Symphony of the Night

Yawn

2004-10-09T10:10:36Z

It occurs to me that I never update this anymore. I have no good excuse for why I'm not paying any attention to my livejournal anymore. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that, not being in Russia, my day-to-day life seems fairly mundane to me so I don't really feel like there's anything worth cramming haphazardly in here. When something interesting or exciting has happened, I've basically just been too lazy to bother throwing it up here. Yes, that's right I am lazy. I know how utterly ridiculous that must sound, but take it on good faith that it's true.

With that thought in mind, here are the highlights of Dan's life between the 31st of September and the 9th of October in this Year of Our Lord/Common Era 2004 roughly presented in generally chronological order:

1) Arrived at school-adventure, excitement,

2) Realized how cool it is to have two border collies around our house; joined the border collie caucus,

3) Became horribly and hideously swamped in the literal mountains of work which quickly piled up between the LSATs, two seminars and two upper-level polisci classes; continued validation of my theory that I'm the worst polisci major ever and should've been either an English or a Russian major,

4) Played up through 5.8 levels of Viewtiful Joe before arriving at a boss who thrashed me so thoroughly that-for the first time I can remember-I stopped playing a game; fantastic game otherwise,

5) Assorted parties of assorted natures at our house in which the brothers got sufficiently trashed and made asses of themselves; Pike kid falls from balcony at Castle party and gets FUCKED up, possible changes to alcohol policy with negative impacts on fraternities likely,

6) Added the word "pwn3d" (pronounced powned) to my lexicon,

7) Removed the word "pwn3d" from my lexicon (except for special occasions and/or when I'm drunk),

8) Decided to go in on cigars and a humidor with Ken thanks to a great deal on them from a mail-order cigar company; next step: buying a brandy snifter so I can make cool "smoke sitting in glass of alcohol" effect,

9) Freaked out about not studying enough for the LSATs and started cramming hard core about it and IMing Rina and Rishabh for guidance and support,

10) Decided to follow through on going to more concerts and saw Flogging Molly at the Electric Factory; absurdly cool thing to do on a night during which it was pouring due to hurricane leftovers

11) Joined in the grotesque process of deciding on a new pledge class for our house; 4 new guys running around; house to 30 by the end of the year; how the fuck did I let that happen?,

12) Lost my left contact,

13) Took the LSATs; LSATs were pwn3d; now that I've said that, I sure as shit better end up with a decent score so I don't look like a total fuck-stain and get pwn3d myself,

14) Continued on the concert route and bought tickets to Bad Religion; also seeing My Chemical Romance and Story of the Year later this month; Greenday a possible addition to the list,

15) Realized that though I really would like a girlfriend right now, I have neither the time to find one nor the time to sustain a relationship were I to find one; also was alerted to the fact that I have no chance with the girl on whom I had some designs,

16) Bought Once-Nightwish, Drunken Lullabies and Swagger-Flogging Molly and Empire Strikes First-Bad Religion; great happiness ensued,

17) Received a new left contact,

18) Watched the debates and, due to some prodding by a certain Markian Dobczansky, have become
vehement in my recently political rantings and ravings about George W. Bush; yes, I know Kerry is also a douche-bag, but anyone has to do better than Bush has done and will continue to do,

19) (Time uncertain) All but stopped playing GemStone; other than to complete one lingering transaction I haven't signed on in the last two weeks and I haven't hunted in nearly three; gaming time is being spent on other games and I just don't give two shits about it right now; I don't want to talk to people who don't exist about random shit that doesn't exist in a world that doesn't exist; I'll probably be back to it soon enough, but this is by far the longest I've gone not playing and not wanting to play since I started GS two summers ago; who knows, maybe I'm done with it,

20) (Time uncertain) Beat Half Life again,

21) Beat Deus Ex again.

That pretty much brings everyone up to the present. I don't really foresee a great deal of change occurring in this routine anytime in the near future. Life, overall, is good. Busy, but good. We'll see how much longer that lasts. Until next time, whenever that is.

DC out

EDIT: In case anyone is curious and/or can't see the icon very well, my new icon is a wallpaper for the anime Hellsing. Phenomenal soundtrack, cool characters, well drawn, cool concept, LOTs of plot holes.

Still alive, apparently

2004-08-30T10:05:20Z

So it's been a while since I updated this thing. I don't know if anyone reads it anymore, so I don't know if anyone cares that I haven't been updating. I kind of assume that most of the people who would read this I also talk to on a frequent enough basis that they're kept appraised of what is going on in my life. That being said, I've found it to be rather therapeutic to get my thoughts out of my head and on "paper" can be good for me even if no one else is really reading it.

With all the craziness that has happened over the course of the past month and change since I got back, part of me is surprised that I haven't turned to this more often to keep things in check and the other part of me isn't really all that surprised that it was one of the first things to drop off my list of priorities after I started getting busier. Not like I wasn't spending enough time in front of a computer screen. Let's be honest, this is me that we're talking about. It just never really appealed to me as a hugely productive use of my time. As leaving for school again has crept up slowly but surely and events have unfolded and, for most intents and purposes, come to their logical conclusions, it feels like it is a good time to concertize all the randomness floating about me into a more coherent order.

So what's been going on. I had to get jobs. That was an important part of the last 5 weeks. I was signed up with a ridiculous (and by ridiculous I mean four) number of temp agencies around Denver and spent much of the first two or so weeks just sitting around waiting for them to call me and say, "HEY! We found a lame ass thing for you to do today. The pay is shit and the work will numb your brain, but you don't have shit else to do, so you'll probably say yes. Asshole." Early on I took two jobs. One as a receptionist for a day and one passing out flyers in Cherry Creek for two days (which actually only came out to 8 hours, total). It was looking like it was going to be a long, poor summer ahead of me. Not much coming down the pipe and not doing so well when it did.

Fortunately, the tables turned rather dramatically on that note and I received an offer for a 4 week assignment doing data entry that paid ten bucks an hour. As I would find out, data entry would be just as insanely boring as everyone had always told me it would be. There's really not a whole lot to say about where i worked or what I did while I was there. I spent 8 hours a day sitting in front of a computer screen changing database entry after database entry. Almost all of the people I worked with were old women who clearly saw me as this cute little boy and babied me. And there was the general set of stereotypical office-related drama. Whatever. They let me listen to music and fed me on Fridays and paid me well. Things could've been a lot worse.

Socially it's certainly been an interesting few weeks. Some things have kind of dissipated that I woulnd't necessarily have expected to, but for the most part it's been quite good. I've had plenty of time to hang out with Abbott and Hof and even got to see Gente, which was a pleasant surprise. Saw Evil Dead, Army of Darkness and the Princess Bride at the Esquire for midnight movies. I was disappointed to miss Evil Dead 2, but I think I can be forgiven since I spent $70 on a ticket to be at the Dhu which was that weekend. That, too, was a fun little event. On the GS side of things, I've rejoined splat 1337 after taking a break from it since the beginning of this calendar year or so. The group's changed minutely and I'm quite a bit happier with it now. Met some cool new people for merchant hunting, hunting partners and a good information network. It's good stuff.

And, of course, there's Melissa. Nothing like stumbling blindly into a relationship when you were neither looking for nor anticipating that anything would happen. I've really got nothing that can adequately explain it. We liked each other immediately and, less than 24 hours after meeting me, she was inviting me to her house for dinner. Things kind of just went from there. I've spent no small amount of the summer driving back and forth from my house to Longmont (where she lives) and Colorado Springs (where she goes to school) to spend time with her-and it's all been well worth it. Having to end things with her is certainly one of the things about which I'm looking forward to the least with regards to the end of the summer and heading back to school. We both got into the relationship with the clear understanding that it would be ending at the end of the summer, but we both seem to have ended up liking one another quite a bit more than we anticipated. I think it's safe to say that we flirted with and crossed back and forth over the "relationship" line quite a few times. There are plenty of reasons that point to it being a very bad idea for us to stay together long distance, so I think we're making the right decision, but it's not without some regrets. She's high up there on one of the coolest girls I've met in recent memory. Perhaps if I'm back here for a longer period of time, something can be worked out. Who knows.

This last section is a follow-up to the post I made way back when I was still in Russia about getting tickets to Nightwish. The show was last night and it was really everything it promised to be. Melissa was originally supposed to come with me but things fell through with her at the last minute, so my dad volunteered to join me for some good old-fashioned bonding time. Certainly changed my outlook and tone, but it had some benefits, too. I've always been closer to my dad, so it's good to spend time with him before I leave.

The show was held at a club called "Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom" which lies in the heart of Denver's recently gentrified ghetto, Five Points. Not really the greatest place to hang out, but certainly a lot nicer now than it was 10 or 15 years ago. They ended up opening the doors an hour later than it said on the tickets, so my dad and I waited outside for an hour and a half or so just taking in the scene. It was a beautiful evening for standing outside and waiting, too. Very nice. Once we got inside, the club was awesome. It was designed to hold about 500 people, with a small section upstairs where you could sit that looked down over the main standing area and the stage. There was a full service bar which was serving drinks for really cheap. $3.25 for a beer and $4.00 for a mixed drink. At a bar? For a concert? DAMN. The poured them big and strong, too. I was very happy.

The opening act was called "Lullacry" and they were as bad as their name would predict. Unimaginative, repetitive rock that was basically a pale imitation of Nightwish. Their lead singer was hotter than Tarja (the lead singer of Nightwish), but couldn't sing anywhere near as well. The atmosphere and the crowd were really chill, though, as after this band finished their set they just came down off the stage and mingled around, signing autographs and taking pictures with people. Definitely not something you'd expect to see at a bigger show, but very nice.

Nightwish was everything I could've hoped for and more. I managed to make my way up with about 5 or 10 feet of the stage for the entire act, and it was a crowd that was very low on moshing, so I could spend my time enjoying the music and the performance instead of trying to fend for my life against psychopaths trying to crash headlong into me. The set list, too, was about as perfect as I could've asked. I bought Century Child earlier that day and hadn't listened to it a whole lot, but as far as Once, Oceanborn and Wishmaster were concerned, they played all of my favorite songs and then some. It blew me away. To finish things off, I managed to pick up one of the guitar picks that the guitarist threw into the crowd during the show. This, along with noticing how they've been unattended to and unappreciated, has led me to decide that I need to come up with some sort of scrapbook for all of my concert tickets. It'd be nice to be able to look through all of them and have them all in one place. I bothered to go through the trouble of keeping them. Might as well do something nice with them. My dad, amazingly, even enjoyed the show.

After leaving the show, I met up with Jesse and Kate at the Esquire for the Princess Bride which was absolutely phenomenal to see. Great movie. Great audience. Made a great night even better. To top things off, after that I went back to Jesse's and we drank beers and shot the shit on his balcony for about three hours. Good memories. Good times. The chill of the wind as we sat was definitely a reminder that the summer was coming to a close, though. Nice to be able to enjoy these times while I still can.

I think that's most of the important stuff that's been tugging at my mind. Maybe one more before I leave, depending on how things work. Who knows.

DC out

Finis

2004-07-22T04:05:38Z

Just as a warning, this is a pretty graphic post compared to the others. Take it as you will.

Drip, drip, drip. Eek, thud; eek, thud.

Oh god, they're fucking, aren't they? How depressing is that? I mean, what do I care? I wouldn't fuck that girl with John Ross's dick. Still, what a way to end a night.

Drip, drip, drip. Yeah, they're definitely fucking.

Fragments:

"To spending more than we have and enjoying every penny of it!"

"I wouldn't sleep with him! I have standars!'

"We're platonic sleep buddies. Don't you know that you can sleep in a bed with someone and not actually have sex with them?"

"Well, platonic isn't really the right word anymore."

Drip, drip, drip.

For six goddamn weeks, that infernal noise reverberated around the insides of my tiny, dirty room. How hard is it to fix a fucking faucet? These aren't complciated pieces of equipment. just so long as it stops that noise! It's like voices in my head hissing to me, "Kill the girl....kill the girl..." Alright, not really, but that would be funny. This situation is only made funnier by the fact that they came in to fix it. Twice, actually. Even replaced the knob on the cold water. By that I meant the blue colored-knob, since there was no hot water at the time, so everything was "the cold water." But hey! This is a democracy with a freek market economy! That doesn't shit shit for making my faucet not leak. Assholes.

Drip, drip, drip.

Its' the middle of the fucking night, so why is it so bright outside?!? It's really unnverving to stumble out of a club at four in the morning and bet met with the light of a barely pre-dawn sky. Kind of makes it hard to sleep in, too. By nine AM the sun is blasting through the window onto my bed, shining in my face. I didn't get to sleep until six in the morning! Is it really so muchto ask to sleep until noon?

On the plus side, Red Square is gorgeous at this time of day. It's basically deserted. A few cops partrol new the gates to the Kremlin and around Lenin's masoleum-who would no doubt find something wrong with our passports and fine us to get them back if we so much as looked in their general direction, but that's pretty much it. In that soft pink light with no on around except for six drunk American students, it is hard to really take in all this place has seen. Hundreds of years of czarist proclamations, executions, the rise and fall of the Soviet Empire. To Russia, this spot is the center of teh wolrd. They even have a pretty little plaque inset into the cobblestones that says as much-and if you're not going to believe the Russians, who the fuck are you going to believe? let's be honest.

Drip, drip, drip. Eek, thud, groan, pant, thud, drip.

Sometimes you just have to be impressed. I admit that I've done a fair bit of drinking in my time, and, let's be fair, I've seen other people (like John Ross) drink so much they can't function. But Russians put us all to shame. It blows my mind when I think about the sheer volume of shitty vodka and beer I consumed in clubs, restaurants, on the street, sitting on the stoop in front of my building, floaiting on a boat on the Neva River...you get the picture. Then I think about the fact that the average Russian I met drank somewhere in the neighborhood of twice as much as I and, on average, was about a third less drunk. Full liters of vodka would disappear among a group of three people in about a half hour. And that was the pre-party. On the way to the club, I grab a beer from a street vendor (preferably 20 proof Baltica 8, which is roughly equivalent to drinking motor oil), get to the club and start pounding vodka shots again. Once I've danced my ass off, we all head out and go to one of the swank after-party hang outs where we drink even more until all hours of the night. needless to say, I seem to remember about as much of Russia as I don't remember.

Drip, drip, drip.

Russian girls, oh Russian girls I'm going to miss ven more than the cheap alcohol. The rampant AIDS epidemic puts a real damper on having any desire to initiate physical contact with them, but fucking-A are they great to look at. I don't pretend to have seen everywhere, but I'd have to guess that Moscow girls rate very high up there on the world's hottest list. It certainly doesn't hurt that many of them are rich and, therefore, dressed simply stunningly.

Russian fashion is an irreconcilable combination of of stuff that you wished had died int he mid-'90s and French high style-much like the rest of the country, go figure. One interesting observation on this note: the bra seems to have only selectively arrived in Russia. here's the general rule which held fairly true for six weeks with a few exceptions. If the shirt was opaque, invariably the girl wouldn't be wearing a bra. If the shirt was translucent or transparent, invariably she would have a bra on. The "see-through" look was very big there. It's greatest achievement was the very thin and tight white linen pants that left basically nothing to the imagination.

In the midst of all of the eye candy, I should point out that Russian dyevs don't seem to age very well. There are all these young and really hot girls and all of these babuskas and, as far as I could tell, nothing in between. We deteremined, therefore, that some devious Russian scientists has developed a "babushka" pill that turns tall, thin hotties into short, old grandmothers. After a girl has a kid, she is forced to take these pills so that her husband is no longer attracted to her and can rejoin the stripper/prostitute circles, thereby contributing to Russia's flourishing commerce of sex. We were unable to come up with any more adequate explanation fro the otherwise baffling phenomenon.

Silence

Perhaps the picture I've painted seems bleak or odd. Rest assured, it was and is and continues to be. The 19th century Russia poet Tyutchev once asserted, "You cannot understand Russia with your mind. You can't measure it with universal dimensions. Russia has something special. In Russia you must simply believe." I have found this to be absolutely correct. I'm not sure I'd say I enjoyed Russia in the way you might enjoy a day of skiing or going to a concert or drinking with a group of friends, no most certainly not that. What pulls at me and what my heart lingers on is the fascination-fascination with a massive country with an alien mindset and culture and history. It's not comfortable and often not fun to be there, but it's a mystical and bizarre world and so very tempting to return to. "The fascination becomes the horror."

Drip, drip, drip.

Short Update Before the Real Update

2004-07-22T02:33:35Z

There's really two major events that happened in Russia that I haven't written about. The last week of the trip was fairly uneventful. We partied and went to clubs and hung out and said our good byes. That was about it.

Interesting note 1: my bed broke. I was sleeping on it and it just collapsed entirely. I woke up to find my matress lying on the floor amidst the rubble of my bed frame. I had it rigged McGyver-style for a few days, but then it really really broke so I just slept on a matress on the floor. Definitely closer to the floor of my room than I ever wanted to be. When I told the dejournayas about this little situation, they tried to make me pay $60.00 to have it repaired. Now, I don't know much about furniture, but there's no way that bed cost $60.00. In addition, I'm not going to pay for something that broke simply because I was using it for its intended purpose. I'm pretty sure you're supposed to sleep on a bed. Had I been jumping on it and broken it, that'd be one thing, but sleeping? Come on. Stupid.

Interesting note 2: while in St. Petersburg, I picked up a water parasite. It took a while to decide exactly what to do with him, but his name is Bill and he's of the giardia strain. No one wants to hear the details, but it's a pretty standard parasite. It makes your whole GI system very unhappy. As a result, my last week in Moscow certainly left something to be desired. I spent much of it in my room just being sick, though I made honest attempts to fight the symptoms with meds and keep going out, but that doesn't always work quite as well as you'd hope. Needless to say, it wasn't an ideal away to go out. But, now I'm home and I've acquired the great Flagyl weapon. My Flagyl is like Uma Thurman, and this is Kill Bill Volume Three. I've already sold the rights to Tarantino. It's going to be hot. Alright, that's it.

DC out (for now)

Home at last...

2004-07-13T03:02:51Z

Hey all. Sorry for not updating last Friday. Just a quick note to say that I'm back on US soil (and currently sitting in NYC). I'll post a full update when I get home on Friday or Saturday with the last details of the trip. For now, damn it's good to be back. See you all soon.

DC out

I have good news, and I have bad news...

2004-07-05T19:10:14Z

The good news is we found Lenin's mother.

The bad news is that she's pregnant.

So was one of the jokes told to us by our tour guide in Novgorod. I thought it was a good opener. She clearly hated the Soviets, and was full of comments like this. So, I'm back in Moscow after my little sojourn to Novgorod and St. Petersburg. It was one hell of a trip, but I'm already getting ahead of myself, since I ought to explain what I did before we left instead of just jumping into the middle of the story.

As promised, I'll give you the full rundown of my viewing of "Master and Margarita" from last Monday night. I have a relatively storied connection with the play, which is why I spent way too much to see it and why I went out of my way to do so. I'm going to assume most of you reading this haven't read it, so if you have, this might be a bit of review for you.

The book Master and Margariat is, at best, a caustic review of life in the Soviet Union and was written mostly during the 1930s, at which point Stalin was at the peak of his purgings and economic plans, etc. The story takes place sometime generally before it was written, either the late 1920s under NEP or in the early 1930s as Stalin began to consolidate his power. In addition to the liberal and scalding social commentary of a regime that didn't take kindly to social commentary, there's plenty of nudity and sex-related imagery, of which the regime was also not particularly fond. And, to finish things off, a solid third of the story takes place in Jerusalem dealing with Pontius Pilate and Jesus. This book pretty much has the works when it comes to things that were going to be censored by the Soviets.

So, that being said, in the 1970s, this man named Yuri Lyubimov opens up a theater called the Taganka. The theater was known for pushing the envelope, but hadn't really done much during its early life to really get much heat from anyone for any reason. For some reason, Lyubimov decides to put on a staged version of "Master and Margarita." They don't cut out much, and-especially if you've read the text-most of the symbols and commentaries are still there, if slightly more veiled. They rehearsed it, put together sets, costumes, the works, all with the censors watching their every move and expecting at every moment to be told that they had to shut it down, rendering all their work for naught, but, amazingly, that never happened.

As for my personal connection, somehow (I forget the story exactly) while my mom was in Moscow, she managed to attend one of the fully produced shows for the censors right before it opened to the public. I later wrote a paper about it for a class using her account of the situation with my own personal research to define the theater, and this performance in particular, as an example of allowed dissent in the Soviet Union. So, yeah, it was a big deal for me to actually be able to see the performance in its original location.

The performance itself was good, but certainly not the best I've ever seen. Much of it was lost on me simply due to the fact that I can't speak Russian and, therefore, didn't get many things that I couldn't recognize by sight alone. The imagination of the show took on a very...ephemeral nature. In some ways, it would work better as a movie with modern special effects. There's so much that you simply can't portray accurately on stage, so they resorted to rather simple tricks to get the point across or left things out entirely except perhaps for dialogue that I couldn't understand. The other kind of funny thing was that my mom warned me that the performance was pretty racy. In 1970s USSR, I'm sure it was. To my post-millenial sense of what is proper, it was pretty tame. I think I probably could've predicted that, though.

This section somehow got really long, really fast. I'll close by saying that I'm glad I saw it, and if you want to hear more specifics, ask me in person, since I'm sure I left out a lot.

I did nothing of interest between Monday night and Wednesday night when we left for Novgorod other than get lost with a bunch of people looking for a jazz club that Scott swore existed. As far as we can tell, it doesn't. Oh well.

We left by train for Novgorod at 9:30 PM from Leningradsky station. I don't like trains. I never have. I doubt I ever will. I've never really been in a sleeper car, and after this experience, I doubt I'll try very hard to do so again. It worked and it was cheaper than flying, but ugh. It didn't help that I was on the bottom bunk and Gene was throwing stuff on me from the top bunk all night or that the train stopped in Novgorod at 4:15 AM, which meant I got essentially no sleep that night. Oh well. So it goes.

Novgorod the city, on the other hand, was an amazingly nice reprieve from Moscow. It is a very old city, about 400 years older than Moscow. It was briefly the northern military and economic capital of the Kievan Rus, but by the 13th century, Moscow overtook it as the center of the growing Russian state. As with everywhere in Russia, the mark of Orthodox Christianity is very clear on this city. There are far more cathedrals than the city could possibly have used, but they all have unique stories behind them and tend to be gorgeous both from the outside and the inside, so it's not too bad to have to tour them time and again. We also visited a reproduction of a wooden, traditional village, their central fortress and took a boat trip on the Volkhov River which runs through the city.

It is essentially a tourist town, so it moves at a much slower and more manageable pace than Moscow, and our guide (who made the joke above) was probably one of the best we've had since we've been in Russia. She was knowledgeable, spoke very fluent English and spiced up the tours with plenty of anecdotes and jokes that helped us to relate to the situation a little bit more closely than just a long lecture that you might receive in a history class.

The trip finished with a very pleasant dinner in one of the former towers of the main fortress. We ate very traditional Russian cuisine. I ate pike cooked in a crock pot with vegetables and cold borshch. We also drank honey mead, which is called medavookha. Really tasty stuff, but I'm not sure I'd hazard ordering it anywhere where it's not a traditional and locally made drink. The next morning we awoke to head to the train to Petersburg at 7 in the morning.

Petersburg, Petersburg, Petersburg. Where to start? It was a big weekend, so I guess I'll complain first and compliment second.

There were really only two bad things about St. Petersburg. The first was our living conditions. Three of us were crammed into a dorm room that really should've housed no more than one person. The bathroom was DISGUSTING and there was no hot water in the shower. The lack of hot water didn't bug me so much, since I would never have stepped foot in that shower stall without a hazmat suit on anyway. Gross. The second bad thing about Petersburg was the brevity of our stay. Three days isn't anywhere near enough time to visit a city with so much history and so many things to see. I guess that's just a good reason for me to find an excuse to make my way back here. Alright, enough with the complaining. Now on to the good.

St. Petersburg and Moscow are really two completely different sides to the same country. It'd be hard for two major cities to be any more different. Moscow is a massive, thriving, sprawling, very Russian metropolis with everyone doing everything with no real regard for one another. St. Petersburg is almost a living museum. It has many more foreigners (so yours truly doesn't stick out quite so much), its cleaner, people are more relaxed, the pace of the city is slower. My dad put it best when he called it "Moscow's more elegant little sister." I wish I had more time to explore it, but here is what I did get to do.

The first day we were there we took a walking tour of the city. We hit all the major sites and I did a lot of picture taking. I can't buy disposable cameras here for some reasons, so I'm taking pictures with Scott's camera and then get doubles to send to him after we get back since he never thinks to take pictures himself. We saw the main palaces on the mainland and the three big squares. We walked upon the Neva and many of the canals and generally enjoyed the good weather for walking. It's much smaller than Moscow, so it's much more manageable to see all of the big stuff in a single day, at least from the outside. Like in Novgorod, we had a very good tour guide who would be with us for all three days in the city. That night we bought some vodka and sausage and bread and cheese and took a boat tour of the city. We caught the tail end of the White Nights, so it never really got dark. Kind of eerie, but very beautiful and pleasant to be on the water at night.

Day two separates into three easy categories. The first part of the day was spent at the Hermitage which was everything I'd hoped for and more. They say you could spend 10 years there and not see everything, so I was definitely left wanting more. It would be simply unfair to attempt to recreate the overwhelming majesty and beauty of the experience here. The palace itself is simply unbelievable and their art collection really defies description. I'll be happy to talk to anyone about it at length in person though, if anyone is interested.

Part two of day two was spent touring Peter and Paul Fortress, which was the first construction initiated by Peter the Great when he founded the city. Though it was never used to defend the city, it certainly was built with that purpose in mind. The walls are 8 to 15 meters high and 15 meters thick. Pretty impressive, to say the least. We saw the main cathedral and the prison that housed political prisoners during the end of the czarist era, including the cells which housed Gorky and Lenin's brother. In the main cathedral were the tombs of all of the Romanov emperors, including the newly dedicated area to Nicholas II and his family after their remains were uncovered and buried in the last few years.

After our trip to Peter and Paul Fortress, we headed back to get cleaned up and change for part three of the day, which was a trip to the Marinskii Theater for a production of the ballet "Manon." Ballet has never really been my genre of choice, so there are certainly plenty of other things I might've wanted to see (namely an opera), but the troop is one of the best in the world and their talent was undeniable. The tickets were a bit more than I'd anticipated-600 r instead of 400 r-but that's probably worth it in the big picture to see a beautiful theater and the performance. The Russians we were with actually told us that this troupe is considered to be superior to that of the Bolshoi. I don't know how true that is, but it was certainly very good.

Our final day in St. Petersburg was not actually spent in Petersburg proper but at Peterhof where Peter the Great built his primary summer residence. We took a hydrofoil to get there and the trip lasted a pleasant 30 minutes. Peterhof was nothing short of unbelievable. Peter's title as a visionary emperor was not without good reason. Though the gardens surrounding the palace complex (which is enormous) are modeled closely after Versailles, there are a lot of fun little details throughout the complex. The pride, of course, are the fountains. There are hundreds of them scattered around and they all work solely by use of natural pressure. There's no electricity, no recycling of water. It's an entirely natural process which you kind of have to see to believe. There are also several "joke" fountains that Peter designed to trick his courtiers just to get them wet when they'd settled down to relax. One turned on when you tried to take fake fruit off a plate, another would randomly go off on a walkway, one turned on when people walked under an arch, another turned on when you sat on a bench, etc., etc. Peter was a funny, funny guy. Big dreams for a big man and all that stuff. We spent the day relaxing and walking around the gardens and taking in the exquisite view of the Gulf of Finland. I'd been unsure about this particular day and kind of disappointed that we wouldn't get a chance to visit the Dostoevsky or Pushkin museums, but it certainly did not disappoint.

We left Petersburg by train late Sunday night, but in the few hours before we left, we met up with some kids from Yale who were staying in Petersburg for another boat trip and a little 4th of July celebration. This was a very funny event, but not really what I would've liked out of it. We arrived 15 minutes late to find that the Yale kinds were all already totally fucking bombed. Turns out their school paid for them to go to a 16000 rouble dinner to celebrate and they'd all drunk liberally. Most of them were too drunk to stand up, let alone make any really coherent conversation. We endeavored to catch up, but, after being here as long as we have been, our tolerances are pretty good and one bottle of vodka and a bottle of wine shared between a decently sized group of people didn't really take us too far. More than being pleasant it ended up being kind of obnoxious. They spent most of their time falling over one another, engaging in inappropriately public displays of affection, puking or generally making asses of themselves. Whatever. I guess Yale kids don't know how to hold their alcohol.

Another train trip and we arrived back in Moscow early this morning around 6:30 at which point I stumbled back to my room and passed out.

Alright, that was a really really long post, and, I must believe, hardly my most lyrical. I'm pretty tired still and getting ready to come back home, so my brain's not entirely with me right now. I hope all is well with everyone and I'll look forward to seeing/talking to you all soon. One more week! Until then.

DC out

Malenkii Update

2004-06-29T16:06:16Z

A a quick update, I'm going to St. Petersburg tomorrow night, and then I'll post more completely on Monday night when I get back.

The only major thing of note is that I did make it to "Master and Margarita" at the Taganka Theater last night. I have neither time nor ambition right now to fully explain why it was important that I go see it. You'll have to wait until Monday for that one. Suffice to say, it was very interesting to see their interpretation of something I've read so many timesand have created in such depth in my imagination. I'm still chewing it around in my mind, but I'm very glad I caught it.

Alright, that's all. Until Monday.

DC out

Tick, tick, tick, tick...

2004-06-25T22:56:31Z

Before anyting else: hot water is back on. Best thing ever. Now back to your regularly scheduled update.

Somehow I've managed to end up on the back side of my stay in Russia. I'm not entirely sure how that happened, since it really feels like I just got here. Time doesn't like to slow down for anyone, apparently. Since a couple people have asked, I'll be back in the US on July 12th. I fly into NYC, which means I'll probably get to Philly on the 13th, assuming I can find someone to stay with in NYC. I fly back to Denver on Friday the 16th. If I'm going to be where you are and you want to hang out, let me know either by commenting here or by e-mail.

Classes are basically what you'd expect from them. Ilya's continues to be interesting. We discussed communal housing and modern life in Moscow this week, which concludes the historical and ideological section of his course. From here on out, it is all going to be literature related to Moscow. We started with a classic romantic tragedy called "Poor Liza" and will finish up in a couple weeks with Master and Margarita and Moscow to the End of the Line. Some good stuff in there, and, when possible, we'll be visiting locations mentioned in the city, which is pretty awesome. Connected to that, we'll hopefully be getting tickets to see the staged version of Master and Margarita at the Taganka Theater where it first managed to escape the censors in the late 1970s. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Folklore is improving a little bit. We've moved on to fairy tales, which is more what I'd expected from the class. The hard part is that the class isn't either in Russian or English. It's a bizarre mix of the two, which makes life tough for all three of us, since Gene and I are always translating for Scott, and none of us speak Russian well enough to understand the cartoony voices they use in the movie versions. Ah well, not too much left of it and it is generally easy enough.

Unlike last week, this past week I spent quite a bit more time visiting a variety of cultural landmarks, namely the two most famous art galleries in Moscow. Last Saturday I went out to the Pushkin Art Museum, which is the modern, international gallery. They had a pretty impressive Egyptian and Greek collection, but the gems of the collection are their late 19th and early 20th century pieces. I'm kind of having a total brain lapse on names right now, but the "big ones" of that period are all well represented-Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne, etc. The Picasso section, in particular, had pieces from pretty much all of his major periods, so you could see the evolution of his technique, ending with a gorgeous cubist portrait of someone whose name I'm forgetting. The gallery also had a traveling exhibition of Dali sketches, which were interesting and included some interesting studies of the human body. I tend to like his finished pieces a bit better, though.

Today, I dragged myself out of bed to head to the Tretyakov Gallery for a tour. The Tretyakov is unique because it is a collection of only Russian art dating back to around the founding of Moscow in the 12th and 13th century. They have somewhere in the neighborhood of 120,000 pieces in the collection, so about 4 hours on one day is hardly enough to see all there is to see, but I got a pretty good taste of things. Some of the highlights: Rublyov's "Trinity"-perhaps the most famous icon ever painted by almost without question the most famous icon painter; the picture of Ivan the Terrible holding his son after having just killed him-I'll bring home a poster, but it's one of the most unbelievably powerful pieces I've ever seen. Ivan's face is a masterpiece of horror, shock and insanity; the picture of Peter the Great interrogating his son-very similar to the previous picture both in terms of theme and construction. If I can find them, I want to get both posters and mount them next to one another to show the similarities.

There were some others, but you know about me and names. I might head back there sometime when I'm less tired and have more time and come back with a more detailed report, but who knows. So much to do, so little time to do it.

Like last week, there was a great deal of partying that went on this week. I've done more clubbing and hanging out at bars in Moscow than I have in my entire life previous, so it's starting to drag on me a little bit. As Sarah pointed out, it is easy to see how people get burned out on this lifestyle. It's certainly a good time, but it's not easy on the body.

Last Saturday night I went to a club called "Fabrique" with a group of law school students for their last night here. Pretty standard house/techno music with a good sized dance floor and reasonable prices. There were about 20 of them in the group. Of that 20, 10 got too drunk before we left to come out and another 8 bailed within an hour of us being there, so Marie and I were left there dancing the night away until about 4 or 4:30. I don't know why people left so early, I was having a great time. Marie and few of the others in that group all go to DU Law and will be back in Colorado later this summer, so we might hang out once we're all back stateside.

Monday night was another trip to Boarhouse in celebration of Matt's last night here before he goes to Novgorod. Those drink specials are never going to get old. Drinks are predictably kind of weak, but when you get 4 of them, who cares? My selections this week: 4 gin and tonics, 3 white russians and 2 vodka shots. Yum.

Assorted nights between Saturday and Thursday that aren't specifically enumerated were spent in this very internet cafe which doubles as an actual cafe and has a big screen projection TV for watching the continuing progress of the EuroCup. The round robin section is over and we're on to the tournament elimination. England is out, so I'm rooting for Portugal.

Oh, on a side note, a few more Americans have showed up, including a girl named Julie who is working for NASA and lives in Cali and a mixed group spending several weeks here through SRAS, including a girl named Alice who got here early and has been hanging out with us. That being said, last night (Thursday), Julie, Alice, Gene, Scott and I all went out to check out a place called "Propaganda" which is supposed to be the hottest Thursday night club in town. Gene and Scott had some navigation issues on the way, so we wandered around for an hour and a half before finding it by around 1:30 AM, which was kind of annoying. No great loss, though, as face control was easy to get through.

This place is now my new favorite club in the city. The DJ rocked, it was well designed and the drinks were reasonably priced. The real kicker, though, was the devs (expat slang for girls-from "devooshka" which means girl/young woman/etc.). These were, by far, the hottest girls I have seen since I got here. AND they were all willing to dance with you, which is obviously cool. The language barrier kind of puts a damper on talking to them, but it certainly doesn't stop everyone from having a great time dancing and/or enjoying the eye candy. We'll definitely be back there again before we leave.

After we left the club around 4:30, we headed over to Red Square, which was empty and gorgeous in the dawn light and hung out there and in Alexandrovsky Sad for the next hour until the metro opened. By the time all was said and done, we got back to the dorm at around 7:00 AM. Needless to say, getting up to go to the Tretyakov by 10:30 wasn't the easiest thing I've ever done. Neither Gene nor Scott made it, so it was just Ilya, the tour guide and me. However, both the staying up late and the getting up early were well worth it.

Earlier tonight we went to a restaurant called "Soup." Very tasty meal with (you guessed it) soup and a steak and 1/4th of a bottle of wine for about 20 bucks. The soup I got was something called solyanka, which is apparently a traditional Russian soup. Gene's borshch and Scott's gazpacho were also very good. Alice and I might go back there a few times for lunch just to try all the soups they have. They also had a nice lounge DJ playing the whole time, which created a very pleasant ambiance. Some other people wanted to head out to Frabrique, but I think I'm just as pleased with my decision to come back, since I think tomorrow night we're going to go to a jazz club and be out late again. It's a rough life, but someone has to do it. Might as well be me.

On a final note, since the last update, I read the entire Farseer Trilogy again. Yes, it's that good-except for the part in which she uses the word "irregardless" and I want to go on a violent, wolf-like rampage. That is all.

And thus ends another entry of my comings and goings. At the end of this week, our group is heading to Novgorod and St. Petersburg for a few days. I'll probably hold off on updating until we get back on Monday, so I can include our exploits in the "Window to the West" in the update. Hope all is well with everyone. Talk to you soon.

DC out

Runing Windows...

2004-06-18T17:18:47Z

As I booted the computer today, the title of this post is the message that popped up. I can only hope the makers of Russian computers have discovered the secrets of demonic summoning and have embedded the runes to do so into their operating systems. Awesome.

Boring things first. Class is going fine, nothing much to say there. Yay, now on to more important stuff.

To begin with, I never in my entire life imagined that I would ever watch as much soccer as I have since I got to Russia. I've never been a huge soccer fan and I can't say that I've ever understood why it appeals to so many people around the world. As it turns out, the EuroCup is on right now, so all the big national teams around Europe are coming out to see who is number one.

Russia, like the rest of the world not including the US, is obsessed with soccer, so it's been on EVERYWHERE. There have been two games a night for the past week with no sign of stopping anytime soon. Bars are packed with people. Fans of opposing teams have fights in the streets and scream at one another. It's been crazy, but a lot of fun. I've gone to many bars since they started to watch games, though I still can't really bring myself to care about the sport. The atmosphere created by the games and fans is really the exciting part. Needless to say, of course, France sucks and I hope they lose. Russia, unfortunately, also sucks and already lost.

Nightlife has been quite hot since my last update. Let's be honest. Last Friday night after I posted, I really wasn't planning on doing anything. As I was looking through "Go!" (a publication put out by the Moscow Times about bars, clubs and restaurants), I noticed that one of the bigger and less restrictive clubs was having a fairly well known DJ play that night, so I started talking to people to see what interest was like. One of my buddies called, and was informed that face control would be very strict. That basically means you are one of three groups: 1) unbelievably attractive girl, 2) unbelievably attractive guy or 3) unbelievably rich "New Russian," probably with mob connections. So that pretty much ended that hope.

Instead, after talking with some American law students, we found out that one of them knew someone who knew someone else who had a mob connection and had a table reserved at a club called "Karma Bar" and was willing to take about 20 of us down there with him. Karma's hardly the most exclusive club in Moscow, but it's certainly no slouch, either. We were more than happy to take that as an alternative offer. We pregamed pretty hard and then had several drinks and a hookah when we went, so I was kickin' by the time everyone started dancing. Suffice to say, other than the dance floor was comfortably crowded and the music was good, I don't have any detailed memories of the night. I do know the mob guy- who was best described by my FSU friend Ryan as "95 pounds of pure sketch"-paid for our tab and got us in because he was trying to sleep with one of the law school students. I don't know if he was successful or not. Regardless, it was a very fun day.

The next night (Saturday) we went out to a pub to watch the France-England game. It was good, and we did some Irish Car Bombs, but drinks were unfortunately very expensive and England somehow managed to blow the game in extra time after the 90 minute mark. It was very frustrating. So it goes.

Sunday was boring.

Monday we went to a place called "Boarshouse." Stupid name, stupid decor, great drink specials on Monday night. Before 8 beer and food are all half price. It's pretty solid American style food, too, which is good, since I'd kind of been craving a burger and fries. Even better than that, they have a beat-the-clock drink special. From 7 to 8, you get shots and mixed drinks at 4 for 1. 8 to 9, 3 for 1. And 9 to 10, 2 for 1. So by ordering three drinks, you actually end up with 9. Sweet. More soccer, more drunkeness. Good times. We even caught the last metro train back.

Tuesday and Wednesday we spent drinking on the stoop. Our dorm opens into this good sized courtyard with some steps down from the door. It's a nice place to gather and hang out and drink, etc. People will just buy some vodka and beers and mixers and spend hours and hours doing nothing but drinking and chilling. We met some hilarious Russian soldiers and got some good hanging out and talking in as the days until the FSU kids left ticked down.

Last night was the last night they were here, so naturally people came up with ridiculous plans that didn't pan out. We initially were going to go to a pub to watch more soccer-the France/Croatia and England/Switzerland games were on. Instead, we ended up with less than half a group and didn't find the bar because people are lazy. So we found a little Georgian restaurant, ate and had some beers. It was pleasant, but certainly not the exciting night for which we'd hoped. Improving from there, on our way back, we got hopelessly lost after getting off at the wrong metro stop and were delayed about an hour and change, which kind of sucked. Oh well. The best laid plans of mice and men, I guess. That's about it. I suspect things will quiet down now that there are only three of us around.

This has really been the only cultural event of the past week, besides drinking vodka. It was pretty nice, really, we went there earlier today. Moscow weather, it should be noted, sucks ass. It changes by the minute and is either hot and sunny or cold and pouring, so it's kind of hard to dress appropriately. Kolomenskoe is a territory in the southeast of Moscow, still reachable by the metro, on a hill with a nice view of the city. It's a wonderfully wooded area with trees as old as 600 years.

Naturally, it was the location of one of the czar's palaces. Peter the Great's father built a palace here, and earlier it was the sight of a cathedral built to celebrate the birth of Ivan the Terrible (yay irony!). The palace was gorgeous, based on the paintings we saw and the model, but it was made entirely of wood and was neglected after Peter moved the capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg, so it is no longer standing. The remaining cathedrals, however, are still beautiful and the scenery is hard to beat.

In addition to cathedrals and a musuem, we also saw the house Peter the Great lived in while waging war against the Swedes. It had been transferred during the 1970s from Arkhangelska (sp?) in the north down to Kolomenskoe. Small house for a big man. In addition, Kolomenskoe used to be famous for the fruits and vegetables grown there, so there were naturally lots of bees and we visited the beekeeper's house. There, we were treated to a honey and tea tasting event. Both were good, but sometime sit down and try to eat six teaspoons of honey. It's hard to do. Tasty, but really rich. Ilya (our teacher) finished all of his. I didn't get even close. Of course, he felt sick afterwards. After tea and honey, we headed back to the metro and home.

There's not a whole lot else to report. FSU kids left today, which is kind of a drag. It was nice to have a group of 25 or so instead of just 3 of us. They were a cool group, too. We'll get it figured out.

As usual, hope everyone is doing well. Talk to you all soon.

DC out

Nightwish!

2004-06-18T16:40:37Z

This is a post before the actual post and it's only purpose is to gloat that I have tickets to a Nightwish concert on the 28th of August at a place called Cervantes in Denver. I *believe,* though I am not certain, that this is their first major US tour and I'm just totally fucking stoked to be going.

If you know who they are, they're having shows in most of the major cities across the US. You can find them listed on their official website, so check around. If you don't know who they are, download some of their stuff or go pick up one of their CDs (their newest "Once" just came out).

I have an extra ticket, too. $20.00 to whoever wants it and will be around and you can get them online at www.ticketwest.com if there end up being multiple requests.

Yeah. Awesome. Made my fucking day.

On a side note. My mom was very amused that I could buy tickets for a rock concert at a small venue in Denver from Moscow compared to her experiences while she was here in the late 1970s. Heh, crazy.

DC out

Of Country Codes and Manhole Covers

2004-06-11T17:11:59Z

Welcome to week two of "Dan's Life in Moscow" updates. Now that I'm settled in and am actually *doing* things, they should become a bit more interesting. I'll apologize beforehand for length. I know I'm wordy, so this is likely to be long, and I now know HTML for LJ cuts (thanks to Sned and Sarah), so it's been improved. Consider yourself warned.

I guess I ought to begin with classes. There's not a whole lot to say about them. Let's be honest. I'm not in Moscow to take classes. They are a required part of this little endeavor, so I am taking them, but that's about it.

Ilya's class is essentially a history of Moscow course, and despite my immediately preceeding comments, I've found it to be fascinating so far. He has done an amazing job of putting together a course pack that includes literature (we've read excerpts from War and Peace and Pushkin's Bronze Horseman), first hand historical documents and general historical information. The classes themselves are a good blend of discussion, lecture and multimedia. As time goes on, we're going to be doing fieldwork assignments at various landmarks, museums, monuments, restaurants and clubs around Moscow, which basically means we go there and then write a page about what we thought of it. These are all things I'd be doing anyway, so it's no sweat off my back.

As for the folklore class, I'm going to follow the old adage that if you can't say anything nice, you shouldn't say anything at all. I'll take it and I'll do the work, but, uh, let's hope that it's just a slow start.

Now on to the things I've seen and done since I've been here.

As noted in my last post, I visited the Kremlin last Friday, which was just as cool as everyone said it would be. Amazing architecture, rich history, beautiful artifacts. Enough said.

Earlier last week I visited the historical home of the Romanov family before they became the czars of Russia. It had been fully restored to its original purposes and style, so that was a very interesting peek into the past.

Last Sunday I went to the country-side around Moscow to visit a dacha. It was a very quaint little cabin in the Russian forest owned by someone who is apparently a big wig director in Moscow. He gave us all a copy of his book. It's in Russian, so I can't do much with it, but hopefully the parents can help out in that department when I get home. We were well fed and all the rumors you've heard about how much Russians drink vodka and toasts are absolutely true. Within 15 minutes of starting the meal, I think we'd gone through at least 6 rounds of toasts. After dinner we visited their neighbors and played some ping-pong, tossed a basketball around and lounged in hammocks. It would've been perfect were it not for the mosquitos, which ate me alive. I guess that happens.

This Wednesday we made a little visit to the KGB museum, which provided endless amusement for those of us who have an interest in espionage and Soviet political maneuvering. It was relatively small-only one floor of a medium sized building with about 4 rooms-but packed with artifacts and information and a great tour guide. It also had one of the most amazing pictures I've ever seen. It was an enormous blow up on one of the wall of Soviet soldiers marching across Red Square with St. Basil's Cathedral in the background carrying all of the Nazi flags and
equipment to throw in a big pile after re-taking Moscow. It just floored me. Un-fucking-believable. Too bad they didn't allow pictures in that room or sell posters of it.

Today, we went to "Star City" whose Russian name I'm going to forget. It's the training facility for cosmonauts. We saw some models of space shuttles and some training rooms like the huge tank they use to get people used to working in zero-G. It wasn't an amazing tour and I'd hardly mention it were it not for the fact that taking it almost cost me my life.

We're walking around the base, not really seeing anything special, just doing our thing and, as with most streets, there are manholes with manhole covers. Now, in the US, it takes a very special tool or an act of god to move a manhole cover that is placed on a manhole, so it's safe to walk on them. I take this experience and decide that it's ok to not take any real note of the manhole and just walk right over it. In Russia, apparently, this is a mistake. The cover didn't fit the hole, so when I stepped on the side of the cover, it tipped down into the hole, my foot following. I fell into the hole up to my crotch, when the combination of my ass hitting the edge of the hole and the cover swinging back into place, trapping my leg and stopping my descent.

As the other people on the tour helped to pull me out, I noted that had I not stopped, I would've fallen about 20 feet into a watery sewage grave, most likely smashing myself on the edge of the ledge and the ladder on the way down. I'm not really hurt, but it gave me a pretty good scare. Since it was on government property, the Russians were really worried to make sure I was ok. Later in the tour, when we entered a different building, a high ranking official who was one of the people basically in charge of the facility talked to me to make sure I wasn't too hurt. So, I guess no harm no foul. I know not to step on manhole covers anymore and got a decent story out of it.

That's about it for activities. In the next couple days I'll be visiting the World War II memorial, so we'll see how that goes and I'll write about it in the next update.

On to food. This week I've spent ENTIRELY too much on food. I'm going to have to cut WAY back in the next couple weeks, but it was very much worth it. Scott (my roommate who is alternately cool and infuriaiting) and Jamie (an FSU girl) and I have been going out together a lot, and these are our recent exploits.

I had Georgian food on Monday, which was amazing and quite different than anything I've tried before. Great food and beautiful land. Too bad it's war torn and so dangerous. After that, we went to a "sports bar" and sat around drinking for about 5 hours waiting for a Rockies-Giants game to come on. We got drunk and tired after watching about an hour of it. We were going to try to make it to 4 AM to watch Game 7 of the Stanley Cup, but we left the bar around 1 and decided it just wasn't worth it.

On Wednesday after the KGB exhibit, we wandered all over the place before finding ourselves at "The American Bar and Grill." It was a scary place and I can only pray that they don't actually think Americans are all people from Texas. It was cheesy decor, high priced and bad food. Don't go there. For any reason. I'm not really sure why *I* was there, but whatever.

And last night, Thursday night, we started off by just heading to a coffee shop where we hung out and ate and drank and generally made merry for a while before leaving to go to a Serbian restaurant called 011 nearby. The guide we had said it was "inexpensive and tasty." So we roll up to the restaurant wearing jeans and t-shirts, hats on, headphones hanging around our necks and walk in. The place is gorgeously decorated and has place-settings which scream "not-inexpensive." I cannot believe they didn't sneer at us and tell us to get lost, but, amazingly enough, they seated us and then provided us with menus in both English and Russian and a waiter who spoke some English.

I won't go through the details of the entire meal, but suffice to say it was incredible. Definitely of the best meals I have had in my entire life. Service was great, food was perfect. Good wine, good company. I can't really think of anything that would've made the night better. We found out it is called 011 because that is the Serbian country code when you're calling someone there. Pretty nifty. The only downside was the fact that between three of us, we spent 6000 roubles, which is around 200 dollars. But it was worth it, and if you're ever in Moscow....GO TO THIS PLACE!!!! You won't regret it.

I think that's all for now. Hope everyone is well. Talk to you soon.

DC out

Farseer-ness

2004-06-04T16:32:13Z

One more thing that I forgot to put in the last update.

It's been a long time since I found myself ravenously devouring a book (or series of books, in this case). Probably the last time I did was summer after my freshman year when I was reading Steven King's "Dark Tower" series. Before I left, Chris/Tierus recommended Robin Hobb's (sp?) books, so I picked up the first of the three trilogies, "The Farseer Trilogy." I couldn't put it down. I read all 2000 pages of it between when I left on Thursday and last night around 11 PM. Unbelievably well-written and very imaginative. About the best capitalization on the implicit limitations of first person narration that I can ever remember reading. If you've time and the space on your reading list, I highly recommend you pick it up. I'll wait to read the other two trilogies until I get home.

I'm still picking at the ending in my mind. I haven't quite decided what I think of it. Might need to read the whole thing again before I can make judgement. Hopefully some of you will have read it by the time I get back so I can bounce my thoughts off of someone, but for now it's left a very satisfying taste in my mouth.

Ok, now I'm done.

DC out (again)

Zdrastvyui iz Moskvi

2004-06-04T16:20:33Z

Alright, I've checked my e-mail, I've checked all the GS boards (and have been thoroughly disappointed by the lack of information from SimuCon, fuckers), so now I have a half hour to tell you all of the stuff that's been going on since I got here.

Moscow and Russia are hilarious. There's really no possible way to describe or recount all of the thoroughly ridiculous things with which I come in contact. It would take me all fucking year, but I'll give you a sampling.

On the one hand, you walk through GUM (a huge mall near Red Square) and see the poshest of chic stores with unbelievably expensive stuff. There are billboards and advertisements EVERYWHERE for everything you can imagine. I've consulted with the other Americans here, and we've unanimously decided that there are actually *more* ads here than there are in the States, if you can believe that. Much of the city is clean, glitzy and high tech, like this internet cafe, which could easy prosper anywhere in the US. Clubs (and associated prices in them) are very comparable to any of the decent places I've been in Philly. The subway system also makes every other one I've seen look like so many tubes full of shit. It's fucking gorgeous, clean, fast and reliable. Stores carry most of the "modern amenities" that I can think of wanting and there's lots of variety.

On the other hand, I don't have hot water in my room right now because every neighborhood in the city goes on a 4 week period without hot water. My faucet drips something wicked. We were told we'd have a refridgerator in our room 5 days ago, 4 days ago, 3 days ago, 2 days ago and today, but we have no refridgerator. We have these ladies on our floors called dejournayas (basically lady of the day, from the French) who watch our every coming and going and enforce an 11:00 PM curfew, which is almost always broken so they yell at us but let us in anyway. There's a lot of partially functioning things and lots of things which clearly no one has bothered to take the time or effort to clean in a very long time. The health system sucks, cops are corrupt and crime is a MUCH bigger problem. One of my friends already got his cell-phone stolen from him while he was at a club.

Predictably, Russia is all about the facade and about desperately trying to figure out whether it wants to be more like the West or unto itself. Neither of these seems likely to be resolved in the near future, but it's an interesting context in which to live.

Kvas is not good. I'll give it another chance later, but so far, not happening. Pirogi and pirazhki are good. I will eat a lot of them before I leave. Borscht must be eaten with sour cream. Vodka is plentiful and cheap, but Russian beer should probably be skipped. I will eat a great deal of fried chicken and rice (kuritsa i ris) before I leave. These people can and do make ANYTHING greasy. Including salads.

The people situation has developed somewhat since last post. Scott, the guy not from Penn, is already starting to get on my nerves. He's some bizarre combination of a stoner hippy and a neurotic East Coast Jew. He's cool some of the time, but other times he's all but intolerable. We're reading "Master and Margarita" for a class and today he told me he "might skip the Pontius Pilate sections because anything about Jesus makes me sick." This coming from the same person that would rip you to shreds if you use "gay" to mean anything but one of the two dictionary definitions. He also doesn't speak a word of Russian. That's right. He signed up on an exchange program to Russia and doesn't know ANY Russian. He's still learning the alphabet. Bizarre.

The other guy is Gene Markin. Some of you laugh; some of you need an explanation. Suffice to say, he's actually a really cool kid who wasn't too enamoured with being an ASG. He speaks Russian pretty fluently, which can make things much easier for me and Scott since my Russian is functional but somewhat limited and his is nonexistant. For menus, in particular, he is helpful. I do pretty well with types of food, but I can't do much more than say "That's a kind of chicken, that's pork, that's pirogi, etc." I don't know spices or garnish really. Anyway, good stuff there.

There is a big group of FSU kids here, too, so I'm not just stuck with two other people. There are about 20 of them, and most of them are cool. Most of the girls in the group are also definitely lookers. We'll see if anything can get started there, but they're cool, so flirting it up will definitely be the order of the day.

I think that's about all I've either time or energy to write about right now. You can expect about one of these a week, since I'm going to do something way out there and limit the amount of time I spend on the computer. The next one will be more about the stuff I've seen and classes, along with any other good stories I can come up.

Hope everyone is well at home. As always, e-mails and comments are appreciated. If you can think of anything you want from here, let me know and I'll see what I can do to pick it up. Until then.

DC out

Privyet!

2004-05-31T12:08:12Z

Hello everyone-

I really have no idea who is or is not reading this anymore. I don't have enough time right now to really sit down and think out a well-planned journal entry, unfortunately. Still jet-lagged and we've been on a bus-tour of Moscow all of today, so my brain isn't exactly functioning perfectly. Hopefully in the coming days things will settle down a bit and I can find some time to come to this internet cafe (which is all of 5 minutes from my dorm) and actually write something complete. I'm going to have to talk to the people here about disabling the alt-tab function. Really really annoying to not be able to move freely between windows.

For now, Moscow is fucking amazing. There are only three of us on the program, and the other two guys seem to be pretty cool so far. One is from Penn and the other from Clarke which is in Worcester, MA. The latter is my roommate. We've already gotten ourselves thoroughly lost in and around the university, and seem to be getting along well so far.

Classes haven't started yet, so no news on that front. When I update again, I'll make some comment on those.

For now, my remaining time is rapidly dwindling, so I'll call this entry quits. Hope everyone is well. Drop me a comment here or e-mail to corrend@sas.upenn.edu and I'll respond when I get the chance.

DC out

"You're gonna carry that weight."

2004-05-05T05:49:32Z

What the fuck does that mean? "You're gonna carry that weight."

I've seen it at least 20 times by now and the whole thing from start to finish probably 7 or 8 times, but it never ceases to mesmerize me. There's a certain contained perfection to it that speaks volumes to me. Sure, it has its flaws and lackluster moments, but the episodes that are on are about as good as it gets. If you haven't seen it yet, find some way to do so.

Yeah, that's right, we're talking about Cowboy Bebop. Adult Swim in all its glory provided me with yet another viewing of the series and the series finale played tonight and despite the fact that I've seen the series and the final episodes so many times, that last line that comes up drives me fucking nuts. If you haven't watched the series and have any desire to not have it spoiled, you might consider not reading anymore. We'll consider that fair warning.

So Spike dies in taking Vicious down. Makes the gun with his hand and says, "Bang!" He then collapses to the floor and "Blue" starts up. Anyone with a shred of humanity in them at this points either starts crying or drinking heavily. You watch all the credits and as "Blue" dies down, the camera has panned up to a night sky from which fades a single star. The screen fades to white and then to a charcol picture of Spike lying dead as the music fades out. Fade to black and in the lower right hand corner where we usually see "See you Space Cowboy" we're treated to "You're gonna carry that weight." As if you're not pissed off enough after Julia's death, Jet's outburst about Spike or Faye's desperate pleadings with him to not go, now you have a dead hero and that god-foresaken line. What weight are we carrying? Is it even speaking to the viewer? I wish I had time to really just sit and think about this one. Maybe I should rewatch all the "big" background episodes (as opposed to the self-contained ones) and see if I can piece something together. Like everything, it'll have to be done another night.

I could not begin to explain why, but that show and the characters really elicit a strong emotional response. Ah well, something to think about as I finish this absurd paper about Lebanon. If anyone has any thoughts on the matter, I'd be more than happy to hear them.

DC out

All of Egypt, Finally

2004-04-28T09:20:29Z

Ok, I decided that it's been long enough that I might as well sit down and write the rest of what all happened in Egypt. I got that first update in, which was good, but I've been slacking since then. Before things become too faded from my memory, I'm going to get as much of the experiences as I can down here. As previously, I'm writing this to record memories. No promises about cohesiveness or anything else.

Sunday:

Sunday was the first of the leisure days. There would be many more, but having arrived the night before and conference not starting until tomorrow, a great deal of Sunday was spent doing nothing of note more than sitting around and hanging out. It should be noted that sitting around and hanging out in a beach-front villa at a resort is a beautiful, beautiful thing. A bunch of us decided that today would be a great day to head down to the beach for the first time during our trip.

The "beach," if it could properly be called that, wasn't really one. The way the coast ended up near our hotel was basically a series of fairly steep and rocky cliffs. The resort had carved and flattened these cliffs out so that there was a tiered beach overlooking the ocean beyond. There was no sand beach as the reef came right up to the edge of the cliffs. Instead, you had to walk across these floating platforms to get beyond the reef and then jump in the ocean. The reef extended about 30 yards almost straight out from the cliffs at a depth of only about 3 to 5 feet. After that, it dropped suddenly off to probably 100 to 150 feet before leveling out again. There were reefs all along this underwater steep slope as well. So we tanned and swam and generally enjoyed ourselves.

The resort also offered diving lessons. I'd never done any scuba before, but they had a pretty reasonable price for a beginners lesson, so Samir, Jaymin, Rishabh and I signed up for one that afternoon. I won't go through all the details, but scuba diving has to be one of the single most awesome things in the entire universe. I saw a morey eel and a giant sea turtle and all kinds of crazy fish in the reef environment. It's amazing to be able to move freely in three dimensions and see just everything that's going on underwater. I didn't have a whole lot of flexibility to go off as the guides were keeping pretty close track of us, but we were underwater for about a half hour total and got down to maybe 10 meters underwater. Cool, cool stuff. I really can't wait until I have another opportunity to do it again, I'd certainly go very far out of my way to do it. Just amazing.

After diving we headed over to the resort's pool for more laying in the sun and playing in water. For the record, in less than a week, I used pretty much an entire bottle of sunscreen trying desperately to prevent myself from being burned to a crisp. I succeeded, fortunately. Anyway, the pool had water slides, a basketball hoop, volleyball, a winding path back around from the main area to other smaller pools. Very cool, very fun to screw around in. We spent a vast majority of our time playing pool ball, basically basketball in the pool. We spent several hours doing this before retiring to the villa to clean up and head out.

Not a whole lot to tell of this night, we just went out and got some Lebanese food. Tasty stuff and we got to sit on the floor while we ate. Again, after food was hookah and then home to sleep. The next morning we'd actually have to get up and go to a committee session. We were there for a Model UN conference, after all...

Monday:

Woke up, got dressed up and headed to committee session. Committee was terrible. Bad GA committee with a bad chair and bad topics. Neither Jocelyn nor I had any desire to do anything, but we felt like we should stick around for at least a little while. Fortunately, neither one of us really had important countries, so I'm pretty sure our presence wasn't really missed. I figure we probably stayed in committee chatting or reading or coming up with assorted caligraphic scripts for about 2.5 hours out of four that it lasted. Not too shabby. We went back to the villa for some lunch and a mid day swim. There was a second committee session in the afternoon which we also decided to go to at least for a little while. I brought "Fup" with me. Great book, by the way. I had just enough time to read the entire thing before we ditched the rest of the committee session and headed home. Not surprisingly, we spent the time during which we were supposed to be in committee tanning next to the pool and/or playing pool ball. Excellent.

That night was the first of the conference organized events. It was titled Bedouin Night and we were promised a treat. We were not at all disappointed. They took us about 45 minutes away from our hotel into the desert to a hotel called the Echo Club. It was built at the base of some rock formations which very much reminded me of Red Rocks in Colorado. The rocks were MUCH bigger, but it had that feeling. There were three kind of enclosing an area with a stage in the middle, then a depression in front of the stage which acted as a dance floor and then steps with couches and tables ascending back away from the dance floor. Amazing scene. We sat down and were served a fantastic meal of roasted lamb and hummus and other tasty Egyptian foodstuffs. While we ate, we were treated to whirling dervishes and belly-dancing which was very cool to see in person. After those two were done they brought out a fire eater who did a variety of fun tricks with, well, fire.

Some truly exciting Egyptian trance followed the acts and they opened up the dance floor. Great music, great food, great scenery, beautiful warm desert night. Can't ask for much more than that. Then sleep.

Tuesday and Wednesday:

I'm grouping these two together because the only thing that separates them is what we did at night. Both days were spent lounging in the sun both in the pool and snorkeling in the ocean. Gotta love that. Lots of trips on the slide, lots of games of pool ball and lots of relaxing in the sun with a drink.

Tuesday night we went to a highly recommended Egyptian restaurant and were not at all disappointed. I maintain that the Middle East is the one place in the world where I could happily live as a vegetarian. Falafel and hummus and tabouleh and all the rest just get it done for me. Which isn't to say they don't do meat well, too, but it'd be much easier to give up. The conference organized event on Tuesday night was clubbing night. After the great music and event on Monday night, I was VERY excited for clubbing night. As far as location was concerned, everything was perfect. The club was open air and it was a great night with a nice moon and clear skies. The night didn't really pan out so well from there. They had hired professional dancers to dance during the music, and they were just ridiculously hot, but that was where the excitement pretty much ended for me. The music at Bedouin night was so good that I get the feeling I had my expectations set too high. It was unique to the region and house, which I certainly like better than hip hop. The music at clubbing night was...well, terrible comes to mind. It was all Top 40 American music. RIDICULOUS! I can listen to 50 Cent or Britney or any of the rest of them anytime and anywhere at home. I don't need to go halfway around the fucking world to listen to that kind of stupid stupid shit. I mean, come on! Is it that hard to play good regional music?!? Even hip hop would've be FINE! As long as it was GOOD and REGIONAL! I really resent being fed standard American crap at a conference that prides itself on being so international. Ok, end rant on that subject.

The clubbing ended and we volunteered to host a party at our house for the night, so as people trickled back, they headed over to the villa for alcohol and swimming and general entertainment. It was a scene right out of a movie or something. Bunch of college students playing around in a pool and drinking and watching the sun rise at a beach-front villa. Funny story, though. In Egypt, alcohol is a bit harder to get than it is in the States. They also have cheap knock off versions of US brands. For example, there is "Fineland" vodka instead of "Finlandia" and "Jhon Whaler Black Label" instead of Johnny Walker. They taste just as bad as the names might indicate. We stayed up until 7 AM when the buffet opened, grabbed "breakfast" and then went to sleep.

Woke up around noon on Wednesday and did the swimming/tanning/hanging out that was outlined above.

Wednesday night was the Cabaret. In theory, every school was supposed to come with a presentation to share with everyone else that represented their cultural heritage. Nate, Jocelyn and I weren't really too interested, so we grabbed a tasty falafel dinner, watched some movies, packed and got some sleep. Everyone else pulled all-nighters after attending the festivities. Most people described it as basically being an 8th grade talent show. I don't feel like I missed too much.

Alright, that's it for now. I'll finish up with what happened in Cairo some other time. TIRED!

DC out

Spring Fling

2004-04-18T18:27:12Z

Well, Spring Fling was incredible. Nothing quite like going on a three day bender to get you ready to head into finals period. The weather had a nice turn around from high 50s and raiing earlier in the week to low 70s and not a cloud in the sky by Thursday morning. Excellent.

Thursday afternoon an alumnus from New York came down and played the guitar out on our porch for several hours while we had the grill going. Lots of good eating and music and hanging out. Later that night we held our third annual party with Kenn Kweder (local classic rock cover band). One of the guys in the house also managed to get a DJ to play in the front room. That's a lot of solid music going on. It was about as consistantly packed as I've ever seen a party here. It was going really well until some idiot guys from the rugby team showed up and started shit with some of the brothers. When it was all said and done, they'd attempted to steal a composite, stole a bottle of shitty triple sec and pissed on our front porch. There were about 10 of them just all hanging around and they simply wouldn't leave. I've never seen people try so hard to force others to get into a fight with them. When we finally got them to go to the back door, they'd run around to the back door. Finally, some university officials showed up and called the police, which scared them off for good. Hope this doesn't start a consistant feud between them and us. Well, whatever. School year is almost over and they'll hopefully move on and forget about it. Other than that, the party was a huge success.

Friday was kind of a split day. After staying up until 4 finishing up with the party stuff, I had to wake up at 8 so I could finish a paper that I was presenting at an academic conference at noon. Finally finished up that crazy Pushkin paper. After revising it at least 6 times, it's nice to be done with it so I can focus on other things. The conference went really well, though. I'd never actually presented a paper before, so it was a good experience. There were some other pretty interesting papers presented as well, so though it got a bit in the way of my drunkeness, it was well worth the diversion.

After the conference, I head back to the house where people are hanging out and drinking (not surprisingly). We head over to the quad to drink and see the sights, but it wasn't really that cool. Had some fried oreas though. Tasty, but each one probably takes 10 years off of your life and after wandering around for a while the alcohol had worn off, so back to the house to drink more. A keg arrived in our absense so we set up a 105 cup game of beruit. Somewhere around this time from a combination of alcohol and just being tired, I passed out. I woke up around 10:30, and, lacking anything else to do, did a power hour with Ken. For those of you who don't know, it's a shot of beer every minute for an hour. It's about 7.5 beers when all is said and done. Ken did some masterful work putting together a CD. It started in 1945 and ended in 2004, minute of a song from each year. When the song changed, you take a shot. Genius. After that, I was pretty drunk and retired.

Saturday I slept in, woke up and (not surprisingly) started drinking. Ken and I took a trip downtown to pick up some cigars. I splurged on a 10 dollar one and Ken went crazy and bought a pipe. We came back, drank some more and headed to the Quad for the Mask and Wig show. Now, last year, they played a pretty hard set and I had fond memories of moshing in the mud in the Quad. I was quite disappointed this year. See, the univeristy apparently freaked out about the whole possibility of a lawsuit problem and brought in an absurd amount of event staff. In addition, they probably talked to the band, because the set was MUCH lighter this year. No opportunity to just go nuts and whenever anyone did try to get something started, the event staff promptly moved in and broke everything up. LAME! From this failure, I've decided that next year I need to make a concerted effort to try to get to more concerts. I went to a lot in high school and have just not been doing it since college. Hopefully I can do something about that. I miss that scene.

After we got back to the house, we relaxed in the sun in our front yard and got the grill going for a bit again. At 8 a crowd collected and we all sat down for another power hour. There were about 10 people this time, and I was going for my second in as many days. Good times, good times. Having gotten sufficiently wasted off of that, I smoked the cigar, which was excellent, played a couple games of beruit and passed out.

Which brings me to my slightly hungover but nonetheless pleased current state. Hope everyone else's weekend was equally entertaining. Probably another Egypt update later today.

DC out

Egyptian Sonata, Third Movement-Rondo-Friday/Saturday

2004-04-11T18:41:39Z

As a disclaimer, this post is likely to be long and may or may not have interesting stories and/or cohesive syntax. I'm recording memories rather than writing to an audience. Just so you know.

Well, it's been just over a week since I get back, so I suppose I can actually give a recount of all the craziness that happened to me while I was over in Egypt. Yeah, I know it's taken a while, but hey, it was a big thing. Sometimes you need to give yourself some time to reprocess everything that's happened. And while I've recovered emotionally (?) from the experience, it says nothing for the fact that my sleep schedule is still incredibly and totally fucked. Anyway, now that I'm heavily procrastinating the writing of two papers and have to sit here watching my selfstun script run anyway, I might as well get it all out of my brain and onto "paper."

Friday/Saturday: I'm putting these two days together since the vast majority of both of them were used for travel. Travel, both unsurprisingly and fortunatley, was largely uneventful. We jumped in a van at 5:00 PM in Philly and got to JFK around 8:30 PM. Few of us had eaten before we got in the van, so, understandibly, we were all hungry when we got there. Now, I don't know what airports you've been to, but all the ones I've been to have food past security in the concourses. For whatever reason, this one didn't, so we had to go through security twice.

I'm not a very smart person, apparently, because I chose that day to break in my new pair of Birkenstocks. I was sufficiently punished by quickly receiving a blister which showed up while we were in the airport. This blister caused me to limp around like an idiot until we got to Cairo and I could change shoes.

Before getting on the plane we received a cursory and relatively meaningless search from the nice people at Egypt air. The thoroughness of the search suggested that they were really only looking for tanks, assault rifles and RPGs (the grenade kind, not the D&D kind). This would be a sign of things to come, but more on that later. After an unfortunate incident traveling to England about 7 years ago, I've learned to sleep on planes, so I don't remember much about the flight other than what food we did receive was terrible, there were no decent movies and that they gave us these funny bootie things to put over our socks while we were onboard. My blister much appreciated the absense of painful sandal and comfortable bootie.

The Egyptians have strange ideas about airports. So I wake up, we arrive in Cairo and head to baggage claim. They have a pretty standard little belt going around and we all take our positions waiting for it to bring our bags around to us. Easy money. Oh no! Not so simple. The belt suddenly stops and we notice that all of the bags have been taken off the belt and placed off to the side. There is now a massive mob of people surrounding these piles of bags all digging to find theirs. Fortunately, all 10 of us track our bags down and off we go to our connecting flight to Sharm.

In most airports, this (at most) requires going to an "Arrivals" area, checking in and going to your new gate. Again, not so in Cairo. Turns out there are two airports there. The "new" airport and the "old" airport. We were in the latter, our next flight was in the former. The new airport was about a 10 minute drive from the old, and there were 10 of us all with baggage. As we would quickly learn, to Egyptians, white skin=money so upon exiting the terminal we were assaulted by cab drivers and bus drivers and all the rest trying to get us to use them. We eventually found some nice, and by that I mean pushy, guy who claimed to be able to take all 10 of us with our baggage up to the new airport. We agreed, and by that I mean we looked around with dumbfounded looks and blindly followed, and went off in search of his bus. The bus he took us to was of the VW variety with a luggage rack on top. How we fit inside and our luggage on top I have no idea, but it seems to have happened. Not only that, but he didn't tie our luggage down, so we were all worried that it would fall off. As if that all wasn't enough, he thought that this would be a good opportunity for us to attempt to get to the new airport by a back route and avoid paying the entrance fee. The nice men with the unifroms and the AK-47s tended to disagree, so after 10 minutes of screaming at one another in Arabic, our driver finally gave in and went the normal way. We make it on time with all of our luggage.

At this point we meet up with Ivan and head to the next flight. It's short, I sleep, end of story. We arrive in Sharm, get the luggage and take a bus back to our hotel. By this time, it's late evening and we're all raunchy from traveling, so this is an exciting moment.

Even more exciting is getting to our "rooms." The hotel ran out of "normal" hotel rooms, so Rishabh (the trip leader) splurged and got us a beachside villa to share. We weren't really sure what to expect when they said "beachside villa," but damn if we weren't excited. When we saw it, we were not disappointed. It was huge. 5 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, rooftop terrace with a view of the ocean, huge downstairs common room, kitchen, dining room, privite pool and jacuzzi. Suffice to say, it was hot. We moved in, I roomed with Samir, we all showered. I jumped in the pool (which was freezing) only to be informed that everyone was leaving for dinner, though earlier everyone had said that we'd take a swim before we headed off. Oh well. Shower, change. Then it was time to head to Naama Bay for dinner and our first look at the sights of Sharm.

However, getting there was a bit of an adventure. We'd asked the hotel before we left how much it should cost to take a taxi down there and were informed that it should cost about 20 Egyptian pounds (for reference, 1 dollar is about 6.5 LE). We got in the car and noticed immediately that there was no rate machine. Whatever, must be a set rate or something. So he drives us there and then, as we're getting out, a friend tries to give him 20 LE. The guy FLIPPED OUT and demanded 45 for his services. He actually tried to give back the 20 and almost got out of the car to follow us. From this we learned an important lesson: always set the price BEFORE you get in.

Naama Bay is the traditionally touristy area of Sharm. It's bright, it's artificial, it's geared towards us, in other words. Like before, you couldn't move 5 feet without having someone come up to you and asking you to come with them to their store/restaurant. They'll even give you a gift because you're their "NEW AMERICAN FRIEND!" These people had to be fended off in droves. On the plus side, we discovered a decent seafood restaurant and stumbled upon something that would become a standard for the rest of our trip, the hooka bar. They call it shisha, which was an early problem, but it worked out. Shisha, apparently, is the flavored tobacco itself, while the hooka is the aparatus that one uses to smoke. Anyway, after dinner we sat around for many fine hours and enjoyed the warm night, the comfy piillows and, of course, Mr. Hooka. As people got tired and bored they trickled back to the villa where some of us went swimming and thus ends the first entry. More later.

DC out

My Beer is Better than Your Beer

2004-04-10T03:12:16Z

http://www.courierpress.com/ecp/me/article/0,1626,ECP_2256_2792775,00.html

God it's a beautiful thing to have your drinking choice validated by science. Or something.

Who am I kidding? I'd drink it even if it wasn't better for me.

Egyptian Sonata, Second Movement-Adagio

2004-04-04T09:31:44Z

Got home earlier tonight. Much too tired and fried to put my thoughts into anything even remotely resembling a coherent post, so you'll have to wait for a few days for me to put things together and get this all worked out both in my mind and on paper.

While it's very nice to be back, the house is in interesting shape, to say the least. I'm sure I'll hear all about it tomorrow. I guess we'll see what happens. More when I can see straight.

DC out

Egyptian Sonata, First Movement-Allegro

2004-03-29T14:37:02Z

I don't have a lot of time to update now, so this movement will be brief. When I get home, I'll recapitulate and tell all of the stories worth telling in the detail that they deserve.

In short, however, this place is fucking unbelievable. The people, the hotel, the private villa, the food, the ocean. It's awesome. It has been a very long time since I was in a place that was completely new to me. It's exhilirating, to say the least.

About the only unremarkable thing about this experience so far has been the conference itself. I just can't bring myself to care. Let's be honest, though. If you have the choice between chilling on the beach of a resort or sitting in an over-crowded, hot room debating the impact of globalization on gender roles, which one would you pick? That's what I thought.

Hope all is well for everyone. I'll talk to you soon.

DC out

frosstbyte @ 2004-03-17T20:53:00

2004-03-18T01:53:58Z

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Test

I'm not really surprised I ended up being a heretic. I expect that. I'm kind of surprised about the high scores in the violent circle and the fraudulent/malicious/panderes circle. I have no idea where that came from. Oh well. I guess here's for keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn't actually work that way.

DC out