Monday, January 24, 2011

Terrorist attack in Moscow airport

I don't want to speculate who might be responsible for another bombing in Moscow. I will just refer you to Wikipedia table showing terrorist attacks by countries (scroll the page down) - if you search for Russia, you will find 23 attacks during the last 20 years - now they are 24. Seems like countries like Pakistan, India and Israel - where there is a conflict of some kind going on - can only claim the same frequency.
I remember too well 1999 when I was not able to sleep fearing that our apartment building might be the next one to explode - and I have never been a person with rich imagination. I also remember that one of my close friends overslept one day and missed the subway train that exploded - she was on the next train actually. I wish I did not have such memories!
One more thing - my mom is arriving at that airport next Monday - it was our luck that we did not order the tickets for a week earlier, wasn't it?

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Education and healthcare in Russia

Education in Russia
Standards of education in Russia have hugely decreased over the last 10 years. I am not talking about Western Education here – since I only had a limited exposure to it. But I have graduated from 2 Russian Universities, one of them being one of the top-3 in Russia. I got both diplomas with honor but I am not proud of it – because whereas I had to study hard in both cases to get there, many of other students got the same results by bribing and ass-licking. It did not feel right when students get good marks just for regular attendance – a common case in Russian universities.

There is an opinion that Russian school education provides broader knowledge foundation compared to the West. Since my first education was in teacher’s training, I know pretty well that nowadays it is extremely rare that those who did well in their studies go on to teach in schools. There were about 30 students in our group, only about 5 of them went on to teach in school, most of them had bad marks and were far from knowledgeable in their subject.

There was a moment in my life 2 years ago when I was so tired of hard exploitation at my office with lots of overtime work and no gratitude for it from management, that I went to school I graduated from – mind you it was a Moscow school with in-depth German study – these are considered almost elite schools in Russia – and offered my services as English and German teacher. The principal offered me an administrative job as head of educational activities in out-of-school hours as well as part-time teaching English and German. She promised me lots of interesting activities and independence in the position. I liked the sound of it – until I heard the price tag. I would get 22,000 RUB which is about 700 USD – at that time my basic salary in office work was 48,000 and with overtime payments I was getting 60,000 and there were different bonuses paid as well. We were paying 28,000 RUB rent for a bachelor apartment in Moscow – so you can imagine what I thought about the idea of taking the job. The only way out from this according to the principal, were private lessons that I could be teaching and although they are not officially allowed, everyone did turn a blind eye on them.


Russian healthcare
There are doctors in Russia who do not charge bribes and treat patients well anyway – my classmate’s mom is a good friend of our family and head of department in Moscow hospital – she is one of these doctors herself. But there are also many others who won’t do anything unless bribed – and I do not judge them for it – with the funny salary they have it’s their way of surviving, I do not mind help them in this. Though I do mind the Government making them act the way.

There is a nice quote from Stalin the Government must be following “We will not increase doctors’ and teachers’ salaries – a good doctor and teacher can take care of themselves and we do not need bad doctors and teachers, do we?”. To me it sounds bizarre but what do I know!

Friday, January 14, 2011

Happy New Year!

No, I am not crazy! It’s the Old New Year in Russia – since Russia used another calendar (and Russian Orthodox still do) that is 13 days behind the rest of the world, there is a tradition to celebrate this holiday as well.

We got our kind of present last night - we thought that we were paying our real estate agent for her services certain percentage of the list price of our house-to-be - but as I discovered yesterday, we are not - which is a discovery worth $ 7,000 - I wish I made more discoveries like this one!

I also found a great deal today - I was dreaming of subscription for The Economist for a while, even looked at their promotions yesterday, but they were too expensive to me. But today I saw this special offer, where you get first 12 issues for $12 and pay $36 per 3 months after that. However, when I tried to sign up, it did not work in the beginning - since the offer was a US-only deal. I was disappointed and was closing the window, when a pop-up appeared stating that there is a similar offer in Canada, but I will have to pay CAD 15 for the first 12 issues, which I thought still was a great deal and subscribed for it. Yey!

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Sacral truth about women

I so totally agree with the quote:

There can be 3 things wrong with a woman:
1. She is not being fu...ed
2. She is being fu...ed in the wrong way
3. She is being fu...ed by the wrong guy

Any other problems are derived from these three. I just got another confirmation for this.

Hobbies

From a very young age I had different hobbies all the time. I am not the kind of person that can collect stamps all their life once started. Maybe it’s attention deficit disorder but I don’t mind it this way. I’ve been to dancing, drama, karate, typing and many other classes while at school. But neither of them lasted long. I was always on something new and fascinating in the next moment. Never felt obliged to keep to one thing and try and achieve some level of skills.

Same was and is true with music, movies and books. I don’t prefer some specific genre – there are many of those I enjoy from time to time. You can find Tolstoy and J.K. Rowling’s books on my bookshelves, I can watch some serious dramas one day and silly comedies another and enjoy both likewise. My approach to hobbies is to try as many as you can, to switch between them depending on the mood and I don’t believe in the concept of the One – the best, the most attractive and suitable for me. I change so do my affections, taste and habits. So should my hobbies as well to match my current self.

There was always a wish list of hobbies I’d like to try one day – these are painting, writing and singing. I still hope that I might do that one day. Well, I will give up writing eventually – I guess I just lack something in my brain to be able to make up stories.

As for the present, when we were at cottage celebrating New Year, I found a book by Maeve Binchy – Irish author – Whitethorn Woods – it is a slow, easy-going book, a typical female reading – romantic, a bit naïve, but still enjoyable. It is more like set of short stories, than a novel, I usually don’t like such plots, but not in this case. I like to sit with my e-book under warm blanket with the cat lying at my feet and enjoy winter evenings.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Patriotism issues

This post is inspired by a Canuck who wrote on my friend’s Facebook page "Listen , and I am serious about this ... I was born here so I have a RIGHT to say this... YOU were born in Russia , yes maybe you are a citzen of Canada but YOU are FIRST Russian second Canadian and its disgusting that you as a early immigrant to MY country.....So listen ... You are first RUSSIAN...second Canadian...and please dont confuse this shit..” replying to her comments that she supported team Canada in its game against Russians.

There are idiots everywhere – that is one of the proofs for that. Another one is for example when another friend of mine heard from his Canadian neighbor “Go back where you came from” as a reply in an argument. When people start using things like these it only shows that their IQ is dangerously close to zero and that they are not able to come up with a reasonable discussion instead.

I want to share my ideas of patriotism here – being proud of your country, its history, achievements, culture etc is good and right. However, it’s dangerous at the same time. It’s like being religious – when one gets emotional about something, it’s easier to manipulate such person. There is indeed nothing wrong about believing that if you do good deeds in your life, you will get your reward later on. But once someone tells you “your prophet/God is wrong/does not exist” things may turn nasty.

Same with patriotic moods – politicians have been using them forever over the history to better control people and to achieve their goals and ambitions. Abuse of any feelings is a dirty play, but a very efficient one. Hence the only way to avoid being a puppet is to ask yourself “Who is the profiteer in the situation?” – there is a Russian saying going “When the stars got lit, it means, somebody needs it” - let’s not get influenced and keep clear mind in any situation! Since “if you don’t control emotions, emotions will control you”.

As for the immigration issues – indeed we came to Canada from somewhere else. But one cannot say “nobody invited us here” unless someone arrived illegally – government representing people set rules for immigrants to be able to come to the country – meaning there was mutual interest in the deal – we wanted to come to the country, it wanted us to come. I don’t believe in public charity, I am sorry. Hence Canada had its reasons to let us come and now we have the right to stay and try our best to become part of it. I am not saying as some do “Canada owes me now that it let me in”, I am saying that I can stay and try to set up a new life for my family and myself here. That is part of a deal, nobody promised it would be easy, the only promise was this opportunity. And I am indeed grateful for it.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Popularizing my blog

Not that I am fame-thirsty or anything, but the stats on my blog are really upsetting - the graph looks like a dying's person ECG! I guess I should spend more time posting some dirty stuff interesting texts in here...

The only problem to solve now is to decide on what might be interesting...

Can someone help me out with this? Not that I am desperate to read all those "5 ways to popularize your blog" manuals, so do not send me to google, but if you have some topics that you would like to read about, I would be glad to know.