Jul 13 2008
Today is both Balzhan’s and Javier Eppen’s birthday, so a big congratulations to both of them. To newcomers to this blog, Balzhan is a friend here in Astana, whilst Javier is a good friend who rented a room in the same house as us, a long time ago. We’ve not heard from him in a while, but we hope he, Paula & family are doing well…
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Jul 10 2008
Am the only person who would misinterpret the journalist’s story, when reading that headline? Although the article itself has the word elected inserted between Bury and Mayor, the RSS feed last week definitely had it missing. Perhaps a deliberate ploy to get people to view the page. Maybe I should try the same 😉
Oh before I forget, Natalya is back home, my brother Nick has managed to get a job (congratulations) and Alex is leaving on holiday soon.
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Jul 04 2008
Natalya Kim arrived on the train this evening. We saw some photos of her baby. Except she isn’t a baby anymore, she is a proper, fully formed little girl. Awwwwwwww. Anyway, Dave came over for a meal and a little drink. We are hopefully going out for a session at some club near his. Anyway, need to make a move now, will try and write a post tomorrow to say how it went. Natalya arrived safely, we got home without too much hassle taxi wise, and now we are hopefully heading to A8 or Club Seoul…
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Jul 04 2008
Natalya (as in Ms. Kim, rather than the Dr. Natalya that gets mentioned more often on this site) should be arriving later today (Friday). We’ve not seen her in a while, so it will be good to catch up. She used to live with us in Cheltenham a long time ago, before returning to Kazakhstan. Dave is also supposed to be popping over for a drink or two, as well as some haute cuisine created by yours truly. (OK, it will probably be some processed & battered meat product deep fried with chips & beans, but he didn’t complain last time 😉 )
Finally, before I forget, Happy Birthday to the friend who doesn’t want their name or photo on this site. We hope you enjoyed your day, and we look forward to meeting again soon.
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Jul 02 2008
Last night (well, a couple of hours ago) was the first night of celebrations. The reason? This city’s (Astana) birthday as being the capital of Kazakhstan. Also, the president has his birthday around this time, so it is a joint celebration. Anyway there was huge firework display with some lasers. The sights and sounds all the way from our flat window was pretty spectacular. They will apparently be repeating the spectacle each night by the river, though whether it will be to the same scale remains to be seen. Hopefully Ira and I will manage to get a little closer sometime, and I’ll try and figure out which settings will work best on the camera. Probably not tomorrow, as Dave is coming over to get drunk catch up and listen to some of his new tunes discuss deep intellectual matters.
Oh, and the car alarms? In the car park near us, despite being a good 10/15 minute walk away, all the car alarms were set off by the bassy booms from the fireworks!
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Jun 21 2008
Just a quick post from the in-laws for now, but last night Ira and I went out to the Queen’s Birthday Party, organised by the British (! (/sarcasm)) Embassy, then went on to the BG Challenge Ball (see last year’s post – if I don’t get around to linking to it properly, it should hopefully pop up in the ‘related posts’ links below this text, and then finally onto a club called A8. We saw a lot of friends, some of whom had not met each other before, I wore a suit (!), had proper fish and chips (served in newspaper), and finally got to see if A8 lived up to the hype.
Can someone remind me to change that last paragraph from one sentence into something a little more manageable? Anyway, no photos as not enough pockets, but I’ll try and post more details soon, once I’m a little more alert.
I’ve just returned from a nice meal out with Walton and Assel, and returned to the in-laws where Aunty Sasha is.
Jun 19 2008
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!
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Jun 14 2008
Sorry, it looks like I just e-mailed everyone in my Contacts list to join StumbleUpon accidentally. I was attempting to see who had already joined, and link up with them.
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Jun 11 2008
OK, so I definitely need to clear some time in the next week or two, and try to catch up with a lot of posts (and photo editing) on this blog. Although my memory of my holiday last September may be a little hazy by now, I’m hoping the pictures will either refresh said memory, or paint a good enough picture to give you, the reader, enough of an idea. After that, we have our trip to Britain over Christmas and New Year, with Mum’s wedding in between. After that we have finally meeting up with Tom the pilot, contact being made with an American Jazz singer hopefully coming to Astana to play some sets locally. Finally, we have the birthday trip to Amsterdam (I may need to link to upcoming forum posts for the Coffeeshop specific info) and Britain again this April and May. I’m hoping that by posting this summary now, it will remind me what is missing, and force me into actually taking the time out to write a few words and crop a few piccies. To friends and family still waiting for those posts, thanks for your patience so far.
May 22 2008
Just in case you have not come across this well publicized report already, head on over to the BBC’s article detailing how an Australian man was caught by the police and subsequently fined for having alcohol in the car. No, not some USA-like charge of having an open container in a moving vehicle, this driver had decided it was more important to use the remaining seat belt in the back of his car to secure a crate of beer, rather than the five year old child! Whilst we’re on the topic of Australia, we won’t be seeing DavidG this week, as he is away, and also, don’t forget to check out AlexC’s blog – Dryad Musings. Recent posts have covered her photography project, the diverse range of nature around her, their new transport, and Australia’s flavour of Big Brother!
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