Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everybody! It's not Christmas here in Russia (they have it on the 7th of January, and it's not a very big deal. New Years' is a much much bigger deal), but I'm taking the day off work tomorrow anyway because it seems wrong to work on Christmas.

So I ended up going to the microchip factory after all. It turns out that my student is the deputy CEO, so I was able to get past security. Anyway, the microchip factory was really really neat, and I don't think I came across as too incompetent. It was interesting, even if they didn't give me free microchips or make me the heir to the company after the other people on my tour died as a result of their own greed or laziness. You can't have everything.

I discovered a nerd game the other day. What you do is, you take a number and assume that the highest digit indicates the base of that number. For example, if your number is 352, the highest digit is 5, so you assume that you're working in base-6. The number 1101 would be binary because the highest digit is 1. Then you see how quickly you can convert the number to base-10. Once you know the rule, it's just a matter of multiplying really big numbers in your head, but it passes the time on long bus rides. If you're better at math than me, you don't have to convert it to base-10. You could also use bigger numbers. I use license plates and addresses, so I'm never working with more than four digits here.

When I tried to teach this game to another teacher, I got caught up explaining that there are bases other than 10. It turns out that that is not common knowledge. On the other hand, when I taught my boyfriend this game, I learned that he has all the powers of two up to the 20th memorized. I occupy some sort of wacky middle ground between not knowing about numbers and being a hopeless nerd about them, which I suppose is fitting if you teach English in the "Silicon Valley of Russia."

Why don't my students ever want to learn about shoes?

One of my students has decided that we're going on a field trip to the microchip factory, where I will tell him how to describe everything in English. Really. Having never been to a microchip factory before, I'm kind of excited about this, assuming they let me through security. I am half-hoping that they do not let me through security, however, as this is likely to be my most impressive display of incompetence to date. And, considering that I've spent three years in a country where I don't even speak the language, that's saying something.

The funny part is that it would probably be about a million times easier for me to label a schematic than to explain things in actual factory. Also, quieter. Also, almost certainly illegal.


Speaking of stuff I'm not very good at, I'm going to a party tomorrow because I bought a pair of shoes for it. Well, I'm going to the party because it's a work thing and I ought to go. I bought the pair of shoes because I knew that they would motivate me to go.

Last month I bought white stockings and bluish shoes as a reward for being sociable. And also because I had been looking for bluish shoes for a couple years. And that probably requires some explanation:

I once read a book where a pair of boots was described in such detail that I decided that, if I ever saw such shoes, I would buy them immediately. Actually, they were brown boots with blue stitching, and I'd probably buy such shoes without the literary reference, as I have a thing about contrast stitching. Anyway, I have yet to find the exact shoes described.

But that's not really the point. The point is that this gave me the idea of acquiring, or keeping an eye out for, every pair of shoes I have ever read about.

This was going okay for a while, as nobody writes very much about shoes. I had to admit that I was never, ever going to find stiletto stilettos (A Series of Unfortunate Events), which is probably for the best. Wizard of Oz shoes are easy to find, but I wasn't going to pay very much for them, so I had to wait a bit (thank you, China). And then I was reminded that the shoes from the book are silver, not red, so what I have are movie shoes, not book shoes. But then again I already had silver shoes.

I was utterly, hopelessly, defeated by the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, though. I was doing fine at the beginning of the series, before the shoe-obsessed assistant detective has much money, but the latest books have her in a much better financial situation, and I had to admit that I simply couldn't keep up. Not to mention that that series takes place in Botswana, while I live in a country with six months of snow. I was caught between abandoning my original idea which was, admittedly, silly, or simply ignoring that series for the time being. I chose not to abandon my original idea because I like buying shoes.

Anyway, white stockings and bluish shoes are from The Luzhin Defense. Nobody has recognized that yet (I'll be pretty amazed if anyone ever does), but I consider this to be quite a successful acquisition, as people often ask me whether the shoes are blue or gray or green, which means they're definitely bluish. They were also very discounted (perhaps nobody knew what to match them with?) and have good traction. I must admit that white is not a particularly flattering color for tights, but I like the fact that my leg-pastiness can be voluntary for once in my life.


And while I'm on the subject of questionable fashion choices, there are few things more distressing than realizing that you have the same hairstyle as one of your students if said student is a 50-year-old man. I spend entire lessons just wanting to say, "look, pal, I'm sure everyone's impressed by your shiny, voluminous, auburn hair, but one of us needs to get a haircut, and it is not going to be me."