Almaty Bouldering

In June Irina and I happened to find ourselves in Almaty, Kazakhstan, so the logical next step was to find some boulders to play on. Since Almaty is nestled in the foothills of the Tian Shan Range which creates a natural border between China, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, we figured it wouldn’t be too hard to find some suitable rock. Through skilled use of the interweb and asking around we thought our best bet and the easiest to reach from town would be by Big Almaty Lake, about 20 miles from the city.

Step one was to secure transportation. As one might assume this was not necessarily easy. Since rentals cars do not exist there for all intents and purposes, our usual mode of transportation around the city was through friends or flagging a ride. Formal taxis were prohibitively expensive so the thing to do was to stand along the road with your hand out. When a car stoped we negotiated a price. It’s like hitching for a fee and it worked surprisingly well, but wasn’t going to work to get out to the boulders. Our only option was to rely on friends with a 4WD, which luckily wasn’t difficult for us to arrange.

The drive was only a mild adventure. After leaving Almaty, which is around 2,600 feet, we paid a few Tenge to enter Ile-Alatay National Park and headed up a huge river gorge. At some point along the way the road turned to dirt and the 4WD came in handy. The most notable thing about the drive was the number of yurts that we passed, including one with a Mercedes parked in front. Postmodernism can be a wonderful thing. I mean just because you have a yurt doesn’t mean that you don’t want to roll in a fine German sedan.

When we eventually made it to the lake, we were at 8,500 feet and 5 miles from Kyrgyzstan border surrounded by beautiful snow covered mountains. To the right of the lake there was an obvious huge boulder field. I proceeded to run around finding things to climb. If I would have been blindfolded and teleported to the boulders, I would have sworn that I was in the Sierras. The rock was high quality alpine granite that felt quite familiar. I didn’t have that much time so I settled on a few nice looking lines. The rock cleaned with only a few strokes of a toothbrush and I was rewarded with quality moves in an amazing location.

I have never been particularly wedded to grades, but they seemed even more absurd there. I decided to created a new system based on the number of layovers that one has. We departed from Los Angeles, changed planes in Chicago, Manchester, Istanbul, and Kiev before eventually arriving fourteen time zones away. So the problems I climbed would be graded Layover-4 or L-4. Besides, jetlag always adds to the difficulty. On the way down we stopped at a roadside stand and drank Kumis made by a local Kazakh. It was quite tasty.

Things To Do In Kazakhstan:
Go bouldering.

Drink Kumis (fermented horse milk) and Shubat (fermented camel milk).

Eat the Kazakh national dish beshbarmak.

Speak Russian or travel with someone who does.

Run like hell when crossing the street.

See the golden man statue.

Things Not To Do In Kazakhstan:
Attempt to keep up when drinking vodka with Russians or Kazakhs. The Kazakh national dish is not as good when regurgitated.

Honestly that’s the only big one.

More photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/theecstasyofhistory/sets/72157606157656193/

Broken Water Filter

This is culmination of months of decay. It started out with a slow leak and gradually got bad enough we had to turn it around so it sprayed outside.

The Economy

My sister asked me write her an email giving a few reasons that Obama isn’t a socialist. She was getting sick of her co-workers in Temecula (aka the new Orange County) sending her soundbites from Foxnews. This is what I came up with off the top of my head. Sorry for the rant. I usually confine my rants to snarky one liners on my facebook status update.

1) He’s a capitalist (this is the big one really). He does not want to
nationalize industry (Wilson nationalized the steel industry during
World War One), nor does he not want to collectivize production. I do
believe that these are crucial components of Marxism. Not to point
fingers, but George W. nationalized a number of banks last week.

2) The purpose of all taxes is to redistribute wealth. Building
infrastructure, for example, needs to be financed. Seeing that most
SUV’s aren’t designed to drive off road, I’m sure most people
don’t
object to pooling resources for this one. Nor do I think this makes our
country socialist.

3) The United States has been socialist for good long time. Risk, writ
large, is shared by all tax payers while profits are privatized. This is
a peculiar kind of socialism, but one that serves the direct purpose of
taking our money and handing it to a small group of very rich when the
decision that they made result in economic crisis (i.e. when a firm is
“too big to fail”). This economic crisis is certainly not the first
time
that this has occurred. Other examples range from myriad other subsidies
and direct handouts to business, to firms like Walmart not offering
“part-time” employees health insurance and then helping them apply
for
Medicaid. Yes, a peculiar kind of socialism. Taking a comment that Obama
made about wanting to “spread the wealth around” and suggesting that
this makes him socialist is rather peculiar when one considers that the
tax policies of W. have directly benefited the richest corporations
while real wages have stagnated or fallen over the last eight years.
What W. did was a large scale redistribution of wealth that took money
from the majority and gave it to the minority of super rich (with the
thinking that they could make better use of it than us, supposedly by
investing it). Economic policies such as this do not remove the hand of
government regulation and replace it with the “invisible hand” of the

market (aka GOD… Don’t take my word for it, read The Wealth of
Nations. It’s quite good). What these policies do is use government to
aid in the creation of wealth and then make sure it stays in the hands
of the few, a kind of corporate socialism.

This a long way of saying that if Obama wants to use tax money to do
things like build roads and give children health insurance, this is
helping to provide for the basic needs of society. Furthermore, his tax
plan will not result in a massive redistribution of wealth towards the
majority.

4) For fuck’s sake, one of his chief economic advisers is Warren Buffet.
I haven’t seen him out throwing Molotov’s from the barricade for long
time.

This is better than anything I could write

I stole this from a friends blog and it is more succinct that writing an entry on the economic system.

My Birthday

I thought long and hard about how I wanted to spend my 30th birthday. My main goal was to being having new experiences somewhere new. That was accomplished as we were in Istanbul. We had seen a good amount of Istanbul, but we hadn’t gone to a bath yet and a nice day of relaxation sounded like an enjoyable birthday. After breakfast and a little walking around, we made our way to one of the historic tourist baths. Once inside we were led to separate changing and bathing areas. The routine is that one lays in an incredible hot room for awhile, gets the scrub down, and then cools off. The sauna room was a bit hot for me, but in the end it felt nice and the scrubbing took off enough skin to make my arms look like they had wet newspaper on them. After a nice cool shower I enjoyed some tea and juice. Although a little more intense than I expected, it was an interesting and not an unenjoyable experience.

After relaxing in the room for a spell tying to replace some of the fluids that I sweated out in the bath, we walked down so I could get a shave before we went out for dinner. I have always wanted to get a shave at a barber shop with a straight razor; it is a lost art in the states and very common in Istanbul. Once at the barbers it started simple enough. He applied shaving cream with a brush and proceeded to give me a nice close shave. After a once over, apricots arrived and everyone in the shop shared the tasty fruit. He then offered me a cigarette. I regret not taking it for the photo alone, but I thought it difficult to manage to smoke while getting a shave. After our break he applied lather and gave me a second closer shave. As he was wrapping this up I looked over and saw a bowl of hot wax that he was stirring. I thought to myself, hmm, that’s funny, someone must be coming in after me because that cannot possibly be for me. Ohh how wrong I was. First he applied it liberally to my cheeks and my nose. I think I was in such a state of shock that all I could do is sit there and stare. I almost cried though when he put wax on the end of two Q-tips and shoved them up my nose. At this point I can safely say that I know the pain that women endure when they get waxed. It hurt so bad I thought my nose was going to break when he pulled them out. Everything after this point is a blur, but we made it to dinner and finished the evening on a terrace bar over looking the Bosphorus.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/theecstasyofhistory/sets/72157606402708668/

Loyalty

So I got hired to do some research for a labor historian at UCLA this summer, but in order to work for the state of California I had to sign this:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of California; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter.”

I can only imagine the possible scenario of being called into action in defense of the motherland while I’m reading crusty old documents in the archive. Moreover, do I get combat pay if I called into action?

Things Not to Do

This is the first post about Almaty. It won’t be the last. I found it appropriate to begin with a few simple words of advice. DO NOT TRY TO KEEP UP WHEN DRINKING VODKA WITH RUSSIANS (OR KAZAKH’S).

Beshbarmak, the national dish of Kazakhstan, does not taste as good the second time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Besbarmak

Religion

While in Istanbul Irina and I made a concerted effort to see as much of the city as we could. One day we decided to venture out to the conservative neighborhood of Üsküdar to check out its mosques. A number of them are quite significant architecturally and are away from the crowds in Sultanahmet. Our friend Bilge, in a list of things to do in the city, warned us not to kiss in public there and the trusty Lonely Planet gave a similar warning. We headed the warning and Irina dressed conservatively; her shoulders were well covered. As the afternoon progressed to walked up the hill going into one mosque then another. Tourists are welcome to go into mosques as long as its not prayer time. You just take off your shoes and women cover their shoulders and their head with a scarf. Occasionally Irina would leave her sunglasses on and look all Jacky O which amused me to no end. When we finally made it to the last mosque on our little self-guided tour, a man was sitting in the small courtyard. He asked if we wanted to go in. We said yes and he ran over to get the keeper to unlock the door. This one for some reason had a lock on an inner door. A man presented himself shortly and we made our way into the main room. The walls were absolutely amazing. They were covered in 300 year old hand made tile. I have always liked ceramics and really appreciated the time and skill that it took to make the tiles. The man who was sitting in the courtyard insisted on showing us around and even took out the mosque’s copy of the Qur’a which had beautifully printed color pages. It didn’t look too old, but it was quite impressive nonetheless. After we talked for awhile, his English was workable, he asked us if we were Catholic or Protestant. Not wanting to rock the boat too much I simply said I wasn’t religious. He replied “not Catholic, not Protestant. Atheist.” I nodded yes. This fact confused him since the United States was a Protestant country and all. When it was Irina’s turn and she replied the same. This made perfect since to him since Russia was godless and all. So here we are in a mosque telling our new friend that we are atheists. I was rather amused. The man was evidently not too upset by our proclamations as he decided to take us on a tour of all the other mosques in the neighborhood, at least a few we hadn’t been to. He even took us into a madrasah that was being renovated. Eventually we made our way down the hill and he asked us to take tea with him. We ducked into the courtyard of another mosque and joined about 20 men sitting around drinking tea before prayer. As the three of us were enjoying our tea, our guide decided to announce to the men around us that we were atheists. Their English was quite bad, so all we could do is nod yes. I felt a little uncomfortable, but they didn’t seem to care much. As we sat there the imam began the call to prayer and we got up and left for the ferry home. We kissed on the ferry to make up for lost time.

The Hustle

Navigating a city the size of Istanbul, about 11 million people live in the city, surprisingly wasn’t very difficult. There is a good tram system with two funiculars, buses, and more ferries than you can shake a stick at. One afternoon while we were enjoying tea above the Bosphorus I counted 14 ferries crossing at the same time. As a tourist the main task to accomplish is figuring out how much money you should be spending for something. The next task is figuring out how to get what you want for how much you should be paying for it. Most of the time this just meant leaving the tourist haven of Sultanahmet and engaging in a bit of bargaining. We only had trouble a few times. Once we were overcharged at a restaurant. Another time the waiter “added” the bill wrong. We called him on it and he changed it. On my birthday the trams had stopped running so we caught a cab home. By this point we knew the city well and were fully aware that he was driving in circles. By the time he almost missed the turn on the absolutely longest way he could drive us back we started giving directions. Finally we just made him pull over. I would have given him half of what was on the meter if I would have had the change, but I didn’t. Generally though commercial exchange was good natured. People were out to make a living would take as much money for something as you were willing to give them. The defense was knowing how much you should be paying for something.

Probably the funniest experience in this department was with some of the young men shining shoes on the bridge. One afternoon we were walking behind one such young man when his brush dropped off the back of his stand which he was carrying. Feeling good natured, I picked it up, got his attention, and handed it to him. He was ingratiated and proceeded to give me a free shine to repay my good deed. He spoke a bit of English and we chatted a bit. Towards the end of cleaning my skate shoes he told me that his daughter was in the hospital and requested a bit of change. It was pretty obvious that the hospital bit wasn’t true, but I gave him a few lira. The next week we were walking in the same spot when another young man’s brush fell off of his kit as he walked by me. Without thinking I picked it up and handed it to him. He too professed his gratitude, shook my hand, and wanted to repay me for my good deed. We were in a hurry and I said no, but had a difficult time prying my hand free. After the exchange, the second time a brush had fallen in front of me, I asked Irina if she thought this was the hustle to get tourists to get their shoes shined. We both thought it was so, but two time could still be a coincidence right? We continued crossing the bridge as we talked then went under the road in a pedestrian tunnel. As we emerged on the other side of the deserted tunnel a young man crossed in front of me and dropped his brush. We confidently walked past without saying a word, but I should have paid him for confirming our theory. I actually found this pretty damned creative, really funn, and all in good fun.

Back on the Weblog

I’ve been off the Blog for awhile now. I was busy with work and generally uninspired to write about trying to write my dissertation. I made some progress with the diss then went to LAWCHA in Vancouver to take part in a panel. After visiting some friends in Seattle on the way home, Irina and I departed for our big summer trip. We flew to Istanbul then made our way to Kiev and Almaty. My goal is to tell various stories from the trip intermixed with reports from an exciting summer of work… Oh, BTW, I turned 30.