Burger that catches my eye the most. The first time I went to Starlight I was with Wonderpants, Ms. Australia and Quagmire. We ordered a tall "giraffe" of beer, 3.5 litres, and perused the menu. Both Quagmire, another burger lover, and I immediately settled on The Really Big Shawn Burger.

"400 grams of beef with bacon, cheese and our house chili sauce layered between and served on a platter of our famous chili cheese fries. Think you can eat it all?"

The menu was teasing, ney, CHALLENGING us, so Quagmire and I both ordered The Really Big Shawn Burger. Dripping with grease and steaming with deliciousness, the two of us looked at the massive mound of food that was set out in front of us. A giant toothpick held the entire creation together. Do we eat it with a fork or with our hands and, in either case, how?

Quagmire and I both come from the same school of North American thought that a burger, like a pizza, is to be tackled with one's hands, the way a tiger tackles a gazelle. Oh wait, that's a lion. You get the picture.

With piping-hot grease burning our hands as it ran freely out of the burger and down our arms, we attacked. I can say that that first time I attempted The Really Big Shawn Burger I got my ass kicked. I ate 3/4 of it and some of the fries and felt proud of that fact, but there was literally no room left for another bite. Nevertheless the issue nagged at me for several months, as did Ms. Australia who continued to call Quagmire and I "pussies".

To rub salt into the wound a few months after that we returned to Starlight Diner on Mayakovskaya, this time with Gem who, goaded on by Ms. Australia, ordered The Really Big Shawn Burger. Ms. Australia commented at least a dozen times on how Quagmire and I couldn't finish it. To her credit, Gem did finish the monster burger but it took her nearly two hours! Needless to say that she didn't feel too good about it afterwards!

A month after the "Gem Incident" I returned to Starlight determined to consume the mammoth burger which, I've been told, includes the generous serving of chili-cheese fries. Once again, however, the burger prevailed and I felt like more of a loser, especially after watching Gem, a girl, finish it. This was a MAN'S burger, damnit! Why can't I eat a whole one?!? That second attempt at The Really Big Shawn Burger nearly did me in although, to be fair, I had been drinking beer for four hours straight when I attempted to tackle it.

After that I was depressed and convinced that life was not worth living. If a man can't eat a stupidly large cheeseburger, then what kind of man was he? I, obviously, was not a man.

Which is why on Friday, with only one week left in Russia, I joined a group of English teachers including Gem and we made our way to Starlight Diner. I had not forgotten about The Really Big Shawn Burger (bastard!) and I was sufficiently soused to believe that THIS TIME was the time. With prideful relish I told the waitress "One Really Big Shawn Burger!" Gem was in shock. "Again?" she asked.

Of course! I was not leaving Russia until I had managed to gain a victory over this motherf**ker of a burger, and this was it.

About 20 minutes later the beast arrived, looking like it had nearly a year ago when I first attempted it, steaming with arrogant deliciousness, the little pieces of bacon covered in cheese sticking out from the sides of the burger laughing at me. "Ha! You're back for some more, are you?"
"Oh yes. And this time, I shall prevail!"

I almost cried out "By the power of Greyskull!" when I seized the bastard with both hands and, ignoring the familiar pain of the burning grease I took a giant bite out of it (and nearly dislocated my jaw in the process). The burger merely shrugged off this mosquito bite, however, and hit me back with a solid weight in my stomach.

Ignoring the pain I washed some lingering fat-smeared lettuce out of my teeth with a swig of beer and chomped down again. This time the burger noticed and cried out. "Hey! So you wanna play hardball, do ya?"

It began to fight back harder and I admit that after my third bite I was sweating profusely, my stomach was doing somersaults and my hands were trembling, but I could not back down! I refused to return home hanging my head in shame. I swore to myself that if I didn't defeat The Really Big Shawn Burger this time around I would swear off meat forever and eat only carrots and lettuce. THAT was a life I refused to live! So with a burst of determination I took another giant bite out of the burger.

I could feel the fat and grease and beef and bacon and bread and cheese all clambering around in my stomach and trying to climb up my esophagus, which generous glasses of beer helped to keep under control, but I looked at the fearsome monster on my plate and realized that I had eaten 3/4 of it! With a burst of new confidence I seized the burger, looking a lot smaller and not so cocky now, and with three bites in rapid succession I finished it off!

I did it! I ate The Really Big Shawn Burger! There were still a bunch of chili-cheese fries on the plate but with their leader gone they offered no resistance, and quickly piled them into my mouth and then, exhausted but triumphant, I slouched back into the red leather bench and let out a long, well-earned belch.

From that day on I will no fear burger and always walk with my head held high. I defeated Starlight Diner's Really Big Shawn Burger!

Park Pabyedi (Victory Park)

2010-08-25T04:01:00.011-04:00

Victory Park in Moscow is one of the more fascinating places in the city. Construction on the park started in 1961. It was meant to serve as a memorial to the great Soviet victory over the Nazis and as place where Victory Day celebrations could be held. Bureaucratic bungling and corruption, however, meant that the park took over 30 years to complete.It was finally completed in 1996 with the addition of a massive obelisk and a tank park.

The land that Victory Park was built on is the exact same spot where, in 1812, Napolean stood and watched Moscow burning. Today it has an extensive fountain garden, forest, a massive second world war museum, a tank park where both German and Soviet machines can be seen and many monuments ringing the hill.

To get to Victory Park take the dark blue metro line to Park Pabyedi (Парк Победы) and turn right when you exit the station. Walk down an understreet tunnel and when you emerge you will see the massive square lined with fountains and a gigantic obelisk at the far end. You are in Victory Park!

Парк Победы metro station

The Victory Obelisk dominates the skyline around the area. The names of nearly every battle the Red Army took part in during the 1941-1945 war is engraved on the obelisk.

Inside the Victory Museum is the "Hall of Tears", a solemn place where the 30 million + dead of the war can be honoured.

The 1st floor of the Victory Museum consists of stunning dioramas of major battles, such as this one depicting the seige of Leningrad.

The stairs to the second floor and the Hall of Heroes are interesting.

The Hall of Heroes: the names of every Soviet citizen who won the Order of Lenin are engraved on the walls.

Sadly, the museum glorifies the Kalishnikov AK-47, the world's most produced assault rifle and responsible for hundreds of conflicts and millions of lives since 1947.

Outside the Victory Museum, at the bottom of the hill, is the tank park. Nearly a hundred vehicles from both German and Soviet arsenals are parked here. All of them were recovered from actual battlefields and many bear the scars of war.

Soviet T-34. I noticed a giant shell hole in the rear of this tank.

Soviet ISU-152 tank-destroyer, recovered from the Kursk battlefield.

The tank park also houses a big collection of aircraft, from early Yak and Mig designs up to the modern-day Mig-29 fighter jet.

At the far end of the tank park is a recreated partisan village. Visitors can roam around and climb on the buildings (as I did!)

A massive Soviet railway gun used during the seige of Budapest.

There's a small waterpark with Soviet gunships and a recreated battlecruiser.

At the end of the tank park is a monument to the founding of the United Nations in 1945. Here a French soldier stands alongside a Russian, American and British soldier. What I never understood was "Why the French? They LOST the war!"

Heading away from Victory Park you are greeted with a fantastic view of the Moscow skyline.

Pigeon Katy

2010-08-23T02:52:00.005-04:00

I'm married!

Last week, on August 17th, Katya and I took part in a little ceremony at ZAGS in Moscow, signed the paper, exchanged rings and received a marriage certificate.

When I came to Russia I never had any intentions of finding a girlfriend, let alone getting married. I came because I wanted to see Russia, travel around and find out where the wind would take me. Well, it took me into the arms of a lovely wife who treats me like gold and also makes fantastic Russian food.

In less than two weeks the wind will be carrying me home but not before dropping me off in London, England to visit some long-lost relatives. After London it will take me to Ottawa, Canada to visit my immediate family, and then it will take me to British Columbia where, I'm hoping, it will plop me down in Victoria, right on top of a big juicy job.

Katya is excited to emigrate to Canada. Although she is a Moscow girl who has lived here most of her life (not including the first few years she grew up in Volgograd before her parents moved), she claims that she hates it here. It's not Moscow that she hates; it's living in a big city. The hustle and bustle, the noise, the pollution, the crowds...they all wear on her and she believes that a smaller town in clean, quiet, friendly and peaceful Canada is just what she needs.

She also loves animals more than anyone I've ever met. Last month, when temperatures were topping 40 degrees centigrade, Katya and I stumbled across a pigeon who had walked through some melting tar. The tar had hardened a little and the birds wings and legs were stuck in awkward positions and the animal was unable to move. With it's little head bobbing and it's beady eyes flicking back and forth it was trying to slide itself along on it's belly.

Katya picked the pigeon up and, nearly in tears, took it to the nearest veterinary hospital. The vet, a woman who looked at us as if we were crazy when Katya handed her the pigeon, checked the bird over and then pulled out a needle and promptly euthanized it. Then she asked me for 500 roubles.

Katya was thoroughly traumatized by this event for two days and kept saying how sorry she felt for the pigeon, although eventually I convinced her that at least we helped it die peacefully instead of baking to death in the sun or being mauled by dogs and cats.

Canada has very progressive animal protection laws and Canadians generally love animals and respect them, so Katya is very keen to be a part of such a society. Nevertheless, I fear that it will be the small differences in culture that will make her unhappy, such as friendly customer service and orderly traffic and professional police officers and exhorbitantly-priced mobile phone service.

What I really worry about is getting her the permanent residence visa. This stage of the game is an incredibly difficult bureaucratic nightmare. There are 88 pages of forms to fill out, each question is worded in such a way that it accuses the applicant (including me, the sponsor) of lying about their marriage, and forcing us to prove it (I thought it said somewhere in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that we were to be presumed innocent until proven guilty?). In addition to the forms we require print-outs of all our text messages and phone calls to each other, many of our photos as well as all our wedding photos, translations and notarizations of all of Katya's documents including her degree and work history, and I have to send in my tax assessments for the past bunch of years (difficult to do because I spent 3 of those years overseas).

Then there is the worst part: we have to pay nearly $1500 for the application and then, if Katya is approved, another $985 for a "Right of Permanent Residency" fee.

That will all be in later blog posts. I don't intend to finish Mission to Moscow until Katya and I were happily reunited in Canada, and even then I think it could be interesting. Like Crocodile Dundee, but about a Russian. And a woman. And there's no crocodiles in the beginning (although I wish there were). Maybe "Pigeon Katy"?

Ladies & Gentlemen

2010-08-16T01:40:00.010-04:00

The people of Moscow, all 11 - 15 million of them (statistics are difficult to accurately assess because of the massive amount of illegal immigration and unregistered citizens in the city), are as varied and vibrant as any other large city in the world. As the 7th largest city in the world and the largest city in Europe, Moscow is impossible to stereotype or categorize.

Nevertheless, in the interests of mindless entertainment, I present you with the people of Moscow!

The Young Men of Moscow

Often arrogant, often incredibly generous. Sometimes violent, sometimes sweet as apple pie. The young men of Moscow can be either your best friend or hold you in the highest contempt, depending on how you interact with them.

Russian men have a reputation for hard work, hard drinking and hard fighting, but for the most part the men of Moscow are incredibly well-behaved and very friendly. At least, 9 times out of 10 my experiences with Russian men in Moscow are positive. To be friends with a Muscovite male means to be almost brothers. With the hard drinking and all the singing and sharing of deepest fears that come with it (vodka is a strange drink; it induces bouts of sudden sentimentality followed by dirty uplifting songs, followed by vomit) it is possible to form a deep bond with a brother Russian in a matter of a few hours.

In my experiences Muscovite men have been a hell of a lot more helpful than the women, especially when lost and asking for directions or dealing with the nerve-wracking bureaucracy in Russia. They generally act with politeness and friendly, if not direct and to the point, about it.

However, there is a dark side to Moscow men. The machismo culture of Russia means that when they sit on a bench next to you on the metro, they will spread their legs wide apart, pushing your out of the way in a show of "I'm dominant". Feel free to push them back. It's part of the male pecking order in Moscow. Many of them walk with the elbows thrust out from the side of their body in a show of muscular ability, but they end up looking as if they are an ostrich trying to fly. I find this is more common among the skinnier men with no muscles. Then there is that ferociously ugly mullet which is everywhere.

Why the mullet, gentlemen? It doesn't take a fashion genius to know that mullets and rat tails are absolutely disgusting. Even your women think so!

The Young Women of Moscow

Ah, the beauty of Russia! This great land is populated by the best women in the world, in this blogger's opinion. Blonde, brunette, red-head, jet-black...what is it with those beautiful faces, that grace and style, those ultra-sexy figures and that feminine confidence?

Russian women are famous around the world for their beauty, but in Moscow they are, like their young male counterparts, charming and friendly and cute and funny yet also venomous, violent and aggressive when someone gets in their way.

The ladies of Moscow are everywhere. It is estimated that in Russia there are 8 women for every man and, while that figure is much lower in Moscow, there are still 3 beautiful ladies for every mullet-sporting gentleman.

It is amazing how many gorgeous young women inhabit this great city. Everywhere one looks there is a beautiful girl who could easily grace the cover of a magazine but instead works as a personal assistant in an office. When I first arrived in Moscow my neck was sore from constantly rotating in utter amazement at the parade of beauties who passed me. Now I'm a sort-of immune to it and only the super-gorgeous catch my eye.

Moscow girls dress with the highest sense of fashion and wouldn't dare go to the corner store without first fixing their hair and choosing the correct pair of high heels to match the shopping bag they are bringing with them. This year a classical 1940's flowery summer dress is all the rage (and I agree whole-heartedly with the trend).

Speaking to these women is easy. If they are under 30 than they know English although may be self-conscious of their abilities. Usually, when they hear me speaking English to someone else, they come up to chat practise their language a little. Naturally I have no problem with this! Sometimes the way to meet a particularly stunning girl is to ask, in English, "Do you speak English?"

Contrary to popular belief most Russian women DO NOT want to emigrate out of Moscow. They love the city and the night clubs and cafes and their friends and families. A Moscow girl will move overseas for love, and that only. They are very fatalist and believe deeply in the unknown mysteries of the paranormal. They believe in soul-mates and love at first sight and ghosts and destiny, and if a Moscow girl falls in love with a man she will remain ferociously loyal and protective, almost like a mother bear protecting her cubs. This also includes an unhealthy dose of jealousy, dependence and cattyness, but in a society where 2 out of every 3 women are destined to live a life alone, it seems natural.

Which explains why a skinny insecure guy with bad teeth and a mullet will have a drop-dead leggy supermodel on his arm.

Bashing America

2010-08-11T08:30:00.003-04:00

America is one of the most disliked countries in popular opinion around the world and bashing the country and the people is a popular topic of discussion. This is no less true in Russia where the usual complaints and fears of American global hegemony are supported by personal attacks on the American people themselves.

"Americans are fat and uneducated." a student told me (who was ironically fat and making an ironically uneducated statement). "They want to rule the world and are rude and aggressive." As an afterthought she added "And they're racist."

In the past I've tried to educate my American-hating students about the fallacy of popular anti-American opinion but now I've just given up. Funnily enough, when these students meet actual Americans, either as teachers or out in public, they are incredibly congenial and genuinely interested in them.

Nowhere is America-bashing more popular than in my home country of Canada. Canadians probably understand America better than any other nation (who is not America) and are the single most-similar nationality to Americans in the world.

The type of America-hating rhetoric that I hear in Russia is mildly amusing when compared to the venemous insults that spew out of Canadian mouths to their southern big brother, and all of it is a lot more educated-sounding than what I hear in Russia, although as equally-unfounded.

We have a popular political satirist in Canada named "Rick Mercer". He got his fame (and his own show) as a reporter for a CBC program called "This Hour Has 22 Minutes". Rick Mercer's segment was called "Talking To Americans" and involved him travelling to the US and grabbing the lowest, most uneducated dregs of society, putting them in front of the camera, asking them ridiculous questions that they couldn't give intelligent answers for, and then pandering them off as typical Americans. Needless to say that "Talking To Americans" was a big hit in Canada.

Other insults to America and Americans I've heard in Canada range from "All an American needs to be happy is a handgun, a black man to shoot and a bag of crack" to "Americans can't find their own capital on a map" to, simply, "Americans are dumb and overweight"

There is no denying that popular opinions of America in Canada are linked to world opinions, and that America hasn't helped itself in the hearts and minds of Canadians. After September 11 Canada was the first nation to jump on board the War on Terror, where a US F-16 pilot promptly bombed a Canadian military convoy in Afghanistan. Following this episode the Marine Honor Guard at the White House hung the Canadian flag upside down as the Prime-Minister stepped off the helicopter to meet the President. America has reneged on NAFTA by imposing trade tariffs on softwood lumber, and have continually reneged on mutual agreements pertaining to the protection of the Great Lakes.

When pundits like Ann Coulter bash Canada on Fox TV it sends our country into an uproar. She is responsible for saying things like "Canada only exists on the North American continent because we let it" and "Those [sic] faggity Canadian soldiers wouldn't know what a rifle looked like if you made them eat one." (Despite having over 30% of our military fighting in the Kandahar region alongside US forces, and losing hundreds of soldiers in the process).

But imagine if the American equivalent of Rick Mercer came to Canada and did a piece called "Talking to Canadians"? The uproar would be deafening! The message Canadians send is "We can bash you all we want, but don't bash us!"

America is Canada's biggest trading partner, and Canada is America's. Canadians speak the same language (and we don't have an accent), wear the same styles, drive the same cars, watch the same TV programs, eat the same food and play the same sports! Our only differences lie in our political values. So why, then, all the hatred?

Myself, I am a fan of America. The US practically invented democracy, which we in the western hemisphere enjoy and take for granted today. Despite some of the poorer southern states lagging behind, America has some of the best schools in the world and has produced some of the greatest minds in world history. If you think of the 10 most influential inventions in world history, at least half of them will have been invented in the USA. How can an uneducated nation accomplish this?

Yes, Americans are getting fatter, but for all the smug Canadians out there, so are you. So are the British and the Germans and even the French and Japanese! We're all addicted to fast food, and that's not America's fault, either. It's yours, for choosing to eat there.

Indeed, the fact that you can choose to eat a salad or a cheeseburger is largely thanks to America (and I DO thank America for the cheeseburger...whoever invented it should receive a medal).

People claim that America is warlike yet America has stopped more wars from breaking out than has started them. Iraq has definitely tarnished America's image, and when Ann Coulter and other ultra-conservatives attacked Canada for not joining up we Canucks were incensed that Americans didn't notice our contributions in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, America has a fine, indeed the best, record in world history of providing humanitarian, economic, political and military aid to alleviate the suffering of people around the globe.

Americans remain unaware of Canada for the most part. They like to compare our universal health care to communist-style socialism (which it is not...alternative options do exist in Canada) and, well, that's about it. Nevertheless, I love the beauty that is the beast called America.

I have seen a fair part of the United States, including every state along the eastern seaboard, around the Great Lakes and some on the western seaboard. Is there anywhere more beautiful than Pennsylvania, Massachusettes, Virginia or Washington State? I admit that Oregon is rather boring and Detroit is a hell-hole, but Manitoba is ultra-boring and, well, nothing really compares with Detroit.

I love that in America I can visit almost every climate that exists on earth within the relative comfort and safety of the most advanced country in the world. I love that the US military is mighty but answers to democratically-elected government: as a Canadian, I take comfort in the US armed forces. I would much rather be under the influence and protection of the defenders of freedom and democracy than under the Chinese and Russians or, god-forbid, the European Union with its stifling bureaucracy.

I find American people charmingly genuine and very friendly. When I mention I'm from Canada they are usually very interested in me and want to talk to me. Americans, as a rule and not an exception, have a wonderful sense of humor and are some of the most helpful people there are. Once my friend and I had a tire blow-out in New York State and THREE cars pulled over immediately to lend assistance! In Ontario the first ten cars would simply drive by. I can count among some of my favourite friends at least five Americans, and I only have ten favourite friends.

There is no better customer service in the world than south of the Mason-Dixie line, nor can you find better restaurants. Sure, American beer is particularly crappy, but I have to admit a soft spot for Sam Adams. I also love American sports, such as baseball and football (although hockey will always remain my favourite and that is decidely Canadian).

When I see the American flag I feel like I am almost home, and I feel that the blue square against the red and white stripes is strikingly beautiful and symbolic. The Star Spangled Banner for me is an anthem steeped in the rich history of America that speaks of the great expirement of liberty and democracy. I'm not saying that I dislike my own country's flag and anthem, symbols that stand for different things, what I am saying is that I also like America's symbols.

Think of the Statue of Liberty. What better symbol of democracy's development in the world can you find than that?

Bashing America offends me, particularly when it's done by Canadians who should know better. I give Russians the benefit of the doubt because of their history and geographical/cultural distance from America, but Canadians should not be so smug. When I return home I will always remain a defender of what I consider one of the greatest, most important, friendliest and most beautiful countries in the world. The United States of America.

Hopefully one day they'll listen to Canada about how to brew better beer.

A Russian Wedding

2010-08-10T05:54:00.012-04:00

Two months ago my Russian friends Sasha and Gal were married, and with all good intentions I forgot to tell you about this wedding.

Months before the wedding Gal asked me if I wanted her to invite an English-speaking friend because nobody at the wedding aside from her and the groom can speak English. As they would be busy with getting married and all, I said "Sure! Please!" Gal invited Ms. Australia and I.

The day of the wedding started in Shyolkova, where Gal was hidden away in her sister's (also my fiance) bedroom. Sasha and the best man (who is also called Sasha) arrived lugging a hockey bag filled with alcohol between them.

They were stopped outside the apartment building by the bridal party, who then proceeded to torment the groom and best man in a Russian tradition called vykup. Bascially the groom, aided by his trusted best man, must prove his love for his bride by going through several humiliating challenges.Katya and the bridal party had spent weeks coming up with the vykup and started to recite a poem they had written which was riddled with clues for Sasha to solve.

The first involved finding two horses behind a tree. There were indeed two horses behind a tree; broom sticks with cardboard horse heads were waiting. Sasha and Sasha straddled their broomsticks and were then made to wear silly hats and gallop around like drunken cossacks while making horse sounds.

After this first challenge they had to pull out a few bottles of wine and cognac and give them to the girls.Next there were six balloons weighted down with rocks and inside each balloon was another clue. Sasha, clutching a tinfoil sword, had to pop each balloon and piece together the clues. The end-result was not good for either Sasha; the clues told them they had to wear belly-dancer costumes and perform a belly dance in front of the bridal party.

With red faces and extremely-displeased looks on their faces, the two young men did as instructed while the girls shrieked with laughter and took photos. I was also about to snap off a photo but then felt a surge of pity for them and abstained. Again they had to pay off the women with alcohol.

The vykup went on like this, each challenge bringing him closer to his bride, each one costing him alcohol; first outside, then in the doorway, then in the hallway, then outside the bedroom door and, finally, in the bedroom while Gal watched and laughed at the last humiliation (I very strongly told Katya that our wedding was to be a simple exchange of vows, signing of a form and a couple of drinks).

Next everyone, including family (who had been showing up in greater numbers during the vykup), piled into cars and we all drove to Mytischi and to ZAGS, the government office that registers weddings.

I have seen wedding factories before, in South Korea, and seen a line of brides in beautiful white gowns with their hair done up in expensive fashions, waiting for their turn to be wed, so I wasn't too shocked to see the same thing in Russia. There were no less than 7 wedding parties standing around in the parking lot while one after the other brides and grooms walked out of ZAGS to shouts of "Kiss her! Kiss her!" while people threw coins on their heads. The difference between Russian wedding factories and Korean wedding factories is that the Koreans have a much higher rate of matrimonial production efficiency.

Inside ZAGS Sasha and Gal listened to a woman ramble on about some things I couldn't understand very well, but was pretty much a speech about commitment and sickness and health and all that stuff. Then the wedding, swollen to over 60 people, proceeded to walk around Mytischi to visit important cultural and historical landmarks.

This walk felt like being on a golf course, as wedding parties in front and behind had to move along at a specific speed in order to ensure that only one wedding party was at one monument at one time. I nearly yelled "Play through!" to a party behind us when our party took too long in front of an old Viking boat.

I'm not big on ceremony. Perhaps it's because of my own past, or because I'm selfish, or because I'm not mature enough to appreciate it, but the wedding ceremony for me is like an advance payment one must suffer through before the real wedding can begin: the reception!

Sasha and Gal held their reception at a beautiful restaurant in Mytischi, called Starry Gorod (Old City). This white-stone and dark-oak building is surrounded by willow trees and blooming flowers and includes a huge outdoor covered patio with a self-contained bar. The interior of the restaurant is medieval-chic, with big stone walls supported by giant wooden beams lit by actual flaming torches! It was awesome!For some reason Sasha (and if you know Sasha you understand why) chose the "Imperial March" theme from Star Wars as the music while the guests were seated.

This reception wasn't just an open bar. Each table itself was a bar, groaning under the weight of bottles of Johnny Walker Red Label, red and white wine, cognac, vodka (the good stuff) and bottles of beer chilling in buckets of ice. Candles and floral arrangements highlighted the banquet of booze laid out on each white tablecloth. I was literally in heaven.

Katya, Ms. Australia and I were seated at a table with five other of Katya's relatives who she had never met, but who had flown in from the south of Russia for the free booze...I mean, wedding. Surprisingly it was Katya, not a big drinker herself, who cracked the first bottle of vodka the moment she had sat down and poured everyone a shot. Ms. Australia and I looked at each other and gave each other a solemn "Well, this is it. See you in a day or two!"

Once everyone was seated Sasha's sister, who was MC for this occasion, started the first round of toasts. I understood only a few words. "To....and...and...Sasha and Gal....with...and...that's all!" The dining room erupted into a flurry of clinking glasses and 60+ people downed their shots of vodka.

Then came another toast. "My brother....with...Russia....and...who...and...to your health!". Clink clink drink drink. The vodka made my face screw up and my body shiver yet was pleasingly comforting. More toasts ensued, and between each toast I drank from a bottle of beer or a glass of Red Label whiskey or red wine, all three of which I had strategically placed in front of me to chase the vodka.

Toast #3 followed soon after. "Family....happy...thank you everyone....why....who...and...to Russia!" Same process.

Toast #4: "It is...opinion...normal...from this restaurant....and...urrah!"

Toast #9: "What....last year....Mytischi...goddamn!"

Toast #12: "I can't say how much I love these two, because words can't describe it, but from the bottom of my heart and without irony I can honestly say that I am so happy that they met and were married. To the bride and groom!"

Sometime between toast #12 and toast #21 I not only became fluent in Russian, but dinner was also served. I think I had pork cutlets. Or was it the salmon? I don't remember. I do know that at one point Ms. Australia had to be taken home and so I helped her into a car (whose car? A taxi? Why don't I know?) Somehow I got her home and somehow Gem had come to Mytischi from Moscow, and somehow I convinced her to take Ms. Australia's place at the wedding, and somehow Gem and I made it back to the wedding.

All hell was breaking loose, although I only remember it in snatches. I remember a belly dancer, who was actually a woman and not Sasha or Sasha. I remember dancing myself, or at least stumbling around and crashing into other dancers and a wooden beam. I remember talking to a Russian girl who spoke excellent English. I remember Katya fuming. I remember not seeing Katya or Gem or Sasha or Gal for a long time, but smoking a cigar with Sasha's father. I remember talking to another Russian beauty who spoke English. I remember Gal, the bride, calling me a "Fucking idiot!" in Russian and me understanding. Then I woke up in my bed the next morning.
Thankfully I was alone, and somehow my dress shirt was off but my suit jacket and my tie were still on. So were my trousers and one shoe. Katya wouldn't speak to me when I called her. In fact, it took two days for her to explain to me that I had embarrassed her with my drunkeness, ignored her, chatted up hot Russian women in front of her, and smoked a bowl of weed with some Russian guys nobody knew but who had come to crash the wedding. I had no answers or excuses for any of this, because I didn't remember most of it, although Gem and Sasha's father both confirmed what Katya accused me of.

I'm going to make a great husband. That's why we're not having a wedding reception.

Moscow: Cauldron of Hell

2010-08-07T17:58:00.003-04:00

These reports from CNN and Russia Today sums it up. Need I say anything more?

Russian Culture As I See It

2010-08-06T05:50:00.009-04:00

As the city of Moscow continues to endure a sweltering heat wave and the surrounding forests and peat bogs continue to burn and pour choking, toxic smoke into the city, I and everyone around me has become not a little on edge as of late. Sleep is nearly impossible and working at Central School, with all its politics and screwy scheduling, is a grinding ordeal. Taking the metro four times a day (which is also filled with putrid eye-burning smoke from the fires) and being jostled by millions of equally irritable people has stretched my nerves to the breaking point.

Yet there are a few things that keep me going. These things stop me from throwing my arms up in the air, boarding an airplane and getting out of this near-hell. The things that allow me to retain my sanity are Katya, Russian history and culture and my hope for the future.

As a girlfriend Katya is far and above anyone I have ever had the fortune (or misfortune) of dating in Canada. The qualities that make a Russian woman the best lover and companion in the world are too numerous to recount here, and there are millions of websites and books devoted to this topic, so I won't touch on them. All I can say is that, for the most part, Russian women are very intelligent, stunningly beautiful, entrancingly feminine and extremely charming. With their quick wits, laisser-faire outlooks on life and well-timed sense of humour, I have been blessed to have captured the heart of a Russian girl and it is in large part due to her that I can endure this summer in Moscow.

Indeed, what gives Russian woman these world-class qualities is Russian culture itself, and this is another reason I can put up with the heat and smoke and crappy situation at work. Russian culture is at the same time subtle and loud, beautiful and terrible, awe-inspiring and completely stupid.

I went to a restaurant near the Old Arbat that was located on ground floor of a beautiful 19th Century building. Inside the walls were painted in a calming soft-yellow and lime-green curtains hung from the huge windows. Paintings of serene Russian village life adorned the walls and soft yellow mini-chandeliers gave the place a warm atmosphere. With the decorative samovars dotted here and there and the wood-carved cats on the table and the smell of cooking lamb and chicken and potatoes wafting from the kitchen, it would have been the most cultured Restaurant I've ever been to.

Of course, this is Russia, and something beautiful has to be countered by something ugly.There were three badly-beaten televisions hanging from the ceiling and they were blaring horrendous Russian pop so loud that I couldn't hear my companions speaking. Although the food was delicious the service was horrible, and the mean old woman who served us actually shouted at us to hurry up and finish eating so she could stop working (it was 4 in the afternoon). A group of businessmen in the corner were getting pasted on vodka and started shouting at each other.

Oh, Russia.

Russia is ancient. People were settling these lands when Socrates was speaking at the Parthenon. The Vikings, on their epic trade journeys to the middle east, mixed with the original inhabitants to create the unique Slavic ethnicity. The Orthodox Church added an old-world, slightly-oriental mysticism to Slavic culture. The Mongol onslaught and subsequent four centuries of occupation gave Russian culture its distinct territoriality and ethnic pride. The beginning of the Czars, with Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible, created an Empire where politics and culture could be organized within the borders of a once-chaotic land.

Go to Red Square and stand in awe in front of the massive red-brick walls of the Kremlin, the original site of Moscow and the centre of so much of world history, or gaze with spiritual contemplation at the beauty of St. Basil's Cathedral. Check out the 700-year-old defensive walls of old Moscow in the Kitay Gorod. Visit the traditional splendour and beauty of old Russia at Suzdal and Vladimir and Nizhny Novgorod.

Moscow 600 years ago: St. Basil's Cathedral.

This is the land of a culture that has confused and dazzled the world many times. In the mid 1800s a wave of Russomania swept over the world as the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol and Pushkin went international. Tchaikovsky was composing his great symphonies. Czar Alexandre I had liberated Europe from Napolean and Alexandre II was emancipating the serfs and slaves. Enourmous palaces and monuments were going up in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

The 19th Century was Russia's Golden Age, and everywhere I go I can see evidence of this.Walk along the Old Arbat and take in the street painters, cafes, musicians and the beautiful Russo-European architecture. Check out the area around Red Square and admire the buildings and statues and gardens and cobbled streets. Take a visit to St. Petersburg for a real taste of Russia in the mid-19th Century.

Moscow 200 years ago: The Old Arbat.

Then came the October Revolution of 1917 and the brutal civil war that saw the Bolsheviks (Communists) of Lenin seize power, and overnight the classical culture of Russia was forcefully changed. The 20th Century was one of Soviet idealism and repression. The great monuments of Stalinism can be seen today in the glamorous Moscow Metro and the Seven Sisters skyscrapers that ring the city. Bleak and soulless apartment tenements from the era of Kruschev and Brezhnev are everywhere. Statues to Lenin can be found in every park.

Moscow 50 years ago: one of the 7 Sisters near Leningradski Station.

The Soviet era was not all bad for Russian culture. Indeed, it is because of the Communists forced-modernization of Russia that the value of a top-rate education is part of Russian culture today, and most Russians are very-well educated (some of the best Universities in the world, such as Moscow State University, are in Russia yet Russian degrees are not recognized in much of the world, despite a long history of producing some of the most brilliant minds in science, humanities and the arts). It was during the Soviet period that Bulgakov, one of my personal favourite authors, wrote "The Master and Margarita", a thinly-veiled critiscism of Soviet culture in which the Devil and his entourage come to Moscow and wreak hilarious havoc on the bureaucrats and Communist elite.

"The Master and Margarita" serves to show the world that although traditional Russian culture, wit and creativity and deep insight into the human soul, was well-hidden during the Soviet era, it was alive and well.

Russia today is undergoing another violent upheavel in its cultural values, as out-of-control capitalism clashes with traditional mores. The people of Russia, the bearers of the torch of that beautiful Russian culture, are losing their touch as they struggle with every day frustrations, government corruption and decreasing opportunities for the future. Katya, a true Slavophile who has done so much to teach me about the subtleties of these great people, despairs for the future of Russia and has told me that, today, "Russia is for sale at discount prices".

Moscow today: Glass high-rises going up all over the city.

Soon enough I will be returning to Canada, a country with a different and younger cultural heritage than this ancient land, and I no longer know what to expect. Canada is an experiment in multi-culturalism, with a stable democracy and government, well-managed free-market economy and a multi-layered diaspora of cultures all working together for a common cause. Canada represents above-average standards of living blended together with a deep love of nature and freedom, while Russia represents a long and beautiful cultural history mixed with periods of horror and uncertainty about the future. In short, Canada is much more boring than Russia.

And that is mainly why I continue to endure in this terrible Moscow summer.

Moscow Burning

2010-08-04T05:12:00.003-04:00

It's a surreal scene in Moscow today. This unprecedented heatwave, the hottest Russia has endured since they began keeping records 130 years ago, has caused numerous forest and peat bog fires in the surrounding area to break out, and the smoke from these fires hangs over the city like a death shroud.

For the past week I've awoken every morning to something that smells like burning grass. A haze of grey smoke drifts throughout the city, through everyone's windows (kept wide open because of the heat) and reduces visibility to a few hundred yards. Everything in my apartment is covered in a light blanket of silky sediment and it is a constant battle to keep electronic equipment, and my fan in particular, clean. The city itself appears as if though it is slowly smoldering, and it reminds me of a scene from Dante's Inferno.

The local fire departments are combating the forest fires with some success, but the peat bog fires are nearly impossible to extinguish. The fires themselves are under the surface, and simply dousing water on the ground does nothing to put them out. In order to effectively fight them hundreds of miles of ditches filled with water need to be dug and Moscow simply doesn't have the resources for such an undertaking. I doubt any city in the world could pull it off.

In July I had Beeline hook up the internet in my new flat and as a promotion they offered me two months of free digital cable. I now have 200 channels, including all the Discovery network channels (which I can watch in English thanks to the modern technology of the digital cable box). Last week Katya and I were watching the news on Russia 1 and a scientist was showing the public why these peat bog fires are breaking out.

She had a one-metre long thermometre stuck into the ground in a grassy clearing and a bunch of monitoring equipment surrounding it. The temperature on the surface, under the relentlessly blazing sun, was an astounding 44 degrees centigrade! She pulled the thermometer out of the ground and the temperature one metre down read 33 degrees! Under the effects of a vicious sun and a long waterless drought, the peat and other plants below the surface are bursting into flames.

In my life I have endured some strange weather. My earliest memories include a tornado taking my bicycle away in Ontario. I have sweltered in the heat of south-east Asia and endured the biting cold of a Russian (and Canadian, for that matter) winter. I remember vicious windstorms cropping up in the Pacific and knocking down trees and houses on the coast. Like everyone everywhere, I stand in awe of the power of mother nature. This summer in Moscow, however, is the most insufferable weather I have ever encountered.

The classrooms at central school are veritable furnaces. There is no air conditioning in the building (like almost everywhere else in Moscow) and the big windows are sealed to keep heat in during the winter. The sun blazes down through the windows into the classroom and I have had one student pass out from the heat. I myself have had my vision go black and seen stars dancing around in front of my eyes. Night time is just as bad, as the sweltering heat causes everyone to sweat profusely in bed. Even with my fan on high I sweat like a pig because the fan simply blows hot, moist air on me like a convection oven. I manage a few hours of sleep at night, taken in snatches of exhaustion, and I know that almost all 15 million Muscovites are suffering through the same torments. Even Katya, who weighs in at a mere 100 lbs and gets cold simply thinking about ice cubes, is sweltering.

The heatwave continues unabated and there is no end in sight. Soon Russians will have been enduring this record-breaking heat for two months and with air conditioning absent from almost everywhere there is little anyone can do to cool down. I have 4 1/2 weeks left here and will soon find myself standing in a cool ocean breeze on Canada's Pacific coast, but for everyone else in Moscow, the only hope is that winter will come early this year.

The Yalta Conference

2010-08-02T06:03:00.013-04:00

By February of 1944 the front lines in Russia had been pushed back far to the west. Most of Belorussia and the Ukraine had been liberated by the Red Army and Germany's Army Group North, besieging Leningrad, was in a precarious position and would soon be forced to withdraw. Everybody knew that the war would end with an Axis defeat, the only questions were "When" and "How".

The Soviet Union, United Kingdom and the United States of America, called the "Big Three" by this point, decided to hold a top-level conference to discuss these questions and what the post-war world would look like. Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt had already met once before, in Tehran, and had discussed general strategy and issued the "unconditional surrender" proclamation to the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan and their sattelites). After spectacular Red Army successes in 1943 at Stalingrad, Kursk and along the Dnieper River, as well as American successes pushing the Japanese out of the Pacific Ocean, it was time to look to the future.

Stalin, ever paranoid, refused to fly in aircraft, therefore it was decided that the conference should take place somewhere he could reach by train. The Crimea, the famous Ukrainian peninsula which juts out into the Black Sea, traditionally a place of seaside resorts and the home of the Russian Black Sea fleet, was chosen as the site for the conference not only because it offered the most accessible place for all three leaders but also because it represented the stunning successes of the Soviet Union the year before.

The Crimea had been fought over twice during the war. The first time was during the German onslaughts in 1941 and 1942, when the Red Army had heroically defended the port city of Sevastopol against overwhelming odds. The second time was in 1943 when the Red Army returned during their drive west, this time with the Germans defending Sevastopol (although they didn't manage to put up as much of a defence as the Russians had the year before). Because of this the Crimea was in ruins. The resort town of Yalta was chosen because it was the least damaged of towns on the peninsula.

Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin came to the conference with differing agendas. Roosevelt and Churchill, firm allies mutually committed to each other, were being heavily critiscized by the Soviet press and by Stalin for failing to open a second front in 1943. Indeed, the vast bulk of the German forces were facing the Russians and the Soviet Union had borne the overwhelming brunt of the Second World War. All of European Russia was in ruins and tens of millions of its citizens were dead and maimed, and the USSR desperately needed the western Allies to invade nazi-occupied Europe and draw German divisions away from the Russian front. This was the position Stalin was taking at Yalta.

The western Allies, for the their part, had some difficult decisions ahead of them. When war had broken out in 1939 England had been woefully under-prepared. By 1941 the vast British Empire was being threatened with extinction by the Axis in Europe, Africa, India and Asia. England was barely hanging on when America entered the war. The giant industrial capacity of the USA took some time to convert to full war production and resources had to be split between the European and Pacific theatres. Although the Allies, by 1943, had kicked the Axis out of Africa and had invaded Italy, they felt that they were in no shape to mount a full-scale invasion of western Europe. They had to be satisfied with the strategic bombing campaign over Germany and Lend-Lease shipments to the USSR. By 1944 they were preparing for the long-awaited second front, however.

For the Russians this argument was inconsequential. Russia had been outnumbered and outclassed and, through sheer willpower and at tremendous cost in life and land, had fought the Axis to a standstill and then steadily pushed them back. They couldn't understand why the Allies were making only token efforts to fight the Germans while they, the Soviets, did all the bleeding. They believed, perhaps rightfully so (we will never know), that the UK and US were simply letting the nazis and communists bleed each other to death and thus killing "two birds with one stone."

Roosevelt and Churchill also disagreed on some points about the conduct of the war and the shape of the world when it was all over. Roosevelt trusted Stalin and had tremendous respect for him, despite his appallment at the Great Terror Stalin had unleashed on his people before the war. Roosevelt felt certain that he could work with Stalin and that they could come to an understanding (it is interesting to note that Stalin felt the same way about Roosevelt. Nikita Kruschev, in his memoirs, writes that Stalin only cried publicly twice: once when his first wife Nadya committed suicide and then when Roosevelt passed away). Roosevelt was also a strong supporter of opening the second front with a full-scale invasion of France and the liberation of Western Europe.

Churchill, on the other hand, distrusted Stalin immensely and did not hide the fact. He feared that despite whatever assurances Stalin gave, the Soviet Union would never let the people of Eastern Europe, once they were overrun by the advancing Red Army, democratically choose their own way of life. He was terrified of the Red Army overrunning all of Europe, to the English Channel, and imposing a tyrannical Stalinist dictatorship on hundreds of millions of people. Churchill's foreboding clashed with Roosevelt's idealism and helped to lay the roots of the Cold War.

Because of this fear of Soviet conquest, Churchill lobbied hard for the second front to open in South-East Europe, with an invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia. His arguments were that the western Allies could then drive north and liberate Eastern Europe before the Red Army had time to conquer it. Churchill was adamant that this course of action be chosen and even went so far as to publicly denounce the American plans in Parliament. He knew, however, that England would never be strong enough to conduct such an operation alone. He was well-aware that the sun was setting on the British Empire and that two new superpowers were being born by the war: the USA and the USSR. From now on, England would have to go where America wanted.

So when, on February 4th 1944, the Big Three met at Yalta, the course of history was already being decided.

Poland was the first item on the agenda. It was the German invasion of Poland in 1939 that had started the war, and it was from Poland that Germany had attacked the Soviet Union. Britain had guaranteed Poland's independence, and the Polish government was living in exile in London. The Polish people had been suffering the worst of the nazi occupation. Its large jewish population had completely vanished and all the nazi death camps were situated in Poland. Millions of Poles had been murdered and oppressed and taken off for slave labour in German industry. Now the mighty Red Army stood on the Polish borders and the Germans were digging in for a heavy fight.

Stalin argued that Poland should fall under the Soviet sphere of influence, and that eastern Poland (annexed by the USSR in 1939 in a secret treaty with Hitler) should remain part of the Soviet Union and its borders be extended westwards into Germany in compensation. Stalin refused to recognized the Polish government-in-exile in London, and insisted that the Polish Communist Party (then in exile in Moscow) was the legitimate government.

Both Roosevelt and Churchill were against Stalin's suggestions for Poland, and as a result Stalin gave in a little and promised that free democratic elections would be held in Poland after the war ended. As it turns out, there were elections in Poland under Soviet guidance, but only Communists were allowed to run for office, and only those who were sympathetic to the Stalinist leadership. It was exactly as Churchill feared.

Roosevelt, for his part, wanted the USSR to enter into the war with Japan through an invasion of Manchuria and Korea. Stalin wanted US recognition of Mongolia as part of the Soviet Union and Soviet interests in the Manchurian railway. Roosevelt agreed despite never consulting with the Chinese government. Stalin then agreed to declare war on Japan three months after Germany was defeated.

Other points that the Big Three discussed were the occupation of Germany and, particularly, Berlin once the fighting was over. It was agreed that the Allied and Soviet demarcation line through Germany would be along the Oder River, which cuts Germany in half. Berlin, deep inside the Soviet zone, would be a strange "open city" split into four, with zones of occupation divided between the Soviets, the Americans, the British and the French. The inclusion of the French in Germany's occupation was a surprise for both Roosevelt and Stalin, but Churchill insisted upon it. After all, France had fallen and been completely occupied by the Germans in only 6 weeks in 1940, and it would be Allied soldiers doing all the fighting to liberate her.

Stalin also agreed to allow "free" elections in all territories overrun by the Red Army, but in the end the same format of elections were implemented as in Poland. One area of historical discontent, and indeed even shame for the western powers, was the provision that came out of the Yalta Conference that all former citizens of the USSR currently residing in the west or liberated from German camps by the west's armies were to be returned to the USSR at the end of the war. It is unknown why Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to this without even giving it a second thought, but the fate of millions of emigres, Soviet POWs and even death-camp survivors was sealed at the Yalta conference.

After the war Stalin started a second great purge of the Soviet empire (for indeed by 1946 it was a vast empire, stretching from the Oder River to the Pacific Ocean). Stalin declared that to be captured alive represented treason, and so rather than be hailed as returning heroes, those Soviet soldiers who had been taken prisoner by the Germans were sent off to the GULAG in Siberia or executed. Civilians who had been forced into German labour camps were also considered traitors after their liberation, and the few surviving Jews from the concentration camps were treated with open suspicion and hostility. A fate much worse met those Russian emigres who had left during or after the 1917 Revolution and settled in the west. Many Russians living in America, England, Canada, France, Netherlands, Australia and other points of the western world were forcefully repatriated back into the hands of Stalin's NKVD, where they were tried with treason and shot.

One of the biggest, and arguably most important, results of the Yalta Conference was the finalization and formation of a world governing body, the United Nations. Although Stalin wanted all 16 of the Soviet Republics recognized in the UN, the Big Three settled on two: Russia and the Ukraine. It was decided that the UK, the USA, the USSR, China and France (again an unexplained insistence by Churchill) make up the top-echelon permanent Security Council of the United Nations. The site for the United Nations was to be San Francisco although this was later changed to New York. The basic mission statement and operating procedures of the UN were drafted at this conference and an historic world body was formed.

The conference lasted for 7 days, and in the evenings the three powerful leaders had a chance to talk candidly with each other away from the world's media. Churchill refused to speak with Stalin in private and even had his and his delegation's rooms swept for microphones each evening. Roosevelt and Stalin, on the other hand, spent many long hours in discussion. Roosevelt was still not confident that the planned invasion of France, set for late May, would be succesful and he voiced his fears to Stalin. Stalin, for his part, promised to open a massive new offensive in the east that would help draw German divisions away from France (a strange concession considering that Stalin had been arguing for the west to draw German divisions away from Russia). In the event, Stalin kept his word and a few months before the Allied invasion of Normandy the Red Army launched the biggest offensive in world history that took them all the way to Berlin and the Oder River.

When the conference ended the three leaders drafted a press release outlining the results and posed for photographers. They then shook hands and went home to have the agreements ratified by their respective governments. In Moscow the Central Committee was quick to rubber-stamp Stalin's side, but in Washington and London both Congress and Parliament bickered over the wording and the provisions of the agreements. Parliament was especially concerned about Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe but, tired by five years of war, they conceded and drafted it into law.

Three months later the Red Army launched "Operation Bagration" which would overrun all of Eastern Europe while the Allies, shortly after that, landed on the beaches of Normandy and began a long and brutal advance through Western Europe. Roosevelt would die soon after and the next time the "Big Three" would meet, at Potsdam after the war, the US would be represented by President Truman, an avid anti-Communist. The Cold War, which would plunge the entire world into 60 years of nuclear paranoia and has its beginnings at the Yalta Conference, would begin and the shape of everything that has happened since was formed at the little seaside resort town of Yalta.

Adrift

2010-07-29T16:54:00.002-04:00

Despite what the image this blog may convey, I'm not actually an alcoholic. Many, if not most, of my entries have been made while I've been completely lucid. Some of them have been made while under the influence, which is something that is not unheard of in Russia. In fact, if somebody has a moral or physical aversion to alcohol I would suggest avoiding Russia.

As for those better-than-thou "let me give you some advice about alcohol" do-gooders who stumble across this blog from time to time, and send me emails about the evils of drinking and Jesus Christ and what not (you know who you are), all I can say is: "Welcome to Russia".

For those who have spent any amount of time reading what I write here, you may have noticed that my thoughts and opinions have turned vile as of late. This sudden turn to negativity from an otherwise usually positive outlook on life has everything to do with the unprecedented heatwave which is scorching Russia into dust and my forced move from Mytischi to Moscow. I have lately become what we in Canada call an "unhappy camper".

My friends have all left. Wonderpants and Ms. Australia went home and although I stay in regular Facebook touch with them, they are no longer physical entities in my life. Gem still floats in and out of my life but my contact with her was always through Ms. Australia and we lead pretty much separate lives. Quagmire is long-gone. Katya is my anchor in this over-heated country but the fact of the matter is that I have a difficult time getting smashed, talking about hot chicks at the bar, puking into a bush and passing out in a bus shelter with her. She's not really into that and has a completely different idea about how her future husband should behave (here's a note to all women: any man you are interested in has done/will do the same things I've described above, unless he is gay in which case you don't have a chance...even if he is gay he'll probably do those things anyways).

Combine the heat with the loss of friends and social status and sprinkle in some professional disgruntlement and mix it up with the overall shitty quality of life of Moscow and voila! You have one unhappy blogger!

Tonight after work I got drunk with a few British colleagues at a little kiosk outside the school. Then I came home and turned my fan to "high", quickly got bored and started writing. And that's all I have to say about that.

Dacha

2010-07-26T02:02:00.007-04:00

The Russian dacha has no real direct translation into English. Part cottage, part country-home, part mini-farm, the dacha can only best be described by using the Russian word for it.

A dacha is a small house on a little plot of land out in the country. During the warm seasons city dwellers flock to their peaceful little dachas to get away from the traffic and noise of urban living. Most people have gardens and fresh herbs and vegetables on their dacha, and although a hundred dachas can all be clustered together, it really is more peaceful and relaxed than the impersonal cities of Russia.

Historically only the ruling classes in St. Petersburg and Moscow enjoyed the use of a dacha. Even during Soviet times only a few of the elite were entitled to such privileges. During the 1990s policy started to change and real estate economics came into play: those who could afford a dacha could buy one. People who serve a certain length of time in the armed forces also receive a plot of land in the country for free, where most immediately build a dacha.

Katya's father, thanks to his 30 years of service in the Red Army, received just such a plot of land ten years ago, and this past weekend Katya and I went out to visit. I had never been to a dacha before although I have wanted to since before I came to Russia.

Katya's father and mother split up more than a year ago and while her mother stayed in their flat in Shyolkova, her father established a permanent residence at his dacha. Like all Russian men he is veritable handyman and has turned his plot of land into a rustic paradise.

Katya and I spent an hour on a bus and hopped off at a peaceful little village whose name I never learned, where her father met us in his Lada and, after purchasing some beer and cake, drove us the rest of the way.

He has built a two-story wooden cottage with a garage for his car, dug a well and built an outhouse, erected a fully-functioning banya (Russian sauna) complete with birch branches to thrash oneself with (a Russian tradition before entering the banya), a greenhouse and a garden, a chicken coup and a wooden honey bee contraption. He has also adopted two little puppies he found wandering around in the woods with no mother, who I named "Bitey" (on account of chewing on everything, incuding my toes) and "Stupid" (on account of being stupid).

The first thing I noticed at the dacha was that the oppressive heat of Moscow was nowhere to be found, and as the sun set in the west the temperature was a comfortable 25 C with a nice cool breeze blowing through the house. Needless to say I had the most comfortable sleep I've had in over a month, since this atrocious heatwave began.

I had been very excited to eat shashleek, a delicious kabob-style dish cooked over red coals. This mouth-watering meal comes from the Caucausus and is a favourite with Russians and anyone who tries it, really. Wonderpants and I ate a lot of shashleek during the spring, and our method of cooking it involved spearing some marinated pork and vegetables on a metal stick and placing it over the red-hot coals in a little metal grill Wonderpants had brought. We would, of course, add some beer to the meat during the cooking process. When it was finished we would peel the chunks of pork off the kabob into a piece of flatbread and chow down.

Shashleek, apparently, is a much more intricate meal and deserves a special cooking process, as Katya's father kept grabbing the meat from my hands while I speared the chunks onto the kabob. "Nyet! Nyet!" He kept shouting. Then he would gingerly show me how to spear meat properly. I honestly couldn't tell the difference between my method and his, but he took all the meat away from me and did it himself. Katya, who has been with me at previous shashleek cook-outs and never complained, make clucking sounds at me and told me I didn't know what I was doing. Rather than risk more loss of dignity in my shashleek-methodology, I sat back with a beer and let them cook the entire dinner for me. Who has the wrong methodology now?!

The food was delicious in the end, and we sat under the stars drinking beer with bad 80s pop playing while her father, through Katya's translations, berated me for my limited knowledge of the Russian language. I realized at this point that he doesn't really like me. I fired back when he tried teaching me the correct way of pronouncing the "Russian" words "escalator", "elevator" and "bizness lonch". He wouldn't believe me that those were English words (escalator and elevator borrowing from Latin) borrowed by the Russians, and that Russians were pronouncing "business lunch" incorrectly. Although I like the Russian language (it is a very poetic, passionate language full of creative idioms and interesting dictation), I was being linguistically abused and had to defend myself.

The next day we went off to a vast forest that surrounds the area. I grew up in and around forests and a year of living in one of the biggest metropolis' in the world was grinding me down, so it was such a pleasant treat to hike for a few hours among pines, birch, maple and all the other trees that I grew up with.

Finally, it was time to leave and her father drove us all the way back to Shyolkova. When we were about 30 km out of the city the temperature skyrocketted suddenly and we all immediately burst into sweat despite the wind through the car windows (concrete retains heat and doesn't let it off, thus large cities create a sort of bubble of heat around them, making them even more unbearable to live in than they already are. The heat from Moscow has expanded to nearly 50 km around the city in this record-breaking heatwave).

All in all the weekend was blissful and interesting. I am sincerely grateful to Katya's father for having us out there and although I can tell he doesn't like me, or at least he likes to torment me, I like him. He's an interesting character, stubborn and opinionated, but after everything he has done in his life I guess he's earned the right to be. Katya had a good time, too, and we both felt much more rejuvenated upon returning to the shittiness of city life.

We said our goodbyes and spaciba bolshoi to her father and came back to my place in Moscow, where I found that some of the plastic items in my room were actually melting! Welcome back to Moscow.

A farm on the way to the dacha

An angry rooster at the dacha

Bitey and Stupid, two of the cutest puppies I have ever met

Shashleek, PROPERLY skewered, unlike the barbaric ways of us ignorant westerners. See the difference? I don't.

Sunflowers at the dacha

Peaceful pond in the beautiful forest around the dacha. It felt like home.