Wu Wei

My first weekend in Pristina

The agenda for Saturday was to do some washing (now I have some other clothes to wear after Austrian Airlines finally gave them back), find one of the bigger supermarkets which might have meat, unlike the minimarkets, and do some exploring.

First task failed because the washing machine didn't work. Most of the technology in this house is supposed to work, but rarely does. I was glad to have internet working and managed to minimise the washing and do it in the bath, remembering as I did it my mother's refusal to have one on the grounds that standing on her head over the bath pounding the washing was a good form of exercise. No rain so at least I could hang it out when I had finished.

Then I walked into town looking for the supermarket I had seen somewhere. On the way I admired the large villas (mostly unfinished but inhabited all the same) with beautifully tended gardens of flowers and little orchards. Interspersed were many minimarkets and internet cafes, plus ramshackle old sheds made of corrugated iron or what looked wattle and daub. At one point a truck was blocking the road while it delivered a cow and its calf. We really could have been in a country village.

Nearer one of the main streets, the road became the preserve of small tailoring shops with sewing machines in the window, dry cleaners, and miscellaneous metal shops with old motors and tools in the window. I guess they could fix anything. But no supermarket.

Eventually I found it in another identical looking street. It really was quite big, but had no fresh meat, only frozen lumps of chicken and turkey which were not very appetising-looking. I came out with things to make hot dinners quickly: cans of beans and tomatoes, herbs, low fat milk, and German feta cheese. Not really so successful!

There isn't really a central market in Pristina, or at least I haven't heard of one, which is a shame because I really enjoy wandering round them looking at the local products which are so colourful, and are not at all the absolutely standard vegetables you see in any European supermarket thanks to the standardisation of the EU. It's also a great place for people watching. The old men in Kosovo still wear what I have to call Turkish hats for want of a better name. They look just like white flower pots only with a domed top like beehives in some countries. No photos as I forgot to bring the camera.

So I went to the local shops and got some really nice pears and plums plus a lot of spinach forgetting that salad is not really sufficient now. Everything costs 1 Euro a kilo like in Greece, but I think that's just the price to stupid foreigners who can't haggle.

By then I was so cold I didn't bother with exploring but just stayed in trying to get warm and drinking endless tea and coffees.

In order to catch up with the Sudoku craze in England I tried the CD that came with last weeks Sunday paper, but found I was getting nowhere. Sloph manages them without any problems but they seemed to be beyond me. But then after some googling I downloaded a proper programme to do them, which had pencil marks and checking plus undo. I quickly got up to Extra hard level. Now I'm bored with them.

Sunday has been supposedly for work, but was distracted by chatting to the Canadians who just arrived and their attempts to get the TV to work. No luck so far, but they have an idea how to do it which is more than I do.

Lurker day

Since I missed the official (?) Lurker Day (around 21 September) I shall have one of my own.

Would those of you who read my blog (apart from my family) but have never made a comment, like to introduce themselves and leave a comment saying something encouraging.

London walk for Democracy in Belarus

Thanks to Siberian Light

Volodymyr Campaign are organising a walk in London, as a part of their call for democracy in Belarus:

At the suggestion of Students for Global Democracy, who are organising the walks worldwide, the overall length of the walk will be approximately 12 km to symbolise the 12 years Lukashenka has been in power. If you don't think you can manage the whole distance, you are welcome to walk as far as you can or to join us at any of the points along the way.

They'll be passing a whole group of post-Soviet states' embassies, the walk culminating outside the Belarus embassy.

Wish I could go myself, I'd like to do something to help Belarus, after all those years of living next door in Lithuania. But I'll be in Kosovo then.

Minor panic

We are busy building "an electronic library" at work. However this is such a boring idea (3rd one I've done in the last two years), that we decided to stretch the idea a bit further.

With the excellent IT support I was provided with, we set to, providing a work blog for news and some collaborative working tools for the group we are providing the library for. Who knows whether the young people in the Ministry are brave enough to try anything. They have new computers but don't really know what they should be doing. Not sure electronic collaborative working helps this situation.

We decided to put it on the government server itself, as the ministry internet connection to the server is by satellite and very slow. This only solves a third of the problem, because at the moment we still have to load files onto the server from the ministry which is fine after everyone has gone home but horrendously slow and crash prone during the day. We found that both of us uploading even small files brought the network practically to a halt. And then there was the power cut, but at least the generator kicked in and we could work. The biggest problem is that government people are not so well paid so the people who are recruited are not so well trained or dynamic enough as those who work in the private sector like the guy who is helping me.

But my real panic was that I hadn't realised the site was already live (luckily Google hasn't crawled it yet) and there was I putting pseudo (and some not so pseudo) news items on the home page! Still we cleaned it up quick and now we can track if anyone reaches it, and cares enough to send an email.

Only one week to get something to present to the group, but we are both now having fun getting it working instead of arguing about the best way to do the user interface and the files will eventually get loaded.

Not a bad week for small achievements.

More silly tests

Your IQ Is 120

Your Logical Intelligence is Below Average Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Exceptional Your General Knowledge is Exceptional

A Quick and Dirty IQ Test

That explains why I can't do Sudoku.

Lithuania stops excavation of warplane crash site for fears of radioactive impact

I no longer have access to Lithuania's Elta English language news service but this headline today looks ominous.

It seems the Russian warplane crashed not far from Kaunas on its way to Kaliningrad and now the Lithuanians aren't letting the pilot leave. More here and here

Why would the war plane bits be radioactive? I think we should be told.

Tornado in Vilnius

Seems like everyone's having bad weather!

Juggling the baby

Succumbed to buying and reading the weekend papers, after years of only the Economist, the local English language newspaper and internet newsletters. I even picked up another one on the plane, anxious to overdose on newsprint I can actually read.

In the Observer Lynn Barber had an article about women journalists including reviewing a book called Cupcakes and Kalashnikovs:

First and foremost the terribly patronising title. It is supposed to sum up the dilemma of career versus motherhood, but I have had a career and raised children without ever handling a Kalashnikov or a cupcake or wishing to. ...

(the title) is taken from a self-publicising essay by Christina Lamb, Sunday Times foreign correspondent ... who boasts about how she has never attended a parents' evening and how she left her newborn, premature baby in intensive care to go and interview General Pinochet.

Actually, all articles about 'juggling' career and baby are pretty nauseating; they invariably consist of boasting about the career while glossing over all the juggled babies crashing to the floor.

A wonderful image but at the same time one that fills you full of guilt about your own babies' crashes, when you were not there to pick them up. Nevertheless I can feel smug about having a career and managing to fulfil my ambition to be on a school board, as well as getting to parents evenings.

Reverse culture shock

Pristina is not the only place to have lost its kiosks

Bee suddenly noticed that the street corner kiosk that she had grown up with in Eastern Europe did not exist in Oxford and she wondered where could you buy all the things she was used to. I had to explain about late night supermarkets, newsagents, and "indian" shops which are open till all hours and provide more than kiosks do. She was not convinced.

Another incident on a bus. Used to buying fixed fare tickets (from a kiosk) she plonked her pound coin down in the driver's dish and expected a ticket. After some moments of silence, the driver asked her where she wanted to go. She didn't know why it was any of his business. Afterwards I explained that there were different fares for different distances and it was necessary to actually talk to the driver. This seemed to be deeply shocking at first. Now we are both retrained to say thank you to the bus driver when we get off, as if he is a friend for driving us. Oxford is really friendly like that!!!

Bee and I suffered another attack of supermarket angst. Part of moving to England includes moving round various bed and breakfast establishments in Oxford while we found a suitable home and (unplanned but totally predictable) while the previous occupant moves out. We stayed in one place just by where we are going to live, so we investigated the fish and chip shop and the minimarket. Sloph sneered while Bee and I came back immensely cheered that the minimarket was actually the size of a "Minima" (Lithuanian code for the smallest size of big well stocked local supermarket) and sold good bread, sandwiches, and all the things you need for life in a B&B.

However when we went to the large Tesco to stock up for the apartment on the river I rented for the kids while I am in Kosovo, Bee and I freaked out. There were too many choices. Organic this and that, and it was really hard to find things like ordinary tea bags and simple (Greek-style) yoghurt just because the place was too damn big and there was too much damn choice. There were too many decisions to make, and too many labels in English to read, so you really had to read them. Not so much bother when the only bit you could read in a foreign language was stuck over by a label in Lithuanian or Greek.

Contrast that with the search I had this evening in Pristina for some ordinary teabags. After searching three or four minimarkets I thought I had managed it and bought something called crni chai, (black tea). It was next to a packet of green tea. I should have been warned as the shopkeeper said it was really good Slovenian tea with the 1001 mark. When I got home I realised it was blackcurrent tea. Now I shall have to try again tomorrow. Perhaps nobody drinks "Indian" tea. I shall have to resort to the tin of Yorkshire tea left by last week's visitors. Shopping in Kosovo is even simpler than in Kiev 12 years ago, as there are few luxury goods and no dollar shops where you could get a selection of goodies for hard currency.

In the early days in Lithuania, supermarkets had girls specially trained to accost shoppers and explain what products were for, as nobody could read the labels. In Greece girls accost you to tell you the latest cheap deal or hand you vouchers for buying two milk cartons. In Tescos I was feeling the need for someone to explain why I needed to choose between 200 cheeses and which one I really needed. It seems we all make the wrong choices as the population gets fatter and fatter.

All mod cons except luggage and kiosks

Well hey!!!

On the internet at home in Kosovo at last. That was unexpected. The ethernet wire has been pushed under the sofa when somebody hoovers, but the post it note with the IP addresses is now pink and safely fixed under the glass covering the coffee table, so I decided to give it a try. Worked first time! So here I am able to blog in the evenings for the first time.

It's not exactly fast but who cares, while the electricity lasts. We had a short power cut this evening already and for a short while the generator went off as well, but it wasn't dark.

Only bad news so far is that after two weeks of living in suitcases in Oxford, I am now living without any suitcases in Kosovo. I never should have believed Austrian Airlines that half an hour was a good enough connection, especially as the plane from London was late. Still it seems the luggage is in the Pristina airport so I will get it sometime tomorrow. Queued up with several other people in the same position, then suddenly remembered I couldn't remember where I was staying or the address of the mInistry or my Kosovo mobile phone. Luckily I only had to give my mobile phone number. My brain must have had a clear out like we did with all the other things when we moved. Also couldn't remember any Albanian, but luckily some has come back.

Another loss is the kiosks. It seems that the Government decided that all the scruffy old sheds that people have knocked up to sell things on the pavement have to go as they are not tidy enough. It seems they will be replaced by fewer nicer ones which all match. Of course there will be a nice fee for the licence to get one, as a nice little earner for someone close to the government. And who cares about the people who have paid (2000 Euros was the figure I heard) as a previous investment (or should we call it protection money, or even insurance) who have just lost everything.