painting

The flat I moved in to was in serious need of remont. Accepting that was part of the deal in my getting a big flat for myself at an affordable price.but then I had never before attempted remont, and thus didn’t know what was waiting for me until I set about remont, part one: painting the living room.
Painting is hard work! I got all kinds of cool brushes and roller devices. It was all a bit fun, but the fun wears out as the paint sets into the back and arms and faces get covered in flecks of white paint.
My level of respect for the (mainly polish) painters/ plumber/ handmen in this city has increased dramatically. One might see this as unskilled labour, but that is a mistake!!! This is hard stuff!

othello

It seems in London, as in Russia, it is often who you know that matters. Othello tickets went on sale last year, sold out within hours, and the prices on the internet soared to, in some cases over 2,000 pounds. Even rubbish seats were going for 500 and the guardian described the show as a “super luxury ticket item.” And yet, thanks to my collegue conar, I found myself last night in the front row, practically for free, with some of my work collegues from the fiction department of the bookshop.
Yet I can see why people with money would be willing to pay obscene sums to see such a show, it was amazing. As we left the theatre conar said he felt like he had been beaten up, and it is true that was the feeling. Othello is of course intense, but the intimacy of the Donmar theatre (we were close enough for the actors spit to land on us) and the talent of the cast made it even more brutal.
The cast was amazing: Ewan McGregor as Iago (hence the ticket prices) was convincingly evil and cunning. I had had some difficulty imagining him doing Shakespeare, as opposed to, well, trainspotting, but he fit into the part perfectly. Tom hiddleston was phenomenal as cassio (in some ways even strong than mcgregor, dare I say?). Yet the best of all was chiwetel ejiofor, who was Othello. The only weak link in my view was Kelly reilly, who unfortunately played Desdemona. Her reading of shakespeares verse was a bit painful to the ear, and reminded me that I was seeing a play, not listening to a live conversation, which was the feeling I had the rest of the time. But what she lacked was more than made up for by the others. The ending is of course brutal, leaving no possibility left for redemption or hope of any kind…, members of the audience were crying (a Korean girl looked like she had completely lost it and I heard a member of staff asking if she needed help) I was shaking and we all walked out of the theatre in a stunned silence, which is, I suppose, the ways things should be after watching such a tragedy.

from russia

I dragged rob off to the From Russia exhibit on at the royal academy of arts. I don’t go to the royal academy enough, and yet every time I do I am pleased. The current show (which almost didn’t happen, since the Russian government apparently feared for the paintings safety in london) looks at French and Russian paintings from 1870-1925. It claims to “explore the interaction between Russian and French art.” I am not sure how well this supposed interaction is demonstrated, but it was a stunning set of works nonetheless. Large chunks of the expo are made up of the personal collections of Sergei Shukin and Ivan Morozov, both of whom were serious collectors of French art. Thus there was a good range of gaugin, matisse, monet, manet and pisarro alongside Russian masters like repin, malevich, petrov-vodkin and Chagall. I had seen all the paintings before (in Russia) but never assembled together in one place (as in Russia they are housed in different museums) and never in a context that put them together, which made me see them in a slightly different light.
The volume and range of the paintings were quite impressive indeed, but the same could not be said for the audience, I think rob and I were the only people there under 55! I guess that is what you get for going on a random Wednesday afternoon.

A letter from the big man

As i guess everyone knows by now, the letter below appeared this morning in Granma, Cuba's main daily. After 49 years, Fidel Castro has decided not to see another 5 year term in office, and is leaving it up to parliament to choose someone else.
it is said the sign of a great leader is the ability and willingness to relinquish power. it took fidel awhile, but i am happy to see he got there (better late than never!)
i havent been in cuba in ages now, but i have wonderful memories of that beautiful country, and some of the kindess people in the world. i will watch with great interest to see who is elected next! i would like to see it be Vice-President Carlos Lage Davila, but who knows....?

Queridos compatriotas:

Les prometí el pasado viernes 15 de febrero que en la próxima reflexión abordaría un tema de interés para muchos compatriotas. La misma adquiere esta vez forma de mensaje.

Ha llegado el momento de postular y elegir al Consejo de Estado, su Presidente, Vicepresidentes y Secretario.

Desempeñé el honroso cargo de Presidente a lo largo de muchos años. El 15 de febrero de 1976 se aprobó la Constitución Socialista por voto libre, directo y secreto de más del 95% de los ciudadanos con derecho a votar. La primera Asamblea Nacional se constituyó el 2 de diciembre de ese año y eligió el Consejo de Estado y su Presidencia. Antes había ejercido el cargo de Primer Ministro durante casi 18 años. Siempre dispuse de las prerrogativas necesarias para llevar adelante la obra revolucionaria con el apoyo de la inmensa mayoría del pueblo.

Conociendo mi estado crítico de salud, muchos en el exterior pensaban que la renuncia provisional al cargo de Presidente del Consejo de Estado el 31 de julio de 2006, que dejé en manos del Primer Vicepresidente, Raúl Castro Ruz, era definitiva. El propio Raúl, quien adicionalmente ocupa el cargo de Ministro de las F.A.R. por méritos personales, y los demás compañeros de la dirección del Partido y el Estado, fueron renuentes a considerarme apartado de mis cargos a pesar de mi estado precario de salud.

Era incómoda mi posición frente a un adversario que hizo todo lo imaginable por deshacerse de mí y en nada me agradaba complacerlo.

Más adelante pude alcanzar de nuevo el dominio total de mi mente, la posibilidad de leer y meditar mucho, obligado por el reposo. Me acompañaban las fuerzas físicas suficientes para escribir largas horas, las que compartía con la rehabilitación y los programas pertinentes de recuperación. Un elemental sentido común me indicaba que esa actividad estaba a mi alcance. Por otro lado me preocupó siempre, al hablar de mi salud, evitar ilusiones que en el caso de un desenlace adverso, traerían noticias traumáticas a nuestro pueblo en medio de la batalla. Prepararlo para mi ausencia, sicológica y políticamente, era mi primera obligación después de tantos años de lucha. Nunca dejé de señalar que se trataba de una recuperación "no exenta de riesgos".

Mi deseo fue siempre cumplir el deber hasta el último aliento. Es lo que puedo ofrecer.

A mis entrañables compatriotas, que me hicieron el inmenso honor de elegirme en días recientes como miembro del Parlamento, en cuyo seno se deben adoptar acuerdos importantes para el destino de nuestra Revolución, les comunico que no aspiraré ni aceptaré - repito- no aspiraré ni aceptaré, el cargo de Presidente del Consejo de Estado y Comandante en Jefe.

enough said

independence day

one thing about working in central london, next to one of the city's main tourist attractions is that little happens in the world without you hearing about it rapidly. when benazir bhutto was killed, we knew rapidly, via a general announcement. so today when very loud honking sounds suddenly started blasting everywhere shortly after noon, we knew something was up. wonder who won? asked my collegue justin, assuming it such blasted could only accompany a sporting event. but that wasnt it, and all we had to do to figure it out was peer out the window- suddenly, seemingly in seconds, albanian flags had appeared from everywhere the street was filled with them, guys with cars with the flags on them were driving around honking. old women were sobbing, young girls dancing with the flags draped around their bodies. and we knew without consulting the news: kosovo had declared independence.
9 years ago, from my moscow-based perspective, i thought the bombing of serbia was horribly wrong. i knew little about kosovo and the balkans in those days, and the feeling of ignorance was no doubt partly behind my decision to choose south slav studies as my specialty at (moscow) university. not that we ever got the albanian side of events there. but the years since, many of which have been spent traveling extensively to all ex-yugo parts have made me doubt what seemed so obvious then. having the fist of a serbian nationalist repeatedly slammed into my face played a large role in this, but i dont think my doubts can be attributed to just this one unfortunate incident, nor could i base it on the incredible generosity of the serbian doctor who performed emergency surgery on me, saving my life, in a novi sad hospital with no running water or cleaning devices. things are too complicated to be reduced to such anecdotes. but now, watching from behind i london till, i was happy for the kosovars, they deserve their state, i just hope they will run it well.

elections

several big countries are having elections this year, i can only hope that they will not all be as fictitious as this one.

i am a cat

if you havent read I am a cat, you should. i dont write this just because i am one myself, but because the book is truely a work of genius. written at the start of the 20th century by a japanese writer i had never heard of before, it is a biting social satire on japanese society. it is told from the perspective of a cat, who lives with a school teacher and his family, whose every action and habits he describes with the level of distaste and superiority one would expect from a feline, convinced as they always are of representing superior beings. the book is massive, but well worth the read, as long as you dont mind embarassing yourself by bursting out loud on the tube.
but i am trying to move myself away from fiction now. i am off next month to south america, and i have a great deal to write before then, not least the lectures i am supposed to be giving while away. such a pity there are not 34 hours in a day, i am sure i could find a good way to use them.

common trends

it is amazing that there are some themes in life that run common through everyones lives regardless of differences of religion, culture, and national origin.
MD and i have worked together for over a year now, and on the surface you would think that we would have little in common, besides our employer. but lately we have found a mutual subject of conversation:elderly relatives.
he is not the only one i discuss this with. caitlin enjoys the same phone calls i do, only hers come from toronto. our phone conversations with our parents are identical: on saturday i was informed that the temperature had fallen overnight by 5 degrees. amazingly, the weatherman had got it all wrong and my father was cross that he had not had time to prepare psychologically for this climate transistion. caitlins father suffered a similar shock over in ontario. it seems the weathermen around the globe were consipiring to trick pensioners.
i get these phone calls at least once a week. the go on forever and are almost entirely uniform in content, yet provide great entertainment to my family.
weather is a standard feature in my conversations on the phone to home. international politcal conspiracies, real or imagined, are another. MD gets his share of these as well, but he has another issue to face: the car. his father has driven the same car since 1975 and refuses to change it. but MD complains that he spends more repairing the thing than it would cost to but a new one. i completely understand: my dad has had the same fridge for THIRTY SIX YEARS. we unite over such dilemmas at the till point. MD is plotting a way to make the car disappear without his father noticing. that would be rather hard to manage with a fridge though...so i must think of another way!
oh and needless to say none of our fathers can use a mobile phone.....

friends

as the comments to my last post show, i have been a distant friend in the past few months. i have the impression i have been turned into a zombie: wake up, run to library, run to work, come home, collapse in bed.
i live nearby several friends i have barely seen in months. even my dearest feline companion is feeling neglected, and she is absolutely right to lay on the guilt trips as she does.
so i promise, i will make a greater effort this year to try to visit all of you, where ever you are.
but mainly i dream of a time where i will be able to have only one job, and enjoy things like weekends, like normal people do...

january

i didnt even manage to mark the new year effectively. all my friends were gone awya or ill, leaving me to the gloom of london's most touristic place to spend the night, not because i wanted to be there, but sincethat happens to be where i work, and as luck would have it, i was on a late shift new years eve, and an early shift new years day.
but i hope this year will be different from 2007, which was not my best.
everyone lays out goals for the new year (i know, as the book industry makes loads of money this way, as soon as the new years hits, sales in rubbish like paul mckenna's I can make you rich soar) these goals should be realistic and achievable if they are meant to ever be realised. i know this, but still i am going to break the rules and be overly ambitous with mine: this year i want to submit my fucking phd thesis and change jobs.
two very big things, but if i can manage it, i think i will be better off. wich me luck, i am going to need it.

the kite runner

i lived the book the kite runner. it was one of the first english language books i had bought in ages, after years of living in moscow, budapest and paris. i came over to london on the eurostar for my interview for the phd programme i am now in. after the interview i had some time to kill, but not enough to do anything particularly exciting, so i wandered into a book shop, and took advantage of one of the english 3 for 2 deals. one of the books i choose, and the first i read, was the kite runner.
years later, it is still on the 3 for 2 offer, and has held that slot for longer than any book i can think of, with the possible exception of the life of pi. it is one of those books i recomend evey time someone comes in and asks what on earth to buy (although often when i suggest it, they have already read it)
so it was with great expectations that i went off to see the film yesterday evening. the last film adaptation i saw, northern lights/ the golden compass, was pretty bad, so i was a bit worried this would be another disappointing rendidion of a much loved book. but on the whole i liked the film. i LOVED that the film used afghan actors speaking their own language, as i had been dreading some american version with actors speaking in bad accents (like so many "set in russia" films i have endured). i was also happy to note taht many people in england are willing to show up to a film with subtitles. the film had some really gripping parts and the child actors were very good. it also gave a graphic view of how a country can go to hell in a very short period of time. the film/ book begin in the late 70s, where part of the society at least live in a westernised world of rock music, bell bottems, whisy and pool parties. when the main character, amir, returns in 2000, the taliban have created a surreal atmosphere of paranoia and fear. kabul is in ruins, children run part naked on the streets, the trees have all been burnt down, and the houses are alll falling apart. in 20 years the place had become unrecogonisable.
this transition was demonstrated effectively by the film, providing a shocking visual manifestation of collapse.....but i still prefered the book. the film was good, but there is nothing like a satisfying read....

christmas is over, finally

i suppose most british people enjoy the christmas season: it is a chance to have a holiday from work, overeat, get gifts and see their family....but not if you work in retail!
christmas is the busiest time of year: sales in novemeber and december are basically the same as the rest of the year combined, so there is really no way to underestimate the seasons importance. i have been doing overtime since the start of november, and only next week, when the sale maddness is behind will things begin to get back to normal. by the end of january, the place will be almost dead, and it will stay that way at least until summer.
in some ways i dont mind the christmas rush, we are all so busy taht there is no time to get bored. on the other hand, people get angry and agressive as the get stressed and closer to the big day: they shout, make ridiculous demands and throw tantrums like little kids.authors come in to do signings practically every other day. ian mcewan was very nice (signing a copy of atonement for my aunt) and jamie oliver was an utter twat, arriving once again with an entourage of 15 people, all to sign his beek about how to lead the good and "simple" life out in the country. somehow i doubt a man who needs a squad to sign books grows his own veg, but anyway....
nigella lawson was not much better, but then i didnt have high hopes.....
despite all the endless shifts, i have somehow been reading alot. this is partly since i have had loads of free books dumped on me, but also due to the new place where i live, which is an uninterupted ride from where i work, giving me a good chuck of non-degree related reading every night as i head home.
i finally read No Mean City, the novel of the gorbals, the slum my father was born in. actually the book was published shortly after his birth and is set at just that time: the depression. it was pretty grim stuff, a tale of fighting, drinking and not having indoor plumbing. my parents took me once to see that part of glasgow, and i do have vague memories of such things, but by that time things had already been massively renovated, although the area still looked grim....when i told my dad i had been reading the book, he insisted that although his family had been poor they still more respectable than those in the novel! i guess everything is relative, even in poverty.
from there i moved on to reading some journalistic biographies set in zimbabwe: house of stone by christina lamb and mukiwa and when a crocodile eats the sun, by peter godwin. grim all over again with regards to the present state of things there, although the parts that intrigued me the most were the details of how white people there lived in the 60s and 70s: basically like immune gods. it was fascinating and sickening at the same time.
continueing the biography/memoir theme, i read the latest book by isabel allende, suma de los dias. i wasnt too impressed. it seemed to be trying to cash in on the (deserved) popularity of paula, but without the self reflection. there was also a bit too much self satisfaction in there...although there were a few juicy sections, such as allende's daughter in law becoming a lesbian...but at a certain point i have to ask myself: do i care?
so in such a way i spent my christmas: curled up in bed, reading free books. i cant really complain.

one down

part of the reason i havent written much in the past month is that i have been stuck with three jobs. i was unfortunate, they just happened to all overlap, and i couldnt do much about it, especially as i need the money and experience.
but today i handed in my final grades at ucl, so i am no longer teaching there, and left with only two jobs. thank god. teaching at the university level for the first time was, of course, an important experience adn i learned alot. but i am not really sure this is what i want to do with my life, adn if anything it has motivated me to explore my options in others fields. the kids werent bad kids, they were just very uninformed and unsure what they were doing at university. it seems british kids go to university as it is expected of them, at least if they come from the middle class, which most of them do. they are essentially there cause mummy and daddy would not have allowed anything else, btu that is the only reason. i had a handful who were clearly the first in their families to pursue higher education, adn those kids worked harder than the average. there were also a few who were generally interested in the subject matter....but i think i could count them on one hand.
i will give the english credit for one thing: they can write the most amazing sick notes. for example, i got this letter the last week of term, it was forwarded by the department secretary:

I have come down with a bad case of the flu and wont be attending my
> lectures until Wednesday and would like you to notify my lecturers.
> This is because on Saturday night i collapsed three times and in the
> process badly damaged my front teeth, which now have to be repaired.
> The Dentist also mentioned a form that I should be able to collect
> from university so that i can receive free treatment, if possible
> could you send it via an email?
> Many Thanks, X

amazing, isnt it? another student announced he wouldnt be able to make it in as he "didnt have enough money for the bus ticket." i suggested he start walking early, but he didnt take me up on it.
i am starting to think all first years should be required to take a hard and exhausting gap year prior to commencing study....

yikes!

over a month has gone by since i last wrote. i dont think i have ever allowed that to happen before.
but then i have been extremely busy and not with good internet access. i have been working like mad, and had several celebrity encounters at my job.
john bolton, bush's walrus-like ex ambassador to the UN, came in the other week, and pitched an absolute fit over where his latest book, pompously titled "surrender is not n option," had been shelved. we put it in american politics. however, he felt that he was an issue of world importance, an should thus be more prominantly displayed. we told him to bugger off, as politely as one can.
needless to say i was delighted to find this review in this week's economist:
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10281457
the review fits the man, at least as the man presented himself to us!
on a happier note, Ian McEwan was nice and signed a copy of atonement for my aunt, she will be happy.

no comment

reading week moscow

this past week has been reading week,, which means no classes to teach. i took the week to go back to moscow.
i miss moscow when i am not there and i wish the bloody air tickets were not so ridiculously expensive so i could go back more often. the cheapest direct flight i could find was 300 pounds, so i ended up buying one for 45pounds return on easy jet to tallinn. this at least meant that i got to stop in and see oliver before heading on to russia.
zbig picked me up at leningradskaia and we headed to his gorgeous flat at novokuznetskaia. i cant believe what an amazing place he found. i was extremely tired from several nights of little sleep and my first night in moscow i slept like a zombie. but i dont think it was only tiredness. I had forgot how wonderful it is to sleep in moscow flats in the winter: they are dry and warm and cosy. unlike english ones, which inevitably seem damp and cold, even if the temperature outside isnt that cold, and even if you have on the heat, they are never comfortable. so curled up in zbig's bed, in the nice dry warmth of a moscow winter, i just didnt want to get up! and then my last day i really did not want to get on that train to head back west...to my dingy london flat and my various underpaid jobs....

flying by

time is going by so quickly i cant get a hold of things. i have been rubbish at keeping this blog up to date, but i dont even notice that weeks elapse without my writing something...i am juggling three jobs at the moment: the bookshop (which pays the bills) the teaching (which is supposed to be good experience) and now a researcher position at another london university. together they pay enough to survive on, but as usual the ones that interest me the most dont pay enough for me to do them exclusively.
to add to the confusion, my own work is done mainly in in serbian and russian, but the researcher position involves cuba and working in spanish. when i have to deal with both in the same day, i become vaguely incoherent, at least to myself.
today i struggled to get up and teach at 9am. the kids seemed in a fine mood: someone named "vanilla ice" signed the register and even drew a large erect penis on the said register for me to admire, presumably. apparently adolesence extends well into the late teens.
to be fair, the kids are not bad kids, most of them just dont want to be in my class at 9am, and i cant entirely blame them for that.they are generally decent, ignorant and very young. i have about 4 who are actually interested in the subject material, which is at least something. in a way, i sort of feel sorry for them. they come to university with all kinds of unfounded expectations, and instead of some wonderful educational experience they get the likes of me. one kid told me every single one of his class is with a phd student. of course we phds are not bad people, but it must be pretty annoying to pay a lot of money for university and not meet any real professors your first year. it also sends the loud and clar message that first year of university in england is a joke, you would have to work at it not to pass. the fact that real professors dont want to teach first year classes, and dump them on all the phds, is an indicator of the first years students last place position in the university priority list. i cant blame them if they get annoyed.

christmas

in the retail world, the christmas season has begun.
i have always disliked this holiday. i find it pointless and annoying....but in the western retail world it is sadly unavoidable, so much that i think most people here tie the two together: christmas and shopping.
although i am of course aware of all of this i was still surprised in the staff meeting when we were told that the "christmas I changeover" was beginning. this means all the books have to be restickers, and the front of shop reajusted. it also indicated the arrival of loads of rubbish books that british people love to buy at this time of year, no doubt presents for all those people they feel obliged to give something to, but they dont know what. this is the on and only time of year when people start buying humour books in large numbers. (last years hit was "is it just me or is everything shit?" apparently the ideal present for that brother inlaw you have spent christmas with eery year for the past decade and yet still barely know) it addition loads of people have come in for signings, knowing that super expensive signed books will sell now, and no time else. so we have a display with signed eric clapton (50£), jamie oliver (60£) and the life of pi (50£) and other such titles.
the mass of frantic shoppers hasnt arrived yet, just the preview: endless hordes of little old ladies who come in to buy things early. they are inevitably chatty and hae provided us with a whole host of reasons why they are shopping now, 2.5 months before the big day. one told me she was afraid everything would be gone by december. another told my collegue she was afraid she might die before then, and wanted to get he grandkids gifts first (she appeared in perfect health, these ones always do). but i suspect in reality they are just bored, and shopping for christmas gives them something to do, and something to look forward to. that might be the one positive thing about this holiday...

food

i think i have already written some entry like this before, but every time my mouth starts watering and i start getting hungry, this list comes to my mind.
Food I miss in England: London has a good selection of international food and I am greatly relieved that I have found a good Korean place to satisfy my pipinpop cravings. But there are still some things I haven’t found that I miss desperately.
1. grechka: it is the best breakfast, I don’t know why English people cant get that
2. mole: beans and chocolat what could be better???
3. Kefir: the ultimate hangover cure, which given the amount people here drink on weekend binges, should definitely be imported.
4. Tvorog/ turos: I like it in all forms, I like sirki with chocolat around the sides, and I like it in things like buns.
5. Burek od sira. The ultimate food to eat before going out. You will never get a hangover, you will never be hungary. Also good to take on long train rides.
6. Empanadas. Kind of like a Chilean varient on burek, but even better in that you can get them stuffed with so many different things. I have never seen them in London. You can get samosas here, which are good and the same relative size. But it is not the same thing.
7. Hachipuri: mmmmmm Georgian cheese…..mmmm….
8. makos puns. I am not even really sure of the term here in English. The dictionary tells me it is “poppy” but I have never seen a “poppy bun” in English. It is makos in Hungarian and mak in most Slavic languages. It is a black substance that is sweet and good in buns.
9. Kafa/kava: call it what you want, I am not getting into linguistic political correctness here. I miss it.

generation 1989

How do you teach history, and what is the time frame of what you can expect people to know?
I felt old today. i am meant to be teaching historical research methods to two classes of 18 year olds. For the occasion, I have given them each a different east European city, which they will be studying the whole term. I chose smaller cities, to force them to dig around a bit more for material.
On the first class, none of them had heard of the cities I assigned to them. Today their assignment was to, in small groups, tell the others what they had found out about their place. Every single kid had used the same “source”: wikipedia.
This was fine, in fact it was what I expected. So then I took them to the computer lab and gave them 15 minutes to check their city out on a digital journal database, followed by another 15 minutes looking at the times digital archive. Then I asked them what they had learned flipping through.
Tom: “dude, there was like a war in mostar and they killed lots of people and blew up a bridge.”
Alex: “no way man, there was a war in Dubrovnik too, these other guys called serbs bombed the whole fucking place.”
Sylvia: “there was like a revolution in my city!” (timisoara)
Paul: “there are FOUR football teams in Sofia!”
I was at first surprised that this was news: I remember all of these events happening quite clearly. But then I calculated that my entire class was born in 1989. They were infants when the berlin wall fell, some of them weren’t even born yet. They were toddlers during the Bosnian war. Their first historical memory is iraq. They are a totally different generation.

teaching, again

it is not that i lack for teaching experience, cause i have loads of it. i taught high school english in moscow in 2000-2001. and i have taught in various schools and companies in moscow, paris and cambridge over the past 7 years.
today, though, was my first day teaching at a university, which turns out to be a bit different.
teaching english, what i did before, has its ups and downs. unless you are teaching high school students, the students are generally motivated and anxious to learn, especially when they are paying loads of money for the lessons. sometimes, they are just looking for a shrink to pour out all their problems to (this is especially true with one on one lessons). university is different. the class i teach is obligatory for all first years in the department, so the students have to be there if they want to or not, and since it is increasingly impossible to get a job anywhere without a degree, they have the idea that they have to be in university, or their parents who sent them there had that idea.
furthermore, the class is at 9am, which is asking the near impossible from a squad of 18 year olds (and from me as well!)
so despite all my experience i felt pretty nervous walking into the room today. i had to remind myself that they were probably more scared of me than i of them. but still, it was intimidating to have 30 sleepy faces staring at me for 2 hours. i hope i didnt bore them to death.

ew!

now the contract for my flat does clearly say "no pets." however they gave us this updated contract AFTER we had paid our non refundable security deposit of several hundred pounds, and there was no way i was going to loose that money, so i just decided to keep qite about the cat a move in anyway. but then friday the landlord announced he would visit the next day (saturday). i paniced. then i called max and pleaded with him to take the beast for the day. he agreed, albeit not to happily, especially as i had to bring the cat over at 7:45 am, before work.
i dropped the cat off, made her a fresh litter box, and filled her bowls with water and her favourite soft food. i gave her half a tin of soft food cause i figured she would be a bit traumatised and not that hungry. but i put the other half on the tin in the fridge, and told max he could give it to her if she finished the first half.
max and his girlfriend lika went out to run some errands during the day....and when they came back, daria, one of max's flatmates and a sweet peasant girl from poland, complemented him on his good taste in buying...pate! max asked her nervously which pate she was referring to, and sure enough, it was the cat food. daria had apparently spread it on toast.
max and lika decided not to say anything....

the book killer

i have been doing a lot of overtime lately, specifically i have been doing "returns." when i have tried to explain to my friends what this means, they have all looked utterly horrified, so i thought i would explain the bad new publically.
the thing is, alot, maybe even the majority of books published every year in the uk end up being destroyed. yes, that is right, they get pulped.
the reason is that too many works are published every year and the publishers print runs which are too large for the demand, on the hopes that whatever book they just printed will actually sell. a book shop (at least the big chains) only pay for the books they sell, the rest are just sitting on the shelf, either waiting to be sold, or taking up space that could be occupied by a book with better chances of selling. and since all those books in the shop are technically not paid for by the shop, they can be sent back to the publisher, and this is often what happens. some publishers only ask for part of the book back (the cover with barcode normally) then the actual inside we toss in the bin. seriously.
so for example, when a book is on offer (like 3 for 2) we order lots of copies since whatever is on that offer has a good chance of selling (since the british public tends to buy whatever is put in front of them, on offer). when the book stops being on offer (which at some point is inevitable) it generally stops selling, leaving us with some 25 copies when we only need 2. the the 23 extras get pulped.
so my job is partly to walk around the shop and find those books that arent selling and send them off to their fate. this is actually a terrible task that no book lover should want to do, but i have to admit i sort of enjoy it. it is a bit like a puzzle or a treasure hunt. many of the ones marked for return have been on the shelves for years with out moving and are often misplaced, so finding them can be quite a complex procedure. it is amazing though, when i am hunting for returns, the time flies by.

the beach

i first bought the beach (the novel, by alex garland) around the time it came out. i was around 18 at the time, and i completely identified with richard, the hero. like him, i spent a lot of my teens travelling to odd destinations, derooting myself from all people and places. richards pull is south east asia, mine was more south america, but as in his case, there were times where i got myself so lost in oblivion i wasnt sure where i was or what i was doing there, and there were sinister people and dark moments that punctured the "holiday"in technicaly sunny places. i use "holiday"in brackets since that is not really what it ever was in my case, unlike in richard's.
i remember buying the beach while passing through heathrow airport in transit, probably between moscow and montreal, the places where i was supposed to be living in those days. that was about 10 years ago, before domodedovo opened. back then, british airways still flew out of sheremetevo II, and they had this wierd schedule if you were trying to get to north america. you left moscow in the early evening, arrived in london in the early evening (thanks to the time difference), spent the night in a dodgy hotel attached to the airport (which you couldnt leave, as you hadnt gone throught british border control, which i suppose explains the barbed wire i dont think i imagined seeing). then the next morning a hotel alarm woke you and you went back to terminal 4 to continue on to canada. i was always grateful i got off in montreal. once that plane reached the western hemisphere, it became something like a bus in the sky, stopping at carious canadian cities along the way. after montreal was toronto, and i forget what came next. so i bought the beach at one of those airport bookshops (wh smith? waterstones?) and took it with me to the airport hotel to pass the time. i remeber ready it over the cheap "continental"breakfast we were given for lunch. it lasted me until dorval airport, and i was pleased.
after that, the film came out. i went to see it and was totally disappointed, that film really sucked despite having an all star cast. maybe the book just cant be adapted to film, although i blame the bad script. the film mixed my memories, and i forgot about the book.
but the book hasnt gone away, it is still a big sucess in the publishing industry, i know that now. when all the booksellers in my company were asked to choose their top books of the past 25 years, it made it easily into the top 25, alongside gabriel garcia marquez and margaret atwood. then recently penguin (the publisher) decided to realise a special edition series of books commemorating their anniversary (i forget which one...75 maybe?). the choose 36 titles and republished them in the original old-school format. and of all the "significant"works of the better part of the past century, they choose the beach. and then nostalgia overwealmed me and i had a sudden desire to see if 10 years later the book still impresses me as it did, or if it was just part of my teenage phase.
but no, the book is amazing...to me at least. i could see why someone else wouldnt like it, but i again read it nearly in one night.
and now i will put it one my shelf, maybe for another 10 years...we shall see.

guests

jeremy showed up in london. i hadnt seen the guy in nearly 4 years. it is really amazing how time flies. he is here for a few days only and making the most of it. so even though i am in the painful process of editing my latest chapter, i dumped my studies and went off to play tourist. actually that is something i definately dont do enough. i dont feel i know enough of london for the amount of time i have now spent here. and event the places that i do know change so much that i would have to keep going to them regularly to really stay on top of things. the museums do a great job changing around exhibits all the time, so everytime i set foot in, say, tate modern, the place looks totally different.
today jeremy and i did the british museum and the national portrait gallery. i use the word "did'" but actually it is impossible to do justice to those places. they are both so massive and hold so many collections that my mind starts spinning after a few hours nad i cant take things in any longer. but i wanted jeremy to at least see what is here in london. i feel obliged to do touristic justice to whatever city i am living in.
and actually, despite all its enormous problems, london is a good city for tourists. living here it is easy to forget that, and i need the odd visitor from time to time to remind me. the state museums are excellent and free. you can wander in, have a look and leave without feeling you have to see everything and get your money's worth, which is exactly how i feel everytime i go to anything in paris, for example. there are loads of parks and the centre of the city is pretty walkable. plus the natives are fairly benevolent. it is not like moscow where the police see a tourist and immediately dollar signs ring up in their eyeballs. so i enjoy the occasional touristic run of london. i think i need to do it more.

at the travel agents

i walked into my regular travel agent today. they already think i am crazy, but i am used to that.
"hello, i am going on a strange trip and i need a ticket, but it is kind of wierd and i dont know if you can do it."
the woman looked at me slightly patronizingly and asked what the ticket was. when i told her i wanted a mercosur air pass to get me to chile via paraguay and that i would be making my way to rio via the falklands...she asked me to come back the next day, as apparently she needed to speak to a manager.
i am looking forward to this latest strange plot in my head. my dad and i are going off on this odd trek together, and he has already got his maps out and is pouring through his old spanish grammar books. that is what i like most about travel actually: planning it and preparing for it is half the fun.

susan sontag goes biserk

funny the things people get obsessed about.
there is a woman who comes every day to the national library. my friends and i call her the susan sontag look alike as it seems she is delibrately cultivating such an image (long grey hair with one streak of black in the middle, dresses as badly as possible etc). i have walked by her desk a few times from which i have deduced she must be studying on the indian caste systems...or something like that, based on the books on her desk.
anyway, she always sits in the EXACT same seat everyday, and she arrives exactly at opening in order to secure that spot, which she holds for herself until closing. but today her world was turned upside down.
i was sitting in a seat of my own (choosen randomly) when i heard a loud, animal like growling sound coming from behind me, i turned around to see the womans eyes blazing and her nostrils flairing. i followed her gaze to see what caused this fury and sure enough, the unthinkable had happened, she arrived 10 minutes after opening, and someone had taken her seat!! she flipped, stormed over to the guy (no doubt a first time user) and demanded he move....but his english was apparently dificient as he kept raising his hands in confusion and gesturing with confused raised eyebrows. finnally she sat in another seat and preceded to slap her documents on the desk loudly. a proper freak show.
i hope this isnt what happens to people if they spend too much time in libraries, if i start doing things like that, someone please hit me. hard.

updates

i have been very bad and i havent written anything in ages. i do have a good excuse though: i finnally moved house this past week, which means NO MORE WALTHAMSTOW! thank god!
i am now in the process of resettling into my new flat located a nice 30 minute bus ride from work, yeah!
the cat is still having difficulty ajusting but i hope she will settle down in the next few days, paws crossed! i meanwhile still need to buy the last few things and then i will start to feel that i have a new home.

hooligans

i dont know what it is with this country (england) and its hooligan children. it is really strange, there are so many of them and they behave in a violent and pointless manner i have never seen anywhere else.
yesterday 2 boys came into the bookshop. at some moment, one of them (who was about 9) pushed my collegue, a petite german girl. she looked at him for an explanation, and he said sarcastically that it was an accident. she continued what she was doing. then the boy and his friend (who was about 12) started throwing books of the shelf and onto the floor. at that point my collegue asked them to leave. they spat in her face. she began ushering them out, but even at the front door, with everyone watching, they were throwing things off tables and on the ground, shouting abuse and obscenities. outside the shop, they started laughing and walked off.
this sort of thing seems to happen all the time here. you see it alot on the bus. a few months back a bunch of similar young kids jumped on top of me as i was getting of the bus so that i fell and ripped my trousers. they, again, laughed and ran off. it is quite difficult to do anything. technically the boys in the shop didnt commit a crime (they didnt destroy or steal anything) but they just behave atrociously, and seemingly for absolutely no reason.
of course there are kids who behave badly everywhere, in all countries, but it is this last point that particularly bothers me here: there never seems to be any reason for their behaviour other than maybe boredom. it is one thing to start a fight over some grevance, real or imagined, but these kids seem to do it as a sport. the other thing that is striking is that they are always very young, like 10-16, always white and "ethnically" british, and always seemingly constantly unacompanied. when these guys came into the bookshop it was already after 8pm. what were a 9 and a 12 year old doing cruising the west end alone at that hour anyway? where the hell were their parents? my german collegue and i posed these questions in bewilderment to our head of security, MD. he just laughed at us. "just imagine" he said "you call the parents in here, they will be younger than both of you cause they had the kids at 15, they will be smoking and drinking and fucking a different guy every night...you think they have time to look after those kids?"
scary thought.

london update

i really should be working on my next chapter of my thesis. but i ahve had lots of distractions lately, and not all of them related to work or harry potter.
finnally, i found a new flat so i will be moving in a couple of weeks. thank god. there was a really gruesome murder on my street a few days back...and well....enough said.
other than that, caitlin and yuri have just relocated to london. so i have been hanging out with them. they have a nice place in south kensington, and instead of sitting in the library all the time like a good phd student, i have been going around to museums with caitlin and drinking in their flat.
yesterday we wandered throught the V&A and friday we went to the exhibit on mega cities that is currently on at tate modern. that was really cool. i loved the airal views of mumbai, london, cairo, johannesburg and tokyo. and their were some really great photos from each of those places....plus a video on toilets in mumbai, which having experienced them close up, proved only to be too accurate. i like mega cities, i have always operated on the assumption the larger and smellier the better. i think that is why i love mumbai so much when i was there. or moscow or istambul or cairo. i know i am alone in this view, but parks and green space make me really nervous and uncomforatble. i am sure i suffer from some strange syndrom....but anyway, if you are in london and get a chance to see it, go, it is worth it!

some books and an indian summer

first let me note that the title of this entry has nothing, NOTHING to do with the weather. how can we even hope for an indian summer (in the english sense of the word....ie baba leto to use the less ambiguous russian) when the english one has not even started?
by indian summer i was rather referring to the upcoming 60th aniversary of the "the midnight hour while the world slept" (to barrow from nehru) and pakistan and india became two countries, seperate both of each other and of the british empire.
the hype has been fairly impressive. the library has been doing a big exhibit on Gandhi's Quit India now movement, and even the bookshop has been doing displays on indian literature in anticipation of the great event. additionally, a whole cluster of new books has suddenly appeared devoted not only to independance, but also to the events surrounding the partition...something which indian and pakistani historiography seems to have all to often ignored. meanwhile, trafalgar square has been filling up every weekend with all kinds of events aimed at commemerating the events....alll of which seem to feature beautiful young dancers in saris and loads of food and music.
extra indian books have been ordered into the bookshop and i have been stocking up, even though i should be writing my chapter.
i really like indian literature. i wish i knew enough about pakistani books to comment on them or choose them for a display, but alas i am sadly quite ignorant of their literature, music and art. I do, however, have some notions of indian writing, and i have been learning more all the time.
i read kiran desai's booker winning Inheritance of Loss. i liked it well enough, but not on the level of other booker winning indian works (such as the god of small things). i read mistry's a fine balance, which i liked better. and now i am sinking my teeth (or eyes) into the 1,400 epic a suitable boy. so far, i find it mesmerizing and i am absolutely amazed by vikram seth, the writer who managed to produce such an epic. respect.

the first summer bash

according to the bbc, it has been the rainest three months since records began in the 18th century. it rained literally non-stop from may until this week. several people died in the floodings and property damage reached the into the billions of pounds. it has all been incredibly bleak and depressing....and cold with temperatures around 17 degrees.
so it seemed something like a miracle when 2 days ago the rain STOPPED. and it has been at least partly sunny since. now in a normal country, this would seem like normal weather, but here where we have used to such greyness, it seems miraculous. and it was the perfect weather for the triplets birthday bash which took place last night in Angel. it was my very first ever birthday party for triplets, and it was good fun. we started with dinner,and from there moved on to a bar where various people showed up and we had cocktails and took loads of silly photographs....it was good fun, and it felt like finnally (in AUGUST!) we were having the first proper party of the summer season!

the last of pottermania

i finished the book just before my train rolled into kings cross, so i was still thinking about it as the rafters of the train station appeared and floated past. i liked the last harry potter, although i confess i was a little sad the series ended. i started reading the books 7 years ago, after someone gave me a copy of the first one in the dorms of moscow university. when the 5th came out, i had friends of friends who happened to be flying through heathrow the day of the release bring me a copy in moscow. for the 6th i was actually in england, having come over to attend an interview for the programme i am now in. and for the last i was standing behind a till in central london, having my photograph taken by screaming mobs.
according to rumours floating around the staff room, JK rowlings is planning 2 more books for the near future: but they will not be about harry potter. that should be interesting, but not the same.
meanwhile i need to start working on the next chapter of my bloody thesis...

pottermania III

it was another long night in the bookshop.
things have been basically torn apart for the past several days due to the customers who come in to buy harry potter, but take 300 hundred books off the shelves (and put them on random tables)in the process. it is also july, which is to say stock take time. so the boss asked for volunteers to do an overnight shift of stock taking.
i really dont mind this sort of thing: we got free food and a cab home, plus double time for working aftr midnight, and the work was pretty mindless.
the shop closer at the usual time, and suddenly a mob of about 40 indian guys came pouring into the shop all dressed in identical shirts, trousers and ties, with these strange zapping machines. they then combed through the shop at lightening spped, zapping the barcode of every single book on the way. it was an incredible sight, i have never seen guys work so fast (and they were all guys, i noted, there was not a single girl among them). then my collegues and i went behind them, spot checking the shelves to make sure they got everything. they were pretty accurate, i only found about 5 mistakes the whole night, which considering the hundreds of books i checked isnt much.
it is strange being in the shop in the middle of the night with no customers. kind of spooky actually.

death and the pigeon

somehow a dead pigeon with its head smashed in appeared on my front doorstep.
any theories as to how it got there? did he smash into the door? (my flatmate claims this doesnt happen) witchcraft perhaps? (maybe it is my fault? i havent sold enough harry potters? no, that its not possible, the computer tells me i have sold thousands)or good old east london hooliganism? (but what would be the logic behind that? "hhmmm, i am bored, i know! lets kill a pigeon and put it on someone's front step, YEAH!")
how strange.

potter maddness, part II

this harry potter business doesnt stop. the past several days have been nothing but unpacking convoys of boxes and watching them sell within hours. sales are through the roof and apparently we will all get bonuses...i am certainly not complaining, i am always happy to get an extra 100 quid or whatever the amount will be!
yesterday we sold out too early on in the day, and i spent my whole shift telling the bad news to endless queues of kids, many of whom burst into tears, it was a dreadful scene. this is the first time i have ever thought of my job as remotely...cool? kids have run up and asked for my autograph, one little girl, who looked to be about 7, got it in her head that i not only look like, but actually WAS hermione, and insisted i sign her book. i found it a bit odd to be mistaken for a fictional 17 years old witch, but of course i signed the thing. tomarrow tonight i am doing another "anti social hours" night shift since the whole shop is a bit or a mess thanks to the huge crowds.
yesterday, apparently one of the managers of a nearby branch had some sort of potter-induced nervous breakdown and couldnt work anymore, after doing several double shifts in a row, so some people from my branch had to go cover.....amazing stuff, and all over a book! (which i might add i am now halfway through, and enjoying very much!)

potter maddness from the epicentre

the past 2 days have been crazy.
friday night, shortly after 9pm, i got on the eurostar to com back to london, for one reason: harry potter. from waterloo station, i grabbed the first cab i saw and headed straight for work. i knew when i arrived there would be a huge queue, i had seen images of it on french tv: the dutch teenagers who had waited for several days in the rain so they could be the very first to get the last ever potter book, the endless chains of people wrapping around street corners in central london, and so on. but i was still surprised by how excited people can get over a book. i arrived to a long chain of people who were clearly annoyed i could go inside the shop and they couldnt. inside, the shop lookied like something out of a war zone with boxes and wrappings all over the place. the management fed us pizza, sweets and coke to keep us as awake a hyper as possible, since every one knew it would be a very long night. we spent the hours before the opening setting things up, while the manager periodically shouted out the minutes until midnight. we practiced the till procedures and got paired in twos: one person to face the customers and push the buttons on the computers, and another to grab the books and bag them.
at midnight the crowds outside began screaming adn we turned of the lights, letting the first woman come running in, screaming, in the darkness. from then on the next several hours was total maddness. people came running in screaming. one girl grabbed the first copy of the book she saw and stood there screaming "i touched it, i touched it." a man fainted. other people cried. many took pictures of us, with the flashes of their cameras flashing in our faces annoyingly. the funniest was a group of 30 school children from india who showed up with their scary teacher. they were all dressed identically in uniforms that looked like people worn here when india was still part of the empire. each grabbed their book and went running off , jumping, while their teacher (a white lady, of course) tried to maintain control.
by 3 am i was zombie and the manager finnally locked the door, announcing no more copies would be given out that night. we straightened a little while the managers called for taxis to take us home.
i came back home at about 4am with my bags, and flopped into bed for a 4 hour nap...then i had to get up again to go back to the maddness. the shop was again like a war zone all saturday: people running every where trying to grab as many copies as they could get their hands on. by 7pm, the thousands of copies we had started with were all gone and crying children could be heard everywhere. scary stuff.

paris, 10 years later

yaelle, solenne, and i: the three musketeers.
we gathered tuesday night in a restaurant in the 6th to celebrate our "10th anniversary." it seems incredible, but it was exactly 10 years ago this coming month (august) that the three of us all decided to move en masse to montreal. we packed our bags and hauled ourselves off to that cold and far away city where we spent a year huddled in various bars and cafes pretending to study for our classes (we signed up for all the same ones, bien sur). it was good time. during the school breaks, we headed off to my parents house, since they lied the closest, except for the one massive and crazy trip we planned together to venezuela. we were teenagers then and busy plotting crazy adventures.....and it was all now 10 years ago. we gathered in the restaurant and noticed that we look more or less the same, although many things in our lives have changed. yaelle and solenne still live in permanantly in paris, which is where i always imagined they woudl end up....but i am now seperated and living elsewhere. funny how life sends us in different directions like that....

paris

i was really happy to leave paris in 2005. if you go back to those blog entries, you see i was at the end of my patience with the city and myself in it. i had a rubbish job i hated and was going down a dead end road. i wasnt making enough money to live normally, i was sharing a too small flat out in notorious department 93, more than one hour from my job. a month after i left, my old neighbourhood erupted in flames: two boys died running away from the cops. it was he end of Ramadan and apparently they were afraid of being late getting home. after their death, people went a bit crazy and thousands of cars in my old neighbourhood were burned down in the weeks of riioting that followed. watching everything from london, i was glad i had left.
yet there are things about paris i like and i am glad to come back here to visit my friends and family here. i especially love paris at easter and in the summer, the two seasons i know paris best in. i have spent parts of 3 of the past 4 summers here and i love seeing my "summer friends" every time i come. some of these "summer friends" have become good friends i now see out of the context of either summer or paris. for example, i associate summer in paris with hanging out with aude, who is seemingly always here at that time visiting her huge family. over the years we have spent i dont know how many hours hanging out in cafes around the city (as well as on the couches of her aunt/grandparents house). she has tried to teach how to play settlers of catan, and introduced me to some cool people.
i also love hanging out with adam and audrey, catching up on the gossip of my former work place, and being filled in on the latest on the political and social scene in department 93, which is so far away in many aspects from the rest of paris.
i love heading to the different musuems, in particular the musee european de la photographie. i love going to the opera with my parents to see the ballet, and taking a walk along the promenade during intermission. i love having huge and ridiculous fights with tony and cam about world history and the future of technology. i like walking on the ile saint louis and eating berthillion ice cream with my mother and spending hours in gibert jeune hunting for books. i like having my hair cut by christophe and going to la ferme saint simon for lunch with my father. i miss these little traditions when i am not here...i just wish there were a way to combine them with decent employment and a better living condition than the one i had when i lived here. but no place can be perfect....

paris buda moscow london

i have spent the last 7 years moving back and forth between paris moscow budapest and london. i really dont know anymore which of them is meant to be my home. having visited all 4 in the last 2 months, i can see that it would be impossible for me ever to choose just one of them to live in. there are parts of all four that i need. there are things i do specifically in one of the 4, and i have some strange set of rituals that goes with each one of them. for example, my hairdresser is in paris and i buy my Cds and DVDs in moscow, at gorbushka. i buy my books in london and moscow and i go out most in buda and paris. with the eurostar, easy jet and ryan air these places (except moscow which remains a pain to get to) are not far away, and if i had the money i would visit them all even more often.
but alas, i am a poor student.

updates

i got this from maysambas blog. it seems our brains are in the same century, somewhat to my surprise

Итак, вам лучше всего жить в России времен Екатерины Второй

«Век золотой Екатерины», как пел Игорь Тальков – это еще и Ваш век! Просвещение, стремление объять великую культуру Европы, познать ее, проникнуться и, быть может, самому создать произведение искусства. Вы цените интеллект, образованность, высокие идеалы просвещения. Невежество и пошлость вызывают у Вас отвращение. Массовая культура Вам чужда. По натуре Вы – современный аристократ, цените утонченный вкус, по-настоящему избранное общество. Возможно, Вы и есть интеллектуальная или научная элита нашей страны. Только все же не зазнавайетсь! Помните, что и среди народа попроще встречаются хорошие, добрые люди, а обладать блестящим умом и эрудицией может не только такой замечательный человек, как Вы, но и откровенный мерзавец :)

Пройти тест

east london

my neighbours are having the most incredible house party imaginable. i can hear their music as clearly as if it were on my own computer. they have erected a huge tent structure with all kinds of exciting flashing lights.
then our next door neighbours, "the poles" are having their evening drinking and smoking chats on their back patio. these guys must be really homesick peasants as it seems they have endevoured to recreated village poland here in london. one of them is an incredibly skilled carpentor. he has put various quasi add-ons to the house, and a bit wood shed in the back. then he constructed a huge WIND MILL (yes, like the things holland is famous for) and put one of them on the patio. then an arch-like enterence to the patio was added. then last week a little waterfall appeared. i am waiting for the appearence of some pigs or cows, that is surely the logical next step. our downstairs neighbours are italians with drug habits. the other night they apparently had a massive fight, and i havent heard them since, which is unusual since they normally blast cheesy italian disco pop music every night, which i cant say i miss in this moment of silence.
it was a quiet day in the library, so many people are gone on holiday that it has become a bit depressing to sit there, especially on friday afternoons. so i finished the minimum i had to and left. i grabbed some films on the way home and came back to relax in the calm of my east london attic. i rewatched la historia official, which i hadnt seen in years. it remains as disturbing and powerful as ever. then i moved on to mne ni bolna, which is an incredibly light and funny film for the heavy topics it deals with (poverty, cancer). next up was edgardo cozarinsky's ronda nocturnal, about a (very good looking) buenos aires street hustler. the film was filled withr eally good looking gay guys, and some seriously odd scenes. i very rarely take evenings off like this, but i wish i could more often....

the travel till

i spent the afternoon working in the travel department. all my collegues hate it there, but it is my favourite place to be: calm, quiet and surrounded by travel guides! while up there, observing the people around me, i came up with the following list.

the best places to people watch:
1. London, heathrow, terminal 4: all, and reall ALL, of humanity can be found here. i know, as i spent large chunks of my childhood rushing up and down that long hallway of shops. i once saw brad pitt shopping in the harrods. another time my mother ended up conversing with boy george (having no idea who he was). i think within one hour you could find every nationality, faith and colour of person in that terminal. but it has to be specifically terminal 4, the others dont compare.
2. laduree, the terrace, champs elysees, paris. ok les champs is tacky and i hate it, but the terrace at laduree is a great place to watch the oddest show of arabs and russians anywhere around. flashy vulgar wealth on display.
3. laduree, inside, place de la madeline. same place but totally opposite crowd, watch the dysfunctionality at work. also leads off onto faubourg-st honore, a great street worth of people watching.
4. the fountain at Ohotni riad shopping mall, moscow. i love just standing there and watching the dyevs go up to the fountain, pose absurdly, while their boyfriends/ fathers take photos. this is a strange russian habit i will never get.
5. sitting by the door at Leopolds, mumbai. india is a very odd mix, and you can see it all from one chair, if you choose correctly here. on the street outside you have guys hawking any type of merchandise imaginable, combined with beggers and petty theives. inside, you have somewhat wealthy indians, aussie tourists, lost souls, british backpackers, famous writers, and everything else that ever found its way to india, by what ever means.
6. the Malecon, havana. this street is know as havana's communal living room, and i would say with good reason. everyone takes an evening stroll down this street, stopping to smoke or make out half way down, sitting on the railing, before continuing...only to stop again a few moments later.
7.coffee bean, tverskaia, moscow, actually, it is not the watching so much as the listening in on other peoples conversations that makes this place such a good laugh.....just listen to them! (especially the woman!)
8 any cafe overlooking .the streets of phuket, watch the people, and then try to figure out the relationship behind THAT story. is he married back home? how old is he? how old is she? how many people are living off her earnings?
9. boulevard de sabana grande, caracas. same deal like szechenyi in pest: guys playing chess....but here there is alot more besides...
10 any rave-beach party on mykonos, greece. goa sucked by comparision. mykonos featured some of the most equisitedly beautiful and exotic people i have ever seen.....such a pity they were almost all GAY!!!
11. mall of america, minneapolis minnesota. this is the most stunning tribute to comercialism i have EVER seen. and watch the people. then guess what size they wear....

why do we people watch? of course this is a strange habit, but i think we all indulge in it to some degree. i dont know what exactly is the anthropological explanation for why we want to watch the lives of others. i have neer understood, for example, watching big brother (but then i dont have a tv) but i do admit that i sometimes watch other people in social settings. when i was young, at terminal 4, for example, i think it was out of sheer curiosity. there were so many different kinds of people from places i had barely heard of, and it was all quite thrilling. now, i think it is just about trying to understand. there are so many worlds out there, even within the boundaries of one city: how can we grasp it all? observation is the only tool.

london

i finished my chapter last night and sent it off to my supervisor. ok, i realise it is not FINISHED, but i reached the point where i had written what i had to say at leas for the moment, and now it can sit a bit before i go back to it and change things about again. so this morning, completely unaware that a major bomb had just been diffused by specialists in the very centre of the city, i decided to go for a walk.
i dont know london as well as i should given how much time i have been here. i know london, budapest and moscow much better. the fact that i spent 2 months unemployed in paris one summer helped, with nothing to do i walked all over the place. but here my life is about shuttling between the library and my job and i fear i dont see much of the city outside these two places. that is something i greatly regret though, and i dream of a time when deadlines arent on top of me and i can walk where and when i please. but today i felt that i had the right to do as i pleased, and so i headed for a stroll around mayfair, which according to the book i grabbed from work, is where the Queen buys her underwear (on Conduit street apparently) and where King Jefri, the sultan of Brunei's brother, has sex parties that feature up to 50 prostitutes. it is also a favourite haunt for wealthy russians. actually i would say the area is heavily russian and arab populated.....sort of like the area around les champs in paris. so i walked around the mansion blocks and the synagogue with the intention of getting to know the place better....but then i fear i got sidetracked by the 50% off sale going on selfidges, and it was there that my good intentions got sidetracked by my shopping demons....and into the place i went...
but my struggle to get to know london must continue, i am not yet satisfied with my ability to find things here!

more lists: cafes and bars

i have been yelled at via email for not writing enough lately. thing is, i have been a bit busy, but clearly that is no excuse, and i shall do my best to do better.
so while standing behind the till today at work, i started thinking of the best places where i like to hang out, and have a coffee or a glass of wine...and this is what i have come up with, but i suspect it is incomplete:
1> Freud, london. one of my favourite london hangout bars. they have really great cocktails. i sit on the stairs, no one else gets to sit there!
2.christophers martini bar, london. it is a bit ridiculous....but it is also near my job, and hence a regular pit stop.
3. szimpla/dupla, budapest: i have no idea how many nights of my life have been lost here, but more than i should be able to count. sadly, my other favourite budapest haunt, the goethe cafe, has now closed, and part of the building has been taken over by louis vuitton. it seems so wrong, goethe has the best tez cafe ever, and andrassy ut will never be the same again!
4.leopolds, mumbai. cmon, it is a classic. it has the best cheap food and drinks in the colaba, and the best atmosphere. if you dont believe me, read shantarum.
5.the bed, bangkok. this design of this place is wicked, adn the music is excellent as well.
6. random pit in prague. i cant remeber the name of the place where i spent so many evenings once upon a time in the mid 1990s. if was not far from the main square (and the national museum of rocks, as i called it) and it was undergrown in a wierd cave like construct. you had to climb up ladders to get into some of the rooms. i am sure it was an incredible fire hazard, which is probably why it is long gone, but it was truely spectacular.
7. plato, belgrade. no trip to serbia would be complete without spending hours gossiping with maysamba in plato....
8.the dome, mumbai. such an amazing view, and from the height of the top of the building, you cant smell the shit that fills the water below.
9. VIP room, paris. this place is also ridiculous, but for some reason it became a regular stop over place after work when i was working in paris. i cant even recall the number of times i missed that last metro because of the cocktails...
10. cafe delmas, paris. the location is perfect and they have outdoor heaters so you dont freeze in winter. excellent wine. and the food is good too. what i like about delmas is the odd variety of people: it is open all day and night and at any given time you can see everyone from pensioners to students sipping on coffee or munching a salad.
11. the eagle, cambridge. this place has the coolest ceiling ever, where american pilots carved stuff into the wood during the war. also something (DNA if i remember correctly) was discovered inside....definately my favourite cambridge spot, although the pickerel is a close second!

london

the weather in this place couldnt be worse. justin has tried to convince me that it actually doesnt rain much in england, but he is wrong: it rains all the bloody time. i cant remember the last day when it DIDNT rain, and the 5 days forcast only promises more of this misery. it is almost july and i cant wear any summer clothes yet, or if i try to i have to adapt them with various layers. my feet are cold all the time and i just want to curl up in bed with the cat...and this is summer?
the climate is most definately my biggest complaint about london, it would be a much more livable place other wise.
i need to finish my latest chapter, but it is going soooo slowly. i dont know why: i know what i need to say, but i am having trouble formulating it onto the paper somehow, it would almost be easier if the material i had were less, then i would not be bothered by the problems of selection. but in moscow i picted up tons of extra sources which are really useful, but sifting through them is incredibly time consuming....i just want it all to be over!!!

moscow

i wish all libraries were as user friendly as the good old lenin library. i walk in with a list of things i want copied, give them to a babushka, along with some money, and one hour later i pick up all the materials freshly copied and organised for me. then i pay someone else to have them all neatly bound so they can be easily transported. no one lectures me about copyright laws or copyright infringement, and i get what i want. (not that i plan to circulate the copies, they are for strictly personal use, and no doubt of interest only to me.....i just dont have time to sit and read them all on the spot, and therefore find it easier to get them copied so i can read them elsewhere)
when i am not in the library, i get taken shopping to see all the places that have opened up in the 8 months since i was last here. russians have a talent for spending money. at least some do. and the fact that there is now plenty of money in the city, and plenty of places to spend it, adds to this tendancy. some of my friends find it normal to spend 100 pounds on lunch. every day. and even more on dinner. these same people find it normal that reserving a table for a birthday part at a cool nightclub can cost 30,000 euros or more, not includding the food. overnight, everyone i know has acquired a blackberry and a personal driver who appears at all hours, even in the middle of the night. and some of these people have relatives working in other parts of the country with no hot water, hospitals, or normal roads.

moscow

since i left moscow, my old supervisor got appointed director of a huge institute within the academy of science. this is a pretty important position, maybe even the most important position in the country in our field.
i have to say this about him, he takes care of his people and former students. lots of people, when they get appointed to such a position start ignoring the people they once talked to. in london, a professor whose class i went to out of pure interest also recently got made director of the school i go to. last year, he was and friendly, now that he is the director, he doesnt answer emails and doesnt recognise me in the hall any more. i have become invisible to his power. no so with my russian supervisor. since being elected director (which is often a position for life!) he has done everything possible to promote me, giving me my first book contract within months of getting his position.
and so i was in moscow to talk about my book and to pick up some free copies. it felt kind of wierd. i arrived at the academy of science and was greeted, by name, by a man who said he would be my guide. this guide gave me a complete tour of the place. we went all oer the (enormous) building so i could see everything from the bar to the museum. then we went into the "directors office" where my supervisor was giving instructions to everyone via telephone and a squad of not-so-young women who run around doing his bidding.
his office was amazing, it was huge and powerful looking with a massive desk and a conference table. it also had massive windows overlooking all of moscow. right below the window, he had put a picture of istambul. when i asked why, he explained that he wanted to be able to come into his office everyday and look down on the second rome, and then out at the third and final.......ooookaaaayyy.....
i doubt that someone with such a position in england would find the time to talk to a lowly phd student. but my russian supervisor found the time to listen to my questions, feed my Academy of Science chocolat (they have started producing their OWN chocolat bars!!!) and give me good recommendations. when i asked him if he knew where i could find some old books, he pressed the magic button on his desk and a little old lady came rushing in the room. he then rattle off the name of the books, and copies appeared within minutes.
"how could you ever bear to leave such a country?" asked my father on the telephone.

tallinn

i know i have written this before, but i really love tallinn. it is the ultimate anti moscow, it is little, cute and clean. (and after 3 days, boring) i wouldnt want to live there, but i am delighted to go there a couple of times a year and see my friends.
and so i arrived and oliver met me at the airport. tallinn international airport is the only airport in the world i have been to where you can WALK easily from the centre of town to the airport. it takes just under 30 minutes.as it was a sunny and warm day, oliver and i decided to walk. as we approached the new town, i could see that even in the year since i was last here, things have changed enormously, again. Tallinn seems to be constantly advancing, far more so than ant ex-socialist state i have been in. it is also the most high tech place i have been, anywhere in the world. there is wifi EVERYWHERE, and everything from taxes to bus passes are done on line. no one uses money, only cards, in all the shops and markets. you can even use your national ID card to pay for your bus ticket, if you want to. it is far ahead of england now in terms of high tech infrastructure.
we walked through the shiny glass new town to oliver's house so i could see where he lived and meet his little brother, and from there we went to a cafe for drinks. oliver is now working as a journalist in estonia's major daily newspaper and thus he had tone sof opinions of the latest (and TOTALLY stupid) scandal with russia. ever since the statue of the soviet soldier was removed from a random garden to a military cemetary, russians have been up in arms. they get bussed in with tourist visas by nashi (a russian vaguely facist youth organisation) in order to stand in soviet uniforms in the now statue-less garden, where they claim to be serving as "living statues." the locals generally ignore them, and the russian media show up to take pictures...for whose benefit? the whole thing is absurd, butfor oliver it is good for business....such is life.

my lunch group

on the days i work, i spend every morning in the library before my shift. on my days off, i am in here until closing. sometimes i feel like i live in this building, but it is my decision. the problem is that if i stay at home, i get easily distracted by all my own stuff and i dont get so much done. here in the library i am forced to behave correctly (to sit up in my chair and not make any noise) and to work.
the whole process would be pretty intolerable if it were not for my lunch group. every day at about 2, i meet a group of friends and we go for lunch outside in the courtyard or on the terrace. there is a core group of four of us: me, dragana, zbig and uilleam, which gets at times supplemented by others. i spend the morning looking forward to 2, and i make all kinds of deals with myself (like 'i must have 1000 words by 2!'), which i tell myself will keep me going until the magic hour. part of my love of lunch is, i suspect, genetic. i love food and i can eat scary amounts of it. by 1:15, my stomach starts grumbling, sometimes so loudly that the people in seats nearby look at me funny, but i cant help it! but i also like the lunch group to relax brainlessly for an hour or so. joking mindlessly recharges my abused brain and enables me to reconcentrate when i go back into the reading rooms. well, provided i dont take advantage of the pimms bar that has recently emerged on the terrace....

wish list

every time i work on the travel floor of the bookshop, i find myself mentally planning my holidays for the next decade. i devise complicaed plans i will probably never have the money to carry out, certainly if i stay in academia.
but planning is half of the fun, and i have long shifts to kill. so i go through the books and make my hypothetical plans for the future.
i have dont this since i was a kid, actually. i remember when i was about 10 going through my father's atlas and looking at all the places i felt i had to go. i made a list of my top 100 hundred to-go places and ticked them off with a highlighted whenever i got to one. if i managed to tick one of my top ten off, it was always a great moment. i remember landing in moscow for the first time and excitedly pulling out my list to tick it off (for it had been in the top ten). mexico city was another such great moment.
but i still have many places yet to go. and here is my revised top ten list:
1. iguazu falls (i have been to some of the countries, like brazil, that meet here, but i want to see this specific point, even if i do get drenched)
2. seoul. i spent 3 years working with korean people. i have heard everything imaginable about korea, and i have tried endless plates of korean dishes. i have to go there and check it out wiht my own eyes.
3. pyongyang. for the reasons mentioned above, with the addition that friends of mine have been and come back with stories bizarre enough to intrigue me.
4. sydney. australia is the only continent i have never been to, unless you count antartica. i will get to both sooner or later!
5. beriut. i want to go there and eat. and eat. and eat.
6. cape town and nature beyond.
7. hong kong. for similar reasons that i want to go to beriut, with the addition of supposeldy good shopping as well. this one frustrated me. it has been on my top ten list since i drafted it for the first time nearly 20 years ago, and still i have failed to get there. it is about time!
8. machiu picchiu. i am not much of a nature person, but i have to see it. even if just once in my lifetime. i am too much of a history geek not to want to see the old inca lands.
9. polynesia (various parts). my mother spent part of her childhood in these parts and yet she never took me. NOT FAIR. i am protesting that i am being deprived of part of my inheritance.
10. dubai. i never would have put this on my list until i went to oman this past april. i never expected such amazing geography and such a different-but-not culture. i have become curious and i want to see more of the gulf!

so now i just have to find the time and money to get to all of these places. should anyone kindly feel like donating a few hundred quid to my travel fund, please do not hesitate.

the view from behind the till

working in one of london, which i suppose means one of england's, major book shops, i get to meet a lot of famous writers. they come in to sign their books and give talks. some of them are really nice and some of them are utterly vile.
so here is some advice: if any of you ever become a famous writer, be nice to your booksellers. we are the people who decide where your book goes in the shop!!!! this might not seem important, but it is: the british reading public is pretty stupid, they buy what is put face out, in the front of shop, at eye level. this might seem absurd, but it is true. i have conducted experiments. if you take a book that is just filed under ordinary fiction A-Z, and bring it to the front of the shop, and put it face out so every one can see the cover, the sales will instantly go up by about 4 times. if you put on some sticker that says "3 for 2" or "3£ off" the sales will go up by about 5 times, and if you put a sticker proclaiming it book of the week, you will sell several hundred copies for sure.
and booksellers are only human, so if you come in an behave like and idiot, why are we going to want to put your book in a prime place????? it is simple: if you are an average range writer, and an ass, we wont promote your book, and it just wont sell.there was an incredibly obnoixous writer who came in last week to sign her book (which as far as i could tell, was about the troubles of women getting aid.....let her speak for herself!) she was rude to the whole staff, and treated us like serfs. she signed the books, left, and we promptly removed them from the front of shop table, banishing them to the section from where they wll sell one copy a week, at best. the reverse is also true. today, a young writer named Mike Stocks came in to sign his books. he was very nice and polite (ie: he queued liked a normal human being instead of pushing to the front shrieking that everyone should know who he is). he chatted with me politely, he asked me if i was a student, and what i studied. he even gave me a free copy of the book, signed in my name. when he left i moved his books to the front of the table. they should sell a bit more from there. i wish him the best, and i will read his book. if it is decent i will recomend it the next time a customer says "uh, i need one more book from the 3for2 table, what do you suggest?"
sometimes the writers dont come to sign, but just to enquire on sales. this is more rare, but it does happen. Michel Holman does this alot. he never even says he is the writer, but i recognise him by now. he is polite enough, so i am happy to provide him with the information. often the guys wo are not writing best sellers are more tolerable than the super stars, but that is not always the case. i had a writer of an average selling first novel come in the other day with his "PA" and behave like a self important twat, whereas donna leon (a massively successful crime writer) was perfectly pleasant, so there doenst seem to be a direct correlation between fame and success. or maybe there is: the nicer you are to your booksellers, the more inclined we will be to promote you and the more successdul you will be!

the latest

me: what happened while i was gone?
dragana: a woman found a bug on her book in Humanities 1, and she stood up and started screaming.
me: anything else?
dragana: no

budapest

i love budapest. i often regret the day i had to leave this place and i am always nostalgic whenever i find myself back here. or even when, elsewhere in some other city, i find myself hearing hungarian or seeing images of buda.
the weekend was a bit hectic. there was a three day conference with over 65 guys from all around europe talking about different topics. i met a lot of really interesting people, some of whom i hope to run into later at future events. we had free breakfasts and lunches everyday and i took advantage of the moment to eat like a pig. then the last night, when we were all exhausted but happy, we went to szechenyi baths. it was great: 9 of us relaxing in hot thermal bath water as the sun went down, brainless and fun.
whenever i come back here, it is easy to slide back into my old buda routine, in particular as many of my friends never actually left it. and so yesterday i got up and trotted of to the university. met with one of my old professors and then settled in the library for a good 10 hours. but it was not an uninteruppted stint. periodically people would come by and ask to go for a chat....then i had lunch with gabor, kati, domogoj and ana, later a coffee with camelia, another with viktor, then vlado. finnally, the evening ended in a caffee with marci and masyamba..the weather was perfect and we sat outside, drinking nice hungarian wine.the perfect holiday...

the world is indeed small

i never forget peoples faces. the names go easily in and out of my head, but peoples faces stick there even when i dont want them to.
i welcomed in the new year 2003 at some odd party in zagreb. it was a dress up affair that involved spending a whole day on hair and make up. not really my thing, but i can put my self through such efforts from time to time. the party was fun. the weather was incredible, around 14 degrees, which seemed tropical after moscow. i hung around zagreb for a few days afterwards before heading off to budapest to hand in my applicaiton for ceu. (from there i caught an aeroflot flight back to moscow, arriving in the middle of the night, with the pilot informing us it was minus 30)
my friends zeljka and hrvoje helped me to zagreb train station as i was leaving. i stood in the doorway of the train and we made some jokes as we waited for the whistle to blow. next to us was a couple: a croatian boy and a hungarian girl who were saying lengthy goodbyes in english. i got on the train and ended up sitting next to the girl. we chatted a little bit, and it turned out she was a ceu student. she told me where to go to hand in my application and suggested a hotel where to spend the night. i took her up on the suggestion, turned in all the documents, and did not think about the train ride again, until yesterday when i found myself sitting at a dinner table next to this very same couple.
lovro and i ended up on the same panel at the conference i was attending. i thought he looked familiar but i couldnt think why. then after the conference we went for lunch with a group of others. his girlfriend dora came to join us, and it was then, when i saw the two of them that i remembered the couple from zagreb station 4.5 years ago. i asked them if they had spent new years in zagreb then....and then dora remembered me from the train. it was really odd.
the world is indeed small, frighteningly so

again, belgrade

it has been 5 years ow that masyamba and i have been coming together to this city, which i suppose makes it some sort of tradition.
we inevitably end up in the same places:plato, the book shops, narodna biblioteka etc..
and so we have spent the past several days, following a well established pattern of people and places.
i am always happy to be here (even if my stomach normally is not, to say nothing about my poor suffering liver) it is sort of like a mini moscow with better weather.
yesterday we woke up late, walked around various book shops, spent hours drinking coffee and then wine in various outdoor cafes, and enjoyed the sun. today we went to the institute of contemportary history (also a regular stop on out route) the the library....
sometimes it is good to have traditions....

updates

i havent written very much rescently. things have been hectic. i had been finishing my paper that i have to present at a conference in budapest.
which is actually where i am now. i spent some quality time at my least favourite london airport (luton) before getting a place this afternoon to buda. everytime i come here i realise just how much i miss the place. the year i spent here was the best of my life, and i still regret the day i left. maybe i always will.
but the travels dont stop here, at least not for now. in one hour masyamba and i are taking the night train to serbia, where we will arrive at an ungodly 6:30 am. provided the train is on time, which is unlikely.....when were serbian trains EVER on time?

on my readership

today was uneventful. it was a bank holiday in england, and i volunteered to work the full day, in order to get the double pay on offer. it proved to be a good idea, there were no big bosses around, and hardly any customers. so i stood behind the till and chatted with my collegues most of the time, and made about 125 pounds in the process. it is just a pity every day isnt like that!
then i cme home and happened to check my readership of this blog. for the first time ever, i found i had a reader on every continent, and in an odd variety of places. specifically: argentina, canada, australia, quatar, thailand, india, japan, kenya, morocco, russia, hungary, romania, serbia, portugal, france, germany and england.
ok, admitedly, i appear to have no fans in antartica, but i think that would just be too much to hope for.
thanks guys!

now i think i should get back to work...

mind, body, spirit

yesterday i was sent to cover the mind, body and spirit section of the shop. this is like the freak centre. i had worked there once befroe, several months ago, but in the meantime i had blocked from my mind just how strange the customers who go there are. this is the area where we stick all the strange books: self help, witchcraft, angels, talking to the dead, crystals, devil worship, and religion. within an hour of starting to shelve there, a man came in, sat down and started meditating in a corner. several witches were next, followed by a bag lady with snot running out of her nose. a freak show, in other words. but the real excitedment of the day came a few hours later when my boss came over and whispered we had a psycho slav in the art section. he asked me to go stand nearby and translate. i dont know if the guy was polish, ukrainian or russian, but i suspect ukrainian. he speach was slurred, which is what polish sounds like to me anyway. he kept repeating a litany of slavonic swear words, and screaming into space. sometimes he would fall on the ground, and make very odd faces. my boss called the police. the police came and used my testimony to arrest the guy ( it is asbosable to swear in public, but not to be just freaklike) and they took the guy away, presumably to test him to see what drugs he was on.
i was dissapointed the excitement was over, that meant i had to go back to m,b,s.

obituary

my computer died.
at one moment he simply stopped turning on. a black screen stared at me, responseless. i took him to the university computer centre, but they could do nothing. i took him to the brixton boys at work who pride themselves on being able to make ANYTHING jump start, but even they had no luck.
finnally, there was nothing left to do...other than buy a new one. sniff sniff
the past few weeks have sped by in a blur, with odd people popping into my life. guillermo came through london for a week, i hadnt seen him for ages. then thibault called last night to ask me for drinks: i havent seen the guy in two years, in what was a different life in a different country. then adam sent a text saying he is coming to london for the weekend, could i go for a drink?
everyone seems to be passing through london these day, definately not the time to be without a computer.