When I got to my Bishkek apartment, I thought, “How in the heck am I going to get all my interneting done here? There’s no desk!” I seriously considered buying one, but frankly, there’s no room for it here, and where would I store it before we come back next year?

On the other hand, there are four stools in the apartment... a-ha! Success! I have made my desk equivalent:

Although it's workable, it's not all that convenient, which is why I'm mostly at Cafe Misto for those purposes.

In Kyrgyzstan it's important for someone in my position to dress respectably, which means no wrinkles. The apartment came with an iron. In the States my iron had a cord that was nearly three meters long. The iron here has a cord of a meter, max. There is no ironing board. Sure, I can put a sheet on the little table here and iron on that, but the distance from the outlet to the iron using that approach is frustrating, and I'm constantly worried that the heat and steam from the iron will ruin the inexpensive veneer of the table through the sheet. I gave in and bought an ironing board... which, come to think of it, was my first purchase back in Kazan 2010 after my internet dongle. In the fUSSR ironing boards have an electrical outlet on the edge of the board, from which runs an electric cord of a good two meters. Now that makes for bettering ironing.