Postcard from Bishkek

A week or so ago, a journalist phoned and asked if they could come and take an interview from me.  To be honest, I am not very keen on giving interviews but, as they say, it “goes with the territory” … so I agreed. At the appointed time, the journalist appeared in my office and […]

I wrote a postcard the other day, (Visa free … finally!), about the long and drawn out process of trying to get a visa free regime adopted here in Kyrgyzstan … and I said that I had two press releases waiting on my computer, but I was reluctant to issue them until the new law […]

The Saturday postcards are normally a review of the previous weeks news, and gets sent out to a variety of people as an email.  It is a purely personal take on the news, as seen from my perspective as: an Englishman living here in Kyrgyzstan for over 16 years; an former teacher (of Religious Studies, […]

I got a phone call on Friday afternoon.  I was surprised because my mobile told me before I picked up that it was a call from Marat, who lives in the UK, and I didn’t know he was due back here in Kyrgyzstan. He is the Director of Silk Road Media, the publisher of the […]

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 […]

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, […]

I wasn’t sure whether to post this or not … for a start, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to give it any publicity, but when I found a particular post on the website of the Portland Mercury, it made me see red … and I felt that I just had to respond.

There is a fair amount of discussion (in the business press – and ironically, on the internet) about the amount of time spent by workers surfing the net – the cost to business is supposed to run into hours and hours of lost production and millions of pounds, dollars, Euro or som. It’s not just […]

Today has been a busy day. About half way through, the phone rang, and Lisa transferred it to me saying, “It’s a Mr. ****”. Now, the name meant nothing to me.  It was obviously an Anglophile name -  so it wasn’t the police, (they had already called in connection with the bomb blast earlier this […]

Today has been a busy day. It began with a minor crisis – no internet.  It’s at times like this that I realize how reliant we have become on the internet for our everyday operations: especially for communications and news.  Anyway, having arrived in the office, as usual, at six, I was able to spend […]