Red Exile isn't dead - he's just been distracted...

So 'real life' has intervened in the last few weeks in the shape of punishing work schedule; quite a lot of travel; a friend (and her 46kg dog) temporarily moving in and - which has been very stressy - the search for new offices in Moscow.

of course there comes a point, blog-wise, where after a longish absence it almost becomes intimidating to do the 'here's what I've been doing' catch-up post. I have got over this, however, by just dumping highlights from my facebook account. So here we go (with more shockingly bad photography from my handheld PDA), the recent past:

Yesterday

Red Exile is spending another public holiday in the office; surprised how humid it is outside, which is early in the season.
1:43pm
May 1
I was in Prague on business
Red Exile says: "If I should die think only this of me"... I like Shiraz with my chocolate course.
12:25am
April 30

Red Exile is watching the night twinkle on the Danube; a glass of bubbles to hand; a violin being played in the background.
10:40pm

Red Exile says "OK, so there is some football match coming up in Moscow? No, I don't have tickets and I gather the street price is edging towards Euros 1,000" - crazy! Since 'Chelski' has now won a place in this match, I am told the price is now Euros 4,500 for non-VIP tickets.
3:34pm

Red Exile does not have a PhD in applied sciences and therefore is struggling to work the shower in his hotel bedroom. Which was the Four Seasons - which is superb - and it's restaurant, Allegro, quite unbelievably good (and the holder of Prague's first and only Michelin star)
9:09am
Red Exile I have a table with a view; a pigeon breast; a 1/2 bottle of Côte Rotie: I love life, Prague & everything…
10:53pm

Red Exile is now over a bumpy flight - and normal, smiley service is resumed. We thank you for your patience in this temporary service difficulty.
9:39pm

Red Exile I have *never* thought of the Czechs as other than opportunists and wasters and, 30 minutes in, 4 yrs l8r, I see I was right! I am inclined to be in a very bad mood after landing - partly angry at myself for having been so scared 'up there', which is silly, and partly (justifiably) because Czech immigration, clearing flights in from China and Russia, didn't open the EU Citizens line; until people like me pointed out how crazy it was that we'd have to queue with all the non-EU citizens being admitted with visas. Also, the taxi system sucks.
8:18pm

Red Exile says the plane is what? Late?!? Arrgh!
5:24pm

Red Exile Has now had Aeroflot baked goods and a drink so calmer, checked in and now only to ponder age of plane about to fly...
4:30pm

Red Exile says my life is *so stressful* it is no wonder I have high blood pressure and the heart of an 80 yr old. *Made plane just on time*.
4:16pm

Red Exile hopes everyone enjoys Thursday's neo-cold war parade - cos rehearsals for it have screwed Moscow traffic even more than usual & I am l8 4 plane. The parade is 9th May actually. That didn't make the traffic less sucky.
3:02pm

Red Exile notes that one of his two female house guests is on heat. The 46kg, 4-legged one. Words cannot express... They're moving on Monday. When my mother arrives... I don't get my apartment to myself for another two weeks...
10:19am
April 28

Red Exile is off to a business lunch in brilliant sunshine.
12:00pm

Red Exile added a new photo to New offices - bought 'off-plan': what can go wrong? OK, so the building is still a 'work in progress' in a completely gutted, exterior cladding yet to be junked and re-done and completely needs rewiring and plumbing kind-of-way. But the developer *promises* me it will be ready for entry June 1st. This is good: our current lease expires 31st May.
11:46am

Red Exile Madama Butterfly / Stanislavski etc: tonight Irina Arkad'eva was *a goddess*. Act 2 finale a weepy *triumph*!
10:15pm

Red Exile is @ v. gd performance of Madama Butterfly, fuelling up before original 2hr version of Act2.
8:08pm

Red Exile is at the opera, Madama Butterfly, eyeing chandeliers warily... see April 18th for the last comment to make sense.
6:37pm

Red Exile has discovered of himself that the pathology of his fear of flying is fear of heights. He discovered this in the glass lift of Moscow's uber-elitny Lotte Plaza.
5:30pm

Red Exile Apropos his new office space, a mantra: elitny. Designerny. Loftny. *Not Pafosny*. Pafosny? Think Paris Hilton, Donatella Versace, Las Vegas and anything by Dolce & Gabbana. yes, that's right 'gay' (in the sense US highschoolers use the term) and achingly vulgar.
2:24pm

Red Exile has signed an office lease!! Designer space; central & official. Yay!

7:30pm


Red Exile is so-near-and-yet-so-far. Do we have a lease deal or not?!?!
3:42pm


Red Exile was feeling wildly exuberant; but is now back under control to face the day's trials.
9:34am
April 24

Red Exile is an idiot! Left ballet ticket @home! So sulking shopped at Tsum & now @Cafe Bar-boy... which is what one of the girls I know Christened café des artistes - the name just stuck somehow

7:46pm

Red Exile is off to the ballet tonight. German State Rhine company. Stravinsky. Rites of Spring. A dose of sanity and love in my fraught life.
5:18pm

Red Exile "To the FSB senior officer whose convoy cut me up today but then whose car was pranged by his own follow vehicle not breaking fast enough: hah! Tosser LOL". This was really too funny to watch. Made my morning actually...
10:34am
April 23

Red Exile actually dares hope there *might* be a glimmer of hope. On the property side of things...
11:11pm

Red Exile has had, in truth, a $*#@ing shite day; and sometimes feels all the burden is on him as (some) just swish about... no doubt his default inner cheeriness will be back o/night. I was stressed, just leaving the office, over-worked and miserable. It happens...
9:29pm

Red Exile just came up with a strategy "find a 30-something woman, make her pretty and let's get her to cry on television" and is concerned that he doesn't feel cheap. It was a good strategy. And I am not cheap... 400 Euros an hour baby!
12:04pm
April 22

I was in Warsaw -I am not hugely fond of Warsaw...
Red Exile has too much work to do and no time to do it.
11:22pm

Red Exile has turned down the chance to eat escalope of crocodile. No kidding - it's available at the Intercontinental Hotel Tower's Mexican restaurant (don't ask!). The public space is crappy in this hotel, but the rooms are great and the view always good (well as good as a view over Warsaw can ever be).
2:58pm


Red Exile says: "well *hello!* Aeroflot you sexy thang!". They're flying brand-new A320-200s into CEE. Eat me, BA!
9:41pm

Red Exile knows he has lived in Russia too long: he finds the baked goods in the Aeroflot business lounge quite irresistibly alluring.
5:31pm

Red Exile setting of for the traditional traffic jam to Sheremetyevo airport, to fly Aeroflot to Warsaw. Ah the glamour of it all...
2:54pm

Red Exile has narrowly missed *death* at the ballet. An 8-cm diameter crystal fell from the great central chandelier and missed my head by inches before smashing on ground in 100s pieces. Felt cold draft of death did we. This really happened and the lump of crystal missed my head by less than 30 cms
8:06pm

Red Exile is off to the Stanislaski-Nemirovich-Danchenko tonight 2 them dance Romeo & Juliet.
5:26pm
April 18

Red Exile wonders if the 'rock song' whose chorus is "are you off your meds?: is Placebo. He laughs & luvs it. It is and I downloaded it from iTunes.
11:40pm

Red Exile is off to dinner with a mate from 'the small island'...as I now refer to the Britain
7:03pm

Red Exile has just used his best BBC voice to voice-over a TNK-BP corporate video. This is the second time I have done this (just to help them out for a favour - because it is crazy expensive for them to have it done in London and any old Brit RP voice will do - and because, in more weighty and feesome matters, they are also a client)
10:43am
April 15

I was travelling in Ukraine
Red Exile sees this new overnight train comes with anti-terrorism advice. In the event security forces are going to storm your Chechen terrorists "run-like-f*ck in other direction" seems to be the ambivalent advice. On the new trains there is a poster by the loos with safety advice. This include in cute little pictures what to do if security forces are storming your high-jacked train. And, yes, run in the opposite direction is the helpful guidance they proffer...
6:38am

Red Exile is witnessing drama @ border; 2 men arrested & dragged off train by Ukrainian troops. Unpaid parking tickets? Very exciting and the full-on paramilitary performance...
12:44am
April 14

Red Exile and his friend, Johnny Walker, are at the Russian border - for processing. LOL
11:50pm

Red Exile has had his day ruined - 'new' landlord informs him he has been gazumped on new space. So back to Square one and now 5 weeks to Moscow office is homeless... This was a low moment
7:32pm


Red Exile is having a very good day commercially and meteorologically: it is a gorgeous sunny day in Kyiv; the sky is almost ridiculously blue.
2:13pm


Red Exile now has a very deep and abiding love of Ukraine; its tragic and compelling history - the more you get to know it the less like Russia it is.

You learn a lot about Ukraine in the long drive between Kyiv and Lviv and back - abandoned villages and the wrecks of old collective farms testifying to the waste of Collectivised farming, it's failure and - actually - the enormous post-Soviet decline in Ukrainian agricultural output. Land reform is desperately needed to modernise and rejuvenate Ukrainian agriculture.

At the same time, as you drive past vast, pompous - but now sadly forlorn - Soviet-era memorials to WWII (more to bludgeon home a message of loyalty to the Ukrainians than a message of celebration) you realise how awful it must have been to be Ukrainian and part of the USSR. Wondering around Lviv today it is almost impossible to imagine that this bright, smiley, European city was once Soviet. It is totally unlike anything in Russia.
1:02am
April 13

Red Exile is about to have a hearty lunch of Turkey liver; veal, sour cream & dumplings & all trimmings. It is not cuisine minceur, but do eat at café Amadeus.
1:45pm
April 12

Red Exile is enjoying his birthday in Lviv, in which the whole history of Middle Europe can be seen. The ebb and flow of empires; the heterogeneous sweep of its European architecture; but still defiantly European (Renaissance, Baroque, Neo-classical, Art Nouveau...)
8:28pm
April 11


Red Exile is enjoying cafe society in Lviv; which is charming. Drinking champagne, sitting outside at the Vienna Café where people-watching is great fun
11:30pm

Red Exile is leaving lunchtime for the 5hr roadtrip to Lviv. The guy driving asks "do you want 'fast' or 'safe'?" - what the heck: fast! LOL.
12:30pm
April 10

Red Exile is having a fascinating day in Kyiv.
6:10pm

Red Exile s at the UKR border post, on the train, watching a beautiful sunrise. He is now though hungry & *very* thirsty!
6:29am
April 9

Red Exile Has just realized that as he is on tne slow-overnight 'express' - 13hrs - inexplicably it has neither restaurant nor bar. Nightmare!! This is the second time I have done this! memo-to-self: only Train #1 (Moscow-Kyiv) and Train #2 (Kyiv Moscow) have buffet cars. The others *don't*
9:54pm

Red Exile en route to Kyiv & then Lviv.
8:40pm

Red Exile is somewhere between despair (back to office property square 1) and elation (deal done). Only in Moscow do we live by these 2 emotional gears and no others. That last sentence, BTW, is probably the truest thing I have ever written about life in Moscow.
12:20pm
April 8

Red Exile did have to smile as he was cut up this morning by a rickety old Lada with *diplomatic plates*.
10:04am
April 7

Red Exile has had just the most sublime & wonderful night at the ballet; even if his body won't fly dream a soul can. Sometimes good performances make my purple-prose-restraint short-circuit.
10:26pm

Red Exile wonders what you say to a week that is pretty-much ruined before it has begun... hello? Property-related - a great development I was hoping to take was snaffled up - even though I had agreed terms with the developer - by a Russian bank.
10:15am
April 6

Red Exile woke up this morning dreaming about the future of capitalism. Last night he tried to dream about Tuscany. Oh well...
5:30pm
April 4

Red Exile is back to the drawing board: 8 weeks and counting to find new offices - or else it is hot desking in my front room! Another potential site fell-through (because this one was pretty far from a metro station and, in any case, I just learned that this particular station is about to close for a year's remont; which ruled the property out completely.
5:45pm
April 3

So there you have it. Normal service will now hopefully be resumed...

Red Exile really wants to buy this house (off topic)

...but it is, really, on the market 'too soon' (for which reasons Exile won't dwell and be vulgar)...

...but blast 'global credit crunch' I could really do an elderly relative to drop off their perch (and, yes, I do hate myself for even thinking that)

The current arrangement sucks (rip out current kitchen and bathrooms = EUR 50k minimum) & burn the furniture in the pictures - but, hello? - 100 sqm drawing room in *the* medieval city I have decided to buy in?

I may have to wait years for another elderly Lucchese to die to free up real estate like this...

I am, bluntly, just not one of life's lucky people...

Red Exile at home: a photo-meme

From this last Sunday

(and, apologies in advance, I am a truly crappy photographer)

So I return from a week in London and before me are rows of sheeny-shiney shoes. Housekeeper had sent them to the boy at the Marriott Aurora for cleaning. I love clean shoes - scuffed shoes depress me: having them sent out for cleaning is an essential indulgence (especially as snow is forecast for Moscow later this week). The Arab photographs are part of a group I have had framed for the hallway:



While in London I splurged at Jo Malone's, inter alia, on scented candles. I brought back a bunch of 'wild fig and cassis'. The cushions, from a shop I like in Marrakesh, hide the hideous sofa (like all expats, this is a rented apartment)... into every life a little rain must fall...



The Jo Malone splurging included more bottles of Pomegrante Noir. There is no Jo Malone stockist in Russia - it is still a hard life out here LOL - so I buy whenever I am in London or fly British Airways... but the latter no longer stocks Pomegranate Noir, so I bought extra in her shop: sulk. Although I have... er... a fair stock, I always buy, because one never knows how long it will be between trips.

Housekeeper and I have a game. She constantly rearranges the bottles in different shapes, whereas I like to group them by scent (er... I 'collect' three). She goes for fancy shapes. It is our little game and, since I am never here when she is, is as close as we have gotten to human interaction since the day I hired her...

I also checked that the office courier had picked up my opera and ballet tickets for next few weeks. These are:

Tosca - 27th March

Nabucco - 29th March

Chaika (sixth time!) - 7th April

Romeo & Juliet (Dusseldorf ballet on tour) - 19th April - and I have just ordered tickets for their Stravinsky/Rites of Spring for 23rd April

Madam Butterfly - 27th April

I guess I am an opera and ballet nut (but this quarter has been a little disappointing in terms of offering, so I have gone less than usual):

On Saturday I also worshipped at the Nepresso store on Petrovka Pereulok - and finally succumbed to buying one of those cute capsule holders (who on earth buys those wildly over-priced trinkets I had thought...er...me, it seems). Currently on offer, Chez Exile, we have (left to right) the current 'limited edition' Goroka; the previous limited edition 'special club' (which I 'stock-piled' before it sold out); Arpeggio (for breakfast) and the one I buy for people who insist on adding cow-juice to real coffee...

On Saturday, I also bought a lamp stand: slightly Ottoman, slightly Victorian-English. That corner needed a lamp stand. It was ruinously expensive (at 31,000 RUR), but it appealed to me:

The lighting now works better and doesn't clash with the pair of landscapes I bought from Ukrainian painter, Anna Gidora, from her 'Black Sea' series. They are dedicated the the effect of the wind upon land and souls. She wrote a poem about them:

"Тень ветра почти незаметна,

Но очаровывает своим присутствием.

Ветер всегда наполнен смыслом.

Через тень он шлёт послания,Но как научиться их читать?"

"Shadow of the wind is almost imperceptible,But it charms by its presence.

Wind is always filled with sense.

Through a shadow it sends a message,

But how could we learn to read it?"

(getting into Russia, on the overnight train, required an export license from the Ukrainian Ministry of culture (Ukrainian customs); temporary import license into Russia and (signed and stamped, natch) documents for the eventual Russian export license)

Sunday evening I settled down with this really sweet US-Ukrainian film (starring Elijah Wood) and a bottle of the Marchesi Antinori's finest not-quite-plonk (of which I bought a case from Moscow's Globus Gourmet):

Quiet weekends in the world's busiest city are a treasure...

Expat postcard: moody crustacea, bootboy rebels and guns

I am in a strop with Arkady Novikov: Moscow’s eponymous Restauranteur. Knowingly or not I kind of live in his elitny eateries, for both business and pleasure. Last night I was having a crab-fest at Nedal'nij Vostok – Kamchatka crab at its best – with a tiny splurge of Beluga which, if not ecologically-PC, was damned fine. Life in Moscow without Novikov restaurants would be much less onctueuse.

Nedal'nij Vostok is cuisine-butch. Go for one of the tables near the central, open-plan kitchen and watch the kitchen floor-show. Watching a live lobster being sashimied is a curious experience. The chef took one lobster after another, lovingly stroked each down the back of its shell with the blunt side of the knife, before dispatching it, Roman-style, tip of the knife’s blade quickly through the thorax. Then he sliced the still-moving lobster in half, from jaw to tip of the tail. After being bisected, the legs still move for quite a while. My fellow diners were horrified, but I was fascinated, and vaguely recall its movements are more reflexive than brain-driven. Aesthetically this is gunk-free slaughter.

So why the strop with Novikov? My favourite deli in town, Globus Gourmet, has stopped accepting Novikov discount cards. Added to the fact that neo-Novikov joints, Vanil and Indus, have also stopped taking the cards, frankly I have to question why I shell out RUR 10,000 for it (10% off restaurant bills, 5% off shops, caterers and …er…a luxury florist). My card expires in April and I am not sure I shall bother to renew it.

The other day, after a breakfast meeting in (Novikov's) Vogue Café, I decided to drop into the Marriott Aurora Hotel to have my shoes cleaned by the boot-black there. Every two weeks or so I send my housekeeper to the Aurora’s boot-black, with all my boots and shoes (other than the ones I am wearing) to be cleaned. It is an indulgence of the essential, ordinary kind. Especially in a city whose streets are as filthy as Moscow’s in winter.

Incidentally I am nervous about the phrase boot-black: I hope it means ‘one who blackens boots’, rather than ‘the black person who cleans your boots’. The phrase being originally American, I am uncertain as to its proper etymology. But, anyway, bootblack is the phrase I use: shoe-shine boy sounds ridiculous after-all.

My capitalist-but-liberal sensitivity is enhanced by the fact that, in Kyiv, the rather ancient bootblack I prefer is, actually, black (remember seeing a non-white face in Kyiv is rare indeed). And fascinating.

Originally he was a Moscow-backed rebel leader fighting for the MPLA in Angola in the 1980s, but then he found himself in exile in the Moscow of the USSR. Somehow he ended up in Kyiv, with wife and child, just as the USSR collapsed and his Moscow-pension disappeared with the Great Struggle. So there he is today – half a planet a way from the home from which he is exiled and can never go back, his patron-state having disappeared – seemingly utterly forgotten. And now he cleans shoes at the Dnipro Hotel in Kyiv. He does an excellent job, BTW. Tip generously. His life story is well worth hearing.

PS: go the Dnipro hotel only for your shoes to be cleaned. It is an awful dive: more whorehouse than hotel; although very popular with regional government officials; Scandinavian engineers and – oddly – Italian importers. The restaurant is Soviet-era ghastly.

This week has proven very long, but somewhat typical of Moscow-business-season. I particularly enjoyed the 20.30 meeting (which went on until 23.45) close by the airport; at the office of a mini-oligarch. I counted 7 armed guards from entrance to boardroom: you don’t see as many armed guards as you used to in Moscow offices. The city is getting soft. Or more subtle.

Highlights and lowlights – a week past

Very good moments:

Dinner with a chum I haven’t seen in six years, La Cigale du Recamier, Paris.

I love the food here and, although I am only in Paris about ten nights a year, I feel slightly boring that I insist I dine here for half of them; but this place *is* Paris dining for me. Although I have no writing talent, when I ‘cash out’, I plan to de-funge here and toil at my lite-weight, auto-bio. It is very post-modern, literary… but also comfy and I love the food and the wine list…

Guest: “have you seen la Comtesse [most gorgeously grand, and improbably good, if wildly eccentric, friend] she always asks about you…you used to vacation together… she used to say you would have made a lovely art historian…you know she sold the Rome apartment…to a Fendi sister…you used to go there together a lot, no?”

Me: “…She never got over the shock of Michael Portillo’s ‘coming out’; but her cousin in the Vatican is a friend of one of mine there… yes she did… we did…the downstairs is now the main shop in Rome [of a fashion brand]… we email occasionally – she hates email and says proper letters ‘maketh civilization’ and email cheapens us all – but we are having lunch New Year’s, in Rome, at her new place…”

Guest: “Why do you persist in living in Moscow? Come live in Paris. It would be much better for you… [we both do vaguely the same sort of work…I think mine is more interesting; he thinks it ‘no doubt envelope-pushing, but not quite the thing one should anchor oneself to]”

I think he used the phrase ‘envelope-pushing’ on purpose and not in a totally wholesome way. It is not true, BTW. About ‘envelopes’ and stuff… don't believe everything you read about Russia…

…Dinner started at 9.30 (ended before the Witching Hour though, because I had an 08.00 meeting). It began with vast apologies to Guest and maitre d’ both, as I was 45 minutes late ([in French, from the back of the hotel car]:

“Please send a bottle of Veuve to our table and ask him to order… the driver says I am ETA 20 minutes…so please take his order, and hopefully I’ll in arrive in time. I’ll have the fois gras and the soufflé with mustard sauce – you still do that yes? [they did] And your recommended Gigondas please; but please decant it*…sorry again!)

* our French place is hard by Gigondas, so I know what will be guaranteed He’ll like, so asking for it to be decanted is not pretension, just being practical (wine snobs are bores but inverse-wine snobs are immensely the more dreary, so get over yourselves).

We hadn’t had dinner, or anything other than a quick coffee at Heathrow, for six years. Now married, bred x two…committed to living in France…utterly happy. I envy him. He has matured: in comparison to him I see I haven’t matured. I am still a spoilt little boy. The curse of being an only child.

Guest: “So… have you exorcised all your Caribbean ghosts? We never thought that world was quite you. You should you come back to civilized Europe and all we [he really said this] stand for”

Me: “Actually, Moscow *is * civilized Europe, but I know what you mean… Haiti? Guadeloupe? Forgotten completely… Utterly forgotten.

“But I am not done with Moscow quite yet. I have something and someone there important to me. Things to do…goals… [etc]”.

--------

Highlights:

Meeting some lovely friends at Bar des Amis on Wednesday night in London - I was briefly passing through the UK for a few hours – everyone’s children are growing up so fast. One friend – admittedly after second bottle of Nuit Saint Georges – I told ‘you and [wife] *must* come visit me in Moscow, I’ll be the perfect host and we’ll scoot up to St Pete’s and stay at my favorite hotel in Russia’.

Lowlights:

To be chanted, to a piano piece by Philip Glass:

“I hate BAE 146s
I hate BAE 146s
I hate BAE 146s
I hate BAE 146s
BAE 146s hate them,
yes I most certainly do”

For inspiration, herewith a piano piece composed by Philip Glass… swoons…



Anyway, BAE 146s! Scariest freakin’ engines noises on the air-borne planet. And I really don’t like ‘yanking and banking’ that low over Southern London – all too reminiscent of:



When you are *that low* over London city tower blocks…it is horrid… did I say the Orly – London City airport by Air France was useful? Poke out my eyes! The noise the tiny-weeny engines make as they rev down for descent. Loathsome.

Mid-light:

In London, at my usual (really I suppose pretty regular) hotel, they don’t charge me for any of my bar bill, “you’re family sir, welcome back…is it cold in Moscow?...”

Oh. But the meetings all this travel was for? Apparently my bosses think I did good. The meetings were easy Compared to all the flying: I am going to have to go back on the tranquilizers when I fly this much again…

A la recherche du temps perdu

Ever since I lived in the DOM and, indeed, rather surprisingly did a thing for a while (on loan from someone, seconded to someone else) in Haiti, I have always had a soft spot for Air France.

In 2002, I crossed the Atlantic 19 times with them. Epically comfortable, at the front of the plane, it was like a monthly+, Michelin-starred lunch-date at 40,000 feet.

There used to be an Air France flight that left Miami – jolly early, 06.55? – and went, like a bus, down les Antilles; first to Port au Prince, in Haiti, before Guadeloupe, Martinique and Cayenne. I wonder if it still does? Miami I used to go to – for R&R – about every 4-6 weeks.

On landing in Haiti’s Toussaint Louverture ‘International’ Airport, for post-9/11 security reasons, everyone had to de-plane, and I will never forget the strutting, sexy (I was younger, thinner), *assuredness* as I ‘turned left’ – entering Haiti – as discount tourists all gawped at me, as they turned right (in transit to a holiday Isle).

True, they and I knew Haiti was relentless and unforgiving chaos. But they were going on, to calmer islands further south, to drink lame cocktails at some sub-Sandals hotel (those most Weybridge of resorts). While I, on the other hand, was doing stuff, meeting my gun-packing, chauffeured Hummer waiting outside the airport. These were literally the best days of my life: I never earned so little, or lived so much.

Today I was passing through Paris Orly Ouest to fly Paris-London City (for a grand total of 16 hours: I fly to Kyiv tomorrow).

Bizarrely, this itty-bitty – but jolly useful – flight uses the same gate-suite as the Air France flights to Cayenne, Fort de France and, the airport for the island that was my base for 2 ½ years, Pointe à Pitre en Guadeloupe.

I have used these gates several times since my Caribbean posting – Air France uses them to fly to Morocco, which I have done several times since living in the FWI – but this afternoon, as I was flying to London (for a 16 hour trip mostly spent at in an investment bank), they were boarding the main daily flight to Guadeloupe.

And I was engulfed in a wave of warm, humid and slightly noxious *nostalgie*.

My colleagues with me, laughed. My English became more obviously Frenchified – i.e. in an accent that, for Francophone English speakers, was more easily understandable. I was engulfed.

Stealing a moment away from my colleagues (including my boss) I called my mother. I set the scene. “You miss it, darling. Of course you do. I miss the winter sun there, but I do not miss, darling – and every day I am grateful – that you decided to come back. I don’t think you were ever cut out for [that life]...”.

Gwada-French has a distinctive accent, the one, now, with which I speak French (as Parisians never fail to remind me) and, hearing it all around me at Orly airport today, was almost unbearable.

I have now the most interesting life I have ever had – the work I do in Moscow is some of the most intellectually and professionally…blah, blah… but when reminded of what I had, and who I shared it with, in Haiti and Guadeloupe… sighs. In Paris today I met worked with someone with whom, wonderfully, I collaborated 10 years ago. They have aged better...

So now I know why Proust was such a preternaturally miserable git. Temps definitely perdue

Modern life...

My life-planning seems to have crunched a gear. Having spent all weekend working in the office (albeit enlivened by a great evening at the Bolshoi Sunday), the rest of the week is now looking pretty horrendous.

I am about to leave for the airport to Paris (two meetings on arrival, from about 6pm local time, interviewing people for jobs here in Moscow as it happens). Then, on Wednesday, an early morning, lengthy and important meeting before flying from Orly – a much easier airport than CdG – to London City airport, for a crucial (and likely to be very lengthy) meeting there.

My working day will begin about 08.00 Paris and end about 20.00 London (or 23.00, my body will think, as I will be running on Moscow time). NB: yes, I would have preferred to Eurostar – anything to avoid flying – but central Paris, to the City of London, is definitely quicker (in the middle of the day when Eurostar-ers clearly like a long lunch) to fly Air France to City airport. That’s City airport: go to Heathrow and your scheduling will be screwed (and you might have well as crossed the channel by steam ship).

Thursday and I am on the 08.00 BA flight to Kyiv; hopefully landing in time to go give a speech at a conference (I would have cut this, but apparently we’re sponsoring and I can’t get out of it). After the sponsors’ reception, I will head straight to Kyiv station for the overnight train to Moscow. With a fair wind we will have cleared first the Ukrainian and then the Russian border posts by about 01.00 Moscow time and then I can then sleep before the 05.30 wake up and arrival into Moscow shortly thereafter, early on Friday morning. And a full day of meetings.

When I started in my career, and decided I wanted it to be as international as could be, business trips tended to be ‘fly out the night before, dinner (sampling local culture), meeting, local networking lunch, afternoon flight home’. Now it’s five countries in four days and subsisting on airport food. Moreover, in the days before email – I am that old – business trips were rather decorous uninterrupted, thought-provoking affairs. These days, one has still to carve out 6-8 hours a day processing email traffic. It is what you do now, in airport lounges, on planes and, yes, even in the backs of taxis and before grabbing a few hours’ sleep. This is progress apparently.

Four YouTube videos watched today

I think this is the best issues-spot ever done by (a) any oil firm and (b) one of the best corporate issues-spot e.v.e.r. (I kind of love it and everything Chevron is doing on http://www.willyoujoinus.com/).



That made me laugh a lot today (I found it at SixtySecondView, the best PR blog in Europe). What follows is the antidote:



And, finally, an extraordinary comment piece from MSNBC. I don't think you would see something like that ever on Russian TV...

Her Majesty has been graciously pleased...

Traditionally, if you are about to receive an Honour from Her Majesty The Queen you get a telephone call, to ask if you will accept the honour (and advising you to tell no-one that you are to receive it, until officially announced by Buckingham Palace: it’s very bad form to leak). The telephone call is supposed to start with the magic formulaic words ‘Her Majesty has been graciously pleased…[to make you a Knight etc].

So, congratulations today for those people honoured in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list. Inter alia, two names particularly caught my eye. Our Ambassador to Moscow, Anthony Brenton has been made a Knight (and, upon his investiture, will become Sir Anthony Brenton).

Although, two – wonderfully British – caveats here. One today isn’t actually, of course, the Queen’s real birthday; but the Official birthday. (a) it’s a nicer time of year for Trooping the Colour, the ceremonial celebration of the Monarch’s birthday and (b)…well…it’s convenient to have a second Honours’ List half way through the year: convenient for the Government that is. The Queen, of course, doesn’t choose who goes on the List – the Government which serves in her name does that.* [slightly rambling footnote @ bottom of post - Exile]

Mine is not a country short of honorific tags: that what 1,000 years of monarchy gets you. Brenton (you’re not supposed to call him Sir until he actually gets dubbed, until then he is still plain Mister, albeit HE) will be Knighted in the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael & St George. Traditionally, that’s the Order for diplomatic or other overseas (civilian) service to the Crown. Brenton is already a Companion in that Order (and has the letters CMG after his name); now he gets his ‘K’ – his Knighthood – and the letters after his name become KCMG.

In London establishment circles – which always like to laugh at the FCO – there is a little joke about the Order of St Michael & St George:

CMG = Call Me God
KCMG = Kindly Call Me God
GCMG – that’s terribly grand and the highest level of the order – God Calls Me God

Oh…the little things we Brits laugh at…

In the old days, Ambassadors were usually knighted either at the start of their stint (very grand postings) or at the end: the ‘rules’ are much more fluid now. I think it would be a very nerdy thing to be an Embassy-watcher – so I shan’t admit to it – but I wonder whether Brenton’s ‘K’ isn’t a sign he’s about to go.






Of course, this year he has had to put up with a lot: - those asswipes Nashi harassing him wherever he goes, for instance – but, let’s face it, Britain’s relationship with Russia, politically, hasn’t been this bad since Brezhnev. Actually, it might have almost been better then… Not a huge success for Brenton then (albeit probably bugger all he could have done about it). Orthodoxy says he should stay in his post at least another year (‘safe pair of hands Old Boy while the new PM settles in….see us through the Russkies' changing of the Kremlin guard and all that…'). I wonder if the FCO shares my view and thinks – lovely bloke that he is (ditto his wife, Susan, who is utterly charming and a rock) – it might be better to start afresh. 'New PM in London, new Ambassador – fresh start Old Chap…' You see there is nothing so Foreign Office as to make a chap a Knight before pushing him out to retirement.



If you’re still hanging in there with me on this post, you’ll recall I said that two names caught my eye. The other was Oleg Gordievsky. He’s been made a CMG! Astonishing! (a) It is bad form, IMHO, ever to give Honours to traitors, however much we’ve been grateful for their treachery. He betrayed his country so, res ipsa loquitur, he is not an honourable bloke and we shouldn’t honour him. Sorry old thing and all that. (b) Given the current state of Russo-British relations, isn’t this just sticking one finger up at VVP?

I know Blair is pissed off with President Putin, but I wonder if this honour for Gordievsky doesn’t mean Her Majesty hasn’t been put in the position of being graciously pleased to tell VVP: ‘Up Yours Volodya!’

Footnote:

* Big Exception to Rule. There are five Honours – since you ask, you didn’t? Oh well... – which are not the choice of the Government but the personal gift of the Sovereign:

o The Knights Garter – hugely grand, only 24 living at any one time
o The Knights Thistle – seems slightly Da Vinci Code I know – the 16 Knights Garter for Scotland, as it were
o The Order of Merit – think “Stalin personally wanted to make me a People’s Artist of the Soviet Union”-equivalent
o The Royal Victorian Order – gift for loyal palace servants, grand and not-so-grand
o Royal Victorian Chain – I know, sounds like something with which to flush the royal loo, but actually it's wildly über-grand: usually the Monarch’s quietly-dignified way of saying ‘thank you for being my friend’

Interestingly, I suspect aristo-chattering class London will be more interested in the Knight Grand Cross given to Sir Robin Janvrin; currently the Queen’s Private Secretary. Already a Knight of the Order of the Bath – very grand order this, technically fourth in the British Orders of Chivalry - he would I think have got it anyway in the New Year’s Honours List (he retires in September).

It’s the timing you see. In the strangely moving and rather good film, The Queen,

he is portrayed (no fault of the actor this, who is a fine English character actor) as something of an unctuous toady. People who know Robin Janvrin thought that characterization of him terribly unfair. And clearly so did HM. To get his ‘G’ right now (so having the letters GCB after his name, or God Calls Back) sends a subtle message, clearly understood, across all the right breakfast tables in town and country.

Odd. When I was a teenager I desperately wanted to be a diplomat and – slightly scary really – imagined myself, forty-something swishing around with my ‘K’, as Ambassador somewhere in a glamorous ‘hardship posting’ like….oh… El Salvador or Suharto-era Jakarta. Very Saigon, Year of the Cat etc. At Cambridge I came to realise that I was not the type. That, and the realization I was just not fiercely bright-enough ever to be a QC (so why bother with law at all, I concluded) were two of the three biggest disappointments of my life (the third, when I was at drama school – don’t ask, I did later go to a real school too – was being told “you don’t have the face to be Hamlet, but don’t worry sweetheart, one day you’ll grow into a marvelous Polonius. You have a character actor’s face!" I was fourteen).

Why did that thought crop into my head? Silly. Ended. Anyway, this afternoon I shall write a couple of congratulatory notes to a couple of other people I know on today’s list…funny old world.

Paradise lost

I had this lovely little post, Tuesday, and then my notebook crashed, just as I was re-typing in the verification code to post my latest ramblings (PS: it is a myth that Blogger ‘auto-saves’. Twice, I have lost something and I have yet to see its self-proclaimed auto-save actually work).

Actually my notebook always crashes if I even try to post anything the tiniest bit Russophobic so I think the FSB (or my largest client) has installed some clever widget to that effect… Alternatively, at three years old, probably around 8,000 active hours and having been dropped not so long ago at Sheremetyevo airport (there’s the sweetest crack where the fan-thingy sits), maybe it needs replacing

But it is very light to carry, I have a second battery for it and I think it is kind of cool-looking. I would miss it (our new supplier is, exclusively, Lenovo…I have yet to fall in love with any of their products): I also fiercely don’t want to be messed about with by Microsoft Vista because you just know it won’t work with my HP iPAQ – on point of principle I guess – so I shall eek out every last drop of life from my cool little Samsung for as long as I can… unless I decide to go ahead and personally buy one of these babies.

Sorry, was I away a while?

I think it happens to every ex-pat but, every 9-12 months or so, one goes through a "I hate [the country I'm in] phase"; it only lasts a couple or weeks or so; has nothing to do with the country concerned and is usually only a temporary thing, before all love and harmony is returned. It doesn't matter which country I am in; happens every time, every year or so.

I guess most people are the same about the job they are in; or the relationship. The trick, I have found, is not to have all these coincide. Usually, if two or more do, it's time to move on from those concerned.

It's not a home-sick thing: I am never homesick for the UK, and haven't been since I moved abroad in 2001, it's just a sort of long-cycle emotional thingy I guess: a sort of quasi-PMS for expats.

Anyway, I am just emerging from mine now, which is why I haven't posted much recently, having been rather glum. C'est la vie. I am also working in lovely Kyiv (yesterday and today and spending the weekend) and, despite the seemingly inevitable slide into dangerous political chaos here, it's impossible not to be smiley in Kyiv...This Saturday is Kyiv Day: it'll either be a carnival or the backdrop to a coup; which is why weekends, in the post-Soviet space, are never dull.

So (a) Yes, Morocco was fantastic: I bought a lot of contemporary art (a lot, according to my bank manager) and spent an hour with Russian customs and the airport rep from the 'State Committee on Cultural Heritage', on my return, getting temporary import licenses for it all so I can take it all out again when, one day, it's time to leave...

(b) Yes, DC [your comment to the last post] it does refer to Western prejudice.

Don't get me wrong, Russia often does itself no favours with its habit of treating foreigners with a choice of only two emotions: bored indifference or outright hostility. Like Moscow weather (hot, humid Summers or vicious icy winters, but no significant Spring or Autumn), Russia's foreign dialogue often lacks nuance. I have come to learn that, in the Russian psyche these two, lonely emotional gears represent sophistication in the case of the former; and decisive patriotism in the case of the latter. Go figure! The fact it's not really working for them doesn't seem to occurred to anyone...

(c) Sorry, Krusenstern, but this blogger just doesn't do team sports. Your Blog-Carnival Russian Media is a great idea and I wish you the best of luck! Quite courageous though, I think, to link the carnival to some rinky-dink award for Новая Газета [Russian site]: the Novaya Gazeta [Wiki listing] newspaper is almost tiresomely anti-President Putin and, let's just say this:

Expats living in Russia, who go-bang-drum for Novaya Gazeta, had better not be banking on Russian visa-renewal any time soon ;-)

So anyway, in my head many 'stellar' (sic) posts have come and gone and have been left unwritten. My bad. But it's a blog, not a marriage vow, after all: get over yourselves!

Speaking of which, Red Exile wishes Chris a great wedding this weekend...and enjoy the month-long honeymoon you're going on. And thank your lucky stars you don't work for Americans (who would never give you a month's nuptial leave no matter how long you'd worked for them: to who, BTW, I say; enjoy Memorial Weekend'.

Anyway, I am not going to bore you with holiday snaps. OK, just this one: what a clever PSA advert for such a conservative (and Muslim) country like Morocco, don't you think?

Humble Pie...

OK, so I failed to do three posts Sunday - by way of 'breaks' in what turned out to be 14 hours in the office. I left the office at 01.45 and actually fell asleep on my bed, at home, fully clothed before the alarm woke me 07.00 to go to a breakfast meeting. I have never pushed the envelope like this before, stress- and work-wise. I did 14 hours yesterday and I finished 'today's' work about 30 minutes ago.

We're thrashed with work - which I guess is good - and I am flying to North Africa tomorrow, as it now is, for a longish, total break... In my world, time off has to be paid for (almost by way of apology for not being there to serve), so as every last drop of blood and sweat is gained before one sod's off to do nothing).

Whatever...

I owe an apology to the Barack Obama campaign. They had *nothing* to do with that Hilary-Apple-1984 ad... as everyone in the USA knew but me... exiled-in-Russia-boy.

It was made, actually, by a 'real person'. He was fired from his job for it. This might be less, though, an example of how 'new media' can destroy the lives of those who drive cutting edge content and more, one hears, that his employer was/is connected to the Obama campaign and this "unauthorised" piece of campaigning (while, *dead cool* IMHO) may have risked backfiring on the candidate and, hence, the creator had to be torched.

In politics supporters and volunteers are the most expendable of all: they make pretty corpses and, sucker-believers all, they rarely complain.

Actually, a mate of mine from the UK - with whom I had shared some political war stories - said to me: "for you even to think about how PACs are a great way to to ratfuck [technical political PR term, people] means you have an even more craven view of democracy than I thought".

Yeah right, oh-my-last-New-Labour-believer-friend...and your point is?

The creator was interviewed on YouTube by their 'political editor' (good grief). He seemed too good to be true to me.

Whatever, I still think he is a PAC-man (hah! hah!).

1st of 3: Ephemera

It has been too long since I last posted. It has been mad and at work and I am here, in the office: in fact I have worked 19 days straight without a break, which is quite depressing. I have structured my list of things to do around three blogging breaks today. The car will pick me up for home at 01.00 - which is too depressing to think about really - and I have a breakfast meeting at Vogue Café; and then basically meetings, breakfasts and dinners everyday. They'll be 14 hour days, every day.

Anyway, there are a couple of YouTube videos I have recently seen I want to share.

The first I saw at the often interesting Lebanese Bloggers. It starts as a simple piece of satire and then gets bitingly good. The last line is a brilliant punchline.

Catch it while you can, because earlier versions seem to have been pulled.


Anyway, this clip has been bouncing around the English-speaking Middle East; and they love it.

I was just thinking today that, after this posting, I am definitely heading back to the Middle East. I really want to go back to Beirut.

Anyway, as a teenager - briefly thinking about becoming a total whore and going into advertising (where did that come from?) - I remember the great Apple launch ad which, it is true, pretty much confirmed that the best advertising in the 1980s was done in Britain. This iconic ad has now been brilliantly appropriated and used for a Barack Obama viral campaign (Actually I am thinking this may have been done by a PAC committee and not by the official campaign, but we all know how PACs work. It's what I would have done: to keep the Candidate looking squeaky-clean and not down-in-the-gutter nasty). It was designed purely for the YouTube generation. Inter alia, it tells you the Obama campaign is prepared to be sneaky and mean: they could be winners I'm thinking.

Epically good political vital marketing. I am not holding my breath for anything that good to appear here for December 2007 or May 2008!



It has that wince! Ouch! factor don't you think? Or maybe only other Hilary fans will think like me. You go girl!

BTW, this was the original Apple launch ad: By Ridley 'Bladerunner' Scott. It is from 1983. I love it still. These were the days when we talked about an "Apple Mackintosh" and not a Mac, right? Is it really 24 years ago?!? Oh boy...



Of course, Scott took the Orwell 1984 idea and mixed it with a bit of TV series, 'Blake's 7', which while finished by then, had still a lot of resonance on early 80's contemporary British pop culture (Brit boys between 35 and 45 will go misty-eyed at the rocking sci-fi show that was 'Blake's 7': their wives, girlfriends, 'etc' and all foreigners will think they've cracked).

At the time the Ad, and Blake 7 for that matter, sub-consciously played on our deep fear of the USSR; and what we thought were the mad, bad, evil geriatrics in the Kremlin, trying to end our world. The grey, dumb slaves in the Apple ad? I am sure that is how, as a 15-year old in 1984, that is truly how I thought Soviet people were... Come to think of it, I am quite shocked that, then, I used to think 'Russians' were really quite bad people...

Oh go on then, I can't resist a little bit:



Oh...and since we're having an orgy of YouTube, let's end on this very neat, smiley little Apple ad, also designed specially for the YouTube generation. I wonder if my Russian reader will get the joke?

While I am travelling...

I have this jolly little travel schedule the next 48 hours:

SK 735 20MAR SVO-CPH 1545 1630
SK 464 20MAR CPH-OSL 1835 1945
LH 3145 21MAR OSL-MUC 1755 2020
LH 3196 21MAR MUC-SVO 2100 0205+1day

Oh smiley joy: Sheremetyevo 2 airport and immigration/customs at half past two in the morning; home by 3.30am? 4.00am? And, naturally, a 10.00am meeting later that morning

hmm...in carbon footprint terms, I think I am going to have to plant a Siberia-full of forest to become carbon-neutral :(

But Dear Reader, please amuse me while I am away by answering the single question poll I have, on the dashboard (below, right of this post and half way down). It would be very interesting for me to see what you think of Russia.

Feverish ramblings...

I am just dying of flu and some hideous stomach virus. Really, I think I am on the cusp of death itself: bottles of Evian are just not touching my temperature; my lips have shrunk so much they are now too small for my mouth and seem to have split all over (eew!); everything aches and...well...other people's illnesses are boring I know.

Work was relentless last week - three countries in three days and then a 12-hour stint in the office on Sunday (which, mayhaps, is why my immune system has since declared an unofficial industrial action and apparently now withdrawn labour).

I was in Kyiv again for 24 hours last week: glorious spring weather, before 24 hours in Warsaw. Actually, in Kyiv I had a very interesting lunch with the Editor-in-Chief of Segodnya which, although Wikipedia calls it a tabloid, is actually quite influential. His views on the future of the current Presidency and coalition Government were fascinating but, I'm afraid, not for 'public' repetition on this blog.

To Warsaw I flew, LOT, a staggering turd of an airline. The Kyiv-Warsaw leg of my trip I flew business class and, wow!, I have seen Moscow trolley cars with more élan. It must have the worst business class product in Europe's skies right now. Six seats across, in business class! Honestly, if these small countries of CEE can't do flag-carrier airlines properly, forget it!, and at least become a half-way decent discount carrier.

In the in-flight magazine - actually not bad - the deputy Treasury Minister was forlornly interviewed about LOT's 'future'. As with so much else about Poland, it seems to me at least, progress is blocked only by the ability of Polish politicians and vested interests to argue amongst themselves, not noticing the missed opportunities accumulating around them.

It was a beautiful afternoon when I arrived in Warsaw and, from my hotel room, at the Intercontinental I had a lovely view (right, is the picture I took from my room, with my HP PDA) of the Palace of Culture as it was struck by the late afternoon sunshine. This magnificent building was a 'present' from old Uncle Joe himself and was, of course, an architecturally unsubtle reminder of who the boss was. It is not surprising therefore that there was talk of demolishing it; but I am glad they've kept it. It is a magnificent chunk of sculpted space. In the courtyard, they are still ice-skating. I was in town to speak at a conference on IPOs (or so I thought); actually I seem to have stepped into a war zone between the Warsaw Stock Exchange and London's AIM market. Talk about a battle not worth fighting!

As the day went on, it seemed to me that both the LSE and WSE have missed the plot a tad; and were arguing about the wrong things. The LSE, it seemed to me, just pitched its marketing proposition to Polish firms thinking about an IPO completely wrongly (sell the idea of a London listing first, don't focus on AIM); while, on the other hand, the Warsaw Stock Exchange has missed the big picture that they need to move their butt and make a meaningful effort to become the main regional stock market for smaller-larger and larger medium sized CEE companies, wanting a stock listing, because the likes of London, NYSE Euronext and Frankfurt are soon going to be all over their ass. Their current main argument - our listings' fees are cheaper - is intellectually weak: they need to step up and talk about liquidity, investor targeting blah, blah. I said all this, bizarrely, on a couple of TV interviews and a few newspaper interviews while in town; so the debate, while the wrong one, seems to be a high profile one.

Oh right: so why am I sulking today; apart from the whole ill thing...Like most only children I make a dreadful patient, particularly when there is no-one here to nurse me :(

Well, we live in a world where one can't even be ill in peace any more. I sent out emails and SMS messages around 06.00 saying I am staying at home and planning to rest and, bugger me, when I have been awake today it has been endless emails and gmails, Skype text messages, cell phone calls and all the other half dozen electronic means there are to get hold of me.

Not only do I get to feel guilty taking my 37.5 degree-racked body to bed, but I then get stressed at all the messages bunching up which, if I don't process them today, will make tomorrow even worse. I miss the old days, earlier in my career (before email and PDAs) when a person could be sick and, hey!, actually have an undisturbed day at home trying to get better. These days, I swear, short of actually being on Life Support in an ICU, no-one respects being ill any more....sulk!

But less than four weeks until my 2-week+ vacation to Morocco, where my GPRS doesn't work for my handheld! ;-) ...Why do you think I choose out-of-the-way places for holidays!?! So I think happy thoughts then of my upcoming break here, and here, and here:

That splendid old girl is my mother; whom I took to Marrakesh last year...

Above, is the Ben Youssef Mosque, Marrakesh

Be the first visitor, in the quiet early cool of the day, to the Jardin Majorelle (above, below); Yves Saint Laurant's gift to the city

The urban oasis, below and bottom, of the Villa des Orangers, Marrakesh