The Most Popular Language in the World is not Mandarin

Totally by chance (and by Craigslist) I’m staying in a house in Brooklyn at the moment that’s populated by three Congolese, one French native and a Puerto Rican. The prevailing language then, is French, which I speak at a basic to intermediate level. I speak English with the Puerto Rican and it feels strange to me now, its easiness, as I’ve been hanging out in Moscow for the past eighteen months.

When I return there, I’ll be speaking French with my Georgian wife (who speaks Russian, French and English) and sometimes English at a ratio of about 70:30—the 30% lapse is on my side, as her French is near perfect and we feel it’s better to improve my French than her English. With her daughter I will speak English, but sometimes Russian, at a ratio of 80:20—English for the most part for training purposes, and because of my poor Russian.

Alone on the streets of Moscow I’ll speak 100% Russian (albeit those few sentences you'll find at the top of the list of 'Essential Phrases' in any guide book). It’ll be mixed with a heavy dose of global sign language, punctuated with Jim Carrey-esque facial expressions when necessary.

So when one of my French or English-speaking Brooklyn housemates calls me, the first word that reaches, and sometimes escapes my lips, is Da? When someone tells a story that draws me in, thereby leaving my subconscious wide open, and they end it with an unbelievable twist, pravda? often slips out instead of really? or vraiment?

At this point I usually squeeze my eyes shut, grimace and shake my head as if what I said was actually written on a sheet of paper in pencil, and my head is the eraser rubbing it out. It might seem strange, but I’m in my element in these minor linguistic tempests.

But the language I miss the most isn’t mentioned above. It’s the most popular language there is, but the dialect I'm referring to is only used by two people on this planet. It has nothing to do with words or sounds and when understood it relays more information than any other method ever could. It’s the dialect that I share with my wife at those moments when we’re just sitting silently looking at each other. Smiling.

I’ll be bringing forward the date of my return flight to Moscow next week.

Most Popular Language
The Language of Love
Multicultural

Hijiki: Death by Seaweed?

Arsenic. Every time I hear that word I think of anything by Agatha Christie. You know, isolated old manor houses and stuffy butlers. Not Japanese foodstuffs.

I'm staying with a friend of mine, Orlando, in New York. He is crazy about the Japanese seaweed, nori. When I first met him, this is what he was eating. He buys sheets of it that are normally used for making sushi, except he skips the rice and the raw fish and the painstaking preparation, and just devours it the same way I would a pack of McVities Plain Chocolate Digestives. They’re biscuits…uhm…I mean cookies. It’s a British thing.

While out grocery shopping the other day I came across something black, glistening and messy (no, not that!) in a plastic container that resembled a lab experiment not only gone wrong but also forgotten about for months.

The fact that this substance was in an upmarket organic grocery store nestled in-between the fresh salmon and roe clued me in on it purporting to be something edible. Once the girl behind the counter explained that hijiki is a type of seaweed, it transformed in my mind into one of those foodstuffs that you look at and just know it’ll give you ten times more nutrients than the most nutritional food you’ve ever eaten.

So I bought it for my seaweed-loving friend and took it home, because as much as he loves the stuff he always seems happy to offer me some too. Nice guy. I would offer him some of my McVities Plain Chocolate Digestives too if I could find any in America.

As I’d never heard about hijiki nor seen it before, and being curious by nature, I decided to look it up and allow myself to be amazed by the abundance of good stuff I knew would reside in this little packet of moist dark matter. Well, it didn’t let me down, I was indeed amazed, but for the wrong reasons.

It turns out that hijiki isn’t only packed with good stuff, it’s also loaded with arsenic (apparently there’s a bad kind of arsenic—organic—and a worse kind—inorganic. Hijiki of course plays host to the evilest of the twins.) Food standards authorities in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have advised against its consumption altogether. Their American and Japanese counterparts haven’t followed suit. I can understand the Japanese stance. The last thing the government will want is a bunch of senior citizens digging up and polishing their old Samurai katanas and partaking in an uprising against the disturbance of their traditions.

It seems to be a ‘better safe than sorry’ scenario, because nobody has officially even fallen ill from it. The Japanese traditionally eat it with relative frequency but in small quantities. I don’t know what the story is in the US but I’m guessing they’ve decided that nobody really eats it to the degrees where it would be a concern, so they’re not bothered. Maybe they need to visit the grocery store I bought it from, where they happily sell portions of hijiki that are twenty seven times more in weight than the maximum daily amount recommended by the Japanese Ministry of Health...with no health warning attached. After that visit, maybe they should make another one to meet their most seaweed-loving citizen, Orlando.

I’m pretty certain that if he was at home when I returned from the store, he would have thanked me hastily and downed the whole portion in one sitting. Remember Cookie Monster? Well, Orlando’s just the same. But with seaweed. And a lot less messy. If someone was to be the first reported casualty of hijiki consumption I would rather their name didn’t begin and end with the letter O. Of course, I’d rather nobody was the first reported casualty, but either I’ve got my math, or my research wrong, or selling hijiki in the quantity I came across is bordering on manslaughter.

Anyone out there know any different? Until I hear otherwise, I'll be sticking to the McVities Plain Chocolate Digestives.

hijiki
hijiki arsenic
Japanese
Seaweed

Russia Has Lost Its Balls.

Funny. I never imagined Russia had any interest in baseball until I visited a Moscow hypermarket near my flat the other day. It soon became clear why.

Everyone, the whole world over, knows what the objects in the above photo are. Baseball bats. Right? Good. Now then...where are those little spherical things that are supposed to go with them?

Let's look to the left. Nope. That's home fitness equipment. (Hmm. I wonder how far a 2 kilo dumbbell will go when whacked with a baseball bat?)

Let's look to the right. Nope. Those are plant pots. Yes. Plant pots. Plenty room for houseplant hardware but not for baseballs it seems.

So you would assume that the balls had been mistakenly placed elsewhere, wouldn't you? Well maybe. Some vodka swizzled high school dropout quietly doing his bit to rebel against corporate greed (Hey! Without him I'd have nothing to write about). But if that were indeed the case then you'd be a better man than me if you managed to find them.

Something tells me though, that there's another explanation, like—the balls aren't anywhere in the store full stop, not even in the store's zip code for that matter, because the point is not to play sport. But then...what exactly are the good citizens of Moscow doing with just baseball bats?

Whatever the populace is doing with them, this chain of large supermarkets obviously supports it by purposely buying and supplying only half the shipment. And the other half? Don't worry, they won't go to waste. They'll get shipped off to whoever dares to drive carelessly anywhere near the guys who buy the bats...because they'll be needing the extra balls.

Baseball
Russia
Bat
Violence
Institutionalized

A Man Carrying Flowers

It seems that a man carrying flowers also carries a sign saying: “I’m approachable. Approach me.”

In general, approachability is considered to be an asset, but then that depends on who’s doing the approaching.

I had just strolled out of London’s Covent Garden Flower Market with a fresh bunch of lush sunflowers for my girlfriend. Buoyed by the response I knew I'd receive from her, I walked up one side of a side street towards South Lambeth Road while a small group of schoolgirls walked down the other. I wouldn’t have known they were there if not for the fact that one of them shouted a vulgarity at the top of her lungs. Let’s just say that she was loudly mistaking someone for a part of a woman’s anatomy (clue: not a tit). I turned to find that, surprisingly, that someone was me.

Dumbstruck by this seemingly unsolicited speaking of mind, I carried on up the road, uncharacteristically shocked into speechlessness. Seconds later she repeated herself, I suppose so as to make sure that this important opinion of hers hadn’t been mistaken for, say, ‘Good day to you kind sir. What a lovely bunch of flowers you’re carrying’.

Now, I can’t quite be certain on this one, but I can only assume that she felt affronted by what might be seen in some circles as my wanton disregard for what a 'real' man should or shouldn’t be doing, a subject on which she, in her no more than sixteen years on this planet, is evidently an expert.

Fifteen minutes later (exactly how long it took me to recover and come up with a belated smart retort), I turned a corner on a quiet street, and was met by a woman walking towards me who was clearly lost in thought. She clocked the flowers, then she clocked who was carrying them.

“Are they for me?” she said, and smiled a smile that made the previous abuse worthwhile. I smiled back instantly.

I can only assume what would have happened minus my floral accompaniment, but I doubt that that kind of woman (she was damn hot!) would have said a word to this man on that quiet street corner without the flowers acting as a social catalyst.

So, it seems that interactions with London strangers can be about more than wanting directions, wanting money, Hampstead Heath, or the giving away of crap free newspapers.

man
flowers
romantic

Russia's Not Hot Water

It's summer. Those months where you had to attach crampons to your boots just to pop to the corner shop seem a world away now. And just when the beleaguered masses are getting used to a reasonable degree of heat in their lives again, the Moscow United Energy Company (MOEK) goes and snatches the experience away from them. Yes. It’s that time of year again when summer is neither warmly received, nor warmly delivered: the hot water cut-off.

When those busy little worker bees at MOEK pull out their spanners, many Muscovites pull out their spare saucepans, but MOEK may be doing the populace an unwitting favor. It seems the cold showers that the hardier Muscovites resort to at these times might actually be doing them some good.

As contradictory as it may sound, bombarding yourself with water that’s a few degrees shy of crystallization helps prevent sickness, according to Dr. Alexa Fleckenstein. In her book, Health₂0, she propounds that a daily cold shower will strengthen your immune system, fighting off colds and influenza.

Did someone say Swine Flu? What Swine Flu?

Cold showers also rid the body of toxins, and improve circulation and respiration. And there’s more, (oh yes, this cold shower business is to personal hygiene what garlic is to the culinary world!) Although the dampening of a rampant libido is the first thing that comes to mind when someone utters the words 'cold' and 'shower' in the same sentence, gynecologist Dr G.N. Mansukhani states that it actually helps to raise your sperm count. So there’s something to be said for the old Soviet centralization practices after all.

Unfortunately for me, I'm not a bath person, even when the alternative is water that's not just cold, but subarctic bone-brittling cold. I just don't get on with ‘still’ water. If you're the same and you should find yourself void of the usual options when the stoppage rolls around, (one, no friends with hot water; two, all of said friends have stolen your saucepans; three, the saucepans are actually theirs, because you stole them last year) then here is my personal recipe for a bearable cold shower. *

The hands, feet and face are the most resilient to cold, and are the recommended starting points by Dr. Fleckenstein. After wetting them, rub your hands all over your body, this helps ease your skin towards the heart-stopping temperature it will soon endure beneath a stream of virtual ice crystals. Once that’s done, soap up thoroughly (and frantically) using your preferred scrubbing device. Don’t skimp on this step because the lather will provide a good buffer between you and the blast of liquid nitrogen you’re about to subject yourself to—at least for the first second anyway. Rinse off the arms first. Hand-feed water to the neck. Then, tease the chest, stomach, back and hips beneath the spray, like you’re going through poses for a Hawaiian ‘hula’ style photo shoot. By this time numbness and gravity will have taken care of everything below the waist.

Done.

A handy side effect, by the way, is that the bathroom mirror won’t steam up. This fact will save your life. How else would you realize how blue your skin has turned from the combination of the scientifically impossible sub-zero water and the fact that you’ve been holding your breath in shock for ten minutes straight?

Oh. A word of warning before I leave you. There are one or two areas that you can’t trick—the cold will affect them as normal. Sorry guys, but that's the price of good health.

*Please note that this is not professional health advice, merely a suggestion as to how to cope with the temporary lack of a basic necessity!

Russia
Turn Off
Cut Off
Hot Water
Cold Shower

Thank Your (Un)lucky Stars.

On a trip to New York last month my wife and I flew Swiss International from Moscow with a stopover in Zurich. My wife had never flown with them before and I assured her that they were one of the best airlines on the planet. I still think they are, I just picked the wrong trip to tell her that.

On the nine-hour push out of Zurich we had no in-flight entertainment. No films, no radio. Zip. It wouldn’t have been so bad if we had been wearing blinkers (not so strange if you know us intimately, trust me) but in strict adherence to my ‘cabin luggage only’ rule, they didn’t make the grade. So, unblinkered, we were free to see that everyone around us—that’s everyone—was wearing the appropriate facial expressions for the movies they were happily watching. The plane was full and the stewardess’s multiple attempts at resetting the system didn’t help us.

On the way back we boarded a plane at JFK stoked to find that it was brand spanking new. If I’d closed my eyes for the first thirty rows then opened them, I’d have believed—albeit short-term—that I was on a plane full of business class seats. What I believed long-term though was that there was no way the same thing could happen to us on the flight home. Chance, I reckoned, would have our backs, after properly abandoning us the first time round. Even if that failed, then…hey…the plane was brand new!

I was sort of right. It couldn’t happen to us again...well not just us anyway.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we regret to inform you that because this is a new plane…the entertainment system is not working.”

Excuse me?

That one took some figuring out. I’m still working on it now.

The announcer was Swiss-German, and although her English seemed very good I hoped there was something lost in translation. After take-off I realized there wasn’t. Something else that wasn’t lost was the image of that green and blue map on my screen, with its numerous helpful flight statistics.

33296 feet. 10148.6 meters. 543 miles per hour. 873.9 kilometers per…

I swear those figures remained burnt onto my corneas for a week.

We then arrived at my favorite airport of all time, Zurich, and were rolling on through the security checkpoint. My wife had bought a gleaming new white MacBook from the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue and had already fallen head over heels for it. Of course she was required to take it out of its bag for it to be scanned. The woman in charge of the x-ray machine’s conveyor belt then felt the need to turn the computer top-down in a tray which had previously been used on a construction site to transport some form of aggregate from one place to another. You can tell by the depth and number of scratches that are engrained on my beloved’s laptop now.

Sometimes in life you are faced with so much bad luck in such a short period that it truly bewilders you. Then you shake your head, exhale, and conclude that—

1. The movie selection was probably going to be everything from the depths of PG rated hell anyway.

2. The MacBook is luckily not a present for somebody back home, and

3. You have four working limbs and you aren’t being shot at by both sides of a war you have nothing to do with.

In short, you realize that the ‘bad luck’ was of quite a harmless variety. You just hope it remains so, as you slip back in your seat for that last leg of your journey, and cruise along at 33296 feet. 10148.6 meters. 543 miles per hour…