[Leica] Valentine's Day in Tashkent

[mads.christensen at gmx.net (Mads Christensen)]

Thanks for all your comments.

 

The last picture is in fact img4646, as rightly pointed out by Luis (and not
img4664).

 

About Tashkent: I don't know much about New Jersey but I am not sure that
that comparison will hold very long. As I have put it to Luis already, I am
afraid there is less mythical and more mystical about Tashkent. This city
was badly hit by a large earthquake in 1966 and the reconstruction efforts
have left the city with a very scattered layout, according to my taste.
Apart from that I get so many flashbacks to what I remember from coming to
Riga, Latvia to live with my family and work on my first overseas assignment
in 1992-94. I say overseas although this is only on the other side of the
Baltic Sea from Sweden, a 1-hour flight away from Copenhagen. We came a few
months after the collapse of the Soviet Union in August 1991 but peoples'
lives and the whole society was so different compared to living in Western
Europe. Here in Tashkent, 15-16 years after, there is still a lot of the old
Soviet life style and behavior left over. The 'smell' is so much old style
that I cannot really believe it. Of course it makes me wonder what life was
all about here, 15 years ago? Uzbekistan is a very inward looking country
that really needs a shake-up and a serious turn-around but this will not
happen before the current ruler is no longer in charge. When that happens,
things may become worse, if not nasty, but hopefully then things will turn
better for real. 

 

And to Peter Dzwig: Oh, yes we have had lots of snow. Much more this winter
than what is the norm and temperatures have been much lower and much longer
too, than normally. This winter seems to have been abnormal all the way
around the Caspian Sea and it has really stirred up some things as per the
well known domino effect: The low temperatures caused Turkmenistan to stop
supplying (piped natural) gas to the northern most parts of Iran on the
southern side of the border. Northern Iran is traditionally supplied by
imported gas and not by gas from the distant Iranian fields at the rim of
the Persian Golf. The Turkmens were probably also using the situation to
remind their southern neighbours that they would like to see some revisions
to price and other delivery terms in the wake of the higher prices than
Russia is now willing to pay for gas imports from Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan
and Uzbekistan for re-export to Europe after blending it with Russian gas
from Western Siberia. Anyway, this caused Iran to economize with its gas
export to Turkey because all its own gas was needed to keep up with the
rising domestic demands. This caused Turkey to hold back some of the gas
that it has over-contracted from Russia and has gotten rid of by shipping it
to Greece in a new pipeline that the two traditionally not-so-good
neighbours opened last year. The Greeks, however, are luckier because they
are getting most of their gas via a different pipeline that carries Russian
gas around the northern and western rim of the Black Sea and the Greeks also
have an LNG terminal. Hence the domino chips stopped falling before the
effects from cold winter in Central Asia spilled into the Balkan countries.
Sorry for being so technical and detailed?

 

I could add quite a few more lines about how the general climatic
conditions, hot and dry summers and very cold winters, are making things
very difficult when it comes to developing new huge but shallow and high
pressurized oil and gas condensate fields in Kazakhstan, at the northern end
of the Caspian Sea but that will have to wait until next time.

 

  

Regards,

 

Mads 

 


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