During the last month or so, I have been contacted by a number of people, all related to Kazakhstan strangely enough. First we had someone who has built a plane and called it Berkut (which is also the name of a vodka over here), an English guy moving to Astana who wanted some more information about satellite TV and supermarkets, an Australian guy who is moving here in December, with his Russian wife, and finally an Indian (apologies if incorrect, his surname sounds Hindu to me) architect, living in New York who designed the local Cinema City complex (he wanted some photos of it, as his current ones weren’t too good).
I’m hopefully passing the vodka on to an American friend, so the plane builder can celebrate the flight with a suitably named drink, we’re looking forward to meeting some new faces here in Astana at some point, and the architect has been put in touch with Tom, who has better camera skills than me, so should have some better shots than those captured last night at Tiflis.
Anyway, they all made contact through finding this blog, so a big thanks to the search engines out there who are spidering away 🙂
Nov 26 2007
A Month Of Random Contacts…
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Nov 19 2007
Oz Equals Land Of Toxic Emissions?
Having spoken to Alex, I decided to catch up on news that featured Australia this morning, and came across a BBC article entitled ‘Australians named worst emitters’. Rather than a study into the effect too many barbecues has on the gastric tract, it details just how bad Australia’s pollution is compared to other countries, when you factor in the size of each nation’s population. More specifically the CO2 emissions created by each state’s power stations. Although Americans and Chinese people obviously have the highest pollution levels, when you divide the output by the population, Australia turns out to be the most polluting nation on earth, when it comes to the production of electricity!
Nov 09 2007
Weak Dollar Is Hurting My Income!
As many regular readers will know, I sometimes supplement my income by writing posts for companies that want some links placed, or products reviewed. The vast majority of them pay via PayPal, and in US Dollars. In the past this was not too much of a problem, but having just checked my balance today, I can see that the weaker dollar means I am earning less and less (in UK pounds or Kazakh tenge) for each post I write.
As an example, my current PayPal balance is $171.05, which just a month ago would have equated to around £85. However, if I currently withdraw that money into my nominated UK bank account, I will get just £78.98. Whilst this may not seem a lot in isolation, over the course of a month or even a year, that means losing around $800 in currency exchanges. Of course, the dollar may well bounce back, and I can start looking at an exchange rate of around $2=£1 again, but until then, I’ll just have to hope the US politicians decide they no longer want a weak dollar, though that would obviously make US exports seems less attractive.
Never thought the US economy would effect my income so directly!
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Oct 30 2007
3rd Day Of Work
As I previously mentioned, I now have a second job helping Kazakhs and Russians that want to improve their English through conversation with a bona fide UK citizen 🙂
I will try and keep the details anonymous, as I’m not sure that the people would want their names etc. publicly posted. Today was the first time I met my school girl pupil. And before anyone cracks any bad jokes, she is just 13, so nothing dodgy please… She is not as confident in speaking, and appears to have a smaller vocabulary than the other person, but she at least wants to learn. The man is a little more forthcoming when it comes to conversations, but as long as I have a structure in place for her lessons, I think it will go OK. If things progress well, I may have some more clients lined up, as their is a company close by that may want me to help their staff as well.
The time away from the flat has both its advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, getting into the fresh air, and a brisk 40 minute walk each day is bound to be good for me, but I earn less there than I could at home writing commercial posts. Also, I am not really looking forward to the steps up to the building when the ice and snow kicks in – they are already quite slippery if it has rained, so I will need to remember to keep awake. Speaking of which, Mondays, Tuesday and Thursdays I will need to be at the office by 11.15am, and Tuesdays an hour earlier, which means I have to go to bed a lot earlier. In isolation, this is obviously not a problem, but to get the best paying opportunities for this blog, I need to keep the same hours as Americans, which previously meant not heading to bed until 4 or 5am. Obviously staying up this late and then trying to get to the office would result in a zombie like Chris turning up, which would not look too good, nor really give my students a fair deal. We will have to see how it goes, however today I found out that rather than an 8.45am start, I can leave an hour later, as the girl was expecting a 10am start, not 9am as I was informed.
Sep 20 2007
Spring Clean Of Bookmarks…
OK, this is one of the last posts I will make whilst in Kazakhstan, so I intend to use it to catch up with a few articles, videos and sites I have been meaning to post about in the last few weeks. Otherwise I will return in a little under a month, and forget all about them probably…
BBC article on the growth in high tech online crime.
Article on 50 Cent’s promise to quit, which he gave prior to his album being beaten to the UK#1 spot.
Related article on fiddy postponing his European tour.
Cool article on speech to sign language translation software. Most impressive.
Another article, this time on how DNA data could be at risk if funding organizations succeed in twisting researchers’ arms.
Article on how Chernobyl is to receive a new steel cover.
Were they pushed, did they jump, or were they stage managed dives? Check out a little background info here on the continuing political family soap opera that is Kazakhstan…
Article on beloved uncle Pres Nazarbayev not being nominated for the Nobel prize. Never mind, he got a consolation prize.
From 3 weeks ago, an article on arrest warrants being issued over the Aliyev case.
Piece on two bodyguard’s return to Kazakhstan and their confession live to the media. (Related to Aliyev’s alleged criminal activities).
VOA (Voice of America?) summary of the recent elections held in this country.
Is Kazakhstan to follow Russia’s example by moving in on, or at least re-negotiating contracts with, Western oil and gas companies? The International Herald Tribune’s website has a report on the goings on.
Reports from foreign diplomats/govt workers on Astana and Almaty. I had especially wanted to give these two pages their own post. Some of the information is incorrect, some is simply out of date, though there are some gems in there for those considering moving to this country. I may remember to make a more detailed post when I get back half way through October.
Finally a couple of YouTube vids that caught my attention, both from members over at the channels.nl forum I believe. The first is on a man with a lot of vision, and quite a variant on the static art you’ll see in most galleries…
Secondly, we have a video that will have little cultural reference if you are not in the right age band, but is about who would win if all the super heros and villans had a big scrap. Hmm, not sold that too well, sorry. Unless you have tight bandwidth restrictions per month, trust me, it is worth listening to 🙂
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Sep 13 2007
Met With Dan
Earlier this year, someone contacted me, having read 2006’s posts on the fun and frollocks involved when we sorted out my resident’s permit. Although he (Dan) had been visiting Kazakhstan (Shymkent specifically) since the early 90s, he was actually moving over here with Kazakh wife (sound familiar 🙂 ), and wanted to check if there were anything matters he should get sorted before leaving Britain. Anyway, skip forward a few months, and I heard back from him, that all was well, he had a job, and his wife seemed happy. Earlier this month, he discovered he would be driving his sister-in-law’s car to Astana, as she had moved, and wanted the freedom that a motor vehicle afforded her. We decided to use this opportunity to actually meet in the real world.
After a minutes thinking, Ira and I decided to take him to an Argentinian / Mexican / American / Italian restaurant that we had previously visited with Walton and his lovely wife. When I phoned Dan, we discovered that his journey over had been mostly uneventful, especially the sections of mile after mile of featureless steppe. Having arrived a little later than intended, he had spent the evening and early night at one restaurant, and then they had moved onto a 24hr place (actually Cafe Shymkent, weird coincidence!) and stayed there eating and drinking until 7am!
However, when we met Dan, it turned out that the restaurant he had started the previous night’s celebrations in was the same one we were heading to! It can’t have been a bad steak the night before, as he and his sister-in-law were both happy to return there. I took a long my camera to try and create another visual record of the courses we ordered, but as this was the first time Dan and I had met, I forgot all about it until the end. Anyway, Ira and I can not have made too bad an impression of your average Cheltonian and Astanite, as he repeated his offer of entertaining us should we manage to make it down to Shymkent 🙂
I couldn’t decide which of Dan’s photos to use – the smiling one with a blurry hand in concealing his face, or the clearer, less joyful expression, so have both 🙂
Now we have his wife’s sister (I forgot to write down her name, I’m sure he’ll remind me soon enough ;)), Ira and a plate of free water melon the restaurant supplied 🙂
After that we went for a drive around an area of Astana that his wife’s sister had not yet familiarised herself with yet. We both look forward to meeting up with Dan et al in the future.
Sep 12 2007
Google Earth Software Updated
As you may remember, I have been using Google Earth to help plan out some of the upcoming Amsterdam trip – there is no point in deciding to visit four museums in one day, if they are all miles from each other, for example. Anyway, thanks to a kind forum member over at www.channels.nl, I was informed of an update Google have made. Apart from a number of background tweaks, if you now press Ctrl+Alt+A, you can slip into a basic flight simulation mode, and take off from a few different airports around the world. The ability to easily ‘fly’ around areas certainly brings a new perspective to looking at out planet, though without an analogue controller of some description, you may well find it difficult to be very accurate with your headings. I’ve yet to try my steering wheel & pedals combo…
On a similar note, the BBC have published an article on fresh satellite data being used in conjunction with Google Earth in an attempt to find the missing Steve Fossett. If you don’t know who he is, stick his name in as a search term at your favourite search engine – his achievements are pretty impressive. Anyway, people are now looking for a 30 by 20 pixel blob on maps around the area his plane could have gone down, though the American military has thumbed their noses at the idea, scoffing at the idea that civilian satellite imagery is good enough to detect such a small presence.
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Sep 10 2007
Happy Birthday Tom…
Today Tom, of LifeOf2Me fame has his birthday. I don’t know how old he will be, so lets be nice, and assume 32? I hope today brings you the company of many friends, and that they all remind you what a great person you are to have around.
For newer readers to this blog, Tom spent some time in Astana this and last year, before moving back to America, and then taking some Afghan kids to Kyrgyzstan on a summer camp, with Walton.
I hope we manage to meet up again some time soon, in any case, don’t work too hard, and keep on being your brilliant self 🙂
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Sep 07 2007
Language Differences
We went out tonight with Walton, as a belated birthday celebration for him. (I will post up some pictures when I get round to emptying the memory card again, hopefully tomorrow). One topic of conversation was the difference between UK English spelling, and how the Americans can not spell properly. OK, to be fair, I am pretty sure he defended his nation well, explaining that they know how to spell, it is just that UK English has too many un-necessary letters.
Seriously, I discovered tonight that I did not know the UK English spelling of some words, and that in fact he occasionally spells some words in UK English. For example, he would write arguement, where as the American spelling is in fact argument. It looks as though all these years of not bothering to change the default language of my spell checker has effected me, as I did not realise I had been spelling it in American English myself. In fact FireFox’s spell checker is set to UK English, and even it does not like arguement! Sometimes though, different words entirely are used, for example, in Britain, estate agents ‘help’ (sometimes) with the process of buying and selling houses, whereas in America the same job is performed by a person called a realtor. (Assuming they belong to the official realtor association).
OK, well I need to help organize my neighbor’s aluminum gray colored jewelry in the center of his apartment.
Or if you prefer to spell that as an English person…
I need to help organise my neighbour’s aluminium grey coloured jewellery in the centre of his flat.
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