Archive sections: ‘For the Record’
Maxim spent the back end of last busily scouring the internet for inspiration. For homework one of his teachers at school had given him the task of drawing a poster, (a gazeta), to commemorate February 23rd, Dehn zashitnika Otechestva, (Defenders of the Fatherland Day – otherwise known as Army Day or Men’s Day). February 23rd [...]
Sunday was a rare “day off”. Tatiana, my accountant, has a friend, Anna, staying from Russia, and suggested going into the mountains so we decided to make a day of it. The obvious choice for a day trip from Bishkek is to go to one of the valleys in the Kyrgyz Krebet, just South of [...]
On Saturday I wrote about the Swiss charity Parmir Bridges and some events that they are organizing in various Swiss towns in March. In the post I mentioned that they had arranged for the translation for a book by Ella Maillart into Kyrgyz. Being a Swiss based charity concerned with Kyrgyzstan, their interest in Ella [...]
Every now and again we have experience which gives us a sense of having a “brush with history”. In fact we are living through history, it’s just that much of it is mundane and ordinary … everyday life, the details of which are “grist for the mill” for social historians who try to piece together [...]
It is not clear to me whether the great Mongol leader Tamerlane died on February 17th or the 18th, in 1405, I have seen both dates recorded in the literature. Whichever it was, I am sure that were plenty of people who were relieved by his passing – if only the envoys of the Chinese [...]
Yesterday, I commented on the fact that it was Saint Valentine’s Day. I could just have easily chosen to mark an anniversary which has slightly more relevance to Kyrgyzstan, but the day passed by without anyone really noticing it. It was February 14th, 1483 when Babur, (the “Tiger”), the first of the Mogul Emperors, of [...]
On Saturday, the International Women’s Club in Bishkek organized a Valentine’s Day Ball in the Hyatt. I didn’t go, because: a) I didn’t know about it … (so they need to look at their marketing … usually they write to everyone and approach us for sponsorship or prizes for the raffle but this time we [...]
In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the importance of hats in Central Asia and concentrated on the headgear worn by men. Women also have distinctive styles of traditional headgear and I suppose that I ought to mention these as well.
Whenever we have a spell of cold weather, I am taken to task by my friends and colleagues about why I don’t wear a hat. It isn’t just hats, I tend not to wear a scarf or gloves. The reason is simple, I have a habit of loosing them. I put them down in a [...]
I’ve missed an anniversary. Surprisingly, little was made of it here, even though it was a nice round number – “It was twenty years ago …” as the Beatles sang on the title track of “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, that the Supreme Soviet of the Kyrgyz Republic, then a constituent republic of the [...]
