Rage

So I'm up late tonight - it's 4:40. I've been watching the villanova/Pitt game on CBS. With 45 seconds left there is some sort of error. I refresh the page to find out that my 20 gigs of bandwidth for the month have run out. How unbelievably amazing. I got to miss the buzzer beater finish happen on the yahoo boxscore from my phone. How fun. In a few hours when I get up I'm going to get this thing back on, and possibly choke someone.

Well that's swell

I just got an email from the embassy - this is the main part of it:

"Recently, private U.S. citizens resident in or visiting Kyiv have reported seven violent criminal assaults and robberies directed against foreign nationals by a gang of street criminals. These reported activities have occurred in and around the areas surrounding O’Brien’s Pub and the Hyatt Hotel in Kyiv."


Basically what it says is that the bar I go to all of the time, and the area where I live is where this has possibly been happening. To be honest, I'm sure part of it had to do with St. Patricks day this week where there was an outstanding supply of drunk English speaking foreigners in the area to rob. Anyways, I'm off to go study - pretty much in the area it just described.

Holy Crap I think spring is coming!

I think that the rain/snow/sleet mix today might have been winters swan song. I just looked at the 10 day forecast (as if a 1 day forecast was actually accurate) for Kiev and was blown away. Now only is it supposed to be sunny for the next 10 days, but the temperature is supposed to go from around 30 today, up to 61 on the 2nd of April. This is good news indeed, especially since I can get back to running.

Physics be damned

So I was just walking home (not from the bar - that 'racing' post was from yesterday and for some reason my phone just sent it) and experienced something rather strange. It was snowing, raining, AND sleeting at the same time. I didn't know that was even possible because it would imply there were 3 different temperatures happening at the same time.

Racing

So I decided to go get lunch and break from work (around 3 to give you an idea of my schedule) and went to the local bar cafe. They have some tv on and it's a satelite feed from the uk. They were showing sports then a commercial comes on and it's clear the channel has changed. It's a promo for the racing channel. All sorts of cars and real race car driving - not that NASCAR crap. Formula one and such. Then they to to the programming ...horse racing. Just not what you would expect to see on the racing channel.

You've got to be kidding me

I just spent almost FOUR HOURS on Skype with some mushroom farming lady. From 8:15 to 12:57 - working over her slides. Half of which was me telling her the exact things I wrote to her in her powerpoint a week ago, and the other half was me just trying to understand what in the hell her technology does so I could try to convert it into some type of English. Things like this:

• Economy of energy raw (cost price reduction 1кг mushrooms a minimum on 30 %)

What the hell does that mean? Needless to say what I thought I was going to do tonight didn't happen. It's now 1AM, I'm going to go to bed, and you can bet I'm counting those 4 hours of work onto my soon to be shortened work day tomorrow (or sometime this week).

Note to self

If I ever start working in an R&B dj group with a black guy do not let us name the group black and white. Also don't let us try to rap over almost every song we play. I'm fairly certain I am going to pay the ten dollars to go to the club upstairs before the night is over since R&B night or more like Karaoke night for these two DJs.

Sigh...


UPDATE: So I tried to go upstairs but I couldn't get in. I'm not sure if they didn't have change (not likely), were full (not likely), or it was because I wasn't a girl (bingo!). I went back to the floor I was on and eventually found some people who spoke some English so I stayed for an hour or so more before I left.

I eventually came home and watched the end of the basketball games. I felt quite dirty as I was watching Duke and wishing they would lose because I hate them but hoping they would win for my bracket. They can lose the next round to Villanova now though - which means I can express all sorts of hatred for them in next weekends game.

It's Sunday. I have some work that I thought I was going to do this weekend but it may not happen. I have to spend a bit of time cleaning up my apartment - as it's gotten pretty messy over the last 5 weeks. Also, Sunday is a part of the weekend, and I really don't feel like working today.

St Patricks

So I'm at the local Irish bar with a bunch of Irish people who keep
buying me beer. How else could this be a better night? Well for
starters I wouldn't have accidentally agreed to meet with some clients
at 10:30 am. Besides that it's a great night, and still just 8pm.

emails

I just spent 2 hours sending emails. Seriously that's ridiculous. It should not take that long to send out 8 presentations and a large email to all of the participants with general notes.

Hopefully I don't offend anyone. I wasn't particularly harsh, but some of the presentations have 35 - 40 comments on them and there are an average of 11 slides per presentation. Some of these things are just so hard to not comment on. One example being: "They are behind us". Seriously what the hell is that supposed to tell me? Okay, so your competition is behind you? Are you in a line with them? Oh, your product is better than theirs. What makes yours better? When were you going to tell me?

...back to work

Saturday = Snow/Rain

Seriously, every single Saturday (and usually Sunday) it either snows or rains here. I know this for a fact because typically every Saturday I try to go out and I'm always debating between wearing somewhat nice shoes or my waterproof boots. EVERY SATURDAY. It's snowing and raining today. I knew this would happen though, so I took yesterday off from work since it was 'warm' and around 43. The other reason for that is that I have work that has to get done this weekend. There are around 12 presentations that had to be submitted by Friday - I've received 8 (exactly what I expected actually - 66%) I'm getting ready to go chill at the coffee shop and page through them and make notes. I briefly looked at a few of them, and one stood out from the rest. I'm fairly sure someone else with a business background made the presentation because there are 10 additional pages of financial documents, science and technology background, and other information in an appendix. The other 7 can't come up with enough business language to fill the 10 slide template out - let alone make 10 pages of an appendix. Quite frankly I don't even know what the product is, but I'd assume that team will win some money for the simple fact that they have their 'stuff' together.

This weekend I'm going to try to get my hair cut. That should be fun. I've found a few pictures of my hair how I want it, and we'll just have to see how that goes. I think before I go I'll look up a few words and phrases - shorter, longer, don't cut my ear off, how much, and 1.5 centimeters.

Dinfast

Din-fast (n) [din-fuhst] : From the latin word 'velum'
(1) Derived from the latin word 'to fast', dinfast is a meal eaten late in the evening followed almost immediately by a long sleep, or fast. Typically resulting in a non-hungry feeling the morning after. (2) A solution to the fact that your meeting went 1.5 hours late and you didn't have time to buy anything for dinner or breakfast before the stores closed.

Chicken or the Egg?

So I went yesterday to get some chicken at the grocery store and there wasn't any. I figured that I would go back today and there would be some. There wasn't. I did buy some eggs though so I can hopefully make my own chickens soon.

Yesterday there was a very large line in the fruit store. They had bananas. They had a line. For me, the line won and I went home bananaless. Today there was no line, and no bananas. I was left wondering what came first, the banana or the line?

The fruit store did have orange juice today. They did not have it yesterday. I bought all 3 cartons they had. They have none now.

Uneventful day

Today was fairly uneventful. I woke up around 7:30 to do some work - started around 8. I worked on and off until around 12:30 when I decided to get some lunch. There is a pizza place a few blocks from here I've passed a few times that I went to. Pizza was good. I got a large so I would have leftovers for tomorrow or for dinner - depending on if I was going to make the effort to walk to the grocery store. The large pizza I got was 40 uah - about 6 dollars, however I didn't realize that the tea I got with it was 30 uah - about 4 dollars. I ate half of it and got a box to bring the rest home.

After dropping off my half a pizza I went to the coffee shop and worked for another 3 hours. With all of the data aggregation I've done over the last week, today I managed to put together an 8 page feasibility plan template. It's still a work in progress, but I have my notes of what I want to write in each section and also a few comments to myself. I need to work on the flow of it so it's more logical tomorrow. Eventually I went home and caught up on emails and some other work related stuff.

Soon after I decided that I would go to the grocery store to find some chicken. After walking down there I found out that unless I wanted a whole chicken there wasn't anything left - and there were only 3 whole chickens left at that. I went to look for some orange juice, but alas there was none. Strange because there wasn't any orange juice at the other store I went to beforehand on my way home from the coffee shop. In fact, it seems like the juice selection has been dwindling and the stock isn't being replaced. I found small juicebox sized cartons of OJ and got 4 of them - 1/4 liter a piece. While walking home I realized that it was still warm enough (about 42) and light enough to go for a quick run. I came home and got ready in a hurry and went for a 20 minute run. When I got back I worked out for about 45 minutes using the gym I've been slowly putting together here in my apartment.

After relaxing for about 30 minutes on the computer and catching up with the day I made dinner. Not pizza, not chicken, but a few scrambled eggs. After dinner and a quick shower it was almost 10. Certainly not time to relax yet - I went back to the coffee house to study some Russian verbs. So now it's just shy of midnight and I'm writing this. I think I may relax for a half an hour or so before I go to bed.

I think Wednesday I am going to try to go to (and find) the Armenian embassy so I can get my visa taken care of. Thursday I am meeting Tim for lunch, and supposedly sometime this week Nina - one of the scientists I met this week - is going to call me so I can work on her presentation before she takes off for a conference somewhere next week.

This is the bathroom at the building I've been at for the last two
days. The toilet paper provided for this hole was cut up squares of
newspaper.

Breakfast of Champions

So I think I'm eating spaghetti for breakfast tomorrow morning. By the time I got home from work today the main grocery store was closed, and the smaller place that just sells fruit and vegetables only had bananas that were brown and black. If I was making some sort of banana shake that would probably be okay, but I really don't like my bananas looking like they were jumped in a dark alley. They also didn't have any apples left. There were onions, but I just can't imagine biting into one of them has the same sense of satisfaction.

Also, today was an eye opening day in the sense that I'd have never thought it would be so difficult to get a scientist to answer a question like "What does your technology do?", or "Who are the potential customers?" I do however have a better understanding of multilayer synthetic crystals and how they relate to carbon testing spectrometers. I'm also fairly sure that one of the scientists I was talking to today must have been thinking, "You idiot, how could you not know that every steel production facility uses spectrometers to measure carbon levels in their products."

Also, I listened to a 30 minute presentation about mushroom growing substrates. Talk about exciting.

Lastly, since these scientists are all paid by the government and work at govt. labs - and as you've heard me mention things are a little crazy here with the financial situation and things...I've learned that these scientists don't know month to month what they are getting paid. One of the guys who I've spent a lot of time with talking about many things has explained how last month he only received half of his salary because that is what was available. He is working this month on his research and doesn't know if he will receive 50% or 100% of his salary for this month. I had two takeaways from this: 1) That sucks. 2) At least these people are saving enough of their money to get through such a situation. While I'm sure some haven't saved enough and are in serious trouble, I'm guessing that there are more people here who are ready to find out they are only receiving half of their salary than people in the US who are prepared to find that out.

I have pictures to put up soon, but I'm quite tired and will be passing out shortly.

Me tired

So today I left my apartment to go to the conference I was attending at 8:45 AM. I just got home at 11 PM. In the process I learned that going out to dinner means that no matter what you ordered the bill is split evenly, so even though I didn't order a salad or soup, had no tea or coffee, and ordered the cheapest meal, I payed an even split of the bill. I would have been fine paying up to 150 or so since my dinner was 107 and I have no idea what my coke cost, but 240 just doesn't seem fair. Sure, it's about 18 dollars, but I'm trying to be as cheap as humanly possible here. For 240 Hrivna I probably could have eaten for 3 days on my own.

Also, one of the guys who is a consultant and speaking at this thing just flew in today. He's a professor at Stanford and does some other stuff. He seemed like a pretty impressive guy and I was thinking that collectively the things that he and the other speakers/consultants I was out with have done are pretty cool. I could totally see myself doing what they do, and thought he was a pretty interesting guy. Then he asked me if I had any knowledge of the dating services around town because he wanted to go out on a date while he was here. I told him what I knew - which is that I don't know anything except that if you talk English on the streets someone will be sure to hand you a card or brochure telling you where you can find a wife or 'massage'. To this he replied that he wasn't looking for a prostitute, but if he went on a date with someone and ended up taking her back to his hotel room it would be okay. Suddenly I wasn't as impressed with the guy.

18 vs 18

Apparently there is a difference between the trolleys numbered 18 and the buses numbered 18. The 18 bus goes along the road of my apartment, the 18 trolley does not. I found this out after riding the 18 trolley from one end of its route to the other. I eventually got off at the road I needed to be on, but further away from home if I had just walked from where I got on the thing in the first place. I'll check later, but I'm fairly sure I covered 9 miles today.

Bobby, regarding your comment about shorting things here - the Ukrainian stock market is down about 80%, and the currency about 40% to the dollar. So I think you missed the boat on that trade. The projections are that the GDP could be down by as much as 12% this year though, so there is certainly more room for it to fall.

I'm going to pass out now. My body hurts. Also, it probably was a bad idea to wear yesterdays socks today with all the walking I did.

Lucky number 18

So after finding the bank I had to go to that was easily two miles from the Azerbaijan consolate services building I stopped to get some food. After a quick sandwitch I'm back on the road on trolly number 18. I saw that the 18 passed the consolate a few times while I was waiting so hopefully this thing takes me towards a direction I want to go. Otherwise I'm pretty screwed.

7.5 Miles

That's what I'm walking today for 'work'. I have to go pick up a paper at the offices here, then walk all the way back past my apartment to go to the embassy for Azerbaijan. I'm hoping someone there speaks English.... Hopefully the banana I had for breakfast holds me up. After I get back I'll probably go out to lunch somewhere.

Also, yesterday my mind was blown by the fact that 1 liter of water weighs 1 kilo. Those crazy scientists who came up with the metric system really knew what they were doing.

Head in the sand

There are a lot of things I miss since I don't speak the language here. One on particular is just how bad things are in the country. After doing some fairly basic research I've found that it would have been better to keep my head in the sand. Either today or tomorrow I think I will head down to the ATM and take out about 1500 in local currency just to keep it under my mattress - not literally, I'll hide it somewhere else. Apparently the economy here is worse than I thought, people are getting laid off faster than they are in America, and the country really is on the edge both politically and economically.

And for somewhat more upbeat news... I found out this morning that my bowls are apparently not dishwasher safe. By 'found out' I mean that they seem to have both warped and cracked in a few different places. I had 4 bowls, and now I have two.