Reflections II

I apologize in advance for the disconnected flavor of this post. I have had good practice in silence during my time here and therefore have become ever more reflective. I suppose it's about time for me to come home, and in fact I do fly out of Moscow the 17th of August. Here goes:

I intend to always be learning a language in life, and I do mean phonetically differentiated languages, i.e. English, Russian, etc., as opposed to languages differentiated by subject, i.e. Philosophy, Calculus, Economics, Biology, etc., though continuing my general education through ample reading is also in the plans. Learning a new language makes you feel like a child again, and is one of the best ways I know of instilling humility. I am constantly reminded of my fallacious memory and weak tongue unless I am making a concerted effort to carefully and consciously construct my speech. I again insist that this mild source of humiliation is/can be good because it gives one the opportunity to respond with increased sense of humor and humility, both of which are good. Both of which I naturally lack. Or have been conditioned to be lacking in, I don’t know.

The kind of humility I’m talking about should not be confused with the wheezling kind of resignation, the world view that assumes certain things about ‘the way things are’. ‘I’m no good at Russian’, or ‘our society is corrupt and there’s nothing I can do about it’, or even ‘this or that gives me such an amount of utility’ (subconsciously calculated of course). Things in this world are never exactly the way we think they are, and one of the spiritual truisms is that we are created to act and not only be acted upon. This is a perspective that resonates with many in the West but is received with considerable hesitation in Russia. The life context of so many here has been framed by a regime whose stated goal was to create a system where each part was defined entirely by the whole. An anthill of workers. Still, the key point with all of social science’s indicators of success in Russian is that they are improving. There is variation, and things are moving in a positive direction. Even in regards to freedom of the press, which I am studying, the new President Medvediev called a meeting with the Union of Journalists immediately upon assuming power. Putin never did.

Another lesson learned in international travel: do not work through the middle man. This includes such companies as Vayama, Cheap Tickets.com, etc. These companies are virtually useless now that other, free search engines are available to find the cheapest tickets, i.e. Kayak.com (thank you Channing). I spent this last week trying to work through Vayama in re-scheduling my flight out of Moscow from the 21^st to the 17^th, but time spent on them was wasted. First of all, you give them a request, which they look up on the airline’s sight (which you can do yourself). Then they submit a request for change to their booking department (which takes a day or so to process), then, if the tickets haven’t sold out yet, they wait for a confirmation email from the airline, which they forward to you, and then you must call the middle man back to confirm. Well by the time all of this tedious, expensive and bureaucratic process is complete, another customer has purchased your spot by logging into the airline’s sight for 5 minutes. I finally asked Vayama if I couldn’t just call the airline myself, and they admitted that I could, and that I wouldn’t even have to pay the commission fee to Vayama if I did. But I had to go through a week of hell to find out (they would send their emails about 3 AM my time). The dark side of capitalism.