saturdays in sakhalin: sleds, for babies!

I've seen something quite amusing in a practical sort of way while walking about town. Baby strollers with sled rails instead of wheels. It makes perfect sense when you think about it. When the sidewalks are covered with snow and ice (and they are unless it goes several days without snowing and the plow people have a chance to clear the sidewalks), sled rails just make more sense than wheels. I only wish I could snap a picture without looking mildly threatening.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: wither JLo

Turkmenistan made it into the U.S. news cycle! Albeit, only because it involved prominent popular culture figure, Jennifer Lopez, often known as JLo (or less desirably as Jenny from the Block).

As has been reported in many articles, JLo performed a concert at a hotel resort area known as Avaza which is near the city of Turkmenbasy (which is about a three hour drive north-northwest of Balkanabat). Of course, with the reputation Turkmenistan, JLo was roundly criticized for the performance, which some claim she was paid upwards of $1.5 million for.

Is the apparent outrage with her performance justified? Can she (or her management team) claim to have not realized the nature of the performance, what the country is like, and that the President would be there? Going back to that first question, I'm not sure I really care about the outrage or whether people should be upset. Partly because I also work here, thus lending credibility/support to the regime and partly because this is how capitalism works. You pay someone for a service or product and they provide said items. Is it blood money or something terrible? Well, probably, sort of, indirectly yes. The advantage for me is that I am but one tiny blip in the NSA's PRISM net and I do not work in an industry where public sentiment of me, as in my individual self, matters. JLo's professional well-being relies on her being popular and inoffensive enough to avoid any public outcry.

Now going back to that second question (or really set of questions) from the previous paragraph. Should JLo and her team have known better? I think so, but I am also far more familiar with the affairs of Turkmenistan than the average person, though that does not take much. Part of it will depend on just who they interacted with to organize the event. Was it with CNPC as most articles state? If that's the case, then they should have done some basic research into what CNPC does (oil and gas), where they are from (China), who owns them (Chinese government), and what specifically CNPC was doing organizing a party in Avaza. Perhaps not known to Team JLo, but CNPC operates on the other side of the country. But Avaza is the crown jewel of Turkmenistan vacation spots, or at least that's what the billions the Turkmen government puts into the project want it to be, so perhaps it's just a good place to have a party. What is generally well-known within Turkmenistan is that the President loves to have his picture taken. After all, he's on the front page (above the fold!) of the national paper every single day. He also likes to be at major events, in this case, the grand opening of recently-completed parts of Avaza. To everyone in Turkmenistan, it is totally logical and expected the President would be at such an event. To people on the outside, especially Americans, it seems odd, arguably unexpected. After all, U.S. Presidents do not show up to the grand openings of every major construction project. However, the comparison is best made to a state or large city, something with a population similar to Turkmenistan's roughly 5 million. Would the mayor or governor appear at such an event? Sure, there is a decent chance for an appearance. And is getting JLo to perform for the President effectively a subtle bribe by CNPC? Well, it's not even subtle, though not as blatant as gifting him a yacht or whoever bought him this Bugatti. JLo's presence both strokes his ego and gives him more legitimacy, as if to say, "See, big American stars sing Happy Birthday to me so I can't be a bad guy."

Quite interestingly is the reaction from people here who are reading about this. Understandably, many people, especially the younger women, were excited that JLo, as an internationally known entertainer, came to their country. This is a big deal to them as it somehow validates the importance of the country along with the validation it provides to the President. What locals here seem more surprised by is the characterization of their country as an oppressive dictatorship with in-name-only democracy and a poor human rights record. They find this so surprising because it is simply not true for much if the nation. Well, the in-name-only democracy part is true for everyone. After all, after the previous President died, the current one became interim President through the magic of having the person who was supposed to be the interim President arrested along with many others. Then, he changed the constitution to allow himself to run in the next election since the previous constitution forbade interim President's from becoming elected. And Bob's your uncle. Anyway, people here were surprised because conditions here are improving. In the immediate aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Central Asian countries in particular badly struggled. So far from everything, very poor, and often reliant on Russia for contact with the West. The country struggled for several years, but has slowly been gathering wealth from its natural resources. Of course the wealth is not evenly distributed, but most people are seeing basic needs (ie: housing, food, gas) provided so they are happy enough and certainly see the improvement in very real and important terms. Even if the political leadership siphons the vast majority of the money away and corruption is rampant, conditions today are still much improved from what they were 10-15 years ago.

As for JLo and her supposed moral dilemma. She can donate her concert fee to charity, take the write-off, reap the positive press benefits and move on. Or she can wait it out and Americans will find something else to care about for 15 minutes.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: all the king's men

Well, the VPN technology is not perfect and the connection is not entirely reliable to begin with.

Continuing where we left off, there was some amusing fall-out after the President's misadventure with the horse. Unsurprisingly, there were some local attempts to halt dissemination of the President's rendition of something that was not Gangnam Style. It's not clear how many days this went on for, perhaps only one or two because the videos spread quickly, but there were attempts to stop dissemination of videos at the airport. We had a few employees who were flying out the next day and they affirmed that they were also searched at the airport, made to login to their computers, and then their recently accessed pictures and videos were reviewed. Of course, much like in the EurasiaNet article, the airport personnel did not do a very thorough job of checking. One colleague told me he simply logged in under the generic username available on all company laptops. Logging in like this only shows default files and no pictures or video other than whatever Windows7 comes preloaded with. Not the most tech savvy group of individuals.

Ever since I heard about the attempt to halt dissemination, I have made it a point to try and show the video to as many people as possible. First, it is a hilarious fall. How often do you get to watch the leader of a nation face plant into the ground? If this happened in the U.S., it would be making every single news and semi-news program. Second, the race is obviously staged. You can clearly see the second place rider gaining on him easily towards the end. He was no doubt holding back until nearly the end. Frankly, everything about the Presidency here is staged. It makes for great theater to outsiders and deep reluctance to discuss it with locals. Third, Streisand Effect, enough said. Fourth, the attempt to stop distribution was so ham-handed, it pretty much typifies all that is wrong here. Fifth, there is apparently a rumor going around that it was not actually the President riding the horse. Evidently, this is some sort of attempt to make it seem like he did not fall off the horse, though it would imply that he's pathologically obsessed with his image. Well, it doesn't imply that at all. It makes it very, very clear.

Anyway, please watch the video. Find it on YouTube, go to the links above, something. It is hilarious.

tuesdays not in turkmenistan: turkey edition

Akin to my last post, this is not actually Tuesday, but that’s what I’m going to say it is.

I have been in Turkey. After my course in Dubai ended (see last post for marginally more info about why I was in Dubai), I headed to Turkey. I spent a mix of time in Istanbul and time outside of Istanbul in the central Anatolia part of the country. This is a nice place. For sure I saw and did “touristy” things since, well, I am a tourist. These have been my days off (with the usual about of work via e-mail that goes with all my days off) and I can do as I please. Istanbul, at least the big sights like the Hagia Sophia, are certainly very tourist heavy. However, it was nice to see many locals (at least Turkish people) visiting many of the same historic sites. It is good to see that people here are also interested in their nation’s heritage. This does not even count the endless local school groups touring the sites. My goodness, short little people following the buddy system everywhere. And retired Germans. They were also everywhere.

Turkey is a nice place. I expect I will come back here one day. Perhaps not soon as there are so many other places to visit, but these unspent Lira should be used one day. Much like the U.S., there is simply too much to see here in a week. Lots of diversity, geographic regions, and history. The food’s pretty good as well, though I will simply never be a fan of lamb. It tastes too much like lamb.

tuesdays not in turkmenistan: dubai edition

This post is a lie, sort of. It’s not actually Tuesday, April 16. In fact, it’s more than 10 days later. However, I have been busy and my time has been better spent pursuing other endeavors of which will largely not be discussed here. Despite this, the contents of this post are quite true. And be true, I mean filled with conjecture, opinion, and hearsay.

I was not in Dubai long. All told, it was less than 80 hours on the ground there. And I did not see all that much of the place either. However, it essentially conformed to what I expected. Perhaps I only saw what I wished to see and my assessment will simply reflect all my preconceived notions, most of which were negative. My preconceived notions about Dubai were that it is basically Las Vegas without the gambling and strip clubs (but it does have hookers [or whatever term you wish to use]). Sand? Check. Hot? Check. Lots of shopping? Check. Lots of restaurants? Check. People from all over the world working there? Check. Interesting architecture? Check. Wide roads but oddly bad traffic? Check. No soul? Check. That’s basically what I saw. Perhaps there is a vibrant local culture where all the locals are contributing to fantastic advancements in the arts and sciences. However, I could not help but notice the city was powered by expatriate labor. (Perhaps this is an ironic comment from someone who has worked as an expat for the last four years, but at least everywhere I go our workforce is overwhelmingly local in content.) As I noted earlier, I did not see much, but what I saw was this. Locals were working government jobs. Things like immigration officers and police. But nearly everyone else was an expat. Every taxi cab I was in was driven by a foreigner (though that would arguably be true in much of the world), the hotel staff was an interesting mix of more non-locals, and the restaurant we had the course dinner at was staffed by additional foreigners.

A side note for now. I was in Dubai for a training course for work. Hence my presence there in the first place and why there was a “course dinner” when we all went out as a group and had dinner together. Ironically enough, in true Las Vegas fashion, we went to a buffet. And it was not even a very good buffet. I would say it was distinctly worse than any decent Vegas buffet I have ever been too. To further add to the Vegas comparison, the buffet was at a big hotel and resort. A few guys in the course who had been there before basically compared it to Disneyland. You can even swim with dolphins at the resort part. I can only assume they are chronically depressed dolphins.

Back to all the foreigners at the hotel. We stayed in a nice business hotel and also had the training course in one of their seminar rooms. The coordinate that our instructor interacted with was either from the U.K., Australia, or South Africa. I realize that it is terrible I could not distinguish her accent, but I only her heard speak a few times and not very clearly at that. Regardless, she was clearly a “professional” of sorts. Meanwhile, other hotel employees like the housekeeping staff and the people who stocked the little room outside our main conference room with food and water (waiters I suppose) were all either African or Southeast Asian. No kidding. There was a bar in the lobby area where we had some drinks after the last day of the course. Staffed by more expats. I cannot recall a single instance of seeing a local doing what could be called blue-collar or service work.

Dubai is a strange and magical city in this regards. It is also totally unsustainable.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: a new year, no promises

For sophisticates like myself living 13 hours ahead of the lagging West Coasters, the New Year has already arrived. In fact, it arrived nearly 12 hours ago to great and glorious fanfare for the neutral nation of Turkmenistan. And we were playing Mario Kart Wii when it happened. It was as awesome as you think it sounds.

Interestingly enough, yesterday was a holiday in Turkmenistan. Well, sort of. By decree from the great and glorious neutral leader of Turkmenistan, they did a bit of horse-trading for the days. Basically, Saturday was a "normal" working day and Monday become part of the weekend in its place. So people with "normal" jobs had Sunday (as is typical), Monday (traded for Saturday), and today (New Year) off. Strange and magical indeed. Of course, the business I'm in does not take days off. In fact, Sunday was a ridiculous mash up of semi-panicked activity to get a few things out the door. In the end, it's yet another day off added to the already absurdly long list of public holidays in Turkmenistan.

Of course, since you are reading this, you are literate. It also means I'm back after a four week hiatus. I'm not sure where I have been. It was dark and a bit stuffy, so perhaps a broom closet or stuck under a large tea cozy, but I'm free once again. Free to post intermittent and irregular updates and also free to travel back Stateside on Friday. Eight weeks in this time and it is time to start taking some of my accrued days off. I have a few small items for myself, but do wish to share with people when I get back. The most novel one is the English-language Turkmen newspaper I snagged while I stayed in a hotel in Ashgabat earlier in my rotation. (Why was I in a hotel and not a staff house? The staff houses were full since several people were in town. Why was I in Ashgabat? Business totally and in no way related to activities of the CIA. Yes, that sounds right.)

I'm not sure what the game plan is while I am in the U.S. There are some nebulous plans to visit a guy from work who lives out in South Carolina. Perhaps a swing through my storage place and then a drive back across the Southwest with a stop in Los Angeles. It's all quite wonderfully vague. And something about furniture moving.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: wrong ali

There's someone who works for one of our clients with the name Muhammad Ali. Actually, it's not spelled exactly like that, and he's obviously not the boxer, but every time I hear his name, it makes me want to say, "You spoke with Muhammad Ali? How was that?" This must be the curse of people who share names with famous people. You hear the same jokes time and time again so no matter how original someone thinks they are being, you have already heard the line before.

Even a seemingly not-especially-unique name like my last name attracts countless comments. (According the 1990 U.S. census, the last name of Love was the 330-something most common. I'd find you a link, but our network here has become insufferably slow.) For the most part, the comments are positive:
Someone: "Love? Really? That's such a cool name."
Me: "Yeah, it's working out pretty well so I've decided to keep it."
In all fairness, it is a good name. Short, rarely mispronounced, makes you memorable in a non-negative way, women seem interested in pairing their first name with it, etc. You learn to take it in stride, though the jokes do get old. I cannot recall the last original one someone said when referencing my last name. Still, better than being named Smith or Jones.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: where there was no thanksgiving

And never will be.

That sounds a bit gloomy. Actually, I did get something from my embassy while I was in Ashgabat last week. I received an invitation to U.S. Culture Days in Ashgabat. Sadly, but not really as that is not the emotion I experienced, I flew back to Balkanabat a day before the series of events started. I actually passed the invitation along to my manager. While he is not from the U.S., he previously worked there and his children were born there so they are U.S. citizens.

Interestingly enough, I saw a news piece on the event last night while flipping through the channels. Wait, first a bit about the channels.

We used to have various television channels. Let's say about 12-15 working channels. Over time, fewer and fewer of them were working owing to poor service and whatever kind of chicanery goes on here that I would rather not know about. This past weekend, just three days ago, they restored channels, though not all the same ones as we had before. One of them happens to be a local Turkmenistan television channel and this is what I saw last night.

During the segment, there was a voice-over presumably describing the performance. I assume the performers were part of the Della Mae bluegrass group based on some rigorous process of elimination while looking at the schedule in the link above. In shots that showed the audience, they seemed to be comprised of politely sitting schoolchildren, perhaps ages 11-14, who were not there on their own volition. Despite it being a Saturday, there were all wearing the traditional schoolgirl dress and hat, much like these students though they are older. And while they were a polite audience, they seemed less than enthused, no doubt attending not entirely on their own accord.

I wish I could get a TV Guide equivalent for the local news channel. I only know a few shows that will be on at certain times and this is because they are on the TVs in the airports while I wait for my flights to and from Balkanabat. Around 13:00, there is a program where performers play some sort of traditional stringed instrument. I believe they are called dutars. That's what we see while waiting for the ASB-BLK flight. The return leg usually has a news program on around 15:00. It often features government officials standing in front of either a carpet or a picture of the President or both while they update the President with various reports. I cannot tell if the news does a voice-over of this or not as the audio is never on in the BLK airport. Sometimes, they cutaway to show the President sitting at a large U-shaped desk with three monitors along one side, a laptop on the other side, and him looking very serious. His computer setup is undoubtedly pretty sweet, for sure he's a big Minecraft fan.

What I find most fascinating is the English-language reporting they did for a while last night. Two questions came to me. First, who is the target audience of an English-language broadcast that only airs in Turkmenistan? (Related question is why anyone like myself would consider the news to be impartial.) Second, could they have found someone with better English-language skills to read that segment. The fellow's accent was thick and the enunciation non-existent. I had to listen for a while to be sure he was actually speaking English.

In summary, I had curry for Thanksgiving.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: karaoke

Wherein terrible singing is somehow universal. We had a karaoke night last Friday and apparently another one is scheduled for this coming Friday. Singing (often badly) is apparently universally popular. As for my own efforts, I was impressed by how much better (read: louder) I was after about two beers.

a brief follow-up from yesterday

Perhaps you are wondering why I have chased this missing bag from yesterday so doggedly. It's not my bag. In fact, the guy is not even a colleague. And it's definitely not my job. We have a travel department here. Perhaps they should be doing this? Well, there's a lot of that "not my job" attitude here that I don't like. The fact that this is not my job is not the point. It's simply a decent thing to try and do for someone. The guy hasn't been in a position to do this himself since he's been traveling within Kazakhstan as well. He's been without his bag now 3+ weeks and I feel for him. It's a generally crappy situation all the way around and I have a suitably obsessive personality for this sort of thing. At this point, with the time invested thus far, now I have to see this to the end. It has become a mission that must be completed.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: wherein Turkish Airlines has let me down

I want to preface this post by stating that I have never flown on Turkish Airlines. However, I have spent several hours and called them 47 different times in an attempt to find a missing bag belonging to a colleague. It is a near universal truth that airlines typically have terrible customer service. Outside of a couple of the higher-end airlines (Qatar Airlines, Cathay Pacific perhaps) or possession of elite status, the call center experience is a byzantine maze of recursive despair. First, some back story!

Actually, this fellow is not technically a colleague. He is a contractor from Aberdeen who was here to perform some calibrations on equipment but I say colleague in my communiques to Turkish Airlines to keep it simple and will do the same here. He arrived to Ashgabat and his bag did not make it with him. He came to Balkanabat, spent a week here, then went back to Ashgabat. His bag had still not been found. He then flew to Almaty, Kazakhstan (for more calibration work) and his bag finally turned up in Ashgabat the day after he left. Wonderful timing. A plan was hatched, evidently a deeply complicated one, to send his bag from Ashgabat to Almaty via Istanbul on Turkish Airlines. Sadly, the tale of woe continued for my colleague as his bag never arrived in Almaty. There was quite a bit of insistence that it had, but several checks of the Almaty airport, luggage claim area, and lost and found told a different story.

At this point, I was probably 10-15 calls in already. It is astonishingly hard to find a phone number for the Turkish Airlines desk at the Almaty airport. The numbers on their website are definitely not the same as what their customer service line provided. Either way, no one picked up any of the numbers and people from our office in Almaty went down to the airport to check in person. Now was the time for further calls. I was armed with the certainty that the bag was not in Almaty and a scan of the baggage tag so I definitely had all the correct numbers, dates, flights to provide to Turkish Airlines. Good golly, what a mess. There are three primary numbers I have been calling, though only one of them leads to anyone remotely helpful. General customer service is a debacle. Some second number for luggage issues is not passable. A third number with an extension is marginal and depending on who you speak with, might yield some semblance of progress.

A word of advice to Turkish Airlines is that your departments should be staffed during business hours. If I call and everyone is busy, then put me on hold where I can listen to that snazzy two-line jingle of yours over and over and over. We are Turkish Airlines. We are globally yours. What you should not do is let the phone ring 11 times, then have the call end at the start of a 12th ring. I did not enter my pin code to call internationally, dial your 12-digit number, press 9 for English and then a 5-digit extension just so your system could hang up on me after 54 seconds. A second word of advice is that you should properly train whoever I spoke with on Saturday as he was incredibly rude and condescending. Also, I found his insistence that the airline possessed no system for tracking baggage utterly bizarre. Seriously, the guy insisted that the airline could not track baggage. Maybe my dear readers are thinking that he did not have access to the system to track the baggage based on the bar code and number. That’s what I thought too so I asked him if he could tell me what number to call to get someone who could track the baggage based on the luggage tag information. No one! Well, no one can according to him. The only logical conclusion based on this information is that nearly every bag reaches its final destination through nothing short of sheer happenstance and luck of the utmost proportions.

I try, I really do try to be polite when I’m on the phone with customer service. I understand it’s a generally shitty job and 90% of the complaints are routine and most of the callers are angry and frustrated so they are not very polite. Knowing all this makes me want to be as polite as possible because I want to live by the no-asshole rule. I realize the world is not so simple and that abiding by Bill and Ted’s insistence that we “be excellent to each other” is not always easy, but there is no reason to be rude on the phone. It will not improve the level of assistance you receive and it will not make the process go faster. If anything, being rude will lead to a lower level of service as why would anyone want to go above and beyond for a jerk? Back the fellow who said bags could not be tracked. He tried my patience and I was compelled to interrupt him more than once since it was clear he was not listening to me. Part of one of the baggage codes is ASBTK. ASB stands for Ashgabat and TK stands for Turkish Airlines. I was trying to explain to him that during one of the prior times I called, the code was read to me as ASETK and I was concerned that the reason he could not see the bag in his system (which is apparently NOT a system to track bags, but only a system to log missing bags) was that perhaps the code had been mistyped. Instead of hearing me out, he kept saying that ASE is not a valid airport code and that I was wrong and should call back when I had the correct information. I was looking at a picture of the baggage tag while I was on the phone with him so I most definitely had the correct information. His continued insistence that I was wrong was very off-putting.

Sunday yielded better luck. Recall that I previously mentioned having been given some information on an even earlier call. Yeah, that was last Wednesday. Six days ago, I spoke with “Hasan” who was helpful and told me they had the bag in Istanbul. Hot damn, we were in business! I e-mailed all this to the owner of the bag along with an e-mail address he needed to send his address to and provide his claim reference number. He called, spoke with a different person, and was told they had no record of his bag. Uh, ok, that’s a bit odd, but maybe someone misunderstood and perhaps “B” does sound like “E”. (By the way, this is why I use the NATO phonetic alphabet when reading letters on the phone so ASBTK is actually Alfa-Sierra-Bravo-Tango-Kilo.) Anyway, this info on failure to find his bag came back to me on Saturday which is when I resumed my call saga and ended up with the haughty fellow who claimed the airline had no way to track bags. Sunday, I spoke with the same “Hasan” again! This time, I was armed with the shipping address to get the bag home so I gave my own e-mail and phone number and took down the information again to ensure it was correct and sent my own e-mail to atalf@tgs.aero. (TGS = Turkish Ground Services.) Two days later (today) and still no reply has led me to spend an uncannily large portion of my afternoon on the phone trying to speak with a real human instead of 11 rings and then dial tone.

I have made 25 calls today. I am sure of this, much like I am sure I possess the correct bag documentation, because I get an e-mail every time I use my PIN to make an international call. (The cost is not the issue as these route through our network, so the incremental cost is negligible, but the satellite routing does result in a bit of a lag during calls that adds to the difficulty.) I believe I have spoken to an actual person about four times. All other calls have not been answered. The sum total of my experience today is that my will to live has been crushed by the heartless automatons of the Turkish Airlines phone system. In all seriousness, this has been the most demoralizing customer service experience of my life. I called the number and extension to reach the department where “Hasan” works. I did not get a chance to speak with Hasan. Instead, providing the same information today as I had previously given to Hasan, I was told that the claim was now too old for them to see in their system and that they would transfer me to the Insurance (?) department. Sigh. I used the word recursive earlier so you might be able to guess what happened when I spoke with the folks in the Insurance department. That's right, they referred me back to where I had come from. If you ever call Turkish Airlines at +90 212 463 6363, press 9 for English then extension 15740 you get the starting department. If you enter extension 15640, you get Insurance or whoever they are. The sad thing is that I have called these numbers so often, I do not have to look them up to enter them here. They are now deeply burned into my damaged psyche. Also, if you're ever in a similar situation, you can try +90 212 468 4848, press 9 for English, then press 7 for missing luggage and +90 212 444 0849 and again press 9 for English, then press 7 for missing luggage but neither of those numbers were particularly helpful.

And now I am here. I have just entered all the relevant information into the Turkish Airlines web form and received their delightful automated reply. At least I know their system has this claim somewhere in the queue. However, even their online form is quite aggravating. It could not accept any phone number unless it was entered with no spaces. However, it had no separate field for the country code so it’s just one continuous number that is not clearly a non-Turkish number. Additionally, the flight information fields are required, but there was no red asterisk by those field indicating they were required. Also, you can only enter one flight number, which is silly since you cannot easily indicate your trip had multiple legs. All this was clarified in the text I could enter along with the recourse I have attempted thus far. We shall see if any headway can be made via this method. I can only hope for a resolution by next Tuesday lest I spend another post lambasting the shoddy customer service of Turkish Airlines.

Edit: I am aware that ASE is actually the airport code to the airport in Aspen, Colorado. The guy mentioned it was a U.S. airport during the call in the context that ASETK could not possibly be the code on the tag since Turkish Airlines does not fly there.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: deportation (not me)

Don't worry, or worry the same amount you had previously, for I am not one of the few being deported (and neither are any of my coworkers). Perhaps that is an outcome some of you slightly hope for, presumably only because you want me to come home and not because you would like to see me spend 15 days in jail before coming home. This is the outcome, or seems to be the likely outcome, for some individuals currently in the clink. Two weeks ago, there was an industry event attended by at least one of the major operators and many service companies. Post-event, there were post-events that evidently took on an adult theme. The word is that four people, a mix of operator and service company employees, are being deported as a result of the evening's "festivities" as I shall so discretely call them.

This is the real deal. This is why newly arrived expats get the lecture about being on good behavior and not metaphorically or literally screwing around. This is why we have an informal 11pm curfew. We get well compensated for being here and it is not because it is dangerous or there is some pervasive risk of malaria. It is because when you are here, it's not that there is no freedom, but there is a distinct decrease in the amount to which I am accustomed. It would sound much more dramatic if I could boldly proclaim that that there is no freedom here, but that would not be true.

What they have is much more watching. Sure, I can walk around the street and, if I am by myself and dressed discretely, I can blend in and won't attract a second look. Well, only if a walk suitably slow enough. My typical fast and purposeful walk seems to draw quite a bit of attention since fast-walking was evidently banned. However, in any sort of expat group, our English and everyone else's appearance will out us very quickly as foreigners. That's not really a problem, but it simply means you cannot lose yourself in a sea of anonymity. People will look, some will stare. Most of the ones who stare are likely staring at the arm sleeve of tattoos belonging to a colleague. I have no doubts that the security guards at the base make a note of every time I/we exit the base and return to the base in the evenings. My presence (and that of every expat) here must be registered. If we go somewhere else like Ashgabat or one of the port cities to go offshore, then that move must be registered. I am being watched. It is not sophisticated. In fact, it is rather clumsy at times. But being in a country with very few foreigners leads to a pervasive sense of always sticking out and attracting attention, not for what you are doing, but for simply existing in this place.

I will have to take solace in the knowledge that at least I am not a spy, because this would make it terrible to do my job. Maybe.

tuesdays not in turkmenistan: labor law

This is the first in several back-dated entries. I started penning this entry during my last rotation and had intended to publish while I was at home. However, my busy home schedule precluded finalizing my thoughts on the subject. Additionally, it skirts along some potentially sensitive work topics that I am generally reluctant to avoid so my comments will be couched and somewhat vague as I will not discuss specifics about work. As always, my opinions are my own or those of my sponsors.

We have been rolling through some changes for local staff at work related to local labor law compliance. The issue is relatively straightforward in a broad sense. Work has a general compensation philosophy. There are certain ways we wish to pay people given the nature of the work (ie: field work, offshore, remote, etc) and to stay competitive with other employers in the industry. At the same time, there are certain ways we must compensate local employees according to the local law. Of course, local law trumps the company's general compensation practices. Furthermore, anytime you change how people are paid (not how much they are paid, but the nature of the way time is tracked, procedures, etc), they can become very defensive. I have seen this at two previous locations when somewhat similar changes were made. Even if you demonstrate to people that their overall pay will be either the same or higher, there is still a great deal of skepticism. This is normal, even expected, and taking the time to explain this to people is part of the job.

However, what has surprised me the most is who some of the most resistant employees have been during this process. I have certain expectations for our engineer population, both in terms of their work performance, but also what I would broadly call their world view. They work for a large, international company and are in a small and provincial (in relative terms) country. They could conceivably be working for local company, but they chose to work here instead. Working here is nothing short of an excellent springboard to get outside of the country. This includes the training opportunities that are afforded to them in other parts of the world as well as the chance for an international assignment. I like to view working here as an an excellent opportunity to "get out" for a local engineer. By this, I mean a chance to see, work, and live in other parts of the world. Some may want to do that for the rest of their careers and some may want to get out for a while, make more money, and then come back home. Either way, they have opportunities here. However, they only have those opportunities if they invest the time, effort, and have a decent view of the long-term. I expect the engineers here to have that long-term view, or at least a conceptual understanding of why it is important. Perhaps they have a hard time letting go of home, or don't really want to take an assignment outside of Turkmenistan. That is understandable, but they should comprehend why that will limit their opportunities in the company.

no expiration

Related to the post earlier today about local and expat staff, I remembered something else that can create problems for local staff when they try to travel overseas. The older Turkmen passports have no expiration date. Almost every country issues passports with a 5 or 10 year validity. (In the U.S., passports are good for 10 years unless you are under 16, then they are good for 5 years.) Until a couple years ago, Turkmenistan passports had no expiration date. Not having an expiration date means some visa applications cannot be completely filled out which then means the application cannot be processed. We had someone who recently was rejected because he still has an older passport without an expiration date. One more hurdle for locals to conquer.

sundays in turkmenistan: continuing from tuesday

I wanted to get this done on Wednesday and call it something clever like "wednesdays in the world: global business" but will settle for this knock-off "Sundays in Turkmenistan" which is barely acceptable to read and not at all alliterative. Plus, these thoughts were all tumbling around then and were somehow fresher and made more sense. Now, time has either confused me or at least weakened the apparent newness of the ideas in my own mind. Regardless, we shall continue.

We wrapped up very quickly on Tuesday with an idea about training local staff. It came on the heels of the idea of where qualified people come from and how the industry is very specialized. The basic idea is that sometimes we need to bring in expatriates to certain locations when specific experience and skill sets are needed that are not locally available. Generally speaking, any foreign worker needs to be justified to the government (immigration ministry) and explain why the position cannot be filled with a local resident. The general explanations are lack of education, training, experience, etc. Of course, some companies could continuously make this claim, especially if they never give local staff opportunities to get experience and training. The response in some countries is that many expats are given a hard cap on how long they can be in the country. I have been told be colleagues who have worked in Angola that there is a three year limit for most expat workers there. The reasoning is supposedly that you should be able to train a local replacement to do your job during that time. This type of policy can produce some unintended consequences, the most prominent of which according to colleagues is the generally poor quality and unmotivated nature of much of the local staff because they know they cannot be easily released. (Angola, specifically in Luanda, also has a reputation as the most universally disliked location amongst people who have spent time there.) Their policies regarding time limits may not even be necessary. Companies have a few compelling reasons to train and develop local staff:

1. Mobility. Local staff are generally more mobile within the country. Things like border passes, permissions, registration are largely unnecessary because in most countries, local people can move freely within their own country. (I should note that at least for border passes, this is not true in Turkmenistan. Anyone going offshore, local or expat, requires a border pass document.) The flip side to this internal mobility is that for some countries, there is a problem with external mobility. Generally speaking, smaller and poorer countries have fewer visa-free agreements with other countries. For example, the number of countries that Turkmens can visit without getting a visa in advance can be counted on one hand. Another example is that in post-war Iraq, as the industry was going back for oil and gas work, it was very difficult to get visas for local Iraqis to go to training centers in other countries.
2. Money. Perhaps this should be listed first to emphasize its importance. Maybe I will simply list it twice. Local staff in less developed nations are paid at local rates. This is generally much less than what expatriate workers are paid as those employees are paid at international rates which are comparable to the rates in the more developed countries. It is in the employer's interest to have qualified local staff instead of more expensive expats. The flip side of this goes back to this being a global business. Once many locals in places like Turkmenistan gain training and experience, they want to work internationally themselves. It can become a challenge to retain and motivate some local staff members since they can take their skills to a competitor or client who might offer a more attractive deal or an international assignment. This becomes a management problem in terms of knowing your people, understanding their goals and having a plan with them.
3. Money. There, I listed it twice. Locals are cheaper and this is a business after all.
4. Business climate. You could call this a couple different things, but in terms of community relations, government dealings, and procedural matters, being able to have and present a strong local work force matters. This is a very international industry, but it is important to have local employees familiar with the less well published business practices of the region. This is particularly true in countries that have largely nationalized their natural resources so working with state companies is very important.

The general philosophy about local and expat workers here is that the company should try to employ as many people from a country as there are positions within that country. Let's say we have 100 people working in country ABC. Ideally, that would mean we have 100 ABC citizens working for the company, the vast majority of which will be working as home-country employees with a few working internationally. Perhaps 90 would be at home and 10 would work overseas. This would imply 10 expat workers inside country ABC. This being the ideal case also means it is not the reality in most of the world. In practical terms, a perfect balance would be almost impossible. More broadly though, some countries, usually better-educated ones, are over-represented worldwide when it comes to the numbers of positions the company has back in their home country. (Also, some people are from countries with no current operations so of course they are over-represented by this metric.) This imbalance will likely exist for a long time. We can take steps to minimize the imbalance through scholarships and internships and developing local staff. However, we cannot fundamentally change the quality of education available in local high schools and universities nor meaningfully redistribute the wealth of the world. We will settle for more training and go from there.

An unrelated note:
When I first started this entry on Wednesday, I had added notes at the bottom of my draft about internet quotes. I have no idea what prompted it four days ago since it is unrelated to the topic at hand, but I will leave you with this:
"The problem with quotes from the internet is it is hard to verify their authenticity."
-Abraham Lincoln

wherein there was pork!

There was an employees only party at the base last night. Sort of an end of Ramadan party. Amazingly, there was pork in one of the dishes being served. This is a first. Previously, everything served at parties and the canteen in general has always been halal. Also, I am not capable of matching our local guys drink for drink. This is hardly shocking, but can be a source of much learning.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: which news to believe

I find the media coverage of Turkmenistan quite interesting. There's the obvious interest since I am here much of the time and ongoing events can potentially affect me. However, the disconnect between some of what is reported and what I can personally see and gather from the people I talk to is what I find most fascinating. Obviously it's not all sunshine and rainbows here, but the compelling question you should always ask yourself when reading anything is "Why should I believe the accuracy of this information?" Why should you believe anything I write here? Do we have a closer personal relationship built over many years that leads you to believe most of what I put forth? Do I seem genuine and interested in finding the "truth" of a situation? Is my writing crisp and professional (which it is obviously not) and thus carries more weight? I hope it is not the last one. A silver tongue is not the same as being truthful and honest.

A story about the abuses of the political leadership (original source) sounds very plausible. It follows with what you can reasonably expect in terms of behavior in a weak "democracy" and it matches with what you can hear "on the ground" from what people are willing to share. Of course, with no reasonable way to publicly quote sources without fear of reprisals, journalism cannot be as forthcoming.

I have seen a couple different articles (and now cannot find links!) discussing what how the Avaza (or Awaza) holiday resort area near Turkmenbasy along the Caspian coast is a failure and mostly empty. Most of these have come from .ru sourced websites, though most of the news aggregation on Eurasia.net comes from .ru sites originally. This conflicts with what local staff here have told me about how popular the resort is and that it is very hard to get a room at any of the hotels and that people like to go there on the weekends when possible. I don't see a very compelling case for why local staff here would lie to me about the popularity of the resort. You could make the case for some national pride, but on other subjects, these same people are not exactly flag-waving zealots. At the same time, why would a media site report the resort to be empty and abandoned? That is the question that makes you wonder. Do Russian or other media sites have a compelling interest in making Turkmenistan look bad? Perhaps they do or perhaps it is even a personal animosity at the reporter or site owner level. However, there is plenty of fodder for criticism and they do not need to misrepresent the situation. There is enough low-hanging fruit to feast on when it comes to critiques of the place.

More suitable for criticism would be the home demolitions in the fifth paragraph from bottom. And this is true from what I have gathered from people who have been here longer. Another anecdote is about the Presidential Hotel where important visitors stay and it apparently costs up to 400 USD/night. The front facade is very nice, but when it was first built, s shanty-town residential area was behind the hotel and visible from rooms that faced that direction. That residential area is no longer there and I will give you one guess as to who insisted upon its "rehabilitation". You could make the argument for ideas like eminent domain and urban renewal and the like. However, eminent domain rests upon the idea of fair compensation, and while that value can be disputed, it is certainly larger than zero.

Then there are stories about troubled airline maintenance which are particularly eye-catching for the simple reason that I fly on those planes. Is this a believable story or merely a baseless disparagement of the state airline? I'll let you know after my next flight.

melon day!

Today was Turkmen Melon Day, one of only 24 public holidays in the country. We celebrated by going out and and getting a muskmelon from a local shop and then only managing to eat a quarter of it before calling it quits. The rest has been saved for later. It looked like the melons in the foreground of this photo and the inside looks and tastes much like a honeydew melon. Celebrations like this were not to be found in Balkanabat, likely only really taking place in Ashgabat.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: mario kart

That's right, Mario Kart. Harkening back to memories from days of yore playing Mario Kart 64, we have been playing the more recent incarnation of the game for the Wii, aptly and very originally titled Mario Kart Wii. The originality blows me away. As I noted before, one of the items I lugged here from the States was a Nintendo Wii along with a handful of games and I was judicious enough to get extra controllers beyond the lone one that came with the console. Now we can kart about with 4 players throwing shells, dropping banana peels, and generally acting like the overgrown children that camp life almost demands we regress towards.

It helps to have a handful of other youngish and single engineers in the camp. Apparently, most of the ones with wives and children do something silly like call home in the evenings. I will confess to playing the single-player mode, but that's only to unlock additional levels. I swear that I do not have a gaming addiction. Frankly, I don't have time to have a gaming addiction. Work is super busy right now, but all work and no play makes a man something something. Go crazy? Don't mind if I do.

The video games are really a symptom of something else. Much like the nostalgic 80s and early 90s movie nights, living in the camp leads to this peculiar regression. I lived on my own, alone, for more than six years. Four of those years were in the U.S. with all the usual trappings of paying rent, dealing with utilities, obtaining food, laundry, etc. Life maintenance tasks. And while I obviously got by, no one would ever accuse me of living a well-cultured life. Two-plus years abroad prior to here still required a reasonable level of looking after oneself. However, here in the camp, well, hmmmm. Frankly, we're spoiled. Food is prepared, dishes are done, rooms are cleaned (though mine is so empty, there is nothing to clean), sheets are changed, laundry is done. Of course, this is all to encourage and free up time to work as much as possible. You cannot work at all hours of the day if you are busy trying to get ingredients to test out that latest recipe you found.

Regardless, or irregardless, work cannot become all-consuming. There is a point, and it can be reached very quickly, where the brain simply cannot process meaningful work anymore and there's only one thing you can do. Let's race!

tuesdays in turkmenistan: simcity

I spent a couple days in Ashgabat last week. While there, I hit upon a realization about how I can describe Ashgabat. It's like SimCity! Yes, that SimCity, the computer game series of yore (and they are actually finally releasing a new game next year). Seriously, Ashgabat, with its gleaming white buildings paving over the old ramshackle domiciles reminds me of building out a city in SimCity. Perhaps it is a bit like one of those scenarios in the game where you start with an existing city that is about to be struck by some sort of natural disaster or is plagued by some sort of problem and you have to rebuild it back to its former glory. Or not. The point is that it is a struggling city and you control how to bring prosperity to your simulated people.

In this real-world scenario, Turkmenistan as a whole, but specifically Ashgabat is plagued by the struggles of post-Soviet independence and building its economy and infrastructure and gaining greater economic independence from Russia. Much like the computer game where you are the all powerful leader, Turkmenistan also has its autocratic leaders, first with Niyazov and now with Berdimuhamedow, who I occasionally do not cross paths with because the roads where his motorcade travels are cordoned back by a full block. Furthermore, much like the SimCity loans you could take to finance the city's construction, Ashgabat sees the proceeds of oil and gas sales flow towards its center.

Armed with existing infrastructure that is on the ropes in many places, top-down control, lots of money, and some open land, we have our SimCity. And boy has it been playing out like a game as well. Several of the local engineers are originally from Ashgabat and they tell me they barely recognize the city from what it was less than 10 years ago. The gleaming white marble and limestone, overly ornate lamp fixtures, lawns that no one ever walks on, 15m columns that support nothing in particular, and then there are the big projects. Huge city blocks that were either empty or emptied are turned into sports complexes, medical centers, ice skating rinks, new rows of apartment buildings. There's a whole half of the city that looks incredible. This is the public image that they want to project. To give them credit, it is a very fine projection. Of course, there's the other half of the city, where most of the people live and the buildings are not so glamorous. The tour buses will not be going there, but fret not for in our SimCity, with enough time and money, we shall bulldoze those areas and re-zone them and put something nicer in their place. Take note that I said some of the lots were empty, but also that some were emptied. So what if the view out the back of the fanciest hotel in town looked down on some shanty area. Those people are easily relocated and "compensated" for their troubles. This is SimCity, where anything is possible with the bold and always forward thinking of the leader.