Drive By Shooting

Having a driver isn’t exactly the same thing as having your own car in the driveway and hopping in it every time you get the urge for a coffee or a donut. Having a driver means you have to call to have him come get you to take you places, and in my case, since I’m sharing Ali with “Mr. John”……”Miss Sally” often loses out to meetings, refilling ink cartridges, and company banking….really really important things like that. Such was the case this week when all I wanted to do was go out and buy a few more countries for the fridge….my own little game of Risk so to speak. (I’m happy to report that Hungarian bacon and American pancake syrup are now present and accounted for.) This week trying to get to the grocery store was like having one car in the family and trying to get the keys back from your husband and kids.

Much of the blame has to go to traffic. It’s the beginning of Novruz, the biggest holiday of the year in Azerbaijan. It lasts for eight days…as in the bank closed today and won’t open again until March 29^th! People who actually work for a living will appreciate that…people like me who don’t do all that much in the run of a day are a little freaked out. I have been told the restaurants will be open. Thank God! But a side effect of no one having to be at work has been that the normally insanely congested traffic in Baku deteriorated into the same situation I remember when the BIG blackout hit Toronto a few years back…..since everybody has someplace to go other than the office.

It took three days to finally get it done but luckily the traffic situation eased quite a bit and we were able to make it out for food. Ali was on the hunt for yellow printer ink for the office but had no luck since all the cartridge masters had taken the day off. If you build, fix, repair, or replace anything in Baku, you are “the master.” I am becoming the master of this….I call it Drive By Shooting….since I have to take most of my pictures from the front seat of the Prado.

There are an incredible number of statues around the city....poets, politicians and the like.

I'm getting a thing for the balconies, too.

This is a corner of the Academy of Sciences.

These were when I was parked outside The Corner Bar during the ink hunt.

Male members of a wedding party taking sweets to the bride's house.

Hope they aren't in a hurry to get there.

These guys are probably not in a rush to get where they're going.

Inescapable......Cola Wars....everywhere you go in this world.

I met three masters this past week. The cable master came, climbed up this ladder that he accessed from the master bedroom window, and hooked up our cable TV. Digital! Seventy channels!

I now have some English channels….four of which are fashion channels. (I have yet to see anyone in a hoodie at Ramstore.) There’s CNN and ESPN and lots of sports and some American shows, too. Last night I watched the Simpsons ….of all things. There are a couple of channels that carry network shows like ER, Gray’s, Ugly Betty, and Day's of Our Lives. I even saw Tyra Banks interview Kim Kardashian.….I’m not sure if they are current or behind but if a person wants current, a trip downtown to the Hong Kong store will keep you up to date on everything…..for a very few bucks. Why, one could even get a lovely Prada bag to go with them, all at the same time........and for only a few dollars more.

Of course, if you ever see me carrying a Prada bag you'll know it's a real one, right?

My other master encounters involved the washing machine, which Lena told me wasn’t working. I checked it out and sure enough it wasn’t advancing from the wash cycle to the rinse cycle on its own. I called Ali, who called the landlord, who called the master. Master shows up only two hours late which is really prompt service around here and begins to give me washing machine lessons in Russian. I immediately understood when he told me there was nothing wrong with the washer having seen the same look on John’s face countless times in the past. Then I nodded my way through a hand signal lesson on the use of a front loading washer. Master left….but not before finding the English page of the appliance manual and making sure that I earmarked it. HA! I took it upstairs and tossed it into the cupboard with the rest of the appliance manuals and then went downstairs to run a load of laundry. Later that afternoon, I called Ali who called the landlord, who in turn, called the master.

I guess one master wasn’t enough because two masters showed up the second time. Obviously, I had a huge problem…..but since John was home and Ali was there to interpret, I disappeared upstairs to the quiet of my room to contemplate the fall from domestic goddess in my old country to failing basic laundry skills in my new one. I sat on the bed and contemplated getting a taxi license. I wasn’t there long when I heard John calling me back downstairs to face both masters (and a fully functioning washer) who both asked me for the English instructions, and who both used sign language and a lot of dial pointing to show me what I was doing wrong. Ali wasn’t a huge help since I doubt he does a lot of laundry and I conceded that I was just going to have to read the manual before I inflicted a third service call on the landlord. So, how was I supposed to know that the cycle advance wasn’t automatic on programs four through seven in the permanent press mode? Kind of putting a fine point on things if you ask me. And who uses automatic laundry gear in Baku anyway. This is one of the more common sites around the city, though not all are as color coordinated as this.