reconnecting – a facebook guilt trip

2 months on, I feel like I’ve aged a million years and the wrinkled, dry, flaky eczematic skin on my knuckles didn’t help assuage that dreadful feeling of being old.

I’ve taken to calling the country, Turdmenistan – a shitty pun, I know. It’s difficult for me to speak objectively about the country and to give me some other perspectives, I’ve taken to reading about Turkmenistan online now that I’m back in Singapore with 24/7 internet access. I’ve yet to read Turkmenistan’s most famous book but if you’ve an interest, it’s available online here in 22 languages. Strangely enough, it’s not (yet) available in Mandarin.

I’m wondering if the inhabitants of Ashgabat are of a different breed of those in the other regions. I’ve read about genuine smiles and curiosity but those are extremely unfamiliar to me. All I see on a daily basis are hostile stares and wary looks, people slowing down their cars to gawk. Maybe we need to travel out of Ashgabat and I know that we should but right now, I’m simply uninterested in this country.

Anyway, the locals come in an assortment of ethnicities. The majority is probably Turkmen and the other most obvious ethnic group is Russian. In every bazaar, there seems to be at least a Korean shop selling various types of kimchi and pickled vegetables. I’ve tasted some before and it’s a very poor imitation of  what you can find outside of this food-vacuum. We’ve also met an Armenian whom we keep bumping into at airports and the ex-neighbour who gave us Winch is Georgian. There are also people of Indian descent.

Turkmen men tend to carry really stupid hair cuts (a half-bowl) while the Turkmen women are really attractive, slim and generous at the top and bottom. They’re really quite fetching in the elegant traditional dress which is not unlike the qipao in its silhouette – fitted from the top to the hips, then  However,most middle-aged and old Turkmen women are, bluntly put, fat and the elegance of the traditional dresses they wear disappears – the item of clothing is more tent than dress.

Russian men and women tend to conform to my (negative) stereotypes. Men have short hair, often crew-cut and are burly in size. Many women are platinum blonde with overgroomed eyebrows, and sport makeup plastered on with a trowel. They also have a penchant for skimpy clothes with animals prints though that might give way to big furs with animal prints soon.

In general, the women favor stilettos of at least 3 inches while the men like shiny pointy leather shoes and undershirt vests. English among the older generation is almost non-existent although school-going kids and undergrads may speak a little.

little man goes to…

I just saw the whole travel plan entry from Chels and thought I’d do one of my own.

01 – 04 Sept ‘09 – Muscat, Oman (confirmed and boarding the plane in about 9 hours)
Business for Tanguy and leisure for me. I just received an email from him saying that the sub-contractor he’ll be visiting there has booked us a room at Barr Al Jissah Resort & Spa, part of the Shangri-la group. I’m a lucky, lucky girl!

16 – 20 Oct ‘09 – Bangkok, Thailand (hope this can be confirmed soon-ish)
A “weekend” in Bangkok for us.

21 – 31 Oct ‘09 – Singapore (as above)
Going home, alone, to eat. I miss prawns, avocados, sashimi, ayam penyet among a million other things.  Oh, and to shop at Cold Storage, Fairprice and Giant. I’m not kidding about that last bit.

Christmas  ’09 /New Year ‘10 – France (tentative)
Hello, Plouys!

Lunar New Year ‘10 – Singapore (tentative)
Hello, pineapple tarts and family!

March ‘10 – Dominican Republic (tentative)

sprinkles

Yay,  my first rain in Ashgabat and it’s surprisingly cool at around 20 degrees. It’s a nice respite from the merciless heat. The two Thai wives, Jum and Wae found it too cold and had to wear jackets for warmth =)

yes i’m alive

10 full days and 3 power cuts later, I’ve stopped worrying about my frozen produce melting and bacteria having a pool party in my freezer. One never knows when the next power cut is coming so I’m really happy that we’ve not had any in the last 4 days or so.

On the subject of grocery shopping, we have a variety of places to go for that activity. There are 2 supermarkets in Yimpaş and Paytagt. The former is larger but the latter seem to have a larger variety of imported stuff. Something unnerving is how quick the sales assistants manage to restock items. There I am, picking up a bottle of something which I can’t read and while I’ve just managed to take out of Russian-English dictionary from my hand bag to translate the bottle’s label, I would find that the empty space, formerly taken up by the bottle in my hand, has been filled; my bottle has been replaced. Yes, they are super dilligent and industrious but this poses a problem when one does not want that bottle that’s in one’s hand anymore, after translating the label to “Crimean Nibbles” and not pasta sauce as one had expected it to be. This poor unwanted bottle is then hastily shoved into a space, any space, where it can’t be with its other Crimean Nibble friends.

There are of course numerous bazaars, all with names I can barely spell. We’ve got completely ripped off at the Russian bazaar, where I am sure the man charged us the price of a full kilo of aubergines when we only bought 2. I’m trying to avoid shopping at the bazaars right now. Unfortunately, one can’t find everything at one place so we’ll have to explore the different bazaars.

Currency is ever-so-slightly confusing and they have just redenominated their currency on New Year’s Day 2009. Bazaars and smaller shops hasn’t really updated their price tags so we still need to deal with the old currency. So, 5000 old manats (TMM) = 1 new manat (TMT).  As far as things are concerned, one usually withdraws USD from the banks and changes it into TMT. 1 USD is roughly 2.85 TMT. Unfortunately for our multinational household of 2 (European and Singaporean), we tend to recalculate the cost of items based on our local currencies. So for convenience’s sake , we usually calculate things with the following formula:  1 TMT = 0.50 SGD = 0.25 EUR

PS: Thank you, Captain Carrot for that lovely piece.

cumi bali

Carrot asked Anne who asked me in return if I were ready to move. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready for Turkmenistan, a country with a suspiciously little amount of available information and dodgy internet connection. Lol.

estimation

I’m currently shifting around giant blobs of files from Ellie’s harddisk to L’ours Noir to make space for CSI New York.

(from xkcd.com via LW on Facebook)

rachel goes to penang

I’m still recovering from that infernal alarm clock which we used to wake ourselves up for breakfast. Dia showed amazingly rapid reflexes for someone who is an extremely heavy sleeper and she managed to turn it off within 15s of it ringing every morning.

fingers crossed

It seems like my application would be approved a fortnight after being submitted so if everything goes according to plan, I should receive my letter of invitation in the week I return from Penang.  I guess I can start thinking about the exact date in August I will leave.

but seriously

I know that nobody can be blamed for making fun of us going to Turkmenistan, especially when I’ve been guilty of that myself. But I guess there comes a time when enough is enough, even more so with half of us there and the other half of us due to be there in about a month’s time.  I am really tired and annoyed of dealing with all the concerned yet derisive questions, not to mention all the misconceptions about Turkemenistan. Answering my parents’ questions is something I want and need to do but I can really do without the other unnecessary comments and questions.

The following is an ad verbum example of highest level of stupidity I have dealt with thus far, although perhaps something might come along and surpass it within the next 4 weeks:

“ahhh haha. you are going to turkmenihstan (sic) i’m going to USA. we’re gonnae ENEMIES. arab and christina (sic). islam and christianity. wooooooooooo. i can crusade and you can jihad”

this exquisite pain

Nothing beats being all greased up and having my back worked over by the massage therapist