Living in the Russian Federation – Red Square! 27-10-2008

Ok, so the weekend hit and it was all about being a tourist. Given that I hadn’t really been able to see a lot of Moscow yet due to work hours I decided that the weekend is for tourist stuff!

Saturday: Visiting Red Square
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get as much video footage as I’d have liked as they don’t seem to like filming. I went walking around the area for about five hours as I love to just explore new places on foot. Red Square was awesome, to say the least, and nothing could have prepared me for the Kremlin Palace, which frankly must have been designed whilst induced on the best drugs known to mankind. The whole thing gave me a Tetris vibe… hence the music ^_^

Sunday: Ismolova Market
Sunday got cold…real cold. I met up with some of my friends at work and headed over to Ismolova Market, which is the most surreal setting for a marketplace. Imagine wooden buildings for market stalls that design-wise would be much more suited belonging to Disney World and yet selling souvenirs and dodgy (read: incredibly nice) Kebabs. Also, where else but Moscow could you see a Southpark vs. Winnie the Pooh chess set?

On another note, it suddenly got a lot colder today. Much freaking colder, actually, as you’ll see in this video. I’m not sure why I have the Pink Floyd song Sheep playing in the background so don’t ask.

Monday was another day in the office. Things were much busier today than they had been over the last week as a few new people started and I’m looking after them right now. I didn’t get out of the office until after 8pm so nothing new really happened today. I’m hoping that tomorrow will be more eventful!

Living in the Russian Federation – Ninja Power! 24/10/2008

It’s been a fun time at work, the change of environment from working wih and supporting 3,000 people down to around 10 has been a welcome change of pace and attitiude. Finally I’m in a position to really start looking at best practices, preventative measures and most of all I’m laying down the groundwork for all the IT stuff to come down the line. There’s a real buzz about being a part of a ‘first team’ and doing the things that we’re doing. Next week is going to be insanely cool as I get to start travelling Moscow to various IT vendors and retailers to start negotiating prices, kit and support which should be a lot of fun. It’ll also be a great place to really get to see some more of Moscow which sadly I’ve not seen anywhere near enough of so far

Being an office of only a few people (and never having everyone there at the same time…) things could easily get boring, however we actually manage to have a great time especially when things like this happen. So to set the scene, the office is silent, we’ve all got our heads down working on various things then out of nowhere this dude appears at out 19th floor window swinging around like a mother fucker with a squeegy. Ron chirps up straight away “ya know, I can see he’s breaking at least 6 separate safety procedures already” then starts reeming them off. Deividos then chirps up “and people die making these buildings all the time like that, this place is made from the blood and bones of the fallen just like the Pyramids!”.

This proves that there is nothing like a dude swinging around outside your 19th floor window to brighten up the day (and clean the view!)

Today was also monumental as I visited the shared vending machine for the first time and discovered two gems… take a look!

Ninja Drinks are awesome and you can check out their website at Ninja Drinks!!!

Tomorrow it’s my first day off so I’m going to do some touristy things….

Philthy

Living in the Russian Federation – 22/10/2008 ‘Milk?’

Today I decided that I really needed to get some milk so that I can have coffee whilst at home. I’m pretty much a self confessed caffeine whore and if I don’t get regular doses I’m not the most responsive person on the planet. With that in mind, I set off to a small grocery store on новый арбат (New Arbat) which is the main area that I’m staying in. After getting back to the apartment I recorded the following little video post:

Mmmm salty…

As mentioned I decided that I’d head out to get some actual milk. Instead of head back to the same store I decided that I’d check out a new area and see what I found. The results were staggering! I headed up past новый арбат and then doubled back down арбатская (Arbatskaya – or Old Arbat) which is the main pedestrianised tourist area. I stopped for Starbucks and continued on to смоленская (Smolenskaya) which is the area where I catch the tubve in the morning as I hadn’t had a chance to explore yet. After the hilarity of seeing the ‘Golden Ring’ hotel I found an awesome little grocery store just on the corner, best of all they accepted AMEX so I can use the company card there.

Much more happened on this little trip so I recorded a little vid blog just after I got back in as frankly what I witnessed was just plain weird.

I’m only a couple of days into this now and if this is the level of crazy I’m seeing then I can’t wait to see what else is out there. It’s a scary, insane, and rewarding thing to stay in another country that doesn’t have a recognisable language. I’d never imagined that I’d get to do something like this but have to recommend that if any of you lovely readers get the chance to do something similar you take it – there’s nothing else quite like it!

Sir Philthy

Living in the Russian Federation – 20/10/2008

So I arrived after a couple of fun flights… The first thing to strike me was how incredibly hot the women are. Incredible. I kid you not, there were two flight attendants who I’d consider to be pretty much perfect, and the lovely girl next to me on the flight was a dead ringer for Tricia Helfer (of BSG fame).Things bode well indeed.

Aside from the women, I have to admit to having a near panic situation when boarding the plane as I realised that a) I was the only English speaking person on there and b) EVERYTHING was in Russian. This was just the flight too. I sort of wondered what I had got myself into but the fear soon subsided when I was brought my first in-flight vodka (Yes, first – indicating that there were several more after that initial one).

Getting back to my apartment from the airport was pretty easy enough, although first impressions were that I’ve never seen traffic blocked like I did here. My driver Dimitri (who was a living legend) informs me that the roads just get conjested randomly through the day and night with no warning. Sometimes a 25 minute walk can take 3 hours in a car, although he recommends that the car is the better option!

Here’s a video of my first impressions of the hotel:

It’s already 11pm here so I don’t intend to venture out into the city until the morning. First day at work: 8:30am sharp – I’m looking forward to it.

Philthy

Living In The Russian Federation – Mafia, Tetris and Vodka 19/10/2008

So it turns out that I need to travel to Russia. Apparently I’m needed over there for a while to set up a whole load of new IT kit and work with a deluge of new people that will be starting in my company’s fledgling Russian office in Moscow. I don’t speak Russian (yet) and I’ll be literally living there. Apartment, grocery shopping, doing my own washing and of course catching the underground to work each day.

What this means is that I’ll be able to write about the wonderful, different, crazy and extreme things that I see whilst living there. I’ll be searching for Robots, checking out the local food, seeing the sites and being my usual British self so please look forward to some interesting blog updates in the near future.

‘How near?’ I hear you asking… well I fly out in just a few hours and I’ll be getting straight to the day-job as soon as I get there. As soon as I have an established internet connection however, I’ll be posting like a Vodka inspired Tetrimo trying to make a 4-line Tetris.

So my friends, I bid you farewell for now! Please feel free to start up some bets on how fast I get met by the Mafia.

Philthy