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.