almost sorted

Now in my flat for almost three days, and things are falling into place. A few bits and pieces needed to be bought, but now I have a bedside light (important when an apartment is chilly and one does not want to climb out of bed to switch off the main light, and trail back in the dark!). Kitchen is also sorted, and I am sure the heating will go on soon. In Tbilisi 'central heating' seems to mean individual central heating rather than in the Russian and Lithuanian sense, where the municipality provides the heating. Alas, it is not individual enough for me to control it - the owner of the house controls it, I think. The apartment is north-facing (like mine in Vilnius) and with a big roof over the balcony does not get much sunshine. But I am sure in the spring and summer it will be just grand.

Internet now works in the apartment, too; TV selection is pretty poor, though I get TV5 Europe (a French channel) and the Russian channel 'Kultura' which is pretty good. Both should improve the relevant languages. In distant Tajikistan I get all the German channels...

Work is going very swimmingly, though today I got the first inkling of a wee bit of disagreement between different bodies about a certain aspect of the job. Thank goodness for that, otherwise there would be nothing left for us to do. Everyone is very nice and enthusiastic, and they are very cooperative which is great.

The Georgian language is difficult, though I am getting the hang of quite a bit of the alphabet now. The word for 'no' is 'ara', or for 'no no' it's 'arara', but when they say it the intonation does not sound like 'no!'. It's very weird. The word for 'yes' seems to be 'cho' ('ch' as in 'loch') or 'chay' ('ch' as in 'Charlie'; which, with a slight twist of pronounciation is Armenian for 'no'). 'Thank you', since you were asking, is 'gmadlobt'. Learning the alphabet is not hard when it comes to familiar words, like 'oktomberi' for 'october' but when it comes to words like 'gmadlobt' it's a totally different question.