First full day of work...

Our so-called "early team" ("ударная группа," in Russian) is fairly small and has the job of preparing the way for the main team, which arrives in 3 days, and for the arrival of the spacecraft the day after that. Today's main tasks were to provide support for various coordination meetings, to aid in the facility "walkdown" ("обход") in preparation for a formal transfer of control, and translation of about umpteen gazillion facility readiness certificates.

The weather was cool this morning, warming in midday and becoming cool again this evening. One thing that I readily noticed was the utter quiet out in front of the hotel both before the start of the work day (I got up at 5 am) and once the work day is through, a sort of "me-and-my-tinnitus" kind of quiet, though if you listen real hard, you can just barely hear a few insects occasionally in the evening.

I've finished my share of the certificates, leaving only an eyeballing of the result tomorrow morning before posting them to the appropriate subdirectory on the server.

Cheers...