Women work with men in hard work at European construction sites.

So to speak, full emancipation.

I wonder if there are reasonable boundaries in emancipation?

What, in your opinion, should be in our society, and what already goes beyond the reasonable:

1. Allow women not to wear a scarf;

2. Allow women to travel the world on their own without …

I spoke to a vegetable wholesaler in a market in Astana.

He procures potatoes, onions, carrots; cabbage etc. from farmers in the regions, and later on sells them in the market to restaurants, cafeterias, cafes and shops.

Here is what he says, that corruption and bribes are a blooming industry not only in the government but also in the private …

A little bit about stupid superstitions.

     Everyone knows our Kazakh belief in the name of “koz tiedi” or in Russian – the evil eye.

     Modern educated people still believe in this nonsense. They hide from the prying eyes of their newborns for up to 40 days, smear specks on the foreheads, cling a pin to them …

“I will try in order.

The first and most important thing. People who speak exclusively Kazakh in our country are exercising their constitutional right. It doesn’t matter who they talk to – foreigners, Russian speakers or among themselves. Constitutional law.

I recently flew to Lithuania. Everyone there also speaks or at least understands Russian. But I downloaded a Lithuanian phrasebook, …

No, I’m not talking about global villains like Dracula or Putin. I am referring to ordinary citizens, perhaps quite decent and law-abiding, but committing inexplicable actions for me.

Here in the supermarket, a handsome man with a cart full of food, stops in a narrow aisle and picks melons for a long time. He touches one, the other. Smells, snaps. …

I don’t believe in superstitions.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out how three grams of saliva fired over my left shoulder can change the trajectory of a brick that should fall on my head around the corner.

What is the connection between them?!

Or what kind of trouble can my grandmother bring me with empty buckets, unless …

 My friend’s son studies at one of the Czech universities.

               Recently she went to visit him. She decided to lavish her son’s classmates, mostly Czechs, with Kazakh national dishes, and served a dinner in the dormitory. Before the feast, the son suddenly said to his mother: “Mom, just do not pull your handbag …

With fear I am waiting for the moment when young people begin to annoy me, when their music seems to be stupid, outfits are tasteless, mores are loose; when I catch myself thinking that earlier the grass was greener, and the water was wetter.

Some of my peers have already started to express such suspicions. However, it has not touched …

Ali was born into a poor family. He remembered since childhood, as his parents lived in a rented apartments and barely making ends meet. He also remembered how his father and mother had waited in fear for the rent to be paid every first day of the month, how they had hated the landlord, called him a blood-sucker and a …