This morning it was snowing, like each of the previous 5, but today for the first time the temperature was a bit above zero, so the layer of black ice that covers everything had changed in places to pools of viscous slush.
Walking is pretty hazardous, falls and injuries are common. I went to the assistance of a toppled "babushka" (ubiquitous grandmother type, usually 5 feet tall, 3 three feet in diameter) along with half a dozen other able bodied men. She was more heavily loaded than a fully equipped linebacker. There was no flexibility at her waist or anywhere else. We hoisted her like she was a phone booth, and she continued on her way without even a glance sideways. She did say "oy".
It's light by 9:15, so that's when I headed for the metro to come into town and write this message. I'm staying about 35 minutes out from the center in quite a nice apartment in a huge building on a street with miles of like structures. Upper middle class by local standards. The metro is quite nice, at its worst like NYC on a good day.
Developing countries (at least the ones I've been to) usually have what's called a "dual economy", with a "traditional sector" of agricultural uneducated types, and a "modern sector" of urban industrial types who deal with cash and services and the like. Here there is a third sector, the "hard currency sector". These are people with access to dollars either because they are foreign or because they somehow get hooked in, by means legal or otherwise.
I spent New Year's Eve with the latter group at the "Night of the Czars" which took place at a hotel just over the river from Red Square. The tickets were $150 (about twice the monthly salary of a college professor, 4 times that of factory worker), but my tab was picked up by the gregarious president of the bank/brokerage I'm working for. Everything you've heard about the vodka and the endless toasts is true. The lobster and caviar were fine, the symphony orchestra at midnight passable given that they were playing in a hotel lobby while fireworks (private of course) went off outside. All in all, it reminded me of Fellini covering Marie Antoinette's last supper.
The Financial Markets are just springing to life here, and the banking business is truly making it up as it goes along. There are no textbooks, no regulations, just bags of money driving around in cars between places with security measures that range from heavy (the Moscow Inter Bank Currency Exchange) to light (where I'm working). In the words of a certain babushka, "oy".
Anyway sorry for the form letter, but connect time is ransom-priced here and I am borrowing just about everything necessary to pull off this communique. Please respond soon (to this address) with any news you can think of, the more trivial and/or personal the better.
love, B.
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Jan. 6 Merry Christmas everybody! the church here runs on the julian calendar which is i think 13 days later. apparently they've only celebrated this openly again for 2 years. the metro runs an hour later than usual (till 2am) so folks can make it home from midnight mass.
shop till you drop: to buy anything you stand on line three times - once to see what there is and what it costs (there is a separate counter and one or more surly attendants for each class of product, e.g. meat, dairy, dry goods, vegetables (of which there frequently aren't any)), then again to pay a cashier who gives you a little chit for each of the items you want to buy, then again back at the counter(s) to hand over the chit(s) and get the item(s). not exactly the honor system. what makes the lines so stressful is 1. russian linesmanship and 2. the fact that most people aren't buying anything they are just gawking at either how little there is to buy or how much more it costs than it used to.
there is a little market out here in my suburban neigborhood. It has a quaint name "produkti" which it turns out is what they are all called. This one is fairly clean and most of the lights work, but by the time i get there (usually around 7:30 pm) there is never any milk or bread. The other day i went into the city center after work and followed a throng of babushkas who were moving roughly in a group from shop to shop in a central neighborhood. each shop was smellier and more depressing than the next so i finally threw in the towel and went to the supermarket by the us embassy where you can pay in dollars if you use a credit card. iceberg lettuce $4.50 (i passed) etc. came home and prepared myself a lovely dinner of canned corn (product of u.s. but canned in belfast!) and shrink-wrapped german wurst.
I did find one local shop with nice looking chopped meat. i waited in line and as i got closer and closer the tray got emptier and emptier. the person before me got the last. they removed the empty tray and price sign, and disappeared. everybody else stood patiently so i did too. after a time they returned with a fresh overflowing tray and a sign that said 5000 rbl/kilo in place of the 4000 some moments before.
naka you asked about the laws and taxes and such per that news story. the laws have changed so often and in such contradictory ways that there is no stable ground in many areas. tax wise the compliance is absurdly low, but the enforcing authorities seem to exist only in theory so it doesn't matter. basically, its not possible to do business without entering gray area at every turn even with honest intentions. with dishonest intentions the sky's the limit. the multi-national accounting firms are getting big bucks for their best guess about where the laws will wind up.
i am trying to design financial software based on such opinions. it's not easy because certain practices must be supported, particulary with regard to foreign currency, which are, ahem, for internal use only. it seems like things ought to come into focus this year some time. it seemed that way last year at this time also.
1/7 went to the bolshoi to see the nutcracker on christmas. bought a scalped ticket for $35 that said 500 rbl on it ($0.45). had spoken to half a dozen scalpers over 30 minutes. the pricing structure was uniform and they each warned me that they wouldn't budge even after showtime. this suggests that they are, ahem, organized. the theater is beautiful. the main curtain is full of hammers and sickles and pictures of lenin, everything else is gold leaf and crystal. it does need paint and i wished my $35 could have gone to that instead of where it went.
1/8 stood on line 1.5 hours (in january in moscow) to see big impressionist exhibit at Pushkin museum. just as we were in the next bunch to be admitted a lady in a uniform came out and hung a sign that said 'museum closed today'. she said something about a problem with the lights.
to those of you who answered the first message, thank you from the heart of my bottom. its great to feel in touch, something which some of the furriners here are lacking. sprintnet provides a moscow phone # by which i can get to igc (my email host) tho the connect time is about .65/minute, above my usual 10$ month. it is of course extremely worth it.
to the one who did not reply, may your hard drive require sudden reformatting.
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1/11 my first social visit with a non-english speaker "svetlana" - i'm sure i understood well over 15% of what she said but I am making some progress with my russky language. i asked if she liked it better now or under socialism. she said now you never know what bad thing is going to happen tomorrow. her 70 year old grandmother is on a pension, is lucky enough to have a job scrubbing floors too, and counts every ruble ($0.000641) when buying bread. on the other hand, before "there was nothing interesting, nothing to think about or question, nothing to dream about". couldn't tell what the upshot was, or whether there was one.
1/12 clinton is in town but he hasn't called yet to say when he wants to get together. there are several anti-reform demonstrations going on cause the new (post-zhirinovsky) parliament is also meeting for the first time (great timing!). the embassy advised u.s. citizens to lay low. I have my camera and am planning to leave work early.
1/15 got there too late and missed the fun - clinton walked into a sausage store in the center - no one wanted to lose their place in line to shake his hand. ruble fell 3% against the dollar last week. bentsen then makes a speech that says the country is stabilizing. russians found the comment puzzling.
2 weeks ago folks at my job stayed after work, turned the lights off, got drunk and danced to a boom box. I figured it was new years. last week they did it again. i figured it was (orthodox) christmas. this week again. Martin Luther King's birthday? no its that if you don't have at least $20 (more than a week's salary for many) there's no place to "go out". the people who have an office in which they can do this are in fact a privileged class themselves.
1/16 invited to the hospital where "svet" is a nurse - went with some russian friends of hers and another american guy whose russian is great - like many buildings here it appears closed from the outside cause so many lights don't work - first we mysteriously sat with the mostly elderly ward patients and watched russian rock videos on tv - then we went into a back room where champagne and fruit appeared and we visited with two young attending physicians who had been at Columbia Medical in NYC for 5 months. afterwards the other american said to me - "i understood the conversation but i have no idea how or why that party happened" - I missed plenty of the conversation but it was obvious that svet had brought the goodies from home in order to show 1) her american friends that she has cool young bosses who spoke english and 2) her bosses that she has american friends.
afterwards we went to an art institute that was way too big to see in the 3 hours we spent and then to the Gorky Park outdoor skating rink where pounding disco music played as two emcee characters danced on a stage and attempted to banter with each other in broken english. on the way home i finally had a real good fall on the icy walkways.
good news dept. - in a large but fairly barren store near me there is a little window in the back wall at which there is always a line of people with empty bottles - i finally summoned up the nerve to stand in it so i could look in the window - with all the people pressing from behind i thrust my head through to discover a highly portable retail liquor operation - domestic (still called "sovetskoe") champagne at 2650 rbl ($1.89 and not half bad) explains, to me at least, why the entire social contract hasn't yet unravelled.
1/19 bad news dept. - the ruble is in a free fall - now down > 15% since i got here. pessimism is rife - . spent 45 min (at $300/hr) with a bigtime U.S. securities lawyer going over what TDC (my advisee) could and could not do with US clients - at the end she said her grandparents left Russia 100 years ago and everyday she thanks god that they did. I never thought of it that way but i could make the same statement, though it just doesn't seem like the right way to look at it.
1/20 the moscow country music scene and i finally found each other - by midnight i was exporting books, importing cd's, and managing a singer's US career, according at least to my new partners.
so, this chapter is nearing an end - spending the next few days pretending to mount a job search here - idle curiosity really - a chance to leverage the small amount of political capital i've built up into a few more audiences with high profile types who usually have interesting insights
thank you for keeping in touch (don't stop) - it made a big difference - i'm back 1/27.
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1/22 yesterday was the 70th anniversary of lenin's death. many of the faithful congregated at the tomb on Red Square, where his body is on view, to commemorate the event. Unfortunately, Friday is the day on which the embalmers "touch him up" and the mausoleum is closed to visitors. The embalmers were quoted as saying that they had to stick to their schedule just like everyone else, so the masses had to do without a viewing on the hallowed day.
this is not to say that the embalmers are completely unaffected by market reforms, as their state subsidies are now being reduced. in a search for revenue, they are now offering long term embalming to the general public. the initial process takes six months and the cost is US$250,000. so far no takers.
1/23 got home at 6 am from "Casino America". situated in the ground floor ballrooms of the stalin-era leningrad hotel, it was a curious mix of russian mafiosi, thugs, and hookers, and yuppies from the both the first and third worlds, dancing (sardine-tight) till daybreak to alternating rock, blues and salsa bands. every hour or so they marched a muzzled and presumably tamed bear through the gaming room.
1/26 last night in town - invited some friends for drinks at a foreign-oriented pub - along with the invited guests walks in Peter Derby, CEO of large bank (his bodyguards waited outside) - I'd previously met him and accepted his offer of a tour of their systems area - we talked of opportunities available to me if i return
1/28 back to US - went grocery shopping - came home and put it all on the kitchen table and for reasons i can't explain finished the last roll of film with a picture of the groceries. somehow it represents closure. "there's no place like home".