Friday, December 30, 2005
Happy New Year from Kyrgyzstan!
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Transliteration = Funny
A bit of fun in the supermarket aisles (and with The Beta Store re-opening last week, we actually have a supermarket now!):
Multi-Lingual Embarrassments Continued
Last Friday during our Russian lesson, I inadvertently learned a dirty word. I'm still not sure what the word means exactly, but I can at least say it.
We were learning new verbs, so Jarken, our tutor, was having us use the verbs in sentences. One of the verbs we were learning, peasat (I can't type in Cyrillic, so phonetics will have to do for now), means 'to write.' Of the verbs we know, most all of them are conjugated by dropping the last consonant and adding, in the first person, what sounds like you. Given no evidence to the contrary, I assumed this would be how one should conjugate this verb as well. I looked at Jarken and said Ya peeshayou poemey, thinking I was saying 'I write poems.'
She sat back in her chair and shook her head. Then, in a voice far more stern than usual, she said, in English, No. Please remember, 'peeshyou, not peeshayou.' I chalked this up to the usual and frequent instances when I somehow foul up the language and Jarken kindly reminds me of it. As it was late in the lesson and she'd already been correcting me on a fairly steady basis for over an hour, the stern tone of voice seemed maybe fitting.
A few minutes later, again piecing together sentences with our new verbs but in a different context, I again said Ya peeshayou poemey. Jarken immediately said No. That is for...that is for toilet! Please do not say. Confused, Erin and I looked at one another then both looked at Jarken. She explained in broken English and a series of charades that it is what little children do in their pants, what people do in the toilet, and that by adding that one syllable I was horribly altering the meaning of my sentence. Shaking her head, she repeated what I'd said and laughed for a good, long minute.
I piss poems. Or I shit poems. I'm not sure which. Either one, though...not so much, thanks.
We were learning new verbs, so Jarken, our tutor, was having us use the verbs in sentences. One of the verbs we were learning, peasat (I can't type in Cyrillic, so phonetics will have to do for now), means 'to write.' Of the verbs we know, most all of them are conjugated by dropping the last consonant and adding, in the first person, what sounds like you. Given no evidence to the contrary, I assumed this would be how one should conjugate this verb as well. I looked at Jarken and said Ya peeshayou poemey, thinking I was saying 'I write poems.'
She sat back in her chair and shook her head. Then, in a voice far more stern than usual, she said, in English, No. Please remember, 'peeshyou, not peeshayou.' I chalked this up to the usual and frequent instances when I somehow foul up the language and Jarken kindly reminds me of it. As it was late in the lesson and she'd already been correcting me on a fairly steady basis for over an hour, the stern tone of voice seemed maybe fitting.
A few minutes later, again piecing together sentences with our new verbs but in a different context, I again said Ya peeshayou poemey. Jarken immediately said No. That is for...that is for toilet! Please do not say. Confused, Erin and I looked at one another then both looked at Jarken. She explained in broken English and a series of charades that it is what little children do in their pants, what people do in the toilet, and that by adding that one syllable I was horribly altering the meaning of my sentence. Shaking her head, she repeated what I'd said and laughed for a good, long minute.
I piss poems. Or I shit poems. I'm not sure which. Either one, though...not so much, thanks.
Friday, December 23, 2005
Cupcakes, French Fries, & Jesus Christ
Well, as you've undoubtedly figured out by all the ridiculous specials on television over the last two weeks and the gaudy light display on the house across the street (an apparent attempt to get the electric bill to match the gas), it's Christmas time again! I don't know what that means for you, but for me it means one thing. And, even though Erin and I are in Kyrgyzstan this year and a lot of other things are different, I can at least take comfort in the fact that my favorite annual tradition can still be enjoyed, time and again. I'm speaking, of course, of this wee bit o' genius, which, for the sake of good taste and those who are made to spend time with me on any regular basis, I only allow myself to partake of for a few brief minutes in the few fleeting days around the holiday. To get in the spirit. To feel the cheer.
If you're one of those pesky few not in the Jesus fan club or just don't feel like singing carols right now but still wanna laugh a bit, may I recommend this, a gem that brilliantly manages to pay respect to both C.S. Lewis and Dr. Dre simultaneously.
'Tis the season, folks. Enjoy.
If you're one of those pesky few not in the Jesus fan club or just don't feel like singing carols right now but still wanna laugh a bit, may I recommend this, a gem that brilliantly manages to pay respect to both C.S. Lewis and Dr. Dre simultaneously.
'Tis the season, folks. Enjoy.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Gone Out the Window
Sometime last week a friend emailed me and asked what it looked like out our window. I realized, after I sent it (actually, after she replied and I saw what I'd written), that this might make for a good blog post for y'all. And since my days lately have more or less consisted only of waking up, writing, throwing myself around the apartment in what I like to call 'exercise,' showering, dressing, walking the three blocks to campus, having Russian lessons, eating wee bits from the bazaar around the corner, and generally not doing anything exciting or out of the ordinary, there's not much else of note to put up on this page. So, looking out my window...
On the kitchen/living room side of the apartment, directly across the street (Togolok Muldo), is a big university building (some other university, not AUCA; there are seriously like 35 colleges in Bishkek) with a really cool Persian-esque tower thing on top (I'm a bit ignorant and therefore inarticulate when it comes to architecture, sorry) and a 6 story apartment building beside it. Most of the apartment buildings in Bishkek have rather ugly faces, as no one technically owns them. Those who were living in the apartments when the Soviet system fell were just given the apartment, but the building itself, formerly owned by the state, fell into some nebulous ownership limbo, where they've stayed since. As a result, the facades of most buildings are crumbly and pockmarked and the stairwells are dark and damp and dirty, even in the nicer buildings where the apartments themselves are warm and well-kept.
(Our apartment building falls into that last category, thankfully. Although there seems to be someone taking care of the building at large as well, as last week someone covered up the few broken windows in the stairwell, replaced lightbulbs, and added a keypad security device on the metal gate inside the outer door. They didn't, however, install any device that would allow one to open the door once the security number had been entered on the keypad, which means that everyone is forced to drop a shoulder into the metal grates every time they come home. It makes for a slightly louder, funnier, bruised-shoulder-ier existence.)
Looking north down the street is more of the same for a few blocks but then it peters out into a sort of shanty town of little tin-roofed shacks and then the edge of town. Before that, around the first corner (Jabek Jaloo), is the small bazaar we go to everyday to buy bread and produce and rice and pasta and some cheese from time to time (we've been here nearly five weeks, I know, but it feels like a year already, so I'm going to leave that "from time to time" in there). And the other day we bought a rotisserie chicken that was delicious (if, ya know, you're into that sort of thing) and a smoky sausage link thing whose origin we have yet to discern with any authority.
Back to the windows, if you were to look south, you'd see the national soccer stadium and sports complex just past the first corner (we're one empty lot from the corner of Togolok Muldo and Frunze, in the middle of the second floor; a small magazine, like a convenience store, stands right on the corner), though you'd be more likely to hear the stadium before you saw it on a game day. (Very much like our house in Bloomington during football season, that.) Beyond that and across the street is some sort of big governmental building, very Soviet looking--concrete, right angles, imposing--with a two-story statue of Manas carrying a horse on his shoulders out front. Manas is the warrior horseman who is the national hero and the protagonist of the most famous Kyrgyz epic poem, The Manas. (When I say famous, I mostly mean among the Kyrgyz and a select group of other Central Asians and Mongolians and Chinese; I don't mean Shakespeare or Shaggy & Scooby.)
Looking past that, out of the city, on a clear day you'll see the rather huge, rather imposing, incredibly jagged Kyrgyz Kirkasi mountain range. On a day less clear, you'll still see the tops of the mountains, covered in snow and looming. They're in the ballpark of 15,000+ feet, which makes for a surprising sight when you suddenly look up from the sidewalk and find them there staring at you.
Out the bedroom window, on the eastern side of the apartment, you'll see the apartment complex courtyard, which looks exactly like a run-down apartment complex courtyard in any city in America. There is a playground equipped with a swing set without swings, a sand box with no sand, and a slide covered in graffiti. On the other side of the far end of the wing running east-west on the southern side (to the right, looking out the window) is the Japanese Embassy, the dubious existence of which you are all by now well aware. On the sidewalk between that same southern wing of the building and the embassy were three large orange dumpsters where we put our trash for pick-up. About a week ago we discovered the dumpsters gone. They have not yet returned and we now walk our trash about a block west down Frunze to another set of orange dumpsters.
The air is clean, the water filthy, and women's footwear is of the L'il Kim / corner ho school of fashion. Actually, most of the younger women dress like what I'd assume was a pro in the states: really short skirts, fishnets, gigantic leather boots (knee high at least, thigh high often) with three/four/five inch stiletto heels in varying shades of bright colors (gold and silver lame, hot pink, day-glo green, etc), shirts that do little to hide anything one might want to hide with a shirt, and long furs covering it all when outside. For the first two days I thought we lived in the red light district. Then I wised up. The men favor a more Mafia-inspired fashion, black on black on black. 3/4-length black leather jackets are the norm, over black pants, pointy (think elves) black leather shoes, black sweater or sportcoat, black oxford underneath. And topping it all off is either a furry Russian box hat (think George Costanza skipping through a winter day in only a t-shirt) or what's called a kolpak, the traditional Kyrgyz hat, which looks like a tipi with flaps balanced precariously on someone's head. The same was true of the men in Armenia (minus the hats), so I'm guessing it's a post-Soviet thing. The Armenian women loved their giant heels, too, but not so much the tiny skirts, fishnets, and teeny tops.
The window is now closed.
On the kitchen/living room side of the apartment, directly across the street (Togolok Muldo), is a big university building (some other university, not AUCA; there are seriously like 35 colleges in Bishkek) with a really cool Persian-esque tower thing on top (I'm a bit ignorant and therefore inarticulate when it comes to architecture, sorry) and a 6 story apartment building beside it. Most of the apartment buildings in Bishkek have rather ugly faces, as no one technically owns them. Those who were living in the apartments when the Soviet system fell were just given the apartment, but the building itself, formerly owned by the state, fell into some nebulous ownership limbo, where they've stayed since. As a result, the facades of most buildings are crumbly and pockmarked and the stairwells are dark and damp and dirty, even in the nicer buildings where the apartments themselves are warm and well-kept.
(Our apartment building falls into that last category, thankfully. Although there seems to be someone taking care of the building at large as well, as last week someone covered up the few broken windows in the stairwell, replaced lightbulbs, and added a keypad security device on the metal gate inside the outer door. They didn't, however, install any device that would allow one to open the door once the security number had been entered on the keypad, which means that everyone is forced to drop a shoulder into the metal grates every time they come home. It makes for a slightly louder, funnier, bruised-shoulder-ier existence.)
Looking north down the street is more of the same for a few blocks but then it peters out into a sort of shanty town of little tin-roofed shacks and then the edge of town. Before that, around the first corner (Jabek Jaloo), is the small bazaar we go to everyday to buy bread and produce and rice and pasta and some cheese from time to time (we've been here nearly five weeks, I know, but it feels like a year already, so I'm going to leave that "from time to time" in there). And the other day we bought a rotisserie chicken that was delicious (if, ya know, you're into that sort of thing) and a smoky sausage link thing whose origin we have yet to discern with any authority.
Back to the windows, if you were to look south, you'd see the national soccer stadium and sports complex just past the first corner (we're one empty lot from the corner of Togolok Muldo and Frunze, in the middle of the second floor; a small magazine, like a convenience store, stands right on the corner), though you'd be more likely to hear the stadium before you saw it on a game day. (Very much like our house in Bloomington during football season, that.) Beyond that and across the street is some sort of big governmental building, very Soviet looking--concrete, right angles, imposing--with a two-story statue of Manas carrying a horse on his shoulders out front. Manas is the warrior horseman who is the national hero and the protagonist of the most famous Kyrgyz epic poem, The Manas. (When I say famous, I mostly mean among the Kyrgyz and a select group of other Central Asians and Mongolians and Chinese; I don't mean Shakespeare or Shaggy & Scooby.)
Looking past that, out of the city, on a clear day you'll see the rather huge, rather imposing, incredibly jagged Kyrgyz Kirkasi mountain range. On a day less clear, you'll still see the tops of the mountains, covered in snow and looming. They're in the ballpark of 15,000+ feet, which makes for a surprising sight when you suddenly look up from the sidewalk and find them there staring at you.
Out the bedroom window, on the eastern side of the apartment, you'll see the apartment complex courtyard, which looks exactly like a run-down apartment complex courtyard in any city in America. There is a playground equipped with a swing set without swings, a sand box with no sand, and a slide covered in graffiti. On the other side of the far end of the wing running east-west on the southern side (to the right, looking out the window) is the Japanese Embassy, the dubious existence of which you are all by now well aware. On the sidewalk between that same southern wing of the building and the embassy were three large orange dumpsters where we put our trash for pick-up. About a week ago we discovered the dumpsters gone. They have not yet returned and we now walk our trash about a block west down Frunze to another set of orange dumpsters.
The air is clean, the water filthy, and women's footwear is of the L'il Kim / corner ho school of fashion. Actually, most of the younger women dress like what I'd assume was a pro in the states: really short skirts, fishnets, gigantic leather boots (knee high at least, thigh high often) with three/four/five inch stiletto heels in varying shades of bright colors (gold and silver lame, hot pink, day-glo green, etc), shirts that do little to hide anything one might want to hide with a shirt, and long furs covering it all when outside. For the first two days I thought we lived in the red light district. Then I wised up. The men favor a more Mafia-inspired fashion, black on black on black. 3/4-length black leather jackets are the norm, over black pants, pointy (think elves) black leather shoes, black sweater or sportcoat, black oxford underneath. And topping it all off is either a furry Russian box hat (think George Costanza skipping through a winter day in only a t-shirt) or what's called a kolpak, the traditional Kyrgyz hat, which looks like a tipi with flaps balanced precariously on someone's head. The same was true of the men in Armenia (minus the hats), so I'm guessing it's a post-Soviet thing. The Armenian women loved their giant heels, too, but not so much the tiny skirts, fishnets, and teeny tops.
The window is now closed.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Contrary to Popular Opinion, I am Not in Any Way Depressed, Unhappy, or Otherwise Disgruntled & I Offer to You, as Proof, These Following Truths:
I have put my purist tendencies aside and, beyond merely accepting Erin’s setting Snood to the “Christmas” option, find myself giggling frequently at the weird, new Santa and Ornament Snoods.
*
While walking home from the university last Wednesday night during a terrific snow storm—big, thick flakes in rapid succession and a still, crisp air—I felt as though I’d slipped into the musical drama version of my life, or, at least, a music montage segue between plot points, and, in order to supply the requisite soundtrack and still not quite comfortable enough when alone in the dark to wear headphones and deafen myself with the ipod, I sang, out loud, Nina Simone’s “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good” all the way home. While I’ll concede that it is indeed a sad song, the choice was made not because it twinned my own inner-self in some way but because I felt it better upped the drama of the situation, of the musical I had slipped into. These things happen. Directors call them artistic choices. Psychologists call them psychotic episodes. The few Kyrgyz I passed on the street called it funny. I agreed.
*
We visited the Meat House again and, as of this afternoon, we are now in possession of nearly two pounds of cured, smoky pork, spicy mustard, a block of white semi-soft cheese, and what amounts to a giant loaf of white sandwich bread. Have I mentioned that I love sandwiches?
*
Having watched the European finals, it appears the Norwegian curling team will be a favorite for the ’06 Olympic gold. I have no special allegiance to Norway, but curling, my god, could a sport possibly be any more ridiculously fun? I don’t think so.
*
And then I watched the Scottish lawn bowling finals and realized that yes, yes there can be a funnier sport in the world. Scottish lawn bowling—not to be confused with bocce, though other than the slightly-oval shape of the lawn bowling balls, I couldn’t be sure what the specific difference is—is genius to watch, full of men with the same athletic build as PBA stars in the US, glorious comb-overs, and a weird little stutter-step strut thing after every roll. Watch for it, it’s good stuff. Promise.
*
I saw a drunk man slip on sidewalk ice and slide ten feet on his chest, his arms and legs raised and spread in ecstatic revelry, then spring up from the ride’s end smiling, begin singing, and stumble on, unscathed. It was 2:30 in the afternoon.
*
I have managed to conjure, out of the few bits of produce not frozen inedible at the bazaar by the recent patch of serious cold and what I think was lamb and a smoked sausage of unknown origin, to make rather delicious and perfectly passable versions of both jambalaya and shepherd’s pie. Delicious, I tell you, delicious!
*
Among the Most Played on our iTunes right now, as I type this, are A Tribe Called Quest’s “Award Tour,” The Beatles “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” The Detroit Cobras’ “Shout Bama Lama,” and Dr. Teeth & the Electric Mayhem’s “Can You Picture That?”. This is not the soundtrack of a depressive ex-pat, people. These are the songs a happy man sings and dances to by himself in his apartment after a few hours of writing that’s been going well.
*
This weekend saw me surpass the 20,000 word mark on the novel. Erin and I shared a tiny apricot cake in celebration.
*
Lastly, I honestly believed that a bizarre, somewhat inedible sandwich and noises like cars being eaten by enormous lizards in the middle of the night were funny stories, not indications of my desire to be air-lifted home.
*
While walking home from the university last Wednesday night during a terrific snow storm—big, thick flakes in rapid succession and a still, crisp air—I felt as though I’d slipped into the musical drama version of my life, or, at least, a music montage segue between plot points, and, in order to supply the requisite soundtrack and still not quite comfortable enough when alone in the dark to wear headphones and deafen myself with the ipod, I sang, out loud, Nina Simone’s “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good” all the way home. While I’ll concede that it is indeed a sad song, the choice was made not because it twinned my own inner-self in some way but because I felt it better upped the drama of the situation, of the musical I had slipped into. These things happen. Directors call them artistic choices. Psychologists call them psychotic episodes. The few Kyrgyz I passed on the street called it funny. I agreed.
*
We visited the Meat House again and, as of this afternoon, we are now in possession of nearly two pounds of cured, smoky pork, spicy mustard, a block of white semi-soft cheese, and what amounts to a giant loaf of white sandwich bread. Have I mentioned that I love sandwiches?
*
Having watched the European finals, it appears the Norwegian curling team will be a favorite for the ’06 Olympic gold. I have no special allegiance to Norway, but curling, my god, could a sport possibly be any more ridiculously fun? I don’t think so.
*
And then I watched the Scottish lawn bowling finals and realized that yes, yes there can be a funnier sport in the world. Scottish lawn bowling—not to be confused with bocce, though other than the slightly-oval shape of the lawn bowling balls, I couldn’t be sure what the specific difference is—is genius to watch, full of men with the same athletic build as PBA stars in the US, glorious comb-overs, and a weird little stutter-step strut thing after every roll. Watch for it, it’s good stuff. Promise.
*
I saw a drunk man slip on sidewalk ice and slide ten feet on his chest, his arms and legs raised and spread in ecstatic revelry, then spring up from the ride’s end smiling, begin singing, and stumble on, unscathed. It was 2:30 in the afternoon.
*
I have managed to conjure, out of the few bits of produce not frozen inedible at the bazaar by the recent patch of serious cold and what I think was lamb and a smoked sausage of unknown origin, to make rather delicious and perfectly passable versions of both jambalaya and shepherd’s pie. Delicious, I tell you, delicious!
*
Among the Most Played on our iTunes right now, as I type this, are A Tribe Called Quest’s “Award Tour,” The Beatles “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” The Detroit Cobras’ “Shout Bama Lama,” and Dr. Teeth & the Electric Mayhem’s “Can You Picture That?”. This is not the soundtrack of a depressive ex-pat, people. These are the songs a happy man sings and dances to by himself in his apartment after a few hours of writing that’s been going well.
*
This weekend saw me surpass the 20,000 word mark on the novel. Erin and I shared a tiny apricot cake in celebration.
*
Lastly, I honestly believed that a bizarre, somewhat inedible sandwich and noises like cars being eaten by enormous lizards in the middle of the night were funny stories, not indications of my desire to be air-lifted home.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Pipe Dreams
Last Wednesday night, around 3:30 or so, I woke up and rolled over so that I was facing the bedroom door. I was on my way back to sleep when I realized I hadn't actually woken up because I was cold or because the bed is too short or because I was having a dream where the same horrible person keeps calling and calling me until I finally have to smash my cell phone to bits with a hammer (all of which have recently woken me from sleep) but because the world was vibrating and making an awful noise while it was at it. Awful like a subwoofer implanted in your molars, like someone feeding a mid-70s model Lincoln through a paper shredder. The more I woke up, the louder the noise became.
I woke up Erin after a little bit and told her, "The blender is stuck on puree but something's blocking the blades." She made a noise meant to mean What the hell are you talking about? "Do you hear that awful noise," I asked. "Oh," she said.
We laid there a bit not talking. Eventually Erin put her glasses on and went to the bedroom window, the one that overlooks the courtyard of our apartment complex. She thought maybe a car was out there making the noise. It would had to have been a monster truck with a jet engine, so not surprisingly, there was no car out there and Erin got back into bed.
I put my glasses on and got up. The computer was sitting on the dresser by the bedroom door so, thinking it could have maybe been running roughly and using the dresser as a sort of amplifier, I reached out and felt the drawers for vibrations. Nothing, which, of course, is a good thing, as they probably would have signaled the end of the laptop.
The noise was so loud and so bass-heavy that it was difficult to tell which direction it could have been coming from. The only corollary I have at my disposal is if you were to experience seeing Jucifer in a very small closet. Or there was a story on This American Life once (Episode 279, if you're looking) about a group of people who compete in car stereo contests, something called db drag racing, where they build car stereos so loud they can't actually be played while someone is sitting in the car. It was something like that. So we went blindly into the hallway in search of the source, like David Livingstone setting off to find the source of the Nile, only in pajamas and without such lofty goals.
Once into the hallway a few feet, it became clear that the noise was originating somewhere in the direction of the bathroom or kitchen. Moving in that direction it became even clearer that the noise was definitely coming from the bathroom. In the wall behind the washing machine, to be exact. We looked at each other and then both went to shut off the water for the wash. It was off. "Off is to the right, right?" I screamed. Erin ignored me and began turning the machine on and off again, thinking maybe it had somehow come to life and was eating a Jabberwocky. No dukes. Finally we noticed that the wall was actually vibrating. The pipes inside that bit of wall were not well and were letting us know as much through the only means they had available to them: retched, horrible noise.
We closed the bathroom door and the bedroom door, too, and climbed back into bed. The noise didn't stop for another hour and a half, during which I sat awake trying to keep my teeth from chattering while Erin slept soundly beside me.
The noises have come back a few times since. And some horrific banging noises as well from the same spot. The banging noises sound like someone's knocking on the door with a ball peen hammer. The first few times I actually got up to look.
There is no moral here, no punch-line. Anecdotes can fail in that way and still exist.
I woke up Erin after a little bit and told her, "The blender is stuck on puree but something's blocking the blades." She made a noise meant to mean What the hell are you talking about? "Do you hear that awful noise," I asked. "Oh," she said.
We laid there a bit not talking. Eventually Erin put her glasses on and went to the bedroom window, the one that overlooks the courtyard of our apartment complex. She thought maybe a car was out there making the noise. It would had to have been a monster truck with a jet engine, so not surprisingly, there was no car out there and Erin got back into bed.
I put my glasses on and got up. The computer was sitting on the dresser by the bedroom door so, thinking it could have maybe been running roughly and using the dresser as a sort of amplifier, I reached out and felt the drawers for vibrations. Nothing, which, of course, is a good thing, as they probably would have signaled the end of the laptop.
The noise was so loud and so bass-heavy that it was difficult to tell which direction it could have been coming from. The only corollary I have at my disposal is if you were to experience seeing Jucifer in a very small closet. Or there was a story on This American Life once (Episode 279, if you're looking) about a group of people who compete in car stereo contests, something called db drag racing, where they build car stereos so loud they can't actually be played while someone is sitting in the car. It was something like that. So we went blindly into the hallway in search of the source, like David Livingstone setting off to find the source of the Nile, only in pajamas and without such lofty goals.
Once into the hallway a few feet, it became clear that the noise was originating somewhere in the direction of the bathroom or kitchen. Moving in that direction it became even clearer that the noise was definitely coming from the bathroom. In the wall behind the washing machine, to be exact. We looked at each other and then both went to shut off the water for the wash. It was off. "Off is to the right, right?" I screamed. Erin ignored me and began turning the machine on and off again, thinking maybe it had somehow come to life and was eating a Jabberwocky. No dukes. Finally we noticed that the wall was actually vibrating. The pipes inside that bit of wall were not well and were letting us know as much through the only means they had available to them: retched, horrible noise.
We closed the bathroom door and the bedroom door, too, and climbed back into bed. The noise didn't stop for another hour and a half, during which I sat awake trying to keep my teeth from chattering while Erin slept soundly beside me.
The noises have come back a few times since. And some horrific banging noises as well from the same spot. The banging noises sound like someone's knocking on the door with a ball peen hammer. The first few times I actually got up to look.
There is no moral here, no punch-line. Anecdotes can fail in that way and still exist.
Friday, December 09, 2005
Cheating & How My Body Hates Me
I've been feeling kind of myneh all week. The specific symptoms of myneh have included sleeping far, far longer each day than one would deem "normal" (say, 16 hours easy), eating next to nothing, and feeling little desire to perform the simplest tasks or even those that typically bring me joy (writing, for instance). Thus, no blog posts all week. Sorry about that. I think the annual one-off round of flu is here for me (not Bird Flu damn it, just your average God Damn! it's cold out there kind of flu...). I'm more or less recovered (though I didn't get out of bed until mid-afternoon today and skipped yesterday's Russian lesson) and will attempt to make up for lost blog-time.
This all seemed to start on Monday, when Erin and I decided that for dinner we'd walk up to Fat Boys, the English-speaking, American-friendly, English language library-having restaurant downtown. We were both tired and very hungry (neither of us having eaten all day), and these factors combined into an all-encompassing laziness. As I've said before, it's tiring just leaving the apartment. So we cheated and took the easy route to dinner.
This week has been cold, very, very cold. As I write this it is 10 degree F in Bishkek (according to the weather widget on the Mac, anyway). That's about right for the week's weather in general. The walk downtown on Monday night was no exception, and by the time we reached Fat Boys--after a half hour or so--we found our faces numbed to the point that it was difficult to form words correctly. And our noses were running in a very unflattering, seemingly unstoppable manner.
Fat Boys is two rooms connected by a bar/foyer area on the ground floor of a large, block-long building a few minutes east of the main square. The room on the right houses the library. Neither of us ventured over there for a look-see, so I have no reports. (We may, in the near future, need to do so, however, as we're both dangerously nearing the end of the reading materials we brought with us. I found three back issues of The Economist last night in one of the cupboards and was gleeful for hours.) The room on the left is the dining area proper, with maybe twenty two-tops spread around the room, some pushed together against the walls to form four-tops.
Upon entering, E and I just sort of lingered inside the door, unsure of what to do next. The waitstaff (five or six young Kyrgyz girls) were all sitting or standing by the bar directly opposite the door. After a minute or so of our sizing up the place and slowly regaining feeling to our faces, one of the girls at the bar said, "Please sit anywhere" in English. There were a few couples toward the front of the room and a foursome at the table by the door. We sat ourselves at a free table in the corner furthest from the door, in the back left-hand corner of the building, and very shortly menus were brought to us.
It was oddly comforting and refreshing and just plain nice to find the menu in English. I was surprised by that (the response from my emotional center, not the English) and welcomed it, as it seemed to be helping with the physical warming of my body, which even after a few minutes inside I was still in desperate need of. We were left alone with the menus for a few minutes, then a waitress came over and asked us, in Russian, if we were ready to order. My yeeha English! feeling diminished a bit, but didn't vanish completely. Erin ordered, in English, a Greek Salad and a grilled cheese with tomato. I asked for a Turkish salad (essentially a Greek salad with the Feta and olives replaced by a metric ton of shredded carrots) and a curried chicken sandwich. The sandwich order was of the oh no, need to say something now sort. I had noticed the sandwich in my initial look through the menu and for some unknown reason went back there in my panicked need to order. I wasn't quite up to eating one of the dinner entree items (a full lamb dinner [of unknown cut] seemed a bit much, really) and didn't quite know whether or not it was cool to still order pancakes (a perennial comfort food, thank you very much; one of the other breakfast dishes was called "The Cholesterol" and involved grits, toast, several meats, and eggs...very funny). So curried chicken sandwich, obviously.
When our food came, all at once, everything looked good. The salads were big and delicious. Erin's grilled cheese was straight out of a sandwich maker, grill marks and all. The tomatoes in it were sliced nice and small, so as to both be warm and to avoid the unfortunately common occurrence of pulling the tomato slice out of the sandwich with a misplaced bite (I more or less lived on grilled cheese with tomato at Skidmore for two years [Spa Ladies of my past, I thank you], so I was happy to see such brilliant craftsmanship, so to speak). My sandwich, on the other hand, looked like a 1950s B-movie UFO: a large, round bulb, hard and brown, with bits of lettuce and a gelatinous, yellowy substance spilling out of the middle. In a way, it resembled a jelly donut filled with curried chicken. Only, you know, different.
And the roll was hard. Really, really hard. Too hard to easily bite into in one try. The added effort in grinding through the roll led the filling--with a consistency like super-loose tuna salad, only Grey Poupon brown--to shoot out in various directions. And while the filling was mayonnaise heavy to begin with, there was also another, autonomous layer of mayonnaise, thick and viscous, on either side of the filling. The overall effect was like attempting to bite through two cast-iron pans with a layer of potato salad in between, held in place by KY Jelly. Not easy. But it was really tasty and I was hungry, so I kept trying. The curry was flavorful and the roll, after it'd been gnawed away and allowed to sit for a bit in the mouth, was actually pretty tasty, too. But the whole thing was just too tiring. After five or six bites, I gave up. Erin gave me half of her grilled cheese and did her best to have a go at the curried chicken. She managed three or four bites and gave up, claiming to be full (bless her heart). Eventually, the waitress came back and cleared all of the plates except the sandwich, which continued to sit between us like an emblem of our failure for another ten or fifteen minutes.
We just sat there after that enjoying our tea and sodas (Central Asian Sprite has a tendency to taste like 7-Up, so I was having Pepsi). Erin helped me plan out the rest of the novel I'm working on (there was a rather sizable black hole in the plot and I was rapidly approaching it, but we managed to get that taken care of while sitting there). Eventually, the sandwich was adios-ed and we got our bill. The whole thing was about $6.50, including tip. Brilliant.
On our way out a group of three men came in. They stood just inside the doorway, looking confused, until one of the waitstaff directed them to a table. We smelled our kind in them, but left before letting on that we knew. Instead we went home, played a few games of Blokus and cribbage, then I went to bed, where I stayed until about four o'clock the next afternoon, alternately sleeping and waking long enough to moan, achingly roll over, and fall back asleep.
This all seemed to start on Monday, when Erin and I decided that for dinner we'd walk up to Fat Boys, the English-speaking, American-friendly, English language library-having restaurant downtown. We were both tired and very hungry (neither of us having eaten all day), and these factors combined into an all-encompassing laziness. As I've said before, it's tiring just leaving the apartment. So we cheated and took the easy route to dinner.
This week has been cold, very, very cold. As I write this it is 10 degree F in Bishkek (according to the weather widget on the Mac, anyway). That's about right for the week's weather in general. The walk downtown on Monday night was no exception, and by the time we reached Fat Boys--after a half hour or so--we found our faces numbed to the point that it was difficult to form words correctly. And our noses were running in a very unflattering, seemingly unstoppable manner.
Fat Boys is two rooms connected by a bar/foyer area on the ground floor of a large, block-long building a few minutes east of the main square. The room on the right houses the library. Neither of us ventured over there for a look-see, so I have no reports. (We may, in the near future, need to do so, however, as we're both dangerously nearing the end of the reading materials we brought with us. I found three back issues of The Economist last night in one of the cupboards and was gleeful for hours.) The room on the left is the dining area proper, with maybe twenty two-tops spread around the room, some pushed together against the walls to form four-tops.
Upon entering, E and I just sort of lingered inside the door, unsure of what to do next. The waitstaff (five or six young Kyrgyz girls) were all sitting or standing by the bar directly opposite the door. After a minute or so of our sizing up the place and slowly regaining feeling to our faces, one of the girls at the bar said, "Please sit anywhere" in English. There were a few couples toward the front of the room and a foursome at the table by the door. We sat ourselves at a free table in the corner furthest from the door, in the back left-hand corner of the building, and very shortly menus were brought to us.
It was oddly comforting and refreshing and just plain nice to find the menu in English. I was surprised by that (the response from my emotional center, not the English) and welcomed it, as it seemed to be helping with the physical warming of my body, which even after a few minutes inside I was still in desperate need of. We were left alone with the menus for a few minutes, then a waitress came over and asked us, in Russian, if we were ready to order. My yeeha English! feeling diminished a bit, but didn't vanish completely. Erin ordered, in English, a Greek Salad and a grilled cheese with tomato. I asked for a Turkish salad (essentially a Greek salad with the Feta and olives replaced by a metric ton of shredded carrots) and a curried chicken sandwich. The sandwich order was of the oh no, need to say something now sort. I had noticed the sandwich in my initial look through the menu and for some unknown reason went back there in my panicked need to order. I wasn't quite up to eating one of the dinner entree items (a full lamb dinner [of unknown cut] seemed a bit much, really) and didn't quite know whether or not it was cool to still order pancakes (a perennial comfort food, thank you very much; one of the other breakfast dishes was called "The Cholesterol" and involved grits, toast, several meats, and eggs...very funny). So curried chicken sandwich, obviously.
When our food came, all at once, everything looked good. The salads were big and delicious. Erin's grilled cheese was straight out of a sandwich maker, grill marks and all. The tomatoes in it were sliced nice and small, so as to both be warm and to avoid the unfortunately common occurrence of pulling the tomato slice out of the sandwich with a misplaced bite (I more or less lived on grilled cheese with tomato at Skidmore for two years [Spa Ladies of my past, I thank you], so I was happy to see such brilliant craftsmanship, so to speak). My sandwich, on the other hand, looked like a 1950s B-movie UFO: a large, round bulb, hard and brown, with bits of lettuce and a gelatinous, yellowy substance spilling out of the middle. In a way, it resembled a jelly donut filled with curried chicken. Only, you know, different.
And the roll was hard. Really, really hard. Too hard to easily bite into in one try. The added effort in grinding through the roll led the filling--with a consistency like super-loose tuna salad, only Grey Poupon brown--to shoot out in various directions. And while the filling was mayonnaise heavy to begin with, there was also another, autonomous layer of mayonnaise, thick and viscous, on either side of the filling. The overall effect was like attempting to bite through two cast-iron pans with a layer of potato salad in between, held in place by KY Jelly. Not easy. But it was really tasty and I was hungry, so I kept trying. The curry was flavorful and the roll, after it'd been gnawed away and allowed to sit for a bit in the mouth, was actually pretty tasty, too. But the whole thing was just too tiring. After five or six bites, I gave up. Erin gave me half of her grilled cheese and did her best to have a go at the curried chicken. She managed three or four bites and gave up, claiming to be full (bless her heart). Eventually, the waitress came back and cleared all of the plates except the sandwich, which continued to sit between us like an emblem of our failure for another ten or fifteen minutes.
We just sat there after that enjoying our tea and sodas (Central Asian Sprite has a tendency to taste like 7-Up, so I was having Pepsi). Erin helped me plan out the rest of the novel I'm working on (there was a rather sizable black hole in the plot and I was rapidly approaching it, but we managed to get that taken care of while sitting there). Eventually, the sandwich was adios-ed and we got our bill. The whole thing was about $6.50, including tip. Brilliant.
On our way out a group of three men came in. They stood just inside the doorway, looking confused, until one of the waitstaff directed them to a table. We smelled our kind in them, but left before letting on that we knew. Instead we went home, played a few games of Blokus and cribbage, then I went to bed, where I stayed until about four o'clock the next afternoon, alternately sleeping and waking long enough to moan, achingly roll over, and fall back asleep.
Monday, December 05, 2005
I'm This Far from Full-On Paranoia
As you may have picked up from the last dozen posts or so--I've been hinting at this since getting off the plane--living abroad, especially in Central Asia, can be a bit trying. Not that I don't love being here or that I'm not glad we're doing it or any of the many things that could also go in this sentence. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is, sometimes it's a bit hard to be an American not living in America. Especially when only one tiny sliver of a country separates you from a country we handily carpet-bombed a few years back then turned over to warlords and opium dealers and called liberation. The Kyrgyz Republic still has a great relationship with the US and a predominately warm and trusting relationship with its people. But, ya know, the more times people go on television and say things like this, the more I'm gonna feel the need to start looking over my shoulder every time I leave the apartment:
We are working hard in good faith on both sides to come up with an approach that can be supported by the president and the Congress, to both find a way to be aggressive in the war on terror and still comply with U.S. law. -- National security adviser Stephen Hadley, on "Fox News Sunday."
I mean, c'mon! Negotiating being able to torture people? And not even caring enough to hide it anymore? And telling a man who spent years in a POW camp that his proposal banning our use of torture is ill-advised? Really? That's what we're doing now? Really?
All I'm saying is, this could make these next six months harder than they need to be. And I don't want that. I don't want that at all. I just want to wake up in the morning, write for a few hours, exercise, take a shower, go around the corner to buy some delicious 8 cent bread and fake a conversation in Russian, head to campus and edit some press releases, come home, watch Return of the Jedi or a Tom & Jerry cartoon dubbed in Russian, eat some tofu and weird black mushrooms, read a little, then go to bed. That's all. But if this keeps up, I don't know, boy, I just don't know.
Link to the full story here.
We are working hard in good faith on both sides to come up with an approach that can be supported by the president and the Congress, to both find a way to be aggressive in the war on terror and still comply with U.S. law. -- National security adviser Stephen Hadley, on "Fox News Sunday."
I mean, c'mon! Negotiating being able to torture people? And not even caring enough to hide it anymore? And telling a man who spent years in a POW camp that his proposal banning our use of torture is ill-advised? Really? That's what we're doing now? Really?
All I'm saying is, this could make these next six months harder than they need to be. And I don't want that. I don't want that at all. I just want to wake up in the morning, write for a few hours, exercise, take a shower, go around the corner to buy some delicious 8 cent bread and fake a conversation in Russian, head to campus and edit some press releases, come home, watch Return of the Jedi or a Tom & Jerry cartoon dubbed in Russian, eat some tofu and weird black mushrooms, read a little, then go to bed. That's all. But if this keeps up, I don't know, boy, I just don't know.
Link to the full story here.
Friday, December 02, 2005
For the Record,
this is nowhere near us (I'm looking in your direction here, Mom):
Follow me, please, for the best squirrel story ever.
Just saying.
(Thanks to Ms. Fu for the story.)
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Short Takes
On our second or third day here in Bishkek, I was asked my name by a student at AUCA. His English was only slightly better than my Russian (well, not that bad, but close), so it took me a few seconds to understand what he was asking. Before I gave him my name, while still computing what he'd asked, I said or uttered or whatever it is that comes out, "Uh." A few minutes later another student came up to us and the first student introduced me as Uhdan. I have been very careful with every sound I make since then.
*
There is a man who walks by our apartment everyday, at random times, yelling. As he is yelling in Russian, we have no idea what it is that he's yelling. We have taken to calling him Yelling Guy, as in, "Yelling Guy's back." "I know, I'm not deaf."
*
We live directly next door to the Japanese Embassy. We walk past it more or less every time we leave our apartment, as it is on the way to both the university and downtown. I have never, not once, seen anyone enter, leave, or otherwise exist within the tall, imposing fence of the Japanese Embassy. I have concerns regarding its operation.
*
The only channels we get in English on our television are BBC World News, CNN World News (for about four hours a day), random sporting events (the 1997 NBA playoffs were on this morning), and Fashion Television. While we both enjoy watching random American films from the 80s dubbed in Russian (Crocodile Dundee, Mad Max 2, Major League, and Batman so far), it is sometimes nice just to have something in English in the background. And sometimes it's nice not to have that something be reports of the world's approaching explosion delivered in a posh British accent. So, Fashion TV. I have learned much (an astounding number of Ukrainian models) and been utterly baffled with an alarming frequency.
*
There is a building somewhere near our apartment that rings a bell every morning at 7:30. The bell ring 37 times. I have no idea why.
*
Hanging against the wall on the first landing of the university's central staircase are three flags: The Kyrgyz flag on the right, the US flag on the left, and in between an IU flag in crimson and cream. It makes me giggle a little bit every time I see it. As though it is a nation or world power or somehow as important as the two places/ideas symbolized by the flags flanking it. So many reasons to laugh. Too many to list.
*
About four days ago I put up a picture of our two dogs as the wallpaper on the laptop. It is a great picture, taken sometime over the summer, with the two of them peeking out at the driveway of our house in Bloomington through the slats in the porch railings, looking off to the right with their mouths open and their tongues just barely poking out, like a smile. I put it up because I was missing them and thought seeing them more often would tamp that down a bit. Not so. Seeing them every day only increased the missing of the mutts. There is a new picture on the desktop now.
*
Why, after five years of miserable basketball (even the year of the NCAA finals was miserable, considering the victory over Duke that got them there; and, when you live with E., the day Duke leaves the tournament is miserable, trust me) does IU finally have a team this year?
*
There is, as I assume is the case in most places where English is not the first language, a certain type of English spoken by even the best English speakers here, one that is buffered with subtle, awkward pauses and a syntax both formal and, at times, convoluted. I find myself thinking in this new English when in conversation with an English speaker here. I have even found myself composing emails that way. I recognize it as it is happening, but can do nothing to stop it.
