Hi, everybody !
My name is Arthur,
I am from Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is located in Central Asia; it borders with Russia to the North and West, China to the South-East and Iran to the South-West across the Caspian Sea.
Kazakhstan occupies quite large territory; it stretches 3,000 kilometers from East to West and more than 1,500 kilometers from North to South.
This is the biggest landlocked country in the World. It has access to the Caspian Sea but it is rather a big salty lake than a sea because it has no connection with World Ocean. Kazakhstan has rich oil fields on the coasts of the Caspian Sea, may be not as big as Iran on the other side of the Caspian Sea but considerably rich in oil anyway..
Kazakhstan used to be a part of Russian Empire from 18-th century to the year 1991 when the Soviet Union disintegrated and the six independent Turkic states came into existence, Kazakhstan was the biggest of them by its size though not the biggest one in terms of population
I have Russian background, my native language is Russian. My specialty is Engineer of Telecommunications; I worked as telecom specialist in mobile phone companies for 7 years, then I worked in Broadband Mobile Internet Access industry for the last 3 years.
Kazakhstan is also significant by its spacecrafts (rockets) launching / landing base. Is it located roughly in the middle of the country, most of International space crews were sent to the orbital station from Kazakhstan, actually for the recent few years all launches / landings related with International Space Program were made from Kazakhstan.
On the first picture you can see a space rocket; this is cargo spacecraft, the most popular one, so called “a working horse of space program”. I and my colleagues were lucky to visit this rocket launching base because a cell phone company I was working for had a contract with Russian “NASA” to build mobile phone network covering all launching sites and the core town. It was one of my independent projects, I like such projects because I have freedom for creativity, and you begin from scratch, just from a blank page. You have a chunk of territory and it is your responsibility to locate Radio Base Stations so that provide appropriate radio-network coverage. This is a challenging pursuit but if you exactly know what you are doing and what results to expect you just enjoy the process.
My home-city is located pretty close to mountains, so I always had an opportunity to enjoy the beautiful sceneries. On the second picture you can see a mountain lake and a mountain chain on the background. These mountains are part of Tien Shan mountain range, one of the longest in Central Asia stretching for 2,800 kilometers from East to West along the southern border of Kazakhstan. The highest peak is 7,439 meters above the sea level.
I came to Canada in September 2010 by Skilled Workers Federal Immigration program. Now I live in NE of Calgary, close to downtown. I am married and have 6-year-old son. Our family rent 2-bedroom apartment. I like Canada in general and Calgary in particular. People here are kind and friendly; I can feel the spirit of freedom and independence everywhere.
The air is fresh and clean and I can see untouched wild life in my neighborhood; I mean squirrels and rabbits, although my place is located just 15 minutes walk from downtown.
I want to continue my career in IT / telecom industry. Firstly I will improve my English, I am sure that our EAP course is the best way to achieve this goal, after that I plan to take “fast track” program at SAIT. The name of the program is Technology Infrastructure Management, the length is 40 weeks, and the gist of the program is a hybrid between a System Administrator and IT manager.
