Meanwhile in Semipalatinsk, where the temperture has fallen to -45 in recent days, one heater (installed in 1934!), failed. Official information from the akimat seems to indicate that only three hot water heaters serve the entire city of Semei. I should explain that most cities in Kazakhstan have centralized heating and hot water, meaning that hot water for radiators is heated centrally and sent out in pipes to homes and offices. It has been a long-acknowledged problem that much of the infrastructure of Kazakhstan was built by the Soviets and never upgraded or replaced. The causes are under investigation and city leadership has promised to build a new heater by the spring!

As of yet, there is no word that the leadership of Semipalatinsk will be punished. However many Kazakhstani are joking about the fact that the initiator of the referendum to extend the President’s term is the head of Semipalatinsk State University. One wonders why he isn’t pushing for a referendum to upgrade the heating infrastructure. The crisis might explain why the announcement of the referendum happened in Uralsk however!

Apparently a circus owner from Kostanai came to Karaganda to buy a lion for his circus. That’s not unusual; there’s a zoo in Karaganda. He picked him up in a Gazelle, which is a big moving van style truck. And the lion was locked in a cage in the back of the Gazelle. It’s kind of funny to find a lion inside a gazelle instead of the other way around, but that’s still not newsworthy. The circus owner came home with the lion late, which is also not interesting. Karaganda is a good drive away from Kostanai, so it might be expected that the driver wouldn’t be able to do it all in one day and get home for dinner time. Now dear reader, take a minute and think what you would do in this situation. You have a lion in the back of your truck and you come home late at night. Would you park the truck, leaving the lion in the back, and just go home?. Because that’s what happened. The lion was discovered the next day by another car owner who alerted the police. It is unclear whether the owner of the parking lot will be charged for the extra security.

Interestingly, a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior said, “The cage containing the predator was locked, and the lion was calm,” and there is no indication that the circus owner will face any kind of punishment. So I guess it’s not illegal to leave wild animals out all night unmonitored.

Even though jokes aren’t funny when you have to explain them, I will say that the word in the pic means ass, and has the same connotation in Russian of badly done, crappy (pun gleefully intended), disorganized, and so on.