Twenty-five Signs of a Completely Americanized Russian Programmer
Translated from Russian by Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov
- Your English is still broken but you occasionally use the articles "a" and
"the" in front of nouns
- Teaching your American co-workers dirty words in Russian is no longer
fun.
- You now prefer technical books in English to their Russian translations,
but you've stopped buying books and seldom open the ones you have.
- You can throw out technical magazines you are subscribed to without reading
them. Can throw out 90% of your mail without opening it.
- You have at least twice more computers at home that there are members of
your family, but some were not switched on for several months.
- You occasionally buy paper for your home printer in Staples instead of bringing
it from work.
- Can no longer consider the division of the country on Republicans and Democrats
as a communist-style circus for rednecks and start to distinguish Democratic
party platform from the Republican platform. Some even start to have their own
preference in presidential elections. Few develop allergy to Fox News. While
you still regularly read Inosmi.ru, you start verifying translation by finding
original articles via Google. And start to realize that NYT Russia coverage
is fully controlled by State Department.
- When you ask your child a question in Russian you are not surprised that
he/she answers you in English.
- You order a double deck hamburger and diet Coca-Cola.
- More often speak with children using cell phone than in person. If
relaxing after work you sit on your lawn you are not surprised if wife or child
calls your cell phone from the house.
- You judge the size of the house by the number of bedrooms in it.
- You know your social security number by heart
- Are not surprised that your neighbors complain to the police about loud
music in your house.
- Can explain the rules of baseball.
- Forget how to open the hood of your car; do not wash your car and
disregard the shopping cart dents in your rear bumper for several months.
- Write into email conferences more frequently than you phone your relatives.
- Are not shocked that you own your bank a six-figure sum for your house.
- Coming from work or a trip to the mall judge who of family members are at
home by looking at the cars in the parking lot.
- Use "parking", "appointment", "OK", "shopping", "insurance", "lunch", etc
as Russian words.
- Respect the opinion of people who think that food in Burger King is different
(and better) than in MacDonald's. Regularly order iced tea in winter.
- Buy fat-free food right after you've driven an additional 5 minutes around
the parking lot to find a parking place three yards closer to the shop entrance.
- You now know that 90 degrees Fahrenheit is hot and 30 degrees is cold and
stop thinking about people who use Fahrenheit instead of Celcius and miles instead
of kilometers as backward and clueless...
- Not surprised that speed is measured in miles and square footage in feet.
Able to explain directions using American measures of distance and do not think
about them as anachronisms. When stopped by police office for speeding
you do not try to fool him by pretending that you are used to measuring speed
in kilometers per hours and mixed then with miles per hour.
- Can' t turn on your TV if your remote control is lost. Periodically
when you came home try to open the door of your house with car remote and are
surprised that it does not work.
- Know what 401K means and notice that the value of S&P500 index can influence
your mood. Unfortunately, you also no longer think that stocks are for
suckers who want to lose money or for Wall Street sharks who feed on 401K suckers...
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Created June 1, 1998; Last modified:
January 21, 2013
