Preliminary results

My job involves doing 5-15 interviews a day, talking to Russians and immigrants, usually at markets. Some of the results from the survey are interesting in and of themselves, but I can't probably talk about those without violating one of the many forms I signed a few weeks ago. But I can start a tally of the strange but recurring things that happen to me as I try to fill my daily quota:

• Number of times I have been asked if I am married: 5
• Number of times I have been asked by a woman to marry her and take her back to New York: 2
• Number of times I have been offered help in finding a mistress: 1
• Number of times I have been asked to show my passport to prove that I am American: 2
• Largest number of people who have surrounded me as I attempt to conduct a one-on-one interview: 8 (all male)
• Number of times I have been asked for money: 3
• Number of times I have been compared to Phillip Kirkorov:

1. Mercifully.