Frankfurt

With a bit of delay I made it to Frankfurt last night but it seems I was just too late to be let on to the connecting flight to Toronto.  After some puppy dog eyes and an attempt at a Christmas lie by telling the agent I was going home for the first time in 2 years and hadn't seen my children in just as long I realized there was nothing they could do.  It could have been my poor acting or that I went a bit too far in my lie but the agent did not seem overly sympathetic.  Many people missed that same connection so we all had to give up and start making our plan B.

I was re-booked on the exact same flight 24 hours later.  I could have gotten to Toronto sooner the next day but there were no other options for the flight to Regina so I had to choose between staying longer in a hotel in Germany or in the Pearson Airport.  I decided on the hotel where I could get a night's rest, a few free meals and a shower.

Now, some 18 hours later I'm getting ready to check out and get back to the second half of the trip (even though I'm still not even technically halfway).   The weather is promising in Frankfurt so I shouldn't have any issues getting out of here but, as if I was waiting on federal election results back home, my fate lies with Toronto.

Frankfurt from the sky

Tyumen to Moscow

Outside of Tyumen Airport

First leg of the trip is done. I made to Domodedovo international airport in Moscow. The flight was fine overall but since that one awful flight over the summer a slight uneasiness during flying has been reintroduced into my life that I haven't had since my very first flight as a child.

I always find myself in an epic, flight long, battle over the armrests. I was unlucky and got placed in the middle seat. Window and aisle get at least 1 armrest and then I have to fight for the ones on either side of me. Unless my neighbors are kids it's pretty much guaranteed that the passengers are wider than me so they naturally take up more room and figure theydeserve the armrest. Any chance I get to take back some of that neutral territory I have to plant in my elbows and hold my ground. After a certain point it becomes so uncomfortable and actually hurts my elbows but I'll never give up that space. It usually wants I've made one or two more enemies by the end of the trip.

In Russia they take their airplane meals very seriously. Great thing is every flight has a meal on it. I personally love airplane food so it's mostly good news for me. The problem comes when it's 6am and to you're trying to sleep. The flights attendants will always wake you up to see if you want food. The top favorite things in my life are sleep and food but sleep trumps food everytime so I don't really appreciate this. anyways, now that they've woken me up I figure i could use some breakfast. I take the meal tray and, at 6am, they serve me a rice and chicken dinner with a piece of bread. Definitely not breakfast food and not worth waking up for.

The concept of staying seated and belted in when taking off and landing is means nothing to them. While landing they like to prepare for deplaning. Many time I've seen little (not actual little but Russian little) old ladies standing up to walk to the bathroom and/or to put on their coats the second the wheels touch the ground.

During the 20 minute final descent I was going in and out of consciousness but had 4 individual dreams of the plane crashing each in its own unique scenario. Couldn't have been a good sign but despite all that, some fog and heavy snowfall we still landed and I'm one step closer to being back in Canada.

Exponential growth of the problem

Moscow: The problem

Tyumen airport

To achieve this efficient 30 hour travel time one has to leave Tyumen early in the morning so you can make the connections is Moscow. With little sleep last night, and the last two weeks really, I wasn't starting this trip very fresh but still excited to get home.

At the entrance to the airport everyone has to go through an initial metal detector, even if not flying. A good safety measure I suppose but probably just used as a way to add more Russian jobs. A couple of my students were travelling the same day as me ad I saw one of them, from Iraq, holding up the security screening. He noticed me further back in the line, came over to say hi and said he had a bit of a problem.

'I forgot to get rid of my room key from the training center'
'ok, I can take it. No problem.'
'no, you don't understand. I had lost my actual room key a while ago so I've been using a knife to get in. '
- now the security delay makes sense. Probably not good for anyone to get caught with a knife but if someone were to add a stereotype, it would be worse for an Iraqi.
'ok, got it. Just step outside and discreetly drop it in the garbage'
- even when I try, I can't stop teaching.

The way home

My first class finished a couple of days ago and the students, and more importantly, I managed to survive. On the last day the lead instructor announced that I would be taking lead on the next class. I received some applause and congratulations from the class. On the inside I was saying 'shit' but took it in stride. The great thing about being 2nd instructor is you can pass all the decisions and blame back to the lead. It had to happen sometime so I'll tackle that in the new year.

The course went well overall, I made some improvements on my teaching but still have more to learn. In the end, my biggest mistake was to grant the students Facebook access while the course was still going on. Having not cleaned up my pictures in 6 years they got a peak at events from my life that people who are supposed to respect and fear you shouldn't. lesson learnt.

Now I'm starting my 8000 km journey back home for the holidays. It will take about 30 hours to get home as long as all goes smoothly. Here's hoping.

One reason I'm glad I switched positions

I left my old position and have been an instructor for the past 4 months.  I really enjoy traveling and seeing new parts of the world and I got the chance to see a few different places in Russia.  It had been a great experience but had I continued in that same position I wouldn't have seen new places, it would have been the same towns/locations over and over again.  So, with this change I was happy to give up the travel and settle into something resembling a 'life'.

My least favorite place was a town called Pyt-Yakh and it happened to be the place I traveled to most often.  The town itself is fine, it's a work town, but the geographical area of it made it the unfortunate recipient of some of the worst quality water I've had to deal with. 

normal water

I'm glad I didn't spend enough time there to find this out but I've been told that after living there for a while you might notice your fingernails turning yellowish and, if you happen to brush your teeth with it, it'll show there as well.   There's also an associated smell that goes with the color so those who think they can manage it with their eyes closed might still find it hard.

The Students

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was impressed how most of my students are learning the material in this very technical course in English when most of them have a different mother tongue.  Of course I will never tell them I'm impressed...from my perspective all they do is whine and complain about how hard everything is, how few days off they get, etc.  Well, back in MY day it was more difficult and we had fewer days off, but I digress.

There's about 7 years difference between me and the students which is quite a bit less than when I went through this school.  It's a fine line between being friendly with them but keeping the professional attitude required to be an effective instructor.  Naturally, being an overly-polite and helpful guy I have to error on the side of being more strict and tough with them to keep my proper level of superiority over these subordinates.

Every once in while though these kids get you to crack a smile.  This week we, as main instructors, have had some time out of the classroom while a guest instructor covers a specific topic.  I saw one of the students in the hallway and as he was passing he said 'Dave, we miss you in the class this week.'

These little bastards aren't so bad sometimes....

йога

I was recently convinced to go and try a yoga class in Tyumen.  Two friends of mine basically gave me no choice but promised me a good lunch following this obviously humiliating situation.  I'm not against yoga and have actually been eager to try it out someday and get into that whole lifestyle but I've HESITATED going with people from the oilfield since the time I walked in on two rig hands practicing what was apparently yoga in the gym of a floating rig.  They were properly dressed in coveralls and large work boots so I'm sure they were following the right procedure.  They asked if I wanted to join but I politely declined telling them I had to do a run for 'training', then I walked around the gym once and left as fast as I could.  It was just too much to take in all at once.

This time, however, it was going to be a different situation.  There would be a real yoga instructor, full yoga experience and maybe some fit girls there yoga-ing beside me to help the time go by.  When it comes to these situations where I have no idea what I'm doing, I don't speak the language well enough and i'm bound to look like a fool I strategically position myself in the back of the room so that I can falter without being seen by the rest of the people in the class.  My friends, who took the same approach, had already done a few classes so I was expecting to be the worst out of them but, as part of my strategy, I looked around the room for one person that might be worse.  I was pleasantly surprised to see a grizzly of a Russian sitting in the back row as well so I sat close to him figuring I was more flexible than 275lb man.

The instructor noticed my 'new face' and she knew a little bit of English so she asked me my name to welcome me to the class.  After answering, her face lights up....
'oohhh, David Swenson!'. 
The rest of the class had a nice little yoga-chuckle at her comment so I figured it was some sort of inside joke.  Turns out this David Swenson is some sore of master yoga instructor, about 60 years old and doesn't have much hair.  I hope it wasn't a comparison based on looks.

The 2 hour yoga session (I was told it would only be 1) was started off with a chant.  The translation of this chant having something to do with the Lotus Feet, Thousand headed men and conch shells.  I suppose one is supposed to feel very spiritual during this chant but I was focusing on biting my lip to keep from laughing.  It started off with an 'Ommmmmmm' and I barely made it through that first verse but decided I better go with the process I used when I was in high school choir (for the easy grades) of just opening my mouth but not making a sound.  I let the rest of the group get me through it while I pinched my skin and pulled on my leg hair so I could keep a straight face.  

With the chanting completed the instructor gave a 10 minute introduction/explanation of what Yoga is all about so it was great that I had no idea what she saying.  The next part was to change the way we breathe.  I'm generally quite happy with how I breathe but apparently, in Yoga, you need to breathe like you're a Rhino in heat.  The sounds that were filling the room completely destroyed any concentration I had.  I couldn't get this technique down.  When I tried to breathe louder I made sounds that more resembled a donkey.  I stuck with my quiet breathing in the end.  

So we're 1.5 hours into this 'Plank, Downward facing Dog' routine and I'm feeling like I'm at least doing better than the rollie-pollie fellow sitting next to me.  The instructor then says a couple words, claps her hands twice quickly and then all I see are legs flying in the air....and staying there.  I'd seen this move in a movie once but thought it was an exaggeration of the yoga technique but here I am still trying to get out of child's pose and people are balancing on top of their heads like it's the easiest thing in the world.  I have more trouble standing on my feet then they do upside down.  As I look to my supposed safety net, the gigantor beside me, I'm crushed as he's completely vertical, upside down, holding the straightest pose of the whole group.  All this time he was just pretending to be terrible and the hustles me right at the end.  I really felt like pushing him over.


Anyways, I survived the class and I was now looking forward to the post-yoga lunch that I was promised.  That part did not disappoint.  We went to a cafe serving Uzbek food and as you can see from the pictures below it was the perfect yoga recovery meal.  Namaste.

Where's Dave been?

To the faithful followers I apologize for the long stretch in between blogs.  In June I abruptly changed positions, went on an overdue holiday back home, started in my new position in August, somehow ran a marathon in September in Berlin and since then have been back in Russia working at one of our training centers. 


The move from a quality supervisor to an instructor has been a challenge.  I've never really been comfortable speaking to a group of people so it seems that for me to teach a class 6 days a week for 3 months wouldn't be the wisest choice.  Having said that, it was a good move for me.  I was getting tired in my position and lacking some direction.  The constant traveling was wearing me down a bit so I was happy to get into a position that would keep me in one place.  I'm still working my long hours, possibly even longer than before but now I stick to a schedule. The only problem came in terms of blogs in that I've found I have fewer stories now that my life is more 'normal'.   I guess I'll just have to search out those entertaining situations. 


The challenge comes with teaching technical topics to new grads from all different parts of the world.  I have one American in my class and the rest are all non-native English speakers.  They are combined from four Russians, four from Thailand, two from Mexico, two from Iraq, one from Ecuador, one from Brazil, one from Malaysia, one from Poland, and one from Libya.  In the end this means that at best I have one person in the class who will understand every word that I say.   I'm very impressed with the kids that are learning in English as their second, or third, language.  This course is tough for native english speakers so they have their work cut out for them.  I still have improvements to make in how I speak to them but I've adapted the way I speak so that they can at least understand the bulk of what I'm saying.   The best part of having all of these people coming to Russia from warmer climates is watching them freeze and complain in only -5C weather.  On the other hand, their excitement to see snow irks me...let's see how much they enjoy it after a few months. 



This post didn't have much for entertainment but mostly used as an update of what I'm doing these days.  I have a few more posts in brewing and I'll try to get back to updating regularly.  

Quick vacation back home

I just got back from a mostly relaxing vacation which included a trip back home and then a blurry adventure in Ireland on my way back to work in Russia.  It's always nice to be back at home visiting with friends and family and as for Ireland, I have one piece of advice...don't accept any drinking challenges against an Irishman, especially 6 of them at once. It won't end well.  

On my way back to Russia, dealing with an Irish hangover, I boarded my second last leg of the trip from Frankfurt to Moscow.  After a month of not practicing any Russian or, at the very least, seeing any Russian women I'm happy to hear a familiar unfamiliar language and notice a few girls that are worth noticing while boarding.  It just so happens that two of them are sitting across the aisle from me and the closest one started checking me out every so often during the flight.  Of course I'm keeping it cool, sitting back and watching the animated kids movie on my TV screen.  I figure she's going to break at some point since she can't seem to stop staring at me.  As we start our final descent she finally reaches over and grabs my arm.  I calmly take off my headphones to look over as she holds out her air sickness bag and asks if I need to use it.   With a look of complete confusion, I politely decline.

The two Russian beauties could not stop laughing (at me, presumably) until the plane landed.  I suppose I need to re-evaluate my 'cool' look as it seems to get mistaken for a look of imminent vomiting.... but I can still make them laugh.

Eastern Siberia Part 2: Mood Swings

Finally I have time to post on the possibly awaited second part of my trip to Eastern Siberia.  During the flight I had many thoughts going through my head of 'why am i here?', 'what did I do to deserve this punishment?' and strongly considering making a life change if i survived the flight.

I had mixed feelings while getting off the plane as I knew I would be spending around 3 weeks in this area before I could go home AND the only way out was going back on that awful flight.  My mood started to improve after getting a chance to see our base, meet the crews and get into work mode.  The one good thing about working in such an isolated place is that you don't have anyone on-site except for people doing the physical work.  I was the closest thing to a boss at that location so it was nice just to focus on work and not have to deal  with all the extras.   

2am

 

One of the first things I was warned about when I was heading this far north is the concept of 'white nights'.  This is the time of the year when there is no darkness, 24 hours of sunlight.  In the northern regions of Russia this lasts for about 3 months.  I prefer it to the winter when there is only a couple hours of sunlight a day but it makes it very difficult to get a good night's sleep when the sun won't go down. 

The initial reason I had made this trip to Eastern Siberia was to witness an on-the-job operation of a young engineer to see if he was comfortable to this job without supervision. So this meant I had to visit a rig and watch him through the entire operation. 

No, it's not a pterodactyl..it's a mosquito

It was going to be a long job, middle of nowhere, mosquitoes in both size and numbers that I have never seen before, and having to resist the urge to do the work and only supervise.  On day one of three I was already bored and the weather was less than ideal. I was sinking into a low, nothing to do, nowhere to go and dreaming of the day I could finally leave this place. 

Then, in the morning of day 2 the skies cleared up and the sun came out. There was a light breeze which kept the mosquitoes away.  The job was going very smoothly and I found myself relaxing, enjoying the weather, the peace and quiet (aside from the drilling rig in front of us).  You can see my level of calm as I sit in our work unit enjoying a cup of tea, an apple and working on my Siberian sun tan. These days it's one of the most coveted types of tans. 

a natural at Siberian sun tanning

 There was one manual laborer who spoke a bit of English and every chance he had he wanted to test out his pronunciation with me.  So, once in a while we would go grab another cup of tea, have a couple snacks and he would ask me something in English and I would respond in Russian.  On this second day my Russian was starting to flow and I was feeling like I was finally getting a grasp on some basic conversation. The rest of the day was much of the same...working outside in the sun, light breeze, lots of food/tea breaks, russian/english conversation.  I was feeling good again, it was such a significant change in mood from day 1 to day 2 and as I sat in my chair, watching the sun NOT go down (ever), thinking back on how good the day was I take a sip of tea, completely forget where my mouth was and pour hot tea all over my crotch.    Back to neutral.

The rest of my trip was mostly uneventful until July 1st when I left and celebrated Canada Day in the airport. (which can  be read about in my previous blog post).

Canada day in Russia

This post should be Part 2 of my trip to Eastern Siberia but i had to interrupt that process to describe my Canada day.

This was my third Canada day I spent living in a different country and it was setting up to be the worst one since the last two were spent with other Canadians living abroad or, at least, with friends. The majority of this one was spent traveling in helicopters and planes from vankor oilfield to Krasnoyarsk. There wasn't any real chance even for some solo celebration.

I did get satisfaction but in a unique way. I was in the airport of the vankor oilfield and wasting a lot of time waiting on my ride out of there. There were two coworkers with me with different levels of English skills. As we chatted in english I could see confused looks coming from other passengers directed at me. It was not for a while after we had been speaking in english when I decided to stand up and stretch. There was a quick break in conversation and the other passengers piped up and started questioning the Russian person I was traveling with. My Russian is poor but I know when people are talking about me so I turned to my coworker and asked what they had said. She told me they were asking where I was from, what I was doing here, etc. I asked her if she had answered them. She said she hadn't and told me they were waiting for my answer.

So here I am, now standing in front of a crowd of 20 Russians, all staring at me and waiting for me to speak. As it was Canada day I took my chance to say, loud and proud,

'I Am Canadian!'

felt good. Then the post-statement russian conversation turned to questions of why I was
there, how much I was getting paid and other curiosities as they we're amazed that someone from another country would actually choose to be in this part of Russia. A few people wanted to come up and meet me and shake my hand. It was like being a celebrity just for being Canadian...the way it should be.

Happy Canada Day!

No explanation required

Eastern Siberia Part 1: The Trip to Nowhere

Finally, the time came for me to travel to Eastern Siberia.  I was actually looking forward to this since it was a part of Russia I hadn't seen yet and have been getting a bit tired of the usual locations.  I'm also very glad that my trip was taking place during the spring-summer instead of the dead of winter.  The intermediate city I had to travel to, Krasnoyarsk, is a large Siberian city and said to be the most beautiful city in Siberia.  On the outskirts there is a national park area which offered a good hike and pleasant views of the surrounding area.  Instead of getting a chance to see that I luckily got to spend the day in the office.  Maybe I'll get that opportunity on my next trip out this way.  Below is a view of my stops as I traveled from Tyumen to our remote base.

Flight Path

I was only spending a night there and the next day was off to a large oilfield to the north of Kranoyarsk.  This was the more 'interesting' and unknown part of the trip as I had to take a plane to a small town near the oilfiield and then jump on a chopper to go the rest of the way.  To give you an idea of how far north I was, the town where I would switch to the helicopter was already 163km into the polar circle.  The flight was a charter plane set up by the oil company and the plane design was more for function than comfort but just because it lacked comfort didn't mean I was very confident in its functionality.

Something resembling a plane

Massive leg room and in-flight meal

It was easily the worst plane ride I've ever had topping the previous one of flying Moscow to Tyumen when I first arrived in Russia which now seemed more like a flight on  Air Force One compared to this one.  It had the traditional fold down seats, the leg room was adequate for someone 4 feet tall and the safety card, found in the pocket in front of me, said 'Don't Bother'.  I spent the 3+ hour flight with my one knew jammed into the back of the guy in front of me, the other in the aisle.  There is the feeling in flights, usually when beginning the final  descent where the plane does a few quick drops and you get brief feeling of weightlessness before it stabilizes.  Like most people, I absolutely love that feeling so I was pleased this plane did the same thing every few minutes during the entire flight.  It was the first time I thought I might need to use the air sickness bag but i held out.  To finish the flight the pilots did a triple-tap landing just to make sure they had good contact with the ground.  It wasn't a surprise the pilots were the first ones off the plane.   

It was a self-service airline so that more revenue could go into purchasing high quality planes and doing proper maintenance, obviously. 

Baggage Claim - Get it yourself

The helicopter ride was the more comfortable part of the trip, even though the first thing I noticed when I boarded is there was a large drop hatch behind me and started worrying about the string and tape that was most likely being used to keep it closed.  Anyways, we made it without issue and I took a quick video of the some of the landscape we flew over.  It's not very exciting but was a different view than flying over the Gulf.  I can't wait for the flight back. 

well, hi there

Transportation for the 2nd leg of the trip

USSR Ice Cream

It tastes the same for everyone.  It has to.  

My Russian language lesson for you

Now that I've been in Russia for about 8 months I figure it's time for me to teach you all some of the language. 

Basic:

Здравствуйте - Hello   (pronounced:  Zdras-vee-tyeh)
до свидания - Good Bye  (pronounced: Dass-vee-dahneea)
да - Yes  (Da)
нет - No (Nyet)
баклажан - eggplant (Ba-Kla-zhan)    
водка - Vodka (Vodka)
спасибо - Thank You (Spa-See-Bah)
Брюс Уиллис - Bruce Willis  (yeah, bruce freakin' willis)

 
let's practice....

     - баклажан?  
     - нет
     - водка?
     - да  
     - спасибо, Брюс Уиллис

 Intermediate:



Меня зовут Дэвид - My name is David  (Mean-ya Zo-Voot -insert Russian name-')
как вас зовут? - What is your name?  (Cock Voss Zo-Voot)
....she answers....
очень приятно - Very nice to meet you (oh-chin pre-at-nah)
я люблю вас. что ваш номер телефона? - I love you. What is your telephone number?
             (yah lew-blue Voss.  Sh-toe vash no-mair teh-leh-phone-ah?)
...she leaves....
я не понимаю - I don't understand (Yah knee Pony-my-you)

Advanced (i'll just do this phonetically, it takes too long to type in Russian)

Zdrasvite, moxnoe Indyeka, Bolshoy, Sihri c Sihrom.  Da, Da, Da.  Ovoshi...salat, pyerets, aguryets, i luk.  Da. i sauce mayonnaise. Da. Spasiba 

And that is how you order a sub from 'Aмерикан Сэндвич' (subway) with my favorite toppings.  That's all you need to know to survive. The rest comes with practice and soon you will be a professional Russian, just like this guy....


Professional Russian  (make sure to watch the entire thing

Russian lesson of the day

The story goes that a few guys were getting ready for a big night of drinking, they go to the store and purchase a biscuit each and 5 bottles of vodka.  In the morning each of the guys are suffering from severe headaches, upset stomach with vomiting, decrease in mental capacity and a pale appearance. 

Their explanation is that it must have been a bad batch of biscuits. 

How Russia got the Olympics (and other events)

I was talking with a local the other day and we ended up discussing how Russia all of a sudden will be hosting a range of world sporting events such as...

2014 Olympics in Socchi
2016 Ice Hockey World Cup
2018 FIFA World Cup

I couldn't think of any events recently held in Russia and was asking if it was strange that now three very large events will be here in a span of 7 years.  Turns out there was a very simple explanation.  Many people in the international community are certain the world will be ending soon, whether through the Mayan prediction or the next rapture, etc. so these decision committees said....

'Screw it, we're all going to be dead anyways.  Let's give them to Russia.'

Harassment at Mcdonalds

I broke down today and joined the Mcdonalds craze that seems to have a hold of this city.  The lineups to the registers inside as well as the outdoor walk-up window remind me of Tim Horton's back home.  In a desperate move for food at a late hour before starting the overnight shift at work I hit the walk-up window and placed my order with the fewest required words possible. 

After a few practice runs in my head of what I needed to say to order what I wanted I was ready and as long as the McEmployee listened to me there wouldn't be a problem.  Today, however, I got the guy who felt like throwing some questions into the middle of my practiced order.  He completely caught me offguard and I lost my focus so after taking a  moment to come up with a response to a question i didn't understand I gave up and told him I don't speak Russian. 

He knew a bit of english and his translation of the question turned out be 'boy or girl?' I started thinking.....

1)  I thought my gender was obvious enough
2) When did asking your gender become part of the ordering process?

I felt emasculated but refused to answer his question and simply repeated my order in a deeper voice.  That seemed to work. 

I realized later that maybe he thought I ordered a kids happy meal or something where the toy that comes with it is gender specific.  This makes the most sense to me but still not sure how he would hear me order that as the Russian pronunciation of Big Mac is ..wait for it....Big Mac. 

Medical Mythbusters

I had to visit the med clinic the other day for a vaccination and I inadvertently went through a round of Russian Mythbusters. 

Myth:  It's only a vaccine, it will be easy
Fact:  no, it won't.    BUSTED

Myth:  The doctors don't speak english but the receptionists do. No need for a translator.
Fact:  Three receptionists, no English.  Always hire a translator.        BUSTED


Myth:  If the doctor hands you a thermometer and just to make sure on where it goes you point at the thermometer, then at your mouth and doctor nods her head to confirm, then be confident that's where it goes.
Fact:  The thermometer goes in your armpit.  Where were you on that one translator???  BUSTED

Myth:  Be concerned of where that thermometer had been before you put it in your mouth.
Fact:  yes, be very concerned.     CONFIRMED

Russian Lesson of the Day

If you find this sign informative you are not allowed to use the bathroom in my apartment.  

Russian Lesson of the Day

There's really no point to bumper cars....unless they have guns

Today's Menu

Dave:  What salad do you have today?
Cook:  Carrot salad
Dave:  Oh, what all is in it?
Cook:  Carrots
Dave:   That makes sense

The ultra complex carrot salad

Paradiski - Les Arcs

My recent snowboarding vacation took place in the southeast corner of France, the Peisey-Vallandry ski area of the French Alps. I took the train from Paris on a 5 hour trip to the closest town, passing through Albertville on the way.  Albertville, for those who don't remember, was the host city the 1992 winter olympics.  Many of the events took place outside of Albertville and I was passing through this area in the train it was easy to see why.  There were many towns located not far from each other to access as much of the Alps as possible.  As it turns out the resorts I was staying at, Les Arcs, was a spot used for some of the skiing during those olympics.  On a side note, Canada collected only 7 medals (2 gold) that year compared to 26 medals in 2010 including 14 gold.  I had the absolute pleasure of travelling to Vancouver last year and enjoying a part of the olympics with great friends but that's a whole other story involving the Molson Canadian Hockey House, multiple Team Canada hockey jerseys, twizzelators, taquitos, getting filmed on national television while belting the Canadian anthem and strolling the Vancouver streets in costumes like this....

ya, it's a one-piece

Like I said, it's a whole other story but I'll get back to my vacation.  The resort I was going to be boarding at had an elevation of 2000m which turned out to be key as much of the snow on the lower resorts had melted and the ground could be seen.  The weather was wonderful, possibly a little too warm but since I'm barely a better boarder than some one of those cocky 7 year olds whipping by me on the hill, I didn't need pristine conditions.  There was a fair bit of fresh snow that fell during the week so all-in-all I had nothing to complain about. 

Ski trips, no matter the age, tend to involve a fair bit of drinking and since I was meeting up with 5 guys from the UK it's safe to say this trip went beyond that.  It helped (or didn't help) that we were staying at a resort that had All-you-can-drink wine and $1 beers.  The quality was terrible but you couldn't beat the price.  The next most reasonable beer was $8 at other establishments so we usually stuck near home for sociables, copious amounts of drinking games including one called 'depth charge'.  If you don't know it you don't want to.  The loser of each game had to finish their drinks, of course, but there were added punishments such as having to wear a horse head to the bar or during dinner.  Don't ask me why someone decided to bring a horse head on the trip.  This was a popular punishment until it caused a little kid to freak out seeing a horse's head on a human body. That will most likely stick with him  for life, I know my traumatic horse story did.  

Due to the effectiveness of the drinking games, the guys from the UK were in top form most of the trip.  This got us into a few interesting situations of almost getting run over by a snow plow, having a pushing match with police officers in the elevator, punching our chalet host, and other scenarios I have chosen to censor. In each of these situations I was the typical Canadian peacemaker trying to keep the Brits under control.  It Seemed I could handle my alcohol a bit better than they could.  Nevertheless, these antics made us quite popular with the local ski staff and wanted to join our party. 

One night, my buddy and I were the only ones that could make it out.  The rest of the crew had too difficult of a time staying awake for dinner and keeping dinner down so we went out for a few beers, a quiet night.  We ran into a couple from Israel and chatted with them for a little while, nice people.  They were staying at the club med resort and they were telling us that it was a party every night with lots of single Belgian girls.  Being part Belgian I thought it was my duty to meet with some people with my heritage so my buddy and I made a plan to go to club med.  The couple told us it's actually quite difficult to get in since the whole idea with club med is it's a package deal and since everything is included the only one's allowed in the resort are the guests who have properly paid for the services.  Also, the couple told us not to go that night since it was getting late and they would be closing down the bar in half hour or so.  At that point, we had Belgium on the mind, so we ignored that last statement and made our plan to infiltrate club med.  My friend, being British, wanted to go with a 007 tactic and I was going with the Mission Impossible strategy but I think our styles clashed as we had three failed attempts at finding a secret entry and decided just to walk in the front door and see what happens.  The security staff at club med should be used as secret service agents since they were after us right away looking for identification, reasons for being there, where we were staying, etc. and forced us to leave as quickly as possible.  As we were told, the bar was closed anyways so our plan was doomed to fail.  A boycott on club med was put into effect after that. 

Overall, It was not a relaxing vacation but definitely worthwhile.

View from the Summit

I was at a local nightclub last night and partway through the night someone decided to show the semi-finals (i think) of Canada vs. Scotland in Ford world men's curling championship on the only TV they had in the club.  An interesting choice to say the least to show in the night club.  As expected no one was watching except for me and it wasn't for my love of curling but noticing that this tournament was being held in Regina.  For those who don't know, Regina is my hometown.  Just as with the diamond in the rough find of the Bryan Adams tape in a Russian work truck, I felt a bit of pride and homesickness to see my city on TV and all the fans in red cheering on Canada in what ended up being a win.  It didn't matter that the Euro/Russian house music was blaring in the foreground.  As the camera scanned the crowd of fans it showed a seemingly endless close up of an older lady, presumably a proud mother, waving her canadian flag in front of her.  The only problem is that she was holding it backwards. You might say that it's impossible to hold the Canadian flag backwards an you would be mostly right but when it has a trim at the bottom that says CANADA but you see it as ADANAC it becomes a bit more obvious. 

This affected me more than it should have at the time and I was a little distraught from seeing my flag being waved backwards.  Thankfully, a nice girl with a barbed wire tattoo on her arm took me to the dance floor and helped me forget my troubles.  After a few basic Russian-English back and forths I asked what her job was and she told me it was a 'secret! secret!'....must be a government thing.

Self-Sustaining Russian Business

Soon after moving here I enjoyed a brand of vodka called 'Русский Стандарт' or Russian Standard.  I didn't realize until today that 'Russian Standard' is a corporation that operates in three areas: Banking, Vodka Distilling and Insurance.  Below is my flowchart of how their business operates and how it is probably one of the most profitable businesses in Russia. 

My editor (mother) has informed me that my last entry was full of grammatical errors. My apologies, I tend to write these very quickly and neglect to read them over before posting.

Vacation

After barely making it to the train station and arriving with my shirt drenched in sweat, I boarded the train to start my 5 hour trip through the France countryside on my way to the Alps in southeast France.  It should be a beautiful trip and a great chance to see more of France. 

I'm looking forward to meeting up with my old friend I used to work with in Canada, despite the fact that he's British. 

I could write a complete entry on the last two days of this training course.  We had a consultant instructor hailing from LSU in Louisiana with a PHD in psychology to deliver material on 'coaching' as it is a significant part of our job role.  The only positive feedback I can offer for this guy is that he had plenty of energy.  In my 28 years have put myself in many situations that one could call wasteful.  I've spent full days laying on the floor of my apartment because laying on the couch was just too optimistic of a task to complete in a day but these 2 days were the most useless two days of my life.  As a outside consultant he would have to pride himself on being able to present topics to anyone in any company without having in depth knowledge of the company's organization or operations. 

Since his knowledge was limited on our org structure we spent the better parts of the sessions teaching him how we operate, our reporting structure and our role in the company.  The course was being held in a small room and I guess this guy was used to speaking in auditoriums or maybe even stadiums because he would get so aninmated and yell as loud as he could to make a point.  He also used the strategy of punching himself, slapping his own hands, pounding on the wall/tables for dramatic effect.  By the end of the day hands were completely red from constantly beating the shit out of himself.  The class found it funny at first but after a while
it just became annoying and frustrating.  He could tell we weren't getting involved so he continued to get more and more animated and use a louder voice to engage us.  He might do a lot of presentations for the hearing impaired.  The only joy I took in those two days was the incessant jokes resulting and humourous criticism from his presentation style.  There was no value from this part of the course, which was supposed to be the main draw for entire week.  It was a shame as the rest of the course was quite valuable.  I have to stop here on this topic before I get too negative, as awful as these two days were, without it, I would have been leaving Paris two days earlier so it's not all bad.  

As always, the fellow course-mates were top notch and we attacked paris as best we could.  I continue to add friends from around the world and I can't wait to take advantage of their friendship when I make a trip to their countries.  

Russian Humour Cont'd

To make a long story short, I met this petite girl from our training center today and my preconceptions of how such a person would talk/act were shattered as she gave me a great example of a Russian joke. 

There were three of us sitting around the table and a conversation came up of how tough the next two days of work will be for them.  Each of them had a lot of outstanding tasks, stuff they didn't want to, late nights, etc.  I chimed in, agreed with them and, with a straight face, said I as going to have a rough few days as well and I wasn't looking forward to tomorrow morning having to get up early and board a plane to Paris for and after a week of training have to spend another week snowboarding in the Alps. 

She responded to my sarcasm with 'Paris will be nice, and a nice place for you to die'.

touche

The Secret to the Russian sense of Humour

My sarcastic, awkward, dry and immature sense of humour has not gone over as well in Russia when compared to the US/Canada.  Of course the language barrier offers some challenges but I've been hit with blank stares of confusion when telling some 'jokes'.  

But, since I need my sense of humour to me through most situations in life I had to adapt and try to figure out how to make a Russian laugh.  With some people here it isn't so hard but there are some sticklers who make it very difficult for me to even get a smile from.  

One of the harder cases was the receptionist at my gym, very tough to crack using conventional ways but, in the end, it was a basic solution.  On Women's day I decided to learn how to say 'Happy Women's Day' in Russian and I was going pass on my well wishes to all the Russian women I saw from then on.  So, even though this receptionist usually gives me plain faced, disapproving looks i decided to say 'поздравляю с женским днем!!!'  (which is not an easy phrase to get out.)  Paste it into google translate and you can listen for yourself.

Well, this seemingly sincere statement turned out to be one of the funniest things she must have heard in the past year because not only did she start cracking up instantly but as I left the gym an hour later she still couldn't look me in the eye without laughing. I'm an international master of comedy. 

International Women's Day

Today is a International Women's Day, celebrated very seriously in Russia and is officially a day off from work.  It gets a bit complicated after that since, in Russia, they seem to always try to tie a day off into the weekend. In this particular case since today is the holiday everyone worked on Saturday so that they would have Monday off and the holiday becomes a Sun-Mon-Tues set of time off.

Aside from the time off, it is a tradition for the men to shower the women with flowers, chocolates, cakes, champagne, etc. I got caught off guard by not knowing the tradition and, since it's a day off today, all the gifts at work were being handed out on Saturday at work.  I wasn't going to be shown up by all the other guys in the office so I made a quick trip to the store and bought some Belgian chocolates for the women who I've gotten to know in my time here.

There was also a gathering held last night by our spousal association, partly as a send off for my boss and his family as they are moving soon, but also to celebrate Women's Day Eve and give everyone a chance to celebrate the great women we have here.  I have nothing but wonderful things to say about the families I've met in Russia and the always welcoming SSA (and I'm not just saying that because I know they're reading my blog ;)  For some reason they keep inviting the shy Canadian with no spouse out to their parties and I'm very grateful.  

So to all the women out there, in the words of a promiscuous male foreigner in Thailand after a night of risky decisions....

'Thank you for being a woman!'