News and Reviews

My parents came a week ago Tuesday and will be leaving tomorrow morning from Petersburg. This was the first time my parents had been abroad and suffice it to say that Russia is not the best introduction to foreign travel. I feared the worst but it wasn't so bad. In Moscow we went places where they needed a translator on days I didn't have classes and other days they stuck to tourist stuff. Then they came to Ryazan where I showed them "real Russia," that is, Russia without any tourist attractions. We left on an overnight train for Petersburg the next day, where we were met by a snowstorm. I may have pictures later. Anyway, some highlights:

-Dad, after seeing two women walking arm and arm, leaned over and asked, "Gay?" The same question was later posed to two of my female co-workers in Ryazan over dinner.
-Mom, a 60 year-old software editor suffering from mild agoraphobia, took the metro during rush hour.
-On their first day alone, dad's Russian lessons on cassette paid off and he was able to order coffee. As he explained it, all he had to do was ask for someone who spoke English and then ask them for coffee.

I thought I would also review various Russia/foreign travel related products and services. I only got to the computer stuff but I'll try to do hotels later.

Computer Stuff:

SkyLink: A cell phone company that has lately been pushing internet service through its cell phone network. How I found this company is a pretty good Russia story. My apartment's previous inhabitant, and owner, died and her daughter inherited the place. The real estate was valuable enough that my landlady paid whatever "fees" had to be paid to get the paperwork pushed through and her name as an owner. All other services (water, gas, phone), though, also required a similar payment to change the name. Since they all worked, my landlady saw no point in paying $200 to change the name. However, when I tried to get DSL, neither I nor my landlady could penetrate the bureaucracy of TsentrTeleKom without reregistering the phone. So, I had been using internet cards and going through dial up until April. Recently SkyLink opened up a Ryazan office offering high speed wireless and I jumped at the chance to get rid of dial up. Basically the whole thing works like a cell phone except you buy a modem with a USB output instead of a phone. In short, it cost $250 to set up (mostly the cost of the modem) and the service costs $.04 per megabyte. Good if you just want casual but fast internet but very expensive if you are trying to download anything.

IrisPen: This is a text scanning pen which I thought would make my life in the archive easier. It hasn't. This scanner is only good for materials printed on white paper, in modern fonts and without errors. You also need a strong, steady hand and practice. It does work in Russian (along with other major languages) and has some use at Russian libraries, where checking out books is much more difficult and sometimes impossible. I find myself more and more using this for amusement. For the same price (about $100), I could have had more fun with a breathalyzer.