No News is...........boring!

Hi Everyone,

Sorry I've not been in touch recently but that's because nothing has happened! Well, that's not quite true. Absolutely nothing had happened on the work front. The British Embassy in Bucharest runs slower than a sloth watching paint dry while wading through black treacle in slow motion. They appear to be terribly disorganised and so that leaves me sitting here twiddling my fingers. I have however done some charity work. The teaching English to HIV+ children has not materialised yet but I have been involved in collecting and distributing goods to those children and their families. I took part in a presentation to Proctor and Gamble (Balkans). As a result we were given about 10 big boxes of their products - toothpaste, tooth brushes, soap, washing powder, ladies products (you know what I am talking about!) shampoos, pampers etc. I went with Michaela to give them to the children and their families who live in what only can be called a compound outside of Bucharest. The conditions really are awful and they were very grateful for the boxes.

Also I have not been in touch because the house has been in such a mess for the past month. There is a completely new bathroom going in and so for the past 3 weeks there has only been a bath tub and a toilet bowl (no cistern or anything like that, no wash hand basin etc). So to 'flush' the toilet you have to throw a bucket of water down there. Lovely. So for the last week I have been living with Alin and Roxana. They have a big house with plenty of space and a toilet that actually flushes which is a bonus.

The down side is that they have a 4 years old boy, Matei. To say his is spoilt is like saying that Hitler had one or two minor issues. He is used to getting his way, all the time. So if you go to watch TV he immediately wants the cartoon channel on or his cartoon dvds. So you decide to check your e-mails. He immediately wants to play his computer games etc. If he doesn't get his way he has a tantrum. Since he does not go to bed until 10.00pm at the earliest I'm sure you get the idea. How we laughed when I swung him around the room by his hair. In addition to this, he has not been well. Without any warning he decides to impersonate the Trevi Fountains in Rome with a multicoloured spray in all directions. Thankfully he is just physically sick and the the other end is not affected! It always seems to happen when he is sitting on the sofa. So when you sit on the couch there's a strange squelching sound and rather acidic whiff. I hope you can see why I have not been in touch recently!

Due the lack of news, let me give you a picture of modern Romania, through things that have appeared on the TV news recently or stories I have heard.

In the east of the country a man's cow went into a neighbour's garden and ate most of their flowers/plants. Now OK, I know that's not exactly up there with the 700 billion dollar package for the financial crisis in the USA. But the flowerless neighbour grabbed his pitchfork went next door and killed the cow's owner and left the wife in hospital on a life support machine. Seems a little excessive even for the famous Romanian "latin temperament"!

Tiberiu's mum lives in a village about 20kms outside of Bucharest. Every month her pension is delivered by the postman. That pension is the enormous sum of 70 euros a month. Not much at all, about 250 Romanian lei. For many years now she has been receiving 235 lei because the postman takes 15 lei as a "charge" for delivering this. And he does this for every pensioner in the village. We reckon there's at least 50 pensioners in the village so that's 750 lei a month he takes for "delivering" their pensions. That is 3 times Tibi's mother's pension! Once Tibi found out about this he arranged for it to be transferred directly into her bank account. Unfortunately many of the pensioners in the village don't have bank accounts. And there's no use telling the Post Office, they know it goes on!

To give you an idea how far that pension goes - Tibi's mum and step dad use wood and coal to heat their house and water, so in autumn they get all the coal and wood they think they will need. This year that cost them nearly 1,000 lei, that's 4 times her pension! But they are in luxury compared to others. In the very north of the country in an area called Maremures, they had on TV a pensioner who gets......wait for it........3 lei a week pension. That's 60 pence a week, not even 1 euro! There has been such a scandal that the government has promised to take action about it. Probably to double the pension!!

The final story regards the place where I have been staying, at Alin and Roxana's. Alin is the director of a complex for orphans who have left the orphanage system but are not ready to go out into society just yet. This place helps them to develop life skills to lead productive full lives (like killing people with pitchforks and stealing from pensioners). The complex covers a large area. One day they noticed some cranes on the edge of the place. So they went to have a look and they found that a company had fenced off an area of their land and was building on it. Despite contacting the police, city authorities, council etc, there is now a 10 floor SoftNet computer building there. Needless to say the police and city authorities have wallets that are as bulging as the local postman's.

And finally.....I've been on TV again! I went to the opening of the Radisson Hotel a couple of weeks ago and in a programme on TV about it there I was with a glass of Moet and Chandon in my hand looking all suave and sophisticated - as usual!!

Well I hope to have news about me working soon, but with the lovely weather we are having here, 23c and beautiful sunshine all day, I'm not complaining!

Take care

Andrew