Moving Out

Photo: The air shipment is set aside for packing.

I am spending all day, every day so far this week, cooped up in my increasingly empty apartment with my Russian-speaking packers.

It is my job to watch them so I can jump in when they do things like try to fold, rather roll, my Persian carpets. Incidents requiring my direct intervention usually happen three times a day and take about two minutes to resolve.

So other than those rousing six or so minutes, it is pretty boring. Of course, I can’t read or write or I’m likely to miss it when they pack up the expensive equipment which belongs to the cable company. (This happened to us last move.)

Tomorrow, I get to hand over the apartment to the landlord, along with the three building keys, mailbox key and three sets of front door keys. She also gets back the four keys to the bedrooms, the owners’ manuals (in a slew of foreign languages generally not including English) on all the built-ins, and the three remotes to the window air conditioners.

I think we used the air cons about three weeks last summer. Right now, it’s almost June and it’s so cold outside I’m shivering in my light jacket. Of course, I’ll get plenty of warm weather in Abu Dhabi in a few weeks!

It's done nothing but rain (and hail) here. We have plenty of cheap umbrellas, bought during downpours in London and in New York City. But, of course, those were the first things to be packed and loaded. Big trucks are illegal in the city so the moving company has to bring in a small truck which they continually fill and later empty into a container elsewhere.

Hopefully, later this summer, all my stuff will magically reappear in my next home in Abu Dhabi.
Photo: A last look off my bedroom balcony at the Ukraine Hotel. This is how I want to remember Moscow.

Open House to Close Up

Now that I have all these lovely, cheap Russian crystal vases, Larry suggested I get some flowers for them!

I went to the flower market Wednesday near the Kievskaya metro. It’s actually a collection of about 10 stalls and a central hallway. The hallway was packed with flowers, shop assistants and customers. I pushed my way down to the last stalls as it was not as crowded that far back. The white roses looked good so after agreeing to the price, I asked for six of them.

The assistant gave me an incredulous grin and did nothing. She knew from my poor Russian that I was obviously a foreigner. But she just couldn’t believe I was so clueless as to actually order SIX roses. I quickly realized my faux pas. In Russia, flowers are never given in even numbers. Even numbered flowers are appropriate only for the dead.

“Oh, I want seven, seven okay?” I amended. She smiled knowingly and wrapped up my roses. I carried them home Russian-style, with the buds down.

The flowers served as decoration for my "Open House to Close Down" party. As I can't ship any alcohol to UAE, I needed some serious help, drinking up all the liquor in our apartment. I emailed 30 girlfriends to drop by Friday afternoon. Ten actually showed up. This was a good turn-out as half of the invitees turned out to be out of the country.

The party was BYOI (bring your own ice). Perhaps because they are constantly tripping over the stuff on sidewalks, Russians don't like ice in their drinks. I don't know anyone with an icemaker and you can't buy ice here.

Along with getting rid of my alcohol, I also took advantage of the party to start cleaning out my pantry. While I will donate the Russian products to charity, my buddies were thrilled to get their hands on the American stuff I imported via my suitcase, like my partially used Crisco, vanilla, and powdered sugar.

I also took the opportunity to weed our DVD collection of movies we'll never watch again. Frankly, most of them were not worth watching the first time. And while I was at it, I set out ugly household accessories. After a few drinks, these actually looked good to my friends and they hauled my unwanted stuff away in droves!

Everyone also left with a bottle of something. In fact, Larry was not happy to come home and find I had accidentally given away a $50 bottle of Bulgarian wine a collegue had given him.

And there was more accidental give-aways. Ann took my black leather jacket right out of my closet. She mistook it for her jacket and had to bring it back a couple of days later.

I got to have at least one drink from my previously unopened bottle of dark rum I dragged back from the Caribbean. Before the stress of moving, before the pain of saying goodbye, it was nice to take an afternoon off and relax with my friends. I may not miss much about Moscow, but that's one thing I will regret leaving behind.

Photo: I get by with a little help from my friends, some of whom are pictured here at my party.

Job Description for a Trailing Spouse

Photo: Trailing spouse, Nancy, enjoying trip to Budapest in 2005.

Must be a creative problem-solver ready for a variety of new challenges. You must be able to come up with a solution for operating your gas grill safely when your nozzle doesn’t conform to the hook-up on the local bottled gas. Or you must be able to figure out how to pick your teenage son up at the airport at 2 a.m. when you have no car, mass transit isn’t running and you can’t trust taxis.

Must be able to quickly assemble your own large network of on-the-ground contacts through informal means. They have vital information unavailable to you anywhere else, including the Internet. Collectively, they’ve been everywhere and usually can be counted on to know somebody who knows somebody who might have a solution to your problem. They are your Yellow Pages.

Must have a strong sense of inwardly-focused self-esteem. You have to be able to accept the fact that whatever high-powered professional background you may have had, your job now is to provide a smooth domestic life for your husband.

Experience in logistics, foreign languages and travel planning a plus. This is not a requirement because you will learn on the job.

Must be flexible. There are way too many factors outside your control and/or understanding. This includes the schedule of how long you will live in any one place.

Positive outlook a must. If you can’t be happy here, do your family a favor and get everyone out a.s.a.p. regardless of the cost to your husband’s career or your finances. As a friend from Texas says, “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

Benefits: Foreign travel and a luxury lifestyle you usually will not be able to afford to maintain once you move back in the U.S. Plus after the initial six months in new location, you have extensive free time. You will now actually have time for hobbies, friendships, and quality time with your children. If you choose to volunteer, your personal contributions can have a huge impact because the need is so great. However, be advised that as a trailing spouse, you are on call 24/7 and must cancel EVERYTHING on your agenda for as long as necessary (which overseas is often three times as long) when the ceiling literally caves in.

Overall, nice work if you can get it.

Turning Russian

Moscow is definitely rubbing off on me. Yesterday, I took off for my French cooking class wearing four inch high-heeled boots. This is despite the fact, I knew I had 50 minutes of trodding along the uneven sidewalks of Moscow.

My last blog poked fun at American tourist in their white tennis shoes. But who was wearing silly shoes now?

Like a Russian native, I wear my spiky heeled boots, pushing my way through the crowds in the metro while maintaining a suitably gloomy expression. Where will my Russian conversion end? If I don’t watch myself, I’ll probably decide I need scary collagen lips and shirts cut down to my navel.

The Contact Lense Solution

Taylor is in Prague this week playing in a school tennis tournament. I still haven’t figured out why the school can’t find them any matches in Russia. Tay left Thursday, packing the only toothpaste and contact lense solution in the flat. This left me to source replacements.

Buying toothpaste is no problem. They sell it in local grocery stores and in some of the kiosks outside the Metro. But I had no idea where to buy contact lense solution.

Contact lense solultion is expensive here and I’m not completely confident in medical products sold. That's why I always bring contact lense solution back from the U.S. I called my friend, Diane, another contact wearer, to see if she knew where to find contact lense solution. She was no help as she ALSO brought back all her solution from the U.S. (No wonder our suitcases are always full.)

When I came up empty at the kiosks by the Metro, I decided to try an apteka (drug store). I immediately spotted Colgate toothpaste inside the glass counter. I pointed to it and the shop assistant pulled out three different kinds of Colgate. One of them had a bee on the label. Are they making honey-flavored toothpaste now? I couldn’t understand the Russian on the boxes, so I just went with the one with stripes.

Then on a shelf behind a counter across the store, I spotted bottles of ReNu Multiplus. I know ReNU is some kind of contact lense solution made by Bausch & Lomb. The assistant refused to show it to me as it was in a different section of the 12’ x 12’ store, probably with a different owner than the toothpaste section.

I paid for my Colgate and got another assistant to sell me the ReNu. That label was also in Russian. For all I knew, it could have said, “This is a powerful cleaner that will burn your eyes.” I decided not to try it until I could do further research.

I left the shop and walked along New Arbat, window shopping on my way to the Embassy gym. It was about a 45 minute walk, but it was a beautiful day, cool and sunny. My time in Moscow would have been much happier if every day could have been a day in May.

I stopped to look at an overpriced shirt and the shop girl came out. “Are you American?” she asked me in Russian. “Da” I said, surprised she could tell.

I may not look Russian. My clothes aren't skin-tight and my hair is not a metallic shade of red. But how did she peg me as an American? Then I realized I was wearing the badge of Americans traveling abroard worldwide—my white tennis shoes. I had given myself special dispensation to wear them on the street as I was going directly to my racquetball game after shopping and didn’t want to drag an extra set of shoes around.

I won my racquetball game in a tiebreaker, picked up some takeout samosas from the Embassy cafeteria, and walked home. Once there, I did a Web search on my ReNu Multiplus. This turned out to be a different formulation than the ReNU contact lense solution that is currently being recalled because it causes serious eye infections.

I took a shower, brushed my teeth with my new toothpaste and put in my contact lenses. Overall, a very successful day.

On the Streets

Yesterday, the American Women’s Organization screened the Academy Award nominated documentary “The Children of Leningradsky.” It is a film about homeless children living in a train station in Moscow. I had really wanted to see this film, but found I couldn’t stand to watch more than a few minutes. I have difficulty watching fictionalized movies about homeless children. I don’t know why I thought I could watch a movie about real ones set in the city in which I live.

The movie’s producer/director drove to Moscow from Poland for our screening. She is working with the International Women’s Club of Moscow to try to put an intervention program together.

Expat women have a lot of financial and talent resources available. Unfortunately, what this project needs are volunteers proficient at working with the Russian burocracy and political system. Because even if they had space donated for some kind of shelter, the director estimates a two-year timeline just to get government authorization to set up.

After that, they’d have an even WORSE battle trying to get each kid registered. Without registration, each child would risk being evicted or, often a worse alternative, be institutionalized.

That’s assuming the only issue is getting these kids off the streets. But many of them have such severe drug and alcohol addiction problems that they can only be saved with intensive professional intervention. And if you REALLY want to address the root problem, you’d have to start by fixing their abusive and uncaring families, the reason most of these kids end up being on the streets in the first place.

Once on the streets, homeless children in Moscow have a lifespan of only three to five years. The clothes and toiletries we donated yesterday were no more than a bandaid.

Although I ride the Moscow metro almost daily, I don’t see this side of Moscow. The only panhandlers I encounter are the pensioners, silently standing by the wayside with their palms extended. The director says the children have a much lower profile now because of police harassment. She did say the situation has improved in Moscow, but is getting worse in other Russian cities.

My friend, Cathy, who works with Doctors Without Borders in Moscow, told me today about a pregnant teenager who’s currently living in an elevator mechanism room with a bunch of I.V. drug users. Believe it or not, this is an improvement over living with the young woman's abusive family.

Cathy is trying to locate a used stroller for her. While Cathy could easily get money donated for a new stroller, it would be stolen and sold for drug money. The ideal situation would be to get the woman registered somewhere so she could have a safe place to live, but it’s an uphill battle. Russia doesn’t seem to have the political will to address this issue and they won't get out of the way of the people who do.

Unfurnished

Photo: View from the living room of our new apartment in Abu Dhabi.

We’ve put a deposit down on the unfurnished apartment we saw in Abu Dhabi. Even with the typical unrealistic construction schedules, our place will be ready before we are.

Larry’s residency permit is still in process so we will have to start the lease before we are legally able to move in. This is also before we get our air shipment which contains the minimum necessities (sheets, towels, tableware and pots and pans) we’d need to actually inhabit the place.

But because there’s practically NO availability, we must take it or lose it. Even though the streets of Abu Dhabi are clean, I would just as soon not be sleeping in them.

And when I say “unfurnished,” I mean REALLY unfurnished. We have to go out and buy a washer, a dryer, a refrigerator and window coverings. But that’s not all. While, we’re at it, we also have to get a microwave, an oven (called a cooker), and a dishwasher. And yesterday, Larry found out that unfurnished also means and NO LIGHT FIXTURES. Silly us, we thought they’d be installing them when they finished the apartment.

I wonder how you say, “Can I get a discount?” in Arabic.

Photo: View from the apartment's master bedroom overlooking the Sheraton Residences (far right), where Larry is currently at home awaiting his residency visa, our air shipment, and Taylor and me!

Triumphant!

Last week, my Internet was cut off for non-payment. In my defense, it’s not like you get a reminder, or even a bill. You are suppose to track your usage yourself and pay (in advance) when it get low.

For Russians this is easy. You can pay at many convenient bank locations. You pull up the Russian website on your computer, print out the proper forms (available only in Cyrllic), fill them out in duplicate in Russian, and then wait in the proper line at the bank with your cash, answering any questions the Russian cashier may have.

As this is very daunting, I was relieved to find that, instead, I could buy an Internet payment card at a telephone store. Then I only had to login to the Russian website and enter the card and code number. I ran into trouble when the store ran out of cards about the same time my account ran out of money.

I scoured the neighborhood until I found another store with Internet payment cards. I bought a $50 one, but with no Internet service, I had no way to log on to the website and record the card numbers. I ended up taking my computer to a restaurant with a wireless connection. After ordering lunch, I discovered their wireless service was down.

I then took my laptop to a friend’s apartment and used her wireless connection to get online to pay my bill. Relieved at having this issue resolved, I arrived home to find that while my wireless worked, my hot water did not.

Every summer, the City of Moscow turns off the hot water in various parts of the city for two weeks so they can clean the pipes. Last year, Larry had studied the plumbing in our bathroom and figured out the inputs and outputs so he could turn on our apartment’s boiler. But this time, Larry was in Saudi.

Facing icy showers, I opened the door to the boiler and found two schematics of the plumbing in Cyrillic. Relying heavily on my knowledge of the words “open” and “close” in Russian, I was able to turn the appropriate nozzles and start the boiler.

It worked. Thanks to me, I could take a hot bath! I could run the dishwasher! I could download emails! I rule my world!

Knowing the Value

Because we are moving, I once again have to fill out Valued Inventory Forms. This is where I itemize EVERYTHING in my home, assign it a category based on its method of transport, and give it a replacement value.

My worldly good are getting to Abu Dhabi three different ways: Fastest is the 44 lbs. I can take on the plane as baggage. Another 800 lbs. goes in an air shipment that will arrive in Abu Dhabi in two to three weeks. Everything else will go in a container that will arrive in three months. The container takes a long time because, for obvious reasons, our belongings don’t get to take the shortcut through Iran.

After I finish “triaging” my belongings, I start the daunting task of coming up with the replacement values. For example, I have to count up all my pairs of shoes and figure out how much money I’d need to replace them. It doesn’t help the process that I stop to imagine what fun I’d have at Nordstrom’s Rack with my insurance-funded shoe shopping spree.

A more difficult exercise is coming up with a replacement value for unique items we've acquired overseas. A good example of this is the peasant painting of our family on the Great Wall. A Chinese artist, working from family photos, painted Larry, Alec, Taylor and me exactly--except he made us look Chinese! I paid $150 when I commissioned the painting six years ago in Beijing, but now I wouldn’t part for it for $150,000. So what’s the replacement value on that?

Luckily, I don’t have to put a price on the things I truly value: my family, my friends and the adventures that await.

Photo: My family, as we looked in 1999, on the Great Wall.

Newlyweds No More

If I get up early enough, I can catch “The Newlyweds” on MTV here. I have to be careful, though, that my laughter doesn’t wake anyone else up.

I think this show is hilarious. It’s not that Nick and Jessica are both so stupid. (Maybe they aren’t on the MENSA celebrity recruitment list, but they have made successful careers in an extremely competitive business.) It’s just that they are just so young and clueless.

Hampered by their immaturity, not to mention the constant presence of a camera crew, Nick and Jessica are very funny as they slam up against the reality of married life.

They kind of remind me of another young and clueless newlywed couple: Nancy and Larry circa 1980--minus the fabulous home, Hummer, and Louis Vitton accessories, of course.

But without the media dogging our every step, Larry and I could eventually figure out this whole marriage thing. The benefit has been years of happy adventures together. So sometimes, early in the morning, I like to watch the Newlyweds, as a reminder of how far we’ve come.

Dining with Strangers

I met a young American documentary maker at a dinner party this week. She is in town making a film about young Russians who came of age at the fall of communism. A former PBS producer, Robin worked on Sesame Street in Russia. I don’t know about Big Bird, but I am sure Oscar the Grouch felt quite at home here.

Last night, I had dinner with another stranger, a woman who contacted me after reading my blog.

“I’m off to meet a stranger I met through the Internet,” I told Taylor. He had been sitting on the sofa, watching TV AND IMing four friends at the same time. There’s a lot of competition for his attention, and sometimes, I admit, I resort to a little dramatics.

He looked up and I continued, “Oh, it’s okay. She’s an expat mom who is moving to Moscow this summer.” He cocked an eyebrow. “And I’m taking a friend.”

I had asked my friend, Monique, who, like me, is frequently on her own evenings, to join us. This turned out to be very fortuitous as, unbeknownst to me, the woman we were meeting, Geysa, was Brazilian. Also unbeknownst to me, Monique was the founding member of Moscow’s Brazilian Women’s Club.

We met at Geysa’s hotel and dodging the bumper-to-bumper traffic around Bellaruskaya circle, walked to a local restaurant.

My friend, Ann, who lives in the neighborhood, had recommended a cozy Georgian restaurant. She told me it was down the street from the lady who sells crystal next to the meat counter. Ann didn’t know the address or even the restaurant’s name, but informed me that the outside looks like a log cabin. There's not a whole lot of log cabins in downtown Moscow so I figured I couldn't miss it.

Ann neglected to mention that the menu was entirely in Russian. While Monique, Geysa and I had English, Spanish, Portugese, and French covered, the seven page Russian menu was a problem. Please remember, there are about SIX different words in Russian for chicken, so it’s not like you can learn one word and find it on the menu.

The waitresses spoke no English, but a fellow diner, volunteered to help. There was no question about having him read the 60-item menu, so we requested a couple of orders of potatoes and mushrooms and some chicken shashlik. Shashliks are meats grilled on a stick. We washed them down with Baltika 7 beers, while the three of us compared notes on the countries in which we’d lived.

I took the Metro the home. (I will miss the Metro here. Every big city ought to have one.) And I will miss the interesting mix of people that continually come my way here.

Rippled

Living overseas, I am amazed at how horrible events somewhere else in the world have a ripple effect on my personal schedule.

Yesterday, a friend called to tell me she would be free for dinner, after all. Her previous engagement for dinner at the Armenian Embassy had been cancelled due to an Armenian plane crashing into the Black Sea this week. A tragic plane crash somewhere else meant I don’t have to eat alone Friday night.

The biggest headline ripple for me, of course, was the 1999 U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. We were living in Beijing at the time. Understandably outraged, the Chinese government bussed in huge numbers of students to Beijing for anti-American protests. The American Embassy there was in lock-down. There were reports of Americans, including a CNN reporter, being roughed up.

For security reasons, my children’s school canceled their annual discovery trips. In fact, school was cancelled. Anyone who might be mistaken for American (including Canadians, Europeans and Australians) found it prudent not to leave our guarded, gated residential compound.

One of my neighbors got a call in the middle of the night from her husband’s employer. They were pulling all their American employees out of China. She and her husband had to wake up their three young children and hightail it to the airport for the first flight out.

I took the precaution of dusting off our personal emergency evacuation plans. Airline tickets reserved? Check. Bicycles in shape to get to the airport? Check. Sufficient dollars in the safe to bribe our way out if necessary? Check.

But mostly, I spent the days trading information with my neighbors, trying to assess the risk by getting a handle on what was happening in the streets. My biggest concern was the government ability to control the protests.

But I needn’t have worried. After about three tense days, things calmed down. Expats returned. School resumed. Life in Beijing went on.

Today, what I MOST remember about that week was being forced to cancel my trip to Hong Kong with Larry. Hong Kong, unlike Beijing, had Mexican food and theaters with American movies. Because the U.S. drops a bomb thousands of miles away, I don’t get to eat enchiladas. That’s a very strange ripple.

May Day With the Comrades

Photo by Taylor Perkins: Boats are moving again on the Moscow River outside my window.

While things are heating up (literally) in Abu Dhabi for Larry, I'm enjoying fine Moscow weather. I’m awash in all that sunlight I so desperately miss in the winter. The sun now rises at 5:45 a.m. and doesn’t set until 9:30 p.m. The high temperatures are in the low 60s F.

We Moscovites are taking advantage of being outside and I see a definite increase in broken beer bottles on the sidewalks. I also noticed the annual return of gypsy women panhandling outside the train station. From my kitchen window, I can see boats now glide by as they ply their trade on the Moscow River.

Today is May Day (Labor Day) in Moscow. This use to be a bigger deal under the Soviet government. It is still a favored day for aging communist to get out and protest (usually over pensions and housing) but there’s not a lot of other holiday activity.

Victory Day next week, celebrating Russia’s defeat of Nazi Germany, is a much bigger deal. While Taylor has to attend school on May Day, Good Friday and Thanksgiving, he gets two days off for Victory Day. At this point, our only plans are to take him to his French orthodontist for a new retainer. I guess we’ll be celebrating victory over crooked teeth.