"Moskau, fremd und geheimnisvoll"
("Moscow, foreign and mysterious")
- "Moskau" by Dschinghis Khan
"Diese Stadt ist eine Dirne"
(="This city is a prostitute")
- "Moskau" by Rammstein
I have a fairly simple philosophy of life. It consists of things like:
* In an argument, both sides are probably wrong.
* Respecting someone is not the same as liking them.
* The conventional wisdom is long disproven. So are the alternatives - except one.
* People are mostly silly, but not bad - except when they're organised in their sillyness.
* Competition produces improvement only when cheating is impossible. Cheating is always possible.
* There's no point in talking to someone who won't listen.
* If something needs doing, and you know roughly how, and no one else seems inclined, do it.
* If there's no good and clear reason to do something, don't do it.
All quite uncontroversial, yes?
Well, no. As regards the last one, I've had to deal with some bureaucracy lately, and it's been conspicuously absent. Instead, I've found some alternative maxims:
* If it's a stupid idea, but it's in the rulebook, do it. But exonerate yourself by saying you know it's stupid. Because that makes it all right.
* If your situation doesn't fit into a neat box, you're being deliberately awkward just to annoy me. And you probably eat babies too.
* Every other department in this organisation follows procedure because they're too dumb not to. We follow procedure because we couldn't work with the others if we didn't.
So yes. I am now officially restarting again on a government scheme on January 7th. I've done the course before and it gave me a miniature nervous breakdown with two months convalescence.
Immediately after which they tried to get me to restart the course - but I disappeared and got myself got trained as a teacher instead.
Now, I've also been offered a teaching job in Moscow, and if I accept it I'll be leaving...guess when? Go on, I bet you can't guess the date.
And yes, I did tell them. It didn't stop them filling out for forms for an hour.
I could go to Moscow, or the opportunity's still open in Bulgaria...and there's two more interviews tomorrow.
It's nice to be in demand.
I just may end up as the only socialist in Moscow.
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