In Kyiv (Kiev, Ukrainian spelling) for a couple of weeks. Have a nice flat this time (most times really), very near the town centre. Nearish the supermarket (about 1 km) and yet far enough to get exercise going there and back, especially when weighed down with heavy shopping. The Bessarabian market (old style) is next to it, and very nice, too. Beautiful displays of fruit and vegetables, lots of caviar for the foreigners and so on. Today prices seemed to be reasonably normal, given also the quality of the food. Maybe marginally higher than in Vilnius, but I have seen the quality of tomatoes in Vilnius recently.

In the flat the TV has the same programmes as in Lithuania - maybe a few fewer, but seeing I am going to Rwanda next month, it won't do me any harm to watch arte (www.arte-tv.de) in French instead of in German.

Met my friend Helene yesterday which was nice; earlier in the year we bumped into each other in the concert hall here (we know each other from Lithuania). All good fun. Helene is working on energy, I am on social stuff.

News today is that in the UK 7 junior ministers have resigned after signing a letter asking Blair to resign. He is not, so far, and spluttering about this letter saying that it is disloyal and discourteous. Mr Blair, you always talk about listening - we have always known that you don't listen (see Iraq), and it seems you will never learn to listen either. (Wasting my breath here).

This week my office is very close to the Yakitoria in Kiev (www.yakitoria.com.ua). It's a chain of Japanese restaurants which exists both in Moscow and in Kiev. The Yakitoria introduced me to sushi and I have never looked back. I nearly always eat the same meals, a mixture of different types of sushi and nigri and all those things. So far in 3 days I have had four portions of sushi, including one humungous one on my first day. I introduced my co-worker to the yakitoria, and she loves it, too. One of the soups there has a total of 11 calories. Unfortunately next week I have to work in another location, but I'll probably live. There is another type of sushi restaurant not far from my flat; two different ones in fact. Once I tried sushi from the supermarket in Vilnius, and it was fairly disgusting. I don't like to make it with raw fish at home, but smoked fish is fine, as well as shrimps and all that sort of thing.

Yesterday I tried to email a posting to the blog, but it does not seem to have arrived. Since I have also been experimenting with email programmes on my scandisk cruzer (a memory stick with 2 GB of memory, and an ability to run its own programmes) and failed on that one, it's lost. The world will probably continue to turn.