Barbara Demick is a journalist who traveled to North Korea in order to find out what life there is like. Such visits are always so strictly monitored that Demick failed to glean many insights. Then she found people who’d defected from the horror show that is North Korea and recorded their stories.

Nothing to Envy is a really great book that I highly recommend. The lives of North Koreans whom Demick interviewed are engrossing. The author never condescends to her subjects, never patronizes or dehumanizes them. She manages to bring their experiences to the pages of her book in all their rich complexity.

What I found very curious is how similar many things were in the Koreans’ and the post-Soviets’ reaction to the collapse of their system. During the famine of the 1990s, Koreans started to create a clandestine market economy. Just as in the FSU, these black market businesses were mostly run by women while men continued going to their unpaid “jobs” feeling lost and resentful. I’m telling you, people, capitalism and feminism go hand in hand. Even in such a deeply patriarchal society as North Korea (were all contraception is illegal and divorced women lose their children in 100% of cases), women perked up and gained a measure of authority and self-respect the moment elements of capitalism were introduced.

Of course, our post-Soviet situation lacked the tragic aspects of what North Korea experienced in the 1990s. There was no famine, no concentration camps. Yet, we also saw an appearance of large numbers of abandoned children who lived at the train stations, and our emigres were as browbeaten, miserable and confused as North Korean defectors. Our teachers were the most impoverished class since they were convinced that making money was beneath them and preferred to grumble and mumble instead of working.

Demick’s view of the North Koreans is tainted by the fact that she only managed to speak to defectors. As a result, the perspective the book offers is invariably that of the people who were disillusioned with the regime even before leaving the country. By the end, it begins to look like nobody in North Korea believes the party ideology. That, of course, is not true. When the regime finally collapses, we are not likely to see crowds of happy, liberated North Koreans. Even those who will initially be euphoric will soon find that inscribing themselves into capitalism is an onerous task.

Author: Barbara Demick
Title: Nothing to Envy
My rating: 9 out of 10

Airport smoking lounges of the past have been substituted with device charging corners. Addicts patiently sit there, tied to their obnoxious yet overpowering habit and wistfully stare at those who are free of the addiction and can pass them by at ease.

So I went ahead and used Uber for the third time. I needed to get to Heathrow and decided that everything be damned if at my age and working as much as I do I will subject myself to subways and shuttles. Not that I used any other method of getting to an airport but a taxi even when I was young and poor, to be honest.

And it turns out using Uber was a great idea because the driver I got was an immigrant from Spain who’d left the country 5 years ago, right after the crisis hit. So you can imagine how much we had to say to each other.

Just like every single person from Spain I ever talked to, Ricardo finds the discussion of who will win the next election in Spain to be quite boring. The crisis is about the corruption, and Spanish corruption is a product of the country’s history and culture, he believes.

Ricardo is an educated person with a degree from the Complutense, but there’s no need for him and his expertise in Spain.

“Here I will always be an immigrant, always suspect, always second-class,” he says. “But it’s worth it because here in the UK I go to a government agency an nobody expects me to bring a bribe. And do you know how many people who work in the official capacity here are not white? There are quite a lot! And that never happens in Spain. We keep our dark-skinned immigrants at the very bottom. And I don’t want to live in such a place.”

The culture of nepotism and corruption in Spain goes so far back that nobody knows how to live any differently. My hope is that the young Spaniards who are leaving the country to go work in the EU, Canada or the US will discover a different way of life and bring the knowledge of how to live without corruption back home with them.

The 42-year-old Ricardo is not planning to go back, though. He’s applied for UK citizenship and is preparing for the exam.

Hey, have you, folks, seen the scandalous Planned Parenthood video? Edited, schmedited, if any part of it is true, if it’s not a 100% hoax, these creatures deserve to be taken behind the barn and shot. I only managed to watch about 5 seconds of it before having to turn it off. Who is this horrible, vulgar freak of a woman and why does she have employment anywhere at all? I hope she gets fired immediately because this dumb piece of stupid trash just set reproductive rights decades back.

And to think she had to go and do this at the beginning of an election cycle. The election was the Democrats’ to lose before this, and now I just don’t know any longer.

First, good news on Greece, now great news on Iran. Diplomacy has proven its worth this month.

When I think how close the world was to seeing the bombing of Iran and Greece’s slippage back towards the colonels, I feel awed. 

I met this really sensational skincare professional from Italy who told me what makeup I was wearing after just looking at me for a while. If you think that’s not a big deal, she named the actual brands!

She also said she can see I’m a big fan of the facial scrub but should quit it immediately because it’s wrong for my skin type.

On the positive side, she said I have sensational skin and should sell recipes of what it is I’m doing to keep it so fresh and unlined. And when I told her my age, the woman was shocked.

And she wholeheartedly approved of my habit to switch the brands of facial care products I use. It’s good to switch them often, people. Once every two years, for sure. So don’t get too attached to any single brand.

Of course, I can share my skin secret but I don’t think it will be helpful to most readers. I’ve been mosturizing every single day and doing facial masks at least once a month since the age of 15. Once the freshness is gone, there’s not much one can do. The secret is to prevent it from going away. But few people are capable of worrying about what they’ll look like at 40 when they are 15.

The good news is that with this skincare routine you can have the most unhealthy lifestyle ever and still look fresh.

Driving in London is absolutely insane. I’ve only been here as a passenger but I truly admire people who manage to drive here every day without turning into complete neurotics. There’s no way I would be able to drive in these conditions.

London is the most high-energy city I’ve ever visited, and I’ve visited enough places for this statement to make sense. The degree of intellectual stimulation it offers is out of this world. (I couldn’t say the same for New York, Toronto, Madrid or Berlin, for instance. These are amazing cities that have an enormous lot to offer, but I don’t perceive them as an energy shot to the intellect. Their role is different.)

I believe the reason for the way the city stimulates the intellect is the speed and intensity in which the old, the new, the historic, the borrowed, the authentic, the colonial, the imperial, the postmodern, the medieval, etc assault one’s senses at every turn.

All of a sudden, I have discovered in myself an enormous curiosity towards new areas of interest, new hobbies, new research possibilities. It’s tiresome as hell but also very exciting.

I’m leaving London tomorrow, and it’s just as well, or my brain would explode.

You know what comment I get most frequently here in London after I say I live in the US?

“You must find people here so unpleasant! In the US everybody is so nice and polite, unlike here.”

I don’t find that to be true, though. Everybody I’ve come across in the UK has been very polite and helpful.

Here are more photos.

The Piccadilly Circus:

Ok, it’s just a road that leads into the Circus but I love this building.

Today was a day of protests everywhere. Falun Gong was protesting against torture and mistreatment at the hands of the Chinese:

Eritreans were protesting against sanctions, I think, but I’m not very familiar with their situation, so it was hard to figure out:

And animal lovers from Scotland protested against Cameron’s timid promise somewhat to relax the restrictions on fox-hunting:

I don’t want to make it sound like I’m equating the tragedy of Falun Gong or whatever is happening in Eritrea with the strange hullabaloo over fox-hunting. It simply so happened that the protests were located obe after another on my way.

And since we’ve been talking about Churchill, here’s the statue:

It stands facing the Westminster Palace:

“Where are you going?” the man at the bus station inquired.

“Hampstead,” I said.

“Ahmstead?” he asked.

“No, Hampstead,” I corrected.

“Whah es shay sayin’?” a driver who was standing across from us yelled out. “Oymstead?”

I’d seriously never met anyone who spoke like a character in a Dickens novel before, so this was hugely fascinating.

And a photo from my long walk today:

It looks like a postcard but I actually took it myself. If somebody could be so kind as to tell me what the building is, I’ll be grateful. I wanted to approach and find out but the lawn in front looked and smelled  like it was paved with manure. And I was wearing my new Camper shoes that I’d just bought on Oxford Street.

So do you know how in the US we always charge our cell phones in public places? It turns out you can’t do that in England. I saw a cluster of outlets located at the waist level at Waterston’s and concluded they must exist specifically for charging phones.

But when the store workers saw my phone charging, they flipped. In the UK, charging the phone publicly seems akin to masturbating in public because the store workers seemed horribly embarrassed about the whole thing. After I removed my charger, I continued browsing books but the workers kept practically wriggling in shame around me.

Finally, a young woman approached me and with a whisper that 100 years ago was used for offers of pornographic postcards informed me that there was a booth on the third floor of Selfridge ‘ s where I could “do it privately.”

So I headed to Starbucks and proceeded to “do it” publicly because it will just be the limit if my charger gets banned from homey old Starbucks as well.

When you travel, you just never know what will provoke people.