The unsolicited ads on the Moscow metro for fake MOTs, University diplomas,IDs maintain for me this coutry's mystery. Sure we know that there is a whole lot of corruption but the fake bits of paper ensuring your status as a qualified driver, doctor(!) etc widely available on the black market in the 90s are the thing of the past, right? Not so it seems. Unless those ads on the metro are aimed solely at the very desperate illegal immigrants, like those from Tajikistan who work for pennies and have right to, well, nothing, not unlike Mexicans in the US. Either way this country, unlike any other, presents plenty if opportunities for time travel. And that's what we love it for.))))

Moscow, 08

Yesterday in Moscow I had an appointment with a doctor as I seem to have some kind of sinus problem that’s been bothering me a lot recently. The building of the free hospital where I arrived for my consultation had no work done in ages. Paint coming off the walls, elevator barely working, endless rude yelling. When I tried to go in, the security guard (like there is anything to steal) ordered me to go back to the cloakroom and get what turned out to be plastic shower caps you buy for a modest price of 10 roubles and put over your shoes.
The doctor that performed some form of water boarding on me, which admittedly did ease up my sinus, was left unaffected by my terrorist joke and proceeded to tell me with a grim face that she has no clue what the government does with all the oil money, since the doctors in this hospital, many, like herself with a PhD status, see none of it. Never did, not once. It is the unofficial ‘envelope’ salaries that help them stay afloat. Knowing this and fully prepared, even if extremely uncomfortable, I slipped on her desk my envelope with a 100-dollar bill in it, pushing it gently towards her. ‘You shouldn’t have’ she said and of course it’s true but who am I to fight against this dominant factor of Russian economy.
There are more old ladies begging in the metro than a few months ago. People are often uncontrollably, unreasonably rude. All women under the age of forty wear high spike-heeled boots. Mostly in black and occasionally red. Drinking and smoking youths are hanging on every corner like the whole place is a ghetto. And this is a respectable area of Moscow we’re talking about. As I got into a tram the driver with a burning cigarette hanging from his mouth sold me a ticket. One dollar one way, and I had to get off after two stops. The prices here generally are compatible to those in London and NY. The service is not. Where the hell is all the progress?
This is my motherland.

One Man Show

Russia's today's presidential elections realistically have only one name on the ballot. That of Dmitri Medvedev. For the wider public, outside of small groups who by the force of inertia still follow Zuganov the Communist and Zhirinovsky the clown, and aside from a complete unknown Bagdanov 'the democrat', there is no one else on that ballot they can vote for. The public acts as an inactive, uninterested observer. Most of the people i know are refusing to participate in what they see as a farce. The turnout, no matter what the official number announced, will be low. Having said that, no matter what the turn out is to be, in my view the percentage of the votes received by each candidate will be a genuine reflection of how those few who did take part voted. Increasigngly upset by what's going on in Russian on my own personal level, i fear more and more that this one man show is what fits russia best.