We are all off ice skating in a few minutes. There are two ice rinks (that we know of) in Astana, and we have not tried the second one yet.
One small problem – I can not actually skate. If you see me from the waist up, nothing looks too bad – I appear to be moving (albeit a little slowly) normally. However, if you do not have the ice rink wall blocking your view, you will notice a strange pattern to my feet moving. Unfortunately, only one of my ankles will allow me to balance on it, whilst the other foot is pushing at an angle on the ice. As soon as I try to complete the manoeuvre my other ankle just buckles under me. Given that I am not the most stable of people on ice anyway, this tends to lead to me falling on my arse. Which then gets cold and wet, whilst my face goes red and I attempt to stand up. So…. I tend to skate with one leg, hoping no one is laughing too loudly.
Anyway, should be a laugh, and we have just discovered that Lorsha will also be coming with us. Big thanks to his Dad in advance, for giving us a lift. I will try to remember to write a little report later, to let others know what the state of the ice is like… hopefully more like Swindon ice rink than Bristol’s.
Jul 05 2007
Push And Glide
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Jul 05 2007
Pedalo A Go-Go
As Alex had not yet seen Astana from the river Ishim, we decided to hire a pedalo (in case that turns out to be an English phrase, those are little boats with water wheel like propulsion, that two people power by pedalling like on a bike) and have a quick jaunt around the area between two bridges. After a not small amount of bickering over just how inaccurate some people’s sense of direction was (steering with two non-equal sources of power and a dodgy rudder is not the most accurate of systems) we quickly settled into a routine. Said routine consisted of not ceaselessly turning in circles, avoiding other boats that dared to cross our intended (though somewhat zig-zag) course and generally having fun. Alex managed to grab a few shots of the scenery, so there is another batch of photos I’ll have to post sometime soon.
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Jul 05 2007
Took A Quick Tour Round Kazakhstan
We went and visited the different areas of Kazakhstan this evening, and it only took just over an hour…
OK, not entirely accurate, we actually went to the big map of Kazakhstan that features models of famous buildings, land marks and geographical land marks. You walk around the area, and can get an idea of just where certain features are in relation to others. We went last year with Mum & John, but as Alex had obviously not seen it before, we also hired a guide to point out the interesting features.
Anyway, we walked all around, and then went to the section under cover that details some of the new developments near the Presidential Palace etc.
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Jul 03 2007
Oleg Is Back In Astana :)
He has been away in Moscow studying for almost a year now, so it is really good to have him back around, if only for a couple of weeks. We (Ira, myself, AlexC and Oleg himself), all went out for a meal this evening. We headed over to where Irina works (KMG), as she was called in on her day off (quel surprise), and once we were all together, headed to the Uzbek restaurant near there. It turns out they now have a outdoor section, shared with the Samovar restaurant (Russian food) next door, which was based on the roof. For once, the food was tasty and hot, the service was incredibly good by Kazakh standards, with smiles and a few English phrases thrown in by the waitress. Hopefully have a few pictures to follow soon 🙂 .
Jul 03 2007
Got To Love That HDMI Quality
From the income generated from this blog and my other sites, I spent a little money on items from e-bay, e-buyer and a few other online stores. As most of them to not deliver to Kazakhstan (and as our postal service out here is still a little hit and miss), I had them delivered to AlexC’s house. One of the most eagerly awaited goodies was a 10 metre DVI>HDMI lead. We can now watch videos from the PC, on the TV, at the full 1920×1080 resolution, without any of the interference that using component caused.
Although the vast majority of my files are at much lower resolutions, viewing digital photos (I’ll hopefully be posting some of Alex’s a little later) is a lot better now, as we can really see the fine detail without having to zoom in.
Anyway, with that lead, and a proper null modem cable to connect to the satellite receiver (I had to bodge one together previously, which looked a little ugly, and was about 10cm to short to use since we bought the TV stand), the room is starting to look a little tidier 🙂 I can now also upload new firmwares to the satellite box when ever needed, so more channels are available day to day 🙂
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Jul 03 2007
More Goodies From Britain
Big thanks to ChrisD, who despite still not having written his post on last year’s trip over here, has mostly redeemed himself by donating a portable hard drive to my storage collection. AlexC kindly bought it over in her luggage, which with all the other things for us in there (more to come on that later), did not leave a lot of room for her own stuff.
Not only does this now bring the total space available to just over 1 Tb (1024 Gb), he also filled the hard drive with the downloads I requested from him (we originally only had a 700Mb per month allowance from our ISP). I should of course point out that I own all the original media for these files, but they are in the UK, and to heavy to transport out here…
Anyway, all the tunes and movies have made a very welcome return to this flat, so thank you both 🙂
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Jul 02 2007
As Promised, More Info…
on Alex…
So, as you will already know if you have read the previous posts, our friend Alex is now here in Kazakhstan. Her journey over here was a little more eventful than any of us thought it would be. Her flight originally had a 2 hour stop over in Kaliningrad, before completing her journey here in Astana. Unfortunately, some flight time changes were made, and the e-mail the travel broker sent to Alex explaining this was not at all clear. We discovered a day prior to her leaving Britain that she would in fact have to spend 26 hours in Kaliningrad. As she did not have a visa, or a place to stay there, we were hoping she could simply stay in the transit lounge between flights.
Unfortunately, Kaliningrad airport closes over night! Eventually, they locked her in the mother and baby room, which at least had beds, and made sure she was accompanied by airport staff at all times. Although it is obviously not nice to have your movements so restricted, once they had decided she was not a dodgy person trying to slip into the country, they made sure she was as comfortable as possible, and even fed her for free! (In fact over fed her, but that is a story for another time.)
I will hopefully be posting some pictures of where we have visited since Alex’s arrival, and may even be able to persuade her to write a post describing her views of Kazakhstan…
We originally thought she would be landing at Astana airport in 3 and a bit hours from now. Unfortunately none of us checked her tickets properly… instead of a 2 hour wait at Kaliningrad airport, it turns out she had a 26 hour wait!
At first we saw this as a pain in the bum, but nothing too major. After all, spending a day in a transit lounge is not the worst thing in the world. However, it turns out the airport does not have a transit lounge, so she had to go through with all the other passengers who were staying in the country. As she did not have a visa, the passport control people were obviously unhappy. Then it turned out this oblast’s (it is actually part of Russia, though isolated geographically) airport CLOSED over night. Several phone calls later, and she has now been allowed to stay the night in the mother and baby room with a staff member who volunteered to spend the night there.
Hopefully we will now see Alex in around 27 hours, and if nothing else, she has an interesting start to her holiday to tell her friends about back home. I might even be able to persuade her to make short post on here
Jul 02 2007
Goodies From Home
As you may have noticed, I have not posted a great deal this past week, mainly because Alex is over here on holiday, and so I used that as an excuse to take a short vacation from the normal daily postings. Hope my loyal readers don’t mind, and that any newcomers will have considered coming back to check for new info…
Anyway, Alex’s luggage was somewhat weighed down by a new router/modem/wi-fi access point. I originally had two, which did not make sense at the time, as I was on dial up access to the internet since moving to Kazakhstan. So, my Mum got one of them for her place (apart from anything else, it is easier to trouble shoot a piece of hardware when you have actually used one before 😉 ), and the other one went to the in-laws, so they could use their PDA downstairs to browse the web. It might never happen, but I liked to give them the choice in the future.
Anyway, the Netgear DG834PN that I ordered seems to do the job, and has a few more toys for me to learn how to use.
Oh, and the little blue flashing LEDs help 😉
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Jun 28 2007
Alex Is Here :)
More information, photos, and hopefully comments from the woman herself, but Alex arrived Tuesday morning, and all is well 🙂
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Jun 25 2007
Alex Arriving Soon
We originally thought she would be landing at Astana airport in 3 and a bit hours from now. Unfortunately none of us checked her tickets properly… instead of a 2 hour wait at Kaliningrad airport, it turns out she had a 26 hour wait!
At first we saw this as a pain in the bum, but nothing too major. After all, spending a day in a transit lounge is not the worst thing in the world. However, it turns out the airport does not have a transit lounge, so she had to go through with all the other passengers who were staying in the country. As she did not have a visa, the passport control people were obviously unhappy. Then it turned out this oblast’s (it is actually part of Russia, though isolated geographically) airport CLOSED over night. Several phone calls later, and she has now been allowed to stay the night in the mother and baby room with a staff member who volunteered to spend the night there.
Hopefully we will now see Alex in around 27 hours, and if nothing else, she has an interesting start to her holiday to tell her friends about back home. I might even be able to persuade her to make short post on here 🙂
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