Irina found a pizza place that delivered, so we treated ourselves to a film and pizza last night. A little pricey (1 litre of coke/fanta cost 800 tenge (about quadruple the cost in a shop), pizzas were 1600-1950 tenge (around 7 pounds/$15) each), but mine was tasty. Without going into gory details, if you happen to use Napoli (or ‘Neopol’ depending whether you trust the pizza boxes or the bill) pizzeria, you may want to ensure you have a supply of Immodium to hand (the severity was enough to wake me at 3am and send me running to the loo!).
That said, the pizza was good enough for me to hope it was a one off, and so I hope to try them out again in the future - will post if it turns out they should be avoided

Oh, and I know that pizza delivery isn’t exactly ‘Eating Out’ but I don’t have a category for ‘Eating In’

I was speaking to a friend recently, and discovered one of their relatives had just reached the official pensioner age. The relative has chosen to continue working in their current job. Not that most people have a lot of choice… The MONTHLY pension here is just 11,000 tenge! That equates to around $85, or if you prefer £40, to live on. Although some essentials are cheaper in this country, a lot of prices are catching up, without a matching rise in wages or pensions. For those pensioners living solely on a their state pension, I simply can not imagine how they manage to pay the electricity and other utility bills, buy enough food to survive 4 weeks. That is completely ignoring such ‘luxuries’ as clothing or fuel for their transport, if they have any.
When it comes to most matters with this country, I stay fairly neutral - it is difficult to criticize any system without having lived through the multitude of changes etc., however this pension level just seems immoral.
Anyway, I’ll hop off my soap box for now, at least until someone gets me fired up about the equally scandalous level of pay doctors get paid here.

Right, I think I now have all the text deciphered This is the last of the posts on the charity event organized by BG (British Gas) Kazakhstan to raise funds for the Kazakh Paralympic team and their trip to the Paralympics next year at Beijing, China.
Throughout the evening, there were draws for the raffle, with prizes donated by local businesses. The worst was a 20% discount card from a jeweller. If I ever discover the name of the company that ‘donated’ some guaranteed business for themselves, I will gladly post it here, possibly with the anchor text ‘Tight Fisted Profit Obsessed Dratsab’ Any way, the rest of the prizes were very good, and from the ones I remembered to tap into my phone as we went along, we have a couple of mobile phones, quite a few massages (I am assuming they were of the reputable variety ), dance lessons, a couple of weekends at a hotel, a few restaurant cards (pre-paid with about $150 on them I think), body spa vouchers, quite a few pre-paid SIM cards with credit pre-applied to them, some month passes for a local gym, a return ticket to Almaty (for one person). In between the raffle sessions, we had a belly dancer. We did not win anything, but unlike the lottery or fruit machines, it was good to know our cash was going to a very worth cause.
Then came the main event (in terms of fund raising) - the auction. This was basically the realm of either foreigners on foreign wages, or Kazakhs who were lucky enough to have a job that paid Western wages. The bidders were very generous, paying more than the item was worth in each case. There was another weekend stay in a luxury hotel here in Astana, and also another return flight to Almaty. The hotel stay was won for 75,000 Tenge (around $575), and then immediately returned to be bid on again (basically a large charitable donation from the first winner), where it then raised a further 55,000 Tenge (around $420). We then had the deputy chairman of the Kazakh Paralympic Committee give a small speech, during which an outrageously rude American group at a table behind us talked loudly all through. If it hadn’t been a corporate event that involved people Irina knew from work, I’d have gladly quietly told the ignorant rude idiots to shut the hell up or take their inconsequential conversation outside. Anyway, the return flight to Almaty sold for 100,500 Tenge (around $775), I think this was also put back in the pot to be re-sold and raise more money for the charity, though I appear to have forgotten to record the second amount. Apologies. Nope, scratch that, I entered the details at the end of my notes. The second time round the ticket sold for 60,000 Tenge (~$460). The ticket was then put back into the auction AGAIN, and resold for a 3rd time, for 51,000 Tenge ($390). So the two auctions items managed to raise around $2600 just by themselves! Altogether, with entrance tickets, donations & raffle tickets also included, the evening raised around 800,000 Tenge ($6200). I will certainly be keeping an eye out on TV for any coverage the Kazakh Paralympic team get next year in Shanghai
Oh, and just for any hard core cynics out there, this is not a sponsored post, I just see this as being a worthy cause to promote.

OK, so once again, my posting has been sporadic as of late. I’ve now pretty much recovered from the illness though, so I’m hoping to be writing a little more.

In the mean time, here are a few links I have been meaning to suggest -

www.robertamsterdam.com - Perspectives on Russia, Europe, and International Affairs
kazakhstan.blogsome.com/2007/02/03/126/ - KZBlog’s look at KZ Blogs!
kazakhstan.neweurasia.net/?p=248 - Kazakh queues

PS This post’s title is a reference to a Shed Seven song, in case anyone cares…
PPS Had my third Russian lesson today, all went well. The ride back cost 600 Tenge, which was a rip off, but it was balanced out by a friendly driver giving me a lift for free on the way there - he decided a foreigner coming to live in RK and trying to learn Russian was something to be applauded…