Postcard from Bishkek

I know that I going on about Social Media, but it’s a great thing for someone like me – an expat thousands of miles away from ‘home’ … allowing me to keep in touch with family and friends, to keep in touch and find out what’s happening in their lives. Sometimes it’s good news – […]

Seneca had a point when he said Quam bene vivas refert, non quam diu; It’s how well you live, not how long (… I confess that I don’t know Latin … but that’s I was told it means). Every year, (well, for the last eighteen years), the American consulting firm Mercer has conducted its Quality of Life survey […]

A headline brought a smile to my face … but it soon disappeared as I considered the full implications of the story. It was above a short article reporting a survey carried out by the National Statistics Committee … the government’s bureau for collecting, analyzing and reporting on all measurable aspects of Kyrgyz society. Eight […]

I got a bit of a surprise the other day when I received a link to a news item: Rating deductions – The “Jannat” hotel chain pays less to the budget than the hotel “Dostuk”. The article was published on the well known and respected Tazarbek site of the AkiPress news agency, which specializes in business news […]

The burning question of the day usually comes at about seven o’clock in the evening, when I get home from the hotel: “What are we going to eat?” We have a problem because, well, everyone has different tastes … if I suggest spaghetti, Maxim may well reject that option  and announce that he wants to […]

As a ‘foreigner’ in a ‘foreign land’, especially one involved in tourism, I find that conversations often turn to questions of passports and visas … and, over the weekend I came across an interesting statistic – and, as is usual, I found myself asking questions about how reliable it was. Being a former teach of […]

This time last year, I wrote a postcard introducing an annual number puzzle and thought I would pose it once again this year:

There’s something special about the the number forty – although, as a Brit, I should say fourty. It’s a composite number – which basically means that it is not a Prime number, (that it has more than two factors – 1 and itself). It’s a semiperfect number, which means that it is possible to get […]

As a teacher of Computing and Information Technology, I used to set an exercise based on the Premier Division of the Football League. The school was located in North London, and the nearest teams were Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur, both of which attracted supporters from among the pupils.  There were a number of of other […]

Some time ago, I walked into the hotel and found the place remarkably quiet.  There’s nothing unusual about that in itself; ours is a small hotel and unless we are full with a conference also in progress it is usually quiet … But this was unusually quiet.  Everyone was engrossed, bent over bits of paper […]