Postcard from Bishkek

A few years ago, a local newspaper, (Public Rating), published a series of articles highlighting seven “unique objects” in Kyrgyzstan which were nominated for inclusion into the UNESCO World Heritage List.The UNESCO list contains over 800 sites which the ‘World Heritage Committee’ considers as having outstanding universal value and are part of the cultural and natural […]

Back in the autumn of 1962 a film was released which was to have a significant effect on the genre of espionage movies in the West: Dr. No, based on the James Bond novel by Ian Fleming.  Indeed, Bond is not just a Western icon, even here everyone knows about James Bond. Although it was […]

Back in 1983, 18 April was endorsed as The International Day for Monuments and Sites by UNESCO. The aim of this special day is to raise public awareness concerning the diversity of the world’s heritage and the efforts that are required to protect and conserve it, as well as drawing attention to its vulnerability. It […]

Sir Neville Francis Fitzgerald Chamberlain KCB KCVO KPM was a British Army officer, (and later Inspector-General of the Royal Irish Constabulary – he resigned in the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland), who is credited with inventing of the game of snooker while serving in Jubbulpore (Jabalpur), India in … on 17th April, […]

I have a confession to make … my diary for today had a mistake … and it is probably a result of my bad handwriting. I had today, 16th April, down as the birthday of Kyrgystan’s version of “The History Man” – Professor Vladimir Mikhailovich Ploskikh … in fact it should have been 10th April.  It’s […]

In the United States, 15th April is known as Tax Day. This is the day when tax returns have to be submitted to the Federal government … there are also local “Tax Days” for those states which have a different deadline for the submission of the forms. For the record: The deadline was originally March […]

On 14th April, 1894, … the first ever motion picture house opened in New York … however, it wasn’t exactly what we would recognize as a cinema. It operated ten Kinetoscopes, a device for “peep-show” viewing of films … inside the carcass was a long strip of perforated film which passed between a light source and […]

One of the mantras associated with responsible tourism runs: “Take only photographs, leave only footprints!” There is another saying, that photographs make the best souvenirs … although, personally, I have some doubts about that.  This is probably because I am not very good at taking them.  I tend to take the the more aesthetic view […]

They say that there are some books that pretend to have read … but which, in fact, very few people have actually done so. In the various lists of such books that we “lie” about are works like: The Bible; 1984 by George Orwell; Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy; A Passage to India by EM Forster; Atlas Shrugged and […]

Gold is an important part of the Kyrgyz economy … the Kumtor Gold mine, the country’s biggest enterprise, contributes something like 14% of the country’s GDP and 40% of its exports and almost 50% of the country’s industrial output. Recent controversy over the ownership and operation of the mine, (which in recent years has produced […]