hyun ho

jai sung

hyun soo, part II

hyun soo had his big interview for the school last night by telephone. i was as nervous as if it were my own interview. masha and i tried to prepare him at the weekend, but of course non of the quesitons we asked him actually appeared in the read interview. it seems they asked him alot on psychologically based ones instead of the academic variants we thought of. for example, they wanted to know what he would do if his best friend did something that hurt him, and so on. i presume that was because it was an interview for a boarding school place? i dont know. but now we are all waiting nervously for the answer. we should know in two-three days. fingers crossed.

image makers

caitlin has been asked to prepare a session on corporate dress for a company here in moscow. it seems many of the girls in the company have difficulty knowing what you wear to a night club, and what you wear to work. so, as part of her preparations, caitlin asked me to go around Moscow with her and take some pitures of some fashion donts common to this city.
my god, they are everywhere....

again, no comment

friday

it couldnt have come fast enough. it has been a long week. i have been trying to help the chos get hyun soo into an elite boarding school in vancouver, 11 time zones away, which has meant a lot of late night phone calls.
and then there are my jobs and my studies as well...i keep meaning to write book reviews for Ferenc, but i dont get around to it.
why are there only 24 hours in the day? it seems so unfair!

no comment

again, the post office

the weather has gone crazy. after some warm and sunny days, it seems it hs become autumn. it is pissing rain non stop, and everyone is ill. my flatmate natalia has a hacking cough, a runny nose and a soar throat. Masha has strep and has to stay in bed for a week. oleg has a fever....and i dont feel so gat myself, but maybe that is by association.
i got up early to post some books to my supervisor in london. naturally, there is one window in one post office in this city of over 12 million from which you can post books at the special book rate. and it is staffed by one babushka. these babushka who work these jobs are amazing. they never age. the remain an indescribeable 60 or so infinately. they just go on stamping their ridiculous peices of paper and barking at people for all eternity. their bodies are formless, and the clothes uniform. they are everywhere. they make my photocopies in the library, they sell me my metro pass, and they work in the post. so it is not surprising that i went to the central post office of moscow, to the one window that sends books abroad at the special rate, only to find the exact same baba who was sitting in the exact same window over 3 years ago when i posted several hundred books from moscow to budapest. and of course she remembered me, as babas always do. and then preceeded to deliver a monologue on the lines of "what, you dont have any books in england? you have to buy all of ours?" and so on.
after 45 minutes of standing in queues and filling out the obligatory forms, the books were off to england and i headed for the library to repeat the whole process of filling out useless forms, being lectured to, and waiting. grr
after this excitement i met masyamba and ira for lunch. it was pissing rain so we went to the closest place and chatted. such a pity i cant spend my whole life just socialising....but i have exams in october and right now i really should be preparing for them....yikes!

the KGB boys

I suppose the male equivalent of the generals daughter would be the various kgb men whom I have among my acquaintances/students/ colleagues here. There are several of them. Many come from military of KGB families as well, since in the soviet union it was common for children to follow their parents careers. Many generals were the sons of generals, and then married the daughters of other generals, and so on. I like talking to the KGB guys since they can tell very interesting stories about a social strata that no longer exists. They all have certain traits in common, such as a sober demeanour that never show if the person is happy or bored or annoyed. Vladimir told me how he got into the KGB school. He wanted to sit the entrance exams both there and at mgy. But the KGB school exams were first, and during the exam day, he had his documents confiscated by the officials, which meant that he couldn’t sit the exams at mgy at all (since you are not allowed in without documents). Thus he was forced to go to the KGB school. There were many aspects of that no one told him about during the interview and exams. He didn’t know he would spent 8 years wearing a uniform and living 4 to a room in dormitory. Never mind the exercise and psychological training that accompanied such a course. The good thing was that the KGB was the one part of soviet military style service that was free of hazing. Such things were not tolerated, and in any case Vladimir claims there was no time for that sort of stuff, the students worked non-stop and often didn’t sleep more than 3 hours a night. Oleg agreed. He says some guys who had completed service in the army tried to bring hazing to the KGB academy, but they failed. Vladimir and I argue constantly about the law. He claims that laws must exist, but he doesn’t need to follow them. I say that laws don’t work unless everyone in the country adheres to them. But he complains that in Russia some people will always be exempt, and he plans to be one of them. Laws are for stupid people who cant get around them. He knows, having seen the system for the inside. But if people like him continue to break the law with impunity, how will order ever be installed in this place? But then some people don’t want order, they flourish in its absence. Although oleg and Vladimir don’t like laws, they rigidly adheres to all traditions. My chair is always pulled out, my drinks are paid for, and I am escorted home after dark. Vladimir got married in December and became a father in June. He admits he didn’t want to get married and doesn’t love his wife. But he pays her bills and has already bought his infant son a flat. That is what is expected of him, and he doesn’t question it. Of course, in the best Russian tradition he will get divorced in a year or two and the whole scenario will replay with some other woman. Oleg is a serial husband as well. Perhaps it is again the KGB connection again. Oleg claims that in the KGB, all potential wives had to be subject to a background check and screening, and often a guys first choice would be rejected, so he would have to choose another…hardly and ideal situation, but obviously in those days no one was asking questions.

the general's daughter

I work with some pretty odd people here. So I thought I would add a few descriptions of them to preserve them in memory.
One of these people is X, the daughter of a retired soviet general. She spent a chunk of her childhood in cuba, her real childhood she tells me. Life was much better in cuba than here in Moscow. Her family lived in an enclave for Russians right on the edge of Havana. In the enclave they had their own shops (providing them with kolbasa and sirki even in cuba) and their own school. Her family was allotted a house (for the first time in their lives) and they even had a garden with a patio. And a dog. The dog dominates her memory of the place, she bursts in to tears even now describing how they had been forced to leave the dog there when they returned to Russia. She has funny stories about going back and forth between Havana and Moscow, about the people who would jump out of the plane and go bolting across the tarmac during refuelling at Gander airport in Canada, and about the time she smuggled a smelly lobster to her sister in Moscow (where such things were unknown). I gave her an article from the economist on the state of things in cuba in light of fidels surgery. Her father was friends with Raul castro, and X agrees that raul is lacking in charisma. He is a doer not a dreamer, which is why he can never replace his brother in the peoples hearts. Like me she is very worried about what will happen to the place after fidel is gone.
X’s other favourite topic of conversation is sex. She appears to be in full rebellion (age 31) against her military family’s soviet sexual prudery. For some reason sex was a completely taboo topic in the soviet union, especially among people of her class. Her mother never talked to her about it at all, and when she first got her period, in Havana, she actually thought she was dying. The mother of a Cuban friend managed to set her straight. However it appears that X is doing everything now to reverse her parents prudishness. She talks about sex non stop. And about her lovers (of which there are so many I often get confused and cannot keep track….so I just nod my head and pretend I know who she is talking about). This is a common theme with Russian women of her generation, those who were born early enough to grow up in the Soviet period, but who finished school/university in an independent Russia. When I was teaching here before (2000-2003) I had many similar students, all about the same age. I even had a student whom I called tarzanka (do to her limited English skills which seemed destined never to improve) who was also a general’s daughter. At one point during the year I had her as my student, she got pregnant, but decided to have an abortion as she could not figure out who the father might be, her husband or his friend. You would think as a medical doctor she would have been able to prevent such a situation in the first place, but no. they never do. X’s stories are similar, and the innocuous “how was your weekend” seems to invite trouble.
But at least she is not boring.

Hyun soo, in his own words

I have been asked to teach a 12 year old Korean boy how to write....but how do you do that? it is nearly imposible in my view. out of ignorance, i asked the boy to write me a story, any story, about anything he wanted.
the result is truely incredible, so i could not resist putting it up here for everyone to see.

The Crime, by Hyun Soo Cho
I was there in Korea. It was midnight when a phone call came from my companion called Jake. He asked if I could come out to the Grand Park in the Center of Seoul, so I said I can. 2hours later I was heading to the Grand Park in my BMW 5series. I accelerated full speed as no cars went by. In 30 minutes I was there waiting for Jake when a red Mercedes arrived. It was him. He was the head of all the gangsters in Korea. He stepped forward to me and whispered something to my ear which I could hardly understand. He repeated again and finally understood. It was another plan. It was a horrible plan, but I could not refuse. The plan was to surround a train and seize the gold stored inside the train and then explode it. If the plan succeeded it could be a lot of money. Nobody could refuse money. I agreed but still didn’t feel so sure about the plan. I had three days before the plan started. The only thing that came into my mind was the plan. I wasn’t sure if this was the right thing to do. Finally the day came. Everybody gathered in the Seoul Train Station. 6 men (including Jake) got into the train and 10 men (including me) were waiting for the train to stop at the next station. 4 men were blocking the entrance. Finally the crime started. One of the men in the train persuaded the driver to stop at the next station. The train stopped. Few minutes later the train was surrounded. The men were busy collecting gold while the others were surrounding the train. Soon all the gold that could be found was collected. They threw a grenade at the train and a moment later the train exploded. Just then we could here the sirens of the police cars. We ran as if we were faster than the speed of light. I survived. The police wasn’t fast enough to catch us or to remember the number plate. That evening I received 200,000,000,000 won which was quite a lot of money. I switched on the TV the next day and the first thing I saw was the explosion of the train the day before. 149 people were found dead. This caused sorrow to the whole country not just to the families; from there I realized that I made the wrong choice. I realized from the explosion that the country is important than yourself. I also realized that this also brought a great shame to the country. From that day I didn’t have a single moment which was peaceful and till this day I still regret about the accident.

summer's last gasp

this coming week is predicted to be hot, but i think it will be one of the last ones. august in moscow always marks the end of summer, and i can remember the year it snowed on the first of september (ok, that is really unusual, but still it happened) so it is time to go out and wear all the summer outfits one more time before they get packed up for yet another very very long winter. everyone i know is going off for a last end-of-august holiday to try to make their tan last a tad longer by giving it a late season blast in goa or hurgada. i will stay here however, and watch as autmn rapidly approaches.

biblioteka imeni lenina

i thought i would take advantage of the free wifi that has appeared all over my neighbourhood to post some of the pictures on my computer. of course, i am sure there must be some trick connected to this free wifi business. apparently 4 million households in moscow got it yesterday. but i have difficulty imagining it is going to last long....

another sunday brunch

yesterday i met caitlin for yet another one of our sunday brunches. this time we met near caitlins office, where she had stocked 20 boxes of gluten free crackers that she had discovered at the produkti near her house. the produkti lady thinks she is mad and even asked why on earth she was buying so many of the same boxes of crackers, caitlin tried to explain it was for a gluten intolerant friend, not that the baba understood what that meant....

excess

I managed to spend about 12 hours in restaurants on Wednesday.
The day got off to a nice, productive start. I got up at 5:45 to get to an early morning meeting at the other end of the city. The meeting finished at 9:30 and I headed straight for the library to get in to the fotocopy babas before the crowds arrived. This I did, and by 1 I felt I had got enough done to take a break…and that is when things got decadent. I met Igor and Ira. We were all hungry, and Igor mischievously suggested going for sushi. The thing is that Ira just moved here from western Ukraine, where apparently she never tried any national cusine other than Ukrainian. Igor knows this, obviously, and it was for this reason that he suggested the sushi. So we went to planeta sushi (a chain found all over the city selling edible, decently priced sushi) and went a bit crazy. First we ordered all the fresh fruit drinks Ira had never heard of (guava etc) and made her try them all, then we ordered a truly excessive amount of sushi and set about trying to teach Ira how to use chop sticks. It was a bit ridiculous, but after some drinks we were all laughing, including the waitresses. This went on for several hours, and the restaurant even brought us dessert sushi (with fruit inside) on the house. In the process we also managed to cover every topic imaginable from post grad examinations to Serbian post modernist writing. We must have seemed like a group of freaks.
This would have been a nice relaxing day had it stopped there. However in the evening, as every Wednesday evening, I had to go over to a company where I teach and check documents twice a week. But when I arrived, I was greeted by Vladimir (the ex KGB friend of the pirate) and Oleg who announced that we were not going to be productive, but rather were going to go out. Vladimir had already made reservations at B2, a restaurant/ night club with regular concerts. So we ended up in a jazz lounge with a band playing café del mar music while we drank and ate….naturally, sushi. We were there for hours. We kept ordering random plates just to try them, and then the mobiles came out and Oleg and Vladimir started to invite some friends and the table filled with people and plates…..i stumbled home at 2, although I had to be at the other side of Moscow at 8 to teach a class.
I actually made it to the class on time. Masha, the student, greeted me with “oi, I am too tired to work, lets go downstairs to the restaurant.”
We did, but I ordered only coffee. There was no room for more.

fainting spells

you probably never wondered what would happen to you if you fainted in the Lenin library. the topic never crossed my mind either until this morning when the girl in front of my wiped out quite unexpectantly, collapsing in a human puddle at my feet.
one of the library babas saw the girl fall, and after making a phone call, she ordered me to grab her by the legs. since saying no to a library baba is not an option i did as i was told, as did a girl who was sitting near by and was ordered to take the unconscious girl's arms. we then carried the girl (whose name i never discovered) to the central hall, as indicated by the babushka. we were met there by the Lenin Library Medsestra. i had no idea that the library even employed its own resident nurse, but it does....and an angrier baba i have never encountered!
she slapped the girl a few times on the face until she came to, and then asked her if she was pregnant. the girl claimed she wasnt, but the baba made a grunt that indicated "they all say that" and repeated her explanation. she then went for the details, asking when the last time the girl got her period, how often she had sex and so on. all of this in the central hall filled with people walking past to use the catelogues. obviously the girl turned bright red, especially whent he baba announced she would have to make a medical exam...right there! so the medical baba waddled off, ordering those of us who had carried the girl to stay with her. eventually she reappeared with all kinds of odd instruments. she took blood pressure, and then several blood samples, and continued asking all kinds of hideous questions, while people walked by and stared. i waited until she was side tracked and bolted, not wanting to spend the whole morning there....but i am very very very glad it was not me who wiped out on the library carpet!

chav nation of hummers

Russians have long been obsesses with cars. When I lived here before, it seemed everyone needed a BMW or Mercedes. I can remember sergei my old boss arranging to have his stolen in Germany for him. My Russian friends could never understand why I, and many of my foreign friends preferred to take the metro. I tried to explain it is faster and cheaper, but my friends were never convinced, for them not taking the metro always seemed to be a source of pride, whereas for me, taking cars during the day always seemed like a huge pain. Lately, it seems, the city developed an incredible obsession for really big cars. Not cars, jeeps of SUVs. Several of my acquaintances have gone out and bought one. The last time I had lunch with anatoli, who always has the latest in car fashion, he was driving a Mercedes SUV. I find this odd, especially as these monsters are notoriously difficult to park in a city not designed to support the volume of cars currently on the roads. Parking would be a problem even in a smart car, but in a Mercedes SUV, it is a total nightmare. So why does everyone want one? I decided to ask people who are more in touch with these matters than i. Anatoli claims jeeps are more safe and more comfortable, since you supposedly have more leg room. Olga claims jeeps are more “kruta.” She is slightly car obsessed and is now in the process of getting a new one for herself. she was torn between the cute little mazda 3 and an SUV. The mazda was cuter (and comes in red, every dyevs favourite colour) but she insists that the SUV is better. She claims people feel more powerful in a jeep. Because they are high up, the drivers can look down (literally, physically) on all the other regular cars and feel more important. The mititsia (GAI) will not challenge you in the same way, they will show more respect. Other drivers will be afraid of you and always give you the right of way. And if you are in a crash, your car will not be as damaged as some little moscovitch. Or at least that is how olga explained things to me. Of course, it is also a money thing. Russian like cars that look like they were very expensive (even if they were stolen from some poor german) and SUVs are certainly that. They also like the ones that come with the dark windows so you cant see the person inside, hence the appearance of Hummers. Oleg claims jeeps are better in an accident, the other person will die before you do, he argues. But then Marina claims that Russia is simply a chav nation and Russians just want to buy the most expensive car they can find so they can show it off to everyone. They prefer to have a Mercedes SUV and to live in a small soviet flat with their mother than to save money to buy a flat of their own or make remont. But this phenomenon seems to have attacked the whole region. Caitlin went to Yerevan the other weekend, and came back reporting that there were few cars on the roads, but a disproportionate number of them were Hummers. How odd.

the good life

it is good to be an overfed house cat.
i have human servants who spend all their waking hours attending to my every feline need. i even managed to pack one of them off to my old rodina to earn more money to feed me and buy me more toys and cat beds.
in the meantime i have been granted a large house with a garden and servants who take care of me. as you can see in the photo, i am waiting at the moment for one of them to open my food tin, and to serve me on my silver platter.
things are as they should be.

blah

i cant wait for the end of this week. i dont know why, but it has seemed exceptionally long, even though it has been very productive. i have got alot done in the library and at home. i finished my annotated bibliography and got it off to my supervisor, and now i am back to working on my literary review. i have decided that in order to write this though, i must first come up with a working definition of culture and that has proved suprisingly difficult. so i spent a few hours late last night reading through Lotman on the hopes that his great thoughts would enlighten me. they did, but i still havent come up with the thing i am looking for. so finally i got frustrated and watched a DVD (i saw Kukushka a russian film that is actually mainly in finnish and some odd lapplandish language)....the most simple way to turn of my brain and completely relax. i guess any serious thoughts regarding culture and my literary review will have to wait for the weekend when i dont have my job to think about as well. but no matter how much work i get done, i always have the feeling that it isnt enough, that i have somehow wasted time, and that i should be doing more with my months here. this feeling has been with me for years, since budapest at least and maybe before. no matter how much i do, it isnt enough.....yet, unlike in budapest, there is no competition here. or rather there is, but they are unseen? or maybe i am only up against myself at this stage?