Like most people as we grow old, the ravages of time may take its toll, physically, on the body … but mentally and emotionally I feel much as I did when I left school and entered University.

That’s not to say that I haven’t learned a lot in the time that has passed since then.  Indeed, my opinions have changed as I have gained more knowledge and gathered more experiences … enough, I hope, to avoid repeating the same mistakes that I made in my youth.

Since then, Kyrgyzstan – and Bishkek in particular – has changed considerably.

I am often asked about the changes I have seen over the time I have lived here and my answer is usually in several parts:

The amount of traffic: when I first came here, (for a holiday, back in 1994), there were far fewer vehicles and you could safely cross the road without really looking – you could hear the oncoming traffic.  Nowadays there are there are far more vehicles on the streets, many of them modern, foreign made SUV’s rather than the old “beat up” Ladas and Moskvitches that used to predominate.

The number and range of restaurants: when I first came here there was very little choice and what did exist seemed to involve a choice between cavernous halls ideal for holding a banquet, with menus and prices to match, or small cafés offering local dishes.  Now there is a huge selection covering a wide variety of cuisines to cater for almost any taste.  Of course, away from Bishkek the choice of food on offer is still limited, but it is improving.

I look upon this as a positive sign not simply because it means that there is more choice for the consumer, but also that there is more money in the economy … people have more money available for “discretionary items of expenditure”, such as eating out.  That’s not universally true, of course, but there are signs that this is a tendency or trend.

People are also becoming more discerning in how they spend that money … instead of buying something because it is all that is available, now they tend do their research, know what they want and seek out the best bargains.

The shops: not only are there more shops, they are also far more obvious with large shop windows on the street with impressive displays of goods on offer for sale.

It used to said in the 1990′s that, in the days of the Soviet Union, when the supply and prices of goods were strictly controlled, people had money but there was nothing in the shops for them to buy …  and that shortly after Independence, imported goods began to arrive – and there was the Ruble crisis, bankruptcies and the collapse of several of the banks – which all meant that although there were plenty of things in the shops to buy, people had no money to buy them.

There’s still some truth in that for many people who are cannot find work or are stuck in jobs with low salaries … but expectations are high and rapidly changing.

Indeed, when one of the first supermarket to open its doors here in Bishkek, I remember being told by one family how they to pay a visit and how it felt like walking through a Museum … there were things on offer that they had only heard of before … but they were shocked by the prices.  ”It was all very nice but we’ll keep shopping at the bazaar!”, was how the mother put it to me at the time.

The amount of construction: there has been a construction boom – especially in Bishkek – with high rise blocks of “elite apartments”, business and commercial centers.  Some of those buildings that have gone up have been new hotels … and, for us, that is both good and bad news for us.

Although the “bad news” for us as hoteliers is that there is greater competition, it represents “good news” for the consumer in that they have a greater choice,  In another way, it is also “Good News” in that it is a sign that the situation in Kyrgyz tourism as a whole is improving which means that we, as a tour company, have a wider variety of products to offer tourists who contact us.  Finally, increased competition keeps us “on our toes” as it means we have to work that much harder to attract and retain business … its a stimulus to us to be “think out of the box” and be creative rather than simply sit back and “rest on our laurels”.  I hope that we rise to that challenge.

Of course, there have been far more dramatic changes arising from what seems to be constant uncertainty arising from political and social upheavals, two revolutions and civil unrest.

There are also lots of things that haven’t changed, such as the level of bureaucracy and the tendency to think that government can and should look after the citizens “from the cradle to the grave”.  The problem with this, it seems to me, is that it encourages a passivity – what I call the “field of dreams” philosophy: “If you build it – people will come”.

Men altymysh zhashtamyn

As I have approached a new milestone in my life, I have had to learn a new phrase in Kyrgyz: Men altymysh zhashtamyn - I am 60 years old … today.

In Kyrgyzstan it is very common to ask someone personal details when meeting them for the first time: how old they are, if they are married or not, about their children … and so on.

It took a bit of getting used to, because it is not common in Britain … indeed, it can seem impertinent.

In a way, that’s not surprising because there is a strong tradition here of respect for one’s elders.

According to Kyrgyz tradition, for example, it is the responsibility of the youngest son to take care of his parents. The older brothers may marry and move away from home to establish their own households – traditionally they were given a yurt of their own to start their married life – but not the youngest son, who stayed with his parents and inherited their yurt. Sometimes the parents decide it is not necessary – but this extension of the general tradition or respect – where youth acknowledges and respects its elders – which is so firmly entrenched in the local psyche that it is rarely defied.

There are a number of titles which are used when addressing an older person as a sign of respect.  An older male may well be referred to as baike, (aka or ake) and an older person may refer to a younger one as uke or uka.  In pre-soviet times a number of other titles were also used – khan, bek, bai and myrza were assigned to men, whilst ayim (= “madam”) to older women. The Kyrgyz word joldosh was the equivalent to the Russian “tovarisch”, or comrade, but is not used that much today.

I’m not sure if today I join the ranks of the aksakal, (white beards … the title given to the elders),  ot if I have to wait a few more years to qualify.

To be fair, some women, especially in the cities, don’t like being asked their age, but in the villages it is acceptable and most people will answer.

A parent will tell the actual age of a child that has yet to go to school, (usually at the age of 7), but once they are at school, reference is usually made the class that they are in … so, instead of asking how old they are, you might ask which class they are in.  This can be confusing if they repeat a year … but that’s not frequent.   Schools are organized from the 1st class, (or grade – at age 7), up to the 11th class, (at 18).

As the children get older they start to refer to themselves by their year of birth, so instead of asking how old someone is, you might ask “In what year were you born?”, and the reply is usually the last two digits of the year.

Actually, the year of birth is quite often used as an identifying feature … a zayavleniya, (will quite often be written from so-and-so, then quoting the year of birth; for example: “Ot Ian Claytor, grazhdanin Velikobritannia, god rozhdeniye 1953“, From Ian Claytor, British Citizen, year of birth, 1953.)

News reports, especially of crime stories, will identify people whether accused, victims or witnesses by adding their year of birth even if the names are abbreviated to initials.

Once people start approaching Middle age, the tendency is to revert to asking how old they are … and this practice continues for the rest of their lives.

There are some limitations, however, and it’s not a total “free for all”.   Younger people, for example, usually won’t ask about boyfriends/girlfriends on a first meeting, (it’s only as people get to know one another that such topics are approached), but one of the advantages of advancing years is that you are free to do so.

As it happens, I don’t like birthdays and I would be happy to forget it … but Birthdays are big here and altymysh is a kroogliy data – a round figure – so I doubt that I will be allowed to do so …

The Daily Mail article

It’s amazing how many people seem to find pictures of cats alluring.  A few days ago, however, there was a startling photo posted  on a series of websites. The Daily Mail, in the UK, headlined the story about a cat show in Bishkek, “Is this the world’s scariest cat? Sphynx monster looks more like a gremlin than a pussycat“.

As it happens, I had been invited to the Cat Show and had intended to go  but, even though it was held on a Sunday, work me in the office and I was sorry to have missed the sight.

I must admit that the photo did not make the particular specimen look particularly appealing, but the words “monster” and “gremlin” seemed a little unkind … and two other photos in the report of the cat dressed up as a bride in a wedding dress certainly made me want to squirm.

It wasn’t, however, a universal reaction.  I was impressed, for example, by the reaction of Tatiana, my accountant, when I showed her the article: “Ohhh, kakaya kasavitsa!“, (What a Beauty!).

The cat is one of the Don Sphinx species, a hairless breed of cat which is of fairly recent origin.  The bloodline can be traced back to the discovery of a hairless cat by a cat breeder in Rostov-on-Don back in 1987 which was probably a cross with a more ancient breed of hairless cat, the Sphinx Cat.  Although not all registries recognize the breed, the Donskoy was recognized by the World Cat Federation ten years later and by the International Cat Association in 2005.  Despite their cold appearance, the breed is known to be a warm, affectionate and highly intelligent.

Now, at the moment I have five cats, (Victor – the original, Garfield – the not so original name chosen for a Ginger Tom, Mathilda – the only femal, Vasya and Tom – the two kittens); none of them Donskoys.  Victor is the only one who wasn’t a stray that happened to wander in, or was abandoned outside the office by someone knowing that we would take them in and try to find them a home.  We’ve had lots more strays dumped on us but we’ve managed to find homes for most of them.

These five all have a story and are now part of our “family” … or perhaps that should be part of the “workforce” as they spend most of the day with us in the office.  They even have their own “Job Description” which I put together a few years ago for a course.

Like me, Tatiana also has a number of cats … and dogs … and, from time to time, an assortment of other animals.  Her house, for example, was once home to rats, frogs … and spiders … and … well, you get the point.  That’s nothing, however, compared to Esengeldiev Mukeeva, the president of the Kyr Felinology Cat Club which organized the show, who has something like twenty cats and dogs in her home.

Another popular photo from the show scanned from the local Vecherniy Bishkek newspaper

There were lots of other photos taken at that Cat Show, one of which was featured on a number of websites … of a particularly large specimen; giving something of a new meaning to the phrase “big cats”.

Incidentally, Tom is getting to be a “big cat”, himself.  We sometimes joke that he is a “feeding machine”.  As soon as I walk into the office in the early morning he meanders round my feet, looking up at me with his wide yellow green eyes and mewing loudly, demanding to be fed.   Having hoovered up whatever I’ve laid out for him, he’ll be back again an hour later.  He sits on my lap and bites my are if I have the temerity to try and ignore his requests.

Mind you, he gets plenty of exercise, so he should work all the weight he is putting on.  Having seen the older cats coming and going by the fortichka, the little fanlight in the kitchen window provided for ventilation purposes, he has managed to work out how to escape into the fresh air – something that Vasya has yet to do.

The other day I was in my flat on the first floor, (English style – second floor everywhere else in the world), and glanced out of the window to see Tom high up in the tree just outside the building.  I know that cats like climbing high, but I was concerned because I wasn’t sure he would be able to get down, especially when I saw that Vasya had chased him up the tree and was looking about distinctly nervous.

I remembered how many years ago, back in the UK, Rosie, (my first cat), had gone missing shortly after we had moved to North London.  I went out to look for her, called her name and whistled … nothing … then, far away in the distance I could hear her mewing.  I followed the sound across some open park land and a busy major road and looked up a tree … and there she was, trapped, scared out of her wits and not able to get down.  I went back home and fetched a ladder … and a friend.  The ladder wasn’t tall enough to reach her … but as my friend was little taller than me he climbed up and managed to grab hold of her.  Unfortunately, she panicked and lashed out at him, scratching his arm and he dropped her.  She landed on her feet – stared down the road and ran for home … with us in hot pursuit.  Fortunately, no harm was done to her … apart from being scared witless and never crossing that particular green again.

I had visions of having to effect another such rescue, but I needn’t have worried … First Tom and then Vasya edged their way back down the tree trunk and returned to terra firma.  They weren’t put off by their adventure and still race each other to the treetops.  My heart still misses a beat, but I feel a lot easier about it now.

I will feel even easier having come across a fascinating post on the BBC website: Who, What, Why: How do cats survive falls from great heights?.  I had thought it was just an urban myth that cats always managed to land on their feet … akin to them having nine lives … but it seems that there is some scientific justification to it.

A thoughtful Tom

Tom, the youngest of the kittens has a loud mew and a very demanding character.

We think that someone abandoned him when he was only a few months old, possibly because of his mew and possibly because he hadn’t been properly house trained … something I think we have finally dealt with.  We are not sure, because one day he just appeared in the middle of the office, looked up at Tatiana my accountant and meowed … loudly.

If he had somehow managed to sneak in … it was now impossible to miss him.

Something like this has happened before.  Garfield also just turned up, stood outside the door of the office and just waited until someone opened it.  Then he calmly walked in, made his way to the kitchen and started demolishing a plate of Kit-e-Kat that had been laid out for Vita, (my original cat, now 14 years old).

On another occasion, Tatiana looked up from her accounts and out of the window and saw somebody laying down a bowl of food just outside the window and putting a kitten to it, before turning round and running off.

This time, no one actually saw Tom arrive.  He was just there.  Thinking of our previous experience we went outside to see if we could see anyone, but there was no-one.  If someone had indeed abandoned him, then they had long since disappeared.

To be honest, he’s not the most beautiful of cats … like Matilda, (one of my five cats and the only female), he’s black and white.  However, whereas she is predominantly black with white patches, he is much lighter and the black fur provides him with a mottled pattern.  As is usually the case with such colourings, the white often looks a dirty grey – especially around the flanks of the torso.

He is basically an eating machine.  Whereas most of the other cats used to be content to be fed once or twice a day, Tom will stand in the middle of the kitchen floor every two hours and mew – loudly – looking up at me with those yellowy-green eyes of his, demanding to be fed, and not desisting until I have opened the cupboard and put down a plate of something or other.  The other cats already know that if they hear his meow from the kitchen, then they need to come running … there’s food to be had.  As a result he, and the others for that matter, are rapidly putting on weight and I have taken  laying out smaller portions than I used to do.

I am not sure why we gave him the name Tom.  Maxim chose the name and it just stuck.  Tom, Tommy, Tomik … all variations of the name you can sometimes hear us calling … sometimes in summons, sometimes in despair.

Despair?  Yes.  You see, Tom is a rascal; running around the place, poking his nose into everything, getting into everything, upturning things and as a result he gets the blame for everything that goes wrong.  The telephone’s not working – check to see if he’s pulled the cable out of the socket … again.  A cup lies smashed to smithereens on the floor – he’s probably jumped up on the table and sent it flying.  The shyrdak hanging the wall seems to have a bulge in it – because he’s climbed up the chair and sneaked behind it.  The wallpaper seems to be peeling off the wall near the door, because he’s been sharpening his claws on it.   He’s our very own version of Macavity.

On the other hand, he is also very affectionate and it is easy to forgive his each and every misdemeanor.  When I am sitting at the computer, for example, he will jump up onto my lap with no warning at all, giving me a start, and then start crawling up my chest to rub his cheek against my jaw, purring loudly and staring at me with those yellowy-green eyes … preventing me from concentrating on my work.  Sometimes his stretches his neck and pushes his head forward so that he can take a playful bite at my ear lobe.  On other occasions, as lies on my lap and my fingers dart back and forth across the keyboard, he reaches out with a paw, with claws outstretched, and grabs for my hand, the claws sinking into soft flesh as he drags my fingers to his mouth to playfully bite at them.

Tatiana tells me that If I leave the office for any reason at all, then he walks up to the door, looks at it plaintifully and meows.

He walks up to the adult cats and rubs his cheek up against them.  At first, they weren’t sure what to make of him.  Nowadays, Vita tends to ignore him, although watches him attentively whist trying to create a disinterested demeanor. Matilda, on the other hand accepts his attentions and they can often be seen lying together, washing each other.  Only Garfield remains unsure, occasionally hissing jealously at him in warning.

He gets on well with Vasya, another abandoned kitten about a month older than him, but with a totally different character.  The two kittens play together all the time – when they aren’t sleeping; chasing each other around the room, jumping at each other, biting each other and play fighting.  Vasya’s much quieter and far more sedate – more regal – so much so that he has become everyone’s darling.  The kids especially adore him.

If Tom is the hooligan, a loevable rogue like his namesake in the cartoons, then Vasya is the equivalent of Jerry – a real Prince Charming.

Peasant Wedding

Today, January 13th, as well as being Stariy Noviy God, (“Old New Year”), marks the anniversary of the death in 1625, of Jan Brueghel the Elder.  He was one of a whole dynasty of artists called Brueghel, (including Peter the Younger, Jan the Elder and Jan the Younger), and he was the son of Peter Bruegel the elder.

If someone simply refers to Bruegel, however, it’s almost certainly Peter the Elder that they mean.  He dropped the ‘h’ and simply signed his works Bruegel.

It’s  not often these days that I come face to face with the rendition of  a Bruegel painting, but some time ago, a friend of mine who happens to run a restaurant, brought me his wine list to show me.  For the front cover he had chosen a detail from a Bruegel painting, the Peasant Wedding feast which hangs in the Kusthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

He was really proud of it.  They had recently started to stock French wines and so he had had the wine list drawn up anew and as well as including the latest additions, they had completely redesigned it.

He made the mistake of asking me what I thought about his masterpiece … and maybe I was being a little unkind, or at least mischievous, as I hesitated before saying, “It’s fine … very nice, in fact, except …”.  “Except what?”, he asked perturbed.  “Well,…”, I said, “you do know, don’t you, that Bruegel wasn’t French – He was Flemish … that is, Belgian.”

He started to look a little crestfallen and I could see that he really liked this painting, (and I don’t blame him because I quite like it, too), but he was coming round to the opinion that it wasn’t that much of a problem because most people wouldn’t know the difference – unless, of course, they were either French or Belgian.

It was then that I dropped the second bombshell and pointed out that of all the paintings he could have chosen, this was, perhaps, not quite the most appropriate for a wine list … as the “waiters” are not serving wine but delivering plates of food.  “Yes, but we serve food as well, (it is a restaurant after all), and the picture does show a banquet in progress.”  “True, but why did you have to use the one picture with Bruegel’s most famous ‘mistake’ in it?”

“Mistake?!”

Three feet

“Yes, look, the waiter at the front has three feet.”  Bruegel was famous for the detail of his work, so how could he make such a complete “Fail!”?  If the picture had been generated today, then it could easily have qualified for one of those “Ooops, Photoshop Bloopers” competitions.  The two most famous examples of his paintings with exquisite detail are probably Children’s Games and The Harvesters.  These two are often used to illustrate the finer detail of his canvases.  You can stand back and take in the overall scene and even marvel faces and so on, but if you can get up close and look at the minute detail, then you see exactly how much care and attention he paid to every square centimeter of the picture.

I once saw, for example, a TEDTalk, by Amit Sood, about “building a museum of museums on the web”.  He used the Harvesters to show how a new on-line resource, (Google Art), gives surfers access to images with 10 billion pixels.  “What do you get for 10 billion pixels?”, he asked and then zoomed around the picture giving some examples … and then as a supreme salesman he makes his pitch and says: “The Best is yet to come”.

My friend looked distraught.  “I never noticed”, he said.  Oddly enough, most people don’t … until it is pointed out to them, that is.

He reached for his phone and said he was going to try and reach to printers to see if he could stop the printing, but I persuaded him not to bother … it was a good painting, and most people wouldn’t know about him being Flemish or wouldn’t spot the additional foot.

The Icarus Landscape

Anyway, that got us talking about how I knew so much about Peter Bruegel the Elder.  I admitted that he is one of my heroes.  The first time I came across him was in Primary school … when we were shown his picture, Landscape with the fall of Icarus.  We were doing some project about the history of flight and I remember searching the sky in the picture asking the teacher, “But, where’s Icarus?), only for her to point – not at the sky, but at the pair of legs splashing in the water.

Detail

Indeed, my main interest in this particular picture was Icarus.  You see, as my initials are IC, that has meant that over the years many people have given me nicknames like Ai-See, Ik, Icky, Ichabod, (a character in a popular Children’s TV serial), or even Icarus.

It was also whilst at school that I met his painting of the Tower of Babel, an iconic image which is remarkably close to the zigguratof ancient Mesopotamia which modern scholars think well have been the origin of this little known Bible story.

Tower of Babel

My next encounter with him was as a student in Oxford.  A friend of mine got a job managing a shop selling posters and gave me part-time job as a sales assistant.  They carried a lot of pictures by Bruegel and he sold me a few of them, which had been damaged in transit, cheap to decorate my room … I suppose it was a form of marketing, as it would be a form of showcase and I would be sure to tell all my fellow student where I had got them.

The highlight, however, came later on when I went to Vienna and visited the Kusthistorisches Museum, where something like a third of the surviving forty odd paintings are kept.  By this time I had taken an Open University Associate Student Self Study Course called “Looking at Paintings” which meant that I was able to look at the pictures with a fresh eye and appreciate them much more clearly for their brilliance of execution.

Logo of the Football Federation of the Kyrgyz Republic

The Americans call it “Soccer” to distinguish it from their home grown version of Football, but the rest of the world calls it Football. Some people, however, call it “The Beautiful Game”.

Now, I have never been very keen about soccer, although I am happy to watch the odd game.  Maybe this is because I wasn’t very good at it and never got picked for the team.  In my teens, I gravitated to Rugby where I found myself accepted more easily and my limitations more easily overlooked.  There was less competition for places in the Rugby team as more players were needed, (15 as opposed to 11), and it was seen as a “rough” game.  I remember being told by Major Rowsell, the coach, not to worry about that: “Whereas Rugby is a game for hooligans played by Gentlemen, Football, (Soccer), is a game for gentlemen played by hooligans.”

I did play in a couple of matches for the staff team against the school, in the days when those matches were not frowned upon as unfair and potentially dangerous with adults playing against teenagers.  Needless to say, I wasn’t a first choice for the team, but it was known that I was prepared to turn out and have-a-go if the need arose, and the kids really looked forward to these occasions, (and, it the truth be told, normally hammered us).  Although I was just there to make up the numbers, and hidden away somewhere on the wing, on one occasion I actually almost scored.  Notice that: “almost” scored … in fact, I should have scored … the goalie was out of position and I’ll never forget the look of horror and astonishment as he stood looking at me turn to relief and delight as my mis-kick went wide of the post – very wide.  At least I didn’t fall over and land up flat on my back on the floor and a complete laughing stock.   However, with that kick I not only missed the goal, but also may chance to be a hero.

I do, however, support a club: Chelsea; but that’s simply because everyone else had one.  My brother supported Burnley – I have absolutely no idea why, we lived far away from this Northern city – but most people supported the giants of the day, another Northern club, Leeds United.  Under pressure form the kids in the Church Youth Group where I helped out, who all supported Leeds and wanted to know who I supported, I picked a team at random.  I wasn’t going to choose Leeds simply to be awkward, but I didn’t find them, attractive in their all white strip and what I took to be arrogance.  Chelsea had a number of young players who looked good and were often in the news on the fashion and other non-sporting pages … and I preferred their blue strip rather than all white of Leeds.  So I chose Chelsea.

I took a lot of ribbing; Chelsea were seen as bit of a joke.  There was even a 1930’s Music Hall song poking fun at the club for its lack of success, called: “The Day That Chelsea Won The Cup”. That year, however, Chelsea did indeed win the FA Cup, beating Leeds in the final; which went to a replay – the first time this had happened since the 1911/12 season – and which wouldn’t happen these days because they now have penalty shoot-outs to decide a match which is still tied after extras time. I wasn’t allowed to enjoy the glorious victory, however, and, for a time, I became a pariah.

There’s also the dark side of the club – the hooligans that support it and, unfortunately, also make the news.

I still support Chelsea, at least nominally, and it still draws a smile if it comes up in conversation.  History has a tendency of repeating itself and when I started teaching in North London, Leeds United had given way to Manchester United as the leading club in the English game and my affiliation to the Blues, as opposed to the Reds, often led to interesting banter. Even here in Kyrgyzstan it sometimes draws pitiful looks, although there isn’t the same antipathy towards the club, perhaps as a result of its association with the Russian millionaire Roman Abramovich.

There is some controversy as to where football originated.  Association Football, the current version of the game played all over the world, was first codified by the English FA.

Now, today happens to be the anniversary of the first ever official “international” Football match, back in 1872, which was between England and Scotland.

There had already been some “challenge” matches between England and Scotland, (five of them in the years 1870-72), but they are not recognized as the Scottish team was chosen from players who belonged to London clubs.  In 1872 the English FA decided to send a team to Scotland to play against a Scottish team.  At that time there was no Scottish FA, but the Queens Park club decided to accept the challenge and fielded a team.  The match took place on St. Andrew’s Day, November 30th.  It ended up a 0-0 draw.

Football is popular here in Kyrgyzstan.  People take a great interest in different competitions such as the European Cup and the World Cup.  That does not mean to say, however, that you will see lots of people “kicking a ball around” in their spare time …

The sport is governed by the Football Federation of the Kyrgyz Republic, (FFKR), which was established in 1992 and became a full member of FIFA in 1994.  The same year they also joined the Asian Football Confederation.

The national team has participated in a number of competitions – but has yet to reach the finals of a major one.  The team has, however, showed signs of promise and potential.

Their first international match was played against Kazakhstan in September 1992, which resulted in a draw, 1-1.  They recorded their highest win against Maldives (6-0) in 1997 having suffered their worst ever result a week earlier, (losing 7-0 to Iran – which was, at least, considerably better than American Somoa’s 31-0 loss to Australia in a 2001 World Qualifying match!)

In the 2004 Asian Cup they surprisingly lost their first match against Afghanistan who were just returning to international football and even their subsequent victory against eventual group-winners Nepal was not enough to help them proceed further.  However, they reached the semi final of the 2006 competition.

In the qualifications of the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, their performances left no one in doubt that there is a potentially bright future for football in Kyrgyzstan.  Grouped with Bahrain, Syria and neighbours Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan matched their rivals, and recorded a 1-0 win away from home against Syria who were ranked nearly 70 places above them.

The country’s ranking in the FIFA/Coca Cola World Rankings have fluctuated somewhat – starting at 165th in August 1994, falling to 175th in November 2003 and then rising to their best ever position of 119th in August 2006. At the moment they are ranked 188th – which is a new record low for them having just dropped two places in the rankings – and their average position in the rankings is 157th.

At least that is better than American Samoa, who are ranked the world’s worst team.  They recently won their first match, (against Tonga, 2-1), after some 30 defeats in almost two decades; they also hold the record for the worst ever defeat, 31-0 against Australia.

The Federation faces many difficulties in trying to harness the skills of young players, but with the help of FIFA, they have a program for the game’s development amongst the country’s youth - and have 60 youth trainers throughout the country.  However, limited funds to finance the high cost of travel and accommodation for international matches means that it is difficult for the national teams to gain experience, apart from in official competitions.   Of course, they are not alone in this respect … and in 2006 they participated in the ELF tournament (ELF=Equality, Liberty, Fraternity) in Northern Cyprus.  It is hoped that this will become an annual tournament – for mainly non-FIFA registered teams who lack the opportunity to play competitive international football.  As well as Kyrgyzstan, the teams in this initial tournament included: Northern Cyprus, Greenland, Tajikistan, Tibet, Zanzibar, Gagauzia (an autonomous region of Moldovia), and The Crimea.  (Afghanistan were also supposed to participate – but they withdrew).

The national team play all in red – shirts, shorts and socks – when at home in the Spartak Stadium in Bishkek, and all in white when playing away.

As well as running the national team, FFKR operate a Championship league and a knockout cup competition.

The Federation also support Women’s football – and the Kyrgyz team Azalea represented the republic in the USSR championship as early as in 1989.  They went on to win the CIS championship in 1992 – the high spot of their history.  Since then they have participated in several other international competitions – including the Kazakh Open Championship.  There are some three hundred players in the Bishkek area alone, and the Federation plan to hold a regular championship.

Mini-Football is also popular … and the Kyrgyzstan have even recorded a win against Australia in the 2006 Asian Cup competition.

The TARDIS

Every now and again I sitting working, or in a meeting, and the peace and quiet is disturbed by a sudden noise as someone’s mobile telephone bursts into life.

If it happens to be in a meeting, then a set frowns usually erupt on the faces of the participants – so I always try to remember to switch my phone into “silent mode” whenever I go into a meeting.  It’s amazing how many different ringtones there are.  Some people don’t seem to alter the ringtone from the factory preset and that can mean that people rush to find their handset and see if it is there phone ringing.

One of my friends, however, has one of a cock crowing … loudly … very loudly! … so loudly, in fact, that it normally sends me jumping out of my skin.  I suppose it means he can hear it even in the melee of a rowdy bar when watching a sporting event like the Rugby World Cup.

Another friend has set his to the anthem of the Soviet Union, (but I think he’s changed it now … he is a civil servant and I think it brought his loyalty to Kyrgyzstan into question – especially since Russia has readopted the tune as their national anthem.)

When I was looking for a distinctive ringtone to use, I looked at several alternatives … I ruled out the James Bond theme and Mission Impossible as I thought they might give people the wrong idea.  Several classical tunes were already in use and sometimes difficult to hear – such as The Rite of Spring or Carmen Burana.  In the end, I settled on:

Da-da-dum da-da dum da-da-dum dum-di-dum,
Da-da-dum da-da dum da-da-dum dum-di-dum,
Diddy-da-dum diddy-da-dum diddy-da-dum,
Dum- dum
Diddy-da-dum diddy-da-dum diddy-da-dum
Dum- dum
Wa-haaaaa wa-haaaaa

As a result, I always know if it is my phone that’s ringing, no-one else has this ring tone.  It has another advantage in that it starts off softly and takes a while to build up the crescendo to get the Wa-haaaaa’s, so no-one is sent jumping out of their skin.  When I am with another Englishman, however, it normally causes a halt in the conversation as they try to place it and then say, with a bemused look on their face, “Dr. Who”.

That’s right, it’s the theme tune to the television series Dr. Who:

 http://youtu.be/8NPJ6GMXM3E 

Another friend of mine, a local person, was intrigued by this choice.  One day he had the chance to see an episode, dubbed into Russian, and made a point of watching.  He decided that it was nonsense and wondered why I liked it.  I tried to explain that it was part of my youth – and had a profound effect on people of my age when the first episodes were broadcast back in the 1960’s.

Tomorrow, incidentally, marks the anniversary of the first episode back in 1963.

It was almost totally overlooked – overshadowed by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy the day before, (November 22nd, 1963), and the BBC decided to run the opening episode the following week just before the second episode was due to be broadcast.

We had never seen anything quite like this before.

The strange character of the Doctor, a grumpy Time Lord over nine hundred years old, who travels through space and time in a ship called the TARDIS – Time and Relative Dimensions in Space –  which was disguised as a police telephone box and was bigger, vastly bigger on the inside than the outside, captured our imaginations.  Susan, his teenager granddaughter went to school and presented the teachers with lots of conundrums, saying things like “… but it wasn’t like that”, and two of them, (one, conveniently named Ian, automatically caught my attention), decided to investigate only to find themselves kidnapped and catapulted back into the stone age.

To be honest, the next few episodes struck me as tedious and tiresome.  These days they would strike me even more so as there was lots of talk and very little action and I was ready to give up … but then came the masterpiece which was to create a legend.

The TARDIS transported its motley crew across time and space to the planet of Skaro where there were two intelligent life forms – the humanoid Thaals and their nemesis, the Kaleds, a lifeform that had once been humanoid but had evolved so that they could not move around except in what looked like individual mobile tanks made out of egg boxes: The Daleks.  These were a ruthless, technologically advanced, race, (apparently meant to be an analogy with the Nazis of World War II), and their cries of “Exterminate, exterminate, exterminate”, delivered with an electronic mechanical voice that we had never heard before with the screen flashing between negative and normal as the actors fell to ground screaming in their death throes sent lots of children hiding behind their settees, (divan or couch), in terror.  I actually remember that … it’s not an urban myth!

The storyline at the end of one episode called for one of the actors to get into the “individual tank” of a Dalek that had been disabled.  They opened the tank and lifted the creature out covered in a blanket and placed it on the floor before opening a sliding door and moving off.  As the music started and credits rolled by the camera scanned the bundle on the floor and a terrifying tentacle started to emerge from underneath the blanket.  Hitchcock couldn’t have done it better!

Terry Nation, the scriptwriter had performed a miracle and had created a sensation which would sweep the country by storm and led to a franchise which would last well into the next century.  Schoolkids would run around the school playground with their arms held out like the sucker and gun on a Dalek crying “Exterminate, exterminate …” and the joke emerged that it was easy to escape them, all you had to do was run upstairs … but in later episodes we discovered that these “individual tanks” could fly.

It soon became a “national institution” in the UK although it took some time for it to become accepted in the American market.  Many famous actors wanted to be involved, and were given roles.  The programme evolved into what the Guinness Book of Records says is the longest running Science Fiction television show and the “most successful” science fiction series of all time with spin off books, DVD’s, radio programmes and other franchised merchandise.

Like most forms of good storytelling, (whether in literature, theatre, films, poetry, song …), it works on several levels.  Superficially one can take the stories at face value, as entertainment, but there are other more significant levels for those who care to look for them.

On the whole, the productions don’t attempt to ascribe to realism. Unlike Star Trek, Star Wars and the comic book super heroes, Doctor Who, the low cost special effects don’t detract from the essential storyline.  (At one point a scandal almost erupted as a helicopter was crashed in the plot the first episode of one series and aficionados wondered what was happening to their beloved programme.)

The character of the Doctor and his companions evolved to quite complex levels and he now assumes a godlike character saving humanity, the earth if not the universe.  Despite the imaginative storylines, some of the plots are, to be frank, escapist nonsense, especially when taking at face value.  However, they are able to explore quite complex scientific, philosophical and metaphysical ideas.  It may require us to cast aside our preconceptions but, if we are prepared to do so, they help us to challenge our understanding of the world and ourselves.

The Radcliffe Camera - Part of the Bodleian Library, Oxford

On November 8th, 1602, the Bodleian Library in Oxford opened it’s doors  for the first time.

One of the oldest libraries in Europe, and the second largest in the UK, (after the British Library), its history goes back to collections which started in the fourteenth century.  It takes it’s name, however, from Sir Thomas Bodley, a fellow  of Merton College, who sought to revive what had been become a depleted repository and donated many of his books to the collection.

Although I didn’t use the library much when I was a student in Oxford, we had a pretty good library in college.  I do remember, however, visiting the Radcliffe Camera, (one of the iconic sights of Oxford), to track down a particular volume on one occasion; how we gathered in the library before my graduation ceremony, which took place in the nearby Sheldonian Theatre, and being taken to register and receive my library card and having to swear the time honoured oath:

I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library, nor to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document or other object belonging to it or in its custody; not to bring into the Library, or kindle therein, any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.

(This is apparently a translation of the traditional Latin oath – the original version did not include the prohibition on smoking tobacco).  I don’t have it any more, but I kept my Readers card, which had the oath printed on the back, as a “souvenir” for a long time after graduating.

Nowadays, the Bodleian is one of six “legal deposit” libraries, entitled to receive copies of any book published in the United Kingdom.  Here in Kyrgyzstan we also have a “Deposit Library” - the National Library, on the corner of Sovietskaya and Frunze streets in downtown Bishkek.  

In the years since it was founded in 1934 it has become one of the major repositories of culture in the country.  

The first public library in what is now Kyrgyzstan was established in Karakol, but by 1934 there were several such institutions around the country. In May, 1934, the People’s Commissars decided to create a Republican State Library, by merging two such libraries, the Frunze Central Library and the State Scientific Library. Donations of books were received from libraries all over the Soviet Union, (including some 16,000 from Belarus), and there were some 700 registered readers and 13 employees when the doors of the new institution opened in August.

During the war years, when Kyrgyzstan received many factories and institutions evacuated from the West, the work of the library expanded considerably: staff organized a series of smaller libraries in hospitals and military establishments: attendance rose from a pre-war figure of about 250 people a day to between 600 and 700 and a research department was established to support this increase.

Following the war, work on extending the bibliography records started during the expansion continued and the Library began training to support the staff from regional libraries. During the mid 1960′s, when the library moved into new premises, there were over 45,000 readers.

Then, in 1984, to mark it’s 50th Anniversary, the National Library moved into its present home on Sovietskaya Street.

Following Independence, a lot of work has gone into updating the technological resources. 

Its public mission of the National Library is the:

• promotion of science, culture, education and other spheres of society;
• provision of free and equal access to domestic and international information resources;
• develop a  national information space;
• preservation of documentary heritage of Kyrgyzstan;
• integration into the global information space.

and this translates into the following tasks:

• acquisition, storage and providing access to the complete collection of national documents, as well as the extraterritorial publications, which have a direct or indirect relation to Kyrgyzstan;
• providing for the formation and use of the stock of domestic and foreign publications necessary for the development of the state, society, science, culture and education in the republic on the basis of exhaustive acquisition and storage;
• providing permanent storage, restoration and preservation of library collections;
• organizing the search for and purchase of Kyrgyz books and manuscripts, both within the country and abroad;
• providing scholarship and publication of library collections through a system of directories and files on various media;
• providing a national exchange-reserve and reallocation of underutilized literature;
• organizing the storage of literature of scientific, technical and cultural value;
• organizing the library and bibliographic information service for the use of readers and subscribers, ;
• organizing information and reference and bibliographic services for Kyrgyz readers living outside the country;
• as the centre of the national bibliography, collecting the most complete current and retrospective bibliographic information about domestic and foreign publications of the country, establishing and maintaining a unified catalogue of “Kyrgyzstan”;
• ensuring the creation of an automated information-library system in the country;
• serving as a leading scientific research, scholarly and methodological institution in the field of library science, bibliography and book science;
• conducting sociological and marketing research relating to all aspects of library activities;
• carrying out international co-operation of library services and serving as the national centre for international book exchange and subscription;
• promoting the development and implementation of state policy in library development within the Republic;
• organizing the training of library staff, and participation in continuing professional education.

In short, the library collects copies of all literature published in the country, as well as a variety of publications from other CIS countries and further afield.  There are a total of over 6 million documents, (books, magazines, newspapers, sheet music, records, patent and other reference documents and some 97000 Doctoral dissertations, private papers of several prominent people) in 89 languages – including:

• a copy of the first book ever to be printed in Russian – “Apostol” which was printed in Moscow in 1564.
• a collection of of 74000 items written in foreign languages – mainly reference literature: encyclopaedias, dictionaries, directories and biographies
• a collection of miniature books – the smallest of which measures only 5cm by 3.5cm.
• books in Kyrgyz written in Arabic, Latin and Cyrillic scripts – reflecting the various changes that have taken place in the transformation from an oral, nomadic tradition.

There are some 120 thousand items added to the stock every year.  

The fourteen reading rooms can accommodate upto 600 people.  During a year there are about 200,000 visitors and the number rises annually.  About one and a half million books are issued on loan to readers – including books obtained by international inter-library loan.  There is a special reading room, (the German Reading Room), which is supported by the German Embassy and the Goethe Institute which houses a collection of books in German and organises a number of joint events each year.   

The building also hosts a number of exhibitions and conferences every year, and offers a number of other services such as internet access – although the rise in the number of internet cafés in Bishkek means that there are plenty of places to check email for anyone who doesn’t have access at home. 

The Library has a website,  (www.nlkr.gov.kg), which is supposedly in Russian, Kyrgyz and English … but, at the moment, if you click the British flag you are greeted with the message “No Translation available” against all the posts.  

For about 25 years it has published a directory of “Literature about Kyrgyzstan” – in Russian and Kyrgyz. 

One of the major tasks facing the staff at the current time is cataloguing the vast array of material that it has in its collection.

The blue spruce trees in front of the building were apparently planted by visiting writers and artists including: Arthur Miller, James Baldwin and Peter Ustinov.

Outside the museum is a statue of Osmonov, a Kyrgyz Poet.  He also appears on the 200 som note.

In the small park area behind the National Library, hidden amongst the trees is the statue of Dzerzhinsky.  It bears no name or inscription.  At one time this stood on a plinth in Oak Park, at the foot of the upper part of Prospect Erkindik.  At that time the Avenue was also named Dzerzhinsky.   His statue replaced that of Lenin when that was moved into the main square – and was in turn replaced by the monument to Erkindik.  Rather than lose the statue, it was relocated here.  As a young boy he shot his sister – but in some accounts it was his brother that was responsible for the girl’s death.  He was a religious youth and even entertained the idea of joining the Jesuits.  However, he then took an interest in social justice and so became involved in revolutionary politics and became one of the leaders of the Socialist parties of Poland and Lithuania. Active in the 1905 revolution, he organized strikes and worked amongst the military.  Later he was arrested and imprisoned several times – and contracted tuberculosis.  He was active once more in the 1917 revolutions and later in the Polish Communist Party.  However, Dzerzhinsky is probably best remembered as the founder of the NKVD – the forerunner of the KGB.

namba.kg

Maxim, one of the “baseball kids” that I have written about before, has been quite creative recently.

For one thing, he has started calling himself Maxim Claytor.  This is not something I have encouraged – but he is using it as a sort of “pen name” when it comes to setting up an email account and his account on Namba - a sort of Kyrgyz social media site.

I can’t say I am that happy about it and, in fact, it can get confusing and a couple of days ago, one of my friends told me he had seen a “Maxim Claytor” on the site and asked if it was a relative.  However, I have seen a lot worse examples of nom de plume.

He has posted some photographs and a couple of videos of himself and his friends on their beloved BMX bikes on the site.

Both boys, Andrei and Maxim have set up their own blogs – but, to be honest, they are not particularly active in updating them.

They are both also keen on taking photographs and during the long summer holiday Maxim took lots, especially of his group of friends outside the Philharmonia practising their various antics on their bikes.  Like many kids on bikes, he seems to be a little accident prone and seems to “come a cropper”, falling off and on at least one occasion he hurt himself, although not seriously.   I wrote a postcard about that which included one of his films – a slideshow that he had put together to post on his blog.

Maxim has, however been busy trying to put together pictures, playbills and posters, for a short film he wants to make year which he calls “The Habits of Maxim” or “Maxim’s Habits”.  Of course, he will be both the star and the director and his beloved BMX will be his co-star.  Apparently he also wants to include some social messages, “Say no to drugs” and that sort of thing.  He was busy last year working with a social project giving presentations on a variety of topics in schools, youth clubs and children’s homes … hence this interest.

Well, he’s posted another short video which he shot over the summer and he asked me if I would post it on my site as well … so, here it is:

bmx 2011 г. Спорт Намба Видео

The Beatles logo

It was forty five years ago today, back in 1966, (when I was an impressionable 13 year old), that an event took place in San Fransisco which was to be a milestone in musical history, even though we didn’t realize it at the time.  It was the last time that “The Beatles”, (The Fab Four of John, George, Paul and Ringo), gave their last concert performance before paying fans.

That not to say that it was “the day the music died” … as the group continued producing “studio albums” which included much of their better known work: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (in 1967), The Beatles (more commonly known as the White Album, in 1968), Yellow Submarine (in 1969), Abbey Road (in 1969) and Let It Be (in 1970).

Indeed, it was to be another three years before an irrevocable split was to break the group up, Lennon announcing to the others in September, 1969 that he was leaving the band.  They had just recorded their twelfth and final album, “Let it be”, which was released in May the next year.   Despite rumours to the contrary, they were never to reform and give a “reunited” concert or issue a “reunited” album – although individual members of the group were to collaborate and perform together, occasionally appearing on each other’s albums.

The death of John Lennon in New York intervened but, even if hadn’t been shot, it is doubtful that the group would have come together again.

They had already indicated that live concert performances were something they wanted to move away from, in favour of studio recording.  When plans were being laid for their second film, “Help!”, they apparently presented the producers with a list of things they wanted to see in the film, and those that they didn’t, arising from their experience of filming “A Hard Day’s Night” – including “no film of concert performances”.

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The iconic "Sergeant Pepper" album

The Beatles have a remarkable place in the history of popular music, partly for the range of their music and their resulting influence on the subsequent development of popular music but mainly for their sheer popularity, (which led to John Lennon’s infamous controversial assertion that they were “more popular than Jesus”).  The phenomenon of Beatlemania swept through, not just Britain, but also America and, so it seemed, the whole world.  Beatle haircuts and collarless jackets became the rage – even I had them, (well, the jacket, my hair didn’t lend itself well to the hairstyle).

Their influence even reached into the Soviet Union and they are still a recognized force here in Kyrgyzstan today.

There are groups, for example, that perform Beatles numbers in restaurants whilst diners tuck in to whatever they have ordered from the menu.  They have quite a wide repertoire covering most of the classics – but, for some reason, Yesterday is clearly everyone’s favourite.  On one occasion I was at a Sixtieth Birthday party for an acquaintance.  It was a grand affair in a restaurant with people seated at several large round tables.  From time to time, guests were called up in turn to make a toast and present their gift … that much I had expected, but what took me by surprise was the fact that everyone also sang a song.  I was quite perturbed – you’ve probably never heard me sing, but if you had, you would understand why.  Even though I used to sing in the school choir, I find it hard to maintain a tune, and I never very few songs through from beginning to end. It was quite an international gathering and people sang songs in different languages, so when it was my turn to be called upon the master of ceremonies said something like: “We’ve heard songs in Kyrgyz and Russian, Uzbek and Tajik, French and German.  Now we are to be treated to one in English.”  I stood uncertainly and one of the guests at my table sensed my unease and whispered, “Ian, sing Yesterday … everyone knows it and will sing along with you.”  For the record: – although Yesterday is one of the songs that I do know all the way through, I chose a different song.

On another occasion, I was invited as a dinner guest by a swimming coach whop had represented the Soviet Union at one of the Olympic Games, and at one point in the evening he rose from the table and said, “Ian come with me, I have something to show you.”   I didn’t know him particularly well, so I was intrigued as we left his daughter to entertain the other guests and he led me through his large, (large for Kyrgyzstan, that is), apartment.  He led me into a room where there stood an old reel-to-reel tape recorder and he carefully selected and mounted a tape and pressed the “play” button.  I listened, but all I could hear was a crackly white noise.  “What do you think of that?”, he asked.   Confused and nonplussed, I asked what I was listening to, and he explained.  It was a recording he made back in the 1960’s, when he was a student, of a Radio Luxembourg broadcast, which at that time was “illegal” in the Soviet Union.  The “white noise” that I was listening to was a Beatles song.  I strained my ears … could it be?, well, maybe behind all that crackle I could detect some music and, yes, maybe I could recognize it as a Beatles song – but, to this day, I am not certain.

There was even talk at one time that an enterprising entrepreneur wanted to set up a Beatles Museum somewhere in the Issyk Kul oblast, but nothing seemed to come of it.

But it’s not just us “old fogies” who revere the Fab Four and their work … I have a friend, a twenty year old student, who can quote whole songs at me … and not just Yesterday.

Even the kids know who the Beatles were, although they don’t rate the songs as highly as more contemporary music.  I have to admit that when I listen to some of the less well known songs, I think they have a point … but, as I point out to them, it’s a part of history – and, more importantly to me, it’s a part of my youth.  I grew up with the Beatles, and they were an important influence in my life, along with the likes of  Batman and Robin, Superman, the Bash Street Kids, Deparate Dan and Roger the Dodger, Tom and Jerry and Doctor Who, The Archers and Alistair Cooke, David Bowie and James Taylor … and so the list could go on.

I try to point out to them that many of the songs were “ground breaking” in their day, when they were first released.  It is difficult, however, to explain the impact made at time by the raw power of early hits like  She Loves You, or of soulful ballads like Eleanor Rigby, or the psychedelic Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine, and especially of the iconic Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, which seemed to represent the embodiment of social cultural revolutions of the 1960 – the Swinging Sixties.

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I can’t help wondering what they will have look back on with reverence and nostalgia when they reach my advanced age. What influences, people, events will help to shape what they eventually become.  Just as we didn’t know, as John, Paul, George and Ringo left the stage for the last time, back then in 1966, what was to follow … we’ll just have to wait and see.