Fil. kand.

Fil. kand. is short for filosofie kandidat which is Swedish for Philosophy Candidate and it is an academic title that’s the equivalent of a Bachelor of Arts Degree. On the picture above is the traditional cake – Prinsesstårta – which is customarily served with champagne in Sweden to celebrate that someone has become a fil. kand..

This woman is fil. kand. i ryska. That’s a BA in Russian language, comrades! And for my Russian comrades – да, наконец-то я стала Женщиной с Высшим Образованием!

Blandband

Sometimes you just take a liking to something without being able to explain really why. That’s the way it is for me with horses, saltgurka, Jessica Simpson and the picture above.

Back when I was a kid internet was so new there was nothing to download from it, we didn’t have any mp3players, not to speak of iTunes or iPods, but we did have this thing called ‘blandband’ [mixed tapes]. We made them with songs that we liked which we taped from the radio. Then we shared them with each other. It was great; let me tell you, comrades, those were indeed the days! My generation later did the same thing with CDs and I’ve kept doing it. From time to time. In 2006 I made a CD for Katharina with all of Johnny Cash’s most religious songs. It was a hit, of course, and last Sunday I got to thinking that I should do it again. Make her a CD with mixed good songs that contain, as I like to call it, ‘a splash of the Divine’ [translated into the language of mortals and/or average people that means ‘songs where they mention either God, Jesus, pray, Amen or all of the above’]. LeAnn Rimes latest country effort (I would never listen to her pop, but of course you understand that, comrades, that’s a given and I trust you know this as well as I do) “Family” is so awesome I cannot stop listening to it – not only is her voice perfect for country, but it is also works wonderfully in duets, and there’s three of them on the disc. Jewel’s crossed over completely to country now with “Perfectly Clear”; yet I am not the least impressed. The first track sounds like old school Jewel grown up, which I suppose it also is, in many ways, but other than that the disc is terrible. Maybe because it’s not the ‘pop-country’ that I’m used to, but has more of a… bluegrass feeling to it. I don’t know. Perhaps it just needs to grow on me. Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift were last year’s biggest musical experiences for me, and I’m looking forward to hearing more of them in the future… I don’t know much about music, but I know what I like! And Dixie Chicks is a classic, comrades, which I know that you know – and you know I know you know.

1. “What I Cannot Change” – LeAnn Rimes [Family]
2. “Stronger Woman” – Jewel [Perfectly Clear]
3. “Wide Open Spaces” – Dixie Chicks [Wide Open Spaces]
4. “Jesus Take The Wheel” – Carrie Underwood [Some Hearts]
5. “Easy Silence” – Dixie Chicks [Taking the Long Way]
6. “Fifteen” – Taylor Swift [Fearless]
7. “Pray Out Loud” – Jessica Simpson [Do You Know]
8. “The More Boys I Meet” – Carrie Underwood [Carnival Ride]
9. “Our Song” – Taylor Swift [Taylor Swift]
10. “Nothin’ Better to Do” – LeAnn Rimes [Family]
11. “Lessons Learned” – Carrie Underwood [Some Hearts]
12. “Fearless” – Taylor Swift [Fearless]
13. “Do You Know” – Jessica Simpson with Dolly Parton [Do You Know]
14. “The Best Day” – Taylor Swift [Fearless]
15. “So Small” – Carrie Underwood [Carnival Ride]
16. “I Believe In Love” – Dixie Chicks [Top of the World – Live]

Implicit

God is awesome and my Swedish church is awesome enough to be worthy of Him: “Wireless. Prayer is free. Constantly online. Pray when, where and how you want. Free support in all congregations.”

Being as I am a single woman now I was asked out on a date. I said yes and I went. Yesterday. For lunch. With a man. A kind, good-looking, educated, smart, interesting man who’s not only Russian in Sweden but also interested in me, the Swede in Russia. I hate dating (I consider it the third worst man-made creation – after concentration camps and religious fundamentalism) but yesterday was very nice. Going on a date gave me an excuse to put on my cutest outfit so far this year (the knee high black boots, a red pleated skirt with my newly bought rust colored cardigan with puffy shoulders on top of a brown tank top with lace trimming), but it’s too bad that I’m so not there or, literally speaking – not here. This would’ve been perfect – had I been perfect, that is. He lives just around the corner from me, which back in the old days would’ve been the first criteria for getting into my pants. I hate traveling far. No matter how contradictory that might sound, it’s true.

Yesterday was only good during the two hours when I was on my lunch-break/lunch-date. Otherwise it was a horrible day; filled with awful hard academic work and terrible news. I arrived at the university library at 8.30 and left at 19.00. Yeah. Also I found out my grade for the exam in Russian lit from last week – my professor said he was ‘disappointed with me’ and that ‘actually’ he was ‘forced’ to put a ‘G’ on me [that’s a C or a 3, comrades] because I hadn’t done anything of what he had ‘expected of me’. Ever since then I only want to stick sharp objects into various parts of his body. He never explained to me that it was going to be a written exam, even though I asked him over and over again all of fall semester, and didn’t bother to tell me that the 2500 pages of fiction that I read was only ONE question, whereas there rest of the SEVEN questions were on literary theory. And he even failed on giving me all the formal material that was on the test. He didn’t even give me an example of the test until Monday afternoon, and the exam was on Wednesday morning. And he’s the one who’s ‘disappointed’! And as if getting a bad grade wasn’t terrible enough, he says he has to ‘figure out’ what to write about me for the scholarship application, because he’s not ‘sure’ and in order to get ‘sure’ he asked me if I ‘wouldn’t mind’ giving the PhD students of not only our institution, but our UNIVERSITY a seminar on Dusty’s “Siberian Notebook”? And that’ll be next Monday. This means I have less than a week not only to write an essay in order pass my last exam in Russian grammar, but also to prepare a seminar for people who know more than me, all the while I feel like I’ve already given everything I had to give IN THIS LIFE and want to make use of the popular Swedish term ‘utbränd’.

See, comrades, in Russia I would deal with a situation of this kind in a very simple way. In Sweden such a way is ‘unhealthy’ and frowned upon by ‘authorities’.

And I bet I won’t even be happy once I get that stupid degree I’ve been working so hard to get.

And he has the nerve to tell me that my Swedish analysis of Solzhenitsyn’s “The Cancer Ward” sounds like a freaking ‘school essay’! Does he even understand what it means to live for almost five years abroad? Without anybody to talk to at all in your native tongue? I don’t think so, comrades! Of course my Swedish sounds like I’m a kid – I was a kid when I lived here! Not only do I want to stick little knifes into his eyes and spit into his coffee when he’s not looking, but I also want to break down and cry and scream ‘unfair, unfair, unfair’! I really think it’s unfair. I tried so hard and I came so far and he… made me feel stupid. He made me doubt myself. He forced me to question my intelligence, my knowledge, my abilities. And nobody’s got the right to do that to me. Nobody! Not even my darling professor M. I don’t love him anymore. I hate him. He’s an old jerk who could only catch a woman when he was ‘persona non grata’ and that’s not saying a little, comrades. No more, comrades, no more!

But the thing is that once you’ve started what I’ve started, you can never go back. I can’t cry in front of HIM because then he’ll consider me a ‘weak woman’ and I can’t complain because then he’ll say that ‘it’s a miracle I’ve made it this far at all, if it wasn’t for him, then surely…’ and he’ll probably imply that he knew I was ‘just a pretty little thing’ and in reality I’m ‘this mindless young girl’ and I can’t NOT do the seminar because he has to write a letter of recommendation for me not only to the Swedish Institute now, but more importantly – to Berkeley in the fall.

Nadia, the professor I’m passing my grammar exam with, is the good cop in this idiotic ‘bad cop/good cop game’ we call ‘higher education’. I passed the first oral exam out of two with her in the afternoon today, and she convinced me that I’m not stupid at all, in fact I’m really smart and I know many things, and not only that – I also work hard and I’ve earned the diploma I’m about to receive. I also bashed M a little bit in front of her, and, comrades, was she feeling me! Not I, but she herself commented on all of this using my exact words – ‘he’s never satisfied’ with anything, and though it’s of course great to have ‘someone in your life’ who ‘pushes you like that’, he clearly doesn’t understand that ‘some of us’ have a little ‘less time at our hands’ and perhaps, perhaps even a life ‘outside of the university walls…’

Don’t you hate it when you get so mad or angry or hurt or sad but can’t tell the person, and even though you know this, the words won’t stop coming and it’s just like a never-ending monologue of hatred, anger, pain and sadness going on and on and on inside your head?

Göteborg

This is (from the right) Annie, me, Elena (she’s from Moscow!) and Magnus (that’s Annie’s brother) drinking wine and enjoying a splendid Friday evening together yesterday. Good times, good times indeed! Also please make note of my smokin’ hot nerdy glasses… yeah, that’s right – the year 2009 is the year of everything’s allowed! At least for me.

After you’ve repeated a certain action a certain number of times, the action in question becomes automatic and sooner or later finds a more or less predictable form. My annual winter holiday trip to Sweden from Russia is currently being repeated for the fifth time and yes, it has found a very predictable form. I am both surprised at how predictable everything is and at how calmly I take the cultural differences now compared to how it was the first couple of years. I remember that going back to Sweden used to be a shocking and disturbing and sometimes unpleasant experience, because it was like traveling not between two countries, but between two worlds. The reason for this could be anything; there could be many reasons. Of course, I’m older now and I’m surer of myself, and I’ve done it before, and so on and so forth. But I don’t think that’s the deal here; I think there’s something else to it. I think I have achieved what was never my plan, but what is the dream of many ‘expats’ around the globe – I have acquired two cultures. When I moved to Russia, I left Sweden behind me, but then I realized that having Sweden with me in Russia was one of the biggest pluses about my life in Russia, and so I was reacquainted with Sweden already when I was in Russia, thus making the transfer back to Sweden much easier. I have also befriended Russia in Sweden, which eases yet another transfer – back to Russia. And I don’t feel exclusively ‘Swedish’ anymore; neither do I feel ‘Russian’. There are many things I like about Sweden, but I no longer belong here like I used to. The feeling is hard to explain. This first week in Sweden has been good, but it hasn’t been as much of ‘coming home’ as it used to be. Perhaps it’s been done too much for me to get excited. I was excited on the train from Stockholm to Gothenburg for about one hour before we arrived, because I was going to see my family, which I hadn’t seen in a long time. And I always get excited to see my family, no matter where I am. Some things about Gothenburg are really ‘home’ to me, but some of them are just… part of this city by the sea. I grew up here, but the city I grew up in is gone (speaking metaphysical – because all of it is still here), and the person I was when I lived here is also gone. And that’s why more and more it feels like I’m a stranger meeting a stranger. Or just two old friends nodding to each other, having long since forgotten everything they shared many years ago.
On Sunday evening all of my family – mother, father, brother, sister – had dinner and it was very nice. On Monday I went straight to the university, where I arrived at my institution to find it dead. So I went to have black Swedish coffee and a traditional muffin in the same coffee shop on the Avenue as I always do. Afterwards I returned to the institution and found my darling professor there, and he explained to me that there was no more ‘Institution of Slavic Languages’, but now it’s been replaced by the ‘Institution of Languages & Literatures’ (which sounds like the silliest thing in Swedish). M. and I had a three hour long conversation about everything and nothing, as always. Then we decided that I would pass my last exam in Russian literature on Wednesday at 10 am, and I realized that I had to study really hard all Tuesday. After that I met up with Katharina in the university canteen, and we talked and had a good time and then decided to study together all Tuesday. Which we did and that was great because I love Katharina. On Wednesday I had my exam, it was two hard hours of Russian formalism and structuralism, but I did it and I think I passed. After that I had a meeting with another professor, Nadia, about my last exam – in Russian grammar. We had a nice conversation and she gave me things to do and I went straight to the library to work on them. And I worked on them until I met Annie on Thursday evening. Seeing Annie again was also great. She’s so cute and one of my best friends ever. Can’t believe I’ve known her for almost 8 years! Crazy! On Friday I met with Nadia again, we discussed the form of my last exam, and she liked the work that I had done so far, so I think I’ll be able to pass everything by the end of next week. Can’t believe I’m actually going to have that diploma in my hands by this time next week…

On Friday evening I went home to Annie, where we drank good wine and played a game called ‘Buzz’ with her brother Magnus and Magnus' friend Elena. I spoke Russian to Elena because guess what, comrades? She’s from the Motherland! Yes, it was great indeed. We also played ‘Singstar’ with ABBA songs and I and Annie rocked it so wonderful we bored everyone else out of the living room. I haven’t had such a good time in… a very, very long time! It was great. ABBA is indeed the best thing since Dusty and Kafka.
Tomorrow it’s Sunday and you know what that means, don’t you, comrades? That’s right – communion and mass in church with Katharina!

Stockholm

Nadia & me making a ‘Patriotic Excursion’ of the capital of my home and native land on Saturday.

Whenever I’m given the chance to go through Stockholm, I always use this opportunity to catch up with my fellow classmates of ’04 Putincity Pedagogical University. They all [except for one; she’s currently in Seattle] live in the capital. This year was no exception – in fact, this year was more than ever before. I arrived in Stockholm on Friday evening, on a flight that was an hour late from Prague, and went straight to fetch my Yekat friend Nadia at her hotel, and together we made it out to the suburb on the subway. There we were greeted by Sara, her Russian wife Lena [who’s really from Minsk], and Malin. There was wine and food and good conversation. On Saturday I decided to show Nadia all the great ‘Patriotic Landmarks’ of Sweden’s capital. I called it ‘My Patriotic Excursion’. Though the patriotism I had hoped for to be present seemed not to want to wake up, especially not when I couldn’t figure out if the place where our government is located is called “Rosenbad” or not… Anyway, I haven’t forgotten the word ‘riksdag’ yet anyway! After that we posed in front of the castle [the king was home!] and I also showed Nadia my future place of work in Gamla stan – The Swedish Academy! Yes, that’s where I’ll have one of those 18 places and get to pick Nobel Prize winners… ah… the brightness of my future! For dinner I took Nadia out for pizza – Swedish pizza! – and she managed to eat a whole pizza, and so did I, but for Nadia this means more than it does for me: she is now ready for her вид на жительство. Later in the evening we drank tea with Sara and after Nadia had left on the subway, I and Sara watched “Torsk på Tallinn”. I almost got myself an anxiety chock. That, comrades, is one part of Swedish society which I have definitely left behind…

Prague

Incidentally this is where I always dreamed of being one day – not between to peeing men, but in front of the Kafka Museum.

Even though I should be checking out of my room as we speak, I just want to write down a couple of words on my trip so far. The journey already from the start in Yekaterinburg was awesome – they have this new kind of transit system at Sheremet’evo when you change between national and international, which meant that I and a group of other [formerly known as ‘unlucky suckers’] were driven between airplanes and around the whole airport field inside of it, and not outside, as it was before. It was awesome, yet scary, because planes were constantly taking off and landing and the road was slippery as hell. And they do say that it’s more likely you’ll die in a car crash then in a plane crash. On the flight between Moscow and Prague all the people with special food needs – meaning two vegetarian and two Jews who had the bravery to order Kosher from Aeroflot – were bunched up together in the front of the plane, and of course they messed up our special food needs anyway. So we got to talking; me, two Jews from Israel who kept arguing that I must be Russian since I ‘speak Russian’ and ‘look like a Russian beauty’ [rookie mistake, comrades – rookie mistake…] and a Chinese teacher of English. It was one crazy flight and I proved to be able to hold my own when the Jews pulled out their Torah and wanted to know exactly how well I know the Old Testament after reading it four times… needless to say, I passed. Then upon landing I was soon to find myself with these two in the car of their Russian girlfriend Irina, where they started smoking weed and promised they’d take me down town in a moment…

I made to the bus stop, where Varvara from Yekaterinburg met me and guided me to the right bus, and I made it to the hostel, where I fell asleep in my bed straight away. Incidentally, this hostel is nicer than where I’ve lived for 2 and a half year in Yekat…. Yesterday I first got lost, then I got on the metro, then I walked and walked and walked and was so happy and joyous and content even though this trip will cost me twice as much as my usual trip back home would. My ‘lack of new year’s resolutions’ has, however, already proved to not be so good in practice as it was in theory. Remember how I wrote that this year I can do ‘whatever’ I want, ‘whenever’ I want to? Yeah. So because of this I decided to travel in 4 inch heeled black knee-high boots. They’re not super uncomfortable, but walking for more than 5 hours straight in them hurt. My feet were begging me for mercy yesterday… and since I can do whatever I want to do, I sat down first in a café and took off my shoes, then I lost all dignity a couple of hours later and sat down in a mall and took off my shoes.

I did make it – as the picture above clearly indicates – to the Kafka Museum. Kafka rocks! I’ve expecting a Metamorphosis to happen as soon as I got off the plane, but as of yet – nothing. I have not yet turned into any bug of sort, comrades. But I will have three more days here in February and then I will get myself metamorphosed, I promise. In every sense of the word. The museum was awesome. But I can understand that if you don’t speak German, Czech or English it’s not very good at all. And if you’re not a fan of Kafka it won’t make any sense at all. I’m such a huge fan of Kafka; I think I and Kafka are like homegirl and homeboy. He was a vegetarian – I am a vegetarian. He wrote things that people back in his day didn’t want to publish – I write things now that people in my day don’t want to publish. Kafka saw my life in Russia long before there was even me, let alone me in Russia. Kafka is my man. I love Kafka so much I scared all the other English and Russian speaking visitors at the Museum. I told them about how I was expecting the metamorphosis any moment now. They tried to stay away, but that’s a rookie mistake – Kafka will creep up on you when you least expect it. And so will I. So will I, comrades.

My Point Exactly

Incidentially I was just asking myself the same thing.

Even though I won't be waking up in Las Vegas tomorrow...

Tent Day

I bet they’d been waiting all year for this! Minus 23, the river Iset’ is frozen and it’s… tent day!

For a long time I imagined that when this happened, then the title of my first blog post afterwards would be “single”. Well, that isn’t the title of this blog post – my first in the year 2009 – but that’s probably the biggest piece of news that I’ve got this year. Yeah, I’m single.

Now I’ve almost recovered completely from my Pelvic Inflammatory Disease [which is NOT an STD and therefore it is NOT brave of me to be so open about it on my blog!] but the antibiotics I was taking still forced me to celebrate this New Year’s Eve sober. Something that can be hard, not to say almost impossible, to do in Russia where one must drink at least half of one’s yearly dose of vodka already during the 1st of January (from midnight till 8 in the morning) or one is not to be considered a ‘real’ man. Thus I was invited to spend New Year’s Eve with my old roomie Jen’s Pentecostal Church, which seemed super boring at first [a group of people more religious than me getting together NOT to drink and NOT even to watch Medvedev give his first speech ever at midnight to the Russian people, from 10 at night until 6 in the morning], but turned out to be super fun. I’m not being ironic. We spent the last 5 minutes of 2008 and the first 15 minutes of 2009 in prayer, and that was awesome. Praying always makes me happy because nothing can bring more joy than talking to our Lord, am I right or am I right?

Since my Korean roomie left me to go backpacking around Europe for a whopping 40 days and 40 nights I’ve been alone in room 206. It’s been a whole week now, and I must admit that I’ve come to the conclusion that I cannot be left alone for such a long time. The first thing I did was clean. I’ve cleaned a lot since I found myself with out my more handsome half. Back when I was a kid my father used to say that women in love clean a lot. Well, once again it has been proved that my father knows nothing about women – I’ve cleaned everything there is to clean in this Russian dirt dorm where I live. And let me tell you that there’s A LOT one can clean here. But now it’s all cleaned already. I even spent two hours one evening home-dry-cleaning this super cute red coat that Nujan left me. I’m going to wear it in Europe! Nujan left me with a home-dry-cleaning set and an electric blanket. I’ve mastered the home-dry-cleaning though it was really difficult (one mistake and the fabric gets ruined, comrades) and I’ve begun a deep and fulfilling love affair with the electric blanket. Never before in my life have I owned an electric blanket. I always thought it was for old Asian people [news flash: the electric blanket I have WAS made for old Asian people since it was brought here by the Russian Post from South Korea]. During this week of living alone I’ve sometimes spent time just with the electric blanket and nothing else, purely lying still in my bed as my body gets heated by the blanket, at the same time telling myself that the only reason I do this is because it is minus 20 outside…

I think I don’t love my professor M back in Sweden anymore. I’ve heard all of his stories now [many of them twice or thrice] and I’ve made it to where I wanted to make it and I’m done. I’m old enough to know that New Year’s resolutions are only made to be broken and that just because it’s a new year it doesn’t automatically mean that I have to become a new [read: better] person. Yeah, I wanted to resolve that the year 2009 was going to be “The Year of Health” for me [because it sucked so bad to be so sick during December] but I don’t think I’m going to push myself in that direction. After all this life is likely to be my only life [on Earth that is – in Heaven I’ll be rocking and rolling with the big J for ETERNITY!] and I haven’t really enjoyed it as much as I should’ve. So instead of telling myself what I shouldn’t do in 2009, this will be the year when I can do anything I want whenever I feel like it. No restrictions. No resolutions. Everything is allowed.

By the way, comrades, if you think that it isn’t very ‘biblical’ of me to say such things, I think you should look up Saint Paul’s first letter to Corinthians, Chapter 6, verse 12.

There’s not much else for me to write here since I’ve spent the last couple of days writing a time-demanding summary of/essay on Bakhtin’s “The Problem of Dostoevsky’s Poetics” and because of that I haven’t really done anything worthy of blogging about. What I can say, however, is that I made a mayor crack-down on Mr Bakhtin and his ‘legendary’ and supposedly ‘perfect’ as well as ‘ground-breaking’ theory in my essay, and confronted him with the fact that Dusty’s “The Double” is nothing but a 19th century version of the Book of Job. Also I pointed out – very smartly I might add, comrades – that the ‘two-headed word’ that Bakhtin sees in Dusty’s style of writing was actually not invented by him, but can be found everywhere in The Gospel according to St. John. Yeah! Thus, I argued in my essay, when Bakhtin says that we in Dusty meet the world during ‘carnival’ when life is turned ‘inside out’, what we really meet is the world of the New Testament, because what can be more ‘life inside out’ than God becoming Man? Hello?

Excuse me these my pious thoughts. Soon I’m going to be back in Sweden, and back in my liberal and non-speaking-in-tongues Swedish Lutheran Church, where they’ll know how to manage me and get these overly devout feelings out of me. I can’t wait!