The daughter of one of my dearest friends turns 10 years old today. Last year, on her ninth birthday, she wrote this to her mother:

Dearest mama,

Congratulations on your ninth child!

You'll find it strange, but each year it's a new child.

I'm wishing you to have as many children as possible!

This note is so incredible I keep citing it to everyone. Last week, I asked my friend if she remembered it - and she didn't! She said her daughter wrote something as crazy and full of depth regularly, and she kept storing these notes religiously...

Happy Birthday, Yulia!

Khodorkovsky has just been sentenced to nine years minus 583+ days that he's already served and will have served by the time all the appeals have been considered.

Sometime after the election, my friend's 9-year-old daughter was assigned to write a "folk fairy-tale" that ended with Yushchenko's victory. Later, the teacher assigned the kids to compose a poem praising Yushchenko.

During the election, the same teacher asked the kids who their families were voting for - and everyone raised their hands and yelled, 'Yushchenko!' My friend's daughter abstained and, when asked, replied that they weren't voting for anyone. The teacher told the girl to tell her parents to make up their minds fast.

Instead of going over to the school and kicking the teacher's ass, my friend is blaming Yushchenko. She's even compared him to Stalin once - but then admitted that it was somewhat of an exaggeration.

Post-apocalyptic rhetoric on Moscow's TVTs Channel today:

Young Leninists Avenue has been divided into a zone of dark and a zone of light. [...] Among the hostages of the situation are those who work at one local beauty salon. [...]

A blackout in Moscow and I'm not there to take pictures...

Our New York friends are visiting right now - Mishah says they're excited to experience it all over again...

I do have a bunch of new photos and stories but am too busy to post them all now. Actually, there's a pretty unorganized selection of new shots on the photo page, which I didn't bother to announce at all. There'll be more, though.

Here's my favorite today's photo: a Ukrainian interpretation of Che Guevara - he's wearing a shirt with the traditional Ukrainian embroidery and the star on his hat has been replaced with the Ukrainian coat of arms, a trident, tryzub. I saw this at Trukhaniv Island today, where they had the Eurovision tent camp...

Eurovision on Khreshchatyk:

There are so many people on Khreshchatyk these days that there's a pile of shit and some TP on our staircase and urine in our elevator.

This is one area of Ukrainian life where the president - good or bad - is totally irrelevant. (By 'Ukrainian' I, of course, mean this part of the world, which includes Russia, too...)

Somehow, I expected this Eurovision thing to be something like a mini-summer in St. Pete: the city drowns in tourists then - all those foreigners who know how to smile and be carefree, and who don't have enough imagination to use other people's staircases as toilets.

I read the statement of Nasha Ukraina about Zvarych in Ukrainian - and it sounded so unforgivably Soviet.

I then read the same statement in English - and it turned out to be so badly translated that all I could do was laugh...

[...]

Roman Zvarych is not a pupil of Soviet system, he is not used to the blind fulfillment of leadership directives or wishes of certain colleagues. Such a behavior of an official is unusual for many people and came for somebody as an unpleasant surprise. But if we are on the way to Europe, we will have to get used to new approaches. In a civilized world it is normal when an official acts according to the law.

That's why initiators of this scandal will not reach their goal. Let them aim their forces at state well-being.

We also appeal to the media to be weighed and follow professional standards, not to grab 'hot news' and be used but to try to find a person who is interested in this scandal.[...]

Abdymok has more on this here.

I'm in Kyiv. Yesterday was lovely and warm, but today it's cold and rainy, and I have nothing to wear in this weather...

I spent most of the day yesterday chatting with mama and hanging out with friends. I talked so much that I had a pretty bad sore throat by the end of the day...

Also, for an hour or so, Mishah and I dealt with a certain state entity - but I hope to write a lot more about it in a few months.

Kyiv is totally beautiful, the chestnuts and the lilac and all - I hope the Eurovision crowd is having fun. To fully enjoy the city, though, it's important to get your ass uphill and away from the Khreshchatyk mess - this is why I didn't get to have a good look at the people yesterday. I've seen a few Pora tents on Khreshchatyk, but the scene is a lot more remindful of a routine Kyiv weekend than of the Orange Revolution times.

Funny but I heard a U2 recording played real loud yesterday - at the exact same spot on Khreshchatyk where I heard it back in November. It was 'Faith (In the Name of Love)' then - and it was 'The Real Thing' this time... I still wish Bono would come here some time...

Yanukovych supporters were walking around with their flags but I didn't bother to come closer to them because who needs all their bitchy energy thrown at you on such a wonderful spring day. Later, I watched them on the evening news - and again I was happy I hadn't been in the mood for taking pictures.

I saw this t-shirt on Khreshchatyk yesterday:



I watched a little bit of the Eurovision semi-final on the TV at night, realized that a really cool Moldovan band, Zdob Si Zdub, is here somehow, decided to vote for them but fell asleep before the show was over. This morning, I was happy to learn that they've made it into the final!

I wonder if this blog looks any better now... Helpful suggestions are very welcome!

I've just changed the template because the blog looked real bad on some browsers - I've known that for a long time, actually, I've seen what it looks like myself, from a computer in Istanbul, and was quite horrified, but thank you so much, Don, for reminding me again - and I apologize to everyone who had to struggle through this ugliness!

Man, it was scary, to push the Republish button...

So now it'll take a while before I get the links back and fix the rest of the stuff... Sorry!

***

P.S. I know this is not related to the change of the template - but I'm so technologically-challenged that when things begin to go wrong, I always feel it's some kind of conspiracy: two minutes ago, the TV suddenly went static, every single channel, and a moment later I heard Mishah cursing in the shower - turns out the water disappeared, too, at the very same moment... Almost disappeared. Now I've asked him to please grind the coffee beans real quick, before electricity disappears, too... And Mishah has asked me to see if Gazeta.ru has anything on this chain of little disasters, a terrorist act or something, but there's nothing, of course.

Update: The elevator's not working. Water, TV and elevator. But the electricity's there.

I've been getting lots of German spam for some reason lately - but it's some weird kind of spam: it's about the news, not Viagra. Today, I've found this in the inbox:

From: findslct@vya.dexclusvs.com
To: e_smtp@yahoo.com
Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 05:13:12 UTC
Subject: Armenian Genocide Plagues Ankara 90 Years On

Full Article:
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,353274,00.html

And, you know, it's some pretty harsh stuff to wake up to...

Typhoid, the Russians, imperialism and Kaiser Wilhelm II in far away Berlin -- all were responsible for the mass deaths of Anatolian Armenians. At least that's the case if you read the official Turkish history books. According to the Turkish version, the only group that didn't bear any responsibility were the Ottomans, the great-grandfathers of modern-day Turkey, which is now on the cusp of joining the European Union.

[...]

Good morning.

Mama has told me about it on the phone today/yesterday - Ukrainian tennis players barely escaped violence in Andijon, where they were taking part in a tournament.

Oleksandr Yarmola, Serhiy Yaroshenko and Orest Tereshchuk (the best-known of the three), they all lost in the first round of the event - and for once must have been happy about it...

***

Tashkent used to be a very popular junior tennis destination in the Soviet times - and although I've never been there (unfortunately!), I remember papa taking kids to Tashkent every once in a while and always bringing back those amazing, huge, sweet cantaloupes...

***

The screwed-up Andijon tournament seems to have been big news in Britain...

Here's a BBC piece on it:

Tennis players caught in unrest
May 14, 2005

British tennis players have been driven by armed guard away from trouble spots in Uzbekistan to safety in the capital.

Richard Bloomfield from Norfolk and Arvind Parmar from Hitchin, Herts, were taking part in a tournament in the city of Andijan where clashes broke out.

Others are: Jamie Delgado (Berks), Dan Kiernan (Cleveland), David Sherwood and Jonny Marray, (both Yorks) and coach James Trotman and referee Carl Baldwin.

Government forces fought with militants on Friday and 200 are reported killed.

The players, coach and referee are being driven to the British Consulate in the capital and they are due to fly back to the UK on Monday.

They had been competing in the Andijan Futures but were caught up in the mass civil unrest in the city in the east of Uzbekistan.

And a report in the Times:

Britons fear for safety as violence erupts
By Neil Harman, Tennis Correspondent
May 14, 2005

THE sound of gunfire was frighteningly audible down the phone line. James Trotman, the LTA coach, was huddled together yesterday with six British players at a tennis club in the strife-torn city of Andijan in Uzbekistan waiting for the word that it is safe to pack up and get out of the country as fast as their transport will carry them.

[...]

“We still don’t know what’s going on, to be truthful,” Trotman said yesterday evening. “We have been hearing conflicting messages all day, but as far as we know, a team from the British consulate is arriving to assess our situation and see when it is safe to leave. As of now, we have been told to stay at the club and not move. Some other guys have left, but we were told the roads were all blocked and that was too dangerous.

“The trouble is, we’re not sure what to do. Some people tell us it’s under control and then we hear how many people have been killed. It’s pretty bloody scary, to tell you the truth. It’s been horrible from the day we arrived. Three guys, including myself, have been sick with the food and we are staying in a place where most of the windows are smashed.”

Confusion spread to the event itself when initial reports that the tournament was to be cancelled were overruled and Marray went out to play his semi-final yesterday morning. “There was a 90-minute delay, but then the tournament director told us to get on with it,” Trotman said. “Jonny lost, it was not a good performance, but I don’t think that was uppermost in any of our minds. We just want to get out of here as quickly and safely as we can.

“I know none of us has experienced anything like this in our lives. There is so much uncertainty, no one really knows what is going on and every few minutes for the last six hours or so we’ve heard really loud gunfire from what seems to be a few hundred yards away. There are said to be a lot of snipers on the roofs around here.”

The British players were facing a five-hour car journey to Tashkent for next week’s challenger event in Fergana. “All we want to do is get home in one piece,” Trotman said, as another loud crack of gunfire was heard in the distance.

And a piece from some local British paper (the Suffolk Evening Star or something):

Suffolk tennis coach in riot
May 16, 2005

RELATIVES of a national tennis coach from Suffolk have spoken of their ordeal after he was caught up in civil unrest in Uzbekistan.

James Trotman, 26, a former junior Wimbledon doubles' champion, was working with a group of British tennis players in Andijan in the former Soviet republic when violent clashes began at the end of last week.

He has told of being surrounded by loud gunfire, while the players spent a night huddled together in a tennis club before escaping the mass panic under armed guard.

Mr Trotman has sent two text messages to his family in Tuddenham St Martin, near Ipswich, to assure them he is safe – but his mother Linda said she was still waiting to speak to him and would be relieved when he arrived back in England. The group are due to fly home today.

[...]

Last night, Mrs Trotman said: "On Friday, we thought he was going to fly out on Saturday morning, but they could not leave Andijan because there was a curfew.

"They missed their flight on Saturday and there was not another flight until Monday.

"We heard on Saturday that they had left with an armed guard from Andijan and that was a relief. They went to Tashkent and I do not think there is any trouble there.

"I have not spoken to him but we have had a couple of text messages from him and he said that he is okay and we have been kept informed by the Lawn Tennis Association."

[...]

A joke I've just stumbled over at one of the Russian-language livejournals:

[President] Putin, [Prime Minister] Fradkov and [Parliament Speaker] Gryzlov are at a restaurant.

Waiter: What would you like?

Putin: I'll have meat.

Waiter: And what about the vegetables?

Putin: The vegetables will have meat, too.