Wu Wei

Update on small claims

A sudden vast  increase in traffic to my blog (no, not another war in Georgia) has been caused by someone spotting the post (here) about how we successfully sued Easyjet in the Small Claims County Court, but did it online which was very easy. Thank you lightbluetouchpaper.

It only works for suing British firms or firms with offices in England and Wales. 

However, a friend has also found there is a European version for crossborder claims.  You can find out about it here.  To get the form, you need to download the Regulation, (the form's an appendix) but it seems to explain what you have to do.

It only applies to claims up to 2000 Euros, which is not a lot,  but enough to be helpful with budget airline problems.

How's the recession treating you?

Personally, it's not treating me so bad.  But it's devastating plans for Sloph and Bee in the UK.  There are no few chances to start a proper job and a career, and temping provides only short term opportunities, which has played havoc with travel plans on a gap year.  How to survive?  Sitting it out somehow, which feels like doing nothing, seems the only answer.

I just reread the page Why Wu Wei?

I began this blog when I had a period without work in Greece at the end of my contract and didn't know what to do with myself.  I had to make decisions about where my daughter finished her education and there were no clear solutions.  The answer seemed to be to do nothing and wait to see what happened. 

Well, not exactly "do nothing":

Of course  I was still looking for work, improving my web skills, trying to improve the management of my daughter's school, making other friends now I had more time, doing more exercise with regular swimming and generally enjoying the bits of life in Athens that I did enjoy.  Both Bee and I were ready for a move to another country even if we didn't know where it would be.

Tao philosophy:

When you feel lost and life doesn't seem to be working out, it is because you have lost the Tao (the Way), the river of life, which will lead you where you need to go.  Forcing things does not help to get back to the Way.  Sometimes it is necessary to go in the opposite way to that you would expect. 

Hence the rubric on the top left of the blog.

Eventually something did turn up: a job in Kosovo.  No chance for Bee to live there with me, and only two weeks work a month, for 12 months.  So it seemed, no alternative but to bite the bullet and go back to England where Sloph was just due to start university in Oxford.  

Not our favourite idea, a bit safe and dull, but it's been a success for everyone but me.

Looking back, it was exactly the right thing to do, even for me. The kids have got their education over, or at least for Bee, university is settled for next year.  They have had 4 years of stable life with friends, and for Bee, reconnection with her English roots.

For me, after a brief period feeling depressed by property prices in Oxford and gloom at the lack of attractive property in Ljubljana, I am happily settled in a beautiful flat in Vilnius, meeting new and old friends, and able easily to commute to work in Georgia.  I'm glad I'm not locked into a mortgage on an overpriced tiny terraced house in East Oxford.

Even Georgia is coming out of the recession caused by war and global financial crisis.  Banks have started competing again.  Customers do not want to borrow at current interest rates. So banks, sitting on huge deposits (10% on deposits in hard currency if you leave it there for a year) are slashing interest rates. So there is more work to do here, even though it's been a bit boring for a while.

But it's hard for Bee and Sloph without a home to fall back on in the UK.  On top of all the uncertainty of jobs and money and somewhere  to live, they have to find solutions to where to put stuff, when there is no attic or garage at home to dump them in. No quick and easy way to come home to Mum when it is all too much. Thank God for Skype and the internet to keep in touch.

Hard to believe it will come right in the end.  But for me it always has, so far. 

Get Flook

For some time I've been playing with my iPhone and Flook, a new location browser with photos cooked up by a blog friend (Enidd) from Kiev.  In fact I finally got the iPhone because of it.

Those of you with Twitter updates will already have noticed, but for those who don't know what I'm talking about, see the links to Flook on the righthand panel of the blog, or here (Vilnius) and here (Alaska) etc.

Somehow I would never bother to surf to look what a glacier looks like.  But if one is put in front of me by Flook, and there's a map of exactly where it is and an explanation of who took the photo and why, it's a lot of fun.

On the other hand, people who post a card with a photo of their room, are missing the point.  As Jane (alias Enidd) says:   My favourite flooks have a great photo and let me know a quirky secret or a little-known local restaurant: perfect for my style of blogging on the move.

iPhoto

I'm having a lot of fun with iPhoto.  Its "Names" feature is really cool.  If you attach a name to a face it ploughs through your photos finding matching faces.  It manages to find all the family likenesses at different ages, so it matches my older self with my childhood photos.  

It also managed to match my father's photos under his prewar name with his postwar name, sort of confirming that the prewar photos were really him.

On the other hand it makes some hilarious mismatches, some of which are only funny if you know the people concerned.  

Also if you pick an individual photo, it will try and guess who the people are, which can also be quite funny.

It pulls names out of your address book which saves a lot of typing and misspelling as well.

On the other hand it can't recognise a cat face.

Some of the faces it has found are:

• 5 photos of a guy whose name is on the tip of my tongue but I can't remember it (very frustrating)
• Colonel Sanders of KFC fame ???
• one face from a memorial to the Decembrists, at a station on the Trans-Siberian railway.

All in a day's work

The energy audit video we did on the spur of the moment in a factory got approved on our visit to Kyiv recently, so now we are doing an all purpose Russian version for use in Russian-speaking countries.

 This meant re-shooting or photoshopping some of the scenes in the office where we had proudly displayed our Georgian marketing materials, so they don't act as a red rag to the bull (or perhaps it should be the bear). 

I got to appear for all of three minutes but the crew decided I needed the full make-up treatment as it was close up.  In my younger years I used to wear a lot of make-up especially round the eyes, but lately it didn't really seem to matter much, so it's got reduced just to a splash of lipstick when I remember.  So it was quite fun to see what sort of a movie star they could make out of me :) 

It wasn't so bad, so maybe next time I am shopping I will see what I can find and treat myself.  I'd forgotten about mascara making your eyelashes heavy and the problem of having to see through them all the time. 

Flushing toilets

This is a surprisingly popular topic among expats. 

For several months I have been having a war with my landlady about the fact that the ballcock in the cistern does not switch off the water flow properly and so the toilet runs continuously.  Apart from the minor inconvenience of noise, this situation is often of no interest in most former Soviet countries.  These days, Eastern Europe is generally billed by meter for water, so they know not to waste it, but not in Georgia. 

I began the battle to get the office toilet fixed after being shamed by my Greek colleague.  We both agreed that it was necessary and so asked our office manager to organise that landlady to do it.  Now in Britain  this problem is usually caused by a faulty washer, a simple piece of rubber seal which needs replacing from time to time.  Of course you can often fix it by reflushing the toilet, since it is one of those irritating intermittent faults that disappear when the plumber appears, and you become even more unpopular for wasting people's time.  In Georgia, it seems more complicated, involving replacement of many more parts, which have to be bought in the bazaar, rather than a well-equipped DIY superstore, so the quality is not guaranteed. 

After various failed appointments by the landlady's plumber, he turned up drunk, but eventually we had a working flush.

Then my home toilet malfunctioned.  My landlady is a very important lady doctor, who has no time to  deal with such mundane activities as the toilet, but does have time to be incredibly rude to my Georgian colleagues who are helping me, as well as time to rush round to collect a vast quantity of dollars every three months to pay for her trips abroad.   So this saga has dragged on and on, (punctuated by the toilet working perfectly every now and then) for about six months, finally with a plumber suggesting she buy a new toilet (at vast expense for his labour). Naturally she didn't want to do that and in any case was too busy to find time.  I gave her an ultimatum to repair it during my last trip abroad.  I came back to find nothing changed, though my office manager said it worked perfectly when he tested it.  Sigh. 

This saga was having no satisfactory outcome until I had a shouting match with her on my mobile phone, while I was in the middle of the street.  This was so undignified, I told her I was not willing to continue discussing it.  This actually had some effect, and I thought it was a good line for use on other occasions in the future.

 I was so pissed off, I spent  most of the rent she was due on some carpets for my new flat.  I realised my contract was coming up for renewal, so we had a showdown when I paid her about half what she was expecting and told her I was moving out.

Suddenly a cake appeared, she spent Saturday morning with the expensive plumber buying me a completely new Finnish toilet (instructions in Lithuanian, very conveniently) and we have all been happy ever since.

I can't believe I have really spent half an hour writing about the toilet flush.

And now there is only the phone to fix.  Working today, who knows tomorrow.

Update

Sorry for lack of news.  Was travelling in Kiev and Vilnius, spent most of Sunday in Riga airport suffering from what appeared to be baby flu (well if you get pig flu from pigs, I got baby flu from the baby).  Surprisingly nobody appeared concerned, though I sniffed and sneezed over everybody.

It seems that the day after I left Kiev, at Borispol, passenger body temperatures were being scanned and a doctor was inspecting suspects, so perhaps I might not have got safely away.

Since getting back I have had no internet at home till now.

Here are some odd photos from the travelling:

In Vilnius they are selling a bank for 18 Lt, about 4 Euros.  (Actually, it's an advert for internet enabling you to get online banking etc).

And here is one of the sparrows that still live in Borispol airport.  I took photos of them in the roof of the main lounge while I was visiting in 2006 (see here), but they were too small to show up in the aircraft hangar style roof.  This time in the new part, they seem to prefer lurking under the seats, occasionally coming out for crumbs.  It's a very shiny floor reflecting the roof.

Twitter updates

My Twitter updates now in a widget on the side panel.

100,000 visitors

Thank you everyone who has been reading my blog.

I started it in January 2005, as something to do while l was living in Greece with a gap between projects.  Since then it has visited the UK, Lithuania, Slovenia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, North Cyprus and Georgia. 

Coming up soon: Montenegro and North Cyprus, more Lithuania, Georgia and Oxford, plus a possibility of Ukraine and St Lucia (a bit out of my usual region).

Please push me over

For a long time I never thought I would get over the 50,000 visits to my blog, but the August war managed to get me past 60,000. 

Now Neocounter has me at 99679 when I write this.  So hopefully I shall hit the ton by the end of the week. 

But no need to start a war to do it :)