Take a refugee to lunch day...

Today, the look of the morning Metro crowd of workers, I'd call it un- enthusiastically resolute, but there was some diversity, it's not that old style monolithic mood, some people looked happy, whimsical, other moods.
Ukraine , a place where people are constantly struggling for change, and I don't mean that type of change where the Democrats take the house and the Republicans the Senate (we are a little boring )
: just at the grocery store, "do you have 2 grivnyas and 20 kopecks ? "
Some times they don't even care, the value of your 80 kopecks is worth less than what it's worth for them to hang onto their change...They may give you a bad look : this guy doesn't have 20 kopecks in his pockets(( it is like 1 penny. Most of the time they'll dig it out of their purse, rather than eat it, that penny.

I guess that George Soros was in town this week, wonder how much money he made shorting the Russian ruble ? He and President Poroshenko will catch up at Davos . I speed read his (Soros )  biography recently, his time as a young guy in Hungary in the second world war, his dad figuring out how to save their family. Fascinating stuff : I won't be a spoiler and throw out the strong details of the narrative, especially regarding the Russians. He seems to have extended the olive branch at every step of the way. He is a little like me, an ex-professional dish washer, we are so serious / better not mess around too much with us , we will go quiet .

The elites have returned to Kiev, back from the Maldives, the Swiss Alps, the Bahamas, Sri Lanka : they like to travel, and who wouldn't mind getting away from the icy minus 13 degree winds of last week? I can't really say I ever spend too much time with elites from my world, they are around my circles. And really it depends what you call an elite, some times middle class school teacher's kids pop into the elite, via some lucky combination of being in the right place and time. Here it is largely generational aspects of elites, people whose parents and grand parents were well positioned in the Party at the time of Independence. I was at the Hyatt yesterday for a drink, and there is a clique of big people around, some with with American handlers. WHo the heck these people are, I can't figure it, but big shots, no doubt, glad I don't have their problems.

  Folks I like to chill with don't care too much about your social and economic status, they care about who you are and what you are doing with your life. And there are some here as free and alive in their thinking as the people clustered into the San Francisco Bay Area. In Kiev, they are rather insular, terribly cautious. Don't ask how they made all this money, it's a capitalist system now. I did meet with an Angel  (investor ) today on terribly short notice. He didn't need formality or pre -approved  certifications. He got what I was saying. Nice of him to spare 30 minute for me. I told him that  I thought I'd be a waste of his time.

 I noticed a nice looking lady in an immaculate Mercedes Convertible this afternoon: hard to miss her as she was totally blocking the pedestrian crosswalk at a major intersection for the entire cycle of my green man light. I mean, we have all done something like that. I made eye contact, as I couldn't decide to go around her by the front side or go behind her, either track forced me way off course. I wasn't really worried she'd go forward, but decided there was less chance she'd throw it into reverse. I would never in my life judge a lady via a sidelong glance : just shoot me, I'd rather be dead than make a judgement in such passing circumstance, yet the gal was playing on the radio or her car player, this recent classic " ROyals " by Lorde

[Verse 1]
I've never seen a diamond in the flesh
I cut my teeth on wedding rings in the movies
And I'm not proud of my address,
In a torn-up town, no postcode envy

But every song's like gold teeth, grey goose, trippin' in the bathroom
Blood stains, ball gowns, trashin' the hotel room,
We don't care, we're driving Cadillacs in our dreams.
But everybody's like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece.
Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash.
We don't care, we aren't caught up in your love affair.

And we'll never be royals (royals).
It don't run in our blood,
That kind of luxe just ain't for us.
We crave a different kind of buzz.
Let me be your ruler (ruler),
You can call me queen Bee
And baby I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule.
Let me live that fantasy.

[Verse 2]
My friends and I—we've cracked the code.
We count our dollars on the train to the party.
And everyone who knows us knows that we're fine with this,
We didn't come from money.

But every song's like gold teeth, grey goose, trippin' in the bathroom.
Blood stains, ball gowns, trashin' the hotel room,
We don't care, we're driving Cadillacs in our dreams.
But everybody's like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece.
Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash
We don't care, we aren't caught up in your love affair

And we'll never be royals (royals).
It don't run in our blood
That kind of luxe just ain't for us.
We crave a different kind of buzz.
Let me be your ruler (ruler),
You can call me queen Bee
And baby I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule.
Let me live that fantasy.

Ooh ooh oh
We're bigger than we ever dreamed,
And I'm in love with being queen.
Ooh ooh oh
Life is great without a care
We aren't caught up in your love affair.

And we'll never be royals (royals).
It don't run in our blood
That kind of luxe just ain't for us.
We crave a different kind of buzz
Let me be your ruler (ruler),
You can call me queen Bee
And baby I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule.
Let me live that fantasy.

*************

it is actually a cool song, I tend to forget my impressions of it, could be an all time classic, maybe not, a bit early to decide.

Not that the lady didn't know how to drive her car : she knew/ I don't envy anyone being in an awkward place in an expensive car. I found a place in Kiev, after this encounter :Tarantino/ super luxe and maybe the food is OK ? I decided to only order a beer, it's a place to impress your date, not sit alone and chow down.
I didn't really jell with the Tarantino imagery they chose to print and display, not all of it : some of it. Does he get a cut of it ?

I see all kinds of parking and moving vehicle violations going down on the streets in Kiev, this would be a 300$ ticket, that would be 500/600$ in most areas of California. 80/85 miles per hour speeding can run 800 $ just on the freeway depending on what zone of the road. I see a lot of bad accidents around town from speeders chasing lights and just not looking at what they are doing, holding the phone in their ear while they drive. There is no "sacred contract" regarding the sidewalks, cars have more rights it seems than people. they can park in ways that make navigating the sidewalks really tough.
I noticed a guy bravely stopped astride his mountain bike at a busy traffic light the other day, in the slushy snow piled in the median. It looked impressive, and I regretted not being able to snap a photo. I know a bicycle safety activist in Rivne, they know it's going to take some work and time. He could have been on the cover of Russian "Men's Journal"

They say it's too many police per capita in Ukraine, and maybe that's so, but I sometimes don't see a whole lot around. If they had the ability to enforce expensive fines, without pocketing it, like requiring every driver to have a credit card and doing it as a cash free transaction, something like that. Police could get better salaries and they could maintain the same general numbers .  Street sweeping is such a money maker in San Francisco, nearly everyone gets nailed eventually with those 70$ tickets : when they reduced the number of street sweeping days (thinking to save money,) the budget revenues went down as they were writing a lot less tickets. And of course, I get a Pavlovian response of fear and anxiety every time I hear a street sweeping machine, even when I don't have a car parked on the road.
   With Kiev asking for such huge bailout packages, they need to think of new ways to do stuff. I'd hate it to be at a cocktail party that somebody would angrily look me in the eye and say "oh, you are that guy who thought up these measures, do you have any idea how much I have paid in tickets this year ?" But such things are indeed a way to tax the rich who flaunt the rules of good driving.
I was not aware until recently that in San Francisco in the bus/ taxi lanes, they just have a camera set up and mail people their tickets. I was on a bus and the driver was telling me about it, around Christmas time, and I was thinking that like it must have been the camera was making well over 2,000.00$ / 3,000 $ an hour! For sure, the problem with such systems is that they don't discriminate between rich and poor. People from the country side cruising through in their cars would get these really expensive, difficult to pay tickets.
   No one likes the Politicians anyway, so why should they care if they hike the fees on speeding and bad driving ? Maybe people would start complaining that the old style corruption was cheaper ?
"Things were so much better with widespread corruption, at least the official fees were way cheaper !"