Jul 23 2008

RSS Feeds

Category: Friends,Kazakhstan — ChrisM @ 5:36 am

Following on from the last post, I have recently got around to re-adding most of my favourite RSS feeds, following the last hard drive failure. So, check these out sometime and let me know if you want to recommend any others. (If there is no comment feed listed, it is because there is none listed on their site, and I was unable to guess the correct URL.)

Kazakhstan Blogs

KZBlog – KZBlog Comments

The Life Of 2Me – Not actually on Kazakhstan any more, but the older posts are still of interest. The newer ones are interesting too, just not on Kazakhstan 😉

English Advantage – English Advantage Comments – Not specifically Kazkhstan-based, but it does get mentioned from time to time

A Momentary Relapse of Reason – A Momentary Relapse of Reason Comments – See the previous post here for more info on this new blog

News From The Caravan – News From The Caravan Comments

Narcogen – This feed URL should filter out his automatic XBox 360 posts.

Bogar – Live Space’s RSS feed defaults to a lot of items, it would appear. Occasionally times out.

NewEurasia – NewEurasia Comments – Both of these are specifically for the Kazakhstan section of the site.

Registran – Registran Comments

EurasianNet.org

Other Blogs

Celt Photographic – Celt Photographic Comments – Not often updated any more.

StarBlog – StarBlog Comments – A mix of German and English posts.

WordPress Guru – WordPress Guru Comments – Ask Owen – Ask Owen Comments – Ugh!!’s Greymatter Honeypot – Ugh!!’s Greymatter Honeypot Comments

I’ll add the feed URL for Alex’s Dryad Musings blog once we have her hosted somewhere properly – the free hosting’s required adverts inserted at the top of each page currently ruin the feed.

Whilst you’re checking out and possibly adding those feeds to FireFox/your favourite RSS reader, don’t forget this blog’s feed and comment feed.

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Jul 23 2008

The Final Division Bell

Category: Kazakhstan — ChrisM @ 5:06 am

So, looking for a new take on life in Kazakhstan? I recently received an e-mail from the person behind the ‘A Momentary Relapse of Reason‘ blog hosted over at WordPress.com . I took a look, and it so far, it looks like one to add to your favourites. Much like KZBlog, the posts are well written with some obvious intelligence behind them, and the subjects cover are thought provoking. Even if you’re sober 😉 So head on over, check what the blogger has to say about Almaty, Astana and a tie in to the Beijing Olympics construction boom. Just don’t forget to come back and visit this blog occasionally 🙂

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Jul 02 2008

Car Alarms And Lasers

Category: Friends,Kazakhstan,Personal — ChrisM @ 12:55 am

Last night (well, a couple of hours ago) was the first night of celebrations. The reason? This city’s (Astana) birthday as being the capital of Kazakhstan. Also, the president has his birthday around this time, so it is a joint celebration. Anyway there was huge firework display with some lasers. The sights and sounds all the way from our flat window was pretty spectacular. They will apparently be repeating the spectacle each night by the river, though whether it will be to the same scale remains to be seen. Hopefully Ira and I will manage to get a little closer sometime, and I’ll try and figure out which settings will work best on the camera. Probably not tomorrow, as Dave is coming over to get drunk catch up and listen to some of his new tunes discuss deep intellectual matters.
Oh, and the car alarms? In the car park near us, despite being a good 10/15 minute walk away, all the car alarms were set off by the bassy booms from the fireworks!

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Jun 23 2008

Full Internet Access Has Returned

Category: Internet Connections,Kazakhstan,Personal — ChrisM @ 6:05 pm

Over some of the weekend, for some reason, I was not able to access most websites. I could visit google.com, run searches and check in on Facebook etc. (hi Claire/Wednesday 🙂 ).
However, trying to visit most other sites, even the News section on google resulted in pages not being found. I checked the sites themselves were OK by visiting them via a proxy server, however I wasn’t happy logging into this blog to create posts, as this would leave my user name and password in some log somewhere. Anyway, all things appear back to normal now. If any other Megaline customers in Astana read this, did you have the same problems, or was it restricted to those who connect via the company that looks after the flats on SaryArka?

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Jun 21 2008

Good Night Out

Category: Eating Out,Friends,Kazakhstan,Personal — ChrisM @ 10:13 pm

Just a quick post from the in-laws for now, but last night Ira and I went out to the Queen’s Birthday Party, organised by the British (! (/sarcasm)) Embassy, then went on to the BG Challenge Ball (see last year’s post – if I don’t get around to linking to it properly, it should hopefully pop up in the ‘related posts’ links below this text, and then finally onto a club called A8. We saw a lot of friends, some of whom had not met each other before, I wore a suit (!), had proper fish and chips (served in newspaper), and finally got to see if A8 lived up to the hype.
Can someone remind me to change that last paragraph from one sentence into something a little more manageable? Anyway, no photos as not enough pockets, but I’ll try and post more details soon, once I’m a little more alert.
I’ve just returned from a nice meal out with Walton and Assel, and returned to the in-laws where Aunty Sasha is.

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Jun 11 2008

Missing Posts

Category: Amsterdam,Eating Out,Friends,Personal — ChrisM @ 2:59 am

OK, so I definitely need to clear some time in the next week or two, and try to catch up with a lot of posts (and photo editing) on this blog. Although my memory of my holiday last September may be a little hazy by now, I’m hoping the pictures will either refresh said memory, or paint a good enough picture to give you, the reader, enough of an idea. After that, we have our trip to Britain over Christmas and New Year, with Mum’s wedding in between. After that we have finally meeting up with Tom the pilot, contact being made with an American Jazz singer hopefully coming to Astana to play some sets locally. Finally, we have the birthday trip to Amsterdam (I may need to link to upcoming forum posts for the Coffeeshop specific info) and Britain again this April and May. I’m hoping that by posting this summary now, it will remind me what is missing, and force me into actually taking the time out to write a few words and crop a few piccies. To friends and family still waiting for those posts, thanks for your patience so far.

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Jun 10 2008

Looking For Advice

Category: Dasha&Kittens — ChrisM @ 12:08 am

Our kittens (Kara especially) love to find inanimate household objects, and kidnap them for future use as toys. Whether they hide stashes of pens or lighters and coins, we eventually find them chewed up, under the sofa or bed. At first, I either tidied them up or threw them away if they were beyond hope. Now I’m starting to wonder if we should allow them a ‘toy’ pen (with the ink refill and metal spring removed of course) in the hope they will not find the need to steal new pens?

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May 29 2008

Car Rules Changing

Category: Kazakh Driving — ChrisM @ 1:26 am

Kazakhstan recently tightened up car regulations. For example, the main and front side windows can no longer have tinted glass. This has led to policeman pulling over even posh looking cars, with important businessmen in the back, and instructing the chauffeur he can not continue the journey until he strips off the film. Quite what they do when they come across the odd car that actually has tinted glass, rather than just the post-factory film stuck to normal glass, I’m not sure.
It also appears that motorists must turn on their headlights at all times of day, at least on roads outside of the city. Unfortunately, there is still no sign of people being forced to wear seat belts, and many cars can be seen driving around with broken tail lights and curtains in the rear window. (To keep the temperature down. I can see the logic, but you are supposed to be aware of the traffic behind you when driving…)

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May 23 2008

White Lines

Category: Kazakh Driving — ChrisM @ 11:19 am

No, not a reference to the seminal track by Melle Mel and The Furious Five (not Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel, as often quoted – this was a marketing ploy by the record label, who listed ‘Grandmaster’ as a track artist), nor Duran Duran’s version of said song. No, I’m happy to report that Astana has had it’s road markings reapplied. Drivers still don’t seem to exactly stick to their lane (or even stick to the principle of three marked lanes should equal a maximum of three real life lanes of traffic), but it does seem to have a small effect.
The reason for this being done now is probably the birthday celebrations Astana will be holding soon – many construction projects and visible improvements are being rushed through to completion in order to make sure all looks well in time. Sadly, they took down the rainbow road ornaments; DaveG had a point that they didn’t really fit in with the image of a modern capital city, but at a personal level, they looked pretty. Also, with the (necessary) ice scraping done all winter long on the roads, not only do the lane markings disappear, also the pedestrian (zebra) crossings have no visible clue left to their whereabouts. Now you could just cross where you know they are supposed to be, but the rainbow structures over the roads hopefully used to give some motorists a reminder that the pedestrians were supposed to try and cross there, and should therefore be avoided a little more often.

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May 03 2008

Train Horn In A Car?

Category: Kazakh Driving,Videos — ChrisM @ 11:50 am

I have seen these for sale before, as well as MP3s of the isolated sound of the horn, but this video shows what happens when you put said train horns in a car, and drive round scaring people.

Personally, I would love one if I ever drive over here in Kazakhstan, just to make sure other drivers were aware of my presence, but I’m not too sure how well the police would react. In any case, it seems like a better idea than the one an old boss implemented – he managed to import an American police siren, installed it in his Volvo, and used to tear down the fast lane on motorways, using it when people wouldn’t let him pass!

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