Category: Russia

BELGRADE, January 13th, 2020 /Worldwide Distribution/ — Numbeo, a global leader in comparing cost of living worldwide, released its Cost of Living Index 2020.According to Numbeo, the most expensive city at the beginning of 2020 is Zurich in Switzerland. Other cities in Switzerland get spots no. 2-5 of the most expensive cities in Numbeo’s list: Basel, Lausanne, Geneva, Bern.

Three cities in Norway are on the spots no. 6-8: Stavanger, Oslo, Trondheim.

New York in the United States is ranked 11th, while San Francisco 12th (out of 440 cities in the world).

Tokyo, ranked globally 18th (out of 440 cities), is the most expensive city in Asia.

Cities in Africa are all in the bottom half of the list, with the most expensive ranked city being Pretoria in South Africa on the spot no. 252.

This semiannual publication is released twice per year – in January and in July each year by using a snapshot of current indices on the day of the release.

Numbeo is a market leader in comparing the cost of living worldwide, according to Internet traffic estimators, such as Similarweb or Alexa.

You can access the rankings here.

When you retire the Cost of Living is the most important aspect. Most if not 80% of retired people have much less money then when they worked full time. This is altered by people working way into their retirement age. That 80 year old door greeter at WalMart is just trying to survive…

Therefore, a surprising bunch of people, go to countries that have a much lower cost of living…

Tunis, Tunisia – COLI – 28.32
New York, NY, United States – COLI – 100.00
Zurich, Switzerland – 128.29
Moscow, Russia – COLI – 47.65

Cost of Living Index is less than half of New York, USA if you live in Moscow, Russia. That is a huge difference. It means your money will go much farther. Moscow is a very safe city and Sveta and I love living here…

Don’t take my word for it, follow the link and see all the wonderful places that are much cheaper to live than where you could be located at. It makes sense to find your niche in life and another country is always a good choice…

Just takes a international passport, some reorganization of your life and the will to do it…

WtR

(Bloomberg) — A container with 23.94 tons of American chicken feet cleared Chinese customs Tuesday, potentially heralding the start of a new trading era between the two countries just days before they sign a long-awaited trade deal. The chicken feet, or phoenix claws as they’re known in Chinese recipes, were inspected and approved for unloading by customs in Shanghai, the official Securities Times reported. The event marks the return of U.S. poultry meat to China five years after it was banned, it said.

Source: U.S. Chicken Feet Entering China May Presage New Trading Era

Pretty sad affair when Bloomberg writes about chicken feet as the savior of America…

In Russia years ago they had Bush Legs…

“Bush legs” (Russian: ножки Буша nozhki Busha) is a prevailing term in the post-Soviet states that denotes chicken leg quarters from the United States. The expression first appeared in 1990 when Mikhail Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush signed a trade agreement about delivery of frozen chicken leg quarters to the USSR. In those times the USSR was experiencing food shortages and “Bush legs” enjoyed wide popularity.

Source: Bush legs – Wikipedia

Except Wikipedia is kinda lying. The Russians laughed at the Bush Legs and we now do not have them anymore. Russia is self-sufficient in chicken and selling it to the world even…

I really doubt if Chicken feet will save America….but use what you can to push the hope up!

Maybe I need to do a Phoenix Feet (Chicken Feet and or Trump Feet) Recipe…

For the sake of easy to remember; just call then “Trump Feet”…

Have a nice day…

WtR

Interesting News:

MOSCOW, January 5. /TASS/. The Progress Rocket and Space Center (RCC) (part of Russian space corporation Roscosmos), together with S7 Space (operator of the Sea Launch project), have begun to work on the parameters of a rocket for the Sea Launch projects, a spokesperson with the center told TASS.”At present, the specialists of our company are discussing with S7 Space tactical and technical requirements for a launch vehicle in ensure launches from the Sea Launch platform and the timing of the main stages

Source: Russia’s Roscosmos and S7 start working on characteristics of Sea Launch rocket – Science & Space – TASS

Hey! That is the space agency I talk about here in Korolev, Russia where Svetochka and I live…

WtR

Dear Ajman Beach Hotel,

We wrote this for trip advisor, but we want to get it also directly to the Hotel. So many times people only talk about how bad things were and never about the good. My wife and I would like to thank all the hard working staff that the hotel has. I am a retired chef and Food Service Director, I want special thanks to go to the food service of the Hotel, the food was fantastic. We also had a young man who kept our room clean and he was a perfect gentleman and very pleasant the whole time we were there…

We had the best time of our lives and we travel extensively…

Thank you again!

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Where to begin?

Room 412, sea side, my wife and I, and no preconceived expectations. Small hotel, first hotel built in Ajman, location is on the beach and you can literally walk to anything worth seeing. The hotel has a shuttle bus to take you to Dubai and it runs everyday. They are well staffed in all departments and the employees are fantastic.

The sea is crystal clear all the time, we were there for two weeks and even though it rained three times and stormed, never did the sea cloud up with debris and seaweed. We like to snorkel and basically did that everyday. Only one day was too bad to swim, due to high winds.

Food was perfection. They serve fish and a very good whiting fish everyday. Unlike hotels that serve chicken as the main daily dish, they served fish everyday. Chicken as a secondary and beef as a secondary also everyday. I ate so much fish, I though I would burst….it was fried, baked, steamed, sauced, garlic covered, grilled and several other ways. They served rice, potatoes, pastas, many types of vegetables, fruit salads, beans of many types and on and on. They had many types of cold salads from egg salad, tuna salad, Greek salad, lettuce salad, to Caesar salad. They served beef grilled steak, grilled chicken steaks, fried chicken, beef stew, chicken stew, fried egg plane, I mean they served everything and everything was delicious.

But; if you love desserts? They only have homemade custards, ice cream and fruit salad. We do not eat dessert so it never mattered. If you must have an endless display of desserts, then don’t go to this hotel. No desserts to speak of…

All other food is endless and delicious and as there were many families, I saw the kids eating happily with all the variety available. Not to mention I gained a kilo in weight during my two weeks. There was just too much food, too good and it was endless. Be alert to the fact that you will basically drink only water, hot tea and coffee. No sodas, no beer no nothing, unless you buy and again, this was not an issue for us.

There were downsides as with everywhere.

The nightlife is noisy until early morning. Not just our hotel, but all the hotels around would party until 3 am. Out hotel has what they call the Lawn and we got to watch many young children’s birthday parties. The hotel is run by Indians and thus we had much opportunities to see Indian parties and Arab parties. Thus the noise was outweighed with seeing how cultures partied. I can tell you that men dance with men and they can really dance up a storm. 🙂

I am going to write to the home office of this hotel and tell them how great things were. So many times all we hear is the bad and while we had a few issues, such as one rotten employee and some neighboring rooms smoking in a non smoking floor. In noway does a rotten apple spoil the whole basket and that is what needs to be remembered…

Oh my wife wanted me to remind everyone to go see the Ajman Museum it is about a 800 meter walk from the hotel and worth spending a few hours at. You will learn a bunch about Ajman and its beginnings…

Ajman may be the poorest of the UAE, but far from the least of the UAE. Also spend a day shopping with the locals, you will find that the prices are fantastic and you might have to struggle to get it all home.

I have missed many things, but I already wrote a book as a comment…

My wife and I loved Ajman Beach Hotel and Ajman is a jewel.
****

Svetlana Prostova & Kyle Keeton – Room 412

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This is the letter above I sent to the home office of the Ajman Beach Hotel…

Ajman Beach Hotel

WtR

This is Earnest and this is his doggy (Sorry my bad, do not know the doggy’s name). Earnest is, as is typical in Russia during the winter, sitting in his sled. Svetochka is taking her grandson for a evening walk. The doggy is checking out things and earnest is trying to keep up with where he is going…

I call the GIF “fast doggy”…

I believe that the fence on the left is his home and this is her sons place, Misha!

Doggy got to do what doggy’s do….run and run and run…

I was thinking this morning:

Yesterday I kinda tore my stitch a bit and found my arm bleeding. It took me two hours to act like a doctor and fix my foolishness. But then I thought about how it is not foolish…

I carry many days of the week now a big 5 to 6 liter of water home. I also carry a bag of food for us to eat on. Many times I carry this on 8 to 10 kilometers during my walk and I have said in the past that my right hand and arm are not as strong as they use to be. Well, carrying water has strengthen my arm (both) a bunch…

Today I carried without issues the water in my right hand all the way. I use my left hand more than my right many times, because of easy to weaken the right. It is caused by my heart attacks in the past, but now I find that my right arm is gaining stamina…

The messing up a stitch made me switch my tactics and it was all okay. Today my left arm has healed just enough that it is solid and stable. I heal fast and for that I am lucky…

Then I was thinking:

It takes longer to get things back to normal as we get older, but we can do it. I am living proof of such a thought. When I came to Russia I was in very bad shape. I would image most people would think I would be crazy to come to a country that Americans think is so terrible and backwards that I would have died, immediately…

But I found very knowledgeable doctors, very good healthcare and the pricing made it easy to swallow and bite the bullet to get things done. I realize that many would scoff at such thinking and I have been called every name in the book over all the years for even thinking that Russian Healthcare is good…

I am still alive because of Russian Healthcare:

The biggest thing I found in Russian Healthcare was the fact that the doctors or almost all women and women care. The men doctors I still see in Russia do not have the same aegis attitude and abilities and really that is normal. I am the same way. It is like in America the nurse is the one to deal with what the doctor says and she is the person who has the skills to do the job right. Here in Russia the doctors are women and thus, I have found that you basically get the same doctor and nurse all in one…not always but many times…

I have also learned through Svetochka, that you must do research and make many decisions about your healthcare on your own. The internet is a vast array of fantastic information about 99% of all that is and could be wrong with you. That research and the doctor create a condition that means you have care and your knowledge is much superior to the situation that I found myself in in America…

I have wrote many times on this blog about how bad it was in America and the healthcare had me so drugged up that I could barely function…

I have come a long ways…

I have no doubt that in America I would be dead right now:

I must have done something right in my life. For my little sweetpea as I call Svetochka, has been by my side since before I even came to Russia. One of my heart attacks number six I believe, she stayed in touch by phone constantly. Half way around the world and she took all the time necessary to be available to help as she could. How many guys could say that and how many guys could say that someone sight unseen would travel half way around the world to see you?

I came to Russia in 2006:

No one in America gave a crap if I lived or died and I would be dead right now. All the men in my family from my dad and all his brothers (3 of them) died at 50….I am lucky that both my grandads lived to be 83 and I hope to follow. But it was very close when that first heart attack hit…

I am thankful for how all the conditions came together in Russia to extend my life. I do wake everyday and realize that I am on borrowed time and am thankful to wake and be alive each and everyday. When I wake it is a comfort to find my sweetpea next to me and I am 99% of the time up early, getting coffee and making breakfast. I have learned to be a quiet mouse as I move around the flat and Svetochka has learned to sleep through a tornado if she needs to…

The up early has only been acquired since the Tiny Russian Village era. 2014 was when I finally shook off the health issues after going through many withdraw from prescription medicine and mental depression from so many health issues. It took me years to get out of having so many antidepressants in America. I still have health issues but the Tiny Russian Village was where I gathered myself and got back on track completely. That is when I healed and became strong again. Thus, TRV is in my soul also and I look forward to getting back and living as basic as is comfortable…

It all started 10 years ago, when I came to Russia. It started with dropping the worse to start, the happy pills as I call them, the antidepressants. These pills were hard to drop and I took it on as a do or die situation. Taking antidepressants is a death sentence and no one better believe different, or you will find out soon enough. They take your soul and they take your mind… Source: I have come a long ways… | Windows to Russia

One day:

I will find Sveta and I living in our Tiny Russian Village home and I hope to live to 100…

WtR

Drachona Recipe From Russia:

Ingredients:
8 ea eggs
1 c milk
2 Tb sour cream
1 Tb flour
2 Tb butter
salt (pinch)

Lets Cook:

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. or 148-150 degrees C.

Crack and Separate yolks and egg-whites into two bowls.

Take egg yolks and blend with salt, sour cream and flour thoroughly. Then mix milk in slowly. Blend well…

In the other bowl beat up egg-whites until sorta foamy and stir with the ingredients in the first bowl gently. Do not whip…

Grease a cake pan (I use a 10×2) with the butter and pour the mixed ingredients in. (I also toss any left over butter into the mix.)

Bake in middle of a well heated oven. After setting oven on bake not preheat. It is done when a toothpick comes out clean… (20 minutes but be careful because these are eggs and sour cream. They burn easily. I like my Drachona to be very dark on the bottom and light on the top…)

Lets Eat:

Drachona is served with melted butter and green parsley.

Drachona is a very easy dish to fix and can be a wonderful breakfast for your family. It also lends it self to experimentation and you will find that using other flavors such as pumpkin, cheese or even garlic creates new flavors every time…

Lets Eat: Yummy…

WtR

Good opinion post from Sputnik. It is exactly what I have been saying about what happened when America destroyed the New Year….Welcome to 2020 so far it has come in like a lion, lets hope it goes out better than it came in…

Any hopes that 2020 would be a better year for the world were soon dashed by President Trump’s brutal drone attack on General Soleimani and his associates at Baghdad Airport in the early hours of 3rd January.

How did you spend New Year’s Eve? My wife and I celebrated at a party. We all counted in the chimes of Big Ben to midnight and then sang Rabbie Burns‘ ‘Auld Lang Syne’ as a piper played in 2020.

For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

Then everyone wished everyone else a very Happy New Year, before the dancing resumed. The atmosphere was tremendous. 2020 could not have started in a better way. Then along came Donald Trump. But he wasn’t carrying a cup o’kindness. Far from it. He was carrying a drone.

The President’s deadly salvo on 2nd January was not just a murderous, blatantly illegal war crime directed against Qasem Soleimani and those with him. It was a crime against the New Year, and what a New Year represents.

Source: Donald Trump’s Crime Against the New Year – Sputnik International

Click the link and read the complete article by Sputnik…

WtR

The healthcare in Russia is really very good. Like everywhere you must be smart and able to tell good people from bad, but when you find someone good make sure you cater to them and use their abilities…

A thousand rubles is about $15 to $16 and when I say a few thousand “it ain’t much” to get many items of healthcare done in Russia…

We found a elder lady skin cancer doctor and she has the luck to have a pretty good young female surgeon who can do the work that she specifies. In my case a few months ago we had testing done on a large spot that never healed and it was high risk. Therefore, we needed to get it cut out. It was from a cat bite about 30 years ago and in the USA I was told a dozen times to ignore it….it got worse and worse and Svetochka talked to her son Misha and he knew of a good cancer doctor…

She knew the minute she saw it what needed to be done, but she took a sample and had an analysis run. It was whatever….called something in too big words to worry about and yesterday it was removed…

It is nice having good healthcare that is dirt cheap. It really makes a difference in your cost of living. Pharmacy is cheap in Russia. 99% of the care is very cheap and in all my years, I have never found poor issues with we use for healthcare. The main thing is to ask around and find who is happy with where you think you are going. In Russia forums and friends and family are the key to getting it done…

You mess up in Russia and the forums will eat you alive. The bloggers will attack you and Russians just love their forums….it is nice in Russia, you have lots of doctors that work these forums and they give a bunch of free advice…

Oh and it helps to have a son in-law who is mainstream and updated on cancer issues and research in this particular issue…

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Last night as we walked to the clinic downtown Moscow, Russia…

This morning I was nosy and watched a 5G tower being leveled…

The tower has a crane with a guy using the crane to push the tower into position and a guy on the ground with survey equipment using a walkie-talkie to tell him what to do. Pretty cool actually. There also is a cement truck waiting to dump a bunch of cement to set the pole in place. The guy on the tower waved at me as I was standing taking images….that was nice…

Our town Korolev is just about 5G ready. Moscow is done and they are spreading to the suburbs…

Now you know a bit more about Russia!

WtR

Enter any comment section on any website with a degree of light foot treading. Or else you will sink into the quagmire real fast. Discussion is not a word that goes with the typical comment section upon the pages of just about any news site in the world. The world comment section has become one humongous war zone and a huge portion of the players are bots and or paid actors to redirect, destroy and manipulate comment sections world wide…

“Anyone can be a god upon his throne as a commentator!” – Me

WtR

PS:

Ignorance can be educated. Crazy can be medicated. But there is no cure for stupid. In the 1960s, people took acid to make the world weird. Now in 2020 the world is weird, and people take Prozac to make it normal. – Anonymous