Postcard from Bishkek

A couple of years ago, my passport expired and I had to apply for a new one.  It seems amusing now but, as the time drew near, it caused me a certain amount of anxiety. Over the years that I have been here in Bishkek, I have to apply for a new passport three times […]

A taxi from one of the many Taxi firms that now operate in Bishkek When I first came to Kyrgyzstan, almost any and every car could be considered a “taxi”.     This is an exaggeration – but it is true that you would see people standing by the roadside trying to, literally, “flag down” […]

The last Saturday in April – this year 26th April – is designated as Veterinarians Day. It’s not surprising that the occupation is highly regarded here in Kyrgyzstan – given the importance of agriculture to the national economy, contributing something like 25% of the republic’s GDP, and the predominance of livestock rearing and management within […]

One of the issues that has attracted a lot of attention here in recent times is the provision of education for children with Special Needs … which is a little surprising because it is one of those issues which is so often “pushed into the background”. One of the groups of children that have “special […]

On March 19th, 1474, a law was enacted in Venice which was pretty revolutionary in that, for the first time in history it provided legal copyright protection for inventions - recognizing the “moral right” of the author and granting them the exclusive right to benefit from the use of their “intellectual property” - at least for a limited time. […]

One of the questions I am most frequently asked , by foreigners and locals alike, concerns what changes I have seen here in Bishkek in the eighteen and a half years I have lived here. Although there are other things I could note, when answering I normally concentrate on three topics … the number and […]

A short while ago, one of my correspondents sent me a link to an article by John Daly on the Jamestown Foundation’s website, China and Kyrgyzstan Discuss Rail Projects, and asked if I could comment … The article is about the discussions that are going on about the possibility of developing the country’s railway system […]

In was on St Scholastica’s Day in 1355 that one of the most notorious events in the history of Oxford – both the town and he University.  It was such a significant event that the city museum used to have, (and I presume still has), a whole room dedicated to an audio visual presentation about […]

A few years ago I was asked to be a visiting speaker at a class in the American University of Central Asia, (AUCA). The class was part of a course on Business Studies and was titled Business Ethics. At first I was reluctant to agree, because I thought they’ll want to hear about bribery and corruption […]

As a former schoolteacher, I always take an interest in news reports about education … so, I was intrigued last December to see a report of a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Social Policy addressed by the Deputy Minister of Education and Science who quoted a number of very interesting statistics – another of […]