General Report

Work is picking up quickly. I knew this job was screwed up before I came; mainly due to the lack of resources and organization, as well as the different talent levels of all of the project controls folks. We have folks from U.S., Britain, Kazakhstan, Romania, Phillipines, Thailand, and of course, Texas (which sometimes can be the worst). So lots of personalities and egos to deal with. And a very hard-headed and in-experienced Russian client.

Today I had to go and get another chemical screening (for drugs), blood test (for HIV/STD) and a chest x-ray (for TB). This is for the work permit. Someone is going to Kazan tomorrow (3 hour drive) to submit all of the paperwork, and it should take 6-8 weeks after that.

Other than that everything's fairly normal. We are working overtime so I don't leave work until 7:30. I bought sausage, cheese, bread, cucumbers, tomatoes, salad so I can eat in my room some nights and not have to go out all the time. Breakfast is served in the hotel at 5:30 am. The cleaning staff leaves something in the room each day as somewhat of a treat I guess. Always a bottle of water, sometimes a carton of juice or a soda, last night a large bar of Russian chocolate. I want to save it as I'm trying to lose weight. The soup we have for lunch is really good, sometimes borsch (red), today cabbage soup and along with that I had a salad and a peroshcki. I would love to find a little restaurant that serves borscht and peroschki I can rely on each night. The expats tend to favor the expensive restaurants with a western menu (about 3 of those in town) but I love the Russian food. That will probably come later.

Oh, this is interesting. Saturday down by the river where they have this park, its a 50 ruble admission ($1.60 or so) but they have nice places to sit, several dance floors and, guess what - a karaoke place. I was with 2 other expats (one of them a Brit I'd worked with on a few previous jobs and the other a Russian living in Atlanta). I was getting a bit bored, so I managed to strike up a conversation with a couple of ladies at the next table, one of them was an English teacher at the local institute (although her English wasn't all that great) and one a kindergarten teacher. Anyway I mentioned the karaoke place and their eyes lit up. So we went over to the Karaoke place. They had a selection of English language music, so I did a duet with the English teacher of "Love me tender" by Elvis Presley - that one's a hit in just about any country. I was totally drowned out by the Russians trying to sing along, it was really ugly, them trying to sing in English. So I decided to do an encore with "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond - figured they couldn't sing along with that one. I was right, that one totally brought the house down. I think I have a Nizhnekamsk fan club now. I told Andrew about the Karaoke place and now I'm sure some of the expats will want to head over there. They all want to sing country - don't know if the Russians really have an appreciation for that. Should be interesting if we go again this weekend.