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