I'm bringing Lazy back...

Privet vsyem!

I know I have been ridiculously out-of-action. Not because things haven't been happening but because so much has been happening that...well...I have felt too tired to write about it and generally submitted to the voice of the lazy 'devil' Aanch that sits on my left shoulder...

So what now? Well, these are difficult economic times so we've had to regrettably fire her. And now, I, under the sound guidance of my halo-bearing 'angel' Aanch, am back at your service...

Here's what you've missed:

1. Temperatures continue to be in-tune with oil prices i.e. they're heading back up. Spring is slowly approaching. The cute-little flower buds and happy song-birds that they used to show in Bambi and Lion King to depict Spring still seem like a cruel joke but the days are getting longer, DST has ticked away, the Sun is becoming more than just a guest-star in my Bollywood life and the snow and ice are slowly melting to reveal the long-forgotten colours and textures of the mud and gravel underneath (along with the occasional unpleasantries of perfectly-preserved pre-Winter dog excrement...)

2. Dorota (my Polish flatmate) and I went to Murmansk, the largest city in the world north of the Arctic Circle. I have to say, while it felt great to be so far up-north (See satellite image: http://www.maplandia.com/russia/murmanskaya-oblast/kolskiy-rayon/murmansk/), the 20 hours we spent there sandwiched between 27 hours of train journey each way, were more than enough! The city is bigger than I expected but still small enough so we were able to walk a big chunk in around 4 hours. But among the Alyosha statue overlooking the Kola Inlet, the Museum of Regional Studies (Probably the № 1 employer of taxidermists in Murmansk), the red-brick Lighthouse and the rather stinky Aquarium, the highlight of my Murmansk trip was falling waist-deep in snow! Even though, at one point I was terrified - because even when Dorota tried to pull me out, there was no ground beneath my feet on which I could have pushed myself up and out and any attempt to this end only sank me deeper into the snow – without this incident, there would be little else worth remembering from Murmansk!

3. This is an uncomfortable time of the year for a brown girl in Saint-Petersburg. 20th April is Adolf Hitler’s birthday and whilst I really don’t care about Nazi-boy’s birthday, I do have to watch out for racial hatred in Europe’s skin-head capital. My Schengen won’t be ready in time, so my planned escape to Latvia is essentially turning itself into a self-imposed house-arrest to avoid getting beaten-up or stabbed. (Hmmm...every beautiful city has an ugly face!) From what I hear, sometimes even the Police turn a blind-eye to Neo-Nazi activities and it’s only the old, wobbly Babushkas who shout at these xenophobic trouble-makers. I guess, if you survived the Leningrad blockade, very little in life must scare you! Kind of makes you wonder why Supernanny wasn’t originally Russian instead...

That’s all for now. I must say that the ‘devil’ Aanch sabotaged me again. I sat down in front of the computer to write a cover letter for a job application but ended up doing this blog-entry instead. Oh well, just coz we fired her doesn’t mean she isn’t good at what she does...

Back to work now...