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!

The Oaf

I feel like an oaf here in Russia. This really is a country where knowledge of the language is necessary. This isn't like Korea or any other Asian country where the bare minimum will get me by; in Russia one is expected to know the language.

Korean has very little grammar. There are no past-tenses or future-tenses and everything depends on the context. I can say "Yesterday I car drive" and it will mean the same as "I was driving a car yesterday", which is great if you're learning a new language. Russian, however, is much more complicated.

Russian has six cases that change the ending of the words, as well as gender-specific nouns (like Latin languages: there are masculine and feminine words). The number 1, for instance, in Russian is "adin" but if it comes before a feminine noun it is "adna", however, that all depends on the case, which will help determine the gender of the noun. Simply learning some verbs and nouns in Russia won't do anything for you. I have enough vocabulary to say "I car drive yesterday" but it will sound as barbaric in Russian as it does in English. Add to that the need for correct pronunciation and I'm pretty much a retard in this country.

Most of the expats I've met here have studied Russian and speak Russian to a certain extent (Mr. Irish is 100% fluent), while I can order cigarettes from a store and that's about it. I have tried to learn the numbers but what I've learned and what I hear are two different things.

Surrounded by a classical language and expats who speak it, I feel like a dumb, uncultured oaf. I like beef and barbecues and hockey and bonfires and trucks and girls and rock music. I can pitch a tent in the dark and light a fire out of nothing and survive in the woods and clean and load a rifle and pack a snowball and navigate a canoe like nobody's business and drink myself stupid, yet I can't speak Russian and therefore I'm uncivilized.

Okay, maybe I am uncivilized but I can speak French and read and write in Korean and I'm not an idiot. I will learn enough Russian, eventually, to get by. However, as I'm surrounded by cultured people, both Russian and expat, and I'm the only one who can't speak the language, I feel like an oaf.

Morons and the Ghost of Micheal Jackson

Here we go. I knew this would happen. Just look at the millions of morons who see Elvis. Now they're seeing Micheal Jackson.

It is stupid that scientific exploration into the facts of nature are doubted while things that have not a shred of evidence are fanatically believed. When we (being humans) proved that the Earth was round we found a new unproven phenomena to believe in. Once we prove that aliens are not raping farm-folk in Arkansas we'll start believing in something else equally stupid.

Ghosts? Come on. The ghost of Jacko? Go play in traffic.