You've got to be kidding me

On my way to work this morning, I walked behind two guys in their mid to late 20s.

Guy 1: Well, you know, SOME women do actually enjoy having sex.
Guy 2: I don't know, man.

Uhmmm. Yeah. Like...Dude!!!!!

Jump!

The Professor and I were going through our pictures and discovered that we have a tendency of taking jumping photos of each other. Here's some proof from earlier today:



If you see a spastic Bulgarian girl and a skinny American boy being complete dorks out in public, please come say hi.

A simple task

1. Go to the Google home page
2. Type in failure
3. Look at the first listing, it should put a smile on your face
4. Pass this on to people, before our friends at Google fix it.

via Tree

I almost forgot!

САМО ЛЕВСКИ!

***

This post was especially requested by our company's system administrator.

Три мекици и една кола

In the last several weeks, I’ve had a chance to experience Bulgaria through the eyes of a first-time visitor. The first couple of days were a tiny bit stressful and I worried. How do you explain a place without listing all the trivial facts?! What if you never paid attention in school and don't even know the facts? How do you make sense of a tradition that means nothing to you?! How do you feed a vegetarian when all the vegetarian options on the menu are limited to several different types of potato dishes and a couple of variations of roasted peppers?! Do you ask them to drink ракия?! Which Bulgarian phrases do you teach them first?!

Then, two days into the trip, he learned to order мекици IN BULGARIAN and as ridiculous as it may sound, that made relax.



Bulgaria, just like any other place, is truly wonderful when you have a good person to share it with.

Summer is almost over but that’s OK. There’s a lot of good stuff coming up. I promise to keep you posted.

***

Photo by Prof. Grady

All

These days I'm starting to really believe that you can have it all.

What would Karl Marx say?

For seven years in the States I never saw a garbage truck. Not even once. Not in Tennessee. Not in New York City. Not even in rural Pennsylvania. I think I might have heard them once. But it could have been something else. Yet, every morning I woke up to a clean street and empty garbage containers.

Bulgaria is sort of the opposite. I see the garbage truck every morning on my way to work. I hold my nose as I slide by it. You can't simply walk by. The truck blocks city traffic for extended periods of time and no honking or cursing could make the workers move faster. Rather, they take their time, yell at impatient drivers, catcall pretty girls on their way to school and chitchat with old people walking their dogs in the morning. They also leave a trail of trash behind themselves as they move on with their day.

This sums up the American and the Bulgarian service systems so well, I thought this morning. In the States, that's precisely how things are done: people provide you with a service. It is their job, to make YOUR life easier, more comfortable and as enjoyable as possible. They don't rub it in your face and mostly do it throught the back door (literally, enter throught the back door). They simply do it. Garbage is taken out, streets are cleaned, stores are stocked and so on. Quality of service varies, of course, but that goes without saying. Most of the time, however, you do feel like you live in an Elf World, where tiny little helpers come out of their hiding at night, take care of business and let you kick back and enjoy it.

In Bulgaria, we like to do that kind of thing in the brightness of daylight where more people can witness the miracle that is your labor. Not only do we collect the garbage. We make an event out of it. Not only do we stock your restaurant. We bring the ingredients in plastic bags through the main entrance as you mix your wosabi with your soy sauce. Classy, no?

I really really really love the comfort of American living. I love the fact that things just somehow seem to be taken care of. But I get a huge kick of how in Bulgaria every little detail of your daily existence happens right before your eyes. You recognize not only the person who sells your paper. You recognize the person who brings your paper to the newsstand. You not only know your favorite bartender by name but you also know the name of the guy from the nextdoor grocery store who breaks your bartender's change. You enjoy good food, good drinks, good music but you also know exactly how all of the above comes to you and witness the labor that goes into all of it firsthand. And then, when you are not quite happy with the quality of the service you get, you can still tolerate it because you know that there's an actual person with an actual life and actual problems standing behind it.

Marx would have a field day if he were to come back from the grave and land in Bulgaria. Alienation has yet to come to our part of the world. :)

This is not a filler post

I am not writing about this song because I have nothing better to say. I simply want you to know about it. Because it is sweet, and sad, and melodic, and has the most beautiful lyrics.

Artist: Wilco
Album:Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Track: Jesus, etc.

Jesus, don't cry
You can rely on me honey
You can combine anything you want
I'll be around
You were right about the stars
Each one is a setting sun

I recommend you listen to this song on your way to work. It somehow makes you smile from the inside out. Or at least that's the effect it has on yours truly.

Strictly business

Some of my friends worry that the company I work for is ‘too corporate’. To prove them wrong, I’m including a short list of things I learned from colleagues today:

- To avoid under-wire pain, buy bras with small frames and big cups. Not only does this take care of the constant poking but also creates a favorable optical illusion. Ahem. Yeah.
- Playing the clarinet or the saxophone for a relatively short period of time leads to strange alterations in your vocal organs. As a result, if you open your mouth and tap the side of your neck, you produce the coolest sounds which resemble the sounds of opening champagne bottles.
- It is NOT ok to tell a client that they have no idea what the hell they are talking about.
- You’re not supposed to play ping-pong with your hand in your pocket. That, however, does not mean that you can’t do it.
- There is no such thing as too much sushi.


You see, it’s corporate alright.

Feminists, whores, and princesses

I know I need to be super-careful when I say things like this (especially when I don’t have the time to put enough thought into my own writing) but I seriously think that Bulgarian print media hate women. Their major goal at this point in time is to classify women into types. The most commonly mentioned of which are:

- the feminist: men-hating, self-hating, unattractive, delusional, arrogant
- the whore: fucks with no feelings attached, was probably abused by her parents, comes from a modest background, fucks for money
- the princess: comes from good family background, enjoys luxury, shallow and superficial

I don’t even know how to begin to explain what’s wrong with this picture, but two major things immediately come to mind:

1: Fucking grow up and find another go-to subject when you feel you’re starting to run out of ideas for articles. I swear, every time I see a vulgarity-ridden text about male-female relations I simply want to throw up. I obviously have no particular problems with obscenity nor do I have a mental list of things one should never talk about in public. I simply hate anything which reflects a choice of form over substance: the same way I hate flashed-out corporate websites, bad movies with awesome trailers, etc. etc. I understand how Bulgarian journalists would want to write about stuff like that back in the early 90s, when we first discovered the freedom to talk about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll without being censured. I also understand how that type of writing is a way of subverting the patriarchal norms of a traditional society like the one we live in here in Bulgaria. Yet, replacing one set of stereotypes (women are emotional, motherly, don’t care about sex as much as men) with another (women are whores, gold-digging, manipulating) is of no particular use to anyone.

2: Writing in terms of categories has already been done, many times over. By social scientists and psychoanalysts at the turn of the century. That’s the turn of the 20th century. Which was more than 100 years ago. Contemporary social scientists, psychoanalysts and people capable of independent brain-work, however, have long agreed that speaking in types is pointless to say the least.

***

I had decided that I would no longer write about gender issues here, given the fact that my feminism has produced more personal drama than anything else that I care about. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that my own little battle against ridiculous stereotypes of being and behavior has not even begun. Please, give this text a generous read and do not think of it as militant. All I am trying to say is that it hurts my soul to see smart people say stupid things.