Wu Wei

Is it raining everywhere?

My week in Cyprus has been spoilt by the lousy weather: deluges every lunchtime, and grey skies most of the rest. The hail stones like tennis balls missed Nicosia.   It seems the weather forecast is not much different in Tbilisi.

Turkish Cypriots are getting qualified to join the EU.  They are already skeptical and able to point out the inconsistencies and stupidities of some of the legislation.  On the other hand they are not able to recognise the difference this makes.  Some of them seem to prefer poverty and isolation "in" Turkey (and no changes) to economic development and a higher standard of living with the EU.  Changes are difficult. 

The public sector earns more than the private sector in Turkish Cyprus, so why should anyone change?

Blog Action Day: Climate Change: Georgian journalists learn about energy efficiency

After nearly two years in Georgia, I can say that climate change does not register much over the horizon here.  Our work requires us to do marketing and publicity for energy efficiency, which also gets rather poor coverage in the press in Georgia.  So last weekend we offered a group of Georgian journalists the chance of 2 days in the tourist spot of Sighnaghi in Eastern Georgia, while having some training on the topic of energy efficiency and climate change. 

Previous attempts a year before had been a bit too technical for them.  So this time, the training was mainly carried out by two journalists, who could give tips on their craft as well help to find interesting angles for stories, whilst I explained some of the problems of energy use in Georgia.

We are required in our project to make sure that the training is open to both sexes and that wherever possible equal numbers of women and men are trained.  Normally we have to take photos to prove this.  This time we had 14 women and 1 man (who disappeared the second day).  This is pretty typical for journalists in Georgia. 

We also listened to what the journalists had to say:

What is news in Georgia?
There is no doubt that politics drowns out most of the other news in Georgia. The antics of the government and opposition are covered ad nauseum.  And news drowns out investigative journalism (we only know one journalist from a monthly publication), in depth journalism might imply criticism of the government and the loss of a job.  There are no columns devoted to new technology, or science "as these are not of interest to the people".  Descending into stereotypes, this may be because journalists tend to be recruited from the humanities, and tend to be women, with little science or engineering background.  It may also be because professions are recruited directly from the universities and there is little opportunity to move for example from business to journalism or from science or engineering to journalism.

Environmental issues are seen as a luxury for a poor country like Georgia, and no one realised that CO2 reduction could provide big investments for Georgia through JI and CDM. Nobody knew much about the Kyoto Protocol or the big Climate Change Conference coming up in Copenhagen in Georgia.

Energy Security
This has been the real issue in Georgian news.  After independence there were many difficulties with power supplies (not to mention civil war).  In 1995/6 when I visited Tbilisi and went out to eat, you could either see the menu but not the food when it came, or vice versa, as power supplies were regularly cut off throughout the day.  In those days, it was more important to get some energy at all, and saving it made no sense.  Industry could not get raw materials so was hardly working at all, so had no incentives to save or replace equipment.

Happily times have changed and one of the successes of Saakashvili has been to stabilise and build up the energy supply.  The economy is developing but with a bias towards high risk strategies: a construction boom based a property bubble, luxury hotels and shopping centres hardly affordable or needed by ordinary people; plus a dependence on transit: oil and gas, food imports and other goods going going further east. Who knows what the effect of the Turkey-Armenia rapprochement will be on transit routes in the region?

So what is energy efficiency?
Journalists did not distinguish between energy and energy efficiency.  Energy prices are considered high, till we pointed out that the prices were quite low compared with Europe (electricity is mainly hydro, gas comes from Azerbaijan now).  It is the consumption in Georgia that is high because ex-Soviet countries generally use three times more energy than western developed countries. Some other reasons are:  

• Soviet legacy equipment in factories is worn out and inefficient now, but was never designed with energy efficiency in mind
• Bank interest rates are very high (just beginning to come down below 20%) so loans are expensive
• Lack of knowledge of what is available on the market: not much on the internet on this topic in Russian and even less in Georgian
• A government whose policy of ultraliberalism (inherited from Bush advisers) has removed any regulation which set standards for construction or inhibited the free reign of wild capitalism (suiting some of the government businessmen masquerading as politicians)
• So no building codes requiring insulation and double glazing, or shading for summer.
• Heating even in modern buildings (like our office) is still often by individual room heaters, not central heating.
• Even people building their own new villas do not know about insulation, let alone where to buy it.

In Georgia households account for about half of all energy used in Georgia, unlike most countries, where it is around 20-30%.  District heating from a thermal power station was abandoned in the early 90s, leaving people to fend absolutely for themselves, burning wood, kerosene or even petrol inside their buildings.  New blocks of flats are still being built as "white shell" with the new owner supposed to provide himself with insulation, double glazing, central heating as well as finish the shell.  In contrast, Russia already has legislation similar to the EU on building energy performance.

In the countryside where the poor live, the situation is even worse.  Many villages are without electricity and even small towns lack gas networks.  So people survive with heating using illegal wood burnt in metal boxes on legs (I will not dignify them with the name of stoves), which are horrifyingly dangerous.

Climate change
Freak weather does not much affect Georgia.  Snow in October was unusual this year, but had the merit of keeping the Caucasus mountains inaccessible for Russians.  So climate change is not much of a news story either. 

What is to be done?
Generally the journalists thought it was the government's job to sort out this mess.  So we gave them the example of the grassroots activism of the 10:10 campaign in the UK. 

Single issue activism and greenery is not yet a force in Georgia.  Even parliamentary activism is low key.  Issues are just expressed in terms of whether Saakashvili's resignation will help or not, and on the streets, rather than in Parliament.  Developing rational choices between concrete actions and debating written policy proposals, is too tame for the fiery and emotional Georgians.

Not a very hopeful story.  But we are running a competition for the journalists in the hope that this will create incentives for them to write more on the topic.

I leave you with details of our latest project being developed for a loan:  60 tons of poultry manure a day has to be disposed of somewhere beyond a large poultry farm, as disposal is now getting beyond the scope of the farm.  With this manure and a biodigester, plus a modified diesel generator, it is possible for the farm to be self-sufficient in heat and electricity, sell gas to the local network or bottle it for selling in gas stations.  The manure residue turns into organic solid and liquid fertiliser which commands a higher price than ordinary chemical fertiliser.  This project also reduces methane emissions from the manure and CO2 emissions from electricity and heat generation so could get an income from CO2 reductions. 

A happier prospect?  Not quite.  The farm is busy developing battery hens and broilers just when UK supermarkets are boasting about their eggs laid by hens who have never seen a battery cage.

Busy

Sorry for the lack of posting, just too busy at work!!!  After a rather dull year so far, we are busy setting up to provide residential loans on energy efficiency in Georgia.  

After the success of our video on the energy audit of a sugar factory (don't I lead an exciting life?) we have moved on to using animation in our next videos, on home improvements to save energy.  

Today's drama was the cat.  Someone offered their moggy for a starring role sitting purring on a window sill in a warm house, but apparently it never made it on location, preferring a leap out of a car window.  The family will not be too happy tonight.

Yesterday's drama was in casting the actors.  The Georgians would like actors looking like Georgians. Our paymasters have told us they want a Russian version later.  Since Russians apparently associate Caucasian looking types with criminals, this has been causing us a problem requiring a lot of tact.

Our Irish marketing expert, looking for actors who could act, rather than models who look beautiful, wanted to have a local funny man, who, although he is very ugly, is quite famous.  This caused consternation as in Georgia he normally plays criminals.

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. 

Economics and its discontents?

Seen on a website today for a firm doing research and consultancy in economics:

If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people, on a level with dentists, that would be splendid!
(J.M. Keynes, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, 1930)

Now why would anyone want to choose dentists for comparison? They are only known for the fear and pain they cause, not to mention being expensive.  Or was that part intentional? 

The Depression is repeating, but perhaps now it's the turn of bankers.

A good sales pitch from Ukraine

Kyivpost today recommends in its editorial:

Investing in Ukraine's gas pipeline is the best and cheapest option for Europe to secure Russian gas supplies

The January natural gas war between Ukraine and Russia was a badly needed wake-up call for European Union bureaucrats who have dragged their feet on energy diversification and who have long been wimpy with Russia.

The cutoff of natural gas supplies revealed how deeply dependent both Ukraine and Europe have become on a nation whose leaders are keen to use energy as a geopolitical tool of influence and blackmail. One of Russia's aims was to smear Ukraine, undermining its reputation in Europe as a functioning democracy and as a reliable transit route for Russian gas to Europe.

The Russians also hoped to build support for costly alternative pipeline projects bypassing Ukraine. But that's a tough sell.

Kremlin leaders are finding it hard to finance the $20 billion Nord Stream project across the Baltic Sea, and for good reason. It's a very expensive way to pump 30-55 billion cubic meters of gas.

Another Kremlin favorite is the $20 billion South Stream, which would go through the Black Sea into Bulgaria, also an expensive way to move 30 billion cubic meters of gas.

A third option to bypass Ukraine, touted mainly in the West, is the $13 billion Nabucco gas pipeline. But that's a stiff price tag to move 30 billion cubic meters.

But the better and cheaper option would be to invest up to $3 billion or so in strengthening Ukraine's pipeline system, which already pumps a whopping 120 billion cubic meters of gas each year. The nation's network could pump more, and do so more efficiently, with needed upgrades.

While Russian bad behavior has shown that Europe and everyone else should explore other energy options, Europeans should also back a consortium that would invest into Ukraine's state-owned pipeline. Ukrainian leaders should embrace this option as well. It would bolter the nation's free-market credentials and its economic importance. Europeans would then be deeply involved in the gas issue all the way to the Russian border. Ukraine's gas pipeline might also be a key to opening the door to future membership in the European Union.
In the next five to seven years, Ukraine's vast pipelines will remain dominant, yet vulnerable. Still, the existing network remains the best and cheapest way to pump Russian gas to Europe.

I can't vouch for the numbers, but the argument seems clear.  Though it's only a newspaper that is talking, not the government. 

But on what terms will this be offered? Will the EU (or the corporation it says it will set up for pipelines) enter into  a bidding war with Gazprom for use (and modernisation) of the Ukrainian network, or will it be outright privatisation? If so, given the current legislation in Ukraine preventing the gas transmission system's  privatisation or use through concessions (or other ways) we can predict some tough battles ahead, on the usual lines in the government.

And a bidding war under the current financial crisis will be interesting.  Does anyone have any money to bid?  And can Russia afford to lose?

Still Ukraine stands to gain if it can get the network modernised free and still retain ownership.  We live in interesting times. 

   

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Cars - Status symbols or convenience

Our project has money for transportation, expected to be provided as a car and driver. Actually our transport needs are very small. A taxi will take us to any meeting in Tbilisi and also collect any shopping for the office.

Taxis have one draw back in terms of getting your money back from the people who pay our expenses: they don't provide receipts. They don't have meters either and when you ask them how much it depends how you ask. If you ask in English at the beginning of the journey you will get a rather larger show of fingers than if you ask in Russian at the end of the journey. Usually the answer is "kak khatite" -- which can be translated as (literally) "whatever you like", but after the surprise wears off, this converts to a 5 lari note for journeys round town or perhaps 10 to somewhere more distant. Of course you can haggle if you have the charm and the language, and nobody minds except you when you find that neither of you have change for a 20 lari note.

Once a month (or perhaps twice now) we need to visit some small hydro power plant up a mountain or visit a construction site in another town. So we have managed with the car of one of our team members until now while the debates raged about what we really needed and how to get paid for it.

After wasting six months (one third of the contract time) arguing about it the consortium bosses agreed to buy a new car: the safest option on Georgian roads, the least maintenance and hence downtime, and the most comfortable on long distance travel, when we have to take several people. Nevertheless the choice of car has gone through several iterations.

At the beginning of the saga, Georgian roads were an unknown quantity as were sites of hydro stations. So it seemed safest to opt for 4-wheel drive (especially as we had a hard winter in Tbilisi). Later it became clear that this was actually a desire for a SUV and status: if I have one myself surely the boss needs one too. One's status is assessed by the car one arrives in.

I have been through the SUV stage in my life (living up a hill in Brecon with a road like the bed of a stream meant that even the pram had 4-wheel drive*). The final stages of my divorce and property settlement required "valuing my 4-wheel drive vehicles" as an important part of my assets. Sloph and Bee's father and I surveyed the four (yes 4) 4 wheel drive vehicles we owned at the time and had hysterical laughter. We counted like this:

One bright yellow 1953 landrover - active when the battery was fully charged, gear box open to the air for easier gear changes, mostly used for dragging other cars out of mud and snow. Our original means of transport up the hill to our "summer house" for the last 10 years before it was habitable.

One normal green 1956 landrover - infrequently taxed for use on the public road, but fairly reliable and respectable.

One red Suzuki Jeep about two years old and useful as a pram, used all the time by me.

One green left-hand drive LNG fired Lada Niva used by him. It was an early indicator of the quality of his business decisions but we were busy playing happy families so I didn't notice at the time.

In the end we persuaded our farmer neighbour to dig up some stone and a local contractor to take the landrovers in part payment for making a road, and moved on to those nice Citroen BXs with the adjustable hydraulic suspensions for getting up rutted roads.

But back to Georgia and the car decision.

After a few hydro visits, it was agreed that a 4wheel drive was not strictly necessary (though winter tyres might be required, to get there). If the road was bad, even the Greeks were willing to get out and walk to make an inspection. This in itself was a climbdown since the Greeks are the equals of the Georgians any day in believing that walking instead of driving is a sign of low status.

So we homed in on a Toyota Corolla as the best option for reliability, availability of spare parts and service quality in Georgia, and price. Speaking for myself I hate the Toyota Corolla. I was outmanouevred into buying one new in Greece and I have never driven a more boring car. Give me the Mazda 626 (2 in the UK and 1 in Lithuania) any day. But Mazdas do not exist in Georgia (or so I was told). Since I have had no car in Oxford for three years I have rather lost interest in the beasts, just hiring a metal box on wheels when I need it, as long as it is not yellow.

Finally we were ready this month to buy this horrible car. But Toyota chose this month to recover the drop in the value of the dollar and stung us for another 3000 USD. This was too much. Our valiant car status expert decided what was good enough for the Georgian police was good enough for us and so we now have a Skoda Octavia with tinted windows. I listened to the arguments about heat reduction in favour of the tinting (it's hard to argue against energy efficiency arguments when you are an energy efficiency project) while giggling about looking like the Mafia. However to look like the senior police officers with no car markings may prove useful.

Anyway to cut a long story short we now have a car and driver on tap during working hours. Working hours are apparently defined by the driver picking the boss (me) up in the morning and dropping me off in the evening. I demurred. I live 10 minutes from the office on foot from work and apart from a bit of Tai Chi, it's the only exercise and fresh air I get at the moment. Our car status expert retreated but at six o clock produced a master stroke. It was going to rain. The driver's time was up and we both should get driven home. Again I demurred. It was going to rain heavily. It had looked like heavy rain all day but not managed it. It was actually raining. I gave in and I was driven home. Within 5 minutes there was a deluge worthy of Noah, (Ararat is not far away) which has lasted for two and a half hours and counting.

Main reason for car (even in summer) established: protection from rain. Note to self: take an umbrella everyday in Georgia.

*One day I will unpack and scan the photos of this wonderful home and the adventures we all had in it.

Technorati Tags: rain, cars, status, SUV

Housing terraces in the UK (Part I)

I don't often bother to write about my past in the UK but after posting about the Georgian terraces here, I can't resist doing this bit of research on the buildings I built in the days when I was an junior engineer in the late 60s and early 70s.

For my first job in London I was thrown in at the deep end.; Armed with a maths degree and not much else I was sent off to Manchester once a month to sort out the problems on site on the largest housing estate in Europe in Hulme, Manchester. This was one of those nice concrete panel constructions beloved of socialist countries but built in large numbers in the UK as well. Back to back terrace slums were decanted (wonderful term for temporarily rehousing the occupants) and demolished to be replaced by the so-called horizontal streets in the sky, plus a few tower blocks. Altogether 1000 homes were built in four groups of what were fancifully called crescents modelled on the famous Georgian Royal Crescent in Bath. One was even called John Nash Crescent after the architect in Bath. At the time, the 'Crescents' won several design awards.

It was a pretty surreal start to working life, bluffing my way through problems I had not much idea how to solve, but I developed a way of encouraging people to help me to find solutions, a skill I rely on very much nowadays. Another surreal part of the work was the site office in the middle of the mud and concrete. The so-called Zion Institute, a red brick building, housed the builders' offices, the Halle Orchestra rehearsals and a ballet school. As a result, girls in tutus mingled with workers in overalls and muddy boots, and I frequently shared the ladies loo with the harpist while she was practising.

Tne of my first tasks during the construction was to help sort out the mess caused by the collapse of Ronan Point due to a gas explosion. One corner of this tower block in East London collapsed like a pack of cards, largely because it was built of concrete panels balanced on one another just like a pack of cards. As a result, the blocks in Hulme were being redesigned so the panels were at least tied together, and the heating was being changed to electricity instead of gas. This latter was a disaster. I had the job of checking the heating when the first group of tenants moved in. I had 30 tenants all with complaints about their heating. I had to do some vaguely scientific tests on the heating which showed that the design of the heating was undersized and too expensive to run.

Most of the blocks built in this way developed mould and condensation as electricity became too expensive to heat them properly. The joints between the panels leaked. The "streets in the sky" became escape routes for vandals and hooligans who terrorised the inhabitants. Drug dealers and thugs took over the neighbourhood. Anyone who could get rehoused elsewhere did so, making the blocks housing of last resort for council tenants.

Far from being architectural monuments like Georgian terraces, they looked like rather typical run down housing block in Soviet towns and must have been similar to live in.

I was not hopeful of finding photos for reasons which will become apparent but in fact I found there is an ex-Hulme website here, from which I borrowed the following photos and where you can read the history of the area, and watch a TV video of the problems caused by this type of housing.










In the late 60s it was the largest housing redevelopment in Europe when these crescents were built. By the 1990s it had to be demolished and the whole area regenerated again with low rise housing. Many blocks like these were demolished by controlled explosions, but there don't seem to be any photos for Hulme.

Happily the Zion Institute is still alive and well. It survived bombing in the Second World War,



and has survived two redevelopements. It's now an Arts Centre here.

I am not sure whether I should be proud of my first building project or proud that it no longer exists.

New Year's Resolution

Technorati tags: pinot, Georgian alphabet, Firefox, wine

To learn 5 letters of the Georgian alphabet every day. 

I don't like not recognising any letters at all.  Although I can recognise the word on shop doors for "open" (at least I assume that's what it is), I don't think you can really make much progress that way, since the letters don't actually spell "open", but whatever the word is in Georgian, so I'm not going to learn much.

At 5 letters a day, I should be able to spell out words in a week.  Can't be too stressful, can it?

I just got the Cyrillic add-on to Firefox, which claims you can do Georgian as well, so maybe I can even demonstrate some progress.

Happy New Year to all.

Update: written under the influence of Manana's homemade wine.

It's labelled პინო (that's  pino to you).  Actually it's not that easy to type what's on the bottle label since I had to replace the "p" I typed (what I got was ფ (puh)) with a პ (that's p'uh with a glottal stop).  Only a lot of ingenuity and a Georgian (transliterated) dictionary fixed it. 

This takes me back to learning foreign languages from reading what is written on bottles. I began with learning French from HP sauce bottles. It seems hard to understand why HP (Houses of Parliament) brown sauce should have needed a bilingual labelling in the 1950s, but I read it avidly.

Since then I have always read the labels on bottles carefully. I may not remember anything about wines and vintages but I can read the bottle in most languages I have come across, and sometimes it even came in useful, especially in Hungarian. It seems I have never posted the stuff I wrote about how I got started working in Eastern Europe. So for the New Year I give you "Can I have the baby first" as a page on the righthand margin.  The baby is already 16 going on 17.

Thoughts on becoming 60

This was not something I was looking forward to.  Not only did it mean you were oooold, but it really was the beginning of the end, as opposed to the 40s when it is just the end of the beginning and other such silly phrases. 

The thought of trying to live on my pittance of a pension (or rather several pittances eroded even more by inflation) seemed terrible.  I had worked hard all my life, not been terribly profligate, and in recent years saved quite a bit.  Somehow it seemed to amount to little more than a state pension, which is not enough to live on in the UK, so I would be banished to somewhere cheaper eg Eastern Europe.  Not that I really minded that, not wanting to live in the UK much anyway. 

I went into a panic when Bee decided to be a doctor, thinking this was just more years of work and no comfortable end in sight. 

However, now I have got to 60 it's not so bad.  I got my bus pass.  It seems OK to be offered cheaper this and that, if only I had more time to do them.  After all I have worked and paid taxes for it for most of my life. 

I fell downstairs but bounced on the way and nothing was broken, so I am not so decrepit yet.  No need for the zimmer frame yet.

I have spent the last week or so with my financial adviser and accountant dealing with all the paperwork for these pittances, which now that I really add them up, amount to something reasonable, especially when expressed in Euros.  Even the bad news about having to pay tax this year, as I have been at home for too many days, has been softened by the fact I can avoid tax by making extra pension contributions. 

And I have no plans to stop work.  5 years medical university fees for Bee will make sure of that, but at least I will have a personal doctor in my (real) old age.

Unlike those who retire at 60, I am just off to start a new project in Georgia for 18 months, which I am really looking forward to.  It's a new(ish) country for me, and I shall be doing something different (and perhaps) more useful.  I shall get to see a bit of the country as well.

In our family we never think it's too late to do things.  My mother retrained to be a teacher when I was 16 and she was 50. To be a full time student at 50 was unheard of at the time. 

So the blog will relate tales of life in Georgia.  Lets hope we start with a peaceful New Year.

Technorati tags: pensions, being 60, retirement, working after retirement, Georgia