Census on TV

This is the national census in Russia at the moment. Everybody is asked to deliver all the information necessary to understand the status of the population. But when the Prime Minister and his wife are doing it, it becomes a real event. And a real bunch of jokes on Internet http://radulova.livejournal.com/1969461.html

Echec et Math

Perelman n'est pas un nom très connu, un peu plus à Moscou mais bon. On ne peut pas être très surpris, le gars se refuse à la renommée qui lui tend les bras. Il vient de refuser deux prix internationaux pour récompenser son génie en matière de mathématiques, chacun devant lui apporter 1 million de dollars. Putain, il comprend rien aux chiffres ou quoi. La raison n'est pas simple. Il est juste socialement inapte, enfin, bon, en gros, il vit sur une autre planète et ne comprend pas pourquoi on vient leur faire chier dans sa vie bien calculée.

Alors quand les Ukrainiens s'en mêlent, rien ne va plus. Alors que se déroulent des élections à Kiev, un parti politique a fait une campagne d'affichage avec un mec à la ramasse qui dit de façon cynique pour dénoncer le parti opposant 'ma pension de retraité a augmenté de 7 hryvnia, je vais voter pour le parti XXX'. En gros, humour noir et provocation. Mais quand l'agence de pub ou le parti lui-même cherche la photo d'un loser, ils vont sur Google et prennent une photo de...Perelman. Pas de bol.

Pour l'instant, tout le monde en parle, lui continue de tourner en rond. Si j'étais lui, je demanderai 2 millions de dollars, histoire de se refaire.

I Shot Myself Today

I've created an international project called Ipeka, a artistic collective that destroys boundaries between discipline and focused on storytelling. This is one of our first projects, completely driven from Moscow but with an international cast. You can follow us on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/pages/IPEKA/101264169925374?ref=search . See you soon.

Make Love, Not Worm

The longest conversations in Moscow these days are about the 'Kremlin Worm'. Found in his plate by Dmitry Zelenin (governor of Tverskaya region) during an official lunch at the Kremlin, that little animal is raising interest until the highest level of the Russian political hierarchy. Actually, the modern Zelenin put that photo on his twitter and created one of the most incredible scandals (he removed the photo since then, understanding his unfortunate provocation). Medvedev wanted to fire him, a lot of blogs mentioned him, jokes are already circulating, foreign press is making fun about him...and our little friend has got even his own twitter now http://twitter.com/KremlinCherv.

You don't have to be fat and impressive to succeed in Russia. A star is born.

Liver Pooh

It's a fact. Russian people take care of their livers. Actually, you can find a lot of reasons for that and they're not really linked to liver concerns: raise in prices on the beer market (confirmed by a chat with a Baltika person yesterday), year of health (another stupid advertising campaign done by the government)...

All those efforts to make your liver get better were encapsulated in a small-scale city formats billboards campaign that was planned to generate PR but...did not. So I'm doing my job here and I share with you the visual where you see a lot of garbage captured in the ad device and saying 'be careful to what you give to your liver'.

Not really sure it raised people awareness but at least they found a place where to put the extra garbage that you find everywhere in that city's streets.

(Photo: Dirrty Frank, dying for Big Mac + Heineken + Skittles)

Dirty Job

Visa Land

All the expats are upset with the visa process. True that it becomes quickly a nightmare for most of the people to go to Russia (actually, the people complaining the most are those completely taken in charge by their companies...no big deal then). But who is thinking about our fellow Russian friends? It's a nightmare when times come to organize their vacation or business trips.

Most of the countries ask for visa to Russian citizens (at least more countries than EU people). That's why some of them acted well by opening their borders to Russian new habits of travelling a lot. The clever guys are mainly Egypt, Turkey, Vietnam, Cuba (what a surprise) and few others. They do most of their business out of that.

Easy to understand: light green - no visa, dark green - visa at the entrance, yellow - visa but easy, grey - conditionnally no visa (don't understand), blue - visa for sure, visa for you a bit less.

(Photo: Dirrty Frank, soon on vacation in a no visa country but far away)