Can't stand no more

Every summer, the hot water goes off for 2 to 4 weeks while workers prepare the pipes for winter. It happens at different times in different cities (or, if you live in a big enough city, different areas of the city). Russians cannot fathom a world in which this does not happen. But then they also don't have the concept of running out of hot water on a regular basis.

The hot water usually goes off in mid-July. I was planning to be long gone by that time this year. This year, the hot water went off on May 12. What's more, the central heating system in the flats depends on hot water (don't ask me to explain because I do not know) and it has been a very cold May until this week.

So that's why I haven't updated. I'm too busy heating pots of water on the stove every time I want to take a bath or wash the dishes.

The good news is, the hot water should be back any day now. I cannot wait.


The other good news is, Russia totally won Eurovision on Saturday. More importantly, Dima Bilan won Eurovision.

Dima Bilan is a popstar with a mullet. He is also ultra hot. Don't ask me to explain because I do not know. Anyway, he won the Eurovision with a very, very Eurovision song and performance:

That's Yevgeny Plushenko, just in case Russia's win wasn't already a foregone conclusion.

I must admit, I didn't care for the song. I much prefer the 2006 entry, which got second place:

He can't really dance. It adds to his charm. My coworkers performed this song (and dance!) for my birthday that year.

Anyway, last year I promised a treatise on Eurovision, which never came. That was before I found out about YouTube. YouTube and Wikipedia together will tell you everything you need to know about Eurovision. Particularly insane performances include: Litunania 2006, Ukraine 2007, and Latvia 2008. Songs I actually kinda liked: Bosnia and Herzegovina 2006, Sweden 2007, France 2007, Germany 2007 (I liked Eurovision 2007). Winners: Greece 2005, Finland 2006, Serbia 2007.

The awesome news is, because of Russia's win, Eurovision will be in Moscow next year. If I could afford tickets or stand crowds, I would so be there.

I'll throw myself out, thank you

This post is about my new hat (see right). Also, dirty movies (supposedly with hats)!

This particular hat was purchased to go with my new winter coat. There would be a picture of the coat, too, if I had longer arms. Instead you get a picture of the coat collar. But mostly I just want to show off that, in addition to being stripey, my new hat has a bow on the side.

Not everybody likes the hat. My boyfriend was wondering why I bought "an old lady hat," and my boss, more tactfully, said "if I saw you on the bus, I would give up my seat."

I'm pro-hat, which is easy for me as my natural hair already looks like hat hair anyway. Actually, I'm going to try to wear hats and gloves every day this year. It annoys me that that's considered weird. I appreciate that we don't have to wear hats and gloves every time we go outside. What I don't like is that we're basically not allowed to without coming off as eccentric.

As a foreigner in Russia, I'm automatically eccentric, so that's fine. But, if I went back to America, the hat-and-glove thing would not go over. But, years ago, it would have been really, really weird not to wear them. So what happened?

Someday I'm going to totter around in my hat and gloves and reinforced-toe nylons* impressing people by telling them that I'm from the 20th century, "back when women were ladies." Yes, I am totally going to use that phrase. Totally. But I don't think I can get away with it just yet. I mean, I hope I can't. But someday...


Today, however, I write about dirty movies (and also hats)! My boyfriend has satellite TV, which includes a subscription to this block of movie channels. About half of the movies they show are in English, which I appreciate.

I was channel-surfing the other day while he was in the other room getting actual work done and I stopped on a scene of Courtney Love and some guy going riding-crop shopping. I'm not creepy (not pervy-creepy anyway), but I had to know what movie would be dumb enough to have a riding-crop salesman look so shocked that one of his customers might be buying a riding-crop for sexual purposes.

In the very next scene, my question was answered with the strains of "You Can Leave Your Hat On," which made me think:
1. Hey, this is a really famous movie scene!
2. Either this is a takeoff or screwed-up Kim Basinger looks a lot like cleaned-up Courtney Love.**
3. She has NO HAT!

Apparently, I said this last one out loud because my boyfriend had to know why I was angrily berating his beloved TV. This was embarassing:
M: Oh, because this woman is stripping and she's not wearing a hat.
D: What?
M: It's a really famous scene, but it's just stupid if she's not even wearing a hat. Though she is wearing a slip. Why don't women wear slips anymore?
D: Why are you watching dirty movies on my TV?!
M: Well, I was flipping through channels and I just had to know...you know what? Never mind.


* Fun fact: in other countries, these are called tights, but I always think of tights as patterned or opaque. I also hear Americans calling them pantyhose, which is just too much information.
** I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I'm good with names and terrible with faces.

Sooner them than me

I had (am having?) a bad couple weeks, as is customary for this time of year (thus, shopping immunity week). To start with, there were cockroaches in my apartment. Better cockroaches than ants, mice, poltergeists, pretty much anything, really, but, still, ew. Of course, I immediately called my boyfriend:
Dmitry: You could do nothing and they might go away, or you could buy some powder and sprinkle it on the floor and then go to sleep. The next morning, all the cockroaches will be on the ceiling and you can stand on a chair and vaccuum them up.
Me: What?! Why don't you have me drive a serial killer to a crowded supermarket that only sells ants? And also the serial killer is a giant ant. And I'd be wearing capri pants. And then I can go sunbathing. And then I'd come home and eat a big bowl of ketchup and apply for jobs where people die if I make mistakes.
Dmitry: It's what we did in the Soviet Union.
Me: You had ketchup in the Soviet Union?
In the end I opted for traps, and now they seem to be gone. But that was just the beginning.

Following that incident, there was a week where I managed to put my foot in my mouth every single time I tried to have a non-work-related conversation (this is a high frequency, even for me). By Wednesday I had decided that non-work-related conversations were overrated and that I would never speak ever again.

But there was a party on Thursday. You know what totally does not keep your foot out of your mouth? Champagne!

A few days later, I fell on the ice and hit my head on a parked car. That hurt.

Then at one company I almost just walked into some random office because I was too busy observing this good-looking guy to see if he was checking me out. You might argue that I was, in fact, checking him out, but really I was just observing (Conclusion: he was either checking me out or wondering where I was going. Also, my security pass doesn't let me just walk into any office).

And then I fell again. Stupid ice.

I also argued with a bunch of people, which is the result you might expect from constantly saying the exact wrong thing in every conversation. Sigh...


But enough about me. Instead I will write about how stereotypes about Russia are at least partly true. Recent conversations to demonstrate this:

Talking with some students about the recent outlawing of cigarette and alcohol commercials:
Student: And we can't drink on the street anymore.
Me: But hasn't that always been illegal? I mean technically.
Student: No, not at all. When I was a child, I could drink anywhere.

Practicing personality adjectives with another student, I asked him what kind of character was needed to do his job (he has a pretty important job):
Student: Hard-working, well-educated, good at math, umm...ambitious, umm... ...
Me [looking for "ethical"]: Is it important to follow the law?
Student: ... ...
Me: Stop thinking!

This one is just scary:
Dmitry: What is wrong with your politicians? Don't they know it's not the cold war yet?


But not all stereotypes are true, as you can see from this conversation between teachers that I heard*:
A: ...but positive stereotyping only leads to disappointment. Like before I came to Russia I thought the country would be full of chess players.
B: Chess players?
A: Yeah, I have a thing about chess players.
C: Thing about or thing for?
A: Thank you for correcting my collocation. *Anyway,* I thought the country would be full of these guys who play chess and have conservative but slightly messy hair and didn't like the Soviet Union but feel disillusioned with the current political situation. Also, they'd read Dostoevsky and wear unfasionable sweaters.
C: Well, that's very specific. And this is a positive stereotype?
A: Of course. And you know what?
B: Umm, I know that Russia is full of guys like that.
A: Yes, but they are all the same age as my parents! So you shouldn't stereotype.
C: Are you sure that was your main problem?


Usually I'd find a way to connect the next topic to the previous one, but it's Monday and I'm tired, so, in completely unrelated news, I went to the bookstore over the weekend. I had to for work, but instead of going to the crowded bookstore which I hate but which would definitely have the book I needed and in which I would not be even slighly tempted to browse, I went to the small, quiet bookstore which might have had the book I needed (it did, fortunately) and in which I knew I would spend a lot of money. And then I proceeded to spend a lot of money.

Sigh...maybe the next post will be less nerdy.


* Technically true.

Life seems so much slower

Last week I had more free time than usual, which, for some reason, I spent watching movies. This led to three realizations.

The first is that I miss having time to watch movies, so I'm going to start working a little less.

The second is that my boyfriend and I totally deserve each other.

While watching "Revenge of the Sith" (the first time I had seen it in English, actually), on finding out, moments before they're born, that Padme is going to have twins:
A: You think she would have seen a doctor.
B: What's WRONG with you?
A: Well, she's a senator. It's not like she doesn't have insurance. And couldn't the robots just do a scan or something? Why wouldn't she see a doctor?
B: WHY are you talking about "Star Wars" characters like they're real people?

Two days later, we were watching "Meet Joe Black," in which the two main characters hook up:
B: Are they going to sleep together?
A: It sure looks like it.
B: But they have just met. Are they even using contraceptives?
A: Maybe she'll get pregnant and it'll be part of the plot.
B: But that's SO irresponsible. Who does that?!
A: What's WRONG with you?


The third is that "The Piano" is a dreadful film. There are spoilers below, but who cares?

You might wonder why I was watching this movie in the first place, as it is not really my type of movie, critically acclaimed or not. It has to do with the fact that I was in middle school when it came out, which means that I was vaguely aware of its existence and knew that it was a controversial film. It also means that a handful of my contemporaries had parents who believed them to be old enough to see this film, which led to schoolyard conversations like this:

Classmate: I saw a movie with NAKED PEOPLE.
Everyone else: Tell us more! Tell us more!
C: They were DOING IT.
E: EWW!
C: It was ARTISTIC and BEAUTIFUL and if you're going to be so immature, I'm not going to tell you anything more.
E: Noooo! We'll be mature! Promise!

And that is why, in addition to not watching movies, my kids will be forbidden to attend school.

Naturally, I was intrigued, and this registered itself in the back of my little middle-school brain, not to the point that I ran right out and rented this movie as soon as I turned 18, but enough that, when I caught the beginning of it on TV, I thought, "I gotta see this."

The one good thing I can say is that Paquin did, in fact, deserve her Oscar. But, as for the rest of the film, I couldn't figure out how it got made. All that kept running through my head was that, somewhere, at some point, some executive decided that this film had artistic and/or market value. And based on what?

To start with, it's depressing. That's not enough for me to say it's a bad movie, but it isn't anything other than depressing. It's just depressing. Until the last five minutes or whatever, it exists solely for the purpose of being depressing. It's so depressing that, when you get to the big emotional scenes, you don't really care because, meh, we're all going to die and the world is running out of oil anyway.

Second, and this might just be me, I really hate it when love stories begin with prostitution.* I mean, if you're trying to make a comment about the transactional nature of all human relationships, then have at it, but if you're trying to do something that the audience will approve of, or even cry at the end of, try having your characters meet at a coffee shop or something.

What bothered me most about the movie, even more than all the gratuitous nudity, was that the major plot point relies on a misdirected love note. Why would you send a love note to a man who can't read? I mean, unless you needed some plot device so that your husband could act completely out of character, thus proving that he is not only wrong for you but also evil and therefore any adultery is totally justified.

And, finally (not, mind you, because this was the last thing I disliked about the film, but because I'm running out of synonyms for "terrible"), the ending felt really tacked-on. Was that really how the film was supposed to end, or was that some attempt at increasing market value? I actually knew how the film ended, because I remember my mother talking about it. I'm pretty sure it was in the context of her having been as annoyed with the film as I was.** She might be able to confirm that.

The lesson here is that naked people do not a good film make, even if they are doing it. And also not to take movie recommendations from your middle school classmates.

It does feel good to get all that off my chest, though. The nice thing about having a blog is that everyone within a 100-meter radius of me is spared from hearing about how much this movie sucked.


* - The other day, one of my students referred to "the great American film, 'Pretty Woman.'" This made me want to shout "we made 'Casablanca!'" and run out of the room in tears.

** - I'm scaling this to her disposition. On an absolute scale of annoyance, few people are even capable of getting as annoyed with stuff as I do.

55 hours aggregate

I ended up having a pretty good birthday, in that I got a coffee maker and some cake. I should be able to reply to e-mails individually this weekend (it's a three-day weekend here in Russia). The hijacked birthday-Halloween party was nice, too. And now I'm a square!

The other day I was telling one of my classes what it means to write something off. I was explaining that, fascinatingly, it has nothing to do with writing.

The example I gave was: I wanted to marry Dima Bilan, but he never returned my calls, so I wrote him off.
A couple students were still convinced that this phrasal verb must have something to do with actual writing: So if you have a list of men to marry, and Dima Bilan is on this list, and then you write him off [gesture to indicate crossing something out]?
Me, acting appalled: Why would I have a list?! What kind of person makes lists about such things?!
Other student: Sorry, Marin. We are programmers.

My students found my reaction funny, so hopefully they'll remember that write off != cross out. But when I repeated this story to another teacher, she just pointed out that: either my students know me better than I would like them to, or I should go into programming when I'm done teaching.

And while we're on the subject of marriage, I think I'm going to refuse to teach rich people from now on because if I have to have this conversation with one more student, I just might shoot myself:
Me, being polite: How long have you been married?
Student: To which one?

Russians are not very good with present perfect tense. Or, apparently, marriage. Or not telling me more than I want to know about their personal lives.

Some students take this to even greater extremes, like when I was trying to teach one of my students empathy. (The word, not the concept. That would be like the synaesthetic leading the blind).
Student: [brings up ex-wife for some reason]
Me: And so I say "I'm sorry," to express sympathy, but not empathy because...
Student: Why are you sorry?
M: About your divorce. I'm sorry to hear about your divorce. That's what we say when somebody gets divorced.
S: About which one?

This week I also learned:
1. That my hair looks fine if I actually bother to style it (imagine that!)
2. That I cannot resist green boots on sale (I didn't learn this one so much as prove it).
3. What a blivet is.
4. That "internet" is capitalized in Russian.
5. That Willem Dafoe was really, impossibly, hot in 1988. Seriously. I saw a movie of his and I didn't even recognize him.

But it'll still be two days

After work last Saturday I went to the bookstore (I just meant to show one of the new teachers where it was! Honest!) and walked out with a bunch of short story collections because I have too much work to be able to commit to a novel right now. I also have no self-control.

Last week I learned that I can barely commit to a short story. As in, I started a 19-page story on the bus to work on Monday and finished it on the bus to work on Friday. That was kind of depressing. What was even more depressing was that the story starts and ends with the same line, which, even more depressingly, is: "When the door against which Lyubochka was pressed by the invisible force finally opened, it turned out that the trolleybus was already moving and now she had to jump straight into a puddle." That actually happens.

This week started out promising, as I finished a whole story on Monday, but I haven't picked up a non-textbook book since.

So October is an insanely busy month. November should certainly be better, and not just because there's a three-day weekend. I don't have to do the company newsletter in November. Also, there would almost have to be fewer observations. Not that I've actually completed all of them for this month, but having them hang over my head until I can is also stressful.

To make matters worse, I had an argument with my boyfriend on Monday, my new haircut is not flattering, the copier at work is broken, and I also had two really bad, unproductive lessons yesterday (and in two of my favorite groups, which is awful), though one of them included the following exchange:
"...so don't anthropomorphize."
"Why?"
"The animals don't like it."


It seems like I've been inadverdently offending a lot of people lately (great idea in the weeks leading up to your birthday, btw), but I couldn't always figure out why. Today I realized that, when I'm under a lot of stress, I have a serious intonation problem. Or, rather, I lose control over my probably-already-existing intonation problem. In fact, intonation is one of the reasons I don't like teaching conversational English and, the more I think about it, probably the reason I hate talking on the phone.

I'm not sure that my intonation is all that bad under normal circumstances, but it's one of those things, like looking at people when I talk to them, that I often have to remind myself about, either to use it at all, or not to use inappropriate intonation (this is much, much worse than not using it). But if I'm under too much stress, I don't bother, with horrible consequences (see: Monday's argument), and occasionally kind of amusing ones.

For example, yesterday, I found out that one of my students is pregnant. I produced the requisite happy-congratulatory reaction when she told me because I am happy for her and also because I'm polite. But it seems something went wrong when I repeated this news to my coworkers:
"I just found out that one of my students is pregnant!"
"Adult or teenager?"
"Adult, thank goodness."
"Is she married?"

And:
"I just found out that my student at the company is pregnant!"
"Oh. Is that good or bad?"

So those exclamation points are probably incorrect, but I totally meant to say them. I stopped telling people after those two exchanges because I got distracted by something shiny and also because it was depressing. It wasn't until today, in fact, that I put everything together and realized that, in addition to my eye contact (which I was at least aware of), my intonation has probably been way off lately.


It is also worth noting that my birthday is on Friday. I'm going to be a square! Which would have been a good Halloween costume (I hijacked someone's Halloween party and combined it with my birthday party, but I didn't think about costumes) if not for the facts that I try to keep my real age shrouded in mystery and I am already kind of a square.

As I recall

My boyfriend is out of the hospital! Now he's back at work again.

And on the subject of relationships, I often find xkcd to be true-to-life, but this is just creepy.

Here is a word of advice: if you're going to watch the "Borat" movie (I wouldn't bother), the way to do this is to watch it in a language you don't understand (so you could either take my previous comment with a grain of salt or recognize that the movie sucks that much) with a rather conservative translator.
movie: [something in Russian that I can't understand]
boyfriend: [hysterical laughter]
me: What did he say?
bofriend, still laughing: Oh, I can't translate that. It's too dirty.
Repeat this process for two hours.

I will admit that I was kind of interested to see the movie responsible for the breakup of the Anderson-Rock marriage. I was really expecting those two to make it.* Actually, she really wasn't in the movie very much at all, and she gets points for apparently having a sense of humor about the whole sex tape (hi, googleteers! No porn here!) business, unlike, reportedly, Mr. Rock.** In her place, I suppose I would have run it by him first, but then in her place I wouldn't have married Kid Rock. Or Tommy Lee, for that matter.

Today I found myself pointing out, not by any means for the first time, that "we both liked 'Casablanca'" does not count as having something in common any more than do the shared beliefs that sunsets are nice, butterflies are pretty, and Moscow is cold.

Later it occurred to me that, if my boyfriend saw "Casablanca," he'd probably be the one person in the world not to like it. It sounds crazy, but it actually works out because I'm the only person in the world who doesn't like "Roman Holiday."*** That might count as having something in common. Moreso than it would if we both liked "Casablanca," certainly.

I'm going to test my boyfriend-Casablanca theory for the simple reason that I want to see it again. I will report the results. First order of business: find a copy.



* I ALWAYS expect couples like this to make it on the grounds that it's so crazy that they must know what they're doing. Usually just the first part is true. In fact, if TomKat don't make it, I might have to revise my theory. But I'm sure they will.
** Perhaps he didn't know about the tape.
*** There are a few reasons for this, but most of it boils down to: What's the point of having divine right if you don't use it to impale people who drug you and marry cute foreigners?

Yeah, well, you're interferon with our good time

I have a number of excuses for not having updated. To start with, I was in Siberia. I got back to Moscow two days before starting work, so I've been busy (the start of the year is busy for me).

Now I am preoccupied because my boyfriend is in the hospital with pneumonia. They caught it really really early (they can't even hear it), so he will be fine. He has to stay in the hospital for at least a week because it's Russia. The hospital is clean and they're treating him well, so hopefully he won't still be there in a month (this happened to a friend of mine who went in for appendicitis, was neglected by hospital staff, almost died, changed hospitals, and needed a bunch more surgeries). He doesn't like the food, but there's a little cafe on the first floor and plenty of people to bring him food. The hospital itself is close to one of the companies I teach at, which would be great if the visiting hours were longer (remember, this is Russia). As it is, though, it's pretty easy to get to.

I don't have much to say about the trip right now other than that it was super awesome and I want to go back to Siberia. I think I will find the time to blog more about it. I took a ton of photos that will also need to be posted.

It is also worth noting that my birthday is coming up in less than two months (somebody older and wiser advised me to enjoy these months because it's all downhill from there), and I have decided that this is certainly the perfect gift for me. Because I like to travel, I worry excessively about security, and I am la бегемотка, which is very bastardized Russian for "little hippopotamus."* And because I've always wanted a luggage lock that costs 3-5x as much as any item of luggage I own.


* In Russian, this isn't insulting. Cartoon hippopotami are funny and friendly, so that's what it means. I like it because they're depicted as friendly creatures but are actually quite deadly. I also enjoy having a nickname that requires a footnote.

Eurovision!

I promise a dissertation on Eurovision before the week is out. In summary, while it's officially the Eurovision Song Contest, songwriting is just about the last consideration. Contestants are evaluated on the basis of:
- staging
- looks
- catchiness
- kitschiness
- how favorably their country is viewed by people voting in other countries
- musical talent
- looks
- lyrics

This was only my third Eurovision, but I will admit to being a bit obsessed with it when it comes around.

Anyway, how it works is, each country chooses somebody to send to represent their country in the song contest. This year, 42 countries participated. There are always 24 countries in the final round: Britain, France, Germany, Spain (because these four countries are the biggest sponsors), the top 10 from the previous years, and the top 10 from the semifinal, which airs earlier in the week (and which I've never seen).

There are 24 performances, most of which are delightfully over-the-top and in terrible English (this year's winner was the first winning song since 1998 to contain no English lyrics). The winner is determined by phone voting. You can't vote for the country you're in, which is reasonable. Each country announces its top 10, with 12 points going to first, 10 to second, 8 to third and 7-1 to the 4th-10th.

People always complain about the voting because it seems to be about culture or politics, rather than about the music. Germany ranked Turkey highly because there are a lot of Turkish immigrants in Germany. Russia gives points to Georgia, but not vice-versa, for the same reason. Malta always gives the UK 12 points. The former Yugoslav republics have each others' backs (to some extent). Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine vote for each other. Israel votes for Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Cyprus votes for Greece. Turkey gives points to Armenia, but not vice-versa. The Scandinavian countries vote for each other, but it's slightly less blatant, and I think it's actually in response to the other blocs. This, for me, is just part of what makes Eurovision Eurovision, but some people are actually upset about it and there is talk of the western countries, which get screwed over due to their stable borders and low emigration rates, withdrawing in protest.

Actually, this is almost a dissertation. So I promise a dissertation on this last Eurovision in particular (which was my favorite of the three, despite the lack of Croatia, Dima Bilan, or the Eurovision drinking game) sometime soon.


I also bought a hat today, because I have decided that I no longer go outside without covering my head and I was getting bored of scarves. If I could afford it (not even close: gloves are very expensive!), I'd start wearing gloves everywhere. Nobody would notice, or care, because when you're a foreigner living in Russia you can wear pretty much whatever you want. This is partly because Russians are very flashy and just flat-out ignore traditional rules of dress. If you decide to wear a leopard-print vinyl miniskirt, you're still the most conservatively dressed person in the room. If you feel like wearing three slightly-but-observably different flower prints, you're still one of the most coordinated. And it's partly because they have low expectations for foreigners (especially Americans). If you decide to wear unironed jeans and tennis shoes everywhere, well, that's just what Americans wear.

Next time someone asks me why I live in Russia, I will direct them to this blog entry. It's all about Eurovision and hats.


In other, more important, news: tomorrow is open-toed shoe day!

Just don't know

You know you've spent too much time on Wikipedia when you see a typo on another page and immediately look for the 'Edit' button.

I went cross-country skiing today. I'm not very good at it. Also, the one day this week that I chose to do an outdoor thing was the one day that the sun chose to come out, reflect off the snow, and proceed to burn my face off in the middle of Russian winter. I don't know that I'd mind it so much, except that everybody feels that its acceptable to comment on such things, and it's really not. But the skiing itself was actually a lot of fun.

The rest of my life is not awesome. Work is stressful and my boyfriend, for some reason, picks arguments with me about the war on Iraq, which I never supported, and the Vietnam war, which I wasn't alive during. The funny thing is, we disagree on enough political issues to supply us with a lifetime of disputes. So there's no reason to pick fights about the issues we agree on.

Our office is having a competition to see who can get the most valentines. I wrote one to myself, and one to my coworker's shirt because it's a really nice shirt.

I had an onion on my belt

Back when I was in college and living with two other girls, I lived in an apartment with a cable modem that broke constantly, and the company was constantly sending someone to fix it. Soon, the three of us discovered that cable guys always try to pick up college students. I assume it must work occasionally, because, aside from what must start to seem like constant rejection, you can also report them.

Anyway, I remember one particular cable guy because, when I told him I had a boyfriend, he asked, "is he black?" (I think I need to point out here that the cable guy was black, and my boyfriend was not, and neither was I). I thought it was a weird question because it was so specific. Looking back, I don't know why it was significantly weirder than having a strange guy in your apartment trying to pick you up, or said strange guy asking about your boyfriend's race, or, you know, the entire situation. But, the point is, the guy continued asking me out until the cable was fixed, and I've always assumed there was some odd political thing going on with that question. Perhaps he thought that it was unacceptable to hit on some other guy's girlfriend if you're both the same race, but it's okay if you're not. It's possible that he was just collecting data because he found it interesting. For the purposes of the comparison I'm about to make, though, we have to assume it was the former.

Now I'm in Russia and my boyfriend is Russian, and people ask me, "he is Russian?" all the time, and it has never struck me as a weird question. What does strike me as weird is that, without fail, they then try to pick me up even more. Really. Even if they didn't seem at all interested in me before they asked. Even if I lie and tell them we're married (hey, the word for husband is easier to pronounce than the word for boyfriend). So I've concluded that there is no odd political thing among Russian guys, at least not the ones who are in Russia, which is fair enough.

But I'm starting to wonder if Russian males have bought into their own stereotypes. They are generally very negatively stereotyped, especially when it comes to relationships. They're all supposed to be sexist alcoholics or something. In any case, the stereotypes are unfair, but a lot of foreigners believe them anyway (and then I get to hear about it). Maybe Russians do, too. Then they think, "hmm...this girl's boyfriend is Russian, so he must be a sexist alcoholic. I'm not a sexist alcoholic, of course, so she'll definitely go out with me!" Or, sometimes, "hmm...this girl's boyfriend is Russian, so he must be a sexist alcoholic. That must mean I'm her type!"

Supporting my theory is the fact that my boyfriend, who hates that the company hired so many foreign male teachers this year, was not bothered at all when I told him I thought one of my students liked me. To him, some foreigners who are not at all interested in me and are my employees anyway are a bigger threat to our relationship than a Russian who actually does seem to like me. I should point out that I'm not interested in any of these people, so that's not a factor. I think he's just assuming that the student in question is a sexist alcoholic, whereas foreign males in Russia are all equality-minded teetotallers.