Katja came last weekend. She made my life at least tolerable, diluting the greyness and routine with colours and light.

We saw Anton Corbijn’s Four Perspectives. The feeling was that of being SURROUNDED. A bit head-turning. I loved Stype, and I really liked it that while he treats men ironically, most women are portrayed seriously and beautifully. I think he admires women.

I wish there had been more pictures.

(By the way, exhibitions cost as much as in the UK, only unlike in the UK I don’t think we have free ones. )

Otherwise, we did  the usual window-shopping (silly word…), walking in the snow, taking lots of pictures (Katja did, with her new camera), making Greek salads and drinking Riga balm. Saw a film. Made fun of things and people. Enjoyed the canals and reflections of buildings in their grey iced cocktail. Got half-frozen a few times in the bitter northern February wind.

I’m glad the week is over. Work is completely unrewarding. I still don’t understand what I’m doing; I’m just seizing things and dropping them, without much system. The last couple of days I’ve been budgeting: calculating the factual revenues and costs in 2007. Russian accounting is pitch-dark. Taxation is the same. I feel weary, and I pray I survive at least for six months in this position, and then move on. It’ll look good on my CV, I will have got some work experience, and ANYTHING I’m going to do afterwards will be MORE FUN. It simply can’t get worse than this. That’s how I comfort myself.

I went to the institute library, a tiny tacky… Positive. I went to the library, and took two books. One is ‘Magicians’ Stories’, a collection of short stories by Latin American writers (it’s one of the very few new books there, and it was sticking out very much among the well-thumbed dark dirty books). The other one is Chekhov’s plays. I’m going to read some of the for 1000000001 time this time; I never get tired of them.

Weekend, weekend! Hurrah. Some life is coming, finally. I think the first thing I’ll do is see a film (I love cinema on a Saturday morning!), and the second: have tuna sandwich somewhere. God. Who would have thought I would miss tuna sandwiches.

And a good coffee.