Thursday, November 20, 2008

In Search Of: The Russian Cupcake (Pt. 3)

UH OH! I'M Busted! The Mrs. found out!

-Mr. Cupcake

I’ve learned that my blog has been hijacked, so you will be able to see these there, but not quite as timely. I am doing well and I hope that you all are too. I’m already looking forward to coming home :) Love you all!
Ali

Day 3 evening

We had our first good meal tonight. By Russian standards, we went to a fancy restaurant, a steakhouse. I have to admit that this was the first decent meal that I’ve had since being in Russia. Everything worked out quite well. The ride in to the restaurant was about 25 minutes as we were heading into the city against traffic. We ate, drank and truly enjoyed each other’s company. We had a bit of confusion as our waiter did not speak Russian, but using hand gestures, we worked it out quite well. We weren’t quite ready for our taxi cab and apparently as we found out today from the Accounting Manager, they were running late too. They had called her because they were running late so she was very concerned this morning that everything went smoothly. Little does she know that this is the smoothest anything has gone for us since we have arrived.


[Read More...]

In Search Of: The Russian Cupcake (Pt. 2)

Mr. Cupcake here... I have moved the main posts of the 'In Search Of' series to my new blog. So when you click the 'Read More' link, you will be redirected to the full post on my Blog. Day 2 is by far the funniest... Enjoy!

-Mr. Cupcake

Rest of Day 2-Monday November 11

So, today at work went fine. I talked to one of the payroll ladies and while it was somewhat difficult to understand her we made due. We later learned that the head guy here, who sounds like he is from Texas, has lived here for the past 14 years and speaks perfect Russian. I would have never guessed.

Alex, our interpreter/resource, recommended a few restaurants for us to try and a larger grocery store for us to shop at. So, off we went. It was about a 15 minute walk to the Ichiban. Yes, you read correctly, Ichiban. Apparently, sushi is very popular here, so we thought we’d give it a try. It was eh. Not horrible but not fantastic either. It certainly didn’t come anywhere close to my favorite or any of my favorites for that matter. And I don’t have a desire to go back. The more interesting part about the afternoon and dinner was that we were joined by another co-worker who is not in our group but works for the company and works on some of the same type of things. Her name is Dagmar and she is German. As one of my co-worker started to say tonight “so there are four americans here and people always think that the reputation of americans are spoiled, loud and ungracious” and I finished it with “until you met a German.” Which isn’t what he was going to say but was a perfect ending.


[Read More...]


Wednesday, November 12, 2008

In Search Of: The Russian Cupcake (Pt. 1)

Mrs. Cupcake is currently in Moscow, Russia for her new gig. So Mr. Cupcake (that would be ME) has decided to share the hilarious emails I've been getting from the Mrs. since they seem to revolve around food and electrical fires... I hope you enjoy the following as much as I did...

-Mr. Cupcake

We are currently staying in an apartment that is attached to the same building that the office is in, so we are avoiding any kind of cold walk early in the morning, which is just fine with me. :) We will be staying in the apartments the first 10 days that we are here and then will be moving to a Marriott that is downtown Moscow.

We went out yesterday after we arrived to pick up a few groceries and get something to eat. The 'store” we thought was the grocery store, was actually a health club. English is hardly spoken by anyone. We did not encounter anyone who spoke English until we arrived at the office this morning-which made yesterday even more interesting.


[Read More...]