Just because other people have dumpling carts…
Doesn’t mean I plagiarized the title of this blog: See, these ideas are all mine!
Category: Humor
“Berlin is for partying, not for reading books in a hostel!”
“You want to be a writer? Schopenhauer said that you must not seek to be the most famous artist, you must just become the best that you can be. To draw the sound of flowers,” Mathéo says, clenching his fist passionately. Then he leans back, howling in French at…
Laughing about earthquakes in Almaty
If you haven’t visited, I’m not sure what image you have of Kazakhstan. But I find my colleagues are thoughtful and open. Several people have asked me about the storms in Oklahoma, and how the 2008 worldwide economic krizis is affecting Americans back home. We had a strong storm blow through last week (dark clouds,…
Baath Tubs, or, how your google searches become ad profits
As I shared in two earlier posts, I spent a prior life editing article titles for a suite of self-help websites. My job was to turn your real internet searches into cheesy articles, at $0.04 a title, and I easily made $15-20 an hour while living in a third-world country,…
What to know about job titles in Central Asia
So I have to say, one of the perks of working here in Central Asia is that you get some pretty cool job titles. And if there’s flexibility in your organization, you can take your pick. Unlike in America, where you would be laughed at for trying to take…
How Kazakhs name their children
As I’ve written before, I love learning about people’s names, and I ask people about their names at every moment that might *possibly* be culturally appropriate. So this summer, I met a woman with two daughters. “Who named your children?” I asked. Gulnar* tells me that an elderly relative…
How to catch a street taxi in Astana, Kazakhstan
[[My first travel article is out at Matador Network! Follow that link for audio recorded vocabulary, or read the text below, preserved here for posterity…]] You’re running late to meet with a friend – you’re always running late. So you tromp through the snow to the edge of the…
Tips for a long-distance Skype interview
Don’t know how I ever became the expert on this, but over the past year, I’ve spent lots and lots of time on the international hiring committee for Atameken* library. Our mission, of course, is to convince unemployed young librarians from the US to come to the cold steppes…
REVISE: Ancient Mosques and Networked Marketing
I realized that I vastly prefer blogs that are mostly pictures and only a few words, over blogs that have deep thoughts. So I’m trying to do the same for you here! Below is a little story… A few weeks ago I took off for Nauruz (the spring new-years…
How to meet and marry a man in Kazakhstan
My friends here are constantly teasing me for my, umm, constant talk about boys. “Do you really want to be an oil wife?” Molly asks me, as she pauses in her story of the expat wives. Bored expat wives, see, meet in the mornings at the local cafe and…