Waiting for jobbo

To avoid the old cliché about buses, let me recall, for the comedy aficianados among you, the Alexei Sayle sketch where they wait ages for Godot, and then three turn up at once. Inspired.

So it has proved with my employment situation. Over the weekend I got a few hours' worth of proofreading, which though not much, helps quite a lot when you're in Kyiv and money stretches somewhat further than in London. I then got into discussions with a Ukrainian friend of mine about a potential business opportunity (nothing yet, but it could go somewhere). On Monday, I discover that a highly paid international job based in Kyiv that I might just be in with a sniff at is currently being advertised, deadline Wednesday (guess what I'm doing today). On Tuesday, a Ukrainian friend phones up to tell me that she's managed to organise me a meeting with the head of one of the biggest and best NGOs in the country. And then, almost immediately after, I get two (short-term) job offers. Firstly, my old organisation phones up asking whether I might be interested in a few weeks' work in a far-flung part of the world (I'll tell you more if and when it's confirmed). Then an hour later, one of the very best international think tanks in my field writes to me to say that they need someone urgently to write a 5000-word paper for them, and would I consider it?

Of course, all of this might fall flat. And none of them actually involve a permanent job and a regular salary. Nonetheless, it's certainly a pleasant change from a couple of weeks ago, when I sat around sobbing into my muesli, beginning to doubt that I will ever find gainful employment. [Insert truism about world being funny, up and down, unpredictable here]

All of which means that the post I meant to write about the Ukrainian elections might take a couple more days to get done.