picking cichorium

Now that I have been asked “How was India?” at least 37 times, I am posting the answer online: “I am moving there if everything works out.” Here, look at some icing that I saved up.

Caught in a downpour of merciless autumn rain in Poltava, Ukraine, I ran into the first café I noticed.  There I found a not-so-cozy seat on a tall stool overlooking one of the main streets. The street is nothing special, just streams of water and cars. Fortunately the interior design of the place is entertaining an array of thoughts; a personification of one sociological phenomenon of Eastern Europe, it has hit an old wound. The blue sign over the sky scraper on the decoration announces “SIGNORITA BIKINI & GODZILLA,”and the bubble above the girl’s head states in Ukrainian “A road to a man’s heart.”

Women’s position in Ukraine infuriates and puzzles me. I observe left and right various manifestations of female objectification; it jumps at me even from the high school courses and national news edition! Women are often simply an entertainment, an aid or a potential sexual partner for the night. “You cannot come dance at a club for fun, females are only let in if they look and behave like they want to be picked up,” complains a female friend who lives in Kiev. Many girls are raised with “X or nobody will take you as a wife,” where X may vary from a necessity to look a certain way or to perform a certain housekeeping duty. Caring for a man and pleasing a man seems to be among top priorities of a girl. Wearing clothing on the borderline between sexy and slutty even to a workplace at a bank or school is a norm. No wonder I hear from the foreigners that Eastern European women are the best: they are hot and well kept, they cook and clean, they raise children and don’t say a word against their husbands’ whims – a mix of Barbie dolls with vacuum cleaners.
On the other hand, often working with the teenagers, I have noticed that mostly girls take acute interest in extra school work and non-traditional educational opportunities, mostly girls show up to talks and presentations, mostly girls take top ranking spots in their schools. Why then, 10 years down the road, it is men who run the majority of businesses, make most money and constitute the majority of the political force in the country? When and how do these social groups swap the roles? I might have stumbled on an answer in a conversation with a recently married female friend. She had a hard time switching jobs after marriage since the new employer has pointed out to her that he would prefer for her to stay away from having children. Childbearing seems to knock most women completely out of the labor market.
Not once and not twice did I observe a godzilla strolling down the street with a hottie 20 cm taller and/or 20 years younger than him. Where these couples are an exception on the streets of New York or Berlin, they seem to be a typical sight in Kiev. Strangely, the early soviet ideological writings and practices highlighted women’s equality as comrades; looks like not only the economic beliefs have gone extinct in Eastern Europe over the last 90 years.

Ukraine greeted me with cold weather, absence of my suitcase for days, and forever-angry sales ladies. So far I have been yelled at with my every purchase. Yesterday, for example, I tried to pay for some face cream with a credit card and was asked for a PIN. I politely explain that I have not requested a PIN for this credit card – it does not exist. As a response the sales lady started screaming that every “plastic card” has a PIN and offered to bring hers to demonstrate. Five minutes into my stubbornness, i.e. the actual lack of the PIN, she was forced to change the way she was executing the transaction, and, voila, a receipt for signature sans entering a PIN emerged.

As of today, technology and its usage was the most frustrating part. I needed to email out 15 proofread essays to our students and brought a USB drive to the internet café, to which I was told that they “do not work with the USB devices” and was asked to bring a floppy disk (??!!!) Another saddening factor is my non-working blackberry. I have dutifully researched the GPRS coverage in Ukraine, found a press release about MTS covering Ukraine with GRPS since this summer, called up T-Mobile and enabled the international berry plan. After landing I have discovered that MTS does have a very good coverage, just not the GPRS one. The phone sees the GPRS network, but it does not function once you go 10 km outside of Kiev and Boryspil.

Even dogs on the streets are angrily-neurotic and do not apply reason to their actions. Yesterday I saw a pack of 5 large animals calmly strolling in the street.  Suddenly, when passing one of many cars, one of the dogs turned around, barked at the vehicle and continued on its course. I have been perplexed for a while, getting on and riding in a falling-apart bus.

Astor Place, NYC

Manhattan from New Jersey

Far Rockaway beach in Queens, NY

here are several better pictures from my berry (with a slight touch of photoshop)

a wall of a building in Schenectady, NY

at a train station in Schenectady, NY

the Fed in the fog, NYC

flying out of JFK at 6am several months ago

at one of the beaches in FL