On the evening of my upcoming 31st birthday (20th April), I am hoping to head out TGI Friday (Thank God Its Friday) with Irina, Anna and Ira’s Mum – (her Dad will be away on business). At the end of the week, when our friends here in Astana are more likely to be able to meet up and not worry about work the next day, we are planning to invite them around to ours for hamburgers, baked beans and potato wedges/roast potatoes. As some of our friends have children, we wanted to ensure they could bring them along and so hope to keep some sort of entertainment going for them in Anna’s room, as the living room & kitchen/dining room may be filled with “adults”.
Quotations marks, as I’m hoping most won’t want to drive themselves, and so have a drink or three. Does this mean we will be filling Anna’s room with home theater seating? Not necessarily, however I’m hoping to either use this computer’s third monitor, or Irina’s laptop to stream childrens’ cartoon and movies into Anna’s room. This would require the eldest child of one friend of ours to be the nominated supervisor/monitor of children, but she has been an absolute star when required to fill this role in the past, and I’m hoping the menu on offer will go some way to persuading her that the situation would be to everyones’ liking.
Anyway, once I have cleared the backlog of Anna’s photos and videos from our UK trip, I’ll hopefully be able to post some clips of the little angels from that night. Alternatively I may just remember to stream a few clips up onto Qik.com, and have them automatically imported to this site. Whatever the case, I want to say thank you to Irina for her time and effort in organising a Chris/child-friendly menu for the evening.
Apr 16 2010
Smaller Screens And Burgers!
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Apr 16 2010
Suggestions For Kazakhstan – Part V
It is entirely possible that this post should be titled “Suggestions for the people that specifically look after the water supply to the blocks of flats in our area” rather than “Suggestions For Kazakhstan etc. etc.”, however I do know that people living in other areas of Astana (and certainly more rural areas of Kazakhstan in general) find this subject to be a matter of concern… Put simply, the supply of water needs to be monitored more closely. We don’t give plain tap water to our cats, let alone drink the stuff ourselves. The reason for the water (now less occasionally, admittedly) going orangey/browny is normally that some work is being done with pipes elsewhere in Astana, and that once the pollution has been run through the taps, all will be back to normal. I know of other people living in this city that don’t even brush their teeth in anything other than bottled/boiled water. This makes sense when you think of the ease with which diseases could enter our bloodstream when brushing our gums, however we have not yet decided to go that far. If contractors or maintenance companies (as opposed to some sort of municipal water company) is/are involved, perhaps closer monitoring/regulation is required. Properly enforced oversight or legal ramifications is needed, not just yet another layer of paperwork/stamps/”fines” to be paid. There are some truly revolting theories online as to reasons for the occasional colouring of water that can be observed in Astana, especially from ex-pats/people involved in the industry, but most of these sources were written a few years ago now.
Since we started using a water cooler type setup in our flat (and therefore had some other person deliver huge containers of clean water, rather than transport five litre bottles of water ourselves), I can’t really complain about the physical effort involved to ensure our drinking/cooking/pet/child related H2O needs are met, but when it comes to a shower or bath, I can’t help feeling a little repulsed when the water comes out anything other than clear.
Am I alone in feeling these concerns?
Apr 11 2010
More whiskeys than your averag…
More whiskeys than your average UK “Irish” pub … http://twitpic.com/1evpf1
Apr 06 2010
ROTFTD
These were shot on the 15th of February, and show a cuddly donkey that Anna spotted, and John bought, on the way back from Heathrow airport to Clydach.
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- Anna, A Donkey And Chris On The Floor
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- Anna Resting After Tackling A Donkey
ROTFTD? A bastardization of ROTFL – (Rolling On The Floor Laughing becomes Rolling On The Floor Tackling Donkeys). Anna took a couple of days to become comfortable walking around Mum’s house in Wales (as she had only just started walking unaided back in the more familiar landscape of our flat in Astana). When she had had enough of walking around, she would sometimes totter up to the poor donkey and literally dive onto it…
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Apr 03 2010
Suggestions For Kazakhstan – Part III
Getting back to the Kazakhstan issues that have jumped back into my consciousness since returning to Astana (and admittedly this one isn’t exactly a calamity for us, as we don’t own a car in this country), a friend of ours was pulled over last year whilst driving in a perfectly normal manner. The reason the policeman stopped (and attempted to fine) him? His car was too dirty. We’re not talking about number plates being obscured (I agree, no matter the state of the rest of the car, whenever practical the number plates should be readable) or even his headlights being dangerously muddy (so cars travelling in the opposite direction at night might not see him in time), no, it was the main body that was deemed to be a disgrace to the city.
I don’t know if there was a visiting dignitary who had a lot of disdain for cars that aren’t sparkling, but TBH, there are SO many more issues the police could focus on with motorists before even considering the cosmetic appearance of a car. More on those other issues in the days to come 🙂
Anyway, if you want to be taken seriously, and not have accusations of possible supplementary income sources levelled at your police force, I feel a muddy car should not be a reason to pull you over.
Apr 02 2010
Suggestions For Kazakhstan – Part II
OK, ten months later than intended, here the series continues from the first instalment.
I’m staying out of the political (OSCE chairmanship, laughable implementation of “democracy” (whether you use the Western definition or not), political prisoners etc.) side of things, as I don’t want the renewal of my permission to stay in the country to be questioned next year.
So, on a more personal level, first things first… Whoever decided that private individuals (as opposed to companies etc.) should only be allowed one international parcel to be received per month, please realise this is a ridiculous law. So stupid, we weren’t even aware of it until this week, when we wondered why only one out of two DHL parcels from Britain had turned up. Strangely enough, if you pay customs a lot of money (around the price it took to send the box over here in the first place!) then you can have more than one a month. We also need to pay DHL again, as they say to deliver it to Astana, once Customs in Almaty release it, will be another chargeable service – despite our initial payment including that leg of the journey. OK, so I’m drifting off national policies into company’s customer service attitudes differing in different continents here, and the other suggestions will be a little more wide-ranging, and involve less infrequent occurrences.
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Mar 30 2010
Anna catching up on some misse…
Anna catching up on some missed naps from today’s journeys (Istanbul Airport, last flight before we get to Astana) http://twitpic.com/1bsfgq
Mar 25 2010
Midnight Snacks On The Bed
The 12th of February saw us start our journey to Britain. We decided to break the journey by staying overnight in Istanbul. Although we didn’t see much of the city, it was good to finally make it out of the airport. Anna behaved incredibly well, considering the flight lengths, her age, and didn’t seem too bothered by staying the night in a hotel. She had a little picnic on our bed before settling down for the night, and continued to surprise us by being a little sweetie on the flight to Heathrow.
Hopefully she will repeat the trick in just over four days, though this time we are flying straight through to Astana, assuming we manage to make the connecting flight in Istanbul. Anyway this is the last photo of Anna before we hit Britain…
Anna In Istanbul
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Feb 10 2010
Putting My Finger On It
One of the WordPress plugins that I have been meaning to write about is Comment Referrers by Donncha O Caoimh. Very lightweight, and single purpose, it simply adds a line to e-mails that you receive when new comments are made on a post at your site. If the browser sent a referral URL upon arriving at the page, it is copied in. So if someone has been searching Google for “WordPress Astana ExPat”, I can figure this out if they leave a comment. This can be useful for tailoring your reply to their the visitor’s specific needs, or at the other end of the scale, it is normally very simple to see if someone has simply left a comment to gain a backlink. It also works as a simple way of keeping tabs on which sites or search engines are sending you traffic.
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Jan 27 2010
Temporary Kazakh Ice Rink In Astana
Forgot to include these videos in the earlier post, sorry. Not forgot exactly, just stuck in the need for separate posts for videos and pictures that involve Anna. As the pictures and videos don’t include her, they won’t be automatically imported to her site. In case you missed the earlier post, this ice rink has been set up in a car park next to the big entertainment/Aquarium centre (Duman) not too far from our flat. There is a large tower in the middle which seems to play a music video channel, and since the schools are now back in session, the rink is quite empty normally. If I had my own skates, was able to use both legs whilst trying to move forward on the ice, and didn’t have to consider how to look after Anna following the inevitable sprained ankle, I might have popped down 🙂
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