random acts

... of violence!

what is it with this place?! on wednesday nite (same day i meet my neo-nazis) the aussie guys in the office, which so far consists of paul, clinton and zuben, took the entire kiev office out to dinner. i've since learnt the total on the bill! we will be eating 2 minute noodles for a while now.
at the end of dinner paul and two kiev guys decided to share a taxi to a club or somewhere for a few drinks.
(oh, btw, percy and i stayed home for this one.)
they approached a line of taxis and asked about the cost to wherever it was they wanted to go. taxis in kiev generally don't have meters and you should negotiate the price before you get in. not once you are seated, before you even open the door. anyways, they decided the taxi driver was asking too much and started walking towards the metro station instead. at this point two men ran up to them and assaulted them! i don't know if one was the taxi driver, i heard the story second hand from paul at 2am. one of the kiev guys was pushed to the ground and the other punched in the face. thankfully paul was unhurt. he helped the other two up and just gaped- "what was that about?" no real reason could be given; just "that's kiev." That's Kiev!!?? what the hell? i know there are random acts of violence in sydney too, i suppose i've just never been affected. it has actually made me a little reluctant to approach taxis now. which is really annoying because if the metro got daunting i thought i could always fall back to taxis. now i don't feel so confident.

needless to say the poor fellow who got punched in the face didn't feel like going out, what with blood dripping out his nose and all over his shirt. they all went home quietly on the metro.