Wu Wei

Coincidences

White Sun of the Desert is grumbling about noisy neighbours and their music. His theory is that

The volume of the music being played by a neighbour is inversely proportional to the quality of the music.

or

those who play music stupidly loud in apartments or houses are those who fail to get positive attention by the normal method of not being a complete prick. Or they are simply retarded.

He goes on to expect the child of one of his neighbours to become a psychopath as a result of the bad music played loudly by its parents.

Hm. I just moved into a new house in the student area of Oxford so when last Sunday lunch time the bass next door was making my floor shake, I assumed it was a student. I went next door to introduce myself as the cranky neighbour and ask for the music to be turned down so I could work. Not a nice way to start a relationship I know, but what else can you do when its so loud. I thought perhaps the students had just moved in and didn't realise how loud it was.

The music was so loud that I had to hammer on the door like a lunatic. Then I was harangued by a 65 year old woman with a big head of grey hair who muttered about my working on Sunday afternoon and her right to do what she liked in waking hours. Only this being Oxford, she expressed it in terms of my bad work-life balance and the lack of boundaries. During the conversation she kept disappearing to do something in the kitchen. I went back home rather bemused as to why she needed to play the music so loud. Eventually the music became quieter and my headache went away.

However shortly afterwards there was a flash from my computer and the power went off. My computer has now gne off for remont. Now I am sure that in the 21st century there is no reason to connect the two events. But some irrational part of me tells me I offended the witch next door and she put a spell on my computer. God knows what she was brewing in the kitchen.

Watch this space for what happens when I get home.

Surviving just!

All work and no play certainly makes a dull blog.

I survived moving on my own, managed to set up the internet but not the wireless or the phone but leave the house civilised for Bee who returns to her new home (not quite what I mean) from Japan today. Packing for Bosnia, my computer power unit decided to blow just before I made my backup. Leaving at 4 am the next day meant I had no choice but to bring it with me so I had to pay to ship it back to France where the warranty hopefully has taken over.

The only good news was I was headed for Hotel Hecco in Sarajevo which advertise "computers in the rooms". So eventually I got back to normal and retrieved some of the urgent work, though now have to work on three countries at once to recover what was lost.

Sarajevo was covered in snow when we arrived. Flowers are still blooming and a trip to Tuzla (punctuated by traffic jams whilst rockslides were removed) gave a glorious display of autumn colours, as the leaves are only just turning, and havent yet fallen. By today the snow has all gone and the drizzle is warm.

Daytime work is going well for once, so I am able to do a night and weekend shift on the rest. Only another week to go and I get home, finish everything off and have a rest. Then I go off to start my new project. 18 months in the same place, with good food and wine. Watch this space.

Only one cheer for Costa Coffee

Managed to move house successfully on my own.  Well, that's a slight exaggeration since I did have a firm of movers.  But my kids are pretty organised about moving (we do it so often) so they are a great help.  This time Sloph has already left home (grown up and moved away, not far away) and Bee is conveniently on a school trip in Japan.   Only the sofa has refused to move in.  Despite everything the men tried, it refused to come through the door.  It could have been worse.  We did have two but now Sloph has one of them, and they were old.  Still recycling furniture is difficult.  I was going to offer it to a charity, but it seems it needs a fire certificate for them to accept it.  I can't imagine that a sofa bought in Finland, and moved to Lithuania and Greece on its way to England, has ever had a British fire certificate.  So not sure what I can do with it.  It seems a shame.

So now we are located back just off the Cowley Road again   At 9.00 this morning I went off to the internet cafe to catch up on two days emails, as everyone in the road who has wireless has learnt how to put security on it, and I'm still waiting for Virgin to connect our internet. 

But Cowley Road is not an early morning place, it seems.  So I had to go back and get the laptop and enter the much condemned Costa Coffee to use its free wireless.   I was feeling a lot more charitable towards it, but soon I found the wireless didn't give me Skype and wouldn't let me send emails from Outlook.  So all I could do was read incoming stuff.  The other wifi-ers said that they all had problems.  So only one cheer for Costa Coffee then.  It's the first time I have come across a wifi system that didn't have full capabilities. 

Down the road I spotted this item in a games shop window.  Somehow I think a game entitled "Where is Moldova" can only be played once.  But who knows?

 

Technorati tags: Cowley Rd, Costa coffee, wireless, Moldova

Fish restaurant by the side of the Danube

Finally had a proper night out in Belgrade, despite the workload.  Someone I had worked with briefly in my first year in Vilnius was a colleague of our French lawyer.   She had never met him, just frequently talked to him over the phone.  It seemed he was now working in Belgrade again and he knew it well.  So we went off to dinner at Sharan in Zemun.  It seemed he remembered me and my kids more than I remembered him.  Embarrassing at first but we had lots of fun catching up with what had happened to all the people we worked with at that time.

Sharan is in Zemun which is a suburb just outside Belgrade on the other side of the Danube.  This is what it says on the restaurant's website

To come to Zemun and not to stop by the ŠARAN is like not having been to Zemun at all, the old folks from Zemun use to say.

Tavern Šaran is a pride of zemun. Located at the very bank of river Danube, Šaran still keeps the spirit of the old city. More than century ago fisherman Vićentije Vukotić, had opened this tavern that rapidly became widely known by its fish soup, which traditional recipe is still kept in the restaurant alone. However, it is not only the famous fish soup that is Šaran cuisine known about. In there, one could find various national dishes and exotic meals from around the world too. A friendly atmosphere and a selection of quality vines are the trade mark of tavern Šaran, for more than 120 years.

From the riverside inn, former hangout of fisherman and travellers, to the modern restaurant, where true connoisseurs of exquisite cuisine and good wine gather together, artists and diplomats alike.

Tavern Šaran was still is Zemun's Soul

It's right on the edge of the Danube and in summer must be wonderful.  Yesterday it was dark when we arrived and there was some building work going on on the river bank so it was not so picturesque as it might have been, even if it wasn't too cold to sit out.

We had a big fish dinner and lots of Vranac as always, and talked non-stop.  Then we walked around looking for a taxi without any success.  Finally we found a car park attendant who not only spoke good English but called the taxi off his own mobile for us.

Later I realised that Zemun is presumably the home of the Zemun clan, the most famous mafia organisation in Serbia, deemed responsible for the assassination of Prime Minister Djindjic.  You can read about their escapades here in Wikipedia.  The town itself is full of small old buildings in the Austro-Hungarian style.  If a bit of money was spent on them it would be really pretty.  I suppose we can hardly expect gangsters to do that sort of thing.

My last week here.  Not had enough time to see friends and work memories not all that fond.  But that was the internationals not the locals. 

Time to go home and move into our next house. 

Technorati tags: Zemun, Saran, Belgrade, restaurants, fish

Message to the Managers of the Post Office in Belgrade Airport

Dear Post Office Managers (and Belgrade Airport managers as well)

I have been passing through Nicola Tesla Airport several times a month recently. On the whole it is an efficient and pleasant experience. You can see what I wrote about my first visit here.

We were delighted when we found there was free wireless, though we would have been prepared to pay to work in the clean and modern corner of the post office dedicated to internet. We were even more pleased to find it was a no-smoking area. I have used the desktop computers to print my British Airways boarding card to speed checking in, which was very useful.

In short, you were doing everything right as far as passengers were concerned.

So imagine our horror as this service has just got more and more degraded. First of all, there were no slips of paper with the password for the wireless. Remember this is a service we are prepared to pay for, but we can't use it at all, because you cannot be bothered to print the slips of paper with the password on it.

Then we arrived on Sunday with 5 hours to wait for a connection to Montenegro. Never mind we thought, we can catch up on our work in the post office with the nice internet. IT WAS CLOSED. Passengers don't travel on Sunday I suppose. Or you don't care. I'm sure there are enough young people wanting a job who are prepared to work to open up the internet.

This morning I came in to check in on line and to print my ticket and boarding card. I was told that the printer cartridge had run almost run out of toner. It seems they have been waiting for a month for this toner cartridge.

Also there is no wireless because there are still no password slips. So why did you bother to install the wireless? It doesn't cost anything extra to use, now you have paid for the router. You could be charging money for the service, but instead it has no income because no one has passwords.

What an idiotic way to run a business in a busy airport! Don't you want our money?

And don't go blaming the people on the counter. They are clearly doing their best, despite their managers, and still manage to be polite and helpful.

Anyone know a reliable gas supplier?

Pardon me, but is this the same Gazprom who was protesting last week against the new EU measures, insisting that it is the reliable gas supplier of Europe? Now it is threatening LOUDLY in public to cut off gas to Ukraine (and thus inevitably to Europe eventually) just as a slightly pro-western government might be formed? If it really was a commercial debt there would be no special need to publicise it just now, would there?

Russia just doesn't get it, does it? That actions to neighbours speak louder than reassurances to us.

And if the Baltic States and Poland continue warning about this behaviour and its long term consequences, and the EU does not act? Gasprom will learn it can freeze Germany into submission as well.

Thank God for Gazprom. Even more work for us energy policy guys. It's an ill wind .... :)

Old planes and full price tickets

Little Miss Moi has commented on my previous post about travelling on old planes, which she delicately calls budget airlines. I think the planes and airlines she means don't count in that category as they are not budget prices, just old planes and old style service. In fact our tickets seemed a bit expensive compared with what I used to pay in 2003 when I arranged travel to conferences. But it seemed if we had bought them in Serbia not France then they would have been half the price. The Soviet motto "charge the capitalists double, they can afford it" seems to be alive and well in Serbia but don't start me down that route.

I didn't think there was any choice of airline to get to Podgorica than JAT, which we always avoid on other routes as they are often late or cancel (pretty much like Olympic). But I saw that Montenegro has its own airline so maybe it has new planes to match its airport.

My experience with UIA wasn't too bad on international flights, but it was 10 years ago. I specially liked them, because a friend had once introduced me to the manager at Gatwick, and, on the grounds we were supporting their business and carrying medicines for friends etc (not always true), he used to let me off any excess baggage charges. In those days we had to carry everything with us. And in those days not so many people travelled to Ukraine so you generally met a friend on the way. Not so these days.

But those small airlines and small planes were definitely not fun. Trips to Lviv always involved a compromise: some people couldn't cope with the planes, and others with the overnight train and the disgusting toilet facilities. (Incidentally I don't read much about them anymore.) And that was just the Ukrainian colleagues :) So we ended up one way train and one way plane.

I blame those small planes partly for my ear problems (read about them here). But then in those days everyone had Yak40 stories about near escapes. My own goes like this.

Board plane and find I am sitting by the emergency exit. Grumble to myself about having to put my bags overhead, where of course they wouldn't fit, Yak 40s being designed for the days when people travelled either with a tiny bag (they only had tiny belongings) or with enough food (living and dead) to feed their village.

Notice a funny smell (very unusual as I have no sense of smell and regularly don't notice burning food) and black smoke coming from the seals round the emergency door.

Point this out to air hostess who dismisses it as a problem that will disappear when we take off. Yes, it will disappear and me with it when the door seals fail. Wrestle mentally with the dilemma of moving seats as we are already taxiing down the runway. Stay put, bags still blocking door.

Sure enough after a few minutes the black smoke disappears and all is well. Feel silly for making a fuss. But would I really trust the airhostess to ground the plane if there had been a problem? Not really.

I find that I have an inverse reaction to danger. The more dangerous westerners perceive it, the more I become like the locals. Like not wearing a seat belt in the front seat because they don't. Really stupid, isn't it? Must get out of it now that cars even have seatbelts in the back.

Misleading

Hmm. A lot of traffic suddenly to my blog for the last post A new country. Checking the stats they mostly come from North Cyprus. I hope they weren't too disappointed that the new country was Montenegro and it was only new to me.

Still all blog traffic is welcome traffic. Wonder how they all found me.

A new country

Managed a flying visit to Podgorica (Montenegro) to clock up another country on the list.

Great to get somewhere where the temperature is still 28 (though it was 30 in North Cyprus last week) in October.

Here's the view from my hotel window  (in the middle of the town) when I woke up this morning.

Then, after our meeting we walked round the town looking for some lunch.  Very hard to find any restaurants by the river, or anywhere else.

We came back to the hotel and settled down to work. Here are my two colleagues working hard in our "office".  It's  a hard life on the road.  What glum faces!

Then back to Belgrade this evening.  !5 mins to the airport from the centre, check in 30 min before the flight in a brand new airport that is tiny.  Looks more like a leisure complex from the outside.  But the plane was an old Soviet prop plane with those broken seats and table trays that are always folding down. 

Technorati tags: Podgorica