Sometimes you can hear and see so many striking, odd and new things about Russia on TV or in newspapers or from the people we meet, that I think I'm missing something! Really, it turns out I live at such a dangerous place flooded with mafiosi, catastrophes, bombings happening all the time, with deadly cold winters, demolished economy, depressed people that I'm really surprised I'm still alive and living here. The point is that all those things about Russia are either not true or very much exaggerated.
Long before Arnold Schwarzenegger became the Governor of this sunny and now completely bankrupt state, he starred not only in such screen gems as Stay Hungry and the Terminator films, but in a catalog of Japanese food and beverage commercials. Maybe there's an answer to Sacramento's budget woes: sell ads for the state of California on Japanese television. Or Chinese, maybe, if anyone's interested in a little debt consolidation.