Approaching One Year...

Well, Kazatomprom has been publicly traded for a year - and I've now been in Kazakhstan for nearly a year. The day-to-day differences are a little more normalized, but there's always something new. Take the little room I noticed across from my office...

As usual, there's a poor Google translation available...apparently it's a fire safety room for minorities.

I was recently asked to provide a talk to a "JasTalks" group - a forum for young employees from the Samruk Kazyna group of companies to hear about the career experiences of management personnel. The poster they put together was awesome:

 Luckily I was actually a speaker...and not just a guy sitting at the back that they referred to as a "FAQ up story" in Russian. I even got a speaker gift (that I'm nowhere near being able to read, but cool to have a Russian book for the shelf).

General Nur-Sultan

I came across some great aerial photos of the city, including the Expo Center, which was built for the World Expo in 2017. It now hosts a multi-story energy museum in the "Death Star", with restaurants, the Astana International Stock Exchange (AIX), and Kazakh financial regulators and such in the surrounding building (and the big Mega Silk Way mall across the street - top centre of photo).

Here's one of the Kahn Shatyr mall, with my flat on the left (building attached by walkway), and the Kazatomprom HQ in the black buildings in the upper left.

...of course, it's no longer quite so green at the moment with -30C's and snow back for the season. Guess it's back to the indoor hobby...with some green for the desk.

Food as usual

While this is probably at risk of becoming an ongoing food blog, it's hard not to keep bringing it up!

There were a few big highlights this past month - this first was learning to cook Kazakh/Uzbek Plov (pilaf). A colleague invited me over to his house where his family took me through the 2+ hour process for making the dish - rice, carrots, onions, tender meat (horse in this case) with Achichuk salad and Tashkent Uzbek tea. 

 

And as per Kazakh tradition, the guest had to leave with food and gifts...in my case, the plov the was left, a variety of fruit, and the rice and specific spices needed for plov so I can take it back to Canada and make it at home (with some Alberta beef...)

The second highlight was a Sunday brunch with Italian Michelin Star chef Fabrizio Ferarri.

Learned a lot about Michelin Stars lately - the Brunch day, and the chief marketing officer at KAP owns a restaurant in Edinburgh, UK that was just awarded a Star only a year after opening...plus, I found out that no Canadian restaurant has ever been awarded a Michelin Star! Supposedly, nothing good and unique there...bastards.

And finally - Spicy Korean lunch. I wouldn't have thought to put smoked brisket in my ichiban...but I will in the future!

Aaaaand Corona.

(Kazakh Corona)

The year will end with a week in Prague at an investor conference in December (Christmas season in Prague should be interesting), then a very much needed few weeks with the family back in Saskatoon for Christmas and the new year!

A very hectic start to September ended with a very hectic end to September. At work, we hosted our inaugural capital markets day in London...

The full event, for anyone dying to see it, can be replayed here: https://profile.lsegissuerservices.com/JSCNationalAtomicCoKazatomprom/fundamentals

After the investor day, we were back to Kazakhstan with investors in tow to spend a few days on a bus, visiting a few uranium mines sites.

And without exception...a ton a great food at every stop!

Final stop on the tour route, which took us to mines between Kyzylorda and Shymkent, was the world heritage site of Turkestan - amazing history with thousands of years of history.

And because there just wasn't enough travel in the third quarter, I arranged a trip to our fuel and metals processing facility - the Ulba Metallurgical Plant - in Ust' Kamenogorsk, in north east Kazakhstan. The facility is massive, celebrating 70 years of history this month.

The nearby museum for the site was pretty amazing - showing a model of the entire site, including the IAEA's warehouse where 90,000 tons of "emergency access" uranium will be stored for countries needing fuel in a pinch (the tiny blue building in the corner of the site).

The site manufactures fuel pellets...and will soon assemble fuel bundles:

And on the beryllium, tantalum and niobium side, various products and alloys are produced. The middle picture shows a super conductor wire - left and middle are typical copper and metal core wire with perhaps 8 - 20 large strands in them. The tiny feathery-looking cut wire on the right is made of tantalum - one small wire (bottom half) cut to expose the over 14,000 strands contained in it! 


In the plant itself, some of the operating equipment is over 100 years old.

A couple of the more interesting facts from the site's history:

1) Ulba built a yacht, currently sitting in a nearby warehouse. It's for sale if anyone has about US$5M to US$10M kicking around - oh, and you'll need a little time to take it home. Ust' Kamenogorsk is on the Irtysh River, which stretches about 4,300 km through China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Russia - so unless you have a nice place along the River to vacation with it, you'll need to drive it to the Kara Sea and into the Arctic (and while the flat-bottom boar is river and lake worthy...not sure how it'll fare on the open sea!)

2) Kazakhstan's mint is located on the corner of the Ulba site - all of the country's coinage is minted there.

3) On the wall in the museum, a unique piece of history: Stalin's 1945 decree to create the Ulba metallurgical plant!

4) Around the site, they use Russian vehicles like the UAZ-452 minibus and UAZ-469 Jeep. Awesome, extremely basic vehicles - even this one, which was nearly new. I think I'll try to get the kids one for their first vehicle...

Interestingly, the city itself was much more Russian than Kazakh - but it actually felt a lot like Saskatoon, with deciduous trees and a river. 

Where the Irtysh and Ulba rivers come together in the city, it's pretty amazing - the faster flowing Ulba is warmer in the spring, and carrying more sediment, so it's brownish, while the colder Irtysh, flowing from the mountains, is clear and blue!

Like everywhere I go - good food, especially Georgian.

While similar, there were definitely a few elements that were a little "unlike" Saskatoon - like the world's deepest lock (42m, an hour to fill):

And the hotels...a little different!

Next up - a trip to the US west coast in October and finally, a quick trip home to Saskatoon!