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Living in Astana

I relocated in Astana in January 2018. After Thailand and Hong Kong, it was a bit of a shock to land in cold place again. And by cold, I mean really cold. Last January the coldest day (well night really) was -38 C. What makes it even more fun is that Astana is located in the middle of nowhere and the wind that blows through doubles the coldness effect. Well, the temperature is more likely to stay around -20 C during the winter, and as long as you dress to the weather you’ll do just fine. In summer the place is beautiful.

2000px-Central_Downtown_Astana_pamorama

Astana in nutshell

Astana is the capital of Kazakhstan, which celebrated its 20th Birthday this year. With population of 1 million (and growing), it’s located on the banks of Ishim River, which divides the city into left and right banks. Left bank representing the new side, with most ministries and official buildings, and right bank is where the local population traditionally resides. Astana represents and offers opportunities for young driven professionals.

President Nazarbayev relocated the capital from Almaty to Astana in 1997, and the old city of Akmola was renamed to Astana.

The main religion is islam, but it’s not visible in every day life.

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Pacquiao vs Mayweather: Hugs and Missed Punches

It finally happened. For a number of boxing fans a dream came through. After years of waiting Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather finally stepped into the same ring. Was the waiting worth while? Yes and no… Many questions were answered, while lot of speculations continue.

The fight – coined as the “fight of the century” turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment to many, who expected to see a world class bout.

Manny started of slightly stiff while Floyd maintained his distance and style. Nothing ground-breaking in the first two rounds. In the third round Manny started to add pace and both gained hits. Fourth was probably the most action packed round of the whole fight and Floyd looked to be in trouble a couple of times, while Manny delivered in couple of good crosses and body shots, followed by flurries. After the fourth round the pace slowed down. Manny chasing, Floyd running away. Twitter filled up with amusing tweets after the fight ‘accusing’ Floyd for running away and hugging instead of boxing. This one in particular: “I wish my girlfriend was more like Floyd, when we fight he would just hug me”.

Now, who won the fight? According to the judges Mayweather by unanimous decision.

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How to Get (And Renew) a Driver’s License in Thailand

For many people driving a car in Thailand isn’t the first option that comes to mind, when traveling around the country. There are a lot risks related to it, and so many affordable other options to choose from. Living in Bangkok, you really don’t need a car, at least as a single person or as a couple without kids, because of the convenience of BTS and MRT. But every now and then, it would be nice to jump on a car and drive away for the weekend. As most rental car services require a local license, it makes renting a car a whole lot easier to have one. Here’s how it’s done.

Preparations

If you have a license issued from your country, you don’t have to do the license from scratch. If you have an international license, or license from any English speaking country, you just need to contact your Embassy in Thailand, and ask for a magical thing called “embassy stamp” that clears almost everything in Thailand. But, if your license was issued in a non-English speaking country, you need to get a transcript from your country explaining what the driver’s license is for and what vehicles you can drive.

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Mail Server Pro – Corporate Communications Platform

Email and data security is something that has been raising a lot of eyebrows recently. To be honest, it’s not something most of us actively even think when we post something on Facebook, send an email or SMS, or even make a phone call. Fair enough, most of us got nothing to hide, but still, some things perhaps we think are more private than they actually are. I had an eye opener to many of these things recently.

When you send an email out through the traditional manner, it leaves your server and travels to the recipients mail server. Actually this was the first application of the internet. Sadly not much has changed since in the way emails are sent, as this isn’t very secure way to transfer data. Sure, there is a thing called encryption, which provides certain level of protection, but due to a different kind of security aspect, the encryption cannot be too difficult for government agencies to decrypt. In other words they want to be able to intercept and read certain emails. In principle this is fine, but if they can do it, so can other people, who might not have good intentions of what they will do with the information.

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Shanghai trip and Inside 3D Printing Shanghai Event 2014

After successfully getting the Chinese Visa done at the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok, we were all set to travel to Shanghai. The first edition of Inside 3D Printing Shanghai took place over 2 days at the Shanghai Exhibition Center. The show was coined to be a large one, and I think the local partner did a good job attracting visitors to the exhibits and conference. The total number was estimated between 2500-3000 over two days.

3DPI team this time consisted Ari and myself, and our goals for this show were to get video interviews with a number of industry experts including Wim Michiels from Materialise, Harry Kleijnen from Philips, Lionel Dean from FutureFactories, Maltesh Somasekharappa from Wipro and Ian Gibson from Deakin University. The video interviews is somewhat new concept to 3DPI.TV and we are still learning to climb the ropes. Filming in a noisy tradeshow environment can be tricky and changing the location constantly adds a little extra challenge to it.

The whole trip was amazing. Cathay Pacific treated us well from Bangkok through Hong Kong to Shanghai and back. The hotel we stayed in was probably the nicest I have ever been in: Langham Xintiandi. Just simply amazing service.

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