There's always something

I like working out at the little public gym at Hockey Club Yunost Minsk. It’s a friendly place with an array of good equipment but almost nothing in duplicate. After I’d been going there for a while, I donated a wall clock because theirs had long ago disappeared and I thought we’d all like to know when it’s time to go home. Later I donated some audio cables and connected the TV to the room’s audio system. Still, there’s always something else to fix and the repairs are generally out of my reach.

One time I walked in and discovered that the benches were missing from all the exercise machines and all but one of the movable benches were missing the padded tops from their frames. Somebody had decided that it was time to re-cover them all and simply took them away. They came back after a few days, looking not much different from the way they had looked before they disappeared.

The showers present a special set of problems. One time somebody replaced an ordinary shower head with one of those hose-mounted showers, but they didn’t install a bracket to hold the head in place. We had to hold the head in one hand while washing with the other. I thought about donating a replacement showerhead, but worried that doing a repair that required me to bring my own wrench might be perceived as intrusive. Instead, I put a big rubber band in my bag and attached the showerhead to the hose at a comfortable height every time I took a shower. This was much better than the previous situation, when water shot out of the pipe with no head attached at all.

Sometimes there’s no hot water, and once there was no water at all. Frequently there’s no soap. I carry my own soap and I bathe in cold water when required. In Belarus, we adapt.

Today when I checked in, there were no keys at the front desk. Nastya told me that they were downstairs in the locker room, so I went down and walked in. Oops. The locker room was filled with women who had just left an aerobics class. Apparently, something bad had happened in their locker room, something that left them with a flood, so we had to share. More accurately, the guys had to wait their turn. I changed behind a door in the hallway and got on with my workout.

There’s more, but you get the idea already. In closing, let me leave you with a picture of the floor in the aerobics room. Most of the nails are lined up in a row, but at this spot, it appears that the workman had taken too big a toot on whatever he was drinking. I love it:

Two hours in Frankfurt

I arrived in Minsk yesterday, by way of Frankfurt. Flying from Boston to Frankfurt, I met an interesting Muslim woman named Rawda. She was on her way to Cairo to attend her sister’s wedding, and shared with me her perspectives on a number of things. We ended up talking much of the flight, and I enjoyed her blend of sincerity and buoyant enthusiasm. She promised to take me into the mosque in Cambridge when I return and teach me about how Muslims pray, something I’ve wanted to understand for a long time.

Rawda had a plan. She had a four-hour layover in Frankfurt and thought she should go downtown and see something of Europe. I had a slightly longer layover and knew something about getting around Frankfurt, so I suggested that we go together and look for an interesting place to have breakfast. She worried that she’d be singled out for super-scrutiny because she wore a hijab, but I was the one who got grilled at passport control. The agent wanted to know where I was going and I told him that we were just going for breakfast and returning for flights just after ten a.m. He looked alarmed and I asked him if this were crazy. He said yes, but then admitted that downtown is close and the trains run every fifteen minutes. We proceeded.

I don’t have any pictures to show you of what we encountered when we emerged from the Frankfurt train station just after six a.m. As we climbed the staircase from the underground station-plaza to street level, we passed three derelicts struggling to stand up. One was kneeling on the stairs, facing a bloody needle a few steps up. I hustled Rawda past them and out onto the street without stopping to get out my phone. Shortly after I explained why I’d hustled her up the staircase, she pointed over her shoulder to another group and commented that the guy on the ground was at that moment giving himself an injection into his ankle.

We found a hotel and begged a map, and then set out to take our walk. We started out in Taunusanlage Park, which wasn’t completely empty but most of the people there didn’t appear to have any place to go. Things got a lot better when we walked down to the riverside parkway along the bank of the River Main. Joggers jogged, cyclists cycled, and we walked; particularly enjoying an alley of lush plane trees. Near where we intended to turn away from this riverside walkway, we found an excellent climbing structure. I’ve always been a sucker for such things, so I had to climb on it. This looked like so much fun to Rawda that she climbed a little way up as well.

After breakfast at the train station, we returned to the airport where, once again, Rawda sailed right through security and I had a hard time. I was wearing an anti-heat shirt with some Velcro vent closures, and the Velcro tabs always show up on those new x-ray body scanners. Usually this just means that somebody pats me on the tabs and sends me on my way. The German guy found it necessary to give me a full-body rubdown, twice on the front and twice on the back. Then he made me take off my shoes and he took out my shoe inserts. I had rent money stashed under the inserts, and I think it almost disappeared when I glanced up to see what was going on with my computer, sitting unattended in a bin on the conveyor belt after passing through the luggage scanner. When I looked back at his disappearing hand, he made a point of wrinkling the money and then put it back into my shoe. I can’t guess why I received such a thorough examination at all, unless it was so I’d have something to talk about in my blog.

Anyway, I enjoyed the walk and the conversation but Frankfurt didn’t endear itself to me this time.

Beantown Dance Camp

I’ve spent the last week dancing and having a very good time. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a while but various factors prevented me. Soon after I started dancing Lindy hop, I heard about a famous dance camp in Sweden called Herrang. Everybody agrees that it’s a splendid way to improve one’s dancing, but nobody says anything encouraging about the accommodations. Beantown, on the other hand, shares a stellar reputation for quality, and offers much better accommodations. I chose Beantown.

As usual, when I got there I realized that I don’t know anything. I expected this. Dancers joke about how every time they move up a level they discover a world of much better dancers and amazing new possibilities. In case I missed the point, an instructor told me in an advanced class on the first evening that my swingouts needed work. That’s bad news, because the swingout is central to Lindy. I reported the next day, and almost every day following, to the practice sessions, where I enjoyed the guidance of a private instructor who gave me some pointers each time and then sent me off to practice with whatever followers might be hanging around. I got a lot better, but understand that I still need to work at it.

Every evening we had dance parties, almost entirely to live music. I enjoy dancing with almost everybody. I like dancing with the new dancers because it’s fun to welcome them to the world of Lindy. In addition, I certainly like dancing with the experienced dancers because they open my eyes to new possibilities and help with the collaborative process of interpreting the music. I did plenty of both, along with a little watching, listening and admiring. Finally, all day every day I enjoyed spending time with dancers. We had a very friendly group of interesting people from around the world.

The class tracks during the day included materials on technique, musicality, specialty styles, routines and much more. Most of the instructors impressed me, and some of them impressed me a lot. Not wanting to miss anything, I tried to go to classes more or less all day long every day and then go to the evening dances. People warned me in advance that this would be a bad idea, nearly impossible to complete, and I did have to cut corners. Mostly I cut corners at night, going back to my dorm room soon after midnight. My morning classes generally began by 9:00 or 9:30 and I needed to get some sleep.

Speaking of the dorm room, this is not what I expected at all. I got a large and bright room with a private bathroom, air conditioning, and pleasant view. Endicott College, the venue for the camp, has a gorgeous campus with private beaches, wooded paths, fountains, numerous excellent dance floors and an expansive dining hall run by Marriott. The excellent food surprised me even more than the nice dorm room. I don’t know what kind of education the kids get at Endicott College, but it’s sure a great place to hang out for a summer dance camp.

I highly recommend Beantown and I’d love to go back.

Long silences at Microsoft

I called Microsoft today because I had a couple of little problems with my computer. The problems didn’t bother me much, but when I had a look into it, I saw an error message in my system log that I wanted to investigate. Windows provided me a handy link to click so I could learn more about the error message, but when I clicked, I got a 404 error. Microsoft had changed something, so I pressed ahead with a web search on the error and ended up at a Microsoft support site. Microsoft said I might qualify for free support if I provided my properly-activated product ID, which I did. Presently I found myself talking to a genuine Microsoft Support Engineer who called himself Eric.

In the process of getting Eric on the line I gave Microsoft all the information about me that they needed, but Eric had to ask me again. This gave me a clue as to what would be next: Eric didn’t know a thing. I told him about the mysterious error message and mentioned that one of the symptoms of my problem was that my computer didn’t go to sleep or shut itself off last night. He begged my indulgence and put me on hold for five minutes or so while he did some research.

When he came back on the phone, he announced triumphantly that fixing the computer-not-sleeping problem would be easy and he asked if I’d give him remote access to my computer. I started to agree and then thought better of it. I told him that I used to be a Microsoft support engineer too and if he just wanted to look at my power plan options, I’d be happy to do the typing myself. I opened up the advanced settings window and asked him where he wanted me to look. He started describing “the left column” and I realized that he still hadn’t gotten into the advanced settings on his own computer, so I backed up and coached him.

“OK,” I said. “I’m looking at the window where it says to turn off the display after five minutes on battery or after ten minutes when plugged in. The next line says to put the computer to sleep after fifteen minutes or 25 minutes. Do you want me to click on ‘Change advanced power settings?’”

He decided that would be a good idea, but when we got in there he didn’t know what to do. I asked him which section he wanted me to open first, and he was silent. He’d been silent a few times before, but this time I had to ask if he were alive. He replied affirmatively but it still took him a while longer to decide he wanted me to look in the obvious place, under “Sleep.” This was so obvious that I’d checked it long ago, and I asked him if he’d ever done this before. He chose not to answer.

The rest of the conversation didn’t go any better. I was hoping he’d give up and kick me upstairs to somebody who actually had a clue, but he preferred to ask me to pay him $145 so he could provide me with the in-depth support I really needed. I’m not sure what magic he intended to apply after I paid him, but I knew I didn’t want him mucking around in my computer. “This,” he exulted, “I’ve done before.”

I got exasperated and told him he wasn’t going to do it on my computer. Then I hung up and solved the problem myself in about two minutes. It was very simple and completely obvious. I just hadn’t managed to think of it when I got distracted by the 404 error.

Now I remember why I always had work when I used to be a computer consultant.

Where was I?

My blog posts keep getting farther and farther apart and the readers have noticed. Traffic to my blog site has gotten limited and I feel a little bit bad about it. But not too bad: I’ve been busy!

We began April with a few days of delightful springtime in Minsk. Then we flew to Boston via Istanbul, hoping to see the tulip festival. At the last minute, I threw a wool hat into my luggage because the weather forecast for Istanbul looked a little chilly. Good thing: The cold reached well beyond “chilly.” Undaunted, we left our hotel with all of our clothes on and walked to the park where we wanted to see the tulips. The park’s main gate was closed, but I led Alla through a pedestrian gate and got fifty meters inside before a guard came rushing over to ask what we thought we were doing.

We tried to negotiate with him, saying that we’d come to Turkey specifically to see those tulips and we had only one day. Finally, we talked him into letting us spend one minute beside the nearest bed, but he worried that strong winds would knock tree limbs onto our heads and he wouldn’t allow us to sneak behind him. We went into Topkapi Palace instead, where they had their own tulip garden and views over the park we couldn’t enter. We enjoyed the palace until we finally got so cold and wet that we went indoors to enjoy e a leisurely lunch, and we hung out indoors for the rest of the day.

Fortunately, we had enough time the next morning to walk the park end-to-end and enjoy the tulips before we rushed off to the airport.

There’s not much to say about Boston. It’s home and we like it, but we didn’t have any special adventures and I don’t want to bore you. At one point I wanted to write about how spring hadn’t even reached Boston when we got here and we still found a few piles of snow. I would have showed you the picture I took the day the parks service finally started putting water into the pond in the Boston Common. But now it’s spring and I feel like I missed the opportunity to make its absence into an interesting story.

Meanwhile, I went off to California for nine or ten days. I wanted to meet a couple of newborn cousins and had a very good time with much of their extended family. This coincided with a college reunion, so I saw a whole lot of people and reconnected with some whom I hadn’t seen in a long time.

By the time I got back to Boston, spring had finally arrived here. The city has been ablaze with flowering trees since I returned, and our social life has been ablaze in its own way as we attempt to reconnect with friends. It was a busy month.

If something surprising happens to me in the next few weeks, I’ll try to tell you about it. Meanwhile, I’m focused on my book, where I’m making much more progress.

Suckered!

Back in February, there was a big sale at Sportmaster, a Russian chain of sporting goods stores. In celebration of Men’s Day, they posted signs all over our local store advertising a 50% discount on gifts for men. I discovered this when I walked in to buy one athletic shirt to wear to dance classes. The cashier explained to me that I didn’t actually get a discount that day; but that she’d give me a discount card and the money would show up on my card on April 2 and stay there until the end of April. I took home the shirt and the discount card and showed them to Alla.

Alla liked the shirt and encouraged me to buy another one to bring back to Boston, so I went to their original location and found another of these wonderful shirts in my size. And then I bought a tank top from the same company. I bought a couple of other small things too, and waited eagerly for April 2.

When I thought about the bonanza soon to appear on my discount card, I remembered my dad’s solemn advice: “If something sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t true.” Was this too good to be true? In order to make it more believable, I dreamed up a story involving a cash-flow crisis for the company. They needed income right away and with any luck they’d still be in business on April 2 to give away a whole bunch of merchandise to the frantic people who had bought before Men’s Day. I wanted to be the first customer in the door today to buy stuff before they got cleaned out or went out of business.

The store was surprisingly quiet when I arrived, but they had plenty of goods in all departments so I went and asked the clerk how much money I had on my discount card. It worked out to over fifty dollars, which surprised me because I hadn’t understood until that moment that my single-shirt errand had inflated to a hundred-dollar extravaganza. Anyway, I could think of several interesting ways to spend the money and I took a nice tour through the store and picked out a pair of shower sandals. At that point I decided I’d already had plenty of fun, the place should still be in business tomorrow, and I’d save the rest of the discount card for Alla’s pleasure.

I handed the sandals and the card to the cashier, who asked me for money. “There’s plenty of money on the card,” I said.

“Sure,” she replied, “but you don’t get to use it on 100% of your purchase. We’ll give you at best 30%. I need money for the rest.”

“This isn’t right!,” I sputtered. “Let me see where it’s written.”

She handed me a brochure, which may have been available back in February but this was the first time I’d looked at it. It being in Russian I might have avoided it on purpose, but I don’t remember. It did say something about 30%.

So, in the very best case, if I bought enough stuff to use up the entire balance on my discount card, the total discount averaged over February and April would be 15%. I knew at the beginning that the 50% rebate was too good to be true. I just had no idea how far it was from true. They played me for an April Fool on the second of the month.

A Dash to Vitebsk

I’ve gotten to know the principals of a dance school in Vitebsk because they come to Minsk sometimes for our dance events. One of them tracked me down on Facebook and urged me to come to his school’s third-anniversary party. The party looked like fun but I didn’t imagine going because it bumped up against an event in Minsk. Kostya, however, kept giving me gentle nudges about coming.

A few days before the event, he asked me for some help translating some materials related to his program and inquired again about whether I’d come. It really did look like a good party, so I finally mentioned to Alla that I’d been fending off invitations for a few days now. She asked me, “Why don’t you go?” I didn’t need any more encouragement than that, and by the next day I’d found myself an $18 hotel and reserved train tickets, much to Alla’s surprise.

Honestly, I don’t have a lot of experience with hotels that cheap. I think Luci and I stayed in one in a small Mexican town once and we didn’t find it overly alarming, but we didn’t like it either. I actually liked the one in Vitebsk, and I’d even go back. (But I’d ask for a room on the other side of the building, away from the entrance to a popular bowling alley.)

I got a little bored on the train to Vitebsk, though, which is a bad sign because I’m planning a really long train ride with a cousin later this year. But the trip worked out pretty well otherwise because one of the people in my compartment helped me find the trolleybus that would take me to the dance studio and I got there in time for an excellent master class.

I really loved the dance party that evening. They had a good live band, a cozy location and a vibrant atmosphere. The organizers featured at one point a class group of talented beginners doing a show number. As much as I enjoyed the performance itself, I especially enjoyed watching their teacher’s face as her students danced. Christina beamed with joy, pride and love all at once.

I got back to my little hotel rather late, but the floor lady was ready, waiting right by the door. I have to imagine that security for guests at the Golden Calf Hotel meets or exceeds the security at much fancier hotels, thanks to the attentive and professional floor ladies here. I had time to take a shower and sleep a couple of hours before I said goodbye to the floor lady, walked to the train station and returned to Minsk. I still hadn’t slept enough, so I curled up on my upper berth and slept most of the way back.

The whole trip worked out really well.