Commonplaces...

1- a bit of a cliché, but definitely has to figure at no 1: when drinking many Russians really just don't get the concept of stopping at your limits and will try to get you as leathered as they are. (I m speaking as an experienced person since I had my first bad, very bad experience with vodka last Thursday)

2- ladies, shaggy as a bear with florid faces from the cold, but obviously warm in there coat are wearing fur. All of them wear fur! If not a coat then hats, trim on garments and boots. Mink, fox, sable, seal… you name it. I don’t think that wearing fur is of any cultural statement anymore

I will come back later to this Commonplaces column
With fresh ideas

For a very short moment yesterday, about 15 minutes not more, I saw the sky: blue followed by the sun...and maybe, for I wasn t sparkling with happiness Mother nature decided to treat me with a rainbow...imagine me running wild in my appartment to admire that rare beauty under all its possible angles, with all my cameras and filters ready to fix it...

Then, well... Business as usual
greyish fluffy clouds covered the sky again
dusk and fog
always

Tunes....
musical journey with Ivan

the Mosthigh must have heard me..
finally found a great music shop...
my selection below, influenced, i admit, by the cold temperatures

tita lima - 11:11; tropicalia mood, Brazilian funk, mellow and pleasurable album (best cure for lack of light and warmth)

Tutti Moreno Feat.Joyce - Magica ; outstanding mastery of samba jazz

henrik schwarz - dj kicks; tracks that ooze class & imbued with style. It is a mix
for your mind, body, and, most importantly, SOUL

dj jazzy jeff - hip hop forever 3 - same formula
mixed and brewed by the Magnificent himself..sit back, relax
and enjoy yourselves....

Like a clock, our lives come in a full circle back to the point were we started. So you might believe that my daily life in Moscow is very different...but I cant stop noticing how much I’m repeating myself…there is something about repetition in life… ( Rhythmically repeated movements were a presupposition for the origin of our life – sorry for being a smartass – let’s say I’m just giving you a little insight in my thoughts, sometimes very different from my very superficial considerations on street fashion…So I guess that the repetition of everyday rituals sets our daily course.

All this as an introduction to my original thought that was about
"Breaking habits" – or how fast human beings need to create habits to feel reassured, I guess!

So here I am, with quite a few newly created moscovite habits which my
Sense of decency wont let me list here! One of them, though, – you can “admire” above – is to take the same picture of my neighbourhood each morning when I wake up and each evening before going to bed…
Another habit, that I miss a great deal is listening and searching to some new tunes. The ones among you, who know me and my musical taste please do not hesitate to provide me with your fresh and updated playlists… I will be very thankful for it…

this is it..yes!
by minus 5C
everybody telling me that this is only the beginning
five times worst in a month.

I wont lie..it's not easy to live in this big city and
the cold, the people and the language do not make
it easyier...it just takes a lot of energy...so for the moment
I'm still adapting...

Moscow's girls..


Everybody I know always admired London girls for travellin’ light - to put it in a nice way or in other words - to brave the cold and unfriendly weather in London with their extreme high heels, no tights and their short, scary short skirts.
Well, I got news for you. Girls in Moscow not only run half naked under their fur coats across snowy and already icy November sidewalks wearing high heels with alarming dexterity but they also barely perspire in their fur coats on the metro.
Guys, the general consensus holds that Moscow’s metro scores higher on the babe-o-meter than any other metro in the world…

Welcome to the land of the Petrodollars profits!...
Where a fair is organized for the millionaires…


The statistics present it this way: "officially"3 new millionaires a week in Russia. Allow me to express it in another way: in the national currency a million is worth a very modest 37,000 USD. Hopefully, the organizers targeted some of Moscow’s (dollar) billionaires. After all, with 25 of them in the 2006 Forbes list, Moscow comes second in the world only to New York, with 40!
I read somewhere it would be a very low key event..but I don’t believe in discrete sophistication “à la russe” neither in understated elegance as I wrote earlier.
so I guess the famous concept LESS IS MORE doesn’t really match with the Russian society
mmh..

Photos de rue

too many people...really! i allways thought london and paris were exhausting after 2 days..but Moscow is on a complete other level!
12 mio inhabitants, plus 10 other mio from outside coming in every day...everyone, please enjoy your small little towns and your 10 min walk to the office while I get squeezed in the subway!!

first impressions after 48 hours..

Ice cold temperatures and snowflakes!
the kind of cold that bites your face…
I’m all covered up like an Eskimo going fishing, and I must admit it, I like it!

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If Europe, and I mean here, the Occident…is all about low fat-low carb, no smoking, no cholesterol, no sugar… you would love to be here,in Moscow, where excess is tolerated, what do I say, celebrated!

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and If fashion around the European capitals is deceptively simple – long live the Russian opulence and show off! A real feast for my hungry eyes.

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Welcome the land of the extremes…guys, girls, please take a good look at a Russian map…
And you’ll get it instantly. I’m not gonna bore you with a geographical class here but bear in mind that European Russia is bigger than any other country in Europe...so is there ego too..

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Everybody here is "manager", or doing "bizniss" or if worst comes to worst...they are into marketing....but don't ask them to explain...