When asked, I like to compare our time here to climbing a mountain. It begins with excited anticipation. You make a start but soon the reality sinks in; you realise you have a long climb ahead. Then it’s pain the whole way, with a few spectacular views from the top. After getting back down as fast as you can, you stop and realise what it is you just did and ask yourself, “why don’t we do this more often?”.
It’s been a long time since I updated my blog, but now that the coming of summer has thawed the icy veins of my depression I feel motivated to reflect upon my life once more; today it’s chess. Chess has been played for thousands of years, but I only really joined in over the course of the last 12 months. A year ago, whilst wandering the grounds of the school, I noticed the old gardener and his young apprentice battling it out on a regular basis and eventually my curiosity overcame my bashfulness; now I am the apprentice, getting a regular thrashing by both the chess master and his 12 year old protege.
This is Blaine. This is me. And this is my dumpster. Fortunately for Blaine, he was in time to experience some of the Kiev “Love” as I call it (not the mail order type). Long queues for simple things, overcrowded buses, no hot water, no running water (on occassions) and general daftness. His slothful presence will be missed.
On the 22nd of August I turned thirty. Lauren and I celebrated the following day with a buffett breakfast at the new Hyatt in Kiev. Any words of wisdom at this early stage in life, you may ask? Find a great woman and don’t waste any time getting married to her; aside from that, the last 30 years are pleasant yet slightly surreal blur.
We made for the mouth of the Loire river to begin our tour of the Loire Valley and discovered this amazing concrete structure from the second world war. Constructed by the German Navy, it served as a protective fortress for the construction and safe harbour of German U-Boats. The Allies tried to take this place out by aerial bombardment but only managed to erase the nearby town, one look at this concrete monster and you’ll see why; its roof is 8 metres thick! I recognised it immediately from playing Enemy Territory online 
As mentioned in a previous post, I have taken to retro-shaving and decided to make the arrangement more permanent with a visit to specialist supplier of such goodies in Berlin; The Different Scent. Their range of straight razors and safety razors, brushes, creams, soaps and other accessories was outstanding. Nicholas did a great job of helping me select the bits of kit that were right for me and now, for the first time in years, shaving is a pleasure.
If you haven’t heard me say how much I would love a litre of real milk then we probably haven’t talked in the last 12 months. Let’s just say that the milk in Ukraine … HAS ISSUES. But after many months of abstenance, broken only by some French long-life I acquired, I am pleased to be back on the real stuff: fresh, full cream milk. Let me just say for the record; the difference is like Diet Coke to Champagne! I know I’m not imagining things, this stuff really is FANTASTIC!!!
The photographic drought has been broken; I have a new camera! After our last camera got stolen I went through the usual process of denial, anger, grief and so on, but then I decided it was time to move on and find a newer model to take it’s place. I settled on the Canon PowerShot G9. There was much debate in my mind over whether to make the move to an SLR, but I decided that the convenience of the compact format was more appropriate at this point in my life. More poignantly, I concluded that I’d rather a compact that has been designed to be the best can rather than an adequate, yet mediocre, SLR.
Perhaps absence has made this heart grow fonder, or caused the mind to wander, but it’s my opinion that Sega Lock-On is a decent game that was dropped before it’s time. On a few occassions some of us have discussed a DIY version of Lock-On but that’s as far as things went. Now that summer holidays are here my mind has had time to wander even further than usual and this time it has turned to the lofty subject of building a better Lock-On.