An infinite concatenation of cause and effect

Let’s try something different. Instead of the whopping, rambling mess that I usually splash forth on these pages, let’s go for a more quick-fire rapid round-up of various little tidbits that have been on my mind as of late. So, without further ado…

I’ll start with some doom and gloom.

Since man’s existence is the most considerable and the strangest venture nature has known, it is inevitable that it should also be the shortest; its end is foreseeable and desirable: to extent it indefinitely would be indecent.

EM Cioran, ‘Faces of Decadence’

When December rolls around, I suddenly feel a certain amount of pressure to come up with an appropriately festive-themed piece of reading. I’m not sure if the grim Romanian existentialism would qualify, but if you are unfamiliar with Cioran’s works, the above excerpt is typical. For more light-hearted fare, I’ve opted for Anna Karenina.

* This time four years ago, I was mired in a nasty slog in San Sebastian, mere weeks away from picking up a niggling foot injury that would cap off a somewhat miserable 2006. I was travelling in the south of Spain over the holiday period and it got to a point where I could barely walk. I spent most of my time holed up in cafes reading War and Peace. I spent New Year’s Eve in a small town called Antequera. With hardly a thing going on, I bought myself a bottle of champagne and a rotisserie chicken, drew myself a hot, luxurious bath with bubbles, and settled into War and Peace. So engrossed was I that I failed to notice that 2007 had arrived – a text message from another time zone at 2am alerting me to the fact.

* It’s finally got very cold here. Before about a fortnight ago, it was unseasonably (and eerily) mild. Because I came to Ukraine straight from a summer packed full of travelling and working, I had a limited selection of clothing, and no winter gear to speak of. I had to make do with only a jumper for my first few weeks until another teacher kindly lent/gave me an old, heavy winter coat of his, which is now proving to be a godsend. But I might have been able to get away without it until recently.

My dear little sister will be arriving in a day or so with some more winter paraphernalia and I can fully replenish my supplies when I head home for the holidays.

* One thing I’ll never fully get: how are Ukrainians not more used to the cold? I used to hear the same complaints in Lviv (and Riga, for that matter) about the frigid conditions. My classrooms are like saunas, mainly because there’s no way to control the heat. It’s the same obscene situation in my flat: the heat comes on automatically at a certain time of year and since there’s no way to adjust it, I’ve got to keep the windows open at night to prevent myself waking up bathed in sweat. Honestly, can nothing be done about this?

At school, I’m usually standing there drenched in sweat, while my students sit huddled up in their jumpers and coats. Forget opening the window. Many of them also still cling onto the ‘myth’ that a draft leads to lower back pain. Maybe they’re just addicted to saunas.

* One drawback to teaching English? The anti-social hours. A teacher typically teaches till well after 9pm on any given night. But somehow fortune has smiled upon me this term. I’ve been given a very pleasant timetable where I only work past 5pm twice a week (and even then I finish at 7.15) and finish at 1pm on a Friday. As Slappy the dwarf would say, ‘sweet!’

* Speaking of which, less than a week now till the big Brothers Grimm performance. Just to remind everyone, I play the roles of a TV show host, Rumpelstiltskin, and a dwarf named Slappy. There are only two dwarves in this version.

Tickets have long sold out, so if you haven’t got yours yet…too late.

* Many years ago I was given Andriy Kurkov’s Death and the Penguin, which quickly became one of my favourite books, one which I passed on to a few others. Strangely enough, I never felt compelled to read anymore of his oeuvre.

A few weeks back, he was to make an appearance at the school to give a talk on his past and becoming a writer. Though it was presented in Russian, I was able to get the general gist of what he had to say and even understood the occasional joke. Or at least pretended to and laughed along.

I was discussing what I thought of Kurkov’s writing and trying to list off the books and the order in which he had written them, when a teacher in the vicinity kept correcting me every now and then. I thought to myself, hell, she really knows this guy inside and out.

DP: ‘Wow, you really know your Kurkov.’

Teacher: ‘Well, I should. He’s my husband.’

Thank heavens I had only positive things to say.

Anyhow, said teacher is easily the star of this performance and two of her children are also acting in it. There’s something surreal about doing a play with the wife and children of the writer of one of your favourite books. I’ve met Mr Kurkov and it’s funny now to see him every so often and say hello as if we were long-lost acquaintances. Frankly speaking, I’m too shy to actually say anything more to him. I’ve now read Penguin Lost, the sequel to Death and the Penguin, and am soon to start another of his books, The President’s Last Love. I want to ask him to autograph it, but that might be a bit weird.

* Oceans: highly recommended, especially on the big screen. I sat there stupefied at some of the incredible creatures that inhabit the seabed. I also came away from it thinking I’m never eating sushi or tuna ever again. It’s not only a spectacle of jaw-dropping cinematography, but a heartfelt, poignant take on what humanity is doing to the oceans. And if that doesn’t grab you, then perhaps witnessing the world’s biggest crab orgy just might.

In a similar vein, it reminded me of one of the strangest books I’ve ever read: Lobster, by Giullaume Lecasble . In a nutshell, the premise – without giving too much away - is this: a lobster onboard the Titanic is mere seconds away from meeting his death in a pot of boiling water when tragedy strikes. In the ensuing melee, lobster finds himself clinging for dear life to a young woman who’s had trouble reaching a certain degree of pleasure in her life. The lobster not only clings to dear life, but then clings onto much more, rendering unto this woman her first-ever moment of ecstasy. They tragically get separated amidst the confusion, and the rest of the book is their ongoing quest to find each other. Not figuratively.

* The great mushroom debate: to eat them or not? Half my students and a couple of teachers – as well as the Lonely Planet – say to avoid mushrooms at all costs. In the fallout from Chornobyl in 1986, mushrooms are said to harbour higher-than-usual levels of radioactivity, and apparently this permeates the soil for hundreds of miles in either direction. Chornobyl is only 80 km away, so it might be wise to avoid them. But do I? Do I, bollocks. Am I doing myself any harm?

* I had only ever roasted plantains before, but the other day I threw in a couple of bananas with the vegetables I was roasting and they came out lovely. I left them in about twenty minutes and with honey, they were tasty. Recommended.

* One of life’s greatest mysteries: why has no one yet been able to perfect cling film that actually works properly? It’s one of the most annoyingly useless products on earth. The only greater mystery? Why I continue to buy it.

* One reader asked for more examples of Twads (The World Against Darnell Syndrome). This picture encapsulates it perfectly. No further explanation necessary.

* I’ve been watching Michael Palin’s New Europe lately. Much like any travel programme depicting places you’ve been to, it’s easy to nitpick and find faults with just about every segment. And yes, everyone has a different perspective as to what the highlights of any given place are, but some of his stops have left me wholly disappointed. For starters, I’m impressed that he made the trip to Tiraspol in Transdniestria. But then he talked about what a surreal, utterly bizarre place it was and yet only stayed for 2 minutes of the episode, barely showing anything of the town other than a brief glimpse of a military parade. If you’re going to take the trouble to go to such an out-of-the-way, unique place, at least devote more than 2 minutes to it for godsakes. He also completely neglected to mention Lviv, despite stopping there en route from Budapest to Kyiv. His unbelievably brief segment on Latvia also left me feeling empty, where he devoted most of his time with a chef at one of Riga’s poshest restaurants discussing the over-elaborate security and menu details that accompanied George W Bush’s visit in 2006 for the Nato summit. All the more reason to see these places for yourself and not rely on silly programmes like this.

* Why I love Kyiv (or at least this part of the world), part I: the unpredictability of it all. Quiet nights out with a friend, where you aim to be home at a respectable hour, degenerating into so much more. Just about to say our goodbyes, a few local youths took umbrage at our nationality and started chanting ‘Yankees go home!’ at us (I was out with my buddy Mungo, who’s not American). I thought I was going get my head pummeled in when 3 lovely young damsels came to our rescue and alleviated the situation. And how was I to show my appreciation? By being dragged off to another bar with them and drinking until the sun came up.

Many hours later, I noticed that I had a coat pocket full of dried fish. Only in Ukraine, honestly.

* Why I love Kyiv, (or what an infinite concatenation of causes and effects can lead to) part II: on yet another night, with yet more intentions not to make too late a night of it…a colleague and I were ambling about on the street when we met 3 guys, 1 of whom was Iraqi. With no time for argument, they bundled us into a taxi and took us to some nightclub on the outskirts of town. We didn’t have to pay for a thing, and there was A LOT of vodka flowing that night. After a while I opted for the old Colin Thubron approach and started surreptitiously tossing vodkas back over my shoulder, hoping that it wouldn’t land in anyone’s lap or face.

Sometime that night, between 4 and 7am, I lost my phone. Such is the life of prelapsarian innocence.

* The perils of technology, part I: I never give up, do I? But I realised just how impossible it is to live these days without a phone. It’s cliché to say this, but only when we don’t have something do we realise just how much we rely upon it. I was a floundering mess without a means of communication. Especially since…

* The perils of technology, part II: my internet service has been sporadic and unreliable. Again, when you come to depend upon something and it’s suddenly no longer there…

* Life in Kyiv, parts I-V: Sometimes I’m embarrassed to admit things like this (part I), but on the last 5 Saturdays, I’ve only been home once before 5am. Bear this in mind if you happen to be watching this weekend’s theatre performance. I’ve only been hangover-free for one of the past five rehearsal days.

* I’m embarrassed to admit this (part II), but it wasn’t until I moved to Lviv in September 2005 that I truly began to appreciate the idea of seasonal produce. I’d become spoiled wherever else I’d lived – Nigeria doesn’t count because it was a matter of eating whatever of the 3 or 4 choices that was available and that was it – and enjoyed year-round plump tomatoes, pink grapefruit and aubergines. But once winter kicked in in Lviv, I soon got used to the idea of not getting much more than potatoes, carrots, onions and everything else pickled.

For my produce needs, I relied on the funny old costermonger just outside my flat. She was quite a comical character, and because she could never get my name right, she called me Denis (pronounced DEH-neees). As time went on, we chatted more and more though neither of us understood anything more than the names of products and numbers. Soon, I couldn’t walk by her at all without being pestered to buy something. I began taking the circuitous route around the block if I wanted to avoid her. Comical though she may have most of the time, at other times she started getting cheeky.

One day, she asked me I would mind her stall while she ran off for a minute. Mistake number one: saying yes the first time. She then started taking advantage of my kindness and made this a frequent habit. One minute turned into two, then into three, and before I knew it, I’d be guarding her wares for up to 20 minutes. In this time, I had to deal with irate customers barking at me to sell them things. I was tempted to for a laugh. In one particular moment of ire, I helped myself to some of the gherkins sitting in the enormous white bucket.

This woman’s standards of hygiene were far from desirable. Her hands and nails were black and grimy and whenever I wanted gherkins or tomatoes from this big white bucket, she’d thrust her hands into the cold juices and pluck out a few of each. Strangely, this never seemed to bother me. I reckoned that the pickle juices would kill any germs.

(number of times I got ill in 9 months in Lviv: zero)

One day, whilst awaiting her return from another one of her interminable breaks from the action, a large, fierce-looking Alsatian came up to the stall, and starting helping himself to the contents of the big white bucket. My attempts to shoo him away were met with vicious growls and a shiny display of fangs, so I let him go at it. He was having a grand old time drinking the juice and eating a few tomatoes and gherkins when it came time for him to relieve himself. My efforts to prevent this were in vain, as he thus proceeded to lift his leg and pee all over this woman’s chair. I couldn’t help chuckling over this: hell slap it into her for making me wait and deal with her furious customers all the time!

I never bought anything from that white bucket ever again. I’m sure the dog must have also peed on that.

How about some pickled piss today, young man?

* How I know I’m doing something right with my life, part I: whenever I see people’s Facebook statuses dealing with children’s health problems, the fact that they are soooo tired after a day of work and are looking forward to a glass of wine (does life really get that bad?), or have had a great day out Christmas shopping. Someone shoot me if I ever get to that point.

* How I know I’m doing something right with my life, part II: I recently completed Alain de Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. It’s a revealing read – I never thought reading about transmission engineering, biscuit manufacturing and cargo shipping could be so riveting and insightful. You’ll also never look at electricity pylons in the same way ever again. But the chapter on accountancy really made me feel better about what I’m doing. Not that I doubt it too much these days.

* Why I love Kyiv/this part of the world, part III: when a Natasha gets in touch to meet up, and you’re not completely sure which of the four Natashas in your phone it is. And by Natasha, I don’t mean it as a euphemism for anything else.

* How did my life come to this, part I: out of a potential 4 hours and 30 minutes of football, how much of the following 3 matches - Partizan Belgrade v Shakhtar Donetsk; Metallist Kharkiv v Debrecen; Lech Poznan v Juventus - did I recently watch?

1. bits and pieces of each match as I did other things
2. all of the Shakhtar match and highlights of the other two
3. none
4. I sat glued to every minute of every match

Need I reveal the answer? It must be obvious.

Now, the next question is, why?

1. I have way too much time on my hands
2. I was completely and utterly bored
3. I was too tired to do anything else
4. I truly love this daft sport

Again, need I reveal the answer?

But here’s my real point, and please bear with me. Many years ago, when I used to watch Champions League matches like Arsenal v Barcelona and Manchester United v Bayern Munich, I’d often look at the fixture list of the other ties and see matches like Legia Warsaw v CFR Cluj and Lokomotiv Moscow v Plovdiv and wonder to myself, what poor suckers are stuck watching that drivel? Now fast forward many years later…

(in my defence, the Lech Poznan-Juventus match was played in minus 20 degrees in a blinding snowstorm where by the end you could barely see the pitch, plus it was amusing to watch the Italians with their ridiculous snoods and earmuffs flopping and flailing about all over the place.)

I’d say I need to get out more, but I’m doing just fine with that.

* The perils of technology, part III (or the perils of the lack of technology, part I): all over Kyiv are ticket kiosks where one can purchase tickets for various plays, operas or concerts. Each kiosk seems to have a random smattering of seating for each event. They might have a block of 8 tickets in row C in the 2^nd balcony, along with a block of 12 tickets in row M in the mezzanine. To confirm my suspicions, I visited a couple of kiosks and asked for tickets for the same event, only to be offered various other blocks of tickets in different sections.

The absurdity of this is almost comical. Surely they ought to computerize this ticketing system, right? No wonder you see such large swathes of empty seats at concerts and shows. If someone can’t be bothered to traipse all over town, going from kiosk to kiosk to track down available tickets, then shows are never going to sell out. Where’s the logic in this?

‘The unremitting division of labour resulted in admirable levels of productivity,’ writes de Botton. Um, not in this case.

Perhaps a lesson can be learnt from the industrialization of the biscuit manufacturing process: ‘This mechanization had been introduced not so much because human beings were unable to perform the tasks in hand, but because labour had grown prohibitively expensive. Economics dictated the superior logic of hiring a few engineers to develop three-armed hydraulic machines, then firing two-thirds of the staff and paying them unemployment benefits so that they could stay at home watching television…’

And this from John Ruskin’s The Crown of Wild Olive: ‘Of all wastes, the greatest waste that you can commit is the waste of labour.’

* The show in question was called Samaia, or Georgian Legend. I could probably describe it in more detail if I could remember what it was I saw. It was an impressive spectacle of dancing, twirling, sword fighting, music and…

Actually, forgive me for doing this, but here’s an extract from the website (I’m starting to run out of steam here):

Georgian Legend is a music and dance show which has duly deserved world recognition. The latest advancements in the show-making technology went into putting this world’s major multimillion-budget musical choreographic sensation on stage. The show, retracing the centuries-old history of the arts of dance and music in Georgia and the rest of the Caucasus, is appropriately considered a truly stunning musical event.

Every intricate twist of ancient tales is re-enacted through the brilliant art of Georgian dancers, performers and singers. This magic, reinforced by the breath-taking pageantry of colorful costumes and sets, incredible lighting and unreal sound, weaves a majestic multihued tapestry of the culture of the Caucasus – a feast for the eyes of the spectators and the triumph for Georgian Legend on the world stage. 

As memorable as the show may have been, more than anything I remember paying more for a cognac during the interval than I did for the ticket. And all the empty seats.

The video is also well worth a look.

* I had a minor dilemma on my hands when it came time to celebrating Thanksgiving. I really wanted to watch the Patriots v Colts game, but the one place definitely showing it, Arizona, is on my permanent black-list of boycotts. My other option was the local Irish pub, though they were booked out for a private party. I headed to the city centre to chance it at the Lucky Pub, which for some odd reason – surprise, surprise – had been on my boycott list for a while for some stunt they pulled over the summer.

(Thought I can’t be sure of the exact reason, it might have been something as piddly as Starbucks Syndrome, where they get irritated with you for not spending a certain amount of money. I swear, it’s the same case every time I go into Starbucks. They greet you with the widest smile when you walk in, but if you dare order anything smaller than an extra grande Frappuccino then that grin quickly turns into a scowl. Over the summer, I was spending hours every day watching the World Cup and couldn’t afford, mainly health-wise, to drink beer for 9 straight hours, especially in the blistering heat.)

I lucked out, for they obligingly put the game on for me (promptly taking themselves far from the boycott zone) and I got to enjoy a pleasant Thanksgiving meal of a salad and chips and beer. Though I could have gone to TGI Friday’s, this was about as American as I could get. And they even played the Pixies for a while, which was a nice touch.

It was only when I was leaving that I saw the daily special: ‘Thanksgiving Day in a Lucky Pub – come and enjoy turky’ (sic, obviously).

* Quick question about sports and how it relates to the differences in British and American culture. Why is it that in American sports, if a fan invades the pitch, the cameras never show it and the commentators quickly change the subject until the invader has been apprehended, whereas in Britain the cameras show the entire incident and even replay it on highlight shows after the fact? And conversely, when it comes to gruesome injuries, American television will show it repeatedly from a million angles (think way back to Joe Theismann – how many times was that shown?) while in Britain not a single replay is shown. Something tells me this is worthy of far more in-depth analysis, but what message does this send about the differences in transatlantic sporting mentalities?

* In conclusion, let me offer a brief preview of what is to come in the weeks and months ahead. I hope to put out at least a couple more posts before 2010 comes to a close, and here’s what I’d like to cover:

1.      a wrap-up and photos of my summer travels

2.      in answer to a few of your queries, why I’m not teaching history along with a rant about the problems with the state of education today

3.      details of my recent night in a Ukrainian prison for drunk and disorderly conduct

4.      an insightful, in-depth analysis of the euro-zone crisis

5.      my top 10 cities in the world special

Control your excitement kids.

A decrepit Soviet-era factory and natives being restless

For a change I thought I’d keep my inane commentary to a strict minimum and instead just share a few pictures.

Last week I got up at silly o’clock on a day off and went on a little field trip with a couple of colleagues to the Klavdievskaya Christmas Decorations Factory, about 40km from Kyiv. The factory, first opened in 1949 with production starting in 1952, was one of three companies in the Soviet Union which specialized in the production of Christmas ornaments.

Today the place is a shell of its former self. In its heyday, it employed around 1000 people (or so our guide thought, her estimates ranged from 700 – 1500, so I’ve compromised with my figure), yet we saw only around 20 souls working away in cold, gloomy conditions. Still, it was interesting to watch these women at work glass-blowing, silverworking, painting and ornamenting.

Because my camera is crap, and because I’m a lousy photographer, my pictures hardly amount to much. If you’re interesting in seeing more, this link offers a far clearer picture of the painstaking process of making these ornaments.

Later in the day, I walked to Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), where I watched bored locals in another one of their almost daily protests. The latest gripe is the new tax reform legislation that Parliament has adopted and President Yanukovich is soon to sign into law. The details are long and drawn-out, but in a nutshell, it’s seen as severely harmful for small and medium-sized businesses, and there have been swathes of protests across the country in recent weeks.

The mother of all boycotts: you’ve really pissed me off now

Part II. For part I of my in-depth look at boycotts, click here.

‘Everything conspires, elements and actions alike, to harm you.’

EM Cioran, ‘The Consciousness of Misery’

I’d like to say that I’ve got some simple rules for instituting boycotts, but I’m not sure if I do. On the one hand, you have to consider where you are. Being in Ukraine, where the standards of customer service are different from what we might get expect in other parts, it might seem petty or out of bounds to boycott an establishment on the slippery basis of lousy customer service. But on the other hand, part of what makes boycotts so much fun is the absurdity of it all. Like I mentioned before, the funnest boycotts are oftentimes the most ridiculous.

Arizona BBQ, a dedicated American expat hangout, has recently gone to the top of my boycott black-list (which basically means that it’s on the permanent boycott list, with a slim, slim chance of removal after 1 year). It takes a lot for a place to get on this list, and rack my brains as I might, I’m hard pressed to come up with any other locations that have attained a similarly lofty status.

So what have they done? It’s not so much what they’ve done – yes, that is part of it, naturally – as much as what they are. And the scene they cater to.

Kyiv is probably the first place I’ve lived in that has a sizable, socially influential American expat community. Everywhere else has either had no expat community or one limited to Europeans. Not to name drop too much here, but let’s start with Lviv, for instance. When I lived there, there was virtually no expat community. There were a fair few Peace Corps volunteers, but they seemed to rarely venture out, and most of them stayed in their towns and villages on the outskirts of town. Basque Country had virtually no expats other than non-American English teachers, Riga’s were mainly British and Irish (a lot of them lumberjacks), and in Nigeria, American oil workers never strayed from their heavily-fortified compounds, while the Scots were frequently out and about on the town. Bishkek had the American military presence, but you’d see the same small coterie of expats – a core group of 5-6 that quickly became very recognizable – at the same places. Kyiv, on the other hand, features a plethora of oversexed, overpaid and over here Yanks. And yes, I realise that that is one of the worst sentences I’ve ever written. (And yet I leave it.)

Frankly speaking, and for largely inexplicable reasons, massive groups of Americans abroad make me nervous in ways other nationalities don’t. Don’t get me wrong here: I’m not saying that I can’t be around Americans abroad. I just can’t be around enormous swarms of them in one small place. With Thanksgiving just days away (click here for a remembrance of Thanksgiving traditions past), there’s no way in hell I’m going to any parties catering to home-sick Americans in dire need of turkey and cranberry and stuffing and whatever else is part of the tradition. And yes, I know all the traditions, I am American after all, it’s just that they differ so much from region to region. Personally, the only food item from Thanksgiving I really enjoy are sweet potatoes.

So, strike one against Arizona. Is it the establishment’s fault? Perhaps not, though it’s a classic chicken and egg argument here: did the place set itself up as an American hangout, or did the Americans descend on the place after it opened? Hell, it’s called Arizona after all, so you be the judge.

Onto the charges and what I’ve witnessed in this ghastly place

On my first visit many weeks ago, I went on a Saturday night to watch a highly billed college football game between Miami and Ohio State. There were advertisements in the local rag, the Kyiv Post, mentioning this game as one of Arizona’s featured matches. I got there around 11pm to find exactly 7 people sitting at one table, all glued to the Vitaliy Klitschko title fight (for the uninitiated, that’s boxing, and the Ukrainian Klitschko brothers, Vladimir is the other one, each hold various boxing belts; hell, I don’t follow boxing, I’m not sure how to describe this stuff).  All the televisions were tuned to the battle royale, so the staff very obligingly took me to another room and offered to put my game on the big screen. It took the morons 45 minutes to figure this out, by which point the game was in its later stages. By the time my game finally came on, I was completely engrossed in the boxing, something I had never thought possible. So engrossed, in fact, that I failed to notice the football had come on and ended up missing a crucial play that went against Miami (my team, again for the uninitiated). Almost at the same point as this pivotal play, Klitschko knocked out his opponent, thus retaining his title. Afterwards, the 7 locals rapidly filed out, and the staff then duly informed me that they were closing and I’d have to be leaving. At this point, there was still a good 45 minutes left in my game, and I had ¾ of my beer to drink. I was annoyed, but not too perturbed, for I hardly expected them to stay open and waste all that electricity solely on my account. So thus, this is all a non-starter and didn’t contribute at all to my boycott. In other words, this paragraph has been a completely pointless, endless harangue about nothing at all and you might as well just purge it from your mind right now (though I’m afraid to say that it all gets worse from here: I’m only warming up).

I went a week later on a Sunday to watch football. There was a large-ish American contingent, and I found myself at a table with a couple of young basketball players fresh off the boat. They were quite interesting to talk to and I felt pretty much at ease with these guys.

Then a couple of weeks later, it was a disastrous Sunday of utter carnage.

It goes something like this/these are the types of idiots you get there/this is what the service is like/etc/etc…

…guys high-fiving and giving each other man-hugs…one guy derisively complaining that the previous night in Berlin he wasn’t able to watch some college football game because at every bar he went into the people were watching soccer: ‘I couldn’t believe it, all they were showing was soccer, I was like, are you kidding me? soccer? doesn’t anyone like football around here? what’s with this place’ (this guy has a valid point: can you believe the audacity of those Germans to be watching soccer on a Saturday night in a Berlin pub?!)…the chubby teenage daughter of the main ringleader- a guy from DC who prances around like he owns the place and is one of the most obnoxious pricks I’ve ever met abroad - demanding her steak medium-rare, loudly exclaiming ‘can’t they get it right, why do they always mess it up?’…a child-care room for the expats to bring their kids, only the brats don’t stay in their dedicated room, but instead are running around the place…

This place is an ADHD’s dream. I appreciate and love my sport. For important matches, I want to focus on the action and I tend to eschew social gatherings where people are more into ‘the atmosphere’ and having a good time than in actually watching the finer nuances of the game, hence my avoidance years ago of American Super Bowl parties where the girls are more concerned with the commercials. Here on the main screen was some football highlights programme which constantly jumped between games (around 10 are being played simultaneously across the US on any given Sunday) at crucial moments. It’s impossible to get too engrossed in any one game. On TVs on either side of the room two different games were showing, but on this particular day, neither of them featured the game I wanted. One featured a game that no one was watching. When I asked the waitress to change the game, she pointed me towards obnoxious prick, who flatly turned me down, on the grounds that a friend of his was watching the game. Which friend, I asked, not seeing anyone.

‘He must have gone to the bathroom, man. Chill out, man, watch the game.’

What a…

Nostalgia again: when sports were so much easier

These days, everything has to be on demand: news, sport, weather…in the good old days – here we go again – it was all so much different.

Witness: when I moved to Spain from the US at the age of 9 – this a time when I definitely preferred American football to the world variety – I was devastated that I wouldn’t get to watch American football. Live satellite TV was still a few years away from being able to broadcast games across the Atlantic. Luckily we had the Armed Forces Radio Network, and the David Halberstam in me is tempted to pen an ode to growing up surreptitiously listening to games on my staticky radio under the covers at night to prevent my parents from catching me.

As far as television went, we’d get to watch one game, not of our choosing, on tape delay exactly one week later. That was it. We wouldn’t even be able to get the results of any games until the newspaper 2-3 days later (if we were lucky, the Stars & Stripes – the military newspaper – would have the results in its Tuesday edition).

These days…forget it. We can get what we want, when we want. There are pluses and minuses to both sides.

Generally, very few people were actually focused on any of the games. I’m perfectly ready to admit that the problem here is me, not them. I’m just an anti-social bastard who loves his sport. It’s just a case of this place and the people in it rubbing me the wrong way. My powers of explanation are failing me here and I’m not sure I have it in me to describe more of the antics of this crowd. Other than the basketball guys, it was a weird gathering of expats. This is probably not what you’d call a Catch-22 situation, but it’s the best I analogy I can come up with: I’m somewhat dying to know that these guys do for a living, but at the same time I can hardly bring myself to ask any of them for fear of being ensnared in their ‘conversation’. So I keep schtum and watch my games.

It wouldn’t be a proper boycott without some real controversy with the food, bill and service

It all started when I ordered the BBQ chicken. And therein lays the first problem. I don’t exactly call myself a vegetarian, but I do try to avoid meat at all costs. In her blog, Elizabeth once wrote about being a ‘defensive meat eater’, which I could identify with. But because I like to overcomplicate everything, let me come up with my own label.

I suppose I could call myself a fair-weather vegetarian, a non-confrontational-when-I-need-to-be vegetarian, or a research-purposes meat eater. The research-purposes part I’ll get into when I eventually write up my restaurant reviews from Lviv’s exciting newish scene. It’s rather self-explanatory.

I don’t want to delve too much into any gory detail here, but generally speaking, if I’m invited to someone’s house for dinner, I eat what I’m given and I make no demands ahead of time. If I’m travelling and there’s a local delicacy that involves meat, I make no hesitation in trying it. If I’m staggering home biscuit-arsed late at night in a residential neighbourhood and I’m utterly starving and I see a stray cat on the prowl…well, you get the idea. I eat meat when it’s there to be eaten in a non-guilty manner.

How could anyone pass up this tempting delight from a Bishkek wedding?

A flimsy interlude of sorts

Just because I feel like it, I’m going to drag my sister into this whole mess and embarrass her a bit. It’s a related story so I can get away with it.

She’s a vegetarian through and through, no ifs, ands or buts. For a while she was vegan. Travelling, however, presents a whole host of problems, for it’s difficult enough being a vegetarian, let alone a vegan, in many parts of central and eastern Europe. We spent Christmas and New Year’s together in 2007/8. We were to spend Christmas in Bielefeld, Germany with the family of a friend of hers. I was very much looking forward to that fine German tradition of Christmas goose. Because of her, we instead all got given a coconut milk infused vegetable, couscous and rice casserole concoction. I should be fair and point out just how sweet and touching it was of her friend’s family to give up their tradition to do that for her, even if we all had to suffer in the process.

Vegan casserole in Bielefeld

For the remainder of the trip, which took us to Vienna, Bratislava, Horny Bar and Budapest, she decided to forego being a vegan and instead concentrate on the vegetarianism. After all, a bit of butter or eggs mixed into a dish here and there isn’t the end of the world, right? The whole point of this temporary state of convenience is that there is no way to really be sure some kind of animal products aren’t included in a dish. But at the same time, you ought to try and be as close to vegan as possible. Or something like that.

Instead, the fool took it as her license to make up for lost time and eat as much chocolate and cheese as she could shove down her throat, completing defeating the purpose of it all.

Predictably, not being used to such amounts of dairy, she got terribly constipated and moaned about it the entire trip. And yet, with each meal, what did she do? Order more fried cheese. And then eat more Kinder chocolate for dessert. And so the cycle continued.

Honestly…she might as well have eaten meat. It’s often easier.

The tranquil calm of the Slovakian village of Horny Bar (yes, it's a real place)

Interlude over

It’s thus hard to justify me ordering BBQ chicken then, when there were vegetarian alternatives. I can’t justify it. I just wanted it. I hadn’t had meat in weeks and was feeling myself lacking in protein.

‘Oh no, sorry we don’t have it,’ said the waitress.

Damn.

‘Perhaps you would like a gamburger or cheeseburger?’ (In Russian it’s pronounced like ‘gamburger’. There’s also Garry Potter, Gannah Montana, Gerpes, Gighway to Gell, Garvard, Gonogulu, Gerbert Goover, Gorton Gears a Goo, gim/ger, etc)

(okay, so I made just about all of those up. I think only Garry Potter is true, but I always say Gannah Montana.)

‘No, I’m a vegetarian, I don’t want a gamburger.’

The bemused look on her face cracked me up.

‘But you want chicken, no?’ (wanted, idiot)

‘Yes, but since you don’t have it, I’m a vegetarian.’

And so I ordered a vegetarian calzone.

(Pizza and sushi are ubiquitous in Kyiv these days, and most of the time they appear at the same restaurant. Half the menu is pizza, and the other half, flipped upside down, is sushi.)

The quality of the pizza here varies. Most of it is above-average, not much of it is truly good. But you reckon a place catering to American expats would at least try and replicate a typical American-style pizza, right? Or at least stick to familiar elements?

This might have been the worst calzone I’ve ever had. I’m not entirely sure what all of the ingredients were, but I’m certain it had cucumber inside. It also had chopped up hard-boiled eggs – I’ve had some strange pizzas in my time (haggis and black olive in Edinburgh, for example, which was gorgeous), but this was really taking the pie. There was another mystery vegetable ensconced amongst the folds of bland cheese and burnt dough as well.

On top of this, the waitress kept bringing me small beers. Me, order a small beer? Nah...

The previous time I’d been to Arizona, obnoxious prick went around collecting 50 hryvna ($6) from everyone as a ‘cover charge’. I absolutely refused to pay it on principle and left without doing so. I haven’t paid a cover charge for a sporting event since I had to fork out $10 a pop to watch Euro 2000 matches in Boston. Back in those days there were no American television coverage deals with European football and the only way to watch matches was at Irish pubs. I thought the days of bars charging for sporting events were long gone.

You can see where this one’s going

Eventually I asked for my bill, and there it was, the fat little 50 hryvna cover charge. On top of that, I was charged for large beers. Now, despite our meat misunderstanding, the waitress had generally been affable enough up until that point. And her level of English was decent. Suddenly, when I asked about the large beers and the cover charge, she couldn’t speak a word of English. She looked at me like I had antlers sprouting from my ears. She started jabbering away in Russian. She then left, and over to my table walked a guy who can only be described as gormless and imbecilic to the highest degree.

Displaying excellent English and a sinister grin, this unctuous character inquired whether there was a problem. I said yes, and pointed out the misdemeanors. After minimal haggling, he agreed on the beer discrepancies, but he wouldn’t budge on the cover charge.

The bill, cover charge included, came to 218. I left 220.

Take that, you pricks!

And just to put the nail in the coffin

Trust me when I say this: it was one of the most exciting Sundays in the NFL (for my non-American readership, that would be National Football League) in a long time. On the big screen with the 10 alternating matches, at least half of them went down to the final minutes. At this point, it was genuinely thrilling stuff, and I sat there glued to the action. I literally couldn’t take my eyes off the screen; I didn’t even want to blink. We’re talking 2-3 minutes of game time left in these affairs, which translates to about 12-15 minutes of real time, tops.

And then, the inexplicable. Right about this time, the vast majority of the crowd got up to leave. It was around 10.45pm, certainly not late. There’s no traffic to beat. Public transport runs till after midnight. There were no excuses for this. Real sports fan do not leave games early, especially in situations like this.

Seriously, this is bewildering. I hate to make this comparison, but you’d never in a million years see a crowd of British or Irish fans walking out of a pub like this. You stay until the final whistle. No exceptions.

Congratulations, Arizona. You’ve entered the Darnell Pedzo Pantheon of Permanent Boycotts. It takes a lot to reach such lofty heights.

The look of constipation in Budapest



Commenting on my comments

I see my last comment has been deleted. Did you report the broken equipment? Or was it easier to go home and write several hundred words whining about it, than send a two line email reporting it...maybe the technology isn't the problem?

By Anonymous on Another one of my anti-tech rants, plus a frightfu... on 11/2/10

The above comment following my anti-technology rant has just been brought to my attention by a friend who wishes to remain anonymous – for now, anyway. I confess that I don’t always keep up-to-date with my comments. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate them – I very much do, and I have to thank Elizabeth for being such a reliable, frequent and astute commenter. I should also add that many of my friends comment by emailing me directly.

I’m no great fan of those who hide under the cloak of anonymity (something that should be reserved for alcoholics, overeaters, chronic gamblers and sex addicts), unless it is clear to me who has written it. So to those friends who have written anonymous comments in the past, don’t worry – I know who you are. But there’s good reason why many publications even refuse to publish or respond to anonymous comments or letters. However, aforementioned friend actually suggested I provide a riposte to the comment, and I didn’t want to let a good friend down. So I shall, in the interests of fairness and to clarify anything that might have been misleading.

(and I’m not sure about the comment being deleted – maybe Anonymous has one or two problems with technology. Remember kids, in order to post a comment you actually have to click on ‘post’!)

I’ll start with the most salient point: it might not have been easier to go home and whine (sic) about it, but it was certainly a helluva lot more fun! That’s half the point of a blog anyway, for people to complain and crap on about, well, crap. Clearly, Anonymous didn’t read all the way through to end - which I can’t blame him for seeing as the post was on the dull and soporific side – where I mentioned that by nature, Teflers are a bunch of whingers. It’s in our blood!

Besides, who wants to hear lovey-dovey things like ‘oh, I love life, I love technology, I love birds, isn’t the world such a wonderful place, blah blah blah…’ Human nature dictates that we want to hear the bad stuff, hence the reason news is so rarely good.

I’m only going with what my audience wants here. In surveys I’ve conducted amongst my readers, a whopping 81% said they wanted more ‘rambling anti-technology diatribes that lull us into torpidity’, followed closely by those who want to hear, in intricate detail, about my ‘trips to cafes, what kind of coffee I like the most, how I like to boycott every other café I visit, and what I like to do with the coffee cup when I’m finished’. That came in at 72%. As for ‘well-crafted, structured, concise, witty, to-the-point, cultivated reflections, followed up with erudite commentary and carefully thought-out descriptions of the quirks and foibles of where I’m living, chock-full of unnecessarily big vocabulary words’, well that only got a measly 7%. So that option is out.

Though come to think of it, a letter to someone who cares might be a good idea. To Whom it May Concern: Can you please do something to prevent the sun from shining on Saturday between 10.30 and 16.35 so that my students can actually see the IWB? Or can you please give me candles or mounted wall lights so that the students can see what they are writing, since in order to be able to see the IWB in one classroom I use, I actually have to turn all the lights off? I mean, the ambience and camaraderie in there is great, but it’s not terribly conducive to learning.

Okay, I admit: I have attempted to solve the issues. And here’s what I’ve been told: ‘try’ rebooting the computer. That ‘should’ work. Well, sometimes it does, but it also takes about half an hour. Honestly, is that the best solution?

Moreover, this is a bit like the 'ticking time bomb' scenario scenario used to justify torture. Let me attempt to make one of the most tenuous, ridiculous analogies of my life. This probably won’t even make sense to me.

I’ve never bought into this scenario, which basically states that it is okay to use torture on a suspected terrorist because there could be a bomb ticking away, set to go off in downtown [insert your city here] in the next 15 minutes. Thus, the only way to save lives is to torture this sonofabitch and get the whereabouts of the device out of him. Great, except for one fatal flaw in the logic: this is a completely hypothetical situation which can only be proven true in retrospect. We can’t use this justification for every case on the off-chance that there’s a bomb hidden away somewhere. After the fact, if there were a bomb, defenders of torture can point to this fact and proudly say, ‘we told you so!’ But this will only ever be something that can be applied retroactively after the situation has unfolded. Thus, it’s a lousy argument. Much like mine here.

What the hell’s the connection? If I’ve got a problem in the classroom, then I’m potentially SOL for that lesson. I can report the problem afterwards, but that doesn’t do anything to solve the problem that shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Look, once or twice or every now and then is tolerable; the trouble here is that it happens more often that not. That’s unacceptable.

Seriously, though, I’ve been waiting a long time for a moment like this, where I can try and make a parallel with the ticking time bomb scenario. Hell, I’ve been desperate. But just when I’d given up all hope, the opportunity presented itself on a silver platter. I’ve been waiting so long for this, there’s no way I was passing up such a golden opportunity. I can now check this off my list of things to do in life.

Not to big myself up or anything, but I’m pretty good at improvising and thinking on my feet, and yes, I do have backup plans. So I can worm my way out the situation. But if I’ve got a whole lesson devoted to presentations, and some students are giving Power Point or IWB presentations, and if something goes wrong…well, then we’re fucked. And a phone call or email after the fact won’t help matters in the slightest.

For an interesting and at times downright terrifying look at the potential pitfalls of technological ‘progress’, give John Gray’s Straw Dogs a read. You’ll come away from that collection of essays convinced that technology is more a force for harm than good. And Gray is one of the sharper minds around, and certainly no luddite like me.

To reiterate, my general premise is this: when it’s working technology has its benefits and does make life simpler. But when it’s not, which happens way too often, then it can wreak havoc on our lives. There’s good reason why the looming threat of cyber-terrorism is considered one of the greatest current security challenges today. Some of the doomsday scenarios being talked about are no laughing matter. (And it all starts with IWBs!)

Lastly, and mercifully, I’m violating one of my promises here, by wading so deeply into the mire of shop talk. For my own sake, I want to get away from blabbering on about work, and so in the future, barring some bizarre and unbelievable situation in the classroom, I shall refrain from dragging work into this.

[I must also make one thing very clear: my anti-technology rant was in no way, shape or form an attack on my place of work – far from it. I’m very happy where I work, and believe it or not, I am thankful that the opportunity for using technology does exist. 100% of the blame rests squarely on technology itself – its very existence is the problem.]

[Okay, so I’ve just blown my whole argument out of the water. Do I like technology or not?]

Thanks for the comment, Anonymous. But next time, please do reveal yourself. I’d even be happy to engage in a bit of debate, if you so desire.

In closing

Two excerpts from Alain de Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work:

I felt keenly the painful psychological adjustments required by life in modernity: the need to juggle a respect for the potential offered by science with an awareness of how perplexingly limited and narrowly framed might be its benefits. I felt the temptation of hoping that all activities would acquire the excitement and rigours of engineering while recognising the absurdity of those who, overly impressed by technological achievements, lost sight of how doggedly we will always be pursued by baser forms of error and absurdity…

The pre-scientific age, whatever its deficiencies, had at least offered its members the peace of mind that follows from knowing all manmade achievements to be nothing next to the grandeur of the universe. We, more blessed in our gadgetry but less humble in our outlook, have been left to wrestle with feelings of envy, anxiety and arrogance that follow from having no more compelling repository of veneration than our brilliant, precise, blinkered and morally troubling fellow human beings.