Hello Goodbye

April has arrived with all the glory of a sunny, slightly-warm spring. Flowers are beginning to grow and although the trees haven't started to bud yet, it is only a matter of time. Only small pockets of snow continue to resist the +15 C temperatures and while the ground remains muddy the sidewalks are dry and finally navigable.

It was on April 1st that I moved into Quagmire's old room following his termination from the company and expulsion from Russia. Quagmire, my drinking buddy and comrade-in-arms, failed to show up for a few-too-many classes due to excessive bouts of drinking and the company let him go, thus cancelling his Russian visa. His departure was sad because he and I had great fun together and he was always good for a laugh.

Despite the loss of a friend here in Russia, I did manage to profit from his departure by moving into his old room in the flat he shared with Wonderpants and Ms. Australia. The motivation behind moving was simple: it's a 45-second walk to work, as opposed to the 20 minute walk I had previously had to endure. On Monday's and Wednesdays I have split shifts, which means walking to work and back and then to work and back again, a total walking time of 80 minutes per day.

The first day I spent in my new room was relaxing. I looked at my watch and noted that I would normally have begun preparing to leave on my trek to work, which involves putting on shoes and coat, taking the elevator down, hiking around streets and then running the muddy cesspool of muck gauntlet beside Arena Mytischi before emerging, covered in dirt, at the intersection in front of my school. Another option was always to spend 25 roubles on a marshroutka; small mini-van-sized buses that zig through traffic (and require shouting out "Nasta novkye palzhasta!" in order for them to stop where you want, and then fighting my way through a crowd of grouchy babushki and teenagers wearing too much perfume to get off the bus). Instead of all that stress and exercise, I took a 30-minute nap.

Quagmire appears to be doing well, judging from the few messages I've received. He took the train to Kiev, in the Ukraine, where the only visa required is an entrance stamp in your passport, and he has set up shop there as a private English teacher. I may be happy with our warming weather here in the Moscow Oblast, but Quagmire states that he is quite happy with an additional five or ten degrees of warmth in the Ukraine, which lies much further south.

Of course, I will get to enjoy the warmer weather in one month, when an intense period of travel activity begins for me. My two friends from Canada, Q and Dutchy, are coming to Moscow in May and together with Katya we are taking the train to Volgograd to visit the Stalingrad battlefield. They are in Russia for two weeks and when they head back home I will be heading off to Turkey to teach at a summer camp our company runs there. This camp is on a Mediteranean beach only a few hours from Istanbul, so I plan on visiting the Hagia Sofia and seeing the ruins of Constantinople and getting a tan. Then Katya and I are talking about taking a week in Greece sometime this summer, provided I can get the time off work, and then in September I'm off to Canada for a couple of weeks to get my visa renewed. I am in no rush to return to a mundane life of work and forms and work and bills and work and death. There is still so much to see and do! I figure that I will spend the next couple of years travelling around Europe and the Mediteranean from my nice comfortable base in Russia, and it begins in one month!

Goodbye Quagmire. Hello summer!

Fish Tales

Last night I had a strange series of dreams about my former life in Canada. These dreams brought me, with incredible realism, back to a time before I had conjured up the idea to teach English in Russia. Since I woke up I've had the memories of my life in Port Hardy on my mind.

When I lived in Port Hardy, more than a year ago, I was the Port Supervisor for a fisheries monitoring program with an environmental consulting company. There's a lot of fancy titles there but it's really not all that complicated.

Canada's commercial fisheries, one of the three largest in the world and representing 30% of Canada's gross GDP, is managed by the Department of Fisheries & Oceans, or DFO. Because DFO doesn't have the money or personnel to monitor the entire fisheries in both oceans, they contract private companies to do it. By law there must be a government-certified "observer" at every fish offload at a Canadian port to record what was caught and how much, to ensure compliance with regulations, and to report all this information. Fishing trawlers require an At-Sea-Observer on board when they are out fishing as well as a Dockside Monitor when they offload. The company I worked for provided both services.

I was the supervisor for the Dockside Monitoring Program in Port Hardy. When commercials vessels were returning to port after a week of fishing on the Pacific Ocean they would "hail in" by calling an 800 number. The hail would then be registered in a computer somewhere and on my big Blackberry-like phone I would receive a "ping" and all the hail information. I would then call the fishing plant the vessel was offloading at to confirm the time, and then call one of my staff of observers and "deploy" them to the offload. I was also responsible for hiring, training and supervising the dockside observers, as well as ensuring accuracy of information, maintaining good PR with the commercial fisheries, DFO and the community in general. I also observed a million offloads myself.

Because of my job I had to pass a series of government exams showing that I could properly identify the bulk of the Pacific fish species. Russian factory ships would park off the coast of Canadian and US waters so that domestic boats could sell their catch directly to them. These giant JV ships (Joint-Venture) took millions of pounds of fish back to Russian markets, and it was interesting when I spotted a Yellowtail Rockfish, a species native to the north-east Pacific, in a Russian grocery store a few months ago.

At one point in my Port Hardy-fisheries life, I had a nice house near the beach with a view of the Rocky Mountains on the mainland, a Cavalier Z22, a beautiful blonde fiance, a good salary and job with a great company, and a lot of power. My job was stressful, particularly at the start of the fishing season (March) when 20+ boats a day would want to offload in Port Hardy and I only had 5 observers. The trick was to not burn out my observers so I developed a system whereby I would rotate half of them for night shifts and the other half for day shifts. I would observe whatever was left and created a "mobile office" so I could keep doing my supervisor duties while observing at the dock.

Fishermen themselves are not a friendly lot, and the majority of them feel that government observers counting their fish is an invasion of privacy. Add to that the fact that we then billed them for our services and you have a sometimes stressful situation on your hands. I remember one night in late October 2007. It was 9 pm and a hook-and-line boat was offloading at the government wharf. The skipper was drunk and angry and his crew were throwing insults at me. Finally I said "If you want I can leave, and your fish can rot. Or we can stop fucking around and get this offload finished." At which point the drunk skipper grabbed a tire-iron and swung it at my head. I managed to get out of the way, looked at him for a moment, and then walked away (thus forcing the offload to stop) and called DFO.

Aside from moments like that, however, it was a rewarding job. The data collected was used by government to monitor quotas, and research groups and universities used the data to determine fish migration patterns, stocks in the ocean and other important marine information. Although far from perfect, the system is one of the only like it in the world and the company has consulted with Norway, Australia and the United States to help them set up similar conservation programs.

When my fiance and I broke up I stayed with the job for 9 months, but I became restless and bored and lonely in Port Hardy, and started to panic that I would miss out on seeing the places I always dreamt of seeing, so I decided to come to Russia to teach English. I helped train my replacement (who promised to hire me the moment I returned to Port Hardy), packed a single suitcase, caught a Greyhound bus to Victoria and then a flight to Ottawa.

Every now and again I think that I made a big mistake in leaving my job and home in one of the most beautiful and peaceful parts of the world. Today is one of those days.

On the other side of the coin, however, I have been enjoying my time in Russia and I really enjoy the company of the friends I've made here so far. Some day this will be a memory and as I'm counting fish while eagles glide overhead on thermals and the Rocky Mountains poke through clouds on the horizon, I'll think back to my time in Russia and know that this will all be worth it.

Unless, of course, it isn't. In either case, I might as well enjoy myself.

Thanksgiving & Vodka

On Saturday Ms. Tennessee hosted a Thanksgiving dinner/party, which was attended by Americans, Russians, an Australian, a Brit, a Canadian and one kitten.

Mr. Irish and I started the evening off by pre-drinking a couple of shots of vodka at our kitchen table. Once we had a nice fuzzy feeling we put on our coats, scarves, gloves, etc and made our way to SPAR, where we purchased 10 bottles of beer and I got a bottle of white wine from Chile. Then we hopped on the #4 bus and made our way to Ms. Tennessee's flat.

Despite being completely shit-faced...er...alcoholically handicapped, Ms. Tennessee had cooked up a 14-pound turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, devilled eggs, a bunch of other trimmings and homemade cranberry sauce.

Wonderpants, Quagmire, Ms. Australia and Gem were there. Another American girl, Schwangledoodledandy, showed up an hour after Mr. Irish and I. There were also several Russians, including a balding but young man I'll call Young Homer, his girlfriend who I'll call Cafe (Cute And Friendly-e), and one of Ms. Tennessee's friends, a beautiful 6-foot tall blonde who I'll call, for lack of imagination, Tits.

I got into the beer that Mr. Irish and I had bought and played with the kitten that Ms. Tennessee has recently acquired (as she was waiting at a bus stop a car drove by and some guy threw a new-born kitten out the window. Luckily it landed in a small snowbank at Ms. Tennessee's feet,so she took it home).

After the oldest American male, Quagmire, carved the turkey we all chowed down, then continued to drink more.

After dinner we had a pageant, which Wonderpants had written. I can't remember who played who, but I do remember that I was "Chief Samoset" and Tits was my daughter. It was sort of funny in a Grade 2 way. The script was actually hilarious, filled with Wonderpants' special brand of sarcasm, but the simple fact that we were holding a pageant in the living room was, well, retarded.

Quagmire and I had to make a beer-run, so he and I went to the local produkty where we cleaned them out of beer. They don't sell beer in cases in Russia; one must buy the individual bottle. This means we had a few bags of beer to lug back to the party. No worries. We did it.

After all that turkey and beer I was extremely full and despite drinking copious amounts of ale I was as sober as a bran muffin, so I cracked open the bottle of wine I had bought. There were no clean glasses that I could find, so I ended up carrying the bottle around and drinking directly from it. This seemed to horrify the Russians but I was starting not to care.


Ms. Australia, Gem and I made a second beer run shortly after and once we were outside I realized that my shoes didn't match. I had put on one of mine and one of somebody else's, who has the same size shoes as me. I started to realize that I wasn't actually sober.

Later that night Ms. Tennessee gave us a few shots of vodka and then Quagmire, Mr. Irish and I took a gypsy cab to the Austquagwonder Flat (taking a 'gypsy cab' consists of walking to the curb, holding out your hand, and negotiating a price for a drive with the first car that pulls over).
The three of us went to a produkty and bought more beer and a giant bottle of vodka, then, once at Quagmire's we drank more. By this point the three of us had had between 10 and 20 beers (each), a bottle of wine (each) and within ten minutes of arriving we had downed four or five shots of vodka. Ms. Australia, Gem, Schwangledoodledand and Wonderpants arrived. Then things started to get weird.

Quagmire disappeared to another level of consciousness. Although he and I were on his balcony having a cigarette, he was making no sense at all.

"WHO?" He shouted at me.
"Who me? Who are you? What?" I replied.
"You know what I'm saying, but you don't know."
"Huh?"
"That's what they all think I think but they don't" Quagmire mumbled, or something along those lines. Then he flung the balcony door open and pointed at the group of our companions around the kitchen table. "CHOOSE ONE!!!!" He growled.
"What? Why? What the hell are you talking about?" I asked.
"CHOOOOOSE ONE! DO IT!"
"Ummm...for what, death?"
"You know what I'm saying!"
"I actually don't have a clue what you're saying, but I gotta use the toilet, so do your best to hold that thought" I said, and stumbled off to the bathroom. I was gone for not more than 30 seconds and when I came out of the bathroom Quagmire was sitting at the kitchen table and his hand was bleeding everywhere.

Mr. Irish was trying to soak up the blood with a napkin but Quagmire wouldn't let him. "Punch me!" He kept shouting at Mr. Irish. "Puuuunch Meeeee!" It was the strangest way to pick a fight that I've ever seen, but I started to realize why Quagmire keeps getting punched in the face by Russians when he's drunk. Ms. Australia started to freak out at him. "You're a freak! You stupid idiot! Fine! You don't want help? Go to your room!"

With that she pointed to Quagmire's door and he stood up and, bleeding all over himself, stumbled off to his room never to be seen again.

That's the last memory I have of Thanksgiving. The next time I was conscious it was Sunday morning and I was in bed with Ms. Australia and Gem (fully clothed). And my head hurt a lot.

Absolutely Nothing To Report

Nothing interesting has happened this past week. I bought a pair of jeans and a shirt from a strange little market, but that's not very interesting. I've been teaching the Present Perfect Simple vs. the Past Simple (I have eaten vs I ate) but that's not interesting at all. Even when living overseas the odd week or two can be mundane.

Despite being in Moscow I have absolutely nothing to write about, so I'll post some funny videos, instead!

I first saw those videos in 2003 in Korea. My friend, Mr. Halifax (who married a Korean girl and is now a successful investment manager in Toronto, but I knew him when he was a lowly English teacher...) introduced them to me and I find it very strange that friends of mine here Russia showed me the exact same videos!

That video was shown to me by my ex's friend, Ms. Margarita (who is the only friend of my ex that I'm still friends with, because not only is she one of the most interesting people I've ever met, she also kinda became my friend).

The Hunt For A Cheers

In every town I've lived in I've always had my hangout pub. My Cheers, if you will, where I can go and everybody knows my name and the servers know what I drink and I can unwind after a week (or a day) of work.

In Korea I had the Wa-Bar, which was taken over by us English teacher-expats. In Port Hardy I had Sporty's which became not only my personal local pub but my coffee house, my restaurant and my club. Here in Mytischi I have yet to find a place. I have been actively searching, however.

On Friday night Wonderpants, Mr. Irish and I went to "The Mustang", a low wooden building with a big neon sign on the main drag in Mytischi. It was very obviously an American-style country & western bar. I had passed by this place many times and was curious to see how far Russians could run with this theme.

Being Russian, they ran all the way.

Immediately inside the big wooden doors there were two covered wagons, the type settlers would circle when the 'injuns attacked. Through another door and down a flight of stairs was the main restaurant, which was done in the theme of a wild-west homesteader's ranch (complete with wooden barrels, hard wooden benches and Colt Peacemaker revolvers hanging on the unsanded wooden walls). On two flat screen TVs Legends of the Fall played on a continuous loop. Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton played over the sound system.

Our waiter was wearing a checkered shirt tucked into tight jeans and a big-buckled belt.

The prices sucked at The Mustang. For some reason Mytischi establishments keep Moscow-centre prices, so we were looking at over 100 roubles per beer. The food was low-quality. I had "ribs" which were meaty enough but un-flavoured and dry as a desert.

Nevertheless we checked out The Mustang and it didn't pass my personal tests as a potential hangout spot.

Last night we went to a pseudo-exclusive club called Barbarella, in the Kitay Gorod section of Moscow. Wonderpants, Ms. Australia and two British girls who I'll call Gem and Ms. Birmingham were with me (rather, I was with them). Tucked down a narrow cobbled street across from an abandoned turn-of-the-century block of flats, this super-trendy bar had feis kontrol at the door (but let us in).

Inside Barbarella the walls were light blue and the lighting was soft and dreamy. A fantastic sound system was blazing house music and mash-ups and I could feel each drum beat as it reverberated through my chest cavity. Dozens of disco balls hung from the ceiling and little dots of light spun across the entire place. A long leather-padded bar took up one side of the joint while low leather sofas and classy tables took up the other. The place was packed with people dressed in their best, that is, lots of cleavage and sparkly, stringy shirts. A small section of the bar, in front of the DJ booth, was reserved for dancing and it was filled with girls shaking their stuff (another reason I love Russia is because the girls here can't dance, so I don't feel bad).

Ms. Australia, Gem and Ms. Birmingham took off to the dance floor after checking their coats while Wonderpants and I bought a round of pints. Four pints of beer cost 1500 roubles (nearly $50)!

I bought the first round and then refused to buy any more at those prices, but I guess they were pretty standard for elitny clubs in the center of Moscow. Wonderpants bought the next round and we joined the girls on the dance floor.

It was a cool, super-exclusive club and we had been let in because Gem knew the DJ, but it was far from being a hangout spot. Not only does it take an hour to get to from Mytischi, but a few drinks a week there would bankrupt me. So I crossed it off my list.

So far the only place I have found that matches most of my criteria for a comfortable local watering hole is Beerokratia near Mytischi train station, where I met Katerina. I've only been there once but it is comfortable, the prices are affordable, it's not too far out of the way (15 minutes on the bus or 100 roubles in a taxi), the service is friendly enough for Russia, and the sausages and saurkraut are fantastic.

I'm keeping my options open, however, and I'm determined to find the right combination of price, ambience, quality and location so that I can have my own personal Cheers here in Russia!

Halloween et al.

Yesterday was Halloween and Mr. Irish and I threw a bash. There were, at one point in the evening, over 20 people crammed into our flat. It was a good mix of English teachers and Russians and, surprisingly, only the Russians showed up in costumes.

I had tried to get a costume together but for the life of me I couldn't find anything. Add the fact that I don't know where to look, I can't ask for help at the stores, and I don't get much time off work and I was pretty much out of luck. I attempted to fashion a toga out of a bed sheet but after thirty minutes of trying to figure it out I gave up. I did carve a jack-o-lantern and get pissed-up, however.

Yesterday it snowed in Moscow and the snow hasn't left the ground yet. It wasn't a big white blast, but it was enough to let us know that winter is coming. It was the wet and windy kind of snow that flutters down intermittently, like a preview of what's to come.

I also apparently have a Russian girlfriend, whom I'll call Katerina. I met this 100-lbs brunette through a Russian friend of mine. He had invited me out to a pub ("Beerokratia"...that's an awesome name for a pub) with some of his friends, and she was one of them. At first her flat stomach and great legs had stood out in my mind but the vast

majority of Russian women have those things going for them. The deal was clinched when she panted in my ear "I want to kiss you!". Needless to say I was game, and I've been out with her a few times. It's great having a Russian to navigate all the impossibilities of Moscow for me, and we're going to St. Petersburg next week. It's great having a girl, sitting on my lap at a party, who has two University degrees and has traveled parts of Europe and who actually looks like a model in a bikini. The best part is that I didn't have to do anything but show up at the bar!

Near the end of the Halloween party, around 4 am, the telephone rang and a new friend of mine, a hilarious Russian guy I'll call Medical Lobster (long story that I don't completely understand), answered. It was the attendant who sits in the "lobby" of our building and had called the militsia on us for noise violation.

Most of us foreigners, and most Russians for that matter, do everything they can to avoid the famed corrupt police of Russia, so as soon as Medical Lobster announced that the militsia were on the way people started looking at their mobile phone clocks and stating "Oh, look at the time. I have to be going!" Ten minutes after the call there were 5 people left (not including four people passed out in Mr. Irish's room, two random people passed out on my floor and Katerina passed out in my bed).

Together with four other survivors I stayed up drinking for another hour or so and vaguely remember somebody scrambling all our eggs in one big frying pan and somebody squatting on their haunches and telling jokes in an Irish accent. It might have been the same guy. I don't really remember.

I woke up this afternoon in my bed, fully clothed, next to Katerina. Somehow, somebody had broken our bathroom sink.

Halloween. Snow. Waking up next to a hot Russian brunette. People you've never met passed out on your floor. Broken bathroom. Russian police.

These are all signs of a great party!

Summer of Beer: Tents

Ah, Owen Sound in the summer. Big sun, cool breezes off the bay, green trees and lots of beer. Lots. I mean A LOT of beer.

Every year in August Owen Sound puts on the Summerfolk festival. It's a mini-woodstock that's in it's 31st year. Folk bands play music while hippie chicks shop at homemade jewellery kiosks and I drink at the beer tent.

If you volunteer for set-up construction a week before the festival you get in free for the weekend, so for a fourth Summerfolk in my lifetime I helped set up the site, including lots of fencing and painting stages and kiosks and drinking beer.

During the festival my old friends (some of whom I haven't seen in years) and I hung out at the volunteer campgrounds or the beer tent and...drank beer. Thankfully, as opposed to a couple of years ago when I last went to Summerfolk, nobody brought their kids! So we drank more beer.

I think I spent about 20 minutes at the main stage and the rest of the weekend drinking beer. One night I smoked a little somethin-somethin that was rolled in tobacco leaves and was the size of a cuban cigar and ended up stumbling home at 3 am. My friend S***e, missing somewhere at Summerfolk, sent me a text that read "Help." I replied "With what?" to which he responded "I don't know where I am." Turns out he had wandered to the marina, puked and then passed out under a dry-docked boat.

The Summerfolk bar tent has its own stage where the livelier bands play. Don't get me wrong; the main stage had a few good bands (or so I heard) but there's no dancing or standing or smiling or looking at the stage with your head on an angle to the left. The bar stage had a few great bands, and one of them was a Celtic band from Nova Scotia that was the hit of the weekend.

There were about 8 guys in this band. In addition to the regular drums, bass and guitars they had a couple of fiddlers, a flute-like-thingy, and even a bag-piper! They were lively! I had wandered in to the beer tent when I heard them playing and stumbled upon some of my friends who were dancing so I joined them but, being able to barely stumble around let alone walk upright, I almost fell over a couple of times.

Man, this band was great! You really can't beat lively Celtic music.

Being too drunk does, on occasion, have its drawbacks. There was this beautiful, beautiful brunette in a light-blue dress and a cowboy hat that I started chatting up. We were hitting it off and she touched my arm a couple of times as we laughed and I was thinking "Sweet!" But then I had that prodigal 'one-beer-too-many', and in the way an accident occurs with no warning, I was suddenly too drunk to pass as a human.

As I was trying to look into those incredibly sexy big brown eyes of hers I found I couldn't focus, and her face looked like an out-of-focus picture, and I was aware of the rotation of the earth (except I wasn't keeping up).

I've made a fool of myself in this situation when I was younger and continued to pursue, but now I know that there's no point in reinforcing a defeat, so I stood up suddenly and said "Wow. I'm too loaded to pick you up. Have a great night!" and walked back to the campgrounds.

I never said I was smooth.

Summer of Beer: Beer

Owen Sound is a town of about 20,000 situated at the south-east base of the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario. Georgian Bay turns into an estuary and then a river at Owen Sound. Grains and minerals from the Canadian prairies and northern Ontario are shipped across Lake Superior and Lake Huron to Owen Sound, and from there they are transported to the U.S. and other markets.

But that's all the boring stuff.

I had one of the best summers in a long time last month. I stayed with my high-school friend Mr. GMC, who, since his divorce last year, has a 4-bedroom home. He rented one of the rooms out to me for the month.

In addition to hanging with Mr. GMC, I travelled to Hanover (1 hour south of Owen Sound) to visit my friend and Mr. GMC's younger sister Ms. Pickles and her husband Pie. They have a nice house with a big patio and a hot tub in their backyard. I was there at least once a week during the month. Ms. Pickles and Pie are fun, generous hosts and nobody was ever without a beer in their hand and food in the belly. They are vegetarians but they went out of their way to buy a couple of juicy steaks for me at a barbecue they were hosting.

I also went to Kitchener-Waterloo once a week to visit my friends Ms. Q and Mr. Dutch, who are always fun. Ms. Q and I always have a lot of laughs and, like her sister Ms. Pickles and brother Mr. GMC, is generous but in a dry, sarcastic way.

More in the next post.