Wokin' the hog

Or the dog, depending on your culture and culinary tastes of course. Tanya and I found a new kitchen store today and invested in a wok. Plain iron, plain wooden handles, like I have seen lots of times in China. $12. Not a bad price.

It's cloudy in the west and looks like rain. Wind has been strong and cold for the past two days. Maybe it will rain. Tanya didn't water her flowers tonight, just in case.

We have a new neighbour living in the old house next door where Lucia's mother used to live. Actually he showed up while she was still very sick. Homeless, no job, no documents. Told folks his name and that he was from Krasnodar in Russia. Made arrangements with the owners and started digging up that jungle of a garden spot behind the house. A very hard worker, he had it worked black and planted in no time, then cleaned up the yard and fixed the fence up a bit. Until Lucia's mom died, he lived in a shed in the yard and cooked what little food he had on an open fire.

Sometimes he will borrow 10 hrivna from Tanya for food and he has always paid it back when next he found an odd job. Today as Tanya and I were heading into ZV, he was standing by the gate into our dog yard. He was raving that the dogs needed food and about the people that only he could see and hear and much more. Tanya calmed him down and sent him to his house, then called her friend Ira at the ambulance service.

Apparently no one wants to do anything with him of for him because he has no papers (Ira said and Andrei confirmed later). There are no Social Services anymore (no money), the police won't do anything; the hospitals neither. Because he has no documents there is no way to bill his expenses to the appropriate authority and anything that is done will be at the expense of the person who does it.

I will ask Tanya what we can do. It is sad to be alone in the world.

Zelenoye Village

This afternoon we went for a drive. Just to get me out of the house and away from the computer screen. We headed north towards the highway from Dnipropetrovsk to Kirovograd. About half way between ZV and the highway, we swung west onto a side road that looked like it went somewhere interesting. After a while we came to the village of Zelenoye, which according to the sign had been settled in the 17th century sometime. The road had not been resurfaced since that time either, I might add.

Like many villages in Ukraine it was built on both sides of a little river, which the road, acting as a dam, had turned into a beautiful lake. The centre of town had quite a number of nice houses, one of which I commented on.

"Stop. Go back. That is my friend Ivan".

Sure enough it was. Tanya had worked with Ivan back in P'yatikhatki. He had since gone farming, though Tanya didn't know where. Now we know. We were immmediately invited in, met his wife Galina, given tea and the grand tour.

He has 50 hectares (125 acres), planted to corn this year, a big garden, a bunch of poultry of all sizes and shapes and a small vineyard. He had bought and renovated the house, torn down an old house next door and expanded the yard so he had a place for machinery. There was a Russian built "'73 Chevy 3-ton" truck and a 5 meter end-wheel press drill parked in the yard.

He showed us what looked like a home-made pressure cooker that they use for canning fish and meat. It holds 33 pint jars, sits over two gas burners and has guages and valves to control temperature and pressure. He and three friends had been fishing on the Dnipro River and brought home all the fish preserved in jars, ready to be put away. We got two free sample jars, one plain and one in tomato sauce.

They say when you don't know where you are going any road will get you there. Sounds reasonable to me.

Whiskey on a Sunday

Except this is Saturday and I am drinking coffee. Am on my second liter (quart).

The mad cleaning crew is at it again. The house will be sparkling clean by supper and whatever I do for the next few days, I will get yelled at for messing it up.

Two way traffic on one way width streets is a tricky procedure. Streets in Zhovty Vodi were apparently designed for driving but not for parking. One side is arbitrarily chosen as the parking side. On coming cars on that side of the street duck into available spaces to let cars going the other way get by. Works quite well. Gentleme's agreement, I expect.

Shoping carts are NEVER left in the parking lot but are always returned to the store or the outside stall. Because no one leaves carts out, no one leaves carts out. The first ignorant person who abandons a cart will start a trend and soon the lots will be full of abandoned carts like Canadian shopping malls.

Yesterday Tanya let the dogs out to amuse themselves. I had given Kuchma a dish of milk. Bobik happened along and stood at a respectful distance while Kuchma licked the dish clean. He then went over and sniffed the empty dish, cocked his leg and pee'd on it and on Kuchma.

Sky is sort of cloudy. A few drops of rain have fallen but it looks like what my dad used to call a "four inch rain" - the drops are four inches apart when they hit the ground. Planting of winter wheat will start in a few days (about Sept 10th) so it will likely start to rain then.

We have two suitcases half full with clothes ready to leave for Canada. Two weeks!

Mail Order Madness

Mail Order was a big deal when I was a kid. Shopping was limited in the small towns nearby and trips to the city (Saskatoon and North Battleford) were few and far between. Eaton's and Simpson's were the source of all sorts of good things - clothes, household goods, tools, bikes and toys. Oh the excitement when boxes arrived at the Cavell Post Office which my aunt ran at the time.

Tanya has discovered the joy of on-line shopping. Interflora is a Dutch mail order company with retail outlets in several Ukrainian cities as well. Best of both worlds. Internet orders go to the closest retail outlet (in Dnipropetrovsk in our case). Tanya's order this spring had some problems, she chewed out the manager in Dnipro and replacements arrived in the mail.

Today she picked up a package of clothes, two tops and two pairs of mix and match PJ's that she ordered from a Slovakian company. PJ's were exactly what she wanted. Tops not so. But since there doesn't appear to be a return policy, she has already found new homes for them.

She is also having fun with the Foreign Exchange rates. Her USD account was only giving her 7.80 UAH to the dollar at the bank machine. The posted exchange rate at the bank, if you walk in with dollars was 8.10, and a friend of Andrei's will give her 8.40 which is quite close to that posted on www.oanda.com. For those of you who need to check FX, O and A give you official exchange rates on everything but Monopoply money. She took $200 out of her account (had to go to the main branch in town) and we went to meet the friend. He is fishing today.

New Banner

A gift from my daughter May-B. Many thanks.

Kyle Shaw, Speed Artist

Kyle Shaw is the nephew of long time friend, fellow Agrologist and sometimes blog commenter Insubordinate. He is also a wheelchair athlete. He lost the use of his legs in a car accident at age 16, spent a year or more in rehab and continued on with life. You can read his bio here on the Cyclones Road and Track Club website.

Yesterday he won Silver in the 1500 meters at the Canada summer Games in PEI with a time of 3:41.50. He races again today in the 400 meter at 3:00 pm PEI time, having won his heat yesterday. You can cheer for him and check on the results here.

Grit and determination are family traits and Kyle continues the tradition. Go for Gold today, Kyle. We are with you all the way.

Don't get in a flap

I figured after my last trip to see a doctor, then next one should be to a gynecologist.

To work out the next steps in my sex-change operation (I just threw that in as a cheap way to pick up more readers).

Actually, she is the doctor at the private clinic who has the ultrasound gadget to burn off little skin flaps that we old people sometimes get. I had one on my leg that had been annoying me for a long time, rubbing raw against my pantleg. Thrown, hogtied and branded. Easy as that.

If there is a reason that a gynecologist has this machine, I don't want to know about it.