I guess I recently focused on the no smoking in public places law changes here in Kazakhstan, but thanks to Lucky21842, I have discovered more shocking news…
You can no longer officially drink in public, and they have raised the drinking age to 21! Yes, really. I’ll not embed the video this time, as I want you to actually click across and watch a few of his videos on YouTube itself. Go on, off you go, leave a comment, consider subscribing. I’ll wait.
….
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Look, I’ve got all day, and all night if necessary, trust me, I’m way more stubborn than you.
OK, compromise, go and open the video in a new tab, and if you promise to switch to it after reading this post, we’ve found a good compromise.
So, I realised why this news slightly surprised me – when we went to the Kazakhstan v Croatia match at Astana’s new stadium, they discovered DanD had bought a couple of beers with him. Luckily they didn’t pass the metal detector over me, so my hip flask got through OK. Now, one of party definitely wanted to walk on and get into the grounds quickly, but that is just because he is an ancient, old, moaning man, who probably never even reads this site 🙂 DanD and I decided that two unopened bottles of beer were just too much of a waste to dump, so we opened them up and chugged them down, before re-presenting our tickets to the street patrollers guarding the entrance. During this time, with a good dozen or so of them hanging around next to us, not a single ‘NYET’ was uttered.
However, I can report that the new smoking law was enforced a lot better. At half-time I left my seat, exited the building and walked on into the fresh air, under the night sky. Lighting up a Parliament, a guard quickly came and told me it was not allowed. Outside. In the fresh air. When I asked where it was OK, he told me the toilets. Inside. No extractor fan, no purifiers. Not even that many people using the toilet, just a lot of smokers!
October 17th, 2009 6:40 pm
That’s funny. I’ve also noted the smoking ban is well enforced in cafes and restaurants. But in unis and office buildings people are still puffing away in the stairwells and toilets.
October 17th, 2009 10:54 pm
On the one hand, boo for the poor enforcement and continued ill effect on non-smokers’ health.
On the other… thank god, good to know I won’t ALWAYS have to freeze my butt off this winter 🙂