Mountains and shashlyk

Yesterday we escaped to the mountains from the summer heat. 30 minuted from the city and you are in the peaceful chilly place. Here are some pics:

Somebody turned the party music on and ppl had fun dancing.

Dinner: Shubat ( dring made from camel milk), baursaki ( fried doughnuts) and shashlyk ( grilled lamb meat)

The happiest family It was quite chilly so Vincent got proper cloths

Internet and politics -- Livejournal banned in Kazakhstan

For two weeks I have not been able access Livejournal website -- the biggest blogging platform in Russian. It turned out that LiveJournal has been banned in Kazakhstan since October last year, but I was among those 10% who still could have access to the platform.

At first there were no official information why Livejournal has been blocked, but the unofficial reason was said to be Rakhat Aliyev blog, ex son-in-law of the President Nursultan Nazarbaev. Rakhat Aliyev is a political opponent of Nazarbayev, lives in Austria and has been granted political asylum.

In May 2009 Kazakh authorities recognized that LifeJournal has been blocked due to political reasons and court decision to "stop spread of false information".

Some states still believe that deliberate political censorship is possible in Internet. There are two things they need to take into account:

-Information is accessible via different ways.

- The forbidden fruit is sweet.

Hot summer and fountains

Summer in Almaty is really hot, it's better to take siesta or stay inside between 11.00 and 17.00. Average temperature of July is the same as on the islands of Sri Lanka or Kalimantan. Average temperature in January can be compared with north of Finland.

I like Almaty summer for two things ( so far):

1.For it's warm breezy summer nights with it's special smell. You can go out in t-shirt at night and don't bother to take a jacket with you.

2. For it's fountains. Perfect for dry and hot summers. There are 125 (!) fountains in the city (wikipedia knows everything). Again, I like fountains at night, especially those with floating lights. Here you see pictures of different quality but all of them are original without any Photo shop tricks.

DAY

NIGHT:CHANGE OF COLORS

Summer is here and we are back

We are back after three weeks of joy, sleepless nights, long walks and intensive growth. Take a look how Vincent has changed:

With daddy (about 1 week old)

little-little legs

6 days old

6 weeks old (6 kilo)