Constantinople

I'm in Istanbul right now. Wouldn't mind if I had a more than 2 hour layover since the city has a ton of history and looked pretty awesome on the way down. I'll have to add it to my list of places to visit someday.

Packed

EDIT: Apparently I copied an incomplete list as I put this up 5 minutes before I left for the airport. It's complete now.

For the next 6-7 weeks, this is what I'm wearing since it's all I've packed.

3 pairs black socks
4 pairs white socks
9 boxer shorts
1 pair running shorts
1 bathing suit
Sandals
Black shoes
Running shoes
5 tshirts
2 undershirts
4 polo shirts
Suit Jacket
2 Dress shirts
2 Ties
2 Pairs of Jeans

What could possibly go wrong?

In a feat of both awesomeness and near stupidity, I managed to iron part of my shirt today ...while wearing it. Sure, it wouldn't have taken much effort to take the shirt off, but there's no thrill in ironing a shirt when nobody can get hurt.

I ran out of water

Yesterday when I went to the grocery store I forgot to pick up a jug of water. I realized it about 10 seconds after I left and didn't feel like going back in. I figured that I would stop by on my way back from walking around the city and doing some work. Not realizing the store closed at 4, I showed up at 4:05.

So yeah, I pretty much had all evening to go get water somewhere, but I didn't want to go back down to the main street. I've been told that you can boil the tap water here and it's okay, but I don't know if you can boil away the unholy amounts of chlorine that are in the water here. I'd rather not find out. So, I had a glass of Jack Daniels with my egg and cheese dinner sandwich last night.

I'll have a banana for breakfast and head down to the store afterward. From there - I don't know. It's Memorial Day ....in America. I think I'm just looking for an excuse to not work. I leave on Friday for quite a trip and probably will need to spend a day preparing for that - packing and laundry and such. Not today though, especially if I take the 'holiday'.

When does dirty start?

I'm wearing the same shirt I wore yesterday. I didn't do anything in it yesterday though. I put it on, walked to the coffee shop to do some work, and eventually came home. Is it dirty? It's not like anybody saw me yesterday that will remember what I was wearing. It's not like I'm wearing the same shirt to the office two days in a row. As far as I'm concerned it's totally okay.

I speak good english

The other day I was on the street and somebody stopped me to ask for directions with their map. He was trying to find a street. Ironically he was on the street he was looking for. After explaining this to him he complimented me on my English skills and asked me where I learned to speak so well. I replied by telling him that I spent a semester abroad in America.

Also, I was just told that a report that I spent the last 4 hours revising was both 'great' and 'excellent' in the same email.

I have a conference call at 6:30 with the CEO/President and the director of one of the programs I am working for. All I know is that it's about a proposal or two I wrote like...3 weeks ago. I'll probably need to go re-read it at some point today.

I've got the block

Writers block that is. After writing a different set of reports/information for the last few days, I'm now burnt out on that subject. I may try going back to the reports I was working on last week. Would be nice to have 3 or 4 of them out of the way before I head to my next trip at the end of the month. We'll see how things work out.

My farts smell like strawberries

Okay, so that isn't entirely true. Let me explain. I was in the grocery store the other day and needed to pick up some toilet paper. After eliminating the choices that looked like they would break in two if you sneezed at them there were only two choices left. One was banana scented, and the other was strawberry scented. This is what I had to choose between. Not 1-ply vs. 2-ply; no double roll or triple roll, but strawberry or banana. As a marketing guy, I can think of quite a few other product benefits to sell such a product on before I come its smell. So yeah, I went with strawberry.

Last to First

Lots to cover from the last few days. First off, went and played paintball yesterday with some locals. Got invited by the bartender at the bar I am at a few days a week for dinner and whatnot. There were a total of 15 of us. As nobody knew me, I was picked last. Kinda pissed me off too since I had played more than a large percentage of the group. Although my brother wanted me to, I didn't yell things such as 'Democracy!' and 'Die you commie ferret!' when I shot people. There were two reasons for that. Mainly, they wouldn't understand me anyways as only a few of them spoke English. And secondly, because most of the people on the other team felt the fury of my gun on a regular basis. I pretty thoroughly kicked everyones ass, and dominated a few games while I was at it. After we finished playing I got an award for 'Best Player'. (My ratio was definitely more than +1)

Besides getting the award for 'shooting everyone dead good', I also earned it for (no surprise here) treating my body like a ragdoll. My knees are pretty cut up from jumping over things and diving on the ground quite often. The place we were playing was in the middle of what used to be an old soviet youth campground. We were in and out of old bathrooms and cabins and in the middle of the woods. The woods part got the best of me as I found myself landing on quite a few branches and tree trunks.

...totally off topic, but I just went and got my dinner. I made spaghetti tonight since I didn't feel like making chicken because I didn't feel like cleaning the cutting board and frying pan from last night when I made chicken. Anyways, there is nothing like finding a piece of moldy parmesan cheese mixed in with the rest of the cheese you just sprinkled all over your dinner. Fresh blue cheese I suppose. Bon Apetit!

Anyways, the paintball day was very fun and I'm glad I went. I also got some more material for what I think will become a potentially reoccurring feature on this blog. More information on that shortly.

I can't tell if something tastes funny with this dinner or if it's just in my mind since I found the big piece of green cheese.

Also, and this can be added to the list of things I've said or done that most surely are sending me to hell, but I saw the smallest dwarf (I wrote midget at first but that's insensitive) I've ever seen in my life today. He was like, a dwarfs dwarf.

Okay, I just found another big piece of green cheese, I'm throwing this out and getting food at the bar next door.

..Back to the dwarf - there was no way he was more than 2.5 feet tall (or is it short?). He came into the coffee shop I was doing work at. I wonder what the effects of a double espresso are on someone that size. Anyways yes, I am easily amused and a terrible person.

Victory Day

May 9th is victory day here in Ukraine. Victory from who? Everybody really. May 8th and 9th mark the end of World War 2. The history of Ukraine in this war, as I've learned from reading today, is pretty incredible. I won't even try to explain it, but I will mention this. Hitler, yes that Hitler, and his army was welcomed into parts of Ukraine because they were viewed as a favorable alternative to Stalin. Ultimately this didn't work out too well for the country which ultimately served as the battleground between the two, and was the eventual recipient of Stalin's "Scorched Earch" policy. Essentially a policy of, "if we're going to retreat, burn and destroy everything in the process so those damned Germans don't get anything." While the numbers vary, Ukraine lost around 10,000,000 people during the war.

So, ...you can imagine why they are partying their assess off today. There are fireworks, festivals, parties and more planned for this entire weekend.

Dumpster Diving

I have a very popular set of dumpsters outside my apartment. Once or twice a week I come across people digging through them. Usually it's for bottles - they apparently can be recycled for some amount of money. I've had a few awkward moments where I'm heading out somewhere and carrying a bag of trash with me, and there are people digging through the dumpsters. In these cases I've usually just backtracked and put the bag of garbage down on the side of the building and then walked by the guys digging through the trash. It's not just at night either, but in the middle of the day. It's fairly common to see people going around the main square when it's sunny and looking in all of the garbage cans for glass bottles.

I've often wondered if the homeless people who collect the bottles are territorial. In Buenos Aires it was the same families of people going through the garbage every night. But here it appears random. I've wondered if they ever fight about such things, and then my mind wandered over to a DVD of 'Bum Fights: European Edition'. That's about the same time I realized I was going to hell.

Media Pandemic

First off, I was wondering why Katya at the bar had been talking to me so much this last week. Thanks for that Sarah.

Second, Mexico says that they feel this flu thing has peaked on the same day that the WHO implies they are going to raise their alert scale to 'pandemic'. I think as of today the amount of people who have died from the h1n1 flu is around the people who die every year from stubbing their toe. (Yes, I realize that Mexico has a level of credibility that the WHO could only aspire to.)

Third, I'll see what I can come up with as a better name for 'travel partner'. How about I call her my Russian Sherpa?

Fourth, and finally, I worked for a little bit today even though it's a holiday. I've realized that I don't really 'get' holidays since I have an obscene amount of work that needs to get done and as long as it's completed nobody really cares when I work.

Regarding my work, I've recently started to realize the scale of what I need to do and I'm not sure exactly how to even approach it. I've been trying to do little things here and there, but I'm still not really getting to the big part that I need to dive into soon.

What a wasted day

Two wasted days actually. Yesterday I had a few things planned. One involved getting my visa to Kazakhstan. It turns out that the consular services are only open from 9-12. I found this out at 12:30. Then, later in the day as I was about to go out to run some errands I got a phone call from the post office. After getting to someone who spoke English I found out that they were coming to drop something off to me. (Sarah?) I assumed that meant soon, or even during the day. After waiting outside for about an hour, I went back to my apartment, waited another hour until it was around 5:30 and I figured they won't be coming anytime soon. It's a national holiday both today and Monday, so I figure I won't hear anything about that again until Tuesday. Maybe I'll try picking it up from them.

And then there is today. As I said - a holiday. So after being 75 and sunny for the last 6 days, it rains today and isn't going above 60. I'm almost tempted to work just because I don't exactly feel like walking around in the rain outside. Actually I will work today - I have about $3600 worth of charges on my credit card from the last trip that I need to be reimbursed and I still need to itemize all of the charges. But other than that, I'm celebrating whatever it is the people are celebrating here. All I know is that it used to be a big soviet holiday, which is why the anti-capitalism rally is today.