Anna at the salon. http://t.co/MHq8hVqh
Sep 30 2012
Anna at the salon. http://t.c…
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Sep 27 2012
Riverside Promenade
When I am away in Australia, Irina will be looking after Tim and Anna on her own most of the time, and so wanted to check out what the park-like area near Anna’s playgroup was like. The idea being that whilst Anna is inside, Irina could push Tim around in his pushchair for some fresh air, without having to drive off.
Anna had been there before, so led the way as we discovered what it looked like. It was a bit too sunny to see my phone’s screen, but I decided to test out a new app I installed, and so this is my first attempt at an HDR picture on my phone, taken down by the river Ishim/Esil.
First Time Using An HDR App – The River Ishim (or Esil)
Next time I’ll try and experiment with altering the exposure bracketing manually, and get a feel for what works in certain lighting conditions. The image above obviously has problems in the darker areas, but the sky looks nice at least. I’ll also try and find somewhere with shallow water running over rocks or the like, as though often look really good. I probably shouldn’t expect too much from a phone, but I want to play and see what is possible.
Very near this photo is a statue of Ataturk (check here for Astana.kz ‘s impressive 360 panorama of the same place).
Anyway, it looks as though there are enough paths, benches and views of the river to keep both Irina and Tim occupied, and we may all return the next time our morning is booked up with other commitments. We also spotted the passenger ferry, which we’ve not been on since Anna was tiny, and if the weather holds out, we’ll try and take a trip before I go away.
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Sep 19 2012
10 Months On…
And Tim has his first haircut!
I had previously offered to trim some of his hair with my clippers, as (like his father) he gets very hot in the summer months, and it was starting to get a little messy in places. However, Irina was a little nervous about this, and wanted his first haircutting experience to be from a professional. Understandable. Anyway, Ira heard of a lady who worked in the Khan Shatyr shopping centre who specialized in cutting small children’s hair, so we popped over to check her out. She has a big toy car for them to sit in, a DVD player with cartoons to distract and, probably most importantly, a lot of patience.
Tim was OK for the first couple of minutes (Anna’s hair dresser said many small children get freaked out and think they are being attacked, so she didn’t cut very small kids’ hair), but then really didn’t like it. We didn’t ask for anything too brutal in terms of length, just a tidy up and enough taken away to keep him cool in bed. Anyway, see the following pictures and video for the result…
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- Just Before The Haircut
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- First Ever Haircut In Progress
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- After The Haircut, About To Have Tea
(I’ll upload and embed the videos tomorrow, I need some sleep!)
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Sep 14 2012
Del Papa
Right, before I forget to include it, here is a map showing the location of Del Papa, assuming I have embedded it correctly (thats Respublika Ave on the far left, to give you some sense of where it is)…
We had already visited the restaurant when Irina and I took Tim (Anna was at playgroup) to have some ID photos taken (Irina went to Almaty in the week to apply for her and his visas). This time around it was all four of us, having a nice Sunday lunch (again this post has combined a few tweets to improve the flow of this site). As we weren’t in a rush this time, we could properly sample their food, drink & not have to zoom off afterwards!
Anna, A My Little Pony & Irina At Del Papa
Anna had a cheese and meat pizza (we helped her to finish it off, is there any better an indicator of your love for a child 😉 ), we will pretend that the chocolate milkshake was hers as well (!), and I had a Long Island Iced Tea (once we had ascertained how many millilitres of spirits were included, it worked out to be cheaper than beer or vodka (Tenge per ml using a standardized formula to allow for different ABV %ages)), as Irina had volunteered to drive us back. The pizza was one of the best I’ve had in Astana so far! I had a spaghetti carbonara with some garlic bread (not bad, Ira liked it, I thought it was too dry).
Sunday Lunch
The carbonara was delicious and the Long Island Iced Tea just right, except the Coke was flat. Atmosphere wise, it was very chilled in there, and I’d happily revisit or recommend to friends and this site’s readers!
Carbonara, Garlic Bread, Anna’s Pizza
In conclusion… Del Papa – a very strong 8.5/10
Del Papa’s Sign
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Sep 11 2012
Ramstore has Pampers at cheape…
Ramstore has Pampers at cheapest ever price. Branch in Mega now has no size 4 packs left. Need to use loyalty card http://t.co/3opdSURE
I should probably point out that these are packs of 20 – normally the worst value for money, but because the price is dropped from something like 1500 to 900 tenge, they currently work out cheaper than buying boxes of 160!
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Sep 08 2012
Anna,Tim&Irina @ other pla…
Anna,Tim&Irina @ other playground near home.Astana Almaty flight booked 4 Australia trip. USB3 card still problem. http://t.co/jGc4LLZk
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Aug 23 2012
Tim acquires a taste for climb…
Tim acquires a taste for climbing… http://t.co/X2WgahZu
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Aug 22 2012
Last minute decision (no1 fanc…
Last minute decision (no1 fancied cooking) 2try out tre kanor again, not been4years, since Walton&Assel were still here http://t.co/7DKsW2vR
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Aug 13 2012
Anna’s “best of” collection (a…
Anna’s “best of” collection (artwork from her playgroup). http://t.co/xPGKQNE1
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Aug 11 2012
Saturday Yurt Pictures
On Saturday, Irina’s Mum had her birthday celebration at a yurt near the Kaz Munai Gas building, on top of a restaurant. I’ve compiled the tweets into one post to tidy up the blog once more. I tried out the panorama mode on my phone’s camera, and shot a quick test video as well (I wanted to compare it to the old Touch Pro2’s videos. Igor, Natalya, Losha, Balzhan, Ildar, Dr Natalya, Sveta, Aunty Sasha and the Petropavlovsk side of Irina’s family all attended, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. The service was good, and as each party has a yurt to themselves, we were able to keep the air con on for a while to prevent anyone from passing out in the heat 🙂
After a few toasts, those who aren’t playing outside are in this video…
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- Shanyrak (a wooden part at the top of a yurt)
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- People Gathered For The Starters
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- Friends And Family Arriving
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- The Yurt With Some Of Astana’s Skyscrapers In The Background
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