No News is No News

I'm tempted to say that nothing much has happened since my last blog entry, but that wouldn't be accurate. It would be more precise to report that the exciting, frustrating, novel, banal, transcendent and vulgar events of the last week or so have canceled one another out in my memory. A few sample highlights and lowlights include:

1. Meeting an American graduate student who is working on a research project that parallels my own, but is dissimilar enough not to make me uncomfortable. This fellow scholar -- let's call her 'Vera' -- invited me to come with her to a club where she planned to record a concert and conduct some honest-to-goodness microethnographic investigation.
   

   It sounded like fun to me at the time, but by the end of the night, I started to question whether or not doing research on music in Russia was such a bright idea after all. For starters, Vera has been studying Russian and living in Russia way longer than I have. So while she had no problems getting past the guys at the door, ordering drinks and mingling in the crowd, I found myself totally overwhelmed by the loud music and fast talking. I was unable to figure out how much the cover was or how to check my coat on my own, and apparently I said something to piss off the bartender within the first three seconds of my attempt to order beers for Vera and myself.

   Then there was the smoke. Let me try to give you an idea of how thick the cigarette smoke in this club was. Vera had brought along a couple of high-end digital video cameras to record the concert, and I had volunteered to record the show using one of them. Unfortunately for Vera, her tapes aren't going to reveal much detail of the performance, because the autofocus couldn't get a lock on the people on stage through the blankets of smoke in the air. By the end of the night, my lungs were screaming for fresh air, and part of my brain was shouting at the other that doing research on music in Russia probably wasn't the best idea considering that I sound to most Russians like a dimwitted preschooler. (-5 points.)
   

2. On the other hand, three days later, Vera introduced me to her adviser at Moscow State University: a professor who happens to be extremely knowledgeable about the kind of music I work on, and who was more than happy to talk with me for half an hour about my project in English. The guy was encouraging, generous, and best of all, seemed to be one of the first Russians I've met who thinks my project has merit. (+10 points)

3. One of my big goals for last week was to get a university library card so I could check out a book on the genre that I study which is unavailable in the U.S.. The library card turned out to be the easy part: I filled out a form, gave the librarian a passport photo, let her photocopy a page from my passport, paid 50 rubles, and presto! (+1 point) Then I tried to get the book. Turns out that the card catalog is wrong, and the book I want isn't in library #10, it's actually in #18. (-1 point) No problem, since #18 is right around the corner from #10... and, oh dear, it's the library that has a half-hour long line of students waiting to give their book request slips to the librarian. (-1 point) After waiting for half an hour, I give the librarian my request slip and my brand new library card. She glances at the card, shakes her head, and says "No." I'm confused. No? Why? She says something too quickly for me to understand, gestures at my library card, and then calls for the next person in line to come up. I'm still not sure what went wrong, but I have a feeling that as a visiting student, I might be entitled to reading books but not to checking them out from the library. Or something like that. (-3 points)

4. The other big goal was to get a letter of affiliation from Moscow State University that I could bring to the museum where I want to conduct research so that I can get a research permit. To this end, I decided to write the letter for the folks at the university myself so that they wouldn't have to do anything but print it and stamp it with the university's official seal. How long could it possibly take to print and stamp the letter? 15 minutes? An hour? A day? Two days? Do I hear one week? Sold! (-1 points)

5. The moment the letter is printed and stamped, I take it from the university and deliver it by hand to the museum. By the time I arrive at the museum, though, the building is closing and my contact at the museum has already left. Fortunately, a friendly-seeming guard offers to take the letter and give it to my contact. Great! I'm on my way to getting a museum research permit. (+10 points)
   

6. Wait a minute... that was too easy. After all, the librarian needed my passport and a photograph just to give a library card, so surely a state museum would need something like that. Well, I'm sure that if they need anything they'll call me. I mean, I did put my phone number in the letter, didn't I? Or at least my e-mail address? As it turns out, I did indeed put my contact information on the letter... but the university employee who edited, printed, and stamped my letter of affiliation for me kindly took the liberty of deleting my phone number and e-mail address before hitting 'print'. Grand. (-5 points)

7. So I spent today writing an e-mail to my contact at the museum, explaining that if there's anything else I need to give them for my research permit, I'll be happy to supply it. The problem: I have no idea whether or not this person will get this e-mail, since my contact has less than a stellar track record when it comes to answering my e-mails. (Uncertain score, but provisionally: 0 points)

8. Today I wake up feeling like someone has emptied a can of silly string down my windpipe. Yesterday I had a little case of the sniffles, so I was prepared to feel crappy today. But this? This is unlike any cold I've ever had: I'm sharp mentally, my ability to communicate in a foreign language is better than it's ever been. my mood is good and I've got energy... but someone has replaced my sinuses with an open spigot. And who did this to me? When I get to class, I'm greeted by my teacher and one other student in my group, and both of them are sniffling and coughing. My teacher explains that one of the Thai students in her other group 'got sick' in front of her last week, and she's afraid she's passed some sort of Thai virus to us. (-5)
   

I'll post another entry as soon as something comes along to disrupt the equilibrium...