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Astana, Kazakhstan
There are few things that make me angry (besides oh-so-many-things capitalism). One of them is the decision to rename May 1st in Kazakhstan. International Workers’ Day is already completely disregarded in “official life” in the US, which made me cringe every year. But Kazakhstan, why? In 1995, while the country’s economy was still shrinking and after a much-criticized Constitutional reform, the president decided to rename and repurpose May 1st as the Day of Unity of Kazakhstan’s Peoples. While the effort can be noble, displaying, celebrating and promoting respect for Kazakhstan’s multinational state, ANY OTHER DAY could have been chosen for that. So boo for that.
My first two weeks in Astana were extremely hectic. The spiral of meetings, which I feared could have been slow at the beginning, precipitated fast. Plus, I had the chance to go to several conferences touching upon various aspects of my dissertation and others that were outside of my remit, but still useful to develop contacts.
An example of useless vs useful business cards collected.
There have been already 3 winters and 3 springs so far in Astana. We’ve been way below zero and peeked above 20C just to check out how fast people get rid of their heavy coats. That meant that I was constantly with a cold. Which was definitely not helped by beverages such as the psychedelic lemonade pictured below. Hopefully now, in May!!!!, we can get past this freezing winter.
Taking Kazakh classes has been productive so far. I now understand the structure of the language far better. Now it’s time to expand the vocabulary! Half of the taxi drivers, however, are generally mute (it’s very typical to have silent interactions here). While I’ve already had 3 women driving me in a taxi, something I think I had experienced only twice before in Kazakhstan. Given the amount of rides I have to take to get anywhere, especially in Astana, that’s a fraction of 1%. One ride was particularly fun: mom driving and son behind playing with his tablet, correcting his mom’s Russian and admitting in cute English that he should play less and study more to improve his English.
A felt spread at the Eurasian National University.
bottleneck analysis 