ChrisMerriman.com » Kazakhstan

Jun 24 2009

From J. Lo To Play Dough

Category: In The Media,Kazakhstan — ChrisM @ 5:15 pm

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.
Jennifer Lopez

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.
Placido Domingo

Tags: Astana, Birthday, J. Lo, Jennifer Lopez, Kazakhstan, Palace of Independence, Plácido Domingo, United Press International, WordPress

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Jun 20 2009

Salt Water, Yurts & Peggle

Category: Friends,Kazakhstan,Personal — ChrisM @ 1:54 am

Friday night draws to a close, and we still don’t know whether we are just at Irina’s parents this weekend, as normal, or if we are going on a day trip that was cancelled a couple of weeks ago. The possible destination is a salt water lake a little bit outside of Astana, with a beach on it! In a virtually land locked country like Kazakhstan, any sort of natural sandy beach is a plus. If we are going, I’m hoping someone is sorting a yurt again. No, I’m not missing half the keys and hoping someone is bringing yoghurts, but instead referring to a big tent like structure that the nomadic people used to use in this country. Now we have Anna, the ability to get in from the hot sun, have somewhere for her to lie down on the ground that is clean, and be able to change her clothes/nappy without exposing her body to the elements too much would be great.

Yurt

OK, that is actually a yurt in Mongolia, but it is the closest I could find in terms of a visual reference to the one we used last time.

Anyway, I’ll post/tweet when I know what we are doing tomorrow, but as we only heard about the possibility from a friend a couple of days ago, and the in-laws haven’t mentioned anything, I’m assuming it is another weekend in Chubari. Hopefully DanD is popping over anyway, and I recently installed Peggle on Ira’s Mum’s PC, so whatever happens, I should have something to do 😉

Tags: Astana, Dan, Irina, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Mum, Riviera hotel

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Jun 19 2009

Slow And Steady Wins The Race

Category: Kazakh Driving,Videos — ChrisM @ 11:59 pm

We used a taxi driver today who had been helpful, courteous and driven well in the past. Although the car he drives is something like an old banger of a Volkswagon Polo with an automatic gearbox, he knows the car well, seems to anticipate other drivers’ actions well.
Contrast that to a taxi driver who I drove with recently, who had a Subaru Impreza. The choice of car was an obvious indicator as to his driving style, and whilst I have to admit that I actually enjoyed the experience of zipping between lanes and fitting into gaps between cars that I wouldn’t have tried in a much smaller car, I wouldn’t want to have had Ira or Anna with me. Perhaps the fact I was a little drunk at the time helped me to relax 🙂
So why contact certain taxi drivers direct, rather than just ring a company, or flag down a passing motorist? Most of the time, we now need a car that we know has working, and accessible seat belts in the back, to attach Anna’s car seat to. Add on top of that that some drivers dislike the extra time it takes to safely place Anna in a car, and you can see why when we find a driver who takes their time, doesn’t make a car journey feel like a white knuckle roller coaster ride, we take their mobile phone number.

While we are on the topic of cars, I have only just got around to watching some of Robert Llewellyn’s CarPool episodes. Here is one featuring Dave Gorman. Robert Llewellyn is probably still most famous for playing Kryten in the UK comedy series Red Dwarf, and try searching on this blog or checking out his Wiki, to discover who Dave Gorman is.

urrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh, yuck. Apologies to anyone who loaded this site in the last three minutes. I had originally embedded a video in this space, but when I went to check how it looked on my site, I discovered it automatically started playing. As I can’t see a ‘autoplay=1’ type argument in the code, I’ll just link to it instead, sorry. http://blip.tv/play/gdw_gYrZQJCkXA

Finally, wanted to give a quick heads up to research publicised in a BBC article on rear facing car seats for children. Apparently they should be used up until the age of four, which is certainly not common practice back in Britain. It would just be amazing to see any type of car seat/restraint used with most children over here in Kazakhstan :/

Tags: BBC, Britain, car journey feel, car seat, car seat/restraint, Dave Gorman, driver, Irina, Kazakhstan, rear facing car seats, Red Dwarf, Robert Llewellyn, Subaru Impreza, taxi driver, United Kingdom

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Jun 19 2009

Light At The End Of The Tunnel Is Just

Category: In The Media,Kazakhstan,Sport — ChrisM @ 12:29 am

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.

Kamaz
+

= !

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.

Tags: Astana, Kazakhstan, Lance Armstrong

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Jun 18 2009

Air, Teeth, Mud, Concrete and Burgers

Category: Eating Out,In The Media,Kazakh Driving,Personal — ChrisM @ 8:56 pm

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.

Tags: Astana, Europe, food, Irina, Kazakhstan, NewEurasia.net, scary rabbit food, United States, Winter Olympics

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Jun 03 2009

Suggestions For Kazakhstan – Part I

Category: Kazakhstan — ChrisM @ 8:05 pm

This is the first part of a series of posts on things that have occurred to me since moving back here to Astana…

Not all of us chose something like a Bob stroller when it came to the time to choose transportation for our babies, so if Astana’s Akimat (Mayor basically), could see his way to ensuring that the kerb stones and pavements, at least on the major roads, were easily accessible for pushchairs (and wheelchairs when it comes down to it), life would be a lot easier for some people. Currently, pavements (sidewalks (?) I believe for any American readers often have kerbs that are higher than the pavement, dropping down to a road that is lower than the pavement. Assuming the font used on this blog doesn’t mangle my ASCII stick art too badly, this is what you end up with … _|- … an un-necessarily large drop, with a fence like kerb in the middle. If these could be altered to something like _/ , so a slope was involved, then moving around would be less of a problem, and prams would last longer.

Tags: Akimat, ASCII, Astana, Kazakhstan, Mayor, transportation, United States

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May 29 2009

All arrived fine. onto north w…

Category: Eating Out,Friends,Pictures,Tweets — ChrisM @ 11:54 pm

All arrived fine. onto north wind to check out miss lily’s replacement… john not in photo http://twitpic.com/66zb5

Tags: Astana, Dan, Tweets, twitter, Walton

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May 29 2009

Arrived at ‘Oasis’, closely fo…

Category: Eating Out,Friends,Pictures,Tweets — ChrisM @ 9:13 pm

Arrived at ‘Oasis’, closely followed by Walton.DanC&DanD&John still to arrive.Poss friend of absent Dave as well. http://twitpic.com/66occ

Tags: Astana, Dan, Kazakhstan, Tweets, twitter, Walton

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May 27 2009

Made Me Mad

Category: Kazakh Driving,Personal — ChrisM @ 1:49 am

Walking back from our flat a couple of days ago, I saw a baby being carried by his/her mother in a car. This, sadly, isn’t too unusual in Kazakhstan, and I think I’ll have a few battles in the future when it comes to insisting that Anna is able to use her car seat over here when we get a lift.
Part of the problem is that the law in Astana (laxly enforced) only applies to the front seats as far as seat belts are concerned. This means that even if belts are fitted in the rear when the car was made, they are often ignored, left under the seats or in some truely kcufed up cases removed!
Anyway, back to my story… Not only was this small baby held loosely in her mother’s hands, she was actually sat/leant against the dashboard in the front! So we now have a baby inches away from the glass windscreen, should any accidents occur. But it didn’t end there, this car was an almost new Toyota (Camry? I didn’t notice the exact model), and I’d bet 100 dollars against your 5 that it had air bags.
This means that should even a relatively minor shunt occur, the air bag would… well, lets just say that that baby’s parents would most likely be grieving.
It doesn’t matter how many people tell me that there isn’t the culture of safety over here, or that people don’t consider things like seat belts & car seats for children as necessary/affordable, it does not take a fricking genius to look at the little bundle of joy in their arms and wonder what would happen if this car was crashed into, right now. Anyway, rant over, and just to show that this sort of problem is obviously not just restricted to Kazakhstan, here is a quick picture from failblog I noticed recently…