Towse: views from the hill

A $2-million comma? Au contraire, Rogers tells Aliant

by GRANT ROBERSTON
From Monday’s Globe and Mail

A dispute over the proper use of punctuation in a multimillion-dollar contract for utility poles has turned into l’affaire comma for Rogers Communications Inc. and Aliant Inc.

Federal regulators ruled in July that a single comma in a 14-page contract meant the deal could be scrapped by Aliant, potentially resulting in as much as $2.13-million in extra costs for Rogers.

[...]

Here’s a click of the inside of a Kazakh ger.

… not a “yurt” we were told by our Kazakh informant …

Note the supports holding up the roof and the cross hatching of woven work holding everything together. The Kazakh felt work on the walls and floor liven up the interior. Warm. Cozy. Clean. A place for everything and everything in its place.

The ger exterior is heavy duty felt sometimes covered by decorated/painted canvas for added protection from the elements.

We ran into this ger and several others on our way back to Altay/Aletai from Kanas Lake.

The upcoming week would be a combination of National Day holiday (Oct 1st) — a week-long celebration of fifty-seven years of the PRC — and Autumn Moon Festival, which fell on the Friday (Oct 6th).

Because of the double holiday, everyone, it seemed, would be heading home or going off somewhere on vacation. Every shop had moon cakes. The government was limiting entrance to popular tourist areas in anticipation of flocking holiday crowds and allowing charter flights to book trips to/fro Taiwan for the week so that families could reunite for the holidays.

Luckily we were heading off within the next day or so to Kashgar and then on to Tashkurgan and over the Khunjerab Pass via the Karakoram Highway into Hunza (Pakistan) for the bulk of the holiday period and would miss the holiday crowds.

The days and nights were getting colder up in the mountain pasturelands. Most of the Kazakh families had already folded up their temporary summer homes and headed back to their winter quarters with their flocks and herds. Some were still moseying home.

Our Kazakh entrepreneurs with the gers and their herds had decided to stay on until after the Autumn Moon soze to make a little cash by renting shelter for the holiday makers before heading back to winter quarters.

Gers for rent.

We didn’t stay here, alas. There wasn’t enough room for us, for one thing. Additionally, heck, there was enough hoohah within the band of travelers over less-than-clean public squat toilets and hotel digs without 24-hour hot running water to even consider spending a night somewhere where there was no running water at all and the toilets were not only not American-style but were rudimentary and requiring a trek out into the cold night and the wild outdoors.

These photos plus additional …

Don sez (in comments), I’m drawn to that further shore, and wish for a mule team, some guides and companions and about six months free time.

You would’ve loved his nibs’ great great aunt Burta, who roamed the world until she was booked on the return (US->) of the Titanic and decided ghod was telling her not to wander again.

Burta roamed through Afghanistan with a bunch of guys packing along her long black dresses and a tea pot back in the late 1800s. She went to Greece, Italy, China, Japan, dug relics in Pompeii, and found herself a place wherever she roamed.

I wish I’d known her.

We have her photos and a few things she brought back. The pater familias’ much younger second wife got the stuff — including most of the stuff Aunt Burta had brought back with her — and the bulk of the estate, so we must be content with what we have.

We have the pics and a role model.

Man, I wish I’d known her.

Peter Callesen and his art, including some amazing papercuts.

Back safely.

   Heaven Lake at 6000′ in the Tian Shan (Celestial Mountains). Bogda Peak (17K’/5595 M) in the background; Xinjiang, Uyghur Autonomous Region, northwest China.

Picasa doesn’t seem to want to make thumbnails for the blog since I updated to the lastest version of Picasa, so I’ll need to setup a different routine. I’ll post more photos when life is back on even keel.

Later

I’m back and find that John M. (Mike) Ford died while we were away.

Read this post by his partner, Elise Matthesen, and this tribute at Making Light.

Playing with Google Reader — better sliced bread than Bloglines?

Some say so.