I wrote earlier about one of my educational projects with an ESL teacher here in Kazakhstan. We designed an Jeopardy game in .html to have some fun with kids. Well, implementation didn’t go so well. A lot of teachers found it hard to work with because you had to edit so many different files and know a bit of html, or at least not be terrified of html.

So we decided to go another way. Powerpoint! The advantage is that it’s much easier to work with because you can change the questions all in one file and program without opening a million separate files. Plus it’s What You See Is What You Get. Animations and sound effects are easy to add. You can do an Audio Question or a Video Question without too much work. So here for your consideration is the PPT version, done in Open Office but everything should be compatible. The board is composed of links to the question pages and then each question page has a Back link that takes you to the board. Final Jeopardy at the bottom–the question has the theme song looped 4 times for a two minute time limit. Can easily be removed or modified.

These particular questions are designed to review Straightforward Intermediate Unit 2. Have fun, feel free to modify it, and if you have any suggestions or problems let me know in the comments.

Jeopardy Powerpoint (7 Nov 09)
and for those who prefer html: Jeopardy HTML (22 Sep 09)

I have heard from a number of my friends who work in the government-understandably they preferred to remain anonymous–that the government is doing something about government cars being used for personal purposes. However, the program they have put into place doesn’t seem to be optimal.

To the casual observer, this does seem like a really serious problem. You see cars with AV and AST license plates at the bazaar and at restaurants. A friend of mine says the classmate of his son is picked up from school every day by an AST car. The kid is six years old.

Why is this personal use of cars a problem, I hear you say? Well, first taxpayer money pays for that gas, those drivers’ salaries and repairs and maintenance on the cars. Government workers don’t have the right to take a taxi and then make me pay the bill, which is essentially what they do when they use government cars for unofficial use. And of course the more a car is used, the more maintenance it needs, and the better chances it will get into an accident. More things I have to pay for so Azamat the Lead Manager can show his girlfriend a good time.

Second, I believe it’s a gateway drug to corruption and abuse of power. If you let a civil servant use one piece of government property anyway he or she pleases, why are they going to draw the line at cars? Why not treat their office, their subordiantes, the computers, and other information and property they have access to as if it was their own? All at our expense. At the very least, it would be very hard to take someone seriously who fights against corruption and then uses their AV to drive their mother shopping at Astrikzhan.

Third,while KZ and AV cars are assigned to individuals, the AST (formerly ADM) cars are in a pool. Civil servants who have the right to use them must phone up the dispatcher and wait for an available car to come pick them up. If all the cars are busy, they have to wait longer. One can imagine situations where people who need a car for legitimate reasons wait while all the cars are busy taking people to night clubs and cafes!

So what is the solution? Lower the mileage limits on use of cars for civil servants? Strictly enforce those limits with surprise inspections? Limit the number of government cars available? Reduce the hours of availability? Not so much. Instead the government appears to have authorized members of Zhas Otan to ride with traffic police at night and stop government cars. (more…)

By Lucky21842, via Chris.
As the comments on his YouTube video page say, this is done tongue-in-cheek!

A new ratings site (call it Kazakhstan’s Alexisa) has sprung up: Whois1in.kz. Basically it tracks traffic to websites in the Kaznet web-space. However, I’m not sure how they limit that. They were kind enough to send me an invitation. So apparently blogging in English doesn’t really matter as long as your site is related to Kazakhstan in someway.

So down at the bottom of my site you will notice a new badge that looks like this:

I took this screenshot in better days when my overall ranking was 29th of all the sites registered. On that day I had 57 page views and 33 visitors. Checking now, I’ve only had 42 views from 22 visitors so far, and I am ranked a dismal 98th. But I am the 6th most popular blog and considering that among my competitors are a blog service and a blog compiler that takes entries from different blogs and republishes them, I feel pretty good about that.

If you want to register, you can go here. They have a variety of badges to choose from and they all look pretty slick. I also noticed that the badges by default point to the homepage of Whois1in.kz so I advise modifying it to point to your own site’s statistics by replacing the link in the code. Also the link opens in the same page, so I would change the target to “_blank” or “new”.

Should have mentioned this last night, but Chris Merriman, who admits to not being a huge football fan, has a bit of a play-by-play of the Kazakhstan-Croatia World Cup qualifying match. Kazakhstan was already out of contention to go to South Africa in 2010, but had Ukraine lost or tied Andorra last night, a Croatian victory would have meant a playoff between Ukraine and Croatia for a slot. England already has secured a place in the group. So Croatia might have had something to gain (although Ukraine won 6-0 so it turns out Croatia’s victory is all for nought) and Kazakhstan could have gone out with a bang. A 2-1 loss to the third place team in their group is not bad for KZ though!

Some creative photography used in a park in Karaganda via NewEurasia. It’s pretty clever and also funny, but definitely not to be opened with Russian speaking colleagues looking over your shoulder. So when you’re alone, click here!

Even though jokes aren’t funny when you have to explain them, I will say that the word in the pic means ass, and has the same connotation in Russian of badly done, crappy (pun gleefully intended), disorganized, and so on.

Beibut Shumenov, an undefeated boxer from Kazakhstan, is widely viewed as a future world champion. At 26 years old, he was undefeated–8 fights and 6 wins by knockout–although he made the decision to turn professional only in 2007. He is also one of the few CIS boxers who was smart enough to found his own company, KZ Event Productions, meaning that he is not beholden to businessmen or the government boxing association. By comparison, one member of Kazakhstan’s 2008 Olympic boxing team works as a security guard at Mega Mall in Astana and another is a police officer, when they are not in the ring.

So it was a shame that this promising fighter lost a bout to WBA light heavyweight champion Gabriel Campillo on August 15th of this year. It was a shame that the match took place in Kazakhstan, at the Astana Boxing Complex. It was too bad that he had family from Shimkent in the audience. And it was a shame that he lost on points, with the match a draw until the final round. Campillo won on the basis of one well-timed blow in the 12th round. Even more interestingly, most spectators believed that Shumenov was the clear winner, dominating the entire match. But the match apparently ended amicably with Campillo saying, “Shumenov is a great boxer…He will be world champion.”

However, that wasn’t the end of the matter. (more…)

Just a quick request from my dear readers. I’m trying to put together a mix of pop songs that are well-known and well loved in the CIS. Songs like “Ma-ma-ma-maria” or “Novii Povorot” by Mashina Vremeni. Songs that make everyone in a restaurant start dancing when they start playing it. I would really appreciate song title and artist so I can track it down more effectively. Like who does that maria song? And what is the actual title?

EDIT: Thanks for the huge reaction and quick reaction. That has to be a record for number of comments on a post in one day. I was thinking of any well-known and loved songs.

This is what I have so far from this post and from quizzing friends.

1. “Novii Povorot”, Mashina Vremeni
2. “Lady of the Night”, Modern Talking
3. “You’re My Heart, You’re My Soul”, Modern Talking
4. “Stumbling In”, Smokie
5. “Winds of Change”, Scorpions
6. “Rasputin”, Boney M
7. “Ma-ma-ma-ma Maria”, Gaylords (Ricchi i Poveri, original Italian)
8. Alumnivii Ogurtsi”, Kino
9. “Happy New Year”, ABBA
10. “Moi Adres Sovetskii Soyuz”, No idea who did it.

Also, those last two links in Jen’s comments are hysterical. Not sure they are incredibly popular around here but so awesome. In terms of where to get these in the US, besides trying compilations of 70s-80s pop music, there are ways to download videos or even audio from YouTube and apparently various ways to download MP3s. But as those may not be legal, I really wouldn’t want to post about them here.

On Sept. 30, the most recent space-tourist blasted off from Baikanour for the International Space Station. Guy Laliberte who started life as a clown performing on the streets is most famous for founding the Cirque de Soleil, the troupe that blends circus performing, ballet, performance art, opera, comedy and just about any other drama of performing art you can imagine. He apparently paid $35 million to go into space.

Perhaps it is not a coincidence that he took off from Baikanour, located in a desert area of Central Asia, a region that has serious problems with water supply. He plans to use his time on the space station to to draw attention to problems of clean water. At 24:00 GMT on October 9 [06:00 Oct 10 Astana/Almaty time], he will launch a webcast performance that will link with performances in Montreal, Moscow, Santa Monica, New York City, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Marrakesh, Sydney, Tokyo, Tampa, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Paris and London.

According to the press release,

In each of the cities, an “artistic moment” will unfold in the presence of artists and world-renowned personalities. Each city will have its own theme related to water. The following have already confirmed their participation: Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, A. R. Rahman, Cirque du Soleil, Claude Challe, Dr. David Suzuki, Fnaire, Frank De Winne, Garou, Gilberto Gil, Gregory Colbert, Jean Lemire, Julie Payette, Maud Fontenoy, Patrick Bruel, Peter Gabriel, Peter Lik, Shakira, Simon Carpentier, Tatuya Ishii, Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, Tiffany Speight, U2, Vandana Shiva and Yann Arthus-Bertrand. They will take part in the event either by reading parts of the poem, performing or sharing an artistic work.

Although the site is down right now, it will be broadcast on the One Drop Foundation site.

A quick anecdote that demonstrated to me why there are not more Internet users in Kazakhstan, why companies are not increasing connection speeds, why so few people have websites or blogs. I got a call from a company I work for under contract that they were being audited by the tax authorities and they needed my diplomas and some other documents to show (Apparently they need to prove I am qualified, thus justifying their hiring a foreigner, thus justifying why they pay to a foreign bank account, thus showing why they have some weird tax calculations in their books). I was just about to leave to go to a site for this very employer, but they insisted it was urgent. It would be okay to be late to work since I had to come into the head office to give them my documents.

I go in and hand over the documents to the project manager. I’m about to ask her when I can take them back when she starts copying them.
I say, “Oh, you just need copies?”
“Yes,” she says, “I’ll copy them quickly and you can go.”
“But I could have scanned and emailed them to you from the other office.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “We need hard copies.”
“You could have printed my scans,” I point out.
“Really? I didn’t know that.”

As long as people don’t appreciate the power of the Internet, there will not be much development because it won’t be seen as a serious tool that can make life more efficient. It will be seen only as a distraction or a toy or something imposed on people by the government and IT people.