Wu Wei

More reasons not to use Air Baltic

Yesterday I received an email to propose that I  check in online.   How nice to get a reminder in time to do it, I thought.

However, in the list of advantages for check in online was the following:

    It's free of charge. Airport check-in fee is EUR 5.

WTF!  Where did that come from?  Nowhere mentioned on the website.  Imagine you turn up at the check in desk and are asked for 5 Euros to check in, with no warning.  Absolute uproar, the best way to alienate customers.  Check in assistants collecting money with no receipts and no change! 

At least agent 968 was nowhere to be seen this time, and we all boarded with the usual range of bags.

Just as soon as I find out how to complain to the EU about this airline I will.  Any ideas?

AirBaltic pays more attention to Georgia by learning from Aeroflot and Ryanair

It seems AirBaltic is now been made Airline of the Year by the European Regions Airline Association, and is inviting us to celebrate this by booking cheap flights. Eventually it becomes clear that this only applies to flights starting in the Baltic States, which is not much help if you start in Tbilisi. It’s not clear what the criteria were for this prize but to me it seems their service is deteriorating rapidly.

Because the Lithuanian national airline flyLAL went bankrupt at the beginning of the year, AirBaltic is now the only affordable and sensible route between my work in Tbilisi and my home in Vilnius. So I have been travelling regularly on this route.

I have got used to being in cramped seat conditions on the longer overnight flight between Tbilisi and Riga. The flight is usually full, causing even more cramped conditions.  The alternative flights  to Vienna and Istanbul, the main alternative routes out of Tbilisi, are usually half empty. On these flights, you also get food, blankets and a whole row of seats to yourself, if you are lucky. On my last flight back from Riga AirBaltic tried to charge me 2 Euros for a bottle of water, until I complained, when they produced free water from the back cabin!

But it is the tricks they are playing with baggage that really upset me on a recent trip home that included a side trip to Helsinki. It was impossible to book 6 consecutive flights on the website so I went to the local AirBaltic office down the road in Tbilisi. The flight seemed much cheaper than I was expecting after looking at the costs on the website. Only later I realized that I had to pay an extra 13 Euros for each bag I checked in, on every leg of the flight. This was not mentioned when I booked the ticket. So the flight actually cost 78 Euros more. If I had just turned up at the airport without paying on line, it would have cost me 15 Euros, or 90 Euros in total. While writing this article I was checking my facts, and I find that, had I paid at the same time as the ticket, I would only have been charged 10 Euros per leg.

Now these days when we are all trying to cut down on carbon emissions, I can’t really complain about paying for baggage, but AirBaltic check-in desks are really inconsistent on how they apply their policy. Usually my bag is overweight by a few kilos. Sometimes it matters, sometimes it doesn’t. When it does, I take out my big bag from the suitcase (I carry it specially for the purpose) and fill it with the books and papers I need for my work, until my suitcase is an acceptable weight. Usually this is enough to satisfy the check in person, who recognizes that the excess weight is still being carried on the plane and that this is really illogical, and we laugh about it.

In Helsinki, I was informed by an apologetic check in person that AirBaltic now weighs the baggage when it is offloaded and any overweight bags are contra charged to the airport at the check in end. Although the shift from hold to cabin at check in results in no less baggage being carried, and so no less fuel being used, AirBaltic still tries to earn extra money by charging when the weight is not shifted to the cabin. I don’t think even Ryanair has tried this trick.

In addition to this bag, I always have my handbag and computer. If the check in desk gets really fussy, I am ready to demonstrate that this bag possesses magical properties. It does not look very big, but I can always get the computer, handbag and items with excess weight inside it, and it will still always fit in the frame which airlines use to define the maximum size of hand baggage. Occasionally this all even gets weighed and is passed by AirBaltic.

To my surprise when I left Vilnius this last time, my boarding card was stamped “approved as one piece of hand baggage”. I have never seen that before. On this occasion, we had not even gone through the bother of proving everything would fit in one bag in the frame. So they had seen that I had 3 bags.

On the AirBaltic website there is no mention of restrictions on hand baggage above the usual one bag, with weight and size restrictions. Yet on this same return flight, when we were trying to board the Riga Tbilisi flight, a big row occurred at the front of the queue to board the bus.

The girl in charge of checking boarding cards announced she was charging 10 Lats for every piece of hand baggage over the single one allowed. Not only that but she spoke in Russian in a tone of voice reminiscent of Aeroflot’s best charm school (barking like a dog at us), and actually said “take it or leave it” (which in Russian sounds much worse). As she strode up and down in a long coat and knee high boots, she was missing only a whip and she could have been ready to work as a Nazi concentration camp guard. It was clear she was enjoying her work, and the other girl with her had the decency to look embarrassed.

Now in this part of the world when people invent rules like this, (usually traffic cops) you know it is because they have low salaries or haven’t been paid recently. Usually they do not create a big fuss in public. So what do we assume, that she was especially stupid in trying to earn some extra money or that AirBaltic has a new unwritten baggage policy. And 10 lats (14 Euros) a bag? Who has Lats on the way home to Tbilisi?  And you can be sure she wasn’t giving change for Euros or dollars.

Nearly everyone in the queue had bags that had already passed a check on an earlier flight to Riga where they were in transit. Or they had shopping that they had bought in the duty free shops in the airport. So some people had spent a lot in Riga airport and had a lot of shopping bags. Since when did an airline penalize customers for shopping in its home airport?

This woman was ruthless and rude to everyone. We were all tired, since the flight was departing around 10 pm. I crammed my bags into the frame and showed that it had passed a previous boarding check. I asked for her name. “968” she snarled. So now AirBaltic staff are reduced to numbers to protect them for complaints it seems.

Eventually the flight took off. The journey was spoilt for everyone. Next day I opened the English language paper Georgia Today. With the headline "AirBaltic looks to pay more attention to Georgia", a local journalist conducted an interview with Vice President of Sales Gregory Pomerantsev.

AirBaltic may have won a prize as best European Airline, but their agent 968 collected her own prize from the passengers on the flight from Riga to Tbilisi on Tuesday 27 September. I hope Mr Pomerantsev finds the right reward for her.

Blog Action Day: Climate Change: Georgian journalists learn about energy efficiency

After nearly two years in Georgia, I can say that climate change does not register much over the horizon here.  Our work requires us to do marketing and publicity for energy efficiency, which also gets rather poor coverage in the press in Georgia.  So last weekend we offered a group of Georgian journalists the chance of 2 days in the tourist spot of Sighnaghi in Eastern Georgia, while having some training on the topic of energy efficiency and climate change. 

Previous attempts a year before had been a bit too technical for them.  So this time, the training was mainly carried out by two journalists, who could give tips on their craft as well help to find interesting angles for stories, whilst I explained some of the problems of energy use in Georgia.

We are required in our project to make sure that the training is open to both sexes and that wherever possible equal numbers of women and men are trained.  Normally we have to take photos to prove this.  This time we had 14 women and 1 man (who disappeared the second day).  This is pretty typical for journalists in Georgia. 

We also listened to what the journalists had to say:

What is news in Georgia?
There is no doubt that politics drowns out most of the other news in Georgia. The antics of the government and opposition are covered ad nauseum.  And news drowns out investigative journalism (we only know one journalist from a monthly publication), in depth journalism might imply criticism of the government and the loss of a job.  There are no columns devoted to new technology, or science "as these are not of interest to the people".  Descending into stereotypes, this may be because journalists tend to be recruited from the humanities, and tend to be women, with little science or engineering background.  It may also be because professions are recruited directly from the universities and there is little opportunity to move for example from business to journalism or from science or engineering to journalism.

Environmental issues are seen as a luxury for a poor country like Georgia, and no one realised that CO2 reduction could provide big investments for Georgia through JI and CDM. Nobody knew much about the Kyoto Protocol or the big Climate Change Conference coming up in Copenhagen in Georgia.

Energy Security
This has been the real issue in Georgian news.  After independence there were many difficulties with power supplies (not to mention civil war).  In 1995/6 when I visited Tbilisi and went out to eat, you could either see the menu but not the food when it came, or vice versa, as power supplies were regularly cut off throughout the day.  In those days, it was more important to get some energy at all, and saving it made no sense.  Industry could not get raw materials so was hardly working at all, so had no incentives to save or replace equipment.

Happily times have changed and one of the successes of Saakashvili has been to stabilise and build up the energy supply.  The economy is developing but with a bias towards high risk strategies: a construction boom based a property bubble, luxury hotels and shopping centres hardly affordable or needed by ordinary people; plus a dependence on transit: oil and gas, food imports and other goods going going further east. Who knows what the effect of the Turkey-Armenia rapprochement will be on transit routes in the region?

So what is energy efficiency?
Journalists did not distinguish between energy and energy efficiency.  Energy prices are considered high, till we pointed out that the prices were quite low compared with Europe (electricity is mainly hydro, gas comes from Azerbaijan now).  It is the consumption in Georgia that is high because ex-Soviet countries generally use three times more energy than western developed countries. Some other reasons are:  

• Soviet legacy equipment in factories is worn out and inefficient now, but was never designed with energy efficiency in mind
• Bank interest rates are very high (just beginning to come down below 20%) so loans are expensive
• Lack of knowledge of what is available on the market: not much on the internet on this topic in Russian and even less in Georgian
• A government whose policy of ultraliberalism (inherited from Bush advisers) has removed any regulation which set standards for construction or inhibited the free reign of wild capitalism (suiting some of the government businessmen masquerading as politicians)
• So no building codes requiring insulation and double glazing, or shading for summer.
• Heating even in modern buildings (like our office) is still often by individual room heaters, not central heating.
• Even people building their own new villas do not know about insulation, let alone where to buy it.

In Georgia households account for about half of all energy used in Georgia, unlike most countries, where it is around 20-30%.  District heating from a thermal power station was abandoned in the early 90s, leaving people to fend absolutely for themselves, burning wood, kerosene or even petrol inside their buildings.  New blocks of flats are still being built as "white shell" with the new owner supposed to provide himself with insulation, double glazing, central heating as well as finish the shell.  In contrast, Russia already has legislation similar to the EU on building energy performance.

In the countryside where the poor live, the situation is even worse.  Many villages are without electricity and even small towns lack gas networks.  So people survive with heating using illegal wood burnt in metal boxes on legs (I will not dignify them with the name of stoves), which are horrifyingly dangerous.

Climate change
Freak weather does not much affect Georgia.  Snow in October was unusual this year, but had the merit of keeping the Caucasus mountains inaccessible for Russians.  So climate change is not much of a news story either. 

What is to be done?
Generally the journalists thought it was the government's job to sort out this mess.  So we gave them the example of the grassroots activism of the 10:10 campaign in the UK. 

Single issue activism and greenery is not yet a force in Georgia.  Even parliamentary activism is low key.  Issues are just expressed in terms of whether Saakashvili's resignation will help or not, and on the streets, rather than in Parliament.  Developing rational choices between concrete actions and debating written policy proposals, is too tame for the fiery and emotional Georgians.

Not a very hopeful story.  But we are running a competition for the journalists in the hope that this will create incentives for them to write more on the topic.

I leave you with details of our latest project being developed for a loan:  60 tons of poultry manure a day has to be disposed of somewhere beyond a large poultry farm, as disposal is now getting beyond the scope of the farm.  With this manure and a biodigester, plus a modified diesel generator, it is possible for the farm to be self-sufficient in heat and electricity, sell gas to the local network or bottle it for selling in gas stations.  The manure residue turns into organic solid and liquid fertiliser which commands a higher price than ordinary chemical fertiliser.  This project also reduces methane emissions from the manure and CO2 emissions from electricity and heat generation so could get an income from CO2 reductions. 

A happier prospect?  Not quite.  The farm is busy developing battery hens and broilers just when UK supermarkets are boasting about their eggs laid by hens who have never seen a battery cage.

Who decides what country you are in?

Eternal Remont has pointed here to the problem of Abkhazia on Facebook.  It seems Facebook recognises states not nations.  So groups are now developing for Abkhazians who consider they are not in Georgia.

It's also a big problem for Kosovo.  If you find yourself in Pristina,  on Googlemaps somehow you passed the Kosovo border and ended up in Serbia, which is illegal in the real world.   I tried to put my favourite bookshop (which is  in Pristina) on LibraryThing, but it wouldn't let me put Pristina in Kosovo, so I had to leave the state blank.

Dopplr isn't much better.  I haven't been to Pristina lately but this is what it offers me:

1. Priština, Serbia (also known as 'Pristina') Near Kosovo, Lipkovo, Novi Pazar Verify on a map.  and if you do verify on a map, it's not clear whether Pristina is in Kosovo either.  Very confusing.

It seems that some time ago, Podgorica moved from Serbia and Montenegro (as my old Outlook version insisted) and is now in just Montenegro, according to most software I use.

My iPod Touch thinks I am in Kiev. It doesn't allow me to be in Tbilisi, but I can be in Yerevan.

Just out of interest, who is it who decides which countries go in those drop down boxes.  I assume most people use boxes from a standard programme library.  But who decides when it is time to change the countries?

Hearing Henry V in Tbilisi*

*with apologies to "Reading Lolita in Teheran"

We found there was a group from the OUDS (Oxford University Dramatic Society**) was visiting Tbilisi, playing Henry V for 3 nights so a party was organised.

The place was packed, not a mobile rang (very unusual), nearly everyone came back after the interval. Full marks to the audience because  conditions were not good.  There was no airconditioning so it was like a Turkish bath inside.  The acoustics were awful, the hall being rectangular (ie shaped for music not speech), and there seemed to be no programme. That made it really difficult to hear many of the actors, and unless you know a play really well, it helps to hear the words.

The Georgian audience had subtitles overhead (too far overhead to watch the stage and read) but there was a translation voiceover on earphones, which occasionally hissed and crackled so loud we could hear it too.

I realised I had never seen the Branagh film, or even seen the play, so I mugged up on the plot on the internet 5 minutes before I left.  That didn't help much, as it was rather a cut down play, with a cast of about 10, alternately playing English and French, which must have dictated a few limitations.

Still we all cheered (inwardly) when we heard

Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more...

Cry "God for Harry! England and St George!"

Though perhaps it was a different St George for the audience, since St George is also the patron saint of Georgia and England and Georgia share the flag of red cross on white background.

By then it was clear that this was a play about war, about battles lost and won.  A clever choice to bring to Tbilisi.  But no parallels between Prince Hal and Saakashvili.

I was struck by the line 

"no King of England was not King of France", 

which carries no force today but at the time must have been a rousing cry in itself.

We all remarked that Putin should have been in the audience when King Harry gives no sympathy for Bardolph (an old friend) who is about to be executed for pillage, and  explains how to treat the citizens of France:

We would have all such offenders so cut off: and we give express charge that in our marches through the country there be nothing compelled from the villages, nothing taken but paid for, none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language; for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.

But the end of the play showed the futility of war. Henry dies and his young wife is left with a baby. All lands in France are lost.  

A lesson for both Putin and Saakashvili.

** the OUDS was the starting point for the career of many famous British actors

Busy

Sorry for the lack of posting, just too busy at work!!!  After a rather dull year so far, we are busy setting up to provide residential loans on energy efficiency in Georgia.  

After the success of our video on the energy audit of a sugar factory (don't I lead an exciting life?) we have moved on to using animation in our next videos, on home improvements to save energy.  

Today's drama was the cat.  Someone offered their moggy for a starring role sitting purring on a window sill in a warm house, but apparently it never made it on location, preferring a leap out of a car window.  The family will not be too happy tonight.

Yesterday's drama was in casting the actors.  The Georgians would like actors looking like Georgians. Our paymasters have told us they want a Russian version later.  Since Russians apparently associate Caucasian looking types with criminals, this has been causing us a problem requiring a lot of tact.

Our Irish marketing expert, looking for actors who could act, rather than models who look beautiful, wanted to have a local funny man, who, although he is very ugly, is quite famous.  This caused consternation as in Georgia he normally plays criminals.

Quiet August in Tbilisi

It's a bit quieter here in Tbilisi than last year.  For a rerun see here.

This year, it's just cyber attacks so far.

Read about it here (PCWorld)  and here (BBC).

It brought down Twitter, and partially Google, YouTube, Livejournal and Facebook, as the bots attacked the accounts of Cyxymi, a blogger who reports on both Russian and Georgian.  His name when transliterated reads Sukhumi, the town on the Black Sea in Abkhazia.

Another own goal for the Russians, even if it wasn't the Kremlin. More defences are being built against cyber attacks, which so far publicity always links with Russia.

What's wrong with Georgia?

An interesting take here from Open Democracy. 

Entitled Georgia's pluralistic feudalism, the Greek author, Ilia Roubanis, points out that Georgian politics is dominated by personalities and that change is expected to come with a change of personality, not by change of policy.  All kings are threatened by the barons who wish to become kings in their turn.

Which brings me back to my post here on  the need for a Georgian Magna Carta.

August war again?

Latest from Yulia Latynina in the Moscow Times here:

The Kremlin's behavior is driven by both rational and irrational motives. An irrational motive is Putin's stated desire to hang Saakashvili by the balls. A rational motive is the desire to convince the world that Saakashvili has already hanged himself by the balls.

"Caucasus 2009" is strikingly similar to the Russian exercises that preceded the August 2008 war with Georgia. The smell of war is once again in the air. Counterterrorism operations have been instituted in the Prielbrusiye region on the Russian-Georgian border, many people have been evacuated from the region and Russia has beefed up its forces in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Like deja vu, the Kremlin is again accusing Georgia of aggression, and yet it is Moscow that has insisted that all observers from the United Nations and Europe leave the region to remove unnecessary witnesses to Russia's planned aggression. It would be difficult to label these moves as simply blackmail. Russia is mobilizing for war.

The Kremlin's foreign policy is driven by one basic principle: It will pursue an aggressive, hostile policy as long as it believes it can get away with it.

Joe Biden is coming to Tbilisi  between July 22 and 24.  After that there's a clear run for Putin unless Sarkozy has any plans to visit as well.

More gloom

From here

So now everyone awaits Obamas mission to Moscow on the 6th of july. Most analysts think that his performance would mean the difference of "invade" or "not invade" Georgia. I really hope Obama will be firm, and won't proceed with the naïve "reset" project. Russia needs US as an enemy in order to keep the current cleptocracy at the power, thus persuing the "reset" project will only serve to project US as weak, and confirm the image Putin want's to create.

The rest of the discussion and comments suggest that Russia has enough conflict in the North Caucasus to want to have more in the South.

On the other hand, in the 19th century, Russia conquered the North Caucasus only when it had conquered and created a stable peace in Georgia and control of its southern border.  So trouble erupting on its southern border would need to be sorted out first, with this line of thinking.