FREEFORUM

Talas people keep asking what Nurzhan is apart from "oil" and "Russos". So.

Shift B, Refinery No. 1. Up at 05:10. Tram 3 to the gate, 30 tyiyn, the tram is older than my father. Canteen breakfast: kasha, bread, tea with too much sugar. Twelve hours. Tram back. Mikrorayon, ninth floor, the lift works on even days.

That is the city. The flame on the stack is how you know you're home.

you forgot the smell. nobody from talas believes the smell until they arrive. after a week you stop noticing. after a year you miss it in other cities

Question for the refinery man: how much of what you refine goes to Russia and how much stays in Irad? And the money: Bekzatov's villa or the city budget? WAKE UP IRAD

I make diesel, Ak, not decisions. If I knew where the money went I would not be on shift B.

My cousin worked in Kobozev in the 1980s. (He is the one who called it "Noor-John" in Chicago.) He always said the Palace of Metallurgists had the best dances in the republic.

Still has dances. Sundays, for pensioners. My grandmother goes. She says the floor remembers her.

dastgoh: nine-storey blocks, the Heavy Machine Plant whistle at 7, the market by the tram ring, and in every courtyard a man fixing a Lada he's been fixing since 2006. it's home

Navbahor: same, with more trees and older people. The people planted the trees. The people are now older than the trees. Everyone talks about leaving for Moscow and nobody leaves.

Somebody left. Hi. Moscow oblast, building sites, brigade section 4. Read this thread on a break and almost got homesick over a description of a tram. Tell the stack I said hello.

The stack says hello. Also says come back, the ninth-floor lift now works on odd days too.

winter night shift in nurzhan is the most beautiful thing nobody photographs. steam from every vent, the flame, the snow coming down orange. this is where the boiler rooms came from. that's all. sentimental at 2am

Herald yesterday: a foundation is bringing young musicians into Nurzhan's boiler rooms. Nurzhan_Nights, you are heritage now.

heritage. we were just cold.