Dividing My Time

Internet Day in Russia/День интернета в России: World Domination by Domain Handle?

 

The Internet is the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call waiting.  

~Dave Barry

Today is Internet Day in Russia!    Great timing for Russia’s # 1 fan of Cyberspace, Blogger-in-chief (as he is known) President Dmitry Medvedev (http://twitter.com/KremlinRussia_E) who must feel like kicking back after a week spent kicking some (albeit long distance) ass, firing Moscow’s pint sized mayor, Yuri “The Long Armed” Luzhkov.  And not before time either.  Go Dmitry, Go!

I’m currently doing some half-hearted research on the concept of The Great Russian Soul at the moment for my too much-neglected book, and one of the things that keeps cropping up is Russia’s sense of a special mission to promote its Russianness within the global community.  This means they always have to be just that little bit different about every single little thing.  Like Christmas.  And Internet Day: although the rest of the world celebrates the Vatican-sanctioned World Day for the Internet (pronounced in Russian “Interrrrrrrrr-nyet”) on April 4th, the day of the ascension of St. Isidore of Seville (560-636 CE), (who is the current patron saint of the Internet), in Russia, we celebrate it today because some IT guys (called “Eye-tea-shniki”) decided we should.   Instead of Facebook (pronounced in Russia “feyssss-buk”) Russians have a total prototype called “V Kontakte,” which means “In contact.”  There are also lots of copycat retail sites such as ozon.ru, which sells books and if you squint looks just like amazon.com.   Last Spring, there was a huge hue and cry about the introduction of a Russian language domain, so that the endings read “.rf” rather than the more Latinized “.ru.” This was a pet Kremlin project and will, I feel sure, play a big part in ushering in total world domination.   Any day now.

Living in Russia, I count my cyber blessings daily.  I am old enough, and enough of a veteran of life in Russia to remember what life was like before the internet: endless tries to get a crackly international line on the telephone, no access to print media in English, no iTunes downloads of “Big Love” or “Mad Men,” and no Google or Wikipedia.  Awful…

According to my uber-reliable cyber buddy, Russian Sphinx, only 32.2% of Russians use the Internet, which seems woefully little for a country that has an almost monopolistic lock up on the cyber bride/dating concession.    This may be because the demographics of Russia lean heavily towards the over 70-s, who have not embraced the new technology with open arms.   This generalization, however, does not include HRH’s father, Dedushka, who is very much on-line.  All the time.   Great SKYPEr, Dedushka, as I have mentioned before.

Still, there is no lack of interest in Russia out there in cyber space, and this is brought home to me each and every day as I spend way too much time trawling my Feedjit roll to see who is visiting my blog, how they came to it, and what they are looking for.   The single biggest reason people come are searches (mostly from New Zealand or Australia) for recipes for Beef Stroganoff, but there are other reasons too.  Some particularly intriguing ones follow:

Madras, Tamil Nadu arrived from google.co.in on "Dividing My Time: Sex in Russia" by searching for Would you ever want to Have sushi with Portia and Daniel.

Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts arrived from google.com on "Siberian Pel’meni for a London Yummy Mummy" by searching for what do siberians eat frozen on a stick.

Makati, Manila arrived from google.com.ph on "Dividing My Time: American Women Married to Russian Men" by searching for Russian men tender kiss.

Philippine, Benguet arrived from google.com.ph on "Expat Book Club Euthanasia" by searching for anecdotes which tell something about euthanasia.

 Saint Petersburg, Saint Petersburg City arrived from google.ru on "Why I Hate Dachas, and You Should Too!" by searching for where to get a bikini wax st petersburg russia.

 Mississauga, Ontario arrived from google.ca on "Cool Cucumbers in a Pretty Pickle" by searching for can you sterile cucumbers.

 Brooklyn, New York arrived from google.com on "St. John’s Eve/Иван Купала: Ferns, and Fires, and Flesh: Oh My!" by searching for THORN WREATHS MARTYRS WORE AROUND LEGS .

Moscow, Moscow City arrived from google.ru on "Move Over Noho - Evidence of Same-Sex Marriage Found in Moscow" by searching for girls for marriage in moscow horses.

Melbourne, Victoria arrived from google.com.au on "Dividing My Time: Life in Russia" by searching for russian boom boom our guns are firing.

Elk Grove, California arrived from google.com on "Cool Cucumbers in a Pretty Pickle" by searching for pickles and russian culture.

Toronto, Ontario arrived from google.ca on "Day of the Inventors and Rationalizers (Management Consultants)/День изобретателя и рационализатора: Love To Hear Medvedev Go “Tweet Tweet Tweet!”" by searching for Hot Management Consultants.

El Mirage, Arizona arrived from google.com on "Dividing My Time: Equestrian" by searching for equestrian parade sharpie .

Perth, Western Australia arrived from google.com.au on "St. John’s Eve/Иван Купала: Ferns, and Fires, and Flesh: Oh My!" by searching for Aeroflot nude calendar download.

Happy Internet day to all of Russia’s bloggers, programmers, web site builders, on-line retailers, and, of course, to cyber-stud, President Medvedev !  Who is STILL not following me on Twitter.  Which, frankly speaking, hurts my feelings.

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This post is part of The Stunt.

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Dear Readers:

Are you old enough to remember the pre-Internet days?  What are the things you love or hate about the Internet?  What is your take on the sushi with Portia and Daniel…I fear it is perhaps not rated-PG.   Thoughts?

Thanks for stopping by Dividing My Time. If you liked this post, try some more like it:

Day of the Inventors and Rationalizers (Management Consultants)/День изобретателя и рационализатора: Love To Hear Medvedev Go “Tweet Tweet Tweet!”

Post Cards from the Edge

Day of the Cryptographic Service/День шифровальщика: Don't Russians Already Talk In Code, Anyway?

 

Vivant et repulica…et qui illam regit!

    Here’s the good news:  President and ardent blogger, Dmitry Medevdev, in his State of the Union last Thursday categorically announced that he wants to make my life easier:  “We should simplify the rules for recognizing degrees and diplomas awarded by the world’s leading universities,” he said,  “and also the rules for hiring the foreign specialists we need. Such people should receive their visas swiftly and for a long period. It is we who have an interest in bringing them to Russia rather than the other way round.”

    This is epic.  I hardly even know what to do with all the free time that I will have on my hands, once these new fast track visa regulations take effect.  Maybe I should write a book.

    HRH, of course, doesn’t have a lot of confidence that these measures will be in place next week.   And he’s probably right.  So, very soon, we will have to put aside all other cares and woes, and focus our combined organizational and administrative abilities, and all of Tolya-The-Driver’s time on assembling the necessary paperwork.  We will cancel Christmas so we can afford two multi-entry visas, and I will attempt to work up the courage to visit a Russian Consular section, fail, and ultimately erroneously put my faith in God (who has no say in any of this), FedEx, and some cheesy visa agency to exercise the expensive cowardly mail-it-in option.   

    Once upon a time, I worked at The Bank, and they took care of all this for me.  The Bank, in those heady pre-crisis heady days, maintained an entire department devoted to visas, a group of industrious and, one assumes, well-connected individuals whose sole task it was to keep abreast of the constantly-mutating, esoteric rules and requirements for getting a visa.  They stayed precariously atop of the mountain of documentation, and up-to-speed on the correct dimensions of the 3”x 4” matte color photos.  You had to feel sorry for this crowd, even though they provided much of what little amusement can be had at an Investment Bank; but I never envied them the moment when they had to communicate new and more idiotic additions to the Byzantine regulations as issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  Bankers don’t relish having their time wasted.

    “You want me to have a…what?????” exploded Piers Folkerstone-Smythe, an Old Wykehamist who had made a fortune in Russian telecoms.

    “Test against leprosy,” responded sullen and spotty-faced Sveta, a hapless junior sent out by her scardy-pants bosses to announce the latest addition to the medical tests needed.

    “And just who administers them?” quipped Jessica Underwood, the perennially sarcastic General Counsel, “Ben-Hur?”

    “Well,” said the anal-retentive, paranoid, schizophrenic, Chief Economist, who, for someone who was supposed to work in Russia, spent far more time on Threadneedle Street than he ever did on Romanov Pereulok, “I’m certainly not going to have my insurance profile ruined by taking a test for another fatal disease…in fact I have refused to get a multi-entry visa this year: they simply do not understand why I need an HIV test.”

    I never had a leprosy test, and I often think that it is shame, as it would have stopped conversation dead in Northampton.  But Velvet, who developed a pathological fear of needles, and I continued to go for the annual AIDS tests.   And take it from me, if you march into LabPro in the US, with your 9 year-old and cheerfully ask them to screen you both for HIV, you get some raised eyebrows, and earnest follow-up mail.  Each year, the Russian government came out with a new doozy, which they claimed was nothing that the American INS wasn’t asking for.    This packed the additional diplomatic punch of being America’s fault, and that is always the object of the exercise.   

Now that I’ve left The Bank, HRH handles my visa support work, and I swear he’d rather iron and starch my entire collection of antique damask dinner napkins.  It drives both of us to drink, and we can easily walk there.  When they introduced the really idiotic rule that anyone applying for a work permit would need to submit a Russian translation of the original of their educational diplomas, apostiled (which is a notary on steroids which you get from your State Capitol after a 6 week wait), I could tell we were well and truly up the creek without a paddle.

    I hated to burst HRH’s sense that all would be smooth sailing, but I pointed this out to him as a problem area.

    “What on earth is the problem?” he thundered.  “You graduated didn’t you?”

    “Certainly, I did,” I said haughtily.  “But my diploma is written in Latin.”

    A deathly silence fell, as HRH shook his head, and I could tell what he was thinking – the Freemasons at work again.  He thinks the Freemasons get up every morning to ruin his life.

  

    “You are kidding me,” he said at last.

    “I’m not,” I said,   “and it’s not a Freemason thing, either.”

    “Why are American diplomas written in Latin?” he asked quietly.

    “Not all,” I said.  “Just some.”

    HRH heaved a huge sigh.

    “You are going to have to figure this one out,” he said.   “I’ll fake the HIV and the TB thing, and Tolya will go and get the fake clean driving record certificate, but you will have to deal with the diploma.”

    I chewed my fingernails for a moment, idly humming a few bars of “Gaudeamus Igitur” and wondered what to do.   Calling Columbia was out of the question for the next four hours.  So, I did what I always do in moments of panic, I shot off a text message to Lucy Milne, Princeton Class of ‘89, travel agent to the oligarchs, owner of an enviable rolodex full of mid-level apparatchiks, who all want to go to bed with her.  Faithful Lucy got right back to me.

    “Lucy,” I opened with no fanfare,  “tell me this, is your diploma in Latin?”

    “Right,” she countered, getting the gist immediately.  “Here is what you have to do:  call the Representative of the Papal Nuncio,” in the same way she would casually suggest you give Sasha a call to make your recently-shot rhinoceros hide into a briefcase, “Monsignieur Bonaventura…but, listen, get right on top of it…the entire Ivy League is jamming his switchboard, and its Good Friday next week.

    Perhaps God does have an input after all.