KZBlog

How to Keep Young People (1)

Posted by KZBlog on 10 May 11 • Categorized as Life in KZ • Tagged as corruption, Cronyism, Gani Kasimov, migration

This is one of those fascinating articles I held onto to see if there would be a follow-up. So far I haven’t seen one so I’ll post on the original now. Senator and presidential candidate Gani Kasymov is concerned about young people leaving Kazakhstan.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Kasymov claims that tens of thousands of citizens go to live in the UK and Arab states. He wishes that the government would acknowledge this problem and develop a policy to counteract it. To his credit, he says it is not a simple problem with a simple answer. However he gives his own theory:

[Young people] do not believe that they can have normal career development itself, they do not believe in our medicine or education system; The biggest problem is ire over the fact that they cannot protect themselves against corruption – that’s what prompts the migration

I think this is a very important point that he is raising and platitudes that there is no place like your homeland are not enough. While the standard of living in Kazakhstan has risen, the gap between the haves and the have-nots is still disturbingly wide. Corruption is a real problem, not only in terms of bribery, but also in terms of nepotism and cronyism. And perception of corruption is also quite high; in some cases people don’t try to do certain things because they believe it will be impossible without a bribe or connections even though they have no reason for their pessimism. So the nation has a lot of work to do to level the playing field AND make sure people know the playing field is level.

Weird Rankings (Comments Off on Weird Rankings)

Posted by KZBlog on 9 May 11 • Categorized as Life in KZ • Tagged as Advertising, Caspionet, Graphic design, Marketing

Caspionet, the Kazakhstan government’s answer to CNN, is reporting that the advertising market in Kazakhstan is third in the CIS for number of commercials. I’m not sure that this is an achievement worth celebrating, unless you work in an advertising agency of course. I don’t know too many people who like commercials. On the other hand, if there are going to be ads anyway, they might as well be locally made. Obviously large brands like Colgate and Nescafe are going to use their international ads translated into Kazakh or Russian, but every now and then you do see Kazakhstani actors.

The Caspionet article cites the problem that a lot of Kazakhstan-made ads copy the same basic format and lack creativity. There are exceptions of course. I was rather fond of a bank commercial that showed giant stacks of money learning the alphabet and doing exercises, rather like a nursery school. The tagline was something like, “We help your money grow.”

I would also note that a lot of magazine and newspaper ads lack quality. I suspect a lot of the time, the agencies take images off of the Internet and don’t think about image format so small images are blown up too big. And some photographers don’t seem to have found the zoom on their cameras. Or use low quality equipment. I wish some agencies would invest in professional digital slr cameras.

That being said, a lot of ads are good quality-though it’s hard to tell which brands use local ads and which are using their international ads.

Ninja Football (Comments Off on Ninja Football)

Posted by KZBlog on 8 May 11 • Categorized as Life in KZ • Tagged as Armand Masimzhanov, football, Kairat, Lokomotive, Radmir Ruskova, sport

This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. In a match between the Astana and Almaty football teams, Lokomotiv and Kairat respectively, a Kairat player made a nasty tackle (looks almost like he clotheslined him). That started a huge argument on the field. So far nothing too unusual.

It got crazy when Armand Masimzhanov, an alternate for Kairat, ran onto the field and did a flying kick at the back of Lokomotiv player Radmir Ruskova. Video footage below of the tackle, then the ninja kick and then the kick again in slow motion. I love how the guards don’t get involved until the flying ninja kick, but they move in pretty quickly.

Masimzhanov has been banned for life. But he did get his very own wikipedia entry. So that’s something.

The match was stopped, and a score of 0:3 Kairat was recorded, since Kairat was in the lead before the fight. The Astana club was fined 300,000 tenge (about US$2,000) and the Almaty club will have to pay 400,000 tenge (around US $2,700) as it was their player who ninja kicked an unaware player.