and Taxi.

I arrived at the address, waiting for the client. A woman comes out. He goes to my side. A mask, which, unfortunately, is rare among passengers. I think I praise her, because I work in the respirator myself. She sits in the car, looks at me and takes off her mask.

Why did you remove the mask?

I’m tired, I’m walking all day today.

I am a virus.

These masks do not help. I can also get infected.

I: And without it you can infect me.

You have such a job...



Well, yes, I went to her.

When I was in the third grade, we were asked to write a story about any family member. The choice fell on my grandfather, because from him I often heard some stunning stories from life and colorful material was enough. The task included five questions from the answers to which the story itself was subsequently built. I asked my grandfather who he was working for. Grandfather spoke about working in the circus, about how he trained elephants and giraffes. Giraffes walked the arena on their back legs. And the elephants balanced on the rope under the dome. He told a lot of interesting. I have never been so proud of myself. My story was the best! Who else can boast of something like this? Everybody listened with open mouths. One boy started laughing at me. He said I invented it. But I knew he was just jealous of me, because he wrote a boring story about my mother’s baker. I came home and began to talk about my triumph. Grandfather began to roast like not himself, grandmother began to mock him, but periodically crashed to laugh, like the mother who came later from work. He said he was joking.

I remembered the story from my rehearsal experience (I teach English).

I was invited to a ninth-grade girl with a request to draw grades in school and help with homework, "or it is difficult for her." Classes once a week.

The Week 1. I come to the first class, my mom accompanies me to the student’s room and excitingly blows something like “Mashenka, do it well!” The elderly Mashenka whispers and irritatedly answers, “Good, okay, go already.” I begin to suspect it won’t be easy. Not wrong - the next ten minutes clarify that Masha knows English somewhere at the second grade level. The most unpleasant situation for the tutor is that parents ask for "strengthening the assessments", and there is a good need for more than one year of intense work, so that the child begins to understand the current material in school. Okay, let’s start with the tasks. Under my constant bullshit, Masha slowly tries to get into the process. She was obviously not used to stress. Explain, explain, please learn the rules next week, I give a homework.

Week of 2. Of course, nothing has been learned. I warn you that if this happens again, we will not continue the class. Masha is silent.

Week of 3. The car mother reports that the class will not be, Masha is sick. Okay it happens. November in the courtyard.

Week of 4. My mother is healed. Oh, you know, she’s recovered, but she still has a little cold... Let’s cancel this week too.

A small cold. In the ninth class. It makes an hourly English lesson absolutely impossible. Nina is fine.

Week of 5. Mamma Mia calls. The cold has passed. Let’s continue the lessons in a month.

I am? ? to ? to

Momma Mashi: Well now is the last week before the holidays, she is no longer in the mood to study. Then a week of holidays, then the first couple of weeks of study she too will not be able to study immediately, she needs to return to the process, to adjust.

I, of course, a teacher and even with a diploma, but Nihren did not understand. He courteously refused further training. My mom was very surprised by this decision.

Oh my parents.

History is the science of a hypothetical past.

I am Soviet.
In the flash of coronavirus outbursts, reorganizations and refinancing, he did not pay any attention to the memes that appeared in the messages. Until now, such a "funny" mem with a "dirty" Soviet symbol has not stolen into business correspondence with a very reliable and very decent Moscow partner. Also a former Physfakov, also from MGU and also from OIAI. and unexpectedly. With a good person with misunderstandings you can only talk long and carefully. Such relationships are valuable. The answer was long. Here is he:
“You know that I was born and raised in Frunze. Now it is Kyrgyzstan. And 10 classes before the physical facade of the Moscow University graduated there, in the simple Soviet school number 2. At present, Frunze (Bishkek) is a deep hopeless province. My thanks to the unified Soviet textbooks and the unified Soviet school program. The school program and textbooks were the same - both in Moscow and Kyrgyzstan. Everywhere in the USSR. Soviet culture (culture, as Harari even interpreted it in "Sapiens") created a small fractal there - in our "academic" house in the very center of the city of 82 apartments, about 70 were for visiting specialists. The Soviet specialists. Which from scratch raised everything the outskirts needed - science, medicine, production, cinema, trade, even dance and circus, you name it... The center at the same time won at least twice - sent specialists had a fantastic career growth, impossible in the center, and the outskirts produced themselves, - and products, and people. Yes is. produced the people.
The production of people in Soviet culture. Where to find research staff in Kyrgyzstan? My parents, both mom and dad, were schoolchildren in the villages, they only spoke Kyrgyzstan. Both of them were pulled out of the village by a commission arriving, capturing gifted schoolchildren throughout Kyrgyzstan. There were only Jews and Russians. To avoid local “protection”. All tests (then "tasks") were virtually independent of the language. It was in Stalin’s time. My future parents and other gifted children were selected by the commission (in two different regions), and they were brought to the 5th school-internat, in Frunze, where they were taught Russian and prepared for the necessary subjects to the university - future chemist and biologist, future professors. All this was already done by a local university, also with a single Soviet program. It was also part of an integrated program.
The son of these parents enrolled in the physfak of the Moscow State University, graduated from the department of quantum statistics and worked at the OIAI (Soviet Nuclear Institute, established in the 50s) at N.N. Bogoliubov. It must say something to you already.
When Gorbachev, Pavlov, Yeltsin, Chubais and others with them made life absolutely impossible for the salary of a physicist in the IAEA, this same guy from Frunze left with his wife and children to Los Alamos, to the state nuclear center, he was taken immediately, lightning as he indicated the readiness to move. Here, the potential opponent appreciated the quality of Soviet training.
You know that this guy lives and works in Zurich. And in this life he is not only engaged in science, - those very Soviet special courses in philosophy and Marxist-Leninist political economy have proved very useful for the development of Swiss space and European humanitarian material.
The ability to learn, immersed in it by many dozens of exams at the MSU, made studying at a Swiss business school a simple walk. Why am I all?
I was often asked and asked here in Zurich: “Do you have a Russian wife and you speak Russian, do you feel Kyrgyz or Russian?”
I always answered and answered the truth: “I am Soviet.”
Ideal countries and cultures in history have not been, are not and will not be. But the Soviet Union was and will remain unbeatable in the true greatness of its fantastic victories, innovations and breakthroughs, and the main of them is Soviet culture. She is now forever. With all the Soviet wounds, problems and tragedies caused not by systemic but managerial errors in an absolutely new system. And the further, the better it will be seen, history will tell it all.
I am a Soviet. I am afraid of the Soviet symbols. And I see in them the light of what they thought.”

Do you remember who worked?? to