In Sickness and in Health

A chest-infection in a foreign country is very rarely a good thing. Months of cold and snow and horrible things have left me feeling a little bad. Last friday I woke up in a coughing fit that hurt my chest something proper. Naturally of course, I have been sleeping, eating and drinking (orange juice, naturally) my way back to fitness! God only knows that everyone misses me at work, but still the comfort of their thoughts has only a limited impact on my self-absorbed brain. So, I have spent my time watching a lot of films and TV programmes. After six days of this I have reached one, beautiful, earth-shattering conclusion:

I am in love with Denzel Washington.

Seriously, I have watched a lot of this mans films over the past few days and I really have to say he is a fucking sexual actor. Seriously.

Whether it was as a right-evil bastard in Training Day, a bastard of a hostage negotiator in Inside Man, or just a downright drunken bastard in Man on Fire Denzel is the man to call when the shit goes down. Oh and I watched American Gangster and Malcolm X, too.

I also watched pretty much every episode of Only Fools and Horses, the (relatively) new series of Peep Show, Romper Stomper, Tropic Thunder and a whole host of other random shit. I hate being stuck inside.

Oh Denzel, when will you come rock my world with some shit blowing up?

The Interlude, Part 4 - The Pictures

So, it seemed like a good idea to put all of my pictures into a single, seperate blog post rather than putting them at the end of my update trilogy. Without further ado, I present the adventures of an idiot in southern Central Asia.

 The little basket by the toilet.....

 How we recycle in Kazakhstan

 A Russian broom

 There's some kind of name for this, but I'll be fucked if I know what it is

 Why I chose to upload this picture I'm not too sure

 Karaganda Mosque

 Inside the mosque

 Outside

 Karaganda Catholic Church

 A cute kitty that used to live near me

 The mosque again (the order of these photos is a bit fucked and I can't be bothered re-ordering them)

 Victory Park in Yugo-Vostok

 Трактир Медведь - my favourite restaurant in Karaganda

 Inside

 A salad called "Russian Beauty"

 Karaganda Hockey Arena

 Before the game

 I liked her

 My one and only picture of KarLag museum

 A random apartment in Astana, on my speech adventures

 This was about all I saw of downtown Astana

 Snow in Karaganda - November

 Karaganda still, on my way to the train station

 Somebody told me who this guy was, I forgot

 My first picture of Almaty! This was a set of stairs that had been snowed into a slope...

 See you in spring!

 Ross loves the snow. What a snow-whore

 Creepiest underpass ever

 Yeah

 Mega Centre! What lays inside?

 .....

 And he said let there be Costa...and it was good

 Dunno

 Dramatic pose next to a downed tree

 Precariously balanced van!

 Good luck getting in there

 A monument to something. Really must pay more attention

 The same monument at night

 First Bishkek picture! My first hotel room

 So this is Bishkek.....

 A statue to soldier's of the Second World War, or something

 Government buildings

 Mother-fucking Manas! The Kyrgyz hero

 No idea what this was

 TSuM! But not our TSuM

 It should say Opening Hours. ROFL

 An truly inspirational breakfast

 Vechny Ogun! Not our Vechny Ogun....

 Osh Bazaar. I ate a lot of shashlyk and dodgy plov in this place

 And of course, no trip to Kyrgyzstan is complete without meeting Jackie Chan!

 Squirrel vodka - serious business

Snow back in Karaganda

Mr Cool

 Lasagne, anyone?

For all your STALKER fans out there - Tourist's Breakfast!

As always, much love from Kazakhstan