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День защитника Отечества

Today is the day to celebrate soldiers, veterans and just men in general. I wish we had a day like this in the US. Valentine’s day has come to mean ’spend lots of money on your girlfriend day’ (without needing to mention singles’ awareness day). There isn’t a good ‘buy stuff for your boyfriend day’ yet. Since Russia has only recently celebrated Valentine’s Day, today and March 8th (Women’s Day) have come to be roughly equivalent. In reality, This holiday celebrates the first mass draft in Moscow in 1918 during a civil war. Nowadays, the only thing to see in Vladimir are a bunch of drunk men and some flowers by the eternal flame war memorial.

Kinda makes me glad the US doesn’t have a draft. (yet)

[odd note: When I googled for large images of День защитника Отечества the results were exclusively old men playing chess]

[Itar-tass]

Russia in general

Today I found out that Moscow doesn’t have just a few problems with the bird flu, but many. I knew of about 3 or 4 sites that had found the virus and had begun to ‘destroy’ their birds. Now there are many more suspected sites, all of them within a few hours of Vladimir.

I then did some research on the avian flu. Turns out, the World Health Organization has a generic 6 step process for the spreading of pandemic viruses. The avian flu is currently in step 3. The virus can mutate to infect humans, but can’t transfer hosts between humans. The next steps are:

4. Person to person
5. Epidemic exists
6. Pandemic exists

Added to this, I found the following information:

To acquire the needed mutation through drift, it simply has to continue being an epidemic in birds long enough for the mutations to occur and then be passed to a human.

This is for the H5N1 strain of the avian flu (pretty much the only one reported in the news). If there is an genetic shift in the virus, humans will be at an extremely great risk, with those who are nearer the birds are the first to get sick.

I’m kinda glad I’ll be leaving Russia if only out of my paranoid fear of pandemics and diseases. I don’t trust Russian hospitals, so I’m trying to go to a place without birds. My next move is to the Middle East, I hope. Unfortunately, I wanted to go back to Krasnodar but in the nearby Adygean Republic they are having problems too.

BTW, the CDC reports that if only a medium level pandemic were to break out in the US, over 207,000 people will die.

[Reuters Article - Wikipedia - CDC]

Russia in general

Russia has very few cities that aren’t frozen over in the winter. This makes it one of the first places that is always ready to host the Winter Olympics. That being said, they are trying to get the Olympics in Russia for 2014. Its even in the winter. There’s just one small catch.

Russia does have a few cities that stay relatively snow-less year round. Krasnodar, and the Krasnodar region in the south is one such place. The region borders the Black Sea and is renowned throughout Russia as an excellent summer vacation spot. Sochi is the main tourist city on the coast, completely built up with resorts and private beaches.

And Sochi is exactly where the Russians want to host the Winter Olympics. The real location is actually 40 minutes away to the north in the Caucasus Mountains. Sochi is a much prettier face for the olympics. In fact its one of Russia’s very few pretty face cities. But not where I’d put the Winter Olympics. They hardly see snow!

The other contenders are Salzburg, Austria and PeyongChang, South Korea. They both have great chances and Sochi is only in 3rd place. I would rule out Salzburg because one of their venues is actually in Germany. PeyongChang would be great, but the committee might skip it because of the proximity to North Korea and John Kim Il.

Sochi doesn’t have the greatest chances, but Russia could badly use some good PR. It’d be cool if Sochi did win, but thats more “I’m a Russian major living in Russia and I think Russia is cool.” It doesn’t really matter where the Olympics games are, I’m not going unless they are within 500 kilometers of my residence at the time.
It is possible for me to be near Sochi in 2014, but I don’t even know in what country I’ll be in next year. BTW, If you’ve got any teaching jobs you know of in the Middle East or Taiwan, please let me know!

[News - Wikipedia]

Russia in general

I’ve had allergies since high school. Our building was a converted warehouse and the ventilation was very poor, which caused me to develop allergies to dust. I’ve spent the rest of my life somewhere near tissues or toilet paper.

Eternally blowing my nose has cause a few major problems for me. The first time was summer before senior year in high school when I went to the doctor for some allergy medication, my allergies were quit serious that summer. It turns out my allergies weren’t at all the problem, I was just too used to always having a runny nose. the diagnosis: sinus infection, 1 viral ear infection, 1 bacterioviral ear infection, a cold and pneumonia. Yes, pneumonia. I was given lots of pills and told to stay in bed for 3 days, problem solved.

Now, in Russia, it seems I’ve have had a similar, but less serious situation. I self-diagnosed my sinus infection and dared to venture to a Russian hospital and see a doctor. I’m not usually against doctors, but I’ve heard more than a few stories about Russian health care.

Galina Petrovna, the director of the American Home, took me to the students’ clinic and we went straight to the ears, nose, and throat doctor, cutting in front of about 7 students. I got sat down, checked and she decided I needed antibiotics (thank goodness!) and cold medication. This was exactly what I thought, and I only went for the prescription. She then decided that I needed shots too.

Shots. and not just any shots, 10ml once a day for 5 days. 10ml is a lot to get injected at one time, its no MMR shot. While they were talking I kept hearing the word ‘popa’ (попа) which means butt in Russian. Panic! The plan was for Galina Petrovna to administer the shots for me, in the popa! How would you like it to hear that your boss had to give you shots… in the ass.

Yeah… So I told them I was deathly afraid of shots and she let me get away with just the pills on the condition that by Wednesday, if I didn’t feel better - shots.

Next we went to the Drug Store, still known as an Apothecary to get the drugs. I buy my own syringe and vial of evil ‘ass’ potion (just in case, said my boss), and amoxicillin. Turns out I could’ve gotten the drugs without a prescription for 20 bucks. I’m never going to a doctor in Russia again!

By the way, I feel better now.

Russia in general, Work

Today, the 29th of December, I had my first meeting with the police of Russia. Many people have heard stories of cops robbing you blind in Red Square because your papers aren’t in order or you’re missing a registration stamp you never knew you needed. Well, I had a very similar situation happen to me on the largest pedestrian street in Krasnodar. Krasnodar is a city of almost a million people in the south of Russia, so far south it rarely sees snow in the winter! I was waiting for a friend when they asked me for my papers. I thought nothing of it, this is how cops in Russia find people to fine. They also don’t monitor traffic like we do, they just pull people over at random and if something isn’t exactly right, you get fined. Needless to say, almost everyone gets fined.

But the second they saw I was from the US, they asked to check out my registration at the militia stand. I should’ve known better but I went with them (in the direction that was actually away from the stand, upon later reflection) We went about a block off the main road where they asked me to empty my pockets so they could check for narcotics, they were talking the whole time about Krasnodar’s narcotic problem while interspersing the fact that his aunt lives in Florida as we walked.

One cop tried to get me to turn around while padding me down, so the other one could steal my money. But I told them I knew my rights and I wasn’t going to do anything without a translator and without my things back in my possession. After ‘radioing’ in my information (just my name…) they decided to ‘fine’ me for having no registration 500 rubles. About 20 dollars. I argued so he said make if 1000 and he’ll let me go right now. I almost laughed, finally realizing I wasn’t in any trouble nor could these cops do anyhing to me. So I said I didn’t have the money, it was for travelling home. They gave up and told me to mind the narcotics around here and watch for cops. Ha!

It took me a good 15 minutes to calm down, even longer had my friend not shown up. I’m glad she was later than I, otherwise getting a phone call might have been a lot more interesting with the cops around…