Moving abroad.... or to the country?

Hi all!

I have recently been thinking.... Life in Moldova (and Chisinau in particular), isn't exactly nice, as you probably know. The last year has been particularly bad because the stupid communist government (led by the stupid communist president) is making everything it can to preclude the democrat mayor from making his job (http://www.protv.md has many news reports on this struggle, but only in Romanian). Besides, Chisinau is becoming an increasingly uncomfortable place to live and, very importantly, real estate has become prohibitively expensive, even for the wealthier people.

I live in a "khrushchevka" - one of many apartment blocks built in the 1960s, featuring tiny rooms, lack of elevators, old infrastructure, and many other inconveniences (like two demented old women in neighbouring apartments). Basically, these are ill-fitted for comfortable life or work (and I work from home). To give you numbers, my apartment has 56 square metres and has 3 rooms, plus a tiny kitchen, a tiny bathroom and a tiny closet.

I would like to move to a new apartment, in one of the many new apartment blocks being built these years - with areas of over 100 square metres, independent heating, relatively free interior design (meaning that I can decide where the rooms, kitchen and bathroom will be), underground parking etc. However, in recent years, the price of these new apartments has shot through the roof, going from $250 per square metre to over €1,000! The median price now is probably around €400-500, meaning that to buy an apartment I will need to find at least €40,000 (and experts forecast continuous rise in prices of around 20-30% per year for years to come). And this is the price for the so called "white option", i.e. with bare white walls and no interior finish of any kind. Another €10,000 or so will need to be spent on finishing it (ceiling, walls, floors) and roughly another €10,000 to install all the equipment (including bathroom accessories) and furniture. Probably even more. Underground parking is also a paid commodity, costing probably around €5,000 or more.

You'll probably say: hey, get a mortgage! ...right... a mortgage.... In Moldova, mortgages are relatively new, and thus hardly accessible by western standards. The term is 15 years at most, as far as I know, and interest is around 15% in euros (!). Moreover, when applying for a mortgage, one must provide 30% of the purchase price from one's own wallet. Thus, monthly mortgage payments will be around €500 if applying now, and probably much higher in the coming years. In addition, banks and other lenders look at your source of income, and I don't have a guaranteed income. So simply put, I cannot buy a new apartment.

Other problems in Chisinau are the bad quality or air (very polluted), a lot of cars and lack of parking (not a single multilevel parking, so drivers park their cars everywhere - on sidewalks, lawns, playgrounds etc.), noise pollution (traffic, music, drunks, mobile phones etc.), high prices and rising inflation, horrible traffic, crazy killer drivers driving government vehicles (such as ministers, presidential staff, generals, colonels etc.), and even a lot of mentally sick people who need institutional care but are not getting it (like two of my neighbours).

Generally, such poor quality of life makes one wonder about moving. Everyone asks me why I haven't considered emigrating. I have, but I kind of like it here (except all the stuff I have listed above). Moldova is my home, our parents live here, and I don't want to start from scratch in a foreign country (especially with a newborn child).

A few days ago I thought that it would be wonderful to live outside Chisinau - no noise, cleaner air, no stupid neighbours (assuming living in a standalone house, not an apartment) etc. While this is the norm in the West (living in a suburb and working in the city), it is very uncommon here. Mainly because only Chisinau and a few other towns are more or less developed - other places are basically rural, with poor or no infrastructure, toilets in outhouses and other inconveniences - even in the suburbs.

My parents were born in a village about 50km from Chisinau - Ciuciuleni (pronounced Choo-choo-len'). I love going there for the clean air, quietness and just feeling part of this country. My work requires only a live broadband internet connection and thus, in theory, I could live almost anywhere where there is a phone line. There is also a more or less big house built by my father in Ciuciuleni (not too big, but larger than my apartment). But it lacks modern improvements, like good windows, decent sewer, etc. The village also has poor road access and during icy or rainy weather commuting is difficult. Most importantly, Sasha, my wife, will need to
get a job one day, once our daughter gets a little older, and going to work to Chisinau and back five times a week is a big problem (especially considering the poor road and the fact that Sasha is not going to drive herself). There are also issues like no chance to just get out of the house and go to a store or cinema (no such places there), or visit friends or parents who live in Chisinau.

All these obstacles make me look at this issue more as a theoretical concept rather than a real goal. However, this sounds too damn good to just ignore: with the money saved on not purchasing any new property in Chisinau, I probably could renovate the whole house, install good sewage, buy a good new car, install a wind power generator and probably have cash left for other purposes. But the problem of living far from "civilization" will remain - the village is just "too rural" and lacks such simple things as a decent grocery store or paved roads. At least they are bringing gas in there (this year), so gas heating can be installed.

Saving money in Moldova...

...by purchasing in the USA. Yes, that's right, it can be cheaper to buy stuff from the USA on the other end of the world and have it sent to Moldova than to buy similar things here. Here's how it's possible, if you're interested.

Those of you who have read my website know that things like electronics, quality clothes etc. are awfully expensive in Moldova, despite the low income of the population. This year I decided to build a new computer, but I wanted all the key components (CPU, hard drive, motherboard, memory, video card) to be brought from the USA by my friends, who visit Moldova once or twice a year. So I used the online stores www.NewEgg.com, www.mwave.com and www.ZipZoomFly.com to pick the components I could afford (I went for the cheapest parts in modern product lines). Unfortunately, these stores do not accept Moldovan bank cards, so I had my friend order the parts for me. When he got all the parts, he sent them to me via an international parcel service (he used Meest, which specializes in deliveries to the CIS). The shipping cost an additional $50 and took 6 weeks to arrive (instead of promised 2-3 weeks). But eventually I got my stuff. I estimate that I saved between $100-$200 on my $450 purchase (including shipping). Of course, we had to remove all original packaging from the hardware and describe it as "old computer junk" to save hassle with Moldovan customs (there's a EUR200 limit on how much worth of stuff you can bring into Moldova at once, except for personal effects). Even if I had to pay the 20% VAT on this stuff, I would have saved money. Moreover, at the time, these components were hardly available in Moldova (too new for our little country). Oh, and I also got the parcel delivered to my home, unlike usual parcels which you have to go pick up yourself.

For my new computer I wanted a new operating system - Windows Vista. In Moldova you have two options - pay a fortune for a license or download a cracked version from a local bittorrent network. For some reason, Windows is more expensive in Moldova than in the USA and I can't understand why, because (1) Microsoft must be interested in stimulating people into buying licensed software here more than anywhere else; and (2) it can't cost much to have it shipped to Moldova (this is software, for crying out loud! it's an INTANGIBLE good!!!). I really wanted to have a licensed product, but I didn't want to pay too much ($300 is too much I think). So again I had my friend order it online and simply send me the activation key by email, while I downloaded the installation DVD image from the local bittorrent network. And the software cost me $175 (Home Premium, retail version), saving me around $100.

Another USA purchase was from Victoria's Secret. Their semi-annual sales are very cheap for Moldova, and we ordered four blouses for Sasha to be delivered directly to Moldova (this cost only $5 or $10 more than having it delivered to our friend's address in Illinois). So we took our chances (Moldovan postal service has historically been highly unreliable). We ordered in late August, and the stuff shipped in early September. We were notified that the delivery would take place before September 21. When it didn't arrive by September 23, I contacted the customer service and was given a new date - October 2. So I waited until October 4 and notified them again. They replied saying that they would send the stuff again, but because two of the four items were no longer available, they would issue the refund for the unavailable items. The same day I got a notification to pick up an international parcel. So I sent a message to the customer service to cancel the replacement order and to not issue the refund, to which I was told that it was too late and that I should have called them by phone. As a note, it took them two weeks to ship the original order. So I picked up their first package, and a few days ago I picked up the second one. Plus I was issued a refund, which is one-third of the whole transaction ($30 out of $90). Now Sasha has two extra blouses which she does not need and plans to sell. Here such quality is pretty expensive, I estimate that one blouse would cost around MDL 500-600 ($45-50) in shops, and it should be easy to sell them for $20-30 apiece. So if you do the math, the whole cost may approach zero. This is a very weird result of VS's too optimistic estimates, slow shipping combined with ultrafast shipping and the slow road to Moldova for international parcels. God moves in mysterious ways! But I'm not complaining ;)

I'm back...

Hi. I haven't updated this blog since May. A lot of things have happened since then, the most important being the birth of my daughter Iulia. She was born on September 7, so Sasha and I are enjoying all the treats of being parents for the first time. The summer was quite busy with work so that's the main reason I didn't add anything new here then. Maybe the main reason is laziness. You be the judges of that.

Other major events during this period are:
- I passed the CFA Level 2 exam, so now I am Level 3 candidate;
- I started a new website for my professional activity (i.e. equity research outsourcing). So far, it has not generated new revenues, but there are some new contacts thanks to it and I am hoping to monetize them eventually.

By the way, I managed to vote when coming back from my CFA exam (see previous post).

No citizen's obligation this year

You probably know that in the first days of June I'll be going to Kiev to take my CFA exam. Quite unfortunately, the same weekend Chisinau will have its mayor elections and I won't be able to make it because I'll spend the day in a train.

The reason I am disappointed has a two-year history. In July 2005, Chisinau was electing its Mayor, but failed due to low voters' turn up. At that stage the authorities decided to have a second try, but most candidates (except the Communists - the ruling party) insisted on postponing the elections until a better time, when most people have returned from their vacations (July just happens to be the most "vacationed" month, along with August). Thus, they took their candidacies off. A couple weeks later, the new elections obviously failed again due to only two candidates and still few people in the country.

So, the next try was in Autumn, when the vacation season was over. Still, the elections were invalidated by low presence rate of voters. I think most of them got tired of going to elections with no results, so there was no mayor elected, and a Communist guy was put in charge as the "Interim Mayor" for the next two years to let things cool off.

And this year we should see the new developments of this stupid situation, and I will be away and won't be able to vote.

Don't waste money on games and music in Moldova

Last week I got extremely frustrated by the music and software retail industry in Moldova. Specifically, I was going after buying two music CDs: Mika and Muse (doesn't it sound like 'Mickey Mouse'? :D ), and a computer game Half-Life 2, but failed in both.

There's a music store next to my house, they sell movies, music and games. First of all, there's no logic in how they arranged music CDs on their shelves - you can find Rasmus in two distinct locations, and the staff explain this by the fact that one CD costs 60 MDL ($5), while others costs 110 MDL ($9) and thus are positioned in different locations. Other than that, they claim their CDs are arranged alphabetically under general genre tags. But when under the "pop/rock" tab (isn't it too broad?) I found George Benson and told them that it's hardly pop/rock, they told me that that particular location was Jazz. That was insulting my intelligence but I didn't pay attention to it. Oh, and the most frustrating thing, neither Mika nor Muse (i.e. their latest albums) have made it into the store and I doubt they will get sold in Moldova ever. The same happened when I was looking for Franz Ferdinand CDs - they just don't get sold in Moldova. So what choice have I got? That's right - download some music from the local bittorrent network. On the other hand, we bought a Mozart CD for just 60 MDL ($5), which is cheaper than most music CDs that cost around 100 MDL ($8) these days. And another thing: last summer, music CDs cost 80 MDL, in winter they cost 95 MDL, and now they cost 110 MDL. This can't be good.

Now the other issue - the Half-Life 2 game. They had a game DVD (which cost me 100 MDL = $8) claiming it was Half-Life 2 "Episode 1" expansion. So I bought it. As it turned out, this was some poorly done pirate mod with boring gameplay that lasted no more than 1.5 hours in total. So, I'll never buy a game in Moldova again, because even those carrying the official hologram are pirated (the same happened when I bought my Civilization 4 - it was a DVD disk image packed onto two CDs and I had to install the disk image onto my hard drive and use disk image masking tools to fool the game into thinking it was a legitimate DVD). And buying a game for $20-40 from abroad is far too expensive for Moldova :'( Bittorrent rules! (sadly)

So what conclusions can we make from all this? The Western software and media producers have got to respect our little nation with its small disposable income and healthy appetite for entertainment. I mean they must find a way to respect us by selling their stuff directly in Moldova at Moldovan prices (currently, most software and music comes from Ukraine and Russia and there's no guarantee it's legal). Until then, pirated software, music and movies will be thriving in Moldova.

Remembering the dead

Last weekend Sasha and I went with my parents to their village (where they were born). It was the next weekend after the Easter, which here is celebrated as "Pastele Blajinilor" (i.e. "The Easter of the Blessed", or "Parents' Day" in Russian). On this day (actually someone does it on Sunday, others - on Monday), people go to cemeteries where their parents and grandparents are buried, and perform a few rituals, in addition to simply remembering them.

One of the rituals is to put a towel on the grave, on top of which to put a plate/bowl with Easter eggs , candy, Easter cake, a glass/cup and a candle in it). Usually there are more than one grave together (when relatives are buried together), so each grave would have such a dressing. People would serve each other wine and drink for the memory of their parents and grandparents. But first of all, people would take an old can (from a conserve), put in it a little paper and light it up, then add a little incense on top until it begins emitting scented fumes, and make three circles around the grave(s) with this can - to protect the buried from evil or devil or something like that.

At the same time children would go around the cemetery with bags, greeting you with "Christ is risen!", expecting in return cake/candy etc. to be put into their bags (a bit like Halloween's Trick or Treat, but without the Trick part). By the end of the day they can hardly carry the heavy bags.

The main part of the day is waiting for the priest to come around, giving him a "Remembrance book" and some money. The book is a simple small notebook sold by churches where one would write the names of all people for whom they would like the priest to say a prayer (these must be deceased people). Some people forget these books at home, but it is OK to write the names on a piece of paper. Thus, the priest comes to the grave, you give him the book and some cash and he sings the prayer. He sings it in the way Orthodox priests sing in churches, while a group of women accompanying him provide choir and back vocals. At the end of the prayer they sing "God have mercy on them" at which time you are supposed to lift the towel on the grave, or at least its corner, and move it up and down above the grave. Then you give the priest a glass of wine and he pours it on the grave making an orthodox crucifix image (i.e. a cross with an additional diagonal bar below the horizontal one). After that the priest returns the book, you give him a gift and he moves on to the next grave. A pair of men behind him carry a basket for "gifts". These gifts are ritual and symbolise a sacrifice in exchange for the people's wellbeing in the afterworld. The gifts are also symbolic - an Easter cake, a few easter eggs (i.e. dye-boiled eggs), some candy, a towel or a plate/bowl/glass/cup - usually such a "gift set" is taken from one of the graves. It is also a ritual to give similar "gift sets" (which were on other graves) to young people or children and to anyone else. After the priest has gone, people usually serve others with wine that they had brought with them and leave. Sometimes people have to wait the whole day until the priest comes to them, but usually each year the path is altered so that people wait a different period of time each year.

I hadn't been to a cemetery in many years. This year I wanted to pay a tribute to my grandparents, which included going to two cemeteries in one day. An extra "bonus" of such a visit is that people talk about the buried people and you find out a lot of interesting stuff about your parents' childhood and about your grandparents. This is especially valuable for me because both of my grandfathers had died before I was born.

I am planning to put up a few pictures on my website, so that you could see a Moldovan village cemetery during this day - I am sure it's nothing like what you may have seen at home.

Romanian Embassy: part 2

For those who read the previous post, here's the second episode of the epic battle. My colleague and I actually went back to the Romanian embassy on March 29th. We had gathered more documents and decided to apply for a tourist visa rather than saying we were going to an exam.

So there we were, at 10 a.m., waiting for a chance to get in. The Romanian visa issuing system works as follows: you can only get an appointment by filling in an online form, but usually there are no available spots if you look during the day. However, each night at midnight new spots become available and people actually wait with their forms filled in until midnight to quickly press the "Register" button. Some people have turned this into a business and charge 40 EUR just for that (not everyone has a PC and Internet at home and not everyone is willing to go to an Internet cafe at midnight). Luckily, if you get an appointment, it is valid for one month, so it covers repeat visits, like ours. BUT! If you're a repeat visitor, you can only enter after the current day's appointments have been served. So we managed to get in at 2 pm!

So there we were, thinking that this time we would be able to get those bloody visas. We had even got a reservation voucher from a Romanian travel agency (it is a requirement for touristic visa - either a reservation voucher or some other certificate for that, but not both - this is important). We had also made a flight reservation (because you must have a travel ticket before you apply for a visa!!). But, as it turned out, the travel agency issuing the us the voucher, was not on the embassy's accreditation list (WTF? They don't mention it on the embassy website!). Besides, the embassy staff demanded both the voucher and the certificate, which clearly contradicts their own publiched requirements.

Anyhow, after about 30 minutes of negotiations and the embassy lady going back and forth with these papers, she calls some guy with a beard, who begins asking all sorts of questions, both relevant and irrelevant, so we tell him that we have an exam, that we came the second time, and that we had electronic letters from the CFA institute, which we showed to him. And he says - then why the hassle if you have letters? (WTF?x2) Then the lady explains to him that the letter is neither official (i.e. without any signatures or stamps) nor is it in Romanian (an English language letter would have to be traslated+legalised). So in the end he says: please wait, the consul will come and see you in a few minutes. Yay! They also told the same to a lady who was having some other kind of problems.

1.5 hours later, no Consul, no visas... ^&*k the Romanian embassy, we're leaving. And they don't even accept written complaints! Make that ^&*k double! That's when we began thinking about Kiev for real.

There was still one chance - to pay someone to make us visas. But usually these services are quite expensive - around 60 EUR I think, so we talked to a guy whom we knew a little and he was doing visas for his staff. But apparently he had problems with this stuff himself, so we changed the test center to Kiev. End of story.

Not quite. As you might know, Moldova borders only two countries - Romania and Ukraine. As of 2007, Moldovans can easily travel only to ex-USSR countries, so Kiev is really the only viable solution in terms of travel time and cost (Moscow is too far and expensive). But if you have been following the news, currently there's a political crisis in Ukraine and there is a slight risk that there will be unrest in Kiev when we get there. Same applies to Romania as of yesterday, when Romanian parliament suspended their president.

I'm So Mad!

Yesterday my colleague and I went to the Romanian consulate in Chisinau to apply for visas (since Romania is a part of the EU as of 2007, Moldovans need visas to get there now). We need these visas because we have to take the CFA exam in Bucharest in June.

Appointments for the Consulate can be made online only and usually there either is no available date or the closest available date is at least one month from now. So we waited one month and showed up at 10 am as the online form told us. The form also told the other 300-400 registered applicants to show up at 10 am, so there was a crowd and no one knew what to do (luckily, only about 1 in 5 people showed up, so the crowd was not that big). Anyway, we waited for our turn and entered the consulate at about 2 pm (and yes, we were waiting in the street, standing, starving and freezing for over 4 hours). When we finally had a chance to show our application forms, we were told that the letters from the CFA Institute (from online and also from e-mail) are not valid, because as the Consulate lady said, "she could print out the same letter on her own". For a country which only accepts online appointments, this seems very hypocritical to not accept electronic documents.

The funniest thing is that we were preparing to defend our case of not having the tickets (yes, to get a Romanian visa you first need to purchase a travel ticket (!) ), because we were planning to go by train and train tickets in Chisinau are not sold earlier than 45 days in advance (and it's more than 75 days till June). But we didn't even get to that part.

And when I wanted to complain about these stupid rules and procedures I was told that I could only complain directly to the Consul and if I wanted to do that, I had to wait in the street until he shows up, and that I could not leave a written complaint. Isn't this charming!

Looks like we'll be going to Kiev this year.

PS: It was so much easier to get a UK visa.

Update 2007

Hi There! Missed me? :)

Four months without a single word on this blog. It's time to make it up to you.

First of all, the excuses: I had A LOT of WORK last month (really!!!). I had two important projects with tight deadlines for two different clients, spiced up by a series of smaller assignments from another client. If you're wondering what it is that I do for living, please go to my website (the link is somewhere on the right). On my website you will also find a link to my LinkedIn profile.

Actually, the big news is: my wife Sasha and I are expecting a baby, our first child. While things are still as usual (except regular medical exams for Sasha), it's hard to imagine what will happen when the baby appears. The most fun part is that I work from home :)

On a less important side... Do you have to spend a lot of time in front of a computer monitor? My work is 100% computer-based, and when I was working on the projects I mentioned above, it occurred to me that I need a bigger screen. I have a 17" LCD monitor, but I want to fit more Excel columns on the screen and keep the text size at a readable level. This means I need a 20"+ wide screen. Unfortunately, this is where life in Moldova kicks you in the teeth (or other parts of your body - wherever it hurts more) : such a screen would cost over $400 in Moldova, and in the USA, I could get a decent 22" one for under $300. So now my hope lies in my friend who will come from the USA some time this year - hopefully he will be able to bring me such a monitor, otherwise i will have to buy a relatively expensive 20" alternative from here. :( This actually gave me an idea: to have a live request on my website to anyone who is coming to Moldova to bring me [something] from abroad, such as a monitor in this case, or a piece of food (like bacon, which is not available in Moldova). Do you think this will work? (Maybe not with a bulky monitor, but with smaller things?)

I already mentioned LinkedIn. A friend of mine introduced me to this service. I wonder - has anybody really benefitted from it in terms of getting better paid / more interesting contracts/job offers or is it just a place where people read each other's resumes and pretend to be very smart professionals?