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."

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?

Time to go back to my mansion and eat my lobster

If you had to tell me which Simpsons character I was most like, Lisa would be the obvious, and boring, choice. But I've also been compared to Rev. Lovejoy (my mother's contribution, so ask her why), Moe (my mother again), The Comic Book Guy (trivia brain!), Mrs. Krabappel (give me a few years), and Mr. Burns (it's the selfishness, expensive taste, physical weakness, anti-sun vendetta, and, oh yeah, the fact that I say "excellent" all the time). Nobody ever compares me to Homer.

And, while I appreciate that, I do occasionally have Homer Simpson days. Last Monday was such a day.

I have a lesson at 9:15. I forget that everybody else has to be at work by 9 (which is Russian for 9:20) and therefore there will be traffic and I should probably leave a little earlier than I do for my non-rush-hour classes. So, 9:15 comes and goes and I am still sitting in a taxi which is sitting in a traffic jam. I call my school in a panic and ask them to call my company and tell them I'm going to be late. After I hang up, the taxi pulls into the company parking lot (good timing, me).

When I get to the security desk, they have no record of me. They keep looking for my document, but they cannot find it, which of course is taking more and more time. I am a bit panicked by this point. Finally, they call my contact down to the lobby:
contact: Hi, how are you?
me: SorrypleaseIknowthatIamveryverylate.Thereweremanycarsonthestreet.
contact: So, you know that you will have four lessons a week this year. They're at...
me: YesyesIknow.TodayIamverylate.
contact: But you are starting on the 10th.
me: Ye...what? The 10th?
contact: Yes. Next week.
me: Oh...huh.

So I wasn't 30 minutes late so much as I was 167.5 hours early. Unfortunately, I have the feeling that it won't happen twice, so I should probably wake up early tomorrow.

Which shouldn't be that hard, actually, as it promises to be rainy. That means that I'll happily wake up and leave the house without wasting time on sunscreen and covering my head but everyone else will be slow and late because they don't want to go outside.

Guess I'm a little bit shy

Tomorrow I start teaching. Today I am visiting the hospital, doing some work for Moscow, planning my lessons for the week, doing laundry, and, apparently, updating my blog.

I had to write a profile for our company's website. This is apparently the best I could do. And the little flourishes that make me sound like I have a personality (specifically, "hi," "green city," "friendly," and "look forward to") were edited in by one of the bosses.

One of the school officials uses the term "personality teacher" to describe the teachers who depend more on their charisma than on their teaching skills to keep students. It's not that personality teachers are necessarily bad teachers (often they're excellent), but that their students wouldn't care if they were bad. Because it's about the person, not about the teaching. On the one hand, personality teachers are a scheduling nightmare because their students often refuse to have lessons with any other teacher. On the other hand, you can send them to almost any group and be sure that the students will be happy with them.

Needless to say, I am not a personality teacher. In fact, I am a lack-of-personality teacher. Students ask me to talk about myself and I tell them that my English doesn't need practice, or that I'll discuss my personal life when Cambridge adds a section about it to their tests (they totally should). They know that I love conditionals. They suspect that I'm a workaholic. They probably know that I went to Siberia this summer because I couldn't shut up about it. But, beyond that, there's nothing interesting. Certain students love this because it makes them feel like they're learning, but for the most part I lack the appeal of a personality teacher.

This used to bother me a lot because I wanted to be popular. In my second year, I gave up on wanting to be liked so much, and I'm a better teacher for that. In my third year, I got promoted, and that's when I got into a stupid habit: I started throwing my title around. Not too much, but enough that people would know that I had responsibilities beyond being a regular teacher. This was intended to make me sound more impressive.

If you know anything about Russia, you know that it worked. As a matter of fact, it worked too well, and now I suspect that my English lessons have become something of a status item in certain sectors. As in, "No ordinary teacher can teach me! I must work with your assistant director of studies!"

It's not that I'm not a good teacher. It's just that I don't think that this is the result of a sudden interest in conditionals, which is unfortunate. (Nor is it due to any sudden interest in me, which is good). What happened was that I tried to impress students with my title, and now students are trying to impress other people with my title. The result is that now I get sent to important clients, some of whom don't take their lessons very seriously at all, giving me more stress but fewer papers to mark.


And while we're on the subject of status items: After reading the last post, you might wonder why I was on the Hermes website. It's because my super awesome, irreplaceable purse is going to fall apart in a month or two and one of the Hermes bags is the only bag I have seen that even comes close to what I want.* It turns out that said purse not only costs $6000 or more, but is not even sold on their website for fear that people like me will buy it, so it's back to the drawing board for me. Or to the crocodile farm and a sewing machine store.

Hermes always reminds me of one time when I was teaching a lesson about shopping (the textbook made me do it. Really!)
student: I only like shopping for ties. I have 30 ties.
me: Wow.
student: Do you know shop "Gurmiz"?** It is the only place I buy ties.
me [assuming this is some local Russian shop]: No. I don't buy many ties.
student: You must know. Gurmiz. It is French.
me: No, sorry. I just don't know.
Frustrated, student writes down the name of the shop, which is Hermes. I then pronounce it correctly and place it at the very top right corner of the price/quality chart*** I had drawn, all the while realizing that this student's collection of ties (which, unlike, say, shoes, are completely unnecessary) is worth more than I make in a year. Russians really like their status symbols.


* Big enough to carry a book, smaller than me, secure, trapezoidal, with long handles and/or a shoulder strap and feet. Also, no ugly hardware. Why is that too much to ask?!?

** The story makes more sense if you know (as I did) that "h" in other languages is often transliterated to "g" in Russian, even, apparently, when the "h" isn't pronounced.

*** This is a way of presenting vocabulary like cheap, bargain, good/bad value, ripoff, etc. The horizontal axis represents quality, and the vertical represents price, since price is at least a little bit dependent on quality.

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.

Pictures!

I'm leaving tomorrow. I did manage to upload the pictures from New York before I left: Pictures!