25 DAYS: COPS, HEAT, BUREAUCRACY, ETC.

For those of you who was and still is coming by this page, I'm sorry for not writing more frequently. We've been quite busy these day, eating, drinking tea, going to Parkentskiy market (where we can buy renovation materials), finding out about lots of stuff, educating my younger brother how to live healthily and save money, and many other things. If your head is spinning just from reading this, imagine mine from doing all that in 40+ degrees heat. Vertigo....

Many times I think "Oh, I should write that in our blog", but then because I don't write it down, I kind of forget it. Okay the first subtitle would be...............

COPS!
Almost since our arrival we've been driving our car. It's nice and big... and pretty for these surroundings. I've seen and heard a lot from my cousins and friends about the cops problem and their milking. Milking meaning we, the drivers are cows and they, the cops, are the "milkers". I was somewhat unprepared to deal with all of that, but steadily and slowly I'm getting used to it. I must admit that we get stopped for minor violations of traffic rules, but what I don't get is that it is almost impossible in my mind to avoid these violations, because the environment forces you to. Imagine driving on the road with many potholes. This will make any sound driver who cares about his car's suspension and other important parts to weave around them, which can be quite tricky on a busy road. Then I'm talking about broken traffic lights, which are just that: broken. And everyone goes everywhere on the intersection. Then there are obscure road signs or one, which I haven't seen in Korea or New Zealand, and I just don't know what that means. Then there are of course crazy drivers who never ever uses their blinkers, so, you never know if they're going straight or turning or what not. We've been stopped because of these factors or so I want to believe. :( Each time, I was let go with a relatively small amount of fine paid to the personal pocket of a policeman, who was lucky to catch me. Once I was stopped just because I was driving our car, which looks flashy here, and they wanted to check if there was anything wrong with me or my car to get some dough out of me. Unfortunately there was some problem with my documents, so, I had to part with my $10 that I had in my pocket in exchange for my freedom to go. Don't get too shocked. It's a reality here. We're learning how to deal with it. Every cop assume that we have lots of money because we're driving a car like that. So, recently I started to pretend that I'm just a driver who's driving a rich foreign lady. So, that brings down the plank of amount considerably downward. I played that trick ones, and it worked. I only parted with half of what I was "normally" giving out before. (Now "normally" here, of course doesn't mean it's normal to give a bribe to a policeman, although here it kind of means that. ^^). Anyways, other than corrupted policemen, potholes, and crazy drivers in their beat up Ladas who don't care if their car will get scratched or whatever, it's very nice to drive out here. Several times we noticed a difference in attitude when people saw us getting out of it because they'd assume we're rich. How funny and sad at the same time.

Thinking about the subject of this post, I think I've written enough about the heat and bureaucracy here, so, I'll write about my gym.

GYM!
We started going to the gym about 10 days now. It's good to be back with the iron. Our gym is not near as nice as the one I used to go in Korea in our HYundai building, but it's adequate for the price. I only pay about $12 a month and Katy only about $9. They give a discount to ladies. Katy also was offered to lead a group of ladies in the gym. I suppose she looked quite professional teaching my very unfit cousins. The gym is in the regular school in the old hall where I remember as a kid having our PE (physical education) class. It's stuffed with the old-ish machines and bellbars and dumbbells. Most of it still quite usable. What I thought was interesting compared with my nice gym in Korea, in Korea gym facility was awesome, members on the other hand were in a quite sad shape, for most part of it. Here, the facility is quite sad and run down, but the members are just in great shape. I'd even say too great shape. They are huge. I'm a skinny chicken compared with them. Not that I feel any inferiority about that. HA~ But one thing that kind of makes us laugh in the gym here is that most of the big guys here are very self-centered. They would walk around torso naked and every time they pass anything slightly reflective they would look and I'm almost sure sing with joy inside, liking what they see. It's a very funny behavior for adults in my opinion. We saw one guy the other day walk into the hair salon where Katy was getting her hair cut. He looked very funny with his 80's a-la Shwarzenegger (spelling?) hairstyle and his way too small shirt showing his belly and also his 80s style break-dance narrow sunglasses. And he was all important and very aware of his "fine" physic. Forgive me my bitterness... it's just funny...

Anyways, Katy's waiting for us to leave, so, we're better go.. I'll finish some time later...

FIRST WEEK FLEW BY.

It's been a week and a day since we landed here. A week long impressions?. Desert-like hot (for instance today is about 41 degrees celcius, yesterday when I look at the thermometer in the car for the temperature outside at about 6 something Pm, it was 39 degrees. Note, all these numbers are for the temperature in the shade; out in the sun add 5~8 degrees more. At least it's dry here, so, it's livable. If it was as humid as in Thailand or other similar places, it would've been hell on earth. No kidding.), desert-like sunny, not a glimpse of clouds, my relatives met my expectations in being hospitable, helpful, and food-giving & "feeding" (here they would be feed us, of course).
We've moved into our apartment with our bags and nothing else on past Sunday. My mom gave us some mattresses and pillows, a bunch of unmatching curtains, and some kitchen utensils, my aunty gave us my grandmother's chairs from 60s and a low dining table, which my dad made years ago. The chairs look cool, we like them, so, we will keep them for our new apartment. We bought a small old Soviet fridge off the previous owners of the apartment, and they also left a couple of old furniture junk, which is still usable, as long as you don't move it, for the risk of it falling apart during movement. ^^ We hired 2 girls to clean the apartment before we moved in, when I saw them, I didn't think they'd do a good job, they did okay with windows but with the rest of it it was as I expected - SO-SO. Oh, well...
After getting done with all the paperwork we started looking for a crew to start renovation in our apartment. Through someone and someone of that someone we found a crew and they started renovation on June 10th. According to the plan, they should be done in 2 months. My super-cautious cousins and other relatives kindly told me to forget about the time-frame I was given and amount of money I was quoted for. "Think double of whatever time and money they told you, for your renovation"- said my cousin. Well, I don't want to. I will try to stick to whatever budget we have in mind. Of course plus-minus 10% maybe. Anyways, today we went into the apartment to look at the progress, and we saw a couple of walls gone, almost all windows frames laid outside, old doors taken out, the wallpaper and flooring ripped off. From tomorrow they will be needed a lot of cement, sand and other stuff, which will make our saving less and less day-by-day. Oh well, what wouldn't one do to live in a nice house. We're still deliberating whether we want good wooden floors or just linoleum, nice doors or re-use the old doors, and stuff like that. A lot of decision-making needs to be done... On top of that my hands (and my butt) are itching to do something to turn the renovation money drain into money-making machine. Here's the million dollar question, "What kind of business should we start?" Ideas are there, but the process of picking the one that will make us millionaires is painfully slow. There's a good chance of you benefiting from us becoming millionaires, so, pray for us, think with us... hahaha~~~
Today we've decided that we need suspended ceilings, because the ones that are there are very uneven. We also had a few classes of Russian and Uzbek language. Katy had Russian and Uzbek and I had Uzbek. I guess I did study it in school, because it sort comes back in a very slow and rudimentary way from the back of my brain.
We also have a little dog called Kuzya. My cousin's husband bought him in the market because he felt sorry for him and took him to the office, where he became a little nuisance. So, when we showed up, everyone wanted us to have this dog and rescue from whatever would've happened to him otherwise. He's a little bit bity at the moment. So we have to scold him and distract him with his toy all the time. Otherwise he's very cute and somewhat looks like Ivanka.
One of the frustrating things here is the internet. You can't find it readily available everywhere even in Tashkent. And also the speed is just what we call in Russian "a turtle speed". In order to get decent internet speed you need to pay helluva lot of money. I don't know... Maybe latter, when we have some income we'll do that. For the moment we use either free wireless internet in cafes or my cousin's office, or go to Hyundai distributor, who knows me and kindly lets us use internet there. Now, they have very good and fast internet. I wanted to upload some pictures here, but my guess is that it will take 2 days to upload one photo, sadly.

I'm also happy that a few of our friends have confirmed their coming to our wedding in September.

TRAVELS ENDED.. BUT THE BLOG WILL CONTINUE

After hectic Bangkok we arrived in Tashkent 3 days ago, on June 5^th. Opposite to my expectations the arrival and going through the passport control and getting our luggage out went very smooth. Neither of us had any delays or problems. In fact our luggage came out amongst the first bags, so we were out fairly quickly. But what an idiotic time of departure and arrival; we departed from Bangkok at half past 10 at night and arrived in Tashkent at 3:05. Maybe it’s because the Uzbek airlines is not prestigious and well known airline, so the time of departure allocated to it in the very busy Bangkok new airport was that weird time. By the time our luggage came out it was 4 something and by the time my cousin, brother and cousin’s son met us at the airport it was something past five in the morning. We came home, had tea, talked a little bit, and it was almost 6am before we went to sleep.

As I said last time, this time Bangkok was kind to us and we didn’t have major piss-offs with all sorts of idiots you can find anywhere. But on our way to the airport there was an incident, which frightened Katy and pissed me off. You see, the way Thai people drive is crazy. Despite the crazy traffic they manage to weave between the cars like a mongoose trying to kill a snake, and they do it at a speed of over 120 km/h. I admit it is very unsettling to watch especially in the front windshield, but you just get used to the idea that this is the way they drive. At least we’ve experienced it many times. So, we had this one Dutch guy, who turned out to be a real psycho, although understandably. He had some altercations with the local guys who were loading our bags into the car in the beginning saying nonsense I won’t you bother with here, and then I thought “oh, god.. who’s this guy? Looks normal and acts like a defensive ballerina”… whatever the last two words mean. Then as we drive to the airport on the highway and we drive very fast, all of a sudden he gets up from his seat leans over from behind us and slapping the driver on his shoulder as he is driving a freaking minivan full of us and our bags on the highway at 130~140 km/h. And then yelling starts from all over, driver in Thai telling something like f*** off to him, I’m sure, the Dutch guy yelling are you crazy? Go slowly.. you want to kill us, and us yelling at both the Dutch guy and a driver to calm down. It was good that the driver didn’t flinch much and didn’t turn the steering wheel as a knee jerk reaction one way or the other, otherwise you could’ve read a news about a minivan full of foreigners and a crazy Dutch man crushing off the elevated highway in Bangkok. Then the driver started calling someone and complain in Thai and the Dutch started complaining to us and generally asking if everyone was okay with that and so on. One Israeli guy calmly explained to him to relax and not to cause any more trouble than he already had. Anyways, this incident in a cramped little minivan frightened Katy, so, she couldn’t quite relax until we arrived at the airport.

Now that we’ve been here for 3 days, we actually didn’t waste our time and did a lot. We registered the car to our name, actually we rather got the sort of permission to drive, we registered Katy, applied for a driver’s license, got cell phones and have seen all major relatives. The only ones left are my grandparents who we will see later today.

Driving our car is so nice, because it is so nice.. haha~ It’s a little bit flashy here though.. so, we will sell it within a year probably and buy a smaller one.

I also thought what to do with my blog, since our travels have come to an end, but since it is so popular and I have a little base of the fans who read it, I decided I will keep it and update you on our life here in Uzbekistan. Hahaha~

It is very hot here by the way, about 40 celcius... It becomes hot already at 9am, so hot that you don’t want to do anything. And finally we can eat nice cherries and apricots and other fruits without making a big dent in our wallet.

LAST DAY: BANGKOK.. TRAVELS...

Today is the last day of our stay in Bangkok before we heading to Uzbekistan on 22:35 flight to Tashkent. The hours of departure and arrival are pain in the butt, because we arrive at 3am. Today would be also the last day of our travels. Looking back it doesn't seem such a long time. We practically started going around in Asia on March 16th, today is June 4th, so, it's less than 3 months really, but we feel like we've had enough, and DEFINITELY spent enough. All my budgeting for our travels for about US$50~$70 a day went out the window. It was absolutely impossible for us. And all this shopping for this past week in Bangkok.. woohoo... Money just melt here in this heat and going through your fingers. Anyways, aside from our financial reasons, we're just really sort of tired of moving around and just want to settle.
Well.. the message just popped up that I have less than 3 minutes left, so, I'll finish here.

See you in Tashkent~~ ^^