The End (Introduction)

I've decided to clear up the blog; specifically, I've renamed it and cleared out all my 'personal' posts from before and after the war.

My reason for doing so is as follows: I started the blog in 2008 as a way to keep in touch with my friends and family when I moved to Georgia. I didn't have any grand plans for it, and the content reflected that, there were lots of fairly inane posts about my life, the food, work and so on; stuff that only people who knew me could possibly be interested in, and then only barely.

Anyway, in August 2008, the conflict in South Ossetia was triggered whilst I was living in Tbilisi. To deal with the situation I'd ended up in, I wrote about my experience on my personal blog.

Two years on, and the majority of the blog was still made up of the 'war posts', I'd hardly posted since the end of the crisis, and had little desire to do so. I'd also received attention from strangers about what I'd written, something I neither desired nor expected.

To cut a long story short, I've given over the blog to it's real content, and abandoned it to posterity. It's still the writing I'm most proud of, and to say the least, represents a very interesting period in my life and in the history the South Caucasus. I'd like it to be read, as I believe that I wrote honestly, and that perhaps somewhere in it might lurk something of real value, but I have no desire to engage with it any more, and if I do continue blogging it will be in another forum.

I'd like to thank everyone who read it at the time, especially those who commented or contacted me with messages of support, but I'm going to disable posting and remove my contact details from the site.

If you've just found it, please take some time to read through, I hope it's of interest and of use.

All the best,

Ian