Well, I am back from my monthly trip to Naryn where we have a guesthouse.
I enjoy my regular trips up there. They get me out of the office, into the fresh air and I see a bit of the countryside. It is interesting to see how the scenery changes with the passage of the seasons. This time there wasn’t as much greenery as I would have expected for springtime; the Dolon Pass still had a little snow, but the sun was shining and it was pleasantly mild … until the thunder and hail arrived, that is, but it was a short lived storm and the sun re-emerged to brighten things up. It was still shining quite late into the evening, when we descended to the dining room for supper. More…
When is a joke not a joke?
April Fools’ Day, (or All Fools’ Day), is not a holiday but as in many other countries around the world is celebrated on April 1st by people playing hoaxes or practical jokes on one another. Most of them are small scale, private jokes, played on immediate family, friends or work colleagues, but not all of them. There have been several famous, or infamous, examples of elaborate hoaxes played on the public which were staged by supposedly serious media outlets. I’ll mention just two early ones that I particularly remember. More…
One confusing feature in Kyrgyzstan is that since independence there has been a tendency to change place names, especially from the older Russian version to new Kyrgyz names. In many cases the new name is a form of an even older Kyrgyz name – but not always. In a way, this is isn’t altogether surprising. The young nation wants to assert its identity.
Of course, as new towns, suburbs and streets are built then they acquire new names – it is the same all over the world. The trend here, however, is for names of existing towns, villages and streets to be changed. Indeed a recent proposal to rename some villages by replacing their Russian names with Kyrgyz ones has proved to be extremely controversial.
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In yesterday’s post about the National Anthem of Kyrgyzstan, I mentioned that current anthem which was introduced in 1992 replaced an early one, written in 1946, by Adbylas Maldibaev, which served as the anthem of the Khirghiz SSR, however, that was not 100% accurate. Although he was one of the composers, it was a collaborative effort together with Vladimir Vlasov and Vladimir Fere. (The words were also a result of a collaboration, between K. Malikov, T. Sydykbekov, M. Tokobaev and Aaly Tokombaev.) More…
In last week’s weekly postcard, (posted on Saturday), I mentioned that, “Perhaps the strangest new item of the week is that the parliament has established a working group to change the country’s Flag and National Anthem.”
I wrote a postcard about the Kyrgyz flag earlier in the month, so let me now turn my attention to the anthem. More…
It has been announced that the week from from March 28 to April 1 will be Wikipedia Week here in Kyrgyzstan.
It is an initiative by the Soros Foundation – Kyrgyzstan, (SFK), which is an international, non-government, private foundation that was set up by the Open Society Institute in 1993, headed by George Soros, the financier and philanthropist. It is part of an international network, working in a total of 58 countries around the world. More…
Yesterday, Saturday 26th March, 2011, marked a sad day in that it sees the demise of the BBC Russian service.
The BBC has a long history of broadcasting to the world. It’s the world’s largest international broadcaster, transmitting in 32 different languages around the world, Russian being one of them. According to the BBC Charter, it is politically independent, (something which is often disputed by foreign governments who point to the government funding of the BBC through the license fee arrangement and the Foreign and Commonwealth grant for the operation of the World Service itself), non-profit and non-commercial. More…
Saturday sees the annual Varsity Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge Universities. The race was first staged in 1829 but has only been an annual event since 1856, (with two breaks for the two World Wars, although during the second world War there were four “unofficial” races). The “light blues” of Cambridge have won 80 of the encounters and the “dark blues” of Oxford 75. There has been one draw, in 1877 when both teams crossed the finish line after twenty four minutes and eight seconds of physical exertion and frantic rowing. More…
As well as being the Day of the People’s Revolution, yesterday was also marked in Kyrgyzstan as World Tuberculosis Day.
Ever since 1982, March 24th has been designated as a day dedicated to build public awareness about the global epidemic of tuberculosis, (TB), and efforts to eliminate the disease, although the World Health Organization, (WHO), that are now responsible for coordinating activities to mark the day, only adopted the event in 1996.
March 24th was chosen as it was on this day in 1882 that Dr. Robert Koch astounded the scientific community by announcing that he had discovered the cause of the disease: the TB bacillus. The discovery opened the way toward diagnosing and curing tuberculosis which at that time was raging through Europe and the Americas, causing the death of one out of every seven people. Sixty five years earlier, it had responsible for a quarter of the deaths in England. His discovery was deemed to have been so important by the scientific community that Koch was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine for it in 1905. More…
Back in 2005, Kyrgyzstan experienced the first of its recent revolutions. On March 24th, several weeks of protests culminated in a demonstration outside the Government House, (the White House), and President Askar Akaev feld, driving out of the back entrance of the compound as the masses gathered in front of the building. The crowds were then to storm the building, which was followed by a night of rioting and looting. In the absence of the President, the government fell and a new one took its place, headed by Kurmanbek Bakaev, who was to be evicted from power in his turn some five years later. More…
