The Sun Always Shines On TV

Before we departed the US for Post, we (ok me) were trying to decide what to do about a tv. The US runs on 110v electrical current. Pretty much every where else runs on 220v. In the US, other than a few specialty stores and online retailers, you cannot find a 220v tv. We did consider just purchasing a 110v tv at Costco or Best Buy and shipping it over and just running it on a transformer, but I received some good advice from someone in the Foreign Service who said to wait until I got to post. So that is what we did.

Once we arrived at Post we were supplied a small tv as part of our Welcome Kit. By small I mean maybe 32" (we had a 50" tv before in our house so anything less than that was small to us). The tv worked and served us well, but we also knew that once our House Hold Effects arrived, the Housing office could take back the tv. Before we arrived in Tbilisi, we had been in contact with some of our new neighbors to find out about stores, etc. in town. We found out there were two "Wal-Mart/Target" style stores here, Goodwill (no not the Goodwill back in the US but a German-based chain) and Carrefour (French-based chain). Both of which sold electronics.

When we arrived I started to check out both stores. Goodwill had a small selection whereas Carrefour had a quite large electronic section.

The above picture is illegal. For some reason stores here have some sort of "no pictures allowed" rule. But you can see from the above Carrefour has a decent selection of TVs (this is just a small fraction of what they carry). Carrefour carried everything from Samsung, to Sony and with all sizes. After doing some comparison, I found a 47" Samsung LED tv that was dual voltage and multi-region for like 800 or so GEL, or roughly $650. Ok, this will work. So when I went to pay for it, I popped down my Diplomatic ID (which entitles us to have the Value Added Tax, or VAT removed from our purchases). All of a sudden, the price dropped to around 740 GEL! Bingo!

We have been extremely happy with the tv. We have our Blue-Ray player, Wii-U and Apple TV connected to it via HDMI. The tv has only 3 HDMI connections, and to get a tv with more would have been quite a bit more money. Sorry, I'm cheap. Only once that I recently recall have I had to remove something in order to connect another device.

A few more things to add. We don't have cable/satellite service. It's not that we can't get it, but all of the packages we can get, the majority of the stations are in Russian/Georgian. While it may be good to help us pick up bits and pieces of the language, we just don't think it's worth it. We use an Apple TV (which you can pick up refurbished from Apple for $75). With pretty good Internet here + VPN we are able to stream quite a bit from the US. Also, the Wii-U has the Amazon Prime app, so we have another means to get movies. Allot of people here use AFN but at this point (because of our good Internet connection) we opted not to spend the money on an AFN dish/decoder. We may get one for our next post if our Internet connection isn't all that great. Also, the tv is connected to a UPS. While electricity is more or less stable here, we do have the occasional brown-out/power loss. Having the UPS just adds another layer of protection to the tv.

Since we are an Apple household (yes I know I have Microsoft certifications but Apple does make things easier) we can connect to say CBS.com and then use AirPlay to stream the content from our iMac to the AppleTV. So Deb and I can still watch our shows, just a day later.

One final thought, if you do purchase a tv, save the box/packing material. Ours is saved in the garage, so we when move next December we can just put the tv right back in to its original packaging and send it on it's way to our next post.

Odds and Ends...

• We are closing in on our fourth week here in Tbilisi. I'm slowly getting settled in at the job, and I think Deb and the kids are getting settled in at the house. I feel bad for them, I go somewhere each day, while they are stuck at home. Plus, up here in Z-town it is somewhat far away from anyplace. So to get to the store, we have to hitch a ride or take a cab (taking a cab isn't that expensive, it is like 5 Lari or so to get to the local Goodwill - a German supermarket) until our car gets here.
• Some of our neighbors let us borrow one of their cars this weekend while they are out of town. Deb went to Goodwill yesterday, and today all four of us went to Carrefour at the Tbilisi Mall. I drove, and we survived. Granted it isn't a far drive, but you do have to be aggressive and defensive at the same time while driving here.
• Carrefour was CRAZY today. We ran in to a few coworkers and the common consensus was it was the craziest people had ever seen. This week you have New Years, Georgian New Years and Georgian Christmas so I'm sure most of the crowds were there doing their last minute shopping. Mason got a little overwhelmed by the crowds (and lack of personal space). The big plus about shopping today was we got our Diplomatic ID's on Friday. By having those, we no longer have to pay VAT on purchases (which is something like 14%). It does save us some money and makes shopping a little cheaper.
• After our shopping, we walked around the Tbilisi mall and had lunch at a Burger King there. One thing Deb and I noticed about the mall was it seemed a lot of people smoked inside of it (in fact, Deb went to the restroom and two women were in there smoking. They quickly went in to stalls - I guess smoking was not permitted in the restroom - Deb said there were quite a few no smoking signs in there). I've found that smoking is a lot more prevalent here than in the US.
• Burger King wasn't bad, though I thought the burger was a bit dry. However it was nice to eat a piece of "America". And I was reminded that Europeans typically don't have ice in their drinks, but the soda was cold so it was fine.
• One thing that has been wearing on us is our UAB shipment. UAB is Unaccompanied Air Baggage. We were allotted about 700lbs of UAB, and we have items such as good pillows, good sheets, our iMac, Drobo etc. Well it has been sitting in Cologne Germany for close to 3 weeks now and no movement. Our UAB was suppose to have been here last Friday, then on Sunday then no one knew. I finally reached out to transportation in DC to find out what was going on, and quickly heard back. They were annoyed that the shipment hadn't arrived yet (they were told it was suppose to arrive on the 20th and had not been notified it had been delayed). The transportation company replied that due to heavy volumes it had been bumped was suppose to arrive yesterday, the 28th. 10 years working with a shipping line has had it's advantages, as I've found the shippers tracking website and have been monitoring the shipment. It is still showing in Cologne. I'm hoping that the site hasn't been updated and it has actually arrived in Tbilisi, but I think it hasn't. I'm going to have to send another email tomorrow inquiring on the status, and if it's not here yet I'm not sure what I'm going to do. We have ocean freight that has already arrived in country and I'm partially expecting it to be delivered here this week. That's pretty sad that ocean freight may beat air freight.