Oct 27 2008

No Fishing In The Toilet Bowl

Category: Eating Out,PicturesChrisM @ 2:43 pm

I’ll try and remember to write about the venue itself, and the meeting with friends, but I just wanted to drop in this picture quickly.

Toilet Sign

Toilet Sign

It was in the toilets at an Irish Pub (Sligo) we randomly discovered at the weekend. The fishing and dog impressions are a joke obviously, but the other warnings are needed over here sadly, at least sometimes. Anyway, in case I forget to post more details later, there was good food and drink (Guinness included!), friendly service (with at least one English speaking barman around) and the closest to a UK/Eire pub style atmosphere we’ve found yet.

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Oct 24 2008

Construction Freeze & Outdated Or Incomplete Report

Category: Friends,In The Media,KazakhstanChrisM @ 5:21 am

So here we have a video I recorded from the World News Report – Business Edition from the BBC World channel. (I did try to find one officially uploaded earlier in the day, but couldn’t locate one, so I used my AV card). Anyway, our friend Natalya Kim lives in Almaty, and as I don’t see her city often mentioned on the news, I thought I’d show it here. It contains information on the global financial crisis and how it effects Almaty residents, especially those involved in the construction industry.
I was a little surprised that the correspondent didn’t make mention of the Prime Minister and President’s recent speeches on the matter – you can read more on this over at EurAsiaNet’s article.

I suppose it is possible this was recorded a week or so ago, and they didn’t have time/didn’t think to re-dub it?

[edit]
OK, so that video was originally uploaded and ready for embedding in this post an hour or so ago. Then I checked it’s YouTube page, and the audio had pitch shifted down a few octave! I’d not originally had the speakers on as I didn’t want to risk waking Ira, servers me right for not (quietly) checking it before uploading I suppose. This one should be ok, and don’t blame my poor AV card for the video quality – thats down to YouTube’s conversion process I’m afraid. Better go and find out how you get those ‘Watch In High Quality’ links on your uploaded videos I suppose.

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Oct 18 2008

Miss Lilly

Category: Eating Out,Friends,PersonalChrisM @ 3:54 pm

[EDIT]
Amended time for cocktail happy hour. Thanks to Mel for the correction.

I have been meaning to post about Miss Lilly, an American singer who has taken up residence in Northwind (is that the right term? She will be there six nights a week for six months, anyway.) We have been to see her three times so far, and not been disappointed yet 🙂
Anyway, I promised her on Friday night that I would post details about what is going on this Monday, so…

Monday 20th October 2008
Northwind (“English Pub”)
Prospekt Respublika
Astana

Now I had little bit too much to drink on Friday (thanks to Dave, Mel, and Dave’s friend’s friend for getting me home safely), but I’m pretty sure that Miss Lilly said that this Monday there would be 50% off cocktails from 7pm-8pm, and a little later there would be karaoke. CORRECTION: Either 7-9 or 8-10 IS THE CORRECT TIME.
I could be off on the timings though, so do check at the bar first. I’m hoping that Ira and I can make it, and possibly bring the in-laws.
I tried to search online for some photos or videos of Miss Lilly performing, but can’t find any right now. I think I have some (very blurry) pics on my phone, so when I get back to the flat I’ll upload any that are vaguely useful.

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Oct 14 2008

As Promised

Category: Dasha&KittensChrisM @ 1:03 am

Apparently, Olympiada is not Olympiad. That is to say that Dasha’s kitten from a few months ago IS indeed a girl, and not a boy (see last post on this subject here). Not quite sure where the mistake was made, but hopefully she will now be secure in her own identity 🙂
It looks as though I haven’t actually posted any photos of Olympiada previously on this blog, so here are a few to try and redress the balance.


As more observant readers will no doubt have noticed, I’ve also included a few pictures of the other cats that were on the same memory card 🙂

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Oct 13 2008

Last Year’s Kitten Has Her Own

Category: Dasha&KittensChrisM @ 9:05 pm

Last year Dasha had a kitten, the little sister of our Karra and Muska. She (Tishka), in turn, had her own couple of bundles of joy last week. As Olympiada (more to follow on the re-assignment of her original name) has just been given away, it was nice that these two kittens came along and replenished stocks 🙂
They are called Nushka and Simeon.

Nushka, Simeon, Tishka and Dasha

Nushka, Simeon, Tishka and Dasha

As this is Tishka’s first litter, she was at first a little uncertain as to exactly what she was supposed to do with these miniature versions of her. Dasha (the kitten’s grandmother), was eager to try and help, and can often be found giving a tongue bath to all three of them!

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Oct 08 2008

Vets In Astana

Category: Dasha&Kittens,PersonalChrisM @ 10:25 pm

(This post isn’t sponsored, nor did I mention that I would write this post to them).

If you find yourself in need of a vet in Astana, the options are sometimes a little scary. The previous one we visited was in the basement of a building, through filthy corridors, into a not much cleaner office that the vet rented. To be fair, he seemed like a nice man, and probably did his best to look after the animals, however the dirt in a place that should be close to sterile REALLY put us off.
As I recently mentioned, Karra and Muska needed to be spayed, and Irina was concerned that the only other vet she knew of was where an older cat of hers had passed away. However, after speaking to a few friends, we decided to visit the Cat and Dog specialist “Zoosfera” (someone remind me to use the proper Cyrillic characters once I’ve converted the MySQL tables, please).
Their address is House 10, Micro Region 2, Astana – not too far from the big Eurasia market, nr. Orbita. You can contact them on 8 7172 344585 or 8 7172 365425 . They also had some pet rodents that they had been looking after, so I assume its OK to ask if you don’t have a cat or dog etc. to help out. There were two vet-like ladies there, and a receptionist who also seemed to know a little about the subject. The place was clean, they had all the medicines they needed in stock, and actually seemed to care about the animals, rather than seeing them as purely a source of income.
Like I said, this post was written because I wanted to help out anyone else who might need a safe vet and no money/discount was given for this info to be published.

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Oct 06 2008

Olympiada Is Olympiad

Category: Dasha&KittensChrisM @ 7:53 pm

Our friend Dr Natalya has had a look at Dasha’s kitten from this year, and proclaimed that she is in fact a he. (The kitten, not Dr Natalya, obviously!). One of her friends is going to be taking the kitten, as the in-laws already have two cats at theirs. Olympiada is two months old, and given that it is actually male, and her sister and mother (Tishka and Dasha) have not been spayed, this is probably a good time to find herhim a new home. He really is very cute, and I’m sure Olympiad’s new owners will be very happy with him 🙂

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Oct 06 2008

Path To Recovery

Category: Dasha&KittensChrisM @ 5:19 am

Our cats our recovering well, following their operations last weekend. Although Karra is still a little more cautious when it comes to jumping up too high, both her and Muska are no longer frantically searching for an emergency exit when we sit close to them. Unfortunately we will need to catch them again this week, place them in their travel bags, and pop them to the vets to check their wounds have healed correctly, and in Muska’s case, have the stitches removed. (Karra has already removed all but one of hers!)

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Aug 30 2008

Karra And Muska Are 2!

Category: Dasha&Kittens,PersonalChrisM @ 2:17 am

Looking at the pair of them, I can’t believe it was a full two years ago that Dasha gave birth to them. I don’t yet know how we’ll celebrate what is an entirely normal run of the mill day to them, but hopefully we can find some new toys at the local pet store.

Happy Birthday Karra Muska

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Jul 24 2008

Edward Sells Well

Category: In The Media,KazakhstanChrisM @ 3:31 am

Eursianet.org had an interesting article early last month on the current mayor (Akim) of Astana. There have been stories about that his family was involved in buying a property from a British royal (Prince Andrew – is that the daffy one, or is that Edward? I can never remember) at an above-market price. Mr Tasmagambetov denied the reports completely, and whether they have any basis in truth or not, the article has an interesting look at the possible motive for the release of these reports.

[edit]
Ooops, forgot to link to the actual article. Apologies to anyone who read this in the last 12 hours…

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