Too Much Of A Good Thing

Remember my post about Home Renovations?

Well, after living without water for a couple of weeks (Can you imagine what that's like? Think about how the toilet is supposed to word.) and waiting for them to turn on the water so that we could test the pipes and continue the renovations... they turned on the water!

Happy end, right? Wrong.

Well, when they replaced the water cut-off tap (the old one had frozen) I took a look at it and it didn't seem quite right to me: there was too much play in the handle.

At the time, I thought I was being a bit paranoid, but still, just to be sure I asked them to change it. Not once, but over a week, I asked them to change it about a dozen time. I asked the foreman, the plumber, and the site manager. I asked in person, I phoned them a few times, and I had a Georgian call them and tell them to change it in Georgian.

Each time I got the same answer: "Этот винтик будет как часы работать! (That tap is going to work like a watch!)"

Well a couple of days ago they turned on the water, and guess what? I had water, but now I couldn't turn it off.

Again, I went ape shit on them, but this time there was something they could do, so I didn't feel like I was venting but rather I was being proactive.

Three days later they really did change it. That problem is behind me now...

Putin, Stalin And The Armenians

First, Putin and Stalin:

One day Stalin comes to Putin in a dream and, of course, no believing his life Putin immediately asks Stalin for advice on how to run Russia.

Stalin says, "Oh, that's easy! First round up everyone in Russia with any democratic leanings and have then shot. Then, repaint the Kremlin blue."

"Wait a minute..." says Putin "Why should I repaint the Kremlin Blue?".

But Stalin just grins and says "Don't you have any questions about democrats?".

And now for the Armenians:

One day the Armenians came to God and said "Look, enough is enough, it's us or them, so choose!

And that's how the dinosaurs died out.

2007 Time Person Of The Year

This is old news, but, if you haven't heard, guess who is Time Magazine's 2007 Person Of The Year?

Hint: it's not Mikheil Saakashvili.

Get ready for this: it's your friend and mine, old blue eyes himself, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Владимир Владимирович Путин).

Here is the Time 2007 Person Of The Year Putin Page.

Idiocy And Reality In Georgia

This takes the cake for the stupidest article about Georgia I've read (and believe me, that's a tightly contested title):

Azeris To Take Over Georgia In 15-20 Years, Karabakh Based Pundit Claims
Arminfo, 22 January

Azerbaijan needs Georgia with a leader like Saakashvili, who is a complete cosmopolitan to the core, ready to give his country to anybody to satisfy his own ambitions.

Later Azerbaijan can claim Azerbaijani Georgia, it is just a matter of time. The calculation here is quite simple: taking into account the current demographic situation and the high birth rates among ethnic Azerbaijanis, Azeris will represent 60-70 per cent of the [Georgian] parliament, the cabinet as well as there will be an Azeri president in 15-20 years. The country will be called Georgia only conditionally, analyst Armen Baghdasaryan has told Arminfo.

He was commenting on the recent statements by MP Qanira Pasayeva, a member of the Azerbaijani delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe, that Georgia's Azeris "showed loyalty to the interests of the Georgian state" by voting for Saakashvili and that "Azeris of Borcali (Kvemo Kartli) have never had separatist moods and have always extended a helping hand to Georgia".

Baghdasaryan says that it is not by chance that Pasayeva calls the Georgian Kvemo Kartli by its Azerbaijani name of Borcali and accuses Georgia's Armenians of separatism. "This is why more than 500,000 hidden Azeri radicals voted for Saakashvili. In fact, Georgia's Muslims elected 'Orthodox' Saakashvili a president, who, in addition, vows to settle all Meskhetian Turks in their 'historical homeland,' Georgia, and by doing so, finally Turkicize Georgia. The fooled Georgian people should know who they are dealing with. Masallah Azeris!" he concluded.

This is what minority relations in Georgia are really like:

Opposition Party Of Azerbaijanis In Georgia Ready To Admit Armenians
Trend , January 22

The opposition Party of Azerbaijanis living in Georgia whose co-founder is the former presidential candidate Fazil Aliyev, is ready to admit Armenians living in this country to the party, Fazil Aliyev said to Trend by telephone from Tbilisi on 21 January.

“Everyone regardless of their nationality will be represented in the party,” Aliyev said.

Aliyev was nominated for the presidency by the National Assembly of Azerbaijanis in Georgia and the International Council of Azerbaijanis in Georgia. Fazil Aliyev refused to take part in the elections in December. He attributed it to ‘pressure from Georgian government agencies.’ Later on Aliyev established a new opposition party.

The chief purpose in the party’s establishment is to take part in the parliamentary elections in Georgia to be held in May. According to the current Georgian constitution, parliamentary elections were to be held in autumn of 2008; however, as a result of a referendum which was held together with the early presidential elections, the parliamentary elections will take place in the spring of 2008.

The next party meeting will be held next week. As a result of this meeting, the chairman of the party will be elected and an address will be made to the Georgian Ministry of Justice for official registration.

According to Georgian laws, the party is required to have no less than 1000 members in order to be registered. Aliyev is sure that he has enough supporters who will join his party.

“Not only Azerbaijanis, but also Georgian wish to join the party,” Aliyev said.

Home Renovations

... Or Good News And Bad News!

There's this Garry Larson comic with two chimpanzees sitting on a log and all around them there is hundreds of banana peels. One of them is leaning towards the other and saying "You know, I really like bananas. I mean I know we all do, but I really like bananas.

And so it goes. I suppose, we've all suspected we're not lucky. That somehow things always go wrong... I've always suspected this too... but you know, I think I'm sure now.

Tell me what you think:

My apartment was supposed to have central heating, but shortly after I bought it, it turned out that the heat won't be turned on this winter.

The electricity company (the infamous Telasi, if you've seen Power Trip) doesn't have the proper transformers ready yet and so the hookups for the building is also late. For the time being there is temporary marginally legal (and potentially lethal) connections, but as people move in the quality of the electricity goes down and down.

A couple of days before new years eve the electricity in my apartment was so bad I went to complain. I told them, I really told them, that if they didn't do something that very minute, there would certainly be a fire and everyone would loose electricity (later on I found out that the main electrician for the building had been telling them the same thing for a month too).

The result: they forced me to drink some wine while the promised to do something right away.

They of course did nothing. That night, I lost electricity, and with it my only source of heat. Tbilisi is having it's coldest winter in 50 years and I lost heat! It's been a year I've been here, and you might remember my post when I was staying in my house and freezing my ass off last January. Come this January, and by this measure, my progress has been nil. Actually my progress has been worse than nil - at least then I was living in sort of camping like conditions. Now I'm in a concrete apartment block. It feels much worse.

Can you imagine what it's like trying to get an electrician here on new years eve? As in Here in Georgia? It's impossible. You probably couldn't get an ambulance new years eve here. It took three days to sober the electrician up to come look at the mass of burnt wires that used to be the makeshift hookup panel. He just kept repeating "Я же им сказал.... (I told them)", as he tried to make heads and figure out what should go where. Finally, after an hour, he just gave up and went home. "Tell them to call me when they buy the cable I told them to buy." he said.

The next day I had power, but you're not going to believe what happened next: Those idiots turned off the water! It was -10 and they turned off the water! What do you think happens when you turn off the water when it's -10 out? It's not trick question: yes, the pipes freeze!

Can you believe it? Not only did they freeze, but the couplings all over the building cracked from the pressure. I went ape shit on them of course, but what could they do after it happened?

It took them a whole week to replace the stupid couplings, but actually who cares! It's still not warm enough for the pipes to unfreeze.

Meanwhile, work in my apartment was continuing. Since hot water wasn't going to be available for a year, I decided to install a water heater. Since we hadn't put the connections for a water heater, I had to put Y adapters where the bathroom sink pipes came out of the wall. But the sink I had chosen had a cabinet underneath it so that meant getting a new sink.

I got everything together, but it took forever to get the Y connectors to stop leaking (I still had water then). This is when I started developing my theory that I really am unlucky. Look, everyone installs these things and there are hardly ever any leaks. Well maybe there is, and you redo it. Once. We had to redo it dozens of times, with all sorts of increasingly expensive connectors, until we found some that worked. I could almost start a "santekhnicheskii magazin"

So, I spent the better part of a week on a job that should have taken an hour.

OK, time to install the sink. First we tried silicone but we never could make the sink properly level since it kept slipping. Then we decided to do it like you're supposed to by drilling holes in the wall and mounting it that way.

I was hesitant to do this since I wasn't sure where the pipes were, and I was afraid of drilling into the wall. But everyone assured me that it's simply no possible for pipes to be there. The sink was totally standard, 85 centimeters from the floor, exactly above the outlets. No plumber they said would put pipes there, they said.

Wrong. We drilled into the pipes. Oh my god! Can you believe it?

The only thing left to do, was rip down the ceramic tiles, repair the pipes (and move them!) and redo the ceramic tiles.

Right. Except now the store where we got the tiles has run out of that particular brand. Disaster, except I'm getting used to disasters now, so it's no big deal. I got some other color that goes OK and decided not to think about it too much.

We got the pipes fixed, but of course you have to try them out before you can put the tiles over them. Can you guess what happened? Yes, this is exactly when they monkeys that run my building decided to freeze the pipes.

And now I have to wait for warm weather.

Can you believe this story? I mean, can you really believe it? It's like a bad movie!

But you know what, the good news is for real: Last Friday I got a major piece of paperwork that I needed in order to submit my building permit application. Today I submitted the application.

Yipee! This really is good news!

Yellow Leaves

... ან ყვითელი ფოთოლები

A few weeks ago someone found my email address on Mimino.Org or this blog and emailed me with an interesting request. Apparently she'd heard a song from Mimino.Org and wanted help finding an English translation.

Well, emailing back and forth a few times, it turns out it wasn't the movie's theme song* but rather a much more obscure song, Yellow Leaves, that you only here a very little of in only one scene(and then in the movie you only hear the music not the lyric).

After a few more emails, I offered to find a translator if she could send me the song as an MP3.

Here's Yellow Leaves in Georgian as sung on the BBC.

And here's the translation of the lyrics:

Yellow Leaves

Yellow leaves are being taken by the wind,
And thrown as snowflakes against your door.
I am calling to you, but there is no answer.
Yellow Leaves are like silence.

And still, I believe in yellow leaves,
Yellow Leaves are like silence.

* If anyone knows where I can get a copy of the theme song – in it's original film version, please email me

С Старым Новым Годом!

...გილოცავთ ძკელი ახალ წელს!

...Շնորհավոր հին Նոր տարի!

Merry (Orthodox) Christmas!

С Рождеством!

გილოცავთ შობას!

Merry (Armenian) Christmas

Շնորհավոր Սուրբ Ծնունդ!

A Bird On A Wire

After spending New Years Eve the traditional Georgian (actually Soviet) way at friends, on New Year's Day I wandered over to my favorite bar to hang out for a while.

There is a Georgian tradition that says that the first person to visit a house after new years will define what kind of new year you'll have, so, since I was the first to visit that bar, I'm apparently responsible for the bar for the rest of the year.

Anyway, I was treated to champagne and pilmeny and I gave the owner of the bar a MP3 disk of all of Leonard Cohen's songs.

I had picked Leonard Cohen since the last time I gave them music it was stuff so weird it scared off all the other customers, but with Leonard Cohen I felt pretty safe.

Safe maybe, but still something wasn't quite right... They liked the music, but how can you really appreciate Leonard Cohen in a language you aren't really all that familiar with?

Well, we had time, a CD player with pause, paper and pencil, a native Russian speaker and a native English speaker, so we translated Bird On A Wire.

Here's our translation:

Птица На Проводе

Как птица на проводе,
Как пьяный в полночным хоре,
Я старался по своему быт свободен.

Как червяк на крючке,
Как рыцарь из старой сказки,
Я схоронил все свои ленточки для тебя.

А если, если я был недобрым,
Я надеюсь, что можешь простить.
А если, если я был неверным,
Я надеюсь, что знаешь, я не хотел быть таким к тебе.

Как радившим мертвым ребенок,
Как зверь со своими рогами,
Я оторвалсь от всех, кто добраться меня захотел.

Но я клянусь этой песней,
И всем, что я сделал не то,
Что я сделаю тебя счастливой.

Я видел оопирающегося на деревянный костыль попрошайку,
Он сказал, "Ты не должен о так многом просить.".
А я видел красавицу в ее дверях,
Она выкрикнула, "А почему ты не просишь о большем.".

Как птица на проводе,
Как пьяный в полночным хоре,
Я старался по своему быт свободен.

Here's the original:

A Bird On A Wire

Like a bird on a wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir,
I have tried in my way to be free.

Like a worm on a hook,
like a knight from some old fashioned book,
I have saved all my ribbons for thee.

If I, if I have been unkind,
I hope that you can just let it go by.
If I, if I have been untrue,
I hope you know it was never to you.

Like a baby stillborn,
like a beast with his horn,
I have torn everyone who reached out for me.

But I swear by this song,
and by all that I have done wrong,
I will make it all up to thee.

I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
he said to me, "You must not ask for so much."
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
she cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?"

Oh like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir,
I have tried in my way to be free

Here is what Leonard Cohen has to say about A Bird On A Wire.