Postcard from Bishkek

A year ago I wrote a postcard about World Autism Awareness Day, (WAAD), which is commemorated annually on 2nd April. For those in Bishkek, the Public Association of Parents of children with Autism, Hand in Hand, is staging an event to commemorate the date at the intersection of Erkindik and Bokonbaeva, (near the monument to M. […]

As a child I used to travel the eight miles from Malvern to Worcester to visit a particular newsagents shop … the attraction of this particular shop is that had a rotating wire stand on which it stocked American Comics like Batman and Superman. These were quite different from our home grown variety of comics […]

These days of the ubiquitous computer … most of the time when we want to ‘write something’ we use a keyboard, touch or touch screen … although if there isn’t one around we might reach for a ‘ball point’ – a Biro. Occasionally you might find someone who actually relishes in the use of a […]

Today sees the annual Varsity Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge Universities – actually races … because, for the couple of years, there are four of them: There’s the traditional event between the eights representing the two universities; the race between Isis and Goldie – their reserve crews; the Newton Women’s race and that between Osiris […]

Someone one commented about the postcards on ianbek.kg, that they represented a real eclectic collection of topics … and I have to admit that he was right! Unlike some of the other sites I am involved with, ianbek has no overall, overarching, theme … it’s a ‘personal website’ and I post about things that catch my […]

On March 24, Kyrgyzstan along with the rest of the World will be marking World TB Day with the aim of building public awareness about the global epidemic of tuberculosis (TB) and a renewed call to reach, treat and cure everyone with the disease to accelerate progress towards eradicating it. World TB Day is one of […]

The young guy sat opposite me, along with his supervisor.  In some ways I wished his supervisor hadn’t been there because I had some things I wanted to say to him. They had come to see with a Commercheskaya predlozheniya – a commercial offer, a business proposal. As it happens, it was quite an interesting […]

Criticism is one of those ‘double edged’ words that can be both positive and negative. When someone says, “You’re doing it all wrong!”, it’s often taken badly, as a criticism … and I suppose it is.   Perhaps the reason that we balk whenever we hear the phrase may be because of the way it is […]

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 – […]

There is a saying that “to err is human; to forgive divine“. It come’s from Alexander Pope’s lengthy poem An Essay of Criticism, written in 1709, (which is also the source of several other epithets, such as: “a little learning is a dangerous thing” and “fools rush in where angels fear to tread”). It is […]