Fair Weather and Fireworks

You'll forgive the lack of a July 4th post, I hope, as I've only now come out from under the bed.  You'll say I'm not used to fireworks yet, just being back and right in the middle of fireworks season no less, and probably you'll be right, but mostly you'll be wrong.  Fireworks we had, in Astana, and quite spectacular they were.  The problem, and my reason for hiding, runs a bit deeper than that.

The weather has been fair these past few weeks, bordering on and running smack into foul. When it hasn't been sunny and warm, it's been not just rainy but downright tempestuous, with thunder, lightning, winds, hail and more. Soothsayers are calling for the apocalypse (again), and though I haven't expected to see ghastly men on horses and ghostly souls floating up to heaven with their worm-eaten corpses along for the ride, I have been waiting to turn on the news one of these days and find that California has finally fallen into the ocean, or that New York's been flooded for good (I don't watch the news, but if I did I'd decide not to just in order to avoid the risk).

And there are the days that the weather does cooperate.  And it's fireworks season. It wouldn't be so bad if it was only the professional fireworks shows that are sponsored by the local communities, businesses and whatnot.  But in America, of course, we're free to do anything we want up to and including buying illegal fireworks, lighting them off in our backyards, and unexpectedly taking out an eye, a hand, a tree, even our neighbor's garage. It's the unexpectedness of the fireworks that's had me hiding under the bed, and not just during the 4th. We're so patriotic around these parts that the fireworks started even before July did, with the last weekend in June leading up to the actual holiday and on into the next weekend. And then there are the leftover fireworks, the ones we frantically threw into a box and stashed in the garage because the police sirens that sounded far away at first suddenly seemed a hell of a lot closer and was that a flashing light I saw the next street over? So now it's the week after the 4th and we've all these fireworks just sitting around that'll never keep till next year so why not just light them up on a Wednesday night? It's been a gorgeous day, finally no rain, and I'm sure the neighbors won't mind.  And if anyone asks, it was just a drone.

So on the one day I finally come out from under my doorway (on an inner wall, far away from any gas lines, electrical outlets, and spontaneously combusting rhubarb chutney [no really, it's an actual news story, read it]) to enjoy the non-purgatorial weather the next thing I know a bottle rocket comes flying at my head from three houses over. And I thought I had enough trust issues with this weather! You see, it all started, well, about a year ago when I moved to Kazakhstan. The weather began as the typical springs I knew: blustery, rainy, sometimes cold, sometimes not. But when it started to get warm it just kept going and didn't seem as if it would ever stop. Fall came, or at least made an appearance before winter pushed it aside. I'm pretty sure winter was still there when I left, end of May. It sort of cohabitated with spring for a month or so, each vying to take control of the general weather pattern. And that was when my distrust of the weather began. And it hasn't gone away.

In those carefree days before I knew there could be any climate but Great Lakes-mediated temperate with a healthy dose of Western New York irascibility I went outside of a time without thinking about what I should wear. Except in the most dogged days of August the weather was rarely so warm that a minor wardrobe miscalculation could be a fatal mistake, and winter was, well, winter. You wore boots and a coat and made your mittens with you and knew as long as you didn't decide to take a nap in a snowdrift you were generally not going to become an icicle. Astana changed all that. Besides unbearably hot summers and murderously cold winters, the in-between-climes had one constantly scrambling for the right clothes, never knowing if the temperature in the morning would in any way resemble that of the same evening.

I began taking a sweater with me, even when the weather was predicted to be summery (summer, for home). I would sit in the sun waiting for the bus, sweating in my light jacket, and fear taking it off lest a late season squall would blow in and take half my fingers with it. I began not just to understand my local colleagues who always wore a sweater, even in summer, but to identify with them and to agree with them. I looked forward to returning to New York as an opportunity to enjoy the summer I missed last year. But I've found I can no longer trust the weather. Even a sunny morning has me looking for rain, and wondering whether I ought not bring a sweatshirt for a quick outing to the grocery store. No, I don't walk to the store anymore, or have to wait for the bus. But I'd hate to catch a chill between the car and the door.

So I think for now I'll just stay in my handy doorway, and wait out the worst of it. I've got a cardigan. Hopefully it doesn't flood. 

My Civic Duty

Well, it's officially over.  I can stop running.  Most people who skip the country do so for financial reasons.  Unfortunately, mine were not so lucrative.  Nor did I leave in order to escape from a dismal climate to a more tropical abode.  Not even to get away from a clingy family friend who just can never take a hint in social situations.  I tried not to bring it up, whenever possible.  A stigma like that can only lead to awkward conversations, averted gazes, whispers.  But it's over now.  I suppose I can talk about it.

For all of my adult life I'd avoided that most tedious of necessary duties, that most thankless of thankless appointments, that longest of remedial sitting activities, by which I mean Jury Duty.  Yes, somehow for eleven blissful years I had moved often enough among the counties of New York State that I never got pinned down to serve in a municipal or country court trial.

And then my summons came.  Twas almost a year ago now but I can still remember, with the haziness of something fairly uninteresting and not really worth remembering, the day my mother said to me over Skype that my jury summons had arrived.  Her exact words were (not really), "you'd better email them that you're out of the country or you're going to get arrested!"  (She likes to exaggerate [I'm nothing like her]).  At the time I was happy, even optimistic at the fact that I'd get at least a year's reprieve (surely it would take them a while before they realized I was back in the U.S. again).  All I needed to do was email a copy of my work visa to the court, and I was off scot free.

Or so I thought.

In a move I did not see coming at all, the court sent me a jury summons two weeks before I even left Astana!  And in even worse news, it was for a week when I'd already planned to be out of town for an author signing (you remember those; no? well, there are these people who write what are referred to as novels, and then these people write a fair number of novels and then readers [the ones who read the novels] like them, and the novel-writers [novelists, if you will] become famous and then when they publish a new book they go all over the country and read from their book, and talk about their book, and you can buy their book and they will sign their book.  delightful, truly), which was to last from Thursday of my jury week until the weekend.  Wonderful.

Despite what I'd heard about jury duty being tedious and taxing and all that, it turned out actually to be quite tedious and taxing and, well, just plain annoying.  For starters, it was repetitive.  Every day for a week?  Just wonderful.  Taxing, as well.  All those cell phone minutes spent on local calls!  And the way that it was run, why, you'd get the impression they had no idea how it was going to turn out from one day to another.  No wonder people with good, steady, well-paying jobs dread this sort of thing.  The time commitment is just dreadful.  All the time, I was watching the clock.  One week began to feel longer than the entire year I'd just spent larking off.  It really was as bad as everyone said.

And they just heaped one indignity on top of another.  It wasn't just the complete disregard for people's valuable time.  They also treated everyone like just a number, referring only to designated juror numbers for all announcements, as though we're no more different than cattle.  Cattle!  Every day I called into the number listed on my jury summons, and was subjected to the same pre-recorded voice, spewing out orders as though we were all just products on an assembly line that needed to be added in the correct order.  "These numbers go here.  These numbers be prepared to go here on no notice at all.  These numbers call tomorrow."  I really wanted to quit, after the second day.  It was interfering with my family life, causing stress around the interruption of my personal time, and had the possibility of derailing a trip that had already been paid for.  What a nightmare.  It really is a wonder that anyone calls in the second day, though I'd be willing to bet call completion goes down quite a bit after the first.

But I didn't give up.  I made the call every day until the announcement was that we were all dismissed.  I made a quick cheer (I couldn't help myself), and decided since I'd already gone ahead and gone on my trip I might as well enjoy it.  I feel, to this day, still a bit exploited by the whole experience, and may yet write a strongly-worded letter about making jury duty a more humane process.  I just may.  But for now, I will put my trepidations away, until the next time I have to do my civic duty.

Land of the Free

Even after nearly a month since I got back to the old ancestral abode, it's nice to know my consciousness that any minute could be my last, if not my heart, is still in Kazakhstan.  Culture shock is a funny thing, not least reverse culture shock.  From the realization that the light doesn't actually have to say walk for me not to get killed while crossing the road—I literally had to have my husband teach me how to cross the street again—to the sudden giddy knowledge that in this country you can literally pay someone to do just about anything.  And not only will they do it, but they'll be pleasant and happy and actually act like they want to do it.  Whether or not they actually do is, of course, irrelevant.

The best part about being back though?  The freedom.  You can do anything here! Be anything.  Say anything.  Only in America can you not only pay anyone to do just about anything, but you can have a job or not have a job.  You can choose to blame yourself for lack or surplus of said job, or blame someone else.  You can expect to go out and find a job, or expect someone else to find you a job.  Only in America, do citizens have the freedom to go jobless.  Entire families have the freedom to go hungry, live out of cars, and ask other people for the money to get by.  It's that easy!

The post-Communist world, for all its progress, certainly can't boast that.  In Kazakhstan, you're still forced to feed your family, even if you can't get a job.  The government will literally use its own money to feed you.  And if you're extra oppressed, the government might even go out of its way to get you a job.  True, you can still choose to have a ridiculous number of kids, but be aware that if you get pregnant, the government will force you to let it pay for your doctor visits up to and after the baby is born.  

Surely, it can't be all that bad, you ask?  Well, no, not entirely.  You still have the freedom to smoke all the cheap cigarettes (and they are cheap, thanks to lack of taxes and, I'm gonna assume, also regulations) you want and no one says a word.  Exercise is also relatively frowned upon, unless you're an Olympic athlete, so you shouldn't feel an inordinate amount of pressure to be fit.  But be aware, no matter how long you live, unless you die before you retire from your government-provided job, you will be forced to live off the government mandated pension fund that was put away for your future benefit.  So don't get too damn cocky.

Ah, to breathe the free air again. 

Mountains to Climb

Or, stepping out of the steppe (and into a wholly unfamiliar existence)

The other day, less than a week after my exciting 24-hour voyage back to good old Fairport, I did something totally new and, to be honest quite terrifying for me.  I attended a 5-year-old's birthday party with my husband and his son.  Apparently, this is a thing among the kids these days.  But rather than 10 screaming kindergartners running around some poor parent's backyard, with bursts of games, cake, and gift-opening mixed in, this particular instrument of parental torture was hosted at a place called Bounce-It-Out, which, as the name implies, is a warehouse full of various bounce houses and other climbing/jumping paraphernalia.  Waterboarding has nothing on the shrill ferocity of 15 kids who suddenly realize they're allowed to run around indoors.

But of course before we could actually attend said party, we first had to go buy a gift, which involved soliciting the dubious advice of our own little attendee.  Upon hearing of the fateful party and gift, I couldn't help but think of the musings of McSweeney's own Dr. Amy Fusselman on the subject of child gift-giving in her column, Birthday Parties Are Different Now.  Generosity, thy name is not kindergartner.  The boy was more concerned that his friend not receive something he himself did not already own, or that didn't fit some other arbitrary criteria he made up on the spot ("No, I don't want Christian to have a monster truck").  There is nothing children don't already have that they really want.  Or that doesn't cost more than what their parents have already spent on the party.

And of course, while the children run around and play games as though they've known each other forever (which, in their conception of time, they have) the parents who actually decided to stick around for the party mill about, each in their own little bubble of free space, rarely crossing orbits or making eye contact.  If they're anything like me—which is unlikely—they're all wondering what is going to go so wrong in the next 10-15 years that will turn these little social, semi-sociopathic, butterflies into the constrained social unicorns we all have become, and if it's really worth it.  Somehow I doubt that's what everyone else was actually thinking though.  As far as I can tell, alcohol was the popular subject parents broached when they did manage to utter a social word or two to each other.  Don't get me wrong, I agree wholeheartedly with them, but is a three-story-high, 170,000 square foot room full of air-inflated dirigibles really the venue for that kind of talk?

Possibly the biggest hit among party-goers was what they called an "indoor playground," but which for some reason reminded me of Rambo 4.  Maybe it was the dark, jungle-esque atmosphere of the bottom levels, and all the mesh netting everywhere.  And the screaming.  At least there were no flame throwers.  The other big attraction was the giant inflatable slide.  Over and over kids went up then down, up then down, up then down.  But ask them to take their clean laundry upstairs to their bedroom and suddenly they have lead feet.

I also got back just in time to catch the tail end of the school year.  Having grown up living out the "the country," I never got to experience that kind of school's out feeling you see on movies and tv shows where children, dismissed from class,  pack up their stuff and proceed to have all kinds of adventures walking home from school every day.  Where I come from, if you missed the bus, then you'd better home you run into someone going your way who has a car, because mom's working til 6 and otherwise you get to hang out in the school lobby til she comes to get you.  Here, the young one takes the bus in the morning but, living 1/4 mile from the school we have have the option of walking him in if we want, and we walk up to get him after school (except in the case of the kind of rainstorms that wash small animals down the streets).  And I say up because the school somehow manages to be built upon the only hill in the entire village, and yet still only 1/4 mile away.  I feel like an astronaut just returned to earth every time I try to climb that hill and realize that my steppe-atrophied legs an barely get me there.

I guess I've got a long way to go before I feel comfortable doing this kind of thing.  How far to Astana?

My Final Tour

Picture Merlin, from Disney's animated The Sword in the Stone, just back from Bermuda, coming to a screeching full stop, still in his Bermuda shorts and sunglasses, surfboard in hand, right in front of a bemused child-Arthur.  That is me.  And you are child-Arthur.  You'll forgive me, of course, for disappearing this past month, but I, too, was off on a whim.

I've been in serious training, you see, for something I'd been wanting to do for a long time, and finally, my moment arrived.  Just what was this whimsical and serious adventure?  I was training to participate in the national sport of Kazakhstan, which is of course competitive bus surfing.  How do I know this?  Just look around; it's happening everywhere, everyday (as with most sports, it gets better promotion and funding in the cities).  Like American youths watching and waiting in the wings, and then bingeing beneath their blankets at night in hopes of someday becoming the competitive eating stars they idolize, so the youth of Kazakhstan hone their skills on city streets  all over the country.

So I knew, with one month left before I leave this great country, possibly forever, that I had to get in on the Olympic-sized action.  I set off on a whirlwind tour, seeking out every opportunity I could find, every secret trick and technique, every great guru to emulate.  And then I returned to Astana, capital city and home of the great practitioners of the sport, to train.  It was intense.  It was grueling.  But it was worth it.

Competitive bus surfing is, as it sounds, a sport that takes place on public buses.  It is not, as you might be tempted to assume, performed on top of buses, but in the buses themselves, in the public standing areas, and it measures not just one's physical prowess and balancing skills, but also artistic interpretation and performance.  It combines the physical beauty of figure skating or gymnastics with the real proximity of danger you see in auto racing or American football.  A tumble in competitive bus surfing can cost  you more than style points; it could put you out of the action for months.

Bus conductors are generally recognized as the best at the sport, being required to stand on and navigate often crowded buses without the benefit of a handhold, all while counting change for fares.  These people sometimes perform their job sometimes with a kilo or more of change in pockets and purses on their persons, and you rarely see one miss a beat.  Conductors, being professional athletes are of course barred from competing on the national circuit in keeping with the old Olympic spirit.  Making the jump from paid athlete to amateur national sports icon (if you make it big) is tough, and few can succeed in this cut-throat sport.  Most aren't bitter about it, and can be great role models for training, but it's best to be circumspect if you decide to emulate a conductor's style.

What follows is the place I would show you pictures of different surfing styles as exemplified by the conductors who practice them.  But they wouldn't let me.  Turns out they really can throw you off of public buses.  Instead I will do my best to describe some of them to you.

1. In what is known as the gorilla technique, competitors swing from bar to bar, rarely letting their feet touch the floor.  This technique is more prominent among males, whose longer arms and fingers allow them to reach these bars, which are often out of reach for shorter bus riders.  This method is somewhat less prevalent among competitive bus surfers because, requiring much less balancing upon two feet, there are far fewer opportunities to score points.  When done right, however, this method can be a slam dunk when combined with the technique of the one-handed multi-task.
2. The SoCal boy, a personal favorite of mine, is perhaps most reminiscent of the sport's namesake—actual surfing—and relies on the technique of leaning into the turn.  Buses in Kazakhstan, unlike their more docile counterparts in European countries like the United Kingdom, rarely slow down for turns, and approach bus stops often at alarming rates of speed.  Competitors using this technique must master the concurrent skill of foresight, as one lean in the wrong direction at the wrong time can doom a competitor.  Extra points can be gained for the longest lean, and the bus surfing version of the slalom, completed during long runs in which buses weave in and out of traffic.
3. The moving target relies on constant movement by the competitor, usually in a forwards-backwards orientation to the direction of travel.  This method is considered by some to be the laziest, as mistakes can be covered in many cases simply by keeping your feet moving and not running into anyone.  The jackpot of this move is the dismount, though—the ability to arrive at the door at the exact moment the bus stops without a stumble and can often prove a game changer.

There are many breeds of municipal bus in each city, and none more diverse than in Astana, the new-old capital and ever-expanding dream city.  There are the cadillac lines, whose stateliness is only outdone by the plushness of the almost-new, most-new seats of all the buses (none of them were ever new, it's speculated).  There are the closer-to-microbus lines whose pluckiness and utter lack of shock absorbers make great training grounds, but can also prove hazardous to the the uninitiated.  And then there are the self-assured veteran lines, who will always be guaranteed usefulness and patronage, who go just fast enough to stay on schedule, and feel confident in their ability to get away with the occasional erratic move without too much grumbling by riders.  Whatever the variation, you will see the noble competitors practicing their moves, if you only know what to look for.

There is only one segment of society who scoffs at this great sport, but we also know better than to say anything because if we do it will mean an immediate end to birthday cards filled with money and all the ice cream we want.  I speak, of course, of the babushkis, the grandmothers of Kazakhstan.  These ladies are both wonderful and terrible, and also completely assured of their place in the nation's favorite sport.  Having the natural balancing ability of women, and the toughness only life under Stalin and a subsequent regime change can provide, these grandmothers of the nation are hands-down champions in the sport of bus surfing.  They also know this all too well, and having nothing to prove instead force the younger generation to give up their seats at will and just generally terrorize everyone.  And we love them for it.

Astana is for Lovers

Romeo had his poetry and pointy sword.  That guy from Hi Fidelity had his ridiculously oversized radio.  The prince had Rapunzel's long hair to climb up.  Here in Astana, they do things a little differently.  I've been living in this apartment building for almost nine months (for the amazing story of how I ended up here, see A Room of One's Own, parts 1, 2, and 3), so this is a behavior I've been studying for a while.  At first I was quite baffled by all the commotion, but I believe I've figured it out.

In Astana, as they say, men are men, and women are women.  And there's nothing women like more than being wooed from their 8-story windows on a brisk, -20-degree evening.  From the parking lot.  I say from the parking lot, but really once the sun goes down any reasonably horizontal space becomes fair game as parking in this city.  But the parking is essential to this form of courtship.  Like the brightly colored birds in the Amazon forests who dance around and build elaborate summer homes for their prospective brides, the men here in Astana use their overly elaborate car alarms to attract the attention of their lady-loves.

After all, who has not experienced strong, nay overwhelming, feelings when wakened from a deep sleep by the strident beeps, whoops, sirens, and even computer-generated verbal warnings of a car alarm.  I have to say, I feel especially strongly about the ones that repeat, endlessly, until someone physically comes to the car to turn them off.  The amorous men of this district can't help but attract some attention with these ingenious little devices.  And I have to say, the women in this apartment complex are rather spoiled for choice.  Come evening-time the lot is full of cars, to the point that no more can even drive through, much less actually park.  On any given night you can hear the amorous warbling of not less than five lovers a-wooing and a-waiting.  I can only guess that this complex houses some of the most beautiful women in Astana.

Cars in Astana, like in most cities, are a bit of a status symbol.  And the price of gasoline is exorbitantly low, so cars can reach enormous proportions here.  The bigger the status, the bigger the symbol, so to speak.  And these valuable pieces of pretension are always kept running, warmed up, one would imagine, to provide an inviting egress for the newly-wooed.  Also, as I understand, an already-running car provides a much faster getaway for that playful pastime they refer to here as bride-napping.  Personally I prefer the local term—alyp qashu—so quaint, so un-indicative of its actual meaning in English.  But the women know what they're getting into, I suppose.  One would imagine it's quite easy to judge a man's worth by the size of the car he drives.

And now that the weather is getting warmer, I can only imagine the courting will increase in intensity.  The days are much longer, so the men have more time for driving around and deciding on their targets come nightfall.  Not to mention it's much easier to stand outside and wait for your call to have its desired effect when the temperature is above freezing.  And bride-nappings are much more likely to succeed when one doesn't have to contend with completely iced-over roads and giant piles of snow preventing escape from already impossible-to-escape parking lots.

Nomads Exist!

This morning I decided to undertake a long-overdue task that I'd been avoiding all winter, namely because it was cold outside.  No, cold is an understatement.  It was hellishly cold.  That task was walking across one of the many bridges that criss-cross Astana.  Any tourist worth her salt knows that one's travels are not complete if no bridges have been traversed.  This brings me to the second condition that prevented me from bridge-walking for so long—finding the river.  Really, it's a bit of a charity to call the sluggish ditch meandering through the city a river (I think the reason this city even has a river is so that we can refer to it's two halves by the prosaic "right bank" and "left bank").  As in, "Oh, you live on the right bank?  That's so hipster.  I bet you were living there before the Soviets built Tselinograd, weren't you?"

I'm not ever sure the river is actually visible from the top of Bayterek, which, by the by, is by far not the highest point in the city, but if anything is to be espied from a high place, then it seems only fitting that all height-induced discoveries in this city should be made from the giant symbolic bird's nest.  Nevertheless, we did eventually find the river, and I would say that, while not the most spectacular bridge in the city, this one did have some interesting features.  It was near to the president's palace—ahem, residence— also had a lovely view of the giant glass pyramid that, as far as I can gather, was placed by aliens that the president summoned with his psychic powers.  Oh,  you haven't heard of the president's psychic powers?  I think it's a level-up you earn when you reach 15 years of being in power without any significant uprisings.

I now have reason to be happy that I waited so long to check this box on my Kazakhstan Tourist Travel Card (one more box and I get a free bottle of Kumis!), though, after what we saw on our walk.  I now have irrefutable proof that nomads exist.  Once thought only the stuff of legend, they yet walk (or rather, ride) among us.

At least he was riding against traffic.

It's difficult to say what, exactly, brought him out of the steppe and into the vast metropolis, but he obviously had something important to get to.  I, for one, wouldn't leave the pedestrian area and get anywhere near the driving lanes for any amount of kumis, shashlik, or manti.  But I suppose I take an outsider's view of things.

This brings me to an interesting point of Kazakh culture, though.  At one point while crossing the bridge, we encountered some military personnel, and I thought that perhaps they would stop this solitary nomad, tell him that horses didn't belong out on suspension bridges, especially anywhere near automobiles—how drivers in this city avoid fiery deaths everyday still eludes me—but they simply watched him pass.  Then I remembered that a horse can go nearly anywhere in Kazakhstan.  Why, once I even heard of a man on a horse walking right up to the presidential pal.. , erm, residence, and setting up camp in the presidential dining room.  I think the horse actually slept on the table.

In another account, a Kazakh man decided he wanted to go to the premier of The Dark Knight Rises, and didn't want to leave his horse out in the parking lot (I think it was asthmatic, and at that time of night the idling taxis raise quite a cloud of exhaust), so he took his horse into the theater with him.  There was a bit of a debacle when the horse's tail got caught in the escalator (they're still working out the lawsuit on that one), but no one seemed to mind when the horse—almost systematically—went around and sneezed into everyone's popcorn.  I suppose, given the choice, it's still better than having the teenager working behind the counter sneeze into it.

Yes, nomads exist, and they walk among us.