One night in Shanghai

The second last evening I spent in Shanghai was probably the most active of the lot. Considering the fact that I was such a terrible tourist the whole time I was there (remember, not a single photo, though I did attempt to take a pic of a sign in the subway which said something along the lines of "Jumping into the tunnel is dangerous" with my phone, but the light was too poor), it was high time I made the most of it.

Ironically, I had traveled several thousand kilometers only to end up hanging out with a bunch of Russians. Because I was there on the week prior to Christmas, the Russian expat community was having a sort of party (known in Russian as кооператив, I think. cooperative, lit.), before they went their own ways to celebrate New Year with their respective families. It was held in a faux-German bierhaus, English speaking staff as required. The whole event was practically the least Chinese thing you could do in the city.

The set up involved buying a 300 RMB - or yuan, I would have preferred to have said yuan, but they all say RMB there (short for Renmenbi) - ticket at the door, which paid for the buffet, a few drink tokens, and lottery ticket. 300 RMB, by the way, is roughly 30 euro. The event was sponsored by various Russian companies, which was... well, also bizarre. Again, I came all the way from Moscow just to see people giving out Спортсмастер (Sportsmaster - think along the lines of JD Sports) clothing.

The food was great, especially considering I was famished at the time, and the beer was okay. After having drinking it over the previous couple of days, I had learnt that, yes, Tsingtao beer is the local piss.

[Incidentally, it's always friggin' hilarious in the UK with certain bars selling foreign, supposedly elite beers. Glasgow's Bierhalle Republic and a couple of other places on Ashton Lane in the West End sell Russian Baltika beer for ludicrous sums, whereas it's about a sixth of the price buying it from the street booths in Moscow. I mean, it's not terrible, but it's not as if the hops are handpicked by ivory-skinned virgins. The same goes for Tsingtao. Speaking of Glasgow, although Irn Bru is the number one soft drink in Scotland, there are more Irn Bru drinkers in Russia. Barr shrewdly carved themselves out a niche about a decade ago.]

So, a room full of Russian, drinks a-plenty, there's a lottery with a top prize of two Aeroflot tickets to Moscow - surely good times ahead. Yeah, well, were it not for the Master of Ceremonies, who was a small, thin dorky-looking fellow in glasses dressed up as Santa (or rather Дед Мороз Ded Moroz lit. Father Frost), the night would have been awesome. Instead, he had likely drawn the short straw and everyone else who set it up decided to entrust him with the microphone. What followed was a case of verbal diarrhea coupled with rabbit-in-the-headlights stammering. I had no problem with him chatting away, Russians like to make speeches at celebrations where drinking is involved (it's mandatory), but the speakers were turned up so goddamn loud that I couldn't really chat up any of the lovely Russian ladies my host had introduced me to.

The MC did shut up for about five minutes at one point - and I mean at just one point - but he broke things up between reading out lottery numbers by holding games with everyone. Typically, the audience was shy, apart from one Russian guy who got progessively more drunk off his ass as the evening went on (by leaving time I noticed he was slumped over his chair) and another guy in a nicely tailored Chinese suit. Props to them, because they kept things going, and at one point they made me choke on my drink during one ridiculous game.

It's kind of hard to describe, but basically the game was between two Russian teams, each with a mic. The challenge was to sing a particular well-known Russian song, except leaving out most of the consonants. The effect this generated was one of the straight-up funniest things I've seen in a while, as good as Klaus the Forklift Driver. For the two gentlemen, they didn't just sing it, they almost rocked out to it. I have no clue what the song was, some sort of dorky jingle, to which these two men bellowed (gripping the mic stand as if it were a mighty stead with their war faces on):

- AH-AH-AH!
- OOH-AH-AH!
- OOH-OOH-AH-HA!
- OOH-HA OOH-HA-HA!
- AH-OOH AH-OOH!
- OOH-OOH CHA-CHA-CHA!

You can't really make this stuff up, and it's another reason why I lament not having a decent camera on my person. The two gentlemen were awarded with a bottle of cognac for their efforts, which they of course shared with the losing team, keeping in the spirit of things.

Sadly, lame-ass Santa hit the stage again, though not before having a large glass of cognac thrust down his throat by the two afore mentioned gentlemen. The lottery continued, and none of our numbers had been called either. Things were looking in our favour, seeing as there weren't many guests in attendance either.

Initial prizes were pretty good things like a bunch of iPod nanos (wouldn't have minded one of those), the sports clothing stuff, umm... I don't recall exactly what else, but they weren't naff like something you'd get at a community function at a church hall on a Saturday afternoon. And you'd think that something as big as two plane tickets as the top prize would mean that second and third would be pretty awesome.

No.

I got second prize. Second prize was a fucking year-long magazine subscription to the expat rag by the organizers. Third prize was a proper iPod, or something fancy. If anything it was a slightly shameless bit of self-promotion on second-prize-giver's part, because when I went up onto the stage, Geek Moroz was replaced by the supposed editor in chief, who then spent the next five minutes waxxing lyrical about the publication while I stood there like a plonker. Glancing over at the people I was with confirmed this - their faces said "You look like a plonker".

The prize was also totally pointless, as I was leaving in about two days. Given that this guy had been talking on and on about the magazine, the rest of the audience had stopped listening, so by the time he handed the mic over to me to say a few words it was apparent that nobody would be interested in learning that an Irishman who can speak Russian was at their Shanghai party. But taking a note from the two men of the night, I shouted Всем Наступающим Новым Годом! (vsyem nas-too-pai-yoo-shim no-vym go-dom - lit. To all a happy oncoming New Year) which got a couple of yays from the crowd. That said, my host currently enjoys this subscription, I believe, though she's not made any mention of it to me since then. There were a couple of copies lying around at the venue, though leafing through them was nothing to write home about.

Santa departed, a local band began singing the latest hits of the west and a few old-timers (I've not heard Love Shack by the B-52s in a LOOOOOOOOONG time) and we grooved away til closing time with some locals. I distinctly remember a fat Chinese guy in glasses, shirt and tie, doing a rather toned down interpretation of the Running Man.

We then went on to a pretentious skyscraper nightclub called Mint to see a remarkably effective form of crowd control on the part of the bouncers through the use of green laser pens, drink ludicrously-overpriced bottles of water that may have just been filled from the tap, and watch many ladies (some of whom were at the Russian party) dance suggestively on a couple of podiums.

On the Seventh Day of January, My True Love Sent to Me...

...Bugger all to do, because the first week of January in Russia is their official Christmas, according to the Orthodox Calendar. I won't go into detail about Russian celebrations, safe to say that their 'Christmas' (i.e. all the gift-giving and celebrating on December 25th) falls on New Year's Eve due to the godless regime of the communists quashing anything to do with religion. I also won't touch on the Orthodox Church in Russia, other than the fact its rapid re-emergence since the 1990s has left NO separation between church and state in this country.

What I have been up to since my last post hasn't been that action-filled, but because it's the first week of January and that the whole country is officially comatose, I no longer have any excuse not to write something about last month. My months of being stingy have finally enabled me to waste it in more sensible ways - most prominent of which was a short trip to Shanghai.

Given the fact that a Belgian friend of mine was extremely kind enough to host me in the spare room of her gorgeous Shanghai flat, and the fact that Aeroflot (Russia's national airline) were doing deals at the time of purchase (approx 16,000 roubles round trip, or £320), meant that there was little reason not to get the hell out of Moscow for once.

Unfortunately, I have to confess that I'm one of the worst tourists in the world. I didn't take a single photo, mostly due to the fact that I don't have a digital camera (the one on my Nokia does not count), but I didn't really need to. It wasn't one of those "I need to embrace the local culture in full" type of trips. I just came to hang out, to see what life is like for my Belgian friend and her expatriate acquaintances there, to eat some weird vegetables that look like they are from outer space, to watch my friend argue with souvenir sellers, to shake my butt in extremely pretentious and overpriced nightclubs that have shark tanks by the dance floor located in skyscrapers, and to attend a party held by the local Russian community, only to pointlessly win a subscription to the local community rag in the lottery at the aforesaid party. All of these instances are short stories in themselves, and it would not be fair to cut them short in this entry.

Chiefly what I gathered there is that, much like Moscow isn't Russia, Shanghai isn't China. Oh sure there are Chinese people living there, and they all speak Chinese, but it's very Westernized, a bit of a concrete jungle in the center, but, at least to me, rather comfortable. Even though there are about 20 million people in Shanghai (roughly 5 million more than Moscow, officially), it didn't feel cramped in the slightest. Maybe something to do with the fact that I was on average about a foot taller than everyone else.

Moscow, on the contrary, especially with its winter workday commute on the metro, can be stressful for those who have not yet lost that part of their soul. Shanghai is clean, the locals don't scowl, and the living costs for foreigners are minuscule. Yes, they spit in the streets, but I'll take that over the foul Russian habit of clearing one's nose (Step 1: close one nostril. Step 2: blow out the other. Step 3: repeat with the other. Try to do it in a crowded area as possible for maximum revulsion) any day.

And yes, there are bicycles. Everywhere. Even my Belgian friend has one. Those songs you've heard about the Chinese and bicycles, they're all true. Just bicycles and taxis. The rest of the world should take note, rather than demonizing the Chinese for its sizable contribution to industrial pollution.

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In other news, Mayor Yury Luzhkov's bullshit snow prevention plan has fallen on its arse. Someone sensible in the Russian Air Force (VVS - Voyenno-vozdushnye sily Rossii lit. Military-aerial strength of Russia) has said that they need two weeks notice before they do any cloud seeding. It doesn't really matter now, as Europe appears to have stolen this year's quota. That's not to say it isn't cold. It's very cold. The day I left for Shanghai it plummeted to -27ºC. It currently hovers around the -15 mark, which is just about the temperature where your nasal hairs start to freeze whenever you inhale.

Snow joke

Yesterday it snowed. A lot. From about midday for at least eight hours or so, which makes me happy for a few reasons:

1) I like snow.
2) It makes me thankful I don't need to drive in Moscow.
3) It makes a mockery out of Moscow's Mayor Yury Luzhkov's latest project.

The first point is self-explanatory. Snow is somewhat of a luxury in Ireland, and it's not too windy here, so providing you have a warm enough coat and boots, you're fine, especially if it hangs around minus fifteen/twenty (as the snow lies long enough and is less likely to become a sheet of ice). It's dry underfoot, and as long as it's not windy it's rather pleasant.

Secondly, cast your mind back to a few posts ago, where I posted a couple of pictures of a minor traffic jam. Wasn't really a jam at all, more a run of the mill tailback. My flat looks out on the ring road, and I only live about ten minutes walk away from my workplace. I was just told earlier by a comrade-in-arms that, what would normally take him about 15 minutes to drive home, took him three-and-a-half hours. The worst I have heard was six for another. Last night there were still jams and the occasional siren outside my window when I went to bed at about 11pm.

Lastly, Luzhkov, who is not exactly the most repellent politician in the world (were we to include certain African states), recently came up with a wonderful idea of how to combat such snowfall to prevent such traffic problems - cloud seeding. He believes, by cloud seeding from now until mid-March, he can save millions on the capital's street cleaners (who already do an excellent job) and probably more on lost man hours. Instead, it will allegedly cost less to have a couple of aircraft from the Russian Air Force going up and down several hundred times over the course of four months. Clearly no one there has a clue how much it costs to maintain aircraft, regardless of backhanders and subsidies.

As yesterday clearly demonstrated, this idea hasn't worked. At least I think it hasn't. I'm not sure it's been fully implemented, and even if it is, snow still has to fall elsewhere - likely onto places where people commute from outside the city, but hey - that's not Luzhkov's problem!

One thing is for sure - somebody out there doesn't like the idea that a migrant work force is cleaning up the city, and doesn't want to pay them anymore.

[Yes, I know it's a terrible headline.]

Haye denies Valuev victory

Well, he's done it, and on points no less. I didn't see the fight, not that I could have anyway, so I'll leave it up to the BBC to recount it. What's interesting is that, bearing in mind what I said about Valuev being built like a brick shithouse, is that Haye is suspected of breaking his right hand in the match.

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Haye shocks Valuev to take crown

By Ben Dirs
BBC Sport in Nuremberg

Britain's David Haye put on a magnificent performance to claim the WBA heavyweight crown from Russian Nikolay Valuev in Nuremberg.

Haye, 29, won by majority decision, winning the fight on two judges' scorecards, with the other judge scoring it even.

The Londoner, giving away seven stone to his 7ft opponent, fought the perfect fight, staying on the move and making the lumbering Valuev look every one of his 36 years with his speed.

With his win, the Londoner becomes the first Briton to hold a world heavyweight crown since Lennox Lewis retired in 2003.

In addition, Haye is also only the second former cruiserweight champion to win a portion of the heavyweight crown, after four-time champion Evander Holyfield.

"It means everything to me," said Haye. "From when I was a baby, I said I would be the heavyweight world champion.

"It's a dream come true. I've fought the biggest heavyweight champion and caught him with big shots.

"I made him look like an amateur. People doubted my skills, but I did enough to win.

"Here I am, heavyweight champion of the world and I'm loving it. I'm going to clean up the division."

Approximately 10,000 fans were in attendance at the Nuremberg Arena, including a sizable and vociferous British contingent, to see David do what many thought was impossible and slay Goliath.

Even more remarkable, Haye managed to do it with a suspected broken right hand, which trainer Adam Booth said gave way in the third round.

"His head is solid, the hardest thing I've ever hit," said Haye. "It's like hitting a solid brick wall.

"I'm pretty sure my hand is broken, but it's a small price to pay for being the heavyweight champion of the world."

The first round was largely a fact-finding mission for Haye, circling anti-clockwise away from Valuev's big right and scoring with the occasional flurry to the head and jab to the body.

An immaculate-looking Haye visibly grew in confidence in the second stanza, landing with two sharp left hooks and a stinging left-right combination that forced Valuev to cover up.

Valuev landed with his first meaningful blow at the end of the round, a ramrod jab, but it was more of the same in the third, with Haye having little problem slipping Valuev's left hand and scoring with flashing lefts of his own.

Haye had made Valuev look decidedly sluggish and one-dimensional in the first quarter of the contest. Even though the Russian showed more urgency in the fourth, the Englishman was able to extricate himself from any potential trouble.

With both hands now slung by his waist, once again he had the better of the action, landing with a couple of left-right-left combinations and skimming Valuev's jaw with a huge right hand on the bell.

Haye found the mark with a left-right-right combination in round five, and it was becoming abundantly clear as the fight wore on that unless he was to tire down the stretch, the title could be his.

Valuev managed to pin Haye in a corner and unload with two clubbing blows to the body at the start of round six, but Haye hit back with a hurtful upper-cut and a big over-the-top right.

There were signs that Haye was beginning to tire in the seventh, but he came storming back in the eighth, stiffening Valuev up with a rigid jab before landing with a rasping right to the body.

The ninth was close until Haye unloaded with perhaps the best combination of the night, a left jab followed closely by a right straight down the pipe and Haye landed with two more right-hand bombs in the 10th as Valuev began to look desperate.

With Haye's staying power questioned in the past, the last two rounds, if it got that far, were always going to be tense, but Haye continued to move in round 11, leaving Valuev needing a knockout to win it in the final stanza.

Here I am, heavyweight champion of the world and I'm loving it. I'm going to clean up the division
David Haye

In the final round, Haye almost achieved the impossible, very nearly flooring Valuev with yet another vicious left-right combination with a minute to go. Valuev regained his balance, but Haye continued to pepper the Russian until the final bell sounded.

"From my point of view, the main thing which went wrong was the pace," said Valuev.

"It was like a marathon for me. It was like a track event. I wasn't ready to run that much.

"The judges made their decision and I think the last round made the difference, especially the end of it."

Haye, who was awarded the fight 116-112, 116-112, 114-114, is only the third Briton to win a world heavyweight title since Bob Fitzsimmons lost his crown to James J Jeffries in 1899.

His victory also injects some much-needed vim into a previously moribund heavyweight division.

With 23 wins (21 KOs) from 24 fights, Haye now says he intends to clean up the heavyweight division.

That would mean defeating WBC champion Vitali Klitschko and his brother IBF and WBO holder Wladimir Klitschko.

But his first defence of the WBA belt will likely come against American John Ruiz, who earlier on Saturday beat German Adnan Serin in the seventh round by a technical knockout.

Haye said he sees few problems against former WBA champion.

"I don't think he is the most entertaining. He has won the world title before and you don't do that by being a bad fighter," he said. "I will be way too fast, I will knock him out."

Story from BBC SPORT:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/sport2/hi/boxing/8347139.stm

Published: 2009/11/07 22:58:41 GMT

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And here's a pic from the final round of last night's battle. Taken from PA via BBC.

The End of the Beginning?

Two things to talk about soon:

1.) Snow has fallen, quite heavily. I'd produce photographic evidence, but unfortunately it's still hovering around 0°C and has since melted. A good half-inch or so throughout the day yesterday. It further confirms my prediction that this winter will be a cold one. Last year's sucked ass. Just wet, slushy, and miserable - and the lowest it got was -15°C. This year round it reminds me of the winter of 2005/2006 when I was studying here. It was roasting hot in September, then very mild until approximately the end of October, and then the snow began. In the first week of January of 2006 it dropped as low as -32°C. I'm looking forward to it, honestly, because when it's around -20°C and you're surrounded by a blanket of snow and there's no wind - it's like a fairytale and, despite what one might think, very dry. Complete contrast to the howling gales of Glasgow that chill you right to the bone, even though it's only something like 5°C

2.) The aforementioned Haye-Valuev fight takes place later today in Bern, Switzerland. It will be interesting to see if Haye will live up to his recent remarks about Valuev (circus freak, hairy animal, etc...), and his latest training method of beating up a dummy with a goblin mask on it. "That's Valuev," Haye pointed out, before smacking it at an open workout session on November 4.

(That pic isn't from the workout session, just a press conference, but you get the idea)

Truth be told, Haye will probably get hammered, though all his cruiserweight fight wins were KOs, and he has lost only once to Carl Thompson back in 2004 (at the time he had 10 KOs). His manager threw in the towel after a right hand made Haye lose his balance, sending him in the direction of the canvas.


Here's how the two match up against each other. Note the respective hairiness.



Pictures property of AP and Action Images

Another Day/Another Dollar

"Чим платити?" written on the billing invoice above is in Ukrainian. Although I don't speak it, the language itself is very similar to Russian, and I'm pretty sure it means "What are we paying for?" considering the article I nicked it from is about tariffs in Kiev.

It applies to my post rather neatly as , when I examined my own utility bill - known as "коммунальные услуги" (kommunaliye ooslooghee lit. "communal services") in Russian - there exists (next to the usual electricity, gas, central heating, telephone and hot water) the entry "радио" (lit. radio).

I was puzzled at first what this radio entry meant. Was it something to do with owning an actual radio like a TV license in the UK? I was mildly pissed off at first, considering I didn't have a radio initially, though I then bought a CD/MP3/Radio combo thing (which has since turned out to be a total piece of shit, prompting me to spend some 30,000 roubles - approx. 600 quid - in total on a desktop computer, but the radio still works) meaning I didn't really have any legal ground to stand on. And it's only about 38 roubles a month anyway - just over a dollar at the current exchange rate, or about 80 pence - and I don't handle my bills either (all inclusive in the rent), so I just forgot about it. Until a week ago.

In my monthly shelling out of rent to my (genuinely helpful) landlord and former engineer Giorgy, I handed over the usual scrap of paper that this time round had been obnoxiously stuck into my door handle - a technique usually reserved for pizza delivery employees - rather than slotted into my post box and, out of curiosity, asked what this radio payment actually was.

Turns out this "radio" is a leftover of mid-Soviet times, whereby nearly every apartment in built-up cities were equipped with essentially a direct line to the police for purposes of either asking for assistance, or informing on your dissident liberal neighbors. When Giorgy bought the actual flat back in the 80s, it was no longer there, yet it was still coming in on the utility bill (though back then all sorts of stuff was subsidized by the state).

So what's the big deal with this radio thing anyway? Well, put it this way: there are about 15 million people living in Moscow (legally, the actual number is higher). Granted there are not 15 million households, so let's say there are about four people on average to each residence, give or take an extra million depending on who has actually applied to get the radio thing taken off their bill. That leaves us with... umm... 3 million or so. So that's 3 million dollars a month to the state for a redundant service. Nice way to line the coffers, eh?

I don't think it's so much a case of corruption, more a catastrophic example of no one wanting to deal with the bureaucracy of the matter, so it will take nothing short of a violent coup to remove the damn thing for good.

One more thing to note on the bill, which is far less obvious as maybe not many people can actually visualize it, is not the cost of the hot water, but the actual amount you're paying for. The set amount per household (or flat, more accurately) is something like 5-6 cubic meters a month for just the hot water alone. I can't really visualize it either, but according to Giorgy (again, engineer, so he knows these things) it's an enormous amount, almost 3 or 4 times than the amount you'll ever use.

The upshot is Giorgy is endeavoring to adjust the tariffs appropriately using some sort of device for the hot water, but of course that means filling out several forms and asking some guy to come around with a meter and examine everything, then fill out some more forms.

Reasons #1-370 not to drive in Moscow

Okay I'm giving myself away here a little by showing these, but here's two crappy pics from my crappy Nokia. Just in case you're wondering how bad the capital's traffic can get. Note that this is only the traffic going in one direction.

(The chief reason is due to roadworks further up the road. That traffic shown is far from the worst.)