ChrisMerriman.com

Aug 29 2007

The Barrel Restaurant

Category: Eating Out,Friends,Personal,Pictures — ChrisM @ 11:35 pm

As I mentioned in the previous post, we (Ira, Me, Balzhan, Ildar, Masha, Dr. Natalya, Sasha & Sveta) went out to celebrate Dr. Natalya & Sasha’s new car. In the same way as you ‘wet’ a baby’s head, major accomplishments are celebrated with a drink over here; if you have something to drink, you should have a meal with it. So, we went to the restaurant that uses huge barrels as outdoor dining areas. We all had pork sashliq (kebabs) a little to drink, and generally nattered a little. Before hand, we went and inspected the VW Golf, which is a definite improvement over their old soviet-style car (could have been an old-style Lada?). After that, Sasha dropped the car back at the flat and walked to the restaurant, so he could drink as well.
Anyway, enough of the text, onto the photos…

So first we have a few shots of the car

Now we have the food, starting with the lovely, straight from the oven, lepioshka bread, followed by the potato sausage thingies, some (apparently) delicious salad and the main course – the sashliq 🙂

Oh, and the leftovers 😉

Finally we have the attendants of the evening’s festivities…

Lastly, Balzhan’s nails, of which she was very proud. We had been waiting a while for our food by this time, so Dr. Natalya was threatening to start nibbling on Balzhan’s hands…

Tags: Astana, food, head, Irina, Kazakhstan, soviet-style car, VW Golf

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Aug 29 2007

The Iraq, South Africa AND US Americans!!!

Category: Videos — ChrisM @ 3:18 pm

Thought I’d post a link to a YouTube clip whilst I wait to see if the new resizing method results in a much needed improvement in quality.
Anyway, click here to see the bright young future of America…
Although she has obviously been coached to include South Africa and ‘the’ Iraq in any of her answers. Unfortunately she seems to unable to answer the question regarding how 1 in 5 Americans can’t locate their own country on a map of the world, let alone subtly slip in the required references. I have seen better quality videos of the beauty contest, but the one linked to has helpful subtitles 🙂

Tags: Iraq, Irina, South Africa, United States, YouTube

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Aug 29 2007

YouTube Problems

Category: Personal,Videos — ChrisM @ 3:03 pm

Perhaps a more accurate post title would have been ‘Stupid, impatient Chris’…
Last night I finished uploading all 29 videos to YouTube from the Astana Day celebrations, specifically the concert held in the evening that Ira, AlexC, Ira’s Mum and I all went to.
BEFORE uploading dozens of videos that you’ve resized & re-encoded, in fact before the editing, resizing and recoding, use ONE video as a test. Do not assume all will be ok. My main problem is that I did not exactly follow the advice I gave to Alex’s brother (see the For Alex’s Bro – DV Video Transfer And YouTube post). For some reason, I decided that sticking to the aspect ratio was important, and ended up with a 300×240 pixel video set. Once uploaded to YouTube, they of course bludgeoned it into a 320×240 file. This led to an outstanding loss of quality…. Cue one day of work lost.
Lesson learnt… hopefully, plus it also forced me to learn how to save filter and codec settings to force me to use the correct settings in the future when using DV footage with YouTube. I’ve also got around to figuring out how to queue up jobs in VirtualDub. That way I can mark out the sections from each raw video I want to encode into smaller files, in one go, then leave VirtualDub to encode them all in one batch.
I hasten to add I am now testing one video to ensure the different approach (I’ve ended up adding narrow black vertical borders to ensure the resized video mantains the aspect ratio, and doesn’t crop off any video from the top and bottom), before re-encoding all the videos and uploading.
Next on the ‘To Do’ list is to figure out an easy way to accomplish 2-pass encoding without repeating the same steps 29 times over, and also find the sweet point in terms of encoding quality, beyond which YouTube will discard extra detail.

Live and learn…

Tags: Alex, Astana, Irina, Mum, YouTube

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Aug 28 2007

Kittens Progress

Category: Dasha&Kittens,Personal — ChrisM @ 2:03 am

In a couple of days time, our Karra and Muska will be one year old. They already have a younger brother (Tima), who they will probably meet at Christmas time, when Ira and I will be coming back to Britain for a couple of weeks or so. During the last year, Karra has grown from a little bundle of fluff that was naughty but cute, to a large kitten who is… naughty but cute. Our wall paper is testament to the fact that she can not be trained not to do something, and although often mentioned at the beginning, we never had the heart to go and buy a water sprayer to try and dissuade her from such activities. My slippers’ lifespan has also drastically shortened, as both Karra and Muska seem to enjoy ripping the lining out, and in Karras case, wearing them as a sort of balaclava. Although frustrating to see the slippers deteriorate so quickly, seeing my slipper slide about with just two hind legs and a tail hanging out the back is quite funny.
Muska has been a success story on the whole. Originally she was to stay with the in-laws, however as they both work in normal jobs over here, she did not get a lot of human interaction, and so was VERY wary of anyone trying to stroke her, or even be within a metre or so of her. We originally took her to our flat as a sort of training camp, so when she was comfortable with humans, she could go back home, and not hide whenever the in laws had company. I think it took about 18 hours for that plan to go out the window. Although she is still a little more cautious, especially compared to Karra, Muska will now often demand a stroke, and is not afraid of Karra as she was when she first arrived.
Anyway, I’ll stop boring you with details for now, though I should mention I hope to upload our video of the new kitten (Tima) soon; I’ve already transferred it from the camcorder to the PC, but at its’ current full resolution, uncompressed status, 1 minute of DV video requires approximately 200 Mb, so I need to trim out the unnecessary sections and start working on it a little later.

Tags: Britain, Christmas, Irina, Kara, Muska

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Aug 27 2007

Random Reunion

Category: Friends,Kazakhstan,Personal,Weather — ChrisM @ 1:57 am

As per normal, Ira and I went over to her parent’s house on Sunday, where we catch up on the week’s news, have some lunch, potter around the garden. OK, honesty time, I tend to skip the gardening section. Don’t get me wrong, if there is heavy lifting to do, or something that involves manual labour, I’ll not complain too much, but plants have never liked me; I can try and look after them, but they normally end up in a mess, and wilting; combine my hay fever in, and you can (hopefully) see why I tend to avoid the garden, at least in the hot summer months. Later on, they have a sauna, whilst I appreciate being in a room with normal humidity, and can breathe easily. However, before they got to the sauna stage, Lorsha and his Mum & Dad popped over. The two males had just arrived back from Germany, and wanted to pop in and say hello to the family. It was good to see them again, and then a little while later, Dr. Natalya, Sasha, Balzhan and their respective offsprings popped over, as they had been to the Duman (the big fish place and entertainment centre) for the first time. Yep, they live in Astana, but had never been to the aquarium. I guess it may be a little like the London Eye, or Empire State Building over in NYC – if you live in the city, and don’t have any visiting friends to take to the attractions, you never get round to it. Anyway, as they were in the area, they popped over, as did Asen’s mum, who dropped off a plant for Ira’s mum. It was good to see everyone, though it appears the vodka shots effected me, as I dozed off for a while.

Tags: Astana, Dad, Empire State Building, Germany, Irina, London, Mum

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Aug 26 2007

Sattay With Friends

Category: Eating Out,Friends,Pictures — ChrisM @ 1:31 am

This evening we went with Assel and Walton to the roof terrace section of the Sattay restaurant. Although you do pay a little more than some places, it wasn’t quite in the range of the German style restaurant we went to mid-week, luckily. I had some Bousaky as a starter (a roll that tastes a little like a doughnut, without the sugar added), a kebab (Sashlique) with chips, and some profiteroles for dessert. Unfortunately, they were too tasty to pause and grab a photo, sorry, but you can see the edible bowl they came in at least…
One thing that caught our eyes was the difference in prices between the English menu, and the Russian menu. Being inquisitive, we asked the waitress why foreigners were expected to pay more at this establishment. The reason given was that you received larger portions for the more expensive (English language) versions of the items. Having seen how much a Kazakh man can put away in an evening, especially if the food is required to soak up a good amount of vodka, I remain unconvinced. See the pictures below for an example of how the chips cost more on one menu than the other.
The music they played was refreshingly non-pop, and the service level was good. Once we had finished our meal, and putting the world to rights over some vodka, we headed back to Walton and Assel’s place, where we had some popcorn, sweets and a little more vodka. (See the last photo below, this vodka has garnered quite a reputation internationally, apparently.)

Tags: Astana, food, German style restaurant, Irina, Kazakhstan, Russia, Sattay restaurant, waitress, Walton

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Aug 23 2007

My Very Own Restaurant

Category: Eating Out,Friends,Personal — ChrisM @ 12:56 pm

OK, not quite, but the name of the place we went to last night is not a million miles from my surname…

?????????? which (very) roughly equates to Meramhana, which is pretty damn close to Merriman 🙂
Anyway, we met up with Walton and Assel, who we had not seen since he went away to Kyrgyzstan with Tom to help teach some Afghan teenagers.

The last time we tried to go to this restaurant, the whole place was closed to the public, as there were some government big wigs in attendance at someone important’s birthday. That probably should have given us a small clue as to the price range, but we ploughed on regardless… Whilst we waited outside for Walton to arrive, I took a quick shot of the patio seating, though this now being the end of August, no Kazakhs were in view, as it is too cold to sit outside. Apparently.

When we went in, the interior looked quite impressive, and the staff were actually pleasant to deal with; none of the oft-encountered ‘I am doing you a favour serving you’ sort of attitude. I had a nice fried cheese starter, and a pepper steak with chips. Sorry, that should have been a PEPPER steak with chips. (The amount of pepper corns I scraped off the meat would have lasted me a couple of years in a pepper grinder at home.) Walton and Ira had the same dish, though Irina has mushrooms as her garnish. Even Ira noted that the sauce on the meat was really quite hot. Half through the meal I literally had tears coming from my eyes, and this was after shaving the top, bottom and sides of the meat, to try and minimize the strength of the pepper sauce. I enjoyed it, but would not recommend it in a restaurant that was not air conditoned 😉

Please excuse the messy plate – I forgot to take a shot until about 1/2 through the meal. Whilst we ate, there was a live band playing downstairs, who were pretty talented, even if a little loud. The violinist had a stronger talent for playing her electric violin than singing, but their repertoire involved a wide selection of Russian and English songs, that did not exclusively involve female lead vocals, so overall, their input was most appreciated.

So, we finished off the meal with a nice dollop or two of ice cream, and said our goodbyes. It was really good to have the four of us back together again, and to hear (a little) about Walton’s time at the camp.

[EDIT]
Ooops, apparently ?????????? is actually the Kazakh word for restaurant… not the name of the establishment itself. That is now three words of Kazakh I know 🙂

Tags: Astana, Birthday, Irina, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, violinist, Walton

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Aug 20 2007

Cat Map Of Your Bed

Category: Dasha&Kittens,Personal,Pictures — ChrisM @ 2:57 am

Ira sent me a link last week to a picture that illustrates the real reason your bed exists, at least if you own a cat.
The post was up at a LiveJournal Russian Cats Section, so take a look if you like cats.
Anyway, enough of the blurb for now, onto the picture…

Cat Map Of Your Bed

However, the situation does change a bit when you have two cats; for example unless it is cold, Karra and Muska will normally only sleep on the bed if the other is not already there. I have also had to learn to move slowly in the morning, when getting up, as nothing starts the day badly more than accidentally kicking your cat.

Tags: Irina, Kara, LiveJournal, Muska, Russia

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Aug 19 2007

‘Mini Dasha’ Has A Name!

Category: Dasha&Kittens,Pictures — ChrisM @ 11:29 pm

Assuming the kitten is male, it looks like he will be called Tima. He has gained grammes in three days, which sounds quite healthy to me. (I’m not an expert, but Irina and the in-laws seem happy with his progress at least.)
So first shot is the (now) traditional weighing process…

Next we have a shot of Dasha and Tima posing very nicely for a photo in the box that has seen quite a few kitten litters…

Finally we have a cute shot of Dasha protecting and warming her baby. It really is quite unusual to see Dasha with just one kitten; as she is more than ten years old now, the vet thinks that her body only produced a single kitten to ensure both mother and son would be healthy. Mind you, that vet will not be getting any more business from this family – she appeared to not be too clued up about animals, nor very professional in her communications.

Tags: Astana, Dasha, Irina, Kazakhstan, Tima

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Aug 18 2007

Election Day Today

Category: Kazakhstan — ChrisM @ 8:38 pm

As I am not sure on the exact laws in this country, I will refrain from passing any sort of comment on the current political situation here in Kazakhstan. Anyway, Irina went and voted today, there were two votes to be cast, one for the Majilis (one of the sections of the parliament here), the other for Maslihat, a more local level of administration. The process went smoothly, and an exit poll was apparently in place.
Obviously I am not about to post who she voted for, but I look forward to hearing the results for both votes, and whether any international bodies approve of the elections this time.

Tags: Irina, Kazakhstan

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