Archive sections: ‘From an Expat’
I was listening to a podcast from the BBC last September which referred to an article in a British newspaper which announced that there were some 10 million people who were disabled in Britain, and yet more than 90% of people had never invited a disabled person into their home for a social occasion. Apparently, [...]
The kids have had an extended half term holiday. The school remained closed after the usual week’s break because there were problems with the heating system. It took the school authorities two weeks to resolve the issue – and they tell that, even now, the school is still quite cold.
Today has been a busy day. About half way through, the phone rang, and Lisa transferred it to me saying, “It’s a Mr. ****”. Now, the name meant nothing to me. It was obviously an Anglophile name - so it wasn’t the police, (they had already called in connection with the bomb blast earlier this [...]
Today has been a busy day. Before it had really go underway, I got a phone call from the hotel asking if I had heard, or felt, the explosion. “Uhhh, No – what explosion?”
Today has been a busy day. It began with a minor crisis – no internet. It’s at times like this that I realize how reliant we have become on the internet for our everyday operations: especially for communications and news. Anyway, having arrived in the office, as usual, at six, I was able to spend [...]
During 2010, Kyrgyzstan has seen a drastic reduction in the number of tourists that have visited the country as a direct result of events that have taken place in the country throughout the year. There were tourists, but many less than in previous years. This has led to a reduction of income for those working [...]
The kids went off to the cinema on Monday to watch the latest Harry Potter film. I seem to have missed out almost entirely on the Harry Potter Craze, but it has taken off here just as much as in the West. The books are on sale, (in Russian, so I give them a miss), [...]
A few years ago, we had an enquiry from a tourist who wanted to come to Kyrgyzstan “to see the apples”. This caught me by surprise. Although I was aware that we grow a lot of apples here in Kyrgyzstan, I was intrigued as to why someone would want to travel all this way to [...]
Have you ever noticed how something happens to people whenever they get behind the steering wheel of car? It’s as if the body of the car becomes a shell and the driver takes on a new persona. They become aggressive, selfish, thoughtless, inconsiderate to other road users – pedestrians as well as other drivers – [...]
At the moment I am trying to read ‘News from Tatary‘ by Peter Fleming, originally published in 1936 and telling the story of his 3500 mile journey from Peking through the, then, mysterious province of Sinkiang to India with the Swiss journalist Ella Maillart. Apparently she also wrote an account of the journey, ‘Forbidden Journey’ [...]
