Archive sections: ‘Weekly_Postcards’
You might expect that, as a former Maths teacher, I do not suffer from Arithmophobia – the fear of numbers. Indeed, one of the books that I brought with me when I cam out here 15 years ago was “The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers.” Oddly enough it has no entry for 57, [...]
In Britain, August is known as the “Silly Season” – the period during the summer months typified by the emergence of frivolous news stories in the media due to the “lack of hard news” as people are away on their holidays and governments and businesses close down for the holidays. It’s the same here. The [...]
Douglas Adams, the author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy“, (HHGTTG or H2G2 to aficionados), may be famous for his answer to “the great question of … Life, the Universe and Everything … “, (that is: “forty-two”), but his quirky sense of humour also resulted in a number of interesting “one liners”. One of [...]
Michael J. Fox encountered a number of dilemmas as Marty McFly in the 1985 Stephen Spielberg film, “Back to the Future”. One of those dilemmas gave the film it’s title – having been thrust 50 years into the past, how was Fox/McFly to return home? The film was a great success: it was the highest [...]
The unusual combination of letters in “Kyrgyzstan” often draws jokes and remarks featuring “Alphabet Soup” and a potential high score in Scrabble, (a basic 30 without any bonus for using a double or triple letter, or word, squares - needing a well placed opening, the only K, the Z and both the Y tiles – not to mention the additional bonus [...]
At the end of last week there were reports of an Unidentified Flying Object, (UFO), sighted over central Bishkek. This raised quite a bit of interest … but in fact it is not the first such incident in recent years. Strange lights in the sky, flying torpedoes on Lake Issyk Kul … and, perhaps the [...]
The 1968 British entry for the Eurovision Song Contest was “Congratulations” sung by Harry Roger Webb, or Cliff Richard as he is better known. A popular song, it surprised everyone by being beaten into second place by the Spanish entry.
The closing moments of the 1966 World Cup final, between England and West Germany, gave us one of the most famous and memorable sporting quotations of all time: “They think it’s all over … It is now!”.
The week that has just passed has been like marking time in limbo as we await the referendum. When thinking of a theme for this week’s postcard I toyed with the idea of “Waiting for Godot” … the trouble is that in Beckett’s play, Godot never arrives. The government is intent that the Referendum should [...]
This week has been a real “roller coaster” of a week, full of ups and downs, twists and stomach churning turns. The worst was probably watching the news and reading accounts of the events down South as the week unfolded. Remember that I am based here in Bishkek, and so I don’t have any direct [...]
