Postcard from Bishkek

Not long ago I was chatting with a friend who dropped a bombshell on me, (figuratively – not literally), when he told me that Kyrgyzstan was on of the top Cotton producers in the world.  I expressed my surprise … I know that cotton is often listed as one of the country’s main agricultural products […]

I am not sure if there is a recognized collective noun to describe a gathering of Prime Ministers  … in my search I came up with a number of humourous suggestions, but I would would like to suggest one … at least for Kyrgyz Prime Ministers … a Pony of Prime Ministers.  If you can have a […]

As a former schoolteacher, I always take an interest in news reports about education … so, I was intrigued last December to see a report of a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Social Policy addressed by the Deputy Minister of Education and Science who quoted a number of very interesting statistics – another of […]

On 18th December, 1990, the UN General Assembly adopted the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families and ten years later, (on 4th December, 2000),  they designated that every year this should be commemorated as International Migrants Day. The decision underscored the fact that international migration […]

One of the saddest pieces of news last week is that, so far this year, some 80 people have drowned Kyrgyzstan’s canals, rivers and lakes – including some 21 children – about 25%. Unfortunately there was no information about the equivalent figures for previous years so it is not possible to put that statistic into […]

Transparency International, (TI), is famous for its annual survey, the Corruption Perceptions Index, (CPI), which measures the perceived levels of public sector corruption in 176 countries and territories around the world. A couple of days ago I was sent a link to their latest report – the result of a different survey called the Global Corruption […]

During recent years, as public holidays have approached, banners and signs have appeared bearing the slogan “Mairamynyzdar Menen!” It’s obviously in Kyrgyz, so I asked a Kyrgyz member of staff what it meant – and was told that it’s the Kyrgyz equivalent of the Russian “Se Prazdnikom!” … “with the holiday!”.  It turn, this is […]

The other day I was sent a link to a news article that I hadn’t seen before even though it was a couple of weeks old and it’s a page that I frequently look at given my background in Mathematics and Statistics. As I run a couple of hotels, my correspondent thought that it might […]

Regular readers of my postcards will know of m,y interest in Statistics … and the travel and leisure industry provides a wealth of useful examples that I wish I had been aware of when I was teaching the subject. Whenever two or three hoteliers are gathered together, for example, there is one topic of conversation […]

A few years ago, my Cable TV used to show a wide variety of programmes in different languages: Russian and Kyrgyz, of course, but also English, French, German, Turkish and Japanese … even Italian and Spanish from time to time.  The obviously did some market research and decided to  cut most of these from their […]