Archive sections: ‘From an Expat’
I have referred before to the fact that “the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley …”, and this postcard is just another example of how right Robert Burns was when he made this sharp observation.
Last year, 2009, those of us working in Tourism spent a lot of time lobbying the powers that be about a new draft law “On Tourism“. It all began with a quiet announcement in the press to the effect that a new draft law “On Tourism” had passed its first reading in the Jogorku Kenesh, [...]
“When I was a lad, I served a term, as office boy in an attorney’s firm …” sings Sir Joseph Porter, First Lord of the Admiralty, in Gilbert and Sullivan’s popular operetta, “HMS Pinafore”. I sometimes joke that this is really “my song” because, although I wasn’t exactly a lad when I arrived here in [...]
In another postcard I wrote about how I had decided against taking a trip to the World Exhibition of Sustainable Mountain Development in Grenoble, France, at the end of April, as a result of the Easter Revolution. As it happens, even if I hadn’t taken that decision, I almost certainly would have had problems making [...]
Bakiev has left Kazakhstan and apparently landed in Byelorussia. It is very odd … apparently he has been joined by his family … but not his sons Maxim and Marat who, according to the press, ensconced somewhere else. If the reports I have seen are to be believed then it seems that he has a [...]
One of the tasks that I fall to me from time to time is to make statements to the press about this or that. It’s not a task that I relish. I have always tried to keep a “low profile”, but it is not always possible. As one of the relatively few foreign investors here [...]
People were genuinely surprised on Monday when the city witnessed a march by crowds of young people demanding that they be allocated land in order to build houses. It’s funny that people don’t remember that we faced the same sort of incidents back in 2005. The incident got reported in the Russian press and we [...]
It’s a week since I last wrote a postcard about the recent events here in Kyrgyzstan … and as the former British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, once commented, “A week is a long time in politics.” It has certainly been a long week … an eventful week.
Kyrgyz society (both Civil and Political) was rocked in March 2002 by an incident in the Southern Djalal Abad oblast that led to several politicians (including the serving Prime Minister – Karmanbek Bakiev) being dismissed and continuing tensions which eventual resulted in the Tulip Revolution of 2005. The incident has been referred to as “watershed” [...]
The events in Bishkek of April 7th, 2010, had a number of unfortunate consequences. Of course, the chief of these was the untimely deaths of over eighty people … most seem to have been in the thirties, but some were noticeably older, and not necessarily the typical image of “rent-a-mob” … and the injuries suffered [...]
