Some experiences in Moscow and Tashkent

I was in Moscow for about 6 days to teach a group of Gubkin University students and staff how to use some new scientific equipment for research on the geophysical properties of rocks for oil and gas production.

In Tashkent I did exactly the same thing, for the same type of equipment, and for the same amount of time, but instead teaching a group of engineers working for a geophysical company named Uzbek Geofisika.

I speak neither Russian nor Uzbek, so I had to have a translator with me almost all of the time. He was a geophysics graduate student from Moscow University named Dmitri. Since Uzbekistan was a former Soviet Republic, most of the adults speak Russian as well as their native language (mostly either Uzbek or Tajik), so Dmitry's job was to translate between English and Russian.

The details of work in these places are not too interesting, but many of my other experiences were as you will see!

My travels took me from Boston to Frankfurt to Moscow, then from Moscow to Tashkent, then from Taskent to Munich to Boston once again.

First, upon my arrival in both Moscow and in Tashkent, all airline passengers were inspected for signs of a fever ... that is Swine Flu ... by an army of nurses. In Russia, short stocky women with bleached blond hair in white lab coats came onto the plane armed with infrared thermometers. The thermometers were thrust into each passenger's ear in turn and a nod of approval was given to get off the plane and enter the terminal. In Tashkent we were all lined up on the runway to enter a small door, on the other side of which were women wearing traditional Muslim head coverings with a handful of electronic thermometers. They grabbed each person's collar, pulled open the neckline, and thrust the thermometer under an armpit. We were expected to walk down a long corridor, hand-carry luggage in tow and thermometer in place, until we reached more nurses who extracted the thermometers in the complementary fashion, read your temperature and given a nod and a smile.