you can send biscuits to [watch this space]

Sadly, the saga continues.

On taking my bags to the new flat yesterday, I was promptly abandoned by my new flatmate to the hundred mph slovak questioning of the girls staying a last few nights in the room that will be mine. I think I'm more or less correct, having been through they want to steal everything i have and they want to take compromising photos and blackmail me, in thinking they simply want to keep the room. The chief tenant and his roommate don't want them, and I am about to be caught in the middle.

Of course the chief tenant, L, can have whomever he likes subletting, so were I bent on renting the place there would not be a problem - we'd hold firm and kick these poor souls out. However, I discovered something this morning that should have been top of my list in the first place: the oven which will be my bedroom (duly noticed and assured the aircon works) is not complemented by one in the kitchen. So that's it, game over - no banana cake, no deal.


In other news, I am going to a salsa party with a couple of colleagues this evening. Oh, you dance salsa also? How surprising - seem more like maybe diver. So yes, I continue my run of looking slightly out of place amidst the luscious latino chicos and chicas (or in this case their paler Slav cousins, the čikos and čikas). Beards are not salsa - I've said it before, but I'm damned if I'll learn...

finally...

Wednesday 27th July, whatever it may say elsewhere.
Bratislava

Ahoj maties

I said i would give you all the news via a blog, and it took that much longer than anticipated, but it's here now, so you can rest easy at last and stop the endless pestering...

I'm eating robber's soup and listening to the string accompaniment in what has become my favourite restaurant (despite their not having a table for during-the-storm). The music is a mix of folkish stuff and cheekily flighty takes on various on-hold classics, very enjoyable.

That i may catch up and have this resemble a blog more than a more rambling diaryesque, I will try to condense the first few days, initial impressions and so on.

It's hot.

Being "homeless" not much fun newsflash
All things are relative, of course, but other than this blogue – have decided on that spelling, do you like? Being surrounded by slovak i am feeling vowel withdrawal (touch your finger to your neck)But yes! Other than this thing, the taking longer than expected prize goes to me finding somewhere to live. Tonight will be the middle of I hope three days spent at an excellently located property decorated mostly very tastefully with a strange penchant for zebra. Belongs to a colleague, and I'm not sure how much of the decor came with. Its real moral though is Get a UN job. It may not be quite the story I heard from Unicef Pakistan (jeeps, servants, salary fifteen times the local average...), but these blue caps know how to cut a good real estate deal.

Sorry, as I was saying: arrived Thursday at midnight, hoping to find a flat on Friday. As with Saturday and Sunday, this didn't happen, though on Sunday I had appointments. It just turned out that the people I had them with were five hours drive away in Kosice. But yes and so on, and on Monday I met Ladislav at the third time of asking. Having hoped beyond hope for a ground floor room, my heart sank as my head rose. Finally, on the fifty-eighth floor I came to the east-facing Icarus suite and went in for a glass of water. And so on, and I move in on Friday, praying to all-comers that the air conditioning works.* The guy I'm renting from is in CZ right now, filming a new series of Wife Swap, but will be back on Tuesday, so that's my probation period. Sadly no gas stove. Maybe I'll get a Primus (see Most Incredible CV Ever - the Roland Huntford book is very fine).

*I do still have some environmental principles - I'll buy imported Ecover washing powder as a karmic offset.

More on homes another day.

So I've had six days of the city and language, and three of my jobternsistancy, call it what you will. It will henceforth be my pracu (pruttsoo).

The city and language have so far been the more demanding of the two, though there are indications that will change. I sat in today on a telephone meeting of the Project Approval Committee, whose role (apart from the substance) is to say Fantastic document, really enjoyable, now here's how you need to fundamentally restructure it. And that’s good. The substance is that all Unifem projects, even if the donor has agreed the funding, need to get approval from a panel of top folk, who nonetheless don’t always know quite what they are asking for. But even at its worst it keeps a certain consistency and accountability in the process, much as running everything by a nursery class might. Buy whhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy can’t everyone just get along? yesbut whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?

See you soon : )