tuesdays not in turkmenistan - long gone

Wait, there hasn't been a post in nearly 18 months. And I haven't been in Turkmenistan in over two years. Why this? Why now? I am long gone and I will not be going back. At this point, nearly all the other expats I worked with are no longer in Turkmenistan and I have minimal contact with anyone still there.

I have always pulled my punches with this blog. There was always a reluctance to write too critically about any location I was in, especially when I was in Turkmenistan (though the Turkmen President falling off his horse was too good to not write about). After all, it is essentially North. Korea. Lite. Perhaps I should say "was" since I haven't been there for two years, but my former colleagues have assured me it is as dysfunctional as ever.

Doing a quick check and review of an older post of mine on Turkmenistan's place in various rankings around the world, not much has changed. The country is still pulling in awful marks from essentially everyone:
* Human Rights Watch (Turkmenistan profile link)
* Freedom House (Turkmenistan profile link)
* Reporters Without Borders (Turkmenistan profile link)
* Transparency International (Turkmenistan profile link)
Yep, still not a great place when the only places you beat are Eritrea and the actual North Korea (as per the Reporters Without Borders report).

Turkmenistan's great struggle is not that it is terrible, but that it will continue to be terrible. It sits atop the fourth largest natural gas reserves (direct link to .pdf of the 2015 BP Statistical Review and go to page 20). But all this wealth will not reach the vast majority of the people while it has such a petty and vainglorious leader. Yes, petty enough to insist upon a yacht as a bribe. This was actually semi-openly discussed among expats in at least one of the client offices while I was there. It was never much discussed in front of Turkmen nationals since you could never be certain who actually supported the president as opposed to those who paid lip service to his ego-centrism. And with visas so difficult to come by and deportations so legitimate a threat, the trend was towards discretion around locals.

In the past, I was pulling my punches about the potential of the country. I laid out two main stumbling blocks to developing the country's resources: distribution of wealth and available labor. The labor issue is straightforward enough. People there are not well educated and the nature of the education they receive is very dogmatic and rigid. There are gains, but people will be educated only just enough to perform the work needed, not well enough to create what one might call a creative class. In its current form, the education system there will never lead to an innovative or entrepreneurial society. Additionally, Turkmen nationals need an exit visa to leave the country and get a foreign education. This further restricts which type (and how loyal) of a person is allowed out. As for the distribution of wealth, well, this report sums it up well when it says:
"Twenty percent of the Agency’s revenues go into the State budget. The other 80 percent disappear into the murky, shadow economy that President Berdymukhamedov has built though a legal, but highly unethical, system of law that he created under the noses of western officials, but which has never been analyzed, until now."

With leadership like that, Turkmenistan will never prosper. It will improve in some ways, perhaps many ways, but it will fall deeply short of its potential as long as it is led by such a petty and insecure person.

saturdays in sakhalin: hurricane?

Well, at least one outfit is calling yesterday's storm that, though I would call it a really windy storm. Here are some videos of some of the destruction wrought on Friday evening. the worst of the storm seemed to roll through from about 18:30 to 20:30 which happened to include the time of the day I walk home from the bus stop. Perhaps it would have been advisable to duck into the hotel bar near my bus stop and wait things out, but I wanted to get home so quick-stepped it through the mayhem. The wind was actually strong enough that I was forced to stop at one point, turn sideways, and lean into the wind to keep from being blown over. Perhaps it was a hurricane.

This storm did seem very out of character or at least I hope it was out of character because the city was not very well prepared, especially in terms of tree trimming and securing temporary construction siding. Lots of branches and metal sheeting were on the streets. One of the streets I walk along had broken windows on about half of the cars too. The real kicker was that I saw three different bus stops that had been blown over. Good times for being indoors, which is where I went and stayed Friday evening. My building seems to have been unscathed except for some minor exterior damage and some rain gutter getting ripper off. The proprietors of the shop next to my apartment were not so lucky. Not the best picture, but this tree is a good 15 inches across:

saturdays in sakhalin: where winter just won't let go

I arrived back in Sakhalin a couple of weeks ago and the snow had melted, the air was warm (or at least warm-ish) and I even ran the AC one night. It looked like Spring had arrived. Nope, not even close. The next weekend, a storm rolled through town, cold enough to make me consider bringing the long underwear back into the wardrobe rotation. The storm even dumped some snow up on the top of the nearby mountains, though all we got at town-level was wind and bitterly cold sideways rain. Being the stubborn person I am, I have yet to purchase an umbrella and my decision has not left my too terribly soaked yet. (Hey, I made it through rainy season in Gabon without an umbrella so it'll take a lot more than that to force my hand now.) Since the storm, the weather has been holding relatively steady just above freezing and with enough wind thrown in that it cancels some of the chopper flights up north. This isn't a problem in town, but it really messes up the offshore work.

For now, I am waiting to see when Winter will release its grip. It needs to be soon since we are headed into "Summer Projects" season, a time of uninsulated shipping containers, surface work free of sea ice, and platform maintenance. All this is contingent on non-freezing temperatures or else we're going to have some problems.

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.

saturdays in sakhalin: where am i?

Short version: city = Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk; island = Sakhalin
Slightly longer version: People often refer to this place as simply "Sakhalin" and while that's sort of correct, that's not actually the name of the city. I'm in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the largest city on the island of Sakhalin. The island is part of Russia's Far Eastern Federal District, though that was not always the case. It is worht noting that the Far Eastern Federal District is not part of Siberia. It's even further east as the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Federal_District>Siberian Federal District is to the west of this region. So yes, there is a place past Siberia, though it really depends on what direction you're travelling.

Why are we all here? For the eminently originally named Sakhalin-I and Sakhalin II projects. What can I say, people like functional names. Though apparently all the fields in the Sakhalin-I project are named after birds. Probably tasty birds.

actual first impression

I need to amend my previous post. My first impression upon arrival to Sakhalin was that there was only one conveyor belt in the baggage claim area. This was reminiscent of the airport in Turkmenbasy, Turkmenistan. It's quite a nice looking airport, see here and here. However, the Turkmenbasy airport has a single very long baggage claim conveyor. It snakes around an entire large room that must be close to 50 meters long. It baffles me why they'd make it like that when they could have easily had two (or more) shorter conveyors which would of course mitigate the problems whenever the conveyor needs maintenance. Anyway, that was such a typically Turkmenistan thing, to have something be deliberately fancy for the sake of fanciness (or perhaps an attempt at some obscure world record) that was ultimately not very practical.

Back to the topic at hand, the lonely single conveyor in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk airport (IATA code is UUS for reference). This seems to have been borne more out of necessity given how tiny that room is relative to the number of passengers it is attempting to accommodate. Also, the passengers displayed the same poor baggage claim etiquette as nearly everywhere else I've been which is that they crowded around the belt and did not let anyone else in to reach their bags. This didn't really matter to me because my bags did what they nearly always do which is arrive almost last (but never get lost!) so they crowds had finally thinned by that point.

Bonus picture: Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk airport.

our long trans-national nightmare is over

I'm back. Now from Russia with Love. It works on two whole levels. Additionally, the title is an adapted version of the esteemable Gerald Ford's inauguration speech. Or perhaps that one classic speech from George W. Bush. It's sometimes hard to tell those great orators apart.

My days in Turkmenistan and its censorship of blogger.com and terrible bandwidth are over. I'm now in the fair city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russia, a place seemingly near the edge of the Earth, which you'd think would be hard to find on a spherical body but yet here we are. I have been here nearly two weeks now. First impressions: there is snow, lots of snow and many of the cars are right-hand drive which is presumably a function of the the island's proximity to Japan. A bonus observation: I have heard fireworks every night I have been here, not just last night. The locals seem to really dig blowing things up. More to come soon. Maybe.

tuesday in turkmenistan: neutrality monument (and a brief tour)

Finally! I have been in Ashgabat the last few days and a colleague who grew up in the city took me out on Friday after work to see some of the sights. One of our stops was the Neutrality Monument, formerly known as the Arch of Neutrality. It had been a place I wanted to visit since early on in my time here. It used to be in the city center, but was moved a couple years ago to its present location at the edge of the city. The construction company in charge of its move has some nice photos on their website. I took photos of my own, available upon request.

We went up to the observation deck near the top. There was also a museum level, but since we were there after 5pm, the museum was closed. The area is also surrounded by a nice park. Beyond the park, the area is part of the city where they have tried, with varying levels of success, to plant mass amounts of pine trees. This tree planting occurs in every city, but is particularly large in scale in Ashgabat. They are trying to green this desert landscape and it isn't easy. Regarding the monument, it is a bit absurd, though one could argue most monuments are absurd, especially from an outside perspective. I found the elevators that go up the legs to be quite interesting. The three legs are angled and two of them have a mechanical lift that goes up and down it like a very steep trolley. The third leg has actual stairs, though the stairs were closed during our visit. The lift is something like a cross between an elevator and an escalator (and it has no air conditioning). It also costs a reasonable 1 manat (about $0.35) per person. It's not clear if the stairs would have been free.

My colleague had a whole list of places to go, but some road closures prevented us from visiting some of them. In particular, we were turned away from the world's largest indoor Ferris wheel. It shall have to wait for another day. Instead, we went to a local park with statues of past historical figures from the country and did a driving tour of much of the city. There is a peculiar propensity to make official buildings in the shape of something related to its purpose. For example, the dentistry school has a curved top shaped a bit like a molar. The telecommunications building has the shape of something where you could hang a phone. The oil and gas building is shaped much like a cigarette lighter. The medical building has some twisting shapes similar to the serpents in the Cadeceus symbol.

If you live in Ashgabat, then you see a dramatically different place than what existed 10-15 years ago. Like many capital cities, much of the money from the country flows this direction. New construction abounds and many of the places we saw did not exist 10 years ago. This is what visitors see, or at least what they see first, when coming to Turkmenistan. A city of boundless construction and record-setting numbers of marble buildings. This image contrasts very sharply with what the rest of the country looks like and what another colleague told me a couple days ago. He said that outside of Ashgabat, people are not as happy. The money goes one way, towards the capital, and there are not rows of gleaming marble buildings in the rest of the country. Not yet, though probably not ever.

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.

a post (sort of) about nothing in particular

I have been a largely absentee blogger. Aside from these two falsely-dated “tuesdays (not) in turkmenistan” posts, not much has crossed here in the past few months. This has largely been a practical problem. Due to some changes at work, many websites are now censored by the local telecom. This includes the blogger.com domain where this is hosted. Amusingly enough, I can access blogger through my Android app, but by interest in posted through my thumbs is quite limited. However, there are ways around this practical problem, mostly involving VPNs and other TLAs (three letter acronyms) that I do not fully understand. The other part of the problem has been one of energy and motivation. With enough interest, I am sure I could be posting from work. However, I have clearly not been doing so since I have not had the interest. Nothing new under the sun to write about? Perhaps. Spending my free time in other ways? Perhaps. Simply tired of blogging? Much more likely. Will this upcoming rotation see renewed blogging vigor? Meh. It’s nearly midnight here and I need to go board soon.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, I am posting this from the Istanbul international lounge. Very nice. Very, very nice. Frankfurt should take some lessons from this place. And SFO should hang its head in deep, deep shame since its lounge is a horrid joke.

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.

Headed home

I am sitting in the Ashgabat airport about to start my journey home.  This is a very good thing because I'm exhausted though that may be partially related to sitting in an airport at 2AM local time.  Nonetheless, this rotation has felt a lot longer than 8 weeks. Sure I spent a few days in London on the front end, but it has been a hectic end of year push trying to get bids out the door and revenue booked.

One of the little joys of flying home is the food. The food at home is of course great but I actually mean the airline food. I have a strange affinity for airline food and they serve these locally made wraps on the Ashgabat-Baku leg of the trip that are quite tasty. It's not the standard Lufthansa fare which I believe I have now tasted the full range of, or at least the options available to us mere mortals in economy class.  Plus the lounge in Frankfurt in terminal C when going home is very good. Definitely superior to the uninspired sausages in the terminal B lounge. 

Anyway, boarding soon. And tired of typing on my phone.

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.

earthquake, barely

There was an earthquake last night. It wasn't much of one as my first thought was that someone had hit the side of the building. Plus, it was far less rumbling than when the train goes by. However, it was distinctly an earthquake in that way everything moves that is hard to describe to people who have never been in one. My confirmation came this morning when several people mentioned it so it was obviously not the train or a building issue. Checking out the USGS site, it might have been this quake in Iran as nothing else listed remotely matches. However, that is a long way off in the eastern part of Iran, nearly in Afghanistan. It is possibly the same quake, and the timing sort of works out as well, but the distance is a bit much for me to believe we would feel something like that out here in Balkanabat.

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.

leaving on a jet plane

Leaving on a jet plane, still got that A380 route. (Sing it to the Peter, Paul and Mary tune.) Lufthansa is still running the A380 on this route despite now being on what I call their Winter schedule. Last year, they switched to the 747 in November. This year, according to the lady who checked me in, they will try to run the A380 to SFO until January. The route is popular enough that they are (were?) looking for 10 volunteers to take tomorrow's flight instead. The offer was rather generous and if I was not meeting up with a friend at a set time and place, then I would have more seriously considered their offer. As it is, I'm ditching the lounge soon and will go board in 10 minutes. See everyone in about two months.

tuesdays not in turkmenistan: home so briefly

Whelp. I'm in California, but leaving again on Saturday. Another short-lived trip back, this time for a mix of travel and visa reasons. I will be spending a few days in London before returning all the way back to Turkmenistan. And my return to TUM is essentially fixed due to my visa expiration which is coming soon. I need to be in the country when it expires so they can process the extension with my passport.

headed home again

I'm headed to the airport in about two hours. Hopefully, it will be less of a silly season than what was going on when we landed this afternoon from Balkanabat. I'll be in the Bay Area only about a week-and-a-half before heading out again, though I'll be stopping over most likely in London before a full return to Turkmenistan. Anyway, touching down at SFO in about 27 hours.