Niva can ride on 2 wheels

As a good Lada, Niva can ride on its 2 rear wheels very well. This is its first trip to the mechanics, after I mistreated her with inadvertendly filling her tank with diesel instead of gasoline. My fault? Not entirely. The gas pump was labeled in Russian.
The bad thing is that my car was towed from work, and the entire office knows I made a mistake. They now know I am human, my cover is blown.

A dull week-end

I am afraid I will not report anything exciting this week. Sure, I went to the hair dresser this morning, but who wants to know about that? The risk of coming out with a Russian mullet is still high, even after reviewing the "going to the hairdresser" vocabulary section of my book, but I paid close attention while the lady worked on my neck, and I am safe now.
I will keep my eyes open for anything worth reporting in here. Stay tuned.

Ski by night

Between Akademgorodok and the city, there are other places to ski than just Klioutchi, which, as you could see on my recent pictures, is not all that great. I went yesterday to Inia. That is already a bit better. It is actually quite good if you want to spend the evening there after work (it is open until 10pm) and there is pretty much nobody on the slopes after 7pm.
My pictures are not that good, however, note the awesome black car parked on the paking lot (right hand side picture).
Thanks to my sponsor, "Test Center", a nice little shop next to work, managed by a retired geologist and a physicist, and which rents gear for quite cheap.

More car stories

I received my car on Thursday, after ABTO-1 put on the winter tires and the autostart, a nice feature that allows me to start the car remotely 15 minutes before getting in, so it is warm. I also had the stereo installed...
Now comes the fun part: going to the insurance, then to the administrative office to get the license plate, then to another place to get certified that the identification number of the engine matches the one on the frame of the car and the one in the paperworks, then to the army to get my car registered (you have to do that only if it is a car manufactured in Russia), then to the technical inspection. Before doing all this, I am supposed to pass a medical examination where they check that I am physically and mentally able to drive a car. I was supposed to see a psychologist, and it would have been a lot of fun... I might not pass as mentally normal person when speaking Russian... However, for the sake of saving time, I just added a friend on my insurance who already passed all the tests and I will use his paperworks to get the car registered... a little glitch in the system that allows everybody who has healthy friends to drive a car.

I will keep you posted of my adventures with Niva. Happy birthday to me and talk to you later...

My first new car

Some remains of the materialistic and individualist sides of my personality that i grew in Texas... I decided to buy a car. This is my first new car by the way (contrary to what you may think, my Toyota Tercel was second hand). A little summary of my day at the Russian CarMax, which sounds like Karl Marx, and I brainstormed for a long time today trying to make a good pun out of that, but I could not find anything... So I give you the raw material for a good joke as extra gift.


First, note that the selection is great. The models vary by color, which you can hardly notice because of the snow.
These little cars go fo 170,000 rubles/piece. It is still twice as much as my previous car, and it does not come with airbag. Definitely a good choice if you don't mind the condescending attitude of valets at the parking lot when you hand over the keys.

I just closed a good deal, which calls for a nice and firm handshake. I must say that the car dealer has good reasons to be happy, since I just gave him a pile of cash that pays for 60% of the car. With roubles, that is a nice pile of 1,000 notes.

And that's my new car, which is also my best friend from now on... maybe it will also be my girlfriend if things keep on going the same way, but that's another story. It is a Chevy Niva. It is a 4*4 with a powerful 1.7L engine. It is a variant of the infamous Lada Niva, which guarantees a good reliability.

More pictures of me and Niva in the next weeks!

Skiing in Klioutchi

Klioutchi is 5km away from Academgorodok. This is where we went skiing today with friends. It is not very big (you can see the bottom and the top of the resort on that 1st picture). But it is a nice way to get some fresh air (like we don't get enough of it already...).
Anyway, it was a nice little hang out, and they have good shashlik (=kabobs), for when you want to have a break and warm up your extremities. And look at this beautiful siberian landscape! those birch trees are so pretty! and there are so many of them!
Tomorrow, I go night skiing near the city. I can't wait. Don't expect any good picture though.

What's hot on Fridays?

Yeah, yeah, I know, ice sculptures are real nice too look at, but that's now how you imagine I spend my Friday nights in Akademgorodok. So, here is a typical Friday night around here...

1- Make sure the temperature is not above -28C, and you gather a group of friends at about midnight by the New York Pizza.

2- Go to the Ob Sea, and find a good spot for digging an ice hole. Yes, that's right, it can be hard to walk on the lake covered by over 1 meter of snow, and the digging with axes is long and tedious...
















3- The security guards show up. I thought we were going to get busted, but they just made sure we knew what we were doing. I thought that was a trick question: the answer seemed obvious enough to me: "It is 1am, -28C and we are digging an ice hole with axes". I would rather question if they knew what they were doing, at patrolling a 4000km2 lake at 1 am and then not even busting the people that dig holes.

4- Well... we give up on our first hole: the ice is too thick and the security guards told us
about a nice ice hole on the other side of the lake. So we gather our stuffs (mainly axes) and walk back to the cars and drive around the lake.

5-We stop by a church to ask the directions to the ice hole. Time goes by. I feel like a walrus looking for an ice hole and running out of patience... Except I am on the right side of the ice layer and that the polar bears won't get me when I find the hole.









6- 2am: the HOLE! I hesitate for 5 minutes, and then, under peer pressure, I go for it. That's where these wonderful shots of me were taken.


No resemblance with Brigitte Bardot running on the beach of St Tropez.. I would say it looks more like the end of Titanic. Going in is hard. The body parts that have me huff and puff when going in a water at 18C are tying a big knot in my throat. And then the hardest is when you go outside and the ice sticks under the feet, the wind freezes the layer of water over your whole body and you can't find the damn sleeves of your freaking sweater! I had to take my underpants off by the way, which I did without any concern about what other might think. I think in the process I got cured from my recurrent nightmares of being at the public swimming pool all naked with my classmates looking at me.

6- Once done, go back 1/2 mile to where the cars are parked and drink some cognac. Then party until 5am and call it a night. Get some rest before next week.