Archive: September, 2009
Kyrgyzstan may not spring to mind whenever there is discussion about the Cinema and the film industry. This is understandable as very few films made in Kyrgyzstan reach the West, and those that do are normally restricted to various specialist festivals. There is, however, a film industry and, even though they don’t produce high-budget “blockbusters”, [...]
I know that I have a penchant for clichés … pet phrases which populate many of my conversations. One that always seems to raise eyebrows when people hear it for the first time is: “Don’t close doors!”
Food is a question of taste – as the saying goes: “One man’s meat is another man’s poison”. Don’t expect the food in Kyrgyzstan to be the highlight of your trip – but that does not mean that you have landed up in a culinary wasteland!
Audrey Hepburn may have enjoyed Breakfast at Tiffany’s but recently I have started enjoying “Breakfast at Begemot”. Breakfast is the first meal of the day and, in English, the word is a composite bringing together the two words “break” and “fast” and accurately so it describes the meal that “breaks the fast” since the previous [...]
The sports columns of the popular newspaper Vecherniye Bishkek, (“Evening Bishkek”), once carried the headline “The Incomprehensible Game” – Rugby Football. It may well be that the game with it’s complex and complicated system of laws, scoring, scrums, lineouts, tries, penalties and the host of technicalities, (such having to pass the ball backwards while trying to run [...]
I don’t normally wear bright clothes – but recently I have been seen sporting a bright red Rugby Shirt. The breast displays two small emblems – on the left is the manufacturer’s trade mark: “Kukri”, and on the right is a small embroidered Kyrgyz flag. It’s the Rugby shirt of the Kyrgyz Rugby Federation and [...]
September 1st is known as Dehn Znanniy, (Knowledge Day or Day of Knowledge), as it is the day when the school year traditionally starts in Russia and many other former Soviet republics, including Kyrgyzstan. Although it is regarded as the first day of autumn, the weather is usually good, and this was no exception – [...]
