ok ok

so i have received numerous comments on this site, as well as by email asking me to
1. say something positive
2. say where i am and what i am doing exactly
so, the second point is the easier. i am living in northern moscow in a fairly decent and fairly large flat with a german (sort of) girl named natalia. she doesnt like being called natasha, as she has made clear. she works here with foreign students, and we are both associated loosely with the same umbrella company, which is why we have been alloted a flat together. the flat is free, clean and furnished, so i am not complaining. i will be in this flat until august when it appears i will be assigned another, but i have no clue where.
i am theoretically working at a major oil company, i am there on loan from the company i previously worked, correcting documents and teaching....but i dont know if i will stick around with this job or not. i have some possibilities to change, and i will decide in the next week or two what i am actually doing. i am also supposed to be doing research for my degree. yesterday i went and got my chitatelski billet for biblioteka imena lenina....but i was so exhausted by the effort that i didnt actually read anything, i just established that i have the right to do so...i will go back in a few minutes and try to get some serious work done.
i think i need a few weeks for things to fall into place and then i will have a better idea of where everything is going.
i met up with caitlin last night for dinner. we used to hang out regularly three years ago when i last lived here, and we resumed some old traditions immediately, starting with sushi. she knew of a really good place in the centre, and we feasted there. i think i have about 3 plates and a soup! grotesque, but i really really like sushi!
then we headed past the book shop moskva on tverskaia because i turn out to be the only person who hasnt read robskii's pro luboff...so i bought it and i will read it will great interest.
the usual promenade continued down to ohotni riad and a perusal through the shops. but it doesnt seem as interesting as it used to....but maybe my eyes have changed? i dont know. we then migrated over to the building where yuri used to work, which has a great bar on the ground floor....and we ordered drinks...another moscow night i guess....
i had a horridly early morning today, and it seems i am set to have a lot of those, the oil people want me there at 8 am....when the hell was the last time i had to be somewhere at 8 am? groan.