Deciding to take advantage of what was then the rapidly ending of summer days in Astana, Irina, I and Anna walked across to Ali Ba Ba (the outdoor seating section of Farhi) and had a snack and a couple of drinks. Anna behaved brilliantly, probably helped by the face we were sat at the Kazakh-style tables, which are low and surrounded by cushions on a raised floor. This meant she wasn’t stuck on our laps the whole time, or in her pushchair.
Anna and Chris sat in Ali BaBa
Oh, and for making it easier to follow what is what when this picture is automatically imported into Anna Merriman‘s site, the photo was taken on the 9th of September 2009. 09/09/09, though not at 09:09. That would have been a little too early for all of us, and a little excessive just for obtaining a pretty time and date. That said, as the camera is still set to UK time, it thought it was 09:10 – only a minute off!
So Lucky is planning to give a live webcast later on today, at around 6pm (our time – should be midday in Britain, 8am on the East Coast in American, and 9pm in Japan?)
Anyway, here is the man himself explaining a little more in a YouTube vid he uploaded on the subject.
I’m going to be teaching an English lesson around that time, but hopefully there’ll be some sort of archive so I can play it back, even if real time interaction is out the window…
So, head over there if you want to ask an American living in Almaty, Kazakhstan what life is like (though he probably answered a lot of your questions in his other YouTube videos, so go and watch a few first 🙂 ).
Irina has been ordering a few items for Anna on e-bay, but obviously concentrating on larger sizes, so we can just pick up the clothes when we next return to Britain, rather than having them all reposted to Kazakhstan. So far, we don’t seem to have suffered problems with the Royal Mail strike having delayed anything (touch wood), but according to the BBC’s article on the changing habits of British people sending postcards more and more people will be sending electronic cards this year, in an attempt to save money, and also bypass the whole ‘lost in the post’ issue that occasionally put a damper on proceedings. We sort of operate a half way policy – there is no point in us actually sending real cards from Kazakhsan to people on their birthdays/Christmas, as the post isn’t reliable (see Lucky’s video which will be embedded in an upcoming post) and the selection of available cards over here still isn’t great. So for immediate family, we use an online service that prints a personalised card and then posts it, and for everyone else, we just hope they won’t be offended if we don’t re-start the whole greeting card thing when we move back to Britain.
OK, so this one is out of order compared to the other Lucky21842 videos I’ve been catching up on, but I wanted to embed it now in case I forgot and closed the tabs down in Firefox on Monday when we return home. So, if you haven’t already seen them, there are a lot of YouTube videos that feature elite vehicles and excessive car accessories, parading up and down (and occasionally crashing) Almaty (& a couple of Astana) streets. The video below is a sort of antidote to such clips.
If you click the video, you’ll be taken to the proper page for it, where you can check out his other videos and see the comments left by other YouTube videos. I can understand where 777kuku777 (and indeed Jason/Lucky himself) is coming from when 777kuku777 says
Wahaha, you are so right about the Almaty cars, personally I don’t see the point of those videos. If it’s your car, then do whatever you want with it, make a video for you tube and what-not, otherwise, waste of time. P.S. Dude you being a gangsta is priceless though! Oh and next time for your version of almaty cars use some local songs would be even? funnier:)
However, if I was aware of the sort of media attention that Kazakhstan attracted in some of the tabloids abroad, and I felt proud of Almaty/Astana/Kazakhstan as well, I would want to make sure that people understood that cars were not pulled by donkeys, and that in all likelihood, there were more über-expensive dream machines parading around Almaty (at least) than in the European/American city of your average YouTube viewer…
Yes, I could have just left this as a comment on the video, BUT… 1) I’m currently signed into GMail. Which is tied into my old banned YouTube account. I’d have had to sign out, delete all Google related cookies, sign into YouTube, leave a comment, then re-sign into Gmail (I haven’t yet set up a separate FireFox profile on Ira’s Mum’s PC). Unless you have a banned YouTube account, you have no excuse – go check all the videos out, leave comments, and if you like Lucky’s output as much as me (you there, stop sniggering at the back), consider subscribing …. oh and 2) I ramble too much. Youtube comments are restricted to around 1000/1500 characters? I normally exceed that length. It is a miracle of modern science/txt speak & deliberate lazy spelling that I ever manage to convey anything in a single tweet!
Just finished reading a pretty interesting article from the BBC on a headmaster from India. Check out the picture below…
That isn’t one of his pupils, that IS the headmaster! Babar Ali decided that the amount of children in his neighbourhood who simply can’t afford to attend lessons (even if there is space in a free school, many of them have to work to earn money for their family) wasn’t acceptable, nor a good situation for the prospects of his village. So, each evening after attending school as a pupil, he goes home and relays what he has learned to those kids who are able to take a few hours off work. It is truly humbling to think of someone that age having the emotional capacity to consider others less lucky than himself, and managing to continue his own studies whilst teaching others. Hats off to young man.
(Cynical posting about nothing too important will resume shortly).
I’ve got a few videos I’ll be posting later that display some of Britain’s finest, most up standing citizens (/sarcasm) chavs choosing the wrong people to start some aggravation with. However, for now, please make do with this short piece from BBC news, that details one approach to stop troublesome tearaway teenagers from congregating in some areas. Now, yes, they could just buy some creams and then continue to hang around in alleyways. However I suspect they’ll just move along to the next dimly lit corner that doesn’t have pink lighting installed!
This reporter needs to have a quiet word with whoever edited the video – the first frame you see whilst waiting for the buffering to complete does not show him at his best, especially with his eyes like that!
[edit]
Ooops, looks like when I borrowed the embed code from the BBC website that I missed some sort of don’t autoplay function. Click the link below to see the post on its own, and watch the video. Continue reading “Pinked Chavs?”
As you have most likely guessed from this post’s title, today (12th October – we’re just into that day over here in Kazakhstan, and I doubt he’ll read this in the 4 or so hours left of the 11th of October back in Britain) is my brother’s birthday. He already has the best present he could wish for, as his Facebook friend’s and reader’s of John’s blog already know. I’ll post on that soon.
I hope you have a great day with your family and friends, and that you stay sober enough to remember it Tuesday morning 🙂
We haven’t had a lot of luck with UPSs (Uninterruptible power supplies) over here in Astana. In three and a bit years, two have broken (one the battery definitely died, the other was never diagnosed) and the replacement one I bought a couple of days back didn’t ever work.
Anyway, to be fair to Planet Electronica, where we bought the 3rd UPS from a day before the final choice, they didn’t quibble over their product not working, nor insist on sending it back to Almaty for testing before issuing a refund. However, as the unit didn’t come with a power cable, and was supposed to, I am slightly tempted to go back in a week or so and see if the model is on sale again (it was the last of their stock), and if so look into DNA testing to check if they are simply re-selling a lemon in the hope someone won’t bother to return it.
So, this time, I’ve gone for a simple model (limited LEDs, no graphic display on the unit for exact incoming voltages etc) from a different supplier, not assumed that the big names would automatically mean a longer lasting model, and also took the opportunity to get a higher capacity unit (1250VA/~600W). Although the configuration has been set to initiate an automatic hibernate procedure when the battery gets too low (useful if we aren’t at home when the power goes out), I should get around 20 minutes to continue my work before that point is reached – plenty of time to finish off e-mails or posts and save/publish.
hmm, just noticed that although the powered USB hub, monitor and PC itself are protected by the UPS, the router is plugged in to the mains directly. Will need to see if I can wire up a free standing UK mains socket (the router comes from Britain) to a cable with a male IEC connector to make sure the internet connection isn’t lost either.
[edit]
OK, thinking about it, I need my portable hard drives covered as well, so I’ll probably just wire up a UK 4-way mains extension lead and replace the plug with the kettle lead socket (like the one your PC has on the back). The UPS is only currently running at around 20-30% of maximum load, and even if I’m using both drives and on the internet, I can’t imagine the current drawn is going to be massive.
