Job Discussion Forums

[rusmeister]

/Commercial break:public service announcement/

Love is the ability to love the unloveable or it is not a virtue. Any jerk can love their mother. Loving someone (forgiving and doing good to them) is a lot harder when they're raining abuse on you.

It's best to not respond when people consistently display rudeness and arrogance. It just extends/expands aggression and anger.

/Now, back to our show!/

[Deicide]

[Elan]

Decide:

"Quoting scripture as if it described reality has no upside. There's always somebody who knows more theology than you do. The amount of nonsense that one can know about nothing is infinite. -Deicide"

Profound my brother!! truly profound!
May Ali Baba bless you with many camels and fill your pocket with dates and bless your land with many drums of black gold

[jpvanderwerf2001]

Fun thread! I'll go ahead and reply...

[jpvanderwerf2001]

[Elan]

Trying to defend the indefensible by being �ACADEMIC� is NOT a defense my friend. Your rebuttals to bejarano statements are not only weak but also embarrassingly shallow.
You are digging a hole for yourself for nothing.

Expatella girl is an American Racist and a Coward. She lets other to clean up her mess. No credit to Mother Russia

[jpvanderwerf2001]

[maruss]

Expatella is a realist guys-I've lived there, worked there and met people people and places way of the usual tourist tracks so my advice is why go to such a country and work for peanuts, especially when you are earning a six-figure salary where you are now??But if you can get a European or American ex-pat job , which will at least reward you well for enduring it, then maybe it's worth seriously thinking about if you want to learn the language etc 'in situ'.I had romantic notions about the place for a long time and these were dispelled once I spent a few months there and saw the darker side of the country etc!
If I'm wrong, why do so many Russians still go abroad to live whenever they can find the opportunity????

[bejarano]

"But you're comparing apples and oranges. Moghadishu, Grozny and Baghdad are dangerous for very different reasons than Moscow. The OP was speaking about race crimes in Moscow, not war zones. Therefore I would say the comparison is not applicable and hyperbolic."

I'm not comparing apples and oranges, I'm comapring extremely dangerous places. I didn't use the term 'extremely dangerous' to describe Moscow remember. Who you have to takes issue with is expatella girl and ask her why is she comparing Moscow to Baghdad.

Doesn't matter if it is in a warzone. Though I would consider a warzone extremly dangerous aren't you coming to the conclusion that expatella
girl saying that Moscow is 'extremely dangerous; is in fact 'hyperbole' ?
Wouldn't you say in fact Moscow though requires caution at night is in fact as dangerous as more or less any other major city on the planet (apart from special cases such as Bogota, Johannesburg or Rio) westerners
of all colours need to exercise caution in Moscow.

Her giving an opinion about racism in Russia is not scare-mongering.

EG giving an opinion based on lies is scare mongering because thats what scare mongering is! If we have come to the conclusion that Russia is not as dangerous as Iraq then we have concluded that it is not an 'extremely
dangerous' country and thus she is telling lies and thus scare mongering.

"I commented, because this snippet was used as evidence that Expatella girl is racist."

In the post where EG was telling Travel Zen how unwise it would be for him to travel to Russia, which she did several times and thus labouring the point unecessarily. She comes out with her PC drivel and how to refer to Africans. Why? she was obviously voicing issues about what to call black people in this day and age and she commented that you can call her 'whitey' I don't know why she did this as this was a topic about
black people travelling to Russia and not about how to refer to black
people in the PC world.

"Please re-read my statement more carefully. Ex-girl acknowledging that "whitey" is a racial slur does not make her a racist. Her stating that she would not be offended if someone directed this slur towards her also does not make her a racist.
If someone called me the "N" word and I wasn't offended would that make me a racist?"

If you said to someone "please call me n*****" I would question your
intellect, the fact is you would never say to someone "Please call me
n*****" and we know why. the 'N' word has a history of giving a
race of people an inferiority complex for hundreds of years and is intertwined with language of the slave trade. Thus for historical reasons it is not the same as calling someone 'whitey' Though I find the word as offensive personally.

Bottom line, anyone using or encouraging someone to use racist language is in fact a racist.

"See her comment posted by Elan. It looks unfinished to me, thus my inference. In either case, whether or not she is aware how to address Africans or African-Americans or blacks does not a racist make."

Well it is up to her to correct it and not you to make an inference, she is quite clear when she says "African people" that's what she means. She doesn't mean African-Americans or Afro-Carribeans, she is quite clear
who and what she is referring to.

Like yourself, I'm a mixed race man who was in Russia till recently and will be going back next year. So why don't you tell us about the times you have been beaten? shot? stabbed? You are still alive unless it is your ghost typing away You are still in this awful country where if you are black you are going to die a gruesome death!

Stop sitting on the fence and tell it how it is! You know and I know that
EG is talking a pile of balls! If the country was 'extremely dangerous'
for black people you would not be there!

And we shall have a gentleman's bet shall we? I bet no black foreign national(and I mean Westerner) will get killed by rampaging skinheads in the next two weeks! Deal?

You are playing devils advocate and you are not a very good one. To encourage racist simpletons to post crap up on here is a wicked thing to do.

[bejarano]

[Deicide]

[bejarano]

[GF]

quote]You folks are scaring the begeebers out of me...everyone...is Russia so dangerous? I am a blue/green eyed 1,74 m tall white male with Slavic/Hungarian ancestry. Am I going to get murdered? Is St. Petersburg (where I would like to go) a warzone? Do you have to look over your shoulder every second of every day? Based on posts by some members here it sounds like a warzone where death awaits you on every corner! Anyone want to change my impression?! [/quote]

As usual, the truth is the middle road between the extremes. No, neither city is a warzone nor are you likely to get murdered or be the victim of any other serious crime. However, anyone who tells you that you won't experience any problems or that Russians aren't racists either doesn't know what they are talking about or are out and out lying in order to sound politically correct.

I lived in Moscow for nearly 5 years, am married to a wonderful Moscovite woman and have many great Russian friends. I am white and look like the general population there so I was never 'profiled' on the street by the cops, though they robbed me twice IN my flat when some lovely neighbors called them to report a 'foreigner' living in the building. On the street, the best way to remain safe is to know when not to speak so certain people around you will know you are a foreigner: cops, groups of semi-drunk young men or anyone who remotely looks like a skinhead. The skinhead problem is overrated in my opinion, BUT when they do act the results are often horrifying. In my time there, I very rarely saw any (usually on the metro) and actually witnessed no incidents involving them.

All in all, like others have already said, if you keep your wits about you and your eyes open you should be fine. Just remember that you will be in a country that is fiercely proud, works by its own rules, and finally, that the police are next to useless in just about all situations. Good luck and enjoy your experience. I am sure you will make some really good friends and remember your time there quite fondly.

[maruss]

If you are worried about street-crime then I would agree there are far worse places than Moscow, where you really don't need to look over your shoulder every second etc.However,depending on where you live now of course for comparison, it is grimy,polluted over- crowded, over- priced and generally very unhealthy to live in-if I had children it would be among the last places I would want to bring them up in!Apart from all that, most of it's suburbs are drab and depressing,unless you are turned-on by kiosks and slot machine arcades.That's without mentioning the corruption and such other nasty things such as the arrogance and vulgarity of the elite rich minority who flout their often ill earned wealth with total contempt for the majority of their fellow countrymen who are far less fortunate, but probably also far more honest!
Sorry, but much as I love my close Russian friends, these kind of negative things about their country really rile me and the memory of it is like a kind of slime which it's not easy to wash off!I did once believe that things there would improve, but judging from recent events, it seems they can only get worse!
May Anna Politikovskaya and others like her rest in much deserving peace!

[Joeldew]

Deicide,

What about learning Mandarin in Russia?

Best regards,

Joel