Jul 20 2007

Tom Plus Afghans = Kyrgyzstan!

Category: Friends,PersonalChrisM @ 8:35 pm

I have been meaning to write a post on this subject for a while, but did not get around to it until now. Apologies Tom.
Anyway, as long term readers may recall Tom Toomey live here in Astana for a while, and we regularly met up to get drunk and eat too much have deep philosophical discussions whilst very drunk.
He returned to America earlier this year, and carried on blogging whilst there. It was good to be able to keep up to speed with his life. However, he recently went to Afghanistan (that most friendly of places to be if you are American!), for his regular annual trip to pick up some young men. And women. Perhaps I should clarify? Rather than any sort of romantic quest, he takes Afghan teenagers to Kyrgyzstan for a summer camp. Although British readers will probably only have come across the concept of summer camps through films and TV shows, I have been assured that this really does occur, and is not just some Hollywood invention ;).
So, if you would like to read Tom’s posts, head on over to The LifeOf2Me, and do make sure you read the older posts as well; whereas this blog tends to be random thoughts from the top of my head, his is seriously well written, if not deadly serious subject matter 🙂

PS He is a friend, not a business associate, so this post is not sponsored in any way, I would just really like any readers of mine who have not yet come across his blog to do check it out. Just don’t forget to come back here as well. I’m cool with polygamy 🙂

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Jun 08 2007

The Dragon Fart T-Shirt Has Arrived

Category: Friends,Personal,PicturesChrisM @ 1:34 am

TCat Designs Dragon Fart

As modelled by Pete.
For anyone who hasn’t yet visited, go and check out Tom’s online shop NOW. You will find a whole range of original t-shirts and other items, all designed by Tom.

TCat Designs is run by Tom Toomey, of The Life of 2ME blog. He is now back in America, having lived here in Astana for a short while. He and Walton are hopefully going to be in Kyrgyzstan this summer, running a camp for children from Afghanistan.

Nope, this isn’t sponsored, Tom is a friend, and no money was exchanged for this post.

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Dec 07 2006

10 Days Until Flying Back To The UK

Category: Friends,PersonalChrisM @ 7:28 am

And I’ve been very bad at posting recently. Apologies to anyone still reading this 😉
Irina has just returned from Moscow, Karra is fine and still biting us randomly.
Mum had her birthday on the 5th, but her presents and card didn’t arrive until yesterday, and one still hasn’t made it 🙁
I hope to see Tom and Walton before I leave for my Christmas break, and Tom#2 (‘pilot Tom’) has been in contact to confirm he is fine, but wasn’t able to meet up with us recently due to his work commitments.
It is quite late now, so heading to bed.
Oh and Dad & Nick have received their visas, so it looks like everything is good to go for their visit over here for New Year 🙂
Hope all who read this do so in good health…

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Nov 29 2006

Had A Good Meal

Tom #2 (the pilot) didn’t turn up, hope his flight to Astana was ok…
Anyway we (Myself, Tom & Walton (and Ira when she had finished at Work)) went to Cafe Shymkent, and had a nice meal and a couple of drinks. Talked about all sorts, and I managed to stay sober enough to remember everything this time. Having spent the night working on getting links to my Ad Sense websites up, I’m about to head to bed.
Looked out the window, and it appears to have been snowing a fair bit over night…
If you compare these two photos to the ones here, you can see the lanes are now covered over again completely.
Doesn’t seem to slow down some drivers though…

IMG_1818 (Small).JPG IMG_1820(Small).JPG

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Nov 28 2006

Message For Tom, Message For Other Tom And Another Thing

Category: Friends,Personal,WordPressChrisM @ 2:19 am

OK, first for Tom from LifeOf2Me, I keep forgetting to mention THIS link to you when we meet in the real world… Not sure if it will be of any use to you with your work (if/when the school gets closer to actually needing syllabuses/lesson plans etc.), but I thought it might be of interest to you at the very least…

Second, for the ‘other’ Tom (nowt personal, if I’d met you first, ‘our’ Tom would be the ‘other’ ;>), are we still meeting up Tuesday evening? I’m assuming your flight plans haven’t changed. Anyway, we’ll all be out drinking somewhere, hope you are still coming.

Finally, my HHUUGGEE thanks to the creator of the theme I use for this site; for a while I’d wanted to alter the colours used for hyperlinks – whilst the previous grey was definitely in keeping with the black version of Chameleon I’d chosen, a couple of visitors had mentioned that when I post links, it wasn’t very obvious sometimes. I found this to be true when I’d been up all night, and ended up randomly pushing the cursor around until I found what I needed. Anyway, I digress, Ainslie spotted my request 1/2 day after I added it on one of his posts. I then neglected to check back for an answer for a while, and when I discovered his speedy response, I followed up with another query (still a newbie with CSS – I can bodge/cut’n’paste/guess some things, but I wasn’t sure which value to alter for link colours…). Lo and behold, some 39 minutes later, he had the answer.

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Oct 30 2006

Went Out Saturday Night

Category: Eating Out,Friends,Kazakhstan,PersonalChrisM @ 11:53 am

And met up with a couple of fellow bloggers. You can check their sites by clicking on the KZBlog and The Life of 2ME links on the right, under Kazakh blogs. Had a good time, and a little to eat. I appear to have drunk a bit too much, as the moment we stepped outside of the cafe (Shymkent, around City Market and Cinema City area), my memory is a little too hazy to recall the journey home etc. Tom has already posted on our meeting (direct link here), and I don’t have much to add to his portrayal. Next time, I’ll not have an evening meal at home, and eat a little bit more whilst out, to soak up the excess spirit :>

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Oct 26 2006

Just Found Another English Blog On Astana

Category: Friends,KazakhstanChrisM @ 3:19 pm

Whilst googling, I discovered TheLifeOf2Me. If you get a moment check it out…

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