This morning I was finally, after almost 4 months of twiddling my thumbs and checking my emails every 5 minutes, given a date of departure. I will be flying to King Khaled International Airport in Riyadh, KSA, on Monday 25th June. In honour of the occasion, I have eaten some pork. I've been told the name of the hotel I'll be in to start with, but no indication yet of how long I'll be there - if it'll just be a couple of days before they relocate me to AlJouf up i...

From a year of revolution to a year of … more revolution? Once again, I have been slack in getting down to this. I'm telling myself it's because my life is just so exciting; you can believe that too if you want. Having said that, my life is a little more exciting at the moment than it has been previously. In early December, I went home for 10 days - ostensibly to get a new visa. I didn't do anything particularly exciting, just enjoyed the comforts of home, ...

I notice this site hasn't caught on to the new time system in Russia - Putin decided not to change the clocks this year, so they wouldn't lose valuable trading hours with the Far East. But it's messing eveyrthing up for everyone because now we've lost hours with the West and that's causing bigger problems - so it's expected to go back to normal next year. For now I have to pretend I'm in Abu Dhabi to get the time zone right. It's midday on Friday, and normally a...

I'm typing this while waiting for the next episode of Downton Abbey to finish streaming, so forgive me being distracted - I keep checking the progress. Since the last entry here, I've just had a list of bullet points of things I wanted to include, so I'll go through them pretty much in order and it will be hopelessly structure-less and nonsensical, but you're all wonderfully forgiving people so I'll get away with it. The escalator at my home metro station (Timir...

A month in, and I have now had some vodka. Admittedly only one shot, by myself, to accompany my imitation caviar, but it has been done. Continuing along the alcoholic theme, as I write I am drinking a mug of medovukha, which is basically mead. I bought it at the honey fair last Sunday (more of which later on), and this is it's first outing. My friend Ti was meant to come over this evening to drink it with me, but her schedule was changed at the last minute and sh...