February 2002

February: Peak Season!

When I meet Moldovan friends in London - most are on extended holidays - two topics of conversation always come up. The first is invariably about the Ali G show (to those not familiar he presented the MTV music awards last year) and a comedy character, he created, a Kazakhstan news reporter investigating English cultural life. Unfortunately his total lack of awareness about "political and social correctness" in language creates a number of comical situations. For example he describes his love of hunting in Kazakhstan to a group of real English vegetarians in bad English. The result you can imagine!

The second is about how natural Moldovan food is and English supermarket fruit and vegetables are not. It is always a great source of national pride to Moldovans in England, rightly so! At present there is a movement towards organically produced food because of worries about genetic tomatoes made from fish DNA and cows injected with hormones to produce more milk and so on. This leads me on to the subject of Moldovan wine.

Continued...

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Post It And Lose It

In the process of structuring economic ties and attracting foreign influence state shipping and handling and postal services are making a leap to stamp out the unfavorable reputation of state "delayed delivery" post.

Recent reforms of the Moldova central Mail Delivery Office and the whole system of dispatch and delivery at this point hardly become solid ground for nurturing hopes of a near improvement. Thus this profitable governmental institution is far from being the best means of correspondence and tangible communication neither within the country nor beyond its borders.

Continued...

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Town On The Dinester

Bender fortress and relict woods, acacia trees in blossom and quiet dusty streets. This is the town of Bender on the right bank of the Dniester River. A town with a notable destiny and a rich history.

In contrast to big and busy cities that attract many, Bender is a provincial town, whose advantage over others is a quiet life. In spite of its quietness, modern Bender is an industrial center where in the years of the Soviet power there were plants of all-Union significance. Major enterprises exported their production to over 40 countries abroad. Unfortunately, not all of them are functioning at present; neither are all the products of those that are working available to local consumers.

Continued...