Another dire "Here I Am; There It Is Picture" fail. I've got to get better at directing non-English-speaking strangers when they are taking photos of me.
It’s not . . . clear . . . whether or not I have a real reservation for a tour in St. Petersburg or not Still waiting for confirmation from the website. I realized I don’t really care. I went online and in about ten minutes downloaded walking tours of St. Petersburg, Tallinn, and Helsinki. Just saved myself about $200 and I’ll probably have more fun this way. Besides, I might have some help in both Tallinn and Helsinki, companion-wise, so who needs an expensive formal tour?
Downloaded walking tours for St. Petersburg, Tallinn, Helsinki – easier, save lotsa dough.
MSU
I returned to the bakery (The Upside Down Bakery, to be precise) following a nice walk after work. I was surprised to find it stil open. Alas, they were out of the muffins I wanted, but I had a delightful conversation with the Owner/Manager, an ex-pat Brit who explained to me that in Moscow bakeries regularly stayed open until 11:00 p.m. or even all night. Very different from the American model, I told him. I know, he said, having spent lots of time in the States. I took his card and recommended them to the concierge at my hotel.
This reminds me so much of that building you see from the 134 right near Disney and the ABC building.
I enjoy my walks through actual neighborhoods as much or more as I enjoy formal tours. I like seeing how people really live. I’m fascinated by urban life, and I enjoy seeing the different kinds of apartment house architecture, what the streets and parks are like, how the people seem to fit into them. I’ve had this thought in all of the cities I’ve been in so far: If I was here for an extended period of time, I’d definitely spend a lot of time just walking through neighborhoods like this. I’ve spent thousands of hours doing the same thing in New York and Los Angeles, and I never get tired of it.
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I have discovered where old has-been American rock, metal and and pop acts go to die: Russia. There’s so many rich people in Russia, I guess you can charge whatever you want for concert tickets, and I guess the nouveau riche here really love American has-been acts. It’s amazing.
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Moscow has terrible drainage. Days after a small rainstorm, there are still gigantic puddles all over the place that you have to detour around. Pity.
But a Few of the Concert Ads I’ve Seen
Sting
Whitesnake
Kenny G
Ringo Starr
The Doors (!)
Sinead O’Connor
Seal
John Fogarty
Iron Maiden
puzzling
Average Rating: 4.5 out of 5 based on 164 user reviews.
Very puzzling ad. Why is Benicio del Toro selling ice cream bars in Russia.
I have to say I love the aspects of my visit in Moscow that happily ring the chimes of stereotypes Americans have of Russia. The super-helpful receptionis is named Svetlana, how great is that. And on Wednesday the IT director offered me some caviar. In the office.
I have realized that my travel day on June 4, when I go home, is going to be particularly challenging. Not only do I have to get up early to catch a 6:55 flight from Helsinki, but I then have a seven hour layover in Munich. That means, I have to get up insanely early, get on a short flight, then be stuck in an airport literally all day, then get on a twelve hour flight. A twelve hour flight that I’ll be in a tiny coach seat, yay. I’m not complaining (well, I am, but I’m in denial about it). It’s a quality problem, I understand. I’ll just have to be really zen that day and go to my happy place while the person sitting in front of me leans her coach seat way back so that it’s literally in my face. For twelve hours.
From the river
Alas, I can’t shift the exit from Helsinki do to arcane ticket restrictions, and while I could head into Munich for the day, just the round trip cab fare would be quite expensive. Grumble.
The new "Kremlin!" casino hotel and resort opening this fall on the north end of the Vegas Strip.
After work I just headed back to the hotel to relax. Near the hotel I stopped into a bakery and got a bacon and green onion muffin that turned out to be heaven on a stick.
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I know I’ve mentioned McDonald’s entirely too many times buyt here I go again. In addition to being a reliable source for actual fountain Diet Cokes (albeit with sometimes dodgy local recipes), and an escape from intimidating and expensive menus in foreign languages, it’s also a great barometer on “how foreign” a city is.
The new Peter The Great statue. Is this Moscow or Treasure Island?
You can judge how alien a place is by how easy or hard a visit to McDonalds is. I’m serious. Paris? No problem. Even if the menu is in French, it’s a snap. Belgium? No sweat. Germany? A tiny bit harder, but still not bad. Tokyo? Medium challenging. The saving grace is the employee takes one look at the big round-eye American and simply flips the laminated placemat menu over to the Engrish side.
Beijing and Moscow McDonalds, however, are challenging. Mysterious menus, enormous lines, loud foreign voices all around you, intimidating currency, etc.
My Favorite Muffin Places
My Favorite Muffin, Upper West Side, New York (long gone, I’m sure, but it was hell on wheels in the 1980s)
Zaro’s, Grand Central Terminal, New York
Upside Down Bakery, Moscow
Any Mrs. Field’s (their raspberry muffins and chocolate chip muffins are religious experiences)
Average Rating: 4.4 out of 5 based on 256 user reviews.
First day in the Moscow office and all went well. Colleagues took me to an Uzbek restaurant. While I tucked into Karam Shurva (cabbage soup) and yummy cheese pie (sort of a large sopapilla), I bored my companions with how I loved Uzbekistan because it was one of the answers to my favorite geographical trivia question.[1]
Speaking of food, after work I found my Russian Mexican food. I high-tailed it to Ла Кантина, which is La Cantina to you and me. I had a very servicable chicken quesadilla and a lovely ear of asado corn.
...and all the drowning horses.
To get there, I took a nice long walk through the neighborhoods between where the Firm’s office is and the Kremlin area. I was happy that my sense of navigation was working properly (though to be honest, the Kremlin is kind of hard to miss). It was the first real time I’d strolled through a real “neighborhood, ” rather than a large busy main thoroughfare, and I enjoyed myself. I enjoyed the architecture, the bustle of city life, and also the gorgeous Russians themselves. I may have to revise my list of Cities With the Most Attractive People.
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This bridge was made of pieces from ruins of old Kremlin walls.
Okay, more on those Orthodox icons. It turns out that people really DO worship the icons themselves. From all the stories I’ve heard about Moscow’s history (“And in this battle the famous Awesome Icon of Weeping Mary was credited for winning the battle against the Tatars!”) it’s clear that the “veneration” of icons leads people into thinking they have magical powers. I have to conclude that the theological criticism from Western Christianity regarding idol worship are fair. Sorry, Russia.
Evidence of failed Russian engineering. They seem weirdly proud of it.
Russian churches are weird. They tend to be very small, and they never have seats of any kind. You always stand in a Russian church. Also, the incense in them is absolutely stifling. It’s thicker than the thickest patchouli I’ve ever experienced at the hippiest Austin party. It’s so think even when holding your nose you can feel it hammering against the back of your throat. I don’t get how the faithful can tolerate it.
They also seem to have little choirs going all the time, singing the most beautiful music. I’d stand and listen to it longer if I wan’t having to hold my breath.
Theological Advantages of Protestantism Over Catholicism and Orthdox Christianity
No intercession necessary – hey, you get to pray to God directly!
Religious professionals can marry, a practice with many diverse benefits
Church authority much less vertical and authoritative
You get to actually read the Bible yourself , instead of having it interpreted for you
Fewer gods (only four: God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and Satan), compared to Catholicism which is those four plus all the saints plus Mary, and Orthodox, which is all the Catholic gods plus magic icons
(Of course, the fact that I was encouraged to read the Bible on my own was the beginning of the process that led me to abandoning religion altogether, but the points of my list are still valid.)
Street dancing in Moscow is an odd mixture of hip-hop and clogging.
[1] “What are the world’s only two double-landlocked countries?”
Average Rating: 4.8 out of 5 based on 174 user reviews.
Note: Get ready for lots of photos of churches with pretty gold domes!
The magnificent Christ the Redeemer Cathedral. It's brand new. It replaced a swimming pool.
Slept late. Needed to! Then off to my tour of the Kremlin.
The tour didn’t start well, as it was quite hard to find the office. I was afraid I’d simply miss the tour completely. The office was hidden in a large, partially under construction office complex, and I finally got to where I was going after enlisting the help of about half of the people who worked at other business in the building.
My bad impression of the tour company was exacerbated by their near-inability to deal with payment by credit card. I don’t mind if you can only take cash, but if that’s the case, don’t make a big deal on your website that credit cards are okay.
I also made another realization a few minutes after our rather pro forma tour guide began leading us toward the Kremlin: I prefer expat American or British tourguides to native ones. Does this make me a bad person? If so, well there you have it. It’s not just the facility with English that I prefer, but it’s just that every native English speaker tour guide I’ve ever had has been livelier and more fun than the perfunctory locals.
I could barely understand our tour guide on this tour, not only because of her thick accent but because she spoke way too softly. Come on, sing out, Louise!
Anyway, even a boring tour guide couldn’t make the Kremlin boring. It’s a magnificent, ancient miniature city that’s the historic center of the Moscow. The walls have been built and rebuilt many times. It’s full of amazing churches, several of which we investigated. The interior of Orthodox Christian churches are completely covered with icons, which are religious paintings or carving depicting basic Christian symbols or subjects. They differ in importance from Western religious art in their high degree of devotional importance. In addition to inspiring and informing, they are also meant to be a focus of meditiation. This reverence for concrete images has made the Orthodox church a target from the West, as it has been equated with idolatry. The Orthodox insist that they do not worship the icons themselves. Perhaps, but let’s remember that Catholics also insist that they don’t worship Mary, and it sure seems like they do. (They do.)
Anyway, we saw beautiful icons that were as much as a thousand years old in the beautiful, gold-domed churches inside the Kremlin.
We also saw a gigantic cannon, hundreds of regular-sized cannons captured from Napolean in 1812, a huge broken bell that seems to be an actual monument to failure, President Putin’s offices, some fabulous Faberge treasures, and lots of other stuff.
I enjoyed chatting with fellow tourist Barbara who was in Moscow working like me. She was heading up some workshops for the local Avon team. We both complained about sore feet and laughingly realized we had both taken “preemptory” Advil before starting the tour. Nevertheless, poor Barbara was exhausted and didn’t make it to the end of the tour. She collapsed after the fourth church, couldn’t get up, and they had to put her down. Poor thing.
Dullest Tourguides
The chainsmoking yawn in Brussels
The soft-spoken unintelligble baboushka in Moscow
The perfunctory prefect on my first trip to the Great Wall
Average Rating: 4.9 out of 5 based on 282 user reviews.
Imagine Las Vegas and Beijing having a baby, and that’ll give you a good idea of what Moscow looks like. It’s massive and rough around the edges with bad drainage and crumbling roads, like Beijing. But it’s decorated like a theme park, like Vegas. I swear, when you are looking at the glittering domes of the Kremlin, the ridiculously gaudy and weird St. Basil’s Cathedral, the new-ish and much-hated statue of Peter the Great, or the massive wedding cake of Christ the Redeemer Cathedral, it feels like you are looking at the new Soviet Union-themed casino on the Strip.
One of the heroes of WWII
It’s also not a little scary. When I checked into my hotel, the front desk gave me something they called “temporary registration papers” for me to keep inside my passport, which, they stressed, I needed to have with me at all times. Yes! In Moscow you really have to have ‘papers’! Today I’ll get my official, non-temporary registration.
But it gets better. When the concierge was coaching me on my planned use of the subway system, he warned, “Now, whatever, you do, don’t show your papers to fake police.”
Fake police? Yeah, I feel so much better now.
Some rain delayed my explorations for a few minutes, but happily stopped. My first task: Find the Client’s office so there would be no drama on Monday morning.
One of St. Basil's domes
As I began to walk around the city, I was at first predictably intimidated by the fact that everything was not only in a different language, but a different alphabet. Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, which contains some letters that look like and are pronounced similar to their counterparts in English, letters that look like English letters but are pronounced completely differently, letters borrowed from Greek, letters borrowed from Hebrew, and some letters specific to Russian. It’s quite a jumble.
But I quickly discovered the Great Cyrillic Decoder Ring: American franchise businesses! Yep, within a block or two of my walk, I began to see Starbucks, McDonalds, Cinnabon (which I first identified by SMELL, I swear to Rapture Jesus on a Pterodactyl), and others.
See if you can figure out the name of my hotel. You can do it! First person to put it into a comment wins!
Let’s look at those names:
Starbucks CTAPBAKC
McDonalds MAKдOHAлдC
Restaurant ресторан
Sbarro CбAPPO
If you just take a breath, you start to see the connections. Pretty soon I was doing better, which is a good thing, because the subway in Moscow is an adventure.
First of all, it’s world famous for its beauty. Yes, its beauty. The Soviet government pulled out all the stops, and many of the stations are like underground Art Deco palaces.
Anyway, it was important for me to get more comfortable with the Cyrillic alphabet so I could figure out where the hell I was going on the subway. And I’m doing great; I’ve taken several rides (including transfers) and haven’t gotten lost yet.
I walked the entire length of the Arbat, a historical street that’s now a pedestrian mall. It was good for people watching but as sightseeing was about on par with the Venice Beach “boardwalk.”
I then walked around the river and went into the spectacular Christ the Redeemer Cathedral, the tallest Orthodox church in the world. It’s a shame I couldn’t get photos inside, because it’s jaw-dropping.
My Moscow-as-Vegas theory was given more legitimacy when I discovered the insane state of Peter the Great on the river. It’s less than 20 years old and would be completely at home in front of Treasure Island on the Strip. It’s on the list of the world’s ugliest statues, and Moscow has already tried to give it way to several other cities (“Thanks, but we’re good, ” said St. Petersburg with a shudder).
There seem to be no black people at all in Moscow.
On the other hand, the very Caucasian men and women of the city are extreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemly attractive. Seriously, the women are smokin’ and the men all have an intense, “Must escort my girlfriend back to our flat and then head to the gym” sort of look.
Finally got to Red Square. St. Basil’s has to be the most insane house of worship I’ve ever seen. It’s from the 1500s and it’s so unusual that it’s really without precedent in the history of Russian architecture. I’m going to try to go in on Saturday morning before my train.
Also went into Gum, the enormous shopping structure directly across Red Square from the Kremlin. It’s a beautiful Art Moderne mall full of high end franchise stores. Gorgeous to walk through.
Then home and collapse!
Some of the Cooler Churches I’ve Been In
St. John the Divine, New York
Chartres, Chartres, France
Notre Dame, Paris, France
Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, carved out of the Baths of Diocletian, Rome
St. Peter’s, Rome, duh
Christ the Redeemer, Moscow
Average Rating: 4.4 out of 5 based on 225 user reviews.
It was my last day in the Munich office so I took my pal Christine, the Office Administrator, out for Indian food at lunch. I told her how, despite my excitement leaving for Russia and my increasing homesickness, I was very sorry to be leaving my beautiful, beloved Munich. I admitted to her how, before I had come to Germany for the first time in 2006 (also to Munich, on an earlier project for this same client), I had been pretty negative about visiting Germany. “You know, the whole history thing, ” I said. I then told her how that visit completely changed my opinion of this gorgeous country, which I will now visit at any opportunity. “The difference in how Germany has worked to process the lessons of the War are how Japan has is stark, ” I said. “Japan has pretty much dealt with it by trying to pretend it didn’t happen.”
And if you don’t believe me, just try contrasting how Western Europeans feel about Germans today, as opposed to how the Chinese feel about the Japanese.
Germany, on the other hand, has never st
The sun sets on this visit, but hope to return!
opped working hard to get past the horrifying lessons of the Third Reich.
“It’s still a big problem, ” Christine told me. “Germans don’t feel entitled to be proud at all. About anything. We’re meek and apologetic all the time. And this has negative consequences when it comes to public policy, particularly in the area of immigration.” In other words, Germany has gotten the reputation as being the cushiest destination for immigrants, because Germans are afraid to demand any sort of compliance or assimilation from newcomers.
I told her I hoped I’d have many chances to return to Munich. She wished me well on my Russian adventure, which will start in just a few minutes when boarding starts.
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I sure hope the fact that I don’t have a return airplane ticket from Russia in my hand turns out to be a problem as I enter Moscow tonight. Within ten minutes of arriving at the airport, I was asked about this. I can understand how a closed country like Russia wants to make sure I don’t plan on trying to stay in the country illegally (as IF). But no one told me I would be required to have proof in writing in my hand to make it through customs or immigration. The fact is, I don’t have a return ticket from Moscow. I’m not leaving Russia from Moscow, and I’m leaving from St. Petersburg, and I’m leaving by bus, not plane, and I don’t yet have bus ticket. Oops? Fingers crossed.
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Note to the security guy with the handsome face and rippling biceps bulging out of his white short-sleeve shirt who performed a special search of all of my photographic equipment: You may search anything of mine, any time, for any reason. Consider me at your disposal, bitte und danke.
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It was a little weird as I got processed through the Passport Check. I thought of all that work we did in Cleveland, New York and Washington to get my Russia visa. All those phone calls, all those fees, all those forms, all that worry, all for this tiny little thirty-second moment. It is unlikely that anyone else will look at the visa stamp again.
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The whole night, during the flight and especially after I landed, I had fears that something awful would go wrong and I’d find myself as a character with a (brief) supporting role in some Nelson DeMille thriller. There would be a problem with my passport. Or there would be a problem with my visa. Or the driver who was supposed to be there to pick me up wouldn’t be there, leaving me stranded and ruble-less at 3:00 a.m. in scary Moscow.
But the passport and visa were fine, and the driver was there waiting for me, thanks.
I got glimpses of both The Kremlin and St. Basil’s during the drive. Coolness!
The hotel was perfectly fine (there were some pretty iffy reviews of it on TripAdvisor.com, so this was a relief). Almost 5:00 a.m. before I got to bed.
Ethnic Restaurants I’ve Been to in Munich
Chinese
Indian
Mexican
French
Italian
Israeli
German
Austrian
Average Rating: 4.7 out of 5 based on 188 user reviews.
Took a very nice walk along the Isar River after work. They’ve been doing a lot of work on the river, tons of landscaping, beaches, floating walking paths, tunnels, recreation areas, etc. It’s wildly pleasant. Everyone’s on their bikes and walking with their families or sweethearts. The weather was fantastic.
Speaking of bikes, I wish I could take urban planners from all over the States, jam them into a plane, and take them to Munich to see the enormous benefits a large city receives when it becomes truly friendly to bicycle traffic.
It’s really a revelation to walk around a city that embraces the bicycle to the degree that Munich does. Any other city this size in the states would be much more choked with cars than Munich is. When you get such a high percentage of your population on public transportation and two-wheeled transportation, your automobile traffic simply isn’t as bad.
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I think I found a great public meeting place in Munich. There’s a large fountain in front of one of the old city gates in an area called Karlsplatz (or Stachus). I was there last night after saying so long to my pal Tex at City Segway Tours, and it seems that every attractive young Municher was there waiting for his/her date. It would be a great place to snap candids or just people watch. Incidentally, adjacent to this fountain is the largest-business-volume McDonalds in the world.
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I stopped by City Segway tours to say so long to my tour guide Tex. I had forgotten to write on his floor (it’s a thing), so I composed something nice and suggestive. “This’ll give your customers something to ask you about, ” I said.
Segway Tours I’ve Done
Berlin
Minneapolis (Old Mill area)
Munich
Average Rating: 4.5 out of 5 based on 286 user reviews.
I always feel ignorant being monolingual. Unfortunately, I really think I’m past the age where acquiring new languages comes easy. The fact is, I’ve always been fascinated by languages without having any talent for them at all.
But when I’m in somewhere as multilingual as Europe I REALLY feel ignant.
When I’m interacting with Europeans, I see two behaviors that amuse me.
People in service occupations are used to customer walking up and addressing them in any number of tongues. It’s fun to watch them mentally click on a dropdown list and pick the language they think they’ll need. They are usually correct, also, for whatever reason. I assume they always know I’m American because I look like I don’t believe in evolution by natural selection, or something like that.
The subways are empty early on weekend mornings.
The second reaction is funnier to me. That’s when I approach them and say, In my best German or French (or Russian), “I’m sorry, I don’t speak _____.” I then get this look from them. It’s not an unkind look , really… the thought bubble I imagine I see over their heads reads something like this:
“Okay, don’t scare him. Speak softly and reassuringly. Hey, Marcel! Looks like we’ve got another escapee from the Care Facility for the Victims of Profound Head Injuries. Ignatz, distract him with something shiny while I pull out my dart gun. He’s just going to hurt himself out here. The sooner we can get him back to the home, the better it will be for everyone.”
Frankly, I have trouble even imaginging what it must be like to be able to mentally juggle all those different vocabularies and gramamars and even slang. I really admire them.
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Last night my colleagues and I went to a Jewish/Israeli restaurant. Seriously? A Jewish restaurant in Munich? The birth of the Third Reich? Why not open a nice deli in Damascus? It boggles the mind. Why, ifyou were a Jew, would you want to go anywhere NEAR Germany? For that matter, I’ve never understood why Jewish people bought Mercedes and BMWs, but that’s just me.
Oh, the food at the restaurant? Meh.
Languages I’d Be Most Interested in Learning If I Was Less Stoopid
Italian
Latin
Arabic
Average Rating: 4.9 out of 5 based on 253 user reviews.
Completely different topic! During the last couple of years, I’ve been very entertained and inspired by a writer named John Scalzi. He has rapidly growing stature in the science fiction field, but like me he also writes about movies and video games, as well as lots of other types of writing. His long-running blog, The Whatever, is full of gossipy anecdotes, testimonials and opinions on, among many other things, the writer’s life.
I’ve always known what a lazy writer I am. That, frankly, was a major reason for keeping this travel journal. Just a test of my writing endurance: Could I successfully maintain a daily blog for a twelve week period? I’ve been pleased with the results, mostly, and, inspired by Mr. Scalzi in several different ways, I’m eager to roll my sleeves up and try to earn more of my living by writing.
An area I’m interested in investigating is, duh, travel writing. I enjoy traveling so much, and I clearly like talking about it with my keyboard. I wonder if I can find some outlets where I can submit some travel writing?
It’s important for me to feel inspiration at this moment, because, as this job is winding down and I don’t have much else in the pipeline, I’m starting to feel the creeping “What If I Don’t Get Another Gig For Six Months” dreads. You might think I’d have a ton of money stockpiled after this assignment, but it’s going to be a surprisingly small amount. No, it’s not because I’m a crack addict or a shopaholic (anyone who knows my wardrobe knows this isn’t true). It’s because whever you start working after not working for a while, you’re digging yourself out of a hole for a certain number of paychecks. In my case, it was a big damn hole.
So the reason I won’t have a year’s worth of dollars ready to take care of me when I return to Los Angeles is that I’ve paid off three of my four credit cards and gotten caught up (to a certain degree) on back taxes. Not completely caught up, I hasten to add. But I’ve made good progress.
So I need to keep working, damnit.
I also need to stop depending so utterly on this software training work. I love doing it, and I enjoy the jobs when they come. But they are too sporadic these days. They should be supplemental income, not my only income. And if I’m not willing (or able?) to get an in-house training job, I need to have a second major source of income. Perhaps it’s stupid to hope writing could be that source, but still, it’s a goal. The idea feels right inside my head. We’ll see.
Areas I’d Like to Try Writing More On
Books (duh)
Games (duh)
Movies (duh duh)
Travel
Politics/Gay Rights
Politics/Rational Thought vs. Superstition in Public Policy
Pets
Food
Low Carb Living
Am I leaving out anything obvious here?
Tommorrow: Back to Munich stuff!
Average Rating: 4.8 out of 5 based on 154 user reviews.
Always great to see you! You’re looking well. Why thank you, I’m well, too.
You say you have a problem you think I can help you with? Terrific. Please tell me about it.
I see. I see. Yes. I think I understand. That is indeed A Situation. And one that I am sure I can help you with.
I believe I understand The Situation. Thank you for describing it clearly. Now what shall we do about The Situation?
I see, yes. You’d like me to take Course of Action in order to help you with The Situation? Why, I’d be more than happy to help you. Course of Action is right in my wheelhouse. You’ve come to the right person to help you with this particular Situation. Thanks. I’ll get right on that. Talk to you later— what, sorry?
Oh, yes. That’s right. You tell me you have a Situation. Yes, I understand.
Yes, and you’d like me to take Course of Action. Yes, that was clear. I’ve got it. Thanks again. Well, I’d better get back to what I was doing…
[Sigh.] Yes. Yes. I promise I heard you the first two times. You have a Situation. Got it. I promise you, I got it the first two times. Yes. And you think the only sensible solution is for me to enact Course of Action. I fully agree with you. I’ve been agreeing with you for ten minutes. Yes. Now if we could just wrap this up . . .
Oh. My god. You’re starting back on the loop again. What is it that I have to do to jar you out of the loop and extricate myself from this increasinly tedious conversation?
Yes. Course of Action. I think I am going to set myself on fire now.
A Situation? Really? Yes, that is soooo fascinating. Do you happen to have anything really sharp?
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Why does this happen? Why do people not trust that you understand the information the first couple of times they tell it to you? Why does this converstation take fifteen minutes when it should take two minutes? That’s thirteen minutes I’ll never get back.
What should be this:
Becomes this ghastly, endless loop:
Why do people do this? Do they have all day to talk about this issue? I don’t. How do we extricate ourselves from these excruciationly attenuated conversations without seeming terribly rude?
If Only There Were Polite Escapes From People Who…
…talk in endless loops
…tell endless boring stories
…tell endlless boring stories about their jobs
…make condescending judgmental statements regarding their beliefs in the supernatural
…say things like “anyhoo” and “I guess I shouldn’t kid a kidder” and “working hard? Or hardly working?” or “what can I do you for” or “bassackwards”
Average Rating: 4.9 out of 5 based on 178 user reviews.
But a Few of the Concert Ads I’ve Seen
