20.10.12 My first full week has come to an end. I’m alive. I can do it. Soon it will be routine and it won’t seem like any more work than I used to have. Already next week I’ll have a small break on Tuesday because my student at the printing company has flown to South Korea to negotiate with their ink dealer. Furthermore, I might also be able to adjust my schedule a little bit more, to cram some classes together back to back, thus giving me more time in between for lunch and other things important for health and sanity maintenance. I already moved that same student from Thursday to Friday last week, which gave me plenty of time to prepare for a long day at the end of the week. 28.10.12 Today is Sasha the 1st’s birthday. Sasha the 1st is the guy I lived with in Vladimir during my first year in Russia. I hadn’t written him since his birthday last year, or maybe even two years ago, but I remembered him today and wrote him a short note. Last week at work wasn’t as hard as it was supposed to be. There were plenty of cancellations, all of them convenient, as almost any cancellation fits well into my schedule. This coming week I’ll see how this new schedule works. Last week wasn’t an accurate test since that one student was in South Korea. Aside from work, things are going well. I’ve been writing much less, but reading much more. I’ve begun to read aloud. I record myself, and send it to my girlfriend, Sasha (the 4th). I don’t know if she listens to everything I record, or, if she does, how much she understands. She and I have switched books so that we have different things to record and read. This way, she can catch up to the point in a book to where I stopped recording, while I record the other book that she’s been reading. So far, we’ve been doing a lot of girly literature: Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, and a book by Louisa May Alcott. I’ve also been reading Shutter Island, a typical thriller which was made into a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio several years ago. Aside from that, I’m still reading “B’esy” (Demons) by Dostoevski. This I read aloud too, but I don’t record myself. Who would listen to me? I try to read fifty pages every week, at which pace I should finish by Christmas. Working as much as I have been and will have to, I can’t help but dream of loads of free time. Halfway into one of Dostoevski’s novels, there’s nothing more I’d like than a week off to finish it. Recently I toyed with the idea of arranging to return to Vladimir for a few months. I could arrange a reading list of classical literature with my former teacher there, and I would take a few months off and read like a madman. Alas, the desire to read so much might disappear as soon as the opportunity comes. It's another example of wanting mostly the things that you don't have. I’ll just have to stick to picking away at some very large novels, page by page, and I’ll get there, wherever I’m headed, eventually. 2.11.12 I’ll write for half and hour and see what comes. I’m listening to some of Bach’s violin sonatas right now. I haven’t listened to these for a long time, so now they are especially therapeutic, as though I were taking a vitamin that I’ve deprived myself of for several months. I have been depressed recently. The work load is heavy, and the weather sucks. Under these conditions, if I don’t get enough sleep, which occasionally happens I think due to sudden severe changes in atmospheric pressure, then I’m a real grump and not the best guy to be in the same room with. This is not good for a teacher, but my students and I make do, somehow. I felt like crap on Wednesday. I talked with Sasha about my day, and she explained, as I knew deep down, that the day hadn’t been all that bad after all. I replied that my mood was such that it was very easy to make mountains out of molehills. Wednesday was full of molehills, each of which felt like the greatest disaster to me. In fact, almost every day is full of molehills. A good day doesn’t depend of the problems I encounter, but on how I relate to them. The quality of a day depends on my mood, which depends on a lot of things. It’s interesting though, how much my work depends on my mood. You would think that the opposite is truer, that if I work well, then I’m in a good mood. While this is true, I think the reverse dependence is even more valid: The better my mood, the better I work. The question arises, then, how can I generate a good mood to begin with? Can it possibly be maintained? The latter question is easy to answer: No, it can’t. This is because good and bad are relative things. If a good mood lasts a long time, then you get used to the goodness, after which bad things, however slight they may appear at first, have nevertheless more and more weight as time goes on. Conversely, if you’re used to living in bad conditions: bad weather, too much work, not enough sleep – then the slightest positive thing can have a terrific effect on your day. Two Wednesdays ago, for example, I was running late at the company, as I often do, and it seemed I wouldn’t have time for lunch before my first lesson at the Vodniki center, where I work evenings. I finished my last lesson at the company that day, and discovered that I had received an SMS from the Vodniki receptionist. My individual had cancelled. I could go home and enjoy a decent lunch! Oh heaven! Just that small event made my day. Imagine how simply happiness can come to us. Which brings me to the more complicated question: how do we generate good moods? What is the formula for happiness? I think there are many kinds of happiness. There seems to be a sort of vicarious happiness that a parent feels which their child scores a goal in soccer, or gets good grades in school. Still, I think this might be a particular case of a more general form of happiness, in which the parent considers the child’s physical or academic prowess to somehow be their own achievement. Consider a simpler example. Imagine you had to run a marathon tomorrow morning. You would have no help along the way, but at the end there would be a banquet of fruits and drinks. You would struggle and might nearly die of starvation during the event, but you would reach the finish line where there would be a ripe banana waiting for you. Can you imagine how good that banana would taste? Do you know how good its sugar would make you feel? Whatever that feeling is, I think it’s the same as what we feel when we perceive the rewards of any goal which requires hard work to achieve. In the case of vicarious happiness, the parent works hard to make money to support the child to see it grow and succeed. Getting back to the maintenance of feeling happy, bananas won’t suffice for long. The tenth banana is never as tasty as the first. Our child’s most recent perfect report card is never as rewarding as the very first, when the child worked hard to achieve high marks. However, it seems to me that according to an American way of life, people try to achieve and maintain positive feelings via, metaphorically speaking, bigger and more frequent bananas. Or maybe some people try to move on to supposedly better things, like papayas or avocados. They’re missing something. They don’t realize that a very important key to that good feeling they had when they finally reached their goal was the hard work, particularly the starvation they endured and the deprivation of those things that bring happiness in the end. A good friend of mine has imparted his wisdom on me on more than one occasion: there’s nothing romantic about poverty, or something like that. I think he says this to encourage me to make more money, although I feel that I have more than what I need to be happy. Consider two extremes of the professional spectrum. One on end there’s a man who has to work very hard to earn a day’s worth of food, and on the other there’s a multibillionaire, whose work entails checking a few stocks every once in a while (or hiring someone to do so), who has everything he could possibly need. Who’s happier? I think you could argue for the case of the hard worker for two reasons: First of all, he has a clear goal every day - work enough for a good dinner; Secondly, the worker is more likely to be able to appreciate the things he has. The so-called ‘rich’ man, on the other hand, lacks not only the ability to recognize the value of his possessions, but also a good reason to work hard, aside from getting more possessions – an empty endeavor. What good is a warehouse full of bananas when you’re too fat to run up an appetite good enough for eating a few? In order for my friend to convince me of the value of his advice, he’ll have to explain to me why I need luxuries like my own house and car. As far as I can tell, I maximize my satisfaction in life with a good meal at the end of my day at a job that I enjoy doing. The so-called rich man is a glutton. Is he any better off than a heroin addict who has access to exponentially increasing amounts of his drug, enough to keep him continually satisfied? If I come across as a communist or socialist, don’t think it’s because I’m in Russia. I’m actually a big fan of Ayn Rand. My parents might be unhappy to hear that alongside their lessons, she has also taught me a few things about hard work. But as far as happiness goes, I think I may have learned most of all from my dog, Caesor. I’ve written a lot about bananas here. Caesor liked bananas too, along with anything else thrown near his mouth, especially tennis balls and Frisbees – he loved chasing those. Have you ever seen a dog smile? I sometimes pass smiling dogs here and I think of Caesor. They must be going after a tennis ball, I think to myself, as I see them trot by, off to work, or whatever business stray dogs do. Many Americans and people in general, don’t like to lower themselves to the status of an animal. I’m not ashamed to admit not only that humans aren’t really special, but also that they can learn a few things from other creatures. Happiness, for example, can be a really very simple thing. Maybe it’s even necessarily so. All you need is a tennis ball, or a banana – call it whatever you want – and then you have to run like mad to go after it. Do you have yours? 4.11.12 I’ve been following the Presidential Race quite closely. I somehow enjoy looking at a map of my country, in red and blue. Sure it sort of highlights our lack of unity, but it also is a symbol of democracy. The battles are only at the voting stations, and they’re fought with our thoughts and reasoning, and not with violent weapons. Maybe Americans can be proud of themselves for this process. I was also wondering about people who live in swing states. I understand that polling agencies are surveying the citizenry of these states daily. Does that ever get annoying? If you live in, say, Wisconsin, then do you get called ten times every day by ten different polling organizations interested in your choice of candidate? I also think it’s interesting how Obama’s performance over Hurricane Sandy has seem to have a positive influence on the undecided voters. It indicates a very short attention span. Maybe, in future elections, the incumbent can secretly arrange a small terrorist attack in an important city. The attack would take place in such a way so that nobody is hurt, but so that access to power and clean water is lost. Then the President can fly over there and, with a fat smile on his face, stand where the cameras can see him while he takes charge of the water distribution exercises. So voters are swayed by how well a President handles a big hurricane, but not about what was done, or not, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, or Detroit? Again, I guess some voters can’t remember that far back. As far as hurricane Sandy is concerned, I guess Obama can thank his lucky stars that he didn’t need any votes in Congress for allocating emergency funds to devastated areas in New York and New Jersey. 7.11.12 It’s election night over in the states. It’s early morning over here. I’m excited about the event. It almost strikes me like a championship football match. It’s like a political super bowl. I would say world cup, but this sort of thing doesn’t happen in the same way in other places. For one thing, we’ve got a twisted voting system. Let’s see how it turns out. Speaking of the electoral college, why don’t we take it to a further extreme? Not only could the president be chosen by the votes of delegates from each state, but those delegates’votes could be chosen by representatives from each county in each state, and each of those representatives’ votes can be chosen by additional, subordinate, representative voting from each district. In the end, my vote could be tallied in a household vote which gets contributed in our street vote, which is part of the district vote, then the county, state, and finally national vote. If you find yourself asking, ‘what’s the point of such a silly system?’ then you get my point. It’s silly, isn’t it?

2.10.12 I should write about my time away from my Russian home in Dolgoprudny while it’s still a little fresh in my mind. It was hard to leave here in the last week of August. I had really enjoyed my three weeks of vacation here, not travelling anywhere but where classical literature would take me in my head. It had been more than enough of a release from my everyday work life, and I wasn’t especially keen on travelling for real. But I had practiced my German, and studied some Polish with the hopes of building some sort of foundation for further study of language during my course which was to take place in Krakow the following month. It was the day before my mom’s birthday when I left for Domodedovo airport, anxious that I had forgotten something, and address to a hostel, or important information for the first day of the CELTA course. I found myself feeling the outer pocket of my computer bag to ensure that my passport was still there. If I lose my passport, I’m screwed – I kept thinking – please, just don’t let me lose my passport. I had never lost it before, but I wasn’t sure that that was reason to worry less, so I worried more. Sasha called me when I was in the express train to the airport. This was the last time we would be able to talk to each other for a few weeks, because while I might have been able to figure out how skype works, it wouldn’t have worked out anyway, since she would spend much of the month in the boonies with some distant relatives of the older generation. On the train, she asked me if everything was all right, if I had everything I needed. I said yes, we wished each other well, and said goodbye. My nervousness went away when I finally arrived at the hostel in Berlin. I had established a place to stay and a place to get food at a nearby supermarket. Life was good again. So in the last week of August, I spent a few days walking around Berlin, with my brother for two days, seeing the sights, but also walking the city proper, probably in places where few tourists go, coming in and out of the more familiar areas here and there, making ‘connections’ to known places, like I often do on walks in Moscow. On my last day there, I went on a very long walk, which featured three branches of a local bookstore, called ‘Hugendubels,’ where I couldn’t help but buy a few more books for practical reading before my next trip to the country; featured also Charlotte’s castle, where my parents, Aunt and Uncle had visited a few years before. I walked around in the garden behind the castle before heading home. I walked on a dirt path along a canal until I reached the street of June 17th (I think that’s the right date), which brought me past the Column of Victory, and the Soviet monument, just as it did on my first day in Berlin about seven years ago. The central train station is near that monument. There I got on a train back to my hostel for the night before my trip to Krakow. The train ride east was discouraging. The tracks within a few miles of Berlin are in perfect order. You can just imagine them being a certain distance from one another with an error of no more than a fraction of a millimeter, but then you go further and further east and soon the planks on which the tracks are laid change from cement to wooden. Some of them seem to be rotting away. The platforms too become all the more overgrown with grass and weeds, the further east you go. And then you arrive in Krakow. The main train station, where I arrived that evening, left a good first impression. Sure, the planks were still wooden, but they looked good. The lighting was uniform. No lights had gone out, and none were flickering. The platform was precisely paved and free of cigarette butts and beer bottles. There wasn’t even any trash among the tracks. I took my time leaving the station. I wanted to enjoy the fact that I had arrived in Krakow and not some other city in Poland or some other country. Sure, the train had been direct from Berlin, but direct trains haven’t stopped this American from making really stupid travel mistakes. So I eventually made my way down an escalator and into an adjacent mall. There was a currency exchange counter there. I took note. I exited the mall, found the street name and was happy to have that very street on the map I had drawn to help me reach my accommodation. It turned out to be really close. I found the street without any problem, but passed by the hostel at first, and was forced to turn back to find myself in front of the entrance to what looked like a strip club. There was a sign in black and white with the profile of a woman wearing little more than very high-heels beckoning to the passers-by to pay her a visit. This was where my hostel was supposed to be. For a moment I thought that I had been had, and would have to make an immediate change in accommodation plans. It was already past nine in the evening, plenty dark, and not the best time to be running around an unknown city while carrying a few bags and dragging a huge suitcase. I entered the building with the strip club’s sign, climbed some stairs, and found, attached to a door on my left, a small business card which I recognized as my intended hostel. I rang, and was accepted and given a room. The strip club, it turns out, was further along the first floor, down some stairs. It wasn’t very popular, I would find out. In fact, I spent a good deal of time in the area (stretching in the courtyard after running), and saw so few people go inside, that I began to doubt that it was a club of any sort. Lots of possibilities come to mind, if you have a little imagination: a hackers’ base, for example, maybe associated to some spy organization. My place at the hostel was rather nice. I was in a room furnished for five or six, but over the course of the whole month, I was alone in the room most of the time. I had gambled on the popularity of Krakow in September, and my gamble ended up paying off, since I usually had peace and quiet while doing my homework, but also paid about half the price that the CELTA administrators’ recommended accommodation providers had offered. Aside from the room, there was a kitchen with a small cooker and a fridge. I cooked a few times a week and had leftovers for when there was no time to cook. The month flew by, and soon I found myself packing my bags again, getting ready for the trip back. I’ve said before that leaving a place that has been your home somehow reminds me of dying, and I was reminded again when leaving Krakow, even if I had been there only a few weeks. This feeling was accentuated by the fact that my trip back was the same as the one had been forward, only much faster. It was as though my short life there were flashing before my eyes before my return to Purgatory. I travelled back to Berlin on a night train (because I, foolishly, had bought a round trip flight between Berlin and Moscow). I had to catch two connecting trains, one in Warsaw at midnight, the other in S’czens’c’a (I think) around six in the morning. I could have left my luggage in a locker at Alexander Platz in Berlin and walked around the famous museum island for a few hours, but I decided not to dilly dally and take a bus straight to Tegel airport, where I would read Hermann Hesse instead of walk. The bus ride there was nostalgic. I passed through central Berlin, saw the buildings I had seen only a few weeks before, passed a café where my brother and I had had lunch, drove up to the Brandenburger gates before turning and leaving the town center for more distant locations. I have to make a long story short here, because it’s bedtime, so I’ll say simply that I’m back. Today was my first day on the job. They’ve given me the first week off from the company, which I really appreciate. I expect there might be a very tight schedule next week when I try to commute (on foot?) from one end of Dolgoprudny to the other. Today was all right. My first lesson was with a 7-year-old Russian monster to whom I first tried to impart my knowledge of English of few months ago. She was nicer than I remember. Today’s second lesson was with a group of young Russian monsters. That could’ve gone better, but at least I’m not so shell shocked that I’m not willing to try them again. A lot of these monsters know me already. We worked together last year, even if just from lessons that I covered for another teacher. I don’t know if I can call my work ‘teaching’ as much as ‘spending time in the same room while attempting to incorporate elements of language instruction.’ It’s always been a bit of a struggle for me, working with kids. Fortunately, I’ll be able to teach adults too. In the end, it will be a good balance of work, and a good experience overall. So here’s to the start of another marathon! 3.10.12 The CELTA course was demanding, as they said it would be. The second and third weeks were most difficult. I had four papers to turn in overall, and the first two they asked me to resubmit. I was expecting not to pass the third on the first try either, but somehow I did pass, and the fourth one was a breeze in comparison to the others. Nobody was asked to resubmit that one. Aside from these papers – analyzing grammar and lexis; producing a lesson based on a given text; producing a lesson for a particular student (to be interviewed) with certain problems (to be discovered from the interview recording); and lessons we’ve learned during the course – we had to give eight short lessons for observation by our peers and tutors, all of whom are experienced language teachers and teacher trainers. You would think that giving the lessons was the easy part, since I had been teaching a work load fifteen times as great for the past two years of my teaching profession, but in the course quantity wasn’t as important as quality. The lessons were scrutinized down to every word said and gesture made. If you were but one second over the forty-five minute time limit, you were commanded to cease instruction and give the next teacher five minutes to set up the class for his or her attempt at avoiding dismal failure in the instruction gauntlet. Needless to say, the tutors wanted to see your plans for each lesson, with every word and gesture highlighted, every breath taken measured by the clock, and every activity planned from instructions through to the feedback stage. The planning was in insane detail, but as used as I was to much simpler and more concise planning, I didn’t resent the attention to the microscopic units of each part of the lesson. As a matter of fact, in some strange way, I almost enjoyed planning very much. I wrote a rough draft, a first draft, then rewrote it for myself for class, and then finally rewrote it a final time for the tutor. This final draft was to be written on a special form which tabulated stage, aims, time, and procedure, along with separate pages for grammar and lexis analysis, prediction of problems in the functional language, grammar or lexis presentations. If I had learned to appreciate planning like this back in high school, I may have enjoyed English class much more. It strikes me a good skill to have, when writing an essay for instance. Back then, I drudged though every single written assignment given to me. Today, having somehow come to appreciate planning things, I might enjoy writing essays much more. If only there were a way to go back to school again … Incidentally, my enjoyment of this part of my job isn’t without a connection to mathematics. Teaching English seems to me to be more and more an intricate science the longer I try to do it. There are so many variables that go into one lesson. The students are a huge variable that I can’t completely control. Although I can control them to a certain extent, depending on how I carry out my job with them: I can make them fall asleep, or scream in rage, or frustration. If I’m successful and a little lucky, I can make them interesting in learning, but that doesn’t happen every day. Aside from them, there are still plenty of variables in a lesson which I do control: what material to cover; how to cover it; how to review; what tasks – should I put this task first or second?; Will the students be tired of speaking at this point and be ready to write a little, or should they listen or read instead of write? In short, the whats, hows, and whens of each lesson are only a sampling of what I’ve had to think about when planning. In the end, lessons are really kind of mathematic. Each lesson is an optimization problem. What combination of possible solutions to what, how and when will get the students as far as possible within the given amount of time? Some lessons get them far (when the right combination is chosen), others not so far. I wanted to write about Krakow, where I took my CELTA course last month, but it’s time for bed. Tomorrow is day three of the current marathon. This week they’ve got me running at a slow jog. They’ll set me free (put me on full time) starting next week. Maybe the analogy isn’t expressed so well that way. Maybe this week I’m still free of too much weight on my back while I run, whereas next week I’ll have to carry a two thousand pound elephant along with me – prime print.

30.7.12 Let me draw you a picture. The sun is not far above the horizon, although it's nearly noon. There is snow on the ground, hard packed. I'm walking towards the railroad tracks, which I'll then follow one station past Dolgoprudny, where I'll veer away to get to a cluster of buildings where Prime Print is located - that's my company work site. We haven't had snow for awhile, so that whatever snow is present has long since turned to pack ice, and this makes for trecherous walking sometimes. I pride myself on my ability to keep my footing on the hazardous ground, although even I have moments where I unexpectedly find myself head over heels in the air, about to hit a very hard, cold ground. On this day, I don't reach the tracks without having one of these moments. The best thing to do when you have been betrayed by a lack of friction, and gravity is quickly pulling you towards a rather uncomfortable impact with elementaly hardened ice, is to relax, say to yourself that bad things are bound to happen, and at least try to enjoy to view of a possibly crystal blue sky as your short flight comes to its bruising end. Luckily for me, the sky was clear and blue on that day, and I enjoyed the view. I let a terrific grunt with the impact, then I picked myself up, brushed myself off, checked for broken limbs, and having found everything in order, I got on my way. I realised only half an hour later, as I was approaching my turn away from the tracks, that my digital camera had fallen out of my pocket. And then I remembered the guy who had been walking towards me when I slipped that morning. He gave me a strange look after I had gotten up, although I hadn't said anything to him. What, had he never seen anyone slip on an icy street before? Maybe I slip with an American accent too, I thought, and so he had recognised a foreigner by the way I fall. But then it occured to me that he might have seen my camera fly out of my coat packet and was waiting for me to, perhaps hoping that I wouldn't, feel in my pockets and notice the camera's absence. Of course, I didn't do this after I fell, I must have been in a hurry to get to work. Thus I lost my camera, it would seem, to some Russian bum. For the sake of political correctness, I should note that there are no more nor fewer bums in this country than any other. I would remind anyone who has been conditioned to hate a fear anything associated with the Soviet Union or communism, that an American might have also taken a camera up for grabs. Anyway, I didn't mention this incident to get into any comparisons, but to explain what has happened with my camera. I promised someone that I would post some photos at the end of the blog, but without many good ones of Dolgoprudny, I'll have to restrict myself to photos in words. Turns out, describing a photo in writing is an interesting and challenging exercise. The idea came to me as a homework assignment that I gave to my students. I had long since been doing an activity in class where a student describes a picture to a partner who draws what is being described and asks questions for any details. If the students are motivated, the activity can be very communicative. But for the first time this past month, after doing this activity in class, I asked my students to write about their own favorite photo at home, then to bring it in and explain what they had written (without reading their text), sort of a show-and-tell assignment. I took their texts at the end of class, and as usual corrected them and responded. But with such an assignment, how could I respond but with a description of a photo of my own. It occured to me then that I didn't have to provide a hard photo, but that I could pick any memory and describe it. I rather enjoyed doing this, especially since my students had chosen some beautiful pictures, which allowed me to do the same. I am sitting on the bank of a shallow creek. The water isn't more than a few inches deep as it flows in a wide swath across a bed of large rocks and small boulders. It's night, and the moon is full. The otherwise visible stars are hiding behind the light of the moon, which in return lights up the trees on the other bank, and the sides of the mountains looming in the distance on each edge of the valley. I can see the reflection of the trees and the mountains in the water, centered by a long white streak of moonlight. The rocks interrupt the reflection here and there, but not so much that I can't see Half Dome standing sentry across from me. I look up and see the actual mountain jutting out of the valley floor. The plan was to climb it the next day. (This memory is one of the most beautiful pictures I have in my collection.) 2.8.12 In my next picture, I'm in Russia again. It's last winter, and rather cold, but no weather could stop me from enjoying my Saturday walks. I am in a new place again. I was in the area last week, but I didn't come this way. I must have walked a long way already, possibly all the way from home, because I'm still well north of the station where the train from Dolgoprudny stops. It's a typical street, leading from one street to, as I will soon find out, a broader avenue that I have walked along before. There's snow on the ground, but the sidewalks have been cleaned well enough that whatever slippery sheets of ice may be lying on their surfaces are easily visible, and can be carefully crossed, if not avoided all together. There's a vent releasing room-temperature air from a thick pipe which is sticking out of the ground next to some sleeping trees in between the sidewalk and the street. There's a bush next to the vent, also sleeping. Its branches come close enough to the vent that it is getting a constant blast of air. The air comes out relatively warm and wet. The water evidently condenses on the branches, and then freezes. Icicles form and grow as more and more water comes out, condenses on the already frozen sheath of water, and freezes in turn. Furthermore, the blast of air is so strong, and the branches are so close to the vent that the icicles grow slightly sideways, because every additional drop of water is still blown a little away from the vent. As I walk by, the branches already have been adorned with icicles almost a foot long, extending first to the side, then curling downward as gravity overcomes the flow of air from the vent as the icicles grow more and more. With the added weight and form, the otherwise bare branches sway much more in the artificial wind than they would otherwise. The icicles bump into one another and make not the sound of chimes, as you might expect by their appearance, but more like marbles bumping into one another. It's cold. I move on to find a bookstore and happily go inside to warm myself up. I'm in a train. I'm going to work in the central school Moscow. I ran to catch this train, because the later one is more packed and takes longer to arrive. In this train, I can always find a seat, as I have today. I am writing in my notebook, brainstorming ideas for an 'agree or disagree' handout that I'll write up after arriving at school, and then use in that evening's lesson. We don't know what the topic is, maybe sports, or education, or vegetarianism. The sun is shining through the windows of the train carriage from the east, which is strange, since it's already late afternoon. I'm wearing an old polo shirt, my blue jeans, and my nicest shoes. My backpack is on my lap. I'm using its back side as a table to write on. The table is a little sweaty from the run to the train station, but that's O.K., it's still a good table. There are textbooks inside, and speakers, plenty of hard things on which to write. The textbooks are not for that evening's class, I only have to make some copies from them for the company's classes the next day. I may use the speakers that evening. I might have a song lined up, maybe "We don't need no Education," if the topic is education, or "Another One Bites the Dust," if it's sports. I might also just have a random song prepared in case nobody has anything to say about whatever topic I have planned for the evening. (That happens sometimes. I've done these topics so many times, that occasionally I forget to start from the beginning and my starting point is too complicated for anybody to have an opinion on it.) In the train, I don't pay much attention to the other people in the carriage with me. We're all going to Moscow, but each for his or her own reason. So late in the afternoon, I might be one of few who are going to work. Other people might still be on the job if it requires them to travel from place to place; others might be visiting a friend; some of the young people might be going to a class of one sort or another. This picture is very recent, taken within the past month. Not only as I sit in this train, but elsewhere and elsewhen, every day, constantly, I am trying not to think about how many classes I have left. The Moscow Marathon is coming to an end, but I mustn't think about the finish line, because sometimes you're finished as soon as you think about it, whether or not you've actually come to the end. It's best not to distract yourself with thoughts of free time, good weather, long walks, sitting in parks with some nuts, dark chocolate, a bottle of water, and a good book - it's best not to think about those things until the job is done. Because such thoughts don't motivate you anymore, they kill you. They bring your tired run to a dead halt and you collapse along the way. You won't be able to get up after thinking about such things, but will have to crawl along until the merciful end. Your legs, having gone on strike, will already be on vacation, but your soul will be forced to drag itself to and from work whatever way it can. "Finish line?" you must force yourself to think, "What line? What vacation? I don't know what you're talking about; now leave me be please, I have a delightful lesson that I want to prepare for, oh boy!" Today, I am on vacation. Yesterday was my first day. It was a good day. Today is too. I've wanted to write this last entry before the exhaustion of work leaves me entirely. It's almost already left, though not completely. I only have to imagine that I have a lesson in a few hours, and a muscle in my brain tightens. It's still rather sore, just like a runner's quads and hams and joints after a three-hour run. A few weeks' rest will do it some good. Of course, I've already begun to enjoy my free time in ways that weren't possible before. In the absense of work, there's a big void that needs to be filled. I'd like to fill it with a lot of reading and writing, but also some other things that I want, or nevertheless have to do, like some homework before my CELTA course starts next month. I'll put that off, a few days at least, to the last minute at most. 4.8.12 Here are two more pictures. I may have described them already, but I'll do them again, because after thinking for a few minutes, I decided that these were ones which might stay in my memory for a long time. It's late Februaury. The Presidential elections are in a few weeks. I'm standing on Pushkin Square, along with a crowd of a few hundred other people who have gathered either to support one of the opposition candidates or, like me, to see the spectacle. The candidate is Vladimir Dj., I call him the Joker, a fitting name, because not many people take him seriously. I can see the Joker up on the stage that has been set up on the edge of the square, which isn't very big, no bigger than a soccer field. It's enclosed by streets on all sides, one of them being the busy Tver avenue, which leads to the Red Square in one direction, and to the Belarus train station in the other. People have flags and banners of all sorts. On one side of the square there's a huge banner in black and red which says, "[Vote for] Djirinovski, or else it will get worse!" And on the other side there's a banner of the same large size, spanning almost the entire length of the square, which says, "Djirinovski, and it will get better!" There are traffic jams all around, with cars honking, either in support of the Joker, or to disrupt whatever he's trying to say. He's up on the stage. I can't see him as clearly as I've seen him on T.V., with his shortly-cropped frizzy grey hair, beady eyes and smoke-stained teeth, but despite the distance, I can recognise him from where I stand. He's wearing a light grey winter coat, maybe you call it a frock, and he puts on glasses whenever he wants to read something from his notes. His voice is as clear as ever because there are loud speakers which translate his speech to all corners of the square. For some reason he's talking about historical events from the past, and I don't understand how they pertain to what he wants accomplished in the near or distant future. I get the impression that others might not understand this either, or that they're used to him talking like this, and they've stopped listening until the Joker indicates that it's time to cheer again. He does this with a change of intonation and volume in his voice. The topic changes accordingly, and suddenly he's talking about current problems and solutions. There's a small climax within the speech, the crowd cheers, then the Joker goes back into seemingly less relevant material, and the atmosphere goes dormant again, waiting for the next surge in emotion, be it hatred towards the current administration, or hope for the future, or amusement at the prospect of the Joker as President. Later that day, I've walked further into downtown Moscow and have come to what I think is called Theater Square, which extends all the way across the street from the Bolshoi Theater. Here the communists are having a meeting in support of their candidate, Mr Z. The location is fitting because there's a monument on the square, I think of Carl Marx, with an engraved epithet calling for the proletariate from all countries of the world to unite. The street, another big avenue which goes in a circle around the Red Square, has been closed for the meeting, and a small crowd extends from a stage on one side of the street, set up right next to the monument, into the small square in front of the theater. The place has been decorated extensively. Everything and everyone is dressed in red: there are ribbons on the fountains and lampposts, and flags of all sizes with the legendary sickle and hammer. The stage itself is practically covered in red curtains, red in the back and on the sides, and a red banner spanning the top saying, I forget exactly, but something like, "Power to the Folk." The crowd here is not very big, no more than a few hundred people. Most of the supporters seem to be of the more elderly generation, those who can well compare the current times with the old, and who have decided that the latter were, despite their faults, nonetheless better than the former. In this meeting, there are many speakers. I've arrived in time to hear the candidate himself, Mr. Z. He has a heavy build; he's not overweight, but looks rather like an aged weight lifter. The material in his speech seems more to the point than that of the Joker's speech, and his voice is deep and penetrating. In short, the man looks and speaks like a tank. He doesn't speak for long, though, after my arrival, and other speakers come to take his place. I don't know where they come from, whether or not they are waiting in the front rows of the crowd, or in the background of the stage. There are plenty of people on the stage, one of whom I recognise from a photo I saw of Mr. Z speaking somewhere. This man must be his body guard. He's huge, also with a very heavy build, although seemingly sooner as a result of one too many Russian doughnuts than of lifting heavy weights. He's middle-aged, maybe nearing fifty, with short black hair spotted with grey, and a mean looking face. His arms are crossed one way or another, either one hand in the other arcoss his substantial waist - that's when he's relaxed - or, when he's serious, across his chest. He stands there the entire time, never asking anything of anyone, never drinking the hot tea that's going around. He's silent as a mouse, but he doesn't stand far enough away (and it would have to be pretty far) that his presence isn't obvious and imposing. He moves his position according to where Mr.Z goes to sit down as the other speakers take their turn. At one point the meeting takes on sort of a religious tone, as one or two particular speakers come on - I don't know whether I should call them cheer leaders, or communist priests - and lead the congregation in an intermissionary prayer. I can't help but think of my own experiences in my hometown catholic church, as we used to repeat 'Lord, hear our prayer,' after whatever the priest wanted to pray for that week. Here, on the avenue next to Theater Square, one of the speakers says, 'for this or that,' after which the crowd shouts 'Ура! [Hurray!],' whereby the last chant is for those who fell in the war for the motherland at the hands of the Nazi fascists. I think to myself, you don't need to have an elderly audience for this comment to have an emotional effect; the Joker probably invoked this moment of history in his speech too. That ought to do it. This marathon's over. The academic year has come to an end for me, and this blog has temporarily reached its end too. It may seem to have reached its end long ago, judging by how little I wrote this past Spring, but believe it or not, I was still chugging along at work and on the weekends through Moscow. I was already tired then and, try as I might not to, I was counting the months, then the weeks, and finally the days left before now finally arrived. Now it's now, finally! It's here, I've passed on, so to speak, and am in heaven. But I'll resurrect as a teacher, probably at too soon a time. I'll have to make the most of my time off to gather enough willpower to go back to work in a few weeks. How am I going to do this? Well, by running a marathon, or course - only a marathon of a different kind. Maybe I'll write or read like a madman. I've already started my Polish textbook (I'm going to Krakov next month for my CELTA course). If I can learn enough Polish to be able to read Alice in Wonderland, I'd be pretty proud of myself. Like I said before, there are plenty of other things that I want or have to do. I'll have to plan well to not miss out on much. People might say to me, I can hear them now, that I should take it easy, relax, lighten up. I guess I can't help myself. I run one marathon after another, in whatever figurative sense you can think of, and at the end of my day, there's no escape from the fact that for me life is a marathon. I'll be running until the day I die. Would I want it any other way?

1.5.12 I repeated a walk today that I did last week for the first time. I found a metro station that had eluded my travels thusfar, even last week I passed it without noticing. The avenue I walked along was called Komsomolskaya, a name which was often heard in Russia in its past, and now, outside of old movies, only in names of streets and squares. Strangely enough, the avenue is on the other side of town from the square of the same name, where three train stations are located, but the metro station it crosses is on the red metro line, as is the station on the square, and Komsomolskaya was about as red as could be, so in a way it makes sense. I was debating whether or not I should go to different branch of Ashan which was within my walking distance (but I've become such a walker that there's not much outside of my walking distance, if you give me enough time, some good weather and provisions) - the branch next to Moscow State Univerisity, which was not far away, but I decided to continue repeating the route I had done a week before, especially considering that it went through Sparrow Hills park, which makes for a walk worth repeating. I didn't regret it. The trees were blooming today, more so than a week ago. There's nothing like a forest on a hill in the spring that lets you see so many shades of green, from the lightest tones, almost verging on yellow, through dark tourquoise all the way to the brown of the trees that aren't early risers in the season. Just as delightful to me is the number of people you see out walking, enjoying the warmer weather in spite of a rather bitter spring wind. They weren't only walking, but riding bikes and roller blades, skateboards and two-wheeled scooters. I tried to think, as I walked on the side of a paved road without any cars, but which was busy with the traffic of people exercising, if there were any places like this in America, where people enjoy being outside for the sake of moving around or enjoying the fresh air. Central Park in New York comes to mind, but when I was there last, allbeit at this time of year, while there were people running and jogging, it didn't compare to what I've seen here in the past few weeks. National Parks in America also come to mind. There are places there for people crazy about hiking, such as myself, big enough to last a whole summer without the hiker seeing any one place twice. I guess that's something to be proud of. I don't think they have national parks in Russia, and if they do, I doubt they're as well kept as the ones in the states. 8.7.12 Oh! I haven't written here in such a long time. I've been writing, sure, either in my other journals, or in replies to students, but it's been quite a while since I took the time to write entirely for myself (whereby I include whoever reads this as a part of myself). The biggest change since my last entry is that I've been seeing a girl. I guess I can blame her for not having the time to read or write as much as I would like, but on the other hand, I guess you can measure how much you care about someone else by the things you're willing to sacrifice from your own life. For me, that might not be that much. I was telling Sasha - that's my girl - the other day, after hearing that her mother had complained about a newfound stench of garlic, explainable only by her contact with me and whatever I eat, that if I had to choose between a girl and garlic, I think I might have to show that girl the door. Poor Sasha couldn't have been happy to hear this, but she's understood how much I appreciate what I consider to be good food, and that she can't hope to compete with it after such a short time. We've only been seeing each other for a few weeks. Other than that I've started working at the central school in Moscow three days a week. They were going to give me another group, so that I would have been working there five days, but they were merciful and gave that group to someone else. They understand, it seems, that the commute is a bit of a pain. Round trip, I'm on the road (by foot) or on the tracks for over two hours to and from central Moscow. It would be tough to do that every day. I'm still working at the printing company in Dolgoprudny, which I guess is why they didn't ask me to move to another apartment and make me more available for other lessons. I should be thankful for my students at the company, even if one of them is rather lazy and evidently sees me only for the prestige of having lessons with a native speaker. I still enjoy walking there every day. While I at first found the timing inconvenient, those walks have given my working day some backbone, some structure around and during which I can plan the rest of the day. Among other things, the experience of walking ninety minutes (round trip) to and from the company hasn't at all lead to the desire to own a car. On the contrary, it's further strengthened my wish never to own a car, but to constantly live close enough to wherever I work to reach my workplace on foot. Spending ninety minutes in a car or private transport can be very stressful, but walking for ninety minutes is often the best part of my day, which isn't to say that lessons don't go well. In fact, it's walking that puts me in a good enough mood to walk into class day after day ready to teach some people some English, or at least make them feel like a million dollars about attending lessons with a native speaker. Without those walks, I'd be sunk. To be fair, I'd probably take the extra time to run some more, but the effect would be the same. In short, I don't see how people live without exercise. It can make the difference between a hellish, stressful day of the same old work, and a day where, despite any bad weather there may be, the sun shines from within.

8.4.12
I haven't written a blog entry in a long time. I don't even know if I have anything unpublished waiting in my blog folder. Oh well. The first round of the marathon is coming to an end. I never was a good finisher.
I call it the first round because there's a possibility that I'll stay in Dolgoprudny for another year. There are many things that factor into this decision, not the least of which is who I'll be working with, in terms of students and colleagues. But the simple things are rather important too. I think I have been eating very well, and it might not hurt to take another year to investigate the effects my diet has on how I work and live. If I moved to another country to continue teaching, I'd sort of have to start from scratch, not only with my diet. Another big issue is physical activity. I've come to enjoy working at the printing company, maybe not so much for the work itself, as much as for the long walking commute there and back. It takes me about fifty minutes each way. As much as my students there might not like to hear it, I don't know if I'd like working with them so much if the company were located closer to home. I arrive there after a long walk ready to work with anyone! Aside from walking there and back, I've recently started running again, and have recalled all the pleasures that come with it. For one thing, food tastes better. It sounds so simple, I know, but for me, the simple pleasures go a long way.
The company is a lesser part of my work. I only have three students there, each of whom I see individually on different days. I have groups of students, usually not more than seven, that I have been teaching since I arrived here. One of those groups finished last week. Some of those students are going to continue coming and I'll try to do a sort of converstaion course with them. I'm not too optimistic about how that will work out, we'll have our first meeting tomorrow. Another group is finishing this week, and I think they're ready to have a break from language link, although maybe I'll be able to entice them to keep coming until the end of May. I wouldn't mind continuing with them, since they're slightly more industrious than members of the other group in that they're willing to do reading and writing assignments outside of class. The former group complains about having too much work to be able to find time for extracurricular English.
I mentioned experimenting with my diet to see how it affects how I feel. I'm interested in being able to control, or at least predict my mood. There are a lot of factors that play a role here, among them the amount of sleep, the amount of monotonous work to complete and, on the contrary, the amount of variety in a day's activities. Food also plays its role, particularly in how much energy you have, and in how well you sleep. You have to take into account the type of food, the frequency of consumption, the amount of consumption, and the timing too. It's all very complicated. And then there's the weather to consider, and that's where I'm at a loss for estimation; but all in due course.
So far I've been able to conclude that the positiveness of my mood is directly related to how well I sleep

22.4.12
Now the trick is sleeping well consistently. I do that rather well, but just as one eventually gets used to living in paradise, and ones afterlife isn't as heavenly as it was after first entering the gates, so too can I be picky about the quality of my nightly dreams. I sometimes wake up with unsolved problems thinking around in my head. Five years ago they were math problems, now they're students who don't understand my carefully prepared explanations. I have to cut my loses and sleep off my instructional failures. If their demon agents don't give me any rest, then I turn on an audiobook, and that usually gets me snoozing in no time.
Another wrench in my sleep-train's engine is that I haven't been arriving home very early. Thankfully my evening groups have finished and we've switched to a slightly lighter schedule, one which finishes forty minutes earlier, so that I get home closer to ten p.m. instead of closer to eleven. This wasn't much of a problem back when the sun rose after 8 a.m., but I recently noticed the sky getting light just before 6, and my room plenty well lit by 7 a.m. Going to bed at midnight just isn't going to cut it anymore. Tomorrow my roommate is covering me, so I'll have another evening to eat a proper dinner before going to bed at a decent hour, but then I'll have three evening classes in a row, and will have to deal with the early sunlight somehow. So far, for lack of a sleeping mask, I've tried tying an undershirt around my eyes. That's worked all right.
In other news, there's not much other news. You can tell that's the case when you start writing about food you eat and how much you sleep. Maybe I just don't have so much to write about anymore. Or maybe there's as much as there has always been, I've just lost my drive. I've been reading more, though.

5.2.12
confused students - unable to understand, not having experienced american politics like i have...
protest against criminal leaders (Putin, Bush)
france - running against Finance
alternative energy as economic weapon.

Soldjenitzsin - infinite progress impossible?
The German left party proposes a thirty hour work week.

living abroad --> living in another body, outside of yourself. new perspective.
new perspective, ayn rand, the bum sitting outside in the cold (should I give her my entire salary, the unlucky gypsy?), taxing the rich, socialism vs. capitalism. adam slarke. glenn beck.

debates. argumentation. logical sabotage! (Where's the certificate?! ; global warming --> green energy) global warming or global cooling? science = religion. faith!

15.2.12
I've been thinking about political sabotage recently. The idea struck me as something rather original at first, but has since changed into something perhaps more everyday than one would care to believe.
The thought came to me first when I heard that there was a small group of Americans who have once again brought up the issue of Barack Obama's birth certificate. Many Americans had argued shortly after Obama's election that he didn't have any right to the Presidency because he hadn't been born in the country, which is required for the job. Before recently hearing of this issue's resurgence, I wasn't sure if Obama had actually gone through the trouble of digging up his birth certificate to calm these people down. Evidently he hadn't. In fact, if he had given it any attention, you might have expected his opponents to find some other cock-eyed reason why he should be evicted from office.
The issue is foolish to such a degree, that not only can I see it not going anywhere for those who brought it up, it rather struck me as something possibly advantageous for the Obama administration, for if his opposition can come up with no better argument for his replacement than rumours about his birth certificate, then the opposition effectively has no argument. This is where the sabotage comes in.
Instead of spreading more legitimate arguments against the Obama administration's policies, like that the amount of money it spends, supporters of Obama could actually support the stupid arguments that arise and are guaranteed to go nowhere. So if you like Obama, you might slyly rock the political boat in your favor by posing the question in your community: but where's the birth certificate?
There would then be a national movement calling for Obama's impeachment on account of his inability to produce a birth certificate, which proves his ineligibility for his job. The birth certificate would become priority number one for the conservative party, and everyone would be in a rage around next October when suddenly Obama would have a press conference which he finishes with a by-the-way remark along with an original copy of his birth certificate.
The wind in his opponents' sails would be entirely extinguished just in time for the election, all according to the plans of those liberal spies in the conservative ranks who provided the wind in the first place by raising hell about Obama's birthplace.

22.2.12
Do you think that sort of sabotage actually takes place? Living in Russia, I sometimes suspect the authenticity of some political arguments I hear every once in awhile. What kind of argument is that? Where did it come from? For example, on one of the state radio stations, they conglomerate all the political advertising into a two minute bit that they repeat several times a day. In those two minutes, they have ads for five of the six presidential candidates, Putin included, whereby Putin's ad strikes me as worlds more convincing than any of the others.
The communist, Mr Z., is advertised with some sort of light, space-age techno music with talk about how the people are denied any political power, and how Mr Z. stands for bringing the government ot the people and so on, and then the ad closes with "He who's against, supports," which I guess is supposed to mean that whoever is against Putin supports Zyuganov, but the punchline mentions neither of the two candidates directly. Maybe I don't understand Russian enough to catch the intended meaning of the line, but as it is I can't help but imagine George Orwell in his grave laughing heartily at such an obvious contradiction.
Then there's Vladimir Djirinovski, who I call Mr. J, or the Joker, which I find to be an appropriate title, considering what many Russians I know think of him. He's quick to call anyone in politics a thief and hulligan, and, it seems, will promise anything if he thinks it's popular enough, which, to be fair, is really what a politician is supposed to do. On the other hand it's clear that he doesn't stand for much, he has no foundation, he only wants more power. His advertisement features him barking at all the thieves and hulligans in politics these days and closes with the punchline: vote Mr. J, or things will get worse!
Putin's advertisement opens with the question "So why are you voting for Putin," and then there's a random person, maybe a well known actor or media figure explaining why he thinks Putin is the right man for the job. Maybe I've been brainwashed into not hating Putin, but I find his ad much more effective.
So I wonder, why do those other candidates, not only Mr Z. and Mr J., have such stupid ads? Maybe the ads I hear on the radio aren't paid for by the respective politicians in the first place, but by the state radio station itself. If that were the case, would the candidates be able to do anything to stop them? Probably not in this country. What if a political party practiced subversive advertising in the U.S.? Can an organisation that's rich enough to do so run an ad that is, in effect, detrimental to the candidate whom it ostensibly supports? How could that candidate request the media outlet to cut the ad if the candidate didn't pay for the ad in the first place? The funding may have come from an unknown source, and even if the ad were openly against the candidate, there's nothing he or she could do to break the contract between the funder and the media outlet... As I write this, it strikes me as something political compaigns have possibly been doing for ages. Have I been enlightened, or struck with a case of political paranoia?
Getting back to Russia, there are some Russians who would go so far as to say that Mr. J is employed by the ruling party, United Russia. He's there to attract any opposition, even though he clearly doesn't have a chance of winning. Taking this conspiracy theory further, some say the whole lot of them are in bed with Putin. They call themselves the opposition, but in effect support Putin by not giving Russian citizens a viable alternative for a ruler.

9.3.12
I haven't written in so long. I haven't had any desire, which is strange since a lot has happened since my last entry. The Russian presidential elections were last weekend, and Putin won handily as predicted. That the results matched many predictions to such accuracy has surely lead many Russians further into the conviction that the elections were predetermined long beforehand, something I don't like to believe, but can't effectively argue against.
Anyone who has followed this event in the west will surely have heard of allegations of election fraud. If you listen to the state radio over hear, and sometimes I think I'm the only one who does, then you might not hear about them so easily. But there are other radio stations which don't shy away from talking about them. I've heard of a few fraudulent voting practices, for example that voters were paid to vote for a certain candidate. They only had to take a picture of their completed ballet and show it to their employer, who would then give them 500 rubles for voting correctly. I've also heard that it was possible to vote more than once, in fact not that difficult. I understand that every voter has a voter ID which they have to show to get a ballot, but that nothing stops them from driving to two different polling stations and getting a ballot at both. And then you hear about buses filled with voters arriving at various stations, and you can't help but wonder if they were on a road trip the whole day, driving to and from various polling stations.
I suppose any of that kind of cheating might have played to Putin's advantage, but I still think any one of the opposing candidates didn't stand much of a chance, even if Russians voted as conscientiously as those back in the land of the free and the brave, because all the opposing candidates fought each other at least as much as Putin. If the opposition could somehow unite behind one candidate, then you'd get Putin shaking in his parka, as it is, he had his way with all of them.
Something I really didn't like about the elections is that there weren't many debates. I know Americans might be tired of hearing about debates, since there have been so many in the Republican party, but I would say there were not enough here, and most importantly, of all candidates, Putin didn't debate anybody! He was challenged on a few occasions, but he always excused himself, saying that he had valuable work to do - you know, Premier Minister stuff. There may have been a debate featuring one of United Russia's representatives, but Putin didn't find it necessary to come down from his throne. I for one really wish he had, just to see how his policies stand against those of the other candidates. I suspect that Putin would have risked a lot if he had agreed to debate anybody, perhaps in particular the upstart business man, turned politician, Proxhorov. Depending on how the opposing candidates performed in a debate with Putin, Russians might have seen that Putin is human, that he's not right all the time, that he has made mistakes, and that someone else might have a few proposals better than his own.
Comparing this with America, will our election be any better? Sure, I don't think there will be much voter fraud (though how can we be sure?), and in regards to the debates, the incumbant President is politically forced to debate whomever challenges him, but in a two party system, that's no surprise. There won't be a debate featuring the incumbant President along with candidates from all the other parties. Was Ralph Nader ever allowed a debate with either George Bush or Al Gore, let alone with both of them at once? I don't think the democrats would have allowed that. And this year, will there be a candidate from the Tea Party in a debate with both Obama and the Republican candidate? Probably not. In this respect, our elections don't strike me as completely democratic either, but I guess that's just the way things work in my homeland - now I almost sound like a Russian.

28.1.12
I just heard the latest news from the 2012 presidential political circus in America. Allegedly Romney said that he'd consider Vladimir Putin a threat to global (or maybe just national) security if Putin wins the Russian presidential elections in about five weeks. I find that a rather dumb thing to say, especially since Putin is slated to win. I've long since understood a sentiment not particular to Russians, but people I believe to be all over the world outside of America, that Americans might do better if they didn't stick their nose in other people's business.
To be fair, few people I know really like Putin as a politician, many think he's a criminal, some would go so far as to support his execution if the right opposing party were to come to power, but the fact is, Russians might think that of their President, Prime minister and ruling party no matter who they happen to be. You'd think Americans would be able to understand that sort of antipathy towards national leaders. But there's another side to all the recent talk about falsified elections and Putin's horrible policies, a side that western media probably doesn't take into account, namely, that Putin, believe it or not, remains extremely popular, and that he owes a least a little of his popularity to political action in service of the Russian people - that is, of course, the right Russian people; the people who have helped keep him in power. But that form of political action is nothing foreign to the west.
What Americans might have trouble understanding is how, merely by doing what every other politician does, one man can remain so popular for so long. After four years of one guy or another, approximately half of Americans are ready for a change, as though it's time to put on spring clothing again. That sort of political moodiness just hasn't come to the Russian Federation yet. Maybe it will in the future, but probably not as soon as next month. As a matter of fact, part of me thinks that these protests about Putin's policies might blow up in the face of the protesters. While there are people in Russia who haven't been voting because they don't see the point, since their enemy Putin would win anyway, there are also people who haven't been voting because their friend Putin would win anyway. The coming election might see a record turn out, and Putin may win by a landslide, even by Russian standards. And if that happens, Clinton and Romney will be shout and scream about the lack of real democracy in Russia. The funny thing is, they will be completely wrong. It will be democracy. The people will have chosen, and if their choice is the same as it's been for the past fifteen years, so be it.
The American's are right, it won't be American democracy, with the long-awaited about-face in the ruling political party, but why should it be? I guess we get upset because America was supposed to be the city on the hill, and everyone was supposed to love and emulate us. Countries have done that, with and without our 'help,' but when a country up and behaves as we perceive to be undemocratically, we as Americans can't help but be a little indignant.
Of course, I may be completely off when I say that Putin will win by a landslide. In the back of many people's minds, mine and maybe Putin's most of all, we can't help but wonder how much election fraud might have helped his party, United Russia, in elections up to the ones last December. I presume lots of people will have a close eye on the coming Presidential elections to make sure eveything is done correctly. I wouldn't be surprised if regardless how authenticallly the elections proceed, people claim to have observed ballot-box stuffing, or to have been forbidden to vote on the evening of the election.
Getting back to what Romney said, I just heard it again (I've had dinner since writing the above), and I can confirm the 'global.' He must have been talking about global threats to American security as opposed to threats to the globe, although I wonder if Russians will understand it that way. Romney also expressed his opinion that Putin will, by winning the Presidency again, place himself among the ranks of the President of Iran. I find his comment disturbing, especially considering the somewhat hostile relationship between Iran and the U.S. You'd like to think that Romney is just talking tough for whomever he wants to please on the campaign trail, but you could've thought the same about Bush when he started talking about the Axis of Evil (except Bush introduced that club after being elected, I think). And while you may argue that Bush was a complete idiot while Romney may at least have some brains, you have to understand that the rest of the world might not see it that way. Russians sometimes can't tell the difference between Obama and Bush, which, depsite how much your bubble of hope may have burst after realizing our President was human, you have to admit is quite a stretch. So now here's Romney, the next goon from the Republican party - that's how Russians will see him if he wins the nomination (they'll look at Gingrich that way too, and perhaps more rightly so!) - saying that Russia is a threat to global security. Most Russians will bite their tongue while thinking about global events of the past ten years, and many won't be too shy to pose the question: if there were a global survey, how many people would consider the biggest threat to global security America? In Russia at least, probably very many.
Sure, America is kind enough to grant rogue nations of the world the right to exist, but we'll sanction the hell out of them if they don't behave like we say they should. Or, if our president isn't a wimpy democrat, we'll wage war on the falsely warranted grounds of preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Well, since Iraq has been dealt with, I guess today there's an opening in the Axis of Evil, and Russia is in the running.
So Putin is as bad as the President or Iran? Was there not enough hostility already? Are Americans lacking nations to threaten and be threatened by? As a society that supports such jingoist politicians, Americans resemble the most insecure bully, pumping iron at the gym, that is, pumping billions of dollars into the military, to be the biggest kid on the block. I wonder if there are any topics in sociology about how societies resemble individual people. By looking at what these politicians, these representatives of American society, say, we can understand the common American school bully. He's insecure as hell, afraid of everyone, and always looking for enemies.
The last news I heard in America was at an airport, in New York I think. Obama was giving an announcement at the pentagon about financial cuts to the military, so many hundreds of billions of dollars over the next few decades. I've heard about his decision since, and am happy about it. It's a step, allbeit a small one, in a right direction. After getting just within earshot of Romney's and Gingrich's potential foreign policy, for the sake of the world I hope Obama stays President. Of course, that's not to say there aren't better people, but he's the lesser of two evils, which is what most Americans vote for (that's the democracy that Russians haven't come to practice yet).
But isn't Ron Paul intriguing sometimes? Sure, he'll dismantle the national government, but he won't spare the military, like his Republican colleagues. I find that enticing. You can't blame me for warming up to him, I mean, everybody agrees that I won't be getting any social security or medicare by the time I'm eligible, so what's it to me if they get scrapped? (Or in case they do get tossed, should I then have to take care of my parents? Ha! Good luck, mom!) Regarding the biggest threat to global security, am I wrong to think that Ron Paul, if posed that question, might brazingly answer America? Not a small part of me would agree with him.

1.2.12
Last weekend I repeated a walk that I had done first on the previous weekend. I should have waited a few more weeks before repeating it, since it wasn't nearly as glorious as the first time. I got off the metro at a station called Tioply Stan. Tioply means warm, Stan apparently has many meanings, ranging rougly from torso, to machine, to the position of enemy forces in a battle. In any case, this station is probably at the furthest southern location around Moscow that I've visited yet. I went there because there were supposed to be a few dollar stores in the area; also it seemed like it wouldn't be difficult to reach central Moscow by foot, despite the ten kilometer (about six mile) distance from downtown. On the first trip, I found one of the dollar stores, and it turned out to be a goldmine for audiobooks. I ended up buying seven of them, mostly classical literature by authors like Tolstoy and Gorky.
As I left that market and reached the avenue corner where I was to turn north for my six mile walk, I was astounded by the view to the south. Beyond the few small stores that stood there in the meager hope of attracting a few customers from the giant mall across the street where I stood, there was nothing. For the first time since my arrival last August, I could see territory seemingly untouched by man. Far off too the invisible south must be Rostov on the Don somewhere, and it seemed nothing lie in between. It was cold that first day I went there, and the smog was lower and not as active as it would be on a less cold day. The mid afternoon sun was going to set within two and a half hours, so if I wanted to reach a metro station on my gray line by foot, I'd have to hurry. I passed a few interesting stores, two bookstores, one had a metallic swiveling shelf of audiobooks standing in view from outside, another was an as of yet uncharted branch of the House of Books. I also passed an Ashan I had never been to before. But on that first day, the light was limited, and I didn't feel like seeing new things in the dark, so I hurried as much as I could.
Eventually I came to an intersection, down one avenue of which Moscow State University could be clearly seen. I had been there before, so I didn't turn, but continued in the same direction, crossed the avenue and found myself before a monument whose meaning I couldn't understand at first. It had the face of an asian man centered on a huge circular piece of bronze-colored metal, like a giant coin the size of a mac truck. It was mounted on a square piece of the same metal, on the front side of which stood written: "There's nothing of more worth than freedom and independence." Can you guess who that asian man was? It seems those words were a quote of his. I don't know much about him, except that he's a well-known historical figure who evidentally had a lot to do with communism in Asia (but maybe I'm misleading you already - I know so little about the history of communism and of Asia). But judging from what I think I know about communism in Asia, these words strike me as a little ironic. I mean, I heard from someone who had been to China recently that the government there wasn't too keen on freedom and independence. Maybe the man's saying just didn't stick.
I continued walking, but didn't reach familiar territory before the sun had more or less gone down. It was rather dark when I reached the Ashan branch on Gagarin Square. I stopped there for a pit stop (the cold really makes you have to pee), and continued on in a direction I hadn't explored before. I suspected that a nearby avenue would lead to a place I knew well, and tried not to vear too far from this avenue, while staying on a road I had never walked along before. My sense of direction didn't fail me, even in the dark. I walked by the Don Monastary, a rather large and probably tourist infested fortress, which was admittedly very peaceful in that evening hour. I eventually reached a square I had visited many times before, where a giant statue of Lenin stands, with a small army of bolsheviks at his feet. Across from the monument there's the metro station Oktyaberski, that is, the October station, a name which certainly has some historical significance connected with one revolution or another. A metro station on the gray line wasn't far off. I reached it after getting slightly lost in an underground passageway, and went home for the day.

4.2.12
There were a bunch of rallies today, four of them in fact, but unfortunately I didn't make it to any one of them. By the time I reached swamp square, where the protest against the election results of last December had taken place, and where another rally for the same people had been planned for today, I quickly realized that I had arrived a little late, since hardly a soul was left on the square. I can't say I blame them, for as I walked across the deserted square, a cold wind robbed me of any body heat I might have held in my several layers of winter clothing.
The stage was on the opposite end of the square from where it had been a few months before. There were a few people there taking things apart, but besides them there were hardly any passers-by, just people, like myself, thinking of the next warm place to escape to. I turned a corner and went to the Red Square from the south, with a good view of what I call the Wanka cathedral. I stopped at the mall on the Red Square, and continued towards a very nice touristy street, called Arbat, where allegedly there was a branch of the dollar store, something which I kind of doubted, since I'd traversed the street so many times before. If there was indeed a branch there, then it would have to have been hidden somewhere down one of the numerous side alleys, but as I reached number 44 Arbat, I found to my surprise the store not hidden in any corners, but with an entrance right onto the street. There wasn't a big sign, however, except what anyone could've mistaken for a mere advertisement, an old torn one at that, on the door to the store, so I can see how I'd walked by without noticing it up to today. The store didn't have any audiobooks or dark chocolate. I was rather disappointed. I guess my wallet was itching, so I bought some dishsoap and tea, then left.

Getting back to what Mitt Romney allegedly said about Putin, I guess the statement reminded me of my theory about people needing enemies, because last week I gave standard material on the subject to my upper-intermediate class, namely a part of the first chapter of "1984" where Winston describes the daily Hate Speech at work. I've given this excerpt to students before, and I don't think they liked it, if they understood it. Why would I give such a hate-filled description of some fantasy world? The answer is that, in regards to the excerpt as well as to the novel as a whole, the reader can always wonder just how fantastic, or not, Winston's world really is.
If Romney did indeed say what I heard on one of Big Brother's Russian radio news stations, then I'm almost at a loss for words. Whether he was expressing his own personal view or just catering to some general Republican perception, I don't understand why an individual or an entity would want to spoil the relatively positive relations with an important country. What's the advantage to making more enemies?
One answer that might pop up in the minds of any liberal and formerally hippy readership I might enjoy involves the pentagon. It's to their advantage: they like making new enemies, because then they'll have someone to bomb, or at least an excuse to make bombs, like in the cold war. The title of the Department of Defense is so Orwellian it makes me want to vomit. The Department gives itself meaning by fostering war, so its political party has no reason to shy away from behaving like the toughest bully on the block.
That's actually the only answer that popped into my head. Reading myself, I fear I come across as a bit of a conspiracy-theory nutcase. Maybe I've spent too much of my life in California. But as long as I'm in the hippy mood, I can divulge some real groovy revelations that I've had recently. Being a hippy is all about spreading love (and weed), right? Expressing things in these terms, you could say that this phenomenon of people needing enemies is a desire to hate something. People love to hate and hate to love.
The hippies had it the other way around, they loved loving and hated hating, but after a short analysis of loving loving and hating hating, I've come to the conclusion that such a position is impossible. It's a yin-yang thing. Surely even the most devoted hipes hated something, if nothing else, then those who didn't want to spread enough love and weed. As a matter of fact, it seems that you can't have love without hate, nor hate without love. If someone tried loving absolutely everyone, they might go insane, or they'd at least lose track of their conception of what love is. It's psychological physics. Every action has an opposing reaction, every positive - a negative.
So maybe I should thank the Republican party for fostering so much hate towards other members of the globe. After all, more hate leaves room for more love, and who are we as Americans going to love more? You guessed it: ourselves! Hallelujah and God Bless the Pentagon!

18.1.12
Winter has finally come. I don't care how cold it gets, just as long as it doesn't start raining any time soon. I was so disappointed to come back after New Year's and hear that they had rain in the forecast. Russia was letting me down. Fortunately, there wasn't any rain, and the temperatures have dropped several degrees since then. I think the air has changed accordingly; it's not as damp as it would be it the upper twenties, and so despite its lower temperature, you don't fell it as much. I walked to the company this morning dressed the same as I had been since late Autumn, and I was plenty warm.
I was in Moscow last weekend, and walking as usual. I went to the central school to turn in a sample test I had taken before Christmas but forgotten to turn in. It was a test on teaching young people. The company asked the teachers to voluntarily take the test, the results of which would then help construct the seminar scheduled for the following month. I was so kind as to complete the test, not really trying to hard to get everything correct. Well, after I turned it in to the secratary in the central school last Saturday, it found its way to whomever was running the seminar, who graded it and informed me that I had done really well: 79 points out of 80. I wouldn't say that result shows that I know what I'm doing as a teacher of young students, I'd sooner conclude that I've finally learned how to take a test with questions involving mulitple choices and matching answers in one column with another. If only I had done so well on the SAT's
But as this is the high-point of my educational test-taking career (I've only taken one such test, and I'm thinking that maybe I should quit while I'm ahead), I may as well divulge the secrets to being such a remarkable teacher, who got 79 out of 80 marks on the most accurate of all teaching tests. It's really quite simple. So simple in fact, that I don't know why we actually need fancy tests and seminars, and even four-year degrees on how to be a teacher. There are two things: first, make the material interesting for the students; and second, have many good examples of whatever you're trying to teach. If you can do those two things, you're on your way. Conversely, if ever you fail as a teacher, chances are that you failed in one of those two points. I screwed up yesterday since I hadn't prepared good examples of the difference between to remember doing something and to remember to do something. It turned out to be more difficult than anticipated.
There are other principles too, such as connecting new material to old, in other words, start studying a new concept from a concept that is already known. I had not a little training as a teacher before I moved to Russia, and yet nobody every went over these principles of teaching with me or my colleagues, who were practically as new to the profession as I was. Maybe if I went after a degree in education, I'd learn a lot about education that I haven't yet found in its practice.
I'm not about to apply for a degree in education, though. Instead, I was thinking of signing up for a CELTA course somewhere in Europe next fall. CELTA is a certificate most people get when they want to teach English abroad. I don't have one, and had been thinking that I may do all right without one, as I have; but now that I feel inclined towards continuing the profession, even, dare I say, making a career out of it, I think getting this certificate is a good next step. If the global market for English teachers doesn't crash, then with a CELTA and the experience I have I'll be able to find a job almost anywhere there are people who want to learn English. I find that prospect rather exciting.

I had walked to the central office from the train station last Saturday. Anyone not nuts about walking around Moscow would have taken the metro, but after getting the train, I felt that I didn't fall into that category, and nor did I after leaving the school. Back on the street, I walked from the central school in a direction I hadn't explored before, and soon found myself at the last metro station within the central ring that had till that day eluded my way, Dostoevski station. There were stairs down into the metro, past which the street I had been walking along ran into a large intersection. In front of me and to my left there was a large building with pillars before the entrance, which indicated a theater of some sort. Across the intersection there was an entrance to what looked like a nice park, and to the right there was a square at one end of a long pedestrian way which ran south between two of the intersecting roads towards the trumpet square and, further, the Kremlin. There was a statue of someone in the square, quite possibly Dostoevski, although I didn't check. I thought the theater would be named after him too, but it turns out that it was a drama theater featuring military plays. It occured to me then that Dostoevski wasn't much of a playwright, and although there certainly are stage performances of "Crime and Punishment," and other works of his, I guess they don't amount to enough to justify dedicating an entire theater to him.
I took the street to the left, walked along it between the theater and the park, and immediately came upon another large building, which was obviously not a theater (there weren't any pillars), but with life-sized model tanks and artillery stationed outside, was quite clearly a museum, one which, like the theater next to it, specialized in military events. I went inside to look at the prices. It was about three dollars emission. That means it can't be very big or famous. I would have entered if the sun hadn't come out. The weather wasn't bad, and I had my walking legs on that day.
Indeed I ended up walking a lot on that day. I continued along the street, made a connection at an intersection with the middle ring highway, went a little out of my way to visit an Ashan for a pit stop, then back tracked a little to reach the Riga train station, as I had several weeks before, but this time instead of going back to Olympiski street, went further in the same direction in search of yet another Ashan branch, one that I hadn't visited before. I found myself walking up a rather long bridge. There was a lot of traffic, but besides that the view was rather nice. At the summit of the bridge I could see to the north a very tall tower which I can't imagine to be for anything but radio or television.
That tower had been accompanying me that entire day. If I'm not mistaken, it's this tower that was featured at the end of Dmitri Gluxhovski's novel Metro 2033, a fantasy novel about life in the Moscovian metro after global nuclear war has rendered mankind's existence on the earth's surface impossible. I think it's closest to a metro station I don't know well, VDNX. I'll have to explore it some more.
I refocused myself on the task at hand, and left the tower behind as I turned southeast, towards the large buildings around Komsomolski Square, one of them the Hilton Hotel, another one was the tower of one of the three train stations located there, and a little further stood another one of Stalin's castles. As I was walking down the other side of the bridge, shortly past the end of it, between some tall buildings I intermittently caught glimpses of an Ashan billboard. The store itself couldn't have been far away.
It wasn't. I entered, found a cheap collection of audiobooks featuring literary material, poetry and shorter works of various famous authors who are studied in Russian schools, and got out of there.
I quickly reached Komsomolski square, and found a dollar store that I had on my map. I don't know if I've written about dollar stores yet. Well, they have them here, only they call them 'Fixed Price,' where everything costs thiry six rubles, or a little over a dollar. I frequent these shops in search of two goods: very dark chocolate, 90% cocoa, which I haven't been able to find anywhere else, and audiobooks. Some of the audiobooks I've found on sale there are ones that I bought already long ago, at a price of much more than thirty six rubles! But I've taken advantage of the low price so much already that more often than not my findings are the other way around: I find audiobooks on sale at some bookstores which I have already bought at Fixed Price, fortunately.
This particular dollar store didn't have any audio or chocolate to offer, so I got on my way, which quickly lead me to the metro and back home.

11.1.12
I admit that it was hard to leave home on the evening of the fourth. My oldest brother was going to stay there for a few more days, while I was embarking on the long trip back to my work life. Even before my arrival in California I had thought about how the end of my vacation would feel, to be on the way to the shuttle terminal where I would get a ride to the airport in San Francisco, and I had hoped that I would be filled with much more anticipation for my return to Russia than I actually felt.
The weather in California couldn't have been much better. How many places in the world have a blue sky like California's, and how many let its residents see it as often as in California? Maybe I had hoped for more rain and temperatures closer to freezing, so that coming back to a place with, theoretically, more snowfall would be much more welcome.
And yet, even if something had happened, if my flight had been cancelled due to bad weather in New York or something like that, and I had been forced to spend another week at home, I may have regretted that as well. While staying at home, it doesn't take long before I begin to feel like a retired person with not enough to do. Even if I were as prone to finding random chores around the property as my Dad and older brother are, it wouldn't take long before boredom sets in and I begin to long for travel in far off lands.
These feelings must be a part of a phase I'm going through, as I live the final months of my glorious twenties. California just doesn't have enough problems. Life there is too easy. How easy it would be to find a job, teaching math say, even at a private school, settle down, and live out the rest of my life in relative ease. I would go crazy! I need a harsher climate, I need a foreign language and culture, I need to not understand and not be understood, and I need a difficult job (teaching math would be much easier) in order to spare myself from the banality that I might fall into if I decided to return to California for good. In short, I need a balance of challenges; and any life I could possibly imagine for myself, in California or elsewhere in the states, be it running into the brick walls of advanced mathematics or teaching teenageers the basics of something I know well, doesn't have the right balance.
Or maybe it's that I feel I know the U.S. too well to want to stay there for a long time. That's not to say life is particularly bad in the states, on the contrary, depending on what one finds good, in some regards American politicians may be right to say that the American way of life is superior to others. But life in the states can't help but bore me, because I perceive how big the world is and how much there is to experience outside of my home country. I know the U.S. I've lived in the liberal west, I've lived in the bible belt. I've worked with university professors as well as high-school drop-outs at a local ballon company. I've worked on really hard math problems and picked up dog poop at a kennel near my home. One might be right to say that there's still a lot I haven't experienced in the U.S., but for all that I haven't seen there, there's so much more in other places of the world that, try as I might to experience them, will go by unnoticed. But it doesn't hurt to try, because it's those experiences that fuel me. My life would be so much more meaningless without them.
Teaching English has been a means to that end. That's not to say that teaching itself is void of meaning. Depending on what day you ask me, my job can be the bane of my existence, or its salvation. I wish that I could be happy with it every day, but I've come to believe that this is impossible. Constant positive or negative feeling does not exist, for after a long period of one extreme or the other, you forget about where you stand - if you haven't experienced anything negative for awhile, then even the smallest bad day may seem a tragedy, and vise versa. In short, feelings are relative, like everything else. So what kind of day is today? O.K. so far, but certainly not a very good day; otherwise I wouldn't be thinking about this!

After returning last Friday, I had a few days off before work began yesterday. I did what I usually do on my days off, which is get to Moscow, either by train or Marshrutka (public transport by van), and walk to my heart's content. I went to the cinema twice and saw some old movies at the theater in the far wing of the China-town castle. One of them was Austrian, called "A Man and twelve Women." It must have been filmed in the fifties, and was cute in a fifties way. The other was a Russian dub of the French film "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."
There are still plenty of things to see in the city, including several museums of history and literature. Apparently, several Russian and Soviet writers lived in Moscow, and some of their homes have been turned into museums. I was thinking of going to the Bulgakov museum. Bulgakov wrote what is considered by many to be the most popular novel among Russians, while it's almost unheard of back home, "The Master and Margarita." He also wrote a novel called something like "The White Guard," which, ironically, Stalin allegedly really enjoyed. I don't know much about the novel or the history behind it, but I think the 'whites' where the opponents of the bolshevik 'reds,' who ended up winning the revolution and eventually placing Stalin in power. Anyway, I've passed this man's, Bulgakov's, previous living quarters, now the Bulgakov museum, and was thinking of stopping by. There's also a museum dedicated to Gogol, and probably more than one to Pushkin, as well as museums on several other authors. And those are only the museums of literature! My Moscow marathon is not even halfway done, and already I wonder if I'll be able to experience everything Moscow has to offer. I haven't even been to a theater yet!