Lex Libertas

Should I put a pic of myself on the site? I’m not sure. Alot of blogs seem to, and if every blog were to run off a cliff, you can bet I would too. I don’t really have any good pictures to put on though.

One of the main problems is that I don’t have any good pictures of myself. All I really have are some random pics. One of me screwing around in a photo booth in Paris, making me look crazy, and two when I was 16 (negotiating the Treaty of Versailles, and climbing Mount Everest), and one taken back in the 70’s (with the coolest New Zealander ever). Or the photo from the modeling shoot I did for Starbucks. Or the one of my bodybuilding days. And the beauty competiton I entered. Or what about one of me in action, fighting the Simi fire, or guarding the UN building in Baghdad? Maybe my “goth or not” picture.

What do you think, I expect responses in the comments. If not, well, we’ll deal with that when the time comes …

1. Pic or no pic?
2. What pic?

Monday was the first real snow since I’ve been here. It started in the late evening, and by morning there was at least a foot on fresh powder covering the ground. I’ve already described the benefits of snow, but it really does drastically improved the look of the city, although it makes life a bit more difficult.

I’ve been walking to school from my dorm, which normally takes between 30 and 45 minutes. I tried doing it on Monday � took over an hour. I am ridiculously inept at walking on icy ground. I have fallen at least once per day since Monday. Wednesday’s was the most spectacular. I was walking along, trying to mind my footing, when I flew up in the air and landed squarely on my back. It was like when someone steps on a banana peel in the classic cartoons, my legs went out and up. I have countless near falls an hour. This morning, I almost slipped and took out an old lady � that would’ve been great, cane and everything thrown into the air.

On Monday, I was supposed to meet up with some of the Frenchies at 2:00 to go check out the sport offerings of the university. Giving due weight to national stereotypes, I expected them to be late. It was worse, they never showed up. They were in bed nursing hangovers (a daily ritual round these parts).

There I was waiting around in the Philology building courtyard with Liam (from Bristol), surrounded by fresh snow and nothing better to do. After fifteen minutes of waiting, I decided to craft a particularly solid snowball meant for whichever tardy Frenchman first walked through the door. After a half hour, I reluctantly concluded that we had been stood up.

As a consolation, several people were engaged in a snowball fight, one of which I had met before. Liam and I decided to jump right in. To make a long story short, the snowball fight lasted three hours with the core group of five or six people, and various passers-by from time to time. I can tell I’m out of shape, because I was quite sore the next day. We’re supposed to try to find the sport department again tomorrow. Let’s see how that goes.

While I never fully realized it until now, Thanksgiving is one my of my favorite holidays. What it lacks in presents, dressing up, or green beer, it makes up for in food. Quite possibly the best meal of the year, it contains many of my favorite dishes since childhood - yams, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. I was never a big turkey fan, and in any case I much preferred the sides.

Now, like my birthday, I will have to spend this holiday in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language, and have precious few friends to celebrate with. In fact, the only other American I know here is my roommate. In case I didn’t fully explain before, my roommate is not English, nor is he named Patrick like I was told. His name’s Wolf, and he’s from New York, though originally raised in New Mexico. Which is good, because we’ve had many cathartic conversations about our longings for Thanksgiving and Mexican food. He, however, is going home for Christmas, so he’ll have a chance to satisfy these cravings. My year in France, the UC program director arranged for all the UC students from Grenoble, and the neighboring city of Lyon to come together and we had an excellent, catered Thanksgiving dinner. No such luck this time around.

So, instead of wallowing in my misery on this fabulous day (I’ve been wallowing for two weeks already, I need a break), I’ve decided to make my own Thanksgiving Day meal � while listening to �Don’t Worry Be Happy,� by the immortal Bobby McFerrin. Incidentally, the local five star hotel (Grand Hotel Europe) is having a Thanksgiving special all day today, with what looks like honest to goodness traditional food. The only problem is that it really is a five star hotel, and they charge accordingly. The price for their restaurants (they have several, huge facility) is usually upwards of $30 per person. Alas, that being out of my range, I’ll make do with what I have.

Here is my Thanksgiving dinner:
(click on pictures for bigger image)

Trying to match as closely as possible to traditional food, in spirit if not taste, color, or texture, I’ve prepared the following. Format is �Normal Dish� = �Replacement�

Stuffing = Buckwheat
Cranberry sauce = Cherry yogurt
Turkey = Frozen vegetables
Yams = Poppyseed roll
Pumpkin pie = Tiny candy

To drink, I had assorted berry juice, though it bears a disturbing resemblance to blood. That tiny sliver of tissue paper you see under my fork is the normal napkin for these parts. As for the main course, I’ll leave it your imagination to formulate the wonderful richness of its succulent flavors. In case you don’t know what �buckwheat� is, it’s a generic, bland, grain that is prepared by boiling it in water. It doesn’t taste very good, but it kind of looks like stuffing. Cranberry sauce and cherry yogurt are both red and somewhere in between solid and liquid. Turkey to vegetables is probably the most counter-intuitive of the list, but the meat here looks frightening, and I don’t really know how to cook it anyways. Besides, I’m in desperate need of natural color in my diet. The poppyseed rolls here are quite good, imagine a cinnamon roll. Replace the cinnamon with poppy seeds, instead of slathering it in icing, put a conservative amount of thin chocolate on the top, and use the same sweetbread. Voila, closest thing to mashed yams with marshmallow on top that I could think of. I haven’t really seen pies here, although they do plenty of cakes, and lots of filled pastries. That being the case, I decided to pick a candy whose color ressembled the creamy brown of pumpkin pie. This local favorite, �Karovka,� is quickly becoming one of mine as well. It’s like flavored sugar � can’t get much better than that. This particular one is caramel.

There we have my thanksgiving meal � it may not be what the pilgrims ate, but the spirit is about the same. Displaced travelers enjoying the native cuisine and giving thanks for all that they have � while at the same time freaking out about the coming winter. The only thing missing on my end are friendly natives to help out with the local food.

The Czechs have a keen eye for understanding what’s going on in the world.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus said Europeans are living in a “dream world” of welfare and long vacations and have yet to realize “they are not moving toward some sort of nirvana.”

The Czech Republic is a candidate for European Union membership, but Mr. Klaus, who was elected president in February, made clear in an interview his distaste for the organization.

The Czech president remains convinced that “you cannot have democratic accountability in anything bigger than a nation state.”

Last week, the European Court of Auditors in Luxembourg released a 400-page report that found “systematic problems, over-estimations, faulty transactions, significant errors and other shortcomings” in the EU budget.

EU auditors could vouch for only 10 percent of the $120 billion the bloc spent in 2002. It was the ninth successive year the auditors were unable to certify the budget as a whole.

Europeans have not yet faced up to such “serious underlying issues,” Mr. Klaus said, because “they are still in the dream world of welfare, long vacations, guaranteed high pensions and cradle-to-grave social security.”

“The enemies of free societies today are those who want to burden us down again with layer upon layer of regulations,” Mr. Klaus said.

“We had that in communist times. But now if you look at all the new rules and regulations of EU membership, layered bureaucracy is staging a comeback.”

The European Union’s 30,000 bureaucrats have produced some 80,000 pages of regulations that the Czech Republic and the other applicants for EU membership will have to adopt.

Mr. Klaus dismissed anti-Americanism in Europe, which he sees as “more a reflection of American anti-Europeanism than European anti-Americanism.”

He said those who organize demonstrations in Europe are a tiny minority of the population. “The majority doesn’t care to demonstrate.”

I’ve always loved Forsyth as an author, and now it turns out he’s got political sense as well.

London’s Guardian yesterday published a series of open letters to the president from various Englishmen and Americans. Many were hostile–the Guardian is a left-wing paper–but we like this one from novelist Frederick Forsyth (ellipsis in original):

You will find yourself assailed on every hand by some pretty pretentious characters collectively known as the British left. They traditionally believe they have a monopoly on morality and that your recent actions preclude you from the club. You opposed and destroyed the world’s most blood-encrusted dictator. This is quite unforgivable.

I beg you to take no notice. The British left intermittently erupts like a pustule upon the buttock of a rather good country. Seventy years ago it opposed mobilisation against Adolf Hitler and worshipped the other genocide, Josef Stalin.

It has marched for Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov. It has slobbered over Ceausescu and Mugabe. It has demonstrated against everything and everyone American for a century. Broadly speaking, it hates your country first, mine second.

Eleven years ago something dreadful happened. Maggie was ousted, Ronald retired, the Berlin wall fell and Gorby abolished communism. All the left’s idols fell and its demons retired. For a decade there was nothing really to hate. But thank the Lord for his limitless mercy. Now they can applaud Saddam, Bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il . . . and hate a God-fearing Texan. So hallelujah and have a good time.

As if life wasn’t difficult enough over here due to natural shortages, certain Russian institutions have decided to create some out of thin air. The subway system gets ridiculously crowded around rush hour. Very often you will see a massive clot of people outside the entrance pushing to get in. I’m talking about groups of fifty-odd people at least. I decided to brave this torrent because I was in enough of a hurry that I needed the subway. What I found still befuddles me.

The reason there is such a backup of people isn’t a lack of room on the interior of the building. The bottleneck is caused by the fact that only five of the ten doors are open. Somebody, somewhere, proclaimed that even though there are ten fully functioning doors (meaning they can open), only five of them should be left unlocked. The result, of course, is the artificial shortage of entrance space, and the ensuing crowd of pushy commuters.

Additionally, at my university, there is a big door frame containing two individual doors. The great administration gods have decreed that only one will be open, and the other shall be eternally locked. This creates a nightmare for traffic as both incoming and outgoing students are forced to use the same door, and when classe let out we can once again see a pushing crowd of people trying to leave. While this inefficiency and waste in terms of traffic usage is bad enough, I can only imagine what a nightmare scenario would occur if there were a fire, or some other reason to evacuate the building. All because they don’t want to unlock a stupid door.

This policy is in practice practically everywhere. Though there are typically three or four escalators in each subway station, only two are usually turned on. Again creating an artifical shortage of exit space and forcing people to act like rabid, bitter, hyenas as they shove their way onto the only active escalator.

I understand that they may leave some escalators off to save energy, but turn them on for rush hour!! And the electricity bit doesn’t account for why doors remain locked. It’s as if the natives feel it would be Russia without artificial shortages, it seems to be an integral part of the culture here.

I’ve decided to add a new category to the blog. “Stupid Californian” will be a place where I relate anecdotes based on differing cultural assumptions. For example:

I’ve already explained the minibuses, technically called “marshroutes,” that careen around the city on myriad undocumented courses. Well, the first couple of times that I’d gotten in them, I consistently checked for seatbelts. Silly Owen, why would a passenger van that routinely comes within inches of violent crashes have seatbelts?

Today I sat in the front, next to the driver, because there was no room in the back on one of my trips. As a reflex, I reached behind me to grab the seatbelt. To my astonishment, there was a seatbelt there. Unfortunately, I felt so much social pressure to just let it be, that I didn’t actually put the seatbelt on. That would have been like putting a huge sign on my forehead that read foreigner. No, I much prefer for people to assume I’m some variety of native until the very end of the trip when I call out where I wish the bus to stop, and everybody turns to see the kid with the accent. At least that way my foreigner status is only common knowledge for a minute before I exit the vehicle.

Internet Cafe

Dorm where I almost lived

Bridge crossing near the metro

Riva, click on the continue reading this entry.

PS: To any non-Riva who reads this, I hope you all got your voyeuristic thrills for the day, and that I will have satiated your desire to delve into others private lives. Perhaps tonight you can leave your binoculars in the night stand and let your poor neighbor undress in peace.

UPDATE: Surprise, surprise. This page was the single most accessed page in the past week at least. I know Riva didn’t read it 17 times on it’s first day. You all should be ashamed of yourselves, not that my understanding of human nature would have predicted anything else of course.
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I woke up this morning (still dark at 8am) expecting a vigorous, yet enjoyable half hour walk to school. Instead I found a slush covered nightmare of a trek. While the snow does magical things in terms of covering up ugly potholes and general beautification of dingy old buildings, it does make walking problematic. This may be old news for anyone living in a place where it snows regularly, but coming from Los Angeles, the only time I see snow is on vacation - when I want to see it. I don’t relish the muddy puddles, splashing cars, and frequent near tumbles when I’m trying desperately to arrive on time for a 9:30 class. Pictures soon to come.

Bring Your Own Toilet Paper: While searching for something with which to blow my nose today at the university, I found out that the bathrooms there don’t have toilet paper. It’s not as if they just run out and never replace it, they just don’t have it. There’s not even a place for a toilet paper holder in the stall. Perhaps that’s just one more reason why Russian women carry such big purses.

In America, pedestrians are only supposed to cross at crosswalks, violating this law will result in a jaywalking ticket. I know, I got one, for the sum of $77. If people don’t follow this law, cars are still expected to give them the right of way. The rampant random crossing is supposed to be held in check with the fine, while still upholding the value of human life for those breaking the law.

In Russia, crossing the street is like playing frogger - with your own body. People can cross the street anywhere, anytime. The tradeoff is that the cars don’t stop - ever. If you’re in the middle of the road, you just have to make sure you’re not setting yourself up for a direct hit. It’s quite often that you’ll find yourself standing in the middle of the road, advancing lane by lane, praying to God that the car in your lane is far enough away to give you time to wait for the car one lane ahead to pass.

I can’t believe it’s only been a week since I left America. It feels like at least a month has gone by. I’m somewhat out of that bad spell that hit in the very begining. I’ve met a lot of foreigners, and I’ve already been invited out to a club both tonight and Saturday. I don’t think I’ll go tonight - way too tired - but the one on Saturday apparently plays goth music, and it’s kind of tempting. The only problem is that I’m on one island, and the clubs are all on the other island. Every night at one am they raise the bridges, and don’t lower them again until 6. This poses a problem as the last metro leaves at midnight. So, the option is to either leave early, or stay until 6am. Now that I’m an ancient 23 years old, I don’t feel like staying out in clubs until the next morning. When I was younger, sure, but not anymore.

I guess I haven’t yet described my class. Well, it’s me, and six chinese kids. Normally, when learning a foreign language, everybody has the same bad accent, and we all understand each other fine. Not in this case. I can’t understand a word of what they’re saying. They’re nice enough kids, but communication is difficult as best. I do sort of feel like I’m back in high school, the kids are all about 18, and during breaks they run to the bathroom to smoke. Today, in class, the building shook, and I immediately thought it was an earthquake. It turned out to big an exceptionally large truck driving by, and I’m sure I was the only one in the class who’s first reaction was “earthquake.”

Yesterday, we were discussing family, and my teacher asked us if we had brothers, sisters, etc. A simple enough mistake to make, but kind of cruel considering the audience comes from a country with a one child policy.

The physical building I’m in is falling apart. It’s stone, and was probably made at least a century ago, but the desks in the class are new, and they have nice whiteboards. The neatest thing, and one advancement over us, is that the erasers stick to the board. The teacher will be writing, and then just reach over to some other part of the board and voila, the eraser is easily accessible. Talk about paying attention to the little things.

Today was my birthday, and to celebrate it I did … nothing. Well that’s not true. I did treat myself to KFC for lunch. It was ok, the ketchup here is really sweet. I got a chicken sandwich called the farmer, it comes with weird tasting pickles, but the meat itself is quite good.

Over here there are many forms of transport - the subway, buses, mini-buses (like family vans with the inside filled with benches), taxis, and personal vehicles. To get a personal vehicle, you just stand on the side of the road and stick out your hand. Some random person will stop, and you tell them where you want to go. You’ll haggle a price and off you go. Neat concept - although I haven’t yet tried it myself, and I don’t know if I will ever be comfortable with it.

Anyways, I finally figured out some of the routes for the mini-buses. It’s as if Russia has all the negatives of central planning with none of the benefits. You’d think that there would be, somewhere a map of all the bus routes, but there isn’t. It’s not even really posted at stops. The buses themselves carry an abridged version in their windows. Today I took a mini-bus home because the subway was jam packed, there was even a line outside the entrance. And by line I mean a massive group of people all violently pushing to get in the doors. It’s like a colony of penguins huddled together - only with even less room than the picture. In taking this mini-bus, I learned my first LOTD (hopefully I can get one every post).

Lesson Of The Day: When in the mini-bus, do not take the seat directly behind the driver. He will doubtlessly have an ever burning cigarette, and the wind will push it back directly into your face for the entire trip. Sucks for a Californian, used to stringent (and just) anti-smoking laws.
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It is the Soldier

It is the soldier, not the reporter,
Who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the soldier, not the poet,
Who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the soldier, not the campus organizer,
Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.

It is the soldier, who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who allows the protester to burn the flag.

–Charles M. Province

In Flander’s Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

-John McCrae

He Died at his Post

A soldier had fallen! ‘Tis well that we weep!
O soft be his pillow, and peaceful his sleep!
Far, far from his home, and the friends he loved most,
He fell in the conflict, and died at his post.

When brave ones were summoned their country to save,
He hasted war’s perils to share with the brave,
And proudly he stood in the van of the host,
And, like his Great Captain, he died at his post.

No more shall earth’s conflicts disturb his repose,
He has gone where the weary are free from life’s woes;
There covered with glory, on Eden’s bright coast,
‘Twill be sweet to remember he died at his post.

Farewell youthful soldier! we ne’er will forget,
The life thou has offered, the death thou has met!
Of thee may our nation in history boast;
And tell the whole world, thou didst die at thy post.

A soldier has fallen; but long shall remain
The star-spangled flag which he died to sustain;
For, sooner than let our loved country be lost,
A nation of freemen will die at their post!

J.W.Holman