Well, it is February, and if you haven't guessed, I am home, and have been home for quite some time now. I assumed this would be apparent, but I have been told 'you need to finish your blog and let everyone know that you are home'. So I am home. But not for long. I am heading off again in a week. But that's another blog, maybe.
Our final times in China were a blast - we were able to relax and party a bit. Of course we finally got robbed 2 days before departure, after being through what were supposedly some of the most dodgy countries in the world without losing a thing. Miles was pickpocketed, but was pretty good-humored about it. It was pretty sad to leave it all behind and return home. I came back to Canada, and Miles back to Australia. It was a bit tough at first, but I guess we were eased back to 'the West' from our time in Beijing and China's other large cities --- although I suppose that is somewhat ironic.
Since returning I have made it my pet interest to follow the politics and news coming out of Central Asia; I find it much more interesting than the crap people are whining about here. You want to see an economic crisis? Go to Tajikistan. So instead of writing a bunch of big reflections on the trip (like I was originally planning on doing a month and a half ago... you'll just have to talk to me in person if you want something more in depth) I'll just post a few things Central Asia-related that I find pretty cool, and throw up my ever-growing "The Central Asian Way" list.
First, if you're interested in following the news: www.eurasianet.org. The biggest news these days is that the Kyrgyz President just announced out of the blue at the beginning of this month that he was going to shut down the US military base at Manas Airport (Miles and I walked between all the US planes when we were in Bishkek catching our flight to Osh)- only 2 weeks after assuring the US that all things were good for the US to stay there. This is the US' only entry point into Afghanistan from the north, and with Obama planning on getting 30 000 more troops into Afghanistan, this whimsical decision by Kyrgyzstan could be pretty critical. Conveniently, Russia has offered Kyrgyzstan $2.15 billion to shut down the air base and to allow it to be used as a base for a new Russian emergency coalition force... Right now it seems like Kyrgyzstan is hesitating to wait and see if the US will offer more $$$. In other great news, Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan has made it illegal to hang laundry to dry outside in Tashkent, in an attempt to beautify the city. He is being criticized for not focusing on more pressing issues... such as the fact that over half of his country is starving.
If you are interested in some entertaining reads: "Silk Road to Ruin" by Ted Rall is hilarious and covers a wide range of topics from the dictators to the oil politics to how to deal with militia checkpoints.
Another great book that I just finished is called "The Devil and the Disappearing Sea, or, How I Tried to Stop the World's Largest Environmental Disaster" by Rob Ferguson. Its by a Canadian Public Awareness Specialist sent in to help raise public awareness for the Aral Sea disaster, however, he finds himself dealing with the absolute best in Central Asian bureaucracy and the whole project goes terribly awry. It does a really good job of demonstrating the absurd Central Asian mentality, and Miles and I found our selves in many of the same situations as Rob did...
Central Asian dictators are great fun too, my personal favorite being Suparmurat 'Turkmenbashi' Niazov of Turkmenistan. This video is hilarious, but also a bit frightening: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6XK-yGi7NA
While Turkmenbashi is pretty funny, Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov is just downright scary: search for 'Uzbekistan Torture Farm' on youtube.
- If you need something, it will not be around (cabbies, ATMs, toilets, toilet paper, cold beer, food). If you do not need something, it will be everywhere and you will be made very aware of it (cabbies, police, mutton).
- “No Problem” is the multipurpose English phrase used by Central Asians for ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’, ‘come with me’, and ‘there is a problem’. Alternatively, it can also mean ‘there is a problem but there won’t be a problem if you give me what I want’ or ‘there is no problem, but there will be a problem if you don’t give me what I want’.
- A useful equation: If you are told that something will take a certain amount of time to get done, add 25-100% of the quoted time to calculate the actual time that it will take. Then flip a coin. If you flip heads then it will get done in the calculated time. If not, it won’t get done.
- If it has bright neon lights and is pumping lively music, the restaurant/bar (actually, all eating establishments are called кафе-бар - café-bars - leaving things a bit ambiguous as to what exactly you can expect from a place) is most certainly dead. There is also a good chance that said establishment is not a restaurant or bar at all, but, say, a closed Laundromat.
- No matter how extensive the menu is, the restaurant only has shashlyk (mutton on a stick), manty (mutton dumplings), samsy (mutton or mutton gristle in a samosa-type pastry), or laghman (mutton noodle soup). Oh and shorpo, yes, shorpo is soup! You will be told that the shorpo is very good today. Its not, its terrible. There is also plov, which is rice cooked in mutton fat with slow-cooked mutton on top. Plov is the pride and joy of the Uzbeks, and can actually be quite tasty (I am also told that it is an aphrodisiac). If the menu says it serves plov on a certain day of the week, they definitely do not serve it that day.
- When you organize a ride with a ‘taxi’ driver, they will tell you that they know where they are going. They don’t.
- Buildings with pictures of hot women in front of them are only hairdressers. Buildings that say кафе-бар MIGHT serve you food. Those buildings on every block that say аптека are ‘apothecaries’. They sell sugar pills and drugs that look like either candies or birth control pills --- for whatever ails you. There are also buildings everywhere with Cyrillic letters that look like they say HOTOPIC (the best translation I can come up with is ‘notarius’). It is certainly not a Hot Topic store, but we never ventured into one to figure out exactly what they were. Instead I sang ‘no- no- notorious!’ every time we passed one. Oh, and all those stores with the razor wire-topped concrete wall and the mirror windows? They’re likely just grocery stores or a boot shops.
- Customer service is not yet a concept that most post-Soviet Central Asians have grasped yet. As a matter of fact, employees in stores and restaurants (there will always be way more staff than could ever be needed) will all try their best NOT to have to serve you. Some will tally stuff (they love tallying things!), some will text on their cellphones, and some will just give you the death glare until you shift to trying to get someone else's attention.
- Walls are much more important than roads.
