KZBlog is going down (2)
After some thought, I have decided not to renew KZBLog’s lease. As you may have noticed, I don’t do a lot of posting here anymore. I don’t have time to blog regularly. Thus I am taking the site down–it does generate some ad revenue but not as much as it costs to keep it up. […]
Culture
- Yurts Are High Fashion and Slum Fashion Too
2011-12-05 - Apples, Sure. But THC is from Kazakhstan too?
2011-10-05 - Naked Man Pot
2011-09-23
- Yurts Are High Fashion and Slum Fashion Too
Resources
- Oh, CNN
2012-07-21 - What Do You Know About Kazakhstan?
2012-07-19 - Books for Kazakh Students
2011-11-06
- Oh, CNN
Politics
- Image
2011-07-28 - Sub Rosa Endorsement
2011-07-26 - The Naked Truth
2011-06-12
- Image
News
- KZBlog is going down
2013-09-10 - Oh, CNN
2012-07-21 - Repentence
2012-07-15
- KZBlog is going down
Fun
- What Do You Know About Kazakhstan?
2012-07-19 - Yurts Are High Fashion and Slum Fashion Too
2011-12-05 - House Hunters Bishkek
2011-12-02
- What Do You Know About Kazakhstan?
Tourism
- Asian Games Torch
2011-01-12 - Wikitravel
2010-08-07 - ALZHIR, the Soviets and Democracy
2010-07-30
- Asian Games Torch
Life in KZ
- Photo Gallery: Almaty Subway
2011-12-07 - Healthcare and the Private Sector
2011-11-30 - Naked Man Pot
2011-09-23
- Photo Gallery: Almaty Subway
Redbubble
The Inauguration and the New Government (Comments Off on The Inauguration and the New Government)
The inauguration was apparently the place to be today; even the candidates who ran against Nazarbayev attended.
In his speech, the President thanked the people for reelecting him and listed the world leaders who had congratulated him on his victory (conspicuously absent from the list were Obama, Ban-Ki Moon and Cameron). He also claimed that these elections had been the best organized and most democratic in the history of not only Kazakhstan, but Central Asia. In particular he noted that the campaigns had lacked any kind of mudslinging or “black PR”. Given that insulting or dishonoring the Leader of the Nation is a crime in Kazakhstan, it’s not surprising that none of the other candidates heavily criticized Nazarbayev, however. He also claimed that political reforms were progressing in Kazakhstan faster than in more established democracies and promised to initiate reforms to give more power to Parliament and local governments.
Most of the speech was given to noting the progress that Kazakhstan has made in its 20 years of independence, including noting that Kazakhstan is already in the fifty most competitive countries in a number of areas including size of national reserves.
The inauguration was followed by a meeting where the Government tended its resignations. And shortly thereafter Karim Masimov was reappointed as Prime Minister by Parliament, making him the longest-serving Prime Minister in Kazakhstan’s history. Kazakhstan has had 7 Prime Ministers (I believe) in 20 years of independence, with an average term of just under 3 years and Masimov is well into his fourth year.
So far none of the other cabinet posts have been filled. However a few days before the inauguration, the national oil company, KazMunaiGas appointed Askar Balzhanov as General Director, moving Kenzhebekov Ibrashev off to some other part of the company. Balzhanov comes from inside KazMunaiGas, so I’m not sure this news bodes too much.
Now we enter the land of rumor and speculation–who will stay on, who will move up, who will move down and of course, who is being positioned to enter Parliament in 2012 when the next elections will be held.
The inauguration begins. Looki… (Comments Off on The inauguration begins. Looki…)
The inauguration begins. Looking forward to the flag kissing.
Kazakhstan Search Engine (Comments Off on Kazakhstan Search Engine)
I’ve been playing with Kazakhstan’s search engine. It’s pretty clear that it covers mainly .kz domains, but also a few .ru sites. English language searches are therefore limited-but you can find sites in English. Overall it has a preference for formal resources. Searching for крем (cream) brings up resources about the Kremlin way before you get to anything about cosmetics. But there are interesting lapses. Searching for Astana brings up Wikipedia and business with Astana in the name before it gets to the Astana city official website, which is 7th on the list.
Interestingly it doesn’t distinguish between Kazakh and Russian so searching for сын (Russian for “son”) matches the Kazakh сынауға as well as Russian words. And while it does well recognizing word forms that contain the search term (i.e. сын will match сыночок, сына and сынақтан and Назарбаев will produce results for not only Назарбаев, but also Назарбаева), it doesn’t do well with word forms that are shorter or vary from the search term, so looking for дочери will match дочерью but not дочь. This seems like something that a Kazakh/Russian language search engine should be able to do since there are so many word roots.
It also seems to do better with general terms rather than specific terms. So searching for крем gives you better results than searching for крем для глаза (No results) and searching for a brand name like eyesential also gives you no results. (This started while looking for a specific brand of eye cream for my wife).
It’d be interesting to run a comparison with Google or Yandex in terms of usefulness of results, but I leave that to IT people, statisticians, and those with more free time than me.
How Elections Work in Kazakhst… (Comments Off on How Elections Work in Kazakhst…)
How Elections Work in Kazakhstan, my piece on Blogcritics Politics: http://t.co/BEiFAxo via @addthis
Inauguration and Meeting (Comments Off on Inauguration and Meeting)
The inauguration of Nazarbayev is tomorrow (or rather, today, since it’s past midnight), and there’s a government meeting scheduled for 11:30am after the ceremony. Presumably the Prime Minister, Ministers and Vice Ministers will officially hand in their resignations, Whether it will be announced immediately today who will be reappointed or not is not clear.
GPS in Kazakhstan (Comments Off on GPS in Kazakhstan)
I was playing around with my iPod the other day (I have a humble little iPod touch instead of the $1000 iPhones and iPads. I will wait til I move back to the US to buy something fancier) and decided to search the App store for “Kazakhstan”.
There’s not a lot of apps out there that target Kazakhstan specifically. There’s a few travel apps, including the intriguing Almaty Walking Tours (which costs $4.99 so I won’t be buying it anytime soon) and World Radio Kazakhstan which seems to get you world radio stations targeted to Kazakhstan like RFE/RL.
But I was impressed to see Navitel, a GPS app for Kazakhstan. It’s a free 30 day trial. After that you have to buy the map which costs $54.99–less than what systèmes GPS would cost anyway.
Navitel works pretty well for directions and tracking your position. The interface could be a little more user-friendly (c.f. earlier post on inconvenience in Kazakhstan), but the basic functions (search and route planning) are easy to figure out. There’s a fairly good database of businesses on there for Astana and Almaty although hopefully they’ll add more. Not sure about the regional towns. The voice module seems to go on and off. It doesn’t always tell you what to do, which makes it not great for driving.
But overall a good first step.
The Final Five (1)
Following up on this post about what Americans notice about life in Kazakhstan, Hilary has posted the top 5 cultural tidbits with links to her earlier posts. This final five post hits on some really tricky ones, probably the ones that really show the difference in mentality between Americans and Kazakhs. It is interesting to note when I go home, how much inconvenience is eliminated from life, or how many services and products are advertised because they make life more convenient. Insurance companies assure you that you can go on their site and sign up in 10 minutes, food is advertised as easy to make, and household appliances are loaded with features to make them quieter or to let you press one button instead of two. None of this would sell well in Kazakhstan where inconvenience is seen as a part of life and where people would rather pay less and suffer more than pay more and suffer less.
There’s an old Soviet joke about Khrushchev talking about the Great Socialist future that touches on this a bit. He says that in 5 years, every Soviet citizen will have a huge apartment. In 10 years, every Soviet citizen will have a car. In 20 years every citizen will have a dacha. He is asked when they will have all the food they can eat. “Well,” Khrushchev answers, “in 50 years, they will be able to take their flying cars to the Ukraine and buy as much as they want!”
RT @_Rifka_: 19 April at Melom… (Comments Off on RT @_Rifka_: 19 April at Melom…)
RT @_Rifka_: 19 April at Meloman Grand in Almaty book signing by Sergei Lyukyanenko author of Night Watch. Awesome!
Desktop Computers (Comments Off on Desktop Computers)
A quick addendum to this post on computer stores and tech service; I have never owned desktop computers in Kazakhstan, only laptops. So while I have had bad service here, I am told that knowledge of laptops has had a lag here. Especially if your computer is not one of the brands widely sold in Kazakhstan (Asus, Acer or HP/Compaq). I was reminded of this by a reader who sent me an email saying that service for his small business-all desktops–has actually been very good.
Giving Birth in Kazakhstan (3)
Not another post about medical services but about traditions and superstitions about birth in Kazakhstan. I recently heard that pregnant women are not allowed to eat camel meat because it can make the pregnancy longer. I had never heard that before so I started asking about other beliefs about mothering and children. Of course, I have no idea how widespread these traditions are or how well-followed they are these days, but some of them were pretty interesting.
Instead of camel, traditionally mothers are supposed to eat predator meat–wolf or tiger meat, for example–to ensure that her son is strong and brave, although this is no longer really possible. Rabbit meat is also good because it makes the child fast and nimble, but too much will make him weak. I think they wanted to say that if the child is too nimble, he will run instead of fighting, but I couldn’t swear to that.
Traditionally, if you are visiting the house of a pregnant or nursing woman, you must bring a gift or something bad will happen to the mother or the baby.
One tradition that I know is still followed today by many is that the child is never named before their birth. Giving the child a name can “jinx” or tempt fate to make them die before they are born. Another is that men are not allowed to be present at the birth. But it’s mainly to protect the men who are in danger of being polluted by all the “womanliness” of the birth. Sending out birth announcements or invitations to see a new baby is also a sign of hubris that can lead to your child being struck down by the gods. You shouldn’t talk to much about a birth or make a big deal of visiting a newborn. And of course men can’t visit a house where a baby has been born for ten days.
By custom the baby is not bathed for three days. Some people seem to think that this is once again in case it dies early, and some people thought it was to not wash off its newborn soul. There used to be some kind of traditional bath made from sheep broth and the afterbirth, but no one I was talking to had ever seen it before.
Any traditions I left off? Any one know how many of these traditions are kept up these days?
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