Some Shots of 120 Furmanov, Apt. 5, Plus Some Stories From Almaty

Since some of you guys have asked for a few pics of the crib:


Bedroom, then living room. Note diapers on the couch in the living room, which we never use, but it makes a nice storage room.




Next, the kitchen with Turkish coffee pot on the stove. Finally, the den, where we spend most of our time blogging and running the Almaty offices of HR&A and Jones Day.





Stories....... Because we will posting Otis pics late today: we have to go to the Green Bazaar for more provisions. After last night’s dinner at another ex-pat place, dinner in will be the rule for a while. So here are some stories to tide you over.

ATMs. There are lots and lots of ATMs all over the city. We generally withdraw 20,000 Tenge at a time ($150). This is always dispensed as either two 10,000T or four 5,000T notes. This is exceedingly annoying in a city where almost everything that you want to buy costs very little, and most vendors have a lot of difficulty breaking a 2,000T note. (For instance, one night we bought two .5 liter bottles of beer and a 1 liter bottle of water for 250T, handed the merchant a 2,000T note, and she had to go next door to the neighboring restaurateur, and when, that failed, raid her daughter’s piggy bank.) DJ--Actually it was 5,oooT note, and we had to wait for a flush customer to come in, but CD always says her fiction is better than my fact.

Shoes. Just before we left, I (Candace) went to DSW and bought a pair of gold mesh shoes with big colored rhinestones all over them. (The parentheses were in case you thought David bought them.) Sort of Disco Elf Shoes. Kind of over the top, but, what the hell, threw them into the luggage. Who knew? They are the height of fashion. Everybody wears pointy shoes. The women with three to four inch heels in bright colors, the men of woven white leather. DJ-The men all wear shoes with pointy squared off toes, saw a guy in a suit yesterday and thought he might be American, till I glommed the shoes, which were velour with the pointy square toes. Many men also favor faux military outfits with mix & match camo.

Pay attention! I think it is incredibly hard to make a joke in a foreign language, so I thought this was cool. Yesterday, Zoya asked us what the verb form of “attention” is. We said, “to attend,” as in “attend to me.” But, we added, that is pretty formal, and most Americans would say, “pay attention.” David, added, “or look here.” Zoya said that English people always say “look here” and that it always seems a little rude; we agreed. She then added, “but it figures, the Americans, with all their money, would say pay attention.”