ChrisMerriman.com

Jul 12 2007

Last Of The Alex Photos

Category: Friends,Kazakhstan,Personal,Pictures — ChrisM @ 4:59 am

OK, we have finally reached the end of the photos with this following shot…

I believe this was taken the day Alex arrived, after her little hiccup in Kaliningrad airport. If you want to read a little more about her trip over here, I’d recommend you go and read her blog – Dryad Musings.
We setup the the site whilst she was here, and Alex has already added a couple more posts since returning to her home. If you fancy reading posts that are a little more well written, rather than the normal stream of consciousness rubbish you normally find on my personal posts here :), then consider adding her to your bookmarks or even adding her feed to your reader.

Tags: Astana, Irina, Kaliningrad airport, Kazakhstan

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Jul 12 2007

Queen Bites Back

Category: In The Media,Personal — ChrisM @ 4:35 am

According to a Times Online article, the Queen was not amused at the ‘direction’ given to her by a famous photographer whilst posing. Whether Annie Leibovitz was not properly versed on Royal etiquette, or simply decided to chance it and attempt to push her luck a little too far is not made clear.
Irina and I recently watched the ‘The Queen’ film, and I was actually expecting to not feel any warmth for her majesty, however the portrayal left me re-assessing just how different a universe the Queen lives in, and not just in a positive way. Having to live a large part of your life according to protocol could well leave you feeling prickly when people not close to you make unusual requests.

Tags: Annie Leibovitz, Bites Back, Irina, photographer, Queen, The Queen, United Kingdom

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Jul 11 2007

In-Laws Meet Alex

Category: Friends,Kazakhstan,Personal,Pictures — ChrisM @ 9:46 pm

Just noticed I appear to be posting these pictures in reverse order – the earlier posts have the most recent piccies, and this post has photos from towards the beginning of Alex’s stay here. I have deliberately left out quite a few days and subjects, as I want Alex to have them on her blog, especially as most are from her camera!

Anyway, that is a shot of the three of us in the back garden, probably just having being fed a lot of nice food, with a little to drink.

Here we have the ferocious guard dog, poised to rip out Alex’s throat, as she is unknown to Aynak. Well, OK, it might look like she is just licking us there, but I am sure she would have been prepared to defend her master’s property at the drop of a hat…

Tags: Astana, food, guard, Irina, Kazakhstan, nice food

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Jul 10 2007

Restaurant Vodka And Monopoly

Category: Eating Out,Friends,Kazakhstan,Personal,Pictures — ChrisM @ 1:23 am

When Oleg and Alex met up, we all went out for a meal in the evening, and tried out the outside section above two of our ‘regular’ restaurant. The service was friendly, and the waitress even spoke a little English with us. Anyway, here is a quick snap shot of the table…

Later on we went back to the flat, had a little to drink, talked, and played a game. When the sun came up, we decided to end the ‘evening’ and slept in a little late that day 🙂
Anyway, hopefully Ira and I will meet up with Oleg again before he returns to Moscow…

Tags: Astana, Irina, Kazakhstan, Moscow, waitress

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Jul 09 2007

Hat Fravoured Pizza

Category: Eating Out,Kazakhstan,Personal — ChrisM @ 10:43 pm

Today is Irina’s last day of holiday, so we went to town and sorted a few things before she had to go back to the office routine.
Not exactly a thrilling end of the relaxing times for her, but we looked into getting an air conditioner unit installed, which should make a big difference at the flat.
Anyway, we paused for a snack and a drink, and discovered a pizza that was ‘hat fravoured’. Whilst I am really glad more and more establishments are producing English language menus etc., some of the spelling mistakes really do grab your attention. (That one was in fact ‘hot flavoured’)

Tags: Irina

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Jul 08 2007

Lost & Prison Break

Category: Friends,Personal — ChrisM @ 10:37 pm

Since Alex arrived with ChrisD’s downloads for me, we have been ploughing through all the episodes of the series we enjoyed watching in Britain.
Given our previous track record, I can not imagine Lost lasting more than a week or two, and although Irina does not particularly like it, I do not think Prison Break will last much longer either.
When the two of us are watching TV, I feed the signal from the PC to our nice big TV, via a DVI>HDMI cable, but if I am working at the same time, and Irina is at work or out, I use the little monitor sat next to my main one here on the desk. Keeps me distracted enough to not notice how long it can take me to write some posts 🙂

Tags: Britain, Irina, Prison Break

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Jul 08 2007

Pedalo Photo

Category: Friends,Kazakhstan,Personal,Pictures — ChrisM @ 9:34 pm

A few more photos before I go and grab some dinner.

This is Irina and Alex at the War Memorial here in Astana, just before we went on to the map of Kazakhstan I mentioned before. As I said before, you may well run across similar photos to these over at Alex’s blog, especially as some of these were taken on her camera. However, she will hopefully have a few more interesting words on the days we spent, and from a different perspective.

Here we have Ira and I (modelling one of Tom’s t-shirts) on a pedalo, with Alex taking the picture. We were on the river Ishim here in Astana, and after half an hour could almost steer the boat in the general direction we wanted to go. No one fell in the water, and we did not sink any other boats foolish enough to get in our way, so we had quite a good time. From here, we went on to a restaurant. More on that place later.

Tags: Alex, Astana, Irina, Kazakhstan, River Ishim, War Memorial

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Jul 08 2007

Map Of Kazakhstan

Category: Friends,Kazakhstan,Pictures — ChrisM @ 8:55 pm

If you have already checked out the link I gave earlier for 3D models of the buildings around where Irina works, you may be interested in an attraction Alex, Ira and I visited last week – it is basically a model map of Kazakhstan you can walk around. You get an idea of where the different towns and regions are within this country, and there is also a covered section which ‘zooms’ in on the area of Astana covered by the Google satellite map I mentioned earlier.

Here we have a tired Ira and me carrying out some very important task on my phone. Or I could have just been playing a game, can’t remember.

That is Alex, standing by the aforementioned map of Astana itself.

Tags: Astana, Google, Irina, Kazakhstan, satellite map

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Jul 08 2007

Alex Safe & Sound

Category: Friends,In The Media,Personal — ChrisM @ 8:04 pm

We have just received a text from Alex, of Dryad Musings fame, and she is back in Britain, on the coach back to Cheltenham. So no unexpected 24 hour delays in Kaliningrad this time, which is a huge relief. Early this morning, we saw her off at the airport (they did not seem to mind her 28 kilo suitcase, luckily), and it would appear that the cigarettes and vodka did not receive undue attention at the UK airport 😉

It was really good to see her again, as we last met at Christmas. Although it was sad to see her go, we will hopefully be meeting up once more this coming December, if all goes well. We may even be able to persuade Ira’s parents to come and visit England with us!

Tags: Britain, Cheltenham, Christmas, coach, Irina, UK airport, United Kingdom

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Jul 08 2007

Astana Day 2007 #2

Category: Friends,Kazakhstan,Personal,Pictures — ChrisM @ 7:41 pm

Here we have a shot of the stage in the daytime, to give you a better idea of how it looked on the day. In the background you can see the Presidential Palace.

That (under the yellow awning) is where the real VIPs (the President and his associates) sat for the evening festivities, though the concert itself was only accessible to those lucky enough to know someone who could get their hands on some tickets (big thanks to Ira’s Dad for sourcing them 🙂 ).