I was playing with PockeTwit yesterday, checking if all the features still worked OK, when I ran my saved search for tweets that mention Cheltenham. (For those that have only come to know me and this site since moving to Kazakhstan, I a lot of my childhood years in Cheltenham, after moving from Yeovil before secondary school.) Ignoring the tweets that were obviously for a Cheltenham in America (which apparently has a shopping mall that teenagers love to write about, and the residents there seem to think a local town is far inferior to their version of a Cheltenham), I came across some vacancies for customer service jobs, more specifically technical support manager. I favourited the tweet (I check twitter on my phone whilst having a smoke, and look up any interesting links on a PC later) just to see what the details were. It turned out the agency was based in Cheltenham, but the job was in London. The salary wasn’t too bad, and to my surprise I only lacked one essential skill, and ticked quite a few of the desired ones. I’m not sure right now if I’d want to be in a management role when we return to Britain (or if I’d be selected), but it was reassuring that there are jobs that pay a living wage or more that I could at least feasibly get an interview for!
[edit]
This post’s title refers to a point that was raised during the last English club I ran where locals reminded me that the title manager does not infer the same job responsibilities over here at all. You will most likely not be in charge of anyone, and can be quite junior within an organization and still be a “manager” in Russian.
Sep 15 2010
A Real Manager
Comments Off on A Real Manager
Sep 08 2010
A Promenade Around Cheltenham Promenade
The 15th of March was the day we all went into Cheltenham for a walk around the town centre (Anna still often preferred to have someone’s hand to hold onto when walking around outdoors at the time, and wasn’t shy about letting you know when she had walked far enough, and expected to be carried the rest of the way!). Anyway, the Promenade itself hasn’t changed much in the four years or so since we moved out of Cheltenham to move to Kazakhstan. I think this is FINALLY the last of the UK videos we recorded on our trip over there this year. There are still a few more post’s worth of pictures to publish, but after that we will be into Kazakhstan based pictures and movies.
Comments Off on A Promenade Around Cheltenham Promenade
Sep 08 2010
@dacy_ebd re. Kazakhstan. It (…
@dacy_ebd re. Kazakhstan. It (just) straddles the geographical,if not political,border of Europe and Asia. Central Asia realistically though
Comments Off on @dacy_ebd re. Kazakhstan. It (…
Sep 07 2010
Plane Tickets
I am pretty sure that this post will end up working my anti-spam plugins overtime, but I was wondering if anybody knew of where to get good Astana <> Britain tickets – price wise? Back in 2006 ChrisD managed to find a return flight that was ridiculously cheap, something silly like two to three hundred pounds. Whenever we go back to the UK for Christmas/have family or friends over, we try to find the cheapest deals going, but never really get very far. We obviously try Travelocity, Expedia and LastMinute , and then once we’ve found the cheapest flights, check the airline’s own website, in case there are special offers on. For a short while, Air Astana had a great deal on return flights (but only from Kazakhstan and back again, not vice versa) but that offer expired. Anyway, does anyone have a tip of where to look, or alternative approaches to consider? Mum will be here in Astana in a little over two weeks, so it would be too late to save her money, but we are hoping to go back to Wales around Christmas/New Year time, so if we need to book well in advance for savings, now would probably be a good time to check, I’m assuming.
Comments Off on Plane Tickets
Sep 07 2010
Present Time – A Little Delayed
Delayed in two senses. When Nick came up to Evesham (btw big congratulations to him for recently passing his driving test!) he bought the Christmas and Birthday presents that we had not been able to open due to being in Kazakhstan at the time. Even though his son Jack was about to be born, we really appreciated him making the effort and making sure we had some more time together (he also had a job interview in Cheltenham, so the timing was perfect). The second part of the delay? The video of this evening was posted a little over a month ago. I have been very slack recently at posting to this blog, other than occasional tweets. Now that PockeTwit (my preferred Windows Mobile twitter client) isn’t working due to OAuth being required for logins, the site has been quite bare recently. I am hoping to put up a few more posts by the end of the week, and if I can just create 36 hours in a day, I might even manage to post more next week 🙂 Oh, 12th of March is the date these photos were taken, which reminds me, I need to check if AnnaMerriman.com is still pulling these posts in automatically, and also start manually embedding those videos that don’t make it across.
-
- That Is For Me, Yes?
-
- Dad Can Borrow These For Now
-
- Panda Puppet (Pyramid Builder!)
-
- New Winter Gear
Comments Off on Present Time – A Little Delayed
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.
Comments Off on Photos Sorted
Aug 29 2010
Just shot this clip (#qik) htt…
Anna Raving At Vaqueros, Astana, Kazakhstan.
Just shot this clip (#qik) http://qik.ly/CJebu
Comments Off on Just shot this clip (#qik) htt…
Aug 07 2010
Petropavlovsk Photos
This is the area around Aunty Sveta’s place in Petropavlovsk (I think the government now wants it to be called Petropavl, but most people I spoke to still add the ovsk. This area of Kazakhstan is very close to Russia, so it is possible that the renaming is an attempt to make it sound more Kazakh).
View Larger Map
The EDGE (think about GPRS v2.5 🙂 ) connection maxed out at 16kbit/sec (about three times slower than old fashioned dial up internet access on computers), consequently I unable to upload shots to twitpic until I returned to Astana.
Travelling From Petropavlovsk's Airport Into Town
Urban Area Of Petropavlovsk
Comments Off on Petropavlovsk Photos
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…
« Previous Page — Next Page »