HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Fashionable for one day

Akademgorodok... The statues and the coffee place

Pictures I took on my way to the office (by foot). I could not resist stopping at the traveler's coffee for a "latte bolchoe". It is quite a nice place for lunch and coffee, and they are quite tolerant w/ regards to non Russian speakers. Definitely a good address. One of the only addresses anyway.

More snow...

Well, this time I believe that snow season has really started. I was advised to go buy skis. I don;t want to be the first guy on skis in town, though. In the mean time, some pictures of Akademgorodok under the snow.

My second snow.

Today is Saturday. I had planned to go jogging and then go for a bike ride. I might have to revise my plans. Whatever my plans will turn out to be, they will probably include cold and wet feet... Numbness is slowly settling in...

My first snow!!!

This is it! That is how it is supposed to look! I woke up on Wednesday, and this is what I saw... woooow, boy o boy o boy! That's real snow. However I was the only one excited at the office. How can you get ever snow numb? Will I ever experience that?

Going to work by bike

It is not so hard to ride bicycle in Akademgorodok. It is all in the layering. Now, why would I do that when it is so easy to go to work by taxi? Just because I came to Siberia to experience cold... so that's not a few snowflakes and a bit of headwind that are going to keep me from enjoying my ride.

Random pictures from Novosibirsk

There is no joking here.


Nokia. Stay connected to your party.


Lenine's legacy is still alive...


...as is the legacy from St Patrick (is that historically correct?)

Of course, there is much more to see in the city. I just don't want to put everything on my first day, otherwise I will be losing my audience. Enjoy your life in the West.

A picture by Vladimir

I was just passing by when a friend of mine took this picture. Amazing, uh, how Vladimir and I have same body language...
Anyway, this is my first time "in town". I could not let this opportunity passing by without having my picture taken there. I guess that would do a great background on your desktop. Let me post more pictures of Vladimir's friends.

I really need to get cable

A sample of what I get on my local TV channels... Boring. I really need to upgrade to cable once I can call a provider in Russian.

No Russian class today

Today, my lesson of Russian has been canceled because my teacher has been bitten by a dog on her way to my office (it was actually on the property of my company). And I thought pretending that the dog ate my paper was a good excuse for not doing my homework...

Can't wait for the week end

Today, I was happy that my friend Ivan invited me for a drink in a new place. 'turns out it is the same place I went to last Saturday. Is it possible I already pub crawled all the good places in Akademgorodok?
I realize I need to take more pics of the place if I want this blog to be of interest to my friends with short attention span who can't take text w/o pictures. I will do that this week end as I will have my first day out in town!!! Novosibirsk, here I am! Yeehaa!

My nights in Russia

Nothing really interesting happened to me today. I already caught my first cold (and it is only -5C in the morning!) and I am tired. So I am thinking back to these crazy nights in MOCKBA, when the local spice girls, Tatiana, Natalia, Natacha and their brother Oleg offered a nice little show. See my movie...

My place in Novosibirsk

My place is actually in Akademgorodok. Here are some pictures. The long time readers of my blog will recognize the pictures of the apartment I posted on the very first day of this blog. And yes, I DO like the green and orange coaches. No trace of the cat yet.

Lesson learned #1

I decided to post lessons learned from my transfer in Novosibirsk. These lessons learned will be posted at regular intervals, and will be accompanied by examples of application. They are of interest for the people who want to move to Russia. The handful of people who are not considering moving to Siberia can skip this part.

Lesson learned #1:

When a person answers your question by “Yes, yes! No problem”, the only reliable information you then have is that the person has the physical capability of saying “Yes, yes! No problem”. Drawing any correlation between your question and the answer is highly speculative.

Example of application:

Me, calling for scheduling a taxi pick up: “Please make sure the driver comes with a big car, because I have a shitload of luggage. Something like a minivan would be the best.

Taxi dispatcher: -Yes, yes! No problem!

Me: -And, by the way, can I pay by credit card? I would prefer because I have little cash.

Taxi dispatcher: -Yes, yes! No problem!”

If you understand lesson learned #1, you should have no difficulty to figure out the size of the cab that came to pick me up, and the final mode of payment.

Back in!

All right, my internet now is set up at my new apartment. I hope I did not lose too many readers in that short time span. But you are lucky because I kept drafts of my posts these last 3 days.
Let me first share some pics from Moscow... or should I say MOCKBA? Oups... Sorry Eddie, your picture did not upload well.

So... looks goos, uh?

Sonia and her Russian cheeseburger.

A little setback

Well, blogger is very cool and automatically translates everything in Russian when you try to use it from Russia. I am sure all the native Russian love that, but for me, that sucks really bad. It looks like I won't get away w/o learning russian. I can't figure out how to post pictures and movies in the right format. So, my apologies for a blog where the format degrades momentarily (I will try to keep the content top notch though).
That won't keep me from telling you about my first day in Russia. I stayed over in Moscow, where I met with my old paparachik friends Sonia and Eddie. We went to the red square and had a real russian dinner (w/ caviar, borsch, and other stuffs). I would love to show you some pictures, but last time I tried to upload them, that did not work out very well. So I might use a workaround.
Now, I am back at the hotel where I will stay one more night after I missed my flight for Novo. Paradise is always hard to reach, isn't it? In the mean time, if someone could send me some screen captures of the blogger commands in good ol' ABC alphabet, I will appreciate!