What persistence and a pretty face can and cannot get you

My utility problems have continued. After a glorious few days of everything working, I lost all water except for an occasional trickle about a week ago. It appears as though the city has turned off the water. My daily calls to my landlord, who can verify if the city has turned off my water or if he has not paid the bill, are not working. He won't pick up the phone. Not a good sign.

On the plus side, I argued for about fifteen minutes with a librarian over my right to look at five years worth of newspaper articles (which you are supposed to request by quarterly volumes) and she called her boss, who assented on the condition that come to the back room and find them myself. Boss lady, an older woman, noticed that I was not Russian.

Seth: Yeah, I'm American.
Keeper of the Newspapers: Oh, I have a sister, well a cousin, in New York. (Russians often call a cousin a brother or sister without using the adjective that denotes cousindom) You're so young and handsome!
Seth: Aw, shucks!
Keeper of the Newspapers: I have another sist--, cousin who is unmarried, and has no children.
Seth [rolling eyes shamelessly with mouth agape]: Yes...
Keeper of the Newspapers: You come on Tuesday to look through more newspapers, I'll bring a picture. Okay!

This is sort of a dilemma, because finding the newspapers myself was much faster than requesting them a quarter at a time but I tend to be anti-granny-matchmaking. Can I sell my heart for more convenient access to Pravda? I think I'll wait until I see the photograph.

Life in Remont

I really like the title of this post, because it seems like it could be the title of a story about someone who lives in Russia whose home is being worked on (remont translates roughly to the noun repairs) but who is also having some kind of emotional trial unrelated to the strains of living in an apartment where the appliances don't work well. Maybe an injury should be involved as well; I did, after all, teach Hemingway half of last year.

Well, I am living in an apartment which is undergoing a serious repair process. Fortunately the mental and semi-metaphorical physical injuries are non-existent. I have, though, spent a parts of a week without hot water (5 days), gas (4 days), electricity (3 days) or a toilet (2 days), and the last, I assure you, has been enormously strenuous, because Russia is notorious for not having decent (or any) public restrooms free or pay.

However, I think the worst part has been the bathing aspect. Now, I'm not a shower snob; I'll take cold showers, even enjoy them, because sometimes the knowledge that a worldwide lesbian conspiracy exists is too much even for me. The shower doesn't work at all though, and my attempt to boil water in an electric tea kettle for a bath was ended in the electricity dying. In fact, after a week in hot, dusty Rostov, sweating buckets while riding public transport, I thought about entitling this post "Smell-o-gram" instead. Basically, I smell like someone who has been working at the Quaker Oats factory in Cedar Rapids all day, ran a few miles down a dirt road behind line of cars picking up dirt the whole way and then tried to cover it up by rolling deodorant all over his body. I bet the real Old Spice Man smells like me, only fishier.

A Human Zoo

In the absense of a desire to describe what the Russians would call otpusk (the nearly universal summer vacation, usually one month or longer, that Russians receive), I'll keep it short by saying that being at home was pretty awesome in comparison to Russia. In particular, wi-fi was an almost unfathomable luxury. Sopranos finale was not what I expected and was quite good. I went to London to see the Juice on my way to Moscow and that was a pretty awesome trip; they really do drive on the wrong side of the road! Boston, even with Garnett and Ray Allen can't beat San Antonio, Dallas, Phoenix and maybe Chicago or Detroit.

I arrived in Rostov about a week ago and, without much else to do, have been pacing myself at about one errand a day, except Sundays, which is race day. (Please note I have added a Gambling Results section at the side, which is primarily to let me know if I'm getting carried away.) After the errand is completed, my day is open to relaxation and yesterday I went to the zoo.

The Rostov Zoo is surprisingly well stocked with animals, and exotic ones at that, but not particularly well staffed. Also, the zoo makes a lot of American zoos look quite spacious, all of which means you can get incredibly (dangerously?) close to a rhinocerous, or a tiger. The staff that you do see around the park have adopted a sort of fatalistic mentality: the sign does warn against goring.

I made my way eventually to the monkey cage, where a throng of people, some of whom had jumped over the fence that separates the cage from the sidewalk, were screeching. This I actually took to be mockery of the monkey, but apparently not. Something was hilarious! That something was that one of the intrepid school-children perched upon the fence had lit a cigarette and given it to the monkey, who was deep in flavor country when I arrived on the scene. When asked how they had trained the monkey to smoke, said the children of the monkey, "It taught US to smoke!" I didn't get a good shot of it exhaling, but here's one of it stubbing out the butt.

Later, I was sitting by the bird pond, contemplating what I had seen (Had the monkey really corrupted those children? Did it also drink and would it try to introduce this habit to the children as well?) when I heard a father shout at his daughter, "Get over here!" Pretty standard, except this girl was 2 or 3 and the dude was standing on bridge over the duck pond, where he had been for a half hour. Obviously, little girl was a little antsy. What I couldn't make out, was why this man was so fascinated by the bird pond. After a little investigation (I switched benches for a better angle), it appeared as though he was fishing in the pond, albeit with only the line (on a kite reel) and the bait.

The guy eventually gave up, and got ready to leave. The girl said to him, "Num Num," which is Russian child gibrish for, "Time to eat." Pretty cute. But not to dad, who was really sick of feeding this girl, especially on a day when he paid 80 rubles to get into the zoo and didn't even catch a fish. Immediate reaction: one spank. They went off on their way out of the park, but he started walking briskly ahead of her, then hopped the fence surrounding the pond and broke off a stick from the wooding on the edge of the pond. The first thought that entered my head was, "That can't be what I think it is. Did he just cut a switch?!" Yes he did. Although I did not see, I did hear. Quite a bit of parenting. The monkey probably taught him.

Monkey ashing his cigarette