Archive sections: ‘Life In Kyrgyzstan’
The word “Orozo” is Kyrgyz for “fast” – refraining from eating. Orozo Ait is also known as the feast of “Eid al Fitr”. It is a celebration to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Ramadan is the month in which Muslims believe the first verses of the Quran were revealed to the prophet Mohammed – [...]
If last week was a Three Day Week, this week has been a Four Day Week. Friday marked the end of Ramadan, and is known here as Orozo Ait, (although elsewhere in the Muslim world it has different names – for example: “Eid al Fitr”), and is a public holiday. Because it is based on [...]
We had an interesting problem with a client’s payment for a tour last month. Yes, we do have tourists in Kyrgyzstan … despite this year’s “little local difficulty” … not as many not as many as last year, nor as many as would have liked or hoped for. As is often the case, there was [...]
Have you noticed how history seems to have a habit of repeating itself. The actual circumstances vary in detail, of course, but the situations and the way that people react often bear remarkable similarities. I have written before how struck I was by the similarities between how the situations evolved in Russia in 1917 and [...]
The question of insurance of insurance has occupied my mind a lot in the last few months – but it’s been mainly a routine matter so I haven’t thought of commenting on it here. Routine? – yes, our policies were due for renewal in July so I spent time in June putting the proposal forms [...]
In many ways, this week has been a quite week but also a strange week … it has provided to be a hiatus in lots of different ways.
Homosexuality was legalized in Kyrgyzstan on 1st January 1998, with the repeal of Article 121 of the Soviet Criminal Code, after concerted pressure from international human rights organisations. Article 130 of the new criminal code – concerning “violent actions of a sexual nature” – punishes “homosexual, lesbian or other actions of a sexual nature resorting [...]
It’s odd that in these days of the internet and Information and Communication Technologies, with i-pods, i-phones and i-pads, Blackberries and Bluetooth, the printed word is still in many respects the preferred version of many people when handling documents. Last week I wrote about an Oral History Project, run as part of a journalism course [...]
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, [...]
It is said that everyone has at least one good book inside them … Apparently, research has shown that over 80% of Americans, for example, think that they have one … but very few actually get to the point of writing one – yet alone publishing it.
