Sorry for lack of blogging.
New job going well. Colleagues great. Life in Georgia easy. Georgians are really friendly and helpful. What more could you want?
If you come to Georgia you have to stay at Manana's but there won't probably be room for you, we will be there first. Fantastic home made food, fantastic home made wine, fantastic home made cha cha (wait till you get there), fantastic welcome. Only snag, she only has 5 rooms.
Overheard at dinner:
Irish: I don't think I can risk bringing my husband here. He will probably enjoy it so much that he will take you home instead of me.
Manana: No problem, my husband kill him.
Already had dinner with the British consul "we fancied one of those evenings where we just said "sod it", so we invited you". Heard all about the walk-in demanding political asylum, the procedures to deal with them and the final verdict: he thought he was being persecuted by aliens from Mars. Not quite the case for political asylum. All happens in Tbilisi. (English degenerating fast now I can rely on Russian)
Had a hilarious evening in the Scarlet Sails bar on quiz night. We picked a fight with the locals complaining the quiz was too British and made a reputation for ourselves (how else do you do marketing?).
Today we found the local artists' market but I forgot my camera. Difficult to buy Christmas presents with no money. We have 200 dollars between us and still have hotel bills today. Georgian banks are very efficient and ATM's give you a choice of dollars and lari, surely illegal. They seem to have extra security. Before you can get into the building, you have to pass through a sort of air lock like they have in space ships, and all the cash transactions are dealt with in the basement vault, where the cashiers are protected from bullets.
This is going to be a great new contract. Little Miss Moi, get here as soon as you can. I saw Carpetblogger in Betsy's lobby but we haven't caught up since.
