This might sound a tad corny but do you know where I am posting this right now? On a train bound for Tallinn from Tartu! Yes, despite the inadequacy of the railway network in the Baltics in general, this is the first train I've ridden on that has WiFi (or as Kristina, my Estonian friend, says: veefy). (Less remarkable, but a rare event no doubt: I'm on first class!) These E-stonians are amazing!
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Need to travel
RIGA - Had a crazy Boxing Day yesterday with some of the craziest strangers-slash-instant friends I've ever been since my student days in Madrid. At least I got a taste of how the Winter Camp in Riga might be in a couple of days. Apart from my lovely Latvian hosts, there were a couple of Brazilian students and an American photographer.
One of the Brazilians, an ethnic Japanese by the name of Shinji now studying in Stockholm, promised to send me a copy of the photo he took at the Cuba Bar. Anyway, looking up his site right now I found some wonderful words to live by, uttered by Amyr Klink, a Brazilian explorer famous for rowing solo across from Namibia to Brazil in 101 days in 1984. He embarked on an even bigger challenge five years later (described by his site as follows):
It is not a little humbling that this adventurer, of Lebanese and Swedish parentage and of not inconsiderable accomplishments, is not only a man of action but also a man of letters and numbers.
Reared at an early age on Brazilian poetry and French literature, Klink has not only penned books about his experiences but has a grounding in economics, with a masters in Management at the University of Mackenzie. He has collected old canoes since he was 10 years old and in the process, helped found the National Sea Museum (Museu Nacional do Mar) in São Francisco do Sul (Santa Catarina state).
Were we all as accomplished and at the same time modest.
One of the Brazilians, an ethnic Japanese by the name of Shinji now studying in Stockholm, promised to send me a copy of the photo he took at the Cuba Bar. Anyway, looking up his site right now I found some wonderful words to live by, uttered by Amyr Klink, a Brazilian explorer famous for rowing solo across from Namibia to Brazil in 101 days in 1984. He embarked on an even bigger challenge five years later (described by his site as follows):
Foi em dezembro de 1989, que teve início o Projeto de Invernagem Antártica, em Solitário, a bordo do veleiro polar "Paratii", quando percorreu 27 mil milhas da Antártica ao Ártico, em 642 dias. Os livros: "Paratii - Entre dois pólos" e "As janelas do Paratii" relatam e ilustram este projeto.Klink's quote (*which I later found on other sites in my travelers' society) was taken from his 1997 project "Antarctica 360" - a rigorous circumnavigation of the frozen continent. In his account called Mar sem Fim (Sea Without End), he spoke about man's need to stretch his legs and experience the world for himself. The original quote in Portuguese is:
Um homem precisa viajar. Por sua conta, não por meio de histórias, imagens, livros ou TV. Precisa viajar por si, com seus olhos e pés, para entender o que é seu. Para um dia plantar as suas árvores e dar-lhes valor. Conhecer o frio para desfrutar o calor. E o oposto. Sentir a distância e o desabrigo para estar bem sob o próprio teto. Um homem precisa viajar para lugares que não conhece para quebrar essa arrogância que nos faz ver o mundo como o imaginamos, e não simplesmente como é ou pode ser; que nos faz professores e doutores do que não vimos, quando deveríamos ser alunos, e simplesmente ir ver.
A man has to travel. On one's own, not through history, images, books or TV. One has to travel by himself, by his own eyes and feet, to understand what's his. To one day plant his own trees and give them worth. To know the cold to enjoy warmth. And vice versa. To feel distance and unshelteredness to feel good under one's own roof. A man has to travel to unknown places to rend the arrogance that makes us see the world as we imagine it and not simply how it is or could be; that make us teachers and doctors of what we haven't seen, when we should be students and simply go and see.
It is not a little humbling that this adventurer, of Lebanese and Swedish parentage and of not inconsiderable accomplishments, is not only a man of action but also a man of letters and numbers.
Reared at an early age on Brazilian poetry and French literature, Klink has not only penned books about his experiences but has a grounding in economics, with a masters in Management at the University of Mackenzie. He has collected old canoes since he was 10 years old and in the process, helped found the National Sea Museum (Museu Nacional do Mar) in São Francisco do Sul (Santa Catarina state).
Were we all as accomplished and at the same time modest.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Russian kerb-crawlers, foreign punters
There was this disconcerting article in Passport magazine, an English-language events guide here in Moscow. This magazine, which I found really refreshing for the original photos and obviously more than once toiled-over articles, for the most part was okay when long-time resident English playwright Jeremy Noble was still editor. He's been replaced since July by this contemptible excuse for an editor (and, I sometimes suspect, for a human being), half-literate English shyster John H. Now it is a mixed bag of varying quality.I've managed to remain aloof on the general question of the quality of magazines and publications but the combined idiocy of John H and the "howdy-do" publisher, John O, has lamentably gotten my gander up in the worst possible way. For example, John O's mug frequently appears in the photos and, unlike the previous editions, there are hardly any cultural reviews nowadays. In its place, the John 'n' John show presents readers the half-mad ravings of a certain American diplomat Linda Lippner (the alliterative Ls recall Lex Luthor's), whose write-ups wouldn't even pass Composition 101 in prep school. The final product ultimately depends on John H but he seems to have the uncanny ability to dodge responsibility to a truly perverse and sickening degree. As you can imagine, my Inessa and I go into paroxysms whenever we see the magazine hit the stands.
Prior to the latest December issue, a decision by John H to request and run an insane article on the supposed superior qualities of Russian women over Western ones based on the former's willingness to be objectified by Western men seems to have tripped up a hornet's nest. Indulgently titled "Google and the Dialectic of Russian Women Versus Western Women", the article takes off on its comparison of Western and Russian attitudes by using the most exact of empirical devices - "the unerring" search engine, Google. While covering his backside by making references to Google's "debatable" mathematical model of relevance to sort searches, the author Alec Maryanchik quickly reveals why no one should even bother reading his writing assignment from John H. (How can Google have both a "debatable" and "unerring" search system, pray tell?) He describes his inexplicable basis for using Google for the article by saying that the engine is "remarkable as a tool for overcoming writer's block – particularly when attempting to tackle a topic as delicate as the cultural divide between Russian and American women." Given a mindlessly controversial topic to explore, Maryanchik pleads guilty to writer's block and cutely reveals to the readers how he got around it. Emperor John and his Jester Alec's New Clothes!He goes on to say that, in contrast to Western feminists, who hardly qualify nowadays as objects of masculine devotion and romance, Russian women are granted "no role other than that of a romantic interest and a bride". He proceeds to commit thematical suicide by jumping from one conclusion and generalisation to the next without giving much bases for them: praising the beauty of the women, while saying it was all due to malnutrition and extreme focus on appearance; Russian life is ghastly while Moscow's is glamourous but only on the surface because, apart from being the Beverly Hills, Miami and New York of Russia, the capital really is essentially as tawdry to its inhabitants as Harlem's ghettoes are to New Yorkers'; while saying Moscow is far more commercial than the rest of the country, in the next breath he decries the demise of family values by saying the only ones who still practice and preach it are the old forgotten folks in Kemerovo in Eastern Siberia; the beauty of Russian women is really just skin deep, as evinced by their preference to perfumes over deodorants; and so on. Yadda-yadda.
With the false air of a sociological study, Maryanchik then devotes the rest of the article to trying to tease out the real reason for the reality gap between practicality and romance that explains how Russian women, essentially, get away with pulling the wool over the eyes of gullible Western men.
Precisely because Russian consumerism co-exists with patriarchate, practicality and romance are not in opposition here, as they are in the West. This is the Russian dialectic of what my expat American friend calls naive cynicism, or romantic practicality – which presents such a relief to the Western man in providing the welcome synthesis of seemingly irreconcilable concepts.Goodness, the depths of the man's ignorance are stunning and unfathomable. He goes on to explain that part of the reason for Russia's booming economy is because representatives of foreign investors or trading firms justify their frequent trips to Moscow by "generat[ing] excitement" for doing business here just for another roll in the hay. These poor excuses for men make other foreign blokes in general look very bad, indeed. If most Russian women can and should be defended as not being kerb-crawlers, it must also be said that not all foreign men are punters, either.
It is in this synthesis that a Russian prostitute, paid by the hour, can and often does, open her heart to a client – so that it is actually possible to have a meaningful and emotional preand post-coital conversation which does not stutter as money changes hands. Conversely, it is in this synthesis that a perfectly decent Russian girl from a good family can hint, on a second date, that her shoes are too thin for the coming winter – and will accept a new pair with no ambivalence clouding her sense of gratitude, underpinned by a sense of entitlement (you are the man, so make me warm). Prostitutes acting like soul mates and vice versa… Russian dialectic again – synthesizing the concept of sponsoring, which is so poorly understood in the West. While relying on a man for the living expenses (including the very basic needs that still remain after paying for the glamour bit), Russian women wear this dependence as gracefully as they wear impossibly high heels on a casual walk down the grocery store.
The ability and willingness of Moscow girls to go off to Ibiza for a week with a near-total stranger bespeaks the kind of zen-like state of inner liberation that can only thrive in the absence of opportunity. Likewise, their hedonism is not of the synthetic intellectual nature – but rather of the raw primeval kind that is virtually extinct in most civilized places these days, vanishing under the onslaught of morality and responsibility.
It is this synthesis of romantic carefree naivety and almost cynical practicality which gives Russian women the ability to bestow a particular brand of warmth, coquetry, and defenseless charm of vulnerability upon rich foreign men – while milking them for gifts and money quite unabashedly and consciously. And – judging by Google at least – everybody wins.
As expected, this two-page article was met with a storm of protest, and not only from women. In fact an excellent piece by Robert Bridge appeared in The Moscow News (a fluffy excuse for a newspaper that is still loads better than the execrable Exile as a regular Moscow publication) a couple of weeks ago with the title "Dude, Where's My Passport?".The more I subject myself to the increasing number of English-language publications available in Moscow, the more it seems the majority of us foreigners only know Russians from four major sources: (1) a car window (2) night/strip clubs (3) their fellow expats (4) a western publication.You wonder really if these people at Passport magazine knew what they're doing. They don't seem to be guided by a particular philosophy or even editorial line. It's pretty much hodge-podge from the way it looks here.
Furthermore, I would venture to guess that 70% of expatriates in Russia are fortified inside gated communities, embassy compounds or expensive apartments that isolate them from average Russian citizens, not to mention Russian life, while most of their friends are fellow expats with similar views.
Personally, I find this troubling because many of us adventurous expats will return home one day and share our tainted "Russian experiences" with friends and family. Unfortunately, these canned views will not differ much from what one can read in The New York Times, for example.
Or worse, they may articulate their jaded opinions in an article like the one I found in Passport magazine this month ("Google and the Dialectic of Russian Women versus Western Women").
Author "Alec Maryanchik" opens his piece by making a comparison of Google searches between American women and Russian women. The "American women" search is top heavy with dull titles involving politics, suffrage and history, thus providing an unattractive image of college girls "hunching under backpacks filled with texts on sexual harassment" fighting patriarchy. Agreeably, not the most accurate account of western women, but at least they walk away from this contest with their dignity - and much else - intact.
The bulk of the article is dedicated to America's Russian sisters, where the top five results of his Google search produced topics associated with Russian brides, wives, dates and more than one seductive photo; in other words, more ugly generalizations.
While nobody would deny that Russian women have become hot export items for men around the world, it is the conclusions the Passport writer draws from this fact that demand comment.
Maryanchik clings to stereotypes so repulsive that I fear his only acquaintances among Russian women are those who spend their nights swinging around brass poles in smoky clubs. Indeed, the only time he seems to really know his subject is when he speaks about prostitutes and how "it is actually possible to have a meaningful and emotional pre- and post-coital conversation which does not stutter as money changes hand." Then there is a story straight out of Dickens' Bleak House about the poor Russian girl who hints on a second date that "her shoes are too thin for the coming winter." Mr. Maryanchik, you would make a fine fiction writer.
My 10-year Moscow experience (including many trips to the provinces), while nothing out of the ordinary, has yet to provide a single instance that could support this wild hypothesis on Russian females. In fact, I believe it is impossible to truly know Russian females without being struck by several powerful impressions. First, the majority are highly educated and driven to succeed, and, like smart women anywhere, have no intention of pinning their future on the whims of a man. In the workplace, they are professionals bordering on perfectionists. It has been my experience that Russian women are simply too well-educated, too well-read, too damn classy to accept a ride-for-free pass through life, yet the Passport writer (who I doubt even owns a passport) believes manipulation to be their essential quality. Maryanchik argues, wrongly, that it is the Russian women's "dependence" and "defenseless charm of vulnerability" mixed with a "thin veneer of glamour" that makes them so appealing to search engines. I would argue that it is exactly the opposite of these traits that make them so.
Of course, there are many shortcomings when generalizing a particular subject through a Google search. When I googled "Passport+Moscow," for example, this monthly glossy did not appear until the fourth page. Maryanchik is certainly welcome to argue that result.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Kafka-esque situations in Kyiv
I'm too busy to blog nowadays, so let me just quote a funny column by one of my favourite writers at Kyiv Post, Paul Miazga. It was just put online at 21:45 tonight. The point here is that such situations are not uncommon in Moscow or other Russian cities (although I must say, St Petersburg has a great deal more sophistication in dealing with foreigners; they live and breathe tourists, after all.)
Here is the column in its entirety.
I guess there's very little else to do than laugh at it. That's what people have learned to do both here in Moscow as in Kyiv.
Here is the column in its entirety.
As the old saying goes, if you get good service, you’ll tell 10 people. If you get bad service, you'll tell 100.I swear, just replace Kyiv with Moscow, I'm sure I've been in this situation. Typically the person who answers would be a young employee or a newbie (whether guy or girl) and the person who comes on would be the supervisor.
Despite my reputation for being a real whiner about various service-related issues in Kyiv, I feel compelled to return to this topic due to a series of what can only be described as Kafka-esque situations in Kyiv of late.
Situation #1: The Call
In my work at the Post I'm often calling various bars and restaurants to find out if they serve this item or the next and what the cost of the item is, or, if a sports bar, who's playing and when. Invariably, with few exceptions – despite my often calling so-called English-speaking bars, restaurants and the like – this is what I get:
“Hello. Do you speak English? Yes? Great. I'd like to know if you serve cheesecake."
Thank you. You would like to make a reservation?”
“No, I don't want to make a reservation. I want to know if you serve American cheesecake.”
“I’m sorry. I don't understand. You want to see our menu?
“Cheesecake – is it on the menu? Do you serve it?”
“Just a moment, please.”
New voice comes on. “Hello. Would you like to reserve a table?”
“No! I just want to know if you serve American cheesecake. U vas amerikansky syrny tort yest?”
Rustling sounds, then the first voice comes back on. “You want to reserve a table?”
At this point, I hang up. Everyone in the office stares at my face, which has turned from pink to red to purple. One staff writer asks me where I’m calling, and as it turns out she used to work at said restaurant. She tells me they do have cheesecake.
This is typically how information in English is gathered in Kyiv.
Situation #2: The Refund
This is the kind of stuff that the Slavic student comedy troupe KVN gets so much mileage out of: pathetic customer service.
Want your money back from that cellophane-wrapped, State Customs Service-approved DVD you bought from that big electronics store downtown? Try this on for size:
“Hi. I just bought this DVD in your shop and, though it says it's in English, I just played it at home and it's not. Here's the receipt. I'd like to have my money back.”
“But it should work. It says on the box it's in English.”
“Yes, but I just tried it at home and it's not; it's in Russian. Here's the receipt. Can I just have my money back?"
“But it says it's in English. Look: it says right here on the box, ‘English version 5.1.’”
“I just told you it doesn’t work. Is there somewhere you can play it in your store, so you can see that it's not in English?”
“No, we don't. It says right on the box....”
At this point, hair is normally pulled out at the roots, or it at least withers to gray. Twenty minutes tick away until finally, after a more senior manager appears, the money is refunded.
Things have improved over the years in terms of customer service, but there's still a long way to go, I'm afraid. But at least Ukrainians can laugh at this.
I guess there's very little else to do than laugh at it. That's what people have learned to do both here in Moscow as in Kyiv.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé
It's that time of the year again, when vinotecas take advantage of this marketing phenomenon known as the Beaujolais Nouveau. The release of this wine, which provides an opportunity to sample the first fruits of the year's harvest of grapes in autumn and the start of their manufacture into vintage wine, has been commercialised into a grand event in the last decade or so.
I remember how, in Japan, the arrival of the year's Beaujolais Nouveau, would be greeted with so much fanfare and marketing glitz. When I was still a student at Kandaiji dorm, the kombini (or produkty in Russian terms) -wait, I guess it was more a Mom-and-Pop's type of business- stocked up on the flowery-labeled Georges Duboeuf wines for sale late in the year. A good number of utterly bourgeois Japanese fell hook, line and sinker for this commercial tactic and bought this new wine by the crates. I kid you not. The frenzy was such -and this, I also remember more keenly from the Seijo Ishii, Tokyu and Coop supermarkets I frequented near my Ichigao station- the release of the wine was celebrated in the same fashion as one would anticipate St Valentine's Day or Halloween. This account is illustrative:
I never really understood the phenomenon. Well, it turns out that people have caught on and are no longer buying crates and cases of the wine as they used to.
William Campbell of Japan Times says that sales had gone down following a disastrous sales campaign in 2004. "By 2002, the supply-demand imbalance in Beaujolais had become so bad that the EU was forced to buy back more than 10 million liters of unsold wine, which ended up being converted into everything from wine vinegar to industrial ethanol," he said in an article published on 11 November 2005. The United States dropped off as the principal market, to be replaced by Japan.
So now the Beaujolais PR machine has "been looking to the unexplored markets of Asia and Eastern Europe to sop up excess supply", Campbell says.
I remember how, in Japan, the arrival of the year's Beaujolais Nouveau, would be greeted with so much fanfare and marketing glitz. When I was still a student at Kandaiji dorm, the kombini (or produkty in Russian terms) -wait, I guess it was more a Mom-and-Pop's type of business- stocked up on the flowery-labeled Georges Duboeuf wines for sale late in the year. A good number of utterly bourgeois Japanese fell hook, line and sinker for this commercial tactic and bought this new wine by the crates. I kid you not. The frenzy was such -and this, I also remember more keenly from the Seijo Ishii, Tokyu and Coop supermarkets I frequented near my Ichigao station- the release of the wine was celebrated in the same fashion as one would anticipate St Valentine's Day or Halloween. This account is illustrative:Unbeknownst to many, Beaujolais actually has a long history of producing top-flight wines. Although it is politically classified as part of Burgundy, geologically the Beaujolais region is really part of the Northern Rhone, as both share the same unique granite soils. The Gamay grape -- despite its lack of success elsewhere -- has thrived in Beaujolais for centuries, and during this time various sub-regions have been discovered that consistently produce the best grapes.For a good while, the going was really good for the producers. In fact, there was even a much anticipated Beaujolais Nouveau Day, the first day that the eponymous wine goes officially on sale. Annually, this is the third Thursday in November - a week before Thanksgiving Day for Americans. Its release, in belaboured mimicry of New Year's Day, is announced, banners fluttering, with much fanfare: "Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé!" (The New Beaujolais has arrived!). Pushing the envelope, a pop song "Beaujolais Day" was even written by Scottish pop rock artist Fish for his would-be fifth album with Marillion to make sure everyone in France, from Burgundy to Paris, got the message. Into Wine calls it one of the "most frivolous and animated rituals in the wine world".
Of the approximately 22,000 hectares under vine, roughly half are classified as simple "Beaujolais," and a quarter as the somewhat better "Beaujolais-Village." The remaining 25 percent of the vineyards are divided into 10 smaller appellations, or "Crus," which have proven to be the region's exceptional growing sites (the two most well-known are Morgon and Moulin-a-Vent, both of which make age-worthy wines that are certainly worth seeking out).
The double-edged sword for Beaujolais, however, has been the Nouveau "phenomenon."
In the Middle Ages, wine rarely made it through the spring without turning to vinegar, so by the time fall arrived, there was quite a bit of thirst built up for the next vintage. Noticing that the Gamay grape produced a wine that could be drunk only a few weeks after harvest, enterprising bistro owners in nearby Lyon used to ship barrels of young Beaujolais, some still fermenting, via a train of oxcarts each fall.
Having aged only a few weeks, the young wine certainly wasn't complex and was often still "gassy" (from the dissolved carbon dioxide from fermentation that hadn't yet had time to come out of solution), but it was refreshing, alcoholic and a welcome harbinger of fall.
Paris merchants tried similar promotions with young local wines, but only the soft Gamay grape from Beaujolais could be drunk in such a short cradle-to-goblet cycle (just try to imagine a Bordeaux Nouveau . . .), so the trains of oxcarts soon stretched all the way from Beaujolais to the capital.
As distribution by barrel became less common in the postwar years, the wine no longer had the luxury of finishing fermentation while still on the back of the truck. To avoid exploding bottles, it had to be degassed, filtered and chemically stabilized -- all within a few weeks of harvest. Yet despite this brutal treatment, people still enjoyed this new wine from Beaujolais, aka "Beaujolais Nouveau."
With the diffusion of French expatriates around the world, and the return of misty-eyed tourists with fond memories of quaffing just-harvested wine, the tradition of drinking Beaujolais Nouveau began to spread outside of France.
I never really understood the phenomenon. Well, it turns out that people have caught on and are no longer buying crates and cases of the wine as they used to.
William Campbell of Japan Times says that sales had gone down following a disastrous sales campaign in 2004. "By 2002, the supply-demand imbalance in Beaujolais had become so bad that the EU was forced to buy back more than 10 million liters of unsold wine, which ended up being converted into everything from wine vinegar to industrial ethanol," he said in an article published on 11 November 2005. The United States dropped off as the principal market, to be replaced by Japan.
So now the Beaujolais PR machine has "been looking to the unexplored markets of Asia and Eastern Europe to sop up excess supply", Campbell says.
Japan has been a dream come true, with Beaujolais imports reaching a whopping 717,000 cases in 2003, up from a mere 66,000 cases in the mid-'90s. 2003 was widely, and wildly, touted as the "vintage of the century" in France, and the buzz helped the '03 Beaujolais Nouveau to sell out in Japan in just a few days.It would be interesting to know how much longer would Japanese sustain this artificial product and the phenomenon behind it.
Following a trees-grow-to-the-sky "planning" philosophy, Japanese importers brought in an astounding 1 million cases of '04 Beaujolais Nouveau, almost all by ruinously expensive airfreight. While Nouveau is best consumed within a few weeks of release, and generally never after Jan. 1, WANDS magazine reported that Beaujolais Nouveau was spotted lingering on retailers' shelves well into the spring, and in some supermarkets even into August -- so much for a refreshing, just-picked taste.
Georges "The King of Beaujolais" Duboeuf personally attended the Tokyo Nouveau release parties for the past two years, perhaps not unsurprising given that Japanese now consume (or more accurately, that Japanese importers now buy) more than 50 percent of all the Beaujolais Nouveau exported from France.
Given last year's tepid demand, and a damaging investigation by French authorities into a Duboeuf blending scandal, no one knows how this year's campaign will play out. What is clear, however, is that even though Beaujolais may be a series of small villages in France's deep south, come the third Thursday in November, all eyes in that part of France at least will be focused on Tokyo.
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Russo-Japanese War 100 years on
On a long and busy day, this brief Kyodo News article on the Japan Today news site caught my eye: "Descendants of Russo-Japanese War commanders to meet in Nagasaki". The article, with a dateline of Sasebo, where the Japanese Self-Defense Maritime Forces maintain a base near the city of Nagasaki on the southernmost main Japanese island of Kyushu, said two great-grandchildren of the commanders of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) will meet in this city next Saturday to talk "about peace and friendship on the centennial of the Sea of Japan Naval Battle".
I knew that most of the anniversaries were supposed to be observed earlier this year, in particular in January for the siege of Port Arthur and in May for the decisive Battle of Tsushima. Understandably there was little motivation in Russia to commemorate the event. The loss was so traumatic for Russians, it triggered a march against the Winter Palace in St Petersburg in January 1905, one of the seminal events that sparked the bloody Bolshevik Revolution 12 years later. The Japanese, meanwhile, were too polite to celebrate a major victory, which signaled in many ways Japan's rise as a global power at the start of the 20th century.
While Russians in general have much respect and admiration for Japan and the Japanese, in general, they are still sore about losing this war, the first lost by a European power to a non-European power. The merest slight is enough to trigger literally violent reactions among Russians, even those normally not given to khuliganizm (hooliganism or mischief). Take for example the case of the riots that erupted in central Moscow on 9 June 2002, when Russia lost to Japan 1-0 in Yokohama in the World Cup.
The Moscow Times in a report the following day said at least one man died and dozens more injured in the worst street violence the capital had seen since the bombing of the parliament building in 1993. The crowd, made up mostly of young men, set fire to cars, broke windows and beat up anyone from fellow fans to police officers in the area intersecting Tverskaya and Mokhovaya streets. "Some 7,000 to 8,000 fans had gathered at Manezh Square, a stone's throw from the Kremlin, to watch the afternoon game on one of several huge screens set up by the city government," the report said. Many fans were drunk and prone to violence even before the start of the match. The melee began during the second half of the match, soon after the Japanese had scored. This caused the crowd to start tossing beer and vodka bottles in the face of Russia's impending defeat.
There are other questions. I wonder if the crowd would have been allowed by the police to reach unmanageable levels if President Vladimir Putin had been at the Kremlin, just a 100 meters away. As it was, Putin was in St Petersburg at the time. Now of course such widespread public disturbance is almost unthinkable. This is less of a testament to the efficiency and effectiveness of Moscow police than an indicator of increased confidence and, arguably, improvement in the lives of Muscovites.
Then again, who knows, football hoodlums would behave in the same way, even in such "more developed" countries as Britain and Belgium. Fortunately we will never know how Russian football fans will behave this time since Russia failed to qualify for the World Cup in Germany next year after drawing 0-0 with Slovakia in a match in Bratislava on 13 October.
I knew that most of the anniversaries were supposed to be observed earlier this year, in particular in January for the siege of Port Arthur and in May for the decisive Battle of Tsushima. Understandably there was little motivation in Russia to commemorate the event. The loss was so traumatic for Russians, it triggered a march against the Winter Palace in St Petersburg in January 1905, one of the seminal events that sparked the bloody Bolshevik Revolution 12 years later. The Japanese, meanwhile, were too polite to celebrate a major victory, which signaled in many ways Japan's rise as a global power at the start of the 20th century.
While Russians in general have much respect and admiration for Japan and the Japanese, in general, they are still sore about losing this war, the first lost by a European power to a non-European power. The merest slight is enough to trigger literally violent reactions among Russians, even those normally not given to khuliganizm (hooliganism or mischief). Take for example the case of the riots that erupted in central Moscow on 9 June 2002, when Russia lost to Japan 1-0 in Yokohama in the World Cup.
The Moscow Times in a report the following day said at least one man died and dozens more injured in the worst street violence the capital had seen since the bombing of the parliament building in 1993. The crowd, made up mostly of young men, set fire to cars, broke windows and beat up anyone from fellow fans to police officers in the area intersecting Tverskaya and Mokhovaya streets. "Some 7,000 to 8,000 fans had gathered at Manezh Square, a stone's throw from the Kremlin, to watch the afternoon game on one of several huge screens set up by the city government," the report said. Many fans were drunk and prone to violence even before the start of the match. The melee began during the second half of the match, soon after the Japanese had scored. This caused the crowd to start tossing beer and vodka bottles in the face of Russia's impending defeat.
By early evening, several hundred rioters moved up Tverskaya Ulitsa smashing store windows and glass advertising stands. Most windows on the first two floors of the Moskva hotel were broken, as were several windows at the State Duma and the historic Yeliseyevsky food store on Tverskaya. Half a dozen restaurants on the fashionable pedestrian strip Kamergersky Pereulok were also vandalized.Having said all this, however, there is little clear connexion between Japan's victory over Russia in the football match and the century-old war. No, this is not the Football War or La Guerra de Fútbol - even though the adversaries here are less fanatic about football that El Salvador and Honduras were in 1969. (One of history's quirky footnotes, which seals a country's reputation in a not very positive way, this conflict - also referred to as the Soccer War, for youse Yankees - notched a decidedly unfunny death toll of 5,000 military and civilian deaths. The war lasted only 100 hours, a peace treaty was not signed until 1980. The original territorial dispute was resolved by the World Court in 1992.) The involvement, however, of xenophobic right-wing groups (which specialise in remembering and capitalising so-called historical insults, no matter how slight) and the beating of four Japanese students who were attending the 12th Tchaikovsky music competition at the nearby Moscow Conservatory of Music even before the match do make it likely that some Russians still do take umbrage at this monumental defeat.
At least seven cars near the Duma had been torched and dozens throughout the downtown area had been overturned or smashed.
As of 10:30 p.m., some 60 people had been detained and about 50 hospitalized, Interfax reported, citing police and health authorities.
"The fans' actions were barbaric," Deputy Mayor Valery Shantsev told reporters. "We put up these screens for them, like in civilized places, but it turned out they were not ready for this."
...
Shantsev said the city would reimburse car and store owners whose property was damaged during the rampage. But victims of the violence said this could prove difficult, as many police officers refused to fill out reports or document the damage.
A number of witnesses and news reports said that some rioters were screaming out racist and neo-fascist slogans. The crowd included some vocal supporters of Alexei Podberyozkin's nationalist Spiritual Heritage movement and other waving the ultra-right's yellow, white and black flag.
...
State-run RTR television, which often displays a pro-Kremlin stance in its news programs, tried to shore up some political capital after the riot. Commenting during the Vesti program, anchorman Yevgeny Revenko pointed out that the violence broke out meters away from the Duma, where just last week deputies gave initial approval to a controversial bill on extremism, which human rights activists have condemned as a potential Kremlin tool to suppress public protest.
There are other questions. I wonder if the crowd would have been allowed by the police to reach unmanageable levels if President Vladimir Putin had been at the Kremlin, just a 100 meters away. As it was, Putin was in St Petersburg at the time. Now of course such widespread public disturbance is almost unthinkable. This is less of a testament to the efficiency and effectiveness of Moscow police than an indicator of increased confidence and, arguably, improvement in the lives of Muscovites.
Then again, who knows, football hoodlums would behave in the same way, even in such "more developed" countries as Britain and Belgium. Fortunately we will never know how Russian football fans will behave this time since Russia failed to qualify for the World Cup in Germany next year after drawing 0-0 with Slovakia in a match in Bratislava on 13 October.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Heavy snowfall blankets Moscow
I've just talked to my Inessa, who's now at home studying. She proposed that we see a Charlie Chaplin film while munching takeaway pizza. We have so little time now, we resort to stealing snatches of it instead of making it. We've been having a bit of difficulty adjusting to each other's schedule, mainly due as I see it to a sense of overambition or optimism on our parts to squeeze as much as we can into a 24-hour day. For the meantime, we have reached a modus vivendi. Tonight, at least, I've agreed to go to her flat so that we can spend a bit of time together side by side. Admittedly this is not the kind of quality time I have in mind whenever the idea of being together pops into my workaholic mind. For the moment there's little else to do but to carry on, or as Americans say, get over it. (Maybe I should just read up a bit on Kazan, where I plan to spend our second long weekend in the coming fortnight.)
Anyway, today was marked by at least a couple of things. The first was the logical conclusion to my report yesterday about the first snow falling and a freeze settling over the city. Still it took me by surprise in the morning, when I peered out to the backyard from my kitchen window: masses of the white fluffy stuff falling from the heavens. It didn't stop until way past lunch hour. From my oversized wooden-framed Soviet-style windows at work I glanced occasionally at the seemingly interminable descent of snow, snow and more snow.
"It's beautiful," remarked my boss' teenage son, now back on a weeklong furlough from final year lyceé in Sophia Antipolis, a technopark founded in the 1970s between Nice and Cannes on the French Riviera. "Especially when the snow's freshly laid, before it gets covered with footprints," said Fidel, sounding almost wistful - suprising for a young man his age who normally eschews putting on overt displays of sentimentality. "But don't you think it's also lovely when there are solitary prints leading out the gate?" I countered, pointing at the visitors' entrance. "Yeah, Darius'", he retorted, somewhat recovering his bluster in referring to the house Yorkshire terrier (named after the first and most accomplished in a line of Persian kings, added to their family after my boss' previous posting in Tehran). Pronounced properly of course in Farsi as "Dâriûsh".
By late afternoon, snow had turned into sleet and by early evening, rain. Even though I found my car covered with snow, it was easy to slide it off Balios as the drizzle had made the snow water-logged and heavy. On our sidelane puddles formed in the depressions between the pavement and the road itself, making it inconvenient and uncomfortable for pedestrians.
The second event was choir practice. As I may have mentioned, I attended chorale rehearsals last week for the first time in five weeks. There I met Anne and Ian, two Scots newly arrived in Moscow. Apart from Andrew, there weren't any tenors around so it was rather difficult to conceal myself in that rather sparse gathering from Sasha's increasingly shrill expressions of displeasure. This time, even though I had to hurry home to feed Mishinka first and to get my music notes before going to the Gymnasium No 14 along Novinsky Bulvar, I still managed to arrive at rehearsals at 19:15 - quite an accomplishment all considered. In fact the choir was still doing the usual warmup vocalizations, which I never really caught last season because we were perennially at least a half-hour late for practice.
What pleased me a lot was seeing Nicole and - yes - Jennifer back. Nicole, of course, has always been here, working now for the British Embassy. But she hadn't been to rehearsal herself for two weeks. As for Jennifer, it was a surprise to see her visiting from Kiev, where she moved to in July. Apart from them, Andrew was there, as well as new members from France, Finland and Norway. Tom, our American baritone, was so surprised to see so many tenors at one time. I hadn't seen Stéphane for a while as well. It was just like in the early part of the year, when I first joined. Quite a warm feeling it gives you.
Anyway, today was marked by at least a couple of things. The first was the logical conclusion to my report yesterday about the first snow falling and a freeze settling over the city. Still it took me by surprise in the morning, when I peered out to the backyard from my kitchen window: masses of the white fluffy stuff falling from the heavens. It didn't stop until way past lunch hour. From my oversized wooden-framed Soviet-style windows at work I glanced occasionally at the seemingly interminable descent of snow, snow and more snow."It's beautiful," remarked my boss' teenage son, now back on a weeklong furlough from final year lyceé in Sophia Antipolis, a technopark founded in the 1970s between Nice and Cannes on the French Riviera. "Especially when the snow's freshly laid, before it gets covered with footprints," said Fidel, sounding almost wistful - suprising for a young man his age who normally eschews putting on overt displays of sentimentality. "But don't you think it's also lovely when there are solitary prints leading out the gate?" I countered, pointing at the visitors' entrance. "Yeah, Darius'", he retorted, somewhat recovering his bluster in referring to the house Yorkshire terrier (named after the first and most accomplished in a line of Persian kings, added to their family after my boss' previous posting in Tehran). Pronounced properly of course in Farsi as "Dâriûsh".
By late afternoon, snow had turned into sleet and by early evening, rain. Even though I found my car covered with snow, it was easy to slide it off Balios as the drizzle had made the snow water-logged and heavy. On our sidelane puddles formed in the depressions between the pavement and the road itself, making it inconvenient and uncomfortable for pedestrians.
The second event was choir practice. As I may have mentioned, I attended chorale rehearsals last week for the first time in five weeks. There I met Anne and Ian, two Scots newly arrived in Moscow. Apart from Andrew, there weren't any tenors around so it was rather difficult to conceal myself in that rather sparse gathering from Sasha's increasingly shrill expressions of displeasure. This time, even though I had to hurry home to feed Mishinka first and to get my music notes before going to the Gymnasium No 14 along Novinsky Bulvar, I still managed to arrive at rehearsals at 19:15 - quite an accomplishment all considered. In fact the choir was still doing the usual warmup vocalizations, which I never really caught last season because we were perennially at least a half-hour late for practice.
What pleased me a lot was seeing Nicole and - yes - Jennifer back. Nicole, of course, has always been here, working now for the British Embassy. But she hadn't been to rehearsal herself for two weeks. As for Jennifer, it was a surprise to see her visiting from Kiev, where she moved to in July. Apart from them, Andrew was there, as well as new members from France, Finland and Norway. Tom, our American baritone, was so surprised to see so many tenors at one time. I hadn't seen Stéphane for a while as well. It was just like in the early part of the year, when I first joined. Quite a warm feeling it gives you.
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Neo-Cromwellian way forward
As a follow-up to that question I raised a couple of weeks ago about over-consumption, I stumbled on this article on The Observer Online that took my questioning a notch further: living a simple life as the New Puritans. "A generation of young, educated and opinionated people determined to sidestep the consumerist perils of modern life. So if you own a 4x4, spend all your time shopping, or are simply overweight - watch your back," says the subtitle of article written by journalist Lucy Siegle about a new moral minority.
According to the Future Foundation, the trends forecaster that coined the term, Britons are "increasingly curbing our enthusiasm for profligate consumption, and health and environment-threatening behaviours." Sure, I'm all eyes as I continue reading down the article. "Gone is the guilt-free pleasure-seeker, to be replaced by the model well-meaning citizen, the New Puritan - a tag interchangeable with neo-Cromwellian, if you really want to seal its 17th century origins - who thinks through the consequences of activities previously thought of as pleasurable and invariably elects to live without them."
Any sensible person in this day and age would probably agree with the principles of this movement, if one can call it such. In many ways my riling against the me-generation and the society of instant gratification as symbolised by the United States has been distilled in purer form in this new movement. I personally subscribe to it. It is, however, important to note that this code of conduct does not stop at being personal or private decisions; they would only be effective, the Future Foundation explains, if the curbs are also "extended to other people's behaviour, and wherever possible enshrined by legislation - for New Puritans do not fear the nanny state". Whoa - move aside Singapore, the anti-consumerist Commonwealth is here! It's like saying, it's no longer enough to talk about faith as internal; if we truly believe, we should now all go out and fulfill an Evangelical type of global commission here.
There are certainly elements of this movement that I heartily approve of, in particular the attack on the aptly described "menace" of the Sports Utility Vehicle.
"Part of the New Puritan brief is to penalise those who make poor choices on behalf of the rest of society - in this case the gas-guzzling, emissions-generating Montessori wagons that choke our town centres." The article goes on to describe a well-organised and -supported band of SUV vigilantes in Paris, a sort of earthbound Yamakasi against the Cheyennes, X5s and Explorers of the banlieus. Les Dégonflés (The Deflated), as they are called, quietly run round in the middle of the night deflating the tyres of SUVs and splattering them with mud. Why, this is a tactic straight out of my own book. Something I secretly wanted to do myself but just never had the gumption to. (In Britain, the equivalent is called the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s, which takes a less violent tactic using fake fixed penalty notices.) If they had such a band in Moscow, 40 SUVs a week would probably not be enough.
What are the specific articles of faith of the NP or neo-Cromwellian? Sure, the intensity varies but I suppose the basics cover the following: no binge drinking, smoking, buying big brands, flying on cheap flights, eating junk food, sleeping with multiple partners, wasting money on designer clothes, growing beyond one's optimum weight, subscribing to celebrity magazines, driving a flash car, or living to watch television. Although I safely clear the bar on at least half this list, it would be a painful cut to adhere to the rest of it. Lisa Siegle says the list is "likely to grow longer", with 80 per cent of people agreeing that alcohol should not be allowed at work at all; 25 per cent saying snack products should not be offered at business meetings; more than a third agreeing that we should think twice before giving sweets and chocolates as gifts to family and friends, and a further 25 per cent thinking that 'the government should start a campaign to discourage people from drinking alcohol on their own at home' (a figure that rises to 41 per cent in Scotland).
Argh. In a way we've been living for far too long on a post-modernist Sodom and Gomorrah, in which the Pleasure Principle served as the main creed. The article continues:
I think I'd have to re-examine my own lifestyle to find out what changes I would have to make. At the moment it seems I'm only paying lip-service and not really making the hard decisions. In fact after taking the diagnostic quiz to find out my degree of Puritanism, as it were, I found out I came out middling on most choices. Not impressive at all. Wouldn't make it as a Yamakasi SUV tyre-buster. The verdict, in pastel colours, came out this way: "There is no doubt that you mean well and are flirting with the temperate outlook, but you are still too frightened of being thought of as extreme. In your heart of hearts you know that we eat too much refined sugar, possess too many appliances and watch too much bad TV, but you cannot bear to acknowledge the demise of libertarianism. However, you show promise; all you need is the courage of your convictions."
According to the Future Foundation, the trends forecaster that coined the term, Britons are "increasingly curbing our enthusiasm for profligate consumption, and health and environment-threatening behaviours." Sure, I'm all eyes as I continue reading down the article. "Gone is the guilt-free pleasure-seeker, to be replaced by the model well-meaning citizen, the New Puritan - a tag interchangeable with neo-Cromwellian, if you really want to seal its 17th century origins - who thinks through the consequences of activities previously thought of as pleasurable and invariably elects to live without them."
Any sensible person in this day and age would probably agree with the principles of this movement, if one can call it such. In many ways my riling against the me-generation and the society of instant gratification as symbolised by the United States has been distilled in purer form in this new movement. I personally subscribe to it. It is, however, important to note that this code of conduct does not stop at being personal or private decisions; they would only be effective, the Future Foundation explains, if the curbs are also "extended to other people's behaviour, and wherever possible enshrined by legislation - for New Puritans do not fear the nanny state". Whoa - move aside Singapore, the anti-consumerist Commonwealth is here! It's like saying, it's no longer enough to talk about faith as internal; if we truly believe, we should now all go out and fulfill an Evangelical type of global commission here.
There are certainly elements of this movement that I heartily approve of, in particular the attack on the aptly described "menace" of the Sports Utility Vehicle.
"Part of the New Puritan brief is to penalise those who make poor choices on behalf of the rest of society - in this case the gas-guzzling, emissions-generating Montessori wagons that choke our town centres." The article goes on to describe a well-organised and -supported band of SUV vigilantes in Paris, a sort of earthbound Yamakasi against the Cheyennes, X5s and Explorers of the banlieus. Les Dégonflés (The Deflated), as they are called, quietly run round in the middle of the night deflating the tyres of SUVs and splattering them with mud. Why, this is a tactic straight out of my own book. Something I secretly wanted to do myself but just never had the gumption to. (In Britain, the equivalent is called the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s, which takes a less violent tactic using fake fixed penalty notices.) If they had such a band in Moscow, 40 SUVs a week would probably not be enough. What are the specific articles of faith of the NP or neo-Cromwellian? Sure, the intensity varies but I suppose the basics cover the following: no binge drinking, smoking, buying big brands, flying on cheap flights, eating junk food, sleeping with multiple partners, wasting money on designer clothes, growing beyond one's optimum weight, subscribing to celebrity magazines, driving a flash car, or living to watch television. Although I safely clear the bar on at least half this list, it would be a painful cut to adhere to the rest of it. Lisa Siegle says the list is "likely to grow longer", with 80 per cent of people agreeing that alcohol should not be allowed at work at all; 25 per cent saying snack products should not be offered at business meetings; more than a third agreeing that we should think twice before giving sweets and chocolates as gifts to family and friends, and a further 25 per cent thinking that 'the government should start a campaign to discourage people from drinking alcohol on their own at home' (a figure that rises to 41 per cent in Scotland).
Argh. In a way we've been living for far too long on a post-modernist Sodom and Gomorrah, in which the Pleasure Principle served as the main creed. The article continues:
These are sobering thoughts for anyone connected to the pleasure market. But if you possess a shred of New Puritanical sensibility you're likely to think that the big brands - the junk-food peddlers, alcohol promoters, cigarette pushers and even the supermarkets - had it coming. That for too long these kinds of businesses reaped vast profits while riding roughshod over community spirit, public health and morality. The lack of a liberal backlash against increased policing of previously uncontroversial pleasures is significant, too. And it's a trade-off the New Puritans are clearly willing to make: extra nannying for extra peace of mind.
This is actually the sign of a maturing civil society, according to Dr Peter Whybrow, director of UCLA's Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behaviour, and author of American Mania: When More is not Enough, which charts what happens to society when we are pushed to the limits of our physical and mental tolerance.
'Civilisation offers no gifts to liberty,' he quotes from Sigmund Freud's Thirties essay, Civilisation and Its Discontents. Whybrow suggests that we use America as a cautionary tale, 'an indication of what happens when citizens turn into consumers, solely driven by immediate reward, and when consumerist impulses become substitutes for communities.'
...
So, with a few grand gestures and some high-profile converts New Puritanism offers a powerful escape route from our impulsive, reward-driven lifestyles. It might just have the potential to stave off the horrors promised by an out-of-control consumerist culture in which, according to agrarian essayist Wendell Berry, 'The histories of all products will be lost. The degradation of products and places, producers and consumers is inevitable.'
Consider the New Puritan philosophy from this point of view and it can look like a blueprint for a rather noble kind of empowerment. Our New Puritans become less like neurotic killjoys and more like early adopters, with an enhanced ability to recognise the pitfalls of contemporary life. A battle is shaping up between the New Puritans and the old guard libertarians, but at the moment it's a vastly uneven one. The New Puritans might be a trend, but it's still a small one, swimming against a seemingly inexorable consumerist river.
But New Puritans shouldn't be deterred. As Oliver Cromwell, their ancestral spiritual leader, put it: 'A few honest men [and let's add in women for contemporary relevance] are better than numbers.
I think I'd have to re-examine my own lifestyle to find out what changes I would have to make. At the moment it seems I'm only paying lip-service and not really making the hard decisions. In fact after taking the diagnostic quiz to find out my degree of Puritanism, as it were, I found out I came out middling on most choices. Not impressive at all. Wouldn't make it as a Yamakasi SUV tyre-buster. The verdict, in pastel colours, came out this way: "There is no doubt that you mean well and are flirting with the temperate outlook, but you are still too frightened of being thought of as extreme. In your heart of hearts you know that we eat too much refined sugar, possess too many appliances and watch too much bad TV, but you cannot bear to acknowledge the demise of libertarianism. However, you show promise; all you need is the courage of your convictions."
Monday, October 10, 2005
Consumption as cause of death
It's been a while since I logged in, mainly due to work but also because of a self-imposed moratorium on blogging for two weeks while I tried to produce a first chapter that would assure my name was recorded in the graduation rolls for next year.
Anyway, I still won't be able to write for a few more days at least. Have to take off for St Petersburg in a matter of hours for work. In fact last night I had to stay at the office pretty much until 1 am, writing and polishing. Intended to go again primarily to answer questions sent in by Sankt-Peterburg Vedomosti (St Petersburg Bulletin) for the occasion. Before clocking in, I thought of going to Auchan, the French hypermarché in the Kommunarka district on MKAD ring road and Kaluzhskoe Shosse (better known to commuters as the one reachable by those eco-friendly IKEA shuttle buses from Metro stations Yasenevo, Tyoply Stan and Anino) in the Moscow beltway. It had been a while since I last went; I can't remember exactly when, but at least six months back for certain.
There is quite a bit of economisation to be made by a good day's shopping at Auchan, especially if one stocks up for a whole fortnight or, as one of my colleagues has consistently done after arriving two years ago, for the whole month. In fact it claims to offer a wide range of goods at 20 percent less than prices elsewhere (in this case, it appears to refer to its Moscow competitors - Sedmoi Kontinent, Perekryostok, Ramstore and Kopeika. Understandably a lot of Muscovites troop to this temple of consumerism especially in the weekends. Still my Inessa and I thought that if we went in the morning, we'd have a fair chance of running down a grocery list in around 90 minutes. In fact, up until the turn to Mega's parking lot I told her, her classmate Nastya and Vanushka that we wouldn't have to fight for shopping carts immediately after leaving the car. Well, shopping at Auchan has gotten faster and more furious since the last time I was there.
In time (or just after the hour mark) my Inessa and I had gotten pretty fed up with all the jostling, shoving and nudging through the crowds at almost every aisle. The original plan to finish at around 1 pm evaporated in the buying frenzy that whipped the crowd up into a tizzy. We were as guilty as everyone.
Still we wondered, even if savings were to be made, how smart is the regular consumer in not rationalising these false savings by buying more but pretty much unnecessary merchandise. My ducky calls it the Diet Coke-Big Fries Paradox: people make a big fuss about buying Diet Coke but don't think twice about loading up on chips. (Traditionally, this paradox has gone by the saying, "Penny wise, pound foolish". Another example is the almost religious avoidance of full cream milk (around 3.2 percent fat content) for low-fat or skimmed by most of the developed world. Having assuaged their conscience, regular consumers load up on a lot of unnecessary food, including deadly carbs.)
The day's shopping pushed me to realise something that has long troubled me about our contemporary lifestyle. Perhaps it's Mitsuo Aida, Japanese poet and calligrapher, subtlely reminding me again and again through his wall calendar that this "take no prisoners" ethic of acquisition could very well lead to the return of consumption (and here I do not mean it in the Madame Bovaresque sense of tuberculosis) as a leading cause of death in the 21st century.
Are we not, as human beings, dooming ourselves with our mass or conspicuous consumption? Are we buying more simply because we get more value for our money? Do we really need that extra shower gel flavour? Or the space-tech three-blade shaver? Or is Mr Gillette just getting the best of us? In connexion with this I read an article just now on the New York Times about the rapacious marketing strategy of the colour printing industry. What is astounding is how much colour ink actually amounts to, ounce per ounce. Here's part of that NYT article.
Here in Moscow, the buying frenzy will likely get worse before with little relief in sight: apart from its branches in Marfino, Khimki, Krasnogorsk, Mytishchi and Maryino, Auchan announced earlier this year that it planned to open more hypermarkets - two in St. Petersburg, one in Nizhny Novgorod, one in Yekaterinburg and one in Tyumen. French retail giant Carrefour and German discount retailers Aldi and Lidl are also thinking of entering the lucrative Russian market.
Anyway, I still won't be able to write for a few more days at least. Have to take off for St Petersburg in a matter of hours for work. In fact last night I had to stay at the office pretty much until 1 am, writing and polishing. Intended to go again primarily to answer questions sent in by Sankt-Peterburg Vedomosti (St Petersburg Bulletin) for the occasion. Before clocking in, I thought of going to Auchan, the French hypermarché in the Kommunarka district on MKAD ring road and Kaluzhskoe Shosse (better known to commuters as the one reachable by those eco-friendly IKEA shuttle buses from Metro stations Yasenevo, Tyoply Stan and Anino) in the Moscow beltway. It had been a while since I last went; I can't remember exactly when, but at least six months back for certain.
There is quite a bit of economisation to be made by a good day's shopping at Auchan, especially if one stocks up for a whole fortnight or, as one of my colleagues has consistently done after arriving two years ago, for the whole month. In fact it claims to offer a wide range of goods at 20 percent less than prices elsewhere (in this case, it appears to refer to its Moscow competitors - Sedmoi Kontinent, Perekryostok, Ramstore and Kopeika. Understandably a lot of Muscovites troop to this temple of consumerism especially in the weekends. Still my Inessa and I thought that if we went in the morning, we'd have a fair chance of running down a grocery list in around 90 minutes. In fact, up until the turn to Mega's parking lot I told her, her classmate Nastya and Vanushka that we wouldn't have to fight for shopping carts immediately after leaving the car. Well, shopping at Auchan has gotten faster and more furious since the last time I was there. In time (or just after the hour mark) my Inessa and I had gotten pretty fed up with all the jostling, shoving and nudging through the crowds at almost every aisle. The original plan to finish at around 1 pm evaporated in the buying frenzy that whipped the crowd up into a tizzy. We were as guilty as everyone.
Still we wondered, even if savings were to be made, how smart is the regular consumer in not rationalising these false savings by buying more but pretty much unnecessary merchandise. My ducky calls it the Diet Coke-Big Fries Paradox: people make a big fuss about buying Diet Coke but don't think twice about loading up on chips. (Traditionally, this paradox has gone by the saying, "Penny wise, pound foolish". Another example is the almost religious avoidance of full cream milk (around 3.2 percent fat content) for low-fat or skimmed by most of the developed world. Having assuaged their conscience, regular consumers load up on a lot of unnecessary food, including deadly carbs.)The day's shopping pushed me to realise something that has long troubled me about our contemporary lifestyle. Perhaps it's Mitsuo Aida, Japanese poet and calligrapher, subtlely reminding me again and again through his wall calendar that this "take no prisoners" ethic of acquisition could very well lead to the return of consumption (and here I do not mean it in the Madame Bovaresque sense of tuberculosis) as a leading cause of death in the 21st century.
Are we not, as human beings, dooming ourselves with our mass or conspicuous consumption? Are we buying more simply because we get more value for our money? Do we really need that extra shower gel flavour? Or the space-tech three-blade shaver? Or is Mr Gillette just getting the best of us? In connexion with this I read an article just now on the New York Times about the rapacious marketing strategy of the colour printing industry. What is astounding is how much colour ink actually amounts to, ounce per ounce. Here's part of that NYT article.
[F]or about $200 you can get the Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 8250 that in just 14 seconds spits out a photo that equals the quality of those coming back from the photo finisher in an hour. For the same price, Canon's iP6600D prints a borderless 4-by-6-inch photo in 46 seconds, but also prints on both sides of dual-side photo paper.Intuitively of course we know that the printer manufacturers were banking (literally) on the killing they'd make in selling disposable ink cartridges. Now it seems there's even a class action suit was filed earlier this year against Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard. In fact this is one of the flagship issues in fair trade campaigns. But just how much they were profiting from this (to a sickening degree, it's now clear) was never all that stark - until today.The catch is that after you make an initial investment, you are going to pay at least 28 cents a print, if you believe the manufacturers' math. It could be closer to 50 cents a print if you trust the testing of product reviewers at Consumer Reports.
In the meantime, the price of printing a 4-by-6-inch snapshot at a retailer's photo lab, like those inside a Sam's Club, is as low as 13 cents. Snapfish.com, an online mail-order service, offers prints for a dime each if you prepay. At those prices, why bother printing at home?
[...]It does not take an advanced business degree for those consumers to see how printer manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard and Canon make their money. They use the "razor blade" business model. It is named from the marketing innovation of King C. Gillette, who in the early years of the last century sold razors for a low price but made all his money on the high-margin disposable razor blades. Printer manufacturers also use this tied-product strategy.
Printers return relatively low profit margins. But the ink, ounce for ounce, is four times the cost of Krug Clos du Mesnil Champagne, which sells for around $425 a bottle. Ink is about the same price as Joy perfume, considered to be one of the more pricey fragrances, at $158 for a 2.5-ounce bottle.
Here in Moscow, the buying frenzy will likely get worse before with little relief in sight: apart from its branches in Marfino, Khimki, Krasnogorsk, Mytishchi and Maryino, Auchan announced earlier this year that it planned to open more hypermarkets - two in St. Petersburg, one in Nizhny Novgorod, one in Yekaterinburg and one in Tyumen. French retail giant Carrefour and German discount retailers Aldi and Lidl are also thinking of entering the lucrative Russian market.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Children of the Beast
Even as I hurry to leave and go to the office (on a Sunday!) to print out some materials for my thesis, I cannot but leave a record here, now that it's become clearer to me, of our having seen this powerful play last night about the Holocaust at the Sergei Obraztsov State Academic Puppet Theatre along Sadovaya-Samotyochnaya.
Roi called me more than a week ago to invite me to see the work "Children of the Beast," based on a novel by dissident Israeli writer David Grossman. Well, to be honest I didn't really pay attention to the title or author until after the play itself, when my Inessa and I joined Roi, Rachel, two other diplomats and members of the cast for dinner at Vivace, an Italian restaurant nearby. And this inattention, brought about by a mind-numbingly busy schedule forced on me by the need to gather materials for this thesis left over from my yearlong MA programme in Madrid three years ago, simply blindsided me to the work's power and meaning. Probably just as well, since I came in without any preconceptions of what I was going to see.
When one talks about puppet theatre, one usually associates it with chilren's entertainment - Punch and Judy style. Of course there's the Hun Lakhon Lek of Thailand (seen earlier this week), Bunraku of Japan and even Wayang Kulit of Indonesia that expand the range of the medium and additonally portray classic literature. But this play, "Children of the Beast," goes far beyond folk or morality tales; it is a complex psychological story that deals with love, hatred, suffering and remembering in all its broad and subtle strokes. It is, as they call it, adult entertainment that pokes, provokes and challenges our conceptions of this sacred corner of history we've commonly kept in our minds about the Shoah - the genocide of two-thirds of the European Jewish population during World War II.
What is interesting is that "Kinder der Bestie" (Children of the Beast), presented as part of the ongoing Third Sergei Obraztsov International Puppet Festival, is actually an Israeli-German co-production between Teatron Theatre and figuren theater tübingen (it apparently is written that way, all in small caps), an ensemble formed in 1991 that has toured extensively overseas (the Internet readily suggests Paris, France; Brighton, England; and Seattle, WA). It's unusual for two countries to present a jointly sponsored work in a third country, this time to mark the moment on the 12th May 1965, when statesmen David Ben-Gurion and Konrad Adenauer met to formally open diplomatic relations between their two countries in the backdrop of Cold War realpolitik.
(Earlier in the year in May, I also saw the German and Israeli Embassies cooperate for the performance of the Moscow-based male Jewish choir Hasidic Capella directed by our choir conductor Alexander Tsaliuk.)
Based on Grossman's novel See Under: Love, this adult animated theatre production uses actors, masks and puppet figures to spin a web of memories, stories and facts relating to how the children of Holocaust survivors deal with the effect of that catastrophic evil. It is performed by figuren theater's artistic director Frank Soehnle and Israeli actor/puppeteer Yehuda Almagor.
The following is excerpted from an article by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer based on an interview with the cast on the sidelines of the 18th Seattle International Children's Festival in May 2004.
The play starts with the appearance of a skeletal puppet figure from a box of sand - the effect of the seemingly unending flow of sand from every fold and recess of the figure's clothing is haunting and eerie, not only marking the passage of time but setting the mood for the unraveling of a series of stories that do not explain themselves easily. What is clear, however, is that the main character is a nine-year-old boy living in Israel named Momik Neumann, the only child of Holocaust survivors, who tries to make sense of the mutterings of a distant relative whom he calls grandfather and who suddenly appeared in the lives of his family one day many years ago. The story is told firsthand by the adult Momik himself, who attempts to retell his grandfather's story. His grandfather, Anschel Wassermann, in turn gives an account of his bizarre survival in a concentration camp by telling one story a day, a kind of perverse Sheherazade, to an SS interrogator, Herr Neigel. (I can't recall now other literary references to a man who would not die despite repeated attempts to kill him; it'll probably bother me the rest of the day.)
Perhaps it's just me, because my Inessa pretty much followed the different threads, but I experienced difficulties deciphering the play's oblique references, sudden flashbacks, stream-of-consciousness storytelling, multifaceted characters (different from schizophrenia, mind) and the melding of fantasy and reality.
It turns out later that there are actually three more characters, voiced by Soehnle or acted out by Almagor's mummy-like puppets: Bruno Schulz, a real-life writer, who was murdered by the Nazis; Paula, Wassermann's wife; and Kazik, a progeria-afflicted baby born to Wassermann and Paula who lives his entire life in 24-hours but remains thankfully ignorant about war and its horrors. The child Momik's difficulty in understanding exactly what happened in his parents' almost unmentionable over there is vividly illustrated by his attempt to lure what he calls the Nazi Beast out from the cellar, in order to capture and tame it. To do so, he enlists his grandfather, a "real Jew", as bait. Soehnle almost spits out the word "Jew" to express Momik's frustration in trying to convince the beast, as if it were just some pet cat, to emerge from the darkness. It emphasises the idea of the comprehensive gap between the survivors and their children, of being a Jewish person then and being one now.
In a performance in June this year at the Théâtre International de Langue Française in the Parc de la Villette for la Biennale des Arts et de la Marionnette in Paris, the play is described as "the story of a quest, that of the transmission of a memory that would rather bury itself in oblivion but at the same time is the only means that could help a child grow up." The two theatre groups together explore "new forms, mix original musique, object, acting game and plastic arts. Their skeletal and ghostly characters provide the children of the beast gripping material, which finds the right tone between reality and fiction, neither accusing nor provocative, in this indictment against forgetting. A play that puts in perpective yesterday's memory and today's history while asking what has been asked since the Holocaust: How can we still believe in Humanity? The question concerns us all."
The novel on which it was based, Ayen Erekh: Ahavah (See Under: Love, 1986), Grossman's second, has been compared to William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Günter Grass' Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum) and Gabriel García Márquez's Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude). An entry a fortnight ago in the literary site, Waggish.org, explains the complex narrative technique of the play; it would also be interesting to look at the reviews written by the Times' Michiko Kakutani and Edmund White.
After the play, I met up with Roi and Rachel, who introduced me to two Hungarian diplomats, Tibor Köszegvári and Eszter Pap. I also met Pinkey and Shubran there. (Interestingly as we were walking out we saw the Kristovsky brothers, Sergey and Vladimir, of the über-popular group Umaturman performing at a private party on the ground floor.) Six of us went to Vivace for dinner, and were later joined by Soehnle and three women from the Tübingen and Obraztsov theatres. The restaurant wasn't anything to write home about, apart from the Querciabella chianti; my Inessa in fact found the place rather distasteful (and I strongly concur). It wasn't the physical setup per se, but rather the kind of clientèle it attracts. The kind of place where government bureaucrats on expense accounts go to, in my Inessa's reckoning. In other words, the polar opposite of Pang's notorious description of our restaurant-going gang in Moscow: high budget, low taste. For my Inessa and me: first and last time.
That's that for now. I really have to run off and do research.
Roi called me more than a week ago to invite me to see the work "Children of the Beast," based on a novel by dissident Israeli writer David Grossman. Well, to be honest I didn't really pay attention to the title or author until after the play itself, when my Inessa and I joined Roi, Rachel, two other diplomats and members of the cast for dinner at Vivace, an Italian restaurant nearby. And this inattention, brought about by a mind-numbingly busy schedule forced on me by the need to gather materials for this thesis left over from my yearlong MA programme in Madrid three years ago, simply blindsided me to the work's power and meaning. Probably just as well, since I came in without any preconceptions of what I was going to see.When one talks about puppet theatre, one usually associates it with chilren's entertainment - Punch and Judy style. Of course there's the Hun Lakhon Lek of Thailand (seen earlier this week), Bunraku of Japan and even Wayang Kulit of Indonesia that expand the range of the medium and additonally portray classic literature. But this play, "Children of the Beast," goes far beyond folk or morality tales; it is a complex psychological story that deals with love, hatred, suffering and remembering in all its broad and subtle strokes. It is, as they call it, adult entertainment that pokes, provokes and challenges our conceptions of this sacred corner of history we've commonly kept in our minds about the Shoah - the genocide of two-thirds of the European Jewish population during World War II.
What is interesting is that "Kinder der Bestie" (Children of the Beast), presented as part of the ongoing Third Sergei Obraztsov International Puppet Festival, is actually an Israeli-German co-production between Teatron Theatre and figuren theater tübingen (it apparently is written that way, all in small caps), an ensemble formed in 1991 that has toured extensively overseas (the Internet readily suggests Paris, France; Brighton, England; and Seattle, WA). It's unusual for two countries to present a jointly sponsored work in a third country, this time to mark the moment on the 12th May 1965, when statesmen David Ben-Gurion and Konrad Adenauer met to formally open diplomatic relations between their two countries in the backdrop of Cold War realpolitik.
(Earlier in the year in May, I also saw the German and Israeli Embassies cooperate for the performance of the Moscow-based male Jewish choir Hasidic Capella directed by our choir conductor Alexander Tsaliuk.)
Based on Grossman's novel See Under: Love, this adult animated theatre production uses actors, masks and puppet figures to spin a web of memories, stories and facts relating to how the children of Holocaust survivors deal with the effect of that catastrophic evil. It is performed by figuren theater's artistic director Frank Soehnle and Israeli actor/puppeteer Yehuda Almagor.
The following is excerpted from an article by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer based on an interview with the cast on the sidelines of the 18th Seattle International Children's Festival in May 2004.
"It works better, though, if people don't know about the Holocaust theme," says figuren theater co-artistic director Frank Soehnle. "Just when they hear that word, people ..." (Soehnle goes into a very funny slump, shoulders up, head down, long face).
...
"You can express things with puppets that just don't work with live actors," says Soehnle's fellow artistic director, Karin Ersching. "It's not just that puppets can explode or catch on fire and things like that.
"Puppets can't lie. They are exactly what they seem to be. There is no ego."
Ersching and Soehnle are Stuttgart natives. Ersching remembers becoming infatuated with puppets when she was about 4. "I watched a TV show. It's still on, a little like your Muppets. Of course, my parents wanted me to train for a real job. So I became a kindergarten teacher.
"I divided my time. But for the past 10 years I've been a full-time professional with puppet theater. And I'm still alive."
The name of Ersching and Soehnle's company, spelled without capital letters, "helps people to know that this is art, not performances to teach or entertain children," says Soehnle. "We work with literary people. There is a fashion among some serious artists to use only lower-case letters."
Soehnle is the youngest of five siblings. And how did his parents react to the fact that their baby wanted to be a puppeteer? (Soehnle does a very funny little mime show of shock, horror, fainting and cardiovascular resuscitation.) "No, really, just as I was getting out of (high) school, a university-level program in puppetry and performance opened up. So that made the profession seem a little more respectable."
The play starts with the appearance of a skeletal puppet figure from a box of sand - the effect of the seemingly unending flow of sand from every fold and recess of the figure's clothing is haunting and eerie, not only marking the passage of time but setting the mood for the unraveling of a series of stories that do not explain themselves easily. What is clear, however, is that the main character is a nine-year-old boy living in Israel named Momik Neumann, the only child of Holocaust survivors, who tries to make sense of the mutterings of a distant relative whom he calls grandfather and who suddenly appeared in the lives of his family one day many years ago. The story is told firsthand by the adult Momik himself, who attempts to retell his grandfather's story. His grandfather, Anschel Wassermann, in turn gives an account of his bizarre survival in a concentration camp by telling one story a day, a kind of perverse Sheherazade, to an SS interrogator, Herr Neigel. (I can't recall now other literary references to a man who would not die despite repeated attempts to kill him; it'll probably bother me the rest of the day.)Perhaps it's just me, because my Inessa pretty much followed the different threads, but I experienced difficulties deciphering the play's oblique references, sudden flashbacks, stream-of-consciousness storytelling, multifaceted characters (different from schizophrenia, mind) and the melding of fantasy and reality.
It turns out later that there are actually three more characters, voiced by Soehnle or acted out by Almagor's mummy-like puppets: Bruno Schulz, a real-life writer, who was murdered by the Nazis; Paula, Wassermann's wife; and Kazik, a progeria-afflicted baby born to Wassermann and Paula who lives his entire life in 24-hours but remains thankfully ignorant about war and its horrors. The child Momik's difficulty in understanding exactly what happened in his parents' almost unmentionable over there is vividly illustrated by his attempt to lure what he calls the Nazi Beast out from the cellar, in order to capture and tame it. To do so, he enlists his grandfather, a "real Jew", as bait. Soehnle almost spits out the word "Jew" to express Momik's frustration in trying to convince the beast, as if it were just some pet cat, to emerge from the darkness. It emphasises the idea of the comprehensive gap between the survivors and their children, of being a Jewish person then and being one now.
In a performance in June this year at the Théâtre International de Langue Française in the Parc de la Villette for la Biennale des Arts et de la Marionnette in Paris, the play is described as "the story of a quest, that of the transmission of a memory that would rather bury itself in oblivion but at the same time is the only means that could help a child grow up." The two theatre groups together explore "new forms, mix original musique, object, acting game and plastic arts. Their skeletal and ghostly characters provide the children of the beast gripping material, which finds the right tone between reality and fiction, neither accusing nor provocative, in this indictment against forgetting. A play that puts in perpective yesterday's memory and today's history while asking what has been asked since the Holocaust: How can we still believe in Humanity? The question concerns us all."
The novel on which it was based, Ayen Erekh: Ahavah (See Under: Love, 1986), Grossman's second, has been compared to William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Günter Grass' Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum) and Gabriel García Márquez's Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude). An entry a fortnight ago in the literary site, Waggish.org, explains the complex narrative technique of the play; it would also be interesting to look at the reviews written by the Times' Michiko Kakutani and Edmund White.
After the play, I met up with Roi and Rachel, who introduced me to two Hungarian diplomats, Tibor Köszegvári and Eszter Pap. I also met Pinkey and Shubran there. (Interestingly as we were walking out we saw the Kristovsky brothers, Sergey and Vladimir, of the über-popular group Umaturman performing at a private party on the ground floor.) Six of us went to Vivace for dinner, and were later joined by Soehnle and three women from the Tübingen and Obraztsov theatres. The restaurant wasn't anything to write home about, apart from the Querciabella chianti; my Inessa in fact found the place rather distasteful (and I strongly concur). It wasn't the physical setup per se, but rather the kind of clientèle it attracts. The kind of place where government bureaucrats on expense accounts go to, in my Inessa's reckoning. In other words, the polar opposite of Pang's notorious description of our restaurant-going gang in Moscow: high budget, low taste. For my Inessa and me: first and last time.
That's that for now. I really have to run off and do research.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Element's top seven
You know what they listed in this week's Element that had me nodding my head like those dopey dogs placed in the back of cars - the seven best Russian products. I guess you can count more than seven, but this is one of those features in Element that I really like and get a crack out of. The seven are:
- Tinkoff beer - With plenty of brands competing on the Russian beer market this one keeps the title of the country’s only premium option. Not too long ago, finding bottles of Tinkoff was a problem but since the opening of their St. Petersburg plant, you can find Tinkoff in about every supermarket. At the moment seven different brews are available.
- J7 juice - Back in the early ‘90s, J7 shocked the market as juice in square carton was something exotic for post-perestroika Russia where people were used to three-liter glass bottles. Since that time, Wimm Bill Dann, Russia’s revolutionary product manufacturer, has launched many other brands but J7 still dominates their other offerings.
- Red October chocolate - Foreign chocolate producers pour millions of dollars every year into ad campaigns but still have not been able to win Russians’ hearts back from Red October chocolates. To try some of finest offerings visit one of the factory stores that Red October has around Moscow. Here they guarantee the freshness and quality of their delicious products.
- Chistaya Liniya cosmetics - The Russian cosmetics industry is probably one of the most developed in the country, which means that it also must fight off tough competition from western brands. Kalina’s Chistaya Liniya manages to stand out in the crowd. Excellent quality, natural ingredients and low prices contribute to the brand’s continued popularity.
- Flagman vodka - There are plenty of decent quality home-grown contenders competing for the tipplers of this most famous of Russian drinks. But we would like to highlight Flagman produced by RVVK. In less then 10 years the company has built a strong recognizable brand. Flagman has soft smooth taste and is affordably priced.
- Vassa clothing - There are plenty of Russian designers flitting around but Yelena Vassa is the only one who has managed to establish steady, high-volume production and who has opened a bunch of stores around country. Simple lines in combination with natural fabrics are key factors to the overwhelming success of Vassa clothing.
- Kristallin mineral water - Evian and Vittel have a serious competitor though with a very modest PR budget. The fact that the market is not yet taken by this drinking water can only be explained by its general lack of advertising. Great taste comes at a ridiculously low price. Carbonated water is also available.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Crazy penguin picnic
I can see clearly now the rain has gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It's going to be a bright, bright sunshiny day
I think I can make it now the pain has gone
And all of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is the rainbow I've been praying for
It's gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It's going to be a bright, bright sunshiny day
I think I can make it now the pain has gone
And all of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is the rainbow I've been praying for
It's gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day
One of Faizal's favourites, this song was originally sung by American crooner Johnny Nash in 1972 but popularised by Jamaican reggae artist Jimmy Cliff in the film Cool Runnings in 1993. We played it on the road to Yaroslavl in our now classic road trip to Vologda. Although it's snazzy, it wasn't all that memorable at the time; in fact, the cheesy but catchy love song Ty dolzhna ryadom byt (It's Not That Simple) by Dima "Oh ain't I so cool" Bilan improbably put it in the shade to become the Song of the Trip. (This popular ballad actually placed second in the national competition to choose Russia's official entry to the Eurovision Song Contest in May 2005 in Kiev.) Today served as a new occasion to play the Nash-Cliff reggae hit, a day which started out all leaky and windy but ended with bales of laughter anyway.
Well to tell the story properly one has to go back to yesterday, at least for my Inessa and me.
It seems all reports about summer's demise were greatly exaggerated. Yesterday was -as the song goes- a very bright, bright sunshiny day, the sort you could wear a tee-shirt for. Dearie came to the flat at around 14.30 and caught me, as usual, not prepared to leave. I got myself finally ready an hour later, to go to an invitational event launch in the outskirts of Moscow recommended by my mavourneen.
Since it was pretty much my first time to drive to that part of town, it took some going to finally find our way to the place, which is located 25 km outside Moscow on MKAD ring road. (We made two wrong turns to Rublyova and to the town of Gorki-10 itself and had to go back en route. I also had to change money at the shopping arcade of the posh Zhukovka village for petrol.) We arrived at 16.30, thinking that perhaps the main event or whatever it was we were supposed to be there for was over. Well at least I thought so. My Inessa has a bit more sang froid than I do and was not at all flustered in the least bit. In fact when she tried to ask for the media coordinator who was to give her accreditation to the event in a 500-sqm chock-full of people running about it turned out the first person she asked was the very official she was looking for.
The event is called Project Artfield (Artpolye in Russian), which is organised by eponymous gallery owner Aidan Salakhova at a grazing field owned by First Stud Farm just off Gorki-10 on Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Shosse. Apart from Aidan Gallery, Stella Art, Regina, XL and VP Studio -all of which had stands at Art Moskva in May- also participated in this successor event to ArtKlyazma. Running through to 10 October (double ten, a lucky day for the Chinese!), Artfield features a couple of dozen of so-called "landscape sculptures" by 26 artists of different generations using different materials. Adhering to Salakhova's mantra that "the genre of monumental propaganda can be topical, even in post-Soviet times" most of the sculptures were outsize, such as two razor blades propped against each other, a knife sticking out and handcuffs, all made by Nice-based artist Philippe Perrin. Ducky and I found two works using huge letters very witty: one reads "ОЙ" on one side and "NO" on the other. Another sign, composed of 17 two-meter-tall pink letters in Cyrillic, reads "Schastye ne za gorami" (Happiness is not far away) by Boris Matrosov. The work that symbolises the exhibition is a life-size copy of the first Sputnik man-made satellite by Rostan Tavasiyev. Instead of Laika (first dog in space), there's a huge Duracell bunny inside. The other artists are Semen Agroskin, Marina Belova, Leonid Borisov, Bruni Lavrenty, Elena Yelagina, Konstantin Zvezdochetov, Yelena Kitaeva, Maxim Ksuta, Oleg Kulik, Konstantin Latyshev, Igor Makarevich, Diana Machulina, Nicola Ovchinnikov, Alexander Petrelli, Alexei Politov, Alexander Savko, Rostan Tavasiev, Alexei Upman, Tatiana Khengster, Sergei Shekhovtsov and Ewerdt Hilgemann.
At almost every public event my Inessa and I go to, guaranteed there's a spectacle of people (often members of the media) who embarass themselves by gouging on free food. It happened at that event at Shore House as well as the Sultanna Frantsuzova fashion show. Here at least it wasn't as embarrassing. People still grabbed food with very little restraint or decorum, as if they hadn't eaten in two days. (Ah well I guess I was a saté guerilla at Blue Elephant last night, as well.) My macushla and I had to share a plate between the two of us. On the way to look for a tree stump to sit on I handed a fork for this girl whom I saw sitting squat on the ground trying to eat salad with two knives.
On the way back we had to fill up on petrol at Lukoil near MKAD before going on our way. We took the road going to Krylatskoe and found ourselves back on the familiar Narodnogo Opolcheniya. Famished yet deciding we wanted something more different than Planeta Sushi or Il Patio we tried Fifth Avenue, a mall some five minutes on foot from Inessa's station along Ulitsa Marshala Biryuzova. Up on the third floor they had a branch of the popular beer restaurant on Taganka, Kolbasoff. We decided to eat instead at El Inka, a Spanish and Peruvian restaurant. In all it was, as Dearie described it, a perfect day.
Whatever ideas we had to continue the Saturday's enjoyment into Sunday were tweaked by the weather, which refused to go along with our script. Faizal told me Sasha was inviting us to have a picnic again just outside Moscow. The main event was tea with a family heirloom, Sasha's babushka's 120-year-old samovar. So we woke up to a very rainy day. Although I signed up for the impromptu outing I had yet to convince my muirnín that it was worth the trip. By midday the whole event was still a big question mark, although the rains had already slowed a bit. When Sasha finally confirmed after his English language lesson with Olya, it was way past 14.00. Ultimately Inessa decided to join us with the condition that she could only stay for two hours. That would've meant taking Balios with us. Faizal, however, insisted that we go in one car, adding that we would all go home together. (For some reason I got it into my head that we were going to join Sasha's family in some forest somewhere.)
After picking up Dearie at the McDo at Novoslobodskaya, we headed in the direction of Yakhroma on Dmitrovskoye Shosse. Just past MKAD we turned right toward Klyazma-2. In contrast with my forest-idea, we set up the samovar on a bench in Troitskoye, a rest area on the banks of the Klyazma Reservoir. There's actually a gravelly beach, but it's the lawn that fills up with river- and sunbathers. Desperately wishing for the remains of summer, we set up the samovar, bublik -a kind of Russian bagel-, honey, fruit preserves, dried mangoes and Cuvée Karsov red wine. Using lit briquettes Sasha was quickly able to get a fire going in the brass container. Despite the warmth of the samovar, the river breeze swept us up in its freezing embrace. With nothing but a flimsy cardigan I started to freeze; Sasha went over to the hotel next door and borrowed a dark-coloured windbreaker for me. That, however, was not enough; to warm up we had to jump up and down and shuffle from side to side. That prompted Sasha to call our gathering the "Crazy Penguin Picnic" - shades of the madness of Vologda! All we had to do now was do an endless song-cycle (sounds like Richard Wagner). It was actually loads of fun, drinking tea and wine while trying to keep warm! So despite the dampness we were able to have a fun picnic with his 1885 Tula samovar outdoors, thanks to Sasha's determination and resourcefulness.
Well to tell the story properly one has to go back to yesterday, at least for my Inessa and me.
It seems all reports about summer's demise were greatly exaggerated. Yesterday was -as the song goes- a very bright, bright sunshiny day, the sort you could wear a tee-shirt for. Dearie came to the flat at around 14.30 and caught me, as usual, not prepared to leave. I got myself finally ready an hour later, to go to an invitational event launch in the outskirts of Moscow recommended by my mavourneen.
Since it was pretty much my first time to drive to that part of town, it took some going to finally find our way to the place, which is located 25 km outside Moscow on MKAD ring road. (We made two wrong turns to Rublyova and to the town of Gorki-10 itself and had to go back en route. I also had to change money at the shopping arcade of the posh Zhukovka village for petrol.) We arrived at 16.30, thinking that perhaps the main event or whatever it was we were supposed to be there for was over. Well at least I thought so. My Inessa has a bit more sang froid than I do and was not at all flustered in the least bit. In fact when she tried to ask for the media coordinator who was to give her accreditation to the event in a 500-sqm chock-full of people running about it turned out the first person she asked was the very official she was looking for.
The event is called Project Artfield (Artpolye in Russian), which is organised by eponymous gallery owner Aidan Salakhova at a grazing field owned by First Stud Farm just off Gorki-10 on Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Shosse. Apart from Aidan Gallery, Stella Art, Regina, XL and VP Studio -all of which had stands at Art Moskva in May- also participated in this successor event to ArtKlyazma. Running through to 10 October (double ten, a lucky day for the Chinese!), Artfield features a couple of dozen of so-called "landscape sculptures" by 26 artists of different generations using different materials. Adhering to Salakhova's mantra that "the genre of monumental propaganda can be topical, even in post-Soviet times" most of the sculptures were outsize, such as two razor blades propped against each other, a knife sticking out and handcuffs, all made by Nice-based artist Philippe Perrin. Ducky and I found two works using huge letters very witty: one reads "ОЙ" on one side and "NO" on the other. Another sign, composed of 17 two-meter-tall pink letters in Cyrillic, reads "Schastye ne za gorami" (Happiness is not far away) by Boris Matrosov. The work that symbolises the exhibition is a life-size copy of the first Sputnik man-made satellite by Rostan Tavasiyev. Instead of Laika (first dog in space), there's a huge Duracell bunny inside. The other artists are Semen Agroskin, Marina Belova, Leonid Borisov, Bruni Lavrenty, Elena Yelagina, Konstantin Zvezdochetov, Yelena Kitaeva, Maxim Ksuta, Oleg Kulik, Konstantin Latyshev, Igor Makarevich, Diana Machulina, Nicola Ovchinnikov, Alexander Petrelli, Alexei Politov, Alexander Savko, Rostan Tavasiev, Alexei Upman, Tatiana Khengster, Sergei Shekhovtsov and Ewerdt Hilgemann.
At almost every public event my Inessa and I go to, guaranteed there's a spectacle of people (often members of the media) who embarass themselves by gouging on free food. It happened at that event at Shore House as well as the Sultanna Frantsuzova fashion show. Here at least it wasn't as embarrassing. People still grabbed food with very little restraint or decorum, as if they hadn't eaten in two days. (Ah well I guess I was a saté guerilla at Blue Elephant last night, as well.) My macushla and I had to share a plate between the two of us. On the way to look for a tree stump to sit on I handed a fork for this girl whom I saw sitting squat on the ground trying to eat salad with two knives.
On the way back we had to fill up on petrol at Lukoil near MKAD before going on our way. We took the road going to Krylatskoe and found ourselves back on the familiar Narodnogo Opolcheniya. Famished yet deciding we wanted something more different than Planeta Sushi or Il Patio we tried Fifth Avenue, a mall some five minutes on foot from Inessa's station along Ulitsa Marshala Biryuzova. Up on the third floor they had a branch of the popular beer restaurant on Taganka, Kolbasoff. We decided to eat instead at El Inka, a Spanish and Peruvian restaurant. In all it was, as Dearie described it, a perfect day.
Whatever ideas we had to continue the Saturday's enjoyment into Sunday were tweaked by the weather, which refused to go along with our script. Faizal told me Sasha was inviting us to have a picnic again just outside Moscow. The main event was tea with a family heirloom, Sasha's babushka's 120-year-old samovar. So we woke up to a very rainy day. Although I signed up for the impromptu outing I had yet to convince my muirnín that it was worth the trip. By midday the whole event was still a big question mark, although the rains had already slowed a bit. When Sasha finally confirmed after his English language lesson with Olya, it was way past 14.00. Ultimately Inessa decided to join us with the condition that she could only stay for two hours. That would've meant taking Balios with us. Faizal, however, insisted that we go in one car, adding that we would all go home together. (For some reason I got it into my head that we were going to join Sasha's family in some forest somewhere.)
After picking up Dearie at the McDo at Novoslobodskaya, we headed in the direction of Yakhroma on Dmitrovskoye Shosse. Just past MKAD we turned right toward Klyazma-2. In contrast with my forest-idea, we set up the samovar on a bench in Troitskoye, a rest area on the banks of the Klyazma Reservoir. There's actually a gravelly beach, but it's the lawn that fills up with river- and sunbathers. Desperately wishing for the remains of summer, we set up the samovar, bublik -a kind of Russian bagel-, honey, fruit preserves, dried mangoes and Cuvée Karsov red wine. Using lit briquettes Sasha was quickly able to get a fire going in the brass container. Despite the warmth of the samovar, the river breeze swept us up in its freezing embrace. With nothing but a flimsy cardigan I started to freeze; Sasha went over to the hotel next door and borrowed a dark-coloured windbreaker for me. That, however, was not enough; to warm up we had to jump up and down and shuffle from side to side. That prompted Sasha to call our gathering the "Crazy Penguin Picnic" - shades of the madness of Vologda! All we had to do now was do an endless song-cycle (sounds like Richard Wagner). It was actually loads of fun, drinking tea and wine while trying to keep warm! So despite the dampness we were able to have a fun picnic with his 1885 Tula samovar outdoors, thanks to Sasha's determination and resourcefulness.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Days of Thailand in Moscow
With work spilling over from Thursday into yesterday Friday was one of those impossibly busy days. It started with an extended meeting at one of the ministries. For lunch speed took precedence over taste or even welfare so I just went with a colleague to McDonald's for a McFresh and a coffee at McCafé.
In the afternoon there were a thousand and one things I had to finish in order to make a clean break with some things that needed to be passed off to our staff this week. In fact I was still orienting two of my colleagues at 5 past when I should already have been picking up my muirnín at Park Kultury.
After sending off my cleaner for the day and freshening up a bit at the flat, Inessa and I hurried off to Novaya Opera at the Hermitage Gardens for the gala opening of the Thai Cultural Festival in Moscow. Arriving 15 minutes late we thought we'd have to wait for the next interval to be able to take our seats. In fact an usherette told us as much when I got in at the door. When we entered the main doors of the hall, however, we saw that things had yet to settle down. Dima of the third form Filipino group at Moscow State University said hello to us first, followed by Sasha of Yukos and the whole Indonesian Embassy. On the other side I also said hello to Katya, Yulia and Zhenya of the Singaporean Embassy, the only other ones who responded to my SOS SMS the other day. On the same row and the back row there were a couple of people from the Foreign Ministry seated as well. My ducky saw a few people she knew from the press conference earlier the day.
The program started with a full court instrumental ensemble playing the overture to a masked khon performance by the National Theatre of Thailand, in which episodes from the ancient Sanskrit epic Ramayana are enacted to music in highly stylished form. Called Ramakian, this Thai version tells of the war between Rama, the rightful King of Ayutthaya, and Totsakan, the evil king of Lanka island who has spirited Rama's wife, Sita, to Lanka. Rama is aided by his royal brother, Laksmana, and several monkey chieftains with their simian armies. Totsakan is supported by various demons, who are also his relatives. Then there was a demonstration of Thai martial arts, followed by the distinctive dances of four different regions in Thailand. All in all it was a very impressive show. Thais certainly know how to put things together.
Following the program Waraporn and Piyapan invited us to go to the reception being held at the new Blue Elephant restaurant.
In the afternoon there were a thousand and one things I had to finish in order to make a clean break with some things that needed to be passed off to our staff this week. In fact I was still orienting two of my colleagues at 5 past when I should already have been picking up my muirnín at Park Kultury.
After sending off my cleaner for the day and freshening up a bit at the flat, Inessa and I hurried off to Novaya Opera at the Hermitage Gardens for the gala opening of the Thai Cultural Festival in Moscow. Arriving 15 minutes late we thought we'd have to wait for the next interval to be able to take our seats. In fact an usherette told us as much when I got in at the door. When we entered the main doors of the hall, however, we saw that things had yet to settle down. Dima of the third form Filipino group at Moscow State University said hello to us first, followed by Sasha of Yukos and the whole Indonesian Embassy. On the other side I also said hello to Katya, Yulia and Zhenya of the Singaporean Embassy, the only other ones who responded to my SOS SMS the other day. On the same row and the back row there were a couple of people from the Foreign Ministry seated as well. My ducky saw a few people she knew from the press conference earlier the day.
The program started with a full court instrumental ensemble playing the overture to a masked khon performance by the National Theatre of Thailand, in which episodes from the ancient Sanskrit epic Ramayana are enacted to music in highly stylished form. Called Ramakian, this Thai version tells of the war between Rama, the rightful King of Ayutthaya, and Totsakan, the evil king of Lanka island who has spirited Rama's wife, Sita, to Lanka. Rama is aided by his royal brother, Laksmana, and several monkey chieftains with their simian armies. Totsakan is supported by various demons, who are also his relatives. Then there was a demonstration of Thai martial arts, followed by the distinctive dances of four different regions in Thailand. All in all it was a very impressive show. Thais certainly know how to put things together.
Following the program Waraporn and Piyapan invited us to go to the reception being held at the new Blue Elephant restaurant.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Eureka!
Let me celebrate a couple of rediscoveries today both related to my Inessa: Alyonka, my favorite chocolate-vanilla spread (comparable to Nutella in quality but considerably less pricey) only available at the supermarket in Shchukino; and Jem, a British singer whose voice has bewitched me since I heard her songs in Inessa's computer in June.
Of course, the day featured a number of other mention-worthy happenings, such as the bank's delay in locating my misplaced cash card; the sumptuous and mildly decadent dish of pork in vinegared pig's blood paired with pork rind-and-tofu curd prepared by my boss' household staff for the usual stragglers at work; and dinner with Faizal and Dearie at Kult, another lounge lizard lair of the O.G.I. variety buried in the recesses of Yauzskaya Ulitsa (better known as the location of the hyper-snob clubs Leto/Zima/Osen). Each of those will likely occupy their own niches in my memory banks.
But in this instance, the last and more modest events are the ones that distinguish this day from others. I've always wanted to get myself another container of Alyonka, which I first bought at Zebra, Inessa's supermarket along Narodnogo Opolcheniya, a couple of months back. Originally sold as a chocolate bar, Alyonka is one of the best brands of Krasny Oktyabr (Red October), a Russian confectioner founded by two Germans, Teodore Ferdinand von Einem and Julius Heuss in 1867, first at Sofiyskaya Naberezhnaya (Sophia Embankment) and later at its current site on Bersenevskaya Naberezhnaya (Bersenev Embankment). They also make another favourite: Slivochnaya Pomadka s Tsukatom (Cream fondant with candied fruit).
The image of the little girl on the chocolate bar first sold in 1966 invokes such nostalgia among Russians it's almost palpable. For example I found the following blog entry by Lolita, a Russian teen now living in Los Angeles, expressing such emotion in finding one of these yellow-red chocolate bars in a small shop in a southern Califorian suburb:
Anyway, I like Alyonka as much for the taste as for the faux Russian folk art packaging. There's no going back to peanut butter after this.
As for Jem, it's a different kind of enchantment altogether. A bit like the grip that took hold of me when hearing De-Phazz for the first time: firm and ticklish. My ducky mentioned her name almost absent-mindedly tonight at Kult when talking about their MP3-filled computer. Wasn't really too sure if we were talking about the same artist, but when I checked online tonight, this website turned up. All her songs are put up in her site. It won't allow me to download songs but I can play a continuous loop until I've gotten all the tunes committed practically to memory!
Jem, whose real name is Jemma Griffiths, is actually from Cardiff, Wales, known for Tom Jones and Charlotte Church. She had been singing and writing songs since the age of 13. After reading law at Sussex University in Brighton, England, she moved out of her comfort zone into London to work for other artists and allow her creativity to flourish. There she had a chance to work with Madonna, Fatboy Slim and Björk's songwriter. When one of her demo-tape songs received wide play following its first exposure at a national radio programme in the US, she was signed up by the record label of the Dave Matthews Band. Although the 30-year-old songstress sounds like and has most often been compared to Dido, I like her better. Her PR sheet is spot-on about her music: "...a combination of bright melodies, soul searching lyrics and diverse rhythms that grab you from the first listen. Her seemingly innocent lyrics contain those closely observed details that are as much about optimism as they are about discovery."
Of course, the day featured a number of other mention-worthy happenings, such as the bank's delay in locating my misplaced cash card; the sumptuous and mildly decadent dish of pork in vinegared pig's blood paired with pork rind-and-tofu curd prepared by my boss' household staff for the usual stragglers at work; and dinner with Faizal and Dearie at Kult, another lounge lizard lair of the O.G.I. variety buried in the recesses of Yauzskaya Ulitsa (better known as the location of the hyper-snob clubs Leto/Zima/Osen). Each of those will likely occupy their own niches in my memory banks.
But in this instance, the last and more modest events are the ones that distinguish this day from others. I've always wanted to get myself another container of Alyonka, which I first bought at Zebra, Inessa's supermarket along Narodnogo Opolcheniya, a couple of months back. Originally sold as a chocolate bar, Alyonka is one of the best brands of Krasny Oktyabr (Red October), a Russian confectioner founded by two Germans, Teodore Ferdinand von Einem and Julius Heuss in 1867, first at Sofiyskaya Naberezhnaya (Sophia Embankment) and later at its current site on Bersenevskaya Naberezhnaya (Bersenev Embankment). They also make another favourite: Slivochnaya Pomadka s Tsukatom (Cream fondant with candied fruit).The image of the little girl on the chocolate bar first sold in 1966 invokes such nostalgia among Russians it's almost palpable. For example I found the following blog entry by Lolita, a Russian teen now living in Los Angeles, expressing such emotion in finding one of these yellow-red chocolate bars in a small shop in a southern Califorian suburb:
Yesterday I went into a Russian shop in the suburbs. It was sort of a hit-and-run affair; I sort of just grabbed a few things which struck my fancy, which is a mystery even to me. The tally was a sweet, crumbly Armenian bread, "French" cookies, a two-liter of kvas, and an assortment of exquisitely packaged candies. A great rush of light entered my breast when I saw the "Alyonka" brand at the counter but, after all, I had already gotten what I had come for, whatever that was. Later on we passed a Russian deli downtown and I got a mushroom and cheese croissant. I was feeling cocky so I thanked the proprietor in Russian; it is the only time I have ever flirted with a Russian man.It is so evocative as a pop symbol, despite its socialist origins that it even became the subject of a legal dispute. In December 2000, Krasny Oktyabr was sued for 4 million rubles ($143,087) by Yelena Gerinas, a woman who claims that the company improperly used her likeness on its Alyonka chocolate bars. Gerinas claims in her lawsuit, the first of its kind in Russia, that the brand-boosting image on Alyonka bars was copied from a photograph taken by her father, the well-known photographer Alexander Gerinas who once worked for Krasny Oktyabr. She says Krasny Oktyabr used the photograph in designing the Alyonka label. Little is known of the case's outcome.
Anyway, I like Alyonka as much for the taste as for the faux Russian folk art packaging. There's no going back to peanut butter after this.
As for Jem, it's a different kind of enchantment altogether. A bit like the grip that took hold of me when hearing De-Phazz for the first time: firm and ticklish. My ducky mentioned her name almost absent-mindedly tonight at Kult when talking about their MP3-filled computer. Wasn't really too sure if we were talking about the same artist, but when I checked online tonight, this website turned up. All her songs are put up in her site. It won't allow me to download songs but I can play a continuous loop until I've gotten all the tunes committed practically to memory!
Jem, whose real name is Jemma Griffiths, is actually from Cardiff, Wales, known for Tom Jones and Charlotte Church. She had been singing and writing songs since the age of 13. After reading law at Sussex University in Brighton, England, she moved out of her comfort zone into London to work for other artists and allow her creativity to flourish. There she had a chance to work with Madonna, Fatboy Slim and Björk's songwriter. When one of her demo-tape songs received wide play following its first exposure at a national radio programme in the US, she was signed up by the record label of the Dave Matthews Band. Although the 30-year-old songstress sounds like and has most often been compared to Dido, I like her better. Her PR sheet is spot-on about her music: "...a combination of bright melodies, soul searching lyrics and diverse rhythms that grab you from the first listen. Her seemingly innocent lyrics contain those closely observed details that are as much about optimism as they are about discovery."
Jem released her debut album Finally Woken in March 2004. Other artists she's been compared to are Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Club 8, Anjali, Beth Orton, Massive Attack, Everything But the Girl and Saint Etienne, which performed in April or May this year in Moscow.Just A Ride
Life, it's ever so strange
It's so full of change
Think that you've worked it out
then BANG
Right out of the blue
Something happens to you
To throw you off course
and then you
Breakdown
Yeah you breakdown
Well don't you breakdown
Listen to me
Because
It's just a ride, it's just a ride
no need to run, no need to hide
It'll take you round and round
Sometimes you're up
sometimes you're down
It's just a ride, it's just a ride
don't be scared
don't hide your eyes
It may feel so real inside
but don't forget it's just a ride
Monday, September 05, 2005
Minuta molchaniya
After last night's festivities I came to the office with a spring in my step with thoughts of last night. When I turned to The Moscow Times, however, I got reminded of the another important commemoration, the tragedy of Beslan. I guess that was the reason the traditional fireworks were canceled by the city in last night's festivities.
I remember that those days in early September last year. There was a certain nervousness in the air as the insecurity and fear pervasive in the days following the underground bombing in February 2004 came back to the city in the wake of two mid-air explosions committed by suspected women suicide bombers and an explosion of a bomb at a bus stop in the city outskirts. On 1 September, traditionally the first day of school all throughout the former Soviet Union, teachers held the first class of the year for pupils of Beslan School No 1, most of whom were accompanied by their parents or close relatives and friends. All of a sudden masked armed men seized the school, held more than 1,000 people captive and very quickly set up booby traps to deter any attempts at rescue. After a tense standoff special security forces rushed the gymnasium where all the hostages were being held. A firefight ensued which precipated the deaths of 331 people, 186 of whom were children. Even in a country used to tragedy (such as the Nord-Ost hostage-taking, the Kursk sinking) the death of innocents was almost too much to bear.
From late last week a number of commemorations took place, such as the meeting of Beslan mothers at the Kremlin with President Putin on Friday and a rally organised by the Kremlin-backed Nashy youth movement (only time will tell if they're merely maleable Boy Scout types, a kind of violent Red Guard that Mao Zedong unleashed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution or the supreme leader's youthful alterego like theHitler-Jugend) on Saturday afternoon at Vasilievsky Spusk (St Basil's Slope) for the victims. My Ossetian friend Alesiya from Vladikavkaz, some 65 km away from Beslan, attended the brief "meeting" in Moscow. Russian business daily Kommersant had this following English report:
I remember that those days in early September last year. There was a certain nervousness in the air as the insecurity and fear pervasive in the days following the underground bombing in February 2004 came back to the city in the wake of two mid-air explosions committed by suspected women suicide bombers and an explosion of a bomb at a bus stop in the city outskirts. On 1 September, traditionally the first day of school all throughout the former Soviet Union, teachers held the first class of the year for pupils of Beslan School No 1, most of whom were accompanied by their parents or close relatives and friends. All of a sudden masked armed men seized the school, held more than 1,000 people captive and very quickly set up booby traps to deter any attempts at rescue. After a tense standoff special security forces rushed the gymnasium where all the hostages were being held. A firefight ensued which precipated the deaths of 331 people, 186 of whom were children. Even in a country used to tragedy (such as the Nord-Ost hostage-taking, the Kursk sinking) the death of innocents was almost too much to bear.
From late last week a number of commemorations took place, such as the meeting of Beslan mothers at the Kremlin with President Putin on Friday and a rally organised by the Kremlin-backed Nashy youth movement (only time will tell if they're merely maleable Boy Scout types, a kind of violent Red Guard that Mao Zedong unleashed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution or the supreme leader's youthful alterego like theHitler-Jugend) on Saturday afternoon at Vasilievsky Spusk (St Basil's Slope) for the victims. My Ossetian friend Alesiya from Vladikavkaz, some 65 km away from Beslan, attended the brief "meeting" in Moscow. Russian business daily Kommersant had this following English report:Unable to Mourn
The mournful meeting of silence was held in Moscow Vasilievsky Spusk Saturday, September 3, 2005, in memory of those slain in Beslan bloodshed a year ago. The meeting staged by Nashy movement was attended by 30,000. Everyone stood still, but for Nashy, naturally.
The beginning was slated for 4:00 p.m. The police arranged a security cordon by 2:30 p.m. with the metal detectors installed from outside of Vasilievsky Spusk. The reporters could enter the square from the Kremlin quay under special lists or incognito, with the crowd from Varvarka. Nashy activists in black T-shirts and jackets reading “No words. The meeting of silence in memory of Beslan victims” were bumped into right after the metal detectors. They were holding boxes with candles. Each incomer received two candles with words “Light of Christ enlighten all.” The people crowded near a black stage where the bell was installed.There were a lot of young people in Vasilievsky Spusk on that day. Some of them came independently and were particularly eyed by Nashy, who were always eager to put down the names and phone numbers, perhaps, in a move to recruit new members.
At 4:30 p.m., one of Nashys walked onto the stage. “We are the one country. The one people. September 3. Beslan. 331 people slain. Of them, 186 were children. It only remains to bewail and live. 331 clangs of the bell in memory of those perished in Beslan. No words. Please keep silence," a Nashy activist said.
The silence was broken in two minutes. Of 331, only the fifty clangs were heard when the voice from the radio sets held by Nashy members commanded to direct people to place candles at the 300th clang of the bell.
It usually takes a quarter of an hour so than the bell could make 331 clangs. Hardly two minutes had passed when pushed by the bosses through radio sets, Nashy activists got down to business, trying to sort out the crowd by sectors, explaining where to put a candle (glass aquariums with sand) once the clangs were over. The women stopped crying.
In Vasilievsky Spusk, only a few followed orders. The better part of the crowd ignored sand aquariums, having preferred to stick candles between cobble-stones of the pavement. When leaving, the people were presenting cigarettes to the police that formed the cordon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
