Funfare for the Common Man

It’s my annual year in review. I think I’ve done one of these every year. Or most years. I don’t remember. In keeping with the spirit of the holiday season last couple of months, which have been oh-so-frenetic, this too will be a rushed, whirlwind recap of what was truly a raucous annus horribilis. And if that makes no sense, that’s because this year hardly made sense. The biggest positive to emerge from 2020? One of my most productive years of reading ever. But that also came at the cost of other things. When people ask ‘how do you find the time to read?’ I answer: ‘because I don’t do most of the stuff I should be doing instead of frittering away my time reading!’ Herewith 2020 in review. The books are a selection of my favourites and highlights. Mercifully, not all of them. January and February: months like any other, for the most part Grand Hotel , Vicki Baum; Flights , Olga Tokarczuk; Love, Poverty and War , Christopher Hitchens; Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation , Michae...

This is the seventh US Presidential election in which I’ve been an eligible voter. Regardless of the result, these are always raucous occasions. It all started in… 1994 : this was the first election where I was eligible to vote. I’d just turned 18 and was in my first semester at university. But for the life of me, I truly cannot remember whether I even voted, much to my shame. I think I did, but…I honestly can’t say. But it was all a bit anti-climactic for me anyway. Whether I voted or not, my first election wasn’t a Presidential one – it was merely the mid-term election, or for my non-American readers, the equivalent of a parliamentary election. Turnout at these is usually much lower. 1996 : the first time I can vote in an election, but I wasn’t even in the US to do so. I was studying abroad in London for the semester and voted by absentee ballot. And this was the start of a tradition of sorts, staying up all night because of the time difference. The election wasn’t close, so we knew ...

We’ve made it to the end: Part 10 (of 10) of my August 2020 Challenge.  Where do we go from here? If you’ve missed any of the previous 9 parts, a recap: Part 1: A decade in quotations: Part 1 (of 10) of the August 2020 Challenge Part 2: My readers ask, I answer: Reader Mailbag, part 1 Part 3: We live in a haunted house Part 4: The Joy of Getting Away From It All Part 5: Looking for truth in all the wrong places Part 6: From the wilds of Western Ukraine to the wild 1970s Soviet Union: Yaremche v Tiraspol Part 7: My wife tried to kill me: [mis]adventures in the Carpathians Part 8: Why my language skills suck: Part 1 Part 9: Why I speak such lousy Ukrainian – even after 10 years in Kyiv So what comes next? First, a quick English lesson: the past simple versus the present perfect. This should be easy for most of you. Compare: This pandemic period was difficult. This pandemic period has been difficult. Are they both correct? No. In the first example, the use of the past simple – was ...

Now I really start making excuses If you missed Part 1, click here: Why my language skills suck No pressure, really, but this part won’t make nearly as much sense unless you’ve read Part 1. Why my language skills suck: Part 1 There has been quite a tinge of nostalgia pervading this blog over the past six or seven months, and I’ve taken these posts in that direction as well.  This wasn’t my initial intention, and when students ask me about my language skills, I hardly think they’re interested in all this self-indulgent mumbo jumbo about my past. I took a ‘seemingly simple’ question and turned it an unnecessarily self-indulgent answer. What else would you expect? I’m not about to change anytime soon. I can just imagine the next time someone asks me why I don’t speak such good Ukrainian or Russian and I direct them to these blog posts and they take a look and say ‘seriously? You want me to read 4000+ words just to hear this answer? Get to the point old man!’ Anyway…picking up where we...

This is post 8 (of 10) for my August 2020 Challenge. We’re going back to the Reader Mailbag to answer one of my reader’s questions. It’s actually one of those questions I get asked a lot by students and is very tricky to truthfully answer in 30 seconds or less. This happens a lot in the classroom – questions requiring intricate answers, for seemingly simple questions. ‘Where are you from?’ and ‘What do you do in your free time?’ are much easier. But ‘do you speak Ukrainian or Russian?’ can lead down all sorts of rabbit holes and tangents. When I answer that my language skills are pretty poor and that I can merely ‘get by’, I often get puzzled looks that appear to say ‘What? Seriously? After 6, 7, 8, 9 and now 10 (!) years living in Ukraine, you can only ‘get by’?’ Actually, it’s worse: I’ve lived here nearly 11 years. With the 10-year anniversary of me deciding to come to Kyiv upon us (I arrived here at the end of August 2010), what a great time to revisit my horrid language skills and...