Blog de Connard

Can I kick It?

2006-03-10T22:35:00.000+02:00

In retrospect, the line "Mr. Dinkins would you please be our mayor/you'd be doing us a really big favor?" off of Tribe Called Quest's 1990 release People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm is absolutely hilarious...and I suspect unintentionally so.

Moscow

2006-03-01T04:39:00.000+02:00

Photos taken while in Moscow last week have been posted on Flickr, here.

Amerovision

2006-02-13T00:05:00.000+02:00

After experiencing Eurovision first hand last year, this doesn't sound like an particularly good idea to me.

Turdblossom

2005-12-12T06:02:00.000+02:00

turdblossom
Originally uploaded by MConnor.

Haven't updated in months, but figured this celebrity sighting earlier today in Austin would be worth posting.

State of the Blog Address

2005-09-21T18:35:00.000+03:00

I haven't updated in a really long time, and need to do so now. In a previous post I had alluded to some news coming in the fall. Well that news has arrived and is ongoing. Work has transferred me from my position in Kiev back to DC and I'm currently in the process of moving. Spent the past two days driving from Austin to DC and will spend the next couple of days moving into an apartment in Alexandria, VA.

As to what this means for the future of the blog, I'm not really sure. Updates have obviously grown much more sporadic over the past couple of weeks, something at least partially related to this move, but they should increase in frequency once I get settled in. If you haven't already, I recommend just setting up an RSS feed and reading from that.

As far as what the content will be, I'm still not sure. I'll still be working with the FSU so I expect that there will be posts here about events in that region that catch my eye, especially in Ukraine. If I travel anywhere, I'm sure I'll post about that too.

So, that's that. Let's see how things develop.

Party's Over

2005-09-08T16:28:00.000+03:00

Well, it lasted about ten months, but it looks like the Orange party is finally over. Today, amid allegations of corruption, Yushenko fired the entire government.

Vilnius

2005-09-02T18:44:00.000+03:00

First set of photos up on flickr from Vilnius. More later.

UPDATE: Actually, all the photos from Lithuania (Vilnius and Gruta Park) are up in that same set by now.

I'm Off

2005-09-01T11:29:00.000+03:00

To Vilnius for the weekend. If the hotel has wi-fi as advertised, I may post some pics and such from the road.

An Open Letter to the "Kyiv Post"

2005-08-29T11:33:00.000+03:00

In response to their August 25th, 2005 front page article "A Belgian Minstrel Comes alive in the Capital."

Dear Sirs,

I was so happy this morning to see the front page article on Michel Querriere from your August 25^th issue.

Why, just this weekend, I was standing near the new Kyiv Bentley dealership on Bessarabski, watching the “elitni” in their D&G or FCUK clothes stumble out of Arena Nightclub and Casino, with it’s promises of instant riches obtainable from gaming. Most of them were drunk on $1,000.00 bottles of Cristal, yakking away on their Vertu cell phones and being escorted into their black German SUVs by professional bodyguards.

Upon observing this spectacle, I distinctly remember thinking to myself just how lucky I was to have been able to live the past year of my life in Kyiv, a city so obviously free of the “materialistic” mindset of the West. I, too, had tired of people who can never get enough of money and Kyiv has provided me with a much needed respite from the “materialistic idiots” of the West.

As a relatively new resident of Kiev trying to avoid materialism, may I be so bold as to suggest that Monsieur Querriere spend a night or two in Grigory Surkis’ tastefully subdued Premiere Palace Hotel? I would also recommend the proletarian ambiance at one of Kyiv’s best new restaurants, Decadence House. All are welcome there, regardless of means.

Thank God that Michel Querriere has decided to grace Kyiv with his presence and towering intellect for the next five years. This city obviously needs more well traveled and world-wise individuals such as him among its residents. I truly hope he doesn’t decide to de-camp to Spain or Italy this winter. If it grows too cold for him, perhaps some of Kyiv’s famous philanthropists, such as the aforementioned Mr. Surkis, Viktor Pinchuk or better yet President Yushenko’s son, Andrey, would be willing to lend him a room in one of their well heated apartments.

Best,

Mike Connor

Kyiv

Oh my Goth!

2005-08-23T12:30:00.000+03:00

I don't know how I've been here a year an missed out on the Ukrainian Gothic Portal, which appers to serve all your Goth needs in Kiev.

Whoops

2005-08-22T17:44:00.000+03:00

Saw the above photo in this Mosnews article. Russian speakers should find it amusing.

Back From Prague

2005-08-22T13:55:00.000+03:00

Well, actually it was a couple different places I was in. Prague, Olomouc, and (briefly) Brno. Quite busy there. Spent most of the time in the car driving around between sites actually. But I was able to get a night or two in Prague. Was able able to catch a beer with old-skool OHSer, Bob H., who had moved to Prague to teach business English for the next year. Now I'm back in Kiev, and some things are developing that could be big come fall. Will inform both my readers when this actually comes through. In the meantime, it's catching up on work and clearing out the inbox for me.

BBC Observation

2005-08-11T12:15:00.000+03:00

One of the couple of English languages channels I get on my digital cable is BBC Prime. I've been watching it a bit for the past few months (along with my beloved Nostalgia) and have determined that British culture is centered around the following things:

1) Gardening

2) Antiques

3) Thinking about, but not actually, moving to the country

4) Oh, and Eastenders.

Now, I will concede the possibility that Brits aren't actually interested in these things and they only want the rest of the world to think that they're interested in them...

I can't decide which scenario is worse.

Sculpture

2005-08-10T18:06:00.000+03:00

So, a sculpture is going to be erected to the letter "Ё" in Russia. This is after locals objected because of the connotation the letter has with certain unsavory Russian phrases. This objection initially struck me as odd, until I recalled my tutor saying that she doesn't even like using words that contain the sound "bl" somewhere in them...because that sound appears in a particularly unsavory Russian word.

After seeing this I shall be looking for a monument to the letter "F" somewhere in the states.

Oh, and for some reason the letter "Ё" is showing up in my browser as the letter "K" in that particular story. If ti does the same in yours, that might explain your confusion when reading it.

Nothing Happening

2005-08-10T15:45:00.000+03:00

Before moving here last year, I learned that absolutely nothing happens in Eastern Europe in August. Everyone is on vacation, nothing gets done. I always found it kind of annoying actually. In the states (and especially in DC) August can get a bit slow, but you can still get things done if you need to. But actually being in Kiev and experiencing the August doldrums first hand is something else entirely. During the week, if people are in town, they aren't going to do a thing. On the weekends, you can completely forget about it. Everyone seems to be out at the Dacha. Making things worse has been the weather. This past week it hasn't been bad at all (if anything it's been a bit chilly for August...yesterday the high was in the low 60s) but the week before that it was easily approaching 100 in the city and you don't even want to move.

So yes, I've been reduced to blogging about the weather and stories about Russian pornos meant to parody Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko become news.

Thankfully, I've got a short trip to Prague at the beginning of next week for work so hopefully that'll give me some more material.

Dorktones

2005-08-05T11:59:00.000+03:00

Stumbled across another podcast that I think is worth checking out. It's a weekly show (updated on Fridays) put together by members of a Dutch band called The Dorktones. It's about an hour of music every week, stuff you don't typically hear on the radio. Lot's of 60s garage, britpop, beat, blues, forgotten europop, ska, reggae, and soul. Very eclectic, but always well mixed every week. Go check it out.

UPDATE: After listening to this week's podcast, I should mention that it's an all instrumental ska special. But they're usually a lot more varied in content. In either case, this weeks episode is still good and I again recommend the podcast in general.

Арбус & Квас

2005-08-04T11:22:00.000+03:00

How do you know it's summer in Kiev (besides the calendar or the temperature, smartass)? Well, just look on the street. At the beginning of summer, Kvas vendors will appear. They're the people dispensing drinks from these tanker looking things, as on the right in that picture, selling the surprisingly good drink that's basically made from fermenting bread.

When the dog days arrive, you start seeing these large cages appearing on the street. Shortly thereafter, said cages will be filled with watermelons, as on the left in that picture. The melons here are so good. Very sweet and they actually taste like watermelon...unlike the watered down flavorless things I've grown used to in the states. They're quite cheap too. A whole melon will go for about two bucks or less. Consequently, I've been eating watermelon every day for the past week or so. Come mid-September, they'll be gone.

Trip Over

2005-08-02T13:29:00.000+03:00

So after spending a week in town I sent my brother off to Prague yesterday. I'd describe the week's events, but he already did a fine job of that over at his blog. So go there and read all about it. He also has lots of photos up on his flickr page.

Whoops

2005-07-28T11:07:00.000+03:00

It's been a week and a half since my last update. Profuse apologies to the both of you that still read this piffle. So let's get up to date here.

UKRAINIAN ENTRY SITUATION

Well, we tested the waters first hand and if you're an American citizen coming to Ukraine for no more than 90 days in a 6 month period you don't need an entry visa. My brother arrived here on Tuesday evening and there were (thankfully) no problems at all. I called the U.S. embassy up the day he arrived to see if there had been any further reports of Americans getting turned away. They clarified to me that the only problems that had been reported to them were of a U.S. journalist trying to get into the country to report about something getting turned away for not having a visa.

So to recap, if you're American and you want to come to Ukraine you apparently do not need a visa if you're coming here as a tourist or on business. If you're here for anything else, including doing any reporting, get the visa.

UKRAINIAN UTILITY SITUATION

My electricity (knock on wood) seems to have been working fine since the literal blow up. We've bitched to our landlord about the obvious fire hazard the rewiring work posesa and we've been told that someone will be out to replace the fuse. Sometime. We're still waiting. In the meantime we've managed to have a lot more utility fun coming in the form of plumbing issues. Shortly after we got our power back, one of our hot water pipes sprung a leak when the hot water was turned back on after sprin cleaning. This didn't bother us too much, but did cause the ceiling of our neighbor below us to start leaking. Sorry about that! We were able to get someone out suprisingly quickly to fix the situation...but that hasn't changed the fact that our water pressure is so freaking low that we haven't been able to use our showers for the past week. It's been bathing in the tubby pouring water over yourself. Perfectly fine in the summer...but I hope this doesn't become routine come October. The explanation from ZhEK is absolutely priceless too. Rather than trying to fix the freaking problem they've just said "Well, it's summer and more people are using more water. There's nothing we can do about it." Thanks guys.

UKRAINIAN TRAFFIC COPS

A few people have asked me about this article, which showed up on fark yesterday. Yes, it's true. Yushenko recently disbanded the Ukrainian traffic police. Pretty smart move actually. They were hideously corrupt and would pull people over just to collect bribes. I've been in plenty of taxis when it's happened. Nothing you could do about it. So in one fell swoop, you manage to look like you're doing something about corruption and the only people that are going to be unhappy about it are the people that won't be able to harass drivers anymore.

The only negative comment I have seen about this appeared in the last print issue of the Kiev Post, wherein a stereotypically disgruntled Taxi driver said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that nothing would be truly be accomplished until people started enforcing traffic laws against the government officials, oligarchs, and their families, who drive like maniacs. Which leads me to the following item

UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT'S SON IS AN ASSHOLE

There's a brewing mini scandal over here regarding the lifestyle of Yushenko's son. A series of articles have appeared in a Ukrainian Newspaper (entitled "Son of God?") that reveal that Yushenko's 19 year old son drives an (unmarked) $120,000 BMW M6, carries a $43,000 Vertu cell phone, lives in a ridiculously expensive apartment, regularly goes clubbing and goes through $1000 bottles of Cristal, and has a retinue of bodyguards that regularly shoo away police that try to get him to move the above mentioned M6 when he parks it in the middle of the street. Additionally, resident's in his neighborhood report that "he speeds up to 62,14 mph, shifts to the wrong lane, blocks other vehicles."

And the best part is that this 19 year old kid is able to live that lifestyle on a salary ostensibly earned from a part-time consulting gig.

In a country where the offspring of the rich and powerful typically steal entire factories and TV Stations something like this would probably just blow over...were it not for Yushenko's outburst when questioned about his son's conduct and resources. He called the journalist who wrote the story a "hired killer that has never worked a minute towards defending the freedom of the press." Ummm...ok.

Anyway, this whole thing is kind of funny to follow and Neeka and Abdymok are all over it. Just go to either site and start scrolling.

ZhEK sucks

2005-07-15T15:08:00.000+03:00

No blogging for the past two days...because I didn't have power the past two days. Wednesday night the power went out in the building. Happens enough that, while annoying, it really isn't a big deal. Someone came out to get things back on line about after about an hour of darkness and we got light back...for about 10 seconds.

It seems that whatever was done to the building was a bit too much for the large, old fuse for apartment in the junction box in our podyezd to take. Rather than just flipping off, the thing blew up, causing the sight above.

The real fun began when we called ZhEK (communal services) the next morning to get them to send someone out to fix the whole thing. ZhEK's initial position was "We already sent someone else out to fix this last night, they said it was fixed and your neighbors haven't been complaining. Therefore, you don't have a problem." I guess they get lots of calls from people lying about their utilities not working. Maybe it's a communal services version of hypochondria.

After some arguing we finally got them to create a work order. This ended up being all for naught, as the technician they assigned the work order to, Oleg, never bothered to show up. Get on the phone with ZhEK again. This time they give us Oleg's cell number and tell us to just call him directly. We call Oleg. Oleg says that he's sick...and will be for the next 2-3 weeks. Good to know that ZhEK electricans are also doctors.

So we call ZhEK back again. They say that they can't send anyone else out because they already created a work order for us...that HAS to be fulfilled by sickly Oleg. However, since this means that we'll be powerless for the next 2-3 weeks, they tell us what we can do is call back in the evening report it as new to the night cres and they can send out the "emergency service" who will then fix it. Oh, and we can't tell emergency services that we already called this in.

Taking ZhEK's advice we call them back and file a new complaint. Emergency Service shows up around 10:00. Their first question: "why didn't you call this in earlier?" Then they get to work.

What did their repair consist of? Rather than replacing the fusebox for our apartment...they just tied in our apartment's line with one of the neighbor's ancient fuses...meaning that this is even more likely to happen the next time the power in our building goes out and gets turned back on. Except this time our neighbors will be just as pissed as we are!

Now we're looking for an independant electrician in Kiev to come out and get this mess sorted out before our building burns down.

Ukrainian Visa Update

2005-07-13T12:29:00.000+03:00

Yesterday the US Embassy in Kiev sent out a warden message stating that U.S. citizens no longer require a visa for short-term travel to Ukraine.

I called the Embassy up to confirm that this was true and they said that it was. I additionally asked them if this meant that Americans would continue to get turned away at the border for not having a visa. Their answer: "Hopefully not."

So for the US Embassy to actually acknowledge visa-free travel, I would be inclined to think that this is actually the case. This was reinforced today when I read that the U.S. Embassy in Kiev is waiving visa issuance fees (as opposed to the $100 visa application fee) for Ukrainians and is setting up a seperate visa application process for Ukrainians that have been issued U.S. visas in the past.

Additionally, a Russian speaking friend of my brother's called up the Ukrainian Embassy in London to try to get clarification from them on the issue. They acknowledged that "there has been some confusion about this subject" but insisted that there were no longer procedures in place to isse single entry visas to American passport holders.

I guess this is all good news, but I remain thoroughly baffled by this. The website of the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington clearly says: Ukraine Sets Visa Free Regime for Revisiting U.S. Citizens

And the text of the presidential decree clearly says: "visa free regime... if they visit Ukraine for the second time within 6 months from the date of their first visit to Ukraine."

Was the Presidential decree wrong? Is MFA just making their own policy about this? Was it just a mistranslation or typo?

To quote Vince Lombardi, what the hell is going on here?

I guess we'll see when my bro arrives on the 25th.

Ukrainian Bureaucratic Bullshit - Part 2

2005-07-11T17:32:00.001+03:00

So earlier this month, Ukraine finally decided to institute a visa-free travel regime for American citizens...except for that they really didn't.

A cursory read of the presidential decree shows that U.S. Citizen visas requirements have been lifted for travel conducted AFTER you have received your first visa and concluded your first trip. Let's look:

With the aim to develop and realize into practice principles of the strategic partnership between Ukraine and the United States of America and guided by the aspirations to simplify the regime for mutual travels and to foster bilateral contacts in all fields of relationships, I issue a decree:

1. To introduce on July 1, 2005 visa free regime for the US citizens for entering Ukraine and for transit through the territory of Ukraine, if they visit Ukraine for the second time within 6 months from the date of their first visit to Ukraine for the period which doesnÂt exceed 90 days. [bold type is mine]

Not quite visa-free...but still pretty good for frequent travelers and to help encourage business travel to Ukraine.

Oh, and there's the small problem in that the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs doesn't seem to be able to read their own freaking president's decrees:

On 30 June 2005, President of Ukraine Victor Yuschenko signed the Decree on the Establishment of Visa-Free Regime for Citizens of the United States of America, which introduced visa-free regime of entry to Ukraine and transit through it territory for U.S. citizens who may stay in Ukraine up to 90 days with at least six month intervals between visits.

So one hand of the government here doesn't seem to know what the other is doing. Typical...except that this lack of understanding of their own laws has lead to Ukrainian Embassies around the world returning visa applications back to the applicants, telling them that they don't need the visas. This is followed up by people getting turned away at the Ukrainian border because it's their first visit and they don't have a visa.

How do I know this? First, the Ukranian Embassy in London returned my brother's recently filed visa application back to him with no action taken, only telling himunofficiallyy by a phone call that he didn't need a visa. Second, when I called up citizen services at the American Embassy in Kiev to try to find out what the official policy is...they refused to give me an answer since no one seems to know what theofficiall Ukrainian position is. What they could tell me was that they had received several phone calls from Americans complaining that a Ukrainian Embassy had not issued them a visa because they "didn't need one" and were then turned away at a Ukrainian border point because THEY DIDN'T HAVE A VISA.

Way to improve your country's image as a backwards soviet relic with a nightmare of abureaucracyy. Let's tell...no, encourage... people to come visit...then turn them away when they get here.

Who needs that hotel anyway?

2005-07-11T17:32:00.000+03:00

This was pretty funny to read.

Apparently engineers looking to demolish a hotel in Moscow found about a ton of explosives that had been placed there in WWII. That tactic was a favorite of the Red Army at the time and was put to extensive use in Kiev after the fascists invaded. Just about all of Kreshatik was blown up and I've been told that the original Uspensiky Cathedral at the Lavra here was also blown up by the departing Red Army. As I wrote last week, it was this targeted demolition that gave the Germans an excuse for the Babi Yar massacre.

Anyway, interesting to see the effects of this stuff 60 years later. And you gotta love quotes like this:

"The boxes held only explosives without detonators so there was no risk of an (accidental) explosion in the hotel,"

Uh huh...

2005-07-08T11:39:00.000+03:00

Ivana Kupala

2005-07-07T14:04:00.000+03:00

Today is a quasi-holiday in Slavic Parts of the world called "Ivan Kupal Day." From what I understand, it's a holiday with pagan roots related to the summer solstice and co-opted by the Russian Orthodox Church to mark the birthday of St. John the Baptist. Traditional celebrations include jumping over fires and swimming.

I know the summer solstice was two weeks ago...but the dates got all screwed up with the calendar switch.

The picture above is a Soviet-era poster for Ivan Kupal that I picked up since Ivan Kupal day is also my birthday.

It's also apparently the birthday of Tom at digenis...so go over there and give him some well wishes.

Most. Overrated. Song. Ever.

2005-07-07T13:53:00.000+03:00

This list immediately endeared itself to me by placing "American Pie" in the number one spot. My god that song has always annoyed me...pretty much for the exact same reasons posited here.

Were I to have been eligible to nominate a song for the list, it would have to be Jimmy Buffett's "Margaritaville."

I've never understood the whole Jimmy Buffett/"Parrothead" thing and this song is the anthem of that movement. What anyone finds appealing about paying fifty bucks or so to go to a suburban amphitheater with a bunch of stumbling drunk baby boomers and frat boys while you listen to some hack in a Hawaiian shirt play the same trite songs he's been playing for the past 30 years is beyond me.

And they lyrics! Absolutely awful. You get these faux-blues observations like I blew out my flip-flop/Stepped on a pop-top/Cut my heel had to cruise on back home mixed with such a clever progressively-changing line in the chorus wherein our narrator slowly comes to admit that his "problems" (Problems? Only if you define hanging out at a beach all summer and getting drunk as a sorrowful existence) are actually his own fault, apparently for driving his woman away.

Spare me.

WTO Push

2005-07-07T13:29:00.000+03:00

Looks like team Yushenko is finally making an effort to push through legislation necessary for Ukraine to join the WTO and get US trade restrictions lifted. Sound like it wasn't without difficulty.

The Financial Times says that: Yulia Tymoshenko, prime minister, and Volodymyr Lytvyn, the parliamentary speaker, needed to shout as opponents sounded sirens and scuffled briefly with pro-government deputies.

The Kiev Post paints an even more vivid picture: As WTO-related bills came onto the slate that day, members of parliament's left and center-left factions stormed the podium to block the bill from coming up to vote, snatching the microphone from Parliament Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn before he could floor the legislation. Scuffling broke out; they even reportedly broke the microphone. The usual suspects were responsible for the obstruction:
members of the Communist and Socialist party factions, and of the bitterly oppositionist Regions of Ukraine and Social Democratic Party of Ukraine
(united) parties.

The Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united) are my next door neighbors...and I didn't see any injuries yesterday so I guess at the least they're ok.

Part of the legislation that WAS passed apparently includes "criminal liability for illegal circulation of compact discs, equipment and raw materials for their production, and moulds." This can't bode well for the local piracy market.

More on this WTO fracas as it develops.

Babi Yar

2005-07-06T17:18:00.000+03:00

This past weekend I finally finished reading A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (decent book, a little too cutesy and some of the characters were too two dimensional, but I enjoyed it on the whole). In one passage in the book, a character makes reference to some streets in Kiev where people in their family lived before WWII. In conjunction with this reference was an side-note about how thier living at this location meant that they didn't have to walk very far when they were called to Babi Yar in September of '41.

This made me pause for a second, because I knew where those streets were (two metro stops from my apartment) but I had always thought that Babi Yar was a bit outside of town, because accounts of the massacre that I had read usually noted that Babi Yar was "northwest of Kiev."

So I pulled out a city map and did some orienteering. Sure enough, there was Babi Yar, sitting just north of the Dorohozhychi metro station. I decided to take advantage of the Monday holiday and check it out during what was a workday for everyone else in the city.

For a site where more than 30,000 people were executed in two days during WWII, there really isn't much to see. There is a plaza in the park where a memorial was erected about 10 years ago. And further in the woods there are a couple of crosses (pictured above) that were put up at the site where people were actually shot. Considering that the VAST majority of people murdered here Jewish, I found the crosses to be slightly unusual...but better than nothing, I guess.

But that's all there was to the place. It was a pretty nice park actually, very quiet, lots of people sitting out and picnicing, heavily wooded, and quite isolated from the urban grime that is downtown Kiev.

How asinine is this?

2005-07-05T18:41:00.000+03:00

It's shit like this that drives me absolutely nuts sometimes about DC. Never mind that DC Baseball teams have been wearing a "W" on their cap since 1908 (for the years there was a team in Washington)... some morons can't bring themselves to buy a Washington Nationals cap because they hate the other "W" so freaking much.

"They say, 'W? Does that stand for Bush?' " said Gary Berned, speaking of fans that visit his kiosk.

Argh! How about this. If you're going to go to a Nats' home game and you have to ask what the "W" on their hats stands for, you're just not allowed to buy that hat or any other merchandise. Period. Someone put me in charge so I can decree this.

Seriously, do you think there were people in Boston that stopped (or started) wearing Boston College gear or were people running out and trying to find British Colombia Lions hats between 1992 and 2000 just because the initials matched up with the then-president?

And than there's this quote from the same article: It's not unlike the difference between people who call the airport by the Potomac "National" and those who refer to it as "Reagan."

Errr...no. For sane people, the dividing line between calling the airport "Reagan" and calling it "National" is whether or not you lived in Washington before 1998 when National Airport was renamed.

Goddammit, keep Washington for Washingtonians!

Moscow Olympics

2005-07-04T20:53:00.000+03:00

"The Man"Norman Chad on Moscow's Olympic Bid:

Pluses: Crooked gymnastics judges get to sleep in their own beds. . . . Russian mob runs a tight ship. . . . United States led a boycott of 1980 Summer Games here. I wouldn't mind seeing that happen again. . . . 'A Night With Yakov Smirnoff' at the Anton Chekhov Playhouse to add Wednesday and Saturday matinees in fall 2011. . . . Hard to find USA Today.

Minuses: Don't get me wrong -- it's a beautiful city and I like the Lenin Mausoleum as much as the next guy, but after a full day of Olympic archery and equestrian, I don't know if I'm in the mood for cabbage schi, fish colbasa and pickled tomatoes. . . . Bolshoi Theater crowd can get pretty rowdy coming out of most weekend shows. . . . Hard to find those neat fur hats in the summer. . . . I'll bet they have a lot of soccer on TV over there.

My only correction...Yakov Smirnoff is actually from Odessa and he currently resides in Branson, Missouri (where he can be seen regularly performing at the Yakov Smirnoff Theater). What a country!

Two Links

2005-07-01T13:02:00.000+03:00

Two things that I read this morning that caused me to nod my head in deep agreement.

The first, from Slashdot. Yes, when you can't write a coherent English sentence, electronically or otherwise, it makes you look stupid.

The other, from Kevin Drum. Being over here, I'm not subjected to all this Tom Cruise nonsense unless I seek it out. But I do wonder why, when the subject of Scientology and Psychiatry comes up with this moron, no one asks him basic questions about Scientology? Sure, the basic tenants of Christianity would sound a bit wacky too, if you changed the names and the time period and removed a lot of the aspects of it that we are all familiar with. But that's the point; everyone is familiar with them. You don't have to ask professed Christians if they really believe that 2000 years ago some carpenter was born to a Virgin, performed some miracles, was executed, rose from the dead, and then ascended into heaven in corporeal form, thus ensuring that humanity can spend their after-life in heaven. Everyone knows that!

I doubt much of the world is familiar with the basic tenets of Scientology; namely that 75 million years agoan alien dictator crashed rockets (that looked just like a DC-8!) full of millions of aliens into the earth then subsequently nuked them with H-bombs, all to deal with an overpopulation problem. Now the spirits of those aliens are inhabiting your body, causing you problems, and holding you back from your full potential. Oh, and that alien dictator is still alive and imprisoned in volcanos.

If journalists would actually ask questions of these wackadoo celebrities, people might stop taking them so seriously and the "church" of Scientology might be stopped from suckering people out of the money and their lives.

No Hot Water

2005-06-28T12:03:00.000+03:00

If there was any doubt that summer was here in Kiev, this sign removed it. Coming home the other day I saw it newly plastered on the bulletin board on the door to my podyezd.

What it says is starting, well...tomorrow, the hot water will be turned off in my neighborhood for annual pipe cleaning and maintenance until July 13th. Fun fun fun.

All in all, it isn't too bad. We have a hot water heater in the apartment. And in past years the municipal authorities haven't even posted notes. You just wake up one morning and get a cold shower that lasts for an indeterminate amount of time. Just have to remember to turn the water heater on tonight.

Miss Russian Army

2005-06-24T21:53:00.000+03:00

One of the things I've learned over here is that the former Soviets absolutely love their beauty pagents. They're on TV all the time and I'm always seeing ads for them around town. They're never ending. Outside of the basic Miss Ukraine I've seen things like Miss Tavriskie Igri, Miss Nemiroff, Miss Donbass, etc...etc...etc...

Then Siberian Light posts about the recently held Miss Russian Army beuaty contest (won by a Naval Lieutanant...go figure). I just saw a report on CNN International about this contest. I think Andy is missing the real story here. According to this CNN report (and the assertion of Miss Rocket Forces), the results were actually decided in advance by the judges!

Is there no limit to corruption? Can we not even keep the Miss Russian Army contest free from graf?

Theater

2005-06-23T12:55:00.000+03:00

Last night, the fair Mrs. Connard thought it would be a good idea to get some culture and go visit the theater. In order to accomodate my nowhere near fluent knowledge of Russian, the selected play was "All of Shakespeare in One Night." One of those wacky things where the performing troupe will run through the basics of all of Shakespeare's plays in 120 minutes, usually to lots of laughs. Oh yeah, and did I mention it was all in Russian?

Anyway, I was pretty much able to understand all of the Shakespeare translated from the English pretty well, but everything else was kind of tough to follow. I still have a bit of a lag time in processing what I'm hearing and inevitably I end up getting hung up on a certain word that makes me miss a bunch of other words and the whole comprehension thing just spirals out of control. I'd get the jokes...but at best it'd be about 2 minutes after everyone else did. What got me was how many people there were in the audience. I never would have guessed that Shakespeare was even mildly popular in this part of the world. Who knew?

Anyway, it was a reasonably enjoyable time, and Mrs. Connard seemed to enjoy herself thoroughly, so that's all that really matters. The theater was followed up by a very pleasant outdoor meal at an Italian place we like near the Golden Gate. Good times had by all.

Heh

2005-06-21T21:32:00.000+03:00

Anyone can say something sucks. But few do it with as much panache as Christopher Hitchens

After I tortured myself with The Davinci Code, all I could say was that I felt like I was intellectually raped.

He puts it so much better than I:

"A few weeks ago, at an airport in Europe, I saw Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code staring at me across the bookstore bins. I had seen it many times before and averted my gaze, but I was facing a long delay, and I suddenly thought: May as well get it over with.

Well, of course I knew it would be bad. I just didn't know that it would be that bad. Never mind for now the breathless and witless style, or the mashed-paper characters, or the lazy, puerile reliance on incredible coincidence to flog the lame plot along. What if it was all true? What if the Nazarene had had issue, in fleshly form, with an androgynous disciple? The Catholic Church would look foolish but, then, it already looks foolish enough on the basis of the official story. 'Opus Dei,' according to Brown, is a sinister cult organization. Excuse me, but I already knew this, so to speak, independently."

Heh. Can't wait for the movie!

Fark de Connard

2005-06-21T18:41:00.000+03:00

From Fark a couple of minutes ago:

More and more Russians are drinking"industrial spirits" (i.e. perfume, anti-freeze, etc...) in lieu of vodka.

I knew the pepper vodka that's popular here tasted god-awful...but I had no idea why until now.

Iran Elections

2005-06-19T13:23:00.000+03:00

A bit off topic from what I usually write about, but Robert at Publius Pundit and Will Franklin from Willisms both have really interesting posts up concerning their visits to Iranian polling stations in Tucson and Houston. Definitely worth a read.

RSS Fixed

2005-06-18T00:30:00.000+03:00

OK. With a nice assist from Mr. Sample, I fixed the RSS problems I was having. Freaking Eurovision gets me again. I wrote that post in MS Word and then pasted the completed thing into Blogger. Apparently a lot of the tags microsoft puts into Word documents can wreck havok with RSS/Atom/Whatever feeds. So I went back through that post and took out all the bad tags. The two of you that subscribe to the RSS feed of this should have it working again.

Don't ever say that my Friday nights aren't exciting.

UnUkrainain

2005-06-16T17:00:00.000+03:00

The weather is nice, the city is green, and it doesn't get dark until around 10. Summer is here in Kiev. So what's the natural response? I finally got cable! Yes, after seeing the local cable demonstrated on another ex-pat's TV last week I caved and signed up for it. The most amazing thing about it was how painless it all turned out to be. I was expecting a multiple week battle with filling out forms, getting stamps, "paying" people, fruitlessly waiting for technicians to show up...but that didn't happen at all. The call was placed to order it on Tuesday. A technician came out to flip a switch and give us our prepayment bill on Wednesday. After the bill was paid Wednesday afternoon, the cable company called back to say technicians would be by with our box on Thursday between 2 and 7. Then Thursday at 4, four guys showed up and finished setting it up. Amazing. No problems, no hassles, just delivering prompt and friendly customer service. Volia Cable, keep it up. You get a hearty endorsement from Blog de Connard.

Anyway, while the cable comes with a lot of English language channels, one of the things I'm most looking forward to is a channel called Ностальгия (nostalgia) that seems to show nothing but rebroadcasts of old Soviet television programs, including the news. Awsome. I'm honestly excited to get television channels that broadcast consistently in Russian. Should help with the language learning a little bit. The bulk Ukrianian language stuff I was previously subjected to was just really confusing.

I also need to be careful to not spend so much time in front of the TV while the weather is actually nice here. Come winter though...

UPDATE: I'm currently watching the 1982 Supreme Soviet Meeting that elected Yuriy Andropov General Secretary of the USSR. I think I have problems.

UPDATE II: Yes, I'm aware I spelled "Ukrainian" wrong in the title of the post. I was about to fix it, but found that that busted the link to this post. Normally that's wouldn't be a big deal...except that someone else found "Nostalgia" interesting and was sending some traffic this way. For the record, right now they're showing a concert of some guy reading poetry. It's not nearly as interesting as listening to Andropov.

Scratch that, the poet is now singing a Russian version of the Ray Charles/Johnny Cash (I don't know who wrote it) tune, "Busted." It's just got quite interesting.

That Poster

2005-06-13T19:21:00.000+03:00

More on that poster I wrote about last week at Siberian Light.

Bad for Ukraine...Good for Me!

2005-06-13T16:27:00.000+03:00

The Action Ukraine Report in my inbox this morning was just chock full of articles regarding the Ukrainian Parliament's inability to pass intellectual property laws in line with WTO norms.

I'd provide links, but these were all in an email. Go to the link above and subscribe to the newsletter. It's worth it. Instead I will just liberally quote from the articles below. Anything I didn't write will be in italics. No plagarism at Blog de Connard.

Anyway, because there are still loopholes big-enough to drive a truck through in the anti-piracy laws here, Ukraine will have to suffer the following consequences:

1) The US imposed USD 75 million worth of sanctions on Ukrainian imports on January 23, 2002. These sanctions will now not be removed.

2) Ukraine needs to sign a bi-lateral trade agreement with the US as part of
the agreements needed for accession to the WTO. The U.S. will not agree
to sign such a bi-lateral trade agreement until the intellectual property
rights amendments are passed

3) Remember when Yushenko came to Washington and Congress applauded when he asked them to lift Jackson-Vanik restrictions for Ukraine? Well, since the Rada decided that they really need their bootleg copies of Miss Congenialty 2, Jackson-Vanik Restrictions on Ukraine will not be Removed in 2005. Officials in Washington last week indicated the Jackson-Vanik issue for Ukraine was not on the Senate Committee's agenda for the rest of 2005. There were also indications it was highly unlikely the issue would be brought before the Committee until Ukraine passes the intellectual property rights amendments.

Hey, at least the country has their priorities in order. In the meantime, I need to head over to Petrovka. Hopefully they'll have in copies of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

DC Socialist Realism

2005-06-09T11:06:00.000+03:00

So a friend of mine emailed me the above picture, taken at a MARC station somewhere between DC and Baltimore.

Brilliant idea really. Let's see...a transit agency is going to put up posters encouraging riders to REPORT suspicious activities or packages to the authorities...so the obvious choice of design style to use is one pioneered during the reign of a brutal dictator characterized by it's terrors and repressions! People in Moscow in 1933 "reported" their neighbors...people in Greenbelt in 2005 should do the same thing, right?

I don't know why I've been trying to find a source of original Communist propaganda posters over here, when it seems I can just go back home and find them actually being used.

Gulag

2005-06-08T13:58:00.000+03:00

If there was one pundit whose opinion I wanted to hear on this whole Amnesty International/Guantanamo/Gulag silliness, it was Anne Applebaum. Her Gulag: A History was easily one of the best books I've read in the past 5 years.

Writing about Amnesty today, she didn't disappoint.

Quick Learner

2005-06-07T23:44:00.000+03:00

So after having iTunes and using it religiously for the past year, I just figured out yesterday that I can add in my own album art if it isn't already embedded in the file (which is the case for most of my songs, as I burned them in off my CD collection, downloaded them from somewhere, or got them for an unbelievably good price at Petrovka).

This discovery has suceeded in absolutely vaporizing any free time I have had in the past two days as I update 20 gigs worth of music and search for album art on amazon or anywhere else on the net.

So there was this Camel walking down the Street...

2005-06-06T12:29:00.000+03:00

No seriously. There was a camel on my street yesterday. I'm trying to read the Sunday papers yesterday afternoon when I keep hearing this drumming coming from the street outside my window. I go down to check it out, and there was a film crew getting shots of a bunch of circus performers marching down my street. I mean, I knew that this country was run like a circus, but this was just re-god damn-diculous.

Outside of that, what's been going on in the week that I took off from posting?

Well I finally was able to see Episode III, about two weeks after the rest of the planet stopped caring about it. Verdict? Inconsistancies with the original trilogy aside, it more than made up for the previous two atrocities. Great flick.

My ongoing search for original Commie propaganda reached its to-date zenith when I found a literal hole in the wall shop that had the largest collection of Communist posters I think I've ever seen in my life. I probably spent about an hour and half going through maybe a third of their collection. It's within easy walking distance of my place too...which could be dangerous for my wallet. The woman who worked there was aboslutely great too, making snarky comments about all the slogans and offering me great discounts (apparently the owner of the place used to produce these posters for a living and charges too much for them as they have sentimental value for her). I'll put up pics of my purchases later.

EU fallout continues as the Dutch did what was predicted and voted down the EU Constitution. When I listen to BBC on the shortwave in the morning, every other freaking story they have is about what's going to happen to the EU. Neeka had a great post linking to an IHT article about the now infamous "Polish Plumber," from the perspective of the Poles. It wasn't even three months ago that I was reading a deluge of commentary pieces about how responsbile the EU was for the wave of democractic movements in the post-Soviet space. The theory was that the prospect of EU membership was what drove all these countries (including Ukraine) to turn towards democracy and to reform their government, military, and economic systems by getting in-line with EU requirements. I now have to seriously ask, what happens now? It's seems obvious to me that further EU expansion is a dead issue. I really have to wonder if Bulgaria and Romania will become members in 2007 as currently scheduled. But what happens to all those in Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia, Croatia, etc...who set their countries down a more democratic path with the promise of future EU as a future reward in return for the initial transistional pain required in moving a country from an undemocratic government and planned economy to market economy and democratic system? Will they still be taken seriously?

How did this post manage to start with camels and end with the EU?

Might as well end this borderline incoherent post with another tangent. Damn, that new White Stripes album is really good.

Amusing

2005-06-02T16:21:00.000+03:00

Instapundit linked to this frog bashing post today. It amused me greatly, so I'll link to it as well. I'm not sure why (it isn't Shadenfreude) but all the EU handwringing this week has been really amusing to me.

Posting has been admittedly light. Mrs. Connard returned to Kiev this week after 3 weeks away and I started at a new job yesterday. Cut me some slack, I'll get back into the swing of things in another couple days here.

Ukrainian Bureaucratic Bullshit

2005-05-30T13:54:00.000+03:00

Just read this post on Orange Ukraine about bureaucratic hoops that have to be jumped through for a Ukrainian national to leave the country for an extended period of time.

It's quite awsome in detailing the same type of crap I have to deal with over here on a daily basis to do any type of business. Remember the sewn together documents post? It's like that, but worse.

I’m Offended! Er…Offensive.

2005-05-27T18:01:00.000+03:00

Well, It’s taken me a little more than a year to do it, but The “Bastard’s Blog” has finally managed to offend someone. What did it? Was it my questioning the rules of the world’s “beautiful game?” Was it my questioning Russia’s status and place in the international system? Was it my bashing Arab culture and television?

Nope.

It was Eurovision!

Terry Wogan’s got nothing on me folks. “Peter” (who, judging from his defense of the Greek winner of Eurovision 2005, Elena Paparizou, must have a last name like Popolapadopolous) was so shocked and outraged at my live blogging of the Eurovision song contest, he felt a need to leave a comment letting me know how “offensive” he finds this site to be.

I’m all for open dialogue with readers, so let’s address his points one by one.

Just commenting to say how offensive your blog is.

I’m offensive? Are you kidding me? Go read Maddox, go read rotten, go read Tucker Max. Then come back here and tell me I’m offensive.

Fine the Eurovision Contest is corny and stuff, but that doesn't give you the right to insult almost every act in the show.

OK, but apparently and stuff you have the right and stuff to come to my blog and stuff and insult me and stuff?

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I accept that,

Good. I am of the opinion that you are an overly sensitive douche-bag with no sense of humor and an inability to detect or appreciate sarcasm.

but you look at Wig Wam and Granny and give your points to them?

Yes, I do. As explained in my posting I thought that Wig Wam’s obvious homage to 70s glam metal was campy and well done. Sitting through 20 or so clones singing Euro-Pop drivel surrounded by horrible back-up dancers made them stick out even more. They managed to be both derivative and original. No small feat in my opinion.

As for the Moldavian act, perhaps you didn’t understand that I was rooting for them so that Eurovision 2006 would have had to have been hosted in Chisinau, the capital of a country so poor that people sell their organs to survive. You probably also missed the joke about holding the competition in Tiraspol, the city that is the capital of Trans-Dniester, a break away region of Moldova that makes Minsk look like Paris.

I mean honestly are you abnormal or what.

I mean honestly and stuff, do you know what a question mark is?

The song that wins should be the song that can be listened to more than once.

Right, and when I think of songs that are replayable I think of the 1984 contest winner from Sweden, “Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley.” Really, who can forget that song? Twenty years later I still hear it all the time, everywhere I go in Europe, nay, the world. It’s timeless.

I find the Moldovian and Norweigan entries cheap trash with a low replayability.

I find that use of the verb “to be” can help sentences sound coherent.

I suggest if you bother LiveBlogging another event you try it with more mature attitude…

I suggest that you stop taking events like the Eurovision Song Contest so seriously.

...and consider perhaps that a well-rehearsed and perfect performance like that by Elena Paparizou (you didn't even spell THAT right)…

1) I didn’t realize that the cheesy dance numbers were part of the competition! I thought it was to judge the best song. Hence the name “Eurovision Song Contest” and not “Eurovision Song and Dance Contest.”

2) I’m sorry and stuff. I promise and stuff to never again misspell a name transliterated from one alphabet into another and stuff, especially by misinterpreting stressed vowel sounds and stuff. Obviously Peter, you are a giant among men in matters of English spelling and grammar. I am shamed that I have not met your high standards and stuff.

…is worth winning over a cheap unappealing grandma running around.

Personally, I find it offensive that you would refer to a poor Moldavian grandmother as “cheap” and “unappealing.” When I think cheap, I’m more likely to think of an over made-up Greek trollop wearing a shirt that says “Studd” than a Grandmother. When I think unappealing, I’m more likely to think of some Cypriot Michael Jackson wannabe than a poor Moldavian Grandmother.

In short Peter, I encourage you to stop bitching about a blog that is blazing new comedic ground by making fun of Eurovision. Instead, I suggest you go eat a Gyro and cry about getting your ass kicked by the Turks at Izmir.

EuroNotes

2005-05-26T10:57:00.000+03:00

Two notes from Europe this morning, both of which my jingoistic American side is ashamed of even writing about.

1) A bunch of scousers were happy in Istanbul last night as Liverpool won the Champions League. Unlike the mysterious UEFA cup, I actually know what the Champions League is. Great game, with the Reds coming back from a 3-0 deficit to win. I do have to say (especially in light of the FA Cup final played last weekend) that this deciding soccer games based on penalty shoot-outs is absolutely retarded. If a basketball game was tied at the end of an overtime, would you decide your winner by shooting a best of 5 free throws? Would the Super Bowl be decided based on a Field Goal contest? No. You play the freaking game until someone wins.

I suppose there is Ukrainian angle to this, as Ukrainian super-star Andriy Shevchenko was on the losing side, AC Milan, and he had two potentially game winning shots stopped in the final minutes. It was also his missed penalty shot that sealed the win for Liverpool.

I can't honestly claim to be a Liverpool fan now, but I was when I lived in England back in the 80s (during the good old days of the Belgian soccer riots). So I was rooting for them last night. You'll never walk alone...or something.

When does the NFL start up again?

2) I couldn't help but be amused by reading this Financial Times article. It looks like the frogs are leaning towards voting down the new EU constitution in a referendum this weekend. And if they don't vote it down, the Dutch probably will shortly thereafter. So what's the EU's reaction? Well, obviously anyone voting against the EU got the wrong result, so they should have to vote again until they vote "correctly."

"The countries which have said No will have to ask themselves the question again." Said Jean-Claude Juncker, current EU president.

Obviously, the 349 page Constitution couldn't be flawed. Obviously, the people voting against it have no clue what they're talking about. People are voting "incorrectly" and they need to go back to the drawing board, not Brussels.

I wish I could say that this surprised me, but the EU has pulled this shit before. Didn't like the Danes voting down Maastricht? Make 'em keep voting until you get the result you want. Didn't like the Irish voting down Nice? Make 'em keep voting until you get the result you want. How meaningless is it to say that all structural changes in the EU are based on unanimous consent of all member countries, when you just make countries keep voting until they vote your way? Seeing crap like this makes me wonder how people over here (E. Europe especially) are able to take the EU seriously. Fundamentally, how is this different than only being able to vote for a Communist Party candidate in an election?

Rakusko

2005-05-24T12:09:00.000+03:00

This is the kind of thing that maybe two people will find interesting, but it's my blog and I'm writing it anyway.

When I was in Slovakia last week, I noticed that on all their maps Austria was called "Rakusko." Austria was also called Rakusko in Czech. This is a bit odd, since in most other Slavic languages that I've been exposed to, Austria is just called "Avstria," or something close to that. Rakusko isn't close at all to what Austria is called in German (which is Osterreich, translated as Eastern Empire) so my interest was piqued.

Spent a bit of time looking into this whole Rakusko thing over the weekend. After a bit of time, I found my answer here. I'll extract the relevant portion below.

The Czech for Austria is Rakousko and an Austrian is a Rakušan. This actually comes from a medieval castle on the Austro-Czech border called Radgos, which is today known as Raabs. The Czechs used the name of the castle for the whole country and called it Rakuš or Rakus, which eventually became Rakousko.

So there you go. I thought it was neat anyway.

Eurovision Hangover

2005-05-24T12:00:00.000+03:00

I think I'm finally recovered from the abuse that was Eurovision weekend. Things seem to have quieted down a bit, and the weather is definitely nicer, warmer, but not so humid. Not much going on now...but that's a good thing. Picture above is what they did to Palts Sportu for Eurovision. I'll give them a bit of credit. The building looks like typical Soviet-era crap, so instead of fixing the crap (which they couldn't have had the money to do), they just covered it up. It didn't look too bad at night all light up.

The really annoying thing about being in this neighborhood was that access to the site was completely blocked off by the city, unless you had a ticket or a pass. This included closing off the metro station that is located right accross the street from there.

Eurovision LiveBlog

2005-05-21T22:11:00.000+03:00

Earlier today I spent about an hour downtown, checking out all the Eurovision happenings. For my American readers, who probably have no idea even what Eurovision is, go here. While I normally don’t have a big problem with crowds, today I just couldn’t deal with it. Too many touts, too many streets blocked off, weather was just a touch too humid. This Ukraine-based blog failed in its unstated mission to provide you, the valued reader, with a first hand account of happenings in Ukraine

However, in order to make this up to you, my loyal readers; I shall instead undertake a task that I assume to be unprecedented and perhaps Herculean in content. I shall live-blog the telecast of the 50^th Annual Eurovision song contest.

Refresh regularly for updates. New content will appear at the end of the post.

God help us all.

9:45 PM – I’m gathering provisions to get me through this undertaking, and in the spirit of the occasion, they’re Ukrainian in nature. Three 1 liter bottles of Chernigiev Beer, three bags of sukariki (I don’t know if the jellied meat and horseradish flavor was a good call here though), and I’ve downloaded Ruslana’s “Dance with the Wolves” ringtone to my Kievstar mobile phone. If I don’t hear that song enough tonight, I’ll get my fix this way.

9:57 PM – The show hasn’t even started yet and I think Kanal 1 has shown their official Eurovision Station ID 9 times in the past 10 minutes. I’m already sick of it. This isn’t a good sign.

10:03 PM – Only Ruslana could pull off wearing a costume that consists of both sequins and goat hair.

10:07 PM – Seven minutes in and I’m already sick of the overdubbing…this doesn’t bode well for the rest of the evening.

10:13 PM – After watching some bald guys do a lord of the dance routine during the Hungarian entrant’s performance, I’m now watching some Brit perform a number to an Arabic beat. Her lyrics actually include the line “Can you feel the heat?” and there are no references to “Boogie Nights.” I am thoroughly confused, on multiple levels.

10:17 PM – If the expression is “It ain’t over ‘till the fat lady sings,” why is the Maltese entrant third in the line-up?

10:28 PM – I have my favorite contestant. Norwegian entry “Wig-Wam.” The reference to The Sweet alone is enough for me. If we’re going to going to quibble about Norwegian metal acts, TurboNegro makes these guys look like the pussies that they are, but Wig-Wam is beating The Darkness at their own game.

10:33 PM – Then again, I can root for these Moldavian guys to win, just so they have to hold Eurovision in Chisinau, or better yet, Tiraspol, next year. Plus I love how the lead singer manages to combine what I assume to be elements of Moldavian folk costume with Adidas track pants.

10:42 PM – The jellied meat and horseradish flavored sukariki – not bad. The contestants from CyprusGod Awful.

10:48 PM – Israel!!?? Israel is allowed to participate in EUROvision? Does this competition have a sense of geography? Maybe this chick has an ace in the hole…the Kiev Synagogue is across the street from Palats Sportu. This chick’s name is Shiri. I knew an Israeli chick in college named Shira. One time she got drunk and started talking about how hot all the IDF guys looked carrying their Uzis. I think we got two and a half years of jokes out of that episode.

10:53 PM – The Serbia and Montenegro entrant came out with a KFOR escort and then the Montenegrin members of the group left to start their own band. I kid, I kid.

I think I’m seeing a pattern here though; your entry has to have either live drumming happening on stage or an opening that contains a pan flute.

Commercial break. Thank God. I need another beer.

11:02 PM – Well, if I ever want a pinstriped navy blazer with pink piping, I guess I need to go to Copenhagen.

11:05 PM – The Swedish entry is a song called “Las Vegas.” I guess that sounds more musically appealing than “Göteburg.”

11:11 PM – You know, I actually like “Razom Nas Bagato.” I’ll always remember kids dancing to this in front of Tsum when no one really knew if the militsia were going to start shooting people or not.

I do have to say though that “Greenjolly” has to be one of the most ill-considered band names of all times.

And what kind of idiot wears a T-Shirt with Che Guevera on it when he’s singing a song about freedom?

11:16 PM – The German entrant is really freaking boring. Seriously. The song is so unmemorable I can’t even snarkily comment on it.

11:20 PM – Is it a coincidence that dogs started howling in my dvor after the Croatian entrant’s song was over? I think not.

There is someone else out there that has decided to liveblog this.

11:24 PM – “You’re a fire/My desire/When I kiss your lips/It makes me higher.” Wow. I had heard lots of talk about how Greece was the favorite in this. If there was a contest for insipid lyrics…maybe.

11:31 PM – I think Russia really just needs to keep entering T.A.T.U. every year. I mean seriously; how, as a nation, are they ever going to top that? Instead of talking about creating a “Common European Space” with the EU, they need to talk about this. Someone call Jose Barraso.

11:33 PM – The Bosnian entrant is a girl-group called “Feminem.” Get it? Oh those wacky Bosnians.

11:36 PM – OK, the Swiss entrant is a German produced, all girl, Estonian band called “Vanilla Ninja.” I’m confused again.

11:41 PM – Gary Cherone, if you’re ever feeling depressed about the whole Van Halen thing, just know that at least Extreme had a huge impact on two kids from Latvia.

11:46 PM – And we end the performance section with the French…too many jokes…head hurts…writing…like Shatner…speaks.

11:55 PM – Shockingly enough, the Ukrainian phone network seems to be overloaded and unable to process my vote for Wig Wam. I get another beer in an act of personal protest.

12:02 AM – Instead of showing all these little video clips of tourist attractions in Kiev, hohols in folk costumes, the Carpathian Mountains, and Ukrainian industry in the East and kids dancing ballet they need to have video clips showing the REAL Ukraine. You know, people waiting in line at some government office to get a pchat on some spravka, some drunk sovok stinking up a subway car, someone selling bootleg firme at a market, a group of kids drinking in a random podyezd when it’s -15 out, oligarchs trying to throw an election, or militsia pulling your car over and hitting you up for a bribe.

12:07 AM – My god, voting is going to take forever. We’re gonna have to sit through over thirty countries reading their top 12 vote getters.

12:17 AM – If I ever get a call and hear someone say on the other end “Good evening Mike, this is Minsk calling” I’m hanging up the phone.

12:25 AM – Finland just bumped their Scandanavian neighbors into the top 5. I don’t think I’m pioneering any new ground in Eurovision commentary here, but there seems to be a definite pattern in neighborhood voting. This does make me wonder how Israel is in the top 5.

12:31 AM – The Irish just thoroughly confused DJ Pasha by speaking a small amount of Gaelic. They also thoroughly confused me by giving all of their votes to the Latvian Extreme rip-offs. These guys are now in the lead.

12:35 AM – Wow. Did I just catch a Bucks Fizz reference from the limey broad? They also gave the Greek chick 12 points. Brits should have better musical taste than that.

12:49 AM – The top two vote getting acts were probably the two most banal in the entire competition. I dare some Euro to try to lecture me about how Americans have no taste. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought that the German act was boring. They’re currently in last place.

12:51 AM – The Spanish chick reading off her country’s votes has a gap in her front teeth that would make Alfred E. Newman jealous.

12:59 AM – The most unintentionally funny part about this whole voting thing is when the presenter comes on from each country and prefaces their statement by saying how great of a job Ukraine did hosting Eurovision this year. It almost always comes across as a backhanded compliment like “Wow, congratulations, you guys didn’t fuck it up!”

1:02 AM – Never mind. The Ukrainian presenter fucked up reading Ukraine’s votes. Twice. The Greek chick with the insipid lyrics is starting to run away with it. She’s in first place and has a 40 some point lead. My boys from Wig Wam are fading, but still in the top 10. My dreams of a Chisinau hosted Eurovision also seem unlikely of coming true.

1:10 AM – Russia gave two points to Ukraine. I guess that’s payback for the Orange Revolution. They also gave their twelve to the large Maltese chick, who’s creeping up in second. It’s a shame I already made my fat lady singing joke.

1:26 AM – Now Viktor Yushenko has come out on stage to give a special prize (that resembles some odd alien artifact) to the insipid Greek chick that just won the contest. It’s some weird looking metal thing that fits in his hand that he says is a gift from “the people of Ukraine.”

Can someone explain to me what a head of state is doing involving himself in this crap?

I can't believe I’ve stayed up this freaking late to watch the boring Greek chick win. Her name (and could it be more steroypically Greek?) is Helena Poparizou. Her completely boring song is called “The One.”

More sample lyrics:

You’re my lover/under cover/You’re my sacred passion/I have no other.

Thanks Europe! Have fun in Athens next year.

Parting Shot

2005-05-20T15:40:00.000+03:00

Parting shot from Trencin. I see statues like this all the time when traveling through former Hapsburg lands. Always wondered what they were. Looked it up when I got back last night...it turns out they're monuments to a Plague outbreak from the beginning of the 1700s.

Trencin from Above

2005-05-20T15:37:00.000+03:00

A shot of Trencin from a hill overlooking the square, but still below the castle. On the right is a Baroque church of some sort. To the left of that a (now abandoned) synagoge. To the left of that is a tower that sits at one end of the square. In the background, the beginning of the Tatra mountains.

Pod Hradom

2005-05-20T15:34:00.000+03:00

The hotel I was put up in was called the Pod Hradom "under the castle." That's it on the right there, that pink building. Great location in the center on these really old streets.

To go off an a mild tangent, when I checked in, the hotel desk clerk made a big deal about getting me a seperate remote for their satellite TV. Fair enough, I'm easily impressed by technology. I get bored late one night since the whole freaking town shuts down at about nine and start flipping around. I had no idea why this was, but it's safe to say that at least half of the 250 channels the satellite received were arab in origin. And my god, arabic television has to be the absolute worst freaking thing I have ever seen in my life.

Every channel could be broken down in one of three ways, and I'm not being hyperbolic about this at all.

1) Some guy singing the worst pop song (in arabic) you could possibly imagine; typically he'd be out in the desert somewhere, maybe around ruins.

2) A panel of guys sitting around a table discussing something very seriously with horrible background designs projected behind them on a bluescreen.

3) The lowest of low rent porn out there. Even worse than it's exceptional trashiness was that over top of the porn would be projected about 10 different phone numbers with flags of various middle-eastern countries next to them with and written underneath each of them it says "Live Arab Sex Chat!"

All I know is that after about 15-20 minutes of flipping through that crap I felt like finding a Quran I could flush down a toilet.

Class Picture

2005-05-20T15:14:00.000+03:00

For some reason, whenever I find myself in the Czech Republic or Slovakia it's allmost always in May. And no, I'm not complaining about that. Anyway, I've noticed this uniquely Czech/Slovak thing when I'm there this time of year. All the store fronts in town will display pictures of what I assume is the Czech/Slovak equivalent of a homeroom class that is graduating. All the pictures I'd seen before in Prague, Brno, and Bratislava were pretty standard. But the pictures up in Trencin were pretty creatively done. Like this group that put all their photos up on building blocks. There was another class I saw that made all their photos look like mugshots. Stuff like that.

Hrad

2005-05-20T15:09:00.000+03:00

Trencin is best known for its castle. It supposedly dates back to the 11th century. Here it is looming above the town square.

Trees on a Pole

2005-05-20T15:06:00.000+03:00

I saw this or something similar to it all over the place in Slovakia. We'd just be driving (or walking) along and all of a sudden there'd be this fir tree completely covered in ribbons and sitting on top of a really long pole. When I initially asked my local hosts what those things were, they didn't know what I was talking about. Five minutes later we saw one on the road and they were able to explain to me that it's related to May Day celebrations somehow. You stick the poles either in front of local government buildings or by the house of a single woman. The connection between the two was not elaborated.

Trencin

2005-05-19T23:53:00.000+03:00

OK, back from Slovakia and in Eurovision-hell...errrrr...Kiev. I put up a photo set from Trencin here. Was pretty busy with work and didn't have much time to wonder around and take pics outside of the main square area around my hotel. Then again, in a city of about 60,000 known for being the "textile center of Slovakia" there wasn't much to see outside of the main square area. More blogging and photo specific stuff tomorrow.

Light Blogging

2005-05-17T21:57:00.000+03:00

Light Blogging through Thursday.

Something unexpected came up with work and I am currently kicking it in some Slovakian town that I hadn't heard of before Sunday called Trencin.

Rock.

Kashtan

2005-05-16T14:22:00.000+03:00

kashtan
Originally uploaded by MConnor.

Absoultely beautiful in Kiev now and this past weekend. It finally stopped raining, the skies are blue, temps are consistently in the high 60s, and all the flora is in full bloom. The Chestut trees all look like they are covered in candles.

With the weather being so nice for once, I was out quite a bit this weekend, but forgot my camera for a lot of it. Especially the Saturday activities.

First I went to Petrovka to get some software...only to find that all the guys selling bootleg goods were gone! This meant about half the freaking market was closed up. I'm hoping that this is just to make a nice showing for all the Eurovision officials and things turn back to normal in June. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Saturday was also "Europe Day" in Kiev. Which basically translated to all the EU countries setting up booths on Kreshatik and giving away crappy little flags and mobile phone providers setting up booths next to them giving away even crappier cardboard hats. I hung out there for a bit with a friend whose wife works for an anti-human traffiking NGO. They got kicked out of their booth eventually by someother NGO and then we moved on to enjoy some beers outside. Europe Day also included an evening concert by "European" artists. I guess "European" meant, in this instance, the Finnish dynamos "BoomFunk MCs." What, Estonia's "Vanilla Ninja" wasn't available? Shockingly enough I didn't stick around for that. I also noticed that Europe Day is going to be held in Donetsk. I can't imagine that's gonna go over well. The European Commission tent will probably get a Molotov cocktail tossed into it by some overzealous Russian Block member.

All in all, Europe Days seemed like a microcosim of what this place is probably going to be like next weekend when Eurovision is going on. This city is actually going to be innundated with tourists. Lots of them. Not to mention all the crappy Eurotrash singers. I'm envisioning a cross between Star Search, American Idol, and some horrible 2 day rave. I'll either not be leaving my house or out in the thick of it, mocking it all. And if Eurovision permanently costs me Petrovka, woe betide you Ruslana...

Hmmm...

2005-05-13T13:24:00.000+03:00

The last time this happened in Central Asia, the results were a government collapsing. We should be keeping our collective eyes open on this one.

Whizzi-What?

2005-05-12T18:10:00.000+03:00

Posting has been light this week not because of anything going on, but because of the lack of anything going on. I got nothing. I've been kind of amused by all of this Yalta back and forth, but really don't have anything original to add to the discussion. Except for that fact that this summer I'd like to actually go check out Yalta (and the rest of Crimea for that matter). Oh, and I agree with the "Roosevelt sold-out Central/Eastern Europe" camp. ESPECIALLY in the case of E. Germany and the Czechoslovakia. He could have put boots on the ground there before the end of the war but elected not to.

On a lighter note, can someone explain to me why has the "Whizzinator" is showing up so much in the news lately? Is the news cycle so slow that everyone's resorting to dick jokes?

Kasha Tents

2005-05-10T15:10:00.000+03:00

A closer inspection of the scene in front of the Rodina Mat, quite a scene really. Every other time I've been there, the crowds have been sparse to say the least. All those tents were dishing out kasha and most of those people were absolutely pickled drunk.

Part II

2005-05-10T15:08:00.000+03:00

After the Kreshatik parade, the whole thing moved south to the Rodina Mat (big statue on the right there) where all the veterans were served traditional kasha and a band played. The eternal flame of victory at the Rodina Mat (basin on the left there) was actually lit for the occasion. Most of the year it isn't lit.

Commies on Parade

2005-05-10T15:05:00.000+03:00

Plenty of communists were marching too. But I'm not sure if they were part of the official parade or not, as they all came at the end. Lots of pictures of Stalin were on display. I guess the marchers forgot the couple million of Ukrainians he starved to death during collectivization in the 30s.

More Victory Day

2005-05-10T15:03:00.000+03:00

Who's that marching in the Victory Day Parde? President Victor Yushenko. I think there's some obvious puns in there somewhere, but I'll stay away from them. Tymoshenko was marching too, I wasn't quick enough to get a picture of her.

Victory Day

2005-05-09T19:48:00.000+03:00

Just got back from walking around what seemed like half of Kiev for most of the day checking out Victory Day happenings. It basically entailed a lot of the above, plus Communists, and people getting absolutely plastered on the holiday. Still really neat to see though. I've got a little bit of real work to do, and I'm really freaking hungry, but I'll try to blog more and put up a flickr set this evening.

UPDATE: Flickr photoset here. I'm too beat to blog individual photos tonight though. More of that tomorrow.

UEFA?

2005-05-08T20:16:00.000+03:00

Siberian Light has a post regarding some antics in Moscow during a UEFA cup game between цска Moscow and Parma. This leads me to ask another question, this time of my soccer watching Euro readers.

Can someone please explain to me what the hell the UEFA cup is? I've finally figured out how all the different national leages work (which is really lame...no playoffs? C'mon, what's up with that?).

I've basically figured out how the Champions League works: take the best teams of all the Euro national leagues, have them play each other and see who wins...but even that's lame in how the teams are selected. How exactly is it determined how many teams from each national league make it? Why do four British Premier League teams make it into the competition, but I didn't see the Albanian league champs?

But I have no idea what the hell the UEFA Cup is. Is it kind of like the NIT of Euro Soccer? Good, but not great? How does a team qualify?

Oh, here's another one, what is the European Cup Winners Cup? That one just sounds asinine.

God help me for even asking these questions, but every freaking day on the BBC I have to listen to this crap, and after six months I've reached my limit and I need to know exactly what it is these people are talking about.

How long is it until the NFL starts up again?

Occupation

2005-05-06T11:45:00.000+03:00

I posted the above picture of the entrance to the Estonian Museum of Occupation, as it appears that my earlier musings concerning Baltic observation of Victory Day this Monday weren't just the random thoughts of some ex-pat in Kiev, but that they are growing into a larger international issue. Turns out that the Presidents of Estonia and Lithuania have refused invitations to attend Victory Day celebrations in Moscow on Monday. They don't view it as victory for their countries, but as the beginning of their occupation. The President of Latvia will be attending, but will be using the occasion to highlight Soviet Occupation.

What absolutely kills me is this story that showed up in the Washington Post this morning. The basic summary is that the Russian Government expressed it's extreme displeasure over a letter sent by President Bush to Latvian President Freiberga in which he acknowledges that Victory Day also marks the start of unwanted Soviet occupation for the Baltic countries.

How is this controversial? During the entire Cold War the U.S. NEVER recognized Soviet annexation of the Baltic states.

And for Russia to deny that it occupied these countries is borderline farcical. Perhaps someone needs to send the Russian Embassies in Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius copies of the "secret" sections of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.

"One cannot use the term 'occupation' to describe those historical events, at that time, the troop deployment took place on an agreed basis and with the clearly expressed agreement of the existing authorities in the Baltic republics." Says Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Russian Ambassador to the EU.

I'll cut out the bullshit of that statement and not go out on too far of a limb to think that what he means is: "She was asking for it, your honor."

UPDATE: More here from the BBC, which had pretty good coverage of all this last night. And for anyone reading this from Western Ukraine or other places in Central Europe, I will reprint verbatim a note that appeared in an article on this subject in the Action Ukraine Report.

The end of the war also did not bring freedom for Ukraine and many other countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ultima Thule has some great thoughts on this, just go there and start scrolling. She also brings up something I completely forgot to post about that is absolutely ridiculous. The Russian Ambassador to Ukraine, Victor Chernomyrdin, recently stated that Russia couldn't be held responsible for crimes against humanity that took place in the Soviet Union, including the Ukrainian famine. If any country was responsible for the Ukrainian famine, he said it was Georgia; after all, Stalin was Georgian.

Look, I'm not bashing Soviet efforts during the war here. The country, people, and Army took an absolute beating during those four years that's really incomprehensible to people today. You read accounts about how awful Fallujah was...well the Russian front in WWII was worse, and it wasn't just one town, it ran from Karelia to Volgograd. Prisoners weren't "abused", they were just executed. So were civilians, en masse. The whole country suffered. Casualties were in the millions.

What I am bashing is the revisionism and the blatant attempt to have it both ways that seems to be going on in Russia right now. As Aussiegirl says, the Russian Govt. seems to be taking this upcoming anniversary as an attempt to lay a Russian claim on the victory and sacrifice of the Second World War while at the same time refusing to acknowledge anything bad that came out of their victory. There's no acknowledgement, let alone discussion of the forcible annexation of the Baltics, Western Ukraine, and Moldova. There's no mention of all the Red Army POWs that, upon liberation from German camps, were immediately sent to the Gulags..."obvious" traitors to the Motherland.

History is written by the victors, but freedom, democracy, and the West was also a victor in May of 1945. While we should rightly honor the sacrifices, contributions, and ultimate victory of Red Army veterans and Soviet people, we cannot let the current, and increasingly undemocratic, Russian government and their selective historical memory use elements of that victory to advance their own current, nationalistic, needs.

Yushenko's First 100 Days

2005-05-04T19:06:00.000+03:00

Lengthy Post on Publius regarding the conclusion of Yushenko's first 100 days in office. I wish they would have referenced this editorial from the Kyiv Post a bit more in their posting though. On the ground here it does seem like there's been a lot of talk and not much in the way of action. It's all well and good (and true) to say that you can't expect lasting reforms and changes to be made overnight. However, there are basic things that can be done quite easily by Executive Decree (like lifting visa requirements for travel) that just aren't being done. Visa requirements were able to be lifted temporarily for EU passport holders coming to Ukraine for Eurovision...why can't that simply be made permanent? Another thing the Publius poster forgets to mention is that part of the deal Yushenko made prior to his innaguration was that many of the powers held by the Ukrainian President would be transferred to the Ukrainian Rada (Parliament) in September of this year. Once that happens, it'll be even harder to push through reforms. And if those powers aren't transferred it'll just make the Orange Revolution look like a pure power grab to the people in the east he still needs to win over. Clock's ticking...

NB!

2005-05-04T14:52:00.000+03:00

One of the photos I had from Tallinn generated some flickr commentary. I posted the above photo with a typically snarky comment about how nonsensical it seemed to put up signs in the tourist center of a city that contained an abbreviation that no tourists would understand. Well, apparently some Estonian took umbrage with that, commenting that NB! is latin and means Nota Bene translated as "mark this" or "notice" and everyone knows that. Now obviously the sign is warning about pickpockets, purse thieves, etc...but I have never seen the NB! abbreviation anywhere before. I travel relatively frequently, but it's entirely possible in this instance (as it is with most things) that I'm an idiot. Have either of the two blog readers I have seen "NB!" used on signs anywhere else in the world besides Estonia?

Old Town

2005-05-03T13:20:00.000+03:00

The Old Town of Tallinn is quite nice and filled with medieval looking streets such as this one. It's all very well preserved and maintained and is another UNESCO World Heritage site. Definitely worth the weekend trip to see.

I posted a full photo set here on flickr, with descriptions for 90% of the photos. Check it out if interested.

Orthodox Easter in Tallinn

2005-05-03T13:16:00.000+03:00

It was Orthodox Easter while I was in Tallinn, so the Nevski Cathedral (pictured above) was a hub of activity most of the time I was there. I poked my head in a couple of times and Orthodox Easter services seemed to be nothing like the Roman Catholic ones I was used to. There were lots of different things going on at once, it was quite a commotion. Traditional Russian easter cakes were being sold out front (to be blessed inside) for about two bucks a piece, we didn't buy any.

There's quite a few Russians in Estonia, they're something like 28% of the population of the country on the whole and 40% of Tallinn in particular. The ethnic Russians seem to have second class status within the country. Russians were the taxi drivers, Russians were cleaning the hotel, Russians were working in all the souvenier stores on the holiday. Mrs. Connard was quite surprised to see Russians in this position, as it's typically the other way around. All I could say is that payback's a bitch.

When it came to Estonians and their opinions concerning Communisim, Russians, and particularly occupation they weren't exactly warm. I recalled stories from the mid nineties where ethnic Russians in Estonia weren't given Estonian cistizenship. But I assume that was all corrected as a requirement for EU membership. I do wonder though, if Russians in Estonia have to use Estonian as the language of education and government. I'd imagine they do. Estonian seemed to be a really difficult language. It's Finno-Urgic, not Indo-European. There's something like 14 different cases that it uses. I didn't even try to speak it when up there. But that didn't matter, as the whole country seemed to be tri-ligual. Everyone knew Russian, English, and Estonian. That alone was quite amazing, as the three languages really aren't related at all.

Tallinn, It's the new Prague!

2005-05-03T13:09:00.000+03:00

Back from Tallinn. Picture above is the upper portion of the Old Town there, known locally as "Toompea." The old town of Tallinn was pretty nice. Everything outside of the old town looked like a mix of Soviet and Scandinavian; which, I suppose, is quite appropriate considering the location. I had read lots of things before hand about how the Estonian people are quite stand-offish, cold, and slow. I didn't find that to be the case at all, except for the staff of Estonian Airlines.

It's not entirely inaccurate to say that Estonia is the new Prague either. Having already overrun Prague with their loutishness, Tallinn seems to be in the opening stages of being overrun by groups of drunken British stag party punters. Seriously, the next time I have to listen to someone bloviate about how classless Americans are when they travel overseas, I'm going to have to ask them if they've ever seen these idiots in action. Were I British, I'd be embarrassed.

Off to the Baltic

2005-04-29T11:50:00.000+03:00

Little to no blogging over the weekend [what else is new? - ed] as I'm off for a weekend jaunt to Tallinn. Check back for pictures and such on Monday or Tuesday.

What?

2005-04-28T18:20:00.000+03:00

So I was reading some news analysis (no link, it was in the Action Ukraine report) about Putin's visit to Israel, and I read that Putin is set to assume the rotating Presidency of the G-8.

Can someone please explain to me my Russia is even IN the G-8, let alone about to lead it and host it's summit? The G-8 is a summit consisting of democracies that lead the world in economic output. Last I checked, Russia has an economy that ranks something like 86th in the world in terms of per capita GDP, putting it behind such luminaries as Mauritius, Malaysia, and Martinique. Last I checked, Russia had recently been downgraded by Freedom House to a "Not Free" rating in their annual comparative assessment of the state of political rights and civil liberties around the world. According to David Brooks in the NYTimes today, a 20-year-old Russian man in 2000 had only a 46 percent chance of reaching age 65. The HIV rate in Russia is more comprable to sub-Sahran Africa than it is to anywhere in the developed world.

Granted, Russia doesn't participate in the economic or financial discussions that are part of a G-8 meeting...but again, why are they even there? More importantly why are they hosting it and allowed to be even the titular head of such an event? Should developed western democracies be allowing this to happen? What kind of message does that send? Why is Putin hosting the G-8? If Russia wants to host some summit with like governments, host these guys. Invite Turkmenbashi. Talk about gold statues of yourself that revolve to face the sun. Have a blast. But the G-8?

More Revaluation

2005-04-28T18:07:00.000+03:00

The currency revaluation continues to piss off a lot of people over here. Since people are concerned about local currency stability they tend to keep their savings at home, in a coffee tin, in Dollars...and their savings just got reduced overnight by about 3%. Comments like this from the Central Bank head can't be making people happy either:

"The Ukrainians haven't lost anything. They will simply pay 505 hryvnys instead of 530 for 100 dollars if they go abroad, it will be cheaper to travel. As to the domestic Ukrainian market, where exactly do you have to use dollars there?"

Right...and how many Ukrainians can afford to travel to the States? Better yet, how many Ukrainians actually get a visa to go to the States?

Look, when you have a fixed currency like they do here, readjustments are bound to happen every now and then. I don't think that the Central Bank arbitrarily revalued the currency. But it's really stupid to say things like that if you don't want to antagonize the people most affected by the revaluation.

Sidewalk Parking

2005-04-28T16:45:00.000+03:00

Neeka had a post yesterday expressing her complete shock that the sidewalks of Kreshatik were being used for parking. Considering that I see scenes like this on my street every day, suprise isn't the word that comes to mind when I see cars on a Kiev sidewalk.

Victory Day

2005-04-27T16:23:00.000+03:00

Victory Day is coming up over here. It's a holiday to commemorate the victory over facism and the end of WWII in Europe. It's a pretty big deal over here, there's always a parade for the veterans. This year is an especially big deal as it's the 60th anniversary of Victory Day. Every night on TV (Canal Inter, I think) they have information about specific battles and city sieges in Ukraine and you'll see items on the news about local preperations for the celebration. I had originally wanted to visit Moscow to see the celebrations there. But when I was talking to an acquaintance that lives there (whose father is a WWII veteran), he informed me that the only way you can get on Red Square to see the parades and such would be if you were specially invited. It's going to be quite a to-do there. The parade will be huge and there will be a ton of world leaders in attendance. So instead I'll be checking out the festivities in Kiev and I'll take a trip over May Day weekend instead of Victory Day (to Tallinn though, not Moscow...check for pictures next Monday or Tuesday).

Anyway, the trip to Tallinn and the festivities for Victory Day got me thinking. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus all have reason to celebrate Victory Day, but what do the Baltic countries think about it? All Victory Day meant for them was 45 odd years of direct Soviet occupation. How does Poland look at it? Sure, they were liberated from the fascists, but all that meant was Nazis were replaced with Communists. Great. So I looked it up last night, and Victory Day (May 9th) isn't a holiday in the Baltics. Instead (in Estonia anyway), they have TWO independence days (one for their original independence in 1919 and one for their Soviet independence in 1989. Plus a Victory Day to mark the battle they won to secure their independance in 1919. It also looks like this isn't a holiday in Poland or Hungary and in the Czech Republic the celebrate liberation on May 8th, since that's when Patton rolled into Western Bohemia and no longer mark the Soviet day of May 9th (The Slovaks seem to do the same thing).

So, after spending time looking at all this I was pleased to see an Anne Applebaum column on this very subject in today's Washington Post. It's interesting, go read it. She points out that the Moscow festivities will be attended by Bush 43. They'll apparently also be attended by other luminaries such as Belarussia's resident lunatic dictator, Alexander Lukashenko. I really hope that on May 10th I don't wake up to a photo of Bush and Lukashenko as embarrassing as this one of Bush with Prince Abdullah. Don't we have some sort of democracy spreading policy now? Sheesh.

NJG

2005-04-25T13:30:00.000+03:00

Fans of other NFC East teams and I have been screaming about this for years. Please, rename them the New Jersey Giants. It would the highpoint of a season to see that stupid "Y" on their helmets replaced with a "J."

Willow Sunday

2005-04-25T12:37:00.000+03:00

Yesterday was "Willow Sunday" in Kiev and, I would imagine, much of the Orthodox world. This meant that there were tons of people out on the street carrying a bunch of willow branches. Willow Sunday is the local equivalent of Palm Sunday. Orthodox Easter is next week. The substituion of willows for palms occurs because there are no palms available in this part of the world and Willows are one of the first plants to bloom. The day was also an occaison for people to make a buck, as there were people hawking bunches of willow branches in front of the active cathedrals in Kiev.

April Snow

2005-04-25T12:31:00.000+03:00

This is what it looked like in Kiev this past Friday. Who needs Spring anyway?

ReValuation

2005-04-22T18:15:00.000+03:00

Well this really sucks. My money now goes about 4% less far over here. Oh well. Suppose the central bank had to do it. The Hryvna is pegged to the dollar and the dollar has been taking a beating.

Unrelated topic. Can someone explain to me why Google news is listing the Donbass Voters Committee as a news source? Talk about a bias. That would be like having MoveOn.Org as a news source. Or new nazi sites as a news source. Oh wait, they've already done that.

Tymoshenko on Elle

2005-04-22T13:56:00.000+03:00

Who's that I saw on the cover of the Ukrainian version of the fashion magazine Elle yesterday? Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko!

I guess she's backing off her earlier preference of magazine covers. According to the BBC article linked above, "nasha" Julia claimed that Playboy would be "the best choice [of magazine covers to appear on] for any real woman".

I can think of someone in the blogosphere that has to be especially perturbed by Julia's change of heart on this matter.

Language Difficulties

2005-04-20T23:15:00.000+03:00

Secretary Rice has got one thing exactly right during her visit to Moscow. In a radio interview in Russia she's quoted as saying: "You understand it [speaking Russian] will be very difficult because I am out of practice, and in your language there are these awful cases!" she continued. "It's very difficult for us, and it is very difficult to talk without making mistakes."

Nasha

2005-04-20T16:08:00.000+03:00

What does a beer advertisement have to do with a David Ignatuius column I read in the Post today?

Well, in a column on the rise of nationalism around the globe he wrote the following:

The Orange Revolution in Ukraine was driven in part by young street protesters from a group called Pora, or "It's Time." In response, Russian leader Vladimir Putin has encouraged a new movement called Nashi, or "Ours," that's designed to appeal to the nationalism of young Russians. Brzezinski fears it could degenerate into a dangerous, right-wing "Nashi-ism."

This got me thinking about the (over)use of the word "Nashi" over here. You see it everywhere in advertisements. Products are constantly labeled as being "our" whatever. The picture is for a local beer, Obolon, whose slogan is apparently "Our Beer," and you see it for other things too. "Our Airline" is Ukraine International, there's a tire company whose name escapes me that calls their tires "our tires." A commercial in Ukraine once had a Japanese guy killing himself when he learned that his Japanese produced television wasn't as good as a television that was "ours."

It goes beyond advertising though, "ours" is really a part of the national psyche. The other day I went to the pharmacy to buy some Vitamin C. The pharmacist asked me "Do you want French vitamins, or ours?" Note here that she didn't say Ukrainian vitamins, she said ours.

Using ours, in lieu of nationality, applies to people as well. If someone here were talking about another Ukrainian person, they could very well refer to them not as Ukrainian, but as ours. This seems to apply to all people in the post Soviet space. Not only would a Russian be ours, but so would a Ukrainian, so would a Moldavian, and so would a Kyrgyz. Mrs. Connard, whose Russian is about 1000% better than mine and has been told that she looks Estonian, once surprised someone when they discovered she was American. How did they react? By saying "I thought you were ours!" I think this only extends to the former Soviet Union though. An East German would definitely not be ours, I doubt a Pole or a Slovak would either. (In a side-note, a Bulgarian might be. There's a Soviet expression I learned that translates as "A chicken isn't a real bird, and Bulgaria isn't overseas." Trust me, it sounds better in Russian.)

Not only are things ours, but I have also learned that things that things that are not ours are yours; again including people. Once while waiting in a line at airport customs an American a few places in front of me was making a commotion. "One of yours?" said a Russian that was traveling with me.

It's funny to think about being an American, because if there's any possessive pronouns that are overused in the States it's you and yours. Especially in advertising. Think about it, how often do you hear on the radio "What's your favorite station?" or "Who plays your favorite songs?" Channel 7, WJLA, in Washington DC, frequently uses the slogan "7 on your side." At sporting events, when the home team is introduced they're usually introduced with something along the lines of "Ladies and Gentleman, Your Washington Wizards!" Even the U.S. Army's advertising slogan now is singular: An Army of One.

But I digress. Taking all this into account, would it surprise me that there was a Russian nationalist organization that was called "Nashi?" Not at all. Would it surprise me if this movement actually resonated with people and attracted followers based on its name and the connotations that go with it? Even less so.

Benedict XVI

2005-04-19T20:21:00.000+03:00

Why do I have the feeling that the new Pope didn't pick his name based on his fondness for this book?

Well Then...

2005-04-18T11:46:00.000+03:00

I have only two things to say about this.

1) As if one needed it, looks to me like another reason not to drink coffee.

2) Have I mentioned lately how glad I am that living in downtown Kiev has eliminated my need to have to drive anywhere?

PaintedTrees

2005-04-15T13:08:00.000+03:00

It's now officially spring in Kiev. How can you tell? People are going around painting all the trees white. Why? I have no idea. But everywhere you go now, this is what you see. Trees with a bright coat of white paint around the bottom of their trunks. If anyone can explain why this is done, please leave a comment and enlighten me.

Nats Win!

2005-04-15T12:55:00.000+03:00

Nats Win!

Mexico

2005-04-15T10:39:00.000+03:00

It's probably old news by now that Atlanta Falcons QB Mike "Don't Call me Michael" Vick was hit with a lawsuit for allegedly giving some woman herpes. The funniest part about the suit is that the woman alleges that Vick used the alias "Ron Mexico" to get tested and treated for herpes.

I guess the NFL doesn't see the humor in Ron Mexico though. They've shut down the sale of custom Atlanta Falcons number 7 jerseys with the "Mexico" name on the back.

They're still available on eBay though.

East Village Ukrainian Museum

2005-04-14T10:58:00.000+03:00

The Times has a write-up on the reopening of the redesigned Ukrainian Musuem in the East Village. Looks neat.

Anarchist Ninjas Must Die!

2005-04-13T22:19:00.000+03:00

For the record, when I went to Penn State, there was no Terrorist Anarchist Ninja Guy club that existed for me to join.

Victor

2005-04-13T16:46:00.000+03:00

Like I said, Kolesnikov's arrest has been getting big local coverage. Every night on the news you can tune in and see which member of the old regime/new opposition is showing up to visit these new protestors. There's typically someone there from the SDPU(U) or some underling from the Ukrainian Regions Party. I got lucky today when I was checking out the whole scene near the Rada. My visit happened to conicide with that of Victor Fyodorvich Yanukovich himself. Look at the guy there, quite confident and forward looking; especially with that "Election 2004" flag flapping behind him.

In the long run, I have no idea how this will play out. During the election controversy, Kolesnikov was one of the Eastern politicians that was calling for autonomy/indepence for east. There's a fair amount of people camping there...but if the Orange revolution was the major leagues, this stuff barely passes as single A ball. Support for the protestors that I saw was limited to guys that obviously work for the new opposition parties showing up in their Lada station wagons to bring campers bread and such.

I have no idea if the charges that they got Kolesnikov on will stick. I read here that he'll be charged with extortion of property rights from the owner of a mall in Donetsk. Wouldn't surprise me if it was true, but can't say that he'll do time for it. The St. Petersburg Times is claiming that his role in three assasination attempts is also being investigated, if true, that's obviously pretty serious. Ukrayinska Pravda seems to think that this arrest could turn Kolesnikov into the Yanukovich block's Tymoshenko (who, incidentally, cancelled her upcoming trip to Moscow because the Russian government refuses to drop the criminal charges they have against her). I suppose that this is possible...but then again Tymoshenko is only Tymoshenko because enormous numbers of people took to the streets to back her position. All I've seen for Kolesnikov is a lot of bark and zero bite.

It'll be worth keeping an eye on this though, the way it shakes out for Kolesnikov could be indicative of how it's going to shake out for a lot of other members of the old government...especially the ones that have it coming.

RussianBlock

2005-04-13T16:42:00.000+03:00

All the campers looked to be from Russian-speaking, Yanukovich backing regions of Ukraine. Lots of Donbass, fair amount of Odessa, and even this group, that represented the Russian Block. Wonder who's interests they have in mind? Independent Ukraine's I'm sure.

Original Ideas

2005-04-13T16:38:00.000+03:00

The arrest of Kolesnikov has driven the Yanukovich true believers absolutely ape-shit. Kolesnikov was a pretty big mover and shaker with the Donbass oligarch clans, and if he goes down (legitimately or not...exactly what he has been charged with hasn't been officially announced) then pretty much any of them are vulnerable. Kolesnikov has business interests common with other Donbass heavyweights and evidence brought out investigating him could quite easily affect other people that came out on the short end of the stick when Yushenko won.

So what original idea do the Yanukovich supporters come up with to demonstrate their displeasure with this arrest? Set up a tent city in Kiev!

Latest Crisis in Ukraine

2005-04-13T16:33:00.000+03:00

Something that's gone largely unnoticed in western media is the recent arrest of former head of the Donetsk Oblast Council, Boris Kolesnikov (pictured on the right there). This hasn't gone unnoticed in Ukraine and the lastest news about it is the main story on all the newscasts.

Stepping Back?

2005-04-12T14:05:00.000+03:00

Last week Publius noted that during Yushenko's visit to Washington, he and President Bush signed a declaration that they would promote democracy in Belarus and Cuba.

Well, it looks like the Cubans weren't too happy about that.

A [Cuban] government delegation that was in Kiev at the moment cut short its visit and Havana issued a protest to the Ukrainian Foreign ministry.

Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Eumelio Caballero Rodriguez said “it is incredible for us that the president of such a friendly country as Ukraine joined the strategy of the United States that has been for the last 40 years carrying out an aggression against our country through economic blockades and by staging over 600 terrorist acts against our country.”

As a side note, I saw this article while looking through the ITAR-TASS website. ITAR-TASS is, of course, the Russian State Central Information Agency. The headline ITAR wrote up for this piece was:

"Ukraine plays down scandal with Belarus, Cuba"

How exactly is it 1) a Scandal or 2) playing down said "Scandal" when the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry says things like:

“...we proceed from the notion that true friends can always frankly speak about existing problems...The development of democracy, respect and protection of basic freedoms and human rights are the cornerstone of the activities of the new Ukrainian authority in the domestic and foreign policy. We follow with interest the development of democratic processes in every state...”

I suppose that in this instance, I should consider the source.

Easy Now...

2005-04-12T13:28:00.000+03:00

I guess this explains why it has suddenly become more difficult to find bootleg movies in Kiev. Ukraine has decided to start enforcing copyright law, to help out their WTO bid. Of course, the movies aren't impossible to find, I was still able to pick some up bootleg wares at Petrovka recently, so I guess the enforcement is limited to pirates visiable to the average foreigner walking around town. But all the guys that used to sell stuff downtown on Kreshatik and Tolstovo Ploshad have packed up and moved on to greener pastures. I just hope they don't shut down Petrovka anytime soon. Man that would suck, it's almost impossible to find English language entertainment over here. Everything not Slavic on TV is dubbed, not subtitled, and there's about 1 English language movie per week that is shown in theaters...and that's just started up recently.