topum

We are flying back home to London for Christmas on Friday. Our Moldovan hosts are going to London for Christmas too, they lived and worked in London for four years a couple of years ago and will be spending this Christmas and the New Year with their friends in London.

Meanwhile we have been having a hard time trying to get our volunteers to leave. The core team is so awesome and people bonded so well that they do not want to split and leave. Three people (two Americans and a Dutch guy) who all came here separately and met each other while volunteering for us have now become Moldova's hottest interior designers to the stars (albeit Moldovan stars, which is rather low key) apparently and are swamped with the contracts from Moldova's upper class.

They designed and built the interior of our community house, the wife of a local MP saw it when they visited, liked it a lot and that was their breakthrough. They are quite excited about the money they can make here from those introductions and will be staying for at least a couple of months for which they already have contracts designing interiors of Moldovan MPs' hunting lodges apparently. Interestingly, not one of them actually is an interior designer. Well, they are now I guess. If there is a market with a low barrier to entry and not much competition when it comes to interior design, Moldova is that market apparently. This reminded me of Tony Hawks's "Big in Albania" a lot.

They want to continue living in the village at our place for volunteers though and are asking us to charge them rent because they won't be volunteers anymore. We agreed that they would just make a donation to the local art school instead to make it simpler now that we have closed the first phase of our project here.

Camden, London.

I would really start lifting more with that upper set of arms. And perhaps stop tanning them too.

London

I was catching a train to Brussels.

Shades of blue improvisation. He was good.



He was just learning.



The red haired girl liked him and stole the show.

In London

The dude on the right actually looked a bit tired and worn out.

Camden, London

In London. More selfies here.

In London

I know nothing about fashion, do not care about it, almost never notice it and have zero fashion sense. In the last couple of months I spent most of my time (except meeting at the ministries and the embassy) in cargo shorts only (yeah, no shoes, no underwear) and it was awesome. Too bad it is too cold for it now.

When I saw this dress (yeah, failed to focus on it properly) in Camden Market though, I somehow immediately thought of usagi_moon and "saw" her face above it. I have no idea why, especially because based on what I know about her I could assume (probably ignorantly) that she likes to wear a lot of black stuff. Still, even when I saw this photo I immediately remembered about usagi_moon and thought that she would rock it. That was unusual.

If I remember correctly, the price tag was GBP 550 (USD 670).

Camden, London