Notes from Kazakhstan

[sawyl]

Pater has returned from his sojourn in Astana and reports that it's a pretty interesting place. Furthermore, he reports that:

• The internet doesn't seem to have penetrated the Kazakhstani academic establishment yet: only the university administration building had a connection to the outside world and even that was desperately slow.
• The Khan Shatyry is a superb blend of British architectural excellent and Soviet construction. As a result, none of the parts quite fit together and everything is held together with mastic.
• There was much amusement over the TV report about the snow that brought the UK to a halt last week.
• He managed to avoid drinking fermented mare's milk, but cheerfully tucked into the various bits of dog and horse he was offered.

I wish I could say I'm surprised about the dog eating but sadly, I'm not.

Comments

[drspleen.livejournal.com]

i was talking to someone about internet usage in a (the?)PNG (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea) University(well i think it was PNG who knows with this caffeine addled mind of mine) and they commented about how the computer room was locked up and you had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get access. The reason for this was there was no one in the U tech savvy enough to fix the computers if anything went wrong, so they implemented the lockdown to stop them getting misused. But this also had the knock on effect that no one wanted to use them in case they were the ones that broke them.

[sawyl.livejournal.com]

It sounds a bit self defeating: surely the best way to learn how to fix a computer is to break it.

[dee-elkay.livejournal.com]

Dog? Was he taken out to underground Korean restaurants?

[sawyl.livejournal.com]

I think you might be right: it does seem a bit unlikely that he'd have been able to order dog at a regular restaurant. Then again, it might just be a wind up; that he was trying to tease his feeble, vegetarian son with tales of his carnivorous achievements...