июля 29, 2007
Translation
7/30 9:07, Pushkin time
Back again after a long week of playing translator (among other things). I'd like to say I'm getting better at it.
I think I last got on sometime this past Tuesday. So to summarize from there:
We had people flying in pretty much all week -- a new person or two added every day. And really, only in the beginning (when the guests were limited to a head engineer and a project manager) was I in my zone of comfort. I spent the better part of a day doing financing negotiations, then a good hunk of another day working out a discussion between a representative of a Latvian bank and a guy from the treasury department of a US company. As if the fact that I had to have them explain in some detail a number of their terms to me wasn't bad enough, there are several terms that have direct translations -- but whose translations have concretely differing meanings in the two languages. I suppose this is the case for technical stuff, too (in fact, it is; I can think of a couple examples). But that's my field. Bank stuff?... -sigh-
Anyway, it ended. The remaining two guys are on a train which is probably at this moment pulling into Nizhniy Novgorod. Sixteen hours one-way (there are no direct flights from Petersburg, and routing through Moscow would take a while, too, plus necessitating a change-of-airports, and all manner of other unpleasantries) to spend an eight-hour day there. Then the two americans fly out via Frankfurt, and И spends another 16 hours returning. Better him than me.
One thing I've been noticing -- and particularly with this last time, since I was able to observe them in a more natural state (interacting with each other, rather than just touristing). The people who come here from the US are for the most part from the Midwest (Chicago and environs, more specifically) or the non-Southern East Coast (southern Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania). Although they have things in common with me -- with us, really -- that none of the people I interact with on a daily basis have, they're distinctly not... my people. They're as foreign in a lot of ways as are the guys from Africa or England.
Tripping for work before, I noticed the phenomenon. Always, on the last flight home, there was a different feel to the plane. Even before getting on the plane. Just being in the crowds, surrounded by a group of people who also made the PacNW their home. Tough to describe; it was just a clear feeling that these are my normal environment. In fact, it was usually possible to pick out, leaving Brisbane or Auckland not only the Americans, but the ones who would be on the plane with me all the way to Portland. A says she picked up on something like that, flying back this past winter, too. It'll be interesting to see if the kids catch on to it this coming winter. And then, to see what we pick up on for our return trip to Pushkin.
What fun is life without social experiments...
Then to the house. Sand and gravel have been delivered (says the crew chief; I'm going out to confirm this evening). Lines have been laid out for the foundation. A tractor was supposed to have come by to push some things around and clear out a bit of the old foundation over whose corner ours falls. This was on Saturday. Eventually, it came out that the truck that hauled the tractor from place to place had broken down somewhere. So nothing Saturday. And Sunday, so far as I know, still nothing on that end. I'm half-expecting a call today that the guy has arrived and I need to swing by and settle with him. Which, of course, is no problem at all in the middle of a busy Monday... Pain in the ass.
A part of this week will be dedicated to the preparations for visa application for myself and the boys (L will be getting his in Seattle with A; Z and G will be with me in Kiev). Surely, a part will also fall to the house-stuff. I'll try to make time here, too.
Back again after a long week of playing translator (among other things). I'd like to say I'm getting better at it.
I think I last got on sometime this past Tuesday. So to summarize from there:
We had people flying in pretty much all week -- a new person or two added every day. And really, only in the beginning (when the guests were limited to a head engineer and a project manager) was I in my zone of comfort. I spent the better part of a day doing financing negotiations, then a good hunk of another day working out a discussion between a representative of a Latvian bank and a guy from the treasury department of a US company. As if the fact that I had to have them explain in some detail a number of their terms to me wasn't bad enough, there are several terms that have direct translations -- but whose translations have concretely differing meanings in the two languages. I suppose this is the case for technical stuff, too (in fact, it is; I can think of a couple examples). But that's my field. Bank stuff?... -sigh-
Anyway, it ended. The remaining two guys are on a train which is probably at this moment pulling into Nizhniy Novgorod. Sixteen hours one-way (there are no direct flights from Petersburg, and routing through Moscow would take a while, too, plus necessitating a change-of-airports, and all manner of other unpleasantries) to spend an eight-hour day there. Then the two americans fly out via Frankfurt, and И spends another 16 hours returning. Better him than me.
One thing I've been noticing -- and particularly with this last time, since I was able to observe them in a more natural state (interacting with each other, rather than just touristing). The people who come here from the US are for the most part from the Midwest (Chicago and environs, more specifically) or the non-Southern East Coast (southern Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania). Although they have things in common with me -- with us, really -- that none of the people I interact with on a daily basis have, they're distinctly not... my people. They're as foreign in a lot of ways as are the guys from Africa or England.
Tripping for work before, I noticed the phenomenon. Always, on the last flight home, there was a different feel to the plane. Even before getting on the plane. Just being in the crowds, surrounded by a group of people who also made the PacNW their home. Tough to describe; it was just a clear feeling that these are my normal environment. In fact, it was usually possible to pick out, leaving Brisbane or Auckland not only the Americans, but the ones who would be on the plane with me all the way to Portland. A says she picked up on something like that, flying back this past winter, too. It'll be interesting to see if the kids catch on to it this coming winter. And then, to see what we pick up on for our return trip to Pushkin.
What fun is life without social experiments...
Then to the house. Sand and gravel have been delivered (says the crew chief; I'm going out to confirm this evening). Lines have been laid out for the foundation. A tractor was supposed to have come by to push some things around and clear out a bit of the old foundation over whose corner ours falls. This was on Saturday. Eventually, it came out that the truck that hauled the tractor from place to place had broken down somewhere. So nothing Saturday. And Sunday, so far as I know, still nothing on that end. I'm half-expecting a call today that the guy has arrived and I need to swing by and settle with him. Which, of course, is no problem at all in the middle of a busy Monday... Pain in the ass.
A part of this week will be dedicated to the preparations for visa application for myself and the boys (L will be getting his in Seattle with A; Z and G will be with me in Kiev). Surely, a part will also fall to the house-stuff. I'll try to make time here, too.
июля 23, 2007
Guests again
7/24 9:19, Pushkin time
We've got people coming in from the US all week this week, so this may be a short one (and they may be really sparse for the next few days).
Saturday after A's dentist appointment (they put in a temporary filling and said to give it a couple days before making the call whether to put in a permanent one or to do something more drastic) we went into the city to do a bit of present-shopping. On the way we stopped in at the big Dom Knigi and -- to all our surprise -- found that the new Harry Potter book (British release) was already in the store and on sale. So A had her book bought and in hand before the doors had even opened on the Portland releases of it. She was so stoked.
By the way, an import of a hardcover version of a big, popular book will set you back 1300r -- at today's exchange rate... too much to even think about.
The gift shopping. Surprisingly, the biggest stumbling block to our attempts to swing through the souvenir places without paying souvenir prices was G. We're pretty sure that he still doesn't believe that A and I can speak any Russian at all, since he never uses it to us. He dreams in Russian (talks in his sleep, so we know that for sure), talks to his brother in Russian, and all of his toys talk in Russian. But to us? Maybe a couple of words, but no sentences. So we would sidle up, trying to look all 'local' and G would bust out with a "Look at that, mommy! They have the dolls like you have!"
Crap.
But we did manage to get some okay stuff anyway. And the place we went is definitely worth remembering.
Then Sunday, A closed herself and L in the bedroom with the book. I had a quick get-together with the foundation crew chief, who looked over the lot (now with container!) and pronounced it ready to begin. He's said that he would have guys out yesterday and today getting the greenery taken out and the ground leveled for the foundation work to start. I've asked A to swing by today to make sure this is happening. Then closer to the middle of the week, they pound in their corner stakes, we go to confirm the location and they get started drilling holes. I brought the chief back by our place to meet A, since -- particularly this week with the aforementioned guests -- she's going to be the one taking care of the check-ups and approvals. Nice guy.
Then yesterday, A's dentist appointment went off. In a half-hour's time they had popped out the temporary, put in a permanent, and sent her on her way. The entire cost for the two visits and the full suite of work? Around 1700r. And this at a higher-end place, too. Once we all get back from our various travels, A says she'll set up for all of us to swing by and get checked up there. A may not have been able to start the med school yet, but of the five of us, she's definitely got the most experience accumulated in the medical realms here. Probably a better medical vocabulary than me (who, you may recall, was so excited to get to say something about the heart, since the word for 'valve' is one that I know) by now, too.
They're here. Time to go.
We've got people coming in from the US all week this week, so this may be a short one (and they may be really sparse for the next few days).
Saturday after A's dentist appointment (they put in a temporary filling and said to give it a couple days before making the call whether to put in a permanent one or to do something more drastic) we went into the city to do a bit of present-shopping. On the way we stopped in at the big Dom Knigi and -- to all our surprise -- found that the new Harry Potter book (British release) was already in the store and on sale. So A had her book bought and in hand before the doors had even opened on the Portland releases of it. She was so stoked.
By the way, an import of a hardcover version of a big, popular book will set you back 1300r -- at today's exchange rate... too much to even think about.
The gift shopping. Surprisingly, the biggest stumbling block to our attempts to swing through the souvenir places without paying souvenir prices was G. We're pretty sure that he still doesn't believe that A and I can speak any Russian at all, since he never uses it to us. He dreams in Russian (talks in his sleep, so we know that for sure), talks to his brother in Russian, and all of his toys talk in Russian. But to us? Maybe a couple of words, but no sentences. So we would sidle up, trying to look all 'local' and G would bust out with a "Look at that, mommy! They have the dolls like you have!"
Crap.
But we did manage to get some okay stuff anyway. And the place we went is definitely worth remembering.
Then Sunday, A closed herself and L in the bedroom with the book. I had a quick get-together with the foundation crew chief, who looked over the lot (now with container!) and pronounced it ready to begin. He's said that he would have guys out yesterday and today getting the greenery taken out and the ground leveled for the foundation work to start. I've asked A to swing by today to make sure this is happening. Then closer to the middle of the week, they pound in their corner stakes, we go to confirm the location and they get started drilling holes. I brought the chief back by our place to meet A, since -- particularly this week with the aforementioned guests -- she's going to be the one taking care of the check-ups and approvals. Nice guy.
Then yesterday, A's dentist appointment went off. In a half-hour's time they had popped out the temporary, put in a permanent, and sent her on her way. The entire cost for the two visits and the full suite of work? Around 1700r. And this at a higher-end place, too. Once we all get back from our various travels, A says she'll set up for all of us to swing by and get checked up there. A may not have been able to start the med school yet, but of the five of us, she's definitely got the most experience accumulated in the medical realms here. Probably a better medical vocabulary than me (who, you may recall, was so excited to get to say something about the heart, since the word for 'valve' is one that I know) by now, too.
They're here. Time to go.
июля 20, 2007
Something
7/20 11:30, Pushkin time
The past two days' free time was occupied mainly on two tasks: Getting the container bought and moved and placed, and fixing our washing machine. The second came down to an issue of Z getting to the age where he sticks stuff in his pockets and forgets to unload them. Jamming the pump and the filter I found 7r,31k, plus $0.18, as well as what looks like a handful of finishing nails. Surprisingly, no pebbles.
And as for the first, on Wednesday i arranged to have the container purchased (something that, as it could only take place at a sales office in the city during business hours, was done via courier), having it picked up and delivered to the yard adjacent to our manufacturing building. Then yesterday afternoon, meeting with the driver of the tractor-trailer that would be delivering the container and the driver of the crane that would be doing the unloading and than having them follow me out to our place. Because the road leaving Pavlovsk to the south goes under a low bridge, our route took us through Pushkin and south on Kievskoye shosse down almost to Gatchina, turning off just beforehand at the Verevo train station, and cutting across country to hit the Pavlovsk-Gatchina road well south of the bridge, right near Romanovka.
Speaking of 'hit', I came close to getting pasted at the tail-end of our cross-country odyssey. The cut-across road hits the Pavlovsk-Gatchina right in the middle of an S-bend. It had been alternately dumping rain and bright sunshine all day yesterday, so the roads were a bit submerged in some places, and wet everywhere. I pulled to a stop at the intersection and was checking for cross-traffic, when I heard a truck horn and heard skidding. I looked to the other side to see a Kamaz sliding straight towards me, with his front wheels kicked all the way to the side (changing his trajectory not in the slightest). Panicking, I popped the car into a different gear (turned out to be 'neutral'), and gassed it. Fortunately, in the couple seconds which I spent figuring out my error, the Kamaz came to a stop a good six inches from my bumper.
Then he went his way and I went mine. Within a couple miles, the numbness had pretty much left my legs..
Anyway, arriving at our lot, with a little bit of rearranging we were able to get the container offloaded and put into place. Now the gastarbeiters will have a home for when they work.
Pretty much the only other thing during these last couple days was the five of us heading into the city wednesday evening to get blood taken pursuant to getting our 'HIV-Certificate' with which we will be able to get our visas in a couple weeks. The place we went was a "European Medical Center". Meaning -- I suppose -- expensive-looking and full of big, empty spaces. Even so, it still only cost 27.5 euro (in rubles) per person for the tests and certificates, which A tells me is less than they cost in Oregon. Plus, they turned the results and certificates around in less than 24 hours. I've got them in my hands now; all that remains to do for visa prep is to get the invitations for myself and the boys and to fill out our app forms. And then go do it.
Fortunately, since my visa was issued for through the entire month of August, the caravan is papered until September. So I've got no worries about the mechanics of re-papering it when we get back from Kiev. The Ford, however, runs out while A is still gone. We're going to try to go to the customs office and explain the situation to them so we can get an application opened before she leaves and have the actual temporary import paperwork done after she gets back and we get our registrations back (now a process that takes up to 3 weeks). Worst-case, they decide not to help us out and we end up paying the 1500-ruble fine for late filing. But I'd really like to avoid that...
The past two days' free time was occupied mainly on two tasks: Getting the container bought and moved and placed, and fixing our washing machine. The second came down to an issue of Z getting to the age where he sticks stuff in his pockets and forgets to unload them. Jamming the pump and the filter I found 7r,31k, plus $0.18, as well as what looks like a handful of finishing nails. Surprisingly, no pebbles.
And as for the first, on Wednesday i arranged to have the container purchased (something that, as it could only take place at a sales office in the city during business hours, was done via courier), having it picked up and delivered to the yard adjacent to our manufacturing building. Then yesterday afternoon, meeting with the driver of the tractor-trailer that would be delivering the container and the driver of the crane that would be doing the unloading and than having them follow me out to our place. Because the road leaving Pavlovsk to the south goes under a low bridge, our route took us through Pushkin and south on Kievskoye shosse down almost to Gatchina, turning off just beforehand at the Verevo train station, and cutting across country to hit the Pavlovsk-Gatchina road well south of the bridge, right near Romanovka.
Speaking of 'hit', I came close to getting pasted at the tail-end of our cross-country odyssey. The cut-across road hits the Pavlovsk-Gatchina right in the middle of an S-bend. It had been alternately dumping rain and bright sunshine all day yesterday, so the roads were a bit submerged in some places, and wet everywhere. I pulled to a stop at the intersection and was checking for cross-traffic, when I heard a truck horn and heard skidding. I looked to the other side to see a Kamaz sliding straight towards me, with his front wheels kicked all the way to the side (changing his trajectory not in the slightest). Panicking, I popped the car into a different gear (turned out to be 'neutral'), and gassed it. Fortunately, in the couple seconds which I spent figuring out my error, the Kamaz came to a stop a good six inches from my bumper.
Then he went his way and I went mine. Within a couple miles, the numbness had pretty much left my legs..
Anyway, arriving at our lot, with a little bit of rearranging we were able to get the container offloaded and put into place. Now the gastarbeiters will have a home for when they work.
Pretty much the only other thing during these last couple days was the five of us heading into the city wednesday evening to get blood taken pursuant to getting our 'HIV-Certificate' with which we will be able to get our visas in a couple weeks. The place we went was a "European Medical Center". Meaning -- I suppose -- expensive-looking and full of big, empty spaces. Even so, it still only cost 27.5 euro (in rubles) per person for the tests and certificates, which A tells me is less than they cost in Oregon. Plus, they turned the results and certificates around in less than 24 hours. I've got them in my hands now; all that remains to do for visa prep is to get the invitations for myself and the boys and to fill out our app forms. And then go do it.
Fortunately, since my visa was issued for through the entire month of August, the caravan is papered until September. So I've got no worries about the mechanics of re-papering it when we get back from Kiev. The Ford, however, runs out while A is still gone. We're going to try to go to the customs office and explain the situation to them so we can get an application opened before she leaves and have the actual temporary import paperwork done after she gets back and we get our registrations back (now a process that takes up to 3 weeks). Worst-case, they decide not to help us out and we end up paying the 1500-ruble fine for late filing. But I'd really like to avoid that...
июля 17, 2007
Rushing
7/17 16:02, Pushkin time
So late yesterday the head guy of the foundation outfit gave me a ring to ask about a safe place to store their tools and materials. Stupid me, I hadn't thought of that. He wondered if maybe a neighbor would agree to hold onto the stuff for me. Umm... No.
So I spent a chunk of this morning figuring out and putting in motion that item. We found a place selling 40-foot shipping containers, dashed over to their yard to pick out one that suited, are sending a guy out to the city to pay for it tomorrow morning, and will have it stationed on a corner of our lot by Friday, at which point the workers will have a place to store tools and materials, as well as a place to sleep (we were previously discussing getting them camping tents...). The nice thing about this option, in addition to it being one of the more secure storage methods, is that we'll be able to use it for the duration of the construction, and then when we're done with it, sell it for something close to (maybe even a bit more, depending on whether or not the market for them continues its trend) what we paid for it. So there is that.
The other quick project to day was a trip to Gatchina to pick up the documents indicating just exactly who we will be taking to court over their swiping of our property. As they are slimy crooks, I don't mind identifying them by name: the Cherezovs -- Sergey Nikolaevich and Yelena Konstantinovna [Черезов Сергей Николаевич и Черезова Елена Константиновна]. As I type, our attorney, Д Д, is putting together the filing papers.
So, progress on both fronts.
So late yesterday the head guy of the foundation outfit gave me a ring to ask about a safe place to store their tools and materials. Stupid me, I hadn't thought of that. He wondered if maybe a neighbor would agree to hold onto the stuff for me. Umm... No.
So I spent a chunk of this morning figuring out and putting in motion that item. We found a place selling 40-foot shipping containers, dashed over to their yard to pick out one that suited, are sending a guy out to the city to pay for it tomorrow morning, and will have it stationed on a corner of our lot by Friday, at which point the workers will have a place to store tools and materials, as well as a place to sleep (we were previously discussing getting them camping tents...). The nice thing about this option, in addition to it being one of the more secure storage methods, is that we'll be able to use it for the duration of the construction, and then when we're done with it, sell it for something close to (maybe even a bit more, depending on whether or not the market for them continues its trend) what we paid for it. So there is that.
The other quick project to day was a trip to Gatchina to pick up the documents indicating just exactly who we will be taking to court over their swiping of our property. As they are slimy crooks, I don't mind identifying them by name: the Cherezovs -- Sergey Nikolaevich and Yelena Konstantinovna [Черезов Сергей Николаевич и Черезова Елена Константиновна]. As I type, our attorney, Д Д, is putting together the filing papers.
So, progress on both fronts.
июля 16, 2007
Uneventful
7/16 13:24, Pushkin time
...to describe, in a word, the weekend. Summmertime is slipping by; things are getting done; and so forth.
I took a quick side-trip this morning down to the Gatchina land office to take the next step regarding getting the corner of our land that the neighbors chopped off straightened back out. Arriving at the УФК office an hour before it opened, I found myself first in line (!!). So when nine rolled around, I was able to hop right up to the window and pass in my 'request for release of official information regarding the registration of ownership' for the neighboring hunk of land. The clerk lady totally botched taking down my vitals from my passport -- in addition to misspelling my name, and among other things, she put down my visa number as my passport number, and the date of my latest entry into Russia as the date my passport was issued -- but was pretty decent about the whole thing when I handed back the pro forma 'check to make sure the information on this is accurate' sheet with corrections on every third word. And once I got the paperwork given to her, she expalined that I needed to pay 100 rubles (plus 2 kopek 'administrative fee'). Which payment takes places around here on the presentation of a квитанция [kvitantsiya - not quite translatable as 'check' or 'bill'] to any Sberbank payment window. That's the way bills, fines, fees, etc. get paid here. So I went across the street to the Sberbank to find that they had also opened at 9, and that in this line I was like number twelve. And Sberbank lines can move slowly (since people will frequently save up several months' worth of kvitantsii and bring them in to pay all at once - one at a time). So I blew close to half an hour waiting for eleven people to take care of what they needed to do before paying my 110.02r (the extra ten is the bank's 'administrative fee'), getting my receipt and being able to take it back over to the УФК office. In exchange, I have a little scrap of paper indicating that I should come back by tomorrow afternoon to get the 'information regarding the registration of ownership'.
But the drive back from Gatchina was nice.
In other doings, L's got a pediatrician's visit happening about twenty minutes from now; A's got a dentist appointment just freshly set up with the outfit that did Z's checkup-preparatory-to-school-registration; and the whole five of us get to go Wednesday evening into the city to give blood for the HIV certificates that we need to get our new visas. I asked, and the office at the city clinic informed me that even though there is no medical sense whatsoever in getting L's blood tested (since the test wouldn't show anything until six months after infection, and he was only born less than three months ago), the way the law is written, every passport needs its own visa, and every visa needs a certificate, and that every certificate needs a blood test. Really, it all comes down to the fact that we are coming from one of the vanishingly few places on earth where children are not simply annotated (with pictures) into their parents' passports. Were we carrying such passports, we would only be going through these hassles for A and I, instead of for everyone. -sigh-
A also got her tickets today (the Fedex delivery guy on what appears to have been Wednesday of last week claimed to have tried to deliver them to us and been unable since no one was home) for her trip back to the US in August. The boys and I have had our tickets to Kiev in hand for the better part of a week already. So that's all coming together.
...to describe, in a word, the weekend. Summmertime is slipping by; things are getting done; and so forth.
I took a quick side-trip this morning down to the Gatchina land office to take the next step regarding getting the corner of our land that the neighbors chopped off straightened back out. Arriving at the УФК office an hour before it opened, I found myself first in line (!!). So when nine rolled around, I was able to hop right up to the window and pass in my 'request for release of official information regarding the registration of ownership' for the neighboring hunk of land. The clerk lady totally botched taking down my vitals from my passport -- in addition to misspelling my name, and among other things, she put down my visa number as my passport number, and the date of my latest entry into Russia as the date my passport was issued -- but was pretty decent about the whole thing when I handed back the pro forma 'check to make sure the information on this is accurate' sheet with corrections on every third word. And once I got the paperwork given to her, she expalined that I needed to pay 100 rubles (plus 2 kopek 'administrative fee'). Which payment takes places around here on the presentation of a квитанция [kvitantsiya - not quite translatable as 'check' or 'bill'] to any Sberbank payment window. That's the way bills, fines, fees, etc. get paid here. So I went across the street to the Sberbank to find that they had also opened at 9, and that in this line I was like number twelve. And Sberbank lines can move slowly (since people will frequently save up several months' worth of kvitantsii and bring them in to pay all at once - one at a time). So I blew close to half an hour waiting for eleven people to take care of what they needed to do before paying my 110.02r (the extra ten is the bank's 'administrative fee'), getting my receipt and being able to take it back over to the УФК office. In exchange, I have a little scrap of paper indicating that I should come back by tomorrow afternoon to get the 'information regarding the registration of ownership'.
But the drive back from Gatchina was nice.
In other doings, L's got a pediatrician's visit happening about twenty minutes from now; A's got a dentist appointment just freshly set up with the outfit that did Z's checkup-preparatory-to-school-registration; and the whole five of us get to go Wednesday evening into the city to give blood for the HIV certificates that we need to get our new visas. I asked, and the office at the city clinic informed me that even though there is no medical sense whatsoever in getting L's blood tested (since the test wouldn't show anything until six months after infection, and he was only born less than three months ago), the way the law is written, every passport needs its own visa, and every visa needs a certificate, and that every certificate needs a blood test. Really, it all comes down to the fact that we are coming from one of the vanishingly few places on earth where children are not simply annotated (with pictures) into their parents' passports. Were we carrying such passports, we would only be going through these hassles for A and I, instead of for everyone. -sigh-
A also got her tickets today (the Fedex delivery guy on what appears to have been Wednesday of last week claimed to have tried to deliver them to us and been unable since no one was home) for her trip back to the US in August. The boys and I have had our tickets to Kiev in hand for the better part of a week already. So that's all coming together.
июля 11, 2007
More
7/12 9:50, Pushkin time
So I heard back from another one of the outfits with a price on the foundation work yesterday. Based on the number we got a while back, it seems almost suspiciously low; though they've got an itemized materials list which adds up correctly and the prices they give also seem individually within the scope of reason. And it's not like they're offering it cheaper than people were able to get eight years ago (in fact, twice as expensive...). So I'm getting together with one last outfit on Saturday and then by the end of the weekend we will have set our selected crew to work. Which puts a foundation in the ground and ready to build on by the time we get back from Kiev. Since the lumber question is still under investigation, I'm not figuring that we'll have wood lying around until after that time anyway.
As for other things; we've got processes moved along far enough that we are getting commitments from the Mexico factory which will be supplying them to us that the first groups of some specialized trucks are going to be built in less than a month -- putting them on our lot inside two months, and sold inside two months + 20 minutes or so. Ad thus the money starts coming in earnest. The first sets of parts for the assembly are set to ship in mid-August, too; we're being conservative and saying an October start-of-build for that, too. Six in October, fourteen in November, twenty two in December. And so forth (though January, because of holidays, will probably be no bigger than December). The view from here going into next summer is going to be pretty different from last spring.
Also, some time in the next couple of weeks, A will be spending some time with her friend Т getting school gear for Z and Т's son С. He needs uniforms (they were willing to go 'real tie' instead of 'bow tie' when I asked) for lessons, play outside, play inside, etc... With only half the summer left to go, Z remains stoked.
So I heard back from another one of the outfits with a price on the foundation work yesterday. Based on the number we got a while back, it seems almost suspiciously low; though they've got an itemized materials list which adds up correctly and the prices they give also seem individually within the scope of reason. And it's not like they're offering it cheaper than people were able to get eight years ago (in fact, twice as expensive...). So I'm getting together with one last outfit on Saturday and then by the end of the weekend we will have set our selected crew to work. Which puts a foundation in the ground and ready to build on by the time we get back from Kiev. Since the lumber question is still under investigation, I'm not figuring that we'll have wood lying around until after that time anyway.
As for other things; we've got processes moved along far enough that we are getting commitments from the Mexico factory which will be supplying them to us that the first groups of some specialized trucks are going to be built in less than a month -- putting them on our lot inside two months, and sold inside two months + 20 minutes or so. Ad thus the money starts coming in earnest. The first sets of parts for the assembly are set to ship in mid-August, too; we're being conservative and saying an October start-of-build for that, too. Six in October, fourteen in November, twenty two in December. And so forth (though January, because of holidays, will probably be no bigger than December). The view from here going into next summer is going to be pretty different from last spring.
Also, some time in the next couple of weeks, A will be spending some time with her friend Т getting school gear for Z and Т's son С. He needs uniforms (they were willing to go 'real tie' instead of 'bow tie' when I asked) for lessons, play outside, play inside, etc... With only half the summer left to go, Z remains stoked.
июля 09, 2007
Monday
7/9 18:46, Pushkin time
This weekend I met with a few more guys about building work. Starting to get prices back; it looks like the winners will be the guys who started out (we're having them figure materials too) with a labor quote for the foundation of 60,000r. Not so bad.
At work today, an idea that I had several months back has reappeared in a surprising fashion. We've been for quite a while right up against the capacity for the RO/RO shipping line that services the America-Petersburg direct route. Then this spring some higher-dollar stuff (John Deere tractors by the thousand) started getting booked and we've been getting slightly bumped. Back last fall, I joking suggested that we should go in on buying or leasing a ship ourselves -- our traffic alone would support it. The idea apparently kicked around a bit, never fully going aw'ay, and tomorrow we start pricing things out. You could hardly call sea shipping a 'core competency' of ours, but -- as with so many things out this way -- there's seemingly no one able or willing to provide it. So we do it ourselves.
In other things, with Sochi 'winning' the 2014 Olympics, everyone is pretty stoked. Not by the games themselves, mind, but by the massive amounts of money that are going to get tossed, Russian-style, at the place. Something like 14 billion dollars has been earmarked for spending so far. Even figuring that 25% minimum will go straight to the pockets of political bosses and connected oligarchs, that's still a ton of money. And with the infrastructure down there on the verge of 'decrepit'... That's a lot of work that will need doing. In particular a lot of concrete mixers and dump trucks. We've got parters in Novorossisk, Rostov, and Stavropol -- all of which are close enough to Sochi that they'll be in the first line of suppliers to the construction. I mentioned some study I remember seeing about how not a single Olympics has even come close to paying off the cost to the hosting country; the answers pretty much all around came to, "So? We'll be making good money off it." Even our workers are talking about how, in three-four years (once the paperwork has all been completed and construction down there can begin) there'll be such a crunch for time that they'll be offering mad rates for welders and the like. I won't be surprised if at least a few make their way down there for the project. But even if things move much faster than anyone expects, that's still a bit off.
This weekend I met with a few more guys about building work. Starting to get prices back; it looks like the winners will be the guys who started out (we're having them figure materials too) with a labor quote for the foundation of 60,000r. Not so bad.
At work today, an idea that I had several months back has reappeared in a surprising fashion. We've been for quite a while right up against the capacity for the RO/RO shipping line that services the America-Petersburg direct route. Then this spring some higher-dollar stuff (John Deere tractors by the thousand) started getting booked and we've been getting slightly bumped. Back last fall, I joking suggested that we should go in on buying or leasing a ship ourselves -- our traffic alone would support it. The idea apparently kicked around a bit, never fully going aw'ay, and tomorrow we start pricing things out. You could hardly call sea shipping a 'core competency' of ours, but -- as with so many things out this way -- there's seemingly no one able or willing to provide it. So we do it ourselves.
In other things, with Sochi 'winning' the 2014 Olympics, everyone is pretty stoked. Not by the games themselves, mind, but by the massive amounts of money that are going to get tossed, Russian-style, at the place. Something like 14 billion dollars has been earmarked for spending so far. Even figuring that 25% minimum will go straight to the pockets of political bosses and connected oligarchs, that's still a ton of money. And with the infrastructure down there on the verge of 'decrepit'... That's a lot of work that will need doing. In particular a lot of concrete mixers and dump trucks. We've got parters in Novorossisk, Rostov, and Stavropol -- all of which are close enough to Sochi that they'll be in the first line of suppliers to the construction. I mentioned some study I remember seeing about how not a single Olympics has even come close to paying off the cost to the hosting country; the answers pretty much all around came to, "So? We'll be making good money off it." Even our workers are talking about how, in three-four years (once the paperwork has all been completed and construction down there can begin) there'll be such a crunch for time that they'll be offering mad rates for welders and the like. I won't be surprised if at least a few make their way down there for the project. But even if things move much faster than anyone expects, that's still a bit off.
июля 05, 2007
Happens
7/6 9:20, Pushkin time
Off to such a good start, then I let it slip. Crud.
So I've been talking with a few foundation crews (one of which -- the one I'm right now leaning toward based on several factors -- is associated with the local concrete factory). These past couple days as part of the final quoting process I've taken a series of trips out to our plot with reps of various different crews; been taken around a whole slew of job sites in the neighborhood, and met a whole lot of guys with super-ethnic names like Makhmud, Ruslan, Kakha, and so forth. Most all of them say a 2-2.5 weeks is the par time from the start of foundation work to the time that you can begin erecting stuff on it. One of the crews, in fact, does the sort of wood-frame construction that we're planning on as well. We'll have to see if we decide to go with them for the foundation first, but there is the possibility that we may just end up making them our "general" on the house. At least for the outside; we're still pretty well set on using И's Moldavian crew (the guys who've put together the truck assembly plant) for doing what interior work we don't want to do ourselves.
The 2-2.5 weeks actually works out pretty well, since it gives adequate layover time for us to get the well and septic hookups put in.
Anyway, that's my excuse for slipping a couple of days worth of updates.
Off to such a good start, then I let it slip. Crud.
So I've been talking with a few foundation crews (one of which -- the one I'm right now leaning toward based on several factors -- is associated with the local concrete factory). These past couple days as part of the final quoting process I've taken a series of trips out to our plot with reps of various different crews; been taken around a whole slew of job sites in the neighborhood, and met a whole lot of guys with super-ethnic names like Makhmud, Ruslan, Kakha, and so forth. Most all of them say a 2-2.5 weeks is the par time from the start of foundation work to the time that you can begin erecting stuff on it. One of the crews, in fact, does the sort of wood-frame construction that we're planning on as well. We'll have to see if we decide to go with them for the foundation first, but there is the possibility that we may just end up making them our "general" on the house. At least for the outside; we're still pretty well set on using И's Moldavian crew (the guys who've put together the truck assembly plant) for doing what interior work we don't want to do ourselves.
The 2-2.5 weeks actually works out pretty well, since it gives adequate layover time for us to get the well and septic hookups put in.
Anyway, that's my excuse for slipping a couple of days worth of updates.
июля 02, 2007
July
7/3 09:33, Pushkin time
Temps have bounced up a little bit, but this morning's brief waking at 4AM to see that the sun wasn't shining more than makes up for a little sweatiness. The folks at Intellicast inform me that sunrise today was at 4:42AM (sunset at 11:23 PM means for all practical purposes that both continue to occur more or less to the north). It's somewhat of a relief to be coming out of the long, long day.
Yesterday in addition to doing a bit of dealing with the foundation folks, I got back the first concrete pricing information on the wood. Mainly, since it's only the first bid on it, it has clearly indicated to us that we will absolutely not be buying locally. Lumber (pine to pick and example) in the Moscow/Saint-Petersburg markets runs in the neighborhood of 9000r per cubic meter. From Nizhniy Novgorod it's more along the lines of 4000r/cube. Even plus the cost of delivering three trailer-loads worth of it the twelve hundred miles, is still comes to under half the cost. So that is definitely the route we'll be taking. One of our partners down there is getting quotes and inventories from a couple of sawmills to pack together the most economical mix of stuff-in-stock and more freshly cut. From the sounds of it, we might even be able to get delivery in earlier rather than later August. So that's good (except for the possibility that I'll be out of town in Kiev right when it happens...).
And then, A has just about finished the last step in the process of getting TB-cleared. She's had all the tests and is going in today to wrap it all together and get her name removed from whatever 'potentially infected' list she made it onto. Honestly, the process, though occupying a fair bit of our time, has gone by pretty quickly. I told her to make sure she keeps her receipt -- just in case.
Temps have bounced up a little bit, but this morning's brief waking at 4AM to see that the sun wasn't shining more than makes up for a little sweatiness. The folks at Intellicast inform me that sunrise today was at 4:42AM (sunset at 11:23 PM means for all practical purposes that both continue to occur more or less to the north). It's somewhat of a relief to be coming out of the long, long day.
Yesterday in addition to doing a bit of dealing with the foundation folks, I got back the first concrete pricing information on the wood. Mainly, since it's only the first bid on it, it has clearly indicated to us that we will absolutely not be buying locally. Lumber (pine to pick and example) in the Moscow/Saint-Petersburg markets runs in the neighborhood of 9000r per cubic meter. From Nizhniy Novgorod it's more along the lines of 4000r/cube. Even plus the cost of delivering three trailer-loads worth of it the twelve hundred miles, is still comes to under half the cost. So that is definitely the route we'll be taking. One of our partners down there is getting quotes and inventories from a couple of sawmills to pack together the most economical mix of stuff-in-stock and more freshly cut. From the sounds of it, we might even be able to get delivery in earlier rather than later August. So that's good (except for the possibility that I'll be out of town in Kiev right when it happens...).
And then, A has just about finished the last step in the process of getting TB-cleared. She's had all the tests and is going in today to wrap it all together and get her name removed from whatever 'potentially infected' list she made it onto. Honestly, the process, though occupying a fair bit of our time, has gone by pretty quickly. I told her to make sure she keeps her receipt -- just in case.
июля 01, 2007
More Dailies
7/1 14:14, Pushkin time
Today, fixed Z's bike; not only was the rear tire flat, he had attempted to 'fix' the gearing -- the untangling of which was itself a good fifteen minutes' work. Now he's back out riding with the other kids while G and L nap.
As for other things, coming back from Finland, I got to take care of temporary-importing our car on my own (it was a busy week for our customs guy, and he basically politely indicated that I had already seen him do it three times; I should be able to figure it out on my own). Not so bad; it's unfortunate that the process requires an early-morning application, with the documents only given out in the late afternoon -- both ends needing to be done in person. So it's not something we could have a courier do for us. Which means that I blow an entire day's time each time I re-register a car. Luckily, my current car registration runs through to September, so I've got a bit of time after getting back from Kiev to pick a day to go and do the work; most likely we'll wait until A gets back from the US and then kill both registrations off simultaneously.
Hanging around with the other people who were temp-importing, I got to gab a bit with a crew of Byelorussians who were in town to work. Russia gets a fair bit of guest-workers from the neighboring CIS states. It complicates our dealings, since our efforts at moving out of the visa-regime fall under the same category as the thousands of undocumented Uzbeks and Albanians also trying to get some sort of legal status. It gives a bit of sympathy for the Mexicans back in the western US. The whole immigration industry sucks.
Today, fixed Z's bike; not only was the rear tire flat, he had attempted to 'fix' the gearing -- the untangling of which was itself a good fifteen minutes' work. Now he's back out riding with the other kids while G and L nap.
As for other things, coming back from Finland, I got to take care of temporary-importing our car on my own (it was a busy week for our customs guy, and he basically politely indicated that I had already seen him do it three times; I should be able to figure it out on my own). Not so bad; it's unfortunate that the process requires an early-morning application, with the documents only given out in the late afternoon -- both ends needing to be done in person. So it's not something we could have a courier do for us. Which means that I blow an entire day's time each time I re-register a car. Luckily, my current car registration runs through to September, so I've got a bit of time after getting back from Kiev to pick a day to go and do the work; most likely we'll wait until A gets back from the US and then kill both registrations off simultaneously.
Hanging around with the other people who were temp-importing, I got to gab a bit with a crew of Byelorussians who were in town to work. Russia gets a fair bit of guest-workers from the neighboring CIS states. It complicates our dealings, since our efforts at moving out of the visa-regime fall under the same category as the thousands of undocumented Uzbeks and Albanians also trying to get some sort of legal status. It gives a bit of sympathy for the Mexicans back in the western US. The whole immigration industry sucks.
