Korsakov October 1997

I’m staying with my friend Svetlana, and her family. She has a daughter of about 13 and a son of about 8. I’ve known Sveta for over a year now. When I first saw her apartment it was a mess. The walls were unpainted and covered with some type of horrible wall paper. But earlier this summer she bought new wall paper, I brought her some paint along with paint brushes and pans. The place now looks pretty good. She had someone come in and redo the kitchen. The guy who did it didn’t do a fantastic job, he used concrete for mourder. The floors still need to be redone, and she plans on doing that later. The water supply in the building is erratic, so they fill the tub up with water in order to be able to flush the toilet. When the water is off they walk down two dark urine stinking flights of stairs to a hand pump out in the yard. There they can fill a bucket up and use it for cooking and light washing. It makes it a pain in the ass to wash yourself effectively, when the tub is filled with potable water. Oh, well. I will appreciate my life in America more because of this experience. I’m definitely getting tiered of Korsakov.

Sveta and I went shopping; I was looking to buy her some coffee mugs, and some silverware. I would also have liked to buy her a salt and pepper shaker. But, nothing could be found. This town is dry, for everything but cheap clothes crappy food and liquor. I told her I would cook some American style food. I couldn’t find any good meat. I bought a big chunk of pork. I don’t know what part of the pig it was from, but it was impossible to cut into decent steaks. I did not know how to use her oven, to make a pork roast. I bought a couple of egg plants. I wanted to buy some green onions but missed the opportunity. But we did find some pepper. I was damn tiered of shopping, but it was interesting to see what the shops had for sale. When we got back to Svetla’s house I cut the Ham into small steaks, cooked up some rice in a pot that I bought her awhile back, and cut some onion and garlic up into a large pot. The big frying pan that I bought her last year got burned up somehow. I cut the eggplant length ways and cooked it in with the onions and garlic along with a generous splash of oil. Then I put the ham steaks and tomato concentrate in with the whole mess. It turned out to be pretty good. Sveta came in a couple of times but I ran her out of the kitchen as she can be a pain in the ass when she gets into her boss mode.

This morning I took a cat bath. It was kind of weird because Sveta tried to orcustraighte the whole thing. I could not figure out what she wanted me to do so I ran her out of the room and proceeded to wash down with a sock that I dipped in warm water and soap. It ended up being a very satisfying bath, but I could see that she was a bit confused. I tried to make her understand that I have been living by my self for a long time and am perfectly comfortable with washing myself. It reminded me of the time when I was on the SOCOL 2 and the cook served hard boiled eggs for breakfast. I took my egg and proceeded to cut it in half with my knife. The electrical engineer about had a heart attach. He tried to get my attention to let me know that I doing it all wrong. I just ignored him and proceeded to scoop the egg from around it’s shell with my spoon. When he saw what I had done, he was amazed. I had my egg out of the shell and eaten in less than 15 seconds, while he was struggling with pealing those tough old eggs for about 10 minutes. He was too proud to use my method but, he never tried to butt into my eating habits, even when I put salt on watermelon.

So, it is now Saturday night. I leave Monday morning for the airport. Sveta works tomorrow witch is a bit of a drag as would like to sleep with her as much as possible before I leave. She is beginning to tire of the sausage, but she can’t get enough of the fondling, and kissing. And I must admit I enjoy it also.

10-5-97

One more day here then I head out for Seattle. I’m disappointed in the fact that I was not able to make any business contacts. I think everyone is a bit pissed off that I am sleeping with a local. I actually don’t know. I need to walk down to the SVTS office, call Ernest and arrange with him to pick me up tomorrow morning. He will pick me up here tomorrow morning and drive me to the airport. Then it is the long flight to the USA. I wish that there was more that I could do here, but in reality is a very backward country. One has got to have friends and the only way to make friends here is to buy them.

I cooked for the kids and I another American breakfast. I took three potatoes, shredded them and washed the starch out of them. I cooked them up along with some onions, garlic and butter. Then I fried some eggs up I put some cheese on the potatoes and then laid the eggs on the top. It was pretty good. I wanted to cook up some more of the pork, but did not have time. Kola is constantly coming over to see what I am doing. He wants to see the photos I took with my digital camera.