Another couple weeks in...

Hectic would be quite an understatement, with ongoing work leading up to a first-time financial report for the company on March 6. It's not as bad as the month leading up to their IPO, when I'm told people were sleeping at the office, but it's been busy enough to mean no time to sit and type. However, I'm now on a 20-hour trip to Miami for a conference (and meeting up with the family for a week), so I'm spending a few hours in Frankfurt with Wifi...

Work continues to be an adventure. I will never complain about policy or process again. Everything requires paperwork - and mountains of it. With no previous Investor Relations work/travel, the company processes are just not yet set up to manage it. And because I'm oblivious, my team is getting stuck picking up the slack:

- "I need this translated" - "OK, did you prepare an internal order to the Protocol group?" - "No" - "Oh, OK, I guess I'll just do it for you"

- "So I'm leaving in 2 days for the business trip" - "What?!? Did you pass an order for approval to HR? Did you provide exact costs to the accountants? Did you reassign your role to a different team member in the internal document system? Did the CEO sign (physically) your hand-written request to use a holiday day? Did the management board approve the cost of the hotel stay that are above maximums" - "ummm, no" - "Well you can't go until it's done!" - "ummm, ok"

I did my first round of HR training - this was the setup:

The booth had English and Russian translators, and headsets were worn as needed. Two of us out of about 12 people spoke English only, the entire training was Russian, and the trainer didn't know any English. It was a good sessions about changing internal culture and mapping processes to become more efficient. I think. Or maybe it was about filling in forms. Not 100% sure, but I got a certificate.

Beyond work, more oddities:
1) I think retail staff here are too used to plastic for payments...and a huge devaluation a couple of years ago left them without the skills for counting back large amounts of change...

I'm yet to see a register in a store anywhere here that allows the cashier to enter how much cash was given to them, with a display of how much change to give. And like the rest of the world these days, math skills seem to be lacking. I now have a card, but still like to feel rich and use tenge (10,000₸ = $35CAD) - but no matter what I'm buying, if I'm not giving them exact change, cashiers are as confused as hell. I'm constantly asked (in Russian) if I have cash of this or that denomination instead of what I've given. 

I was at a sporting goods store, total came to 16,060₸, so I gave 20,060₸, thinking 2 x 2,000₸ bills back and we're done. After a solid 5 mins of deliberations among 3 staff and several requests if I had different denominations (I did not), I was given back my 60₸ in coins along with another 60₸ in coins (for some reason), then 1,000₸ bill, 4 x 200₸ bills, a 2,000₸ bill and 2 x 100₸ coins. OK then.

Don't get me wrong, we've all had the same issue in Canada, but I'm yet to have an experience that ISN'T like that. Bought some batteries for 180₸, only had a 5,000₸ bill. Cashier bypassed the 2,000₸ and 1,000₸ trays, gave me a 20₸ coin, then proceeded to count out 24 x 200₸ bills.

2) Hot dogs are always served cold. 
- don't get it - had a cold hot dog at a hockey game, figured it was just crappy service...but nope...cold everywhere!

3) Food continues to be awesome and cheap. Take this:

There's a Sobey's-like ready-made food counter in the grocery store, all unique things I've never seen, so grabbing something different all the time. Asked for 8 perogies-looking things for supper (they were indeed handmade perogies). Lost in translation, appeared to be given about 8 lbs...but regardless, total cost was $1.35CAD

This particular supper with rice, shishkabobs, perogies and perogies-meat-hedgehog-looking-things was under $2CAD. Including the Stella...

4) I mentioned cell services are cheap. 
I bought an HDMI cable for about $14CAD, and was given this stack of SIM card with 500GB of data as the "free bonus". Will be great for the kids to pop in their phones when they come visit - will give them a Kazakh number and unlimited data!

5) At the end of the long days, I've been desperate to get a martini. 
Two issues though, booze variety is insanely weak, and mixing paraphernalia is not common. At first, I resorted to a surprisingly effective teapot shaker.

Later, tracked down a $70 bar set at "Zara Home", and put it to good use.

And with the advice of some locals, found a store with some alcohol selection to get what was really needed.

6) Lastly, water is very hard. Dishwasher was leaving massive spots, so went looking for some "Jet Dry" and like most shopping excursions, it takes 3x longer than it should, and involved intensive use of Google Translate on every product. I think I ended up getting Jet Dry. And unlike Canadian Jet Dry, this one comes with excellent, positive side effects, according to Google. Guess spotted silverware causes marital issues here. 

This week's video is brought to you by the Regis Hotel, where I've been going for Sunday brunch. Mid-way through each brunch, they do the traditional Russian-sword-champagne thing...

On to Miami for 10 days (and anxious for the 4 days of expense reporting and neccesary approvals that will follow).

Culture and local sport

Coming up on a month now, and the past week saw quite a bit of activity - 1) work got exciting 2) local pro hockey and tennis was exciting 3) karaoke initiation was...something.

1) At work, we released our first "quarterly trading update release" (⇦ at the link, choose "Eng" in the top right). From an investor relations perspective, I've become used to planning my life around four quarterly releases per year - as in "for one month after the end of each quarter, don't plan to have much of a life."

With Kazatomprom, it's slightly different - one month after the quarter, there will first be a trading and operational update with no financials (the company's structure with 13 mines, 13 subsidiaries, a huge fuel cycle plant, multiple international partners, all very complex to consolidate financially, so not possible in 30 days. We get core results out first so we're not so out-of-sync with others in the market, and can talk at conferences about some new information, while the finance group takes another week or two to finish statements (quarterly), and a Management's Discussion and Analysis (only 2x year instead of 4). Also important, as we're the National Operator with a share in every mine, we're releasing details allowing the government to report and talk about what they need to about the quarter, while staying onside with disclosure rules because we put it out publicly first)

Added complexity - had to build a disclosure committee in the company to ensure all the right functions are vetting the information, then write the release in English, then translate to Russian (most disclosure committee not comfortable editing in English) and Kazakh (because it's the second national language). Then, over the course of two weeks, get comments and re-writes (coming back in all three languages), and CONTINUOUSLY editing. If looking at the website link above, and flipping in the top right from "ENG" to "RUS" and "KAZ" languages...don't be fooled into thinking there's some Google Translate voodoo going on - each translation is manual! Google does NOT work for Russian and Kazakh, especially for technical areas! The translation is painstaking and time consuming - at times, I had a sentence with ~15 words...and decided I wanted to use a different adjective in English. Passing the edit to the team...they deleted the ENTIRE sentence in Russian and Kazakh and rewrote it (with totally different words) to convey the new meaning!

Excitement this first time around came when the ministry provided a "statement" to Bloomberg two days earlier (when media asks for information here, government must provide for ultimate transparency). The reporter misinterpreted some facts (that were not facts) and wrote a piece that was counter to our publicized strategy of decreasing production. Controlling 40% of world production means it was big deal - North American uranium company shares dropped...coming back up when our release corrected the statement. It was a good lesson for all on the task at hand - I'll be educating colleagues about how a publicly traded company operates, I'll be training government folks on how a national company must manage it's information flow when it's traded outside the country, and I'll be teaching local media that they now have a direct point of contact within a national company (no other company has had IR) that will happily answer questions at any time!


2) In sports - hit an Astana Barys game (KHL) against league-leading St. Petersburg! Huge arena and great atmosphere, crowd cheered for every rush like it was a goal.

 In what can only be described as a bizarre twist...no beer, and no food or drink allowed in the stands. I guess there's a history of throwing everything you can on the ice if there's a bad call...!


Style of hockey was very back-and-forth with no trap, and big hits - like the NHL used to be when it was fun to watch. Barys lost, but former Saskatoon Blade Darren Deitz picked up a nice goal on a slap shot, with some excitement waiting for a review from upstairs to determine if it was offside!



Like I said - hits were big, and I'm thinking pretty common, since the guys with the spine board actually beat the trainer out to load up the Russian player and get him off the ice to the game could get moving again!

Big boss also invited me out to catch some Tennis - Kazakhstan vs. Portugal in the Davis Cup qualifiers. Kazakhstan took it all 3-1 and moved on to the world finals in Madrid!

 

3) Karaoke was something else - this particular place was high end and called "grammy" - VIP rooms with their own systems and soundproof, while the main floor was $200/table (minimum spend). Every table gets two songs with cordless mics passed around - took about 90 minutes to come back to you. Colleague missed his calling (song is in Russian, and they have a professional singer as well doing accompaniment throughout). They had VOLUMES of binders to pick songs, and I can guarantee I was the first to sing the Canadian hit "If I had a $1,000,000" by the Bare Naked Ladies at this venue, maybe in Astana. No, there will be no published video.

 

Have a fine week...