Моя большая компания

[Аанглийская версия English version]

Суббота был День Города, когда мы отмечали 949 лет со дня основания Минска. Моя подруга Зарина предложила, чтобы мы пригласили ее незрячих и слабовидящих друзей и пошли в центр города на праздник. Она собрала восхитительную группу, включая ее парня Женю. Это было важно, чтобы Женя был с нами, потому что он видит достаточно хорошо и может вести слепых людей до тех пор, как он знает, куда он идет. Если я ухожу дальше, чем нескольких метрах от него, однако, он не может найти меня; так что я должен быть внимателен. Остальные ребята вообще ничего не могут видеть.

Когда мы приехали во Дворце Спорта, сотрудники МЧС продемонстрировали свои навыки по спасению людей из горящих зданий, преодолению препятствий и в целом свой героизм. У них было много оборудования, в том числе огнезащитные костюмы, кислородные баллоны, необычные машины и другие вещи, которые мне казалось было бы интересно потрогать.

Я повел мою группу к одному из грузовиков, где мы сделали фото, а потом я спросил одного из парней, можно ли нам потрогать их снаряжение. Он сказал, что должен получить разрешение, и исчез. Его просьба пошла вверх по инстанциям, и, наконец, один важный человек пригласил нас встретиться с ним около их новейшей пожарной машины, где он сказал пожарным показать нам что-то. Профессиональная экипировка и снаряжение вероятно удваивает вес пожарного, и мы брали каждую часть по очереди, чтобы детальнее рассмотреть.

После МЧС, мы пошли валять дурака на ярмарке ремесел поблизости. Ремесленники поставили палатки на большой площади, где мы бродили от палатки к палатке и играли в игры на прикосновение. Моей любимой была игра около палатки с антиквариатом, где я передал людям вещи и просил их угадать, что я передал им. Нам особенно понравился красивый медный утюг, со съемными брусками внутри. Когда гладишь ткань, можно использовать тепло от одного бруска, а второй в это время нагревать на печи.

Я думаю, что парень, который делает национальные сувениры причудливых форм, доставил большое удовольствие моей компании своими демократичными ценами. К тому же, они купили несколько плюшевых игрушек, но Анжела ничего не купала там, поэтому продавец кинулся за нами вдогонку, чтобы дать её кролика в качестве подарка. На самом деле, некоторые из продавцов дали им подарки. Это было действительно трогательно видеть, как мои друзья обсуждают различные предметы, передавая их друг другу для изучения.

Говоря о «трогать», Вова попал в беду в конце дня, когда я рассказал ему, что я показывал ребятам кучу кукол. Он догнал Таню и провел рукой по ее голове, через плечо и коснулся ее левой груди. Понимая, что он смутился, я дразнил его, «Вова! Не трогать! У тебя уже есть своя собственная жена!» (Анжела жена Вовы.) Смущенный Вова даже не хотел трогать кукол после этого. Он не стал больше ничего трогать вообще, пока чувство смущения не оставило его.

Когда мы уже посмотрели все, что можно было, примерно за час до начала концерта около Ратуши, где мы закончили день, нам повезло. Я предложил попить чай в открытом ресторане на краю площади, и мы заняли последний столик. Ничего не могло быть лучше. Мы расслабились, пили чай и перекусывали и, когда музыка заиграла, мы слушали концерт, сидя за столиком. Группа, Песняры, в советское время была супергруппой и их любят до сих пор, так как они поют на беларуском языке. Когда я услышал их в первый раз шесть или семь лет назад, мне не понравилась их музыка, но теперь они завладели мной и концерт мне понравился.

В целом, мы наслаждались отличным днем товарищеских отношений, дружбы и открытий. Всё прошло великолепно, вплоть до того, что мы нашли палатку, где продавали шашлык, почти без очереди и со свежим мясом прямо с гриля. Сначала мы не могли найти столик, но кто-то заметил наше затруднительное положение и направил нас к столу, который должен был вот-вот освободиться. Я не предполагал, что это будет так легко руководить такой большой компанией, которые во всем полагаются только на меня, но наши совместные усилия принесли большое наслаждение.

Мой сайт с фотографиями изменил свои правила, и вы не можете увидеть фотографии этого месяца в обычном месте. Вот ссылка на альбом, включая фотографии сегодняшней экскурсии.

[Особая благодарность Антонины Спиридоновой за большую помощь с переводом.]

Big following

[Russian version русская версия]

Saturday was City Day, when we celebrated 949 years since the founding of Minsk. My friend Zarina suggested that we might form an entourage of her visually-impaired friends and go downtown for the festivities. She assembled a delightful group, including her boyfriend Zhenya. It was important to have Zhenya with us, because he can see well enough to lead blind people as long as he knows where he’s going. If I get more than a few meters away from him, however, he can’t find me; so I have to pay attention. The rest of the group couldn’t see anything.

When we arrived at the Palace of Sport, the Ministry of Emergency Situations was demonstrating their skills at rescuing people from burning buildings, beating through obstacles and being generally heroic. They had lots of equipment with them, including fireproof suits, oxygen tanks, fancy vehicles and other things I imagined would be interesting to touch.

I took my group over to one of their vehicles, where we paused for a photo, and then I asked one of the guys if we could touch some of their gear. He had to get permission, and disappeared. His request went up the chain of command, and finally one of the big shots invited us to meet him over by their newest fire engine, where he told a fireman to show us around. Dressing up in all that gear probably doubles a man’s weight, and we handled most of it a piece at a time.

From the Emergency Situations area, we went off to fool around at a craft fair nearby. Craftspeople had set up booths in a large area, where we wandered from booth to booth and played various touching games. My favorite was at a display of antiques, where I handed people things and asked them to guess what I’d handed them. We especially liked the beautiful brass iron, with the removable ingots inside. The user could have one ingot warming on the stove while ironing fabric with the heat from another ingot.

I think my followers probably got a bigger charge out of a guy who makes Belarusian souvenirs in whimsical shapes and prices them for easy purchase. In addition, they bought some stuffed animals, but Anzhela didn’t buy anything there and the vendor rushed over as we left to gave her a rabbit as a gift. In fact, several of the vendors gave them gifts. It was indeed touching to see my friends discussing various items, handing them back and forth for discovery.

Speaking of touching, Vova got into trouble late in the day when I told him I was introducing the group to a bunch of dolls. He caught up to Tanya and ran his hand down her head, over her shoulder, onto her left breast. Realizing that he’d gotten confused, I teased him, “Vova! Don’t touch! You’ve already got a wife of your own!” (Anzhela is Vova’s wife.) Embarrassed, Vova didn’t even want to touch the dolls after that. He wouldn’t touch anything more at all until his embarrassment subsided.

We got lucky, running out of things to explore about an hour before the concert would start on City Square, where we’d ended the day. I suggested that we stop for tea at an outdoor restaurant on the edge of the plaza, and we got the last table. It couldn’t have worked out better. We relaxed over tea and snacks until the music started, and we got to listen to the concert seated. The group, Pesnyary, was at one time a Soviet supergroup, and they’re still beloved here since they sing in Belarusian. I didn’t like their music the first time I heard them, six or seven years ago, but they’ve grown on me and I enjoyed the concert too.

Altogether, we enjoyed an excellent day of companionship, friendship and discovery. Everything worked out great, all the way down to finding a shashleek (sheesh-kebob) stand with almost no line and fresh meat right off the grill. Finding a table at which to eat it proved to be a momentary challenge, but somebody noticed our plight and led us over to a table where they were just finishing. I hadn’t imagined it would be so easy to lead around such a big entourage of people all relying on me at once, but our cooperative effort proved to be pure delight.

My photo sharing site has changed its rules, and you can't see this month's pictures in the usual place. Here's a link to the album including pictures of today's excursion.

A Facebook Manual (for Aunt Kiefie)

The fundamental principle for using Facebook successfully is knowing its purpose. Facebook is simply a way for you to entertain your friends and acquaintances. Remember that it’s more for them than for you, and everything else I tell you will follow naturally.

Messaging is your key means of communication if you want to say something to one person. Your dance friends probably don’t care that you congratulate somebody on the arrival of their grandchild, but that grandmother cares a lot. Send Grandma a private message.

Wall Posts are available to the general public, but Facebook doesn’t automatically show all of our posts to all of your friends. It will show a new post first to a few people who seem especially interested in you, people who read most of your recent posts already. It may also show a post about lemonade to your other friends who post about lemonade, but don’t imagine that everybody is going to see a new post right away. But if those first friends like your post and/or comment on it, then Facebook will begin showing that one to more people.

Since wall posts are public and you probably have a diverse group of friends, you should be judicious about what you put there. If something is interesting only to a subset of your friends, you’d be better off posting it in a group that you all belong to, so it won’t get broadcast to people who aren’t interested. You can even create a group for that special set of friends, if there isn’t one already.

Try to be sensitive about the volume of your wall posts. [This isn’t relevant to Aunt Kiefie, who posts only seldom.] Since your close friends will see every one of your posts in their feed, they might feel overwhelmed and change the settings so they see only “important” posts from you. Or, worst case, they might “unfollow” you. If you want to entertain a lot of people, you need to be judicious about it and post only stuff that a lot of people will want to read about. [And I should take my own advice.]

Comments on posts are a little more private than the posts themselves, because people have to do a little work to see them. This is a good place to put your reaction to the post, and it’s probably even OK sometimes if your reaction is, “Wow, Annie, I haven’t seen you in a long time!” If, however, you want to invite Annie to lunch, you should consider taking that back to Messaging.

Replies to comments are almost private, because only the person whose comment elicited the reply will see what you said without clicking on something. Be as personal as you want there, and that would even be an OK place to invite Annie to lunch if you’re replying to her comment that she hasn’t seen you in a long time.

Naming names helps to make sure that certain people see a post. If you mention somebody in a post or in a comment, Facebook will definitely bring that to their attention. You can also tag people in a post, but it’s generally not cool to tag an inanimate object with a person’s name unless that person gave the object to you or will relate very strongly to it.

Posting on somebody else’s wall is very problematic. You can do it, but remember that it’s a Wall Post, and everybody gets a chance to see it. Your friend may be uncomfortable about presenting your conversation about lunch plans to the whole world. Your friend may even be uncomfortable about advertising your passion for oatmeal cookies. The only time you should post on a friend’s wall is when you are confident that your post will be interesting to your friend’s friends, because basically you’re taking control of their space.

If somebody else, like your nephew Steve in Belarus, puts something on your wall and you don’t want it there, feel free to delete it. It’s your wall.

Now that you’re good at all this stuff, you’ll be able to entertain your friends and acquaintances successfully and get a lot of “likes.” That’s fun, of course, but since you remember that your primary focus is on entertaining them, rather than yourself, you don’t need to count the “likes” several times a day. Just check often enough to learn what kinds of things are especially entertaining for your friends, and stick with real life. If you don’t actually live your life, you won’t have anything to say on Facebook!

Hairy Lake

The cleanest lakes in this area are named, if I were to do a direct translation, “Upper and Lower Hairs.” For readability, let’s use the Russian name, Volosi. There’s a popular beach at the spot where the two lakes join, and last year I discovered a footpath to the southern tip of the lower lake, where there’s a picnic table, a fire pit, and clear access to the water in a pathway between the reeds that generally line the shore.

I described this place to Alla last year, and even showed her pictures. I was eager to go back this year, principally because it’s a nice walk, but also because I like swimming in the clear water, where I can see the bottom however far it is from the surface. Since we’re leaving tomorrow, today would be our last chance. Alla agreed to come, knowing we’d be passing the cheese lady along the way. We decided to start right after breakfast because the weather still looked pretty good but the forecast didn’t promise much more sunshine.

We had a nice walk, and I found the place with only a little difficulty where the path led through a recently-mowed field and it was hard to distinguish the path from tractor tracks. At last, we walked down a narrow grassy clearing and I knew we’d almost arrived. The clearing widened into space to park and turn around a couple of cars. A path to our right led through the trees to the picnic table and fire pit. Grass grew in lush abundance despite the shade. We had the place to ourselves, and the last visitors had done a pretty good job of cleaning up after themselves.

“Here it is,” I exulted.

“This isn’t it,” Alla contradicted. She somehow imagined we’d be at a sunny and sandy beach, not at a shaded picnic table in the grass. She remembered the public swimming area where the two lakes met and hadn’t anticipated the reeds at the shore.

As I changed into my swimsuit, Alla sat down, dejected. “I’m not going,” she said. She didn’t want to walk into the water because the bottom looked dirty to her. This is the same blue clay she smeared all over her body at the public beach, but she would have none of it today.

As I walked out over the clay, it bounced under my feet, supported in a network of soft reed roots. Presently, the water got deeper and I launched myself to swim and to drink the sparkling water. I swam lazy laps where I could keep my eye on that opening in the reeds and occasionally encourage Alla to come out for a swim. She likes swimming, but she wouldn’t budge. After a while, I thought I’d better come back because she didn’t appear to be having a good time.

As we walked home, Alla thought about our friend Viktor, who keeps running for President of Belarus but never gets very far. “Poor Viktor,” she said, “he just wants to make life better for the people of Belarus but they have no use for anything new.”

I’ve heard Alla describe today’s beach a couple of times now, once to the cheese lady, whom we visited on our way home, and once to our friends after we got back. To her, it was a dirty-muddy place with no reasonable access to the water. To me, it was a beautiful spot where I could swim as far as I wanted and eat lunch at a rustic picnic table. I considered it a pleasant change from our shallow swimming hole in a less-transparent river. We rushed back, however, 8 km or so to our spot on the river so Alla might go swimming if the sun comes out again. Right now, that doesn’t seem likely.

Long walks

We’re in Ust'e, in the Braslav Lakes region of Belarus. We’ve had a mix of rain and sun, but the weather hasn’t limited our fun in any way. I’ve been catching up on reading and taking walks when I can’t go swimming. Day before yesterday I took only a short walk because I knew it would rain some more. I wandered over to a neighboring cottage and made friends with the family who owns it. I ended up spending upwards of an hour in their living room, talking life and politics beside a pleasant fire, while another storm passed overhead.

Yesterday I made an excursion to Slabodka, a small town about 4 km from here. On the way, I caught up with a group of Belgians also looking for groceries. None of them speaks Russian, so I helped them with some of their shopping before I went off to another store to buy some soap. The second shopkeeper asked if I were Belgian. She hadn't seen the Belgians yet, but I don’t think there are a lot of secrets around here. Shopping in Slabodka is like shopping at Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery in Lake Wobegon: “If we don’t have it, you can probably get by without it anyway.” I came home with most of what I wanted and called it enough.

We did better at shopping today. We walked 4 km in another direction, to pick up some homemade farmer cheese. (Cottage cheese, sort of.) We took a cross-country route to our destination and a different cross-country route back. Along the way, we enjoyed a riot of wildflowers, green vistas, a few cows and horses, and a few very nice people. We decided along the way that we needed some eggs, so Alla started paying attention to see who has chickens.

As we approached the cheese lady’s place, we passed a home with two chickens in the yard. Alla asked if they could sell us a couple tens of eggs. (Dozens are apparently an English affectation. Ten is the number here.) The householder readily agreed, though she only had 16 to sell. That’s OK, because we made good use of the empty sockets in our second egg carton later on.

Leaving the village by a back road, we passed a family I’d met last year when I needed water, and then bumped into a guy named Joseph, who said he could sell us tomatoes, cheese and butter. We didn’t need any more cheese, but we’re sure glad about the tomatoes. They’re amazing. Then, along the path to our village, I noticed something spherical and white on the ground. Alla explained that it’s a rain mushroom, and they’re edible when fresh. They look like the spherical mushrooms everybody raves about in New England, but which I’ve never tried. They taste delicious. I ate a couple of them and we heaped the rest into the empty space in our second egg carton.

I’m enjoying the little challenges of getting by without a car and without any big stores nearby.

For more pictures, please see 2016-08 Belarus.

Two apples

We're on our way from Minsk to Braslav, riding in a bus. A few minutes ago, we stopped in Byagoml' for a ten-minute break. I wandered around the bus station, and found a woman setting up a table facing the street, preparing to sell apples and mushrooms. I figured we'd enjoy eating a couple of apples, so I called to her.

"Would you sell me just two?" I asked.

She nodded, "30,000 rubles."

Her apples weren't big enough to command that high a price, a dollar and a half, even in an expensive city. I frowned. Maybe she thought to take advantage of the foreigner. "That's expensive," I complained.

Thinking I may not have recognized that she was talking about old rubles, she persisted, asking incredulously, "three rubles is expensive?"

"For two apples it is," I replied.

"Oh," she said. "I misunderstood. That was for a bucket full." She withdrew four apples from one of her buckets and handed them to me. "Just take them."

I put the apples into my pockets and called her back. "Miss..." I handed her 5,000 rubles. "Thank you very much."

Before the bus left, I still had time to go to the toilet. That privilege generally costs 5,000 rubles in Minsk, but here it was just 1,300. I handed the attendant 1,500 and she scrabbled about in her box for change. She only had a single hundred-ruble note and no new kopeks. I thanked her and told her it was OK, but she promised to reimburse me, if she could, as I left. She didn't catch my eye as I went out, though, but she came to find me at the bus a few minutes later, a hundred rubles in her hand.

People here are very nice.

Adventures in international commerce

One of the big cell-phone companies in Belarus announced a tempting promotion, now that they’re rolling out 4G data in Minsk. You can buy unlimited 4G service for $.05 per day. That’s right: a nickel a day. And since there aren’t many clients yet, it’s amazingly fast. I’m getting speeds of up to 65 Mb/s, but right now I’m powering everything through my tablet because I don’t have a regular 4G modem.

I was aware of the promotion, and I could have bought a 4G modem from Amazon before I left the USA, a modem intended for sale in the Russian market. I wasn’t 100% sure that was what I needed, however, and decided I’d wait to buy my modem directly from the folks promoting the 4G service. Unfortunately, though, they don’t sell 4G modems. Nobody does.

I tried really hard to find one, and finally persuaded a guy at a local computer store to scour his favorite online sites to see if he could find one anywhere in the country for me. Yes, he found one. Just one, priced at $110. The one from Amazon was going to be $50. I cheaped out, and decided to look farther. I finally found an online merchant in Moscow selling the same thing as Amazon for $60, so I ordered it. They added a delivery fee, but it still felt like a deal, so I pressed ahead. Next, I had a really hard time with the payment.

They said I could pay with Yandex Wallet or by bank transfer. I took a look at Yandex and thought about opening a Wallet account, but I don’t have a local bank account and worried about giving my only credit card number to some Russian website that looks like an attractive target for hackers. Besides, I don’t really even know what’s involved in the setup after the first page, because it got stuck on my computer and I gave up and went off to the bank.

To be more accurate, I went to several banks. The first bank without a huge waiting line said that they could complete the transaction for an $18 fee. Frustrated by the size of the fee, I moved on. I also asked a couple of savvy (I thought) friends whether they had Yandex Wallet or knew anything about this. They didn’t know anything. Not even the one who works at the National Bank of Belarus. Now I do.

I learned about Yandex Wallet after I finished the transaction during my second visit to my bank of choice, only one mile from home. On foot. The bankers warmed to my predicament and even talked to the merchant in Moscow to try to figure out a cheaper and faster way to send the money. It took two bankers fifteen or twenty minutes, and I ended up paying $7 in commissions for a SWIFT transaction that will take several days. Unfortunately, I didn’t mention the words “Yandex Wallet” until too late. It turns out that anybody can send money through Yandex from automated pay stations located pretty much everywhere, and the commissions are generally around 3%.

One day I’ll receive my modem. Today I got an education. Yandex Wallet is (theoretically) easy. I should tell my friends.