Days 141 to 150

A rather bizarre visit to the hospital. Our police registration had not run out. It was for 6 months, but the university decided we should undergo the formal procedure to get re-registered early. So Ali, the kids and I all went to the hospital where we had to endure being marched in front of 6 different doctors and nurses and repeat the same thing. “No we’ve had no problem with X”. X being ears, nose, throat, brain, lungs, hands (only for blokes?!?), eye sight. This took 3 hours and as you can imagine the children were bored. Problem was that we didn’t see everyone we had to and so had to go back to find the remaining examiners. Blood was taken, blood pressure assessed and the final summation from the head doctor. Another 2.5 hours wasted, just so we could get the stamps and signatures required. Ali also had to pay for her “treatment”. Thankfully we had a translator, although needed a female one when Ali went to see the nurse. Just had to keep repeating "no we've had no problems with X". What we couldn’t figure out was why any of this was actually necessary. After all, we could have flown out of the country and returned to get a new police registration certificate. How does that equate to the need for a full medical work up? Anyway, not looking forward to having to do this again as part of the Visa renewal in December.

With the imminent departure of Joe and Penny back to the States and repeated reminders from Matthias to Joe, we sat down to watch Star Wars, which was just for the boys. A great excuse to over dose on chocolate and get excited by a New Hope. The downside was that Joe and Penny did leave a few days later. Matthias in particular was upset, but I too was sad to see them head home. In part because I will miss his enigmatic presence, as well as his confidence when things seemed to hit the wall. On the upside, we replenished our food stocks and our kitchen utensils as they had to limit the number of bags to take on the plane. Hopefully not too long to wait before we can go see them in New York.

Been chatting with Kazakh undergrad ladies about them sacrificing their career for their men. A few of us were in Gloria Jean’s Coffee, drinking whatever they actually had available from the menu and one of the lasses said she had been shot at in America, which detached part of her finger and re-sown. Sadly one of her companions in the party being shot at was hit and killed. Somehow this didn’t put her off going back to America. Anyway, as the conversation unfolded they were commenting on how sad it was to see close girl friends give up their entire career just to be a stay at home wife. I obviously have no objection to Ali staying at home and would be quite happy if she wanted the situation reversed. However, it was the fact that this is a very male dominated society, which I had not really come across before. There are a lot more women than men, though the higher up jobs tend to be populated with men, whilst the women stay at home raising children. The theory is that the men have a lot more women to choose from and if dissatisfied with their current wife, can leave them to find a new one. This in turn means that the current wife will do more to keep the husband happy, including sacrificing their careers, even if they were higher up the echelon than their husbands.

Naturally, we were reflecting upon the stereotypical 1950s house wives and what it took to bring some form of equality in society or even in the relationship. Withholding sex. But with the gender imbalance I guess this would force men to find a wife that would not withhold sex and so the problem continues. There is perhaps little impetus in the current climate to address the issue, though Kazakhstan whilst being intrinsically Muslim appears not to be heading towards a Sharia law. In fact it is difficult to know where the country might head in terms of religious views. I’ve mentioned before some of the problems if a person is not Muslim or Russian Orthodox and that freedom of religion is not the same as in the West. Despite there being allowances to practise different religions, when they affect an individual citizen then the state steps in and hammer home very secular trials. Try and match that with the presence of superstition even among the top educated Kazakhs, it is a strange mixture.

Some say that Kazakhstan’s society is emerging out of a similar scene in 1950s US, but the geopolitical nature combined with advanced technology pervading every part of their society will make for a very different outcome. There are many that want to see greater change and greater reformation here, but to what end. Introduce any modicum of change in one aspect of the machine will cause another part of the machine to change and in ways that will not always be beneficial. There’s a lot to do, but it will take time. One could adapt a quote from The Patriot “I would not swap one dictator concerned with the needs of the many for many dictators concerned about the needs of a few”. There are many ways in which one could derive meaning from this, but never let it be said that a dictator, especially a benevolent dictator, is a negative thing! In the UK I’ve always wanted to believe that there was stability, security and trust in the system that represented the people, so that no-one could take advantage and yet there are stories of what the UK government has done over many centuries and sometimes still does. Perhaps it is on a much reduced scale compared with developing countries and perhaps there are greater standards of protecting the rights of the individual. Though I’m sure this will be disputed by Julian Assange, Ian Tomlinson or Christopher Tappin, etc.

Some struggles still persist. Been waiting for a month now to get some shipping allowance and home schooling budget repaid. Apparently purchasing the bike through the internet means that I never owned the bike before shipping and cannot use the shipping allowance as it is not a personal item. I tried to reason with them given that I or a friend could have purchased the bike and sent it to Kazakhstan from a private address, without ever having unwrapped it, and the Finance team would be none the wiser. Alas all communication went cold after that. Had to meet HR to discuss the issue of home schooling budget. We had purchased a lot of books according to one contract, but HR and Finance insist that they got the age range wrong in that contract. So we discussed what it should be and then Finance turn round and say we can only claim according to the new wording. We also discussed what could be procured through this budget and it turns out that the Kazakhstani’s policy for education is to have one approved curriculum disseminated to all schools. All text books are derived from a single list only. And they want us to do the same. I tried to reason with them, reminded them that we are here to build a better, more Western style university, not to have our children educated according to the Kazakh system. The funny moment came when I said that we had purchased the collected works of William Shakespeare, which they deemed was fiction and not educational. Naturally I was irritated by the whole affair and reminded them that at the time of purchase the old contract was effective. All communication went cold after that too.

Went for a ride with Sean after replacement tyres finally turned up. 80 km onto the Steppe and back again, not too problematic. No punctures. Turns out it was partly my fault. I had read on the website for Continental tyres that the maximum inflation pressure was 175 psi. So I put 150 psi in and went for the ride, which blew a tyre somewhere along the way and another tyre on standing back at the apartment. Turns out that the operating pressure should be around 115 psi, which I used for the 80 km trek. So all seems fine with the tyres and the ride. Keeping up with Sean quite well until I ran out of water and hit the wall. Only when I got back to the apartment the usual numbness that sets in after 20-30 km in the lower regions of the male body didn’t instantly return. After a few days still no feeling. Ali has forbidden any cycling until I get a better saddle.