Beginning of the road...

I've been meaning to start a blog for a while now, but could never really think of a good way of starting one... and still haven't found how, by the looks of it. All the cool kids are doing it though, so I figured I should start to, seeing as I'm as cool as....as a guy who sells cucumbers in a fridge.

yo

The reason for me finally biting the bullet and starting one today is because at the very least I have something interesting to talk about beyond the usual topics that litter so many blogs.

Nobody cares about a stranger's life, but who doesn't care about sex, travel and adventure? I'm not promising a mixture of pornhub, one of those documentaries about foreign countries that you see on bbc and something with Bruce Willis in it- but just pretend I am and keep interested.

There have been so many moments here in Russia where I've thought 'I wish some of my friends in England could see/hear this'. So... let's start from the beginning.

For the off chance that someone who I don't know very well actually reads this I'll just give a little background to myself. I was born in Kiev, Ukraine- but I have always considered myself Russian and still do. I was born right before the collapse of the Soviet Union so technically speaking I am still Russian. It's complicated and unimportant really. Basically now I am a British citizen. I've spent the last 13 years of my life in England, but have one foot in the Russian community and one in the English. As a result I've always been pretty culturally challenged- never quite feeling like I share the same views as my English friends, but not really finding any satisfaction amongst the Russians. That used to bother me a lot, but I've stopped caring now and am just thankful for the good friends I have, despite whatever differences in outlook or culture we have.

I've come over to Russia for a month on business and to see my dad and other family members now. Russia has always been a very dangerous country for everyone involved. During the 90's it was totally fucked, when the Communist government fell apart and people ripped the country's resources and wealth apart as they privatised everything and created a massive gap between the rich and the poor.

We were piss poor when I was a kid and hunger was never far off. A lot of my meals came from a nearby school and my aunty, my grandad and grandmother, my parents and me lived in a small flat all together. This kind of setup was pretty common for people in my part of the world, and I'm saying it purely to build a picture of how a lot of the Soviet bloc evolved from the 90's to now, not for sympathy or something. Of course everybody hated it and fortunately enough my parents were some of the few that were able to get out to the West. So off they went and left me with my grandparents and aunty for three years a few days before my fourth birthday. They worked and sent money back as often as they could. Eventually they got enough money together to get me over, so that's how I got to England.

Anyways enough of my life story, hopefully the other stuff on here will be more interesting. I'm off for some food and I'll give this another go soon.