Wu Wei

A friend in Istanbul Airport

Last Thursday I arrived here at 6.30 in the morning and found I had no cash. Never at my best after an early start, this made me even worst. Normally I have an envelope of leftover cash for each country I go to, so I just assumed there was some. Istanbul airport doesn't have ATMs on the air side and the change point doesn't accept cards. Luckily everyone else does, or else I would have had a very boring time on the 1 dollar I found in my wallet.

The nicest cafe in the airport (the one with wifi, power points, no smoking signs AND comfy sofas) isn't open at that hour, as I found to my cost last time. I went for a mediocre coffee and a foul muffin in the overpriced Starbucks and vowed never again, especially as the nice cafe opened soon after 7am.

This time I decided just to sit on one of the sofas and wait until they opened. I was not alone, though I did not treat the sofas like a park bench as one or two did. Suddenly at 10 to 7, along came a waiter who told us that they were closed and we should all go next door to the cafe which was open. I refused to move,unlike the others. I could see they were going to open soon and I didn't want to sit in a dark bar type atmosphere full of smokers, which was where he was sending us all.

A lot of shouting took place, but I held my ground. It seemed even I might be forceably moved. But I decided that if I looked old enough that young people gave up their seat on buses for me, he was unlikely to try. I asked what time they were opening. 7.30 came the answer. It was now 7.00am. I felt vindicated when after 10 mins they did open, though it was another waiter who took my order. Then I spent the next 4 hours there, working on my computer.

So today when I arrived for another 4 hour wait, I sat down as usual. The waiter came up, and we both looked at each other. It was the rude one. He jumped in surprise, and a wry grim showed he recognised me. This time he offered me a sofa as well as my drink. It was 7pm in the evening, and no sign of closing. Perhaps we both are not at our best in the mornings.

Update: Before I left, this waiter came and asked me to fill in one of those service questionnaires, even with his name on it. This took me back a bit. Maybe he didn't remember shouting at me in the morning. There wasn't room to complain so I just put a remark about it being a shame they didn't open earlier. I noticed on the menu that officially they didn't open till 8am, so I suppose I should be grateful.

Technorati Tags: Istanbul airport, wifi, comfy sofas,

Current affairs

Hmm. Good discussion on local politics, this morning in the office. What does Burjanadze's (Speaker of Parliament) departure mean in practice, so close to the election and why did she do it now?

What are the Russians really intending in Abkhazia shooting down a drone?

Why is ambulance equipment moving to Kutaisi and why are the police on 24 hour shifts now.

Cold feet

So cold today. We are putting our coats on and drinking tea to get warm again. The temperature outside? At least 25 C. But not in our office, where the heat does not reach yet.

We are forced to take sun breaks on our balcony to get our feet warm again.

The latest explanation for the fall of the dollar

I've heard this twice so I don't think I've imagined it.

The dollar is falling against the Georgian lari  because someone (probably Russians) is speculating against the lari before the election to affect voters' choices. After the election on May 21, the dollar will rise again.  Don't hold your breath say I.  Amazing how little people know about what is going on in the world.

Nobody believes me that the pound is falling against the Euro as well as the dollar. 

But everybody has noticed it makes more sense to get paid in Euros rather than dollars.  How long before the Russians notice that too?

And how long before cash machines in Tbilisi disburse euros instead of dollars?

Technorati tags: dollar, lari, euro, speculation

Editing in a foreign alphabet

Last week I wrote a 4 page article for a magazine and had it translated. It became 5 pages.  We had no guidance from the magazine and since I had only a translation of the contents page to go on, I had to guess what they might be interested in.

Then a journalist came to see us and we gave her my article and another one which I wrote the week before, which had been accepted with only minor editing and looks quite good when printed, even if I can't read it.

What came back for checking was an abomination.  The worst kind of student's essay, a cut and paste from each item of background material we had provided, with no proper introduction, logical flow or even our contact details at the end.  We rang up in a rage.  In the end we agreed to cut down 5 pages of our article to two. 

So I set about editing the Georgian translation down.  Easy to cut out whole paragraphs and photos. But what to do then?  I cut out whole sentences in the English.  The Georgian printed word consists of lots of squiggly writing and I found it hard to spot the full stops.  Then I shortened some of the sentences in English.  But what to do in Georgian?  In the end I cut out some words that looked like the same length as the English cut, leaving complete gobbledygook in the Georgian.

Luckily our project assistant managed to decipher my editing and make the Georgian make sense and meet the length requirement.  But to what end I don't know. If only they had said they wanted a 2-page article I could have written a good article from scratch.

Other dramas with translations.  Our team said the technical translations couldn't be understood by ordinary people.  I wasn't surprised.  I took me a long time to understand what milk crumb was (it goes into milk chocolate) and ditto cow condensate (a wonderful picture there :)).  But they insisted the Russian translation was fine, so it wasn't the technical stuff.  We called in the  Georgian translator who had come highly recommended by our sponsor to see what was going on.

She claimed that she was writing "good literary Georgian" (clearly not spoken by the masses).  I remember this problem in Lithuania where in our media group we had a linguist who was always insisting  that words had the wrong endings and the writer hadn't used the pronominal adjectival form. We all nodded sagely and promised not to do it again.  It was like we were all back at school again.

It seems Georgian is a very conservative language, and everything has to be in the right place, with the verb at the end.  Plus you can't just string words together like milk crumb or cow concentrate, but you must explain properly (and grammatically, instead of just stringing words together like in English). Eventually a compromise was struck between "Georgian as it is spoke" and engineering literary Georgian (!?).  I hope the concentrated cows appreciate it.

Technorati tags: Translations, Georgian, Lithuanian, alphabets, proof-reading, editing

What are these?

When I moved into my flat, after a few days I noticed these tiny stamps stuck in random places.  It took me quite a long time to see why they were where they were.

  

Close up they look like this.

They are in strange places for objects of religious devotion.  There's one just to the right of the cooker hood.  They are always high up on a wall.  There's one on my front door on the outside in a corner.  

Eventually I decided they must be covering marks on the wall where pictures have hung.

I have seen them a few other places, so it's not just my landlady. 

Impossible to think of any tags for this one.

Bee's view of Georgia

Bee has been visiting Georgia for the last week and so to make up for my lack of posting, you can catch up on her strange tales of life in Tbilisi. Start here.

Changing careers

I seem to have reinvented myself as a journalist.  Currently I am producing articles for the Georgian version of House and Garden, Business and a lifestyle magazine called Hot Chocolate. It's quite fun writing about the same thing in different styles.  Writing on blogs must help somehow. Later I have to produce something for a weekly magazine which specialises in gossip and lightly clad ladies.  Energy saving tip of the week: wear more clothes. 

Shame I can't read the gossip or recognise the "celebrities".

Technorati tags: georgia, magazines

Yushchenko respectful of Tymoshenko?

In yesterday's article on Ukraine headed "IS THE PARTY OF REGIONS SLIDING INTO CRISIS?" in the Jamestown Foundation's Newsletter, the following paragraph appears:

President Viktor Yushchenko has only led in the polls in 2005. Since 2006 Yushchenko has been in third place behind Viktor Yanukovych and Tymoshenko respectfully. Yushchenko’s ratings temporarily increased to second place after he dissolved parliament in April 2007. 

I haven't seen much sign of that respect.  I guess it's a just a slip.  Still the discussion of Yanukovych's position was interesting.  You can find the rest here.

Technorati tags: Ukraine, Yushchenko

Work experience Georgian style

All students in Britain are obliged when they are 16 to have work experience for a week.  Either the school sets it up for them, in which case they get stuck with boring times in a bank or a shop where nobody knows what to do with them, or they rely on tagging round work with their parents for a few days, not really understanding what they do and being stuck with the photocopying and making the tea.

Unless of course you have such a silly job as me.  When we lived in Lithuania, Sloph's work experiences included two weeks in the British Embassy in Vilnius.  She sat in the Commercial Section feeling useless until the Ambassador took pity on her and told her to research the energy sector for him and write a paper on it.  Her career was set from then on.  Later we did a trip to Parliament to talk to an MP and a meeting in the Ministry of Economy, both on closing the nuclear power station, which was unpopular.     I was accused in the Ministry by one official of trying to get my daughter a job there.  Since neither of us spoke Lithuanian this seemed a bit ambitious.

Today we had a trip out of the office so Bee came too.  First we went to a winery to do a photo shoot (we are preparing for an advertising campaign).  It was arranged at short notice so I didn't really have much idea where we were going.  This was only my second photo shoot (my first was yesterday :)), but we are working with a firm who have good ideas and have delivered so far, so ...   I just asked for a food processing factory that was modern where we could show some boilers or other technical stuff.

On the way we spotted one winery we had heard of so had a quick photo opportunity of our own.  The before and after of a Soviet winery.

     

So we arrived in a downpour of rain at a (another) famous winery.  It seems they are the most technologically advanced wine factory to be found anywhere in Georgia.  Each year production consists of 1.200 000 bottles, the Badagoni wine factory has now become the largest winery in the Caucasus.  They don't seem to have a website but you can arrange a wine tour including a trip to their winery here.  They had a new stylish building (with glass and local stone and a see-through glass floor to the cellar) whose design was explained when we found they were a joint venture with an Italian firm. 

No answer at the main entrance and we remembered it was a religious holiday.  More mobile phone calls on the iPhone by the creative type got us in the trademen's entrance at the back and a tour of the factory.  Then the photographers unloaded the paraphernalia, my assistant and I chose the shots (by the vats and then by the bottling line). The actor chose whether to wear a jacket or not, and peered at his notebook while pretending to read the dials.  After a while we had refreshments, but it was a bit boring and Bee went off to sit in the plush Italian armchairs in the entrance and watch the clouds and rain obscure the fantastic view of the Caucasus mountains towards Russia and Azerbaidjan.  Here are her photos while we were waiting.

First the cellars, built out of traditional Georgian bricks.  The casks in which the wine was ageing came from France and Slovenia. The vats on the production floor were Italian stainless steel.  The refreshments were Khvanchkara, (see pallet) and the photo of the Mukuzani crate is included for Sloph, as we forgot to take a picture as we drove through the village of Mukuzani on the way.

                  

      

Eventually that part was finished and it seemed that the day couldn't end without a Georgian feast in a local restaurant.  I forgot to take its name and I was too busy to take photos of it or the food.  The restaurant was a bit like a motel, but with separate rooms for eating in.  We had a huge feast of Kakhetian specialities, a roaring fire in the corner and many speeches to the birthday boy (it seemed our creative type had one today and had given up a day off for us); to the religious holiday, to international friendship (you know the sort of thing) and my speech toasting a quality work experience covering advertising, a tour of a winery, and Kakhetian hospitality.  What more could a student want?  Nobody toasted the weather.

Later we were due to do a shoot at the one house we have found with a solar panel, but that was ruled out by the continuous rain.

Now we are waiting to see how Bee's career develops. 

Technorati tags: Georgia, work experience, wineries, Georgian wine