Sep 08 2007

First 07 Kitten Video, Alex And A Garden

Category: Dasha&Kittens,Friends,Kazakhstan,Personal,Videos — ChrisM @ 1:52 am

Other than Ildar’s first day at school, this blog is now up to date with the videos I have shot over the last few months, at least after this post. I’m saving Ildar’s collection until I know whether or not we are meeting him again tomorrow.
Anyway, first we have Tima, the single kitten that Dasha had this year, (the brother of Karra and Muska), shot last week. As he does not live with us, I doubt he will have as many photos and videos of him on this blog, but as a few people asked what he looked like, here you go…

This is the last Alex video, taken when she visited us here in Kazakhstan. Not sure what to title this, other than possibly “Alex No YouTube”? Any other (polite suggestions)? For any fans of hers, we will hopefully have some more during our Amsterdam trip, which should also include ChrisD as well.

And the last two videos in this post are from the same day Alex visited my in-laws, here we have Irina taking viewers on a trip round the garden. Over here, especially in Kazakh (as opposed to Russian) families, gardens (if present) tend to be primarily for growing produce, rather than the British standard of lots of grass and some flowers. Anyway, take a peek, and let me know if you have any questions about the plants you see… I know nothing, but will gladly pass your requests on to Ira or her Mum, who can both tell the difference between weeds and flowers, and thereby best me with their expertise by a long way 🙂

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Sep 08 2007

A Little Light Relief

Category: In The Media,Kazakhstan — ChrisM @ 12:47 am

I recently came across a site that has a comic strip artist create a little picture every once in a while. Although some of them seemed to miss my humour somewhat, there were enough in there to hold my interest, and open up each in a new tab. The one currently on display refers to Alexandre Vinokourov, the somewhat disgraced Kazakh Astana cycling team member who was thrown out for blood doping issues. Anyway, once you have check the comic out, browse around the news stories in the region – I picked up a piece on our President again making mention of the planned switch over from Cyrillic to Latin script for the Kazakh written language.
For any over active PPP reviewers, this is a personal post. No money involved, nor was this post requested, just hope to help others interested in the country I live in – Kazakhstan. Thanks.

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Sep 07 2007

Walton At Chelsea

Category: Eating Out,Friends,Pictures — ChrisM @ 11:03 pm

Last night we went to the ‘English Pub’ Chelsea, to celebrate Walton’s birthday last Sunday. It was relatively quiet, and not much had really changed in there. The prices are definitely set at foreigners and ex-pats prices, but they do good (cheese) burgers, the service is friendly, and the birthday boy wanted a nice burger, so we were happy to be there.

Breadcrumbed Hot Cheese Chelsea English Pub Astana Kazakhstan
The starter of bread-crumbed fried cheese was good, though once again all the food arrived at the same time, so it was soon ignored due to the arrival of the…

Garlic Bread Chelsea English Pub Astana Kazakhstan
The garlic bread was tasty enough, once the tomatoes were removed 🙂

Cheeseburger Chelsea English Pub Astana Kazakhstan
Although not in any way a traditional Russian or Kazakh meal, cheeseburger with chips is occasionally nice to bring back the tastes of home 🙂

Iras Starter Chelsea English Pub Astana Kazakhstan
Ira thought she was ordering a starter with this meat, though it looked more like a generously sized main course dish really…
Her actual main course of ‘Chipped fish’ turned out not to be a translation error (we assumed it would be like the traditional English fare of Fish & Chips), and Irina’s “starter” turned out to be more of a main course sized affair, but I think she liked it. As Walton had work the next day, he stuck to beer, as did Ira, but as my boss is a little more understanding, I had a little vodka.
Beer Chelsea English Pub Astana Kazakhstan Walton Chelsea English Pub Astana Kazakhstan

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Sep 07 2007

Forgot About These Ones

Category: Friends,Kazakhstan,Videos — ChrisM @ 3:49 am

I had a nagging feeling I had forgotten some of the videos I uploaded to YouTube a while back. I eventually got around to opening all the posts within the Video category on this blog, then checked which videos from my YouTube channel had been posted. So we have a batch of four here, taken from when AlexC was still here in Kazakhstan, and we had all gone round to Ira’s parents for a nice relaxing evening, some food, and a little drink. I am still impressed that Alex was able to hold her own reasonably well when it came to downing vodka, considering she hadn’t had a drink in some five years!

Here we have Babushka (Ira’s grandma), her Dad, Mum, Alex, Myself, some Wild Strawberries (really little fruit that make great jam), and of course Irina filming. In fact I think she handled all the camera work for these 4 shots…

Ira’s Dad is a little old school in some respects, and so was not happy with the prospect of her chopping some wood up for the samovar§. This despite the fact that if I had done it, we would have ended up with wood splinters, sticks that were too wide to fit in the tube, blood, tears, sweat, and possibly a three-fingered Chris. Compare this to the nature loving, camping, tree-surgery-considering Alex, who knows how to handle sharp tools, and you can see why I giggled (oooops, sorry make that let out a manly guffaw…. hmmm why does that sound so unbelievable?) at the idea that I was a better choice to chop wood. Ira’s Dad did it himself in the end.

The big barbecue thing is, well a barbecue, made by the guys ar Ira’s Dad’s work. He complained that most barbecues are made for shorter people, so they made one with extra long legs 🙂 It looks like I had been demoted that day from my normal duties of burning things. hmmmm, fire, flames, burn, petrol……. sorry, where was I? Seriously, I normally manage to burn the wood well enough, as it is not too difficult task to ensure that wood is burnt well to provide the charcoal needed to cook the sashliq (skewered kebabs) later on.

Finally we have almost everyone at the table before dinner, with Babushka chilling in the reclining garden chair. Alex tries out a little Russian, and Ira tells a blatent lie – the cake can’t be have more than my 43rd!

§ – A tea urn with a difference – the heat is provided by burning wood within the tube that runs through the middle of the area that the water is boiled in. You can now buy electric versions, but there is no fun in that, IMHO.

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Sep 05 2007

Scam Warning

Category: Kazakhstan,Personal — ChrisM @ 11:22 pm

For anyone who lives in Kazakhstan, PLEASE add this number to your mobile’s phone book, under the name of ‘DO NOT ANSWER – SCAMMER’ or something similar. The number is 701 1336 118 (or if you have all your numbers entered in the international format, please use +7 701 1336118).
A little background to the warning, three times over the past few months, the owner(s) of this phone number have called me up, claiming to be a bank. They stated that they were unable to allow a deposit to be made into my account, and needed to confirm some details. Given my very basic Russian language skills, I passed the phone to Irina quite quickly the first time. She recognised that something fishy was going on, and asked them to tell her which bank they worked for, and which branch I allegedly held an account at. As they were unable and unwilling to tell her, they tried a few different tactics to continue the scam. After the original call, they have occasionally called back, trying the same routine…
It is a bit like a real life phishing scam, but done via phone, not e-mail.
If the owner of that phone number would ever like to leave a comment, please do, I await your response with interest.
(Note, obviously very unlikely they read this blog already, though they may possibly Google their own number to check if anyone has called them out.)

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Sep 05 2007

Expensive Cat Poo!

Category: Dasha&Kittens — ChrisM @ 5:37 am

I noticed a few hours ago that the guest toilet room has an aroma wafting out. Up on closer inspection, it was indeed time to clean the cat litter tray. No problem, as long as the contents are not too fresh, armed with a little mesh spade, plastic bag and breathing through my mouth, I don’t mind doing my bit to ensure the kittens have a pleasant experience. (We left it too long once, and were rewarded with a very artistic display on our duvet… never again!) Anyway, I cleared away the contents and clumped up litter, laid some fresh litter in the tray, washed my hands and went back to work…
Ooops, in the time I had been away from the keyboard, TWO $50 opportunities had been released and taken over at PayPerPost! (It is 1K Tuesday again.) Given a straight choice though, I would choose our kittens to be able to go to the loo in comfort over $50 any day. (If it had been the $500 opp also due today, I am not so sure I would not have just hoped they could cross their rear legs for another couple of minutes though 🙂 )

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Sep 05 2007

Astana Day Concerts #9

Category: Friends,Kazakhstan,Videos — ChrisM @ 2:44 am

This is it… the last four videos recorded on the evening that Astana had a concert to celebrate the President’s birthday and also that Astana became the capital of Kazakhstan almost ten years ago now.


Here we have the fireworks starting, with a message in Kazakh, and some more carnival dancing and music in the background.


The fireworks have properly started, and we also have the Rio Carnival procession finally makes its way to the stage.


Excuse the strange start to this video – I couldn’t believe it when a heavily pregnant woman stood on top of an unstable chair to take some photos, so I got a little distracted. Anyway, it leads into the 13th act with singing in both Russian And English. The track Dancing On Broken Glass has also received a fair amount of air time on the radio stations over here. The President had already left by this point. Apparently the singer is quite popular, at least amongst woman. Ira was recently on the same flight as him, coming back from Moscow, though sadly there was no gossip to report back…


The end Of the Astana Day concert, with a cameo by AlexC, testing the low ambient light setting on the camcorder.

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Sep 04 2007

Astana Day Concerts #8

Category: Kazakhstan,Videos — ChrisM @ 10:46 pm

Following the 11th act, we had a big group dancing. From what we could tell, it was a mixture of local teenagers and professional dancers. There were so many performers they spanned the stage to both extremes on the left and right. The drummers had been temporarily kicked off their stage-topping position, to be replaced by some more dancers, who occasionally seemed to get out of sync with each other and the music. That said, I’m pretty sure I don’t know anyone who could have done better.

The 12th act, consisting of singing in Kazakh, as well as traditional Kazakh dancing performed by dancers wearing traditional Kazakh costumes. Once again, my three word vocabulary of Kazakh did not help with the meaning of the song, but given the context (Astana Day concert) and the word Astana is clearly audible, I’m pretty sure it is safe to say it was written especially for the evening.

This is probably the longest video of them all, from after the 12th act, where we have the laser show and then some more from the aerial gymnastics team we saw a little from earlier (still no safety harness or net!),then some dancers.

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Sep 04 2007

Midnight Shopping And Animal Cruelty

Category: Kazakhstan,Personal — ChrisM @ 2:09 am

OK, so it was not exactly midnight when we decided to finally stock up on some bare essentials, but we hoped that leaving late into the evening would mean it would take less than the two or so hours it took last time we visited this shop. After ploughing through the traffic in a taxi (better, but still pretty bad), we got to Astykjan. This is a really big supermarket, especially compared to the other shops in Astana. Whereas Gros or Ramstore may have a metre or so of shelving for popular items, Astykjan has an entire aisle full of products, normally at lower prices. This is starting to sound like a sponsored post, so I’ll move on, but suffice to say the extra travel time is worth it.

Anyway, when we arrived, we checked out the little mini-shops they had inside, and popped into the pet supply store to see if they had some items we needed for the kittens. When we walked in, the first thing that got our attention was a couple of guinea pigs§ kept in a barren cage that was too small for one animal, let alone two. One was sitting still, the other was trying to strip off some food from a stick. My eyes then glanced up, and I was even more disturbed. In an empty aquarium case, there were 14 turtles§2 in a space that could maybe have held 2 more… with no movement possible. Then to top it all of, there were 15 birds in a cage maybe big enough for one or two.

If this had been Britain, I’d have phoned the authorities then and there, and hopefully the shop would have at least been fined and banned from selling animals. As it is, I do not think anything would happen at all, beyond perhaps the animals being hidden behind a counter. The sad thing is, the shop assistant probably does not see anything wrong with the conditions the animals were being held in. I thought about doing something on the spur of the moment, and buying them all, but there is no way we could care for them all at the flat, the kittens would have thought it was just dinner time, and the shop would have just bought more stock. I could have made a scene in the shop, and felt righteous, but that would have just been some crazy foreigner attempting to impose his country’s methods on their own shops, in the eyes of the people in the shop. So what did I do in the end? Nothing, snapped some shots on my mobile, and walked out a little dazed, and feeling pretty useless.

Cramped Cage 1 Cramped Cage 2 Cramped Cage 3

§ hmmm, or hamsters, or some sort of cute small furry animals. I’m not too good at telling the difference.

§2 ermmm, or terrapins, or whatever animals have shells and don’t live in the water.

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Sep 03 2007

Astana Day Concerts Videos #7

Category: Kazakhstan,Videos — ChrisM @ 3:25 am

Part 2 of the 11th act, again with singing in English. I’ve heard this particular track a few times on the radio since.

Dancing combined with some trained doves, released into the sky from a crane, most of whom return to their handlers.The drummer on top of the stage scaffolding returns as well.

Second section of the dancing, continued from the video above.

In the next instalment, we will have some traditional Kazakh dances and a laser show 🙂

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