My friend Sergei is building a house on the south side of Anapa. He and his wife Alicia are currently sharing an apartment with another couple from church and are looking to have their own place. I have plenty of free time and, not really knowing jack-squat about building houses, asked him if he wanted any help. He actually said yes, so I met him at the construction site Monday morning. I hadn't seen his place before I arrived. He's building a second story on top of an existing concrete garage with large steel doors. This seems to be a common arrangement in Russia. Pasha from church has been helping out, also, and they started a week before I did. After a 3 minute tutorial on building a cinder block wall I was put to work building a wall. It took me a minute to figure out which end of the trowel to hold, but it went well after that. 5 rows of blocks later things looked alright, but what do I know? I'm just a programmer and tech writer. Sergei and Pasha said the wall looked good, so I was happy. Mixing concrete by hand and hauling it around in buckets is hard work.
Sergei and I were working on the house Wednesday afternoon when Pasha came by with something he wanted to show me. It was an old, removable hard disk. Very old, made in the 70s, maybe. Maybe it holds some cold-war secrets. It was made in Buglaria, has 12 sectors, and stores 700 kb I was told. The plastic flip handle was a nice feature. Pasha took the thing apart later, he says he's going to use the disk to make a TV antenna. I'm not sure how that's going to work, but Russians are nothing if not resourceful.
