The Book

There are a lot of great people living here today - the best Azerbaijanis, who despite the challenges they have to face every day, still live, love, create, fight and even do business here.

One of these people is Nigar Kocharli - my dear friend and a very extraordinary and smart person. She is the owner of Ali&Nino bookstores and also one of the most popular azeri bloggers (nigar.livejournal.com).

Several months ago she came up with an idea to mix favorite job and the hobby. According to her plan the most talented azeri bloggers had to write a fiction story (or 2) each and send it to the editorial board, which was supposed to select the best ones in turn. As the project has been launched not only her friends but some already famous young azeri and non-azeri writers expressed their willing to participate.

Editorial board had a really hard time choosing among beautiful stories of talented writers. However, today, the book is ready. It has a creative cover, good quality and a very special meaning for all of us.

Today, we salute Nigar for making us proud.
Today, we're gonna participate in a presentation of the book in her Ali&Nino book cafe at 7 PM.

Everyone is welcome to come!

Intro

I did it.

Onnik spent a lot of time convincing me it's important to have a blog in english. Well, my friend, I finally made it here.

So, my yet non-existing friends, today was a very special day for me - I finally got to see Azerbaijani police department, or how we call it "otdeleniye".
But let me start with a little intro.

Azerbaijan is a young post-soviet country, which fought for its independence for ages and thanks to Gorbachev, finally got it almost 20 years ago. Many things happened since.

We lost Karabakh and our friendship with neighbor Armenia became a history, which led to many broken families, killed civilians and other tragedies on both sides of the border.

After "father" a.k.a "national granpa" a.k.a "nationwide leader" Heydar Aliyev came back as a President in 1993 we immidiatelly attracted world's biggest oil companies and piles of money in addition.

Hence, today we have a lot of rich ministers, rich relatives of the ministers, ancestral totalitarian regime, monopoly, corruption and so on. But we have McDonalds here, for what it's worth.

Anyway.
Today I've been dragged to the police station for walking with flowers on Flower Day. Ridiculous, u say? I agree. Read this if u're interested in more details and pictures from today's arrests.

10th May 2009 was a very special day for me.

Welcome to my blog.