Russian Cuisine or Disappearing Family Traditions

While I was cooking a red cabbage salad today, I all of a sudden remembered our family tradition. 

We would buy two or three cabbage heads and my mom would  thinly chop it all (I am so glad I have a chopper in my kitchen now as I am making the cabbage salad), grate some carrots, and then my dad's part would kick-in - which, to me, was a performance. Removing half of the tablecloth from the table, he would put all the chopped cabbage on the bare table, add salt, and start mixing and pressing and squeezing and juicing the cabbage with his hands. I enjoyed watching the cabbage giving juice, getting soft in my dad's strong hands. I was three. I admired his strength, gnawing at the cabbage stem.

And then my mom would bring a huge clay pot, all the cabbage would be put there, covered with a plate and a jar of water to keep the pressure on the cabbage - to squeeze even more juice. The pot would be put on the floor next to the radiator - to improve and accelerate fermentation.

Hardcopy Soap

A couple of years ago I disconnected my TV cable. The customer service guy asked me why I was cancelling my cable? Well, I hadn't turned on my TV for 2 months. The guy didn't find a rebuttal for that in his script and had to let me go.

Freedom. No more rushing home to catch House or SYTYCD. No more stressing over getting home in time (I had no will ti pay extra for the PVR). No more losing hours upon hours glued to the blue screen. No more getting frustrated with the season end (or season break for sports or xmas).

My freedom didn't last long. I got sucked right back into another - similar - addiction. Book sagas.

I read sagas before, of course. But the Harry Potter books I read as they got published, consuming each within 3-4 days of their release - once in a couple of years. Hardly an addiction (even if I reread them in-between, I'll admit).

House Ownership 101

Most Canadians lived their whole lives - or at least their childhood years - in a private house. Which means that by the time they come of age, meet that special someone, and get married - they are fairly well prepared for the magic world of house ownership.

Most immigrants, on the other hand, lived their lives in high-rise apartment buildings, sharing rooms with their siblings (or parents...or grandparents), never having to deal with anything more than cursing municipalities for anything and everything wrong with water supply, heating, and such things.

And then one day you move to Canada, reach financial stability, and enter that magic world of house ownership.

Those are completely unchartered waters!

Why are there 3 garbage bins? Oh, that's green bin, recycling, and rest-of-garbage? Okay, is tea bag considered a green bin? But what about the little paper label attached to it with a staple and a string - are those green bin, too? Or should I tear them away and throw in recycling? While we are at that, are threads and staples recyclable?

The electric jack in master bathroom stops working all of a sudden and there is no reset button. What? Press a reset button in the adjacent bathroom? Who would've thought.

Yet Another Boring Meeting

Have you ever been an unlucky prisoner of a useless, painfully boring presentation?

You sit there, fighting to keep your mind focused or, at least, to keep your head straight. Frantically trying to look alive and alert.

You worry. Am I the only one not following?!

You sneak a look around. Ah, you are not alone in your stupor. John's eyes are glazed over. Sarah supports her head in a straight position with her hands. Dan seems to have mastered the art of yawning with mouth shut. Peter is fully absorbed in wiping his glasses. Michael nods his head every now and then and jots something down in his notepads with a raised brow. You briefly wonder what he's actually writing there.

The most important thing is to keep moving, shifting a little, making sure you look alive.

All of a sudden, Katie asks a question. Started out of their stupor, everyone looks around anxiously: is someone actually paying attention to what's being said? Am I the only one not hearing a single word?

Green tea - double-double or black?

One of the first things you learn when you come to Canada, be it for business, leisure, or immigration, is that everyone goes to mysterious Timmy's to get their daily doze of double-double.

Who is Timmy? What is double-double?

Well, Timmy's is how Canadians lovingly call the fast-food chain Tim Horton's - and Canadians are notoriously attached to their coffee. Double-double merely means a coffee with two sugars, two milks. I'll refrain from sharing my opinion of the coffee as it is irrelevant to this story.

You learn to speak the Timmy's dialect perfectly. You know double-double, ice cap - and even timbits and BELT (don't ask...it's edible, trust me). You feel Proudly Canadian and Always Fresh.

But then one day you decide it's tea time.

Awkward

So many people are preoccupied with their age - oh, I am turning 25... 30... 35... whatever it is. Seriously - it's not about what your ID says - it's about how you look.
 

The bus driver that usually picks me up at my office doorstep is a very chatty guy. He often chooses a victim for the evening, keeping the poor person by his side, chatting all the way to subway station - which is a 40 minute ride. The victim has to stand to keep him company.


Anyway, the other day I tried to sneak quickly by him, eager to get absorbed in my 700-page book, when he said: can I ask you a question? I slumped my shoulders and took a couple of steps back and raised a brow. 


The driver removed his glasses, straightened his jacket, and patted down his hair - as if he were going to pop the question :) 

5-to-9

A friend of mine went to Europe in the early nineties. In those days after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the chaos of Perestroika, Russian stores were see-through for the lack of products on the shelves. You would be lucky to buy a cheese if you needed one. Very lucky.

Back to my friend - he has never been abroad before for the Soviet borders were closed for the vast majority of the population. I don't remember which country was it in, but he was too poor to go to a cafe or a restaurant, so located a supermarket in the neighbourhood.

He says that he spent about an hour there, painfully trying to figure out how to buy cheese when there were so many kinds and varieties - and he left. Cheeseless.

The days of empty shelves are long since gone. Oddly enough, the feeling made a comeback. Only that as opposed to cheese-choice, now we get confronted with too much freedom. Take me - after years devoted to two immigrations, numerous devastating job hunts, mind-boggling language studies, overcoming challenges of new friends, building a family, working long hours - I finally climb to the top of that mountain of mine and find myself... stuck.

Happily married. Got a house. Have lots of friends - close and not so close. Travel a lot. I have a job. A career. I work 9-to-5.

What should I do from 5-to-9???

I have time, interest, and perhaps even money to do something with that free time of mine. The problem? There's too many choices!

I can go to culinary school just for the fun of it. Or join a group of plain-air artists (well, maybe not just now, it being winter). Or set myself to learn how to sew - and design clothes. Or become a home redesign star - at least for my own home. I can write a book, join a yoga class, a dancing class (be it belly- or pole-dancing, doesn't matter).

I can do whatever I want!

The thing is - each and every day, I stand in this supermarket aisle of choices, scratching my head, and then... leave. Too much cheese.

Statistics Vs. Perceptions

Lately, I'm enveloped in the vortex of proposals, weddings, and - of course - baby-making. Wherever I go, invariably the female part of the gathering gravitates towards this topic.

It's ironic, you know. We spend all our lives trying to avoid getting pregnant, and then when we finally say "okay, now I am ready" - it turns out that the chances of actually getting pregnant are not all that high.

Peculiar how stats can be turned whichever way you want (or don't want). When we’re avoiding pregnancy, we tend to exclaim something along the lines of: “birth control pills are only 97% reliable?! There is a three percent chance that I will get pregnant??" And then we think about doubling our protection with a condom. Or if there’s none at hand (oh dear god) plastic food wrap. Ew. 

Later, when you’re starting to get pregnant, all of a sudden your whole perception flips. While 3% seemed frighteningly high before, 25% (and that's the probability number for getting pregnant) seems excruciatingly low. ONLY 25%?!

Therefore the amount of hearsay, superstition, and advice on the subject is mind-boggling. 

The guy should be on top. Okay,

what is it about jeans?

This week a note came out of our HR department, reminding us that while we are allowed to enjoy the 'casual business' dress-code as a means to provide a more comfortable environment at work, leggings, tights and jeans are not allowed. And then even on Fridays, we're only allowed to wear jeans if we buy some charity supporting badge - and wear it.

But why do we need to wear jeans so badly?
Well, I should agree that tights are really not appropriate in the office (even being a woman, I couldn't quite concentrate on a recent presentation delivered by a colleague in tights and over-the-knee boots... and no, her sweater wasn't long).

What I don't quite understand is the obsession with jeans. On the one hand, I don't know why they are excluded from business casual attire. What is so different about them from pants and slackers? So they're blue, big deal. I mean, if they are not tight and/or torn.

On the other hand - why are we so obsessed to get a permission to wear them? Why do we all, as one, show up wearing jeans each and every Friday, as if there's nothing else we can wear - what with all the cool pants, dresses and skirts currently being in style?

Why the moment we're allowed to show up dressed casually, we should be prepared to see people dressed up in something that distinctly looks like pj's?

Beats me.