Жизнь Экспатрианта

2/23 10:09, Pushkin time

The title, I suppose, says it all. The boys have all been sick for pretty much the last week-and-a-half, and it seems that is just over the maximum amount of time my immune system can fight exposure. Crap.

Today is Defenders of the Homeland Day here (previously Red Army Day; the anniversary of the day Lenin signed the order creating the Red Army, as I was informed yesterday -- Russians prefer to simply re-name, rather than give up their days off entirely). In practice it's more or less a "Mens' day", the perhaps unique Russian counterpart to the May 8 "Womens' Day" (which is celebrated pretty much everywhere in the world I've been/been in contact with). So all the guys at work got gifts yesterday from all the women, and as they do here, since the holiday falls on a weekend, we get the Monday off. G made me a tank at his preschool (Z has simply had this past week off).

And as for work, we've got eight trucks off the end of the build process (with the exception of one major piece that the jerks in the US left out of the first shipment of parts and then ended up sticking in the very last container from the second shipment of parts). We probably won't make 1/day this coming week -- I've got a training course to run all week, and those last containers are coming in and will need to be unloaded. But as of March, we will be at that level. A tad bit late, but so it goes; at least we'll be there.

Then in other things, one of the lawyers finally got word back from the Russian immigration folks regarding the possibility of us getting the temporary-resident permits. One necessary piece of documentation that we provide them is a document indicating that we have no US criminal records. We got something along those lines a while ago from the FBI. But documents issued by one country have no validity in another country without a certification-type addendum made by the issuing place's Secretary of State (called an 'apostille'). We tried to get this on our FBI statements, but were told that the US federal government doesn't apostille FBI papers(?!?) and that the State of Oregon, where we live[d] doesn't either. So we submitted the papers without. And of course, the Russian bureaucrats rejected them. A series of calls to the US Consulate (in Moscow, not the lying jerks in Petersburg) finally tracked down the problem. FBI papers are apostilled by the Secretary of State of West Virginia (where, I presume, the FBI headquarters is located). So we're sending the papers out that way for the one more addition.

Another problem came in the Russian translations. Of course, all the documents we submit must be accompanied by Official (that is, done by the one licensed outfit in the city) Russian translations. We were already aware of the fact that the morons who do our visa applications can't spell our last name the same way twice in a row (the 'c' is alternately given as a Russian 'k' or 's' -- as far as we're concerned, the 's' is correct; it's what we had put on L's birth certificate and our land titles, the only actually Russian documents we have). That's not a problem as far as visas are concerned, since each one of those is treated individually. But when we try to apply for something as a family, the fact that our last names don't agree becomes more of an issue -- A had to do a bit of brief explaining when she and L flew out of the country that first time. And the fact that, for example, the translation of our marriage certificate has the last name spelled with the letter 'ch' in that apparently-ambiguous position. The Immigration people basically told the lawyer to come back with a group of documents about all the same people.
So, we're having the translations re-done with better supervision. The only thing that really sticks is our visas now. The solution to which is going to be to get one more set of them, also issued under much closer supervision. Everything has to agree (don't even ask about what the translators do to Z's name...), and then it actually looks like the permits will be a done deal -- for money, of course; this is Russia...

2/18 08:00, Pushkin time

Another spin across the Finnish border this past Saturday -- this time in the Ford. Now both our cars are legal to remain in Russia for as long as until next February. Now it remains only to get our personal registrations sorted out, waste a full day in the city at the customs broker place, and we will have once again fully-formalized temporary-import vehicles (until we leave / our visas end in August).
Two trips in as many weeks -- not that they were particularly bad, thanks to L, our 'without lines' pass for a couple months more -- has us getting pretty well sick of doing the temporary-import dance. A and I have more or less decided that when the Ford gives out, we'll replace it with a car on which we will have a Russian title. The amount of hassle that will save is actually quite impressive.

The Brusnichnoye/Nuijaama border folks were decent again, though (there is that, at least). On the way out, apparently the Russian contingent was being 'visited' by a boss, so the small bit of waiting that is unavoidable no matter what special privileges you bring with you turned out to be a decent chunk of time. And then the capper -- the passport lady, after checking all our stuff out told us to pull up to the other side of the control booths and wait while she brought our passports into the office for 'review'. So we sit. And wait. And finally, she brings them back to me and shows me the orange stamps they have just now put in them.(!!!!) I know enough by now to get concerned when a bureaucrat does something unexpected, and as we had only really supplied-up for a twenty-minute stay in Finland, the prospect of some sort of special stamp being applied to us was... disconcerting.
Turns out (of course, here I am, sitting and typing) they just changed the colors that day; most likely that was what the boss was visiting to oversee. And the delay leaving Russia meant that we got to enter Russia right about the time the boss must have been having lunch, because all of a sudden the line on return started moving light-speed; the guards and bureaucrats were smiley-chatty, and one could almost have called the entire thing pleasant.

We had a good snow on Friday, and another one pretty much all day yesterday. Since the temp dipped enough, the ice patch outside has been maintained and Z has been spending a good chunk of his time skating and beginner-hockeying. He's got a school break this week, which will work out really well, since it looks like skating will be feasible through at least Thursday. G's friend M (the kid whose dad is a Virginian from Philip-Morris) got back this last week from whatever vacation they were on, so G's been in raptures. L has started letting go of things -- and mainly falling on his butt after a second's wobble, but it's the courage that counts for right now. He's not talking yet, though he does make a lot of different noises. Discussing with A, even though we talk to him in english exclusively, he does spend his time in a two-language environment (in fact, his first two weeks of life were spent in an almost exclusively Russian-speaking environment, you may recall), and supposedly kids who are so exposed do take a bit longer to start talking. So no worries.

2/14 19:30, Pushkin time

It chilled down a little today. We've got perhaps as low as the near-freezing minuses, but nothing spectacular. And this very well could be the last 'blast' of 'winter' this year.

We're running into some difficulties with our registration this time around. When we returned in January, we were told that due to some sort of internal dispute in the immigration department, we would only be able to get a one-month registration issued. After which point we would, technically/legally be required to leave the country again to be able to re-enter and thus be able to register ourselves anew -- this opposed to the normal six-month registration we have so far been getting. Rather than go through all that, we simply stayed on our old registrations (not, strictly speaking, following the letter of the immigration law; but they failed to collect our old registrations when we left, and they were actually issued for until the middle of February). Then we took that trip to Finland last weekend, got fresh migrant cards, and took them to get our next six months -- with which we would be able to get our temporary imports on our cars extended for the same period.
But now, we are told that the same internal issues are now limiting everyone to getting no more than a two-month registration. This is actually much worse than the first time we went by, since it means that our cars would only be granted that same two-month temporary import period. It's all quite painful.

The people at the registration broker place indicated -- and И more or less agrees -- that this new thing (quite contrary to the laws, by the way; not that this necessarily poses any impediment to the at least temporary implementation of a new policy) is almost certainly associated with the upcoming (early March) presidential elections. Everyone figures Russia, recognizing that people come here all the time under semi-false pretenses, has caused being here to be somewhat more painful for foreigners in an effort to exert at least some level of control over who is here. The same rumor-hypotheses have the situation loosening up in a month or so.

We'll see.

2/10 14:40, Pushkin time

Since the temporary imports on our cars were right about running up against renewal, and we're planning to be in the US around the time we'd have to take them actually in and out of Russia, we figured on simplifying things by spending a pair of weekends driving to Finland and back (thus 'exporting' the cars and beginning their temporary importation into Russia anew). So yesterday was the van. Again we took the Brusnichnoye-2/Nuijamaa crossing near Lappeenranta -- this time armed with the knowledge that, until he turns one, L is our ticket to a a 'without lines' crossing. Which in this case was very helpful; the line on the border was even worse than the last time we were through. But we blazed on up to the front, popped the side door open so the border control guard could see L, and were through the crossing in no more than a half hour, total.

Amusingly, A had a project she really wanted to get started on. And to start involved a side-trip to one of the big shopping complexes we pass on the way back (there's a shop by the name of Obi there that has a massive home improvement/garden offering). So we drove perhaps a mile past the border -- just far enough to find a side-road into some cover, down which we went just far enough to take a secluded pee in the Finnish woods -- then turned around and headed home. The return border crossing was similarly pleasant; in the interstice between borders, A had us pull off the road a couple times to get winter woods pictures. And even through Obi was packed to the gills, the fact that the Petersburg ring road now goes far enough for us to enter and exit directly from/to Kievskoye shosse, and the overall clearness of the drive had us home by 7. So a cross-border jaunt, plus a major shopping stop all in less than ten hours.
We'll see what kind of time we make next weekend in the Ford. The plan is to leave Z and G with friends for the day and just take our little line-pass-ticket with us. Assuming no stopping at the stores, we stand to make even better time. And then (that is, once we have the two-week import permits exchanged for six-month ones; and then taking into account the fact that we need to coordinate some paperworking for August to get the renewal done correctly) we're covered pretty much until this time next year.

Temperatures have spiked up to something like 5C (!!!February!!!Russia!!!) and all the snow and packed-into-ice have melted pretty much completely. The boys at Intellicast are implying that we'll get a bit more of a dip of chilliness (down all the way to minus 7C at night [insert sarcasm tag]) and then it looks like the season ends pretty much without a winter. On the other hand, the head research guy at the Pulkovo Observatory -- the very Russian-named Habibullo Abdussamatov -- has indicated that data is starting to come in verifying the prediction they made a couple years back (Medium-quality translation) that the sun is moving into the next major solar Minimum (the type of thing that caused the 'Little Ice Age' and indirectly, the end of the Norse presence in Greenland and, it is hypothesized, the fall of Rome) and that these couple warmer winters are the last this area is going to see for quite some time.

2/8 08:08, Pushkin time

I've got a couple minutes while Z and G get ready to go to school.

We had, over Wednesday-Thursday, a nice constant snowfall, culminating in about six inches of accumulation. Later yesterday it warmed up enough that all we have this morning is a crusted-over slush. And they're calling for a warm (1-3C) weekend as well. So everything should be nice and clean for when it dips below freezing again in the middle of next week. Unfortunately, this upcoming frost looks (by the calendar) to be perhaps the last opportunity for Petersburg to have a winter; and the extended forecasts are showing it maxing-out at -3C, tops. It was colder than that in November.
Which means, apparently, that we will have been in Russia for two years without seeing a single 'real' winter.

Yesterday I did get the opportunity to drive truck #4 out of the final bay of our factory and into the lot (where all of our trucks are sitting for the time being until the police issue titles for them). I had driven on a small number of occasions when I worked nights at The Company's plant while I was in school. But apparently, never on ice or snow. Which is, in fact, a little bit different.
Particularly since the trucks we are building have all the cabins pressed way up front, without a trailer the rear axles have practically no weight on them at all. So when I paused in front of the front gates to briefly map out my path for backing into a parking spot, I got stuck. Firmly stuck. I spent about five minutes attempting various combinations of forward, reverse, and super-low gears with all manner of differential-related traction assist buttons and stitches. Even tried sort or rocking my own weight back and forth in the seat -- as if that could have made any difference. Somehow (maybe I just eventually dug down deep enough in the snow to get some rubber touching pavement) I did manage to get moving again and to get our front door unblocked.
Afterward, I was advised that the way to get moving when your vehicle gets stuck in such a manner is to try taking off not in low gear, but in one of the middle gears. The jump that happens when you pop your clutch generally provides the momentum you need to get out of your hole. Apparently, any Russian driver as old as I am would already have known that; it literally had never struck anyone there to tell me something so obvious.

2/5 19:50, Pushkin time

So. Trying not to let slip again.

For starters, you could check out the picture I took yesterday morning at G's school after dropping him off. It turned out decent, considering I can't keep my hands particularly still at the low-light shutter speed.

The last couple days, as previous to them, have been packed. П and Е П have both echoed recently my feeling that for everything we finally manage to get around to actually getting done, another half dozen things crop up. П and I finally sat down this morning to hammer out at least a prospective scheme for the piecerate pay scheme at the factory; Е П and I have arranged to, before the end of the week, draw up an overall structure of how many people will be necessary, doing what, and so forth, to have an actual functioning structure to handle buying, shipping, selling, distributing, and supporting new trucks (for the time being, I have instructed everyone at the dealership to treat the question of building the trucks (whether here or in the US) as a black box -- simply make sure that parts keep getting shipped, customs-cleared, and delivered to one end, and keep picking up the finished stuff from the other).
Which, of course, itself will take time that none of us has to spare. But that's the way it goes.

Enough about work.

Д Д (the lawyer/inventor) felt it worthwhile to visit everyone in management to relay the results of his most recent legal actions. One of the guys in our company got pulled over for some sort of traffic violation, and as a result of the stop had his license seized. Д Д, as is his wont, got the license back and successfully beat the whole thing almost completely. It was the "almost" he wanted to relay to everyone.
In a Russian court, the arresting officer is considered not competent to stand as a witness; rather the officer himself is the complainant (while the defendant, as the other interested party, is also not considered a "witness"). That is, when in court, the word of the arresting or ticketing officer is considered of no more validity than that of the defendant. In the event that a case comes down to the word of one versus the other, the local analogue to 'presumption of innocence' requires the judge to find for the defendant. As I lost a ticket case in Washington when the only thing opposed to me was a letter, written by the ticketing officer, I feel fairly confident in saying that US law doesn't work the same way as does Russian in this respect.
Nevertheless, in the case that Д Д argued, there was an additional piece of evidence that was admitted -- the ticket itself. According to Russian law, a ticket is considered a finding-of-fact, of roughly equivalent weight to a witness' account. However, the ticket is considered a finding-of-fact by both parties. That is, whatever the ticketing officer writes on it is of absolutely equal weight to what the guy who got ticketed writes on it (there are four or five lines on the ticket for that purpose; generally, the cops just want you to write, "I confirm that the above is what happened"). So, as long as you write on your ticket, "I do not agree", the ticket no longer can act as evidence against you -- once more, you are back to the his-word-against-mine, which defaults to a finding of innocence in absence of additional evidence. And cops almost never have anything else.
The mistake our colleague made was to write on the ticket, "I decline to explain" in the spot for his explanation. As the judge told Д Д, this wouldn't constitute confirmation of the ticketing officer's statement, but neither does it realistically constitute denial. So ultimately, the best result he was able to achieve was a reduction-of penalties. So he made the rounds to everyone to make sure the next time he goes to court for one of us (apparently, this is another one of the 'perks' the outfit I am with offers it's workers -- free legal) he has everything he needs to win outright. Д Д doesn't lose very often, and doesn't particularly like it when he does.

2/3 10:08, Pushkin time

Wow. Last time I found a moment to get to writing was...

[checking]

...the beginning of December!!.

Oh man.


I'm not even going to try to do more than a brief re-cap; which is a bit unfair, since the whole reason I have such a long span to cover is that so very much stuff happened.

As I mentioned, way back when, the group of factory engineers from the US came out and spent two and a half weeks with us (including weekends) getting the first part of our factory line working. Aside from all of the more or less expected drama, we discovered pretty well within the first week that a whole bunch of necessary parts -- like, for example, every small part necessary to build and install the engines -- had not been sent to us; our painters were not able to make use of the special-order stuff we had brought in to the US company's specs; several critical suspension pieces were delivered wrong; the alternators delivered would not fit on our engines (even if we had bolts to hold them on...); and the major part of the vehicle chassis electrical wiring was build completely wrong.
Although really, I suppose I saw worse working nights at The Company's trucks factory back when I was still in school. New product launches are painful. Over the time before the US guys left for the Christmas holidays (shortly followed by all of us doing the same), we managed to get the vast majority of the problems worked out more or less; parts on the way, and so forth.

In the two days between the US engineers leaving and A and the boys and I leaving, I arranged with И to spend a couple days in Riga in the weeks after returning from Portland to get some bank stuff for myself done as well as running some errands for the dealership.
Then the New Year company party (which I left early; some six hours before our plane took off from Pulkovo). And then we spent a rainy two weeks back in the Pac NW.
Of all the global impressions made on me back there, the following two stood out the most:
- How big and common the ups-and-downs are there. The smallest, least noticeable rise in the city there is most likely bigger than the primary terrain feature in the Petersburg area. The clouds even lifted one day for long enough for me to see Rainier and the Olympics.
- The overall driving experience. Not only the seemingly exceptional quality of the road surfaces; not only the fact that the spray coming up behind cars was water-colored (as opposed to the brown-mud spray we get here); but also the way people drive in general. Drivers both here and there can be aggressive. The difference seems to be that whereas a Russian driver will push for a space, once he either gets it or doesn't, the matter is more or less settled and traffic moves on. On the other hand, PacNW drivers seem fairly oblivious to the intentions of the people around them (a fact I noted on several occasions back when I had my motorcycle), but get very aggressive after the fact if someone 'takes their place' or is otherwise perceived to have 'slighted' them. Different rule of etiquette, I suppose.

Anyway, we had a good time, saw people we wanted to see, did things we wanted to do, then around 6 January, Z and I flew home (A and the other two boys came back a week later). We puttered around for a couple days -- stopped by with М and got fed a nauseating cold pig-based dish, edible with enough mustard -- and then Z got to spend a couple nights at friends' while I stepped out to Riga.
The flight is only like an hour-half; I ended up spending one night, two days there at a hotel right in the middle of the city -- also right next door to the bank we use. I actually really liked the place. Latvia speaks Russian nearly as much as Latvian, so I had no problems getting on by myself. The fact that the Lat is worth twice as much as the dollar threw me for a bit of a loop; I pulled out fifty of them from an airport ATM without checking the exchange rate; I figured that would certainly be enough to get me to my hotel and then I'd get however much more I needed. Considering how small Riga is, and the fact that food item prices are generally fractions of a single Lat, and the fact that I was only there for two days, I came home with more than thirty Lat leftover. But my descriptions of the place seem to have piqued A's interest, so I figure we'll spend those when we all go out there sometime.

Then I came back, A and the boys flew back, and right about the same time, the crew of engineers came back as well to finish up our startup. Once again, we worked through thirteen straight days, late nights, but finally managed to get our first truck built completely and in working order (with our second, third, fourth, and so on right behind). Over the last two days of that another ten guys came from the US company (though several of them from Africa) to attend our grand opening. Which came off on the 22nd. I, at the last minute, was 'asked' to do translation up on the podium for both И's talk (into English) and one of the US-Company Vice Presidents (into Russian). In fact, after I did those, the US Consul-General in Petersburg got up on the podium to talk and asked for a translator. I sort of ducked down low in the crowd and she ended up having no takers and giving a speech in clearly-unused-to-using-it Russian. Then the Vice Governor of Petersburg got up and gave a bit of a speech. Then A and I got to walk around a bit and chat, until she had to leave and I got pulled off to do the press-conference thing. We were on at least three news channels; plus several magazines and newspapers are writing us up -- I'm getting a copy of the DVD И is burning with all the clips on it. A and I will figure out how to distribute that.

And then the Americans left, and we got back to work. Over the last two weeks, we managed to get three more trucks rolled off and all but the very last part of out process working at our targeted production level of one-per-day. In fact, П (with me, the other half of the management team) sort of accidentally found among his workers just this Friday a guy with the apparent capacity to foreman. So in all likelihood, tomorrow we will see the last part of our process hit target, and we will start cranking out a new truck every day. So far, we haven't even built ourselves out of prepayed customers; and in all likelihood, we won't do that anytime soon or medium-term. So that's all going good.