happy happy joy joy

Steve touched down in Almaty around 5:03 AM Monday morning, and I have been the happiest girl in Almaty ever since I saw him through the glass wall separating international arrivals and the throngs of people anxiously awaiting them. He immediately saw me, as I shot up into the air and started jumping up and down and waving. So I was excited. Sue me.

Ever since we have been hanging out, walking TONS through the city admiring the fountains, memorials, and parks, shopping for pomegranites and other local fruits, veggies, and other goods at the Green Bazaar, and just enjoying each other's company. I had forgotten how we revert to snickering 13-year-olds when together. :)

So I will be logging on very little while he is here! So sorry, dear readers. But I'd much rather spend time with him than look at a computer screen. There will be time enough to do that again when he leaves....

is someone at the NYT reading my blog?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/world/europe/10sitcom.html?em&ex=1189656000&en=53663b3615f7d656&ei=5087%0A

I scooped the grey lady. Not bad for a public health person.

It is soooo good to be back in Almaty. Sunday I went to the green bazaar and saw my sweet Turkish lady who sells me homemad bread, cheese, and yogurt. When I got there, her bread was still hot. Hubba hubba. It's nice to be back where you know how to get around, where things are, etc. My colleagues were a bit amused that an American was showing them around Almaty while they were here.

Fall is slowly setting in and now it's lovely to sit around with open windows. Daytime is warm, and nighttime is cool. Perfect walking weather. And perfect weather for wandering about Almaty at night. My Turkmen colleague kept commenting about how alive and young and energetic Almaty is. Any time we were walking about, there were tons of people about, especially youth. Ashghabat was kindof a dead city---not a lot of people walking around. So I can see why she said what she said. Here even neighborhood supermarkets are open 24 hours a day. Whereas my 7-11 in Mt. Vernon closed at midnight!

My landlord changed cable companies again. Every time I come back from a trip all of the channels are different. So I have to learn them all over again, which is a PITA. I have about 5 US channels now, including CNN, a channel that shows American football, and I even stumbled upon a Seinfeld episode last night. So Steve will have more selection while he's here. Unfortunately, last night I couldn't find the channel the Bukhin family was on. I am hoping I didn't lose them for good...

party time

I have a full house! Or rather, full flat.

My colleague, Lola, from Dushanbe flew in with me yesterday and is staying in my flat until Sunday.

Today another colleague, Aina, flew in from Ashgabat and is staying in my flat until Sunday.

Tomorrow, Nazgul from Bishkek is driving in and is staying in my flat until Sunday.

It is going to be like one giant sleepover. I feel like I'm in college again! :) Fortunately, these women are all great, sweet, and fun to hang out with. And my favorite colleague from Almaty, Galina, is also in on the fun.

Tonight we're going to Turandot, the Chinese restaurant we went to for my birthday. Tomorrow we have a meeting that I've insisted on having on improving data quality while they're all here. Then tomorrow night, it's party time. We will have to bust into that Turkmen cognac I brought home.

For two of the three guests, it is their first time in Almaty. I am so pleased to be able to repay all of their help and kindness while in their towns with showing them around my city. Despite being on the road more than being in Almaty, I can still act like an "Almatinka" (native Almaty-woman)!

Too bad they all have to fly to Romania Sunday. At least I'll be able to sleep in. :) I've done enough travelling for the time being, let someone else deal with early-morning wake-up calls and airports! And seatmate B.O.

pretty as a picture

This monument is to a king named Somoni. He is on Tajik currency, and much revered. Some presidents claim to be descendants of this king, who evidently did some good things for the Tajik people that I don't know much about. Which is not a good thing. (The museum I actually made it to on my last day was closed for repairs!)

This is the garden behind the monument. There were lovely roses everywhere amongst the dirty, shoddy, and mostly non-functioning fountains.

And this is Lenin pointing the way out of that depressing amusement park! Check out his cap and vest. So proletarian, eh? I can't figure out if that's bird poop on the base of the statue or something else. Either way, the distressed nature of the statue is rather fitting, don't you think?

This was an interesting contrast to the Lenin statue. It was about 10 feet behind Lenin. The Soviets tried to Rossify Central Asia, but it didn't quite work out.

Alas, I never made it to the kareoke bar/disco club. So I have no idea what kareoke-ing is like in Dushanbe. 'Tis a pity. In my 20s, I would have been there every night, Copacabana-ing like a superstar! I'm getting far too staid in my old age.

Tomorrow I'll download the photos from my camera and post the beautiful mountain scenery. I was so taken with the scenery on today's flight back to Almaty that I didn't even sleep on the early morning flight. And am paying for it now! :p~ I think it's time to go home and take a nap.

road weary

Just flew back into Dushanbe this morning. I was in Khujand for a few days, where we stayed in the best hotel and largest city in the region. The price we paid for that luxury (despite the "hot water" being slightly warmer than freezing cold) was that we had to bump and jog along the road to cities in the sticks like Konibodom and Isfara for an hour-and-a-half each way, each day. And because the only available flight back in today was in the AM, we had to hit three hospitals in two days. Which made for some very long days. (Thank goodness for Baltika beer. It hits the spot after a 14-hour day.)

I have calculated that I have been on the road 60% of my time since I got to Central Asia, and am definitely feeling road weary. This last trip was nearly three weeks, and Tajikistan was a bit rough on my psyche. Women's options are very, very limited here and it's hard meeting really sharp, strong-willed, hard-working and very competent women and know that they can only achieve so much. Maybe I'm hyper-sensitive to male chauvinism, but it appears that the men here pretty much have carte blanche to treat women like crap. That bothers me. And that I can't do anything about it bothers me even more.

But I won't bore you with my culture pains.

Out in the boondocks of Tajikistan it's very evident just how poor the country is. The first hospital we went to was built in the 1960s and hasn't been touched ever since. You don't want to imagine the structural, sanitation, and modernization issues there. Or the maternal morbidity rate.

Wintertime they only have electricity about two hours a day. Can you imagine running a maternity hospital under such circumstances? Yet the women we met working there were so kind, generous, and giving. I was telling them how delicious I found their fruits and vegetables and they gave me a watermelon to take with me. And they kept feeding us. And feeding us. After lunch, we came back and they had a huge dish of plov waiting for us. Literally expecting us to eat just after lunch! Mercy mercy.

So if the winter is especially cold, people are essentially freezing 22 hours a day. It's rare to acquire a generator, and even if you had one, gas is expensive when you're talking about a salary of about $30 US a month.

The regional maternity home was way better, but it's also a much newer building in the main regional city. They even had AC there.

I saw lots of Soviet-era stuff there still standing: Lenin statues, monuments to WWII, monuments to Soviet astronauts, general big Soviet monuments and lots of Soviet-era buildings. Alas, it was all out of the back of a moving car. I did manage to get some gorgeous aerial shots of Khujond and the mountains separating Khujond and Dushanbe. I also got some shots of some Tajik Air planes.

The flight into Khujond was on a small, old two-prop (AN-45, I think). There was no safety briefing, no cabin announcements, no assigned seating, and 4 pilots in the cockpit. The motors on the engines smelled like they were burning out as we were sitting on the runway and taxiing. People were talking on their cellphones during takeoff and landing. Not to worry--the plane was so old that there was no way that the cell technology could interfere with that instrumentation. The best part was that the seats were collapsable. If you pushed the seatback forward, it would totally fold over like a lawn chair. Once we did that to the seats in front of us, if I had put my feet up on the seat in front of me, I would have more space than a first-class seat in the US. *snork*

On the way back we were in a shiny new 736. Everyone here considered "BO-veeeng" (Boeing) the best so my colleague was happy about the "Boving" back. The two-prop feels a lot more like flying, though. On this flight, we got announcements from the crew in Tajik, Russian, and even English. I was definitely impressed. And on this flight, I knew better than to ask for a window seat. (When I asked on the outbound flight, I couldn't understand why the airport staff gave me a funny look. It's because there's no assigned seating. This time I knew the drill and didn't make the same faux-pas. By the by, the Tajik Air ground crew make the men wait to get on the plane--they say "Women first" and the men stop in their tracks.)

Tomorrow I have an early-morning flight back "home" to Almaty. In 12 days Steve arrives and I need to get ready for his being here! I am going to take the two weeks that he's here off, so have a lot of data to finalize before then. I will definitely get some sightseeing in and cultural events in while he's here, so soon enough will be able to post about something other than pregnant women, data, and maternities! I am sure that will be a pleasant change of pace for you, my dear readers.... and I'll be able to post some good photos, too!

yummy yummy in my tummy

I thought I'd write about how lovely of a tradition they have going on here regarding lunch.

In the office in Almaty and also here in Dushanbe, lunch is provided for a very nominal fee. It's damn tasty, healthy, and very, very convenient. The company I worked for many moons ago in Russia also had the same gig. (I still remember Leonid's blinis from 1993. Hubba-hubba.)

So generally they hire a sweet lady (little/old optional) who goes to the market every morning, buys whatever looks good, and then comes into the office and gets a-cookin'. In Almaty the aromas from the kitchen wafts up to my office on the 3rd floor, and by 12:15, when it's time to eat, my stomach is already a-rumblin' from the tantalizing smells.

There is always at least two homemade salads with fresh veggies, and usually three. The ripe summer tomatoes are always featured in these salads, as are the national herbs, parsley and dill. So are cukes and eggplant. As we move into fall, they'll switch to cabbage, cauliflower, and other seasonal veggies. And also in Almaty generally a soup, as well as a meat, starch, and other side. Pick and choose as you wish.

In the Dushabe office there is always a bowl of fruit, so I finished off today's meal of stuffed green Bulgarian peppers in broth with some red grapes and a peach. I am a total fruit and veggie 'ho both here and in Almaty, because the produce is just so damn fresh and tasty. Don't get me started on the melon stands that Uzbeki's set up all over town in Almaty. There are types of honeydew that I have never seen before, with a dark orangey-yellow skin. You can smell the sweetness of the melon through the thick skin, and when you get home and cut it open, it's like a honeysuckle field exploded through your kitchen. On more than one occasion, melon has been my dinner.

So now I'm sitting in a post-lunch food coma, sipping some black tea. I have also become a tea 'ho. Drinking tea is the national pasttime in Central Asia, and I have adopted it heartily. (Except that I like to use honey or sugar in every other cup, which is usually deemed unnecessary. But I like it strong and sweet.) I probably drink 4-6 cups a day. All those antioxidants are good for me, right? And no teabags, thankyouverymuch. You use loose-leaf tea and set up a "starter" teapot with a strong batch of brew. Boil water in the ubiquitous electric teakettles (they boil in 60-90 seconds), then you pour a bit of the "starter" tea into your cup and add the hot water. Viola! Your tea is ready. Our Almaty office cook adds in her own herbs and spices to the "starter," and boy is that stuff G-oooooo-oooood with a capital G!

To all my fellow coffee addicts: Fear not, for I have not foresaken you. I still need a good strong cup of coffee in the morning and travel with my french press. :) And the first item on my list of things for Steve to bring me next month when he visits was a 5# bag of coffee from Costco...

D is for Dushanbe

(note: blogger is not cooperating with photos today....I'll try to get them up for your viewing plelasure next time)


I almost titled this post "D is for depressing," but that wouldn't be an entirely accurate statement. I strive to report accurately, and I should not color my whole trip negatively because of one stripped-down former amusement park. (More on that below.)

Sunday I didn't have to work, and so spent the day wandering around Dushanbe. It's bigger than I thought, but definitely has that "small-town" feel. No skyscrapers, no towering buildings. Only 4 or 5 flights a day (one arriving around 8:30 in the morning, I can hear the rumbling of the engines from the kitchen in my flat), and that's a busy day.

It was nice and dry and hot and sunny. Got a little tan going, but also took care to walk lots in the shade. First I stopped at the main monument in the main square. I gave a policeman a heart attack by attempting to actually walk too close to the monument. *rolls eyes* If people were not meant to walk up the damn thing, why are there stairs there???

I wish I could tell you what the monument is to and what it means, but I have no idea. There were no explanations of anything I saw and photographed. So while I could appreciate their deisgn, structure, beauty, etc, I had no idea what it was meant to represent. I will ask one of my colleagues about them when we have some down time.

Behind this monument were several fountains (one of the four was actually working, and two boys were bathing in it) and a lovely garden. The designers made the lampposts look like flowers themselves. Nice touch. Mne nravilos' (I liked it).

Shortly after this square, I reached a park. The gates were padlocked the last time I walked by it, so I was pleased to see that the park was open. In I went.

My first reaction was that there weren't really a lot of people there, given all of the others strolling about on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Then I got a little further, and could see why.

Once upon a time this had been an amusement park. Now it was a Soviet-era junk heap. Many of the rides/stations had been stripped, but a few vestiges remained. A decrepit ferris wheel. Whirly-gig chairs chained together, still hanging from the spinner-thingie at the top. Some rusted-out go-karts, but no track. An old Soviet train car where I think people may actually have been living.

I don't know what was more depressing: the park itself, the people who were picnicing in the park, the men who had stationed themselves at the entrance with this filthy, 20+-year old giant teddy bear who would charge you money to take a photo with said bear, or the fact that the park abruptly ended at the other side by massive piles of dirt dug up by tractors (they're building a road there).

Now, this amusement park cemetary is on the main drag of Dushabe. We're talkin' Michigan Avenue in Chicago, or Independence Ave in DC, or Light Street in downtown Baltimore. Not the sort of thing that brings in tourists, yannow?

Perhaps the government decided to leave the dead park as a metaphor for past Soviet times. There is a statue of Lenin at the entrance, pointing straight ahead (a common pose for his statues--pointing for all to see and follow to a shiny, happy, prosperous Socialist happy ending). I snorted as I imagined Lenin pointing the way out of this place. Flee, ye! Get the hell out while the gettin' is good! Of course, he's wearing his vest and holding his little workman's cap. Power to the people, I'm one of you guys, and all that. Boy were those Soviet propagandists good with their symbolism.

Fortunately, the walk got much better as it progressed. I shall post more another time. Gots to crunch some more numbers....

Dushanbe and Yevan, Tajikistan

Hello dear readers,

Apologies for the long hiatus. I had two back-to-back trips, and on my two days in Almaty I had to prep for three weeks in Tajikistan.

I was in Karaganda, Kazakhstan for four days. That was mining country. Everything is named after miners--stores, their soccer team, the stadium, restaurants..... Other than mines and factories, there wasn't much to see. The sanitation in the hotel we stayed in needed work, but I'd prefer to forget about that. More maternity hostpials, more pregnant women, more newborns, more data. But in one maternity, there was cognac. Lots and lots of cognac. Replete with long toasts. Over lunch. At least I was going back to a dataset and a computer. They were going back to the delivery ward. Lord have mercy.

Here in Dushanbe it's still summer. But it's nice and dry during the day, so it's pleasant and liveable without AC, and the nights are nice and cool. It was a stunning approach into Dushanbe, I'm glad I asked for a window seat. The mountains surround the city, which is tucked into a valley. Just gorgeous. And for the next three days I got the see lots of the mountains, since we were working at a site an hour outside of Dushanbe, up in the mountainside. The project has two massive LandRovers that were donated to them by Merlin after the civil war here in the early 90s. So we wound and bumped our way up to Yevan through the mountains and villages. The drive reminded me of the drive from Thessaloniki to Skopje Steve and I made a few years back, and I felt the same sense of freedom and happiness during these drives. You know how sometimes you're driving down the road and you see a dog with their face stuck outside a car window, half-panting, half-smiling at the wind rushing over their head? That was me driving to Yevan. *woof*

Alas Yevan was poor, poor, poor. No running water in the hospital, no hot water piped in at all. There is a water source right outside the hospital, and very time we came in and out there were always a bunch of kids filling up antifreeze-sized bottles with clean water, then lugging them home. It made me sad--they were no more than 6 and 8 years old and they should have been running around, playing and being kids. But instead on the drive up I saw them herding sheep, goats, riding donkeys, fetching water, farm stuff.....I know that farm kids are expected to pitch in whatever their age, but it still made me sad.

Recently the president has initiated some interesting poveryt alleviation schemes to try and help the populace. I am told that Tajiks respect tradition, and for certain events like weddings, funerals, circumsicion parties, they invite tons of people and have lots of food, drink, etc. But then they starve the rest of the time, because paying for these events wipe out their savings. So the president has decreed that only 150 people can attend any wedding. Yes, there is a person who stands at the door and counts, and when the numberof guests reaches 150, no one else can enter. Any number can attend a funeral, but only a pre-apportioned amount of plov (national rice dish) can be served. I didn't ask whether there were government employees dispatched to every funeral to weigh the plov before it was served.

I keep hearing the phrase "our Tajik men" here which is interesting. As in "our Tajik men expect their wife to have at least four children, so to have to perform a hysterectomy on a woman with only two children is a tragedy, for he will surely get another wife to bear him more children." I will refrain from further comment. But suffice it to say that whenever I hear "our Tajik men" I know that I won't like the rest of the sentence.

The Tajik language is very similar to Iranian, so it's very unlike all of the other 'Stans, whose langugages have Turkic roots. They also speak Russian with a very interesting accent outside of Dushanbe. Their grammer is perfect, but the intonation, accent, and where they hit the dominant syllable is very non-Russian. It's like listening to a native of India Speak English--they say the right words, but in such a different lilt that it's almost like it's another language. So that's been very interesting to listen to. Makes me feel like a native Russian when I talk! LOLO

My GI tract wasn't as strong as I thought it was, and I think I got a mild case of Giardia, 'cause I had a fever the other night (as well as some other symptoms I won't disgust you with). So I busted out the Cipro and after two days I feel like a totally different person. I will not contribute to antibiotic resistance, however, so will continue to take the meds for another three days. Right now I'm checking out the contraindications with alcohol, because I really, really want a beer tonight. :)

Tomorrow I don't have to work (gasp, shock, surprise!) so I am going to wander and play and explore all day. Hopefully I'll have interesting things to post for my diligent readers, including some good pictures. Mare, I went out of my way to post today, thanks to your prodding. :) Now I know at least one person is reading this blog other than mom and dad! LOL

the karma wheel

So I guess I've been bragging a little too much about how things are so great here and it's really not so different from Europe or even the States.

I believe that karma decided it's time to be a bit more modest, for I haven't had hot water since I got home from work on Monday. It's already the second time for me without hot water. (The first time was literally one day after my arrival--welcome to the former Soviet world.)

See, in Soviet times they "prophylactically" would shut the hot water off in certain regions while they worked on the pipes. It was so that they wouldn't have any problems in the winter, where it would be really ugly without hot water. I remember being able to tell what people in my office in St Petersburg didn't have hot water for the month--they were bathing more sparingly than usual. Evidently this prophylaxis is still in use, but not for month-long stretches at a time.

Although I must admit, there's a little part of me that enjoys going to the faucet each time, wondering if the hot water will be there. Sometimes I try to guess what the odds are that it will be there. Other times, I do the "oh please oh please oh please" before I turn the faucet on. Depending on the outcome, you can do the happy dance if your hot water has returned, and be all "Damn!" if there isn't.

See what you guys take for granted over there???? I bet you don't give cranking the hot water handle on your faucet a second thought. And here I've developed a whole ritual around it.

This morning, common decency wouldn't allow me to go without showering for another day, so I woke up a half-hour early to do the heating water dance. I pull out all of the pots I own, fill 'em up, light all four burners on the stove, and drink some coffee whilst patiently waiting for the water to heat up. Then I arrange the hot water pots strategically around the tub, then mix with cold water. I have the perfect-sized saucepan for pouring water over me. Thus, I bathe.

The first time it took me all 4 pots of water. This time, I was done after using only 2. Am I getting good at economizing, or what????

Have I mentioned that there is a recycling bin right on the streetcorner from me? I did the happy dance when I spotted it my first weekend here, and my friends laughed at me. They assured me that it goes in the trash with the rest of the garbage. Regardless of what is indeed the case (I can't believe they'd go to the trouble of putting over 100 of these bins throughout the city and then not actually recycle), I faithfully recycle on my way to work every day.

Tonight I'm going to my friend's house to make them gazpacho and pizza. They also were asking me about chili, which I'll make for them once the weather is cooler. They have a bottle of Tobasco they are very excited about using. Which leads me to the question: How did the McIllenhy (sp?) family manage to get Tobasco into every country in the world? It's everywhere.

I have my SPSS syntax nearly perfect for the provider data collection forms and am spewing out indicators for each site like there's no tomorrow. Then I'll do the women's pregnancy and postabortion forms, then the neonatal ICU. The goal is for me to generate all of the data for three time intervals for the five sites in the Karaganda oblast I am visiting next week. Then we can look at the data, see what they're doing well, see where there may be data entry error, and work with the clinicians to talk about ways to improve the indicators that need improvement. I'm seeing some "rebounding" in some sites. The baseline data show very high numbers of un-sound, non-evidence based practices (like giving women spasmolytics during labor). Then the numbers decline drastically at the second data collection time, after they've had training on best practices. Then the numbers start coming back up again during the third data collection--especially if they've had a lot of staff turnover. Which is why we have mentoring visits. A WHO-trained/approved expert comes and reinforces what is evidence-based, what is not, and where they need to improve.

lazy Vera

Boy did I have a nice, lazy weekend where I did a lot of catching up on sleep and old American movies. I did manage to drag myself out to a bon voyage dinner Saturday night and take care of some errands/shopping at the Green Bazaar Sunday, but the vast majority of the weekend was spent on the couch. I didn't even bother to head to the office or cafe to blog, that's how lazy I was. But I enjoyed every luxurious minute of the laziness and the naps, because it's the first I've had in a loooong time. And the last that I'll have for quite some time, given my hectic work/travel schedule (Aug 12-16 in Karaganda, Kazakhstan and then Aug 19-Sep 5 working through 4 sites in Tadjikistan).

I saw an old, old, spotty version of Gone With the Wind on TV last night, which was evidently a German version translated into Russian. (The letter when Scarlett's husband died was all in German, as were other written items. I wonder how many changes in nuancing/translating were made by doing a German version into Russian!). It's one man who does all of the voiceovers in the same monotone. It was too much effort to put togther the voice of this extremely disinterested Soviet man with Elizabeth Taylor's (over)emoting as Scarlett, so I switched the channel. I did catch Four Weddings and a Funeral, which at least had one male and one female dubber. Good dubbing is important--it's when I can hear the English underneath the Russian or even before the Russian that it makes me nuts. So much so that I will switch the channel, even when it's something good that I want to watch.

There are two Russian TV shows that I really enjoy and make an effort not to miss. One is called "Happy Together." The plotline: a sitcom of a couple where the woman is an overly made-up, spend-crazy, red-headed housewife, the man is an impoverished shoe salesman waiting on women with fat Russian legs, their daughter is a ho with an IQ of about 14, and their son is a dork. Yes, they have a dog and their neighbors in the flat across that hall are oversexed, nerdy bankers. Sound familiar? If you've guessed that this is the Russian version of Married With Children, you are indeed correct!!! Except for some reason, this show is a lot more entertaining to me. So every Monday-Thursday at 8 pm Almaty time, you can find me watching this show on DTV.

The other is "Borzovski Friends, subtitled, All Men are Swine." It's about 4 women living in Moscow in their early 40s who are all very good friends and support one another through their ups and downs with life, love, and work. One of the main characters is a shrink named Vera who narrates the events that unfold. There is a blond, a brunette, a redhead, and the ho lawyer who changes the color of her hair often. The women meet out in restaurants and cafes, and generally are well-to-do Muscovites. Most of the time, they are discussing men, sex, and fashion. Sound familiar? If you guessed that this is the Russian version of Sex and The City, you again are correct!! It's on Mon-Thurs from 11pm to midnight on NTV.

I also get BBC World in English, Animal Planet (dubbed), Fox News in English (lord have mercy, even over here I can only tolerate about 60 seconds of it before it's time to move along), several Discovery channels, and a bunch of other stuff including a French and Italian channel. Yup, I have cable. Let the record show, ladies and gentlemen, that I am living larger in Almaty than I was in B'more.

I promise that I will post about more cultural things like all-wooden churches built with no nails, Medeo (the world's highest elevation skating rink) and all of the other lovely things that Almaty has to offer in the future. At a later date I will talk about the lovely Turkish lady I buy homemade yogurt and bread from who calls me endearing words (I'm told) in Turkish, and the sweet Uzbek man who force feeds me samples of his delicious dried fruits. I will talk about taking the bus and the trolleybus and the lack of personal space and use of deodorant. I do more than watch TV here, honest! :) But today, that's just what happened to come out as I decided to blog.

Here are a few more shots of Turkmenistan...the tripod is the one with the rotating gold dictator atop it. The "bleu heur" shot is of some library or ministry or university or something. Then there's the market shot, and the photo that needs to be rotated 90 degrees to the right is the ministry of gas/energy. It looks like a lighter, doesn't it? Yes, that was on purpose. I don't know who copied whom, but evidently there was a similar building in Astana (the new capital of K'stan) that everyone called "the lighter", too. Which was also the ministry of energy. But that one happened to burn to the ground. Being the superstitious lot they are around here, everyone says that it's the name that caused it to burn the ground. We'll see if that happens to the one in Ashgabat....

Speaking of superstitious...one last TV-related comment. There are all sort of psychics now on TV, fleecing the poor public (mostly elderly ladies with various maladies wanting to know if their will get better, or desperate, single women in their mid-30s wanting to know if they'll ever get married/have babies). These women all have dagger-clawed manicures, dons of makeup, and very lacy clothing. They also wave their hands around a lot and waggle their fingers over candles, feeling callers' energy/sending callers energy. I found it entertaining for about 3 minutes before I made me sad. These women are not nearly as sweet as Madame Cleo. I find them more than a bit disturbing.

Ok, from here on in, no more TV talk--I promise!

Busy, Bisy, Bizy

(I'll bring back a nice gift for the first person who correctly identifies where I got the above title from.)

This is a shot of one of the many Turkmen warrior statues standing guard all the way around the Turkmenbashi museum in Rahmana park (see below). Those mountains ringed Ashgabat, and at some points it felt like if I could just streeeeetch my arm out far enough, I could touch them. Just glorious, that Ashgabat with it's mountains, fountains, and white marble buildings.

Things are really heating up here and I'll be spending the next 7 work days in more maternities in Kazakhstan, and then off to Tadjikistan for 2 weeks. Then when I get back I'll have 2 weeks to analyze a BUTTLOAD of data and get it in shape for our reporting requirements before Steve comes. Yikes! It is going to be ovaries to the wall.

Since I worked through lunch I don't feel guilty posting a quick few photos of Turkmenistan. My friends came over yesterday and I was telling them all about it...they wanted to go. And I want to go with Steve. But getting visas without letters of invitation are tough, and I don't know that I want to burden the people I worked with with the bureaucratic rigamarole of writing us letters, submitting them, etc. Besides, I don't have time or the willingness to wait at the Turkmenistan Airlines ticket office for days on end, trying to bribe people for a ticket. So it appears my Turkmen vacation dream will remain just that, a dream...

Here's a shot of an aparment building with those ubiquitous satellite dishes. They look (and spread!) like mushrooms, no?

Here's one of the Ministry of Health. Imagine a city full of massive white marble ministries of varying shapes. Just lovely.

And here are a few shots of this enormous park dedicated to Turkmenbashi (leader of all Turkmen, what the last president/dictator named himself), which depict the writings in his book, Ruhnama. He wrote this book to explain the history/religion/everything about the Turkmen people, and mandated that everyone memorize it, including schoolkids (what fun!). There are copies in every hospital I've been to, in multiple languages. Not to mention the statues (usually gold) and massive portraits of the man hung everywhere. Talk about a cult of personality. This guy leaves Stalin in the dust. (There's a gold statue of him that rotates constantly in the center square so that he's always facing the sun. Popular opinion is that it's so that he can keep an eye on everything going on in Turkmenistan....) There's a massive copy of the Ruhnama in this park that opens every day at 6 pm. I was informed by more than one Turkmen that this book was in the Guiness Book of World Records as the largest electronic book. :) What you can demand be built for you when you're a dictator! Any random whim can become some poor engineer's nightmare.

Sorry, folks, but that's all I can manage for today. I'll come back and upload more this weekend.

And after a data day like today, all I have to say is that SPSS kicks STATA's ass.

Back to Blogging

Access was pretty limited in Turkmenistan, and quite slow even in the capital of Ashgabat. So I didn't even try to blog from there.

Ashgabat was amazing, and I don't even know where to begin. The crazy dictator? The massive white marble buildings? The omnipresent statues, 30' x 40' banners, and sculptures of Turkmenbashi (the former president/dictator)? The lovely national dress the women wore? The massive state subsidies (70 liters of gas cost 1 US $. Water and electricity are free. Rent costs the equivalent of $2 a month. Intra-Turkmenistan flights cost $US 1.50)? The mountains that ring the city? The amazing friendliness and kindness of the Turkmen I met and worked with?

I think I took over 300 pictures. I'll have to find somewhere else to post them. I'll get working on that. And I'll also start posting in more detail about Turkmenistan while I'm in Almaty. I'm here for a few weeks, then off to Tadjikistan for the last two weeks of August.

Den' Rozhdeniya, part II

(Den' Rozhdeniya = Birthday)

My doorbell rang around 7:30, and there stood my friends with their son, also carrying a bouquet of flowers and gifts. I was told that the lovely pair of silver and blue flower earrings and matching necklace was from them, the flowers were from Steve, and the card (featuring a stout little dog with his tongue hanging out) was from Pookie! :) How sweet.

Then we went to a Chinese restaurant near the ginormous, Soviet-esque Almaty theatre, circus, and new Hyatt. I enjoyed my 0,6 liter bottle of Tsingtao and the food very much. No American-i-fied Chinese food here. We had cow stomach, among other more pedestrian choices like bean sprouts, spinach, Chinese seafood soup, and the like. The toasts were flowing, with them wishing me a long life, good health, much happiness, and our celebrating more birthdays together. After several hours of conversation, we realized it was nearly midnight and had a lovely long stroll back to my place.

On the walk back home, we passed one of the camels. No, not a real-life camel. As with the crabs of Baltimore and the cows of Chicago, Almaty has camels decorated by local artists and scattered throughout the city.

I went to bed tired and happy. It had truly been a lovely day full of surprises, kind words, and kind sentiments that helped take my mind off of being so very far away from home and those that I love on a special day.

This last shot is a view from the restaurant: the partially obscured white glowing dome with the green body and yellow tip on the left is the circus, and you can see the mountains in the background. Some newer buildings are also visible. Almaty is experiencing a huge construction boom, and the difference between these sleek, modern, glass-and-steel buildings and the hulking Soviet behemoths is jarring. I'll get some shots of some good Soviet architecture when I get back.

Saturday I am off to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan for 8 days. Don't know how much posting is going to happen from there, so I may be taking a brief hiatus from blogging if access isn't widely available. Look out for future posts about 110+ temps and what a crazy dictator can do to a nation...

Happy Birthday to Me

Today the earth revolved around the sun in such a way that I get to state I'm one year older than I was yesterday.

I expected a rather low-key day, since I wasn't about to run around advertising the fact that I'm steadily marching toward the big "four-o," but that was not in the cards.

This morning as I was stepping through the gate into the front yard of our building, I turned to see a colleague. I greeted her with a "Good morning," to which she replied "Happy Birthday!" That continued throughout the day. I guess I'm the only one that didn't get the memo.

Today during lunch (did I mention that we have a cook and eat a marvelous, three-course lunch daily?) they had a little toast and gave me a lovely bouquet of flowers, a small, handmade, leather yurt knick-knack, and an absolutely gorgeous pair of chandelier silver and turquoise earrings, Kazakh-style. I was (and still am!) overwhelmed at their generosity and kindness. I haven't been here very long at all, so wasn't expecting anything at all. Needless to say, I was bowled over with how quickly I've been accepted into the fold.

Tonight I'm going out to celebrate with my friends. They're going to pick the restaurant since I'm clueless in that regards, but I'll definitely take some pics and let you know tomorrow how birthdays are done Almaty-style.

On Language

Last night I spent 10 minutes laughing my ass off at the Russian pronunciation of "Huckleberry Finn" so I thought I'd devote this entry to the idiosyncracies of language.

Huckleberry Finn, or "GACK-lll-beRRRRRRy FEEEEEEN" as the Russians pronounce it, was one of the few American-ized words I struggled to understand. Generally, words from business and technology like "kompyooterrrr" and "biznizmen" are self-explanatory. The Russians tend to turn an "h" into a "g." To wit, Guckleberry rather than Huckleberry. Gepatit rather than hepatitis.

But then I said "Geminwaaaaaay" to Russify Hemingway, and they all looked at my blankly. So in English, I said "Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway." To which they all said "AAaaaaah. Heminwaaaaaay."

WTF? Now they suddenly can pronounce the H? This is not so normal.

Speaking of normal....

My other favorite Russian word: normal'no, or normal. It's used for everything. "How's the weather?" "Normal." "How was your trip?" "Normal." "What did you think of the movie? "It was normal." "What was the restaurant like?" "Well, normal." What, as opposed to abnormal?

Obviously, normal is more along the lines of OK, fine, decent. But it's so similar to the American "normal" that sometimes it's easier to interpret it as the American "normal" and think their response is funny. And when I say "not normal," everyone is like "Ooooooooohhhhh." It's a pretty strong statement to make.

And the other night a question about "maniacs" came up. No, not like "She's a maniac, maaaa-niac on the floor. And she's dancin' like she's never danced befooooooore." As in, "Are there a lot of maniacs in American like we see in the movies? Yannow, the kind that seem normal (there's the word again) but then go kill and maim women in run-down motels in the middle of nowhere?"

Hollywood has really made my work cut out for me here. I've got to explain things like Texas chili (We see JR Ewing on Dallas eating chili, what is that?), come up with statistics like what proportion of the American population is an axe-murderer, and what real prostitutes look like (yes, Pretty Woman. I explained to them what Baltimore City crack hos looked like, which was not too terribly much in line with Julia Roberts).

So amidst fighting my way through language idiosyncracies, I strive to more accurately report about Life In America. After all, we don't all live the lifestyle of JR Ewing and Richard Gere!