Job Discussion Forums

[rusmeister]

[txmsk]

While we're talking about living in a different culture/society where even hygene is different...

What would you do if one of your students...

1) did not ever wear any deodorant
2) always put on a big fur coat even if the window was opened just a crack

Sure it may sound silly, but I have a student just like this one!

[maruss]

Maybe read Jonathan Dimbleby's new book on Russia and try to understand the reality of life there for the majority of people?

[rusmeister]

[expatella_girl]

[maruss]

for every odour imaginable!!!

[BELS]

[BELS]

[jpvanderwerf2001]

Сквозняк!
Man, if I had a nickel for every time I've heard this gem in the classroom (even when it's +30 outside and +38 inside)...

[coledavis]

Returning to the question of how many people are moving west and east, do we have the facts? Before I came out to Siberia, I was told by a doctor I know that rather a lot of Brits are moving to Russia (although for how long, I don't know).

[buntingblue]

The human perception of "cold" is something very subjective and is not only dependant on the ambient temperature. but also very much on the relative humidity of the air. The moister the "cold air" is, the better the cold can be carried in the air and felt by a person.
This is why people say that "England feels colder than Moscow even though the winter temperatures are much lower in Moscow"
This is also the reason why people skiing on mountains feel relatively much less "cold" than people at much higher temperatures in other parts of the world: the air temperature on the mountain may be much lower, but the relative humidity (air moisture) is also lower.

Aaaaaah. Ipsa scientia potestas est - to be sure, to be sure!

[jpvanderwerf2001]

I think it goes back to the Сквозняк (or draught). There is a palpable fear here of draughts here: I've heard them blamed from the somewhat plausible (a cough or neck crick), to the downright absurd (causing a women to be barren, to being deadly--yes, deadly--to children). So, I think it's less a matter of temperature than it is the draughts.
What else could explain people having a shashlyk in -20 temps, or going swimming in ice water? It can't just be the cold.

[maruss]

Whistling indoors or shaking hands over the threshold....I wonder how they originated?

[sileni]

i spent about two years in Ukraine (plus traveling in Russia), went from only being able to read Russian to being somewhat fluent, got a girlfriend, spent tons of time outside the capital in her town, and spent plenty of time bullshitting and drinking on park benches with all manners of local people, family parties, shashlyk sessions in the woods, etc. etc.

in my life i've never met such a saturated quantity of truly hardcore real people, one after the other, as with these folks. old ladies, young guys, working fathers, girls, teenagers, whatever.... totally open, curious folks who gave me tons of respect.

sure, there were some things that i could never get on board with: 10000 cigarettes a day, endless drinking, materialism, out-of-whack gender relations, rowdy behavior in public, etc. etc. but there are infinite number of things i take issue with back in the US.

there were sketchy things going on at my work - lots of people getting fired, lots of people complaining. i threw enough elbows and performed my ass off and eventually they would meet any of my demands within their capacity.

during all that time, i saw countless other expats come and go - some left the country vowing never to return. one even had a total nervous breakdown and her parents came and got her. a few others really regretted coming.... a lot of them got into stupid relationships.

the only common thread i noticed about all the people who crashed and burned were this:

1) inability to snap out of the western set of expectations (i.e. expecting someone to actually follow through with promises, or expecting a week to go by hassle-free, or planning something down to the minute without accounting for hiccups, or expecting someone to be nice to them American style just because you go up and ask them something)

2) didn't make any effort to learn the language well enough to have fun (i would've HATED it there without the language - it must SUCK to not know enough to have fun)

3) were turned off by the necessity of throwing elbows in order to get something

yeah, it's a messed up place - but we avoided the messed-up crap as much as possible and where we couldn't avoid it (delays, scowling shopkeepers, uncouth citizens) we just had a laugh.

i sound like some macho dickhead in this post but i assure you i'm not. my overall personality is a super goofy american smiley happy-go-lucky hippy type thing, at its default. i understand that it was frustrating for you to live there, but it sounded like your expectations were way off and you should've explored certain avenues instead of others.

i took it as a challenge and ukraine and russia changed my life for the better: gave me tons more confidence, gave me tons more people-managing skills (i.e. how to deal with people who clearly think you're full of shit), and gave me tons new perspectives. a lot of their habitual deception, rudeness in public, values etc. are coping mechanisms to make life better in a harsh-ass place. it's super important to understand the motivations for that, and then try and avoid being the target of them as much as possible.

[sileni]

re: the "whistling while indoors = losing money" thing

the explanation i heard many times was that back in the day, if you were whistling it meant you weren't busting your ass enough and therefore not earning your keep....

so, time spent whistling indoors = lost money

apparently?