Postcard from Bishkek

This week we seem to have had the usual run of news stories.  Follow up accounts about the events in Osh in June, with one report blaming Uzbek nationalists, who oppose Karimov’s regime there, for provoking incidents which led to the eruption of violence; about the “terrorist gang”, (who are now being referred to as simply a “criminal gang”), that were apprehended in last week’s police operation; about how some of the plotters behind the recent explosion in Bishkek had received training in Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

It seems that the controversy over the refueling contract for the Manas air base continues to simmer away with new tax initiatives being proposed by the government and Mina Corporation trying to mount a damage limitation and public relations exercise.

There have also been reports about mining licenses being recalled, and about giving concessions to the Chinese in return for constructing a railway from Kashgar to the Ferghana valley.

There has also been yet another International “League Table” published this week and this time Kyrgyzstan seems to have done much better.

When I saw the news item, I was reminded of an exercise that I used to run when I was teaching Information Technology.  The school was based in North London and many of the children, (girls as well as boys), supported the two local Premier League teams: Arsenal and Spurs.  When class were learning spreadsheets and I would set them a task to chose a football team, (you can guess which ones they tended to choose), and devise a scoring system to see if they could get that team to top the league table.  They could allocate points, as is done now, for a win and a draw, but they choose how many and allocate different amounts for a “home win” as opposed to an “away win”, or for a score draw as opposed to a “no-score draw”.  Then they could add points for things like goals scored or deduct points for things like “yellow cards” or a player being sent off.

Anyway, the International Ranking of Economic Freedom is the result of a survey conducted by the American Research Institute Heritage Foundation, (no, I’ve never heard of them before, either), and the Wall Street Journal, (but, yes, I have heard of them).  It covered 183 countries and allocated each of them scores out of 100 across ten different measures (such as property rights and entrepreneurship) and then averaged them to get a final score.   I won’t comment on the methodology, but I note that Hong Kong comes out on top of the list, (as it has, apparently, on previous occasions), followed by Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.  I wasn’t surprised about some of those, but Ireland was interesting bearing in mind the troubles that they are experiencing at the moment.  Almost interesting was the fact that Albania seemed to do quite well, coming in in 53rd place. Armenia is the best performing country amongst the former CIS countries (at 36th). Kyrgyzstan made the 83rd spot, coming a little behind Kazakhstan, (at 78th), but ahead of Russia, (ranked at 143rd), Uzbekistan, (163rd), and the Ukraine, (164th).

On the whole, however, it’s been a quiet week on the news front.  For me personally, however, let me say that I have had a difficult week this week.

That’s mainly down to problems with the internet.  I thought I aware how much we relied on it for communications but that really came home to me this week – with a vengeance.

It began last weekend with a sudden power cut.  There I was, sitting at the computer busily typing away, and suddenly … phhhttt … the power went off.  It was already evening and dark outside, so I had to stumble about looking for a torch – I have a couple of lamps with small fluorescent tubes just in case something like this happens.

Now, this sort of thing happens everywhere and although it’s not exactly common here, (it doesn’t happen every day or week, for example), it’s not exactly a rare occurrence either. The system is old and many parts of it in need of maintenance, if not a complete overhaul, but the power companies don’t have enough resources to undertake this.  Electricity is very cheap here, some experts say too cheap and that the price should be raised so that more maintenance work can be financed.

Sometimes the power cut is due to a local difficulty, something like a fuse blowing, but occasionally it is much more widespread.  So, the first thing to do is check if the power outage affects just us, or if our neighbours are also without electricity.  It turned out that we were not alone, so it wasn’t the circuit affect the office.  The neighbouring buildings were also without power, so it wasn’t just our building.  Even the traffic lights on the corner were not working.  So, it was clear, the problem lay somewhere in the system.  Perhaps a cable was down, perhaps a problem in the local substation.  All we could do was sit it out patiently.

My mind, of course, ran wild with the possibilities – a simple malfunction in a local transformer, an accident, perhaps involving a cable down, or perhaps something more sinister, such as a terrorist action.  We could hear a very loud, grumbling hissing, noise and it took some time to work out what it could be.  In the end I decided it was the rumbling of the generator at the nearby headquarters of the UN here in Bishkek.  Apparently, I learned later, the hissing noise, (as opposed to the rumbling), was because the heating stations on the outskirts of town, suffered a reduction in power and automatically released steam as a safety measure.  That, in turn, led to some heating problems in some parts of town.

Anyway, I went around the offices and my apartment making sure that all the switches, except the hall light, were in the off position and unplugging appliances etc., to avoid any nasty surprises when the power came back on.  Then I settled down for an early night.

It wasn’t to be, however.  After less than two hours, the power returned and the light suddenly came back on.  So much for the early night!  I turned the television on to see what was happening and then the computer to scan the news wires and bulletin boards for information about what had happened.

It turns out that well over half, (early reports said 70%), of the city was affected.  It was caused by an explosion in one of the city substations but, fortunately, not the result of some malicious actions by force or forces unknown.  Later, the employees of the power company were blamed for “incompetence”, but it seems most likely that it may have just been a combination of the age of the system and the additional demand being put upon it, (apparently more than 40% up on last year).  That raised a different question … is it a sign of more to come?

Apparently Twitter and the other internet social media continued to work, although many Kyrgyz sites were down.   People were putting up tweets and posts throughout the blackout, presumably those outside the affected area or via their mobile phones.  The Internet providers hosting the Kyrgyz sites are mainly based in the city and may well have been affected, so that may be a reason why the sites went down.

There were rumours that Almaty, in Kazakhstan, had also been affected but these turned out to be groundless.  Last time we had such a big power cut, it was due to a problem in Kazakhstan and affected parts of Southern Kazakhstan as well as the whole of Northern Kyrgyzstan.  There was, however, a brief power outage in Kara Balta, about 100 kilometers from Bishkek, but it seems that was totally uncconnected.

One of the bloggers went for a drive around town to see what was happening and reported that the whole town was “drowned in darkness” and a wide range of buildings with power and dark:  The White House –the main government building; the Mayor’s Office; the majority of ministries and government departments; about one hundred thousand apartments – although I don’t know how he counted them; hospitals; shopping malls and thousands of smaller shops and most of the city’s traffic lights were not working.  He also pointed out where there was electricity, for example in some of the suburbs and where there were, presumably, generators, (as we have in the Silk Road Lodge): in some of the government buildings; some of the embassies; virtually all the branches of one of the larger supermarket chains; in banks; many of the casinos and in the offices of the telecommunications companies.

Later, an official went on record saying that none of the “strategic” buildings, (including the White House – he specifically mentioned that), were affected and left without power.

I wonder if there is an International League Table about power cuts?  Anyway, although it all passed off and no-one seems to even remember it now, it was a “wake-up” call and it should have started to exercise a few minds on the possible implications.

Thinking everything was back to normal after the mild excitement would have been a mistake, however.  On Monday we kept losing the internet connection.  I wondered if, perhaps, the power cut had created a surge which might have burned out a component somewhere.  We called our engineer who couldn’t find the problem and we were all confused by the fact that the internet provider which we use said that they could see our modem on the system – but we couldn’t see them.  We replaced the modem and checked all the connections but the problem persisted.  Eventually, on the second day, they admitted that they were having “server problems”.  We noted that other people were reporting similar problems.  The disruption went on for another day and then finally the service seemed to return to normal.  Well, almost.  Everyone else in the office finally had internet access – except me!  We replaced the wireless adapter in my computer and, fortunately, everything now seems to be working normally.  (I’m still keeping my fingers crossed, however.)

So I practically lost communication with the outside world for most of the week.  Then for the other half, I seem to have been rushing to and from meetings.

That included a rush trip to the hospital.  No, it wasn’t for me … I am OK.   One of my neighbours, however, collapsed in his kitchen and we got summoned by his wife to help pick him up.  We called for an ambulance and eventually took him off to hospital for a check up.

Then, to top it all, yesterday the kids’ grandfather died, (just days before his 74th birthday), and I had the job of breaking the news to Maxim when he called in to the office after school, (he’s sixteen).

On the positive side, it’s been brighter and a little warmer this week – even getting into positive territory, although at the moment it is still in negative double figures!  Also, Victor, (who wasn’t affected by the power cut and other internet access problems), has added some new panoramas to our website www.see.kg: the entrance to the Kan-i-gut caves in the Batken oblast, a view of Lake Issyk Kul and a night scene outside the Philharmonia in Bishkek.  When we’ve had internet access we’ve also done some work on www.links.kg and started work on a newbsite, www.kyrgyzdiary.info, giving information about events here in Kyrgyzstan, festivals, concerts, and the like.

Tags: Expat, Life_in_Kyrgyzstan, Reminiscences, Weekly_Postcards