FOR MY ENGLISH-SPEAKING FRIENDS THE RUSSIAN BOOKS WERE LEFT BEHIND... While working for the Canadian company Teck Corporation I undertook several overseas trips. In 1996 I travelled for a total of 40 days with one stop in Berlin, Germany, to purchase binocular microscopes, and then headed to Russia and China where I attended the International Conference and visited several diamond mines. I was then General Manager of a Canadian company exploring gold and diamond in Brazil. Overall the Asian trip was a nightmare and occasionally I still suffer them. In Siberia I was taken to visit a Geology Research Center, I suppose everyone knows how smart the Russians are. All scientists had great knowledge of their expertise area and had PhD and published books. Eager to escape misery, a professor with a doctorate earned US$ 40-100/month, everyone smiled a lot and talked as much (in Russian) trying to impress me. Maybe I could bring some with me to work in Brazil? I had an interpreter (English-speaking) who followed me around from breakfast to good-night. I was shocked by the number of gold teeth most of them had – to my utter amazement one of them had 100% gold teeth. But Ive seen a Brazilian miner with a small diamond embedded in a frontal tooth…, so! Well, everyone gave me copies of their books – in Russian. By that time my luggage was so huge and could not fit a mosquito. And what about the books? What could I do? Impossible to carry them with me, and what for? Who would read them? I will have to leave them behind, but they will learn about it, poor things ... Without option I shoved them in the bottom drawer of the old wardrobe in the bedroom. To this day I feel bad for all books I would never be able to read and the fact that the authors surely found out I left them behind...
Posted on: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 15:51:15 +0000
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