from someone who writes better than I do

So it turns out my friend Dave is quite skilled at capturing the Moscow experience through the written word. He had this Op-Ed published in the Moscow Times on Wednesday, and I have copied it here. Enjoy reading. And I am, incidently, the "friend who hosted the small New Years Party" in the peice. In case you were curious.

Otherwise, I've been working, working, working, and freaking out about my dissertation and my future, in general. But I did re-write my C.V. Off to a movie tonight, and then a day trip to Borodino tomorrow. Heard everyone is waiting on a winter storm! Have fun.

Embracing Absurdity, Fleeing Russian Fatalism
By David Pinsky
I have recently found myself engaged in a number of conversations with Western expatriates in Moscow that begin with the following question: "Why did I choose to live in Russia?" All cynicism aside, I know precisely why I chose to leave my home in New York City for Moscow, just as most other Westerners know their personal reasons for making their moves. Still, the question lingers in the back of my mind, ready to be pushed to the foreground with alarming frequency. And, perhaps surprisingly, it is not homesickness or some other form of mushy nostalgia that triggers such questioning. Instead, the triggers are the everyday absurdities that confront me here.
These absurdities are of an extraordinarily wide variety. Some seem amusing or even cute, while others, well, create a legitimate reason for concern. They range from the unexplained requirement that every receipt I am handed be torn in half, to the supposed existence of Baikal Finance Group. From the reason that doors to metro stations were designed to swing both ways with incredible force, to President Vladimir Putin's recent annual press conference, which saw one journalist present the Russian leader with a gift but not a single journalist ask a question about the war in Chechnya. And from my landlady's insistence that an enormous quantity of sour cream and mayonnaise are good for me, to the irony that ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky heads the Liberal Democratic Party.
None of this is to say that my own country is free of the absurd. To be sure, the United States has more than its own fair share of the illogical and ridiculous. The difference, however, is that in Russia, while the absurd is regularly acknowledged, it is rarely questioned: It is oddly accepted as simply a part of life.
The explanation my Russian friends offer for such willing acceptance is most often either fatalism or outright laziness. "We are a nation of fatalists," they say. "We don't waste time worrying about things over which we have no control." As for being lazy, I will refrain from comment, as my own country is notorious for being home to millions of low-energy souls who appear to have developed an acute fear of walking. I must concede, however, that there is something inviting about subscribing to fatalism. There is not, however, anything inviting about having an out-of-control metro station door smack you in the face. It is annoying. And it hurts.
Perhaps expatriates like me have a bad attitude, and perhaps Russia is not for us. I fully acknowledge this possibility and, as a result, had planned to be more accepting of Russia's quirks in the New Year. Or at least I had such a plan, anyway. When New Year's Eve actually rolled around, I decided that I had a better chance of successfully giving up smoking.
The night began at home, where my landlady and I had a New Year's Eve dinner together -- heavy on the sour cream and mayonnaise, of course -- before I headed out for the night. After dinner, on my way into central Moscow on the metro, I quickly stopped off at a grocery store to pick up some things for a small party that a friend was hosting. With my little grocery basket overflowing with vodka bottles, black bread and the various salty foods that are a staple of the Russian diet, I made my way to the checkout counter. All was proceeding smoothly until the cashier tried to ring up a vacuum-sealed package of smoked salmon.
"The barcode on this fish doesn't work," the cashier, a woman in her mid- to late 30s, said to me, after unsuccessfully trying to run her scanner over the package of smoked salmon. "We can't sell you the fish," she added with a sigh.
"The fish costs 108 rubles," I said, assuming that she simply did not know the price.
"It doesn't matter if we know how much the fish costs," the cashier explained. "We can't sell it to you if we can't scan the barcode."
"You can't sell me the fish because the barcode doesn't work?" I asked in disbelief.
"Yes, that's the rule," she stated firmly.
"This rule is ridiculous," I said. "We both know that the fish costs 108 rubles. Why can't I just give the money to you?"
"Because," the cashier explained, "if you give me the money for the fish and I don't scan the barcode, my drawer will be over by 108 rubles."
"Ok, what if I give you the 108 rubles and you leave it outside your drawer," I suggested.
"You can't do that either," another female employee, who was standing behind her, said. "It's against the rules."
"What kind of logic is behind these rules?" I asked.
"There is no logic," the woman behind the cashier said flatly. "This is Russia." Indeed it is.
The party I was headed to was located in an apartment on Tverskaya Ulitsa, just a few steps from Red Square, the site of what could loosely be equated to the New Year's festivities in New York's Times Square. The key word here is "loosely." Many differences exist between the two, but discounting for the obvious ones in scenery and demographics, the two most notable appear to be that in Moscow you are essentially free to drink alcohol in the street and you are permitted to bring and shoot off your own fireworks. Drinking in public, in the opinion of many, including myself, is not in and of itself a bad thing. And hey, why not combine it with explosives?
The resultant scene in the streets around Red Square unsurprisingly resembled something just short of a riot: thousands of rowdy and drunken revelers, shattered glass bottles, plumes of smoke following an endless series of freelance firework displays and cordons of Moscow policemen around the perimeter. Merry with the aid of a fair amount of Sovietskoye Shampanskoye, I admit that I was truly enjoying myself. This was state sponsored and endorsed chaos. How unique! What's more, it appeared far more interesting than standing among the huddled masses in Times Square, an experience I have never even considered having. For a moment, I forgot my impatience with Russian absurdities and even forgot the night's earlier encounter at the supermarket. My New Year's resolution to embrace Russian fatalism was a good one, I thought. Or maybe it only seemed that way, as within minutes a Technicolor explosive went off practically under my feet. I staggered to the side, my ears ringing. And then I firmly decided that fatalism is a creed better left to others.

David Pinsky is a writer and legal intern at Internews, where he is completing an independent research project about challenges facing non-governmental media in Russia. He contributed this essay to The Moscow Times.