May I cast your eyes rightwards about 150 pixels.

Proper warm like.

As I said in the last posting I generally get stopped by the police at least once per week.
Here’s how it goes:

Policeman: <Russian>
Policeman salutes.
Rog: Sorry, I don’t speak Russian
Policeman: <Russian>
Rog: Sorry, I don’t speak Russian
Policeman: <Russian>
Rog: Sorry, I don’t speak Russian
Policeman: <Russian>
Rog: Sorry, I don’t speak Russian
Policeman: Give me a bribe.

Sometimes, I have other people in the car. Sometimes it’s a wilf sometimes it’s dogs. Wilfs aren’t much help - they behave like I do - get angry and refuse to pay fines or speak Russian. Dogs are better. They get angry and bark very enthusiastically. Sometimes they try to bite the police.
Here’s how it went the other day:

Policeman: <russian>
Policeman salutes.
Rog winds window down
Mishka jumps over the back seat and stuffs head out of window towards policeman.
Mishka: BARK!
Policeman jumps two feet in air, adopts girlish voice.
Policeman: Please be on your way.

Capitals can’t quite describe the threat Mishka can get into a bark. Words cannot describe the look on the policeman’s face.

This posting is brought to you be the dreadful sounding Fun Monday which is being hosted by my good lady wilf. I thought I’d ask a guest writer in to help me out.

Woke up, got out of bed

Getting up is generally pretty relaxed. Janis nearly always wakes first and makes tea. I make coffee later. We have a weird coffee making contraption and Janis likes to pretend she can’t operate it. Work starts late so we stay in bed until the dogs decide that there’s been enough lying around and it really is time for their first walk.

Dragged a comb across my head

Not strictly true for the last 20 or so years. I do put contact lenses in and have a shower - in that order. It’s important. I do not shave every day. Or every other day for that matter. My shaving regime is generally to shave when someone (generally Janis) complains that I am starting to look like a tramp.

Found my way downstairs and drank a cup

Come on Paul, we’ve done this bit. Keep up. Breakfast though goes in cycles. At the moment, I have a smoothie made from bananas kefir (a late fraction milk product) and some other fruit. I feel that such a healthy breakfast lets me off the requirement to eat vegetables for the rest of the day. Previous breakfast obsessions have been smoked salmon and scrambled eggs or even a rather delicious Peter Gordon derived fried feta with poached eggs and chilli sauce. I’m big on breakfast and like to cook things.

And looking up, i noticed i was late

I leave for work sometime between 9:30 and 10:00 depending on how long walking the dogs took.

Found my coat and grabbed my hat

I do wear a hat. Sorry about Paul’s obsession with the rather boring details. Actually, I have a lot of hats. The current favorite is a Paul Smith woolly hat (no bobble sorry). As spring is with us, there’s no real need for hats anymore so we’ll move on if that’s alright with the two Pauls.

Made the bus in seconds flat

I’m not even sure if I could take the bus. Instead I drive to work. I feel really bad about it. The walk is only about 30 minutes and before the winter I used to walk it every day. When it got cold I started to drive and I’ve never managed to break the habit. I generally get stopped by the police once per week. They want only bribes.

Found my way upstairs and had a smoke

Paul is probably talking about the top deck of the bus. We’ll ignore him. Our office is on the 5th floor of a Soviet block in Pechersk. It’s the old part of Kyiv and the office is pretty cool although it’s getting rather full. Over the last year two years, the company has grown from five of us to over a hundred and most of them are here in Kyiv. I spend the day in email and meetings. Let’s pretend today is Monday even though I’m writing on Sunday. Here’s what the schedule looks like:

You’ll notice it has lots and lots of meetings. I’ll not go into them in detail because your browser would probably melt with boredom. My main job is running engineering but I’m also general manager of this site - hence the Petty Cash drudgery and meetings with accountants.

At about 4pm America starts to wake up and the meetings go from being face to face to online - if I have a lot of them stretching into the wee hours (as I do today) I’ll try and get home early and work through the evening from there. Otherwise I leave at about 6-7pm. Janis and I split the cooking. When it’s my turn to cook I generally go over the top and we end up eating very late.

Somebody spoke and i went into a dream

Oh, welcome back Sir Paul. I thought all the talk of meetings had seen you off. At about 10:30 I take the dogs out before going to bed. I try and make sure they get a proper walk every night - I suppose I feel guilty about moving them into a flat in town.

Sorry for everyone who’s been trying to comment here, I’ve finally got round to fixing comments. The details are just too boring to bother typing. If you have a Pord Press blog and comments don’t work, I might be able to help.

Whatever, all three of you reading this can comment away to your hearts content.

Last night when we got back from Piragova the power went out. We didn’t do anything because it’s relatively common. KyivEnergo regularly switch huge sections of Kyiv off for a couple of hours at a time.
Infact, we were so confident, we went out and spent a not insignificant amount of Hryvna on food. Much of it fresh and in serious need of refrigeration. When we got back at 6pm we were still without power. Not good. We decided that cooking a steak on Mishka (not the warmest thing in the flat) wasn’t a good idea. So we went out. Except is was ladies day so everywhere was full.


When we got back (after a curry thanks very much) the power was still out. We washed by candlelight in cold water and consoled ourselves that it would be alright in the morning. It wasn’t. Jane came to work with me to get some interweb and power for her computer. I asked Svitlana to cal lthe electricity company. She tried but they had taken the long weekend and nobody was answering the phone.

After trying all day, she finally spoke to a human being at 4pm. They would send an electrician at <some time this afternoon> we scurried home and 5 minutes later he actually arrived, did something electricany and left with a flourish.

So, not much of a story in the end. Sorry to waste your time.

As I’m sure you know, today is international women’s day. Here’s what the official website * says about it:

Celebrated on 8 March, International Women’s Day (IWD) is the global day connecting all women around the world and inspiring them to achieve their full potential

The Ukranians have modified this though their normal deeply held beliefs on sexual equality and here’s an excerpt from Yushenko’s speech declaring today a public holiday:

Ladies are lovely! They totter around in their high heels and dye their hair. Some of them wear short skirts! They’re so pretty. Let’s have a nice holiday just for them. We men can do the dishes, sweep up or even cook! Won’t that be funny. Of course if you don’t want to just buy some flowers and have Olga cook and clean like normal that’ll be enough. Happy holiday!

* no, I’m not sure how an abstract concept can have its own web site either.

Everyone knows that when you try to order any food in America you get a zillion supplemental questions. A mortgage is no different.

The questions and extra steps we’re having to take are getting slightly out of hand. Our problem is that we’re not US citizens and don’t (as yet) have the right to reside in the US (visa application in process). This meant that we need a US resident to co-sign the mortgage and guarantee us. Luckily we have a friend (who we’ll call Jason because that’s his name) who agreed to do this.

Over time, “co-sign the application” has become “become a named holder on all our bank accounts, be the main signatory on the mortgage and co-owner of the house”. Jase is happy to do this - which speak a lot of his trust of us. We’re not so happy because it assumes a lot of him and, there seem to be some legal problems - can he just give us his half of the house when we have a residency? Will that involve a huge tax payment?

The upshot is that we’ve found another mortgage lender and we’re starting from the beginning again - but keeping the first guy ambling along so as to keep the vendors happy.