Postcards from Russia - Through my peephole

Thursday, last few days of holidays before going back to my quest for blue Narnian donkeys fluent in Chinese, and here I am, with some more Postcards from Russia while watching (ashamed to admit it) a please-shoot-this-obnoxious-brat average program on MTV.

And although I can barely blink while the teenage brat screams at her mother for giving her a $67,000 car at the wrong time, I really feel, as the sensible adult I am, I should stop paying attention to the TV and get to the point of today's post.

A Russian crane

A peek on Russia's day-to-day life. Sure I did all the touristy stuff, paid my repects to Mr. Lenin's tiny body and all, but while doing that my camera got some glimpses of what lies beneath, a country struggling to adjust to capitalism and free market. I have said it before and will repeat it here, never have I seen so many supercars parked close to prefall of the Iron Curtain Ladas, petrol tycoons and other stuff mobsters drinking vodka in 5 star hotel halls while their security personnel eye you poor tourist suspiciosly (no kidding) and just a couple of blocks away workmen carrying put their jobs in the poorest conditions.

After last summer's trip to Romania I thought I had seen enough of Eastern Europe to get the idea of how ex-communist countries are facing the twenty first century. I was wrong, Russia has that same bitter taste but in this case, the mix of the super rich and the super poor makes the place a lot more interesting for the blogger eye. 

I spent a full five minutes watching the works outside Mowcow's Red Square. Please look at the pictures with full attention, the sequence is hilarious (and unsafe).

Am I getting too serious? I think I am! This is new... Anyway, just wanted to give some text to this pictures. Hope you enjoy them. Again, more to be found in my Fb page, only for friends!

Next on Such is Life: Postcards from Russia - The Tzars should have seen it coming!

Postcards from Russia - Such great hights

I've learnt quite a lot of things about Russia lately, its recent and not so recent history, its people and their traditions.

Capitalism, free market and Perestroika have had a somewhat disfunctional way of becoming part of the daily life of Russians, big fat cars mingle with groups of women dressed in black,old men playing chess in the middle of the street and women wearing the most unbelievable high heels one could ever manage to walk on.

- "Let's do the shopping, darling".

- "Sure, dear, i just need to put my comfy shoes on".

Seriously, I bet half the money in my purse (0,76€) that Russian hospitals have the highest rate of ankle injuries among female patients between the ages of 17 and 35 in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD.

Unbelievable.

I therefore undertook the task of taking pictures of all the Russian women wearing appaling heels that I could, and trust me, it was a difficult task to try and take the picture without their enormous mobster boyfriends turning my humble digicam (as in Digimon! but digicam) to tiny sparkling metal pieces (which explains why most pictures are either blurry or twisted).

High heels walking across Moscow's Red Square's irregular pavement make one believe impossible is nothing, of course then you watch this impossibly tall women lose balance and can't help but imagine an average Moscovite ER filled with women carrying one broken high heel shoe in one hand, ankle throbbing.

Of course I have not checked statistics on Russian hospitals, but I have been witness to some very common collateral damages that come with wearing heels through impossible pavements. As you walk along any Russian street you can perfectly hear the very particular clang of lidless heels announcing the arrival of an impossibly tall Russian female, and of course you are correct in that assumption. Here she comes, accompanied by her mobster boyfriend. Camera out, picture!

It hit me as something quite surprising when I discovered this sign at the entrance of Saint Petersburg's Ermitage museum. You can take pictures everywhere, ruin a beautiful Rafael or Leonardo taking pictures but please refrain from ruining the floor with your high heel shoes!!

I pitied them, suffering all day long... I pitied them even more when I learned the reason behing those shoes. Our tour guide in Moscow was a young girl in her twenties who gave us the plainest answer to this quizz: "We wear this shoes to get good men". I really hope she is wrong... Alas, she is one Russian woman, and they are millions treading down the heart of that country. They are likely to have their own reasons.

This is the winner as far as hight goes

I'll leave you now, London's calling, and I have a plane to catch. I plan to have some New Age fun with a vintage feel while I take pictures of the London fields looking through my pair of empty frames, why you may wonder, well, cause being a dickhead's cool, and of course, cause Such is Life!

P.D.: More pictures can be found in my fb page, only for friends!

Postcards from Russia - Moscow and the defenders of the land.

Hey there!

Red Square (Moscow)

Just returned from a holiday in Moscow and Saint Petersburg with my camera full of pictures (yet too many) and even more things to share with you.

Curious place, with curious habits and curious people to say the least and nearly 500 pictures I will not bother you with, just my personal favourites. Today, my take on the Russian authorities.

I suppose Russians will be used to their huge hats but to me they looked like something brought from the past.
The truth is, I felt carried a couple dozen years back while passing their way. It doesn't help that at least 8 of them permanently watch over Lenin's preserved corpse during opening hours or that they make a very odd yet fun looking "dance" while changing guards at the tomb of the unknown Russian soldiers. Even their own "kin" watched them curiously as three soldiers lifted their legs and hit their waepons while maintaining a difficult balance.

The walls of the Kremlin (Moscow)

During the weekend dozens of young cadets (recently graduated by their looks) filled the streets of Moscow leaving some very fun and odd pictures. Walking with their girlfriends and their impossibly high heels (post in the oven in this regard) or just walking along the Red Square with their proud mothers, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, nieces, cousins...



I started to feel too touristy and decided to stop taking pictures, until the morning after, when I came by this:

Smile boys!

More to come on Such is Life's trip to the other side!

Enjoy your summer!

Such is life.

Melon. Yet another "Such is Life" story

Remember me?

The laziest blogger ever? Well I am finally on holidays and ready to provide you with yet another typical "Such is Life" story. Enjoy!


MELON:

What if your mom cared so much about you eating well at work that every morning she would cut a nice slice of melon cut it in pieces, put it in a lunch box and leave it in your bag for you to take to work? wouldn't that be nice? Sure! Awesome, thanks mom, it is lovely.

Or not.

What if you forgot to eat half your melon and realized just on the elevator that takes you home. What would you do? You don't want to dispappoint your mom (let alone let her repeatedly tell you how unhealthy you eat and how dreadful it is that you forgot your melon).

So back to the elevator, there you are, 11pm, back from a long's day work and you panic: S**** there is melon in my lunch box! Think M, think! You live in a very high floor, the elevator is going to take at least a minute and a half to get there. Eat! Now! go! So you start to eat your melon at "12 campanadas" speed (will explain what "12 campanadas" is later), and by the time you reach your floor, chocking and still trying to swallow the last two pieces, guess what?

Your sister and father are waiting for the elevator.

You try to greet them casually, trying to hide the fact that your hand is dripping with sticky melon and that your mouth is full of melon, and that the lunch box is opened in your hand. Oh! i da', sis'er wha' ar' you do (*cough*) ere?

Sister laughs, you finally swallow. Hey dad, I was just eating a forgotten piece of melon. I'll go home now. Bye!

Your sister whatapp's you countless laughs, you finally laugh at yourself, and even more when your sister tells you what your father said: Does she really think I'm going to buy that "one melon piece" thing?

Why not dad? It is perfectly normal to eat melon as fast as you can in an elevator at 11pm on a Tuesday night, right?

Lesson learned, never forget to eat your melon, and if you do, don't lie kids. You'll get caught.

THE END

Such is Life!



12 campanadas: In Spain, we receive the new year eating one grape for each time the bell rings at midnight on December 31st. Chocking is quite common, starting the year spitting grapes to the face of the ones you love too. So. Much. Fun. You have to eat the damn grapes so fast to make it twelve before January 1st that you can barely breathe.

GoT

When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There's no middle ground.

Mr. George R. R. Martin, we may have to meet this summer...

Such is life

My life is trash

They say we are what we eat, I say you live what your trash says you live. And I'm living hell.

I have undertaken a sociological experiment with myself and have come to that conclusion.

So please pay attention to the following findings if you are trying to decide whether you would be happy in my shoes (i.e. being a total loser).

Here's how it goes:

You live what you trash. Episode I

Day 1: The Big One

There is a day in the life of a jr lawyer when you f*** up big time, it can't be avoided. Sooner or later the Big One comes, and you enter into a spiral of stupid and avoidable mistakes which is very hard to come over.

So, you eat lunch and have dinner in front of your deask while trying to cope with disappointment on yourself, at times you can't stop tears (i.e. the bunch of tissues).

Day 2: You've got growing up to do

And you've got to rise from you own ashes and start climbing the mountain again. Losing confidence in yourself leads to more stupid mistakes, and you suddenly start questioning all your actions inside and outside work. First you try your luck with the lottery, wishing that you will become a millionaire and send many many people to ... (there is no translation for esparragar). But you are not lucky enough to win the lottery, losers don´t win the lottery for God's sake! There has to be another way, a professional way out of your missery... You look around your desk and decide it looks too personal and are determined to redecorate your life in a very proffesional way, and thus get rid of all those things that make your workplace less of a rat hole and more of a human desk.

Bye bye Wacky Woolies... Truth is, I really don't think it was necessary get rid of all my cute stuff, but I had to do something, and nothing better came up (resigning is not an option (yet)).

Day 3: Sheds and pieces

So you wake up, it is wednesday still, and you have to go to work. You plaster a smile to your face and try to confront the fact that you have to keep doing what you do, even if all of a sudden you feel your work is trash, your knowledge is trash and of course, your life is trash. All you can do now is start the climb to a better situation, right? WRONG.

Very very very wrong.

Day 4: The accident

There comes a time when you realise you may not be as sane as you thought, and you decide that holding a red hot metal bar cannot burn your fingers, cause, why would it? Physics don't exist, Walmart invented them, just like Christmas or Valentine's Day. Burnt fingers lead to sticky fingers, lots of plaster and freaking burning pain. Yet you have to load yourself with caffeine and keep rowing in your own personal galley.

Thank goodness, it is not so bad, and by the end of the day you are back to full health conditions, or are you?

Day 5: In sickness and in health

As Murphy once said, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. How very true, so, to add pain to the aggravation you get sick, very sick, as in thousands of tissues a day + old man's cough + teary eyes. And yet you have to go to the office again... and keep trying to fix your loss of grace despite the fact that all you want to do is go home and stay in bed all day long.

Worst of all, it that prior experience tells you this may last days, weeks, even months.

Day 6: Happy Birthday

And you turn 26 sitting in front of that desk, blowing your nose at a rate of 10 tissues and hour and being unable to celebrate as you feel you deserve. You sing happy birthday to yourself and receive greetings from family, friends and colleagues while still typing in front of your computer. It is then you realise your life is trash, you are caught up in a vicious circle of work, your ass is growing the size of your chair and your skin is ashy pale and sunlight hurts your eyes.

Time to shake up and make a slight change of scene and society. Well maybe not society, cause the good thing is, even if your life is trash, you share it with the best colleagues you could imagine.

And those colleagues may not be colleagues but good friends, who provide efficient and quality solutions to your trashy existance:

Ha ha ha, not too bad for a loser right?

Suck it! Such is life

Origamad

Every once in a while I discover some kind of handcraft that soon becomes an obsession until I get tired of it.

Just the other day I dropped by a japanese store with a work coleague where, a pack of brightly colored papers with various patterns caught my attention. Origami paper.

At first I thought I could use it for anything, pretty paper is so pretty you cam make up anything just to use it, to cover boxes, notebooks, just to keep it and look at it... but then, back at the office as I waited for our server to come back to life (not surprising but totally nerve-racking), I googled ORIGAMI and, oh surprise! Welcome to a new world.

I started with a simple shirt, easy, then I went on browsing and discovered you can use origami to make useful things, like toothpick cases or clip stands (cause of course everyone has a pocket full of toothpiks in every pair of jeans they wear). And then I went completely crazy. I crafted a very cute tie, a tropical fish, and discovered you can make balloons with paper and blow them!

I realised then this was the kind of silly little thing my sister would love, and just then, I could easily see the kind of madness I would unleash if I showed her my origami paper. And I did!


There's this very cute origami website where they have all kinds of origami categories with instructions and diagrams...they have a page for everithing, and... oh, look! here it says Accessories, lets click here... Oh! you can WEAR origami, WEAR it, as in origami bracelets, origami rings, origami necklaces... and then and there I decided I could leave my sister the difficult parts and go for fashion. I may have done twelve origami bracelets in the last two days (lol) and next weekend: Origami beads for an  origami bracelet!!


I went out on friday night on friday and found myself being "that crazy girl folding paper", I made some more shirts and ties, and fish while at dinner, and wished I had sticky tape to make some more bracelets, but of course, that couldn't be. Crazy girl folding paper was seen again on Saturday afternoon folding paper at a cafe while having lunch with Agnes, wearing her super fashionable paper bracelets, which, by the way, are not waterproof, the rain in Madrid made that veeery clear.


Anyway, just as I had anticipated, as soon as I told my sister about origami, she went crazy too, and soon became the real origami master in the house, she made an amazing cactus and she has announced she is working on a car which may take her a while but will be awesome.

Origamad as we are now, I had to, HAD TO, get origami paper to fill a whole house. I got tons of origami paper from the same store on Saturday afternoon, of course, couldn't wait any longer. Our plan is to fill a huge box with them, or maybe we can decorate rooms, houses and castles with our origami creations.

Or maybe we'll get tired in a few days and will have just tons of colour paper we use for nothing (a very likely option).

Of course there is a dark side to this silly story. My hands are full of papercuts, and they sting like crazy.

Such is Life!