Good news

Today I came home from work and discovered two letters on my doormat. One was from the tax authorities stating that they will send me some money which they apparently owe me from 2008. This very good news has brought me in a very good mood and I decided to blog about something nice tonight.

At first I wanted to blog about domestic violence because that's what the second letter (from the municipality) was about. But then I have discovered this article (a friend posted a link on FB) with some statistics on Russia and decided to share its contents. The article is very amusing (however populist and not always correct), but too long to reflect its contents in one blog post. I'll just share some points that amazed (and amused) me most of all.

The territory of Russia is 17,075,260 square km, but only 15% of that is suitable for comfortable living.
It takes 30 days to clear 40cm of snow in St.-Petersburg.
1.5% of all Russians own 50% of all national resources.
Minimum salary (defined by law) in Russia is approximately €96 a month. As opposed to 1,407.60 in The Netherlands.
According to the latest statistics total population of Russia amounts to 132 million people. 57% of them is either retired or is about to retire. I think Dutch are overreacting a little when they are worried about aging. We'll never catch up with Russia.
Anyway, about 100 million people in Russia are paid from the budget money one way or the other: retirement benefits, civil service of any kind, army, police, intelligence services, imprisoned persons, etc. This means that there are only 32 million people (including children, students and homeless without social security benefits) left to work and pay taxes.
32% of the total population believes in magic. 58% doesn't believe in any kind of magic whatsoever. 10% is indecisive. This division is roughly valid for the whole of Russia except for Moscow. 74% of Muscovites believe in only one sort of magic - money! Two thirds of Russian population hates Muscovites.
Only 31% of the population (over 12 million people) in Moscow are Russians. There are more Azeri in Moscow than in Baku.
There are 23 million Muslims in Russia. They attend more than 3000 mosques in Russia. For your reference - there are about 130 mosques in the Hague. There is one mosque on each end of my street.
Only 20% of the population has saving accounts in banks. 16% keeps their savings at home. The rest doesn't have any savings.
In 2004 every 15th house sold in London was bought by Russians.
There are 605 imprisoned persons per 1000 people of the population in Russia. Only USA can beat this - 710. Kazakhstan (598) and Belarus (505) are following.
Every minute 5 people die in Russia and only 3 babies are born.
A very interesting detail: there are 65,000 more married women than married man. To whom are these women married? Russia doesn't have equal sex marriages yet.
Russia is the world leader when it comes to smoking children and teenagers - 33% of all children are regular smokers.
Russia is the third (after Iraq and Somali) supplier of refugees and asylum seekers in the world.
69% of Russian population doesn't use internet at all!!!
It's not safe to fly in Russia. The chance of a plane crash is 13 times higher than on average in the rest of the world.
In 2008 more than 500,000 baseball bats were sold in Russia. Baseball balls and gloves are considerably less popular - only 3 balls and one glove sold in 2008. Guess what they do with bats. ;)

The conclusion of the article is: if you've packed your bags to move to Russia unpack them now and stay where you are. It's most probably better there. I love that country!

Here's my latest Russian discovery: Cheese People - OME

You can download their album for free here.