More S'pore

We work in the MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore) building – for the first three days we have the 'Penthouse', which means gorgeous view during the breaks and daylight in the room while we work. That's a wonderful thing. We (I) generally have lunch at one hawker stall or another – the food is good, and cheap. Many delegations prefer the air-conditioned restaurants of the area, in which you pay between four and six times as much for the same food. I prefer to spend that money on clothes (not usually, but in this case). I'd noted that an additional suit and a few shirts would come in very handy (if not constitute an actual necessity) and so head out straight to the tailor at the end of our first day (long working days here, so I do not go to the hotel to change, or pass 'Start' – I go directly there. Which is good, because he would have closed 15 minutes later. In this case, he closes 30 minutes later, because that is how long it takes to take measurements and for us to haggle about what I shall order, and to what price. In the end, I spend the per diem for both weeks and then some on two suits, both with an extra pair of pants (bicycle commute and all) and four shirts. I'm supposed to come in for a fitting Wednesday evening (or Thursday during the lunch break if we work too long).

On the way back to the hotel I meet one of my favorite people in the FATF crowd, and am roped into a brief visit of an open-air bar at Boat Quay. One beer, that's all, while talking shop for a while.

Wednesday we do the fitting – the suits fit great, as do the shirts, I take all of them along right away. The vest is way too wide (funny that) and I'll pick it up on Friday (or if I can't make it he'll send it by mail, which is in fact how it turns out).

I take a class of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at Evolve therafter. Thursday evening I'm out with a couple of people at Boat Quay again, though I quit the party pretty early. There was the hope of meeting an old acquaintance from way back again who is currently stationed in Japan but in Singapore today – but we found out about it too late, and so the opportunity passes.

I'm still happy to be back in the hotel at a reasonable time – we're just sitting around a table talking all day, but it's still exhausting work (as usual, the Fund has brought several people while I'm here without backup). And it's the second week of that, without a proper weekend in between (partially my fault, I know, I know).

Almaty – Kuala Lumpur – Singapore

this leg I'm flying business class, which is nice, though with Air Astana (as admittedly with most carriers) this does not equate to a good night's sleep. And while they are able to check my baggage through to Singapore, I am only issued a boarding pass for the first leg. As I stand in line at the transfer desk in KL (and a long line it is), I notice my vision becoming somewhat blurry. This is the telltale sign of an oncoming migraine, which begins to get a grip on me as I slowly make my way to the transfer desk where a very small crew of very unhurried people politely assist a queue of people about 50 yards long, releasing people at the front of the queue at precisely the rate the queue is growing. Which tells me that with even one more person there (or just a tiny bit speedier work), there would be no line at all...

But this way it takes 45 minutes until I'm being told that Silk Air is not represented at this transfer desk (which has a long list of airlines it handles, which I'm not currently in a position to read), and that I should go to the 'other' transfer desk (which clearly advertises serving only two airlines, neither of which I'm with). But at least there is no line there, and I am told (after a brief huddle and a phone call) that Silk Air will issue my boarding pass at the gate...

This might have been funny on another day, but I'm not in a funny mood. KL to Singapore takes no time at all, and I'm being picked up from the airport again. Changi airport in S'pore is probably the easiest airport to get around and away from that I know of, but in my current state I am immensely grateful for this bit of overblown luxury.

Officially, Check-In time at the hotel isn't until 2 pm (it is now 10 in the morning). I mention my migraine at the reception, ease into an easy-chair and let time do its passing thing while they 'see what we can do'. And I'm in bed by 11 local time. Phew.

I sleep until 4 pm, and feel considerably better (if not quite well). So I go out to get dinner, and my bearings. Singapore evidences Singaporean weather – hot and humid, as usual. I find the tailor again where I had shirts made the last time I was here (and a colleague of mine had a suit made, which has had me thinking about that same project ever since), though the whole building is closed on Sundays. I also find the 'Evolve' Mixed Martial Arts gym again, in which I've trained the previous times I've been in Singapore (also closed on Sunday afternoons, not that I'd be in a condition to take advantage of any of its offers). I have dinner at Lau Pak Sat, which is the Singaporean take on a food court. A large corrugated iron hall, inside of wh

ich there are over a hundred little food hawker stalls with a bunch of tables. It's not closed off and therefore not air-conditioned, with a bunch of fans doing little more than comp

ensate for the additional heat produced by the food production. The food on offer is 'regional' in the larger sense – Indian, Thai, Malay, Indonesian, Chinese – you name it. If you want 'Pig Organ Soup', there's a stand here selling it. I go with considerably more conventional (from a Western point of view) fried noodles-with-something-or-other, and even find a funky local desert for afterwards. A lot of it is shaved water ice, but the mango juice poured over it (and seeping into it) makes it nice – the corn at the bottom I'm ambivalent about, the kidney beans I could have done without.

I meet the Canadian delegation here, but decline the offer of beer. No, really, thanks but no, thanks.

Almaty – the End

Friday morning is not a happy experience. But I knew this was coming before going to bed, in fact suspected it the moment we started out on toasts. While I – slowly – make myself presentable again, I take some more headache medication with a lot of water, then head downstairs for a smaller-than-usual breakfast (stomach a little queasy) and coffee.

Our morning session starts on time, but moves a little slowly. I am thinking through a thick cotton fuzz in my head. Once again I realize that the translation breaks come with thinking breaks, which is actually a good thing. I am functional enough to pull this through, and happy about it. We're done with the easy stuff, some of the questions that remain are conceptually difficult. But I've got it together enough to make sense. Really, this could have been worse. I am thinking. The way this is going, if I'm out of here noonish, I can go for a small lunch and a long nap at the hotel, and should be in a state that allows me to head out for a hike with enough daylight left in the day to hike a few hours – maybe continue some in the dark if I'm in easy terrain or on an easy path, and just see how far I get, make camp there and return the next day. Should be good. I drink a lot more water and some more coffee during the morning session, and the level of my hangover subsides enough that I can feel I can think clearly again – even if I'm still trying to avoid sudden movements.

And just in time for our exit meeting, too. My counterparts from last night are all present, and seem entirely switched out. Gone are the jokes and the easy camaraderie – clearly, this is a serious matter. “Work is work, and Schnapps is Schnapps” is what we used to say in Germany (where by and large people will be impressed by how much you can drink only if you can drink that much and show up for work the next day). (I still think being impressed by how much self-inflicted pain people are willing to induce through alcohol is pretty juvenile, but there you go.) And then maybe they're a bit hung over, too. My highest ranked counterpart gives no impression of that at all, however – this is a pretty shrewd operator, and he's entirely switched on. So as I present what we set out to do, he follows along with the help of the draft documents he just received, and peppers my presentation with a couple of insightful questions.

And I now get to reap the rewards of having conceived and run this as a truly collaborative effort – every one of these questions I've been asked before by one or more of his subordinates, so that it seems as though I've been prescient. Laying out everything we've covered this week, I realize how true it was when I said, at the end of pretty much every day after the first, that 'we've covered a lot of ground'. It's quite an impressive amount of work we've done, and it's conceptually coherent and made to fit the local circumstances, it's been adapted across all of their sectors of supervision, and what steps need to happen next is clear not just to me but to them as well.

Great work. So good, in fact, that their top guy insists that they must take me out to lunch. They also bring up again what came up last night, though at the time I thought it was just a fanciful idea, the fact that their supervision unit is going on a 'retreat' tomorrow, it being a high holiday (so of course you spend it away from your family? Wtf?), and that they really want me to join as well. There is talk of a car picking me up from the bottom of the mountain in the late morning where I want to hike because they also don't want to spoil my hike. But first, they take me out to lunch and that's what does it.

First, this is meant to be a fancy lunch, so it's got to be in a fancy place, so we have to organize a driver and head out to the foothills of the mountains – it's a really nice place to have lunch, but we start eating at a time I had planned to be sleeping off the rest of the previous night's effects. And, vodka is brought out again...

This is a hard decision to make, and needs to be made in an instant. I'm still slow, though, and maybe that's why I go with what's expected of me (I so dislike disappointing people). I would come to (ruefully) consider this moment a few more times in the future, but don't really see an alternative. It had, after all, by now been firmly established that I do drink vodka, and that my reason for not having it for lunch was that there was still work to do. But this is after the exit meeting...

I'd also thought that we'd have *one* vodka, as a digestif. And thought that maybe the time had come to test this 'hair of the dog' theory according to which some alcohol in the morning is supposed to help with overcoming a hangover.

Well, we have a vodka after the first course of several more than I had anticipated, and of course it comes with a toast …

by the end of the lunch it is mid-afternoon, there's a mouthful of vodka in my glass of juice, two mouthfuls of vodka in my glass of water, and I still have a few of them in my stomach which provokes precisely the response from the rest of my system that I would have anticipated. The fuzz in my head grows thicker again, my body feels overwhelmed the way it does after fever, when ordinary movement is okay but anything significantly more strenuous than a slow walk seems an effort, my headache – which was blissfully receding – intensifies again.

They also insist on driving me to the very famous 'highest ice-skating rink in the world' built into the side of the mountains somewhere around here, which is a bit of oversized brutalist architecture (an admittedly impressive bit of evidence for delusions of grandeur). There's a wedding being held there (?!) … a picture of me is taken (some smiles show cheer, others merely show teeth) and then I am being released at my hotel.

I'm not in a good state mentally, physically or emotionally at this point (annoyed while unsure whom to be annoyed at) and decide in short order that I am not in any state to start hiking tonight. So that bit of plan is cancelled. Checking work email (it's early in the morning in DC indicates that there's an urgent bit of drafting to be done in preparation for next week's workshop in Singapore), so I call my counterpart here and call off that whole 'retreat' idea. My interpreter had seemed to think that vodka would likely be involved at an event like that, which at this point reduces my regret at that to manageable levels.

My colleague in DC has pity on me when later that evening, as night falls outside and people begin to show up for work in DC, I send in a comment on the paper (and a, slightly redacted, explanation of the circumstances). They'll be kicking that paper across the street a few times (between the Bank and the Fund) before widebanding it anyway, and it is realized that this will likely take until after midnight in the time zone I'm in – so while this is usually my topic of responsibility, he'll hold the pen for it. I have awesome colleagues.

So I postpone any decisions about the next day and get a full night's sleep. No alarm clock for the morning, for once! And I manage to sleep until 8:30 the next day, have a long shower and over breakfast discover that I feel just the tiniest bit adventurous again. I book a hotel car to take me out to the mountains (comparatively expensive, but still less than what the taxi cost that took me from our place to the airport in DC, though that of course will be reimbursed by my employer). It drives past the closest bus station at the mountains, where a bus back to the city leaves every 15 minutes, so I calculate from there. Flight departure minus two hours early arrival for an international flight minus half an hour drive to the airport minus checking out at the hotel minus packing my hiking stuff into the suitcase minus (ideally) a shower minus a half hour to get from where the bus ends to the hotel minus a guesstimated half hour bus ride minus an hour or so walk from where the hike starts to the bus station, generously rounded up at several points for safety, leaves me with three hours between the start of my hike and when I should be back at the start to begin hiking in the direction of the bus station. So I set my cell phone for a loud alarm in an hour and a half, and head out.

It's a hard bit of hiking, particularly the first bit, which is seriously steep. I overtake a few nutcases that are lugging mountain bikes up the mountain... (wtf?). I don't know to what degree the fact that it feels so hard stems from my previous binge-drinking, from the altitude (I start at 1700 m/5,600 ft or thereabouts, but live at sea level) or from the fact that it really is *quite* steep. I follow a pipeline which I'm told leads to 'Big Almaty Lake', which at the same time ensures that I cannot get lost and adds a somewhat surreal quality to the entire endeavour. There's snow on the ground here and there when I set out, which covers more and more of the ground as I gain altitude. I've got a few pictures for the hike; so won't narrate it in detail. Check them out here:

Afterwards, as I head out at a brisk walk in the direction of the bus station, I hold out my thumb at passing cars and a young couple in an SUV picks me up. Their English is about as good as my Russian, but they consent to take me to the bus station. I'm asked 'Turisti'? (or something like that) and I can't really answer even that properly ('business' isn't understood). If I'd still been drunk, I probably would have remembered that the Russian word for work was 'robota' – but thankfully sober again this doesn't occur to me until so late into the drive that it seems pointless to bring up our one fruitless attempt at conversation.

They drive well past the bus station, which is fine by me as they're still on the same road that the hotel car took to get me there. When I see that the route their Satnav points out deviates from that road considerably further along, I indicate that I should probably get out here. The next bit of conversation, if I gauged it right, means that I manage to convey to them where I need to go (using the nearest mall to my hotel as a point of reference), the young lady suggesting to the driver that they could drop me off there, who is clearly much less than thrilled about the idea, but consents to do so after a bit of cajoling from the lady.

This takes a bit of time and I feel bad for imposing on him (through his girlfriend), but in the end decide that other people's lives aren't up to me to decide and that being driven all the way back would in fact be awfully nice, so decide to be selfish. And am dropped off at my hotel not half an hour later (with many a 'spasiba', of course).

I pack my things and have time left that I hadn't planned for. Yay! It's nighttime in DC, so 'chatting' with my wife (thank DARPA for the internet), my favorite pasttime when I have spare moments available, isn't an option. Instead, I hit the gym. I missed the Thursday night MMA class because of drinking, and haven't done so much as a push-up since then for the same reason (except for today's hike, of course). But I am so happy that I finally feel healthy and at home in my body again (rather than the unwelcome guest I've been all of the previous day), that I swim in the pool, run on the treadmill and hit the weights, polishing off a number of 'Quests' fitocracy(.com) has been suggesting to me for a while. And yes, I probably overdid it.

My exit from Almaty is uneventful.

Kazakh Hospitality

The next day starts with my counterparts riddling me with all the questions that occurred to them while trying to put yesterday’s results on paper. Which of course is the point of the whole transfer exercise, and it works beautifully. They ruefully admit that the moment they set pen to paper, what had seemed clear after our discussion created a deluge of questions.

Well, that’s how the brain works. Following someone else’s train of thoughts until it appears clear (or at least free of concepts you don’t understand and of internal inconsistencies) is a different thing entirely from having internalized a conceptual model of thinking. Which is why they say that if you want to be sure you’ve understood something, teach it to someone else.

Or, alternatively, write it down in your own words (or even better, language). I remember that I was much better at recalling what we’d covered in high school in NJ than I had ever been in Germany, and figured out later that the reason was that I had already performed an intellectual transfer by translating it.

But for them the transfer is in the writing, not the listening, because of course we’re working in Russian. Or maybe the ‘of course’ isn’t quite clear, as it wasn’t to me. Kazakh and Russian sound close enough to me that I had to ask what language the interpreter was using with them (showing that I don’t have much of an ear for this sort of thing, Kazakh being a Turkic language).
Turns out Kazakhstan was (forcibly, at least initially) settled by a lot of Russians in the Stalin and post-Stalin area, resulting in nearly a quarter of the current population being of Russian origin, most of which do not speak Kazakh, while everyone here speaks Russian. So while Kazakh is the ‘national language’, Russian is also permissible and with 80% of the population speaking Kazakh and 100% of the population speaking Russian, that’s what they use.

Interesting side note: They also had a sizable German minority from the time of the Czar, but most of them have left for Germany, when a past administration welcomed anyone of such origin in a (broadly successful) attempt to import votes. I prosecuted several of them during my short stint as an assistant prosecutor in Germany, mostly young people with German names and (legally) nationality who were born in Kazakhstan, spoke no German, were amply supported by a welfare system to which they had never contributed and evidenced serious difficulties adjusting to our society. I swerve off that topic as soon as I can. Shouldn’t have mentioned it at all.

I’ve got a lot of muscular aches from training on Tuesday, so Wednesday don’t do much except decide to head out and find the ‘Line Brew’ restaurant/bar again that I’ve had a most excellent horse shashlyk in the last time I was here. I don’t find it right away (even though the directions I were given were spot on, it’s a bit hidden from the side from which I originally approached it, blindingly obvious from the other direction as I retrace my steps half an hour later). So I spend nearly an hour walking around Almaty after dark, working up quite an appetite (and getting really, really tired in the process).

The horse shashlyk is just as good as I remembered. This was so worth spending an hour looking for the place. Not sure that avoiding an estimated taxi fare of three dollars was worth treading asphalt for an hour in my current state, but there’s a principle involved here, you see. I’m the guy who generally stays on the frugal side (the line to ‘cheap’ being sometimes blurry), thereby gaining a more immediate impression of the surroundings, and saving some of my per diem in the process. And I’ve got plans for the per diem in Singapore…

Thursday I’m invited for dinner – initially for Friday evening. My plan was to have the exit meeting in the late morning on Friday so that in the afternoon I’d be able to head out into the mountains which I can see spread out tantalizingly in all their snow-clad glory right before me, along the outskirts of the city, whenever I look outside. I’ve brought a full overnight backpacking kit, which should easily keep me comfortable down to -10 C / 15 F if I wear all my clothes to sleep, and would like to make use of it – the last (first) time I was here and saw this scenery, I’d resolved that if I come here again, I’d time my trip so I could do some hiking.

So, sheepishly, I mention that my preference would be for tonight vs. Friday. No problem, I’m told.

We’re almost completely done by Thursday evening. Several of the documents have a very clear skeleton now with a good bit of meat on them – enough so that we’re all confident that they can finish those documents without any further handholding from my side. So, we’re all pretty happy with what we’ve got so far and I’m really happy with how the timing is working out.
So Thursday evening at eight I’m at the restaurant I’ve been told to attend, and brought into the Chinese room. They wanted the Kazakh room (the whole point of choosing this venue, I’m told, is to make sure that I can have some traditional Kazakh food), but I assume this was booked out before they realized that they liked me enough to trouble themselves over my experience here. The restaurant is called ‘7 Cuisines’, and Kazakh, Uzbek and Chinese are among these (opinions appear to differ on what the others are, if my bead on the rapid bit of Russian conversation is accurate).

We have a number of local delicacies – I particularly like the bread (deep-fried dough) and Plov (a cousin of Pilaf, rice with some other veggies and, in this case at least, meat mixed in). We drink Shubat (Camel’s milk – Kumyss, fermented mare’s milk, is a seasonal item as mares have foals in spring and give milk only for a short time thereafter) and wine. I’m told that they would usually have vodka as well, but that they settled for wine because I don’t drink vodka.

I would realize much later that this was a watershed moment for my trip.

I guess my surprise at this statement is obvious, and leads to further inquiry (haltingly translated by one junior member of our project group recruited for this purpose into this otherwise fairly senior group of Kazakh officials, my official interpreter being paid by the day, not the night). And so the realization slowly percolates into everyone’s understanding that I kept saying ‘thanks, but no, thanks’ to offers of vodka after lunch because I was concerned alcohol would make me too sleepy after lunch and detract from my utility – not because I am opposed to vodka on some more fundamental level. I then witness a moment like when Tom Cruise’s character in Legend declares that he did it for love … because apparently This Changes Everything.

Vodka is brought. And apparently now we are able to follow proper protocol, which demands that after the host has offered a toast (and everyone except my young colleague who came in his own car has downed their glasses), it is time for everyone else, as the evening progresses, to offer a toast of their own. I offer mine out of turn (against protocol!), but apparently this is remedied by having a second round of toasts afterwards in proper order…

The evening is very enjoyable otherwise, my hosts are not just clearly striving to be hospitable, but genuinely pleased with the assistance I’ve been lending and quite impressed with my expertise (blushing as they said and again as I write this). This is evident mostly from the toasts, which are clearly a serious matter, while our conversation is otherwise fairly free ranging. And I employ every technique at my disposal (including what I learned from Coyote Ugly) to keep it enjoyable.

It turns out that I offer the most serious toast of all, as I try to explain what I think of when I offer a toast to ‘absent friends’ – apparently when you offer a toast to the dead, you do not clink glasses. You do get up, and you down the glass even if you’re the designated driver.

We exit the restaurant well after midnight. I’m still relatively solid on my feet (though clearly the last shots aren’t being metabolized yet), have given what seems like a very good impression, and am happy about the evening as I get into the car that I expect to take me to the hotel.
While the changing surroundings become more and more obvious as the ride progresses, I guess so does the amount of alcohol that transitions from my digestive tract into my bloodstream, and so it takes me quite a while to realize that they are looking less and less like the areas my hotel is in, rather than more and more so. And I’ve barely realized that we are now in the area of town populated by large, purpose-built apartment housing that we come to a stop. And I am told that this is where one of my counterparts lives, who has woken up his wife and sister to welcome me (and a small remainder of the dinner group) into his home…

There is Borscht, and, of course, more vodka. There is conversation of which I remember only a deeply felt (and, I believe, shared) sense of camaraderie. I doubt much more could be communicated at this point even though we’re all fluent in Drunkenese and I am amazed by the wealth of meaning I seem able to convey in Simple English liberally sprinkled with ‘Da’, ‘Nyet’, ‘Spasiba’ and of course ‘Dasvidanye’, though that latter only at four in the morning (or thereabouts).

I very dimly remember a brief (I think) chat online with my wife after I am returned to the hotel in a state that’s barely functional, drinking a lot of water and taking headache medication (and setting three separate alarms) before stumbling into bed.

Almaty - Part 1

The US State Department, which is substantially financing this exercise and providing admin support, has arranged for a car to pick me up from the airport. It’s nice to be travelling in class – last time I was here it was quite difficult to get away from the airport, because very few people here spoke a word of English. The signs in the airport made me feel as though I’d entered a new, strange place, simply by having Kazakh and Russian on them before deigning to mention English.
In a further step down the road which makes me feel more world-wise (which I appreciate) while reducing the number of new and exciting things to be found through travel (which I regret), this time I arrive in an airport I remember well, and being whisked away to my hotel less than an hour after landing fits in with this.

Almaty is a strange town, looking like an old soviet town (large, square, brutish buildings, rectangular layout, large blocks between large streets) dropped into a background more properly reminiscent of the Northern Far East. Which, of course, is pretty much what it is historically, and therefore in some way representative for much of what we now call Central Asia.

It’s not the cleanest or most well-maintained city I’ve been in, but it’s also a far cry from the worst. And the weather is absolutely gorgeous. But I sleep badly, give up on it at six in the morning and go to the gym. We start at 10 on the first day, as per my request.

And I find that nothing is the way I expected and, at least to some degree, was led to expect. I have colleagues who are very good at preparing for such a thing and who might have been less surprised. However, with the counterparts on the other side of the globe (which means that they write the answer to my email in my next night, drawing a brief exchange of emails out over a week), the amount of proper preparation one can undertake is limited.

What I am good at is adjusting and improvising. And at making people feel like we’re part of a team. To make them feel that this is their baby, and I’m not here to take it away or tell them how to do their jobs, but to bring in some outside experience that they can take advantage of. By the end of the second day we’re in my comfort zone, where it’s mostly they asking me questions and I giving them answers (or, when I don’t know the answer, my opinion). And it is they who are doing the drafting. That’s good, because it saves on translation, because it gives them ownership of the product which means they’ll be using it because it is their own brainchild, rather than dropped on them from an outsider. And it’s good because it means when they do the drafting, I don’t have to. ;)

Within short order we’ve agreed to expand the scope of our work to something rather more ambitious. And then proceed to attack it. We work 9(ish) to 1, with a long lunch break, and then go until 5. At that point I leave them to do ‘homework’ (some drafting on their own, trying to put on paper the concepts we’ve discussed over the day), and head to the hotel. It is usually there that I realize that while overall my working hours seem very friendly indeed, not taking any breaks in between and being on the frontline all day really is quite demanding. Yet I enjoy the work so much that I’m surprised every day by how drained I feel the moment I get to relax.
But I hate spending a week in a foreign country without seeing anything of it. The trap is easy to fall into – we never get sent to faraway places for work that is easy or done quickly, so usually spend significant amounts of time and energy on the job before returning to the hotel (and the return takes time as well). So by the time we’ve changed into something comfortable, night is falling and it’s going on late, so for some of us ‘adventure’ means finding dinner outside of the hotel. Been there, done that. Don’t like it.

Monday the US peeps and I head to a bar they recommend, we meet up with some of our counterparts and have a pleasant evening. We share a lot of dishes, so I get to try some horse steak again. As I suspected (remember), horse steak isn’t the way to eat horse. It’s a bit on the tough side. I’m looking forward to trying horse shashlyk again …

Tuesday, while we’re taking a digestion walk during the lunch break, conversation turns to sport. Turns out one of my counterparts is the past KyuKuShinKai champion of Almaty. He also says that sure, he’ll see whether he can find a club – doing some (any, really) kind of Martial Art – where I could come in for a session. But of course I’ve learnt to try to have eggs in more than one basket, so I also confer with hotel staff for leads on where to find a place. It takes a while to get across what I actually want (neither ‘KaraTe’ nor ‘TaeKwonDo’ or even ‘Systema’ ring a bell, it’s only when I mention ‘Sambo’ that the coin drops) but in the end I do get a lead. And it’s Tuesday already, so I prioritize my evening accordingly – I throw my sports clothes into my backpack and head out to investigate.

The directions aren’t entirely correct, and the first person I manage to find who both speaks English and has an idea of where this place is, tells me to head down ‘Kosmonaut street’. Only there is no ‘Kosmonaut street’, because all the streets were renamed a couple of years ago (getting rid of Soviet baggage), but some locals still refer to them by their old names. It is issues like that which can make striking out on one’s own so much more difficult than simply taking a taxi. But also more adventurous. And it’s cheaper.

Having found the ‘Academy of Sports and Tourism’, it takes a lot of nonverbal communication interspersed with various ‘Nyet’, ‘Da’ and ‘Spasiba’ until I finally find, near the end of a dimly lit subterranean corridor with a very classic locker room smell, a small side gym (there are several large ones in this building) which – key discovery here – has padded mats on the floor and a boxing bag hanging from the ceiling. Clearly this is what I was looking for. And there’s someone here, and yes, they are about to start a training session, and yes, I can join. So I inhale the two snickers bars I keep in my pack for a reason (haven’t had dinner yet), washing them down with as much water as I can and we go.

They do Mixed Martial Arts training here, and tonight focus on boxing. Before that, there’s warm-up. Warm-up in a strange gym is always interesting – it tells you something about what they do and what they value well before you’ve started the actual training. And it’s generally something they do very regularly, so they tend to be good at the particular exercises they do every time, while new people invariably struggle with unfamiliar exercises. I admit to a bit of vanity (or is it pride) in being fit enough overall to usually be able to work along. And of course I’m aware that everybody checks out what the weird new guy is doing. All of this is fine, until the head instructor (‘Maxim’), kneels, posts his head on the mat in front of him, flips over to land on his feet in a sort of bridge, then walks around to one side while turning over to end up in his starting position. And then explains that I should do that eight times for each side … it takes me a while to realize that he is in fact entirely serious. Maybe nobody else likes that particular exercise either, or maybe they were just all waiting to see how I take it, because it’s not like everybody acts as though they are familiar with the exercise. But I try. It’s damned hard, I’m not good at it, but I can see how it should be an enormously useful core exercise for grappling purposes.

We don’t do any sparring tonight, just a variety of drills – like running in place for two minutes while throwing punches (hard!), then dropping to the floor (easy) and doing twenty push-ups on our knuckles (not, quite, possible after that). I am drenched in sweat when we’re done, have apparently had just enough sugar to last me through the session, and am told that they’d be happy to see me again on Thursday at seven (I think). So, yay!

I inhale a Doner Kebab on my way back to the hotel, hit the shower and am hungry again. So I do have a small meal in the hotel bar, but feel quite good about it. And it’s really late now, so being ten hours ahead of DC time means I catch my wife online in her morning and we chat for a little before I go to sleep. Brilliant day.

Almaty Again

DC (IAD) – Frankfurt (FRA) – Almaty (ALA)

This was never going to be fun. And of course I find someone else to blame. The US State Department is supposed to be reimbursing my travel cost for the first assignment of this trip (after the nth 'blood, sweat and tears' speech of my boss in relation to the constant budget cuts at the Bank, basically all our long-distance missions are now 'back-to-back' missions of two or more assignments stitched together). But involvement of additional agencies of course involves additional policies (if international agencies with supposedly dovetailing objectives have a hard time working together, I'm beginning to suspect much of this isn't due to 'turf wars', but due to a desire of the players doing the actual work – rather than designing the policies – to stay sane). In this case, it's the US travel policy. Sigh.

I'm cool with their idea of reducing travel cost by authorizing economy class only, even if I'm at best lukewarm about putting it into practice myself. I'll be arriving at local midnight, after 24 hours in planes, and supposed to start working the next morning … really? Of course, I am told, I can always fly in a day earlier so I can have a day to recover. Oh, sure. Rather than spend *most* of the Easter weekend away from my wife, I can elect to spend *all* of it away from her. I thought we'd gotten over such naked 'sacrifice your health and/or your family on the altar of business or you don't have what it takes because we don't want emotionally literate employees' and progressed to at least a passing nod towards allowing work and families to co-exist. But with hard times the fig leaves come off and really all we've done is also give women the opportunity to sacrifice family time on the same altar. Not that we'll accord them equal rewards for doing so, but we can pretend, can't we?

An idea of theirs I'm decidedly uncool with is the 'Fly America Act'. It states that if the US government pays for the flight, it must be on a US carrier (at least if one leg of the flight is in the US). So even if other carriers offer the same service more efficiently, the (supposedly small) government remains intent on spending tax money propping up inefficient local conglomerates that have many of their tax returns filed under chapter 11. How come it's only when other governments do this that it's a state subsidy that interferes with the market? There was a time when I was impressed with the US' willingness and ability to practice what it preached, before its preachings grew so strident.

What I was never impressed with is United Airlines. I've mostly been able to avoid them since they ceased being the World Bank's 'preferred carrier', as Lufthansa (and others) provides not just better service, but also at lower rates. But as I once again line up behind the stupid computer screens that are supposed to handle me and get me a boarding pass etc., I am reminded again of my boss' oft-heard French-accented complaint “I 'ate United!”. Tempting me every time to asinine responses like “Wow, you must 'ave been 'ungry”, though I've mostly kept my mouth shut.

As I do now, once again – with simulated patience – standing in a queue. I'm assuming that the number of computer screens available for checking in is supposed to make things faster, or at least do it with fewer humans that might require being paid, or even health insurance or form unions. The funny thing is that this does not seem to be the case. They still require someone to tag the baggage and put it on the conveyor belt, persons to answer questions that the machines are not equipped to address, and of course someone to help out in case the machine can't cope. As is the case with mine – after scanning my passport, it first asks me to put in several letters of my name, then the first three letters of my destination city and then asks me if I want to go to Almeria or Almaty … (it's got access to the e-tickets that were issued against which it can check the info from my passport, for crying out loud!). Then it asks me whether I'll be travelling with an infant on my lap (I sure hope not!), and then informs me with a bright, friendly exclamation mark that I will need assistance from a human to complete my request. Not that I've actually requested anything, except insofar as my showing up at the check-in desk represents an implicit request for them to make good on their promise of transporting me to Frankfurt, for which they have already been paid.

There is only one person who can help with this sort of thing, who's supposed to be a free agent roaming in front of the screens (apparently everyone else is required to stay behind the counters on penalty of something nasty). So there is a small group of what I assume could be baggage-handlers hanging around doing nothing much at all, while the one trouble-shooter is busy helping … pretty much everyone, really. In my case (as I am told about ten minutes later, during which the screen has twice asked me whether I want to continue with this) he needs to check my visa for Kazakhstan. What's laughable about this is that they've barely reduced the amount of people required, while turning a short interaction with humans (who score pretty high on ability to infer the value of questions regarding infants from their presence – or lack thereof), peppered with 'Oh, Almaty, that should be interesting', 'too bad you have to fly on Easter, but at least the flights shouldn't be crowded' and 'have a nice day' into an exercise that foreshadows the imminent descent into a dystopian vision somewhere between Orwell and Kafka.

Oh, and sure they'll upgrade me, for the paltry sum of 579 USD of my own money. I mean, really? I've been upgraded from Business to First Class several times (without asking for it), which was a nice touch but really no more than that, while this would be a life-saver by comparison. Apparently to those who have shall be given.

Now apparently I *could* have flown Business, the State Department simply would not have reimbursed the entire fare. But I would still have had to fly a US carrier, which would still have increased the difference my own unit would have had to stump up. But I realized that too late and thus, I guess, should blame myself for not getting any proper sleep during the (short) night on the flight. But at least AmEx got me one of those seats without a seat in front of it, so at least I can stretch my legs. The seat doesn't recline very far, though, so I'm stiff-necked and slightly grumpy as we arrive in Frankfurt a few hours later. Mostly at finding that I'm clearly not twenty anymore... and maybe a little at United's sorry excuse for coffee. Blech.

FRA is the same as usual. I've heard people complain about it, but I'm used to it by now. My attempts to throw myself at the mercy of the check-in personnel with my best doe-eyed look are stonewalled by pointing out 'policy', much as they were in DC. I'm miffed as I head to the lounge (access to which is apparently the extent to which my vaunted 'Senator' status accords me special treatment). As I board the plane, they do exchange my boarding pass for another one, although the new one also reads 'Economy'. But I'm told they moved me to a row without someone sitting next to me. Slightly pacified, I board and we go on to Almaty.

Hoerikwaggo - once again with feeling

as not everyone is facebooked, by popular request, here's a link to my pics of my Cape Town weekend with comments: https://picasaweb.google.com/101990453540259790412/CapeTown2011#