Tea time

Tonight the hotel ladies decided that our cheese & onion omelettes will not be enough to keep us fighting fit and offered us to help ourselves to what was on the table. The large jar has a lard type substance that was scooped out with the tea cup thus allowing you to dip the raw onion & shallots and garlic cloves into. The other option if fish is your fancy was the bowl of anchovies. Making sure of our five a day is the shredded pickled carrot with some black slimy stuff in it - I think it was sliced mushroom - at least that's what I've convinced myself what it was.
We picked up a pack of cheese yesterday - we reckon it's a safe bet to be Edam.


Ambient temperature update - we cracked -30 deg c first thing this morning and didn't get above -22 all day.

Home from home...

Well sort of! A bit about where we are staying.


It's called the hotel Usbada, which translates as Manor House.


This is the view from the hotel driveway back towards the village. Yayva is basically a couple of dozen of these apartment blocks arranged in a grid pattern of streets. Shops etc occupy the groundfloor on half a dozen blocks and there is a district heating scheme with a network of 18" pipes above ground distributing hot water all over town.
The hotel only has 8 rooms, we are in rooms 4 & 5 which take up all the second floor. The rooms are actually a suite with sitting room ( fridge, microwave, kettle , tv settee, table & chairs), bedroom and en-suite.





Very clean and comfortable but no restaurant facilities or bar etc!! Heating is on all the time, controlled by us opening windows if it gets too hot - which it does, even though -15 or less outside. It's self catering and they have given us the use of their kitchen downstairs - Al B is chief cook, Al G head bottle washer. With self catering, we are regulars at the little supermarket in the village and doing wonders for their turnover.
Out the back their is a log built building which appears to be mainly used for private functions. It has the billiard table ( kept us occupied for 4 hours last Saturday), a banya- a Russian sauna & plunge pool, and a kitchen/dining room. We can't quite work out the etiquette for the banya so haven't tried that yet - need the lowdown from the locals to not commit the equivalent of peeing in the pool or getting chased down the road for going in on ladies night!! The bear lives behind the log cabin. Amazingly there is also an outdoor barbecue - we saw it being used on the first weekend. BBQ in 3 foot of snow and -15, we'll give it a go when we get back to UK in February - not sure it will catch on.


Found this in the kitchen the other night- answers on the back of a 500 ruble note as to what its for - we have no idea and are really baffled as to what it translates as!!!!!!
The other thing about the digs is no wifi, broadband or any of that western decadence. Limited Internet via dongle or mobile phone tethering. Expensive, slow and intermittent. This is Al B in optimum position for best signal.


The Turkish warranty engineer sorted us out with a fast wifi connection at the site - great guy. To get it to work Al B managed to get into the modem and ended up changing the password, hence weve had a procession of guys trooping in to see us having got wind we have an unrestricted wifi connection and asking for set up details!! Got to be careful with that one.

Its not more grey hair..............

........on my 'tache, its icing up!! Personal record low for us at -28degC this morning, Russians say thats normal, last year was -46 so man up!!

Just given our regular update to the Chief Engineer this afternoon about what we've been up to and just about to have conference call with our boss Steve in the UK to touch base with him.

Little bit more involvement with stuff, but as ever translator availability holding us back slightly. Translator is just as frustrated as we are and its one of the issues we've raised.

Life in the freezer....

Just got back from lunch in the canteen, and it's very cold today, thermometer outside office door says -23.


Certainly felt it around the legs as I've come without my lagged trousers today - don't intend going outside again if I can help it.
Bit more involvement today with what the Russian team are up to, but interpreter not feeling well and is keeping a low profile. Pretty much hamstrings us somewhat. Alexander, the deputy chief can speak a little English but mostly conversational and will help out where he can, but he is a very busy guy and is always in some meeting or other.
We do what we can!!!

Location:Russia

He's a domestic god

We've nearly got the self catering under control - various mixtures of pasta, rice, fried chicken, eggs, omelettes, cheese, odd bit of veg etc - even managed to find some baked beans to have on toast for that special treat - 'skinheads on a raft'! Earlier on, the site canteen would open early for us and the ladies provided a hot drink & toast but we've managed to get our act together and get our own sorted before we leave the hotel. Cereal, porridge, fruit juice, fresh fruit, bread & jam being the choice. Lunch is in the canteen, and we generally go for the chicken if its on, everything's always with mash and sometines a small side salad. We've both tried the stews and other cuts, but we haven't a clue what it is, the dinner ladies say its 'meat'. Still can't work out sometimes if its beef, pork, horse or whatever - hence the preference for chicken!!!
Favourite though is the borsch - thick red onion soup with other stuff floating in it, or a thick noodle & potato soup with a couple of chunks of bread. So we're getting our protein and most of our five a day.

Work wise, we are gradually getting a little bit more from our Russian hosts to keep us occupied. All have been very welcoming but still a bit guarded as to why we are at the site, which has no hidden agenda whatsoever. Its still early days and we're still building trust - an experience that was similar to that at Shatura & Surgut. As expected, the language barrier is the biggest issue when wishing to get some info or explain something. So far, only about 30% of the info we require (manuals, drawings) has an english version available or provided with the contract, so working out how things work is challenging - our interpreter is o.k but struggles a bit with some of the technical concepts and terms, and is not always available when we need her (she has other duties but always puts them off to help us out, so we cut her a little slack). However, one or two of the shift lads do have a very basic understanding of english and can answer one or two descriptions of things.
Control Room screens etc are all russian - we can access english text control screens, but signal identifiers, descriptions & alarms on the software screens are russian, as is the text on the 'windows' menus. Might get some screen dumps of windows menus from Killingholmes T3000 to use as a crib sheet and hope the items match up!!!
Might be working out how to use the Banya out the back this weekend - it can only end in tears!!!

Cash, cash and more cash.

The hotel wants the bill to date sorted, so thats not a problem ......do you take visa? If looks could kill, we would be goners as the receptionist blankly stares at us muttering darkly 'cash'.
To be honest we were not aware at that point that we were going to settle the bill, but a quick check with HQ confirms its down to us. Next challenge, where do we get the cash, where is the bank if there is one, where is the ATM and will our cash withdrawal facility have a limit? What kind of hoops will we have to jump through to pull cash in a bank - passports, home address, mothers maiden name, last school etc etc (that was what they wanted just to buy a internet dongle!!)
Panic over it turns out there is a ATM machine on the power station site - located in the security building.
Alan's first to let the machine swallow his card. Button appears that says 'english' - thats handy so we press that expecting the remaining instructions in english, but this is Russia, so it continues in Russian!!!. The translator was with us still, so she puts us right with what to press. Now, we need 15000 rubles, but the machine flashes red and spits card out. Try 10000, same problem. Try 8000, still refusing to pay. Is the machine out of money we ask? One of the guards says try asking for 5000 three times, that should work. We try and it does. Work that one out!!!!. We'll be ringing B'card just to tell them that our cards will be getting some heavy use in cash machines over the next couple of weeks with multiple transactions in one day and for pitys sake don't block the cards or we're doomed.

A quiet Sunday......

..... Just like most of the other days really so nothing new there then.
Took a walk around Yayva as a bit of a Sunday constitutional stroll after lunch. It's not all apartment blocks...


Nearly Every property though had a dog chained up in the garden. And as soon as one barks they all do. Only -7 today so relatively mild.


Found the railway station - you have to cross a set of tracks to get to the building in the picture as demonstrated by a train trundling through just after pic taken.


This is a cafe in the town - we only know as it's the one we went for breakfast in on the day of arrival. All very anonymous and no real indication as to what's behind the door as you can see.





Quickest way to get around is to ice skate down the street.
So had a couple of hours walk as we also went to look at the river which is just ourside town. Bit disappointed to see that it wasnt frozen over and was actually in flow and steaming. Probably as a result of the coal fired power station cooling water discharge as it uses the river for direct cooling I.e no cooling towers, although the new ccgt station has a tower system. A few fishermen about on the bank but couldn't see what they were catching.
Were slowly sorting our grub out from the supermarket, not perfect but managing. Our biggest issue is communication with home, no Internet at the hotel or work(yet) so no skype etc, emails, unless we use our Russian dongle which is so slow as to be virtually like dial up, or use our Uk iPhones on edge( 3 g intermittent) at £6/ mb and £1.50/min calls!!!!!! Al G's Company phone doesn't work Over here (long story and wasn't unexpected!!!) so it's got a Russian sim in it at the moment so it's not totally useless although can't use it as a modem on the laptop as we can't yet download the appropriate software - no robust enough Internet connection. It's called catch 22!!!!