A few thoughts from the weekend...

Watching the Seahawks play the Cardinals reminded me of how much I don’t miss TV. Advertisements selling me stuff I don’t need. Advertisements lying to me. How many people in America are thirsty, hungry, impotent, bald and without a car? Sports are the one reason I might still spring for cable if and when I move back to the states. Even then, the announcers and “analysts” are idiots. Their pride and utter uselessness bothers me. So maybe I’ll just listen to the radio. Or better yet, make friends with someone who has season tickets.

I’ve even caught myself wondering the place of sports in general. How important is Robbie Tobek’s performance in the big scheme of things? Scary, I know.

I also just heard Switchfoot being played over the PA in the Seahawks game. How am I supposed to feel about this? Still, I’m really excited to be watching real football. 88 yards! Interceptions! Fitzgerald is impressive. Mac Strong! The best name in football!

Also, I went to Astana Saturday with Jon, three Ramseys (Jon, Shaun and Jim) and Carol. As the capitol of Kazakhstan, it’s got all the fancy steel and glass buildings that governments like to build these days. Add to that the old-school Soviet love for gargantuan plazas, squares, monuments, memorials, etc. and you’ve got yourself the biggest construction project I’ve ever seen. Oh yeah, Nazarbayev moved the capitol there in 1997. It’s actually a total crap town that’s literally been built overnight.

I wonder if today’s oil-boom countries will be like the boom towns from the gold-rush days in America. Obviously oil has proven more important to the world’s economy recently (and by recently I mean the last century) and there sure is a lot of it under the ground. Still, mankind is using a lot of it too. Also, there are some oil rich countries that aren’t rich at all. Venezuela and Kazakhstan come to mind. (Not like I’m about to complain…)

Astana only reinforces the world view you brought there. It either inspires your optimism for the future prosperity of Kazakhstan or confirms yours suspicions that the prosperity is just a façade. Remember the tizzy everyone got into after they figured out the connection between VP Cheeny and Haliburton? Well in Kazakhstan, all the major companies are owned by relatives of the president. That’s how you get things done people.

Anyway, the whole reason for going to A-town was to visit the PAMCTOP. It’s the single most likely place in K-stan to have eggnog outside of the PAMCTOP in Almaty (more than 20 friggin’ hours away). It’s maybe the most expensive grocery store (there’s a term I haven’t used in forever) I’ve ever been in that wasn’t in London. A bag of tortilla chips and guacamole was $15. That’s 10% of my paycheck on snacks.

This is already too long. Stay tuned for a funny story about avocados and the “Tower of Religious Toleration”.