Primus inter pares

Returning home from Shchukino, I looked up a few sources about the bard-singer I started off talking about in my last entry today. When I first saw the monument more than two years ago, I thought it was something too obscure and local, really nothing to concern myself about. But the more I found out, the more curious I became. And now I realise he looms larger and has more import to this society than his statue's hunched frame suggests.

Bulat Shalovich Okudzhava, who is very little known in the West, is probably the foremost Soviet artist who is best associated with the Arbat. In a sense, to understand him and the other so-called bard-poets of the Soviet period is to capture the zeitgeist of a period far removed from today's capitalist Russia. It would also help differentiate Soviet (sovetsky) from Russian (russky) and, in turn, Russian the ethnicity (russky) from Russian the nationality (rossisky).

Although not Russian by blood, Okudzhava strongly identified respectively with the Russia-led state, Moscow and the Arbat neighborhood where he was born on 9 May 1924. Indeed his life was truly a reflection of the times. He lost his parents, both ardent communists, during the height of Stalin purges of the 1930s. His Georgian father was shot in 1937 while his Armenian mother, identified as "an enemy of the people", was sent to work to Stalin's concentration camps where she spent 18 years. Despite this background, 17-year-old Bulat was ardent enough to conceal his age and sign up to fight at the front for three years beginning in 1941. (He later said he was drafted.)

This Sovietness, that is, the suppression of national traits in favour of the amalgamated internationalist character prescribed by the greater socialist state (a concept often confusing not only for foreigners but also for Russians who only gained consciousness with the advent of the Russian Federation), is aptly described in the following passage culled from this lively tribute:

Bulat Okudzhava spoke and wrote only in Russian. This was because his mother, who spoke Georgian, Azerbaydjanian [sic], and of course Armenian, has always requested that everyone who came to visit her house "Please, speak the language of Lenin - Russian". Only in the country called Soviet Union could a father be shot as an enemy of the people, and his son be sent to war to protect these same people.

Ironically, Okuzhava earned the ire of his fellow Georgians, who viewed this outspoken Russianness to be an act of near-treason. It must be pointed out, however, that the vast majority of Russian bards are not entirely Russian. Perhaps this fact is not merely coincidental. In the article "Immortalizing a Russian Bard", which appeared in November 2004 in the Israeli daily Haaretz, journalist Lily Galili ventured that "it was more natural and more easy for these individuals, whose ethnic identity preserved a certain foreignness, to break free of the ethos of the Soviet ruler." Of course there were distinguished exceptions, such as Vysotsky and Brodsky. Soviet authorities always kept a watchful eye over the bards, even though they did not engage in overt persecution. "Nevertheless, or perhaps precisely for this reason, the bards expressed, to the sounds of a guitar, the most closely guarded emotions of the Soviet citizenry, and rebelled against the enlisted art," Galili says. "They gave birth to a style of quiet protest - the lone man and his guitar, the individual who feels a deep urge to express himself while pushing slightly the boundaries of what is permissible." These songs gave voice to the Soviet masses, who gathered in private homes and in the woods around the large cities, to sing the songs of the bards.

It was during the war that he started writing his first poems, stories and songs. During one bout of confinement in hospital, he wrote and sent verses to a wartime newspaper. He wrote his first famous song in 1946. Despite the tragedy surrounding him, he managed to keep an optimism that was not blind to the suffering of others.

After completing a literature degree at Tbilisi State University in 1950, he worked variously in a provincial and then city school in the Kaluga Region, a newspaper and a publishing house in Moscow. Soon, though, he became the first of a series of poet-performers who captured the spirit and outlook of a generation cowed by Stalin's brutality, confused by Khruschev's indecision and discouraged by Brezhnev's inertia. A St Petersburg Times article said the following when he died in 1997:

In late 1950s he burst onto the Russian music scene with a new genre of music, avtorskaya pesnya (translated loosely as "author's song"), which became extremely popular among the Soviet intelligentsia. Okudzhava sang verses to the accompaniment of acoustic guitar instead of reciting them. His personal performance style, philosophical content and simple, melancholy tunes were a breath of fresh air after the patriotic war songs that dominated the 1940s, the upbeat marches about building factories and railroads of the 1950s, and the sappy Soviet love songs.

"I remember hearing this bootleg tape of Okudzhava in 1960," said Viktor Timofeyev, 80, a pensioner, as he clutched red carnations in his trembling hand. "I have to be honest, I thought the guy should only sing in the shower. But I found that I wanted to hear the songs again, they were so soulful. I haven't stopped listening to them since."

Famous Soviet bards like Vladimir Vysotsky and Alexander Galich followed in Okudzhava's footsteps. Their verse was more openly political, filled with rage and rebellion against the Soviet state. But Okudzhava's more subtle poetry inspired a wider segment of the population, from the politicized intellectuals of the post-Stalin era accustomed to looking for political allegory, to engineers and students.

Certainly, there were also other poets (Andrei Voznesensky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Bella Akhmadulina), singers (Vysotsky, Galich, and Yuri Vizbor) and writers (Vladimir Voinovich, Vasily Aksyonov and Anatoly Pristavkin) who might have been more vocal and visible, but Okudzhava, with his romanticism, kindness and love of life, was still the first among his peers. Primus inter pares. The earlier quoted tribute continues: "It was he who opened the tiny door to freedom for all of us. On the tape recorder, one could record any kind of songs, and not be forced to listen to the music that was being blown into our ears by the public radio and television."

In the late '50s our homes were a bit happier because they were filled with the voice and the guitar music of Okoudjava. Later, professional artists of film and theater began to perform his songs in movies such as "The Star of the Alluring Happiness", "Belorussian Train Station", and "The White Sun of the Desert". Sing at least one line of any song from these movies, and you will be joined by the whole country once known as USSR.

Eventually, he moved from Moscow to Peredelkino, where he battled against mosquitoes and illnesses, reflected on the vicissitudes of life, about who had left and who had remained. He wrote songs less and less: "Maybe it is my age?" he mused. "And maybe they (the melodies) are no longer needed..."

Instead he concentrated on prose and poetry about his life, at first by hand then later on a typewriter. He distrusted computers, which could have made his writing easier. "I don't understand anything about computers," he once said. "This is why I write using a ballpoint pen, crossing words out. I console myself with the thought that Mozart was using a harpsichord and still managed to write good music." (Here is an English-lanugage excerpt of a short story published in Glas, The Show Is Over.)

Apart from plays and short stories, his prose included historical novels for which he found a passion in the 1960s. The four he wrote - Bedny Avrosimov (Poor Avrosimov) in 1969, Pokhozhdeniya Shipova (The Adventures of Shipov) in 1971, Puteshestviye diletantov (Dilettantes' Voyage) in 1977, and Svidaniye s Bonapartom (A Date With Bonaparte) in 1983 - took on a character typical in authoritarian societies, in which historical figures or settings are used to criticise the current regime. Examined together, the first two novels in particular are interesting in their use of phantasmagoric imagery in filtering historical subjects to describe the tense climate of the Soviet Union of the 1960s.

In his Peredelkino country house, Okudzhava worked in his garden like many pensioners do today. He smoked one cigarette all day, extinguishing it in a tiny ashtray. He'd light it up and then later put it out again. "I am saving not my cigarettes of course, but," he laughs, "my health. The doctors said: 'If you smoke, you'll die..." I said: 'If I don't smoke, I'll die even sooner!..'"

On a trip to Paris with his wife Olga, Okudzhava succumbed to a long-running heart ailment at the suburban Percy Hospital on 12 June 1997 at the age of 73. Olga told reporters that he died from "the psychological stress of loneliness". His remains were brought back to Moscow, where they lay in state at the Vakhtangov Theater along Arbat. Russia's political and cultural elite, including first deputy prime ministers Anatoly Chubais and Boris Nemtsov, Economy Minister Yakov Urinson, and poets Voznesensky and Yevtushenko joined a long queue of Moscow faithful in paying tribute and laying flowers at the foot of his brightly lit, half-open coffin. In one eulogy after the next, speakers agreed that Okudzhava's death marked the passing of an era.

Akhmadulina herself, who knew Okudzhava for 40 years, said that the bard was "the conscience of the epoch". He was laid to rest at the Vagankovsky Cemetery.

The paper soldier, the subject of one of his most famous ballads, "stepped into the fire" because he wanted to "make the world better." This honorable and fragile creature who sacrificed his life for others became the symbol of the Russian dissident movement.

Even though Okudzhava did not experience political persecution to the same degree as Joseph Brodsky, who was exiled from the country, the official recordings of his songs did not appear until the glasnost of the late 1980s. Okudzhava continued to write prose and poetry until his death, but he stopped setting his poetry to music because he thought the time for that had passed.

The popularity of Okudzhava's songs reached such a crescendo that the authorities allowed their publication by an official media organization in the late 1970s. (They were first published in stylised form in Krakow in 1970 and in their original form a few years later in the US.) Intelligentsia in the the USSR but also Russian-speaking in other countries lent a further boost to to the songs' renown. Vladimir Nabokov, for example, cited his Sentimental Waltz in the novel Ada, or Ardour.

In the end Okudzhava cemented his place in the Russian literary pantheon. His mark, juxtaposed against his contemporaries, places greatest value in his sincerity and earnestness, in his ability to speak from the heart. His Hebrew translator, Russian émigré Gennady Guntar, called Okudkhava's unique verses "an intelligent urban language." Singer Larissa Gerstein says, "Verses of his poems became codes for the entire intelligentsia in Soviet Russia." Ultimately these codes, cultural more than political in nature, possessed greater accessibility and utility for the larger public. Galili summarises:

This, then, is the essence of what makes Okudzhava unique: Brodsky is considered a complex poet, Vysotsky a more socially minded writer, anchored in the Soviet context. Among this group, Okudzhava is simply the most human, and therefore the most universal of them all. He articulated an outbreak of true feelings, in a reality in which the lie had been consecrated. For this reason, his simple poetry has survived the changing times and changes of regime.

He may have passed away but for Russians, especially for those who lived through the Soviet era, the words of writer Viktor Astafiev still ring true: "Bulat Okudzhava's voice will always be there. Let his song of goodwill and compassion reign on earth..."

I don't know if all the tributes to the man is something that can be easily understood by non-Russians, especially those who do not speak the language at all or well enough. In the end it has to be understood in the context of the age, the best way one can appreciate Soviet cinema, literature and theatre. Some of this spirit lingers on in today's Moscow, especially in the storied street called Arbat, which with its cosy courtyards, quiet sidestreets and relaxed residents, became Okudzhava's family in his youth. At his concerts he always sang a song, introducing it with the words: "Now I'll sing a song about a street that embodies Moscow and my home country. This is a song about Arbat." For this reason Okudzhava would always be associated with Arbat.

The Song of the Arbat
You flow like a river with your strange name
And your asphalt transparent like water in a river.
Oh my Arbat, you are my vocation,
You are my joy and my misfortune.

Your pedestrians are not exalted people,
Their heels pound, they hurry on their way.
Oh my Arbat, you are my religion,
Your roadway lies beneath me.

I will never get over loving you,
Even loving forty thousand other roadways.
Oh my Arbat, you are my native land,
No one could ever come to the end of you.

***

Okudzhava's poems are available in English by the following translators:

• Alec Vagapov
• Tanya Jean Wolfson
• Yevgeny Bonver
• Maya Jouravel
• Murzin

Changes in Old Arbat

Of late I go out for lunch less and less, trying to maximise my time at work and keep expenses to a minimum. Today, however, I was interrupted from my stupor by a lovely text message from my ducky, who asked about the possibility of a nice little tiffin together. I guess my Movable Feast will have to stay in Deepfreeze for another day. No big loss.

Stepping outside, I had to keep my cardigan on as it has been getting nippier by the day. It seems it's been a while since I last took a walk on the Arbat, a pedestrian mall popular with both Russian and foreign tourists; there've been some noticeable changes. For example there's now a casting agency (horrendously rendered as kastingovoe agenstvo in Russian) called Fashion Buro just around the corner. A far cry from the Politburo of the CCCP. (Too bad I really didn't have time to get a peek to find out if the place is all pukka. Like the White Rabbit, I had to hurry.) Charcoal pencil artists have gotten loads better; the bookstore of the Ukrainian Cultural Centre is now open (my verdict: "a complete waste of good space"); and Terranova, this teen fashion store, is offering clothes for no more than 299 rubles. Add to that Mexx, Esprit and the spiffing new building opened by TNK-BP as their headquarters and you've got a neighborhood that's gone downright upmarket.

Lolled about the front of the restaurant before my macushla came. We ate at Tridevyatoye tsarstvo near the restaurant Praga end of Arbat. The name, wittily rendered as 3/9 Tsartsvo, has its origins in the phrase "tridevyatoye tsarstvo, tridesyatoye gosudarstvo," (three-nine kingdom, three-ten government), which is usually taken as the spatial equivalent of the temporal "once upon a time". More apropos, it's the Russian equivalent to Star Wars Episode IV's "In a galaxy far, far away". In other words, a kingdom where many Russian folktales are set. In a linguistic forum online, Inessa found out that the numbers in the phrases actually meant that it took 27 days (=3x9, or one month in the lunar calendar) to reach the kingdom, and 30 (=3x10) to reach the government. Kings are easier to reach than presidents? So is that a reflexion of government in general, or just the Kremlin?

Apart from being packaged well, Tridevyatoye tsarstvo's food is also très bon marché. (Hmmm, first Sultanna Frantsuzova and then this? Is Moscow actually becoming more *affordable*? Gasp!) Between my muirnín and I, we spent only 400 rubles. That's actually a steal.

***

On the way back, I took a bit of time having a shufti with the souvenir stands that line the kilometre-long cobblestoned street. My first memories of Moscow are associated with this street. About a month ago, when my poppet was in Prague, I saw the Mikhail Kozakov film Pokrovskiye vorota (Pokrov Gates). The soundtrack was composed by the poet-songwriter Bulat Okudzhava, whose name first turned up in my Russian language textbook. It was only through this movie that I made the connexion with the bronze monument diagonal to the Georgian Cultural Center on the Arbat. Yes, right next to the mottled mascot of Mu-Mu. (The statue, made by sculptor Georgi Frangulian, shows the singer walking, hands in pocket, through an archway. "The statue represents Okudzhava as a free man, traversing a hard, cold period - the Soviet regime," Frangulian said on the occasion of its inauguration on 8 May 2002.)

Accessible fashionistas

The day started at midday, when I was roused awake by a text message from my Inessa. We spent the better part of the afternoon checking out this "invitational" fashion show by Sultanna Frantsuzova on the Andreyevsky Most (St. Andrew's Bridge) on the Frunzenskaya Naberezhnaya (Frunzen Embankment). My first reaction, while eyeing le beau monde queuing at the foot of the escalator, was: Is that a real name, Sultanna? I was drawn to the double "n" of her name. (Later I would find out that there's confusion over how to transcribe her name in English, with a single or double "n". Is this the same as the Odessa Question?) We were still trying to figure out the whole set-up (much like the initial premise of the French film we saw later) when we found ourselves amidst a full-fledged fashion show - catwalk, anorexic models and gaggle-eyed fans, the works.


But it was no ordinary fashion show. Rather, it actually achieved an anti-snob appeal by being completely accessible, open and mass-based. It was cool the way the organizers did it, blocking off one side of the bridge escalators to convey all the guests, setting up a long catwalk (200 meters, according to FashionStyle.ru, certainly the longest I've seen in my life), serving wine (mostly Crimean) and selling clothes in situ along the whole span of the bridge.

Before coming to Moscow, the only thing about fashion shows that appealed to me was the models. The clothes worn by models had always seemed to me impractical and frivolous. Since coming and attending The Russian Fashion Week twice (the first time in April 2004), I've been impressed with the practicality of the designs. Now we have Ms. Frantsuzova and her fresh ideas. For the two-day event, open from 10 to 10 on the bridge adjacent to Gorky Park, some 10,000 people were expected to gather. The ramp shows showing off her autumn line went on non-stop. People who liked what they saw could just go up to the endless racks of clothes and try on their fancy - there were changing booths expressly for the purpose! The simplest idea, why is it no one had thought of it? Plus, buffets (furshet in Russian) were even planned. The food was modest (nuts, fruits) but considering hundreds of smart-dressed yet modest people showed up it wasn't at all bad.

Coming in completely clueless about the designer and actually looking a little bit more forward to the free food, I am now surprised to learn that this 30-year-old designer is actually causing a stir of sorts for her smart but inexpensive designs. One fashion reporter even called her the first true Russian pret-a-porter designer.

However, her biggest appeal actually might even work against her. The article "Democratic Fashions" which appeared in Context, the weekend edition of The Moscow Times, provides a sharp insight into the bizarre buying habits of Muscovites:

Although experts agreed that Frantsuzova's designs were stylish and well-made for their price range, some suggested that their low prices had an almost detrimental effect on her brand name, given the realities of Moscow's price-obsessed fashion world. Yana Melkumova, fashion editor of Jalouse, said that many of the city's fashion trailblazers love to wear Frantsuzova's stuff but hate to admit it because it's so cheap.

"Everybody wears her things -- everybody who's into fashion -- but people are a bit embarrassed about it," she said by telephone Thursday. "They'll gladly accept compliments [on their looks], but if you ask them, 'Who made that?' they'll say, 'I'm not telling.' And then you'll know, oh, it must be Sultanna Frantsuzova."

Frantsuzova, who is originally from Kalmykia, manages to maintain her line completely demokratichnye, otkrytye and massovye by having all her threads sewn in China. (A-ha, taking a page from WalMart!) Figures. Although I didn't notice any tags saying so on the clothes labels. According to another site, Frantsuzova who has participated for a couple of years in the Russia Fashion Week (oh, Valya should've heard of her then), apparently is also causing a flurry in Europe and Asia (and presumably over more than just her name spelling).

The Russian Fashion Week website has this to say about her:

Sultanna Frantsuzova's given name is not a pseudonym, as it may seem at first glance. Sultanna inherited it from her Kalmuck mother. But in her profession the combination of an imposing name and surname is a winner hands down.

The former student of Vyacheslav Zaitsev's Fashion Laboratory is obstinately conquer[ing] one peak after another. While all the young designers are striving to get to Paris or London, Sultanna Frantsuzova moved from Moscow to Hong Kong - now her production facilities and design bureau are situated in the city that Sultanna nicknamed "New York No. 2".

Hong Kong's work ethic and living standards impressed Frantsuzova: "You leave for Moscow for two weeks, and when you are back there's a new house constructed nearby. The living standards here are higher than in Switzerland. The people are very pleasant. All technological innovations are at your feet. Everything is done in no time".

In January 2005, she partipated in the Hong Kong Fashion Week. The following month she opened several shops there under her name. Her clothes are also being sold in Anhui Province in China. Her first boutique in Moscow was launched in December 2004 in the "Moskvichka" department store on New Arbat, selling clothes, shoes, bags and jewelry. At the same time she has partnered with Moscow shoe retailer "Ж" (Zh), which has a shop on the Garden Ring at the corner of my street. (The lastest buzz about her: she tied the knot with Yevgeny Merman, the creative director of "Ж" shoe company, in Hong Kong last month.)

Her clothes were simple but elegant in design. Dearie picked up a few items off the rack. The attendants were very helpful and attentive. On top of that, they actually give you a cumulative 10 percent discount if you buy more than one item. So I was able to get my poppet a very satisfying birthday gift.

After the fashion show we headed home. We finally bought watermelon, something we'd been keeping from doing for about a month now since Inessa insists good ones from Astrakhan and Volgograd don't really ripen until the end of August. And so there we were. After a quick pasta dinner, my ducky lit up the hookah or nargila for the first time since I got it in Istanbul in November last year. Saw on DVD Embrassez qui vous voudrez, a star-studded but nasty and amoral French comedy whose only redeeming value is Mélanie Laurent, who plays the summer girlfriend of Loïc (Gaspard Uillard).

Beaux et Coco à Moscou

One of the nice things about Moscow is that it is the oldest city I have ever lived in (that is, if one were not to count my dozen or so extended visits to Kyoto as actually “living” there). That means, almost every street corner, if you bother checking, has some kind of history.

I had almost forgotten but last night’s restaurant has some kind of claim to fame. I didn't understand too well what my Inessa was reading to me at the time, but I made up for it by doing some Google-powered sleuthing.

Seven Fridays stands on a distinguished piece of pre-revolutionary property. It was actually there where the A. Rallet & Co. factory was located. The owner of the oldest Russian perfumery was Moscow-born perfumer Ernest Beaux, who went on later to create in his Parisian exile the scent Chanel No. 5 in 1920. There are a lot of urban legends related to the creation: one says Beaux was experimenting with fatty aldehydes and had prepared several samples, and Coco Chanel chose the fifth one. Another said that it was Beaux's assistant who left ten times more aldehyde in the preparation than necessary, which ended up enhancing and fixing the scent. Coco loved it, and although Beaux realised it was a mistake he didn't dare say anything to her. If this were true it would make Chanel No. 5 one of the most wildly successful blunders in commercial history. The official version, though, goes like this: Beaux put over 80 ingredients in a small square bottle. He included it among samples he presented to the French couturière, numbered 1 to 5 and 20 to 24. She chose the fifth, retained its name after her lucky number and launched it on 5 May 1921.

How ironic, Karl Marx and Chanel No. 5 born on the same day.

Per scegliere un buon ristorante

Mixing up my semaphors with my macushla I missed a chance to go to the Indonesian bazaar today. Last year's was brill, I remember. The Indonesians put a lot into the planning and organisation. Although I woke up not too badly at 10 or so, my weekly housekeeper came over to upend my flat again (at least it looks less battle-scarred now) and make sure I've something to wear. After that I got distracted with the Internet while eating a soft cheese rye sandwich. With the phone on silent mode from last night's cinema, I didn't hear my Inessa text and then call me. By the time I caught up with the real world, Dearie was already walking to the bazaar with Olya and Vika. I thus decided just to skip the bazaar; went instead to Shakespeare and Co., a forgotten corner on a small lane off Novokuznetskaya Ulitsa, where I picked up a 15-ruble novel by Moroccan novelist Tahar Ben Jelloun, Cette aveuglante absence de lumière, which looks promising. Granted, the paucity of Francophones in Moscow puts the prices of French language books lower than English ones. But fifteen rubles? That's like spending shillings!

My pet called me up while I was still frothing at the mouth with my bargain discovery: she said Vik was asking if we could take her home. She was completely knackered, having partied all night with her colleagues to celebrate National Oilworkers' Day or something. Interesting. Anyway, Vika looked like she walked off the set of George Romero's Land of the Living Dead so we had to drop her home at the far end of Ryazansky Prospekt before racing back to the flat to make sure my housekeeper supped and got paid.

When that was done and over with, we called Faizal to ask him about that dinner question he had. Nine o' clock, he said. We still had more than an hour of spare time to kill. So in the meantime, my Inessa and I tried to see if we could differentiate a funny bone from a wishbone. Now that's a merrythought! Hee-hee...

In Moscow, you have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to a choice of restaurants. It always takes me 15-30 minutes to narrow down options, and then five more to make a choice. Fortunately, there is a way of getting the necessary information to eliminate unworthies. Inessa today introduced me to menu.ru, which has an English version. It not only provides such necessary information as location, price range, quality and menu list, it provides photos or even videos of the interior of some restaurants. We had a choice of a couple of restaurants, including Venezia or Settebello but went for Sem Pyatnits (Seven Fridays), which is located on Vorontsovskaya Ul. I remember Seven Fridays for two things: the first, Katya Baklanova, my former assistant (née Novozhenova), accepted her fiancé's proposal for marriage there; and second, it is right next to Chornaya Koshka (Black Cat), a theme restaurant set in postwar Moscow.

On the subject of restaurants, I came across a poem by Shel Silverstein while looking up the menu site my ducky told me earlier on (oh, beats me how I get to these pages!). What surprised me was: that Silverstein, author of the best-selling children's book The Giving Tree, died of a heart attack in 1999; and that he was a famous Playboy cartoonist before achieving fame with his thought-provoking verses in 1964. Imagine that, making the jump from soft porn to kids lit in those days? Maybe the end of Camelot really did hit them hard on the other side of Atlantic. Just for mind-boggling spot-on relevance, I present you one of his poems about a menagerie running a restaurant:

Strange Restaurant
By Shel Silverstein
I said, "I'll take the T-bone steak."
A soft voice mooed, "Oh wow."
And I looked up and realized
The waitress was a cow.
I cried, "Mistake--forget the the steak.
I'll take the chicken then."
I heard a cluck--'twas just my luck
The busboy was a hen.
I said, "Okay no, fowl today.
I'll have the seafood dish."
Then I saw through the kitchen door
The cook--he was a fish.
I screamed, "Is there anyone workin' here
Who's an onion or a beet?
No? Your're sure? Okay then friends,
A salad's what I'll eat."
They looked at me. "Oh,no," they said,
"The owner is a cabbage head."

Back in the real world, we shunted off on Balios to Seven Fridays, taking us a mere seven minutes (invoking poetic licence) to the other side of the city in Taganka. Not a mean feat, mind, considering it took us mere minutes considering the detour we had to make to get to the one-way Vorontsovskaya street. Ach, can't forget the are-you-bloody-daft look this bloke had when I poked Balios' snout at the corner of Kitaisky Kvartal (Chinese Quarter). Good there weren't any militsionir otherwise it would be as the Italians say: “Si salvi chi può”.

An aside: while waiting for Faizal up front we saw this Porche coupé park up right in front of us. A very young and attractive woman got out and waited while his boyfriend, obviously padded in more ways than one, started to retract the car roof. She snuck a glance at us looking at the whole procedure, the first time for me with a Porche, before turning back. I don't know these people from Adam but it was a clear sign that she herself had probably just started dating the rich bloke. She had a look that she was only herself getting used to motoring around in such a car, which should be par for the course for New Russians, not so for ordinary mortals. So I figured, she was probably an ordinary Moskvichka who was chatted up in a club by this fellow last week. One can't be too sure, but it's always interesting to plot the map of human relationships.

Faizal came over straight from the bazaar (he was emcee) still wearing part of his elegant get-up, except for the scarf and the sarong. (Haha, note the slippers!) He still had a few scars from the chicken pox, but he seemed otherwise all right. But it looks like he’ll take a wee bit more to get fully back on his feet in the Moscow scene.

Tonight's waiters were human all right and the owner was most likely not a cabbage head. They were certainly and unfortunately not special enough to merit comment. Neither glum nor cheerful, they just went through their paces as if serving in an expensive Russian-French restaurant in Moscow constituted the most dreary McJob. The food was good, offering some game dishes, but was a bit pricey. Presentation, from the menu to the actual dish, was impressive though. This is not a food column, but I would like to note here that the Moskovskaya Kupola dessert was memorable! It was made up of a mousse-cheesecake mass topped by a white candy-floss dome over it that was set aflame by the waiter. This left a strong caramel scent over the whole dish.

My Summer of Love

After work we saw this film by Pawel Pawlikowski, My Summer of Love at 35mm. At first I thought the film was shot in the same Dogme 95 style made popular by Thomas Vinterberg and Lars von Trier. But it's not counted among the five British films officially recognised by the movement, not having adhered to at least two of the group's so-called 10 vows of chastity. Still its tight angles and jerky camera shots allow the viewer to focus, Dogme-style, more on plot and character development and less on extraneous qualities. The film appears to have been one of the most praised in 2004, being even mentioned in the same breath as Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures and Erick Zonca's La vie rêvée des anges (The Dreamlife of Angels). The most flattering review comes from the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw: "It has taken a Polish-born director to respond to the exoticism of the English countryside and English mannerisms of region and class. Within the Yorkshire Dales' sunlit expanses, he has created a swooning love story with wit, flair, eroticism and some New Wave attitude." He is echoed by the Times' James Christopher, who says the film is "more English than Alfie".


Apart from the nimble direction, intelligent script and natural cinematography, it is the complex and nuanced ensemble performance of the cast of three that makes this film altogether memorable. Emily Blunt, the girl who played Tamsin, was as luminescent as Eva Green could have been in a film I have yet to see, that of Bertolucci's The Dreamers. (I can't really tell since I only saw reviews and photos in Première Magazine, but it seems that by the time of Kingdom of Heaven, Eva Green had been reduced to an exotic, period-costumed mannequin.) She exudes such confidence in her role as a rich but neglected child that even her adult poses - drinking wine, playing Saint-Saens on cello, smoking cigarettes and talking about Nietsche and Freud - both come off as seductive and sincere. Tamsin, unplugged, sounds like this: "This is Edith Piaf. I just adore her. She was this marvellous Parisian woman who had such a wonderfully tragic life. She was married 3 times & each husband died in mysterious circumstances. The last one was a boxing champion and she killed him with a fork. She didn't even go to prison because in France crimes of passion are forgiven."

Then there's Natalie Press, who has been called the new Samantha Morton (the pre-cog in Spielberg's The Minority Report) for her performance here. She plays a freckled, wrong-side-of-the-tracks poor girl with such directness that her speech and attitude faze me at first. In the end she draws strength from her own unblinking, unapologetic understanding of her conditions. She reveals as much when Tamsin asks and answers her, straightfaced, what they'd want to do in the future: "I'm gonna get a job in an abattoir, work really hard, get a boyfriend who's like...a bastard, and churn out all these kids, right, with mental problems. And then I'm gonna wait for menopause... or cancer". Although the film's ending is unclear we somehow are left with a notion that, like Kyra Sedgwick's Delia Shunt in Personal Velocity, everything will turn our right for Mona.

Finally, there was the close-to-the-bone performance of Paddy Considine, the ex-con Christian fundamentalist brother of Mona whose inner struggle leads to the crumbling of his brittle convictions and faith. While I've always considered faith as essential the egregious nature of the modern church (less the singing and dancing, more about healing and speaking in tongues) has always been something I've felt uneasy about. In the end faith is a personal matter, I guess. In the film, while the portrayal of born-again prayer meetings was creepily accurate I wasn't too comfortable with the rejection of organized religion as the inevitable conclusion viewers would logically take after viewing.

***

Not having much time we decided to have dinner at Planeta Sushi at my Inessa's neighborhood in Shchukino. This is the second time I've eaten at this Rosinter chain in a week. This confirms without a doubt Planeta's rehabilitation as a more than passable restaurant. It somewhat embarrasses me that I denigrated it as perhaps the worst Japanese restaurant in Moscow (a charge that does not even see as fit for consideration the obiquituous sushi bar at every French, Italian or even Indian restaurant; Muscovites equate Japanese cuisine with sushi). Unlike Ohta-san, who has more stringent standards, I viewed Ginno Taki and Ichiban Boshi as perhaps two of the best and reasonably priced Japanese restaurants in Tokyo. Chef Kasajima Shigeru has done a really admirable job in upgrading Planeta to the same level. In fact I don't think any other establishment (certainly not the cosily interiored but overpriced Netske) probably offers gunkan, tataki and inari sushi. Now having tasted its sake chazuke, tataki zushi and iidako, I can definitely say that Planeta Sushi is indeed "more than just fresh fish", as its motto goes.

After taking my Inessa home I drive back, less sleepy and more pensive than usual. It's been three months since my muirnín and I got together. I must say we are getting along extraordinary well, despite my own silliness and unpredictability. There's always this fresh feeling every time we see each other, something that makes me hopeful for the future. In my note for this entry, I wrote: "Convinced as ever that my Inessa is the most wonderful creature on Earth." That she is.

This morning, I stumbled upon a couple of things that I was best inclined to notice. On Netscape's default page, there was an article based on recent Nottingham Trent University research findings about the nine different kinds of historical and cultural loves. Unlike those prepubescent quizzes in personal scrap books we used to answer about love and marriage, this proposes through scienfitic techniques that there are "a limited and interconnected variety of love stories at work in any particular culture". In my 36 years, I've practically run through the whole list. As for the obvious question of the here and now, I'd say we have a dyadic-partnership love. This is defined as:

Love involves the merging of two people into a single functional unit in which both decide to place the mutually supportive nature of the love relationship ahead of their own individual needs. This demands much honesty, effective communication and mutual respect, but, if done properly, it can also be the most significant way of connecting with another person.

Further reading unearthed this other fun article on the Beeb, about which the Teeming Millions may be of interest to know. It's the public broadcasting equivalent of love.about.com. (Maybe there is such a page...)

Foot-in-mouth disease

Really funny, this Pat Robertson. Look what Washington Post had to say about him in an op-ed piece yesterday entitled "Pat Robertson's Gift". Precious.

We won't even pretend to have given television evangelist Pat Robertson's latest obnoxious utterance much thought, considering his long history of pious bloviations that have made him come across to most Americans as, well, witless. Were it not for the widespread attention being given in Latin America to Mr. Robertson's call on Monday for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, we would have preferred to allow the Christian Coalition's founder to continue his slide from America's mainstream into the obscurity he has so richly earned. But his latest bit of foolery is worth a comment or two -- if for no other reason than Mr. Robertson, in an act of stupidity only he could outdo, has handed Fidel Castro's acolyte a propaganda gift of immeasurable value.

La double vie de Rodrigue

I've not really seen the 1991 Krzysztof Kieslowski film but I sometimes do feel like Véronique, shall we say en ménant une double vie. At least that's how it seems with the long days my Inessa and I lead. There's work of course, and there's l'après-travaille.

For tonight's adventure, Dearie and I -to use a Rushdieism- prettified ourselves (she her new dress, me my Sammy 'n' Jimmy suit) for a BCBG soirée with Moscow's zamechatelnie lyudi. That was at least how the PR people for the event, dubbed Terra Cognita, billed it. Inessa met her photographer, Zhenya, at the Gubernatorsky fusion resto on Vosnesensky for the media orientation. The idea was to follow the media bus to the party venue -Shore House, a restaurant, summer patio and yacht club somewhere off the Moscow Ring Road (MKAD) on Leningradskoe Shosse. Party was scheduled to start at 8, Zhenya was supposed to take photos while my pet and I wined, dined and hobnobbed with the overly-slash-almost bearably pretentious cream of Moscow's crème for a couple of hours before calling it a wrap at around 10, to be in Oktyabrskoye Pole just in time for that elusive call from Inessa's parents. That was before we fell afoul of the Law - Murphy's in particular.

After circling several blocks for more than 40 minutes to get back to a spot just 300 meters from the original point of departure we realised what kind of jam we were into: one that stretched, bumper-to-bumper, from Pushkin Square to Aeroport. The entire time we couldn't stray too far from the media bus, where Anna The PR Coordinator (a.k.a. The Meal Ticket) was. From gremlins in the car stereo to being in the wrong lane all the time, the slow procession turned from merely tedious to excruciating. Worse, my bladder felt like the Aswan Dam during the Nilean high tide. To keep from thinking about anything liquid I had to resort to this Lane-Change Meter game I used to play a lot during the awful chronic traffic jams of 1990-1992 back home. At least the last time I was in traffic this bad, I was also with my Inessa: it was the Victory Day weekend in May, when we basically kept each other company on my overnight trip to Ivanovo by SMS and she to her dacha in a village along the Rybinsk Reservoir. Just as then, Inessa was also very upbeat and supportive this time even though she had to go herself. Yes, things could have definitely been worse. Yet to survive the experience I had to make a pit stop at the mall at the U-bahn station in Aeroport.

We finally got to our destination at around 9:40 pm, 2 hours and a half since we took off from City Hall. What's more, this Shore House was actually just in the Crocus City grounds, 66 km on MKAD. Had we known we could've taken an alternate route without waiting for the media bus! Arggggh. At least the worst was over.

Once at the party we started enjoying ourselves more. The food wasn't anything to write home about, but the place itself deserved its billing. There was a stage constructed on water, a breezy patio, an open bar and a full programme awaiting us. In fact we were rather fortunate: the quality of the evening was going to take a distinctly sharp upturn.

As you can see here in photos taken by Zhenya, Moscow's party crowd was out in full force. Even the sudden chill -not exactly unusual in Moscow in midsummer, although very few people, in their cocktail party dresses, were actually read for it- failed to put a damper on the party, which included performances by Igor Butman and Nino Katamadze. There were also free rides on the yachts moored on the river out back. There were also Ferrari and Porche street races on the lot between Shore House and the Crocus Expo Centre.

Of course for the best part of the evening, neither Butman or Katamadze had a hand in it. Blame my Inessa. Let's just say l'après-party was better than the party. Ukh davno bylo.

What a way to fill up

Since the start of the week we wanted to visit Faizal, who was entering his third week with C. Pox (as Ohta-san terms it), but we had put it off until today, Wednesday, because of this or that reason. So finally we decided it would be good to cheer him up a bit. I was sure that if I were in his place, I'd appreciate company. So at the end of the day, we agreed to meet near Kuznetsky Most station and then drop by Dom Inostranykh Knigi (House of Foreign Books) before going to Kotelnicheskaya Naberezhnaya. (Didn't really buy anything this time since the reference book on the World's Languages was sold out.) Deciding that we'd have picnic indoors with Faizal, we drove around the corner and shopped at Sedmoi Kontinent at the back of Lubyanka Square for some food and wine. On backing out of the parking space the car started to sputter before quickly going dead. I repeated the procedure a couple more times with the same results. (The 24-hour supermarket is located on the side street to the left of the former KGB building -and former Torture Central- below.)


At first I was worried about some maintenance problem, since the transmission has not exactly been as smooth as Lindt in the last two or three weeks. I remember a colleague telling me at work about how he had to pay a few hundred euros after he filled up using watered-down benzin (petrol). Eventually I started worrying whether I had enough petrol in the car tank. Couldn't be, the gauge is still above empty. When it became evident the car was not going anywhere, we decided to leave it right in front of a bus stop along Sretenka and just come back for it perhaps with a little help from Faizal. In the end he had to call Alex, who helped us get petrol using two Aqua Minerale plastic containers (had to pay 5 rubles more per litre since it was illegal to do that), fashion a makeshift funnel and give us a lift back to Sretenka.

It was really supposed to be a quiet evening spent with a friend, but it turned out that the more memorable event was the lesson of sorts I learned.

Shop 'til you drop

Went to GUM, Zara and Okhotny Ryad to get a long-delayed birthday gift for my macushla. Went home after an ale at Phlegmatic Dog, the world's coolest Internet café.

Monday night hustle

Today was the second time I met one of the most interesting people I know in St Petersburg, a Catholic nun named Sister Yolanda. In fact she's one of only perhaps two or three people of that name I know, apart from my own aunt and that old Cuban song by Pablo Milanes. She's from the islands as well, but she's been living in St Petersburg for around 10 years, working at a French Catholic mission there.

My aunt, we always called her by her dimunitive so I really don't know if her name indeed is Yolanda. As for the song, there is surely always a bittersweet story behind it. Tried to look it up online and found the following links:

http://www.lajiribilla.cu/2003/n095_03/095_04.html

Had to go to Leningradsky Vokzal to meet Sister Yolanda.

Working on a Sunday

Helped Inessa finish her deadlines at work.

One day at a time

What a difference a week makes.

Just last week we were still going out with Pang, the heart of The Gang; this week Pang's gone and I feel the summer has taken much of its course. It seems as if we are living on borrowed time and that happy days will soon end.

These sentiments had filled my mind in the last days. John and Karen, too, are gone while Faizal would most likely stay on only until the end of next year. Borg is scheduled to return to Singapore in spring of 2007; if his ambassador is extended, there's a chance he will stay until June of the same year. In many ways since Nipada left in July 2004, I guess we started counting down to the end of our terms. For some, we had passed only the midpoint and was already on the way round back. For others, it was merely a matter of months before they had to pack up and leave.


I remember the first days in my flat at Plyushchikha 42, when I took a shine to the river, took to walks around it or across the bridge to the other side. The river ferries that bissect the city on the way to the Novospassky Monastery near Taganskaya Station start their 90-minute journey from Kievskaya Station just on the opposite bank. I always told myself there would be time enough to ride that and take a tour of the city by river. In the same way I'd always put off a tour of the inside of the Kremlin, a visit to the Historical Museum or a trip to New Jerusalem, there was always this feeling: there'd be time enough to do that later.

As the Japanese say, "Todai moto kurashi": It is always darkest at the foot of the lighthouse.

This sense of "mortality", as it were, prompted me thus to decide that time was neigh. I have to start to run down the list of the things that always seem possible to do. First on the list was the river ferry.

My Inessa and I parked the car on the embankment street leading up to SAS Radisson Slavjanskaja Hotel and crossed to the river bus terminal, as it's called in Russian.

We said hello to Faizal on the way.

Ended the day by having dinner at Goodman Steakhouse along Tverskaya.

Redécouvrant la charme discrète

After work I passed by for my muirnín in her office to go to Biblio-Globus on Myasnitskaya Ulitsa, which I hadn't visited in a while. The bookstore, one of the few carrying English and other foreign titles in Moscow, has improved a lot since I'd last seen it, perhaps in spring. The four-storey style moderne building that houses it, located next to the former KGB headquarters and the State Museum of Vladimir Mayakovsky in Lubyanskaya Ploshchad (Lubyanka Square), was built in the late 19th century by the architect M. Bugrovsky. It housed a shop owned by a certain N. Stakheev before being expropriated by the state in the wake of the 1917 October Revolution. In 1957 the Moscow Soviet decided to establish the state-run Knizhnyj Mir (Book World) on the first two storeys of the street then called Ulitsa Kirova 6. It was only in 1992, when most place names in the new Russian Federation reverted to their pre-revolution forms, that the company was renamed Biblio-Globus.

Anyway, a yearlong renovation changed the feel of the interior; a modern basement was added, while the foreign language section now stocks more titles. The stairs were now set in marble, giving the whole place a much more modern look. The only problem was books were still stacked willy-nilly. Although the staff offered computerised assistance in title searches as well as a book-ordering service finding a title in the piled-up stacks remained a dodgy proposition. (The Russian language sections also seem problematic, if the comical situation described by Ben Zajicek, a history graduate student of the University of Chicago, late last year still applies: "The selection of history books is spotty...mostly it's shelf after shelf of military history and confessions of Stalin's bodyguard's lover.")

Yet there's something attractive about just *stumbling* upon a book you'd fancy. Call me a fan of the Princes of Serendip, if you wish, but there's something wickedly irresistible about chaos. Even though I was really looking for the Cultural Guide of Russia by A.L. Burak et al and couldn't find it, it didn't prevent me from picking up a few books found by accident. I know what you're thinking: file me under the "Shopping as Therapy" section.

Well all that book-browsing got me and my Inessa hungry. Leaving Balios parked in front of the church on the bend (right next to Open Café on Myasnitskaya 13 - currently under renovation) we went to Propaganda for some Asian fusion dinner. One of Moscow's best dance hang-outs, Propaganda was one of the first clubs I visited with Borg in early autumn 2003. It shot to prominence in the 1998 post-crisis period, mainly for its reasonable prices, good music and cute girls. Apart from my own petites aventures there, it merits special mention in the authoritative history of Moscow clubs by Dmitry Shalya: "[I]n the era of general impoverishment, Propaganda became the place to be for entertainment-hungry party animals. And since there was no need to go to work anymore, people were clubbing here nearly all week, faithfully attending Sanches’ Thursdays and even the nameless Tuesdays. A trip to Propaganda at 3am became a post-crisis tradition. Moscow clubbing survived even the crisis." Brit DJ Alison Marks has this take: "The atmosphere there is unbelievable, one of the best in the world. It's without a doubt my favorite place to play."

This time though, we went there for dinner. It was -to be expected on Thursdays- full. Hadn't realised that Thursday remains the most popular night, with only Phlegmatic Dog and The Real McCoy as its only serious rivals. (In addition, Tuesday has emerged as hip-hop night and Wednesday, its Afro-Brazilian, soul funk and upbeat jazz night.) Backing up a bit on Bolshoi Zlatoustinsky Pereulok, we tried Bourbon Street (remember Sting and New Orleans?) but I guess it's too much to expect good and inexpensive food at an American-style dive bar. Would be nice to go just for drinks, likely. One of the vivid images retained from my club-going days with Borg was a row of topless buxom women dancing to a male-dominated mob in November 2003 or thereabouts. They closed the bar for a while for redecoration, one surmises. But there wasn't much by way of improvement, from the peek we got there.

The two other restos, Terrasa and Santori, both appeared questionable so we took to the car again to round the block and eat at The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, charming lounge owned by the same restaurateurs who run Courvoisier. Better known by its Russian name, Skromnoye Obayaniye Burzhuazii, this Luis Buñuel-inspired resto on Bolshaya Lubyanskaya Ulitsa has it all - location, interior, food, cost and clientele. For a while, though, I was turned off by the difficulty in securing tables and the mediocrity of the dishes, especially in relation to its prices. I don't know why, but I always had this impression of Burzhuazii as being pricey. Well Dearie and I went in, were seated almost immediately and chose reasonably priced and carefully prepared dishes. It was also very pleasant to be around nice-looking but real people, as my ducky terms it. In almost every detail, except for slow service, we left quite satisfied. (I guess getting a parking slot quickly was an auspicious mood-setter.)

This evening turned out to be a good chance to revisit and, in many instances, reappreciate my old haunts in the Lubyanka area, especially Biblio-Globus, Propaganda and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

Losing one's bearings

La vita è piena. Life has been full this summer, especially since I've been able to go out and explore a lot of things and places I've not really been able to do thus far. In so many ways I've *gone native*, as it were, more this year than I have. Partly it's because of our Russian circle of friends, who have been faithful and fun. More important it's thanks to my Inessa, with whom I've been peas in a pod, uñas y carne and due gocce d'aqua in the last three months. As one can imagine, we've not really been out of contact for any reasonable period of time for that duration.

And so it was that today we spent the evening apart with different company. I went to an Indonesian reception at the GlavUPK Cultural Centre at Ulofa Palme near Mosfilmovskaya while she met up with a fellow she got acquainted with at Pang's "official" send-off dinner a week ago at her boss' residence. Anyway, there was really little to do about it since I couldn't very much take her as of yet to these formal functions, while she also had to take advantage of the time apart to meet up with acquaintances and friends. (In fact her friend and former boss Q -very James Bond- was apparently back in town only for a couple of weeks and had asked if she was free.) For very trivial reasons I found myself behaving like a righteous royal pain afterwards, throwing a wobbly about how unpleasant it was to think she enjoyed her evening with someone else and all that. I probably need retraining as a human being. Sometimes it doesn't surprise me I've not been able to hold on to a relationship in the past. It's a good thing my muirnín didn't mind so much or consider this as a deal-breaking behaviour.

* * *

At the reception, I didn't get to know too many people. I guess I'm not at all like Borg, who manages to keep to the two-minute rule in cocktail parties and circulate efficiently and optimally. Typically the kind of conversations I get into tend to be long-winded, like that technical discussion of fifth freedom rights and the recent Virgin Airlines and Cathay Pacific deal with Cheong and Haberjan. Borg, meantime, would just pop up, say hello, ask a couple of pertinent but light enough questions, do small talk and then exeunt.

Anyway, one really felt the absence of Pang at the reception. Since Faizal (still down with chicken pox) wasn't there either, it was more difficult to go around this time. John and Karen are also gone. Chat with Fiona went even beyond the two-minute rule (as it should for friends) but there was still a lot of time to burn after that. All the Indonesians were very friendly to me, though, even calling me by name. To my utter shame, I didn't really remember all their names in return. The other funny thing was that they kept on asking me about the bespoke suit I was wearing. "Imperial Tailoring, is it?" Faizal's boss even called out to me on my way out. Everyone knew the special deal I had with Sammy Kotwani. I guess that's how word gets around among close friends.

Evening at the Park

For several weeks now my muirnín and I have been in a race against time to do as much as we can before the warm weather just shut down for the year. It's been a glorious spring and summer this year, starting from April and extending deliciously until the last weekend of August. It's just that both of us have had to work on some weekends, we've not really significantly reduced much from that wish list.

Well we had a chance to trim the list when my Inessa reminded me that we were marking our third month anniversary today. "Why don't we go for a walk today," I suggested just as she was getting into the car at her place of work. With a raised eyebrow and a bemused smile, she agreed. "We can go to Neskuchny Sad and even try out that place you were recommending." While Inessa likes navigating the labyrinth of small lanes and streets of the city centre on foot, she also enjoys walking in parks. One of the most charming ones is Park Kultury (Park of Culture), which was popularised in the West as Gorky Park in Martin Cruz Smith's novel of the same name, and which starred William Hurt in the film version. Its official title is actually the Central Park of Culture and Leisure. According to Fodor,

The park was laid out in 1928 and covers an area of 275 acres. It's the city's most popular all-around recreation center, and in summer, especially on weekends, it's crowded with children and adults enjoying its many attractions. A giant Ferris wheel dominates the park's green; if you're brave enough to ride it, you'll be rewarded with great views of the city. The even braver may want to venture onto the roller coaster. Note that the park's admission price does not include individual rides. Stretching along the riverside, the park includes the Neskuchny Sad (Happy Garden) and the Zelyony Theater (Green Theater), an open-air theater with seating for 10,000. The park also has a boating pond, a fairground, sports grounds, a rock club, and numerous stand-up cafés. In summer, boats leave from the pier for excursions along the Moskva River, and in winter the ponds are transformed into skating rinks.

Although I've practically abandoned the idea of ever rollerblading this year I've not given up the ghost on taking walks. In fact we should still be able to go mushroom picking this autumn. I've been here for more than two years yet I've visited Park Kultury only once, with Vika for a laser show last year. Not yet to Neskuchny Sad (Happy Gardens), which I've read about just one month into my stay in Moscow back in 2003. With this shabby track record we saw this occasion as an excellent opportunity to take corrective measures.


We parked Balios at the foot of the Andreyevsky Most on Frunzenskaya Naberezhnaya, which is the twin of "my" bridge at the back of Plushchikha street, the Krasnoluzhsky Most. (The two bridges, the story goes, were originally part of the Moscow Imperial Ring Railroad, both built by engineer Lavr Proskuryakov and architect Alexander Pomerantsev, the former in 1905 and the latter in 1907. The Krasnoluzhsky was originally named the Nikolayevsky Bridge in honor of Tsar Nicholas II. The two bridges were located near the Luzhniki Stadium and were relocated on barges - 1.5 km downriver and 2.5 km upriver - for opening in 1999 and 2001.)

From the outset it was very pleasant walk on the elegantly glassed-in pedestrian walkway, which allowed us a view of Moscow River toward the Krymsky Most (Crimea Bridge), Kremlin and Church of Christ the Redeemer. From across the river we could see the tacky amusement park in Gorky Park. Apart from a ferris wheel and roller coaster typical of such places, there was a space shuttle mock-up along the embankment. my poppet told me that this was a prototype of the Buran ("snowstorm" in Russian) space shuttle. I had heard before that Russia did have a space shuttle program so I decided to check on this later. (I found out that the program was launched in 1976 in response to the US space shuttle program. The Soviet Union began building its first shuttles in 1980, rolling out the first full-scale Buran in 1984. After an orbital test flight in 1988 and the construction of two more Buran shuttles, Russia pulled the plug on its program in 1993. There was a second orbiter, called Ptichka or "little bird" in Russian, planned but it was never completed. The structural prototype was shipped by barge -like they did with the bridges- to its final destination in Gorky Park from Tushino, where it was kept in storage after structural testing. Now it serves as a theme cafe.)

Walking up to opposite bank we spotted a camera crew shooting a couple of actors in period costumes. We never really found out what that was about: we walked past the first staircase going down and eventually took the walkway that plunged into the gardens itself. There were a lot of couples and young people walking about. Inessa seemed pleased and in her element, finally being able to stretch her long legs. As we walked past the quay we chanced on a river boat picking up some passengers.

Instead of walking all the way along the bank, my Inessa motioned for us to go up a slope, into the woods. Although I had to huff to catch up with her, I didn't think I was that out of shape. The asphalt walk had little surprises in store for us, except a quintessentially Soviet scene straight out of documentaries: a colony of old retirees playing chess on stone benches.

Deciding to turn back we took a dirt path up to try to inject a bit of the unexpected in our rather genteel walk. There were turns here and a fork there, moments for on-the-spot decisions. Having our little fun, we took turns in deciding where to go. No, we weren't exactly expecting to end up in Wonderland, but on a bend back we discovered a lagoon with a large boulder sitting on its far end. The water, still to the point of stupour, probably seemed more inviting to breeding mosquitoes than humans, but the spot we coveted on top of the boulder was already occupied by a biker and his girlfriend. By this time I was starting to look for a place to sit and rest. Although I tried not to draw any attention, Inessa did notice. Just then I drew her to a statue of a girl poised to take a dip into the river. Although it was a Soviet-era sculpture, it had a certain timelessness that appealed to me. My muirnín fancied it too, although she found its distance from the river a little disconcerting. She said it seemed the girl would end up terribly short of her objective and, if the eye were to follow her trajectory, fall spread-eagled and in pain on the concrete ladder-like fountain.

We ended up at Park, the open-air restaurant. Due to the cool breezes, the Moroccan style curtains that served as windbreakers were unfurled, making the cafe appear to take on walls.

Closures and farewells

This was one of those days that seemed to have no ending. It started with a surprise text early just past noon from someone I'd given up on seeing. Although she works just next door, Yulia had maintained a silence for more than two months now. It's a long story, something I'd rather not ever relive but let's just say that she was the subject of one of the lengthiest bouts of emotional pain I've had in perhaps a decade. It all goes back to a very promising fortnight in January. It turns out, the first two happy weeks were lethally deceptive in the sense that they put me on blinkers, gave me false hope and boosted the bullheaded belief I had that I could provide my flagging faerie tale with its little happy ending by dint of sheer will. In the event I lasted a little over four months, rejecting every well-meaning advice almost to the point of endangering friendships because of a daft notion that the script I had written for myself should -as it ought to- soon recover from the minor unexpected (but definitely temporary, mind) downslide it was currently experiencing.

Anyway, two months of silence (not counting an e-mail attempt each to re-establish contact) ended with this SMS: "You have have time for coffee after work today?" I didn't reply promptly because I wasn't too sure I wanted to see her. But the thought that it would be better to breathe life into an unpleasant and sustained dead air won me over in the end. Still it wasn't all smooth sailing from there. I neglected getting back to my Inessa until very late in the afternoon about having to duck out for a while after work. That exposed me in a very ticklish situation. Unlike that in my birthday party on 15 May, this situation did not stem from a dilemma of choice. No, far from it. It was delicate because I had not yet told my macushla about Yulia, something I had kept from her until I ultimately closed this chapter of my life. Fortunately Inessa, understanding to the utmost as usual, agreed to wait for me at McCafé while I met Yulia at John Bull Pub. (It was at John Bull Pub in February where Borg bumped into Yulia and me meeting for coffee.)

In the end I made the right decision to meet up. Yulia actually apologised for making my life difficult. But that's how life is, I replied. There were gaps in the conversation but I didn't bother filling them up like before. Now there was this distinct absence of a desire to tell her about me or my life. She looked great as ever and spoke with the same air of melancholy, distraction and weariness that stirred in me a strong sense of protectiveness in the past. But things decidedly felt very different this time. I was the one who changed. Previouly I wished with every ounce of my being that she would be my future; now I am content that she is in the past. After around 1 hour and 40 minutes sitting with her in that corner pub, I walked her to the station and bid her farewell with a hug. "See you again, I hope," she said. "Of course, of course, what are you saying?," I hurriedly demurred. With that, I walked back to McCafé and met my Inessa. A few more minutes later in the car, I drew all the dots for her by identifying Yulia as that unnamed person who was filling my life with grievous hope when Inessa and I first got acquainted in the second week of April in that yard in Usachova. With that disclosure, I achieved my much-awaited closure.

People might think this all bollocks but from a purely scientific and health viewpoint, it was good I got out when I did. That is, about three months ago when a relationship with my Inessa gave me an unexpected but very welcome soft-landing. According to the Beeb, I could've even got myself killed. An article early this year -just as I was about to begin my throes of despair- says lovesickness can be fatal. Of course, it all comes off as another case where science finds basis for some common-sense notion we've known for centuries. Still it's somewhat amusing to note -and confirm- that indeed despair and hopelessness can drive one to do distinctly unfunny things. The article goes on to say something else I can personally attest to: "Aspects of obsessive complusive disorder can also be found in those experiencing lovesickness, such as preoccupation and obsessively checking for text messages and e-mails."

* * *

By 9 pm we still didn't have any idea what time we would all gather for the evening's main event, the final farewell for Pang. She was flying out for Bangkok in the afternoon of the next day (today) so Faizal, still confined at home and whom we hadn't visited since that late night food delivery on 8 August, decided to invite us over for after-dinner aperitifs as a way of sending Pang off. However, there was still no call from him at this late hour. Pang herself said she'd be engaged in a dinner (as it turned out, at nearby Suzy Wong Café) until well after 10 pm. So Marina and I decided to grab a bite to eat near Faizal's place, a hole-in-the-wall called Lyudi kak lyudi. (Amidst le snobbisme of Moscow, this sarny joint is the sort where you can turn up in your pyjamas, as GO! Magazine writes, and the barmen wouldn't even blink. This place no doubt answers to a tee the Bohemian everyman's secret wish for a friendly neighborhood cafe where the barmen know us, where we can let our hair down and chat with them about the weather, the dog or relationships." One of the reasons the two ponds and Kitai Gorod are such popular districts.)

A couple of sandwiches and shakes later, my Inessa decided to just head on home. "It would be better if just the three of you get together among yourselves," she said. Wisdom beyond her years, truly. And so I turn up at Faizal's door at close to 11.20 pm. Pang brought her last bottle of Bordeaux for us to share. The first couple of hours, we seemed to have been in a state of denial, exchanging mild recriminations of future non-commitments and guarded reassurances of our continued mutual regard. It was somewhat a relief, therefore, that we all softened a little bit and became a bit more candid about how much we would all miss each other.


Indeed Pang's departure does mark an end of an era. Although I first met her in a party she put together in her old state-run flat sometime in September 2003 (my own colleague and senior had just arrived for her posting here at the time), which consequently led to my first night at the Bolshoi Theatre with Pang and her colleague Nipada, it was not until the Valentine's Day for Singles party that Pang again organised in February 2004 at her new flat that we all became as tight as Dick's headband. All unattached singles in a foreign city, we all went out for dinner, drinks or to the theatre at the drop of a hat. Of course in the beginning, with my Russian language classes it was difficult for me to just drop everything. But when the classes ended in late June of the same year, I was able to free myself more for our little regular jaunts. Too bad, actually, that Nipada herself had to leave for marital nirvana in Ottawa the following month. In our mind the quintessentially classic gathering was for an après-party Oreo milkshake at Starlite Diner in Oktyabrskaya at 3 am. By fall of 2004, we had taken to traveling together, first to Smolensk, then Tula, Pereslavl-Zalessky, Istanbul and Suzdal-Vladimir until the end of the year. There were also a number of skiing day trips to Yakhroma, Volen and Stepanovo that cemented our bonds while expanding our circle to include Vika's friends. Faizal and I eventually traveled without Pang to Murmansk and Kirovsk in the Arctic Circle over the New Year hols, while they went without me to Switzerland and France in April this year. We all became busy at work in the spring, but the friendship and affection held. Without doubt the joy I have about life in Moscow I owe a great deal to Pang and Faizal.

By 3 am, we had all broken down to tears. I guess it finally sank in that she was leaving. I was teasing the two of them that the evening broke the previous record we had of gathering very late on a weekday evening (until 3 am at Nipada's place, was it?). This time we took leave of each other at close to 4 am. Followed Pang to her Embassy to return the van she borrowed, then took her home.

Epilogue: I drove up to my driveway at 4, only to discover that I had lost my housekeys. Neither Pang or Faizal could locate it for me, and my ducky had to wake up for naught since she obviously couldn't have had my keys (although she kept a spare copy). Little choice but to sleep in the car. Only recovered them the following morning, when I went back to Faizal's and found out I had taken his jacket by mistake. Mine was still hanging over his kitchen stool when I got there.

Un long week-end

Here we are at the end of a long weekend. Long in a good sense, of course. It started on Thursday, as weekends are wont to in Moscow. The Gang, as Faizal likes calling it, had dinner at Simple Pleasures for Pang. It was the usual mix of highjinks in Russian and English, with Vika and now Marina serving as cross-cultural conduits. My Inessa took a couple of nice photos of the event, which I feature here.


The real weekend, though, started rather inauspiciously when work forced me to keep my muirnín waiting on Friday evening. It had been five days since her birthday on 7 August, and I promised to take her to dinner at the summer patio at the French restaurant Paname. At 9 pm, I was already starting to get antsy at the departure area of Sheremetyevo airport. While it was a relief that the flight out to Bishkek did not seem delayed, our guests seemed to be in no hurry to go through the final check before boarding.

9:15. They were still distractedly chatting away while other passengers on the same flight were already on queue at Gate 20. I tried not to appear in the least bit concerned while at the same time making an attempt to start them on their way. In the end we were only able to see them off at half past the hour. Even though the road was unbelievably clear - the traffic lights were green all the way from Leningradskoe Shosse down to Smolenskaya Ploshchad - I was only able to show up at the corner of Stoleshnikov and Petrovka at quarter past 10. My Inessa didn't see me nor the car at first but when she did, she was genial as usual.

Dinner at Paname, after what Parisians call their city, was memorable, if not for the pâté de fois gras or the aromatic Fitou wine from the Languedoc-Roussillon region, but more for the way the waiter had this habit of purring his reassurances in a gently drawn-out and mildly rising "Uh-huh". Dearie and I couldn't stop laughing later with the recollection. Bad service is a cliché in Russia, and it's so easy to complain as a means of self-affirmation. But it's more fun to appreciate and remember excellent and thoughtful service, which is less and less rare nowadays.

On Saturday, I stayed puttering about at home almost the whole day after a technician fixed my broadband connexion. In fact I was a bit slow on the uptake to get what Vika meant about going to see the Dances International Music Festival at Hermitage Garden at 4 pm. If not for my Inessa, who was hurrying to join Lyosha and Natasha there after meeting up with Seryosha, an old friend from Cherepovets now studying in Germany, I probably wouldn't have hurried to leave the flat. Stepping deep into a cavorting mass fully in party mode, I felt like a traumatized warrior returning in the middle of the annual village carnival. Maybe I'm just a grouch but thoughts of that annoying evening at Café Margarita after my trip to Ukraine in June came back to me.


Fortunately things got better when Neck, a six-piece London-based Irish folk-punk group that specializes in the unique psycho-ceilidh sound, stepped up the main stage and played some electric-punk rock-powered jigs. Leeson O'Keefe and his whistle, fiddle, banjo, guitar, bass and drum crew were such good craic I'd have to be a real ogre not to have cheered up. So much so that not even a downpour dampened our spirits. Still we had to take cover at Sobraniye, where Vika, Pasha and a couple of friends managed to get a table at the veranda for a smile and 2,000 rubles upfront. After that rainy intermission we were treated to one of the oldest groups in World Music, the legendary West African Latin-tinged band, Orchestra Baobab. 'Twas really good stuff: a bit like Buena Vista Social Club, Bob Marley and Youssou N'Dour put in a blender and served with whipped cream and cherry. Except that the Dakar-born band predated them all, 1973 - as old as my youngest sibling. We would've seen them end the festival until 10 and the obligatory fireworks, doing the merengue and the salsa. It's just that we were famished and preferred instead salsa and meringue - the edible sort. And so it was that hunger drove us from Karetny Ryad to Bolshaya Yakimanka, specifically to Pancho Villa, where we had dinner at close to 11 pm.

And then there was today (to use Marina's idea that tomorrow doesn't become today until you've gone off to sleep), the penultimate goodbye gathering for Pang. True to her hospitable self Pang hosted the last party we would have at her Sukharevskaya flat, gathering The Gang again this time with the young officers of the Thai Embassy. If Inessa and I thought we came to party late (had to go to Kievsky rynok for a send-away bouquet then to a produkty for kury gril' or grilled chicken and beer) the Thais - Go, Kate, Art and Ben - came past 9 pm. The photos should speak for themselves.

Starting a blog

On this lazy Sunday while waiting for Marina to pass by the flat, I decided to create a blog. "What's a blog?" my Inessa once asked me. How refreshing to hear that despite the explosive growth of the blogging world ("one blog every second," reports the Beeb), there exist corners in the world yet to be touched by this (to use a favorite word of the Wired World) real-time phenomenon. This story caught my attention a couple of weeks ago in passing, based on the 2 August report on the State of the Blogosphere by Technorati. Smugly self-aware, this appellation apparently refers to either a robotic search engine that tracks the growth of weB LOGs (14.2 million and counting) or a group of web-geeks (more like the oligarchs than just the "haves" of the IT era) who analyze why all this should be important to us. Perhaps my muirnín should have asked "WHY a blog?"

Far from being a Luddite, I pride myself in quickly adapting to new technology. In fact, my early years in Tokyo were characterised by regular visits to the nearest Bic Camera and Yodobashi Camera, first in Shinjuku East and Yokohama South but later in Shibuya. How silly it is to remember now but new gadgets to me were like Ecstasy to a raver. But as James Gleick might have said if I actually finished his book Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything there's always a price to pay for the conveniences one gets from modern technology. Not quite a Faustian bargain, mind, but a trade-off is most certainly the case with mobile phones, which sacrifices privacy for accessibility.

The blog, at least for now, feels like belonging to a different category. It is in effect a diary that one can maintain online. The problem is, I've always had difficulties maintaining a journal. There were several sporadic attempts in the past at leaving a record about how I lived my days, notably in my early teens and again in Japan. Far from being a creature of habit I reveled in the unpredictability and plenitude of life. It thus surprises me to no end how posterity's definitive diarist Samuel Pepys actually found time to log an entry everyday for almost 11 straight years if he was too busy enjoying life. (It turns out he did live an interesting life as a civil servant -Secretary of the Admiralty, Tangier colonial official- after all.) It's almost as if were I to write, I should be put in extended confinement with only my books and thoughts as companions. But no, it would be as wrong as suggesting the Secret Annexe made Anne Frank.

Blogs have not exactly been completely alien to me. One of my childhood friends, a multiple Palanca Award winner, Dean Alfar, has maintained a well-written blog called "Notes from the Peanut Gallery" since the start of the millennium, if not before. In my current existence, my curiosity was first pricked by an insightful account of a foreigner's life in the Moscow outskirts by Val Buzeta, an English-teaching Londoner by way of Chile and Poland. Amused by her jaunts from Zelenograd to Moscow to buy a digital camera in Gorbushka, to raid the Library of Foreign Languages near Taganka for books or to see Verdi's Macbeth at Bolshoi Theatre, I was prompted to pen this note to her on 4 March 2004:

How was Macbeth? I meant to see it as well as part of my recent Bolshoi binge (Un ballo in maschera, Romeo e Julietta, Don Quixote and Turandot in two weeks) but (another echo from your posting) spring cleaning got in the way. After making every effort to live it up in Moscow (skiing every weekend, going to museums, seeing films and clubbing) in the past few months the sheer unliveability of my own flat (which thus forecloses any opportunity for me to invite friends over) forced me to clean up and then trudge down to IKEA in Megamall to buy stuff. Incredible how for example an extra rack or chopping board can contribute to my overall sense of well-being! (Sounds like some Scandinavian promo line.) It was almost nine by the time I got back. (Bizarre aside: finally saw with my own eyes the collapsed shell of Transvaal Aquapark some minutes from Yasenevo Metro.)

As for Amelie, I bought the OST a couple of weeks ago at Gorbushka. I thought it would be evocative of the feel-good sentiments I had seeing that Jean-Pierre Jeunet film for the first time in 2001 but now it seems just dated. What do you think about the soundtrack? (Oh well, even Kill Bill Vol. 1 already sounds dated just two months after it premiered in Moscow. Sigh. Anyway, suggestions for (seemingly) good OSTs: My Life Without Me by Isabelle Coixet, Talk to Her by Pedro Almodovar and Once Upon A Time in Mexico by Robert Rodriguez. (Strangely enough, all with Latin connexions.)

Val, who takes the indecipherable alektoeumenides as her Live Journal nickname, surprised me with an affable reply about the opera ("generally good, suprisingly so"), life in the zagorod ("washing clothes is an event here") and her lineage ("confuses my students no end"). Despite her partiality for ellipsis marks - a quality she shares with the late Dame Barbara Cartland) - she reminded me somehow of Anneke, my faithful friend from Pretoria, even though my favorite South African microbiologist and Mandarin speaker doesn't (not that I know of) really go on crisp binges or say "cheerio". (Any non-American English I guess sounds amusing to us natives. Har!) Unfortunately the exchange ended there. Google now reveals that the LJ blog of Val (web-bio: Born in London, taught in a town near St Petersburg in 2002 and in a primary school in Zelenograd in 2003-4) has been deleted.

During my trips or soujourns overseas I've this tendency to write travel accounts just to tell my friends how it went. Following one such lengthy telling Holden, a friend from a Japanese culture club back in university, tried to nudge me in a mailing list we have to keep a blog, which would make for interesting reading in the future. I practically blew off the suggestion. In fact one of the only reasons I kept Live Journal in my sights was that it would allow me to make friends here in Russia.

Then in late November and early December 2004, the high drama produced by the masses in Kiev and other key cities in western Ukraine to ensure that their votes in the second round redux of the presidential polls were counted affected me so much that reading accounts in the New York Times, the Guardian of UK and the Beeb felt inadequate to meet the burgeoning sense of urgency; I decided to turn to blogs for up-to-the-minute action. The best among the lot were, undoubtedly, Neeka's Baklog by freelance journalist Veronica Khokhlova, and Orange Ukraine by Dan McMinn, a former Peace Corps volunteer and OSCE poll observer.

The final push to start a blog came when a good friend and fellow exile, Pang, started relating to me her concrete plans to publish a book about her three-odd years in Moscow. Along with photos she had a knack for taking, Pang said she would reveal an insider's account of the Russian capital that would be an eye-opener for her Thai compatriots.

To be sure, it would be a real shame not to commit to memory the events we are witnessing and living here in Russia. Perhaps years from now a clearer assessment could be made about these times; but just looking at the "draft of history," as news stories are referred to, I am certain they would provide for some interesting reading. And having just recently obtained a fast connexion, the question sounded more and more to me as "Why not?"

And so it was decided to chronicle my life on the web. Picking up a hint from Neeka's Backlog, I registered at blogger.com while leafing through a couple of books to mine for a facile identity. Pepys provided a motto -in Latin, what else?- I can live with: mens cujusque is est quisque or "The mind is the man."


What about the title? Not really having any *grand* ideas, I resorted to Pushkin. In particular this quote caught my attention:

When the thunderstorm is over, gather in a superstitious flock
To read, from time to time, my faithful scroll...

Kogda groza proydet, tolpoyu suevernoy
Sbiraites' inogda chitat' moy svitok vernyy!

I will most likely change all this, but for now it takes the theme of life and impending mortality as always. But everything being equal, this blog is a register of la belle vie, la dolce vita - life as one makes it. In this sense Pushkin - poet, hero, refugee and bon vivant - is an appropriate archetype.