Update: Wed 21:50

Parts

Well, what's a day between friends, eh? No sign of the parts at KN's yesterday. All these things take place with a 4 hour timezone shift so who knows what is happening right now (home time?). Anyway, the upshot of which means it'll be another day later to Almaty and therefore almost certainly hit the weekend which means Monday. Or Tuesday. Top!

Once again, some more than casual reading of the LP suggests that I'm better off staying here as Almaty is not cheap. Not aided by the woman who runs a relatively cheap guesthouse in Almaty (at the same $30 as here) in the 100% researched and updated LP has in fact sold up and gone back to Korea. The LP told me to phone or email first, which I did and she very kindly replied from "home." Then it's $35 then $40 and very quickly up towards $100 per night. I think I might suffer Bishkek until I have to go.

There's also no view on fork oil. I might have said before that I tried to find some in "we do cars" Bishkek to no avail but there is an awful lot of multigrade engine oil (10W-30, say) which Wikipedia claims means it passes the tests for both. I suspect it may not be ideal for forks. We'll have to see what can be done.

Russian

If I said I was almost fluent, you wouldn't believe me.

Quite rightly too. However we do seem to have covered really quite a lot, though using extremely limited vocabulary. I might be able to ask: why is my passport and visa not ready? (patchymu moy passpart у moya visa ney gatoffi?) (пациму мой пасспорт и моя вуза не гатову? -- my spelling isn't up to much even if I've been told the phonetics aren't too bad) but I simply wouldn't understand the answer.

Not that asking an official why your passport and visa are not ready is likely to get you anything other than an intransigent shrug and the spectable of your passport being tossed to the back of the queue.

However the woman really does annoy me. Having said the other day there were only three tenses (past, present and future) she introduced today the two past tenses and two future tenses depending on your usage of the imperfect and perfect forms of the verbs (whether or not the verb has one of a number of prefixes that change the meaning subtly).

Her previous prime failing was the shrill declaration that the Russian alphabet is phonetic so it is really easy to spell things and why in English you always have to spell words out letter by letter. She followed that up with something like go-toff-i which spells gatoffi. Yes, you may have noticed that the first o changed to an a. Which sounds exactly the same as the a charcater. So, in fact, you have to spell out every Russian word as well as it's otherwise impossible to distinguish between unstressed o's and a's. Grr!

I'm not really sure how she, as a Russian, has come to have such a haughty and patronising (it seems to me) English accent but it's really irritating when she over-emphasis the sounds of things "ee-tsss" and then says "ets" (with a near silent s) immediately afterwards. If I was on the recording at some point, after another interruption to "correct" something there would have been the sound of a thump, a muffled nrg!, the sound of someone falling to the floor and "stupid bitch" mumbled just before the door slammed shut!

Of course, I jest. In reality I would have meekly acquiesced to every withering correction however contradictory and confusing and then stumbled out into the street wondering why it was that I always seem to get poor value for money from these things.

Never mind, it appears to be having results. I've not dared try to actually say anything to anyone yet (as I say, any reply would completely fox me and, besides, they would have to speak with some clipped tones for me to follow) but I have begun to spot the odd word here and there and should really be asking for a пиво (spelt pivo, of course, pronounced peeva), a beer. Except you need to name your beers as there's usually more than one so you might as well just say Baltika, the popular brand.

Bishkek Life

Today's commentary has little to add. I can't find the 2x2, a bar intruigingly described as being the hang-out for the local mafiosi, sex workers, NGO workers and American service personel. I spend too much money at some of the better establishments so it'll be over the road again to the Metro. I think they did Shepherd's pie or something similar. For the expats, you understand.

I've seen one green Kawasaki three times, a red Yamaha, several scooters (three a day?), a couple of small motorbikes (100cc style) and a monkey bike (with high up seating) in all my time here. I haven't seen any indication of where they might get things serviced assuming servicing is not done at home and parts brought in from Almaty.

I've still only seen one mixed race (Asian and Caucasian) couple. The only drunks (and it's only a few) I've seen have been Caucasian. Three African-Americans all of whom could easily have been American military.

At the guest house, they keep asking me, usually after midnight, "why you no sleep?" as I sit there slurping a beer with the door of the room open to reduce the heat and humidity. One of the reasons might be the bloody big garden illuminating lamp two feet behind you and that it's a glass door! Oh and maybe it's because you keep stomping about and yakking after midnight!