Just when I thought I was a pretty unlucky person (never won at the Casino, lottery, etc), my wife and I get upgraded to Business Class on our 9.5 hour flight from Warsaw, Poland.

Let me explain what that means: no more being crammed into a tiny seat with dozens of other people. No more staying up for the duration of the flight because the seat is uncomfortable. No more screaming kids or lines to the lavatory. No more counting minutes until the plane touches down in Chicago.

We just got yanked out of the boarding line and told “you’re upgraded!“. We really don’t know why – probably luck, but maybe my Lufthansa points, or the fact that 2 seats were needed and we were 2 passengers with the same last name.

So here’s how Business Class is different from Coach:

• Room, blessed room. There’s room for your elbows, head, feet, laptop, drink; you can sit upright or stretch out in a kind of a bed you created by manipulating the robotic chair. You an stand up without creating a traffic jam or stretch out without slamming your arms into your sleeping neighbour.
• Food and drink. This airline food I can actually eat and enjoy. Tasty meat dishes, cheese platters, desserts, champagne for wife and Johnny Red Label for me, and so on.
• Service. The flight attentants basically kiss your ass non-stop. More drinks? Coming right up. More of anything? Certainly and with pleasure … sir.
• Entertainment. There’s a personal DVR with a choice of 10 movies, along with music videos, music, and games. No more squinting at the crappy coach screen with sore neck trying to make out what the characters are saying.
• Electronics. The seat is a robotic marvel allowing the passenger to adjust EVERYTHING. There are two 110V outlets for your appliances (very nice for my laptop). The overhead light tells lucky Business Class passengers whether the bathroom is occupied because God forbid they have to wait for 2 minutes.

So I didn’t sleep. I played Godfather (a sweet game if you like GF movie and GTA3) on my laptop, watched a couple of movies, and drank whiskey.  Nine and a half hours went by like a minute.

Next time – coach, of course. Back to reality, ya’ll.

Update:  I booked a similar flight, only this time in Business Class.  It’s more than double what we paid for coach ($2,700 vs. $5,400).  However, this new booking is not during the travel season, so I’d expect another grand to be tacked on to the price.

I doubt I’d ever buy Business Class.  The vision of all the investment money the three extra grand could make in 30 years won’t let me fly Business Class =) 

I doubt I’d ever buy Business Class.  The vision of all the investment money the three extra grand could make in 30 years won’t let me fly Business Class =) 

My wife keeps saying that if somebody took care of the trash, roads, and air conditioning, Ukraine would not be a bad place to live. To that list I add greatly imporoved healthcare and a basic set of laws regulating entrepreneurship. I also keep saying that everything is more expensive in Ukraine than in the States, except for storebought food and most services.

Today I’ll elaborate on the grocery situation. We bought a few food items we normally buy in the States:

• Lunch meat
• Bread
• Milk
• Cereal
• Cheese
• Mineral water
• Alcohol
• Yogurt
• Frozen meals

We also buy lots of fruit and veg, but this time Grandma, and not the store, supplied some garden-fresh produce. By the way, lots of pimarily older people have their own gardens and plots of land designated for produce.

They cultivate their land very much like this weird two-legged creature seen here:

They sell surplus fruit and veg directly off the sidewalks near busy intersections, subway stations, or just wherever it is convenient for them. Because they have no money to invest into pesticides, you can bet your ass their produce is 100% el naturel (organic).

This is the beautiful spread we picked up at a local grocery store, which, by the way, looks exactly like your neighborhood American grocery store with only one difference – it’s very unorganized. Booze takes up 3 isles AND there’s a guy upfront selling more expensive varieties of liquor from a glass case. Some milk is refrigerated along the wall in coolers, but some is sitting on the shelves next to cat food and cookies.

In this small town grocery store we had a hell of a time finding standard items like yogurt and juice, which were also scattered around the store in odd places like fish stands, soda cases, and candy isles.

Here are the prices for the groceries in U.S. dollars:

• 1 lb. of cheese – $1.40
• 1 liter of 2.5% milk – $0.47
• 1 lb. of frozen pelmeni (meat ravioli) – $1.67
• Light flavored cottage cheese – $0.54
• Cereal – $2.28
• 0.8 lb. of fancy assorted chocolates (like Whitman’s Sampler) – $3.22
• 1 liter of currant/orange juice (with pulp) – $0.99 ea.
• 1 lb. of lunch meat (Doktorska Sausage) – $2.99
• 1 bottle (17 oz.) of Coca-Cola Light – $0.49
• Tequila Sauza Golden 24 oz. – $27.62
• Two big reusable bags – $0.08 ea.

Total grocery bill with 20% tax – $44.38. Considering we’d probably never buy fancy tequila or candies for ourselves and only bought them now as a present, our grocery bill would have been around $14. To save our dwindling cash reserves, I paid with my trusty 0% interest forever MasterCard.

Because I keep a very close look on the transactions online AND the store lookied like it was professionally rigged up to take credit and paycheck (debit) cards, I am almost certain my account number is not going to get jacked. However, I will de-authorize the card for foreign purchases as soon as we land in Chicago … just in case.

So what do you think? I thought the food was much cheaper. I didn’t even mention the very delicious Ukrainian bread for $0.30 per loaf, or 1.5 liters of Ukrainian mineral water for $0.40.

Cheese, candies, soft drinks, bread, milk, cereal, are all undoubtedly cheaper. Imported stuff is, of course, more expensive because it’s been on a boat … nothing you can do, really.

Now those who don’t believe in Ukraine you can have an omelette breakfast for 6 pepole for under ten bucks can just read this post.

So I’m running around this huge IT and literature bazaar in Kiev looking for Lionhead’s PC strategy game called “The Movies“. I’ve played it once and totally fell in love with it. It’s a great time killer – basically, it’s like a very specialized variety of The Sims.

I found it on DVD … for five bucks, both Russian and English versions. Immediately, as a half-American, half-Ukrainian dude, I’m hitting a brick-wall-like ethical dillemma. The starred-and-striped side of me is saying, “It’s illegal, it’s immoral, it’s pirated, it really costs $50, what about those programmers, you yourself is a programmer, what if your creations got ripped off“, etc.

While the American side of me is mumbling about the immediate need to create transparent international copyright laws to protect everyone, the Ukrainian side of me is screaming, “Holy crap! Get it – get it – get it – get it … Now!“.

So I got it.

It works without a hitch on my family’s machine, has an official hologram and customs signatures (imported from Russia), and can be exchanged for any other CD or DVD for a mere $2. “Exchanged” as in “come home, NERO, go back, pay two bucks, get the next DVD … lather, rinse, repeat“.

The only problem is that it would not run on my laptop. Not like “the game is too graphically demanding for my laptop“, but like “the laptop does not recognize the DVD inside the DVD-ROM“.

Turns out, the DVD was made for Region 5 (Eastern Europe), while my DVD-ROM is made to play only Region 1 stuff (North America). I tried software fixes – nothing. I tried to look for new firmware for the DVD-ROM. There is no firmware yet.

Nevertheless, it got me thinking about other cool things Ukrainians can get access to simply because they live in Ukraine.

Turns out, they can get all kinds of cool things. I mean movies, shows, games, books, music … all free, all high quality, all free … did I say they were all free?

How? Via HTTP … uhm … websites. They have these websites with an IP geolocation lock thingy – they are accessible only from Eastern Europe. Punch in the site URL from your home in Wichita, and you get nothing. Punch it in from Donetsk or Kiev, and enjoy gigs of freshest videos, movies, games, games for cellphones, shows for cellphones, etc …

Ethics aside … it’s awesome. It’s like the early days of Napster plus BitTorrent (SuprNova) plus Limewire … times ten.

I feel that it’s wrong to have access to something of that magnitude. However, we must also consider that the people of a sovereign nation have a right to create their own laws, including copyright laws. I feel it is a responsibility of a publisher to lobby local governments (if they choose to do so) to gain legal protection. Just because I spent time and money creating a program, a movie, or a song, and decide to sell it in China does not mean that the Communist Party of the People’s Republic of China is now all of a sudden going to defend my rights as am author.

Hey, Microsoft did it … Now if you’re caught with a counterfeit copy of Windoze in Kiev, it’s 3 to 5 with confiscation of assets … well, if they decide to make an example out of you.

Will it change in the future? As the world is getting smaller, undoubtedly. Until then … oh, I gotta go. I need to tell my friend with a fat cable pipe to dl the last season of the Sopranos.

My Dad is telling me I could witness another revolution similar to the Orange Revolution 18 months ago.

In a nutshell…

Ukrainians were fed up with falsified Presidential elections, widespread corruption, and low standards of living. Inspired by Yulia Tymoshenko, a charismatic parliamentary (seen here being hot) …

… everyone hit the streets and stood their ground for several weeks in opposition of the corrupt government. The people’s voice was heard and they got their new government. Turns out, though, it’s as bad as the old one … The good thing was that they were oriented West towards European integration, NATO, etc.

Recently, one of the more prominent Ukrainian political figures Olexander Moroz sneakily agreed to side with a Eastern-oriented (Russia) party and bargained the seat of the head of the Parliament for himself. Another crisis is expected, and by crisis I mean revolution!

So what does this all really mean? Well, the US and Europe already decided to not support anything this new pro-Russian Parliament will do. Foreign investors are skiddish and Ukrainian people are buying up dollars, Euros, and sugar (go figure).

Here’s a pic displaying the possible beginnings of the new revolution:

And a bunch of unrelated pics.

A crappy car …

A crappy locking mechanism on a Ukrainian ferris wheel …

A little street called provulok I grew up on …

A hole in the fence of the kindergarten I went to, still there after 23 years!

A shameless neighbour lady wearing a bikini even though she’s 85 … Kind of sick, really …

Ukrainian vandalism at its best. I understand spray painting, but this? Did they shoot that pavilion with a mortar?

The crappy condition of the roads …

This is a Ukrainian small business at its most mundaine. In this picture you see a man sell toilet paper off the top of his crappy 1961 Chaika.

And finally, a pic of a pretty Ukrainian sunset on the Dnieper river …

Peace out, homies.

Sorry I haven’t been answering your very provocative and intelligent comments. I had to go to Cherkassy to see my Grandma. With my Internet connection, I can barely squeeze in a pictureless post …

Ukrainians in general seem to be very concerned with the way they appear, be it clothes, cars, or gadgets. With prices for non-perishable goods considerably higher than in the U.S. and paychecks hovering around $300-350 a month, it’s hard to be a slick dandy with a new inomarka (an imported car), a Sony-Ericsson mobile phone, and pointy-toed leather shoes (very fashionable right now).

So why am I saying that looks are everything to Ukrainians?

• Yesterday I ran into a childhood friend I haven’t see in 7 years. He was driving a brand new Daewoo Lanos, wearing a silky shirt unbuttoned down to the middle (an 80′s getup, anyone?), talking on the newest model of Sony cellphone – all while rocking a pair of the longest-, pointiest-nosed leather shoes I’ve ever seen. I, on the other hand, was wearing my three-dollar Wal-Mart slippers, a t-shirt I bought at my University blowout sale for $2.99, a pair of cutoff jeans, and talking on my $30 second-hand Motorola. I bought mine with cash. He’s up to his eyeballs in shaky Ukrainian debt.
• My cousin was eating nothing but bread and salo (raw pig fat) for four months. After inviting scurvy into his body for 4 months, he bought himself … a brand new cellphone. You know, the one with videos, radio, mp3, cameras, color screen, and … oh, yeah … the ability to MAKE A TELEPHONE CALL.
• My other friend bought a studio apartment completely on credit for $55,000 at a whopping 15%. Wow.

The list goes on and on. You know what else?

No one seems to understand that buying superficial consumeristic stuff in a country where real estate appreciates at a staggering rate of 50% a year is stupid! There are 10 acre chunks of land available to anyone with nine hundred bucks … and the land’s already been marked for residential development! Hm-m-m-m … a cellphone and some stupid-looking shoes or some prime real estate …

Dammit, I wish I had another month to finalize some paperwork …