Sometime in June or July 2002, I was invited to a conference hosted by the European Training Foundation at a hotel on Lake Issy Kul, Kyrgyzstan. My colleague Janna and I were to present the results of a European Training Foundation project we had been doing for the past two years. We had been working with a group of business schools in Ukraine and Central Asia, helping them develop means of diagnosing corporate training needs more accurately, and improving their in-company training programmes. Of course, I was quite happy to attend: the summer before, I’d been invited to spend a weekend at Issy Kul, but wasn’t able due to work.
The original plan was to leave Almaty (in Kazakhstan) around 15:00. Unfortunately, I had to get a visa at the Kyrgyz embassy, and this was delayed because of previous work, so everything took a little while longer than forecast. We finally left the Embassy around 17:00, and started driving south. I was in a quality Kazakh taxi-I think it was a Lada-and I was in a hurry.
To get to Kyrgyzstan from Almaty you drive south through miles of steppe cut by isolated, shallow valleys. The road is isolated, except for a few settlements huddled together out of the wind. If you can somehow forget the taxi and the odd telephone line cutting the horizon, it’s difficult to tell what year-or century-it is. In many spots, you spot cemeteries, stuck in the middle of nowhere, rags streaming in the biting wind, the only thing moving on the empty landscape.
Not to my particular surprise, the taxi driver didn’t have a map, had never been to the lake before, didn’t know the particular hotel where the conference was taking place. This somehow should have alerted me that the situation was, as my friend Max would say “highly sub-optimal”. But I figured he could handle the situation.
By about 20:00 we had passed the Kyrgyz border without incident, and had reached the outskirts of Bishkek. At that point, I knew we had to turn left, and start looking for the lake.
The driver stopped, got out, and asked some Kyrgyz ladies selling onions by the side of the road: “Where’s the Lake?” With my limited Russian, I understood that the lake was about 1 hour “that way” (along the road). So, we got back in the taxi, and kept driving.
By this time, darkness was falling, and I started to get worried. Not that we would fall into the lake, but if we took the south road rather than the north road (where the hotel was located), we’d be driving for several days the long way around, and miss the conference. So, I really wanted to get to that turn before we missed it in the dark.
About fifty minutes later, we stopped again at the side of the road. “Where’s the Lake?” the driver asked. “That way!” (along the road). “How far?” “About an hour!” So off we went again.
A bit later, it was 22:00, and I insisted we stop for dinner. We found one of those seedy sashlik stands along the road where you’re not sure if you’re eating chicken or roadkill, and had a quick dinner. The Lada sat right next to us, and it was at this moment that I realised the driver looked just like my crazy grand-uncle Niko. This revelation did not fill me with joy: Niko was a kamikaze driver, the terror of central Greece. His ancient red Lada had survived countless accidents, and he was very proud of it.
By that time, it was dark, really dark. The kind of darkness you get in Central Asia when you are barrelling down the road, lit only by the headlights of an old red Lada, with no other lights in sight. We drove and drove. Every 15 or 20 minutes, or whenever we saw lights, the driver would stop, get out, and ask “Where’s the Lake?” And each time, the answer was the same: “That way – one hour.”
Sometime around 01:00 we pulled up to a big DAI checkpoint. The former Soviet Union was riddled with these. Originally designed to control transport authorisations, the modern version of the DAI is essentially a big private toll booth benefiting the cops in charge of the shift. In other words, it’s a baksheesh toll booth: if you want to pass, you have to pay.
It was freezing. An icy wind was blowing down the steppe. There were cars parked here and there. The traffic barrier was down. My driver disappeared into the police station and stayed there. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen, then twenty.
At some point, the driver came out, practically in tears. “They want 6 dollars!” he cried in anguish. I handed him a tenner and told him to hand over the bribe so we could get the fuck out of there. He disappeared back into the DAI.
Another ten minutes passed, then fifteen minutes. I was starting to lose my temper.
Suddenly two Kyrgyz military police in full camouflage and AK 47s appeared at my passenger-side window. One of them opened the rear door. I stepped out of the car: “What’s going on?” I asked, in Russian. He muttered something I didn’t understand back to me. I stood with him next to the open rear door.
Then my driver appeared, accompanied by a short, squat smiling Kyrgyz man with many gold teeth and a shiny chrome suit. “Hello my friend!” he said, putting out his hand. He got into the back of the car, and didn’t say a word more. I looked at the driver, trying to decipher this latest development. He shrugged, and got in the car too.
So, off we drove. It was 01:45, and we were driving through the Stygian darkness, looking for the Lake, with a strange man in the back seat. He and the driver started talking. Luckily, it turned out he knew where the lake was, and better than this, he knew where the hotel was. Then he started speaking English!
“My name is …… I am the environmental minister of Lake Issy Kul region. I represent Kyrgyzstan at the RAMSAR convention. Are you familiar with RAMSAR?”
At this point, I should have felt relieved. In fact, I was ready to explode. It was nearly 02:00 in the morning, we were nowhere near the damned hotel, and my ear was being yakked off by a cheerful Kyrgyz government official who had just scared the living daylights out of me.
Luckily, I was able to respond politely, and soon learned everything I wanted to learn about Lake Issy Kul’s unique geology and ecology.
About 02:45, we dropped him off just outside some dark city. He assured us there was a city there: it was just that there were no lights. We were on the northern shore of Issy Kul. The driver asked him once more: “Where’s the Lake?” “That way!” he pointed into the darkness. “How far?” “One hour!”
Of course. I was wondering if this hotel actually existed, or if was a figment of a collective national imagination, like Xanadu.
About 20 minutes later, without any fanfare, we passed the entry of the hotel. “Stop!” I shouted. We backed up, turned right, and entered the hotel driveway. Ahead of us was another checkpoint. The barrier was down; another policeman in full camouflage and an AK lolled against the guardhouse.
The driver rolled down his window, and in Russian asked to pass. The guard answered something to the negative. The driver turned to me with a worried look in his eyes, and said “The Hotel is closed now, we cannot enter.”
At this point, I lost it entirely. I leaned across the driver’s side, stuck my head out the window, and started right at the guard: “You open that fucking gate right now and let us in!” I growled in English.
He didn’t need an interpreter. “Yes sir!” he saluted, and opened the gate.
The red Lada rolled into the silent hotel grounds. We drove for about 2 minutes through some kind of park, and pulled up to a vast, dark bulk. The hotel was huge. At least 10 stories high; probably 500 meters long, oriented east-west along the northern shore of the lake. The only problem was—there was no entrance. There was one light on in the darkness: it said “Nightclub.” You know—the seedy kind of nightclub where you do a special kind of dancing, paid by the hour.
“OK,” I told the driver, “turn right here and let’s drive around till we find the reception.” So we drove. And drove. And drove. The dinky little asphalt road ended, and I realised we were driving on the hotel lawn. It was 03:20 or so at that point: there was not a single light on in the entire building. We drove around the front, so that we were facing the lakefront, and kept driving, until we made a 360 degree turn around this black edifice.
Shit, I was thinking. What if the hotel really was closed? What if we came to the wrong hotel?
We pulled up to the nightclub again. The driver got out to take a look. He disappeared downstairs, came up again, and pointed to a black shadow next to the nightclub entrance. “That’s the reception!”
I looked at him in disbelief. There wasn’t a single light on: It was absolutely dark. I pulled out my Motorola, flipped the clamshell cover open, and walked into the hotel, navigating by the dim light of the phone.
There wasn’t the least sign of human habitation. Just a vast black space, stairs zig-zagging here and there, sinister post-Soviet potted plants lurking in corners. Finally, I called Janna, my colleague, who had made it earlier. “Janna, we’re here, but can’t see a damned thing!” Janna said she would call the reception and wake someone up.
The driver and I waited in the darkness for about 10 minutes. Up ahead, a light appeared, very faint and pale. It gradually grew closer and closer. Finally, a babushka appeared holding the light, dressed in her finest bathrobe and slippers and hair curlers, and said abruptly in Russian “Give me your passport!”
It was time to check in. I got my room key, got lost on my way to the room, finally found it open, and collapsed on the bed. Before doing so, I made sure the driver got a room as well: he was ready to drive back to Almaty immediately, but I didn’t want to inflict this on him.
It was 03:50. I had found the Lake. I had found the hotel. I had found my room. Three hours later the alarm rang, and I was ready to talk about human resources management in Central Asia.
Showing posts with label Stories from the Road. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stories from the Road. Show all posts
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Good night Dnepropetrovsk!
My last night in Dnepropetrovsk. Our business dinner ended unexpectedly early, and I find myself in the hotel restaurant, reflecting on how things change-and how things remain the same.
The first time I visited Dnepropetrovsk was almost exactly ten years ago, at the end of November 1999, for a company named Ista Battery. Dnepropetrovsk was a different city then: freezing, grim, caught in the throes of the economic collapse following the Russian ruble devaluation. On Karl Marx Avenue, few stores had anything to sell. At the vast, crumbling Hotel Dnepropetrovsk, a 19-storey Stalinist hulk on the Dnieper river, there was no hot water on the upper floors, and the floor monitors cast a jaundiced eye on all our comings and goings. There were perhaps three restaurants worthy of the name in the entire city of over 1 million, and very few people had money to eat in them.
The snow came early that year, and the temperatures quickly reached freezing. A few Ladas and Zhigulis sputtered and coughed their way down the streets; the world was a perpetual state of grey. Crumbling factories, crumbling apartments, crumbling hopes.
Fast forward to November 2009, and it’s a different place. Karl Marx Avenue is lined with expensive stores: Escada, Ermenegildo Zegna, Levis. Good restaurants are on every block: Nobu, Pastoral, Paris, Charly, Kadri. Wifi connections are everywhere. New shopping centres and office blocks have been built, their marble and granite brightening the crumbling Soviet-era apartments. People are better-dressed, better-fed, optimistic.
Despite the current crisis, there is a feeling of potential in the air. Things are tough, but they will get better, and eventually things will normalise to the point where Ukraine is indistinguishable from other European countries, at least for the young. Indeed, for most of them, this point has already been reached.
My client this time around is another manufacturer. In just 8 years, they have built a plant which is among the largest and most modern of its kind in the world. All-new Western machinery. A sparkling factory floor. Top quality products. A capacity for 7 million units per year. To most Ukrainians, manufacturing comes naturally, instinctively. Their thinking is Cartesian and linear. Their ability to plan and improve a manufacturing process is unlimited by tradition or custom.
Nearly every Ukrainian oligarch I meet begins our meeting with the line: “In the next five years, we will be one of the top 10 companies in Europe.” Many of them have actually achieved this. Some of them grow complacent: they drive around in black Porsche Cayennes and spend their money on extravagance. But most of them buckle down. Seven million batteries is just a start: the next step will be another plant for industrial batteries. Then a lead recycling facility. Then renewable energy solutions. There is no limit to the progression. The only limits are of time, capital and human resources.
Sitting in this hotel restaurant, I feel rather humble. In Greece, my country, we are still arguing about the basics. Should university education be public or private? Should the government re-nationalise ports and telecoms? Should an investor dare to build a soccer stadium and mall in the wasteland of Votanikos? Should a 5,000-room hotel complex be licensed on a barren peninsula in Crete?
Looking at it from the perspective of this city, we are frivolous and spoiled. We complain about forest fires, yet every day drivers toss their cigarette butts from their cars. We expect other countries to admire our history, but seem to have forgotten that our historical achievements required sacrifice and self-discipline to achieve them. The notion of arête, of the search for excellence, has largely been forgotten. Instead, we spiral into mediocrity, into the drone of morning TV and failed expectations, empty words in a hollow echo chamber.
This city started only a short time ago from nothing. Generations of Soviet planning had turned Dnepropetrovsk into a vast zone of grey, crumbling concrete. People were disciplined to follow orders. The concept of market cost or market price had not meaning. Just 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this city has made tremendous progress. Immeasurable, if compared with our western standard of living.
And a small group of business entrepreneurs built one of the most modern factories in the world from scratch, in 8 years, from nothing, and show no signs of slowing down. I have two more meetings tomorrow morning, then sprint for the airport and the long flight home. I return to Greece inspired, with different expectations, and a higher standard of achievement than I had when I left just a week ago. Of all the places to find inspiration, I found it in this industrial city on the banks of the Dnieper River, 10 years after I first arrived.
Good night Dnepropetrovsk!
The first time I visited Dnepropetrovsk was almost exactly ten years ago, at the end of November 1999, for a company named Ista Battery. Dnepropetrovsk was a different city then: freezing, grim, caught in the throes of the economic collapse following the Russian ruble devaluation. On Karl Marx Avenue, few stores had anything to sell. At the vast, crumbling Hotel Dnepropetrovsk, a 19-storey Stalinist hulk on the Dnieper river, there was no hot water on the upper floors, and the floor monitors cast a jaundiced eye on all our comings and goings. There were perhaps three restaurants worthy of the name in the entire city of over 1 million, and very few people had money to eat in them.
The snow came early that year, and the temperatures quickly reached freezing. A few Ladas and Zhigulis sputtered and coughed their way down the streets; the world was a perpetual state of grey. Crumbling factories, crumbling apartments, crumbling hopes.
Fast forward to November 2009, and it’s a different place. Karl Marx Avenue is lined with expensive stores: Escada, Ermenegildo Zegna, Levis. Good restaurants are on every block: Nobu, Pastoral, Paris, Charly, Kadri. Wifi connections are everywhere. New shopping centres and office blocks have been built, their marble and granite brightening the crumbling Soviet-era apartments. People are better-dressed, better-fed, optimistic.
Despite the current crisis, there is a feeling of potential in the air. Things are tough, but they will get better, and eventually things will normalise to the point where Ukraine is indistinguishable from other European countries, at least for the young. Indeed, for most of them, this point has already been reached.
My client this time around is another manufacturer. In just 8 years, they have built a plant which is among the largest and most modern of its kind in the world. All-new Western machinery. A sparkling factory floor. Top quality products. A capacity for 7 million units per year. To most Ukrainians, manufacturing comes naturally, instinctively. Their thinking is Cartesian and linear. Their ability to plan and improve a manufacturing process is unlimited by tradition or custom.
Nearly every Ukrainian oligarch I meet begins our meeting with the line: “In the next five years, we will be one of the top 10 companies in Europe.” Many of them have actually achieved this. Some of them grow complacent: they drive around in black Porsche Cayennes and spend their money on extravagance. But most of them buckle down. Seven million batteries is just a start: the next step will be another plant for industrial batteries. Then a lead recycling facility. Then renewable energy solutions. There is no limit to the progression. The only limits are of time, capital and human resources.
Sitting in this hotel restaurant, I feel rather humble. In Greece, my country, we are still arguing about the basics. Should university education be public or private? Should the government re-nationalise ports and telecoms? Should an investor dare to build a soccer stadium and mall in the wasteland of Votanikos? Should a 5,000-room hotel complex be licensed on a barren peninsula in Crete?
Looking at it from the perspective of this city, we are frivolous and spoiled. We complain about forest fires, yet every day drivers toss their cigarette butts from their cars. We expect other countries to admire our history, but seem to have forgotten that our historical achievements required sacrifice and self-discipline to achieve them. The notion of arête, of the search for excellence, has largely been forgotten. Instead, we spiral into mediocrity, into the drone of morning TV and failed expectations, empty words in a hollow echo chamber.
This city started only a short time ago from nothing. Generations of Soviet planning had turned Dnepropetrovsk into a vast zone of grey, crumbling concrete. People were disciplined to follow orders. The concept of market cost or market price had not meaning. Just 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this city has made tremendous progress. Immeasurable, if compared with our western standard of living.
And a small group of business entrepreneurs built one of the most modern factories in the world from scratch, in 8 years, from nothing, and show no signs of slowing down. I have two more meetings tomorrow morning, then sprint for the airport and the long flight home. I return to Greece inspired, with different expectations, and a higher standard of achievement than I had when I left just a week ago. Of all the places to find inspiration, I found it in this industrial city on the banks of the Dnieper River, 10 years after I first arrived.
Good night Dnepropetrovsk!
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Unacceptable!
Lunch was finished, and the conference on Financing of Vocational Education and Training I was attending at CEDEFOP, the European Centre for Development of Vocational Training, was over. I managed to complete the conference without putting my foot in my mouth (or at least not too many times) and I had half an hour before the bus was due to depart for the hotel. So I decided to go back into the main conference room at CEDEFOP’s Thessaloniki headquarters, which was now deserted, and catch up on email.
This created a certain administrative furor. The two worthy ladies cleaning the room stopped in momentary paralysis, uncertain of how to continue. It was only after reassuring one of the conference organisers that yes, of course they could continue cleaning, and no, they weren’t bothering me, that I was allowed to finally get on with my email.
The uneasy silence which had settled did not last long. A steady murmuring started, punctuated by sibilant bursts of outrage. The two ladies were circling around the conference tables, thrashing at them with cleaning rags with barely contained rage.
I gradually understood, from their conversation, that one of their administrators, a Bulgarian, had the unsurpassed arrogance to somehow criticize their work just a while ago.
“Unacceptable,” demanded one of them. “What happened today was UNACCEPTABLE.” Her capable hands smashed the table as though it was the Bulgarian’s face she was pummelling.
“Something is going on,” the other one insisted. “You can see this, something is going on!”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the first one replied. “In all the years I’ve worked here, noone has ever said anything to me!”
I tried to tune out their indignation. I had been out until 01:00 last night at the conference dinner, discussing vocational education and training and trying to avoid a faux pas while straining to hear the dinner conversation. It’s quite demanding: the dinner started with a discussion of the complicated Belgian parliamentary system and a comparative review of European tax and social security contributions, and then moved on to even more esoteric issues. By the end of it, I realised that I could barely keep my eyelids propped open, and that I should really wake up early to slap together a presentation on the committee discussion I had participated in.
And this is where I suffered my latest existentialist shock. Leaving the restaurant in the Ladadika, I walked out in the rainy, promise-filled evening of Thessaloniki and discovered…that the streets were FULL of beautiful young people. They were streaming in all directions, in their mini-skirts and their trench coats and jeans and Armani/Zara clubwear, laughing, talking, smoking, making that cheerful din of the young.
For a moment, I wondered if perhaps a demonstration was about to start. But then it hit me: they were all going out! Every fashionable bar along the waterfront, between the port and my hotel, the Makedonia Palace, was packed. Packed! Full to capacity, people out on the pavement, smoking, writhing absently to music, talking, smoking.
I realised then that I’ve really fallen off life’s bandwagon. Here I am worrying about my presentation and how to finance VET systems and the projects I have to deal with next week, and all around me thousands of beautiful young people are talking the night away, clearly not worried about working or studying or doing anything else the next morning. Most of them were still arriving for the evening’s entertainment. Am I really this old?
“UNACCEPTABLE!” My thoughts were brought back to the conference room with a shock. “WHAT SHE SAID – UNACCEPTABLE!” The anger of the cleaning ladies had bubbled over. A crisis point was reached.
For a brief, hysterical moment, I thought of singing out that hideous old Karras song: Ασ’την να λέει, άσ’την να λέει, εκείνη μόνο ξέρει, και μέσα της θα κλαίει, άσ’την να λέει.... (I won’t bother translating it…it's hopeless).
In my imagination, Karras himself would rise in a white sequined suit from the front of the conference room, crowds of nubile VET students would shimmy to the beat, and the two cleaning ladies would be vindicated in a sweeping Bollywood moment, dancing through the marble halls of CEDEFOP.
But as with the evening before, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour. Better to keep my head down, answer my emails, and avoid the wrath of the cleaning ladies—or perhaps the Bulgarian. Tace is Latin for candle. They made their pinched, offended way out of the conference room, intent on the battle. And I went back to my emails.
This created a certain administrative furor. The two worthy ladies cleaning the room stopped in momentary paralysis, uncertain of how to continue. It was only after reassuring one of the conference organisers that yes, of course they could continue cleaning, and no, they weren’t bothering me, that I was allowed to finally get on with my email.
The uneasy silence which had settled did not last long. A steady murmuring started, punctuated by sibilant bursts of outrage. The two ladies were circling around the conference tables, thrashing at them with cleaning rags with barely contained rage.
I gradually understood, from their conversation, that one of their administrators, a Bulgarian, had the unsurpassed arrogance to somehow criticize their work just a while ago.
“Unacceptable,” demanded one of them. “What happened today was UNACCEPTABLE.” Her capable hands smashed the table as though it was the Bulgarian’s face she was pummelling.
“Something is going on,” the other one insisted. “You can see this, something is going on!”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the first one replied. “In all the years I’ve worked here, noone has ever said anything to me!”
I tried to tune out their indignation. I had been out until 01:00 last night at the conference dinner, discussing vocational education and training and trying to avoid a faux pas while straining to hear the dinner conversation. It’s quite demanding: the dinner started with a discussion of the complicated Belgian parliamentary system and a comparative review of European tax and social security contributions, and then moved on to even more esoteric issues. By the end of it, I realised that I could barely keep my eyelids propped open, and that I should really wake up early to slap together a presentation on the committee discussion I had participated in.
And this is where I suffered my latest existentialist shock. Leaving the restaurant in the Ladadika, I walked out in the rainy, promise-filled evening of Thessaloniki and discovered…that the streets were FULL of beautiful young people. They were streaming in all directions, in their mini-skirts and their trench coats and jeans and Armani/Zara clubwear, laughing, talking, smoking, making that cheerful din of the young.
For a moment, I wondered if perhaps a demonstration was about to start. But then it hit me: they were all going out! Every fashionable bar along the waterfront, between the port and my hotel, the Makedonia Palace, was packed. Packed! Full to capacity, people out on the pavement, smoking, writhing absently to music, talking, smoking.
I realised then that I’ve really fallen off life’s bandwagon. Here I am worrying about my presentation and how to finance VET systems and the projects I have to deal with next week, and all around me thousands of beautiful young people are talking the night away, clearly not worried about working or studying or doing anything else the next morning. Most of them were still arriving for the evening’s entertainment. Am I really this old?
“UNACCEPTABLE!” My thoughts were brought back to the conference room with a shock. “WHAT SHE SAID – UNACCEPTABLE!” The anger of the cleaning ladies had bubbled over. A crisis point was reached.
For a brief, hysterical moment, I thought of singing out that hideous old Karras song: Ασ’την να λέει, άσ’την να λέει, εκείνη μόνο ξέρει, και μέσα της θα κλαίει, άσ’την να λέει.... (I won’t bother translating it…it's hopeless).
In my imagination, Karras himself would rise in a white sequined suit from the front of the conference room, crowds of nubile VET students would shimmy to the beat, and the two cleaning ladies would be vindicated in a sweeping Bollywood moment, dancing through the marble halls of CEDEFOP.
But as with the evening before, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour. Better to keep my head down, answer my emails, and avoid the wrath of the cleaning ladies—or perhaps the Bulgarian. Tace is Latin for candle. They made their pinched, offended way out of the conference room, intent on the battle. And I went back to my emails.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Back from Rubezhnoye
I returned last last night after a gruelling 13-hour trip back from the corrugated packaging factory in Rubezhnoye, Ukraine where I was working all week. It’s a client we’ve worked with since 2002, and this time my colleague and I were reviewing the implementation of a EUR 151 million business plan, and helping out with a large procurement contract.
Rubezhnoye is a small industrial town located about 150 km NE of Donetsk, near the Ukrainian-Russian border in Lugansk Oblast. It’s not like other cities in Ukraine, where you can find WiFi, western cafes and restaurants, and all the comforts of home. There is no internet, except for a highly overloaded satellite uplink which serves the 50-odd managers in the plant. Accessing any kind of news is impossible, and walking down to the newsstand to buy the Financial Time or Herald Tribune is an option which simply doesn’t exist.
So, after a week without news, I returned to Athens to find – NOTHING HAD CHANGED! Republicans still squabbling with Democrats about the $ 700 billion credit bailout, Obama still sniping away at McCain, who was sniping back: the only news was about whether they would be sniping at each other from the same room, since there was some doubt as to whether the first debate would take place. How anyone can take the two US Presidential candidates seriously on the financial crisis when they’ve taken massive campaign contributions from investment banks and Fannie Mae is beyond me.
In Greece, the Vatopedi scandal, involving an illegal land claim by the Vatopedi Monastery, followed by an even more illegal land swap, was still smouldering. Unfortunately, it looked as though ultimately no one was responsible. I have the feeling that the media in this country are already looking for the next big issue.
In Ukraine, there was some news, but again nothing really new. The Orange coalition had collapsed the week before. My estimate is that Iulia Timoshenko and Viktor Yanukovich will form a caretaker government until sometime next May or September, when conditions will be ripe for an election. Everyone party is scurrying around to raise cash to finance this election. The Gazprom gas price hike looms over everyone, yet nobody knows exactly what will happen – except that most likely, some Ukrainian politicians (and Gazprom) will make money, and Ukrainian citizens and companies will pay for it.
In short, it’s business as usual. Crooked government in the US, Greece and Ukraine. Dishonest or inept politicians across the political spectrum. The intersection of money-rich campaign donors (and even monasteries!) bribing politicians, so they in turn can make yet more money. A depressing state of affairs.
Yet in Rubezhnoye, the real economy continues at speed. A new packaging plant and paper machine are being built that will increase output, creating new jobs and enabling Ukraine to produce new packaging materials, supporting the movement of goods and economic growth. My client pays its taxes, pays its workers competitive salaries, and contributes to the environment: over 80% of packaging material is wastepaper, gathered from recycling points across Ukraine and Russia. Starbucks and Pizza Hut and WiFi may be missing, but life goes on without them, and pretty well, I would say. If only someone could do something about these politicians….
Rubezhnoye is a small industrial town located about 150 km NE of Donetsk, near the Ukrainian-Russian border in Lugansk Oblast. It’s not like other cities in Ukraine, where you can find WiFi, western cafes and restaurants, and all the comforts of home. There is no internet, except for a highly overloaded satellite uplink which serves the 50-odd managers in the plant. Accessing any kind of news is impossible, and walking down to the newsstand to buy the Financial Time or Herald Tribune is an option which simply doesn’t exist.
So, after a week without news, I returned to Athens to find – NOTHING HAD CHANGED! Republicans still squabbling with Democrats about the $ 700 billion credit bailout, Obama still sniping away at McCain, who was sniping back: the only news was about whether they would be sniping at each other from the same room, since there was some doubt as to whether the first debate would take place. How anyone can take the two US Presidential candidates seriously on the financial crisis when they’ve taken massive campaign contributions from investment banks and Fannie Mae is beyond me.
In Greece, the Vatopedi scandal, involving an illegal land claim by the Vatopedi Monastery, followed by an even more illegal land swap, was still smouldering. Unfortunately, it looked as though ultimately no one was responsible. I have the feeling that the media in this country are already looking for the next big issue.
In Ukraine, there was some news, but again nothing really new. The Orange coalition had collapsed the week before. My estimate is that Iulia Timoshenko and Viktor Yanukovich will form a caretaker government until sometime next May or September, when conditions will be ripe for an election. Everyone party is scurrying around to raise cash to finance this election. The Gazprom gas price hike looms over everyone, yet nobody knows exactly what will happen – except that most likely, some Ukrainian politicians (and Gazprom) will make money, and Ukrainian citizens and companies will pay for it.
In short, it’s business as usual. Crooked government in the US, Greece and Ukraine. Dishonest or inept politicians across the political spectrum. The intersection of money-rich campaign donors (and even monasteries!) bribing politicians, so they in turn can make yet more money. A depressing state of affairs.
Yet in Rubezhnoye, the real economy continues at speed. A new packaging plant and paper machine are being built that will increase output, creating new jobs and enabling Ukraine to produce new packaging materials, supporting the movement of goods and economic growth. My client pays its taxes, pays its workers competitive salaries, and contributes to the environment: over 80% of packaging material is wastepaper, gathered from recycling points across Ukraine and Russia. Starbucks and Pizza Hut and WiFi may be missing, but life goes on without them, and pretty well, I would say. If only someone could do something about these politicians….
Friday, May 30, 2008
Chicken Limassol
Yesterday I worked in a leading Cypriot chicken processing plant. Somehow, this should sound more impressive than it actually does. I mean, did I really slave my way through university to say that I spent a day working at a leading Cypriot chicken processing plant? cluck cluck cluck.
Never mind. It’s hot. I’m exhausted. And it’s Friday afternoon. I’m going to tell this story come hell or high bouillon.
I’ve been in Cyprus since Tuesday, seeing one company per day. These are participants in a Lean Sales training programme (yes, it’s really called “Lean Sales”), who are entitled to a full day follow-up session. And yesterday it was the turn of the chicken plant.
It’s a modern facility of sweeping lines and glass-walled offices, set in an industrial estate in the hills above Limassol. From the reception area, you see the beautiful, hazy blue Mediterranean down to the south. To the north, the pine-covered Troodos range looms. It’s got to be the nicest little chicken processing plant in the world.
Have you ever seen a chicken filleting line? It's really something. Stainless steel equipment, gleaming tile walls, shock freezers, and lots and lots of chickens. Whole fresh chickens, frozen chickens, chicken wings and drumsticks, chicken burgers and nuggets, chicken gyros and souvlaki… you get the idea.
The carcasses are rolled up in plastic mesh boxes from the slaughterhouse. They are passed down the line on a rolling belt, where white clad workers hygienically slash their way through the day’s work. First the neck. Then the chicken is lifted and speared on a vertically-rotating spike. The wings and drumsticks are slashed off, one person per carcass, revolving it to reach its other side. Any remaining skin is stripped off. Then the hulk is removed from the spike for filleting. This is the most labour-intensive process. You need several strokes of the knife to take off the fillet, but you want to preserve as much meat as possible. After this, little is left but bones and gristle. I didn’t want to ask what happened with the remains, but they are used for something.
All the while, workers move purposefully back and forth, wheeling trolleys, barking out orders, opening refrigerators, dressed in their aseptic white costumes, hairnets and gloves. Between watching the flashing lines of plump chicken carcases making their way to the supermarket shelf, dodging menacing trolleys on a slippery tile floor, and making sure the damned hairnet doesn’t snap off, it’s more challenging than usual to look professional.
To make things even more surreal, the plant manager was a simalcrum of a slightly older James Franco. The chicken carcasses spun on their proverbial wheels. Doughty Bulgarian women slashed pink chicken flesh with their steely knives. Peter Parker's nemesis gave me the evil eye as I tried to explain the concept of net customer profitability. I thought for a moment I might have been a character written into the wrong movie.
But this too came to an end. We ate oven-baked chicken in the cantina. We drank iced frappe and discussed numbers. We swapped war stories. By 17.00, as we were all running out the steam, George made his discrete entrance, his black Mercedes gliding through the factory parking lot just outside the conference room. I shook hands all around, sang my praises and farewells, and was floated back to Nicosia in air conditioned splendour.
Today is Friday. It’s 18.00, over 35 degrees, and I’ve just returned from another memorable factory. I’m exhausted, short several G&Ts and will soon leave for Larnaca Airport and home. Another tough week on the road: 60 hours travel and work in four days.
In this fog, Prospero’s words bring a soaring comfort to mind:
You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Sir, I am vex'd;
Bear with my weakness; my, brain is troubled:
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity:
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind.
Never mind. It’s hot. I’m exhausted. And it’s Friday afternoon. I’m going to tell this story come hell or high bouillon.
I’ve been in Cyprus since Tuesday, seeing one company per day. These are participants in a Lean Sales training programme (yes, it’s really called “Lean Sales”), who are entitled to a full day follow-up session. And yesterday it was the turn of the chicken plant.
It’s a modern facility of sweeping lines and glass-walled offices, set in an industrial estate in the hills above Limassol. From the reception area, you see the beautiful, hazy blue Mediterranean down to the south. To the north, the pine-covered Troodos range looms. It’s got to be the nicest little chicken processing plant in the world.
Have you ever seen a chicken filleting line? It's really something. Stainless steel equipment, gleaming tile walls, shock freezers, and lots and lots of chickens. Whole fresh chickens, frozen chickens, chicken wings and drumsticks, chicken burgers and nuggets, chicken gyros and souvlaki… you get the idea.
The carcasses are rolled up in plastic mesh boxes from the slaughterhouse. They are passed down the line on a rolling belt, where white clad workers hygienically slash their way through the day’s work. First the neck. Then the chicken is lifted and speared on a vertically-rotating spike. The wings and drumsticks are slashed off, one person per carcass, revolving it to reach its other side. Any remaining skin is stripped off. Then the hulk is removed from the spike for filleting. This is the most labour-intensive process. You need several strokes of the knife to take off the fillet, but you want to preserve as much meat as possible. After this, little is left but bones and gristle. I didn’t want to ask what happened with the remains, but they are used for something.
All the while, workers move purposefully back and forth, wheeling trolleys, barking out orders, opening refrigerators, dressed in their aseptic white costumes, hairnets and gloves. Between watching the flashing lines of plump chicken carcases making their way to the supermarket shelf, dodging menacing trolleys on a slippery tile floor, and making sure the damned hairnet doesn’t snap off, it’s more challenging than usual to look professional.
To make things even more surreal, the plant manager was a simalcrum of a slightly older James Franco. The chicken carcasses spun on their proverbial wheels. Doughty Bulgarian women slashed pink chicken flesh with their steely knives. Peter Parker's nemesis gave me the evil eye as I tried to explain the concept of net customer profitability. I thought for a moment I might have been a character written into the wrong movie.
But this too came to an end. We ate oven-baked chicken in the cantina. We drank iced frappe and discussed numbers. We swapped war stories. By 17.00, as we were all running out the steam, George made his discrete entrance, his black Mercedes gliding through the factory parking lot just outside the conference room. I shook hands all around, sang my praises and farewells, and was floated back to Nicosia in air conditioned splendour.
Today is Friday. It’s 18.00, over 35 degrees, and I’ve just returned from another memorable factory. I’m exhausted, short several G&Ts and will soon leave for Larnaca Airport and home. Another tough week on the road: 60 hours travel and work in four days.
In this fog, Prospero’s words bring a soaring comfort to mind:
You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Sir, I am vex'd;
Bear with my weakness; my, brain is troubled:
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity:
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
The Arizona
I’m back at the Arizona Restaurant in Kiev, Dire Straits on the stereo, cigarette smoke in the air and the Eighties are alive and well.
The story of how I found this place is one of those consultant tales. Back in October 1999, I was bidding on a project for a financial institution. This IFI had lent $ 40 million – a large amount at the time – to a leading drinks company in Ukraine, and was looking for a consultant to monitor the marketing side of the loan. What was the client selling in volume and value terms? Were prices competitive? Would the loan be repaid?
In 1999, Kiev was the wild East. The Russian rouble had devalued in 1998, dragging down many of the regional economies with it. Inflation was north of 10%, the dollar was king, and Leonid Kuchma was President. Life today in Ukraine is in technicolour: back then it seemed to be in washed out shades of grey.
I flew up on a Friday and had my first meeting with the bank at around 16:00. Excellent meeting, great communication first time round with Yurij, who would become a good friend. The problem was, the company could see me on Monday at 11:00.
So, I went back to the Domus hotel, in Podil. The sky was cloudy, rain was promised, and I had to figure out how to spend the weekend without making a mess of things. It’s tough, on your own in a city like Kiev. So, I adopted that useful tactic: I asked the hotel where I could find a good restaurant. And the receptionist recommended the Arizona, which was just down the street on the river.
Back then, the restaurant scene in Kiev was a little dismal. In this desert, Arizona was an oasis. The boys in black didn’t exactly check their guns at the door (like they did at the Tropicana in Almaty), but there were enough VIPs at any given time that overt hostility was frowned upon. The place was a microcosm of society, or at least that part of society that could afford a $10 hamburger.
There were representatives of multinational companies, Ukrainian oligarchs and their stunning companions, American families out for a night on the town, pretending for a moment they weren’t on the Dnieper but maybe in Memphis. There were computer executives, consultants, government officials, customs officers, and salesmen of all sorts. There were bankers and development aid officials. There were students and interns and embassy officials and businessmen. At one point, everyone who was anyone passed through the Arizona.
And me. At the Arizona, I could buy a Herald Tribune, play a round of pool, read a book, hack away on the laptop, order countless pots of coffee and dream of home. While it was raining outside, it was warm – and safe – inside. On that weekend, I probably spent over 16 hours inside the place.
Friday afternoon I met Sacha, an excellent pool player in charge of the pool room. We passed the time, shooting one rack of 8-ball after another while it rained and rained. Gradually the place filled up, and I decided to head back to the hotel. Back in 1999, I could just keep up with him. Later, he got better, and I stopped playing when I moved from Athens to Paris, where the concept of spending time in a pool hall somehow isn’t quite the thing. Sacha left the Arizona sometime in 2004: I’ve lost track of him since then.
The next day I walked around just after lunch, catching the tail end of the lunch crown. I stayed until Saturday night, shooting pool, drinking beer and passing time. Around seven that evening, I was playing pool, when a pale glabrous fellow walked up in a black, ankle-length leather coat and pointed to the cue. We started to play, and that’s how I met “Uzi” and Mikhail and their crew. Uzi was my nickname for him: he looked like that fellow in the Dirty Harry movie who walks into a restaurant and sprays the room with a machine gun. Under his leather coat (remember, this was before The Matrix came out) he looked like he had several. Uzi, reassuringly, worked for a nuclear safety institution.
Mikhail was the leader of the crew. As I learned, he drove a white Mercedes, always had two or three very attractive blondes with him, and knew all the flash places. As we were playing pool that first night, I asked him what he did. He handed over a business card which said “Panther Airways – President”. I asked what “Panther Airways” was about, and got the full story. At the time, sanctions were in full force on a certain Balkan country (or what was left of it). The idea was to lease idle JAT aircraft, base them in Ukraine and rake in the cash big time. I don’t know if this ever materialized or not, but somehow I don’t think Mikhail needed a day job.
From Arizona, we made our way to a Latin place, where the mambo was king. The place was packed, raucous, noisy. Cigarette smoke, vodka fumes and beer slop; sweating dancers and salsa music and crazy lights. Kiev on a Saturday night. Both young and old were oh so happy to be alive, letting go with an insistence that was remarkable. After Chernobyl and glasnost and collapse and independence and hyperinflation, dancing seemed like the one thing everyone could do, in any style, and it was enough to keep moving to loud music to avoid standing still and letting your memories catch up with you. I rode the wave as long as I could, but just after midnight was tapped out and returned to the hotel. The rest of the crew stayed out till breakfast, as I found out the next day.
Sunday was the same routine: walk around Kiev in the morning, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Lunch at Arizona. 8-ball in the afternoon, with Uzi paler than usual. Even nuclear scientists and airline executives need sleep, so it was an early dinner, then bed.
The meeting at the drinks firm went very well on Monday, although I got the impression that they weren’t quite sure why I was there. I sat at a wooden table in the dark as seven or eight executives filed in and sat across from me. They turned out to be the dearest people.
By 15.00, I was through the forbidding lines at Borispol airport. As I passed the final check to board the Austrian flight, the warm smell of coffee wafted up the boarding tunnel. The hostess chirped her Gruessgott in her quaint Austrian accent. I have seldom been so glad to board a flight in my life.
Today of course, Kiev is different, as am I. The Arizona is still there. The décor is the same, the menu is the nearly same. Fewer people though, so I get my favourite table to myself nearly every time. Mark Knopfler steps right up to the microphone…we are the sultans, we are the sultans of swing.
The story of how I found this place is one of those consultant tales. Back in October 1999, I was bidding on a project for a financial institution. This IFI had lent $ 40 million – a large amount at the time – to a leading drinks company in Ukraine, and was looking for a consultant to monitor the marketing side of the loan. What was the client selling in volume and value terms? Were prices competitive? Would the loan be repaid?
In 1999, Kiev was the wild East. The Russian rouble had devalued in 1998, dragging down many of the regional economies with it. Inflation was north of 10%, the dollar was king, and Leonid Kuchma was President. Life today in Ukraine is in technicolour: back then it seemed to be in washed out shades of grey.
I flew up on a Friday and had my first meeting with the bank at around 16:00. Excellent meeting, great communication first time round with Yurij, who would become a good friend. The problem was, the company could see me on Monday at 11:00.
So, I went back to the Domus hotel, in Podil. The sky was cloudy, rain was promised, and I had to figure out how to spend the weekend without making a mess of things. It’s tough, on your own in a city like Kiev. So, I adopted that useful tactic: I asked the hotel where I could find a good restaurant. And the receptionist recommended the Arizona, which was just down the street on the river.
Back then, the restaurant scene in Kiev was a little dismal. In this desert, Arizona was an oasis. The boys in black didn’t exactly check their guns at the door (like they did at the Tropicana in Almaty), but there were enough VIPs at any given time that overt hostility was frowned upon. The place was a microcosm of society, or at least that part of society that could afford a $10 hamburger.
There were representatives of multinational companies, Ukrainian oligarchs and their stunning companions, American families out for a night on the town, pretending for a moment they weren’t on the Dnieper but maybe in Memphis. There were computer executives, consultants, government officials, customs officers, and salesmen of all sorts. There were bankers and development aid officials. There were students and interns and embassy officials and businessmen. At one point, everyone who was anyone passed through the Arizona.
And me. At the Arizona, I could buy a Herald Tribune, play a round of pool, read a book, hack away on the laptop, order countless pots of coffee and dream of home. While it was raining outside, it was warm – and safe – inside. On that weekend, I probably spent over 16 hours inside the place.
Friday afternoon I met Sacha, an excellent pool player in charge of the pool room. We passed the time, shooting one rack of 8-ball after another while it rained and rained. Gradually the place filled up, and I decided to head back to the hotel. Back in 1999, I could just keep up with him. Later, he got better, and I stopped playing when I moved from Athens to Paris, where the concept of spending time in a pool hall somehow isn’t quite the thing. Sacha left the Arizona sometime in 2004: I’ve lost track of him since then.
The next day I walked around just after lunch, catching the tail end of the lunch crown. I stayed until Saturday night, shooting pool, drinking beer and passing time. Around seven that evening, I was playing pool, when a pale glabrous fellow walked up in a black, ankle-length leather coat and pointed to the cue. We started to play, and that’s how I met “Uzi” and Mikhail and their crew. Uzi was my nickname for him: he looked like that fellow in the Dirty Harry movie who walks into a restaurant and sprays the room with a machine gun. Under his leather coat (remember, this was before The Matrix came out) he looked like he had several. Uzi, reassuringly, worked for a nuclear safety institution.
Mikhail was the leader of the crew. As I learned, he drove a white Mercedes, always had two or three very attractive blondes with him, and knew all the flash places. As we were playing pool that first night, I asked him what he did. He handed over a business card which said “Panther Airways – President”. I asked what “Panther Airways” was about, and got the full story. At the time, sanctions were in full force on a certain Balkan country (or what was left of it). The idea was to lease idle JAT aircraft, base them in Ukraine and rake in the cash big time. I don’t know if this ever materialized or not, but somehow I don’t think Mikhail needed a day job.
From Arizona, we made our way to a Latin place, where the mambo was king. The place was packed, raucous, noisy. Cigarette smoke, vodka fumes and beer slop; sweating dancers and salsa music and crazy lights. Kiev on a Saturday night. Both young and old were oh so happy to be alive, letting go with an insistence that was remarkable. After Chernobyl and glasnost and collapse and independence and hyperinflation, dancing seemed like the one thing everyone could do, in any style, and it was enough to keep moving to loud music to avoid standing still and letting your memories catch up with you. I rode the wave as long as I could, but just after midnight was tapped out and returned to the hotel. The rest of the crew stayed out till breakfast, as I found out the next day.
Sunday was the same routine: walk around Kiev in the morning, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Lunch at Arizona. 8-ball in the afternoon, with Uzi paler than usual. Even nuclear scientists and airline executives need sleep, so it was an early dinner, then bed.
The meeting at the drinks firm went very well on Monday, although I got the impression that they weren’t quite sure why I was there. I sat at a wooden table in the dark as seven or eight executives filed in and sat across from me. They turned out to be the dearest people.
By 15.00, I was through the forbidding lines at Borispol airport. As I passed the final check to board the Austrian flight, the warm smell of coffee wafted up the boarding tunnel. The hostess chirped her Gruessgott in her quaint Austrian accent. I have seldom been so glad to board a flight in my life.
Today of course, Kiev is different, as am I. The Arizona is still there. The décor is the same, the menu is the nearly same. Fewer people though, so I get my favourite table to myself nearly every time. Mark Knopfler steps right up to the microphone…we are the sultans, we are the sultans of swing.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Dinner at the Tropicana
From a letter sent to friends, in late July 2001
Dear Christine,
I swear I saw Marilyn Monroe at the Tropicana last night. She was wearing a white dress and some Kazak fellow in a shiny chrome suit was chasing her. Was it my relief of surviving a week of 14-hour days? Was it the steak the size of a swimming pool I was eating? Was it the fourth gin & tonic? Either way, I'm sure she was there.
The Tropicana is a veritable oasis in an otherwise colourless city. It's something like Bogart's bar in Casablanca, or a grand hotel in Havana before Fidel. Everyone who's anyone is there: bankers, oil men, the boys in black turtlenecks, and assorted other dignitaries. The tablecloths and napkins are of real linen, the china slightly chipped but servicable, and the cutlery clean.
And, there's the floor show. For about 2 hours, an array of clothed, half-clothed and unclothed Kazak nymphs and other interesting people take your mind off your troubles and the sordid world outside: the chrome suit chasing Marilyn, a thick Bulgarian dressed in a Hawaiian shirt & pith helmet belting out oldies and goldies....
Last night I realised that all these years of consulting, all the sleepless nights and the washed-up feeling of too many airport transfers had finally paid off: I had made it into the upper echelons of society - at the Tropicana!
The rest of Almaty seems pale and drab by comparison. The trees are green, and the houses are brown or grey, and there are few cars on the street. The oil money that was supposed to transform this country into the Saudi of Central Asia has yet to appear. The weather was four days of sunshine, and another four days of rain.
The most interesting part of the city is its people. Being here is simply exhilarating: you never know who you're talking with. Kazaks claim to be able to differentiate at least between the three main ethnics groups or clans, but with over a hundred sub-clans or ethnic groups to choose from, who's counting? The full range of features exists from white Russian to Turkish to Korean, Chinese and Mongolian. Everyone speaks Russian, and everyone seems to get along.
Tomorrow we finish some meetings here, and depart for Bishkek by road. I am looking forward to the trip. Somewhere along the way is the mysterious lake of Issy Kul, nestled somewhere in the mountains. We won't have time to stop (surprise surprise), but maybe can see it coming back to Almaty next Sunday.
According to one associate who emailed me last week, Kyrgyzstan is supposed to be the "Switzerland of Central Asia". I can't wait. But even if it doesn't live up to its name, I know that I will always be welcome in Central Asia - at the Tropicana!
Here's looking at you, kid.
Philip
Dear Christine,
I swear I saw Marilyn Monroe at the Tropicana last night. She was wearing a white dress and some Kazak fellow in a shiny chrome suit was chasing her. Was it my relief of surviving a week of 14-hour days? Was it the steak the size of a swimming pool I was eating? Was it the fourth gin & tonic? Either way, I'm sure she was there.
The Tropicana is a veritable oasis in an otherwise colourless city. It's something like Bogart's bar in Casablanca, or a grand hotel in Havana before Fidel. Everyone who's anyone is there: bankers, oil men, the boys in black turtlenecks, and assorted other dignitaries. The tablecloths and napkins are of real linen, the china slightly chipped but servicable, and the cutlery clean.
And, there's the floor show. For about 2 hours, an array of clothed, half-clothed and unclothed Kazak nymphs and other interesting people take your mind off your troubles and the sordid world outside: the chrome suit chasing Marilyn, a thick Bulgarian dressed in a Hawaiian shirt & pith helmet belting out oldies and goldies....
Last night I realised that all these years of consulting, all the sleepless nights and the washed-up feeling of too many airport transfers had finally paid off: I had made it into the upper echelons of society - at the Tropicana!
The rest of Almaty seems pale and drab by comparison. The trees are green, and the houses are brown or grey, and there are few cars on the street. The oil money that was supposed to transform this country into the Saudi of Central Asia has yet to appear. The weather was four days of sunshine, and another four days of rain.
The most interesting part of the city is its people. Being here is simply exhilarating: you never know who you're talking with. Kazaks claim to be able to differentiate at least between the three main ethnics groups or clans, but with over a hundred sub-clans or ethnic groups to choose from, who's counting? The full range of features exists from white Russian to Turkish to Korean, Chinese and Mongolian. Everyone speaks Russian, and everyone seems to get along.
Tomorrow we finish some meetings here, and depart for Bishkek by road. I am looking forward to the trip. Somewhere along the way is the mysterious lake of Issy Kul, nestled somewhere in the mountains. We won't have time to stop (surprise surprise), but maybe can see it coming back to Almaty next Sunday.
According to one associate who emailed me last week, Kyrgyzstan is supposed to be the "Switzerland of Central Asia". I can't wait. But even if it doesn't live up to its name, I know that I will always be welcome in Central Asia - at the Tropicana!
Here's looking at you, kid.
Philip
Saturday, December 15, 2007
The Kyrgyz Massage
Bishkek, sometime in late July 2001
Dear Friends,
I spent all last Saturday working on a client report, and by 17:00 I was fed up with repeating myself on paper, so I hopped into a taxi and navigated my way by hand signals to the Hyatt. Once in this veritable oasis of charm in an otherwise Central Asian capital, I quickly ascertained that for only $ 25, I could have full use of the gym, which included a weight room, sauna and jacuzzi.
Given that this was my first workout in about a month, I quickly changed and started running off a few excess kilos of lamb sashlik, followed by a quick spin in the sauna. It was fantastic! All my cares fell away, and I imagined myself carefree and young once more, brimming with energy, vigour and well-being.
And that was where hubris winked. For a mere $ 10 supplement, the attendant informed me, I could have a 30 minute massage, sure to restore me to perfect health after a stressful 16 days in Central Asia. How could I say no?
The first indication that something might be wrong was when Gulmira, started pounding my back with fists like hammers. As jolts of pain ran up and down my spine, I began to think that this was not the kind of soothing massage I was accustomed to in the decadent capitals of Europe. No no no, this was the Kyrgyz version, guaranteed to make men strong enough to ride from Bishkek to Ulan Bator in a single week. This was the real secret to Genghis Khan's success.
Following the tenderising, she started to push outwards on each rib right at the point where it joins the spine, as if to snap it like a stale breadstick. "You have problem here!" she crowed helpfully."I didn't before I got here, honey" I thought to myself. Discretion is, after all, the better part of valour. "This is medical massage!" she said proudly, pausing in her labours."Medical is what I'm going to need after this, darling" I thought.
The head "massage" felt like she was trying to remove the hair from my head with sandpaper. Maybe it was at that point that she started naming her tortures: "This is the Ladder of Pain. This is the Symphony of Agony and Repentance". (Or maybe it was my imagination).
But the best, as usual, was saved for last. This was when she bent my elbows backwards at right angles, and ground on some itty bitty nerve running over the shoulder blade. If you've ever seen a fish flopping in the bottom of a boat in its death agonies, this is what I was doing, only louder.
At the end of it, my back felt as it someone had driven over it - repeatedly - on a Range Rover, then punched holes in it with an ice pick. But you know something? It worked! This 30 minutes did restore me to perfect health. I was so happy to be alive, I practically flew out of that gym. So happy, in fact that I went upstairs to the lobby lounge and had a gin and tonic while the Hyatt's chamber music quartet massacred - but really massacred - Mozart's "Eine kleine Nachtmusik". It was the end of another happy day in Central Asia.
Cheers everyone,
Philip
Dear Friends,
I spent all last Saturday working on a client report, and by 17:00 I was fed up with repeating myself on paper, so I hopped into a taxi and navigated my way by hand signals to the Hyatt. Once in this veritable oasis of charm in an otherwise Central Asian capital, I quickly ascertained that for only $ 25, I could have full use of the gym, which included a weight room, sauna and jacuzzi.
Given that this was my first workout in about a month, I quickly changed and started running off a few excess kilos of lamb sashlik, followed by a quick spin in the sauna. It was fantastic! All my cares fell away, and I imagined myself carefree and young once more, brimming with energy, vigour and well-being.
And that was where hubris winked. For a mere $ 10 supplement, the attendant informed me, I could have a 30 minute massage, sure to restore me to perfect health after a stressful 16 days in Central Asia. How could I say no?
The first indication that something might be wrong was when Gulmira, started pounding my back with fists like hammers. As jolts of pain ran up and down my spine, I began to think that this was not the kind of soothing massage I was accustomed to in the decadent capitals of Europe. No no no, this was the Kyrgyz version, guaranteed to make men strong enough to ride from Bishkek to Ulan Bator in a single week. This was the real secret to Genghis Khan's success.
Following the tenderising, she started to push outwards on each rib right at the point where it joins the spine, as if to snap it like a stale breadstick. "You have problem here!" she crowed helpfully."I didn't before I got here, honey" I thought to myself. Discretion is, after all, the better part of valour. "This is medical massage!" she said proudly, pausing in her labours."Medical is what I'm going to need after this, darling" I thought.
The head "massage" felt like she was trying to remove the hair from my head with sandpaper. Maybe it was at that point that she started naming her tortures: "This is the Ladder of Pain. This is the Symphony of Agony and Repentance". (Or maybe it was my imagination).
But the best, as usual, was saved for last. This was when she bent my elbows backwards at right angles, and ground on some itty bitty nerve running over the shoulder blade. If you've ever seen a fish flopping in the bottom of a boat in its death agonies, this is what I was doing, only louder.
At the end of it, my back felt as it someone had driven over it - repeatedly - on a Range Rover, then punched holes in it with an ice pick. But you know something? It worked! This 30 minutes did restore me to perfect health. I was so happy to be alive, I practically flew out of that gym. So happy, in fact that I went upstairs to the lobby lounge and had a gin and tonic while the Hyatt's chamber music quartet massacred - but really massacred - Mozart's "Eine kleine Nachtmusik". It was the end of another happy day in Central Asia.
Cheers everyone,
Philip
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Ozymandius
I was in Uzbekistan on a due diligence mission in Andijan. Driving back and forth from Andijan to Khanabat, and then Fergana, and still later in Tashkent, a poem was running through my mind, something from long ago, but I couldn't remember its name. Finally, sitting on the 04:00 Turkish Airlines flight, waiting for departure, talking to some blessedly interesting people from the OSCE, I remembered:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked then, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Saturday, December 1, 2007
The Som Millionaire
I was briefly a millionaire last Saturday in Tashkent. This is me in the Dedeman Silk Road hotel, having changed EUR 800 for UZS 1,500,000.My father always tells me not to spend it on one place. Well, I did. At the Reception Desk. Paying for our rooms.
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