It’s mid winter, -2C and you think – pah! that’s so waaaaarm.  So you leave your thermal gloves at home when you go out and think how disappointing it is that you can’t boast to everyone back home how cold it is.

You find yourself saying to folks back home – actually it’s been a very mild winter, the most we got down to was -21C AND that was WITH the windchill factor…..

…..then you shrug your shoulders and say – yep, that’s got to be good old global warming – for the ten millionth time…..

…..you are addicted to the Euronews breakfast weather report with that roving map and when it reaches Kiev and it has the lowest temperature beating all of eastern Europe AND Moscow you yell – yay we won! we won!

You see some crass graffiti which you just have to photo and you reckon it’s quite nice to see a bit of colour and even better if it’s a word you understand – besides, it brightens the place up a bit.  In your pre-Kiev life you would mumble – ugh! what kind of a slum is this?

You wait an extra 2 or 3 seconds after the pedestrian lights flash green just to make sure you don’t get knocked down by a car trying to beat the lights…..

…..you cross after 2 or 3 seconds and you are almost mown down by two cars trying to beat the lights but you just stand back, shrug your shoulders and trudge along with everyone else.  You no longer yell out ‘wanker!’ or want to bash the car with your handbag.  You think they’ll probably shoot you anyway…..

…..you are paranoid that everyone has a gun because in expat-land the one story about a foreigner getting shot at a traffic light years ago has circulated so many times over the years that traffic light shootings would appear to be a regular event.

For the gazillionth time in a restaurant you get something you didn’t order but you just shrug and think how much worse things could be, there are a million worse off people in the world, at least we’re lucky enough to be able to afford to eat in a restaurant blah blah blah…..

…..on that very rare occasion that you complain (usually when you have visitors from home who get extremely affronted by aforementioned wrong order) you feel incredibly proud of yourself that you have ‘challenged the system’…..

…..and if the evil devoushka waitress smiles and is pleasant, you walk around like a grinning idiot for the rest of the day because someone was nice to you.