Here in Kazakhstan, new rules are to be bought into place, (wow, just checked and July this year was the date apparently) regarding allowable emissions from cars. The aim is to bring Kazakh cars to Euro-2 standards, however there is one small problem, as pointed out by Zara – the higher quality, lower emission causing petrol and diesel that powers these more tightly regulated vehicles are not to be legislated for until January next year! It will be interesting to see how a company, that is mainly industrial, handles ecological reforms like this – whether the big Kamazs, Soviet-era buses and the like, all critical to an already weakened construction industry will be checked and taken off the road if found to fail, or if certain exemptions will be provided, or perhaps just officials looking the other way whilst they re-check whether they can yet afford that second car.
Aug 15 2009
Cleaner Output From Dirty Input?
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Jul 24 2009
Swine Flu Confirmed In Astana – Pics Added
The first hint that things had changed were when we drove Anna for her (regular) immunizations this morning. I noticed that bus drivers and conductors were wearing face masks. One driver was indeed wearing the mask, just not actually using it – the mask was done up behind the head, but hanging below his chin! I’ll leave the discussion on whether face masks are actually much use except when worn by people who may have already been infected, or in societies where (some) people spit in the street and regularly cough & sneeze without covering their mouth, for another day.
Irina then spoke to someone who had heard that Astana now had confirmed cases of the A/H1N1 virus, and that either local or national authorities had declared that shop and public workers would now be wearing the aforementioned masks.
So, am I worried, about to go and buy a dozen boxes of face masks? Well, with Anna around I’m naturally concerned, but given that Britain currently has approximately 100,000 new cases declared each week, and that the current variant of Swine Flu hasn’t yet mutated to be highly deadly and/or drug resistant, I’m not about to seal all the windows and doors and demand temperature readings from anyone we come into contact with.
It appears that the three (confirmed, as opposed to six including suspected) cases were with people who had been in Britain for academic studies.
Oh, in case 3rd hand information is not (understandably with this sort of topic) official enough to be considered valid, here is an Azerbaijan site’s report on it! I’m not sure whether this Google News search will work for other people, and whether it will stay up to date with new stories, but you can currently see that only the Asian/Central Asian news services seem to have picked up on the reports.
In case they disappear from Google’s listings, here we have Gazeta.kz’s almost translated into English story, and here we have the Indian branch of Reuters summary. Finally, Kazakhstan Today’s bulletin can be found here.
[edit]
OK, just been for a walk in Astana park. Out of a sample size of approximately 200 people, five were found to be wearing masks. That is if you include another bus driver who had it on, but slung under his chin.
Couple of photos below…
Astana Park Ride Attendant Face Mask Swine Flu
Bus Driver Face Mask Not Worn Swine Flu
Jun 24 2009
From J. Lo To Play Dough
OK, so his name is obviously Placido Domingo (well Plácido Domingo to be precise, but I don’t yet know how WordPress will handle accented characters. Cyrillics are still an issue), but if I titled the post from J. Lo to Pla. Do, I thought it quite likely people would read it without making it rhyme. Which would obviously ruin my day 😉
Anyway, the connection between the two singers? Astana, Kazakhstan, obviously.
What, you say you still don’t follow? Fair enough… We will soon be celebrating Astana Day, and last year there were rumours that Jennifer Lopez would be performing at a concert. See NewEurasia.net’s article here.
OK, I was working from memory, and upon reading that article properly, it sounds more like it was for a celebration of the president’s birthday, not Astana day. I’ll need to look into that. I hope NewEurasia implement some mod_rewrite rules soon – all their internal links to old articles are still broken.
However, this time there does seem to be official confirmation, (three English Language sources that I could find at least – United Press International, PR Newswire, merinews (site is utterly unrelated to me, though I should have thought of the domain name before it was grabbed by them.)), that he will be appearing (and presumably singing) on July 5th at the Palace of Independence. This all assumes that it isn’t some sort of power play by akimat, in terms of getting a contract signed.
Anyway, I expect tickets will be for big-wigs, their children, extended familys and any politicians in the area that haven’t recently been denounced for corruption, so I’ll have to keep an eye out in the local press and media for reports on it.
Jun 20 2009
Tasered Twice!
Feel free to source a better quality clip from YouTube, I’ve lost the bookmark for it, sorry. Anyway, police in Nottinghamshire were caught on a mobile phone camera using a taser gun twice on, as well as punching, a person they were attempting to arrest after requests for help from night club security. See the BBC article for the video (I’m fairly certain YouTube had a higher quality version?) and some background information on this.
I love Assistant Chief Constable (Nottinghamshire Police) Peter Davies comments on this…
“We understand that some members of the public may be concerned about this.
“The public’s trust and confidence is very important for us, which is why we have referred this matter for an objective investigation to the IPCC.”
Or perhaps “Oh crap. I wish the public didn’t all have mobile phones with cameras these days” would be more honest?
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Jun 19 2009
Light At The End Of The Tunnel Is Just
A train coming down the tracks the wrong way? Wow, it has been a LONG time since any post on this site was under the ‘sport’ category. Sorry, back to my badly mauled expression. KZBlog wrote a piece titled ‘Light At The End Of The Tunnel‘ on the problems effecting (affecting? why is it I can never remember which is which, like defence and defense?) Team Astana (a cycling team recently made famous by Lance Armstrong’s arrival). This was at the end of May.
However, NewEurasia reported in the last few days that it looks as though the team could be suspended ahead of the July deadline originally thought to be the target to get more government / commercial sponsor money. I have occasionally seen some members of the team training on Astana’s public roads, which in itself is quite an accomplishment – the idea of a Kamaz smashing into me whilst cycling is more than enough to convince me that biking around Astana city is a hobby/mode of transport best left to others.
+
= !
And yes, I am trying to clear down all the news items I bookmarked recently for inclusion on this blog, before I start the catch up process with Anna’s photos. More news stories to come, I’ll try and intersperse a few with pictures of our beautiful baby daughter, but that may need to wait until tomorrow.
Jun 18 2009
Air, Teeth, Mud, Concrete and Burgers
This evening, so Anna could have some fresh air (and a snooze, as she had been cranky all day – teething?) we walked over to Mega (see previous tweet with picture). On the way there (we still take an extra few minutes to use the proper light controlled pedestrian crossing, compared to the main cross roads next to Mega, where cars don’t have to stop when turning right, even though the little green man is, well, green, for pedestrians) we cut across a little patch of grass to get to the pavement. It had previously been raining, and I suddenly found it very difficult to push Anna along. Looking down, I saw the wheel and lower part of the frame caked in mud. Lesson learned – stick to the concrete where possible. It looks like we may be needing some pressure washers to clear the mud off the frame for the pushchair. Hopefully the Akim here in Astana will consider building a proper pavement (sidewalk for American readers), as the one on our side of the road is actually just a series of (usually) connected concrete covers over large pipes.
Speaking of construction in Astana, NewEurasia.net has an article explaining how Kazakhstan hosting the Asian Winter Olympics has benefited Astana now that the city is co-hosting with Almaty (the old capital city over here). See here for the full run down.
Anyway, despite the use of big puddles, leaves and tissues, the pushchair was still leaving a muddy streak behind it when we arrived at Mega, so Ira ran in to pick up a few essentials from Ramstore, and also a couple of takeaways from Star Burger (I think that was the name) – I had a relatively tasty cheese burger, with no scary rabbit food (lettuce, tomato, gherkins etc), which filled a hole nicely.
On the way back a water tanker (one of the smaller versions, compared to what you might see in Europe) was drifting across lanes, apparently trying to drive through a car, rather than overtake it, luckily they both stopped in time for the zebra crossing, so we arrived back home in one piece, though a little wet, as the clouds broke again for a few minutes.
Jun 18 2009
Watermarking Soon?
I have been meaning to process all the images stored on this server for a while, and watermark them with this site’s name. Why? Because I see from my server logs that quite a few are used across the internet (often in Arabic forums and MySpace pages, for some reason), and if others wish to use these pictures, I’d like to get a free advert out of it as well 🙂
However, a family in America discovered another reason for branding their own photos – a Czech company (that specializes in sales of imported Italian food) had taken their happy family snapshot, and used it in their own promotional materials! See an article on it here.
Anyway, unless and until I get anywhere near hitting my monthly data transfer allowance with my web host, I’ll be happy to just watermark the pictures with ChrisMerriman.com, and not take the drastic last step of replacing the file with an identically named one featuring a goatse. (The idea being that on your own site, you update any references to the new filename of the original image). Don’t go and google that word, unless you have a strong stomach, and aren’t at work/in front of children right now.
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May 08 2009
Complaining To A Pan Handler
Here in Wales, some people with healthcare jobs will be having a brand new uniform sometime this year! New colour schemes have been devised to make it easier for patients and their visitors to identify who is in charge, who to ask specific questions regarding your malaise, who takes BP and pulse observations, and who passes the those funny bottles to wee into. OK, the BBC did word it a little more correctly over here, but I think that is what it boils down to 🙂
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Mar 22 2009
Just Right Or Too Far?
Fed up with litter on the streets in your area? Happen to live in a relatively small community? It might be worth asking your local shopkeeper to take the same approach as described here…
Mar 20 2009
Not Mature But Mildly Funny
Don’t panic, there are more baby Anna photos to come still, but I realise that not all regular readers of this blog are here for pictures of our beautiful daughter. So, to carry on with posts about nothing important to anyone, like I used to, here is a story from The Shropshire Star’s online edition, regarding a student who decided that if management at his workplace were going to be stupid, he’d match them.
Not much point in me giving more details, there’d be no point in reading the story then.
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