Friday, October 10, 2008
side 2, track 3

Weather


Categories


Other expats


Fake tales?


Archives


Woah, that was quick.

May 11th, 2007 by Jerry

It’s always the same when you do these international moves. It seems ages and ages away and then suddenly you don’t have enough time.

Of course, this time is different. It’s much worse. All of accumulated stuff is in Paris. It has been since we left Vence. Not all of our stuff of course, the car was driven over full and we’ve bought more stuff here. To keep the prices for the move merely astronomical we’re going to ship stuff from Kyiv to Paris and then put all of it together in a container to San Francisco.

Last night we agreed on the quote from the removal company and gave them the go ahead. They did the calculations back from our preferred arrival date (July 1st) and sent me this mail:

Dear Mrs. & Mr. Nolan:
Please confirm that Corstjens can do the pack-out of your household effects
on Monday, May 14 at 10:30 hrs. at your Kiev residence I wish you a nice week-end.
Sincerely,
The Lovely Larysa.

Posted in Ukraine | No Comments »

Trianon Palace.

April 1st, 2007 by Jerry

I didn’t want this blog to descend into “Look at the crazy stuff in Ukraine” but, after yesterdays revolution, and surrounding political spat it’s just too tempting. I blogged before about the crazy houses. Today we went for a walk down the Dneeper and saw just how far this can go:

Trianon Palace
http://www.trianon-palace.com/ 3 bedrooms, indoor pool, no garage but double marble parking approach. Try a Bablefish translation but the drawings of the proposed interiors is the best bit. The weirdest thing though is the location. I have no idea how much Trianon Palace would cost - several million dollars as a guess and for that money, It’s halfway down a knackered concrete road and only about 200m from the next McMansion.

That said, Bablefish is a really nice part of Ukraine - lots of islands and sandbanks along Dneeper south of Kyiv. I wonder how long it will be before the whole of the dneeper is lined with Trianon Palaces. The real Trianon Palace is now a Westin Hotel. If you stay, you should get a room overlooking Versailles - so the internet says anyway.

Posted in Ukraine | No Comments »

The mills of our revolution grind well

March 31st, 2007 by Jerry

As you may have heard, we’re having a revolution.

Except it’s not really a revolution. It’s more like two neighbors who don’t get on with each other turning their stereos up really loud to annoy each other. The stereos are huge stages surrounded by flags. In Maidan, we have the Europe facing factions and about 200 meters down the road, we have the Russian guys. The European’s have rap and rock, the communists have great marching tunes.

If I stand on the toilet (I’m not kidding) and stick Janis’s camera and long lens out of the window I can see the stage - well the big screen by it. As I’m typing, Julia Tymoshenko is inciting us to do something in Russian. Look:

Julia

Boris is standing on the balcony disagreeing.

Posted in Ukraine | 2 Comments »

Watch the skies.

March 30th, 2007 by Jerry

I was just told, in a rather matter of fact way that there will be a revolution tomorrow and Sunday.

Yushenko is going to dismiss the supreme council, they are adopting a law to make his position unconstitutional or something.

Whatever, all traffic is banned from town tomorrow, seems like our flat is inside the curfew - it means Boris will miss the walk but he might get chance to bite a Bolshevik.

Only Ukraine could have a revolution on April fool’s day.

Posted in Ukraine | No Comments »

The third way.

March 25th, 2007 by Jerry

We’ve come up with a better way of raising money for this damn house.

This afternoon we went out training to be freedom fighters (or as history may dub us “bank robbers”). Janis is seen here modeling the AK-47 which despite what Bulwer-Lytton would have you believe certainly has a more powerful recoil than any pen I’ve ever written with. Wonder if that’s the same Bulwer-Lytton?

Jane Ak-47

We heard on Friday that the mortgage “will probably happen on Monday” there is though “another set of documents” to furnish immediately we head about them. I spent all Friday night sending PDFs of various documents I’ve sent before but have been ignored because they didn’t arrive during the correct phase of the moon or something.

Posted in Ukraine | 2 Comments »

Mortgage lender #2

March 23rd, 2007 by Jerry

Maureen insists that despite the fact that he won’t speak to us, Mortgage Lender #2 is going to come good. She said she’d call with the good news in ten minutes… 20 minutes ago.

At this stage I can’t share her enthusiasm. Despite a run of good fortune in the last 24 hours* things are just running too late. It seems unlikely that we’ll get the mortgage today - the last day required by the sellers after trying for the last 4 weeks.

* Visa approved in 1/8 of estimated time, bank transfer of deposit to US in a mind numbingly short 6 hours, visit to US embassy for power of attorney over in 30 minutes, UPS Ukraine announce new 1 day service to US just as we need a document there on Monday

Posted in Ukraine, California | No Comments »

Wow. look at that!

March 19th, 2007 by Jerry

May I cast your eyes rightwards about 150 pixels.

Picture 3

Proper warm like.

Posted in Ukraine | No Comments »

To the rescue…

March 18th, 2007 by Jerry

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.

Posted in Ukraine | 2 Comments »

A Day in the Life.

March 18th, 2007 by Jerry

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:

Picture 1-6

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.

Posted in Ukraine | 11 Comments »

Happy [international women’s|ladies] day

March 8th, 2007 by Jerry

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.

Posted in Ukraine | No Comments »

« Previous Entries Next Entries »