Windows to Russia

Russia has raised $5.5bn (4bn euros; £3.5bn) in its first international debt sale since it defaulted in 1998. Initial reports said that demand for the Eurobond was five times higher than expected. The Eurobond was split between a $2bn issue repayable in five years, and $3.5bn in ten years.

The road construction was immediately stopped and the site blocked from any other construction. After that came the question – What to do now?

Vladivostok’s residents think the remains should be reburied in a proper way and a proper place. So a commission has been set up and will decide where to rebury the dead found.

This seems to be a normal happening in the world and the past always has a way of rearing her head time and time again. The video shows that there is many remains to be uncovered.

It makes you wander how many people have been buried all over the world in mass graves like this…

Windows to Russia!

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday. That Ukraine will receive a discount of $100 per 1,000 cu m at the natural gas price of $330 and a 30% discount on other prices. He also commented that the Black Sea Fleet will stay in place for the next 25 years. This announcement came after a meeting between the two presidents of Russia and Ukraine after a bit of productive finagling.

A smile, handshake and cooperation that is all it takes. Would that have been to hard for the last Ukraine president?

Oh – I forgot Viktor Yushchenko was bought and paid for by America…

Windows to Russia!

Today I tried out the new camera phone (The one I will use all the time.) and it is not quite as good as the older phone we had. But it does OK and cost a quarter of the last one! The day was very hazy and it looks like we finally have a touch of the ash cloud drifting in and we seem to have a brown haze in the sky.

Now this is just plain cool…

A gigantic 49 square meter canvas was unveiled at the Moscow Tuning Show on Sunday. It may become the largest work of aerography in Russia. Forty-nine painters unveiled their collective work at the Crocus Expo exhibition hall. They worked for three days, from 10 a.m to 6 p.m.

Each participant was given a piece of blank canvas, where they could paint anything they wanted. The main requirement set by the organizers was to stick to orderly graphic lines and use four main colors: blue, white, red, and yellow.

The works were assembled three days later to form a single picture of a double-headed eagle against the background of the Russian flag, which came as a surprise for the artists themselves.

Windows to Russia!

It has been a few days since I posted. We have been busy and had several things to accomplish this weekend. Svet and I got them all done and we are very pleased with the results…

One thing that we needed to do was replace the cellphone that got destroyed last week during the truck trying to run over me. That meant a trip to downtown Moscow on Sunday to get the best price. 🙂

I rely on a camera phone to bring you many of the pictures that are posted on Russian Photo Blog and Windows to Russia.

I had spent way too much money on the last phone and the accident broke it in half. I decided this time to look at Chinese Phones and try one of those variants out. Svet and I wandered to a huge market that has hundreds of cell phone shops and spent a few hours browsing the merchandise. After a while it became apparent that you had four ways to go when buying a cell phone in Russia. First way was to go to a big store and pay a fortune for the phone. Second was to buy name brand at the cell phone market and pay about the same or less as the big store. Third was to buy a used cell phone at same cell phone market. Or fourth was to shop what Svet calls the grey phones at same cell phone market. (Chinese knockoffs that run less than a quarter of the cost of the real thing…)

Yes there is a fifth way and that is to buy from some guys car on the side of the road, a hot stolen cell phone! Or even a sixth way take one from your friend or not friend and do not give it back. 🙂 (Nope not for me…)

So after eating at a wonderful little cafe and talking about what we were going to do. We decided on two little gems from the “grey models” that are fantastic phones. We got two phones with analog TV built in and the TV works great. The first phone is a Nokia TVC1000 and the second phone is a Nokia E71+. Svet needed a new phone and we had decided that since the price of two phones would be much less than half of one from the big stores we got her a phone also.

But Don’t let the Nokia part fool you. Nokia does not even know these phones exist according to their website. These phones are marked made in Finland and Finland has no idea that they make these phones. 🙂 I peeled off the made in Finland sticker inside the battery compartment and found made in China under that sticker.

So what did we get for a couple thousand rubles each?

We got two brand new Quad band(GSM850/900/1800/1900MHz) Dual SIM cards that work at the same time and support for Multi- Languages!

Features:
1. 3.1 inch screen
2. 500 group contacts
3. T-Flash Card support, 761K/256MB for free, support extend TF card to 8GB max
4. dual 2.0 Mega pixel camera for Picture & Video capability,
5. Stereo Loud speaker, 64 chord ring tone
6. MP3 & MP4 player
7. GPRS & WAP connectivity, MMS Transceiver
8. U disk support function to keep the information storage
9. Blue-tooth
10. FM radio
11. Calendar, To do list, Alarm, World Clock, Sport watch
12. Caller picture, caller Ring Tone, caller video
13. Telephone directories: 200groups of contacts, support incoming call with big head sticker, group ring an Messages &Multimedia messaging: SMS, support MMS; Can use downloaded MP3 as SMS rings
14. Schedule power on/off: Support to start/close under set time
15. Alarm clock: 5 groups, support alarm clock when machine’s closed, can set from Monday to Sunday
16. Games: 5 common games (we got three with the phone and installed 75 extra)
17. Mobile TV free… (it works great)
18. Language: English/French/Spanish/Portuguese/German/Indonesia/Vietnam/Turkish/Russian/Arabic/Persian
19. Gravity sensor (screen orientation) and a sliding lock (keypad).
20. It also has shake – which allows you to perform functions by shaking the phone…

The phones are considered identical in specs but they are not identical in real life. So after we set the phones up according to our personal likes and dislikes. We found that we had to trade phones!

Originally I had the phone on the picture on the left. (TVC1000) it was much lighter in weight and had an auto lock keyboard. The TV was also a much higher quality device. Svet’s phone (E71+) had a manual keypad lock and a better camera. So we switched and now are both happy. 🙂

Next post is the unhappy part of the weekend…

Windows to Russia!

Officially announced in Russia today that adoptions of Russian children by U.S. citizens have been suspended for an indefinite period of time. This is according to Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko, the resumption of adoptions will be possible only after a series of negotiations and signing by both parties a bilateral agreement that addresses the situation.

Russia has requested this agreement for years and this last incident with Artem Saveliev being sent back to Russia improperly was the straw that broke the camels back.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Education (data from 2007), the total number of adoptions of Russian children by foreign citizens, almost half are by the USA. The second and third largest number of adopted children is Spain and Italy in that order.

It was reported earlier that the foster mother Artem Saveliev abandoned the child because of the peculiarities of his mental state, as she did not warn the Russian authorities of his return. In connection with the incident Ministry of Education suspended the activities of the agency that organized the adoption. Now the suspension has been extended to the whole system interconnected with America…

Windows to Russia!