Wu Wei

Back in Kosovo

Back to the land of power cuts.  Despite staying in a smart (for Kosovo) hotel which should be paying its electricity bills and so on the A list (no power cuts), this evening over dinner, the lights went out.  It seemed the generator didn't start immediately.  A nice touch was the small tea light with a paper bag round it to give off a gentle glow. 

Still, in the Hotel Luxor, I have a big double room with a balcony overlooking the hillside, a large bathroom and proper shower (not like Greece or Britain) and German TV, all for 45 Euros a night.  It is out of town, that is the only snag, and once you get out there, you don't feel like going back.  That is fine this week since I am working a double shift: social action plan by day and oil stocks by night. 

Each place has its own version of English for the menu and this place is no exception.  Baked chicken meat or cosset lung with balsamigo vinegar.  Cosset (some sort of meat, but by a process of elimination, definitely not pork, beef or chicken) figures quite often on the house menu.  Not sure I am brave enough to want to try anything's lung.

Everyone says nothing has changed in Pristina, but to me coming back, I was struck by what seemed like the growth in universities.  There was always the American University, but on my detour from the airport to the hotel via the back of Pristina, where I don't usually go, I am sure I saw the University ABB (named to come first in the yellow pages?) and the American-European University.  Then next to the hotel is the big new campus of AUK, the American University of Kosovo.   If I could sit on my balcony (no chairs, and raining anyway) I am sure I could benefit from the university wireless connection to the internet.  It comes up tantalisingly when I put my laptop near the window, but not strong enough to connect.  Intermittently there are a surprising number of wireless options, but most are security enabled, unlike home in Oxford.  I am back to the one dial up connection in the hotel, so I am glad of Windows Live Writer to write this on.

tags: kosovo, pristina, power cuts, menu English

Which dead Russian composer are you?

If I were a Dead Russian Composer, I would be Pyotr Chaikovsky. I AM the Real Chaikovsky! Considered by most Westerners to be the greatest Russian composer of all, most late 19th Century Russians think I'm actually too Westernized in my musical tendencies. Despite this criticism, as well as the flak I had to take for my preference of Y-chromosomes, my ballets "The Nutcracker" and "Swan Lake" are upheld as among the greatest and most popular pieces of all time. Who would you be? Dead Russian Composer Personality Test

tags: Russia, composer, meme

Borispol airport wireless again

The last post on this subject seemed to raise a lot of comments (at least by my expectations).

We had a really slow internet connection, plus really stressful work till Friday so not much time to post, or even think.

I am writing this here in the new section of the Departures Lounge. It's the part you forget to visit until you realise your gate has been called, and it's too late to look around.

This time they let us in early without any trouble, so I fired up the laptop and it worked as usual. I haven't yet done a survey for power points but am sitting opposite a bank of 7 intended for a shop, which hasn't yet materialised. You would have to sit on the floor to work though.

Nothing else of any interest in the terminal, since the bar has nothing much to offer in the way of food (sandwich (cheese), sandwich (ham), Snickers, peanuts and chewing gum). It appears to be past peak traveller time as it is shutting at 15.00.

The signs say "shopping centre" and there seems a lot of empty space upstairs, but there is not much sign of any economic activity.

This is probably my last visit to Kiev for a bit, so maybe others can add more updates.

Next travel posting will be from Pristina, so the early copy of Pristina In Your Pocket should come in handy.

All in a week's work

Not much time for blogging this week. Some achievements: 

On the home front
Got bedroom ceiling plastered, (now have bedroom); had house warming party for kids' friends and their parents (since I never met most of them) and had the ex-in-laws round to inspect how I am housing "their" grandchildren, plus the anorexic aunt who talks nonstop about food and clothes.

War with BT continuing about low broadband speed usually 200 kBps, this afternoon it was down to 20.  After spending most of the week on the phone, I now have people emailing and phoning me regularly but no one actually fixing the problem yet.  This needs a special post, but I will wait till there is some result.

On the work front:
Mad dash to get all the presentations done for our seminar in Kiev for the bandits.  Me last as expected.  Off tomorrow (actually it's already today). 
Trying to plan for 3 weeks in Kosovo immediately after Kiev.  Which meant trying to find and unpack some autumn clothes.  No power in Kosovo in autumn could be quite cold.

I wanted to send a friend in Kiev a card as he has to have some checks which might mean heart surgery.  I was looking on Flickr for some photo of Lvov, where he comes from and found this great photo of autumn colours and mist.   

 

I just love the way it is like two photos in one: the foreground with the wonderful autumn colours and the background mist like another lost world.  Autumn is my favourite season.   And the Flickr extension to Windows Live Writer works very easily.

I also had a nice chat in Russian with Olduser who produced it .  In the process I discovered how the Firefox extension Tocyrillic (not sure where I found it), works.  It seems you can type Russian words with the roman alphabet and it will transliterate into the cyrillic alphabet.  That's pretty clever since some Russian letters are transliterated into two Roman ones. Anyway once I got the hang of it, it was much easier than trying to write with the roman alphabet. 

tags: Lvov, Ukraine, broadband

Training new Cold Warriors

Some comments from a foreign service trainee on his blog:

greatdiversions.com » phase two complete

What’s next? Well, I have a week of required courses: Security Overseas (where we learn about all of the ways we can die), Emergency Medical Treatment (where we learn how to try and save those who haven’t died yet), and EEO/Diversity (where we learn not to say insensitive remarks that could cause us to die — I need this one the most.) Jennifer is joining me for Security. She might as well know how we’re going to die also. No secrets…the key to a good marriage.

And after that? Russian. From now until forever. Seven months of intensive, all day Russian class to be exact. All of my classmates who are already in language classes think I’m crazy, but I’m really looking forward to it. Yes, I understand it is going to kick my ass, but I really want to learn and plan to put 100% into it. I’ve always wanted to learn a second language (really learn…not like my French) and being paid to do so seems like about as good as it gets. In order to better to absorb the Russian language and culture (although I’m actually going to Ukraine), I plan on renting every Cold War action flick of the ’80s to get in the vibe. I already have Red Dawn and Rocky IV on my list. Any other suggestions?

"every Cold War action flick" to get the vibe????? Clearly his expectations about dying are not just irony.

Beats the milkman for community care

Registan.net reports:

Tatarstan is suffering from a very serious problem. In July, new legislation required individuals to obtain licenses for selling alcohol. Faced with high costs and complex bureaucracy, many merchants chose to simply stop selling the most common cure for boring village life. Enter Tatarstan Pochtasi.

According to official figures, three major districts now have no shops at all and a further five have almost none.

With the competition wiped out, the director-general of Tatarstan Pochtasi, Olga Kuznetsova, sensed a chance to make a killing. “We have 58 shops and we are selling alcohol in 24 of those,” she says. “When we have shops, they sell everything: milk, bread, and alcohol.”

In the long term, the post office says it plans to extend alcohol sales to 1,058 of its outlets in 44 districts of Tatarstan.

What is a postal service doing selling alcohol and food? It would appear that Tatarstan Pochtasi successfully privatized. This might allow the postal service to get a monopoly on the legal sale of alcohol in most of Tatarstan, but the Alcohol Inspectorate says that they are the only legal entity with the ability to sell alcohol throughout all of Tatarstan. And, as RFE/RL reports, this will only make the post office more vital an institution in Tatar villages.

Clearly the British milkman in his role of community carer could also open up a new market. Or perhaps British village postoffices could twin with Tatarstan Pochtasi to share experiences, since they usually sell food as well.

More is revealed in the original article;
Tatarstan: Post Office Expands Into Vodka Business - RADIO FREE EUROPE / RADIO LIBERTY

It's been a dry summer in the far-flung villages of rural Tatarstan. Lack of water, though, is not
the problem. A traditional antidote to the tedium of village life is suddenly and dramatically in short supply.

Ramshackle shops and kiosks selling rows of vodka and beer were until this summer a feature of almost every village. Now their doors are locked and their shelves empty.

The owners, and with them their stock, vanished in July after state legislation forced individual traders to obtain a license to sell alcohol -- or close. Most chose the latter, daunted by the costs and a web of bureaucracy.

"If some older people need some work to be done in the garden or a roof to be repaired, they pay [with] vodka. And people, usually young people, they don't want money, they want just vodka."

"The lack of places selling alcohol in the villages is leading to illegal trade -- that's to say, trade has begun in bootleg alcohol," notes the deputy head of Tatarstan's State Alcohol Inspectorate, Rustem Arslanov. "So we need places that are licensed to sell alcohol. Tatarstan Pochtasi applied to us and we have supported them."

Pandora Internet radio

One of the real finds in my time wasting on the internet this summer, as it rained all August, is Pandora. It was literally the first thing that came up on Stumbleupon, and probably the best thing I have found yet on it.

Pandora Internet Radio - Find New Music, Listen to Free Web Radio

You can get there from the widget on the side of my blog.

All you have to do is enter a choice of song or artist, and the Music Genome project analyses your taste and produces a stream of similar music which you can refine to keep it within your taste. I have discovered lots of new (to me) music with the Astor Piazzola radio station.

After about half an hour it asks you to register, which you can only do with an American zip code. I have been listening happily ever since.

You can order the music you hear from iTunes or Amazon.

Long live free wireless at Borispol Airport, Kiev

For those sceptics eg carpetblogger who don't believe there is wireless at Borispol, I can sympathise, but they are wrong.  There are at least two networks upstairs in the departure lounge: a public one which is free, and an encrypted one, which I haven't tried, since I saw no reason to use it, not having any corporate secrets to reveal.  The encrypted one seemed to have something to do with the Irish bar in the departures lounge, since as far as I recall it was labelled Air Rianta.

As far as the restaurant downstairs is concerned, Friday was the first time I tried. As far as I remember, three networks flashed up on my screen, the same two as upstairs plus another, which looked like serious business.  I was so pleased that the public one was working I never bothered to investigate further.

This is the third time I have used the wireless connection upstairs, so I don't think I am dreaming. 

However, this time there was a new log in screen with an ominous "test" message, so maybe the days for free wireless will be over soon.

Another plus: if you need to charge your phone or computer, usually you have to sit just outside the men's toilets. Two sockets were already in use.   However, I noticed another socket next to one of the departure gates and sat there happily charging for most of an hour. 

Technological socialism is great!

tags: wireless, kiev, airport

Courtesy of Borispol Airport Wireless

This time on the way out, I had time for a cup of coffee so sat down and decided to see if wireless worked downstairs as well.  I have never seen anyone with a laptop open in the cafe before.  So I sat down and fired up the computer and sure enough there was internet.   I settled down to read the blogs I missed during the week.  After a few minutes I noticed two other laptops open, so I must have started a fashion.

Not only that but an open computer seems to be an invitation to talk.  Just as I am writing this (upstairs) the old guy next door with a smart phone proudly shows me his dog photos.  He hasn't managed to change the language from German to Russian, so it takes a long time to find them.  Not sure why I look like a "doggy" person, but what the hell, they were nice photos.  Not sure about the dogs though.

Downstairs, an American man in his late 30s asked if he could borrow my wireless connection. Having plenty of time and the connection being free, it seemed only reasonable to agree.  He logged onto a website called Hot Russian Women and tried to log on to find a message from the woman with whom he had been corresponding for a year.  She wasn't on line.  He had just arrived from Las Vegas, not a word of Russian, never been to Eastern Europe before and no hotel in Yalta to greet him.  The girl didn't know he was definitely coming.  He insisted it was not a website for mail-order brides.  I guess he wanted an adventure.  Where do these naive men come from?  I guess he will get an adventure but maybe not the one he expected.   I showed him copydude's Soviet women FAQs and he promised to read them. 

I forgot about the banning of liquids on flights to Britain and bought a bottle of good Georgian wine to bring back. I suppose I might have got away with it.  But I stuffed it in a plastic bag in the middle of my clothes in the suitcase at the last minute.  Now I am dreading what will await me at the other end.  Probably a dripping suitcase with all my whites turned red.  I used to have a big Russian dictionary stained bright red, for the same reason.

Airport wireless really is a good thing.  One of my Kosovo colleagues spotted me on Skype and we managed to sort out my next mission. 

Now I just have time to get on the plane.

tags: wireless, airport, kiev, mailorder brides

Update: my bottle of wine survived intact. My bottle of ordinary water went through the security check without a comment, so no one really cared.

Back in Ukraine

Trying to make sense of our tasks after the summer, when we haven't done much work in August.  Luckily the oil price crisis in Ukraine has meant that we have a project that people should be interested in.  Unfortunately, with the new guys we have to start from scratch.  The big guns from the EU are here changing what they want, so we are running to keep up.  Luckily we got some important questions settled and we will come back in a couple of weeks to present everything "at the decision-making level".  We're looking forward to meeting the bandits in person.

We now have an extra trip in October, to kick off our new Agency.

Not much time for restaurant reviews yet, but had dinner with my best friend from Vilnius last night.

tags: ukraine, oil,