I was planning to buy it when I used iMac for couple of minutes back in 2006, because it looked nice both outside and inside — the interface of Mac OS seemed very beautiful to me.

The two problems preventing me to buy a Mac were absence of Macs in Uzbekistan and their price.

So, I saved some money, earned some experience in using eBay and decided to buy a Mac mini.

It is a factory refurbished Mac mini with a new Apple aluminum keyboard.

It looks awesome, it is very small and makes no noise.

Sure, it is not so powerful — Core Duo plus 1 Gb of RAM but can become a good jump-start into the Apple world in couple with my iPhone (which I also love, btw)

Recently a hacker group called Dev-Team announced that there is a software unlock coming to iPhone 3G – you simply install a modified firmware to the iPhone and it works with all operators around the globe. Without any chips and drawbacks. The hack will be released on New Year’s Eve.

The research conducted by Informa Telecoms & Media last November showed that Uzbekistan has one of the cheapest mobile communication services in the World. Only in Sri Lanka and Venezuela it was cheaper to talk and SMS using a mobile network.

Time has since passed and I won’t be mistaken to say that we now have the cheapest mobile communications in the World. For example, I have a family tariff and one minute of talking costs only $0.01 a minute inside the family group and $0.02 — with others. And this is not the lowest price. It can become as low as $0.005 — that is — half a cent from the 3rd minute of talk. And SMSes cost $0.02.

It is partly because of the tough competition in the local market of mobile communications. The biggest mobile operator in Uzbekistan is MTS — a subsidiary of Russian Mobile TeleSystems, which is the biggest mobile operator in Eastern Europe. The second biggest is also a Russian company — Beeline. The third one is a subsidiary of Finnish-Swedish TeliaSonera and is called UCell.

All three companies reported that they’re going to launch 3G until the end of the year.

I think, in a few years the mobile communications will be free, and in a decade — the operators start to pay customers when they use their network ;-)

Today Uzbekistan celebrated two holidays — the Teachers’ day and Eid ul-Fitr.

Happy holidays!

First, I received a mail from a (supposedly) Dutchman, who is currently staying in Tashkent, my hometown. He said he saw the Polish Catholic church in my YouTube video about Tashkent and asked how he can reach the church and see it by himself. I gave him directions, and after 2 days I received a letter of thanks :-)

Second story is more complicated. As you might know, I have a photo gallery with photos of both Uzbekistan and Denmark. So, around two years ago I received an email from a Danish woman who used to live in Uzbekistan. Now, after two years, she found me in LinkedIn and asked how I and Uzbekistan were. It turned out that she studied Russian and worked as an English teacher in Tashkent. I asked why she chose Uzbekistan to study Russian, but not the motherland of the language. She said she liked Uzbekistan more than Russia. It is nice to hear this kind of stuff.

And BTW, I am back in Uzbekistan.

Geirangerfjord, Norway

For example, in Uzbek the word “Are you stupid?” can be said in many different ways, the “correct” form of it being “Jinnimisan?”. But many people, at least in Tashkent, use “Qozoqmisan?” which literally means “Are you a Kazakh?” and which is the synonym of “Jinnimisan?”

You can not feel this rivalry in daily life, but the Uzbek language still resembles the old times.

Bought 2 books there, it took less than 3 weeks to be delivered to Uzbekistan — good service!

Highly recommended.