As I mentioned in the previous video, Dad, Irina, Anna and I went for a walk around a large garden on the 14th of March. Anna managed to walk around quite a lot of the grounds, the rest of the time we took turns in carrying her. She really seemed to enjoy looking at all the different flora around, and other than the fact that the entrance fee was pretty steep it was a pretty good afternoon out. I am already looking forward to when Anna is a little older, and going back there when she can hopefully appreciate it even more. I’m also hoping we’ll be able to go and visit the tree that was adopted for her. We recorded the exact location via GPS, as well as quite a few photos, so we will be able to point out the exact tree to her 🙂
Sep 08 2010
How Often Is Too Often?
At some point in the future we will be moving back to Britain, and Anna will most likely not be at home all day by that point. This means that both Irina and I will be able to (ha, like we would have a financial choice 🙂 ) work, whether it be full time, part time or temp work. I have decided to try and plan ahead and check out the job scene within the IT sector in advance. I don’t know whether I hope for an engineering job (I used to work as a credit card terminal installer/repairer/staff trainer), technical support (most of my recent roles) or perhaps something a little different.
Being realistic, I suspect it will depend on where we live, and the positions available at the time. Anyway, having already signed up to LinkedIn (see my profile here), I thought it was time I start collating references, especially as a lot of my old bosses don’t work for the same company any more, and so I asked a few clients, colleagues and former employers to leave a comment there. Even Kate said something nice! I also decided to start looking at the different groups there, and was surprised to find quite a lot of “content” that appeared to be little more than spam, by a resume résumé resumé CV writing service company, on the IT Job Board group. I was wondering if any other members saw this in other groups and whether it was accepted as normal behaviour or not? I am not writing this question over there, because perhaps this frequency and topic of posting is considered normal? Anyway, if you don’t want to answer publicly, feel free to e-mail me (see the Contact Me section on this page), or send me a message at LinkedIn.
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Sep 07 2010
Photos Sorted
I have finished sorting the photos we have shot here in Kazakhstan since our return from Britain, and I’m about half way through cropping, resizing and minor tweaking as well. I hope to have them published on here soon, and as we will be going back to our flat tomorrow (we have been house and pet sitting for Irina’s parents whilst they were on holiday), I should be able to actually post more often.
The one problem with looking after Anna in a house, compared to a flat, is that she wants to go up and down between all the floors quite a lot, meaning even if I use Irina’s laptop instead of the main PC, I don’t get a lot of free time to post. Anyway, expect photos of Anna’s new custom built play house (no wooden swing sets needed), meals out, playing around and our trip to Petropavlovsk! I think I have spelled the city name correctly this time, I don’t fancy having to trawl through all my posts again after last time’s problems.
I have also uploaded all the videos to YouTube, though only 1/3 of the new ones have any sort of title or description yet. As there are still a few to post that were already uploaded from our UK trip, I’m not going to lose any sleep over these anonymous videos just yet.
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Aug 24 2010
Apologies 4 lack of posts rece…
Apologies 4 lack of posts recently. Here is a picture of Anna enjoying her tea, with Ira slightly out of the frame http://twitpic.com/2hqu63
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Aug 19 2010
Handago took 7 days 2tell us t…
Handago took 7 days 2tell us that Ira’s Acer E200 wasn’t in stock,despite billing us.Also need 2contact co. that replaced screen on my phone
Aug 11 2010
Käwap Restaurant For Another Birthday Celebration
Another post where I’ve taken a few individual tweets and tidied them into one entry. 11th August was my mother-in-law’s birthday, the day after Ira and my wedding anniversary. We headed on downstairs to the new Azerbaijani restaurant located on the ground floor of our building. We hadn’t tried it before, and there was no one else there during our meal, so we were assured of their undivided attention 🙂 Losha’s parents (Igor and Natalya) joined us, and over all Anna was pretty well behaved.
First up we have a quick picture of a salad that was ordered. It doesn’t come out so well with a wobbly camera phone shot, but in the middle of the plate is a radish carved into a rose shape. Very pretty. Personally I have no idea how it tasted, as I’m not a huge fan of rabbit food (meat, potatoes and pasta are my favourite core ingredients), but no one seemed to complain.
They didn’t have any highchairs, and after trying to get Anna to repeat her previous good behaviour in such situations, we gave up and grabbed the one from our kitchen.
There was in fact no turkey sashliq despite it being on menu. This has happened in a few places in Astana. If you have your hopes set on a certain dish before you arrive, best to phone ahead and speak to someone first. Otherwise a good selection of various sashliqs (kebabs). We asked for something without any bone or lots of gristle (I love the taste of meat, but hate thinking about the fact that it used to be an animal. If steak wasn’t so tasty, I might have been converted into a vegetarian in another life. That would mean eating vegetables though. Anyway, I digress…). When the kebab arrived, it was on the bone still. The waitress didn’t seem to understand why we were surprised to see bone in a dish she recommended for having no bone.
Considering that the décor and ambience of the place was reasonably up market, the vodka & beer was reasonably priced. The baursaki were tasty, but most definitely reheated to make them seem over fresh. Better than stone cold and greasy to be honest 🙂 The chicken lyalya (spelling ?) shashliq was tasty. Basically minced chicken shaped into a sort of sausage shape.
At one point Anna seemed to get a bit bored, and decided to get the camera out. I’ve not yet checked the memory card to see the sort of shots achieved.
Finally, during a cigarette break outside, I took a quick picture of the restaurant name. I couldn’t step any further back, so had to take a diagonal shot. Luckily our WiFi signal just reaches downstairs to this point, so I was able to upload some pics without using up my KCell credit 🙂
oh, I’m hoping someone can correct me on the correct spelling in latin characters for the restaurant?
[edit]
Thanks to Oleg and Walton for their help with the spelling, I’ve updated the post to reflect this.
Aug 10 2010
At Assorti with for a meal wit…
At Assorti with for a meal with Anna and Irina. Our anniversary today. Nine years! Ira’s Mum’s birthday tomorrow. http://twitpic.com/2debyp
The pizza was lovely, the portion size of the fluorescent green garlic bread was very generous, however it could have done with a bit more actual garlic flavour to it. They have a high chair there, and the service is very good. Here ends the compressed review of the Assorti restaurant in the top floor of Mega, Astana 🙂
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Aug 07 2010
Anna’s Airport Breakfast
Once again I’m combining a few posts into one, as they are on similar themes, and don’t really need to push the older posts off the front page so quickly.
This first post are of a couple of videos we shot whilst waiting for our flight in Astana airport
Ira’s Dad decided it was time for us all to go and check in, though we wanted to wait for Anna to finish her breakfast first. Anna saw him walking away and ripped her bib off, which sort of made our decision for us!
Oh, I realise that this isn’t really an “Eating Out” sort of post, but it gives you a quick glimpse of the cafe located on the second floor of Astana airport.
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Aug 07 2010
AFK – Petropavlovsk Trip
AFK being away from keyboard, but as Petropavlovsk is quite a long word, I thought I’d abbreviate. Aunty Sveta has her 60th birthday this weekend, so we are heading over there to celebrate it with her. I’ve not published any photos or videos from that city (just over an hour away via plane, Anna would not be likely to be in a party mood after a long drive there) before, so I’m hoping to Tweet/Qik some sort of media whilst there. Meticulous planning by Irina has ensured we’re travelling as light as possible, with all likely problems sorted in advance. Anyway, if posts appear on the blog suddenly, without much warning, of a city that doesn’t look much like Astana, you’ll know why. The city is about as far North as you can go in Kazakhstan before you hit the Russian border, and we haven’t been there since Anna was born, so it will be great to see people and hopefully have a good time celebrating Aunty Sveta’s birthday.
Aug 03 2010
Good Evening And Dan’s Birthday Meal At Tiflis
OK, I’ve removed the six posts that were submitted by my phone on Saturday night and amalgamated them into this one post, with the videos embedded.
It was DanD’s birthday the next day, and so we headed to one of his favourite restaurant’s – Tiflis. I forgot to check in on foursquare or Google Latitude, so don’t have the exact co-ordinates, but I’ve searched on Google Map with Irina, and put where we think it is. The road is called Imanova St, but Google has a different label for some reason. However it is nearly opposite Cinema City, so that is the right street.
The old outdoor (well it had a roof but cut down walls to allow fresh air through) section had just finished being renovated, and we were all very pleasantly surprised by the new look. There are two floors, with an open central courtyard. Downstairs there was a normal seating area with lots of tables, and upstairs had some one table rooms. This worked out well, as they had a Georgian band playing for a lot of the night (see the videos below). The band were great, but when we wanted to talk, it was good to be able to shut the double doors, stick on the air conditioning, and not have to shout.
The food itself was great, with some sort of cheesy bread as a starter for me (salads still haven’t snuck onto my menu!), and a lamb sashliq (with chips obviously) for main. We were there for around three or four hours, and had a chance to congratulate Dan on his upcoming birthday (25th if you believe the normally otherwise honest Dan), and talk about life over here. The service was good, especially by local standards, and I’d happily recommend the place for eating out if you want to try something a bit different. You may find you need to reserve the rooms in advance, and I’m hoping Dan will read this post at some point and leave their telephone number here.
A couple of clips of the room, the company and the main course…
Everyone was still very sober by then, not many beers drunk or shots of Cha Cha served. The restaurant has definitely switched suppliers when it comes to the Georgian spirit of Cha Cha. It didn’t feel like paint stripper going down your throat, if anything it was a little closer to brandy, but not overly so.
OK, onto the entertainment…
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