Jun 12 2010

QBP Videos

Category: Friends,Kazakhstan,Videos — ChrisM @ 2:41 am

So, as I mentioned in a tweet, Irina and I were invited to the Queen’s Birthday Party (organised by the British Embassy) on the 10th of June at the Radisson Hotel here in Astana. This was the first QBP since the new ambassador here in Kazakhstan took over.

A short summary would be no speeches (apparently the correct tradition for celebrating HRH’s birthday), a good local band that played a wide variety of covers, free good food (fish and chips in cones again, as well as a buffet (curries, beef kebabs, potato wedges :) ) and free drink. I’ll leave the details of my mishap on the way home until another day.

The following videos were supposed to be uploaded on the night, but I was too drunk TBH. They were then supposed to be transferred via Qik, but once again the program got very tempremental. So, I reverted to YouTube.

I’ve not yet had a chance to actually watch all the videos, but I wanted to post these up tonight, as I’m away from the PC tomorrow for half the day, then giving a lesson and running an English Talking club in the afternoon and evening, then hopefully off to watch the England vs. USA football match during the night.
So it was now or at some random point in the future for embedding these clips.

Oh, and Irina took some proper photos with a real camera, so I’ll try ad post those up soon as well.

Search Terms That Led To This Post

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Jun 08 2010

Talent

Category: Videos — ChrisM @ 12:51 am

As I write this post, the following video has been watched over 25 million times (and that is just with the original, some of the pointless re-posts on YouTube have had over a million as well!), so it is reasonably likely you’ll already have seen this song.
If Greyson Chance (12 year old boy) singing Paparazzi (a Lady GaGa song) doesn’t ring any immediate bells, click play below now!

I’m glad to see the YouTube comments are now mostly positive, he had a lot of haters on there for a while. OK, so this isn’t the sort of thing I normally post here on ChrisMerriman.com , but the vocal talent (and arrangement skills) of someone so young just blew me away. Some of the girls in the back manage to maintain a totally not interested look throughout, but I’m guessing the blond in the top right might just be interested… Anyway, Greyson tweets and is on facebook, so leave a message of support if you want to show that lip syncing, fame grabbing, talentless media stars (Simon Cowell, you have a lot to answer for) aren’t what impress everybody.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Jun 03 2010

Riding On The Railings

Category: Videos — ChrisM @ 2:15 am

I’m about to head to be, so don’t have a lot of time to write a description for this video, but if you have a spare couple of minutes, please do watch the video. If you’re really pressed for time, I think the interesting stunts are performed from around the one minute mark. If the whole world already knows about Danny MacAskill and Inspired Bicycles, and I’m just the last to come across this clip from YouTube, my apologies.

Tags: , , , ,

Jun 03 2010

Guinness And The Beach

Category: Anna's Photos — ChrisM @ 1:38 am

Another shot (still picture rather than video this time, especially for anyone with difficulties watching YouTube videos due to work based filters etc.) of Anna getting a taste for Guinness, and also of Anna and Irina on the beach. For anyone who hasn’t read this blog before, I have to separate the photos and videos of Anna into separate posts, as when they are automatically imported into Anna’s site, any posts from this site that are in multiple categories get duplicated. I also tend to mention the date the photos or videos were taken (22nd of February in this case), as at some point I hope to amend the dates posts are shown as published on her site, so they reflect the original day the images were taken.
Anyway, enough long winded explanations, onto the pictures…

Tags: , , , ,

Nov 02 2009

Lucky21842 Live

Category: Videos — ChrisM @ 1:43 am

So Lucky is planning to give a live webcast later on today, at around 6pm (our time – should be midday in Britain, 8am on the East Coast in American, and 9pm in Japan?)
Anyway, here is the man himself explaining a little more in a YouTube vid he uploaded on the subject.

I’m going to be teaching an English lesson around that time, but hopefully there’ll be some sort of archive so I can play it back, even if real time interaction is out the window…
So, head over there if you want to ask an American living in Almaty, Kazakhstan what life is like (though he probably answered a lot of your questions in his other YouTube videos, so go and watch a few first :) ).

Oh, the BlogTV URL is here.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Oct 23 2009

Subsequently, Razors Were Involved

Category: Kazakhstan,Personal — ChrisM @ 1:30 am

This is the intro to the weekly vlog series from Jason/Lucky, down in Almaty. Also a short interview with one of the entrants to this year’s Mongol Rally. The same rally that the famous ‘Tupac In Kazakhstan’ video came from. Hmm, I thought I had posted that video already. Can’t seem to find it in my archives anywhere. More than likely it is hiding in one of the draft posts for this blog, or a series of bookmarked tabs in Firefox. I’ve got Kazakh related news articles from early 2008 in my Bookmarks menu. Not a lot of point in posting about most of those, I guess.
So, why haven’t I embedded Lucky’s video in this post? Because I want you to explore his YouTube channel for yourself. Once you’re knocked over by his style and content, leave a comment on a video or two, and consider subscribing :)

Tags: , , , , , ,

Oct 23 2009

Russian And Kazakh Schools In Kazakhstan

Category: Kazakhstan,Videos — ChrisM @ 1:19 am

Jason’s PC is apparently broken right now, so I doubt we’ll see any new YouTube videos for a while. I have been catching up with his back catalogue of films, and drafting posts on those I though people who hadn’t been to Kazakhstan, or even some locals, might find interesting.
This one is on Russian vs. Kazakh schools, here in Kazakhstan. If you have no interest in Central Asia or children, you can probably skip this one. That said, if those conditions apply to you, I’d probably wonder why you’re reading this site in the first place :)

Tags: , , , ,

Oct 17 2009

Almaty Begs Astana For Publicity ;)

Category: Kazakhstan,Videos — ChrisM @ 5:18 pm

So, Lucky21842 asked me (via his twitter account) to give a quick heads up to my readers on his 7 days of VLogging. I think we’re roughly half way through them already, so make sure you click the first link in this post to visit his channel, and watch some more. The embedded video below was his introduction to the series of V-Logs, and as I get through watching the others, I’ll be sure to post any that made me laugh / cry / feel some love :) I may even decide on a spelling of the abbreviated form of Video Logging to stick to!

Oh, and although you’ll often find this request in his info section for each video, if you have a YouTube account and find Jason/Almaty or Kazakhstan interesting, consider adding the video as a favourite, rating it or just subscribing to his account.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Oct 08 2009

SEC SaryArka

Category: Kazakhstan,Personal — ChrisM @ 5:01 pm

DanD bought round a video that I had hoped to view for months – the one featuring a voice over I recorded just before I left for Britain last year. In the end, the script had major alterations, and I wasn’t around to re-record it, so DanD provided the English audio for the final release. I will try and upload a clip to YouTube soon and publish it on this blog. I’ve learnt my lesson though – I’ll create a new account as I don’t want to risk losing all the personal videos again when someone decides fair use doesn’t apply and gets my account banned once more. This particular film was on Social Entrepreneurship, which in this case basically means government run organizations that plough the profit from their ventures back into improvements for Kazakh citizens, rather than someone’s back pocket.
We first played the video back on our DVD player (the file is some sort of AVI, not yet checked if it is specifally DivX/xVid etc.), and I had a little shock when I heard my voice – as the audio was encoded with a variable bit rate (VBR), our DVD player got a little confused and ended up rendering my voice falsetto, with me sounding like Mickey Mouse! At first I thought the production company had simply sped up my recording in order to make it match the video footage they were using, but once played on our PC, all was fine :)
Once I rediscover the exact title for the film on Kazakh Transportation policies for the future, also recorded last year, Dan should hopefully be able to get a copy of that, and we’re hoping the work we recently did together for a film on the International Religious Tolerance conferences should also be available. Something else to add to my CV to make it stand out a little more than the rest, to potential employers back in Britain :)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Feb 09 2009

9th February – T Minus ?

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 1:36 am

Today is the day. If you believe that doctors can ever predict with any sort of certainty, when a child will be born, then you would expect our daughter to be born some time today. As it is, I’m just glad that we’ve reached some sort of milestone that at least signifies you are officially close to giving birth :)
All the bags are packed, the technology has been mostly tested and pared down where necessary. I still need to sort out YouTube uploading from my phone, and if I had some sort of Sony MS <> Micro SD adaptor, I could post all the details, pictures and videos on the phone alone. As it is, you’ll have to make do with a tweet, text or call :)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Next Page »