Archive: January, 2011
The Southern Ring road around Bishkek is named after Isa Akhunbaev, a notable Kyrgyz doctor and surgeon (who lived between 1908 and 1975). Akhunbaev is not well known today outside his native Kyrgyzstan – but he is held in very high regard amongst his own people – not only because of his achievements – but [...]
As I have been sitting nursing a bout of the flu, my mind has turned, (naturally), to medical matters … I have, for example, looked up symptoms and treatments, but I have also been thinking about the medical provision here in Kyrgyzstan. The travel advice for Kyrgyzstan from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office states: [...]
It’s been a strange week here in Bishkek … and also, apparently, around the world. It began with “Blue Monday”. A few years a British tour firm decided on a sales gimmick to help “prime the pump” so that people would start booking holidays, and they decided to declare the Monday of the last full week [...]
Balbals are small stone figures, (statues, statuettes), which are found scattered throughout the Steppes of Central Asia, (from North-western Mongolia to Turkey – the area between the Caspian and Black Seas), and in Northern Kyrgyzstan they are considered to be a feature. This may be because these enigmatic stone figures are a number of places [...]
I am aware that there has been a somewhat depressing turn to the postcards recently, in that there have been quite few references to deaths and funerals. I have mentioned several times that last year was the year of the “black tie”. It wasn’t just a case of the number of people that died in [...]
I see from National Geographic that winter lasts for 21 years on Uranus. Thank goodness it doesn’t last that long here in Kyrgyzstan. Last Friday, the sun was shining and the weather was warm. It made a pleasant change to the bitter, biting, wind and the frozen snow covered ground. One of my neighbours was [...]
I have a saying that “Every day is a special day … for someone”, even if it is not a special holiday. January 25th, for example, the twenty-fifth here in Kyrgyzstan, at least for those called Tatiana, like my accountants … but I wrote about that last year … http://ianbek.kg/?p=1239 It is a special day [...]
If you a regular visitor to ianbek, then you are probably aware that, as a former Maths teacher, I am fascinated with numbers and that,as a former teacher of statistics, I have a “love-hate” relationship with their “use and abuse”. As a result you will probably understand my feelings towards “Blue Monday”. Knowing how almost [...]
Every now and again, I come across a reference to Kyrgyzstan in the news which takes me aback. It happened again earlier this week in a news report from the Marion County Record – a provincial newspaper from Kansas, USA. The reference was in a short article about the singer John Denver and his local [...]
Some people ask me how I find the time to write these weekly postcards, and others ask where I get my inspiration. The answer to both questions is quite simple and, I suppose, go back to my days and training as a teacher. It is a matter of habit, instilled in me over seventeen years in [...]
