One of the things that first caught my eye linguistically here in Bishkek was a discontinuity in word usage. All over the city they sell these things they call samsá (RU самса́).

They are usually triangular in shape so back in Kazan they were called triangles (RU треуго́льники TT өчпөчма́к), whereas samsá (RU TT самса́) were round meat pastries, taller than triangles, with a hole in the top into which broth was poured during baking.

Both are usually filled with a ground meat mixture, often with onions or garlic, so taste-wise they are not all that different, although the triangles are made with phyllo dough слоенное тесто, whereas samsy (plural) are usually made with reguarly dough.

I would call these dishes the Tatar and Kyrgyz equivalents of the hamburger. That is, when you need a fast and dirty gnosh, that's what you go for.

Update June 28, 2015: Russian Wikipedia calls both of these things самса, so perhaps the distinction I was making is unique to Kazan.

It's so easy to be cynical, but here I am halfway across the planet listening to Selena Gomez's song "Love You Like A Love Song." Truthfully, it is very sweet. (Check out YouTube if you don't know the song.)

Trans-national languages, especially English keep penetrating Russian more and more. Kind of drives me crazy. Here's a list of words that have caught my eye so far, and this isn't even counting the Italian coffee/Starbuck's vocabulary that is now ubiquitous.

I'll update this table regularly as I run across new ones.

KFC... it just has a ring to it, yes?

My friend Jim recommended to me James Hollis's book “Finding meaning in the second half of life.” It's rare that I enjoy a book recommended to me, but the last book Jim recommended I liked quite a bit, so I thought I'd give this one a go. I've made it through the first two chapters, and here are my thoughts so far.

The first chapter made me wonder whether the book was going to be not particularly interesting. The kind of self-contemplation he discusses in the first chapter, that he thinks so many people avoid, is a type of self-contemplation that has been part of my life (and part of the lives of pretty well all my Evangelical acquaintances) since before I was twenty. I get it that many people don't seem to have it, but I feared that he was going to simply reassert the exhortations to self-examination that have been part of so much of the literature I have read before. My initial impression was, “More of the same, ho-hum.”

In chapter two I was rather taken with his description of three ways of dealing with the overwhelmingness of life: withdrawal in its many forms (retreating, avoiding, procrastinating, hiding out, denying, dissociating); seizing control in its varying forms (passive aggressiveness, sociopathy); and acquiescence in its many forms (accommodation, codependence). It had never occurred to me think of those things as responses to one generalized issue.

The second chapter makes one think about one's damaging repetitive habits. I'll spare myself the embarrassment of repeating my own such habits here, but I can tell you that I have contemplated them more than once, and more than once I have thought, “If I were just more self-disciplined, I could get past them.” That is partially true when you are dealing with fairly basic issues in high school or your twenties. But nowadays I acknowledge that Hollis’s comment in chapter two is true once you get past those more basic things: “None of us is pleased to learn that our will is not enough...” If you are younger then forty and think this is spineless wimphood, then I can't wait till you are 50+.