Postcard from Bishkek

From my regular scanning of the news sites on line, I came across an item reporting the results of a survey conducted in Britain … with the headlilne declaring that “Cold calls and spam emails top the list of ‘bugbears of modern life’“. Although the list of the top 50 irritants did contain some interesting […]

During recent years, as public holidays have approached, banners and signs have appeared bearing the slogan “Mairamynyzdar Menen!” It’s obviously in Kyrgyz, so I asked a Kyrgyz member of staff what it meant – and was told that it’s the Kyrgyz equivalent of the Russian “Se Prazdnikom!” … “with the holiday!”.  It turn, this is […]

The other day I was sent a link to a news article that I hadn’t seen before even though it was a couple of weeks old and it’s a page that I frequently look at given my background in Mathematics and Statistics. As I run a couple of hotels, my correspondent thought that it might […]

Regular readers of my postcards will know of m,y interest in Statistics … and the travel and leisure industry provides a wealth of useful examples that I wish I had been aware of when I was teaching the subject. Whenever two or three hoteliers are gathered together, for example, there is one topic of conversation […]

A few years ago. when I was living in London, a friend of mine had his mother visiting from New Zealand and he wanted to take to see a West End show.  He selected a few and I asked if I would like to join them to go and and see one of them and […]

January 21st , 2008, is known as “Black Monday” in worldwide stock markets.  The London “FTSE 100″ had its biggest ever one-day points fall, European stocks closed with their worst result since 11 September 2001, and Asian stocks dropped as much as 14%. Although it is a bit of a closed world to me, (I […]

In the States, January 17th is Customer Service Day. It’s billed as a day to reflect on the most important asset of any business – its customers; after all, as I am often heard to say, “without customers there is no business!”.  It is the income received from customers that  pays the bills and the salaries […]

Every now and again people tell me that my approach to work is not the same as that of the locals.  These comments are usually accompanied by the advice: “When in Rome …”, or, “You’ve got to understand out mentality …”. I am not sure I agree with the first, although the second is an […]

A phrase that I hear over and over again is : Pay your taxes and sleep soundly. Oh, if only it were that simple! Unfortunately, things in real are rarely simple! It doesn’t help that nobody likes paying taxes (even if they are an important and a necessary fact of life – after all, Taxes […]

A week ago I went to a conference about the development of Tourism in Central Asia.  Some of the sessions were split into “working groups” which were supposed to look at specific issues and you had to opt for one of several options each time.  For various reasons I chose the group entitled Human Resources and […]