Jan 24 2007
And this will be a very slow post to load for any other dial up users out there, apologies…
Anyway, without much further ado, here are the pictures I promised a long time ago…
(Taken over Christmas, New Year & a little bit beyond, in Britain & Kazakhstan, on our, Nick’s & John’s camera)
(Click the link below, or the post’s title above to see the pictures, as I’m trying to save some bandwidth on the server)
Continue reading “A Little Later Than Intended Again…”
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Jan 23 2007
Check Tom’s post (My Brief Life As Exotic Dancer) for some more information.
I discovered two things taking a snap of the evening….
1) My camera phone really can’t handle low light situations, even on Night Time setting
2) Club staff don’t like photos to be taken when people have more skin exposed than normal (I dumped my phone in my pocket at this point, hence the one below is only pre-strip, sadly)
I also have a few vids of the evening, but these turned out even darker 🙁
Monday, I went for my first (formal) Russian lesson here in Astana. All seemed to go well, and I’m going back on Wednesday for another session.
Jan 01 2007
ChrisD managed to get a corking deal by visiting MajorTravel.co.uk
You’ll probably want to search for London Airports to TSE (Tsleningrad, old name of Akmola, which is the old name of Astana)
Their phone number is 020 7393 1070
You may well find better deals than through this company, but ChrisD’s total fare was below 300 pounds, which we’ve never managed to get before. (He is flying at a less popular time of the year though, don’t be surprised if your fare is 33% to 100% more, depending on how flexible you are about the month you go.)
The embassy don’t mention how long it will take to process a request for a visa, last time I did it, it took them two weeks. Might be best calling them to confirm the current estimated time frame.
Anyway, try to leave AT LEAST 2 or 3 weeks spare between expected visa in your hands and flying – if they need clarification, it might require resubmitting a new form, or even popping to the Embassy in London. (Had to do that before, not difficult to find it and they spoke English). Shouldn’t need to go there, but just in case, thought it was worth mentioning. There is a tube station with 5/10 mins walk of the office.
Don’t forget you’ll need your passport in your hands before you can send off form with it!
Documents required for Visa:
Letter of introduction explaining the purpose of the visit. See below for a rough draft. The missing info is indicated in red. Feel free to re-phrase it, if you wish.
Application forms, fully completed and signed by the applicant. The form (as of 19/07/2006) is attached. See some of the answers for the form are below
Valid passport with one full blank page to affix the visa (please note that the passport must be valid for at least six months after visa’s expiration date)
One passport sized photograph (We normally wrote the name on the back and stapled it to the form)
Self addressed and prepaid envelope, special delivery or registered post only.
VISA FEES (to be paid by cheques or postal orders made out to “Kazakhstan Embassy”, maybe put your passport number on the back of the cheque) – PRIVATE VISA SINGLE ENTRY up to three months visa – 33GBP
Send the above documents to:
CONSULAR SECTION OF KAZAKHSTAN EMBASSY
33 THURLOE SQUARE
LONDON, SW7 2SD
If you need to contact Embassy:
TEL: 020-7581-4646
OPENING HOURS: 9:00 – 12:00
(MONDAY TO FRIDAY, EXCEPT WEDNESDAYS, WEEKENDS AND PUBLIC HOLIDAYS)
Their web site address (well the section you need) is www.kazakhstanembassy.org.uk/cgi-bin/index/92
Answers to some of the questions in the application form (download from the link above):
It would be simple to print out the form and fill it in by hand, as to do it on a computer is a pain; it’s definitely not been designed for filling in electronically.
In case form isn’t too clear, the info you need to put in that you don’t already know is:
17. Purpose of travel: Private
18. Inviting organization (address, tel.): N/A
or person, arranging your visit to Kazakhstan (full name, address, tel.): e-mail us for this info – not going to publish on web :>
19. Places of destination in the Republic of Kazakhstan: Astana
20. The first place of entry into the Republic of Kazakhstan: Astana
21. Temporary address in Kazakhstan: See #18
22. Who is paying for your cost of travelling and for your costs of living during your stay in Kazakhstan?: myself
Re. Expiry date on visa – put a longer date in for the end of the visa, just in case any emergencies arise, its best to have a few days comfort-zone left after you should have officially left the country.
(MAKE SURE THE END DATE IS STILL WITHIN ONE MONTH OF ARRIVAL, OTHERWISE YOU WILL NEED A DIFFERENT, MORE EXPENSIVE VISA)
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Dec 16 2006
We’ve been getting ready for our return to the UK, and we’re pretty much done now…
A huge thank you to our family and friends in Britain, who have kept me sane whilst I’m out here, and also to the family and new friends we have made out here in Kazakhstan.
We took Karra (our kitten) over to the in-laws, so she can stay with her mum and sister while we are away. Karra behaved a lot better in her carry bag this time, with only a few mystified miaows in the taxi 🙂
In 30 hours time Ira and I should have arrived in Cheltenham, where I’m staying with Dad & Nick for the first week, and then onto Swansea (well Clydach to be precise) on the Saturday/Sunday (23rd/24th December) with Nick & Ira to see Mum.
Really looking forward to catching up with family and friends; most of our evenings are planned out already in Cheltenham, so hoping we can just kick back and relax during our time in Clydach.
Irina has been allowed some unpaid leave from work, but only received the permission quite recently, by which time, the flights I’m booked on were full, so she is returning to Kz one day earlier, and going via Moscow, whereas I’ll be dropping into Istanbul on the way there and back.
By the time New Year hits us, Nick, Dad, me & Irina should all be in Astana and I’m hoping they’ll enjoy seeing Astana (it will be Nick’s first winter over here, and Dad’s first time ever.)
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Dec 12 2006
May I recommend visiting Tom’s Short Story originally taken from his blog?
You can check his blog from the link on the right (Lifeof2Me), but you can’t vote on it from there, so click on the link above, and see what you think… Then go back and read the rest of his posts 🙂
Dec 10 2006
With our friends here in Astana…
Tom has already blogged about it, so if you’ve not yet checked out the post, you can read it here.
We all met up early, as this is the last full weekend in 2006 that some of us will be here…
(oh and btw it is now just over 168 hours to go Tom 😉 )
Really enjoyed the night, just wish Dana’s other 0.5 could have been there, but he had a previous family commitment.
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Dec 07 2006
And I’ve been very bad at posting recently. Apologies to anyone still reading this 😉
Irina has just returned from Moscow, Karra is fine and still biting us randomly.
Mum had her birthday on the 5th, but her presents and card didn’t arrive until yesterday, and one still hasn’t made it 🙁
I hope to see Tom and Walton before I leave for my Christmas break, and Tom#2 (‘pilot Tom’) has been in contact to confirm he is fine, but wasn’t able to meet up with us recently due to his work commitments.
It is quite late now, so heading to bed.
Oh and Dad & Nick have received their visas, so it looks like everything is good to go for their visit over here for New Year 🙂
Hope all who read this do so in good health…
Nov 29 2006
Tom #2 (the pilot) didn’t turn up, hope his flight to Astana was ok…
Anyway we (Myself, Tom & Walton (and Ira when she had finished at Work)) went to Cafe Shymkent, and had a nice meal and a couple of drinks. Talked about all sorts, and I managed to stay sober enough to remember everything this time. Having spent the night working on getting links to my Ad Sense websites up, I’m about to head to bed.
Looked out the window, and it appears to have been snowing a fair bit over night…
If you compare these two photos to the ones here, you can see the lanes are now covered over again completely.
Doesn’t seem to slow down some drivers though…
Nov 28 2006
OK, first for Tom from LifeOf2Me, I keep forgetting to mention THIS link to you when we meet in the real world… Not sure if it will be of any use to you with your work (if/when the school gets closer to actually needing syllabuses/lesson plans etc.), but I thought it might be of interest to you at the very least…
Second, for the ‘other’ Tom (nowt personal, if I’d met you first, ‘our’ Tom would be the ‘other’ ;>), are we still meeting up Tuesday evening? I’m assuming your flight plans haven’t changed. Anyway, we’ll all be out drinking somewhere, hope you are still coming.
Finally, my HHUUGGEE thanks to the creator of the theme I use for this site; for a while I’d wanted to alter the colours used for hyperlinks – whilst the previous grey was definitely in keeping with the black version of Chameleon I’d chosen, a couple of visitors had mentioned that when I post links, it wasn’t very obvious sometimes. I found this to be true when I’d been up all night, and ended up randomly pushing the cursor around until I found what I needed. Anyway, I digress, Ainslie spotted my request 1/2 day after I added it on one of his posts. I then neglected to check back for an answer for a while, and when I discovered his speedy response, I followed up with another query (still a newbie with CSS – I can bodge/cut’n’paste/guess some things, but I wasn’t sure which value to alter for link colours…). Lo and behold, some 39 minutes later, he had the answer.
Nov 12 2006
Irina cooked a really nice roast, our friends bought some vodka, and we consumed it all.
Actually I think there is some cake left in the fridge, will go and check just as soon as my stomach returns to normal.
Full respect to Tom, who had to go to work first thing this morning, I woke up early, stood up too quickly and went back to bed again soon after ;>
Anyway click the thumbnails below to see slightly larger versions…
