You just woke up with a heavy head. Carnival is gone and all that is left from the parties in the past 5 days is a hangover and hopefully some sweet memories of an easy going, drunken girl, that you met and took home last night. Now she is gone. Life is back to reality. You are fighting with the rest-alcohol back at work. Your neighbour, your boss, everybody feels the same. Nobody really wants to work and so it’s just a day of being present at work, but they’d have better made it a holiday as well. All that is left for today is surfing the Internet and you came to my site, because you googled and some link brought you here to my blog. I don’t even want to know the keyword you have used. Oh yes, I can see them. All these kinky keywords about Russian girls, Moscow prostitutes, street porn and so on.

Yes, carnival is over and the girls are not easy anymore. You’ve tried your charm with the receptionist this morning, but she just gave you the “idiot-look”. What happened to the girls? Why are they so different to how they have been the last days? They were singing, smiling and so friendly. It was so easy to walk up to them and talk. Hey how are you? Can I buy you a drink? And a little later you were kissing. Now, every approach attempt earns a “Fuck off” look. Yes, even trying to be nice gets you that look. It seems like Amor went on vacation. Indeed it has been a long weekend of parties world wide and maybe he deserves a break. OK, so you have heard about Russian girls and you came to my site to find out more about them. Rumour is that they are the most beautiful, easy to get and doing everything for you. And they are supposed to be super good in bed. Also, YOU can get one, even if you have eaten too many donuts and drunken too many beers in front of the telly. Wake up man. It ain’t that easy. There are plenty of cultural problems involved and why don’t you just look for a girl back at home. Its probably the more easy and better choice.

Anyways, here are some links to sites I have looked up. No, I am not personally interested in these services, I have a girlfriend, but I have just had a few business contacts to the people who run these sites (apart the last one down there) and since I know them I can tell you that you are not being ripped of here as on some Mail-Order-Bride site. So if you still don’t believe me about better looking at home, just give it a try here.

Inter-Friends.net
http://www.inter-friends.net

The site is run by an Austrian, who frequently travels to Russia on business. He realized that there are many women looking for a foreign boyfriend (or more) and many foreigners looking for a Russian women and so he created this site. It’s not a mail-order-bride site showing you photos of girls and ripping you off with the flower deal. There are actually real women uploading their profiles and a women runs the site for the Austrian I know.

Skyfriender
http://www.skyfriender.com
http://love.rambler.ru

The site is produced by a UK company, but full of Russian profiles, because they have sold their service successfully to Russian portal sites such as Mail.ru or Rambler. There are about 5 Million profiles, mostly Russian and the system shares the same database. Love.rambler.ru also shows advertisings of local prostitutes, but the site is only available in Russian, while Skyfriender is in English and German as well. The best of all, making a contact is free. Even so the system language is English you may need an online translator such as babelfish.altavista.com, in order to read the text inside of the profiles (entered by the people). I know some of the people who work for this company and some of my (Russian!) friends use this for their local dating in Moscow. In fact a friend told me about love.rambler.ru and his dating success with this site and the same night (only 1 hour later) I met the company people on a business networking event. Isn’t that a co-incidence?

My-Space
http://www.myspace.com

I was recently invited to this US community by a German friend and after I joined and put in my profile I was shown only Russian girls in my “Browse” page. That is, because the system offers the search for a “date” or “swingers”. There are thousands of profiles of Russian women (and men .. and of course many many other nationalities) and most of them speak English there since it’s a US based platform.

Russian Girl Friday (is not a dating site!)
http://www.russiangirlfriday.com
If you have found love over here and you need help with things being organized for you in Russia, or you are planning on coming over to meet in person with your new love, than check the site of Olesya. She runs the little company called “Russian Girl Friday”. NO NO!!!! It is not a weekend escort for you, but a service that is popular in the USA. Friday was the friend of Robinson Caruso on his lost island and it only means that you hire a friend to support you with local activities. Olesya can help you find an apartment and does all local business for you. This may come in extremely handy, if you don’t know Russian and need help finding a short term apartment for your visit, getting some Russian papers (Visa, Registration etc.) or with the shipping some stuff to your new love etc.

Devushki.nu
http://www.devushki.nu
For all of you who are looking for prostitutes and not a date, check this portal. It wouldn’t be Russia, if we wouldn’t have an online girl catalogue including everything you want from A… to X…. I heard there are many many more sites, but I don’t know of any others. For all of you feminists crying out loud now …. I am sorry, we have these “model” portals in Germany as well and even the famous German mainstream Spiegel Magazine wrote about it. So why wouldn’t I? In any case, the guys of the Moscow based EXILE magazine (that’s where I found this address) warn you! Don’t expect a model to show up. In reality these girls look different than on the site.

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It was about a week ago, when we have been at a dinner at my girlfriends dad’s house. Her aunt told us then, that we should get some salt, because there seems to be a shortage of salt coming soon. I couldn’t believe that. Anything else would seem possible to me, but salt? A few days later we are shopping at Achuan, a large local shopping centre. We hear people talking about the salt crisis again and I am looking into the carts of other people. Yes, its true. People have 3-5 packages of salt in their shopping carts. It seems they are really afraid.

Back at home I start to do a little internet research about this subject and find out, that it is indeed a rumour. Some people seem to believe that Ukraine wants to get back on Russia in the gas dispute. After all about 40% of Russia’s salt comes from Ukraine. The rest is supplied by Belarus, Kazakhstan and other countries. The “salt fever” seems to be triggered by bad memories of Soviet times, when shortages of products were regular and you had to cue up in long lines to get into stores. MosNews brings it to the point: “…But people watch TV, learn that their neighbors rush to shops for salt and follow their example.”

The Times in the UK reports the following from the Tula region:
“In the central Tula region, where the official made his throwaway remark, people mobbed stores and markets, pushing salt prices up from 3 roubles per kilo to 60 roubles (£1.20).
Sergei Kuznetsov, head of Tula’s department of business and markets, said that the panic buyers were mostly elderly. “It’s mostly because of the collective memory from the war years, when salt was one of the things that was most scarce and most in demand,” he told The Times. “We were inundated with calls from old people who hadn’t even been in the stores. They didn’t see for themselves that there was not enough salt. They just panicked.” He said he did not know which official had made the remarks that prompted the crisis.
The panic spread to the surrounding areas over the course of last week and by the weekend had reached Moscow — despite reassurances from officials that warehouses were well stocked. At a supermarket on Dorogomilovsky Street in central Moscow, only expensive imported sea salt was left on the shelves.“
The article also reports that there is a salt shortage now (because people buy too much). Shelf’s in stores are empty and only expensive sea water salt is left. Interfax reports that stores in the Belgorod, Oryol, Kursk, Tambov and Kaluga regions have put NO SALT signs in their windows. In the meantime Ukraine doubled its salt supply to serve the increased demand.
Aleksander Zaturanov, the commercial director for Artemsol, Ukraine’s biggest salt producer, said in THE TIMES that his company had increased its supplies to Russia by 50 per cent. “Our position is that we must give as much as people want,” hesaid. “But at the same time, we understand that people cannot eat more than they eat, so what will they do with the salt? Of course, it’s always good when you can sell more, but chaos is never welcome.”

Russia’s PRAVDA is also reporting about the shortage, but makes a mass psychosis originated by elderly pensioners responsible. Pravda also explains that Russia is now in a regular market economy and that shortages are near to impossible. If one shop runs out of a good, the competitor is offering it and so on. That is true and that’s why I didn’t believe that story from the get go. In any case I would have been more concerned if this would have been about gas, oil or water.

The Ukrainian Kiev Post writes about the shortage as well, but not without a little political poking and a slight smile in their faces: “The conditions for a deficit simply do not exist,” Dmitry Yanin, head of the international confederation of consumer societies, said in an interview with The Associated Press. But Yanin suggests that the root of the salt shortage lies in the public’s conviction that - despite the much touted political and economic stability under President Vladimir Putin, every one looks out for his own interests. “Its a bad signal - if people are so sensitive to rumors it means they don’t believe in the authorities’ ability to solve such problems,” he said. “Trust is minimal.”

Well, word on the streets is, that by Wednesday the latest all shelf’s, even in the regions are filled up with salt again. But the incident shows you, how fragile Russia’s market economy is and that there is still a great lack of consumer trust in this economy. May it be, because of the past or the present politics. I leave that judgement up to you.

Links

http://mosnews.com/news/2006/02/16/saltfever.shtml
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2050122,00.html
http://english.pravda.ru/russia/economics/76194-1/
http://www.kyivpost.com/top/23931/

One thing you have to admit, even though many new media start-ups are not as innovative as they should be, their names are very creative. Here is another player in the VOIP market. JaJah just secured funding from Sequoia, a Silicon Valley based VC who also used to invest into Google. Some of you may speculate, where the name comes from. Maybe it originates from some gunja smoking Austrians with dreads, listening to Roots Reggae on a transistor radio and shouting a “Jah, Rastafari!” to each other across the room. Some of their site graphics would suggest that. Well, now the weed smoking Austrians can do that via the Internet and over much longer distances for very little money.

There is nothing new about Voice over IP. I first tested telephony via the internet in 1998 and nowadays we have big telecom players like AT&T and the alike offering good VoIP rates for businesses and homes for years and guess what, you don’t even need a computer anymore. You just grab your phone and dial, like before. Another hyped start-up, Skype, seems to be a small player in this market controlled by the big global telecom giants, although it was just bought by eBay for app. $ 4 Billion and gets more and more users worldwide. So? What is different about JaJah? After all the company was only online for 2 weeks, before Sequoia invested.

JaJah has another (very unique! smile) approach. It only uses the Internet to market its services. You go to their site, fill in your own number and you’ll be called by their server, which allows you to make a call instantly. This concept is not new. Call-back cards and numbers have been around in the mid-90s and were quite popular. So again, what is new and unique about JaJah? As much as I look, I can’t seem to find it. I am sure after the media buzz about JaJah in the last days, their phones are running hot and especially local investors from Austria are killing each other over the opportunity to invest more. Well done. That could be a concept as well. You are a big known VC, invest some little money in a local start-up and create a media buzz about it. Others will invest and take over your risk. You may even be bought out fast, because some other investor or telecom company thinks it’s nice to have that company. Well, that is Sequoias business, not mine. The only thing making me really afraid is to see how some lazy journalists (e.g. at Spiegel.de) are just re-writing, without switching their brains on and spending some time on a little research, what they get served by a PR agency. But OK, lets hype again. It was fun the last time at the end of the 90’s until the bubble exploded and the crying was loud.

One thing is for sure, although JaJah may have been happy to secure the funding, they may have not been happy about the traffic that hit their sites yesterday. After the news were posted on various news sites together with their link, their site was down for quite a while and I assume their servers and their network were not prepared for a high amount of traffic load. Well, with a smile on my face I have to say, that is what you get if you rely on Microsoft. JaJah is using Microsoft on their backend and that suggests that their newly received cash will be burned fast by the technology department. Anyways, some may say I am a jealous writer, but let me tell you, that I have never had an Internet-Startup. We always said and still say, when being approached with the question if we want to be a partner in a start-up: “We are the guys who sell the shuffles, not the gold diggers.” And that since 1995, without even once getting infected with the “innovative start-up virus”. One may argue of course, that this is stupid as well. Why not take the money and enjoy life (or burn it), as so many others do it.

Links

JaJah
http://www.jajah.at/

Article on Spiegel
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/technologie/0,1518,402574,00.html

Sequoia Capital
http://www.sequoiacap.com/

Happy Army Day

Huh…. it is a grey and wet day today. Not even spraying Silver Iod, as they usually do it for holidays will help clear the skies today. What a sad Army Day. The interesting thing about this holidays is, that the people are off work today, tomorrow (Friday) and on Saturday, but most of them work on Sunday to make up for Friday, which usually is no holiday.

Here is what the Wikipedia is saying about the Red Army Day:

The Council of People’s Commissars set up the Red Army by decree on January 15, 1918 (Old Style) (January 28, 1918), basing it on the already-existing Red Guard. The official Red Army Day of February 23, 1918 marked the day of the first mass draft of the Red Army in Petrograd and Moscow, and of the first combat action against the occupying imperial German army. February 23 became an important national holiday in the Soviet Union, later celebrated as “Soviet Army Day”, and it continues as a day of celebration in present-day Russia as Defenders of the Motherland Day. Credit as the founder of the Red Army generally goes to Leon Trotsky, the People’s Commissar for War from 1918 to 1924.

More about the Red Army on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army

And here are some pictures from my army time. When I joined the service the Red Army was still our main enemy. Only a few months later that changed and now 16 years later I am living here in Moscow. It’s amazing how much times have changed.

Photo from NTV

This morning another roof collapsed under the heavy load of wet snow. What started a few years ago with the collapse of an Aqua Park in Moscow, seemed to have returned to Russia. In the meantime various roofs and buildings collapsed in Germany and Poland leaving many people dead under the rubble and heavy wet snow. Mayor Lushkov announced that the roof of a supermarket near the metro of Baumanskaya metro has collapsed at 5:45 AM this morning. By now, 14 people were counted dead. Most of them seemed to be supermarket employees who spend the night in the market. According to the administration of the supermarket there were approximately 40 people in the market when the roof collapsed under the heavy load of the wet snow. Some seem to be alive and sending SMS asking for help from under the rubble. Also search dogs have found various survivers stuck in the mass of snow, concrete and steel. 22 people were rescued and brought to nearby hospitals. Mayor Lushkov says that the city will do everything possible to help the victims, sadly enough we have experience with these things now, the mayor stated in an interview on the spot. While the mayor is cancelling his trip to the Olympics in Turin, the internet service Yandex reports on its news site that the building was built in 1975 and apparently was designed by Nodar Kancheli, the same architect, who also worked on the previously collapsed Aqua Park.

Sources:
Yandex.ru
http://news.yandex.ru/yandsearch?cl4url=www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews.shtml%3F/20060223102736.shtml&country=Russia
NTV.ru
http://news.ntv.ru/82580/
1TV.ru
http://www.1tv.ru/owa/win/ort6_main.main?p_news_title_id=86332&p_news_razdel_id=8