Май 28, 2007
Weather
5/28 20:33, Pushkin time
Continuing, life is interfering with my ability to regularly get to writing. It happens. The log-trailer project is coming together (first to be completed by Wednesday; remaining nine to be picked up on the 15th of June), the dump trucks are moving forward, and the factory work is still on track for a first build in the first week of August.
Last week I looked after a couple of British guys for a while. Both of them have been in the international gig for decades (one lives more or less permanently in South Africa). The non-africanized one had a whole host of good stories to tell -- many about his time as the representative of his US company back in the 80s in Baghdad -- back when they were the US's friends over there. As he put is, his old boss was hung just a couple months ago. In fact, he says that everyone he knew over there was either killed by the old regime, died during the Iran-Iraq war (he lived in Baghdad through the entire duration of that), or had been killed in the last few years. A hell of a thing, really.
In other things, Z's preschool is just about wrapped up. The music teacher there pulled A aside one recent morning to tell her about how well Z takes to instruments in general -- apparently, hearing something once he is generally able to reproduce it with minimal trying -- and to recommend we hook up with a nearby music academy to arrange for lessons for him. Which I did this evening after work. Between that and Aikido (I found a sensei right near us that will take Z on starting september at his old belt level) and school Z should be pretty occupied. It's only fair, since nowadays everyone tells us that he speaks better than I do -- which is probably true -- so he's ready to move on to normal-for-his-age doings. A and I have decided that he'll be spending time nevertheless over the summer keeping his English literacy skills fresh and helping her accumulate practice in Russian.
And tomorrow we go into Petersburg to spend what will probably end up being a good-sized chunk of the day first in picking up L's birth certificate at the Russian records place and then spending time at the US consulate to get it turned around into whatever US-equivalent paper as well as his passport. Then wednesday to work and other doings and then bright and early thursday morning Z, G, and I pack up and head out for Helsinki and camping and even more bureaucratic-garbage. At least we'll get some camping out of it.
And, to the heading of this one, the summer season in Petersburg has definitely started. During the daytime it's getting up into the mid-30s (call it 80s-90sF) with the humidity that comes of living in swamp country near a sea. It's not so bad for the kids and I -- I grew up with it and they're still not set in their ways -- but A being a weak lifelong-Portlander is having a bit tougher time of it. At least today, with everyone at work commenting on how hot it was, we're pretty safe to figure it won't be much worse than this. And as a bonus we have had during the past week at least four incidents of major thunderbangers with the soaking rain and everything that I remember so well. As with the climate, the kids are pretty neutral about them, but for A it's just another unfamiliarity.
And as for the light situation, my informal and incomplete survey a couple days back strongly indicates that we have just recently lost our remaining remnant of true dark until most likely July-August. It's still plenty dim around the 1AM timeframe (no reading on the street yet), but not so dark you could, for example, make out stars.
Oh yes. And also, this being the first hot day of summer, the trees (I forget the english name for the type) spent all day dropping their fuzz -- the stuff I commented on way back on my very first visit to Russia. G, as usual, was more or less oblivious; but Z was today struck by it. He collected together a softball-sized wad and is talking about stuffing a teddy-cow for his baby brother with it; it is one legitimate local use for the stuff...
Z is also riding a bike with no training wheels and rollerblading at a medium level. No sooner had he strapped the skates on outside than two older kids got theirs on and came over to help him figure out how to do it. And as for the bike, he had his first major wipeout over at И and К's place, losing a bit of skin off his elbow but hardly even noticing in his rush to get back up and going. Good stuff.
Continuing, life is interfering with my ability to regularly get to writing. It happens. The log-trailer project is coming together (first to be completed by Wednesday; remaining nine to be picked up on the 15th of June), the dump trucks are moving forward, and the factory work is still on track for a first build in the first week of August.
Last week I looked after a couple of British guys for a while. Both of them have been in the international gig for decades (one lives more or less permanently in South Africa). The non-africanized one had a whole host of good stories to tell -- many about his time as the representative of his US company back in the 80s in Baghdad -- back when they were the US's friends over there. As he put is, his old boss was hung just a couple months ago. In fact, he says that everyone he knew over there was either killed by the old regime, died during the Iran-Iraq war (he lived in Baghdad through the entire duration of that), or had been killed in the last few years. A hell of a thing, really.
In other things, Z's preschool is just about wrapped up. The music teacher there pulled A aside one recent morning to tell her about how well Z takes to instruments in general -- apparently, hearing something once he is generally able to reproduce it with minimal trying -- and to recommend we hook up with a nearby music academy to arrange for lessons for him. Which I did this evening after work. Between that and Aikido (I found a sensei right near us that will take Z on starting september at his old belt level) and school Z should be pretty occupied. It's only fair, since nowadays everyone tells us that he speaks better than I do -- which is probably true -- so he's ready to move on to normal-for-his-age doings. A and I have decided that he'll be spending time nevertheless over the summer keeping his English literacy skills fresh and helping her accumulate practice in Russian.
And tomorrow we go into Petersburg to spend what will probably end up being a good-sized chunk of the day first in picking up L's birth certificate at the Russian records place and then spending time at the US consulate to get it turned around into whatever US-equivalent paper as well as his passport. Then wednesday to work and other doings and then bright and early thursday morning Z, G, and I pack up and head out for Helsinki and camping and even more bureaucratic-garbage. At least we'll get some camping out of it.
And, to the heading of this one, the summer season in Petersburg has definitely started. During the daytime it's getting up into the mid-30s (call it 80s-90sF) with the humidity that comes of living in swamp country near a sea. It's not so bad for the kids and I -- I grew up with it and they're still not set in their ways -- but A being a weak lifelong-Portlander is having a bit tougher time of it. At least today, with everyone at work commenting on how hot it was, we're pretty safe to figure it won't be much worse than this. And as a bonus we have had during the past week at least four incidents of major thunderbangers with the soaking rain and everything that I remember so well. As with the climate, the kids are pretty neutral about them, but for A it's just another unfamiliarity.
And as for the light situation, my informal and incomplete survey a couple days back strongly indicates that we have just recently lost our remaining remnant of true dark until most likely July-August. It's still plenty dim around the 1AM timeframe (no reading on the street yet), but not so dark you could, for example, make out stars.
Oh yes. And also, this being the first hot day of summer, the trees (I forget the english name for the type) spent all day dropping their fuzz -- the stuff I commented on way back on my very first visit to Russia. G, as usual, was more or less oblivious; but Z was today struck by it. He collected together a softball-sized wad and is talking about stuffing a teddy-cow for his baby brother with it; it is one legitimate local use for the stuff...
Z is also riding a bike with no training wheels and rollerblading at a medium level. No sooner had he strapped the skates on outside than two older kids got theirs on and came over to help him figure out how to do it. And as for the bike, he had his first major wipeout over at И and К's place, losing a bit of skin off his elbow but hardly even noticing in his rush to get back up and going. Good stuff.
Май 19, 2007
Another New Thing
5/20 10:36, Pushkin time
We had Z's birthday party Friday night. He invited a half dozen kids from his preschool and a couple other friends over for bowling at the movie-theater-bowling-alley-restaurants-cafes complex right near the airport. I spent about an hour of prep time running around to the various eateries and arranging for deliveries to us at the lanes; we had fruits and veggies, salmon, shrimp, and eel sushi, and khachapuri. Sushi and khachapuri available in the same place was like a dream for Z. And the kids got to enjoy about two hours of bowling-based chaos with food.
Then yesterday morning, G and I took a quick jaunt down to Gatchina to scout out the land records office (more on that in a bit). Returning, it seems G found a bee or other such. It must have been quick, because he didn't complain about being stung. But by the time we got inside, the lid of his right eye had gotten a touch swollen. No big worries; though over the course of the day it did swell a bit more. And then this morning he woke up with about a 6"-diameter swelling over most of that side of his face. He can't open that eye and looks like absolute hell. But he's behaving as if nothing were wrong; and the medical advice we've solicited basically reassures us that he will be disfigured for maybe as much as 4-5 days, but otherwise nothing serious. It's a [my russian-english medical dictionary informs me] 'sensitivity', rather than an 'allergy' -- the med folks say that the latter involves respiratory problems and is fairly serious and rare.
As for what to do; pretty much the same as in the US. Hydrocortisone cream and antihistamines. If we had caught it right away, the local home remedy is the application of vinegar.
Oh well.
As regards the house, this last week was pretty eventful. We agreed on the house layout with the architect and have passed the project plans around to start accumulating bids. Also on monday I met again with the Kazakh guy who will be taking care of the paperwork side for us -- that is, getting the various approvals from the city, county, oblast, ecological, fire, electrical, and so forth. While this is a process that anyone can do themselves, vanishingly few actually do. Instead they hook up with a guy like ours, pay him an hourly rate, plus a bit of extra wheel-greasing to speed the process up (his example was that, for example, the fire approvals tend to have lines three days long. What he does is buy the inspector a nice bottle of cognac, give it to him in the parking lot at the end of the day, and ask him to open up the back door of the office a half-hour early the next day so they can get his stuff approved first-thing. Well worth the expense. Anyway, on Wednesday he brought out the head of a soil-sampling outfit and we arranged to have out profile-samples drilled this past Friday (based on which we can decide what kind of foundation we'll be needing). We'll be hearing about those in the first week of June.
Also, I sat with the dealership's lawyer for a bit to arrange a strategy for dealing with the neighbors who chopped off a corner of our lot over the winter. Pursuant to that, I'm taking his advice and starting the process of taking them to court. Step 1 is to get a legal document indicating exactly [i]who[/i] has broken our property rights (that's the way they say it here), that is, the legal owner of the lot and the buildings (not always the same person). Then step 2 will be to put together some sort of demonstration of what he has done -- a set of photos will do the trick handily. The after filing, the decision and court demands are done within 30 days. So I'm figuring mid-July for that; the nice thing is that they didn't chop off enough to stop us from proceeding with the building of our stuff. Anyway, step 1 is what G and I were doing in Gatchina -- the seat of the Gatchinskiy Region, in which all of this is located. I should get that answer in a couple days.
We had Z's birthday party Friday night. He invited a half dozen kids from his preschool and a couple other friends over for bowling at the movie-theater-bowling-alley-restaurants-cafes complex right near the airport. I spent about an hour of prep time running around to the various eateries and arranging for deliveries to us at the lanes; we had fruits and veggies, salmon, shrimp, and eel sushi, and khachapuri. Sushi and khachapuri available in the same place was like a dream for Z. And the kids got to enjoy about two hours of bowling-based chaos with food.
Then yesterday morning, G and I took a quick jaunt down to Gatchina to scout out the land records office (more on that in a bit). Returning, it seems G found a bee or other such. It must have been quick, because he didn't complain about being stung. But by the time we got inside, the lid of his right eye had gotten a touch swollen. No big worries; though over the course of the day it did swell a bit more. And then this morning he woke up with about a 6"-diameter swelling over most of that side of his face. He can't open that eye and looks like absolute hell. But he's behaving as if nothing were wrong; and the medical advice we've solicited basically reassures us that he will be disfigured for maybe as much as 4-5 days, but otherwise nothing serious. It's a [my russian-english medical dictionary informs me] 'sensitivity', rather than an 'allergy' -- the med folks say that the latter involves respiratory problems and is fairly serious and rare.
As for what to do; pretty much the same as in the US. Hydrocortisone cream and antihistamines. If we had caught it right away, the local home remedy is the application of vinegar.
Oh well.
As regards the house, this last week was pretty eventful. We agreed on the house layout with the architect and have passed the project plans around to start accumulating bids. Also on monday I met again with the Kazakh guy who will be taking care of the paperwork side for us -- that is, getting the various approvals from the city, county, oblast, ecological, fire, electrical, and so forth. While this is a process that anyone can do themselves, vanishingly few actually do. Instead they hook up with a guy like ours, pay him an hourly rate, plus a bit of extra wheel-greasing to speed the process up (his example was that, for example, the fire approvals tend to have lines three days long. What he does is buy the inspector a nice bottle of cognac, give it to him in the parking lot at the end of the day, and ask him to open up the back door of the office a half-hour early the next day so they can get his stuff approved first-thing. Well worth the expense. Anyway, on Wednesday he brought out the head of a soil-sampling outfit and we arranged to have out profile-samples drilled this past Friday (based on which we can decide what kind of foundation we'll be needing). We'll be hearing about those in the first week of June.
Also, I sat with the dealership's lawyer for a bit to arrange a strategy for dealing with the neighbors who chopped off a corner of our lot over the winter. Pursuant to that, I'm taking his advice and starting the process of taking them to court. Step 1 is to get a legal document indicating exactly [i]who[/i] has broken our property rights (that's the way they say it here), that is, the legal owner of the lot and the buildings (not always the same person). Then step 2 will be to put together some sort of demonstration of what he has done -- a set of photos will do the trick handily. The after filing, the decision and court demands are done within 30 days. So I'm figuring mid-July for that; the nice thing is that they didn't chop off enough to stop us from proceeding with the building of our stuff. Anyway, step 1 is what G and I were doing in Gatchina -- the seat of the Gatchinskiy Region, in which all of this is located. I should get that answer in a couple days.
Май 13, 2007
A Couple More Things
5/14 10:20, Pushkin time
I've been meaning to get these up, too. Just no time until this morning.
For everyone's edification:
The receipt from RodDom №38
and
The summary we were given that will form the beginning of his medical records.
I've been meaning to get these up, too. Just no time until this morning.
For everyone's edification:
The receipt from RodDom №38
and
The summary we were given that will form the beginning of his medical records.
New Normal
5/13 18:30, Pushkin time
So now that everyone is back home, things are more or less settling back down. As would be expected, we're all sleeping a bit less, though L pretty much sleeps fine through the night as bracketed by his feedings at midnight and 8AM and as interrupted by his 4AM.
We did, however, this past week find out what was all the fuss about the marriage and birth certificates. Apparently, while federal documents can be used anywhere, state documents are no good outside the US without an accompanying validation-type thing called an 'apostille'. Learning this, I called the US consulate here to find out that only the secretary of the issuing state can apply apostilles. So after email-corresponding with the Oregon SecState office to figure out the mechanics of it, I sent on Thursday the three certificates via DHL back to Salem along with a pre-paid return DHL airbill to get them back as quickly as possible. The apostilles cost ten bucks apiece (30 total); the shipping costs were five times that. Suck-o.
We also, pursuant to the process of having L US-papered and the visa stuff for he and the rest of us, got passport pictures taken today. The folks at the shop were agog at the need for a two-week-old to have passport photos taken; particularly to go in a document that will be valid until he is five. And the issue of the mechanics of getting his photo done was a bit of a challenge, too; we're hoping that a picture of him with his eyes mostly closed will work, since that's all we could get.
As for L, now that all the accounts have been settled, we can say exactly how much it cost to have him. At the roddom, we paid a total of 22,800rubles for the birth stuff, ancillary medicines, and night in the neonatal care place; at the children's hospital, the total bill for the couple days in their intensive care isolation ward and then the week in the main area, plus a half-dozen ultrasounds and ekgs and who even knows how many blood tests, plus follow-up on A came to a total of 32,300rubles. So the total -- since we weren't planning on the whole children's hospital thing -- came to a bit more than we were expecting; 56,100 rubles, which at today's rate is about $2173. Still, all things considered, not so bad; and it represents that [i]total[/i] cost, not just the copays.
So now that everyone is back home, things are more or less settling back down. As would be expected, we're all sleeping a bit less, though L pretty much sleeps fine through the night as bracketed by his feedings at midnight and 8AM and as interrupted by his 4AM.
We did, however, this past week find out what was all the fuss about the marriage and birth certificates. Apparently, while federal documents can be used anywhere, state documents are no good outside the US without an accompanying validation-type thing called an 'apostille'. Learning this, I called the US consulate here to find out that only the secretary of the issuing state can apply apostilles. So after email-corresponding with the Oregon SecState office to figure out the mechanics of it, I sent on Thursday the three certificates via DHL back to Salem along with a pre-paid return DHL airbill to get them back as quickly as possible. The apostilles cost ten bucks apiece (30 total); the shipping costs were five times that. Suck-o.
We also, pursuant to the process of having L US-papered and the visa stuff for he and the rest of us, got passport pictures taken today. The folks at the shop were agog at the need for a two-week-old to have passport photos taken; particularly to go in a document that will be valid until he is five. And the issue of the mechanics of getting his photo done was a bit of a challenge, too; we're hoping that a picture of him with his eyes mostly closed will work, since that's all we could get.
As for L, now that all the accounts have been settled, we can say exactly how much it cost to have him. At the roddom, we paid a total of 22,800rubles for the birth stuff, ancillary medicines, and night in the neonatal care place; at the children's hospital, the total bill for the couple days in their intensive care isolation ward and then the week in the main area, plus a half-dozen ultrasounds and ekgs and who even knows how many blood tests, plus follow-up on A came to a total of 32,300rubles. So the total -- since we weren't planning on the whole children's hospital thing -- came to a bit more than we were expecting; 56,100 rubles, which at today's rate is about $2173. Still, all things considered, not so bad; and it represents that [i]total[/i] cost, not just the copays.
Май 08, 2007
Finally!
5/8 19:33, Pushkin time
Sorry to have dropped off for a couple days. G got sick on top of my getting to commute every morning in and out of the city (a 20-minute one-way if traffic cooperates; a 90-minute one-way if not; and even more if things are really bad) so we've been pretty busy.
But today, the doctors decided that L had been checked enough, and this afternoon they checked he and A out of the hospital. So everyone is home. Yay!
Sorry to have dropped off for a couple days. G got sick on top of my getting to commute every morning in and out of the city (a 20-minute one-way if traffic cooperates; a 90-minute one-way if not; and even more if things are really bad) so we've been pretty busy.
But today, the doctors decided that L had been checked enough, and this afternoon they checked he and A out of the hospital. So everyone is home. Yay!
Май 05, 2007
Pictures from today
Saturday
5/5 20:19, Pushkin time
The boys and I were able to visit with A and L today. Both were pretty stoked, though G's attention was pretty short-lived. An amusing goings-on this morning, too. When a nurse was by to do a quickie check on L, A must have commented her that he didn't need the nose-tube anymore. To which the nurse replied, "okay," and then took the tube out (!!) We debated whether this was just a lucky coincidence in doctor's orders or a nurse who didn't have much in the way of future employment prospects. The doctor stopped by to check-in herself after the boys and I had left; and her somewhat surprised reaction sort of settled that question. But since L is eating well anyway, it's all fine.
The boys held L and we took all manner of pictures, which I will be going through and putting up as soon as the boys go to bed this evening.
Also, we did get the studded tires changed off the caravan finally. Finland won't let our car in if it has them, so we really had to put an end to the procrastination. The guy who did the tires-changing, a Kyrgyz on a temporary-residence deal, had the pleasure of both boys' company for the duration of the operation. G in particular asked enough questions that he could probably do a tire-swap himself by now; he even managed to sweet-talk the guy into letting him stomp on some of the control pedals on the tire-removal-press machine. Listening in, it is clear that G -- for all he has in terms of accent and rhythm -- still has a ways to go for vocabulary and grammar. But as everyone says, he's got more than enough time.
Oh yeah, and this morning on the way to the hospital G announced that his little brother was Russian -- after all, he is [i]from Russia[/i]. -snort-
The boys and I were able to visit with A and L today. Both were pretty stoked, though G's attention was pretty short-lived. An amusing goings-on this morning, too. When a nurse was by to do a quickie check on L, A must have commented her that he didn't need the nose-tube anymore. To which the nurse replied, "okay," and then took the tube out (!!) We debated whether this was just a lucky coincidence in doctor's orders or a nurse who didn't have much in the way of future employment prospects. The doctor stopped by to check-in herself after the boys and I had left; and her somewhat surprised reaction sort of settled that question. But since L is eating well anyway, it's all fine.
The boys held L and we took all manner of pictures, which I will be going through and putting up as soon as the boys go to bed this evening.
Also, we did get the studded tires changed off the caravan finally. Finland won't let our car in if it has them, so we really had to put an end to the procrastination. The guy who did the tires-changing, a Kyrgyz on a temporary-residence deal, had the pleasure of both boys' company for the duration of the operation. G in particular asked enough questions that he could probably do a tire-swap himself by now; he even managed to sweet-talk the guy into letting him stomp on some of the control pedals on the tire-removal-press machine. Listening in, it is clear that G -- for all he has in terms of accent and rhythm -- still has a ways to go for vocabulary and grammar. But as everyone says, he's got more than enough time.
Oh yeah, and this morning on the way to the hospital G announced that his little brother was Russian -- after all, he is [i]from Russia[/i]. -snort-
Май 04, 2007
End of Week
5/4 21:40, Pushkin time
A bit of a worry yesterday. A called me to tell me that the doctor had said something to her about L being on antibiotics, and that from what she was able to glean, it had to do with an infection in his head (the words for 'antibiotics' and 'infection' are pretty much exactly the same in both languages). So my first mission when I got in was to track that down. And happily enough, I found that there had been a slight communication issue. The word for 'primarily' in Russian is "главно" [glavno] with the final 'o' sounding more like an 'uh'; the word for "head" is "голова" [golova], which is said with the first syllable pretty heavily suppressed into the second. So when the doctor -- who was also happy to see me, as she had been unable to clear up the mix-up once A had keyed-in on "head" -- explained to A that he was taking antibiotics mainly as an infection-preventative measure that is standard whenever a tube is left in the throat and/or stomach for longer than 48 hours, she heard the couple key words, plus something that sounded a lot like 'head'. I have a feeling we're going to be worrying about this kid for a lot longer than will ever be justified.
I did manage to get clearance from the docs, since A and L are in a private room, to take the older boys through the sanitization protocols to visit at the hospital tomorrow. Both are excited; G is, I'm sure, in for a heck of a time.
As for L himself, I happened to be by when his main doctor was stopping by to do a morning checkup, which woke him up and pissed him off. So I got to hear him scream and yell for the first time, which was nice (given all the circumstances). And he's popping his eyes open quite a bit more and periodically even looking at things. A commented that if we hadn't been through two other kids already, and as such already known that things like having not even very much eyeball control is normal in the first week or so, we'd probably be having tri-daily conniptions over the things he does -- or rather, doesn't do. But we can look at those kind of things and say, "nope, nothing wrong there; just normal baby stuff".
Between the two of us, we can't figure out if he particularly looks like either of the boys -- which probably means he doesn't very much. I'm thinking he looks a little bit like the oldest of my sisters (also an L; heh heh), but it's hard to say with any kind of certainty. A at this point has nothing. We'll get some better pictures this weekend and toss them up for comment.
A bit of a worry yesterday. A called me to tell me that the doctor had said something to her about L being on antibiotics, and that from what she was able to glean, it had to do with an infection in his head (the words for 'antibiotics' and 'infection' are pretty much exactly the same in both languages). So my first mission when I got in was to track that down. And happily enough, I found that there had been a slight communication issue. The word for 'primarily' in Russian is "главно" [glavno] with the final 'o' sounding more like an 'uh'; the word for "head" is "голова" [golova], which is said with the first syllable pretty heavily suppressed into the second. So when the doctor -- who was also happy to see me, as she had been unable to clear up the mix-up once A had keyed-in on "head" -- explained to A that he was taking antibiotics mainly as an infection-preventative measure that is standard whenever a tube is left in the throat and/or stomach for longer than 48 hours, she heard the couple key words, plus something that sounded a lot like 'head'. I have a feeling we're going to be worrying about this kid for a lot longer than will ever be justified.
I did manage to get clearance from the docs, since A and L are in a private room, to take the older boys through the sanitization protocols to visit at the hospital tomorrow. Both are excited; G is, I'm sure, in for a heck of a time.
As for L himself, I happened to be by when his main doctor was stopping by to do a morning checkup, which woke him up and pissed him off. So I got to hear him scream and yell for the first time, which was nice (given all the circumstances). And he's popping his eyes open quite a bit more and periodically even looking at things. A commented that if we hadn't been through two other kids already, and as such already known that things like having not even very much eyeball control is normal in the first week or so, we'd probably be having tri-daily conniptions over the things he does -- or rather, doesn't do. But we can look at those kind of things and say, "nope, nothing wrong there; just normal baby stuff".
Between the two of us, we can't figure out if he particularly looks like either of the boys -- which probably means he doesn't very much. I'm thinking he looks a little bit like the oldest of my sisters (also an L; heh heh), but it's hard to say with any kind of certainty. A at this point has nothing. We'll get some better pictures this weekend and toss them up for comment.
Май 03, 2007
News
5/3 22:00, Pushkin time.
The sun is down, but just barely, as I finally get around to writing again. Still another month until White Nights.
This morning found A in much better spirits, and found L moved in to the room with her. He's still got his nose-tube for food; they say they will take it out once he regularly downs 50mL of food at each feeding (spaced three hours apart, round-the-clock). Also, A says that over the entire day today he's been, when awake, grabbing and thrashing and making various noises at her. Which is good.
They plugged him in to an EKG today for a couple of hours' monitoring; I'll have some idea of what they result tomorrow morning -- though A is more than capable of having gotten the point if there was anything showed up to worry about. At present, they have the two of them officially checked-in until the 13th. If he hits his marks sooner, they get out sooner (and we get some money back); if later.. well, we play it by ear. It's a bit too early to say for sure, but A might not be bringing L home this weekend; not such a big drama for her, now that she's able to stay with him, and as for the boys and I, we handle just fine.
Z's birthday is coming up, and as fortune would have it, there is a big, brand-new mega-entertainment thingy sprung up right near the airport (in fact, the complex's name, "Pulkovo 3" is a sort of joke off the fact that Russian international airports are all doubles of their domestic ones -- that is, Sheremetevo 1 is the domestic in north Moscow, Sheremetevo 2 is the international; Koltsovo 1 is the domestic in Yekaterinburg, Koltsovo 2 is the international). And having heard the rumors, we checked it out recently and confirmed that it does in fact have a fairly massive, nice bowling area. So we're setting up for Z's seventh to be an echo of his sixth; simply relocated to the other side of the planet. He is massively stoked.
I also swung by his soon-to-be-school this morning to check int the fact that his name wasn't listed on the sheets they put up a week ago. As the vice-director told me, "most parents should worry about that, but you shouldn't," since the sponsored kids are automatics. But we did find out the name of his teacher -- which, even though I wrote down, I have succeeded in forgetting at least six times; it is definitely Svetlana something-evna something-a. That is for sure. So Z is hooked up.
And finally, to my distress, I have confirmed to myself the beginning of a slow erosion of my english-composition skills. Translating an article for our colleagues in the States, I ran across a phrase having to do with particular actions taken by the police as having been... And I still can't come up with the non-awkward, correct way to say it. The words in Russian mean "outside" as it relates to the "rightful" "field", and they fit very perfectly together. But I stared and stared at it and made a dozen or so efforts at capturing the meaning without completely re-writing the paragraph from scratch. And just couldn't do it. (and then the big electric crane in the yard next door had a short which blew out a fuse in the transformer for our block, removing the immediacy of the issue) I'll sleep on it and see what I come up with tomorrow.
Also, speaking of money-related matters, we've just about got the second dump truck done, are mid-way through the first steps on our third -- this one of a set of three we ordered using a body assembled in Florida from parts made in China, and a total piece of crap that we will never order again -- and spent a chunk of this afternoon pre-prepping our fourth. Also, the parts have all come in for the prototype trailer I'm working on for А Ш (in whose hands the trailer manufacture side of the business has been for the past three years here), and the half-mile worth of metal beams has come in for the set of ten deposit-already-down logging trailers that we're selling to a timber outfit in Irkutsk, and which we expect to turn into a several-dozen-trailer order once these start getting delivered. All the profits for which I get a chunk of. And considering the fact that in Russia a project is not even worth considering unless it trigs out to at least a 200% yearly return, Yay me!
Oh yeah, and the truck manufacture. Almost forgot about that. As it stands, we'll be getting the first set of kits in July, and turning out our first new truck in the first week of August; our ramp-up is tentatively oriented to: w1 - 1; w2 - 1; w3 - 2; w4 - 2; w5 - 3; w6 - 3; w7 - 4; w8 - 4; w9 - 5; w10 - 5; w11 - 6; w12 - 6, which takes us all the way through the end of October having built 42 trucks. Which on the one hand is pretty small, but on the other hand, doesn't even come close to meeting demand, so represents a more or less regular component of commission-based dough. And the space we've got laid out is physically capable of handling 6 trucks production a day -- that is, 30 a week, 1500 a year. The market will bear it, too. It is at that point (actually, before that point; really, somewhere around w5-7 we start running into it) that the question of staffing becomes key. Crazy.
The sun is down, but just barely, as I finally get around to writing again. Still another month until White Nights.
This morning found A in much better spirits, and found L moved in to the room with her. He's still got his nose-tube for food; they say they will take it out once he regularly downs 50mL of food at each feeding (spaced three hours apart, round-the-clock). Also, A says that over the entire day today he's been, when awake, grabbing and thrashing and making various noises at her. Which is good.
They plugged him in to an EKG today for a couple of hours' monitoring; I'll have some idea of what they result tomorrow morning -- though A is more than capable of having gotten the point if there was anything showed up to worry about. At present, they have the two of them officially checked-in until the 13th. If he hits his marks sooner, they get out sooner (and we get some money back); if later.. well, we play it by ear. It's a bit too early to say for sure, but A might not be bringing L home this weekend; not such a big drama for her, now that she's able to stay with him, and as for the boys and I, we handle just fine.
Z's birthday is coming up, and as fortune would have it, there is a big, brand-new mega-entertainment thingy sprung up right near the airport (in fact, the complex's name, "Pulkovo 3" is a sort of joke off the fact that Russian international airports are all doubles of their domestic ones -- that is, Sheremetevo 1 is the domestic in north Moscow, Sheremetevo 2 is the international; Koltsovo 1 is the domestic in Yekaterinburg, Koltsovo 2 is the international). And having heard the rumors, we checked it out recently and confirmed that it does in fact have a fairly massive, nice bowling area. So we're setting up for Z's seventh to be an echo of his sixth; simply relocated to the other side of the planet. He is massively stoked.
I also swung by his soon-to-be-school this morning to check int the fact that his name wasn't listed on the sheets they put up a week ago. As the vice-director told me, "most parents should worry about that, but you shouldn't," since the sponsored kids are automatics. But we did find out the name of his teacher -- which, even though I wrote down, I have succeeded in forgetting at least six times; it is definitely Svetlana something-evna something-a. That is for sure. So Z is hooked up.
And finally, to my distress, I have confirmed to myself the beginning of a slow erosion of my english-composition skills. Translating an article for our colleagues in the States, I ran across a phrase having to do with particular actions taken by the police as having been... And I still can't come up with the non-awkward, correct way to say it. The words in Russian mean "outside" as it relates to the "rightful" "field", and they fit very perfectly together. But I stared and stared at it and made a dozen or so efforts at capturing the meaning without completely re-writing the paragraph from scratch. And just couldn't do it. (and then the big electric crane in the yard next door had a short which blew out a fuse in the transformer for our block, removing the immediacy of the issue) I'll sleep on it and see what I come up with tomorrow.
Also, speaking of money-related matters, we've just about got the second dump truck done, are mid-way through the first steps on our third -- this one of a set of three we ordered using a body assembled in Florida from parts made in China, and a total piece of crap that we will never order again -- and spent a chunk of this afternoon pre-prepping our fourth. Also, the parts have all come in for the prototype trailer I'm working on for А Ш (in whose hands the trailer manufacture side of the business has been for the past three years here), and the half-mile worth of metal beams has come in for the set of ten deposit-already-down logging trailers that we're selling to a timber outfit in Irkutsk, and which we expect to turn into a several-dozen-trailer order once these start getting delivered. All the profits for which I get a chunk of. And considering the fact that in Russia a project is not even worth considering unless it trigs out to at least a 200% yearly return, Yay me!
Oh yeah, and the truck manufacture. Almost forgot about that. As it stands, we'll be getting the first set of kits in July, and turning out our first new truck in the first week of August; our ramp-up is tentatively oriented to: w1 - 1; w2 - 1; w3 - 2; w4 - 2; w5 - 3; w6 - 3; w7 - 4; w8 - 4; w9 - 5; w10 - 5; w11 - 6; w12 - 6, which takes us all the way through the end of October having built 42 trucks. Which on the one hand is pretty small, but on the other hand, doesn't even come close to meeting demand, so represents a more or less regular component of commission-based dough. And the space we've got laid out is physically capable of handling 6 trucks production a day -- that is, 30 a week, 1500 a year. The market will bear it, too. It is at that point (actually, before that point; really, somewhere around w5-7 we start running into it) that the question of staffing becomes key. Crazy.
Май 02, 2007
The Next Phase
5/2 18:00, Pushkin time
This morning, A moved into a room in the children's hospital, where she will be staying with L until he is ready to come home. When we arrived this morning, the doctor with him explained that all with him is perfectly fine with two exceptions: he appears not to have an adequately-developed swallowing reflex (again, thanks to the wonder of Latin roots, the 'glottal'naya refleks' was something I was able to pretty easily puzzle out; we bought this past weekend a Russian/English, English/Russian medical dictionary, which I promptly forgot at home this morning); and he is not adequately active.
For the time being, because of the first, he isn't getting to stay in the room with A; once he no longer needs to eat through a tube in his nose -- just what we need, another kid who associates "nose" with "food"... -- he and A can stay together. They said this morning it might be a couple days, but then A called after his 3PM feeding to say that they gave him a bit of milk from a bottle and he managed to get it down; so he may pick up faster than they expected. As for the second, now that she's been with him for several hours straight, A says that she thinks he just has the same low-motivation character trait as did (does) G. He gets fed at the hospital every three hours, gets changed even more regularly, and has really nothing to bother him at all. So why make noise? It looks like I may be tasked tomorrow morning with explaining to the hospital doctors that we want to intentionally make our fragile baby somewhat less comfortable, so he can come home sooner. At least, I'm sure that is how it will sound to them. By now, I'm pretty well used to the horrified look that I get whenever I try to do anything based on my experiences with our first two kids. Although the head nurse did tell me, amusedly, that I was much better than the last American parents she took care of (a few years back). Apparently the mom spoke no Russian and the dad spoke even less than I do, and the day after the baby was born, they imply announced to everyone that they were leaving the hospital. And try as they might to explain the need for all the follow-up and whatnot, the dad just kept insisting that "they didn't need to do all of that" and that they were ready to go. Shocking.
By the way, they were absolutely unwilling simply to let A stay at the hospital. If she's going to be in a ward where children are (babies, no less..), she had to be fully checked-out for possible infectious diseases and whatnot. Which means more blood and pee tests and the like. These are the mandatory steps someone needs to take if they want to stay with their kid in the hospital around here. All together they ran us something like 350r -- less than $15 -- so no big deal (ohh. the look on the nurse's face when I said that about the blood tests without consulting A. "what kind of a husband are you, 'no big deal'??"). But that done, she's in.
Anyway, shortly after I left, my phone rang; A calling. Apparently someone had come to talk to her, and after a few exchanged phrases -- A says she very clearly got the fact that what she wanted had something to do with "hospital" "baby", and "money" -- they decided to call me up to straighten things out. Basically, she wanted to let me know that the hospital's policy is that free care is given only up until the point that the patient is no longer in medical danger. And then, for non-citizens, either an insurance company needs to be brought into the mix, or an agreement with some level of pre-payment needs to be concluded for the remaining services. This is for L; A's agreement for the lodging and the tests to get lodged was already taken care of. When I suggested that it could maybe wait until tomorrow morning, when I would be coming back by, the hospital lady basically said no problem, whenever it was convenient for me; she just wanted to make sure I knew about it. We're still tallying up the total cost of the whole Birth-of-L. Given the extra excitement, it's sure to go over a thousand dollars US, but it looks like not by much. So that's not so bad then.
And finally, today I did make time to stop back in at work to try to clear up any half-hanging things that I had run out on last week, and also to get the process moving on the boys' and my next visas. Since the invitations had finally been issued on Saturday, the plan was to fill out all the necessary forms, drop the whole packet, passports included, into a DHL envelope to a tourist agency in Finland, and let them get the visas and then ship the passports back to us. Of course, I called to confirm before sending things off. And found out that things have changed a bit on me.
Three weeks ago, a Russian department occupying itself with such things published a new rule forbidding the post or parcel courier shipment of passports. And then, it turns out that the law now says that only one visa can be held at a time, meaning that the moment a new visa is applied in a passport, the old visa is automatically cancelled -- even if it still has time to run. And it has always been the case that foreigners need to get Russian visas from outside the country.
So it became clear that rather than a quick day-trip across the border and back on the 2nd with visas already pre-obtained was now going to be a full trip to a russian consulate somewhere to get the visas, and then a return to Russia no sooner than the 2nd of June (when the old visas expire, and the invitation is written for the new ones to start). And further, when I asked about the possibility of going to Tallinn instead of Helsinki to get our visas -- I have a friend who lives in Tallinn; I know no one in Finland -- I was told that a couple of days ago, in protest of something or other, Estonia suspended operations at their consulate in Moscow, and in retribution, Russia suspended issuance of visas at their Estonian operations. goddammit. So, Helsinki it is...
On the plus side, we confirmed that driving our cars out and back in will not be the tragic mistake we had originally assumed it would be. So the current plan has Z, G, and I leaving Petersburg on the 31st of May to go to Helsinki, camping out somewhere near Helsinki (we'll bring our gear; there are plenty of good places to do it), on June 1 getting our new visas at the russian consulate, then driving back to Petersburg on the 2nd. What makes it exciting is the fact that June 1 is a friday, and if something fails to go properly, we'll be stuck until monday to try again.
That temporary-resident thing gets more and more appealing...
This morning, A moved into a room in the children's hospital, where she will be staying with L until he is ready to come home. When we arrived this morning, the doctor with him explained that all with him is perfectly fine with two exceptions: he appears not to have an adequately-developed swallowing reflex (again, thanks to the wonder of Latin roots, the 'glottal'naya refleks' was something I was able to pretty easily puzzle out; we bought this past weekend a Russian/English, English/Russian medical dictionary, which I promptly forgot at home this morning); and he is not adequately active.
For the time being, because of the first, he isn't getting to stay in the room with A; once he no longer needs to eat through a tube in his nose -- just what we need, another kid who associates "nose" with "food"... -- he and A can stay together. They said this morning it might be a couple days, but then A called after his 3PM feeding to say that they gave him a bit of milk from a bottle and he managed to get it down; so he may pick up faster than they expected. As for the second, now that she's been with him for several hours straight, A says that she thinks he just has the same low-motivation character trait as did (does) G. He gets fed at the hospital every three hours, gets changed even more regularly, and has really nothing to bother him at all. So why make noise? It looks like I may be tasked tomorrow morning with explaining to the hospital doctors that we want to intentionally make our fragile baby somewhat less comfortable, so he can come home sooner. At least, I'm sure that is how it will sound to them. By now, I'm pretty well used to the horrified look that I get whenever I try to do anything based on my experiences with our first two kids. Although the head nurse did tell me, amusedly, that I was much better than the last American parents she took care of (a few years back). Apparently the mom spoke no Russian and the dad spoke even less than I do, and the day after the baby was born, they imply announced to everyone that they were leaving the hospital. And try as they might to explain the need for all the follow-up and whatnot, the dad just kept insisting that "they didn't need to do all of that" and that they were ready to go. Shocking.
By the way, they were absolutely unwilling simply to let A stay at the hospital. If she's going to be in a ward where children are (babies, no less..), she had to be fully checked-out for possible infectious diseases and whatnot. Which means more blood and pee tests and the like. These are the mandatory steps someone needs to take if they want to stay with their kid in the hospital around here. All together they ran us something like 350r -- less than $15 -- so no big deal (ohh. the look on the nurse's face when I said that about the blood tests without consulting A. "what kind of a husband are you, 'no big deal'??"). But that done, she's in.
Anyway, shortly after I left, my phone rang; A calling. Apparently someone had come to talk to her, and after a few exchanged phrases -- A says she very clearly got the fact that what she wanted had something to do with "hospital" "baby", and "money" -- they decided to call me up to straighten things out. Basically, she wanted to let me know that the hospital's policy is that free care is given only up until the point that the patient is no longer in medical danger. And then, for non-citizens, either an insurance company needs to be brought into the mix, or an agreement with some level of pre-payment needs to be concluded for the remaining services. This is for L; A's agreement for the lodging and the tests to get lodged was already taken care of. When I suggested that it could maybe wait until tomorrow morning, when I would be coming back by, the hospital lady basically said no problem, whenever it was convenient for me; she just wanted to make sure I knew about it. We're still tallying up the total cost of the whole Birth-of-L. Given the extra excitement, it's sure to go over a thousand dollars US, but it looks like not by much. So that's not so bad then.
And finally, today I did make time to stop back in at work to try to clear up any half-hanging things that I had run out on last week, and also to get the process moving on the boys' and my next visas. Since the invitations had finally been issued on Saturday, the plan was to fill out all the necessary forms, drop the whole packet, passports included, into a DHL envelope to a tourist agency in Finland, and let them get the visas and then ship the passports back to us. Of course, I called to confirm before sending things off. And found out that things have changed a bit on me.
Three weeks ago, a Russian department occupying itself with such things published a new rule forbidding the post or parcel courier shipment of passports. And then, it turns out that the law now says that only one visa can be held at a time, meaning that the moment a new visa is applied in a passport, the old visa is automatically cancelled -- even if it still has time to run. And it has always been the case that foreigners need to get Russian visas from outside the country.
So it became clear that rather than a quick day-trip across the border and back on the 2nd with visas already pre-obtained was now going to be a full trip to a russian consulate somewhere to get the visas, and then a return to Russia no sooner than the 2nd of June (when the old visas expire, and the invitation is written for the new ones to start). And further, when I asked about the possibility of going to Tallinn instead of Helsinki to get our visas -- I have a friend who lives in Tallinn; I know no one in Finland -- I was told that a couple of days ago, in protest of something or other, Estonia suspended operations at their consulate in Moscow, and in retribution, Russia suspended issuance of visas at their Estonian operations. goddammit. So, Helsinki it is...
On the plus side, we confirmed that driving our cars out and back in will not be the tragic mistake we had originally assumed it would be. So the current plan has Z, G, and I leaving Petersburg on the 31st of May to go to Helsinki, camping out somewhere near Helsinki (we'll bring our gear; there are plenty of good places to do it), on June 1 getting our new visas at the russian consulate, then driving back to Petersburg on the 2nd. What makes it exciting is the fact that June 1 is a friday, and if something fails to go properly, we'll be stuck until monday to try again.
That temporary-resident thing gets more and more appealing...
Май 01, 2007
Process
5/1 14:54, Pushkin time
The latest update: L is making good progress; they've asked A to be ready to start feeding him tomorrow (which is when they'll both be moved into a room there). The doctors say that he's pretty quiet, which is most likely related to this whole thing, but which he will recover from. Just, as the doctor told me today, "not overnight". He did start grumbling at me a bit while I was holding him this morning; it's a start. A is doing about as well as could be expected -- the doctors/nurses at the hospital with L keep asking me how his mom is doing, to which I have by now crafted my answer of 'crappy - he's still not home with her yet'. But tomorrow will be a major improvement.
It is still cold out - puddles that formed in the sun froze over again overnight and are still ice-scrimmed where they have remained in the shade. Ahhh. May.
The latest update: L is making good progress; they've asked A to be ready to start feeding him tomorrow (which is when they'll both be moved into a room there). The doctors say that he's pretty quiet, which is most likely related to this whole thing, but which he will recover from. Just, as the doctor told me today, "not overnight". He did start grumbling at me a bit while I was holding him this morning; it's a start. A is doing about as well as could be expected -- the doctors/nurses at the hospital with L keep asking me how his mom is doing, to which I have by now crafted my answer of 'crappy - he's still not home with her yet'. But tomorrow will be a major improvement.
It is still cold out - puddles that formed in the sun froze over again overnight and are still ice-scrimmed where they have remained in the shade. Ahhh. May.
