Ask Sharivari

do you have any thoughts about simon kuper?

long overdue thread obviously

I went to school with a kid called Simon Kuper and for about three months thought that it was him writing the articles about football.

I've never been motivated to read any of his books but his journalism is fine.

nakh do these memes go here?

http://i.imgur.com/cymEnLu.jpg

Seems about right.

There is not a great deal that unites the whole of the former Eastern bloc, from western Poland to the furthest reaches of central and northern Asia, but squatting is definitely high on the list.

xp = rtc irl?

http://i.imgur.com/UwbFE8l.jpg

I should go back to Romania. I haven't been in about seven years and it's an interesting place.

http://i.imgur.com/c2yBbzW.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RdIcQy2aps

Amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPkEDRSYUpo

I can't quite bring myself to watch an hour long interview with Dugin when it is 20 degrees outside but he is one of the rare European public figures, along with Limonov arguably, who manages to combine being fairly interesting and certifiably insane. There has been some overlap with Russian policy, notably on Crimea and the pivot towards a Eurasian axis with Iran and Turkey (though the latter obvs hasn't ended well) but I gave always been sceptical about how much influence he has over Putin. It suits a lot of commentators to view him as the architect of a nefarious master plan rather than admit that Putin mostly muddles through on expediency and populism.

Hi Shari Vari,

Why do you know so much about Russia and Eastern Europe?

I've enjoyed following your other thread and was always curious about what your connection to that part of the world is.

It's a combination of things - I had always been interested in the Cold War growing up in the eighties, studied Russian briefly at school, developed a strong interest in Polish cinema in my teens and dated a Russian who was tangentially related to a lot of political people (enough to get inside gossip) for quite a while at university. After that, I spent most holidays in Ukraine, Russia and Poland, etc, and started travelling quite extensively in the region for work.

Ah ok cool, always interested to see your updates on what's going on, nice one!

Agree, Sharivari is one of the good guys.

Always a guarantee of quality when you click on a Sharivari answer and he seems like a very good person.

That's very kind of you to say!

Agree, Sharivari is one of the good guys.

^ one of the people whose posts i actively look out for.

Meh

Deems otm.

maybe the worst carbon footprint on ilx ;)

Firstly, sorry

We'll have ya.

Secondly, should i go to the north to buy a laptop today or might there be an advantage in waiting

Thx, sympathies again

I was looking in to this earlier. I'd have to live with ye for a year which, though attractive, isn't viable at the moment. We'll see how it goes though.

You might as well go now, i think. I don't know how quickly it's going to fall further. I'm not really an expert though.

Youre the closest i have next to boards.ie but youre a good deal more palatable

do you know of anything worth reading about other prosperous eu countries with regions containing large inflows of migration from eastern europe, and how government spending/provision has been treated?

Not really. Most of the pieces I have seen recently have been about refugees from the Balkans rather than Visegrad, Bulgarians and Romanians, etc. Would be interesting to see something comparing treatment of ex-Yugoslavs working in Germany in the late 90s with Poles and Czechs today if you do come across something though.

hey so my daughter is thinking of university in some sort of diplomacy/international affairs connection, and the counsellor at school suggested she try learning either German, Russian, or Chinese to supplement her fluent English and French and partial Spanish (and ancient Greek but w/e). Chinese seems too difficult to learn in her spare off-time, German doesn't seem worth the effort, but I don't know about Russian. Looking forward, is knowledge of Russian worth it? I'm thinking of Russia's continued decline but also of central Asian states.

German is at a premium in business - if that's a direction she might want to go in later on.

Russian would be useful imo. It's not as powerful as it used to be but MGIMO pumps out a lot of future diplomats / leaders - not just in the direct sphere of influence but for places like Viet Nam. Russian language skills are still part of a lot of domestic diplomatic training programmes iirc.

Central Asia will be lively over the next twenty years whatever happens so either Russian or Turkish (which is pretty similar to about a dozen other regional languages) would be worth considering if that might be an area of particular interest.

I did consider taking International Relations at degree level and, had i gone down that path, would have been interested in doing my undergraduate study at the LSE and post-grad international relations and Russian at MGIMO.

I'm pretty sure another Ilxor works for the UN and would be better placed to advise though!

I appreciate it looks like i'm trying to recruit your daughter to Russian intelligence but SciencesPo does a joint MA with MGIMO fwiw:

http://www.sciencespo.fr/psia/content/dual-degree-mgimo-moscow

ok thanks!

to reach this other ILXor where would I post?

Turkish is a great idea, I hadn't considered that.

I'm looking to soak up as much advice as I can get. we're in Paris, not London, so the options are different (think SciencesPo rather than the LSE) but not dissimilar.

oh & xp nice!

I may have either misremembered or misinterpreted but i think if you posted something asking for advice on how useful Russian / Turkish are for people who want a career in the diplomatic service on this thread, you might be in luck:

Kyrgyzstan, anyone?

ok today one of my idle 'what if...' ilx thoughts has leapt to 'confirmed', took me long enough to work it out lol

It took you that long to work out he was a Russian plant?

:D exackly

What was your theory though

obviously i am a big proponent of ilx couplehood

ur own admission of living somewhere just outside london + sv's mention of irish s.o. rung faint alarm bells a few months ago. not ashamed to say that subsequent namesearch corroboration via the perfume thread and stout defence from a particularly ugly slur by twu have pushed this one into 'gotcha' territory. u had a good run tho. move over jaymc there's a new sherlock in town etc. obviously everyone else had worked this one out already

Idk that anyone knew or cared! It’s a good guess though but the truth is that I’m his much less polite sock he uses for his dodgy political opinions.

right ok we'll go with that no further qns

ffs dmac out

this is true, you had alluded to this in your trademark obtuse way some time ago

srsly idnr twigging this so ive either forgotten or simple gibberish is being misattributed as obtuseness (latter is v common tbf)

lol I knew I didn’t imagine this
Irish politics discussion thread

But when I was searching for this I found posts of mine far more recent I didn’t even recall making, so.

ha

listen

idnr the post but its entirely likely the opportunity to have a dig at peter crouch eclipsed any other info processing at the time

lol for all my sleuthing he straight up said it

I don’t recall writing that either, tbh, and I’m not sure what made me presume I had won over her mammy - which is a 20-30 year project with no real guarantee of success at the end of it.

well i wasn't going to say but

Well this is a nice to-do.

Remember, even if it seems you've been a creeper for no reason, creeping is its own reason.

lol I have to say I was impressed by the perfume thread bit, I wouldn’t have remembered whatever tipped off imago there.

What’s the worst mixed metaphor you’ve ever used?

happy birthday for yesterday!

you have left the cohort and graduated to better things. hope you had a blast

Thank you. Feels good to be in the Pravin Tambe age bracket at last.

our idol and beacon

A mutual acquaintance of ours has likely passed it on by now, but an encore can't hurt:

Happy (belated) birthday!

Mulţumesc!

happy birthday sv!

a belated hb to you sv!

Thank you!

hbsv.

🎂🎉🎂

La mulți ani!

ty, ty

Back to the original point of the thread? Who is your favorite soprano these days? Favorite tenor? What are your favorite languages?

(Please ignore extra '?)

Thinking just about the ones I’ve seen live in the last few years, Yoncheva stands out as a genuinely exceptional talent. I’ve been impressed by Lisette Oropesa every time I’ve seen her as well. It was unfortunate Grigolo turned out to be such a menace as I’d always thought he was very good. Calleja, probably, of those currently employable by the Royal Opera House.

Otherwise, predictably, Netrebko and Kaufmann.

Russian and French are probably my favourite languages, despite being poor at both.

Cool. No love for Piotr B?

I’m racking my brain trying to remember whether I’ve seen him perform but I suspect not. He’s always good value on screen, though.