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

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.

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.

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.

Almost every article on Kazakhstan in the world press begins with some reference to Borat and then continues on to discuss whether the latest news enhances or diminishes the reputation of Kazakhstan. But here is a piece of news that can be taken either way. I call it a piece of news, but in fact it is a highly useful scientific study. But like all research, not without controversy.

The Sun reported a few weeks ago that Kazakhstan’s beer is among the top ten cheapest in the world. However, when I went to the site of the academic institution that carried out this study, Kazakhstan was not on the list of cheapest countries. However, looking at Kazakhstan’s page I see that there seems to be some confusion on prices between buying a beer in a restaurant and buying it at the store. Beer in the store averages around 100 tenge in Astana these days (0r 0.4 pounds) which would put it between Rwanda and the Philippines in 8th place. Also, when you look at this list, you have North Korea, Bhutan, Tajikistan. Really, Panama, the Philippines, and Kazakhstan are the only tourist friendly and accessible countries on the list. So reasonably speaking, Kazakhstan is the second cheapest place that you could or would actually go to buy beer in the world.

In other beer news, the best beer in the world appears to no longer exist. The Tyan Shyan brewery is only producing light beer as best I can tell. Still good. But not the same.

UPDATE: It looks like the Pintprice website is constantly being updated by users and automatically recalculates its top ten lists. So that explains why Kazakhstan was on the list a few weeks ago, and is now off the list.

Do they do that in European sports events?

Anyway, in case you didn’t know, today at 16:00 GMT or 21:00 Kazakhstan time, England and Kazakhstan will meet in the World Cup qualifiers. If your local station isn’t covering it, or someone else in the house is watching the French Open, Eurosport looks like it will have nice play-by-play coverage online.

We will remember that the last time Kazakhstan and England met, in October of last year, Kazakhstan lost 5-1. Here’s hoping the homefield advantage will play out. It does look like even though the match is taking place in Almaty, the England fans will be in better shape to cheer their team on. According to a Neweurasia post, locals are relegated to the east side of the stadium where there is no roof and the afternoon sun gets in people’s eyes. (more…)

The St. Petersburg Open is not perhaps one of the biggest tennis matches, but it might become a favorite in Kazakshtan. Andrey Golubev of Kazakhstan, made it to the finals after beating Marat Safin, ranked number 8 in the world. Although he lost to Andy Murray, Murray is ranked fourth in the world and considered to be an up-and-coming player. So there’s not shame in the loss. Golubey is ranked 150th.

From the human interest department here at KZBlog: A Kazakhstani woman and a Ukrainian in Euclid, Ohio have opened a Central Asia/former-Soviet/American restuarant called Kebab House. The menu includes American-style shish kebab with meat and vegetables as well as the experimental “best kebab” is grilled chicken, spicy carrots, French fries, lettuce, tomato, pickles and cheese topped with dressing and wrapped in a tortilla. They are planning to introduce the more traditional meat-only lamb kebab. You can also get manty and borsch as well as American classics like chili, hamburgers and mac and cheese.

The most interesting footnote in the article is that there is a Russian Tea Room in Lyndhurst, NJ. Must be a lot of Russian emigrees there!

A bit of shameless self-promotion. In addition to my photos up at Red Bubble, I designed a T-shirt. I’ve seen parodies of Guitar Hero for the cello and the accordion, but I thought “Dombra Hero” was a needed addition. Hope you like it and check out the site for the shirt where you can get a look at it in different colors and buy it in different styles.

By the way, one of the reasons I chose Redbubble is that they deliver anywhere in the world, including to Kazakhstan. So don’t be afraid to order. You’ll get it.

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So far Borat’s “national anthem” and Freestailo are the most popular search requests on this site. And people wondering what exactly Mr. Freestylo is saying make up a large percentage of visitors to this site. So I thought I’d post the lyrics in Kazakh (so you can sing along at home) and then translated into English. Thanks to Lurkmore, Russia’s answer to Wikipedia, for the transcription and a Russian translation.

As always corrections, comments, notes always appreciated. (more…)