Thursday, August 26, 2010
I might have figured out why that guy is switching license plates every day. Yesterday it was announced in the Moscow Times that four men dressed in national police swat team gear robbed a man who was exiting a bank and carrying a bag with US$ 600,000. They beat him and his bodyguard (who I suspect will be looking for a new position when he recovers) and then sped off in a car with, drum roll please, fake license plates. They are still at large and I’m looking every day in case they come back for more plates. There is some serious thought being given to the fact that there might have been a ‘inside’ person who told the robbers when to be there and who would be carrying the cash.
The paper also had an interesting article about Bono, who is in town for a U2 concert. He met with President Medvedev in his dacha resort on the Black Sea. They talked about fighting poverty, fighting AIDS and their respective tastes in music. What they apparently did not discuss was global warming and carbon emissions. Bono, for all the good he might be doing, is almost singlehandedly tossing more carbon into the atmosphere that anyone can imagine. He flies all the time in his private jet for weekend jaunts, even when commercial service is available. This week it took 200 trailer trucks just to get the set for the 360 Concert from Ireland to Moscow! As the paper reported:
“Last week, Carbon Footprint calculated the impact of U2's world tour. Ironically, U2 is outspoken about their commitment to the environment, but carbon output of their tour this year is far bigger even than Madonna's high-maintenance carbon-heavy tour. U2's carbon emissions will equal that of 90,000 people flying from Dublin to London, and are equivalent of the waste created by 6,500 average British or Irish people in an entire year (equal to leaving a standard 100 watt light bulb on for 159,000 years). "To offset this year's carbon emissions, U2 would need to plant 20,118 trees."
Speaking of insensitivity, the Moscow Times has been getting all over Mayor Yury Luzhkov. Mr. Mayor has been in office since 1992 and continues to enrage Muscovites with his selfish and boorish attitude. During the worst of the heat and smoke that Moscow endured, he was vacationing in Austria and had to be told by Putin to get his butt back here. He did so with great reluctance and after one week here, hightailed it back to Austria. Days after he left a new report came out on some of his ‘generosity’.
The report, which could deal a new blow to the mayor's reputation in connection with this summer's wildfires, said Luzhkov has ordered the city to spend 105 million rubles ($3.4 million) to send elderly and disabled residents to various health sanatoriums to recover from “unfavorable weather conditions."
Luzhkov also has ordered the city to invest 256 million rubles into Mosmedynagroprom, an agricultural company that produces honey and other foodstuffs and is owned by the city government. The producer, located in the Kaluga region village of Medyn — informally known as “Luzhkov's Mansion” — also cares for the personal bee farm of Luzhkov, a well-known beekeeping enthusiast, Lifenews.ru reported.
Mr. Mayor’s second wife Yelena Baturina, twenty-seven years his junior, is the only female billionaire (in US$) in Russia and the 275th richest person in the world. She married in 1991 and didn’t have a dime, he became mayor of Moscow in 1992 and she immediately went into real estate and had a virtual monopoly on government contracts regarding housing and new buildings. This suggests that perhaps the bidding process was flawed and many people are very upset at the audacity of this corruption.
I needed to get new Metro Passes for us so yesterday I sat here in the office in front of the computer and practiced my numbers and polite greetings. I approached the ticket counter, exact change in hand, said what I had to say, gave over my money and lo and behold, much to my surprise and amazement, I got exactly what I wanted! Progress, very slow, but in the right direction. Pleased with myself I took off to wander the green streets of Moscow. Two hours later, I had finished my exploration of an area near our apartment complex but in a direction I had never traveled. There are some new high-rise offices that house shops, restaurants and cafes, some of which we all know - Starbucks, le Pain Quotidienne and McDonalds - but there were others that are quite local and worth investigating for possible dinner venues.
Beyond the high-rises things quiet down and I came across yet another large park, surrounded by apartments and directly across the street from the tram shed, or as Cindy likes to say, the place where trams go to sleep at night. This is an old building that must have been very pretty, red and white brick, green wood trim and huge. It takes up an entire city block, right there in the middle of a residential area. I must say these electric trams are very quiet and you have to look both ways often since they sneak up on you if you’re not careful.
We invited one of the new assistant principals over for dinner last night. He is divorced and living alone so we thought we would make sure he had a decent meal. I made a variation on a ratatouille, with tons of carrots, eggplant, onion, tomatoes and garlic. I served that on a bed of lamb’s lettuce and shaved aged Parmesan on top. With that was a cold pesto/penne salad, and a plate of cheeses, pickles and liverwurst. I had purchased some crusty fresh bread and we were off to the races. It was nice to hear about his perceptions of the school and his experiences in other countries. He most recently came from Zagreb and the Director there is a dear friend of mine, so we had lots to talk about.
It dawned on me that I’m repeating many meals, even though we have only been here for three weeks. I realized that I’m rather limited by my two pots and one pan, but that is no excuse for getting lazy in the kitchen. I’m motivated now and can’t wait to see what I’ll come up with for future meals. Here is a photo from last summer in WV of Chef William and his two students, Patrick and Hannah, as they learn how to debone a chicken at Chez Embee.
Cindy will be late tonight, as she must stay at school to rehearse her presentation on Web 2.0 that she’ll be giving to the entire faculty tomorrow. Now I personally think that this Web 2.0 is just a word game enabling booksellers to sell more books, but AAS thinks it is important and therefore Cindy needs to think it important and she has put a lot of work into this presentation. So, if this goes out before she gets home, ignore any mistakes.
Ciao for now, Cindy and Wm
From CC: At least Bono knows how to keep a contract – a friend from AAS went to the concert last night and it rained the whole time and the stage was NOT covered. My friend was seated under an overhang, but the musicians were soaked to the skin and played the entire concert! Foolish maybe, but true to their fans.
Wm is right, I had to stay late due to the technical difficulties with the presentation. I created a PowerPoint document with many slides but then other people were meant to contribute and it got longer and longer. Some of them were sending changes to me an hour after our rehearsal ended at 3:00, a rehearsal which had already caused me to make several significant changes. (Presentations by committee are not to be recommended!) The real complication was the YouTube videos that we had inserted, but my tech guys were on it and had everything running just right when they called me at about 4:45 to meet them in the projection room above the theatre. However, they tried and tried and tried again but the videos wouldn’t play and the PowerPoint kept crashing. They finally hit upon the solution: Switch it to a Macintosh! Ha … ha … ha. AAS is like most other schools in that they are mainly PC-based because of the cost, but so many teachers favor Macs and of course I LOVE Macs. I’m saving this little incident in my fact file in case the topic of changing platforms is ever broached – heck, I’ll be the broacher.
Cross your fingers for me at the presentation.
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