From minus 33 to plus 33

degrees centigrade, that is...........

Yerlan and his beautiful wife, Zhanara arrived on the 0840 flight from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on Tuesday. They are Kazakh Muslims from Astana, Kazakhstan and Yerlan is here to attend a conference on Islamic Financial Services. Hubby and I were at the airport to meet them and to take them to their hotel. He had become acquainted with Yerlan while on a business trip to Kazakhstan. Hubby gave me a quick geography lesson that morning. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are neigbouring countries in Central Asia, Kazakhstan to the north and Uzbek to the? ....... south. Kazakh, a vast country with a population of only 16 million, is economically better-off than Uzbek. Kazakhs look more mongolian whilst Uzbeks, caucasian.

Being located in the Steppes, Kazakhstan experiences extreme climatic conditions. Astana's winter temperatures can plunge down to -33 degrees centigrade and in the summer, the needle points to the direct opposite up to +40 degrees. Hubby was there a few days during a very wintry Ramadhan one year, and it was quite a memorable experience for him, to say the least.

After 50 years of so-called Soviet colonialism, Islam is slowly re-emerging amongst the younger Kazakhs. Yerlan, 39, is himself a very committed Muslim, and serious about helping to set up Islamic establishments in his country. He had really done his research about KL and the environs before coming here, and was eagerly rattling off the names of the many places they intended to see. He speaks English very fluently and translated for Zhanara, who is only 30 years old, and knows very little English. Whereas my Russian is limited to "da" and "nyet", which I had picked up from one of the James Bond movies (was it Dr. Zhivago or From Russia With Love?).

The drive to the hotel turned out to be quite eventful for the young couple and us, too. As we pulled away from KLIA, they were marvelling at the greenness of the scenery and were oooohing and aaahing and exclaiming Masya Allah in praise of God's creations that we Malaysians just take for granted. We headed for Putrajaya, which apparently had been the model used for the design of Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. The story goes that the Kazakh President was such an admirer of our Tun Mahathir, that he took to Tun's idea of building a separate administrative capital, down to using the same Japanese architect who designed KLIA! (Note: I need to verify this.)

Next installment coming soon.

Update: The Japanese architect was Kisho Kurokawa.