If all goes to plan, then this evening I’ll be enjoying some proper British sausages with ChrisK and Dave. Unless they get called away to last minute meetings, then I’ll be deep frying some chips, breaking out the baked beans, and whipping up some Angel Delight for dessert (thanks to Assel there – your gifts have lasted a long time!)
However, said sausages came from the UK in ChrisK’s luggage, so I think we’ll need to bake them nice and long in the oven, and wash them down with plenty of vodka, just to make sure we kill off any bacteria that formed during the plane journey 🙂 If we were actually in Britain, I’d laugh at the prospect of eating them, but sadly you can’t get ‘proper’ sausages over here, so sod it!
Jun 19 2008
An Aussie, Two Brits And Some Bangers…
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Apr 30 2007
Huuuuuuuge Thanks To Walton & Assel
Assel went on a business trip to Britain, and asked if there was anything I’d like bought back from Britain.
I think they only asked for a laugh, anyone who knows my choice of desserts over in Kazakhstan knows I have a penchant for Angel Delight. So, for my birthday, Assel kindly got me 20 packets – 10 strawberry and 10 butterscotch. We were at a restaurant at the time, so I had to wait until we got back to theirs afterwards, before I could sample one.
Delicious.
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Nov 02 2006
New Experience
A friend dropped their PC off today, to sort two issues…
First was easy enough, their portable (USB) hard drive required more juice than his motherboard/PSU could supply. Unfortunately, the drive didn’t come with a separate AC/DC power supply, although it sports a socket for such a transformer. Given the state of finding normal power/audio/video accessories over here, I’ve suggested an easier solution, but less expensive than grabbing a new PSU for the PC. I double checked, and as long as it is of the powered, rather than passive, variety, a new USB hub should solve the problem. Unusual for a USB hub to be the solution to a problem, rather than the cause, but there we go. This way, the USB is only used for data to/from the PC, the power is supplied completely separately by the hub itself.
Next we have a fun issue, where, seemingly at random, the windows GUI flips out and reverts to Windows 98 flat style. No particular software or activity seems to trigger it, so I finally got round to obtaining a Russian Windows XP disc, and will have a go at restoring explorer.exe and ntoskrnl.exe to their original states. If all else goes wrong, he hasn’t reinstalled XP since he got the PC, and some of his friends pride themselves on their l33t hacking & ‘virus’ writing skills, so I’m backing up his entire personal data collection over night (damn D-Link router runs @ 100MBit, not 1GBit, I’m now too lazy to disconnect and patch up direct one to one…) Also running anti virus scans on full depth once xfer is complete.
Had a nice meal and drink with him and his parents (friends with the in-laws), and introduced them to Angel Delight (Andy & KZBlog, you know your days are numbered :P). Already got Igor hooked up to Marmite…
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Sep 22 2006
One For The Milk Drinkers Out There
You need to be so careful buying milk here in Kazakhstan. If you put it in tea/coffee, or cooking food, it might not be so apparent, but for any drinkers of milk, or breakfast cereal lovers, the milk takes a while to get used to.
I might just be hypersensitive to the smells/tastes (I worked in a dairy for a while), but a lot of milk tastes like it has gone off, the minute you open the carton/bag. (Who the hell thought a bag was a sensible container for milk!) As an example, I went shopping yesterday, and thought I’d try a couple different brands of milk, as the only ‘good’ source of milk was out of stock, again. I got a bag of normal milk, and a carton of UHT (long life), thinking it would be a safe bet. I don’t like the taste of UHT so much, but I thought of the two, at least one would be usable.
So, I got home, and thought about making a milk shake, and tested the ‘normal’ milk. Euuuuuurgh! It tasted like it had been left open in the sun for a few days. Oh well, no loss, threw it down the loo, and went to the UHT – best before date had 4 months to go, and it stated it could be stored at 0 – 30 degrees centigrade, prior to opening. It was worse, far worse – the milk had completely separated into a watery liquid, and some clotted fat floating around.
So, the moral of the story is, ummmm, well not sure – either don’t ever work in a dairy prior to visiting Kazakhstan, or maybe it is try to hold your nose whilst drinking milk over here, or maybe just give it up for a while :>
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UPDATE: Irina bought some more milk from a different shop on the way home, same brand, same type, and it tastes fine. Corn flakes, milk shakes and Angel Delights (mum bought some over for us) are now back on the menu :> :>