Sep 08 2007

First 07 Kitten Video, Alex And A Garden

Category: Dasha&Kittens,Friends,Kazakhstan,Personal,Videos — ChrisM @ 1:52 am

Other than Ildar’s first day at school, this blog is now up to date with the videos I have shot over the last few months, at least after this post. I’m saving Ildar’s collection until I know whether or not we are meeting him again tomorrow.
Anyway, first we have Tima, the single kitten that Dasha had this year, (the brother of Karra and Muska), shot last week. As he does not live with us, I doubt he will have as many photos and videos of him on this blog, but as a few people asked what he looked like, here you go…

This is the last Alex video, taken when she visited us here in Kazakhstan. Not sure what to title this, other than possibly “Alex No YouTube”? Any other (polite suggestions)? For any fans of hers, we will hopefully have some more during our Amsterdam trip, which should also include ChrisD as well.

And the last two videos in this post are from the same day Alex visited my in-laws, here we have Irina taking viewers on a trip round the garden. Over here, especially in Kazakh (as opposed to Russian) families, gardens (if present) tend to be primarily for growing produce, rather than the British standard of lots of grass and some flowers. Anyway, take a peek, and let me know if you have any questions about the plants you see… I know nothing, but will gladly pass your requests on to Ira or her Mum, who can both tell the difference between weeds and flowers, and thereby best me with their expertise by a long way 🙂

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Sep 07 2007

Walton At Chelsea

Category: Eating Out,Friends,Pictures — ChrisM @ 11:03 pm

Last night we went to the ‘English Pub’ Chelsea, to celebrate Walton’s birthday last Sunday. It was relatively quiet, and not much had really changed in there. The prices are definitely set at foreigners and ex-pats prices, but they do good (cheese) burgers, the service is friendly, and the birthday boy wanted a nice burger, so we were happy to be there.

Breadcrumbed Hot Cheese Chelsea English Pub Astana Kazakhstan
The starter of bread-crumbed fried cheese was good, though once again all the food arrived at the same time, so it was soon ignored due to the arrival of the…

Garlic Bread Chelsea English Pub Astana Kazakhstan
The garlic bread was tasty enough, once the tomatoes were removed 🙂

Cheeseburger Chelsea English Pub Astana Kazakhstan
Although not in any way a traditional Russian or Kazakh meal, cheeseburger with chips is occasionally nice to bring back the tastes of home 🙂

Iras Starter Chelsea English Pub Astana Kazakhstan
Ira thought she was ordering a starter with this meat, though it looked more like a generously sized main course dish really…
Her actual main course of ‘Chipped fish’ turned out not to be a translation error (we assumed it would be like the traditional English fare of Fish & Chips), and Irina’s “starter” turned out to be more of a main course sized affair, but I think she liked it. As Walton had work the next day, he stuck to beer, as did Ira, but as my boss is a little more understanding, I had a little vodka.
Beer Chelsea English Pub Astana Kazakhstan Walton Chelsea English Pub Astana Kazakhstan

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Sep 07 2007

Forgot About These Ones

Category: Friends,Kazakhstan,Videos — ChrisM @ 3:49 am

I had a nagging feeling I had forgotten some of the videos I uploaded to YouTube a while back. I eventually got around to opening all the posts within the Video category on this blog, then checked which videos from my YouTube channel had been posted. So we have a batch of four here, taken from when AlexC was still here in Kazakhstan, and we had all gone round to Ira’s parents for a nice relaxing evening, some food, and a little drink. I am still impressed that Alex was able to hold her own reasonably well when it came to downing vodka, considering she hadn’t had a drink in some five years!

Here we have Babushka (Ira’s grandma), her Dad, Mum, Alex, Myself, some Wild Strawberries (really little fruit that make great jam), and of course Irina filming. In fact I think she handled all the camera work for these 4 shots…

Ira’s Dad is a little old school in some respects, and so was not happy with the prospect of her chopping some wood up for the samovar§. This despite the fact that if I had done it, we would have ended up with wood splinters, sticks that were too wide to fit in the tube, blood, tears, sweat, and possibly a three-fingered Chris. Compare this to the nature loving, camping, tree-surgery-considering Alex, who knows how to handle sharp tools, and you can see why I giggled (oooops, sorry make that let out a manly guffaw…. hmmm why does that sound so unbelievable?) at the idea that I was a better choice to chop wood. Ira’s Dad did it himself in the end.

The big barbecue thing is, well a barbecue, made by the guys ar Ira’s Dad’s work. He complained that most barbecues are made for shorter people, so they made one with extra long legs 🙂 It looks like I had been demoted that day from my normal duties of burning things. hmmmm, fire, flames, burn, petrol……. sorry, where was I? Seriously, I normally manage to burn the wood well enough, as it is not too difficult task to ensure that wood is burnt well to provide the charcoal needed to cook the sashliq (skewered kebabs) later on.

Finally we have almost everyone at the table before dinner, with Babushka chilling in the reclining garden chair. Alex tries out a little Russian, and Ira tells a blatent lie – the cake can’t be have more than my 43rd!

§ – A tea urn with a difference – the heat is provided by burning wood within the tube that runs through the middle of the area that the water is boiled in. You can now buy electric versions, but there is no fun in that, IMHO.

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Sep 05 2007

Scam Warning

Category: Kazakhstan,Personal — ChrisM @ 11:22 pm

For anyone who lives in Kazakhstan, PLEASE add this number to your mobile’s phone book, under the name of ‘DO NOT ANSWER – SCAMMER’ or something similar. The number is 701 1336 118 (or if you have all your numbers entered in the international format, please use +7 701 1336118).
A little background to the warning, three times over the past few months, the owner(s) of this phone number have called me up, claiming to be a bank. They stated that they were unable to allow a deposit to be made into my account, and needed to confirm some details. Given my very basic Russian language skills, I passed the phone to Irina quite quickly the first time. She recognised that something fishy was going on, and asked them to tell her which bank they worked for, and which branch I allegedly held an account at. As they were unable and unwilling to tell her, they tried a few different tactics to continue the scam. After the original call, they have occasionally called back, trying the same routine…
It is a bit like a real life phishing scam, but done via phone, not e-mail.
If the owner of that phone number would ever like to leave a comment, please do, I await your response with interest.
(Note, obviously very unlikely they read this blog already, though they may possibly Google their own number to check if anyone has called them out.)

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Sep 05 2007

Astana Day Concerts #9

Category: Friends,Kazakhstan,Videos — ChrisM @ 2:44 am

This is it… the last four videos recorded on the evening that Astana had a concert to celebrate the President’s birthday and also that Astana became the capital of Kazakhstan almost ten years ago now.


Here we have the fireworks starting, with a message in Kazakh, and some more carnival dancing and music in the background.


The fireworks have properly started, and we also have the Rio Carnival procession finally makes its way to the stage.


Excuse the strange start to this video – I couldn’t believe it when a heavily pregnant woman stood on top of an unstable chair to take some photos, so I got a little distracted. Anyway, it leads into the 13th act with singing in both Russian And English. The track Dancing On Broken Glass has also received a fair amount of air time on the radio stations over here. The President had already left by this point. Apparently the singer is quite popular, at least amongst woman. Ira was recently on the same flight as him, coming back from Moscow, though sadly there was no gossip to report back…


The end Of the Astana Day concert, with a cameo by AlexC, testing the low ambient light setting on the camcorder.

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Sep 02 2007

Astana Day Concerts Videos #6

Category: Kazakhstan,Videos — ChrisM @ 5:07 pm

The 9th Act a the Astana Day Concert. Singing in Russian, as far as I can tell, the song was dedicated to the President (as it was his birthday) and to Astana itself. Pretty scenery from around Kazakhstan is projected on the screen behind the singer.

This act certainly woke the men up in the audience, as three women sang and swayed in their aqua blue dresses. At the same time, we had some aerial gymnastics from people suspended from a crane, with no safety net or harnesses! The singing was in Kazakh. Well, OK, I don’t know that for sure, but I can’t recognise a single word in the songs, so I am just presuming it wasn’t Russian. Happy to be corrected 🙂
If anyone can tell me exactly what I was attempting to zoom into at around the 2:40 mark, please do let me know…

Part 1 Of The 11th Act at the Astana Day Concert. Singing in English, commentary in Russian. Another act that appeared to enliven at least 50% of the audience. The three women all wore black skirts/dresses of varying styles, the knee high stockings on the 3rd lady did not do much for me personally, but each to their own…

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Sep 02 2007

Almaty Academia Blog

Category: Kazakhstan — ChrisM @ 4:34 am

It sometimes pays to visit the sites of those people who comment at the same sites as you. For example, I came across the KIMEP blog today, which details the issues currently surrounding those who attend or work at the university in Almaty. Although the posts written in Russian are well beyond my very basic comprehension skills, the English language posts certainly make for gripping reading. If you or anyone you know hopes to work there (especially foreigners) or attend courses there, it may serve you well to do a little research here, and ask questions of the Uni staff before committing to anything. This sort of site, although obviously written by one person with a pre-existing issue with the establishment, definitely embodies just why blogs are very useful to those wishing to obtain a more balanced picture than can be achieved with simply reading official literature.

[edit]
The blog used to be found at http://kimepblog.blogspot.com/ – but has been removed…

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Aug 30 2007

Astana Day Concerts Videos #4

Category: Friends,Kazakhstan,Videos — ChrisM @ 2:33 am

OK, as you may have read from earlier posts, I have been experimenting trying to find the best way to encode videos to ensure high quality clips on YouTube. So far things have not gone well. I have ascertained that I do need de-interlace the raw DV video from my camcorder. I have tried different ways of resizing from 720×576 to 320×240, including clipping, adding letter box strips, changing the aspect ratio, all to no avail – the video quality is still far worse than previous videos I’ve uploaded. I have tried both DivX and Xvid codecs, with medium to high bit rates, but I always seem to end up with quality that would look bad coming from an old mobile phone.
For now, I shall continue posting the videos as they stand. If someone has an idea about how to achieve better results, let me know. Similarly, if someone would like to have a copy of these, let me know which interests you, and we’ll sort something out…

First we have a short clip of the lasers being tested during the 7th Act at the Astana Day concert. Why have I included it? Watch out for a video taken later in the night, that shows just how impressive the laser show was 🙂 As a small techy point, although the square and X don’t appear contiguous, to the naked eye, they were solid…

Here we have The 8th act singing in Russian…

Lastly (at least for this post), we have Alex, Ira and Ira’s Mum after the 8th act…

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Aug 30 2007

Russian Copyright Obligations Clarified

Category: In The Media — ChrisM @ 12:03 am

A court in Moscow has confirmed that the head of the company that runs allofMP3.com is NOT breaking any Russian laws. Prosecutors originally bought a case against him for selling MP3s without (mainly Western) record companies’ permission, nor paying them. Russian music labels are not thought to have kicked up a fuss, as they have mostly signed up to a scheme to receive some royalties for each download. Check the BBC article for further information. It would basically appear that Russia has a different approach to intellectual properties, and if Western companies do not want to sign up to schemes that undercut their retail outlets (and so be seen to approve of AllofMP3.com) Russian authorities do not care.
Over here in Kazakhstan, although software is now a little more limited (it is now rarer to see pirated MS Windows or Office products on display for example), you can still easily pick up copies of Albums, MP3 compilations of a wide range of artists, and games for most CD/DVD based gaming systems, including PCs. It certainly saves a lot of money for the average Kazakh consumer, who otherwise could not afford to pay for the original real McCoy, especially at Western prices. The pirated copies are mostly produced in Russia, and other than being sold in CD cases, rather than larger sized cardboard boxes, are normally pretty indistinguishable from the retail versions in Britain. Manuals are often included as a PDF on the disc, and the case inserts are normally above average colour copies of the originals, though the back is often re-designed to include the contact details and logos of the Russian pirates/company involved.

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Aug 29 2007

Astana Day Concerts Videos #3

Category: Kazakhstan,Videos — ChrisM @ 4:26 am

Here we have the evening’s MCs sounding like they are sticking to a strict script, introducing the 7th act. I should point out that the number system I have used to label these singers are not correct in terms of the amount that performed that evening, but rather simply a tally of those I videoed and uploaded.

Next we have a Russian language performance…

Finally, a short clip of one of the President’s security team (I assume) scoping the area out, making sure all is well before the big man himself arrives on the scene.

This video was removed

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