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:
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:
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.)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.
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.)
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 flockI 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.
To read, from time to time, my faithful scroll...
Kogda groza proydet, tolpoyu suevernoy
Sbiraites' inogda chitat' moy svitok vernyy!
