well what has been happening?
Yesterday was filled with corporate things. First there was a meeting to decide the corporate party which is like for 2 days, everything payed for I think, SO I AM there lol. Then we had another meetin/celebration for this executive director coming back, in which I had more cake, oh omg it was so good. And then they invited me fishing next week, and then to a canyon sometime next week as well. They are very nice people. Then they took me to Medeo again (The mountain place and yes I know I cant spell it lol) I was in a meeting with the Head of the Construction Department of Almaty (A politician) and 20 other contractors. It was pretty intense, made even more intense that they were only speaking russian lol. But it was a good experience for me nonetheless.
The company has an english learning program. It was good to mark some tests...
Im learning more about the company and its problem everyday. Let me break it down. I work for a company who markets and sells other peoples products. The products we mainly sell are European. Now we are having fierce competition from China, due to their prices being 1/5 of ours, though their products aren't as good a quality as ours. I was going to try and play the nationalism card, and see if I could get some patritiosm in the Kazak people to buy european products from a KAZAK business. However, unlike australia, they dont trust their own countries companies.... So we may have to play denationalisation. (Yes I know its the wrong term but you get my point) We will have to try and disguise the brand of my company to be not so Kazak, so people are more willing to buy from us. Still the company has no or very little brand awareness. I was asking the so called sales manager/ marketing guy about promotion and branding, and he says their is no reason to cos they are a project based company. No reason?!?!?! Your kidding me. So yes I need to speak with the director on Monday about that. Thats crazy. They have the tender for the lightning at the skating rink at medel, and they aren't going to do any endorsement, branding or promotion? bah I will teach them...
In the night though I had fun, my friend Sasha cooked some Russian Pancakes (They are just regular pancakes, but massive, and you have them with rasberry jam yum). Her house is quite the awesome. She has velvet upholstery (I use big words) or something but yeah it was cool. And wait for this guys.... I watched love actually with Sasha, her sister, and David. I forbade myself to watch romantic comedies, but I was voted out. Though I have to say Keira Knightley has gotten better, she was way too thin in that film. And Qui-Gon from Star Wars episode 1 was there. And Rowan Atkinson. Sif he wasn't given a bigger part..... And yes Hugh Grant you need to smile at some point in your life. Overall, it was ok... Oh ye and I had more vodka. I know i mention it a lot, but this stuff you could get around the corner in a deli lol. I also tried cognac. I have to say I like it better than Scotch but ye, thats about it.
I finally got to ring my mother last night, I was getting really homesick..... the tears were there like they were in Maos Last Dancer.. but it was good to here her voice. Im glad the family is going well and is safe. I cant believe I have been here like 10 days, and I already miss people so much. Especially my family. The people around here are being so good, I need a family of friends atm.
Sasha doesn't believe me Natalie Imbrulia and Hugh Jackman are Australian.... I cant get to a printer but when I do Ill print out IMDb and Wikipedia lol.
So today it was quite up and down. I was sick from work, and if you know what Imodium cures, then you know what I had. But on a happier note, I did my first cooking for the time that I have been here. Something classic: Scrambled eggs. Yes the great Aussie/English thingo that I love. I had to cook on a gas stove though.....God they heat up fast....
Tonight Im going with Galimova to somewhere, but it apparently is quite the awesome. It will be good to get my passport back lol. For those of you that don't know, I had to give my passport to the authorities so that they could register me. So 3 days without a passport. quite an experience lol.
(the rest of this is philosphical, read on if you wish)
You know how they say the world is getting smaller? In theory yes, we have internet communication and better telephone and snail mail services, but for the majority the world is one big enigma. Consider the people here in Almaty. They have all heard of Australia, but to tell me alot about it is a stretch. And this is not one sided. I know nothing of Kazakhstan from my education. It seems that we only learn the key centres of the world, The UK, USA, Europe and Asia. For Australians, we learn about New Zealand because it is close, same as Kazakhstan learns about Russia. But where is the information? Just because our two countries are on opposite sides of the world doesn't mean we have to be strangers. Like I was telling the AIESEC people here that Australia doesn't like to be referred to as American or American Influenced. And they were a little taken aback. So this misinformation is everywhere.
There is a saying "I took the path less travelled, and that has made all the difference". Look im not asking everyone to go to sub saharan africa, but to learn about it in school would have been nice. I mean consider the Modern History subject in Year 11. All we learnt is wars. Boer war, WWI and WWII, Korean Vietnam Gulf and Iraq. I mean honestly there is so much to life other than war.
What about a project where we examine the effects of the move from communism to democracy in Russia. I dunno, maybe Im just hating Australian public school education (Why couldn't I learn russian in school?) but Ill get back to my point.
This world is still massive. There is so much to explore. But we still pay incredible plane flight ticket prices, visa problems, everything to prevent us from going to these places. I dunno, I wished I lived in a world without borders. Thats not to say people lose their national soverignty, but just that its much easy to see and do and work in different places in the world.
Consider North Korea. Now whatever you think of the government, I really would like to go there sometime in my lifetime. Its like I want to learn about their country first hand, not see it on tv.
So yes the world is still to big. A collapsing of invisible borders would be nice.
No comments:
Post a Comment