Events

The first day or so back is always hectic and exhausting. I still marvel that the 11½-hour time change from India was easier than the 9-hour change from St. Petersburg (or, come to think of it, the 8-hour change from Dubai.) I'm still getting back into my life, so I'll end here, but for this non-sequitur: I have t oget these cookies.

The monument to the heroes of the seige of Leningrad: Like this guy, a hero from a different era, Alexander Pushkin: Finally, a propos of none of the above, one more photo of the hotel. This is just before dawn at 4 am:

Ah, the quandry. Quandries, in fact: there are two. The biggest is that it's 4:30am in St. Petersburg but only 7:30pm in Chicago. I need to be back on Chicago time by Tuesday morning. Thus, I'm staying up very late in order to remain conscious at work in three days. I hope it works. The other is that I took some photos of my classmates at the end-of-term party tonight, but I haven't secured permission for general publication yet. On Facebook, only Dukies and my family can see the Duke photos (if I've...

The Culture Dash took me back to Kazan Cathedral today, only this time, I went inside:

Back in February, some of us got the opportunity to tour Indira Gandhi Airport Terminal 3, then under construction. It opened this week: The new terminal—Terminal 3—was "inaugurated" on July 3rd (Saturday) with India's great and good in attendance, and flights will start from July 14th. Mumbai’s airport is also getting a new terminal, but I don’t think it’s nearly as far along as Delhi’s, which needed completing before the Commonwealth Games this October. There is much excitement in the Indian media...

Only a couple blocks from the hotel:

Unavoidable, I suppose. And looking increasingly like an real option after nearly a week of British-inspired Russian cooking:

The good: Spain beating Germany last night. The bad: The sound of "¡Olé olé olé olé!" ricocheting around my aching head this morning. The ugly: Receving a (hopefully-mail-merged) message from the program reminding me of the importance of attending class after I missed for the second time in my MBA program.

I've got KML files of the boat tour and walk from which I took some of the photos posted already in the blog. Of course, as GPS receivers are illegal in Russia, I spent a lot of time meticulously figuring out the coordinate pairs in these files, including the zig-zag lines that perfectly simulate the distorted readings someone would get walking in a heavily-urbanized area.

I took a walk yesterday around 9pm, down Nevsky Prospekt to the Hermitage (about 8 km round-trip). Like today, yesterday it was about 30°C outside. And like today, the sun never quite set. This is from half past midnight: Earlier in the walk, before the Netherlands-Uruguay game, the Fontanka River: The Hermitage Museum (Winter Palace), south face: And (last one today) the west face, as seen on many postcards: Today's fun included six hours of classes so far, then a reception followed by another football...