And then there are pleasant and wonderful Russians...

Hours after I wrote about the drunken weirdo who wanted to get into my flat, I saw another couple of larger than life Russian men.

These two men were in Russian naval uniforms...They're in Malaysia as part of a delegation. They were as pleased to hear an Indian speaking Russian as I was to see them.

When I told them about the encounter I had in the evening, they laughed and said they stayed nearby. All I needed to do was find them and they'd protect me the way the Soviet Pacific Fleet came to India's rescue against the Americans in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War!

Hindi-Russi Bhai Bhai!

You can take the Russian away from Russia, but...

I spent over three years working for an organisation that worked hard to fight stereotypes about Russians. Over that period, I wrote many articles about how so many of the said stereotypes were plain and simple unfair. In fact, these days, the chances of seeing a random drunk in Moscow's city centre on a working afternoon is a remote possibility.

So here, I am thousands of kilometres away from Moscow, in warm and sunny Kuala Lumpur, not thinking either of Russians or stereotypes and bang..

It is 5 pm and someone tries to open the door of my service flat. Not foreseeing any trouble, I open the door...only to see a 6 foot 3 inch drunken man calling himself Andrei walking in.  With him is a Central Asian woman speaking perfect and unaccented Russian.  She says her partner was renting this flat a day before (Not sure how they got on the floor, unless they rented another flat in the same floor).

I politely tell them that I am renting this place and the couple apologise and leave. I don't really know what to make of this, but given the size of that person, panicking and/or getting him agitated would have surely meant that I would have found the need to use my health insurance cover  for some injuries.

Calmness and conversations got me out of a lot of potential trouble in Russia, and today was no exception