Top Ten List Continued
Sticking to tradition, I will start with the bad first. For those who have not seen the first part of my list, scroll down to the entry before this one.
6. The non-existence of punctuality in business and all things official
I could literally talk for hours about this subject. It has been a big nuisance, especially over the last several days. There is no such thing as doing things in a timely manner in any way, shape, or form here. I was told today that punctual people exist here, but they are probably all from the West. I will now expand on a few examples.
Two days ago the local akim (like a mayor) came to our complex at 5.30 pm to tell us that some big shot building inspector from the capital will come on the following day to "inspect" the building. We were told to be at the complex at 11am and that the "big man" will be there at "around noon". Everyone went into a panic. We were told to call the dj and the secretary (the latter we had just hired literally two hours before) and have them come at 11. We were not able to get a hold of either one of them until the next morning at 10 am. In other words, they had to drop everything to be present for the inspection. Without going into too many details, the guy was 5 hours late and only dropped in for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile our boss, who went down to Almaty and hoped to be back that day, never made it back. We think it is probably due to the fact that he is there waiting for something to get done and can't leave until all is taken care of.
Then today, we were supposed to go to the complex and meet with all of the people whom we hired to verify official papers and have them sign the work contract. We had no one available to help us check the papers and we had no contracts ready since our boss is still in Almaty. We had to have someone pass onto the workers to try to come again on Monday at the same time. I hope everything will be ready, but won't be surprised if it is not. In the immortal words of our boss, this kind of stuff is "normal in this country."
5. Driving and safety
If you are from any major metropolitan city in the U.S. and think the locals drive like maniacs, you have not seen anything. Here they have breaking traffic rules down to a fine science. It is normal for our drivers to run red lights, turn left from the far right lane (or sometimes even from the lane of oncoming traffic), tailgate and everything else that would normally get you a traffic fine in a heartbeat in the U.S. The other day, there was even a fellow who almost hit us head on coming from the opposite direction on a oneway entrance-ramp onto a major highway just because he wanted to avoid a long wait at a traffic light. Another time we almost ran head on into a passenger bus that was trying to pass a car. Of course the driver went into the lane of on-coming traffic to do this!
To top this off, wearing seat-belts here is considered an insult by many. It seems that if you wear a seat-belt, the driver thinks that you think they don't drive well. I am very concerned about how things will be once the snow starts falling and the ice starts collecting on the roads.

Good stuff continued
7. Driving
It may seem paradoxical, but sometimes the driving here is very amusing and quite a rush. It is kind of cool to feel like you are literally in the game Need for Speed sometimes.
6. Seeing and participating in a country's development
Kazakstan, in may ways, is a country on the rise. There is much optimism here about the future. Although there are still many hang-ups from the Soviet period, I have seem much change for the better here compared to my time here six years ago. Salaries are going up, jobs are available, and the Kazak government seems to be trying to diversify the economy. There seems to be some sort of a push to make things better for everyone instead of the all out hoarding that is still a regular part of life in many former Soviet republics. Hoarding does go on here (the President of Kazakstan has managed to become one of the top 10 richest men in the world since independence in '91), but the powers that be seem to be ready to "share the wealth" a little here.
I will press on with the list in my next entry.