Scotland Pictures

I had a blast in Scotland getting to see an old friend. The one day it was actually sunny we went out for a hike along the east coast of the country. Was in a small little town that is famous for its smoked fish - aptly named ...'smokies'. Was an awesome day all around, here are a few pictures.

Airport Fun

....so for some reason the entire thing I just wrote out disappeared because of a 'conlicting edits' error. So I'm going to have to summarize what I had wrote.

Left Scotland on Sunday.
Nothing appears to have changed in Ukraine.
Rained a lot in Scotland.
Gas crisis is starting to show its signs, or its just another political theater topic since the flu is getting old.

Viva Scotland

So it turns out that when I decided to fly to Scotland for a few days to see friends, that I was actually going to refresh my Spanish skills. I think about 80% of the people staying at the hostel speak Spanish, and some of them don't speak any English. Has been good, and surprisingly I still remember a lot.

In a few hours I take a train to go stay with the main person I came here to see. Until then, I may just relax here in the hostel.

Also, I watched someone throw up in a garbage can last night. Was amusing. Left and went to bed shortly after that.

Shoo Flu!

Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but the only thing happening in Ukraine - still - is the flu. Fortunately for me I haven't been working much and have avoided going to the cafe/my second office for the last week or so. At this point, with the majority of the work in my contract completed, I am able to work on my own pace to finish some small projects that are informational and have no specific set of guidelines. They will be done when I'm done with them, and they don't have to include anything in particular. There is also a small project that I submitted for review/feedback 2 weeks ago. Maybe by January I'll get a response to that. Who knows.

Anyways, back to the flu talk. There are now rumors going around claiming that the variation of flu here is not H1N1, or regular flu, but instead a "super flu". Although it hasn't been confirmed, apparently a lot of the scientists and politicians are saying that the flu has mutated (possibly as a result of the less than stellar health care system here). How bad is the health care system you may ask? According to someone I had lunch with yesterday (an amazing $12 hamburger) who has a sick kid, after the hospitals got shipments of Tamiflu, all of the hospital employees were allowed to purchase some for themselves and their own family - and are now reselling them at 2 and 3 times the normal price. The doctor they took their kid too offered to sell them her box of Tamiflu for only 1000UAH, or about $12. While that doesn't sound like a lot, don't forget that Ukraine is begging for international help and taking all sorts of free medicine right now from people.

Oh, and just to further the idea of how much this is the only thing that is going on here, there are rumors/conspiracy theories that claim the aerial spray the government used before this break out was actually a bioweapon. This spray was supposedly sprayed from airplanes over the major cities as something that was supposed to kill the flu, but seeing as that hasn't worked, some people are claiming that it must have been a bioweapon by the government.

Oh, and this has continued to spread while the schools have been closed for 2 weeks (with one more week of closures). I can only imagine that once all of the kids go back to school and eat each others boogers that the second round of infections will start speeding up in the country. While I'm certainly not too worried about catching anything, I'm REALLY not looking forward to finding medical help here if I do. Is it too early to leave Ukraine to go home for Christmas?

I'm not dead yet

It's been a week since I wrote anything here. I haven't caught the flu, and am doing my best to avoid it. Other than going to the grocery store, I've been avoiding going outside. When I do go out, I've made sure to avoid opening any doors with my bare hands and touching things that someone sick may have touched.

The new figures state that over 1 million people have been sick in the last 3 weeks. This amounts to roughly 2% of the population. about 50,000 have been hospitalized, and 170ish have died. This means that if you happen to fall into the 2% of people who manage to get sick, you have a .017% chance of dying. Clearly you can see what has everyone worrying about a flu pandemic. From what I can read, this is on par with historical (and annual) flu outbreaks in Ukraine. It's just that this year its H1N2. As the week has gone on, you can see even more how the entire thing has been politicized. One day one of the presidents aides even mentioned the possibility of declaring a national emergency and pushing back the election because of the flu. ...The election in January. That idea has been put down since then.

As for me, I've been keeping busy with odds and ends of work that needs to get done. I "get" to reread all of the reports I previously wrote and edit out any politically sensitive/offensive information. Fortunately there isn't too much, and it's mainly related to the labs in Uzbekistan. Still, I'm going through all of the reports and making sure everything is good. In the process I've also found various typos that I made in the reports I turned in (like spelling 'patent' as 'parent'). Considering that it's been maybe 1 or 2 typos per report...and there was 140 pages of original writing...I'm not sure if that's a good sign or a bad sign.

I've also discovered that Ukraine gets Scotland weather in the winter. It's dark by 4:30 every day, the sun doesn't come out, and there's a 50% chance of rain everyday, and a 90% chance of drizzle. As I said while I was in Scotland years ago - no wonder everyone drinks by 9AM and smokes all day.

The line, you've crossed it.

This is proof things have officially gotten out of hand. People need to calm themselves down.

Running low on stock photos

A few weeks ago I came across a photo for the local online newspaper that was completely out of place. The article had something to do with teachers in Ukraine, and the stock photo they used was basically of a girl in a stripper/teacher uniform, similar to something you may find at a college campus on Halloween.

Today the paper has another confusing photo. Seen below, apparently this is the best they could come up with for a story about the local schools shutting down. It's worth mentioning that there are ZERO confirmed cases of swine flu in Kiev. Basically this entire thing is being blown out of proportion for the political gain of the presidential candidates. One met a shipment of 300k doses of Tamiflu at the airport today, while another is trying to organize meetings and taskforces and get WHO and EU support. Everyone is basically using this as a ploy to show how they would help the country as president.

All hell has broken loose

...and it isn't even a reference to Halloween.

The fear of H1N1, which I will be referring to as H1N2 (H1N1 is so last year), has taken over Ukraine. My trip to Lviv was canceled this weekend because an unidentified viral flu outbreak in western Ukraine that had killed 30 people in a week, with thousands of other people sick. As of last night, they were all confirmed as H1N2. The entire country has ordered a 3 week closing of all schools. Travel from one region of the country to another is being restricted, and apparently Michael Jackson surgical masks are flying off the shelves. (I'm going to the store in a little bit and will bring my camera to see what I can find.) Maybe they help, I don't know. According to the newspaper, there are over 81,000 flu cases in the country so far.

This is ironic in so many ways, because I just finished all of my writing yesterday, meeting a ridiculous deadline that I probably shouldn't have agreed to, and was looking to travel around the country a little bit. As for the writing, the final damages were 212 total pages - most at 11 and 11.5 point font. Of those 134 pages were all original and unique to their respective reports. The other 78 pages were the same introduction to the report over and over in each report - which adds another 6 pages to the 'original' count, bringing it to a solid 140. Last months 45 page document doesn't seem quite as bad anymore.

Anyways, I need to go to the store because I have no food in my apartment besides a half full bag of almonds, some moldy bread from earlier in the week, and a jar of peanut butter. I had been too busy to go shopping during the last week or so. This lead to some interesting dinner ideas. I had almonds and a cut up carrot slices with peanut butter one night. I also washed the same clothes in my washing machine about 6 times as I would start the washer and then forget about them until the end of the day, and at that point they were fairly dry and smelled of mold. Some days I would wash them more than once, thinking I would eventually get back to them to hang them outside to dry. It never happened. Eventually it did though. When I realized I had no clean underwear for the weekend trip I was supposed to take. Which brings us back to H1N2.

Damn you swine flu!

Also, the sun goes down here at 4:30 now. I'm fairly sure there is more solar energy coming off the moon in Ukraine currently.

FINISHED

DONE!
FINISHED!
HOLY CRAP!
HUNDREDS OF PAGES!
BEER!

Happy and green, or brown and sad

A couple times a week I will get a ceasar salad at the coffee shop I work from. It's become clear to me that they don't make their food fresh, and they don't get shipments of food every day. Some days the salads are very very green, crisp, and quite happy looking. (Yes, I just called a salad happy.) Other days, the salads look quite sickly and are a sad brown color with a little bit of faded green mixed in.

Today was a sad salad day. In the middle of eating it I normally work. So after looking down from my computer at my salad, for a split second it actually looked like I was eating a plate of tuna fish with a little bit of mayo. After that I just really couldn't eat anymore of the salad.

How to not make a graph

I've been writing writing and writing lately. I'm almost done with my last sustainability report. After that, I just have to go through all 14 of them and deal with random things - page numbers, finish a few executive summaries, table of contents, ect.

My report on the science lab in Ukraine is the last one I'm writing. Surprisingly, the national academy of sciences publishes a great deal of information in English. To be honest it's MUCH more transparent than I ever would have expected - but mainly because of how much corruption and politicking I've seen from other countries. Anyways, going through the charts and data I came across this beauty of a chart. I think this pretty much illustrates everything that a graphic should not do. (you may need to click on the picture to get a better view of it)

There are WAY too many things going on in this chart. The layout makes it difficult to figure out what data is relevant. It's near impossible to try to pinpoint a specific data point in the various cross sections of data. I could go on but I won't.



Anyways..back to writing. I'm so close I'm actually getting excited to work because it means I'm closer to being done.

What a relief!

I was taking a break from writing and checking the local English newspaper's website. That's where I came across this headline: Tickets for football matches in Ukraine can now be ordered via Internet

According to the press release, "The service is designed mainly for consumers aged between 16 and 36, who actively use the Internet."

The only thing I can think of, is what other things can't you do on the internet here in Ukraine that I don't know about?

This is going to bother me

I like working in a cafe or coffee shop because I can watch random people while I work, or take breaks from working. Today while I was working - 3 hours so far at the time of writing this - I saw a woman walk into the shop that I recognized. The problem is that I can't figure out where I recognize her from. She walked in, started walking towards a table, looked at me, and then turned around and walked out. The more I think about who she was, the more I realize I am not going to remember where I recognize her from. I'm not sure if she's someone I've randomly given food to on the street, works in a place I have gone to before, or just someone I've randomly watched pass by on the street. Maybe I've seen her from here too, since there seems to be a number of people who regularly come to this cafe. Either way, it was really strange to see her look directly at me and then turn around.

Nice Belt

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but there are some seriously tall women in Ukraine. To be honest I don't know how the country doesn't dominate womens volleyball in the olympics every year. It's quite absurd. I bring this up since today I saw a girl that was even more ridiculously tall than the normally tall women here. I honestly think her belt was about the same height as my chin.

I don't know if its something in the water here - besides chlorine and a number of other chemicals - but there are some seriously tall women here.

Deadlines

Is the opposite of a deadline a lifeline? And if so, what does that really mean?

Beware the law of unintended consequences...

A few random thoughts today:

I peeled a carrot with a spooon last week. Worked better than expected.

I recently mentioned that someone installed 3 flood lights in the alleyway/arch that leads to my apartment door. In theory, this was done to ward off crime, or maybe make is less convenient for the homeless people who regularly dig through the garbage. As it turns out, the homeless people really like the lights. Since the alleyway is now so bright, they have no problem digging through the trash at midnight and being able to see everything they are picking at. Last night was the second time this week I've come home at night to people digging through the garbage.

Did you know the value of the US dollar is tanking? Unless you follow the financial markets, you probably wouldn't. Not unless you live in a city like New York, Washington DC, or a list of other touristy attraction-esc cities. The dollar is doing so bad right now that the canadian dollar is almost at parity. This is a currency that calls its 1 dollar coin a "Looney." Ridiculous.

The point of this is that because you don't know, you don't constantly worry about how much more broke you just became every day. In Kiev, almost every bank has a display letting you know the current exchange rate from local UAH to USD, Pound, and Euro. Last month, every day the value of the local currently slowly lost money to every other currency - which totally sucks for the locals who have most of their major bills like home and car loans written out in DOLLARS even though they are paid in HRYVNIA.

Oh, and as for my report writing .....I'm averaging about 3500 to 4500 words per day of typing. Basically I'm writing 90% of a report each day. I've got 3 more full reports to write, and 2 half reports. After that, its just going through them all and dealing with page numbers and loose ends. No weekend for me this week.

You don't know how good you have it

Recently there was a news article here in the local english paper about the government looking to increase the minimum wage here. It was interesting because (well I didn't even know there was a minimum wage here) the minimum wage here....well it's pretty low. Based on a monthly scale, the current monthly minimum wage in Ukraine is 669UAH. The proposal was to increase it to 922UAH by the end of 2010.

Now, I don't know if that's for full time work, part time, or if you just work 1 hour a week you qualify for that - but it doesn't really matter. Let's look at some numbers to put 669UAH into perspective. The current US Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, which, at 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, comes out to be just shy of $1,257 per month. Obviously you don't get to take this much home because of payroll taxes, but since I don't know the tax rate in Ukraine we'll just go with that number.

Now, obviously 669UAH isn't dollars, and for the sake of comparison the figure shouldn't be converted into dollars, but since you may be curious - at today's exchange rate 669 UAH equals about $81. EIGHT ONE. But what can it buy?

669 UAH will buy you about 83 bananas in Kiev, or 81 loaves of bread. Based on the price of the chicken in my fridge, it could also buy about 33 pounds of chicken. My guess is that you are better off with the $1,257. Obviously Kiev is expensive, its the NYC of Ukraine, so living out in the country this would go much longer. Last night I spent 37UAH on a large cup of hot chocolate - I'd be able to buy 18 of them with the minimum wage...and then be homeless and hungry for the rest of the month.

...So the bottom line here is that it would suck to be living on the minimum wage here in Ukraine. Interesting statistic - unemployment in Ukraine is only 2%. I'm actually quite shocked that it's that low. It may have something to do with the fact that the government gives you a maintenance/janitor type job if you want to receive unemployment benefits. So it's kinda like employed-unemployment, and quite possibly indentured servitude.

Spoon

I ate my breakfast with a spoon today. That's not normally a big deal, but when you consider I had scrambled eggs for breakfast, it becomes more confusing. I have 6 forks in my apartment and 12 spoons. 6 forks really isn't enough for a single guy who doesn't do his dishes that often.

Also, it's pretty much winter here now. It's cloudy, dark, and rainy almost every day. The sun sets at an even more ridiculous time each day. Below is a table that shows the sunrise and sunset times for the rest of the month:

Oct 21, 2009 7:30 AM 5:54 PM
Oct 22, 2009 7:32 AM 5:52 PM
Oct 23, 2009 7:34 AM 5:50 PM
Oct 24, 2009 7:35 AM 5:48 PM
Oct 25, 2009 6:37 AM 4:46 PM
Oct 26, 2009 6:39 AM 4:45 PM
Oct 27, 2009 6:40 AM 4:43 PM
Oct 28, 2009 6:42 AM 4:41 PM
Oct 29, 2009 6:44 AM 4:39 PM
Oct 30, 2009 6:45 AM 4:37 PM
Oct 31, 2009 6:47 AM 4:36 PM

As you can see, on October 25th we "fall back" an hour for fall, making the day end even sooner. This whole process bottoms out in December, when the average sunset time for the entire month is just shy of 4PM. I sure can't wait!

10 Days Later

So I haven't wrote anything here in the last 10 days. It's not that nothing has happened in the last 10 days, but that I've been busy being busy. I've also been busy acting busy but not being busy. See, I'm a chronic procrastinator, and with my November 1st deadline looming, I'm almost hoping to waste a few days so that I feel the crunch of time later in the week. For the time being, I've been maybe a little too efficient with my time and I'm just on pace to finish with no real rush or hurry at all. Also, regarding the November 1st deadline, its a Sunday. I don't know if that means my work is done the Friday before, or the Monday after. I should ask, but I'm afraid that if its the 2nd I'll want to use the extra days.

As for some of the random things that have gone on over the last 10 days:

I have heat in my apartment now. It apparently takes an act of city council to determine when the ~11k residential buildings in downtown Kiev get their heat turned on. Once they approve of a time - which is largely based on weather - they set a 1 week rollout period. So this morning I woke up with my radiators working ...barely. I really can't remember how warm or hot they were when I arrived, but if it actually gets cold in my apartment, I may just have to use the gas stove/oven or hot water/steam from the shower to warm the apartment.

I've gotten pizza twice in the last 10 days. Both times I've come home with the pizza (carryout) there has been a homeless person digging through the dumpsters in the alley that goes to my apartment. That's an uncomfortable feeling.

They (not sure who) installed 3 floodlights in the alleyway to my apartment 2 days ago. That means that since I've lived there they've installed 2 security cameras, and 3 flood lights. I don't know if it's for extra security, or if the area is getting dangerous.

I discovered a new park yesterday. Its much bigger than the park I normally go to, and much nicer. It's basically right next to the places I always go running, and I have no idea how I missed it. It's a shame too because now that its cold here and the sun doesn't come out, it really isn't worth going to if I want to relax. Unless I could build a firepit somewhere I don't see myself hanging out there.

The little fruit shop/grocery store I always go to right next to my apartment has closed. I think its just for remodeling. It's sucked though because for the last week I've had to walk a lot farther to get bottles of water, bananas, eggs, and other random food things.

There's been some more random things...I'll update this again later when I need another break from work.

Banana

So I was shopping today in a big open market with fresh meat vegetables and fruit. Normally I have a banana every day for breakfast, so I know they cost about 2uah a banana - but I don't get them here. I asked the lady for two bananas an she puts them in the scale and says 8. I thought I heard her wrong and asked her again. Still 8. They were big bananas so I said no, and offered her five. She was still stuck on 8. So I walked off.
Moral of the story is that they thought because by Russian is terrible I must be a tourist and have money. That or the lady has no idea what a banana costs.

Lots to update

It's been a week and a lot has gone on. Unfortunately I'm rather tired and will be going to bed soon - it's midnight here. However, before going to bed I think it's worth sharing a thought I had a few days ago.

Being a clothing manufacturer/retailer in Ukraine has to be so much easier than in the USA. I'll use a personal example. When I look around town at the lovely young ladies of Ukraine, I see them wearing clothes of two sizes - small and medium. No large, and certainly no extra large. Things like demand planning and setting up retail settings must be so much easier knowing that there is really no need for 48" jeans.

Which led me to another thought. The margins on clothing must be so much better in countries like Ukraine. The amount of material used on a pair of 24" jeans has to be considerably different than the amount of material used to make a pair of 48" jeans. Yet I've never walked into a store and seen a company try to charge the customer more for the fact that their jeans cost more to make. Hell, they cost more to ship too. Maybe that's what America needs to slim down; retailers should start charging more for clothes that are bigger, and slightly less for clothes that are smaller. Then again, this could backfire if women who should wear extra large clothes start buying mediums in an effort to save a few dollars.

Babi Yar

I've mentioned before that this country has some pretty incredible history. Strangely most of it is associated with World War II. (Why is it never written World War 2?) On this day in 1941, and also tomorrow (29th and 30th) there was a historical incident that occurred in Kiev. Babi Yar is known as the largest single execution of Jews in the history of WWII - 33,771 Ukrainian Jews according to the accounts by Nazi offers. Although perhaps graphic, here are the accounts of the incident according to Wikipedia ...which is always 110% accurate.

The Nazi's put up posters that led the Jewish people of Ukraine to believe they were being deported. This is what the signs said:

Kikes of the city of Kiev and vicinity! On Monday, September 29, you are to appear by 08:00 a.m. with your possessions, money, documents, valuables, and warm clothing at Dorogozhitskaya Street, next to the Jewish cemetery. Failure to appear is punishable by death.

The summary of what happened next is essentially that they were stripped naked and driven to the nearby ravine and shot. Over 30,000 of them. An account taken from a book written is this:

One after the other, they had to remove their luggage, then their coats, shoes, and overgarments and also underwear … Once undressed, they were led into the ravine which was about 150 meters long and 30 meters wide and a good 15 meters deep … When they reached the bottom of the ravine they were seized by members of the Schutzpolizei and made to lie down on top of Jews who had already been shot … The corpses were literally in layers. A police marksman came along and shot each Jew in the neck with a submachine gun … I saw these marksmen stand on layers of corpses and shoot one after the other … The marksman would walk across the bodies of the executed Jews to the next Jew, who had meanwhile lain down, and shoot him.

So yeah, there's your history lesson for the day.

I don't really need to shower

There seems to be no hot water today. I found this out as I went to take a shower. Instead I just washed my hair. I didn't really do anything yesterday that warranted a shower anyways.

Also, I was just drinking water from a water bottle and spilled it on my face and body. After looking around for a towel or something, the closest thing was a clean pair of boxers. Is it weird to wipe your face off with underwear - even if they are clean?

How to be a man

I've been busy working lately so there really hasn't been anything to write. Just a few little odds and ends - like a homeless man asking me for vodka or money while I was walking home on Friday.

I also made chili this weekend. One of the cans had a can opener built in to the top, one of those things you lift up and then pull back - sorta like a coke can almost. Well when I pulled it it broke. The logical solution, as most men would agree, would be to hit the top of the can with a blunt object until the can gave in and opened itself. After settling on a spoon - not exactly blunt but it was available - I went to work. After a few good whacks the can opened, and sprayed tomato sauce all over me and the kitchen. In hindsight I should have seen that coming.

Another interesting tidbit, is the fact that I am currently eating chili and spaghetti out of the pot I cooked it in. All of my tupperware is currently in the freezer with chili in it, and the only bowl I have looks like the plastic coating has started to melt off. So, the only other alternative for a bowl I had...was this nice metal pot.

Fulbright don't teach class.

I sent my 'boss' an email today asking for some clarification about something work related. In short, depending on what evaluation criteria I use, a center could be ranked as either very good or very bad.

He wrote back with a detailed answer, and at the end of the email, about 3 paragraphs complimenting the report I submitted for the Department of State the previous week. Among a few quotes:

In closing, I really appreciate your contribution to the interim report that we submitted to State last week. It was extremely well written and incisive, especially the report on the [redacted], which I specifically called attention to in the meeting.

Your report was also a nice complement to [name redacted] half of the report because you two are looking at the labs, necessarily, from two different metrics:

The points you made about the [Lab] in Armenia and the [Lab] in Uzbekistan which can attribute a lot of its success to its governmental connections were quite astute.

A few minutes later, I received an email from Miss Fulbright Parker who had this to say:

Thank you for including me on this exchange of e-mails. I am joining John’s words of appreciation of Michael’s input into our interim report. I think our analysis provides both programmatic and business perspectives on measuring success, which are very important.

I do not necessarily agree with everything in Michael’s analysis, but I still agree with most of it and value very highly everything that Michael wrote.

Kind regards,

Based on comments that we exchanged via the comment boxes in Microsoft Word, it appears she thinks I may be making assumptions based upon the information we gathered in the interviews we conducted. As I have a business degree, and she has a degree in statistical sciences and measurement, I can understand that she's much more uneasy about some of the conclusions I may "jump" to. Either way, if the boss guy was happy, then I suppose I did a good job. I get to continue writing more reports tomorrow, and for the next month. I guess I'm moving in the right direction.

Still not Kansas

These are the public toilets at the park. You have to pay roughly 25
cents to go into the bathroom. I have no idea how much athority the
lady guarding the entrance has though. Is that a city job? Does
whoever gets there first get to collect the money for the day? Does
she buy the toilet paper she hands out or is that government/city
funded?
Also, don't you think these people would be able to have some fun with
the situation and paint a bulls-eye or something around the whole.

Other happenings of the day

So besides seeing a dead person, there were a few other notable things that happened or that I saw today.

1) I saw a young homeless guy - the same young homeless guy I see most days. He was wearing the same jeans, shirt and shoes he always has on. And I'm pretty sure he uses the same McDonalds cup every day too. When I saw him today though, I realized that dude's actually got quite a gut on him. I came to a few conclusions:
a) He must eat at McDonalds every day, which explains the cup and the gut
b) Being homeless pays pretty well, because I don't think I've ever had a gut like this guy had, and I've been regularly fed for most of my life.

2) I went looking at shoes today. I found a pair that I really liked, and they were super cheap. Marked down from almost $110 to $30. I went to the cash register and the lady rang them up ...$130. I pointed out the price tag on the shoe. Apparently it was $30 the regular price, not $30 total. (I realize the numbers don't add up, I have no idea what the lady actually responded with in Russian when I pointed the price tag out, I just read the cash register.) I gestured that I only had $80 and was going to go to the bank. (It's worth noting that I know the word for ATM, so she understood me.)

Then I left the store. I didn't come back either. Just to be safe, I probably won't ever go into that shoe store again.



3) Normally at night I will get a small (or sometimes large) cup of hot chocolate at the cafe near my apartment and do a little bit of work. Tonight was supposed to be no different. I asked for hot chocolate, and a few minutes later the girl brought it to me. A large cup of hot chocolate syrup. Not the actual drink of hot chocolate that I've gotten maybe 7 or 8 times before. I went and got a menu and pointed to "Hot Chocolate" in the menu, and she confirmed that it was indeed what I got.
I have no idea how to say in Russian, "I don't know what the hell this is but it isn't what I normally get," or "Who the hell drinks an entire cup full of chocolate syrup?" So instead I had 5 or 6 spoon fulls of it, and then just worked for a little bit. I ended up spending $4.50 on a large cup of what was probably Hershey's Syrup.

I uh....just saw a dead person.

It looked like they were getting ready to put him in a body bag, that or they just had the bag out since they were eventually going to use it. Guy was probably 60, and based on the rather bloody spot on the side of his face, and what could have been a missing eye, I don't think he just fell over from "natural causes."

Have I mentioned that the driver's here are terrible?

Well that's gross

In an effort to clean everything, I just went into my bathroom to clean the toilet. Basically this meant taking the toilet bowl brush on a stick and running it around the bowl. As I picked the brush up from the container its in, my foot got splashed with a decent amount of water. Apparently it had been sitting in there since the last time I cleaned the toilet.

Needless to say, I just washed my foot with a sponge, a bunch of soap, and some hot water.

Is this wrong?

I just got done sweeping up the floors of my apartment since I've allowed some dirt and dust and all sorts of stuff in. I'm looking at the dustpan, and wondering what to do with it. I could attempt to empty it into the plastic bag that has become the garbage for the day - and that may or may not involve me having to resweep the floor. Or I could just dump it out the window. I'm wondering if that would be tacky and/or wrong.

The girl sitting next to me is gorgeous

Except for the fact that she has a mustache. It's not that hard to miss. I'm not sure how she did.

Funny how things change

Although some of you may be too old to know about this, back when "we kids" were in school and "word processors" were new, it was a common trick to make the size of the font bigger so it looked like you wrote more. You could also do the same with the margins. I realize typewriters didn't have such revolutionary technology, but I hope my analogy helps explain this. (As a side note, why are proctologists not analogists, and why does the word analogy have nothing to do with....nevermind)

Anyways, the last few documents I've had to write, I've found myself making the font smaller (is 10.5 acceptable for business writing?), and increasing the margins on all sides of my documents to .8". On some pages, the margins are different than the pages before too - this is because I absolutely hate to have a paragraph that ends a section dangle on to a new and separate page.

Finally, for those of you still trying to make your documents look longer, here's a super secret MBA/grad school trick. Go through your document and change the font size of the periods in your document. While it seems silly, it goes through and adds just that little bit of extra "content" your report may need.

Dentistry

I saw someone with braces today. This is worth mentioning since I've been looking for someone with them for about a month now. I've seen many a mouth that looks like it came from England here.
I've always known there were dentists here since you can see there work everywhere. Tons of people in the city have teeth covered in gold. I've actually started to think that the trend of grills started here in Kiev.
Also, I now have indisputable evidence that deadlines are important. I've been working on a report for the last three days that I could have easily completed in two days back in grad school. Here though, they tell me by Friday ...and they are getting it Friday.

News to me!

After seeing a few deaf people over the last day, I've been wondering if sign language is universal. Apparently it isn't. There are some common 'words', but in general things are different. I'm wondering if it would be easier to learn another language in sign language, or verbally.

Opportunity Knocks

As far as I understand, most crime happens because an opportunity presents itself. If I leave my laptop out in the open, go to the bathroom, and come back to find myself without a laptop - well certainly I'm at fault for giving someone the opportunity to steal my laptop.

Ukraine is currently going through one of its worst economic downturns in history. In fact, research is pointing to the state currency coming close to historical lows in value over the next 2 months. This would be somewhere between 9.5:$1 to 10:$1. Simply put, even the people who have jobs are hurting, and the people who don't are even worse off.

Given that, while walking home last night I came across an interesting opportunity. Lately the city has been digging up a sewer or gas line right next to the fruit/vegetable/bread/alcohol store by my apartment. This weekend they finally finished whatever repairs they were doing, and have started to cover up their work.

They haven't finished yet though, so at the moment, this is what it looks like right outside of the store. You may see a nicely organized pile of sidewalk stones; however, I see opportunity. About 200 opportunities to be exact. If I was, for instance, a hungry homeless person walking by the store at night, looking in at all the nice produce, bread, and alcohol sitting ever so pretty in the store, I'd say I've got about 200 tries to break through the glass windows of the store front. I'd also say I could just as well break through the panes of glass on the front two doors, and probably make a lot less noise.

I don't know if I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet or not. But certainly, I can't say I'll be surprised if it does happen.

Body parts for sale.

This story has picked up a bunch of press in the Ukrainian news and English language blogs lately. Since I doubt you follow either, I'm taking the liberty of mentioning it to you.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,645375,00.html#ref=nlint

The article is (long and) fascinating for a few reasons. For starters, now you know where that replacement knee you got last week came from. Second, it makes you wonder what some of these companies would do if not for those pesky rules and regulations they have to follow.

And for those of you not up to date on exchange rates; 1 Euro = $1.40 ..roughly.

A few thoughts

It's much harder to cook rice with a gas burner. No matter how low you set the flame, some part of the pot is going to end up with burnt rice.

Q-Tips work just as well as a tissue for cleaning out your nose. I think Unilever is really dropping the ball on this line extension.

Yesterday was the first weekend of college football. Tailgating for 1 isn't as fun as it sounds.

Ahh Europe

One of the things that never fails to amuse me, no matter where in Europe I am, is that it's perfectly normal to see someone with a beer at 9AM. It's actually not the best motivation tool to see someone drinking a beer at 9 when I'm walking to work on a Friday. As it is I want the weekend to come faster, and to see that people are already getting their weekend on is quite disheartening.

BS Alert! Code Red!

I'm currently working on an interim report that is due in 8 days that I was just told about yesterday. Basically it means that the 8 weeks I thought I had to complete my reports for a specific project has been changed to 6 weeks, and I'm supposed to work on this instead. Fortunately there is some overlap, so I'll be moving in a forward direction with both projects.

Anyways, I'm getting ready to take a break. Worked on the format of the report today and am trying to write everything I have completed - at this point I've finished the introduction and the methodology. As for the methodology, here is the brief explanation I just wrote. I don't think I've ever written something that smelled like so much BS in my life.

"Analyzing these four environments as a mechanism to measure RESC sustainability has both advantages and disadvantages. This strategy enables a comprehensive look at a series of criteria that are applicable to every RESC – criteria that play significant factors in the sustainability of any organization. However, this generalized methodology limits the ability to pinpoint specific details and quantify their overall affects on RESC sustainability."

Plumbing issues?

For about a week, the entrance of my apartment building was decorated with what I can only describe as non-traditional decorations. The guy who in the past has put up signs, was once again putting up signs near the elevator. I had no idea what they said, but I was leaving to go to work and really didn't care either. When I got home, there were a series of plastic bags taped to the wall. Perhaps because I had no idea what the signs and labels said, I looked rather intensely at the contents to try to figure out what the signs might say.

(As an aside, it's important to note that context is very important when you don't understand a language. While I was getting my hair cut yesterday, I honestly had no idea what the lady was saying, but because I was sitting in a barber shop, I could at least guess and assume what she was saying. If those same words were repeated on the street I would have had no context and therefore been completely unaware of what the lady was saying.)

Anyways, I soon figured out the context of the contents and labels. Shortly after the phrase, "is that a condom?" left my mouth, I realized that the rest of the contents in that bag (and the one next to it) were female sanitary pads. (Which look strangely different here. I have ideas as to why but that's not important or appropriate for here.)

After attempting to re-read the sign over the labels and plastic bags taped to the wall, I soon realized that the sign was talking about things that shouldn't be flushed down the toilet. Again, as I gained more context, I started to understand what the things were. Two of the other bags were what I can only assume were the non-dissolvable parts of many tampons. The third set of bags, as I was able to figure out through the wonders of an internet translator, were fur.

The point of this story is that for about a week I got to look at things that apparently shouldn't be flushed down the toilet every time I came home. (I won't post the pictures...)

Consider this a comedy routine

I mentioned that quite a lot has happened over the last 11 or so days. Instead of writing one very large update, I'm going to put up a series of small updates throughout the day/next few days as I take breaks from my writing. As most of the things I'll write about will be either humors or just strange, consider this to be a disjointed stand-up routine.

That said, I'm currently working on rewriting a grant application. I'm supposed to be working on a different project as of this morning, but I wanted to get all of my ideas into the document before I switch over. As I'm working,(as in literally 30 seconds ago) Microsoft word has decided to crash. Doing what you may ask? "Saving AutoRecovery file" So Word has managed to crash itself creating a backup file for in case it crashes. Lovely. Hopefully the file was created before it crashed since I need to close it now.

Happy belated birthday

Last Monday marked the 18th birthday for Ukraine. They celebrated similarly to how the USA celebrates. Lots of beer food and fireworks. Oh yeah there was a military parade with a bunch of fighter jets and army things on the street. I'd post pictures but I'm pretty beat from work. It's rather strange to see a bunch of children (and adults) climbing on tanks, missile launching vehicles, and other types of army machinery.

Certainly an interesting thought is this though. Rather often you'll hear people in the USA talk about how the "founding fathers must be rolling in their graves" about whatever is going on in politics that week/month. When's the last time Ben Franklin or George Washington gave their input? Here though, most of those founding fathers are still alive, and some are still quite active in politics. Now, obviously the land has been around for more than 18 years, but the country has only been independent for 18 years.)

11 days later

I haven't put anything up here in 11 days. I've been quite busy. My plan is to fill in some blanks over the next few days. However I'm not doing that now. This post is mainly to make me feel like I have to follow up on the claims I'm currently making.

I see you there

Perhaps I've mentioned it here before, but I have what I would describe as a "communication problem" with the people I work with. The problem is that we seem to have different expectations on what a correct response time for an email should be. 1 hour? 1 day? 1 MONTH? (Not kidding about the 1 month thing either.)

Anyways, if you work and have any sort of message client active, and it shows that you are active, than people can see that you are there. Which means you have no excuse to not answer a short 2 sentence email in less than an hour.

Cleaning Lady

So courtesy of my land lady, there is a lady cleaning my apartment right now. I'm fine with it. I've been working a lot lately and haven't had much time to clean. I actually woke up early this morning to clean up before the lady came because it had gotten that bad.

Anyways, she is in there right now on her knees cleaning the toilet. The toilet that I really need to use. I can't imagine anything more disrespectful than asking her to leave so I can dirty the toilet up as she's cleaning it, but man do I need to go.

Oh technology

I'm going through my manual and editing it by hand on printed paper. I thought of would be easier to get a feel for things this way. So as I just reached the end of a page and went to take a break my mind had the thought of hitting ctrl+s to save my work.

Yeah.

You silly Americans

I try to keep this blog politic free. It prevents anything from coming back and biting me in the butt later on in life. That said, I keep reading some stuff that really makes me wonder about the brain power of the American people.

It appears that lately there has been a rather fierce discussion on the government being involved in health care. My opinion on the matter isn't what's important here. The topic of this post is the people who I keep reading about. I can only laugh when I read about these fanatical people claiming that the government shouldn't and can't be involved in providing health benefits for the American people. Do any of these people work? Do they realize that not only is the government already involved in health care, but that they are supporting it? See that FICA on your paycheck. Yeah, there it is. Not only is it happening, but you're supporting it.

I know I've mentioned something similar many times, but there really needs to be a test that people need to take before being allowed to even show up to certain events and open their mouths. This one as an example: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13442226/

Finally, a quick note about the health care business. I don't know anything about health care. I know a bit about business. Combining these two, I can fairly safely say that the health care company CEOs don't go into work every day thinking about how many sick people they can help. They think about making money. The only incentive they have for keeping you alive is so that you can get sick again later on and pay them more money. The CEO of Delta doesn't go into work thinking about how many people he can get to their vacations, and Steve Jobs doesn't secretly wake up every morning and want to know what's on your iPod.

Also, I scored a 70% on that MSNBC quiz. Not sure how anyone is supposed to know the answer to 19, so consider a 95% as perfect.

How do you people stay skinny?

Something I've always wondered is how the women in this city stay slim. The young ones at least - most of the older women have let themselves go. As I'm walking to work and eating a banana at 10 in the morning, I pass a tiny girl in an even tinier dress eating ice cream. And it's not just her, everyone in the city is always eating ice cream. On hot days there are lines around each and every ice cream stand in the city. It's quite funny actually, all of the women are eating ice cream and all of the men are drinking beer.

Also, there is a girl sitting next to be in the place I'm at. When I was outside and saw her I thought it was a man in a wig. Her arms looked huge and a little hairy. Now that I've sat down next to her I can't tell. I can see hair on her toes, which I would like to think its a fairly masculine thing ...or at least that women would do something about that. Even still, I really can't tell. It would probably be inappropriate to ask her to put her arms out to do the elbow test too. Long story on that one, but women's arms go back further than mens.

No Prostitutes

Recently a lot of messages have been posted in my building. The photo above is one of them. A while back one was to let us know that the hot water would be shut off for the 2 week period that started the day I got back. By the way, it's been more than 2 weeks and the hot water still hasn't been turned on. While my building has an electric boiler, the water only seems to go to the bathroom (which makes no sense). As a result, I have to wash my dishes in my bathtub when I'm looking to wash just one or two things and not run the dishwasher.

Anyways, I sent photos of the signs to my friend at the local office here and asked him if there was anything important that I needed to know. He called me back and told me that it was all ...um, bologna. He said that one of the bullets included that if you have a prostitute over that you should walk her to the door outside and not leave them in the stairwell.

My guess is that something happened while I was gone for 7 weeks. When I got back there were 2 security cameras installed - one focused on the walkway to the building. I'm not sure if there is a roving pack of prostitutes terrorizing my neighborhood or not, but I suppose anything is possible.

Where has all the water gone?

So I just went to take a shower so I could get rid of my bedhead look before I go out, and it appears that there is no water in my apartment. I'm hoping that the engineers are in the process of turning the hot water for the building back on, and in the process they had to shut everything off. I suppose I'll just have to go work for a while and be dirty.

Also, I didn't know how to send it back since they don't speak english. I also found out after checking out the menu that apparently I got a 'Greek Salad.'

One of those days...

I asked for a ceasar salad today for lunch. I pretty much get the exact same thing every day; except for the few days they don't have it. (And the girl who took my order damn well knows that.) Somehow I ended up with whatever this thing is. There was a large chunk of tofu in the middle that I scraped off to the left hand side. This isn't exactly what I had in mind for breakfast/lunch today.

No Words

Kentucky or Kiev?

I've seen many a rat tail in my day. Besides being a staple of the NASCAR crowd in Kentucky, they are immensely popular here in Kiev (along with the mullet). This however, was such an exemplary example, that I had to take a picture.

Quite frankly, I don't understand.

Saw this sign in the bathroom of the coffee shop the other day. I honestly don't understand what the problem is with throwing the toilet paper into the toilet. One of the things that has impressed me the most about this country is the incredible sucking power of the toilets here. I won't go as far as to say they are uncloggable (I'll wait until my brother visits to say that), but they certainly are built for strength. That said, I don't understand why people are being encouraged to throw their dirty toilet paper into the garbage can next to the toilet. I don't want to see that, plus it smells like, well, shit.

A few years back I stayed in a hostel that had a similar sign up, but it was because they were recycling the ...stuff. I'm all for saving the planet, but the idea of my Starbucks coffee cup, which is made of some percent of recycled paper, coming from recycled paper with someones shit on it just goes too far.

How do you spell consise?

Regardless of what my mother says, I was never a good writer. Actually, she'll tell you that I never was a good writer, and has no idea when I became a good one. I'm still working on an answer to that, and quite frankly don't see the same thing as her. One of my biggest problems with writing is brevity (fancy word for someone who doesn't write well). I've never been great at getting to the point when I write, and usually my editing process involves taking three sentences and making them into one.

In a great bout of irony, my current job involves writing. A LOT of writing. This week I have been working on an educational document that will be given to scientists to explain to them how to write the executive summary of a business plan. Among the things that are so wrong with this assignment - I'm writing a educational document that explains how to incorrectly do something. The executive summary is supposed to be done last! (or at least after you've fleshed out all of your ideas and are more than halfway done..)

That said, I find myself writing not only how to write the summary of a document that doesn't exist, but what you should have included in that document, and why it was important to include it. I have all of the concepts written and fleshed out. At this point I'm taking them and putting them into the format that I finally decided on. That in itself took a few hours.

So today I was working on this document. After roughly 7 hours and more than 2,100 words later (5 pages), I was finished with the section that explains how to write the financial information that should be included in an executive summary. By the way, the financial section of an executive summary averages about TWO paragraphs in length.

Now, while the information I've included is (to me) relevant and important, something tells me my bosses were expecting something much more concise in nature. So now, while I want to show them this section to make sure that it's what they were expecting, I also want to try to shorten it. I just can't figure out what isn't important.

C & D

Mentioned on the earlier list were these two items:

C) I had no food
D) My apartment smelled like a dead animal

A while back I got an email saying that there was an 'electrical problem' in my apartment. The landlady was checking to see when I was getting back in town to see when she had to have it fixed by. No big deal. When I left nothing was broken, so clearly something happened while I was gone and she was there. As far as I knew that was the end of the story.

So when I got back into my apartment and opened the door, the first thing that came out of my mouth was a four letter word. In addition to being rather hot (it was mid 80's for who knows how many days with no ventilation), I was greeted by the smell of chicken and death. It smelled like someone had left a pack of frozen chicken out in the sun for a week and nobody opened the windows to try to get the smell out. Yeah, welcome home.

It turns out that the 'electrical problem' that happened when I was gone was actually an electrical outage. The landlady isn't exactly sure how long the power was out before she found it, but needless to say, the roughly 10 pounds of frozen chicken I had in my freezer didn't appreciate it. I also had a pack of sauce and meatballs waiting in the freezer that I figured I would eat my first few days back while I restocked my food. That wasn't the case.

I also noticed that one of my containers of JIF peanut butter was missing. I know I didn't use the entire thing before I left. I'm fairly sure that while I was gone the landlady put it in the refrigerator while she was cleaning (as she's done once before). Then, when she was cleaning out my kitchen for things that went bad when the power went out, she must have thrown it away. Clearly this woman doesn't know how peanut butter works.

So for my first two nights back I had a tomato and cucumber salad for dinner with some bread. I hadn't had the time to get anything else. I went out and got them the day I got back. Other than that, the only things still left in my apartment were some cans of tomato paste, an unopened jar of peanut butter, some herbs and spices, and 2 containers of Dave's Insanity Sauce. (Which, while I was looking at the label this weekend, claims it can be used to remove the finish from wooden floors.)

Where to start

I think that because there is so much I could write here that I've just kept putting it off. So, I'll start breaking things down in pieces.

A) I had no internet
Even though I put 2 months worth of money into my internet account before I left, somehow the account managed to run out of money. I looked at the online account history and it looks like that for every day I was late on the internet bill they took about 4 UAH out of my account. The funny part is this - because I was 10 UAH short on the amount I left in my account, they slowly brought it down to 0 and then disconnected the service 4 UAH at a time from 90.

B) I had no hot water
This I half expected. Every year, the city of Kiev shuts off hot water for two weeks in rotating sections of the city. My apartment is located in the section of town that had the hot water shut off on July 21st - also known as the day I got back from a 7 week trip.

As a result of this, I got to take 3 'showers' with my electric kettle and a water pitcher. Fortunately this only lasted 3 days, and after that the electric or gas boiler in my apartment building was fixed. I don't really know what was wrong with it, but my landlady had to get someone to come and fix it.

I'm Alive

More information forthcoming. In the meantime, how about a pop quiz.

When I arrived back to my apartment:
A) I had no internet
B) I had no hot water
C) I had no food
D) My apartment smelled like a dead animal
E) My suitcase had been ripped
F) I was attacked by my shower
G) All of the above

Welcome to Kentucky

I should clearly come to this Starbucks more often. The children have all left and it's quieted down for lunch time. At this point the majority of the people I see coming in are either retired or just older in general. One specific person who just came in and sat down practically in front of me is a real piece of work. Probably in her early 30's or late 20's, this lady has unwrapped a pack of camel cigarettes and is now using the plastic tear strip to floss her teeth. She's not being discreet about it either, she's completely going into flossing her teeth as if she's getting ready for a hot date to come and visit her here.

Starbucks is not a playground

I realize I'm working in a public place, but there are 5 children running around me at this Starbucks. There's really nothing like watching a 2 year old girl with a booger hanging out of her nose lick a table, chair, and floor while trying to work.

Crazy Lady II

So after the old lady talked to and subsequentially drank some of her iced coffee yesterday she left. About 15 minutes later I saw her in the parking lot talking to a young woman who was coming into Starbucks. It looked like she was offering her drink to another person. After the young woman came in I asked her what the older lady said to her and it was something along the lines of “Life just keeps getting better.” My guess is she spiked her drink with something.

Jump forward 12 hours and I’m back at Starbucks sitting in the same seat. Out of the corner of my eye comes the exact same lady – same clothes and same two duffel bags over her shoulders. She still had the large plastic cup in her hand from her drink last night. So in she comes to Starbucks and gets in line again. I’m wondering if she gets a discount for being homeless, or spends her change on frappachinos. I suppose that’s better than booze. Anyways, she hasn’t asked me if I want to sample her drink yet today. Actually, I don’t see her in the line anymore. Maybe she’s showering in the ladies room.

Crazy Lady

So I’m sitting at a Starbucks minding my own business and working on a report. I’ve been here for a while the crowd is fairly typical for a Starbucks located near a mall and on a main street of the city - a mix of some college freshmen, a few mid-20's, and most of the older people have all left since it's past 8. Out of nowhere, an older lady – probably aged 50-60 comes up to me with what appears to be a frozen coffee drink of some kind and asks me if I want to “take a spoonful of her drink before she dives into it.” I replied by saying that I wasn’t interested but thanked her for the offer. She replied by saying something but I wasn’t completely paying attention and put my earphones back in. She walked across the room and appeared to start talking to her drink before “diving in.” I’m not sure exactly what happened but I’m slightly disturbed.

Too Soon?

A few random notes:

MJ died today. To me he died years ago. Between the lack of a career and looking like a zombie I can't really act that impacted. I'm wondering though if he even needs to be embalmed given the extensive plastic surgery he has had. Also, I've read that Madonna has been pretty upset about the whole ordeal. I wonder if she'll try to adopt any of MJ's 3 kids.

The other day I saw two different girls with tattoos of someones name on their neck. It's like a hickey that never goes away.

I discovered a box of rice in our pantry that proudly states the rice comes from the USA. I never actually knew we made rice here.

The mail I got reminding me to renew my KY drivers license was postmarked as coming from somewhere in Tennessee. Strange.

I've noticed this week coffee shops in the US are pretty different than in Ukraine. Besides not selling beer here, there are fewer people in each coffee shop but everyone stays longer. In Ukraine there are a lot of people and they come and go fairly quickly.

I've also noticed that I find myself staring at less women here in the US. Not in a perverted way, but I don't see as many head turning women here. Granted I'm stuck at home with my mom most of the days, when I do get out it's mainly stay at home soccer-moms who aren't working and anyone my age is busy at their job. In Ukraine the youth work much less and jobs are mainly things for 'adults' and people after they've received their university degrees.

I can't believe I'm typing this

I may get stuck in Cancun for 2 extra days. I don't know if anyone has ever been forced to stay here to continue their vacation in a timeshare they have til the end of the week, but I may have it happen to me. The direct flight on Thursday now looks to have more standby passengers than seats. The flights to Atlanta are open, but by the time they land the only flights left to Cincy are all oversold. I would certainly rather sleep in Cancun than the ATL airport.

I'm still working on things, but for now they don't look great.

Cancun

So it's been 10 days since I've written anything here. It's not that nothing ridiculous has happened in Cancun, but quite frankly none of it is repeatable since my family would kill me for doing so.

Also, I have sunburn. Twice. I'm ready to get out of Cancun but don't want to start working again. I just don't sit still very well, and at this point it's a whole lot of sitting around down here.

28 hours, 10 minutes

It took me 28 Hours and 10 minutes to touch down in Cincinnati after I left Tashkent, Uzbekistan. I got home EARLIER than I expected because a flight to Cincy from JFK was 2 hours later, and I was able to get back here around 8:30 instead of nearly 11:30. I absolutely passed out on the flight from NY to Cincy, and that helped me stay awake until around almost 11 last night. Strangely I feel (yet) no effects of jetlag. All it took was basically staying up for two days straight - between not sleeping the day before I left, and not being able to sleep for most of the time I was flying between Uzbekistan and NY.

Also, I'm making eggs for breakfast and put some PAM in the pan. There is a freshness label on the can on PAM. What the hell part of conola oil - the main ingredient - goes bad? Or maybe it's the water, which is the other ingredient. Just seems like a marketing gimmick to me. If anyone is dumb enough to throw out their half used can of the stuff because "it's not fresh anymore", then they don't deserve to keep their money.

Thoughts on flying in Asia

They are clearly still scared of swine flu and bird flu here. Half the people on the plane were wearing surgical masks, and a large group of the staff at the Istanbul airport are wearing them too. If I had to sneeze I'd probably do it in the direction of one of those people since they are clearly protected from anything I may give them, as opposed to someone without a mask.

Also, in Europe it's fairly normal for people on the plane to clap when the plane lands. I wonder if they would boo if the plane crashed.

Everything you read on the interwebs is true!

Words can't describe the feeling when you experience something you read on the internet about a specific culture. Case in point - Toasting in Uzbekistan. It's worth noting that this toasting procedure is applicable to almost all of the former soviet union.

Anyways, while doing some research before this trip I came across toasting/business lunch customs for Uzbekistan. Without fail, the first three toasts over lunch will be for 1) To Health, 2) To the women/any women who are present, 3) To the families of the people present. So, while at lunch yesterday (as in June 4th) we went out to lunch with the Deputy Director of the institute we were visiting and someone else. Quite frankly I don't actually know the title of the other person, but you could tell he was a subordinate of the Deputy Director. Anyways, we ordered a bottle of vodka. Within 5 minutes he was proposing the first toast - for the health of everyone present. A few minutes later the waiter came around and refilled the shot glasses. (An interesting side note is that he warned me he was drinking 'bottoms-up' and said I could follow along if I was comfortable.) After our glasses were filled back up be quickly moved to make another toast. This time to the women - specifically Miss Parker. Once again, bottoms up. (I'm drinking bottoms up - Miss Parker is sipping her vodka - I think she only claims to be from Bella-Russia.)

Also worth noting, is the reason why the deputy director claims vodka is important with meals in Uzbekistan. Traditionally the food is cooked with a lot of fat. The food we ate had a lot of fat on it, so I can attest to the truthfulness of his comment. He claims that drinking amounts of vodka is a way of naturally encouraging the stomach to start working so that it's ready to break down the fat with the meals. While I'll give some credence to this theory, the man had a bit of a pot-belly, so I assume he wasn't drinking enough.

Anyways, back to the drinking. Knowing that it's customary for the guests to make at least one toast, and seeing that the bottle was getting towards the bottom - I moved to make the next toast before he did. As is with custom, it was to the families of everyone involved. Little did I know that he was going to order ANOTHER bottle of vodka after we finished that one.

End of the story - I had 5 shots of vodka at lunch while I was working yesterday. Fortunately I was able to keep drinking water and eating bread and meat in between them. I think it served as a great warm-up for my trip to Cancun in the coming days. Although that's typically tequila, and that stuff is the devils water.

Time Travel

Admit it, there have been times when you wished there were more than 24 hours in the day. Unfortunately there is nothing you can do about making the day longer. Right?

Wrong. I've found a solution to this problem. I'll be chasing the sun tomorrow. I leave my hotel in 3 hours to go to the airport. I'll be flying from Uzbekistan to Istanbul, have a 3.5 hour layover, take an 11.5 hour flight to New York (JFK), have another 3.5 hour layover, then fly to Cincinnati and land on the same day - 27 hours later. That's right. 27 hours in the day. Time travel in its finest.

I should be up in the air for 19.5 hours tomorrow. Considering I'll be flying against the rotation of the Earth, I wonder if there is a way to quantify the amount of distance I'll travel due to the rotation of the planet instead of the jet propulsion related to the 3 airplanes I'll be on. In all I will be flying about 8950 miles to get to Cancun. 10 time zones. Should be a good time.

Kazakhstan: Great Success!

My visit to Kazakhstan was actually not a great success. While it was certainly worth visiting for work, I can not say that I would return for my own personal travel. As for Kazakhstan, I’ll divide my comments into a few categories.

The Hotel:

The hotel was crap. I can’t imagine how they continue to get $190 per night for the place. My room had a small twin bed that was very uncomfortable. They charged $29 for 24 hours of wifi. While I will admit their wifi was fast – it wasn’t worth the $120 I spent over the 4 days I was there. They did have a cheaper option though. They have a dialup connection you can use for $1 per hour. Perhaps I’m spoiled, but what good is dialup? Especially for downloading movies because there is nothing around the hotel to do.

There was no safe in the hotel, and the rooms were certainly old – you needed a key to open the doors, as in a regular key. You also had to remember to lock your door when you left, especially since there was no safe to put your stuff in if you forgot to lock your door.

The hotel room did come with a feature I’ve never seen before. As you can see in the picture below, the bathroom came equipped with a wall to rest your head on while sitting on the toilet. I think there might have been 18 inches of space between the toilet and the wall. If I was any taller I probably would have had my knees on the wall to even sit down on the toilet. You can also see that the water is blue. This isn’t for cleaning, but is so you can stay away from people who have been drinking out of the toilet. Anyone who had blue or green lips should be avoided immediately.

Another defining characteristic of the hotel was terrible food. The breakfast was terrible. The dinner was terrible. None of it was fresh, and it all sat waiting for you to find it in an electric warming device of sorts. Fortunately breakfast was included in our rate – because there is no way I would willingly pay the roughly $28 for breakfast every day. For me that consisted of 2 glasses of water and something that was a combination of a crepe and a pancake. The one night I went to dinner I basically had a plate of rice with some random meats – none of which were worth going back for second servings of.

The Work:

There are three centers in Kazakhstan that we had to visit. The first is a high security nuclear research center. In addition to all of the paperwork we filled out before we arrived so we could get in, we needed to bring our identification papers to the center. However nobody told me this. Our contact in Kazakhstan asked if I had my passport when we were about 10 minutes from the center. I replied by saying that I didn’t know I needed it and that nobody told me to bring it. My colleague – known here as Miss Parker – tried to give me crap for not knowing to bring my passport. I wasn’t in the mood for it and responded with the fact that I’ve needed it for 0 of the previous centers, and that I can’t be held responsible for knowing things that they haven’t told me. I eventually was able to get in, but it took the person we were meeting with having the director of the institute talking directly to the head of security. An almost expired state of Kentucky drivers license is just enough to get into a national nuclear laboratory. That particular meeting went moderately well despite my translator not being that great.

The second and third visits were much worse. Between realizing that the centers had been swallowed by other institutes in a communist equipment sharing program, to the fact that the translator/country contact pawned off her translating duties to any random semi-english speaking student she could find at each center, I really was not able to collect much data relating to the questions that I wanted to ask about the centers. Miss Parker and the country contact spoke exclusively in Russian with everyone we met with, did not include me in any of the discussions, and left me with half-assed translations that were summaries of what people were saying. I was also called out for asking questions about information that we were provided with – in RUSSIAN. Apparently I should have had my Russian-english translator out working through the documents before I asked any questions. When I asked if Miss Parker planned on translating any of the documents for me so I can write my reports she said that someone at the office in DC has an intern that I should get in touch with. I’m sure the intern will love to see 50 pages worth of presentations and other stuff show up in her email. I don’t expect Miss Parker to translate the entire thing, but I would at least expect her to give me subject headings or some idea of what was provided.

I think the easiest way to sum up the work section of the trip is that I was the dumb English speaking third wheel. I’m not bitter about it, I just don’t know how I’m supposed to do my job. When the reports are half as long as the other ones and someone asks why I’ll just point to what happened.

The City:

Whomever designed Almaty must have been in love with the grid system. The entire city is one large series of blocks that are almost perfectly and equally spaced. The streets are lined with trees, but not enough to absorb all of the car fumes from the air. The city smells like auto exhaust. It also has a very high altitude. These two conditions make trying to run rather difficult – I think I got two blocks away before I turned around and went back to the hotel.

The streets of the city were slightly different from the streets you would expect to see in the USA. Besides allowing you to simulate what it would feel like to drive across the craters of the moon, the streets allow for additional excitement related to the fact that there are no lines to designate specific lanes. While the driving experience wasn’t as terrifying as Azerbaijan or Georgia, it was still something I would describe as frightening. Essentially you never knew if the bump you felt was someone hitting you or that you hit a pothole. Additionally, sometimes you swerved away from cars and sometimes you swerved away from potholes.

The last night I was there I was on my own for dinner – actually every night I was on my own for dinner. The last night though, I went to four restaurants before I found one with an English menu. Things started off well. They brew their own beer. If you want one you have two choices, large or small. Simply having a menu translated into English does not necessarily mean that the menu is actually IN English. As you can see from some of the pictures I took, well, the translation sucked. Some of my favorite dishes were: ‘Juicy Roast’, ‘Meat by on Chinese’, and my personal favorite ‘Cauliflower in Claire’ – I hope they pay that poor girl well. I ordered the ‘Firm Dish’ which was supposed to be beef, mutton, and chicken. I was able to figure out which one was chicken, but have no idea which of the other two things that came out was beef and which was the mutton.

Other random notes:

In Kazakhstan when you have a guest over to your house, or any other type of important meeting at the house it is customary to serve the head of a goat. It’s a tradition that the oldest person gets the tongue, the youngest get the ears, and so on. I knew this when I left. However knowing about the tradition is completely different than seeing a line of 6 or 7 goat heads for sale by a sidewalk street vendor.

While I was walking I came across a long sidewalk that was filled with people holding up signs with numbers on them and letters I couldn’t read. At first it seemed like the majority of the people were women and I assumed this is how the prostitution in the country worked. Later I came across some men, and some men who were too old to be involved in prostitution – or at least too old to want to think about them being involved in it. Also, because of Borat, I thought that maybe the women were listing their prices to plow fields. Considering that some of the prices people were holding up were roughly $15, I assumed it wasn’t prostitution and was various work.

It turns out that Craigslist in Kazakhstan is actually the sidewalk of a street. Most of the people there are trying to rent apartments, sell services, and sell other random things. I also found out that at night you can find a prostitute there. You also get hassled by the gypsies, but that service is free.

Finally, in what was probably the biggest shock for me (and I don’t know why) is that the majority of the Kazak people are all Asian. The boarder with China should have probably given me a hint, but I never connected the idea in my head. The country is basically part of the former Mongolian Empire, and many of the people have Mongol roots. Yes, Mongol is a proper word.

I’m in Uzbekistan now and will write more about that sometime later. The hotel is a whole lot better, internet is free, the breakfast buffet is wonderful, and the women who work here are almost all amazingly gorgeous. Also, while I was flying here I was paging through the in-flight magazine. There was an article on some Uzbek circus families that are world famous. I came across one person that was really special though. I don’t remember her name, but they introduced her in the article like this, “Woman’s name, Uzbekistans first woman clown.” I found that to be an interesting title. I probably would have that put on my business card if it were true.