May 11, Appliance Day

May 11, Appliance Day

We thought we’d spend a wild evening last night taking pictures of the appliances in the apartment….well ok, Rob chose to watch the Russian Discovery channel and I chose to take pictures. Rob now knows how they make rubber gloves, and screw drivers. It beats watching news 24x7 and the round the clock coverage of some stupid golf or tennis match.

Here’s our refrigerator. It’s about 6 and a half feet tall, and like all sane countries, has the freezer on the bottom. When ever you open it plays a little song to let you know you just opened the fridge, as if is were not obvious with the cold air hitting your face. Then if you leave the fridge open while pouring yourself a drink, it plays an angry high pitched song, thus causing you to talk back to the fridge and tell it to keep its pants on. The fridge is about as sophisticated as the crappy little fridges in those dorm fridges.












Here’s the infamous washing machine. It is quite mesmerizing and I could sit and watch the laundry tumble for hours.
It just doesn’t spin, it will spin once or twice, then stop, then revolve a couple times the other way, then make a flushing sound. There’s also a close up of the mystery buttons that make the total time change. If anyone knows what they mean, by all means, do drop me an email: euuayya@yahoo.com.

And to go with the awesome hi tech dryer, is our high tech dryer, located in the kitchen. The clothes pins were imported from America. When we have a large load of laundry, the dryer has wings that fold out to double the capacity of this puppy. Thankfully the previous tenant, Bikini Woman, left this dryer behind.

The microwave I guess should have been pretty self explanatory. The sticker on the front makes it look like we can cook gourmet meals in a snap. The only button we cared to use so far is the +30 seconds button. Thank goodness for numbers or else we’d never know how to cook our blinis for dinner.

The stove is not too exotic; it’s electric so we won’t risk blowing up the apartment with gas. It has solid burners, which smell like burning metal when boiling water. The stove may look normal size, but it’s about ½ or 2/3 the size of one at home. It does have a nice cover which in theory would make a flat surface for more work area. Unfortunately, it was installed crooked so the lid does not quite close.

The day we moved in the owner replaced the phone, we were hoping with one that we could figure out. Instead we got this one, fresh out of the box, but caller id still shows up in Russian. We also are not quite sure how to answer it. We pick it up, it still rings, we hit the phone button, it still rings, we hit it a 2nd time, it still rings. Then on the 3rd try we finally can talk. Luckily it’s usually our translator calling so she understands why it takes so many rings to pick up.

This Ikea-look-alike is actually a heater. There are 3 or 4 in the apartment but we have not turned any on. It’s been just warm enough to not need the heat. Once this guy fires up, I don’t think I’d want to get close to it to avoid the chance of getting char-grill scars.

As if we were not having enough problems with appliances in Russian, they had to throw in a Korean one with a remote. We were lucky to get an apartment with an air conditioner. By the time I leave it might be getting a little warm, but we might not need the AC since we have windows that open, and there’s always a strong breeze in Astana….which makes for good kite flying no matter where you are.

I thought this ceiling was so cool….very architectural compared to the POS apartments we had seen before. The ceiling has a big cut out with lights in the recessed ledge, then spot lights the rest of the way around, and a funky chandelier type light in the middle.

We have been burning though toilet paper like crazy, about a third of our supply in a week. I think Rob is using it at the rate so that it will be all used up the day he leaves, not realizing I will be here another 3 or 4 weeks. I will need to start stock piling it so I can wipe in comfort after Rob leaves.

Today's name for junior: Zanauren Taylor.