more lists

I have been an avid reader of what I shall call travel fiction for decades. I use the term “travel fiction” as a difficult compromise- much of travel literature is clearly exaggerated or even completely fictional, yet it is classified somehow as “truth.” Meanwhile, many books call themselves fiction, yet read largely like travel books. The ones I normally like the best are those that combine fiction with travel successfully. I remember the first such book that fell into my hands when I was about 9 or 10- The Drifters by James Michener. Hardly a work of great literature, but at the time it seemed quite revolutionary to me at the time and I stayed up with my torch under my blankets in bed to find out what happened next.Soon after, my father found a bunch of expired lonely planets at the local library, on sale for 25p each. He brought them home to me and I read them all, underlining my favourite parts- from the consumption of guinea pigs in equator to growing penis gourds in parts of the Pacific. I suppose it is not surprising that some decades later I choose to pursue a doctorate in travel literature. Yet I actually prefer travel fiction, as it generally takes itself less seriously, not being burdened by the label of “truth.”

So in a fit of office boredom, I decided to construct my list of best travel fiction works. Not all the works are of great literary merit (in terms of writing, the first two are in some ways mediocre) but I included them due to the overwhelming attraction I felt to the story, its characters, its setting and the fact that it made me want to run to my closet and grab my sack, stuff in some underwear and do a runner. What did surprise me when I looked over what I had written, I was surprised how much Anglo-Saxon stuff was there, which struck me as odd. I don’t normally like reading Anglo-Saxon literature, I don’t even like reading much in English! But clearly this is a genre at which the Anglo-Saxon world excels, just as they also dominate heavily in the supposedly “non-fiction” travelogue industry….the reasons as to why can be the topic of someone else’s phd….

Just as a note though: I didn’t include Kerouac’s On the Road, as I could never get into it….nor is Greene’s the Power and the Glory on the list, as embarrassingly I have yet to read it!

 

1. The Beach. Alex Garland’s backpacker classic. I have read it several times. It is pure pulp fiction, but I find it addicting!
2. Shantaram. Gregory David Roberts. Again, pulp fiction. I never got into the mystical/spiritual parts, and I certainly do think it is more fiction than truth (but who cares!) yet the descriptions of the Indian underworld are incredible. Funnily enough, I once found myself being put up in a small hotel just down the road from Leopold’s, the café where much of the action takes place. So, some mates and I walked over to the café for a drink, and who did we run into? Gregory David Roberts. He apparently still goes there regularly, and is treated like a Bollywood celebrity by the staff. He looks every bit the ex-Australia convict he claims to have been.
3. A Moveable Feast. The Great Hemingway, who claimed “if the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction.” Moving back some decades to the Paris in the 20s, I read this tale of the Lost Generation in school, and liked it so much I reread it in my free time. Probably the only time I genuinely liked something on the school curriculum.
4. Sheltering Sky. Paul Bowles. Twisted tale with some unforgettable characters. Odd echoes of it reappeared in Esther Freud’sHideous Kinky, which picks up on the same North Africa to the point of destruction theme.
5. In a Free State. V.S. Naipal. A gritty combination of foreignness, sex and sleaze.
6. Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip. A surreal work written by two Soviets during the Stalin era. Basically like Borat, circa 1935, these two oddballs drove across the US, observing capitalism up close.
7. Travesuras de la nina mala. Mario Vargas Llosa. The writer hits on every hot spot: Cuba in the early 60s, Paris’s left bank in the mid to late 60s, then moving on to protests in Trafalgar Square in the early 70s and glimpses of Tokyo’s weird business culture in the early 80s. all starting from Peru, naturally.
8. Tender is the Night. Fitzgerald. Although the Great Gatsby is the one that appears to have been classified as Fitzgerald’s great classic, I always preferred this one…
9. The Razor’s Edge. Somerset Maugham. I really don’t generally like American fiction. I normally avoid it deliberately. Yet three of my choices (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Maugham) all represent a slice of Americans camped out in France in the interwar period. It is amazing how a relatively small expat community could inspire and produce such as rich volume of literature!!!
10. The Berlin Diaries. Christopher Isherwood. A variation on the Americans in Paris, this one features an Englishman in gritty and decadent interwar Berlin…..my literature teacher caught me reading it when I was about 12 and felt it was not “appropriate reading material” for some one of my age, which obviously increased my interest levels dramatically.
11. Cuba and the Night. Pico Iyer combined with El Pintor de batallas by Perez Revelte. These two have a series of common themes (jaded war photographers as protagonists, lost love) although in mood they are quite different.
12. The Asiatics. Frederic Prokosch. Published in 1935, this is another classic of the genre I suppose....Camus called it the first “geographical novel,” as its nameless protagonist zips from Lebanon to China.
13. Out of Africa. Karen von Blixen-Finecke. Ok, again, some might classify this as biography, but I am going to include it anyway….von Blixen-Finecke must have been an amazing character though, I doubt she needed to stretch her imagination too far….

Ok I had intended to make a list of 10, but I have got carried away here and should stop, before the list takes on a life of its own and extends into the hundreds….there is so much out there! And it all makes me wonder, where to next?

old boy

 As films go, it is sadistic, gory, twisted and sick.It is like a Shakespearean tragedy in the epic scale of the characters’ personal destruction.It hits all the sicko themes, from incest to torture, as the audience is treated to teeth being extracted by pliers and unforgivable sex scenes. Yet somehow you have to watch to the end. It was directed by Park Chan-wook, one of Korea’s best directors, and he did a grotesquely beautiful job. Every gesture and musical rhythm is planned, so that there is a sort of sick artistic beauty even as someone blows his brains out in a lift. There is a scene in which the protagonist Oh Daesu fights his way through a line up of baseball bat wielding thugs that ends up resembling a baroque painting more than a modern film.The film is drastically different to the mange in almost all the details, including motivation of the antagonist, who is responsible for having locked up Oh Daesu for over a decade in a private jail. Yet the central themes are the same: the protagonists life is being manipulated and ultimately destroyed by another over a trivial childhood incident. Oh Daesu seeks to avenge his 15 year suffering, and yet it is too late, his life has already been manipulated out of his control and can never be reclaimed. I don’t think I have ever seen a film more twisted.

Время для паники ещё впереди

I dont know how it is possible that some people actually even imagine the race might be close. it the citizens of any other country were voting, I am sure Obama would be leading by 25 percentage points at the very least. Yet, instead, things could still go wither way. and lots of people here in Europe (and probably elsewhere) are still expecting the worst. After all, no one imagine that Bush could possibly win in 2000 (and to be sure he didnt technically) but he ended up in the White House none the less, and years of chaos have followed. A ridiculous war has pointlessly led to the loss of tens of thousands of civilian lives, sent the US spiraling into debt, and tarnished the country's already bad reputation abroad. the use of torture in jails which hold people apparently indefinitely without trial is both disgusting and uncivilized. the Bush years are now (thankfully) ending, with one of the idiot;s final acts being a 700 billion (and rising) bailout of the banks. the country is in recession, and may be heading for depression. Kids are being taken out of school, people cant pay their medical bills, and foreclosures are seeing people loosing their house across the country. Now, given such a situation, it seems hard to imagine that anyone could possibly imagine voting the Republican party back into office, Yet the US appears to be a country of extremes, in-which religious zealots actually get taken seriously and have political clout. Their judgement clouded by irrational forces, they seem capable of making wierd choices, even one involving Sarah Palin.

I stand with Puff Daddy (P Diddy, Diddy) on this one: Sarah Palin, she scare me! (youtube "diddy blog 24 Sarah Palin") And McCain is 72. So lets all hope Obama wins, otherwise my friends on the West side of the Bering Straights might wake up one morning to the sounds of Palin, as she rears her hear and decides to obey her God's will- AND INVADE CHUKHOTKA!!

So I saw Seu Jorge last night at the Roundhouse in Camden. The building had been refurbished apparently sometime last year, making it a far more presentable place than I remembered.
The concert had been meant to feature Afro-reggae, the 14 piece band from the favelas of Rio, as the opening group but legal battles over contracts, rights and money kept them back in Brazil, and Gilles Peterson took their place in the opening slot. I had been to Gilles Peterson shows before (EXIT festival) but I don’t think his music is well suited to a place like the Roundhouse. The music is chilled, acid jazz with (in this instance) some Brazilian infusions, and it would be ideal as a back drop in a chill room in a club, on in your living room towards the end of a party, but as the opening act in a large venue, it didn’t really go.
Seu Jorge came on at exactly 9, punctual to the minute, and started his set. In addition to all the expected hits (Tive Rizao. Carolina), he did two odd but interesting Bowie covers (Rebel, Rebel and Life on Mars) before launching into a crowd sing-a-long of Jorge Ben Jor’s Mas que Nada ~(think 2006 world cup FIFA song) which got people excited.
Pity it was so cold though, it made going out on the patio area a bit painful….

Confused

Interesting: The Georgian prime minister, who I feel like I have been chasing in conferences around Europe this past month, has stepped down. According to Saakashvili: "We made this decision together with Lado Gurgenidze, the decision that he will chair the new financial commission in charge of controlling the financial crisis and stabilizing the financial situation in Georgia." To be sure, he is an economist by training and used to run the Bank of Georgia- but why the sudden switch? Stepping in will be Grigol Mgaloblishvili, who was at the Georgian embassy in Turkey, and more recently the combined embassy of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to the opposition leader Kakha Kukava, “Nobody knows Grigol Mgaloblishvili in Georgian political circles. He is a dark horse. In reality, Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili implements the functions of the prime minister," Kukava speculated that if Saakashvili, keeps Merabishvili on his post, then everything will "remain as earlier."
The BBC reported Gurgenidze was "sacked," while Saakashvili insisted Gurgenidze had only ever intended to stay in power one year or so.
I am a bit confused, but then the piles on my desk are mounting concerning other areas, and I sense the focus is to turn elsewhere now.

the bubble burst

I find myself in yet another 5 star soulless business hotel at yet another financial/ banking conference. There appears to be a hard core group of 15 bankers on the permanent conference circuit, or the “rubber chicken circuit” as my father used to call it, after having been served a few too many rubbery platters in his day. But these same 15 guys (for they are all men) show up at every event, in every country. They recognise me now, and sometimes nod as I walk in. As I am often the only youngish female in attendance, I suppose I am rather noticeable! Over the past 4 months the tone in these conferences has changed rather dramatically. In June there was still the hope that Europe would escape the worst of the credit crunch, and that Russia would be unaffected completely. We all know now that this will not be the case- things are bad and they are set to get much worse. Reports suggest that several times over the past month, the British banking sector has come close to complete collapse. Iceland, once the model, has gone under completely. Russia has weather the crisis worse than most other emerging markets, yet even China has started to wobble this week. In short, things are bad, and the projected recovery dates are receding further into the horizon. The head of Credit Suisse estimated things would stabilise by the end of 2010, with recovery beginning in 2011. Ernst and Young’s recent report also has pushed recovery dates back to 2011. In a similar investment conference I attended in June, these same guys were talking about the end of 2009 as the date by which things would be back to normal. Today, one speaker claimed that possible half of all Russian banks will go over in the near future. Several Western ones are already gone.
And unemployment is rising. In Britain, it is anticipated that it will reach 2 million by this Christmas, and 3 million by next Christmas. So Europe has not escaped. No one has: even Canada, where the leaders saw clearly what was coming and took strict measures to protect their banks, is not safe. The banks might be in better shape, but Canadian industries are among the hardest hit, thanks to their economic ties with their southern neighbour.
I listen to the gloom and doom with half an ear, wondering what the free lunch will include. I like when they serve wine at lunch, it helps make the rest of the afternoon go more quickly, as I discretely snooze with my eyes open in the back….i have heard all the figures already, I know things are bad, and I can only feign attention for so long.

shoes

I am not good a polishing shoes. I never have been. I make a mess, not only of the shoe, but everything in a metre radius of it. So I find myself standing with my foot up on a box in cities around the world having some one else polish my shoes, when I get desperate. It often costs less than doing it myself anyway (so I tell myself). In some cities (Rio, Mumbai) the polishers are often young boys, who do their job diligently and with minimal communication. In other places, (Santiago de Chile) this job seems to be the domain of older men, who ask polite questions and seem astonished to have a woman's foot on their box. But today the polisher was neither young nor old, mid thirties I am guessing, and I quickly recognised a familiar rhythm to his speech. "Glasgow?" I asked, although I already knew the answer. I then told him some portion of me hailed from the same northern city. A long chat followed (I was wearing super grimy boots). The guy left Glasgow at 18 and had been working his way around the world ever since, cleaning shoes and doing other tasks along the way. He assured me that the rumours are true: there is no city on this planet without a Glaswegian population. He has cleaned fellow Glaswegians' shoes in Berlin, Sydney and San Francisco. Like me, many of these diaspora Glaswegians have foreign accents, but they all assured him of their origins. Glasgow has been exporting people for several centuries now, so I suppose this is hardly surprising, but it was interesting to note none the less.
He cleaned my shoes well. I tipped generously, and we both continued our day.

honesty

I am increasingly thinking that Georgians are making a point of defining themselves against Russians. Most telling example: the police in Georgia don’t take bribes!!! I had heard rumours of this great transformation back when I still lived in Moscow. An acquaintance of mine who regularly travelled to Tbilisi assured me that the president had fired two thirds of the police force and given huge raises to those who stayed, on the condition they clean up their act. Some in the beginning pushed their luck and ended up in jail, and the message soon got out to the rest. Today on the streets you see a fair number of police, but unlike the Russian militsia, they do not seem to regard foreigners as walking banks. They appear polite and law abiding. On the autobahn, I was stopped once by the traffic police. The officer apologised for the inconvenience, checked the driver’s license, then saluted and wished us a pleasant journey on to the airport. I was shocked, but the driver assured me it was all normal these days, and I was just too used to living in Russia, “they will need 300 years to catch up to us” he announced proudly. Next came the tales of the war in August, when the soldiers were apparently stealing everything they could get their hands on, from shoes to toilet bowls, which reminds me of the stories older Hungarians used to tell me in Budapest….apparently stealing toilet bowls has long been a Russian soldier trademark- of it has become a self perpetuating myth of Russian soldiers at least. How much of this is true is of course anyones guess, but it is interesting to see what is valued here, and that apparently includes honesty…..

sidenote

Georgian TV shows an interview with a group of Russian soldiers during the war.



Georgian Journalist: “who is the president of your country?”

Soldier: “putin of course”

Journalist: “Putin is your PRESIDENT?”

Soldier: “yeah. I think.”

Journalist: “Who is Dmitry Medvedev?”

Soldier: “I have heard of him…..some minister?”

Journalist: “do you know who our president is?”

Soldier: “no”

Journalist: “have you heard of Mikhail Saakashvili?”

Soldier: “On kto? Gruzin shto li?”



I am sure the Georgians had fun filming that one.

land

The natural setting of Bakuriani is stunning. I arrived around 7am. I was tired from the overnight flight and I must have dozed off at some point in the ride over from Tbilisi, because all I remember was that at some point I opened my eyes and saw we were on a dirt road surrounded by mountains on both sides. It was so dramatic that my tired eyes struggled to take it all in.

This place has a great possibility to be one of the best skit resorts in Europe, I have become convinced. This potential has not escaped the notice of the Georgian authorities, which has recently started to pump money into the region. Thus, Bakuriani is a place in transition. Part of it has the feel of a backward and decayed village- there are mud roads and poorly constructed wood houses, and babushki sitting on broken benches watching the world go by. Yet, at the same time, much of the village is under construction, as luxury ski resorts are being constructed all over the area. Our hotel is not one of the top top range, but it is nice nonetheless. There is a sauna, a swimming pool, a fitness room, a billiard room and a cinema inside. Every day we have our breakfast in a glassed in terrace overlooking the woods. No complaints from my side….

food

Georgian food was widely considered to be the best in the Soviet Union. When my father used to organise tours of the USSR for Westerners, he always made sure that Georgia was included as the last stop on the tour, so the foreigners would leave with the impression of the Soviet Union as a place with friendly people and excessive quantities of good food. Part of the reason there is so much here is that everything grows. Georgia has several climate zones (sea coast, valley, mountains) and good weather most of the year. Thus, I kept meeting people who insisted I try the fruit from their grandmother’s garden or the wine made by their father etc. there are so many livestock animals that you see them wandering all over the place in the countryside. As country’s go, Georgia could not be better off in terms of its ability to feed itself.

But eating in Georgia is a particular affair. I got invited to a Supra, which literally means tablecloth, but the meaning it carries is closer to “mass feast,” and the seemingly endless rituals that go with it. Everyone who lived in the ex-USSR knows that Georgians are famous for their toasts, poetic affairs that seem to last up to 30 minutes. But, during this trip I have become acquainted with some extra details of the toasting procedure I did not know of. For example, it is a grave insult to toast with beer- you do this only to your enemies. If you like a person, you must toast with wine or spirits, nothing else. If the gathering is big, then someone (normally the oldest and wisest man) is appointed Tamada, or toastmaster. The tamada is basically the table dictator. Only he is allowed to make the toasts (unless he specifically gives permission to someone else) and you are only allowed to drink right after he has said his toast (ie, you cant drink whenever you feel like it). If the occasion is really big, then there is a alaverdi, who is like a second back up tamada, who makes sure everyone at the end of the table heard every thing correctly. In order to survive the onslaught of wine and chacha, you must eat enough to coat your stomach. But this requires careful pacing as the food arrives in huge quantities from the beginning…but then it keeps coming! So you must pace yourself carefully to avoid overeating in the first round, as more dishes continue arriving and it is something of a sin not to try ALL of them…..

Georgia

A friendlier people I have never met, or at least not in Europe. Georgians are famous for their hospitality, and rightfully so. Guests are treated like monarchs here. In a ride out to Bakuriani, it somehow came out that I had never seen a pig or a chicken. This is now no longer the case. On my first day some guys escorted me to a farm so I could see both a pig and a chicken together. The pig was lying lazily in a pile of mud and the chickens were walking about aimlessly in circles making strange noises. I was given the chance to kill one, which I declined. The hospitality continued. Not just were our hosts over the top in their efforts, but it seemed the whole population was as well. I walked into a café and the next thing I knew I was sitting around a table having the receipt for Khachipuri explained to me in great detail by the owner. Any time I got lost wandering about, I just stopped people on the street who often insisted on escorting me all the way to my destination. I speak no Georgian, but I found that almost everyone spoke fluent Russian, and unlike in some places (like the Baltics states) people were quite happy to speak with me in Russian, and never once did anyone make a nasty comment. Actually, while the Russian government, and Putin in particular, in universally despised, I did not sense real hostility towards the Russian people, although there were often tones of condensation. The laws of hospitality seem to eliminate the potential of rudeness towards foreigners. Then, of course, there is the over the top Caucasus treatment of women. My bags, even my handbags, are carried at all times. Chairs are pulled out, drinks are poured, and every time I approach a door, all the men queue along side and nod politely as I pass first them all. It is a bit hard to get used to, but I know the intentions are good. And then there is the foooood….

vukovar

Between 18 and 21 November 1991, the town of Vukovar, in eastern Slavonia, close to the Serbian border, fell to the Serbian army, still calling itself the JNA. The low point of this battle came on the 20th when the Serbian army burst into Vukovar's hospital, and started a shooting spree. Those who werent killed at the time were interned and many killed later on at Ovčara (located 5 kilometers southeast of Vukovar). There their bodies were dumped in a mass grave. 200 bodies were exhumed in 1996, in a process which took over 40 days. DNA testing revealed the bodies belonged to teenagers, journalist, a French guy, and several elderly people, among others.
I went to Vukovar several times after the fighting ended. On my first trip, very few buildings had four walls intact, and the place was a ghost town. With my Greek friend Harry and some locals we wandered around the shells of buildings. Bojan, himself a Serb, claimed the Serbs who burst into the hospital that night were high on all sorts of drugs. Their pupils dilated the screamed hysterically and moved irrationally. They were jumpy and shot to kill at the slightest sound. Some were JNA, many more were paramilitaries, or teens who had been given guns and drugs and swept up in the act. It is believed 200 dies in the hospital alone.
The incident is well document and there are plenty of witnesses. Several of the leaders were indicted by the Hague tribunal in the years after the war, at the instigation of requests for the Croatian government. The Serbian government went after many of its own people: in 2004 the Prosecution for War Crimes found three of the JNA leaders guilty of murder and inhumane acts, killing 192 people, and sentenced them all to jail terms between 5 and 20 years. One who escaped all of this, however, was former Yugoslav defense minister Velko Kadijevic. Why? Because he had seen the light and relocated himself to Moscow in 2001. A few months ago, the Croatian started trying to close in on him, requesting his extradition (he was born in what is now Croatia, and the alleged crimes took place in what is now Croatia.) Medvedev responded by making him an automatic citizen through a presidential decree. Today the Russian prosecutor General's office announced officially that he is protected by Russian law and cannot be handed over.
Ok, Russia sees themselves as the defenders of Serbs, as we all know, but even the Serbian courts have concluded that this massacre took place. Kadijevic doesn't deny that either, he only denies "knowing about it at the time." I fail to see what Russia is exactly gaining by protecting such people. It is not the 1990s. These guys can receive a fair trial- in Serbia if anyone has doubts about the impartiality of the Hague tribunal. Jumping over endless laws and having the president personally grant Russian citizenship to prevent someone from facing justice is hardly the "rule of law" way to deal with such a man.

georgia on my mind

Ok I expected some sparks to fly when I announced that, well, I had been offered a free trip to Georgia.

And of course, working for a Russian company, I know to expect conspiracy theories to miraculously pop out of no where….but still I found the reaction overblown.

Yes, there was a big coincidence, I met the Georgian prime minister over some drinks and the very next day was invited to spend a week in a Georgian ski resort. i admit that looks suspicious. But (unlike my employers) I do not think that there is a plot to have me kidnapped, enslaved, locked in a harem, or made the personal toy of the government. I tried to explain that my friend had been there on the same programme and in the same circumstances…..but I also made the mistake of mentioning that certain friends very polish name….

So now it is official: there is an international Polish-Georgian conspiracy against the motherland!!!

'Have you written your will yet?' Asked my boss this morning as he came into the office…..no, I haven't, so if this blog mysteriously goes off the air in the next two weeks, will someone continuing feeding my furry companion? No reason why a cat should fall victim of international disputes!

the big adventure

I got a bike.

Specifically, a little, bright red, Brompton. My employers paid, to my great delight. Apparently this is a new fashion in London- buy your employees a bike and lower your taxes, and additionally claim you are helping the environment and fulfilling your corporate responsibility.

I also got an awesome military like helmut and I am now struggling to navigate londons streets from a new perspective. First, I am noticing certain things that I always managed to block out as a pedestrian, like the enormous quantities of one way streets all over this city! But it is quite fun to ride around the City in the morning watching everyone run off to their offices with their costa coffee mugs in their hands. You have to watch them carefully, cause they never look up at you.

I think I will need to shower 3 times a day from now on though…

perceptions

and so i found myself in a geneva 5 star hotel with a much of business leaders from all over europe, as well as certain political figures of note (again, wondering how i got there!) i was, as usual, the token female, a role i am increasingly getting used to.
the times are tense and tough, and talks quickly went political. as usual, they centred around Georgia.
let me state again, i am not writing here to judge the situation or to say who is right or wrong in it, what interests me far more is the war of perceptions. I have long been obsessed with the way in which the media can drive public opinion, and how it functions and gets manipulated.
but in this case, i would say the situation was a bit of a no-brainer. i have already written about the media war surrounding Georgia. but now i have been able to observe the players up close, making the whole thing even more painfully obvious.
i ran into the Georgian prime minister, Lado Gurgenidze, and two of his colleagues, over croissants in the morning. What a smooth operator! the sad thing is, images, perceptions and first impressions do count, and you could not help but be impressed by this guy. He has degree from the US, speaks absolutely fluent and colloquial English. his accent is less noticeable than mine. furthermore, it is not just the fluency that hits you, it is the high level of sophisticated vocabulary and turns of phrase. and he wears nice tailored suits, good cologne, and is polite and well mannered. In a clintonesque way, he poured me coffee with a charming smile, and asked me questions about my position, even though i more or less must represent the enemy in his eyes. i found myself assuring his aides that of course i love Georgia, its wine and its people- oh, and the cheese of course! hardly what a representative of the Russian media should be announcing in public i am sure. later he did a presentation. again, everything was ultra-slick, with flashing graphics and high definition flow charts.
now you could of dismissed this as a one off exception...but then later on a delegate from MONGOLIA showed up and made a similar impression. this guy had an Oxford degree, equally fluent language and manners, and another nice suit. after his 30 minute presentation, i think we were all indeed prepared to believe that the future of Mongolia is bright.

now compare this image to the Russia delegates: poorly spoken, vulgar and crude, with thick accents and grammatical horrors. the men wore ill fitting suits and shirts with odd patterns. the one woman with them had badly died red hair and a bright blue suit on. The Georgians made no accusations of excuses, speaking instead about investment, economic growth and market reforms, the Russian delegates shrieked about the whole world being against them (while the government in Moscow decided to shut the stock market several times this week!!!) and accused Georgia of all kinds of atrocities.
and in doing so, they looked like fools. the georgians didnt have to accuse them of anything, they were their own worst advocates. it was painful to watch. in a room full of decision makers, you could almost read everyone's mind, seeing them writing off enormous cheques to tbilisi.
out in the hallway, one of the Russian delgates pulled me aside "these fucking Georgians, they are like monkeys dressed up in suits, and everyone is listening to them!" he continued to rant on, pointing out (i am sure correctly) that all the Georgians there were ultimately the off spring of Soviet elites, who had been to the best schools prior to 1991. "We made them who they are, they would have been nothing without us!" he barked. yes, i concede, he might be correct. but does that matter now?

the thing is, i have come across loads of Georgians who are semi-educated and practically peasants, and i know many well educated and sophisticated Russians. so why does every event like this end up the same way? it is not by any means an accurate reflection of inherent reality, it is a problem of representation of that reality. it is not just that the Georgians and Mongolians spoke perfect English (although that helped) it is that they behaved and spoke in a way investors (Swiss, German, French, British) understand and want to hear. many of the investors were themselves Russian born, but came to the event representing international banks, and were cringing as much as i was to watch their homelands official representatives.

i dont believe that Russia is necessarily on a fundamentally different planet, or that Georgians are somehow closer to "us the West." I think that the current Georgian leadership has a brilliant PR team, and the Russian leadership does not. the question here is- why? Russia has no shortage of people who could present a brillant image of their rich country and civilisation. Yet, their leadership seems to go for the crude goons everytime. If these leaders didnt care about world opinion, that would be understandable, but the hysteria suggested they do indeed care- and a lot. so i dont get it- why dont they get a slick PR team, get some well spoken guys in nice clothes and stick them behind the podium with a fetching smile? if they did, i am sure the perceptions of the situation would reverse radically.

decay at the centre?

London and new york have been reeling all week from the trauma. First there was the shock of Merrill lynch and Lehman brothers, followed by shakes and take overs with AIG, HBOS and so on. 5,000 people in canary wharf were fired on Monday alone, including a guy I know. The Lehman brothers employees weren’t even paid their last months wages (at least not yet) and it looks like they wont be. The City has pulsated like one big ball of stress all week long, with anxiety visible in the faces of all. As I walk to work, or wander on my lunch break, I see the usually confident (ok, arrogant) guys in suits huddled over, talking intensely on their mobiles or in little packs of two. The crunch hasn’t yet changed their drinking habits. Maybe it has even made them drink more, as the pubs in Leadenhall market remain overflowing. Maybe they have decided to drink their last wages into oblivion?

Yet as the city shrieks and screams, I escape to the calm of Geneva.

Despite London supposedly being the worlds financial centre, it is a decaying mess by comparison to Switzerland’s third largest city. I am sure the panic is here to, put it is thus far more restrained, or at least less hysterical. That, and it is one of the cleanest and most efficient places on the planet.

outings

Over the past few weeks I have made more of an effort, consciously of by accidental convenience to get out and do more with the limited spare time I have.

Last week I headed to the Royal Albert Hall for the Proms. The New York Philharmonic was playing Tchaikovskii, which can never go wrong, really. For one thing, the building itself is great. The Hall was designed by Captain Francis Fowke and Major-General Henry Y.D. Scott and built by Lucas Brothers. The designers were heavily influenced by ancient amphitheatres, and it shows. The place looks vaguely like a Roman Coliseum, with a huge organ in the middle. The acoustics of the building are actually not the best, but the setting makes up for it. I sat at the top, and thus got an excellent overview of everyone else. Unfortunately I didn’t take opera glasses, I would have had the best people watching post in London if I had.

Then this week I headed to Southbank to catch a multimedia rendition of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. Ok, I admit I have never been a Virginia Woolf fan. I partly blame my secondary school teachers for this, having been forced to read A Room of One’s Own, which I detested, in the 10th class. i think my general dislike also stems from a great mistrust of anything that suggests feminism, to which I have a vague allergy.

Those hesitations aside, the production was technically very well done. The Waves is a saturated and self- aware work, which it has been argued, represents a high-modernist destruction and reconstruction of the concept of the novel. Presented as a play, it comes across as a radio serial form an earlier era more than a standard script. The monologues are typically Woolf, interior free associating monologues with complex vocabulary. The characters are caricatures of themselves, with each fulfilling his inevitable destiny, and the man around whom much of the action revolves, Percival, is left voiceless, uttering not a word of his own throughout the performance. The actors and choreography were amazing. Minute detail was paid to every sound and image, creating an acute impact on the senses. The timing was impeccable and the mis-en-scene incredibly striking, accurately reflecting the obsessions of the modernist mindset. Various microphones planted around the stage captured every little twitch and rustle, while cameras also projected onto a screen emotionally vivid images at well-chosen moments. Technically the play was perfect. I thank God I was not born a member of the English upper middle class at the turn of the century, as more emotionally repressed environment I could not imagine. Still don’t think I will ever be a major Virginia Woolf fan though, something about her writing just makes my skin crawl.

the nutters are everywhere!

Well i have spent the past month swamped by the russian media, but today i have to confess i got sidetracked.

ok, mccain himself is bad enough. his choice of running mate on first glance seemed worst. the announcement that her unmarried 17 year old is 5 months pregnant with the kid of a high school drop out was just entertaining: right wing americans are so preachy on family issues that is amused me to see their hypocrisy revealed so publicly.
but the video on display in the office today was just scary:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/02/palins-church-may-have-sh_n_123205.html

click on the video part, and you will discover that:

1, an oil pipeline through canada is gods will
2. the war in iraq was gods will

what next? can this get any more absurd?

part III (what next?)

There is now no end to the number of petitions streaming in every day. todays pronouncement goes:
"There is no alternative to the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh," said Bako Saakyan, president of the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. "The existing differences must be resolved through direct dialogue. Everyone should realize once and for all that independence has no alternative and cannot be a subject of speculation. Today we can proudly state that we have created a strong and capable army, a progressing country which complies with international standards and is one of the key factors ensuring stability in the region...Rest assured, this is only a matter of time," the NKR leader said.

incidently, today was the 17th anniversary of the NKR's self-declared independance. no one has recognized them yet, but clearly the dream is still alive, as the occasion was celebrated with much show in the republic's capital of Stepanakert.

in case you are unaware, this self proclaimed state is entirely surrounded by Azerbaijan, but its population of 138,000 (after a major exodus of azeris in the 1990s) is around 95% Armenian. However, the Karabakh Armenians speak a dialect of Armenian which is considerably different from that which is spoken in Armenia, making mutual comprehension at times difficult.

the Lonely planet has a book called Microstates. It is written in tongue and cheak and dedicates a page to all the unrecognised, self proclaimed states around the world. Some, like Cristiania, are well known. Others are not. i wonder if they all intend to petition the russian government for recognition? i think there were at least 80 or so in that book!

paris, yet again

strange how efficient the eurostar is in comparison to all other trains in Britain. The journey time from London to paris is now less than 2 hours and 15 minutes, and the ride is smooth, far more so than my little nightly commute home, and more so than 3 years ago, when I was a regular commuter on the paris-london line.
So it has now been three years since I moved away from france. I have more or less switched here to writing in English, and I think in English more as well. (not that everyone is impressed by this great transition, given how often I am asked what my native tongue is!!)
Paris is good for visiting, far better than it is for living. So Sunday, as the weather held, I wandered around the right bank, dragging my 2 friends from one old haunt to another. We had brunch at le fumoir, where yaelle and I used to spend endless slow Sunday afternoons back in 2004-2005. I always find it amazing how so much is closed on Sundays in france. When I worked there is always really annoyed me: I worked on Saturdays, so I always had to run around after work and stock up on things, knowing everything would be closed the next day.
I also find it amazing how little the city changes comparatively. Three years have passed since I lived here, and still all the bars and restaurants I used to frequent are still in place. The shops have the same names and some even the same menu. I still know where things are and where to get what I need/want. This is such a contrast to, for example, Moscow, where there is more change in 6 months than in a paris decade. I sometimes find the endless continuity reassuring though, and it certainly makes it easier to play the tour guide!
But despite the continuity, I am aware how quickly time passes: it has been 3 years since I lived in paris, 4 since Budapest, 5 since Moscow, 8 since st Petersburg, 9 since montreal….and 27 since the friend I am showing around and I first met in the play yard of a school, whose name I no longer remember.

part II

Well the last posting was quasi a joke. I couldn’t believe a representative of Somaliland would really write my office here to ask the Russian government for recognition of Somalilands independence. But several other mini states have been in touch since, with similar requests. Some get taken seriously, others don’t. this one did:

"Transdniestria has by no means been thrown overboard. I believe that we've still got everything ahead of us," Oleg Gudymo told X in connection with Russia's recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. "Fortunately, in Moldova the ruling elite has turned out to be much more intelligent than the Georgian one. Moldovan nationalism is not as terrible as Georgian nationalism. And President Vladimir Voronin is a wise politician and is unlike Saakashvili, who has gone crazy," Gudymo said. "I believe it is Moldova that should be the first to recognize us," he said. “If they want to live in peace with us they have no other option because they realize that we will never go back on our position," Gudymo said.

That combined with the statement issued today by Dmitry Rogozin that "We will ensure the safety of our citizens no matter where they live - among polar bears or in Africa or in the United States. Ensuring the safety and human dignity of Russian citizens is the constitutional duty of our leadership," Rogozin stressed.

This was said on the radio (Ekho Moskvy) in response to a question about the Russian community in Crimea. Draw your own conclusions!

dilemmas

When you work for the media, I guess you get used to dealing with lots of unexpected people and situations. i never would have guessed three months ago that I would have had some of the experiences I have recently. I have had breakfast with the Malaysian minister of tourism (lots of charts on the success of the Malaysia Truly Asia campaign) and I have one with the prime minister of Georgia coming up at the Ritz in Geneva in a few weeks. I have also met some powerful bankers, industrialist and government officials. But I still have yet to figure out how to deal with my increasingly odd correspondence. This morning I came in to find this email waiting for me. Honestly, my heart goes out to the people of Somaliland. Everyone I know who has been concurs that it is functioning as a separate entity and has been for years….but I am neither the UN nor the president of anything- what can I do? i am just a poor phd student!!!!

Dear Madam,

Kindly pass my greetings to H.E the Minister of Foreign Affairs

I understand the Russian Federation is in discussion to recognise Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This is welcome news to us people of the unrecognised republic of Somaliland as we share the predicament of these two peoples and the people of Transdniestra too. Your Excellcies we have been seeking recognition for 17 years. We have far more de facto and de jure claim to Statehood than Kosovo and all other countries of former Yugoslavia none of whom suffered anywhere near the oppression we in Somaliland suffered at the hands of Somalia. Your Excellency I challenge anyone to look into this in any detail and come to any different conclusions. We have secure borders, clear historical timeline of nationhood, elected national and local institutions, the rule of law, our own currency and passports; our own legal system and seperate judiciary yet we have been ignored and dissmissed by the Western nations for reasons beyond our comprehension. It appears they have one rule for the Balkans and the Caucuses and Russia and another for the rest of the World.

A recognition of Somaliland will show Russia is principled nation which values the self-determination and human dignity for all nations unlike the patronising West who are smothering our young nation to death with neglect and indifference. A recognition of Somaliland will also once more demonstrate Russia has its own independent global policy which is based not on self-interest like the West but on principle. It will win Russia an eternal little friend on the shores of the Red Sea. It will be the first African nation which Russian is taught in schools. Russian companies will be given a priority on investment. Putingrads and Medvdevgrads will adorn the deserts of Horn of Africa.The Port of Berbera which you built in the 70s will be open to Russian ships and navy. Most importantly you will show the West's poltical hypocrisy and double-standards when it comes to international affairs. And there is not one single negative poltical fallout for Russia from recognsiing a deserving little country. Even Somalia itself is happy for Somaliland to secede. Ask their ambassdor in Moscow.

Thank you,

X

music

it has been a bank holiday weekend here in england. one of those bank holidays i shall never understand the purpose of, but if am never one to object to....a day out of the office?
normal people would have written " a day off work" but actually i did go into work today, on the holiday, but it was my fun job, at the bookshop, and i only did a 4 hour shift, for which i will receive double pay, so no complaints there!
in the evenings, after all the counting up had been done in the back office of the shop, i went home to work on my very neglected thesis. it is sometimes hard to remember that i came to this country to do a phd. sometimes it seems that since i have been here, i have done everything except that. i often regret having ever started it, but i do want to finish, i have wasted to much time on it not to.
so i got home, changed into my domashnaia odezhda and tried to edit. but i realised something was missing! my Ethiopian music!
i have always had eclectic taste, but there are very few things i can productively work to. i cannot work at all though, without music or distraction of some sort. so for the past few months, i have turned on my Ethiopian tunes before even bothering to open word.
All the albums i have were made during the supposed golden age of ethiopian sound, a remarkably brief period between 1969 and 1975. but the stuff produced in those 6 short years was enough to fill albums of incredible variety. the influence of western jazz is strong, as are Armenian rhythms, apparently the result of the Arba Lijoch, a group of 40 Armenian orphans who escaped from the Armenian genocide in Turkey, and were then, randomly, adopted by Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. For some reason, the emperor concluded Armenians were unusually musical and paid for their ongoing musical training. Selassie didnt much like the decadent sounds that came out of his country in his last years, and tried to stop the musicians from performing live concerts. but that was nothing compared to the Derg, which executed and imprisoned tens of thousands of its opponents without trial, hitting the musical community hard. Those who were left were forced underground or into exile. one has to wonder what would have happened had the political situation gone another way?

entertainment

in the middle of my shift at the bookshop, james walked up to me and handed me a sheet of paper, reading

drab as a fool, aloof as a bard

a man, a plan, a canal: panama

I smirked at his pedantry and snarkily informed him I am generally more interested in content than form.

But then, this week, back in my cubicle, I started thinking in desperation and boredom:

Коростели летели, летели, ..., летели лет сорок

Socorram-me subi no onibus em Marrocos

I topi non avevano nipoti

Then I remember that when it comes to linguistic formalism, the hungarians always go over board:

Kis erek mentén, láp sík ölén odavan a bánya rabja: jaj, Baranyában a vadon élő Kis Pálnét nem keresik
such a strange tongue. no wonder the country produces so many scientists, if you can manage that, you can probably come up with anything.

i saw it coming, but i didnt

when i accepted a job "representing" the russian media in western europe, i went into it with my eyes open, i thought.
everyone knows Russia doesnt have a free media, and hasnt for many years now. my division focuses on financial/commodities reports, so i didnt think this would matter. in any case, i needed the money, badly.

what i didnt expect was what has happened over the past week: a war in georgia, allegedly over two sad strips of land, and a massive propaganda campaign. i didnt expect that every time CNN or SKY news called me i would be given a script to read from. i didnt expect that i would be required to lie publicly, to clients, to the western media, and to investors. and lie i have. i have read out statements from the ministry of foreign affairs with a straight face, knowing perfectly well they consist of fantastical misrepresentations of the truth, some have been absurd to the point of comical. and i have listened as my friends in Gori, in tbilisi, and in sukhami have called me and held their phones in the air so i could here the shots and the screaming. at least the phones lines stayed open.

but most of all, i have concluded russia is weak and putin as scared as ever. this has nothing to do with the war itself, the situation in south ossetia and abhazia is not what i am getting at here (although i have been to both regions and know them well, i have been trying to tell people about the potential for conflict in abhkazia for YEARS now). rather, what is the most telling from my perspective is the way in which the russian leadership fears the media. the way in which it is apparently worried enough about the reality to restrict access to it. if you read the western media in the early days of this conflict, you probably noted all the western news stories were coming from the georgian side. you could say this reflects western media biases, but that is bullshit. the problem is russia restricted access of western journalists and prevented them from representing the russian side of the story. at the start of the conflict, my company and one other (also russian) were the only ones allowed in, giving us complete control over the media....or rather giving the russian government complete control over the media, since they are, ultimately, our bosses. now part of this is the result of endemic corruption (ie we can pay to make sure we are the only ones allowed to cover a story) but it is also the result of fear. what were the russian authorities so scared western journalists would find? that the russian troops were poorly trained and dreadfully fed? we all know this already. i think instead it was because of a mania for controlling the news, in any form, whether it is necessary or not. even if a western journalist wanted to write of the heroic efforts of russia in the region, they probably still would have been restricted, since the authorities trust no one over whom they do not have total control and veto powers.

so the stories that emerged are slanted on the georgian side, and the media filled with endless images of poor elderly georgian pensioners with destroyed houses behind them. russia might have succeeded militarily, but it has lost the image war in the west, and it has only itself to blame for that.

money

so there is apparently a recession on. combined with that soaring fuel prices and 60 million seats slashed from airline schedueles. with the result that i just paid 1,200 pounds for a ticket which this time last year would have cost me 700. ouch.

her highness at rest

food

Ok I am the first to admit I am a pig. I like my food, I always have.

I like trying different tastes and exploring different cuisines. And, since I still preserve the manners of a broke student, I can never ever pass up the site of free food.

So, Friday was a slow day. My boss didn't show up, as he often doesn't on Fridays. And he thus forgot that he and another college were meant to be going to a meeting at canary wharf with a major investment bank. So I went in his place. I wasn't really looking forward to it, it wasn't in my territory, and these presentations are normally a bit stressful, so going to one last minute on a Friday afternoon was not my idea of a good time.

So we got to canary wharf and went to the bank. We were escorted into a large conference room, at which point our jaws dropped. There was a massive and beautiful wood table, filled with a mouth watering spread of delicacies. There was a cheese platter, an enormous fruit platter of pineapple, apricot, blackberries, strawberries kiwi and blueberries. There was a silver tray of biscuits neatly arranged in a display. Then there was another platter of savoury biscuits to go with the cheese selection….

We stared in awe for a moment, then negotiated….could we get away with a bite? Was this for us? Would anyone notice if we dug in? could we get away with sticking some of the grub in my purse for later? At least some wrapped chocolates?

We couldn't resists, we munched some berries, assuming they were little enough not to be notices. Then we decided we should finish ALL the blackberries, cause it would be obvious if there was only one or two left….one thing led to another and we were discreetly wolfing down gobs of expensive food. And we got away with it. Eventually the clients showed up. They didn't give a crap about the presentation, they were bored and looking to spend their Friday as painlessly as possible. One handed me a plate and invited me to dig in, which I did, again.

battle royale

The summer of 2004 was a dismal one. I spent most of it on my friends couch. I was unemployed and had just had my visa to live in hungary revoked, forcing me to leave the country and move to paris, where (I was told at the time) I should work while killing time over the course next year, waiting to be allowed to begin a doctorate in another country. Had all of this happened just a few months later, it would have been unnecessary, hungary would have been in the EU and I wouldn't have needed the visa anyway to stay on there.
But things happened the way they did and I ended up unemployed and in paris.
It was a bad summer, but it would have been a lot worse without the gloomily entertaining presence of Laurent.
Laurent actually was employed, he just barely ever bothered to show up at his workplace. He got away with this as apparently he was a genius in some aspect of computer engineering. Since periodically his company would fly him to 5 star hotels in odd places (gabon, chad) I guess he must indeed have been bright.
He was also depressive, yet amusing in an off beat way. He liked gory asian films where lots of people get killed. So the best parts of that summer were spent on the couch watching strange Japanese, Chinese and Korean murder films with Laurent. I eventually got a job and he followed some girl (kiki? Miki? Niki?) off to gabon, I haven't seen him since. But then this weekend I was doing some returns at the bookshop, when the barcodes on my clipboard sent me into the manga section, which I normally avoid due to the unpleasant body odour that tends to accompany the teenage boys to that part of the shop.
There, going through the mangas to find the right ISBNs, my eyes passed over a copy of Battle Royale, one of the first of the many gory asian flicks I watched with Laurent.
If you don't know it, battle royale is a gory Japanese modern-day lord of the flies. Japan has turned into a police state, known as the Republic of Greater East Asia. In this sick society, obsessed by reality TV, a show called The Programme has developed. Supposedly started as a military research project, The Program is a means of terrorising the population, of creating such paranoia as to make organised insurgency impossible. According to the rules, every year since 1947, fifty 3rd year junior high school (14-15 years old) classes are isolated, and the students required to fight to the death until one student remains. Their movements are restricted and monitored by metal collars around their necks which contain tracking and listening devices; if any student should attempt to escape The Program, or enter declared "danger zones", a bomb will be detonated in the collar, killing the wearer. If the students refuse to participate, they will all be killed simultaneously. As you might imagine, a brave protagonist steps forward to attempt to destroy the perverted and twisted system.
So, anyway, I bought the manga, took it home and started reading. The quality of the images astonishes me, and the story is so dark you cant help get pulled in. to my surprise (I am not normally a manga reader) I found myself this afternoon placing an order on amazon for the next ones in the series. I already know how it all ends, but I want to read/see it again for myself in print.

double life

It is more a triple life in reality, as I am supposed to be doing a phd. But that has been relegated to the side for the moment. Even I can only juggle so much.
So yesterday I left the office at the usual time, with the usual pleasantries of the "have a nice evening sort." But my evening directed me to my other job for the annual stock take.
I get called up for this every year. This is partly because I am one of the few who is willing. Most people complain endlessly that it is dull and inconvenient, but my view is pragmatic: free pizza, easy work and double pay. I don't see any reason to object! My entry from last year describes the routine: squads of around 40 indian guys come into the shop right after closing and start beeping the books. They spread throughout the place, and we follow with endless sheets of paper, checking up behind them. We work through the night, mainly underground (our lowest floor is Europe's largest underground trading area) wandering around the shelves like zombies, refuelling on bad pizza and nachos when necessary. This year, as the "experienced" member of staff I had to go through the safe and cash office as well, counting up every piece of paper that could resemble a voucher or certificate.
Every time they send me home in a taxi (which they have to do by contract after midnight) I wonder at how empty the streets are. The city whirls past and only the occasional drunk reveller is still on the street. and I know things will look very different a few hours later when I am heading back to the centre, to my other job, and it all begins again…..

out of office messages

1. I am currently out at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position. I may be a little moody so be prepared.



2. You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn't have received anything at all.



3. Sorry to have missed you, but I am at the doctor's having my brain removed so I can be promoted to our management team.



4. I will be unable to delete all the unread, worthless emails you send me until I return from vacation on 4/18. Please be patient, and your mail will be deleted in the order it was received.



5. Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged £115.99 for the first 10 words and £11.99 for each additional word in your message.



6. The e-mail server is unable to verify your server connection and is unable to deliver this message. Please restart your computer and try sending again. (The beauty of this is that when you return, you can see how many in-duh-viduals did this over and over.)



7. Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing system. You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks.



8. Hi, I'm thinking about what you've just sent me. Please wait by your PC for my response.



9. I've run away to join a different circus.

the gym

I have become a regular at the gym near, not out of a love for physical fitness, but rather out of boredom.
Going to the gym is one of the few socially acceptable reasons to spend lots of time out of the office. For some reason, if you say you are meeting a friend, or going shopping, this does not meet the criteria, and you can be accused of being lazy, or not pulling your weight. However, taking an hour and a half in the middle of the day to go work out is fine, in fact it is commended, it shows drive and energy, which is apparently mentally linked to ambition.
So, seeing this, I went off to the gym around the corner and asked what I have to do (and how much I have to pay) to become a member.
I was taken to a little room to have a "consultation" with a "personal fitness consultant," who turned out to be a nice south African guy about my age. I later realised that everyone who works in this particular gym is apparently from south Africa, oddly.
So the guy went through a list of pre-prescribed questions seeking to establish why I wanted to become a member: did I want to tone my body? Improve my sex life? Increase my strength? Endurance levels?
No, I replied. i am looking for an acceptable reason to escape the office
The guy looked at me like I was nuts. But I am sure I am not the only person in this position, I am probably just the first to admit to it. In the end, I took a sample 3 month membership to see if I like it.
I have been going at least 3 times a week since then. It is a bizarre experience. Given that the area I work in is overwhelmingly male, and that the few women in the area tend to be secretaries (and thus unlikely to be able to afford the ridiculous costs), I am often the only female in the place. Sometimes I get the whole changing room to myself, including the whirlpool and sauna area. On Fridays after using the equipment I go in their and just lay about, passing the time and splashing water on the wood.
The actually exercise area is a mirror of my office: filled with alfa males preening in front of the mirrors and each other. they totally ignore me, which is a relief. but i study them endlessly, it has become a sociological observation unit in my head. i feel like a fly on the wall observing a world i can barely comprehend.

the line of beauty

my sudden tour of the thatcher kingdom that is canary wharf, combined with the upcoming Booker of Booker award (celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Booker prize) led me to pick up a copy of Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty.
I had been aware of the book for some time. it was a regular sellar at the book shop as well as a staff favourite, but it was only now i managed to pick up a copy and read it. on the one hand, i regret that i waited so long to enjoy this masterpiece, but on the other hand, maybe it is better. I can appreciate it all the more now within my current setting here in the City.
Many people have labelled the book "gay fiction" or a "gay romance" but i find these labels absurd. yes the protagonist is gay.....and? sure, there are plenty of gay sex scenes, but i fail to see how this makes the book worth button holing in such a fashion. if it needs classification, i would put it as a brilliant social satire, or even a historical memory of Thatcher's London, in the same way that Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanieties is a brilliant documentary of Reagan's United States.
It begins in the summer of 1983 "the last summer of its kind there was ever to be." Young and impressionable Nick (an ultimately middle class boy) moves to london and stays with his friend's parents. the father is a palpably ambitious tory MP, determined to impress the Prime Minister (or The Lady as she is generally refered to). Nick is given a front row seat to the happenings and pretensions of the time.
And what a ruthless decade the 80s was....and a self satisfied one too, for some. with a keen eye for social nuance, Hollinghurst recreates this universe with almost scary accuracy. it is all there: the bankers and their coke addiction, the self important Tory MPs who declare "the 80s are going on forever" as 3.5 british citizens are without jobs and mines are closing all over the north, the Diana hair cuts, AIDS, and Every Breath You Take.
Nick is and is not part of this world, and in such a way is the perfect observor, close enough to comment accurately but still reflective. A PhD student at UCL, he is obsessed by aesthetic beauty which he pursues relentlessly amist a world of ultimately philistine Tories who seem to see art exclusively as a symbol or social advancement. Intrigued by Hogarth's Line of Beauty, he attempts to create an artistic world together with his millionaire Lebanese lover. So, yes there is a gay love story, but it is the personalities of the characters that intrigue me. I was just old enough to remember these times, and i recognise too well some of the types: the vulgar businessman turned millionaire by creating an empire, but still remains the crude entrepreneur, the disatisfied who are always lurking beneath the shiny surface. it reminds me of the parties i attended at the time: the posh tory parents who drank too much and disappeared to the bath room to cut lines with their platenum credit cards, leaving us (the kids) to lounge bored around the pool. i remember all to clearly the time my classmate (we were about 11 or 12) took the keys to his dad's Mercedes.....and drove it into a lake....he swam out through the window. the parents grounded him for 2 weeks, and bought another Mercedes.
a vulgar and excessive time.

canary wharf

aside from some hedge funds in the west end, london has two main business centres: the city and canary wharf.
i sucessfully avoided these areas until this past month when i took a job in the city. there was actually no real reason why i avoided the city before, it is just that i never had any real reason to go there. now every day i arrived in a metro car that resembles a game of sardines, and i am normally the only woman except for the occassional secretary.
since there is a lot of business between the two, it seems i shall also frequently be expected to go to canary wharf.

According to wikipedia (ever reliable source that it is!) Canary Wharf is built on the site of the old West India Docks on the Isle of Dogs. From 1802 to 1980, the area was one of the busiest docks in the world, with at one point 50,000 employed. According to the guy in a siut i found myself sitting accross from yesterday, it used to be completely cut off from london. The man was telling me that he had been raised in the docklands, back when it had functioned as a seperate entity with its own police force and restricted enterance. apparently, Canary Wharf itself takes its name from the sea trade with the Canary Islands, whose name comes from the dogs which the Spaniards found there (think in latin here), producing the terms Dog Islands and the Isle of Dogs.
but then the world economy changed, and the docks were useless and obsolete by the 1980s. so, the area is no longer a dock, but an english equivelent of paris's la defence, a wierd business complex partly cut off from the rest of the city, and so different architecturally that is appears more of a seperate entity entirely.
the place is a scary testament to thatcher and the 80s. The Big Bang deregulation of financial services in London radically changed the way merchant banks operated. Instead of the small, corridor and office based buildings occupied in the traditional square mile, like the building i am presently working in, the demand shifted to large floor-plate, open plan space which could be used as a trading floor. actually, i find these huge open plan creations horrid, i always feel i am being watched. but, that was the trend of the time and canary wharf is its lasting legacy. everything here is big and over sized. but i will admit there are some spectacular flats in this area. They all seem massive and well built, both unusual characteristics in london! they have large open spaces and huge windows overlooking the whole city. but i guess the downside is you have to spend all your time in canary wharf....

the job

this afternoon i found myself in a suit, standing in front of a room of businessmen making a presentation in the middle of a massive development in Canary Warf.
i was the only woman in the room, just as i am the only woman (aside from HR) in my company.
i spent nearly an hour going over a database which provides market analysis. i rattled on about the usefulness of the project in due dilligence.
afterwards i wandered over to the ontario tower in canada square and inspected the cocktail bar, already filled with tipsy men in suits, even though it was only lunch time.
and at a certain point, i wondered how the hell i ended up here.

milton keynes, take 2

those of you who have been reading this blog for years might remember an entry from several years back. it was my first weekend in the UK, and my good friend harry (who is not a fan of this country and spends as little time in it as possible, although he was in fact born in london) decided to horrify me. i think he wanted to pursuade me that i had made a grave error in relocating here, or maybe he just wanted to open my eyes fully to the reality of modern england.
in any case, he took me to milton keynes.
specifically, we went to the milton keynes leisure centre, which was probably as far from the world i was just leaving in paris as possible within the European continent.
milton keynes is one of the most culturally lacking places i have ever been (ok, it is not as bad and the MAll of Americas, but up there).
the whole place was strategically planned in the late 60s, and really took off under the dark days of thatcher when such planned communities were considered the way forward. the organisers planned the major road layout according to street hierarchy principles, using a grid pattern of approximately 1 km interval, rather than on the more conventional radialpattern found in older settlements. Major roads within the town run between communities, rather than through them: the major roads are known locally as grid roads and the spaces between them are known as grid squares. so, the place looks like a board game, with zero organic growth architecturally.
i wouldnt want to live here, but maybe i have something wrong with me. unemployment is practically non-existant, houses are larger and cheaper than in london, the birth rate is one of the highest in the country, and families are supposedly happy and intact (if you believe the locals, that is). for my views on the "leisure centre" see the early entry from September 2005.
regardless of what the place is or isnt, my recent evening spent there was truely lovely.
i dont get to see harry that often, so i have to take advantage of the opportunities i get, even if they happen to involve milton keynes. harry and his god mother picked me up at the station and took my to the god mothers house. there, harry and i had a long catching up chat in the back garden over tea while vivian prepared a delicious home cooked english meal. very rarely do you read praise of english cuisine in these pages, but this i assure you was delicious. very rarely do i ever get to have a home made meal in an actual home, including good company, a big dessert and endless cups of tea. the experience was so unusual it seemed strangely exotic.....

the new strong russia?

I got this letter circulated to me by an old friend. he wrote it, it is about his family. now i work for the state media, and a brief inquiry into our computer system revealed nothing has, and most likely nothing will, be published on this....most likely because it is not in the local government's interest. so much for the state of law in putin, um, medvedev's russia.



ДОРОГИЕ ДРУЗЬЯ!
Я И МОЯ СЕМЬЯ СТАЛИ ЖЕРТВАМИ БАНДИСТКОГО ПРОИЗВОЛА, НАПРАВЛЕННОГО НА ЗАХВАТ БИЗНЕСА МОЕГО ОТЦА В Г. ЭНГЕЛЬСЕ, САРАТОВСКОЙ ОБЛАСТИ, ЗА КОТОРЫМ СТОЯТ ОТДЕЛЬНЫЕ СОТРУДНИКИ МЕСТНЫХ ПРАВООХРАНИТЕЛЬНЫХ ОРГАНОВ И АДМИНИСТРАЦИИ Г. ЭНГЕЛЬСА, САРАТОВСКОЙ ОБЛАСТИ. 17 МАЯ 2008 В ЕГО СЛУЖЕБНЫЙ АВТОМОБИЛЬ БЫЛ ПОДБРОШЕН ПИСТОЛЕТ.
20 МАЯ 2008 ГОДА ЗВОНИЛИ С УГРОЗАМИ МОЕЙ МАТЕРИ.
18 ИЮНЯ 2008 ЕМУ В ОФИС ПОДБРОСИЛИ НАРКОТИКИ.

ПРЕСТУПНИКИ МОГУТ ПОЙТИ НА ФИЗИЧЕСКОЕ УСТРАНЕНИЕ ОТЦА ИЛИ КОГО-ТО ИЗ ЧЛЕНОВ НАШЕЙ СЕМЬИ.
ЕСЛИ МОЖЕТЕ СООБЩИТЕ ЭТУ ИНФОРМАЦИЮ ТЕМ ВАШИМ ЗНАКОМЫМ (ВОЗМОЖНО ЖУРНАЛИСТАМ) , КОТОРЫЕ МОГЛИ БЫ СВЯЗАТЬСЯ СО МНОЙ И СООБЩИТЬ О ДАННОЙ ИСТОРИИ ШИРОКОЙ ПУБЛИКЕ.

СПАСИБО ЗА ПОДДЕРЖУ
X

----------

DEAR FRIENDS!

I AND MY FAMILY HAVE BEEN ATTACKED BY A GANG OF CRIMINALS FROM ENGELS, SARATOV REGION.

CRIMINALS ARE TRYING TO TAKE OVER MY FATHER’S (NIKOLAY MOTSNYI) BUSINESS WITH THE USE OF CORRUPTED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS.

FIRST THEY PLANTED A GUN IN MY FATHER’S BUSINESS CAR ON 17 MAY 2008 AND HE WAS CHARGED WITH ILLEGAL POSSESSION OF FIREARMS.

CRIMINALS ORGANIZED A NEW ATTACK AND PLANTED DRUGS INTO THE OFFICE OF HIS COMPANY IN ENGELS, SARATOV REGION ON 18 JUNE (JUST 2 DAYS AFTER HE WAS CLEARED OFF THE PREVIOUS CHARGES).
MY MOTHER RECEIVED A PHONE CALL WITH A THREAT ON 20 MAY 2008.
THIS CRIMINAL ACTIVITY IS FULLY SUPPORTED BY SOME CORRUPTED MEMBERS OF LOCAL POLICE AND SOME OFFICIALS FROM ENGELS CITY ADMINISTRATION.
CRIMINALS ARE READY TO GO FURTHER AND MURDER MY FATHER OR ANYONE FROM OUR FAMILY.
IF YOU KNOW ANYONE WHO COULD CONTACT ME FOR MORE DETAILS AND TELL THIS STORY TO THE WIDER PUBLIC PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO HIM.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT

X

teaching and learning

I have loads of experience in teaching English as a foreign language. In such a way I supported myself through various parts of university, albeit in a minimal subsistence way. I taught English to spoiled Russians in Moscow mansions, French business men and a mix of 20 something students in Cambridge. I always knew I wasn't meant to be an English teacher, I fell into the profession completely by accident…..but it was a means to an end and I got away with it well enough for long enough that people were willing to overlook my lack of certificates and qualifications.
But then one day I hit a block and realised that I couldnt do it anymore, so I started selling books to fund the rest of my doctorate. Even as that job has now come to and end, I think I made the right choice at the time.
In my years of teaching though, I did become proficient in the various theories and trends circulating in that industry. I learned to keep my TTT (teacher talk time) to a minimum, and to do loads of pair work. I learned what a supervisor wanted to see when they opened the door to my classroom: loads of students sitting in pairs, looking happy and speaking the target language. After a few years I became confident enough to walk into classrooms smiling and knowing what I had to do. Funnily though, none of this prepared me to be on the other side of the desk, in the students place.
So yesterday, as I sat down in my first class at the Spanish embassy I was surprised to find that I felt slightly nervous.
The thing is, I had decided about a month ago that the time had come to sort out the muddle of languages in my brain. I speak (sort of) 6 languages. I have studied over 10. I have attended school in 5. I am often a bit lost. The right words don't always come out at the right time, I know what I mean, but not everyone else does. So I decided to do something about it. I trotted around embassies, checked out the prices, and found myself in an advanced Spanish class at the Cervantes institute. Our class is small, there are only 5 of us, plus the teacher, which my former TEFL self tells me is ideal. Interestingly, not one student is English: the other 4 are south African, Portuguese, polish and Australian. English people are famously disinclined to learn languages other than there own, which appears to be the explanation. The teacher seems good. I found myself analysing the exercises as we went along, knowing well which skill every activity was meant to hone. I think it will be an interesting 12 weeks…

work

my new job is boring beyond all belief.
i have had many ridiculous jobs in the past, i have given out flyers outside the paris metro. i have taught english to spoiled brats in moscow mansions. i have had to take overly intoxicated canadian students to hospital to have their stomachs pumped, and i have sold a lot of books. but i have never sat a desk and tried to imagine ways to look busy. my collegues dont seem to mind this. they spend hours chatting, drinking coffee and reading the sports news on the internet. but this utter lack of productivity drives me mad, especially as we are not allowed to do anything productive if it is not company based. so although i have loads of time, i cant get out my thesis and start working on it, that would be "of task," but i can sit for 2 hours and discuss the football, and that is alright. in fact, it is encouraged, as it apparently shows i am a team player!!! i spend hours staring at the clocks (all of which are now showing the right time around the world, as i went around changing them my first week). i read the guardian, the economist, pagina 12, grandma internacional and the bbc several times a day. if you have a blog, i have read it i assure you! you might wonder about my job. the thing is, i do it, easily. but it doesnt take 8.5 hours a day. with concentration and organisation, i can do everything in 4, condeming myself to another 4.5 hours of nothingness. my collegues tell me i work too hard, but i prefer hard work to boredom. surely there has to be some way to improve this situation? helllllllllpppppppp.......

poland

Poland it had been exactly a decade since I last stuck my feet in Poland, and nearly two decades had passed since my first fleeting visit to Warsaw. Needless to say, some things have changed. Warsaw today is much more than I expected it to be, and an era apart from the drab grey city I remembered from earlier encounters. The architecture has changed rapidly, especially in the business-oriented parts of the centre. There are sparkling new glass and steel structures that look impressive. Our own office is in one of these buildings, and has a large balcony overlooking the entire centre. Yet this new design is completely uneven, there are big new glass buildings next to old socialist ones, next to hand built kebab shops. The new centre is hectic and lacks planning, but I am assured it is improving every year. The old core has taken on the aura of central European kitch, but surely part of this is inevitable in an "old town" that was entirely rebuild in the 1950s, based on 19th century paintings of how it had supposedly looked prior to the Nazi occupation. Like parts of Cracow and vaci utca in Budapest (and all of Prague for that matter) the kitch does not entirely detract from the charm. The old square is cute with nice cafes to sit and have a drink in. and we do. The polish staff in our office there prove to be incredibly friendly and helpful. they nearly even kill us with their hospitality. after a huge breakfast at the hotel, and a brief meeting in the office, we headed for "the best sushi restaurant in Poland." It is indeed amazing how sushi has taken over the cities of eastern europe. it is a ubiqitous as mcdonalds now in moscow, and the trend has clear spread to poland too. the sushi was indeed good, and i enjoyed myself immensely. This culinary fun was followed by a city tour given to us by one of the guys in the office there, and included a stop by the best ponci (Spelling? like a buluchka, but a polish varient) bakery in warsaw, and then, with my stomach still full, a trip to the best mexican restaurant in poland for an early dinner. by the time my burrito arrived though, i barely had the energy to take a bite, as much as i love mexican food, even in its polish transcultured appearence!

football season

it is european football time again.
it is strange how i measure time by football, especially since i would not even describe myself as a major football fan. i played only a little bit as a kid, but i was never especially good. i have little interest in the clubs games, and i support rangers only nominally as my family has supported them for generations and it just seems the inborn logical club to back. but for some reason i do watch the international games. as they happen rarely and always in the summer, over the past 2 decades they have also become my way of counting time. i remember always exactly where i was and what i was doing during every world cup or european championship over the past 20 years. one of my earliest memories is of meeting the entire saudi world cup team in the airport, right after they had been knowcked out of the tournament. i was young and ran over and asked the guys to sign my diary (this was before blogs, clearly) they were all very kind, some even drew little pictures in the book.
the last european cup coincided with one of the roughest times of the past few years. I was back in buda, and had just learned that i would not be able to stay in the country for another year. i watched all the games with my friends at liszt ferenc ter, shouting at the screens in the open air cafes. there were always loads of us there, watching. marci and ferenc as our hungarians, marko and jelena in their croatian tshirts, oliver from estonia whose team wasnt even playing, and dogan and bilge from istambul. they were my friends, my circle, and i knew my whole world was about to come to an end. sure enough, we have never all been in the same room together since those days of football. the last game (portugal-greece) i watched in new exile in paris, on my friends couch. i called back to the buda guys, longing to be with them, and hating france for having been dumped there so randomly.
as this cup moves into the semi-finals i cant help but remember those dark days 4 years ago. the first match i watched in a dodgy bar in holloway, munching a veggie kebab (only in england could you buy such a thing!) with a pole, an azeri and a russian from latvia. part way through the game i looked around and realised that i have somehow managed to reconstruct my life here. it is not the same, but i have friends here none the less.
amazingly, dogan and bilge arrived just in time for the start of the tournament. i hadnt seen them since 2004, and it was a delight to see them again, just as the turkish team was advancing in a most surprising and unpredictable way. it is good to reunite, especially over football.

holland

i have actually spent quite a lot of time in this country over the years. added all up i am sure it would be a fairly substantial number of months. but i dont ever really "get" holland. being here feels normal, i know my way around the major cities, i know the food and I have a surrogate home to stay in. Yet i could never imagine living here. i think it is just far too clean, that is surely the big difference between here and england. holland is clean and orderly, and the people are friendly and polite, but (like in england) you never seem to really get to know them, they are somehow always a step removed, and distant.
my days here are always the same, they are spent chatting with people who have known me since birth, eating, and watching roland garros. For some strange twist of timing, i happen to always be here while the great competition is taking place, and as the people i stay with are major tennis fans, who always spend some time watching the matches, especially when Rafael Nadal is playing. Despite several years of exposure, I barely understand the complex scoring system and need it explain to me yet again, every year. i dont know exactly why i am so slow on this matter, but i have given up worrying about it.
then, after tennis, i go for a walk along the canals and marvel at the incredible planning that must go into building these houses on the narrowest of land bridges, and on mini islands separated from the road by draw bridges and moats. the gardens are pretty and immaculate. i appreciate them as an outsider who doesnt understand about such matters can, with learned understanding. i throw bread to the cute ducks on their water nest and observe their peculiar method of communication. the canal in the backyard is patrolled by an authoritarian goose who quickly informs me that i have stepped to close to the nest, and i am obliged to take a step backwards. the after saying hello to the cats, i go back inside to play wordoku.

gatwick

I have never liked Gatwick airport. I just don’t see how it could be convenient for anyone. It is far from the centre, and unlike Luton, has the pretension of being a real international airport. The shopping is rubbish, and the ticket to get there ridiculously overpriced. I have also always thought it smelled. And yet, despite my efforts to avoid the place, I still unfortunately end up from time to time cooling my heels in the building, watching the people stagger about, dazed from jet lag, discussing their trip that has just come to an end, or the one that is just about to begin. I yawn and wait for my plane. It boards from gate 1, and the waiting room must be 45 degrees, stuffed as it is with English louts waiting for the wild adventures they imagine they are off to, and no ventilation system. The flight must be 85 percent male, and almost exclusively between the ages of 20 and 30. Such are the folk would board flights to Amsterdam!!

close encounters

I saw him the moment he entered the shop, it was like a flashback to the 1990s: black leather jacket, black leather trousers, black sunglasses, shaved head, no neck and a HUGE Orthodox gold cross dangling around his middle. I took one look and fled to a remote corner of the fiction section. He apparently headed downstairs, but did not find what he was looking for and approached the guys at the till down there. Apparently, even when he was still several metres away, one colleague told the other to call me. Sure enough, the phone rang on my floor and the duty manager asked me to come down to speak “to a Russian.” But the fellow was not Russian, he was from Vukovar, one of the saddest places I have ever been. During the war, he had joined a certain well-known Serbian paramilitary group, he fought in the krajina for the land he imagined to be his, and he killed lots of people (which he explained to me by air gesturing the act of using a machine gun, complete with sound effects, while my astounded colleagues watched on, from a safe distance). After the war, he went into the foreign legion, and then ended up doing “security” in Moscow. Whatever that means. I am not sure at which point he became a nut case. I suppose some people are just born bonkers, but I doubt this guy was. Rather, events ran their course and took their toll over time. He claimed to have been born in 1975, making him 16 when the war started. I imagined him as a semi-educated provincial who was suddenly given a gun and cause, but never any real background to go with it.
He wanted books on what he pronounced as “brutsele” which after several attempts and gestures I eventually understood was a Serbian rendering of “Bruce Lee,” this guy’s proclaimed hero (after the certain ex-paramilitary leader).
What was weird is that he insists his former leader is still alive today and directing a legion group. He claimed to have seen him, since the time when his brains were allegedly splattered over the carpet of a Belgrade lobby. I found this incredible to believe…I would say impossible even, except that I have learned never to use that word when applied to certain parts of the planet. He showed me some other pictures though, and they were gruesome enough.
As he left the shop, the entire building seemed to give a sigh of relief, myself included. There are things from my past I think I would prefer forgetting, and association with guys with gold chains and tattoos of big cats is certainly up there.

eurovision and more

so russia finally won eurovision, after coming close for several years in a row and watching several neighbouring countries win.
i cnant say i am a huge eurovision fan, although i attended in 2003 (or was it 2002?) in Estonia. but i will be curious to see how the russian authorities manage to arrange such an event, since the recent chelsea- man u football match revealed certain drawbacks to hosting events in moscow: there are very few hotel rooms in general, and those that exist tend to be in luxury business hotels aimed at guys with expense accounts, not tourists. furthermore, russian hotels tend to dramatically raise prices when they know many foreigners will be in town. and then the visa issue....
i might even be about next year for moscows eurovision moment.
sadly, my time working in the bookshop is coming to an end, after over a year and a half of working with endless amounts of fiction, i am moving on. i will be very sad to leave my collegues, many of whom are very cool, and sad as well to leave the books...but economics has forced me to look for better paid ways to spend my time. on my return from south america i sent my CV around, and got offers from the Guardian and from the russian media. i am going with the latter, as it pays better. more on that soon.

books

I recently gave in my notice at the bookshop. It has been a great 1.5 years but I need more money to pay off my student debt, so I had to start looking elsewhere.
And was lucky enough to be offered a job working for a Russian news agency, so we shall see where that will lead me.
But I will really miss my collegues at the book shop, as well as the books. One of the great parts of the job has been the constant exposure to new fiction, and realising just how much stuff is out there. I recently read Travesuras de la nina mala by the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, whom I have always detested. But we got his most recent book in English in the shop, and it looked interesting, so I decided to try to get over my prejudice and read it. I tracked it down in Spanish in Buenos Aires, and then oddly got given a French copy in paris….and I confess that I was completely mesmerized from the start. It is, ultimately, a twisted love story….the dynamics of the two main characters are troubling and uncomfortable. You know early on that there will be no happy ending here. The female main character is a deracinated modern madame bovary, incapable of supporting the bourgeois life proposed to her by the only man who truly loves her. But it is not only the perverse characters that drew me in. the novel sweeps through the second half of the 20th century, from peru in the 50s to paris in its early 60s heyday, to London in the late 60s and 70s to Tokyo in the 80s and Madrid in 90s. conservatism, Sartre, post structuralism, anti Vietnam protests in Trafalgar square, AIDS, high tech globalization- it is literally all there too, but only ever as an intriguing background.
So having got so wrapped up in the work, I decided to give Vargas Llosa’s writing’s another go, thinking my earlier prejudice was perhaps the remains of a more activist youth…..but no. on an Iberia flight to Madrid recently, I picked up an article he wrote in El Pais on Argentina. And he is, as I always thought, a twat. The article made me annoyed. It trashes the current argentine intellectual scene with the ressentiment of someone with a serious complex. Vargas Llosa has always annoyed me for his very right wing views, intolerance, and his self satisfied views towards his position. A brief scanning of recent articles in le Monde and el Pais confirmed I still find him as annoying as 10 years ago when I was studying the latin American Boom.
And yet I loved his last book. My friend Cesare pointed out you don’t have to like a writer to like his work, and he gave the excellent example of celine, an excellent writer, yet an appalling anti- semite and human. At work, my collegue james pointed out that surely SOME right-wingers are capable of producing quality literature, and correctly noted the way in which the European left has long monopolized the field. It is an interesting question….but ultimately what I look for is good fiction, and Travesuras de la nina mala more than provided me with that, to Vargas Llosa’s full credit.

paris

Spring is pan-european family errand time. The timing (april-june) and destinations (paris, Brussels, various small Dutch towns) are always the same, as are the missions. But this predictability does not make for boring excursions, rather there is something pleasant in the annual ritual. And so, I find myself sitting with yaelle, waiting for solenne by the assemble nationale, her latest place of employment. it is a ritual, every time i am in paris we have a reunion, the three of us. we have been doing it for over a decade, how time flies!
and next stop: gibert jeune....