I waited the whole day yesterday (Thu) for the Volia people to come over and set up fast internet for me, and no one showed up, and then I waited till 3:30 pm today (Fri).

It did feel like some conspiracy, you know, after the Ukrtelecom torture earlier this week.

Yesterday, they were here, but at another floor - the wrong one - because of the operator's mistake and their own laziness and/or stupidity. Today, they showed up so late because they were stuck in traffic; one of the guys had a cloth wrapped around his thumb, with some blood beginning to leak through.

On their site, Volia offers urgent installation for $20 or so, but on the phone they tell you they can only send their people over in two days - must be the brain-drain-to-Italy-and-Portugal thing.

People who answer their phones are really nice, I have to admit, and so are Ukrtelecom's people, but waiting for them to answer the phone takes forever, while at Volia you're not put on hold at all. So yes, they are all very nice, but what's the use?

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To make things worse, our elevator isn't working and the staircase is completely unlit. No one knows how long it'll take them to fix the elevator. And it probably needs fixing - it was installed when I was 5 or 6, over quarter of a century ago. I do remember the old elevator sitting in the shaft, detached, like a dead monster, and I also remember the smell of welded metal that used to scare me a lot then.

Anyway, dragging Marta's stroller up and down several times a day sucks.

And in our building, we have people whose cars are worth a few apartments at Kyiv's Left Bank (and some cars have tyres that are worth nearly as much!) - and I wonder how they feel when they have to climb all the way up, using the stairs that stink of urine...

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Because of the internet ordeal, I missed today's (Fri) rallies by the opposition and the Party of the Regions.

The 'opposition' label never really fit Yanukovych - even though they were very serious in their attempts to appear as victims of the evil regime back in summer 2005. So now the opposition looks a lot like it did in 2004: Yulia, Lutsenko... It's like acting, I guess - some actors can only play themselves - the same role over and over again.

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But I walked to Maidan in the evening: they were setting up the stage, and there was a bunch of Yulia's and Nasha Ukraina tents, and the familiar flags. Lutsenko's maroon flags, however, have replaced Pora's orange and yellow ones - yes, no Pora whatsoever, or at least they are nowhere near as conspicuous as they used to be. What a pity, I remember voting for them a year ago...

People who gathered there today weren't really my type. Take this guy, for example:



The words on his poster are:

"I've no 'ethnicity' line in my passport? Am I Chinese? And who are you?"

If I understand it correctly, it's the Ukrainian version of Soviet nostalgia: what this guy has in common with his Soviet predecessors is the unwillingness to admit that some things are just none of his or anyone else's business.

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And in the park across the street from the Cabinet of Ministers, some guys were trying to set up tents - and negotiating with cops. Don't know how it ended or who the guys were.





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Enough for now.