One of my favourite author, Terry Pratchett has said “”Personally, I’d eat the arse out of a dead mole…” Not a strange attempt at grabbing publicity for his books, but rather a (humorous) reference to the lengths he’d go to, to try and find a cure for Alzheimer’s. Although relatively young (for such a neurone-wasting type of disease) to have been struck down, he hasn’t shied away from the media, nor withdrawn into self pity, he hopes to bring further press to the cause. He has also just pledged close to a million dollars (£494,000) to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust. To read some more on this, head on over to this article.

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’

Despite their advertiser’s temporary case of amnesia when it comes to spelling the word discovery (head on over to their site to learn about the Great Discovry:$ 8 Prescription Glasses From Zenni Optical), the site itself seems reasonably well constructed, and easy to use.

If you know your eyesight prescription, and don’t necessarily want to be forced to pay top dollar for good quality glasses, ZenniOptical have a wide range of frames to choose from.

As it really is time to make sure you have presents for family and friends sorted, I thought I would make another post in the vouchers and coupons category here at this blog. eDealFinder have a range of frequently updated promotions running, from Sony vouchers to ShoeBuy coupons.
Do make sure you check all the available discounts, as you may find that some purchases are cheaper using different coupons. As an example, if you head on over to the ShoeBuy discounts section, you will notice that there both percentage based coupons (such as 20% off) as well as straight money off vouchers (such as $5 off). Now before deciding which of these examples to use, you need to consider your total bill - if this comes to more than $25, then the first offer makes more sense, however if you find a bargain at $20 (for example), then the $5 off would actually save you more money.

The rules are pretty simple - register with Overstock’s competition by the 7th December, and you could win a prize from their site. How could it be better? How about five of your friends winning a prize at the same time (up to a total value of $1000)? If you are really lucky and win the grand draw prize, then you and your five best friends (they will soon be your best buddies even if they weren’t before ) get a $5000 pot to spend on your prizes!
So, click the link for the “All I want for Christmas Giveaway“, watch the flash presentation and start thinking which of your friends would most appreciate the gift if you win. You can enter once per day, and your friends can also enter in their own right. (Please see the rules section for exact details).

Personally, I would go for some classy diamond earrings for Irina, and maybe a new digital camera for us. Anyway, ChrisD, AlexC, Oleg, NickM and Seb (who could share with Con :)) would be my 5 nominated friends, if we all lived over in America, rather than Europe. Taking a moment to look at overstock’s inventory, I feel I would probably have difficulty in keeping to the 1K or 5K total, but then again its Christmas, so I suppose I could always dip into the bank account to top up the total budget…

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.

As you may remember from April’s posts, we bought a new TV this year, our first ever flat screen. The process of researching availability, models, other customer’s opinions etc. took a while, but we ended up with a good screen. We did look at a couple of hitachi 50 LCD televisions, but plumped for a Sony in the end. Had I been located somewhere other Kazakhstan, I may well have ended up at Krillion’s web site. Globally, the marker for such screens is worth more than $15 billion, so there is a lot of healthy competition present, ensuring that manufacturers and sales points (be they real world shops or online sites) work hard to get the best deals for their prospective customers.
Without the internet, I would have found it incredibly difficult to decide which TV to go for, the choice of models, sizes and features can be over whelming. Following the trend of more than 90% of other flat screen purchases, after my intensive online research, I bought a screen in a real world shop, as with something that expensive, I wanted a real location and people to speak to should any problems arise. It also obviously helps if you can see the screen performing along side other models. (That said, Kazakhstan’s retailers really need to learn that composite connections are NOT a good way to show off HD models ) Krillion search their database for retailers local to you, making sure you do not waste a trip to the shop, just to find they sold out earlier in the week of the particular make and model of TV you want.

Blog income this year - once I have earned another $1.40, this blog will have paid for the following items this year

Return plane tickets to Amsterdam and Britain, back in September
3 way split on the rent for an apartment in Amsterdam
Spending money for the three week holiday in Amsterdam and Britain
Irina’s new phone (well most of it )
A few meals out during the last 7 months
Most of the cost for the plane tickets Ira and I bought for our trip to Britain this Xmas
Irina’s Xmas pressie (a lovely little laptop. Am I stupid, or just assuming she doesn’t read this blog? Neither, I know she reads the blog, but she helped me to narrow down the selection. This will be a laptop for her to browse the internet whilst I’m hogging the current PC, and to do some office-type work on. Therefore, my normal criteria of how well it plays games and whether it has enough LEDs/transparent casing should not apply to her laptop (I’m also hereby giving Ira written consent to whack me around the head (with something soft) should I start treating it as anything other than her PC…))

Anyway, despite Google’s decision to penalize myself and many other bloggers by wiping out their PageRank (I was expecting a rise to 5, from 4, instead of dropping to 0 with 3 drops in a month), I hope that this blog will help assist this household for the next few years, though I am obviously hoping to diversify the income sources as well.

Following on from the previous poker-based post, rushmore online casino would like blog readers to know about their site. Willing to go that little bit extra, they are currently offering an $888 bonus for first time players. (As ever, check the site linked to for full terms and conditions.) Also tying in with my previous cash back credit cards post, Rushmore Online Casino offer a reward scheme where the more you play, the larger the bonus you can collect.