Postcard from Bishkek

Last year we saw calls from leaders of the Muslim community for the faithful to refrain from participating in the celebrations as they bear no relation to Islam … nor to traditional Kyrgyz culture.  As it happens, the call was more or less ignored and the festivities progressed as usual. As the New Year Celebrations […]

A few years ago I was in a meeting where one speaker stood up to make a point and once having been granted the floor would not release to podium until, basically, the microphone was turned off.  Actually, I felt that the point he was making was a perfectly valid one … that the document […]

Back in 2007, the Kyrgyz Post Office issued a stamp showing a man looking awfully looking like Santa Claus: a jolly looking, “portly”, round faced old man with red cheeks, sporting a long white beard, and a flowing red coat … apart, perhaps, from the fact that he was wearing a white Kalpak – the […]

Tonight is known in Mexico as the Night of the Radishes. The festivities associated with this event have been celebrated since 1897 in the main square of the city of Oaxaca and is usually attended by several thousand people. and has been described as one of the impressive Vegetable Festivals around the world. Craftsmen carve […]

Today happens to be Beethoven’s Birthday … So, Happy Birthday, Ludwig!!! Actually, to be honest, no-one knows exactly when Beethoven was born. He was baptised on 17 December and his family celebrated his birthday on that date, but there is no documentary evidence that his birth was actually on 16 December. Now, considering how many […]

There’s a growing conviction in the scientific community that “we are not alone“, that the universe is so vast that it is inconceivable that life could have emerged on just a small planet circling a small, almost insignificant star in one of the spiral arms of a galaxy, (just one amongst many), in a rapidly […]

Today is the second of the St, George’s Day of 2013.  It’s actually St. Yuri’s Day, but Yuri is one of the Russian equivalents of George. In the Orthodox calendar, Russians commemorate two St. George’s Day: the first in the Spring falls on April 23rd – as in the West – but there is a […]

Today is the first day of Winter … in just a month’s time it will be New Year – the biggest holiday of the year. The place basically closes down for several days  - virtually all the shops close for New Year’s Day, January 1st, even the Narodniy supermarkets which are normally open all day […]

  Tomorrow is St. Andrew’s Day … Saint Andrew happens to be the Patron Saint of Scotland, so I wish all my Scottish readers a Happy St. Andrew’s Day. As it happens, Andrew is quite a popular Saint around the world … as well as being Scotland’s Patron Saint, he also fulfills that role for […]

Opposite the Kyrgyz Agrarian Academy, on Mederova Street, (in the Southern part of town,  near the junction with Sovietskaya – nowadays renamed after Baaytik Baatyr,) there is a Statue which has a striking feature – a long flowing handlebar moustache which surmounts a full beard.  It’s a statue of the Biologist Konstantin Scriabin. It faces […]