KZBlog

Category archive for ‘Life in KZ’

• Photo Gallery: Almaty Subway

  I finally found a nice photo gallery of the Almaty subway which opened the other day. I note that it looks a lot like the Moscow subway, with high ceilings and over-decorated walls. You half expect a crystal chandelier. That may be nice, but for this almost New Yorker, a subway is meant to be [...]

  12/07/11 • (0)

• Healthcare and the Private Sector

  Another post that’s been lounging in obscurity: Interesting report on healthcare reform in Kazakhstan. Specifically, a grad student from Kazakhstan did a survey of doctors on the decision of working in public or private sector. The result seems to be that doctors move from public to private when they fear the public sector is unstable [...]

  11/30/11 • (0)

• Naked Man Pot

  Heard about this one via Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me and tracked down an RFE/RL article about it: the most concentrated and popular form of marijuana is so-called “plastilin” (plasticine), and the way it is harvested and produced has not changed for centuries. It begins with a freshly showered person riding naked for hours on [...]

  9/23/11 • (2)

• He’s a Cowboy on the Steppes

  The title is for all you Jimmy Buffet fans. Once again, for some reason, the program to bring US and Canadian beef cattle, as well as expertise, to Kazakhstan is hitting the press. The Moscow Times via Reuters has a nice article up about Michael Slattery, a cowboy from Nebraska, currently working at a cattle [...]

  7/02/11 • (0)

• Students Are Chewing More Pencils

  The national school leaving exam (ENT or NUT) will be held this year in the first ten days of June. This is the time of year when high school students get nervous as their ENT scores will determine whether they get into university, which universities they can go to, and how much government aid they [...]

  5/20/11 • (0)

• Weird Car Question

  Does anyone happen to know if they sell Curt trailer hitches in Kazakhstan? Or any kind of trailer hitch? We were looking into cars and we like the smaller cars for the gas mileage and lower cost but every now and then you need to haul something big. We were thinking that we could get [...]

  5/14/11 • (0)

• Unhealthy Lifestyles

  I came across an interesting article about Russia and lifestyle diseases. According to the WHO, a large number of deaths in former Soviet states are caused by strokes and heart problems, which are themselves linked to lifestyle choices such as smoking, drinking, eating badly, and not exercising. And the picture is apparently particularly striking compared [...]

  5/13/11 • (0)

• How to Keep Young People

  This is one of those fascinating articles I held onto to see if there would be a follow-up. So far I haven’t seen one so I’ll post on the original now. Senator and presidential candidate Gani Kasymov is concerned about young people leaving Kazakhstan. In a letter to the Prime Minister, Kasymov claims that tens [...]

  5/10/11 • (1)

• Weird Rankings

  Caspionet, the Kazakhstan government’s answer to CNN, is reporting that the advertising market in Kazakhstan is third in the CIS for number of commercials. I’m not sure that this is an achievement worth celebrating, unless you work in an advertising agency of course. I don’t know too many people who like commercials. On the other [...]

  5/09/11 • (0)

• Ninja Football

  This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. In a match between the Astana and Almaty football teams, Lokomotiv and Kairat respectively, a Kairat player made a nasty tackle (looks almost like he clotheslined him). That started a huge argument on the field. So far nothing too unusual. It got crazy when Armand Masimzhanov, an [...]

  5/08/11 • (0)

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