My crazy wife has tried to convince me that this sad blog still has readers and they are desperate for information on the happenings of my life. There is only one big thing to announce really and that is our next assignment. We’re going to anti-Ukraine.
We received our bid list last week. For those of you not up with Foreign Service lingo, the bid list is the list of job assignments available to me for my onward post. Although the list has about 400 different jobs around the world, because of many different limitations, there are really only about 20 that we need to be concerned with. I have to submit my list in about a month with 20 options ranked in preference.
There is something inherently wrong with living some place where you need to feel grateful when the temperature finally surpasses the freezing mark. After about two weeks of temperatures hovering between 10F and 17F, we’re finally to the point where my dog’s pee doesn’t instantly freeze into a yellow puddle next to the tree in front of our apartment.
The details on the situation are still a bit fuzzy, but a U.S. diplomat and his embassy driver were shot and killed in Khartoum, Sudan yesterday. He wasn’t much older than me and it doesn’t sound like he was doing anything any different than I was doing on New Year’s Eve. Scary stuff.
One of the strange aspects of Kyiv is the cost of living. It is very hard to quickly say whether this is a cheap or an expensive place. In the same way, it is hard to describe this place as Third World or First World. Ukraine seems to be in both places at once.
My wife says I don’t have to feel guilty about not blogging. The funny thing is, she’s right. (Not really funny ha ha, I guess, but you know what I mean.) I imagine somewhere at some university there is a grad student writing a thesis about the psychology of the blogosphere and why bloggers feel guilty about not constantly updating a site that few people read and most of that small number of people are strangers. Still, I feel bad about not giving my loyal readers a bit more to read so here is a mini update on life in Kyiv.
Yes, I know. I haven’t updated the blog in about two months. I’m a terrible, terrible blogger. The worst thing I could do now is a cheesy, cop-out post where I just cut and paste someone else’s work. That would be very bad of me.
I had my first Ukrainian traffic cop shakedown experience recently. I think it was about my fifth time driving the new wheels so I guess I was due. To be fair, I probably shouldn’t use the word “shakedown” as I probably did break the law. I’m not really sure. However, seeing as they were going to ask for a bribe anyway, I don’t see that the fact I may have turned left illegally makes the cops actions any better.
You can knock America and Americans for a lot of things, but there is one thing that we do damn well. We line up. We instinctively line up and wait our turn. Sure, patience sometimes wears thin and people push forward. Sometimes some doofus comes along and tries to cut in line. Mostly, if we’re irritated we just do that exasperated sigh to let the person in front of us know our displeasure. All in all, we’re pretty darn orderly. Unfortunately, the rest of the world doesn’t work this way.
I’m trying out some new themes with the blog. I think I like this one, but I need to tweak it a bit and clean up some rough edges. Feel free to provide any input.