What a difference a week makes.
Just last week we were still going out with Pang, the heart of The Gang; this week Pang's gone and I feel the summer has taken much of its course. It seems as if we are living on borrowed time and that happy days will soon end.
These sentiments had filled my mind in the last days. John and Karen, too, are gone while Faizal would most likely stay on only until the end of next year. Borg is scheduled to return to Singapore in spring of 2007; if his ambassador is extended, there's a chance he will stay until June of the same year. In many ways since Nipada left in July 2004, I guess we started counting down to the end of our terms. For some, we had passed only the midpoint and was already on the way round back. For others, it was merely a matter of months before they had to pack up and leave.
I remember the first days in my flat at Plyushchikha 42, when I took a shine to the river, took to walks around it or across the bridge to the other side. The river ferries that bissect the city on the way to the Novospassky Monastery near Taganskaya Station start their 90-minute journey from Kievskaya Station just on the opposite bank. I always told myself there would be time enough to ride that and take a tour of the city by river. In the same way I'd always put off a tour of the inside of the Kremlin, a visit to the Historical Museum or a trip to New Jerusalem, there was always this feeling: there'd be time enough to do that later.
As the Japanese say, "Todai moto kurashi": It is always darkest at the foot of the lighthouse.
This sense of "mortality", as it were, prompted me thus to decide that time was neigh. I have to start to run down the list of the things that always seem possible to do. First on the list was the river ferry.
My Inessa and I parked the car on the embankment street leading up to SAS Radisson Slavjanskaja Hotel and crossed to the river bus terminal, as it's called in Russian.
We said hello to Faizal on the way.
Ended the day by having dinner at Goodman Steakhouse along Tverskaya.
Just last week we were still going out with Pang, the heart of The Gang; this week Pang's gone and I feel the summer has taken much of its course. It seems as if we are living on borrowed time and that happy days will soon end.
These sentiments had filled my mind in the last days. John and Karen, too, are gone while Faizal would most likely stay on only until the end of next year. Borg is scheduled to return to Singapore in spring of 2007; if his ambassador is extended, there's a chance he will stay until June of the same year. In many ways since Nipada left in July 2004, I guess we started counting down to the end of our terms. For some, we had passed only the midpoint and was already on the way round back. For others, it was merely a matter of months before they had to pack up and leave.
I remember the first days in my flat at Plyushchikha 42, when I took a shine to the river, took to walks around it or across the bridge to the other side. The river ferries that bissect the city on the way to the Novospassky Monastery near Taganskaya Station start their 90-minute journey from Kievskaya Station just on the opposite bank. I always told myself there would be time enough to ride that and take a tour of the city by river. In the same way I'd always put off a tour of the inside of the Kremlin, a visit to the Historical Museum or a trip to New Jerusalem, there was always this feeling: there'd be time enough to do that later.
As the Japanese say, "Todai moto kurashi": It is always darkest at the foot of the lighthouse.
This sense of "mortality", as it were, prompted me thus to decide that time was neigh. I have to start to run down the list of the things that always seem possible to do. First on the list was the river ferry.
My Inessa and I parked the car on the embankment street leading up to SAS Radisson Slavjanskaja Hotel and crossed to the river bus terminal, as it's called in Russian.
We said hello to Faizal on the way.
Ended the day by having dinner at Goodman Steakhouse along Tverskaya.
