Pretend you're dread

The Dream is Over

2006-04-14T07:36:00.000+06:00

Well, I suppose it had to end somewhere, but Kyrgyzstan were finally knocked out of the AFC Challenge Cup in the semi-finals by Tajikistan 2-0. However, let's hope this has some effect on their FIFA world ranking and they move up from their lowly ranking of 154. More importantly, let's hope they move above Mayotte, the country immediately above them and whom I've never heard of in my life (despite having a fairly good grasp of geography). In case you're wondering, it's a French administered island off the African coast.

Why can't you just 'go' like everyone else? OR Goddamn you Russian verbs of motion

2006-04-13T13:30:00.000+06:00

Like going to the dentist or cleaning under the bed, I’ve been putting off learning Russian verbs of motion for quite some time. You see, for a long time I was under the mistaken impression that there were just a couple of verbs for ‘going’ and ‘coming’ and I liberally used them for anything vaguely related to movement. So ‘I go’ I thought was ‘Ja idoo’ and whenever I wanted to say I was going somewhere I would use that. However, my wife would constantly correct me, saying ‘no, that should be ‘jedoo’ or ‘pajedoo’ or ‘hozhoo’ in this context, and I dutifully changed it but had no idea why.

Well, according to ‘The New Penguin Russian Course: A Complete Course For Beginners’, Russian verbs of motion are a right little nest of vipers. Alright, it never actually says that, but it’s certainly something to infer when you read passages like this:

‘You will see from these examples that the unidirectional verbs always have the specific meaning of one direction, while the multidirectional verbs are vaguer – so the ‘m’ verbs are used when there is no motion or the number of directions doesn’t matter (rules 2 and 3 above). So, as a ‘rule of thumb’ use the ‘m’ verbs in contexts involving repeated motion’

Are you following this? Really? Ok, well try this:

‘Imperfective future forms of the verbs of motion are rare. As you might expect, the imperfective future of multidirectional (‘chodit’-type) verbs is used for unfinished multidirectional motion and repeated round trips, while the imperfective future of ‘idti’-type verbs (very rare) denotes uncompleted motion in one direction.’

Followed by endless lists of verbs, variations, inflections and examples that are supposed to make some kind of sense. I particularly like the author’s optimistic ‘as you might expect’, as if I’d understood perfectly the previous five pages of this nonsense. So, apparently for every verb of motion (go, fly, walk etc) there is a different form depending on whether it’s in one direction or two, it’s a single trip or a repeated one, it’s on foot or by some form of transport, it’s in the future or the present, it’s a little trip (or kind of trip) or has some kind of preposition after it (go out/in etc). Goodness, why should something such as travel have to be so complicated? Maybe there’s some connection here with the Soviet Union’s reluctance to let any of their citizens go outside of the country – they were worried that the easier unidirectional verbs would discourage any kind of desire to come back.

I started trying to learn these verbs about an hour ago, and like any good procrastinator, decided to write this blog to explain why they are so difficult and to avoid having to go back and look at them again. And if I can’t be bothered, well I’ll have to stick to the one ‘go’ verb I know and spend my whole time here never returning (or going repeatedly, or in the future, or on foot etc etc).

Peace Leader is shot. Criminal Politician threatens Head of Electoral Commission. US Secretary of State proclaims Kyrgyzstan a “stable country”

2006-04-13T10:45:00.000+06:00

On the day of the visit of the

Secretary of State Richard Boucher, one of the leaders of the Coalition for Democracy and Civil, Edil Baisalov, was shot in the head, thankfully not fatally. This is the organization I mentioned in a previous post that were protesting peacefully to try and restore law and order to the country. Clearly some people were not too impressed with that idea. Not sure who that might be…

At the same time, I read this report about the notorious Ryspek Akmatbayev. Now, I’m not sure that all its facts can be proven and it does seem to be largely hearsay and rumour, but it’s not encouraging when The Man Who Would Be An Elected Representative is threatening the head of the Electoral Commission and apparently has some “killer material” to blackmail and threaten Kyrgyzstan’s major politicians. Isn’t it nice to know that Kyrgyz democracy is being played out in such a civilized and equitable manner?

So, it’s good to see the US Secretary of State expressing such confidence in the political process, though maybe more in hope than on anything that’s actually happening in the country. Oh, and because they have an airbase here and are worried about the Russian influence in the region, and because it’s the only base they have in Central Asia after being kicked out of Uzbekistan…

There's a damn yurta in my garden...

2006-04-12T15:23:00.000+06:00

Well, not actually in my garden but the yard in front of my tower block. I saw some guys standing in a line looking appreciative last night but the trees obscured the view and I assumed that it was a dry wall or a German car they were staring admiringly at. Yurtas are the traditional Kyrgyz dwellings that you rarely see in the city, but in the villages some people still live in them. Anyhow, here’s the one currently doing duty in front of my apartment.

What the hell is going on? I’m hoping this is a temporary thing for a celebration or wedding or something and not the government’s solution to the housing shortage problem.

Kyrgyzstan to meet Tajikistan in AFC Challenge semi-final

2006-04-12T10:15:00.000+06:00

Updating the never popular tournament in Bangladesh, little to report as my title kind of says it all, doesn’t it? Just to fill space, Kyrgyzstan will meet Tajikistan in the semi-final (really? You don’t say?). Tajikistan thrashed the host nation 6-1 in the quarters, so looks like the defence is going to be kept on its toes again.

Peace Protestors Politely Ask To Speak To The President. The President Politely Says No

2006-04-12T10:12:00.000+06:00

On Saturday there was another protest in front of the government building, but this time it was by 2000 people looking for an end to all the corruption, intimidation and violent protesting. Read the report here. They gathered outside the president’s palace and requested an audience with Bakiev. He said no. Interesting really, given that when the supporters of dodgy parliamentarian Ryspek Akmatbaev asked for a similar audience, he said yes. Twice. Seems that using intimidation and the threat of violence is a far more effective way of getting to speak to the head of the country.

Speaking in (three) tongues...

2006-04-11T18:13:00.000+06:00

My ten-month old son can recognize words in three languages: show him a picture of a group of animals and say bear, Medved (Russian) or Yulu (Kyrgyz..well that may not be the word but it sounds like that) and he’ll pick out the proverbially wood-defecating animal. Impressive, eh?

Now, this is not going to be a post claiming some kind of ridiculous precocity on my son’s part. Firstly, that’s not true. He’s no more precocious than babies speaking one language at that age. It just so happens that he’s exposed to three languages: English totally from me, English and Russian from his mother, Russian from his aunties and Kyrgyz and Russian from his grandparents.

But I am beginning to think about how you bring up a bilingual or trilingual child. How do you make sure he’s fluent in all of them? Can you make one of the languages his ‘first’ language? Do you have to have rules about who speaks to him in what language? I vaguely remember reading somewhere that you have to speak the minority language in the home, i.e. the language that he won’t be exposed to in the country you’re living, and the majority language outside the home. That would mean English indoors and Russian outside. But of course, I could have misread that and it was the opposite.

Anyhow, I really do want English to be his first language. This isn’t some kind of prejudice, just a practical acknowledgement that his future will be much brighter if that’s his mother tongue. But I also want him to speak Russian fluently and at least have a working knowledge of Kyrgyz. Kyrgyz I think will be the trickiest, simply because I think at some point we’ll move away from Kyrgyzstan and my wife isn’t totally fluent in the language (something she’s somewhat ashamed of given her nationality). If anyone has any advice, It’s be welcome..

They think it's all over....it is now

2006-04-10T16:02:00.000+06:00

AFC Challenge Cup Update No.2:

Well, the boys did good. Facing strong opposition from the Palestine side, Kyrgyzstan edged into the semis of the AFC Challenge Cup in Bangladesh with a last minute winner from Ruslan Djamshidov. Keeping a blank sheet against a team who thrashed Guam 11-0 is quite a feat! And now they get to face either Bangladesh or Tajikistan in the semi-final. I'm a bit divided on this one: Bangladesh are the host nation, so it will at least guarantee some kind of crowd (I'm assuming, though probably not of Maracana proportions); on the other hand, Tajikistan are their local rivals, so racking up a victory against them would do some good for the ole Central Asian pride.

What I'm particularly enjoying about this tournament - apart from its utter willful obscurity - are the match reports from the newspapers in the region. Reading both this and this one, they seem to belong to a slightly different era where goalkeepers are called 'custodians' and scoring two goals is invariably described as a 'brace'. There's something very charming about it.

Anyhow, after this tournament is over, I feel the urge to construct a website dedicated to the Kyrgyzstan national football team. But only if they win...that is the deal.

Getinthere!!

2006-04-09T18:45:00.000+06:00

Ok, updating the AFC Challenge Cup in

Bangladesh

. Kyrgyzstan have now progressed to the quarter-finals after a solid 2-0 victory over Macau and the last 8 line-up is complete: Sri Lanka v Chinese Taipei, Tajikistan v Bangladesh, India Under 20s v Nepal and Kyrgyzstan v Palestine.

So yes, Kyrgyzstan get to face Palestine. Now, this may cause some divided loyalties among some of you. I know the Palestinians have had a rough time of it, and I’m very sympathetic to their cause (hey, down with Israel etc), but come on, this is football, and the plight of the refugees in the camps has to take second place for now. I want you all behind the Kyrgyz team. And they’re going to need your support. In Fahed Attal, they have the tournament’s top scorer (admittedly he did get five of those in Palestine’s 11-0 thrashing of Guam). But still, it’s going to be a tough game.

The game is taking place today at some point. For those with even a passing interest in the tournament, they can go to the Wikipedia site here. In the meantime, I’ll sit and wait for the result and ponder on why India, rather insultingly in my view, only sent their Under 20s side to the tournament

Clash of the Central Asian Titans

2006-04-07T10:30:00.000+06:00

Yes, I know a lot of you are waiting for the World Cup in

Germany

in a couple of months, but until then maybe the AFC Challenge in

Bangladesh

will whet your appetite for the festival of football to come. And I know many of you were eagerly awaiting the result of the Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan derby. Well, it seems that

Kyrgyzstan

sneaked a win, admittedly against an understrength Tajik side. You can read all the gory details here.

Still,

Kyrgyzstan

can't really rest on their laurels. They have to face the mighty Macau next, and need a win if they’re going to progress to the quarter finals. And even if they manage that, they could face

Nepal

Sri Lanka

Tajikistan

(again, groan!) in the last eight. I’ll keep you updated.

Oh, in the match report for the Nepal game, there’s my favourite football phrase of the week: ‘the boys from the Himalayas’. Now, that’s something you won’t hear during the World Cup, and I believe the competition will be poorer because of it…

In Praise of Kyrgyzstan...part one

2006-04-06T11:03:00.000+06:00

Looking back over my last few months, I’m struck by the generally negative tone I’ve adopted towards

Kyrgyzstan

, it’s political system, its inefficient bureaucracy and lack of technology. Kind of makes it seem I don’t like the place that much. But that’s not true. Maybe I’m just a miserable, cynical bugger who sees the worst in everything, but in the spirit of being a better person AND giving my honest opinion, here are some things I like about life in

Kyrgyzstan

Tolerance

When you point out to Kyrgyz people how ethnically diverse and tolerant their country is, they are genuinely taken aback. Yet it’s something that they should be inordinately proud of. There’s a wide range of different ethnic groups here: Kyrgyz, Russian, Uzbek, Tajik, Korean, Dungans, Uygurs and several others. And yet you never really get the sense of them as distinct groups because of the integration between them. It’s a common sight to see a group of friends walking down the street and all of them of a different ethnic hue. I don’t think people here even realize that this is an unusual thing, yet when I tell them that this would be considered progressive in England, they are really surprised.

Lack of interference

The positive flipside to a chaotic political system is a lack of interference in people’s daily lives. When I go back to England, I’m continually frustrated by just how many rules and regulations there are and the ubiquitous presence of CCTV. In Kyrgyzstan, you can pretty much do what you want as long as it isn’t overtly bothering anyone else: you can smoke and drink where you want, drive how you want, buy what you want and, apart from the occasional bribe to keep the traffic police happy, you’re basically left on your own. And, as a good libertarian, that’s how I believe life should be….

Space

It’s only when I come back to Bishkek that I realize just how cramped other cities are. The streets here are ridiculously wide (admittedly this is necessary to give cars a bit of space to swerve round the potholes) and there are loads of parks and open spaces in the city. And well, the rest of the country is just one big space, filled only by mountains and lakes…

Lake Issy Kul

Ok, saying you like Issy Kul is obligatory if you live in Kyrgyzstan. It’s their pride and joy, the one thing they believe (with some justification) that gets them noticed beyond their borders. In case anyone doesn’t know anything about it, it’s, well, a huge lake that occupies a vast portion of the country. It’s the closest thing the Kyrgyz have to the sea and it’s where they all go on holiday in the summer. Now, I’m not sure I actually like Issy Kul, in as much as I’m not a big nature person or a great lover of water, but it is undeniably spectacular…what I love most of all though is the love that Kyrgyz people have for it. When they talk about it, their eyes light up, and you can see they’re already beginning to think about the summer and the chance to go back there again….It’s very, very endearing.

Anyhow, no time now to continue, but I’ll add a few more thoughts on my favourite things about Kyrgyzstan tomorrow..

Gadget Freak

2006-04-05T11:18:00.000+06:00

My name’s David Read and I’m a gadgetholic. There, I’ve said it. It feels a lot better now I’ve got that out in the open. I’ve certainly tried to deny it: oh, I’m just interested in electronics, they’re labour-saving devices, they will help me work/study/organize my life better. But these rationalizations can’t really justify the sheer amount of money I’ve spent on gadgets over the last few years (and probably what I’m going to spend in the future). I realized the truth of my addiction yesterday when I was clearing up my apartment and logged all the stuff that I’ve got. Take a deep breath:

Three digital cameras, one video camera, two mobile phones, one dictaphone, two mp3/4 players, one PDA, two laptops, one portable hard drive, one Playstation 2, one Sony PSP, one printer, one wireless router, one DVD player and a bloody partridge in a pear tree.

And this is just the stuff I’ve got at the moment. I’ve sold or given away numerous other gadgets that I didn’t use or I’d replaced with something newer and funkier.

Now, the bizarre thing is that I was a bit of a technophobe until I was in my mid-twenties. I had never really touched a computer until then, and it was only that my new job came with a PC that I had to confront that fear and buckle down and learn how to a) turn on a computer and b) use it. Maybe it was just the elation of overcoming that fear that fed my obsession, but now it’s become a real financial drain. I went to work in Korea for a month recently and before going, I was literally sweating with anticipation. Not because I would experience a new culture, new food, meet new people, but because Seoul has the largest electronics market in the world (called Yongsan). I realized when I finally got there that there is no way in hell that I could ever live in Korea or Japan. I would be broke within a week and my wife and child would have to live on whatever food scraps they could afford with the money left over from my latest gadget purchase.

But I’m trying to get control of my addiction. I told my wife I would only buy one major gadget this year (notice the sly use of the word major, a get-out clause for a series of smaller purchases) and so far I’ve stuck to my word. I bought a new laptop in Korea and I’m determined that will be the only thing I buy. Still, I feel a bit like a nicotine addict who’s promised himself he’ll smoke only five a day, and it’s now midday and he’s smoked all of them. Christ, it’s only April, and I know that Sony are releasing their ebook reader in the spring and that looks really cool. I don’t suppose that would be considered a major purchase, would it my dear?

Ryspek Akmatbayev Redux

2006-04-04T12:15:00.000+06:00

Quick update on the attempts of Ryspek Akmatbayev to be allowed to run for election (see previous post: Another day, Another protest). According to this report, the government have overturned their original decision and now he's going to be allowed to stand. I do like the last line of the article, which just about sums up the state of politics here: 'It was not clear why the court overturned the decision'. Ooh...fear? Intimidation? Bribery? Any other offers?

(cold) water, (cold) water everywhere...

2006-04-04T12:09:00.000+06:00

Ominous signs over the last couple of days in my flat. The hot water is taking longer and longer to come through and this normally signifies the Kyrgyz government’s annual turn-off-the-hot-water-for-a-month-athon in order to teach its citizens the value of a brisk cold shower. Actually, I don’t think that is the reason, though I’m still not a hundred per cent sure why for one month in the spring every year they turn off the hot water here. Some say it’s to carry out major repairs on the pipes (is that easier when there’s no hot water?), others that they need to conserve water before the demands of the tourist season kick in (can you actually conserve hot water – god I know nothing about these things?).

Whatever. It’s bloody inconvenient, especially for a pampered, spoilt overgrown schoolboy like myself. For a month the house is a constant haze of steam and humidity as the only way to generate hot water is to boil pans on the stove. Having a bath is an exercise in patience and muscular strength as it takes a good five or six large pots of water to fill the tub to a point where it’s licking your ankles. The first few years I was here I used this kind of portable heat sink thingy. You know, it’s like the thing you have at the bottom of the kettle for heating the water (you may be gathering by now that I’m not a science major), except bigger and with a handle and a plug. You have to fill the bath up with cold water, then stick this thing in it and plug it in and it heats it up. It’s frickin’ lethal. You have to remember to unplug it every time you want to stick your hand in the water to check it. And it takes forever as well. I was always scared that I was going to forget to unplug it and I was going to be found dead, slumped naked over the bath with big Einstein hair. That’s not how I want to be remembered, so in the end I stopped using it.

I know in the grander scheme of things this isn’t terribly bad, not like living in the deserts of Africa or the jungles of South America. But hey, that’s why I never volunteered to work in places like that: I like the cool feel of ceramic on my buttocks when I go to toilet and the assurance that when I turn on a lightswitch I’m going to get light. And I like to have hot water as well. Anyhow, the whole purpose of this is to explain to people why I’m likely to be a grumpy bugger over the next month. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Zum the Pirate King

2006-04-03T00:51:00.000+06:00

Not, as you might think, some kind of local Kyrgyz bandito – and fairly unlikely given the country’s landlocked status – but my own name for the temple to dodgy goods and illegal stuff that is Bishkek’s central department store.

Yes, I know that in many countries you can buy pirated DVDs, software, knock-off mobile phones etc, but they are very few where you can buy them in the capital’s biggest and most prominent department store. In ‘Zum’, I’m pretty sure nothing has been obtained or produced in a legal fashion. Every DVD or piece of software is a copy, every mobile phone you buy was intended for some other market – I’ve had two phones here so far: the first was clearly meant to be sold in Britain (the plug was a bit of a giveaway) and the second in France (the start-up screen welcomed me with a hearty ‘bienvenue’). And it’s such a wondrous and shifting metaphor for the country’s struggle to come to grips with entrepreneurism and capitalism. The little shops and kiosks inside it close, open, expand, contract on an alarming regular basis – the chances of you buying a product there and going back six months later and finding the same shop/owner are pretty slim. The warranties you get are normally hastily scribbled on some random piece of paper and are about as legitimate as…well, about as legitimate as the product you’re buying.

I absolutely love the place and have no qualms about buying stuff from there. To start with, there is no alternative legal market. As far as I know, it’s impossible to actually buy legal DVDs and software in Kyrgyzstan; well, it may be possible but I can’t imagine any business would last for more than five minutes. I mean, how much does an official copy of Windows or Office go for these days? $200? $300? Given that the average Kyrgyz salary is about $50-75 a month (source: my wife, her sister, and a taxi driver I spoke to), I don’t think Bill Gates is going to get his bathroom retiled based on the sales of his products here. And why should the Kyrgyz people be denied the latest software? It’s not really their fault that the economy is screwed and it’s not exactly going to pick up if the only exposure to technology they had was some crappy old computer running Windows 95.

So, if you’re ever in Bishkek, go to Zum and see what you can pick up….Oh, souvenirs are on the fourth floor in case you’re wondering (they may actually be the only genuine things in the whole place).

Another Day, Another Protest...

2006-04-01T22:00:00.000+06:00

I got the usual warnings from the British Embassy, there was the usual gathering of military and police on the main street and the usual group of disgruntled folk massed outside the government building. Oh, the people who are there change each time, but the reason is just a variation on a theme: either the government are letting someone run for parliament who they think shouldn’t or they’re not letting someone run who they think should.

In this case it was the latter. This time it was Ryspek Akmatbaev, who has impeccable credentials to be a member of parliament: he was just recently acquitted of murder and, while trying not to judge a book by its cover, looks like a two-bit hoodlum. Apparently he couldn’t run for election because he didn’t disclose a previous criminal conviction and he hadn’t lived in Kyrgyzstan permanently for the last five years; but by golly, he’s not going to let a pesky thing like the law stand in his way…

Most of these guys just want to set up their little criminal fiefdoms in some town in Kyrgyzstan, and the quickest way is to get into political office. They throw a few hundred dollars at the townsfolk, promise them a good meal and free drink if they agree to turn up in the capital and make some noise. They’re hoping that the government is so weak and ineffectual that they might actually agree to their demands rather than have to deal with such visible signs of civil disturbance…and hey, they may be right. The president was so scared, he actually came out and dignified this mob with his presence and gave a little conciliatory speech.

I don’t know what the future holds for Kyrgyzstan if someone like this can have the government shaking in its boots. This time the crowd finally dispersed, but they threatened to be back – and to be armed – if they didn’t get their way. And even if it isn’t them, it will be someone else with the bright idea of bringing a rent-a-mob to the capital to see what they can squeeze out of the government. The future isn’t looking that bright for President Bakiev.

Putin Will Try The, How You Say, Fried Chicken

2006-03-30T21:22:00.000+06:00

Which is an old headline from The Onion and it always makes me laugh. You see Russian speakers often leave out the ‘do’ from questions: how you say in English? What means this? Why you like football? etc, as they don’t really have it in their mother tongue. They just say a normal sentence and change intonation to make it a question.

Now, the purpose of this post is not really to reflect on the difficulties Russian speakers have with English, rather to beat up on myself for my failure to learn Russian. I’ve lived in Kyrgyzstan for two and a half years, and the number of things I can comfortably do in the language could be counted on two hands (probably with enough fingers left over for a very rude and very typical British gesture). In Russian I can:

- Order beer and food in a restaurant

- Ask and answer some basic personal information (how are you, name, age, job etc)

- Ask and answer questions about what I like and dislike

- Buy basic items in a shop (milk, food, cigarettes, beer)

- Tell a taxi driver where I want to go and negotiate a price

- Name quite a few wild and domestic animals (this comes from listening to my relatives playing with my son and his toys)

- Explain to locals that I’m foreign, can’t speak Russian very well, ask them to repeat, say I don’t understand etc.

And that’s about it. Written down it looks fairly impressive (and I was actually quite surprised when I went back over it), but sadly this is not something to be that proud of. You see, given the opportunities I actually have to speak Russian, I should be able to do a lot more in the language AND do the things on that list a whole lot better. I hear Russian all the time in the street, in shops, in my home and I read it constantly on signs, posters and newspapers. My mother-in-law virtually lives in my house and she constantly chatters away to me in Russian and I reply with my usual strings of ‘da, da, da’ (yes, yes, yes for those non-Russian speakers out there) until she asks me something specific or requires a ‘no’ answer and then I just get a puzzled look and a shake of the head.

Now, I’ve rationalized this in many different ways. In fact, if I spent a bit more time learning Russian rather than finding reasons to justify to myself why I haven’t learnt it, I might be a better at it. Oh, it’s a difficult language, will I need the language if I leave the country, my wife never speaks to me in Russian because she speaks English fluently. It’s amazing how many pat explanations you can give yourself when you should be finding ways to practice it.

And of course the worst of it is that I’m a language teacher (and trainer) myself, and my job is to help students develop more effective strategies for learning a foreign language. And you know, I’m pretty damn good at it – I just can’t seem to do it myself. You see, I know the theory – I know I should be willing to take risks, find opportunities to practice the language – but my laziness and fragile adult ego always seem to stand in the way. And I really have tried. I’ve bought books, dictionaries, read newspapers, computer magazines, asked my wife to help me. But deep down I know this is all avoidance of doing the one thing that would really help me learn – actually speaking the bloody language with people!!! This is a technique I’ve studiously avoided in my two years here and boy does it show: the paralysis when a shop assistant asks me something beyond my narrow range of fixed questions and answers, the pregnant pause on the phone when someone rings up and babbles something quickly.

But things will change (I can feel it). I finally have a real motivation to buckle down and learn it: my son is getting to the age where he’s beginning to form words, and some of them are going to be in Russian and some in English. If I don’t get to grips with half of what is going on in his brain, I’m going to be denied access to many aspects of my son’s life. And that’s not going to happen. So, I’m off now to the kitchen to have a little (and I mean little) chat with my mother-in-law. I Will Try, How You Say, The Tea With Milk.

wireless comes to Kyrgyzstan (well, mainly my apartment)

2006-03-30T10:35:00.000+06:00

I'm sat here writing this post on the sofa enjoying the full benefits of wireless broadband technology. Actually, not really the full benefits – it’s probably slower than dial-up connections in most countries and the signal does seem to drop on a fairly regular basis. Impressed? What do you mean no? Oh well yes, I know you’ve had wireless and broadband in your house for years and you can probably download the whole Lord of the Rings Trilogy in ten minutes, but please remember that this is Kyrgyzstan and the fact that I’m sitting here now doing this just doesn’t tell the full story about the joys of trying to get it installed.

You see, you just can’t phone up some company here and say ‘hey, I want broadband and I’m willing to pay’ and they’ll come round and set it all up for you. Goodness no. Firstly, you have to live in the right place. Now, I don’t fully understand the reasons why, but some apartments can have broadband and some can’t. So, you have to put yourself on a waiting list – not for the connection mind you, but just for them to check whether you can have the connection. That took about two months and the answer was a resounding ‘yes’. My how we partied that night. Then, you have to set a date for them to come and install it. That can take a few weeks as well because the company who do all this have to get some kind of permission/authentication from the state-run telephone company to ‘borrow’ their lines. Finally they send someone round to hook you up, explain how to use it and get you to decide on a tariff.

Ah yes, the tariffs. I gather that in other countries you pay some kind of flat fee a month and you get unlimited downloads and traffic. Not so here: there are graded tariffs which limit how much you can download and upload per month. I’m paying $40 a month for 500MB of downloads. Now, I don’t really know that much about this stuff, but five hundred sounded quite a lot. I’m not going to download loads of porn films (clips maybe, but not whole films), so I didn’t think that would get used up. However, I’ve been using it pretty lightly for the last 2-3 weeks and when I checked, I discovered that I’d already used over 700MBs. How the fuck did that happen? Then someone kindly explained to me that just surfing the internet for a few hours a day can eat up 30-40MBs. Hmm, wish someone had told me that earlier…

And then I wanted to have not only broadband, but also wireless. This did seem a little bit like gilding the lily, especially as my flat is the size of a shoebox and I’d probably have to balance the wireless router on my head anyway. But I was insistent. I wanted to be able to lie on the couch or in bed and check my email and dammit, price or logic was not going to be an obstacle. So, I asked the guy who came to install the broadband if he could install wireless as well. I saw a slight flicker behind his eyes (could it be panic?), but ever the professional, he said sure. He came back a few hours later with a wireless router and tinkered away for a few hours and suddenly…nothing. He finally had to admit that this was the first time anyone had ever asked him to install wireless, so he was kind of winging it. But, good guy that he was, he said he would find out and come back next week. Which he did, and he got it all installed and now I’m sat on my sofa writing this post. And I probably won’t be leaving this sofa for a while, as I don’t really have any money left after paying for the internet to be able to, say, go out, buy food, pay the rent or bills. But man, this wireless thing is cool…

The Most Religious Chicken in Kyrgyzstan

2006-03-29T11:17:00.000+06:00

Is here apparently.I particularly like the mix of old world superstition and modern technology, the chicken’s squawking being recorded on a mobile phone.

But it got me thinking about the nature of religion in Kyrgyzstan, and specifically in Bishkek. People naturally assume that it’s a Muslim country (probably because it sounds a bit like Afghanistan and Pakistan) and they would be right. You see, nominally Kyrgyzstan is a Muslim country. It’s written in their passports in case anyone was in any doubt. Yet, if you came here you wouldn’t have the faintest idea that was the case. You can walk around Bishkek for hours and not see a mosque. In fact, you’re more likely to see a Russian Orthodox Church despite Russians making up only a small percentage of the population. No one seems the slightest bit interested in talking about religion – in fact the only Kyrgyz who ever wanted to convert me was a born-again Christian taxi driver. This was a far cry from when I was living in Morocco – within minutes of talking to someone, the subject of religion would come up.

It’s odd really, because since the fall of Communism, the former Soviet states have gotten religion in a big, big way. I lived in Poland, Lithuania, Croatia and Serbia and the churches were always packed on Sunday and there were plenty of people trying to stop you in the street in the name of Jehovah, God or the Reverend Moon. Now, this resurgence was due to the years of repression where they couldn’t worship (and perfectly understandable), so it’s odd that the same fervor didn’t seem to take hold in Kyrgyzstan.

I think the reason is that in essence Kyrgyz people are not defined by their religion or social system but by their nomadic history. For hundreds and hundreds of years they moved around, living in Yurts and living off the land. Things that I think of as typically Kyrgyz date back to that time: the national dishes (mutton and more mutton!), a deep love of nature, sports based on horse riding, a stoic acceptance of what life throws at them, a raft of superstitions to keep out evil spirits, even the way that the crouch instead of sitting by the side of the road have less to do with Islam or Communism and more to do with a time when survival depended on hunting skills and an understanding of nature.

I actually think their nomadic background has had a positive effect on their character: it makes them more tolerant, unhurried, not so quick to judge. Many some other Muslim countries around them could learn something from that.

One year on from the Kyrgyz revolution

2006-03-28T11:08:00.000+06:00

Strangely, there seems to be almost no coverage on TV or in the press about it. OK, maybe it wasn’t as well publicized or dramatic as the ones in Georgia or the Ukraine, but you would have thought it would have crossed someone’s mind to just check in and see how this tiny state was coping one year after such a dramatic upheaval.

Well, I suppose the media can only take their cues from the country itself, and the response from the Kyrgyz people has been fairly muted. Oh, the government organized a big military parade, but that was less to celebrate the revolution and more to ensure no daring souls decided to go for a repeat performance. Because, well, things haven’t really changed much here. It’s difficult as a foreigner to really get a sense of how things have improved or declined over the last 12 months – I don’t earn a local salary, so I’m largely buffered from the daily ups and downs of price changes or job opportunities. However, the few Kyrgyz people I’ve spoken to (ok, this normally means taxi drivers, who are hardly representative of the population at large) seem to think that it’s either exactly the same or has got considerably worse. One I spoke to said that at least Akaev (ousted former president) was only corrupt in giving his family jobs, whereas the new guy has a much broader, less nepotistic attitude towards corruption. Which is nice.

Still, the signs aren’t good for the country. Only last week, a story came out that the government are applying for the same kind of debt relief status that would put them on an economic par with countries like Somalia and Uganda. In the south of the country, some people are earning money by scavenging uranium from a slag heap to sell to China. And Transparency International’s latest league table for non-corruption puts Kyrgyzstan in 130th place, with only countries like Somalia, Uzbekistan, Burma and Ivory Coast below it (and countries like Uganda and Zimbabwe above it!!). By any standards of social progress, these are not good signs.

But I’m not sure that the Kyrgyz people have the heart to do anything about it. Last year’s revolution was very atypical behaviour for a country that prides itself on its stoicism and general ‘life sucks, but what can you do?’ attitude. And you can’t really blame them for not wanting to do it again. So, you replace one set of dodgy chancers with another and the cycle continues. That’s the way it’s been and that’s the way it’s gonna be for quite some time…

Something to write about...

2006-03-27T11:30:00.000+06:00

Glancing at my previous post, it seems that it’s been eight months since I last sat down and wrote something for this blog. Remarkable really, given that I’ve been technically unemployed all that time. Or, as my colleague insists on calling it, ‘retired’. I mean, really, if anything is likely to inspire you to sit down and gush forth all your thoughts and (largely received) opinions on the world it’s a big wedge of doing-nothing time. But no.

Actually, it’s a bit of a lie to say I’ve done nothing for the last eight months. I’m unemployed in the sense that I don’t do a nine-to-five job for a company, but I am working sporadically as a teacher trainer in various parts of the world. I went to Costa Rica for a month to do a course. And South Korea. Now, you would think such exotic locations would inspire all kinds of musings and reflections on the nature of the world, but again, no.

See, there is a bit of a problem with me having a blog. As far as I can see there are two kinds of blogs: the kind which you write to keep your friends and family up to date with your life and are full of utterly impenetrable comments that can only be understood if you know the person (‘hey, Judy love the mouse trousers and keep sending the cookies…LOL’). Really no point in me writing that kind as my family were officially voted ‘The Family Least Likely to Read a Blog If Written By One of Their Relatives’ and my best friend only lives a kilometer away and we see each other every couple of days. The other kind is where you assume you have something interesting to say and people might want to take a peek at whatever’s leaking out of your brain that day. The problem with this kind is that – and this is quite tricky to actually admit – I’m not sure I really have that many thoughts. No, I take that back, I have lots of thoughts during the day, but that are staggeringly mundane. I mean, yesterday, the biggest decision I had to make was whether to watch Spielberg’s Munich on DVD or not. That process took about an hour (in case you’re wondering, the decision was no, but I’ll keep you updated). This is not something the world wants to hear. Oh, and I also had a thought about Shakira’s breasts after seeing one of her videos on TV, but again, I’m not really feeling the words ‘bated breath’ if I wrote that one down either.

No, I’ve decided to keep writing this damn blog as a way of stopping myself from spending one hour thinking about whether to watch a DVD or not or wondering about the exact nipple dimensions of Columbia’s favourite songstress (though I don’t actually think that’s a bad thing to think about every now or then).

I just need to find something to damn well write about….

I’m getting married in the morning….

2005-07-30T00:18:00.000+06:00

……11 o’clock to be precise at the registry office not far from Osh Bazaar. Come along if you’re in the neighbourhood. No? Ok, next time perhaps.

We want it to be as low-key as it could possibly get. Most Kyrgyz weddings seem extraordinarily elaborate affairs. You haven’t really got married here unless you’ve forced all your relatives to dress up in overblown suits and dresses and made them drive round Bishkek beeping their horn while some guy hangs from the sunroof videotaping it. You are then obliged to stop at various key sites around the city and have your photo taken. If you are unlucky, you can get stuck behind four or five other wedding parties doing the same thing and the momentum is lost while you stand around twiddling your thumbs waiting to have your picture taken next to Lenin’s statue.

No. We’re going for the anti-wedding. I’m turning up to the registry office in Hawaiian shirt and sandals, my girlfriend’s wearing jeans and we’ve instructed everyone coming on pain of death not to wear anything frou-frou. Afterwards we’re piling back to my place for beer and takeaway pizza. And that’s it.

Actually, Kyrgyz bureaucracy ain’t that bad….

2005-07-21T23:42:00.000+06:00

In my previous post, I was scathingly critical of the Kyrgyz bureaucratic system. However, after having spent a day wading through the British Home Office’s website trying to find out whether my new son qualifies for British citizenship, I take it all back. From the land of Shakespeare, Milton and Dickens come exquisite paragraphs like this (an extract from the snappily titled Home Office document Guide MN1):

‘A child who comes within SECTION B and is registered becomes a British citizen by descent, whereas a child who comes within SECTION C becomes a British citizen otherwise than by descent. The difference may be important in future because a citizen otherwise than by descent automatically passes on British citizenship to his or her children who are born outside the United Kingdom, but a citizen by descent does not. A person who is registered as a citizen by descent cannot later be registered as a citizen otherwise than by descent. If therefore the child comes within SECTION B but the family intend to return to the United Kingdom the parents might consider it advisable to delay an application until the child qualifies for registration under SECTION C.’

When my son gets old enough to ask why he doesn’t have British Citizenship, I’ll point him wearily to this document….

It’s not Kafkaesque, but it is boring

2005-07-20T12:47:00.000+06:00

I’ve spent the last two weeks trapped in a Kyrgyz bureaucratic maze trying to get a birth certificate for my son and official permission to get married to my girlfriend. I wanted to draw some heady parallels with Kafka’s nightmare visions of a labyrinthine bureaucracy that induces fear and anxiety, but I realised that was pushing it too far. I’m experiencing very little existential angst (well, the sun is shining after all), but I am mightily pissed off.

It seems to work like this: every official office in Kyrgyzstan is open one day a week for about three hours. Unless you get there about half an hour before it opens, you’re going to be stuck behind a large group of irate folk all demanding to know who’s next in the queue. Except of course there isn’t really a queue, just a large group of irate folk demanding to know etc etc. When you finally get into the office, there are normally three or four sour middle-aged women sat behind low wooden desks. There is normally one desk empty and that is invariably the woman you need to see. It would be handy of course to call in advance to find out if she’s going to be there, but they won’t give that kind of tip-top secret information over the phone. Actually, they won’t give you any information over the phone and just insist that you come in to see them.

If you are lucky enough to actually find the woman you want, she will throw you about ten forms that you need to fill out in triplicate and bring back the following week. So, you do that, come back and then sit there for about an hour while they copy everything by hand into a huge black ledger. Then, they tell you that you need to get photocopies of everything and pay a small administrative sum. Now, it would kind of make sense if you could do that there at the office, but that would be way too easy. No, instead you first have to go and find a photocopy shop to make the copies, and then track down the bank where you have to pay for the admin. This is almost always conveniently located at the opposite end of the city. Of course, by the time you’ve done all this, and you’ve got back to the office, it’s closed and you have to wait another week to submit all the documents again. When you finally get to submit all the relevant documents they tell you to go to another office (guess where that might be located!) to get it ratified, notarised and authorised.

So far, me and my girlfriend have visited two separate marriage offices on five separate occasions, the birth registrar’s office twice, the Kyrgyz Ministry of Foreign Affairs twice and we still haven’t got a birth certificate for our son or permission to get married.

Of course, this is all made twice as complicated by the fact that I’m a foreigner. Whenever we go to these offices bearing our two different passports and arcane documents from the British Embassy, you can see these poor women thinking, ‘I don’t get paid enough to deal with this crap.’ Which is a fair point. For example, we want our son to have a British name and we planned to call him Lucas Ewan Read. First, they told us he couldn’t take my surname because we weren’t married and would have to take my girlfriend’s instead. We were planning to get hitched anyhow, but this gave us the necessary impetus to get all the wheels in motion. When we went back and told them we were getting married, they then objected to him having ‘Ewan’ as a middle name. No way. Not possible. Why? Well, they haven’t quite abandoned the old Soviet system of children taking their father’s Russified name. If you ever read Russian literature, it’s very confusing because people have those names like Ivan Ilyich, Ilya Ivanich, Sergei Sergeiovich. The second name is the patronymic. Anyhow, my son has to take my name as his middle name and have the appropriate Slavic ending. So, he will go by the distinguished name of Lucas Davidovich Read. It’s different if nothing else.

I’m sat here writing this blog between visits to the marriage office. The rumour is that the meeting this afternoon may actually be the last one before they give us official permission to marry - assuming of course that the women we’re supposed to see is actually there.

Christ, I bet Kafka never had to put up with this.

Having parties in Kyrgyzstan (host optional)

2005-06-23T00:43:00.000+06:00

The other day, my girlfriend came back from a party celebrating her aunt’s birthday. She’d been gone quite a few hours, so I assumed it’d been quite a good one.

‘Did you enjoy it?’ I asked.

‘It was quite good,’ she replied, ‘though my aunt never turned up.’

I sensed a cultural difference here. It seems that the guest of honour is very much optional when it comes to parties in this neck of the woods.

I mention this because I have to undergo a Kyrgyz gathering in my honour in a few weeks time. To be more precise, it’s in honour of my new son, Lucas. After forty days, they always have a party to celebrate……well, his forty day birthday I suppose. I will honestly try to find out why this is at some point.

Now, much as I love my girlfriend’s family, I’m less than keen to go through with another one of these celebrations. You see, I already had one to celebrate…actually, I’m still a little hazy about what that one was in aid of. It was either my girlfriend’s pregnancy, our ‘marriage’, our general togetherness or my general wonderfulness. I’d like to think it was the last one, but I suspect it was one of the others. In fact, I think the main purpose was for the whole family to get a damn good look at this strange Englishmen who’d joined their clan. Certainly there were a lot of heads popping in and out of doorways whenever I walked down the corridor to go to the toilet.

Now, your average Kyrgyz party isn’t like the ones I remember from England. You know, you buy a crate load of beer, vaguely invite people round you know, make a desperate lunge for one of the ladies, get knocked back, get drunk and fall asleep on the sofa (you may also gather from this that I haven’t been to a party in England for quite a while).

If one word adequately sums up a Kyrgyz party then its mutton. This isn’t some fancy slang, by the way, just a literal description of what you are going to be eating for the 12 hours you are at the party (oh, that’s another thing: they are very, very long). You see, at any big celebration they have to kill a sheep in the guests’ honour, and then the rest of the time is spent eating the damn thing in a variety of unappetising dishes: boiled mutton with potatoes; boiled mutton with vegetables; boiled mutton with noodles; boiled mutton on the bone; sliced boiled mutton. You may begin to notice a recurring ‘boiled’ theme here.

And then there are the toasts. In some ways the endless raising of glasses and speeches are a blessing as they can often offer welcome respite from the mutton motif (and a chance to surreptitiously switch round plates with someone who’s eaten more than you). But they do go on, and after the 15^th person telling you to have a fruitful, healthy life, it does begin to wear a bit. And of course this is all done in translation from Kyrgyz. My girlfriend dutifully explains what each toast wished me, though I began to suspect after the first couple she just started translating on a loop. And then there’s the huge, pregnant post-translation pause where everyone is staring at me and waiting for some kind of response. I always hoped that ‘thank you’ would just about cover it, but normally they want a bit more, presumably as penance for them having to make the toast in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong, they are a great bunch of people: warm, friendly, bosom-clutching folk. I just don’t want to go to their parties very much. I look at it this way: if they came to England, I wouldn’t put them through a Morris Dancing marathon or force them to watch a five-day cricket test, so I hope they’ll cut me some slack regarding some of their traditions.

And if all else fails, they can have the party and I just won’t go…..hey, it’s optional.

Baghdad? No, Bishkek

2005-06-18T22:43:00.000+06:00

“Oh God, not another revolution” I thought. Not, I hasten to add, because I thought it would only further destabilise the Kyrgyz economy, but because I wouldn’t get any holiday out of it. You see, during the ‘real’ Kyrgyz revolution on March 24^th, they shut down the school where I work and I got five days off. But now, I’m on holiday anyhow and won’t benefit from any cancellation of lessons. Shit.

Ok, I better give a bit of back story on this one as this is my first post….

I’ve been working for two years now in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan for the Soros Foundation. Many of my colleagues would like some pretty heavy quotes round the word ‘work’, but we’ll gloss that one for the moment. Kyrgyzstan, at least until recently, was the most laid-back and stable of the ‘stans’. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are police states with loony leaders; Tajikistan is desperately poor and very traditional; Kazakhstan is just a big load of nothing except steppes and oil; Afghanistan…well, you know about that one. If there was going to be political unrest anywhere, it wasn’t going to be Kyrgyzstan.

But it was. On March 24^th a meagre little protest outside the main government building suddenly turned into a full-blown revolution. A couple of rocks thrown from the crowd and the small band of riot police guarding the parliament downed arms and walked off, whistling sheepishly as if to say, ‘me? A member of the army? No, I think you’ve got me confused with someone else.’ And that was it. The protestors swarmed inside and took over, all the corrupt politicians snuck out the back door and got the hell out of there and the reign of Askar Akaev, the man with the bushiest eyebrows in Central Asia, was over.

I missed the revolution. Actually, that’s not true. I live about 500 metres from the parliament building, but instead I was sat at home watching it all on CNN. Christ, I could open my window and hear it all going on, but, well, those rocks looked pretty sharp and I don’t see how my presence there would have helped. And those rocks looked pretty sharp. Half an hour or so after it was all over, me and my mate Tom felt suitably shamed at having sat through the whole thing and went out to have a look. We wandered round the parliament, talked to a few of the revolutionaries, gawked at the broken windows and watched as the masses torched a few of the sleek German cars left behind by the fleeing politicians. But we weren’t really part of it all. We took some pictures, but they largely involved us standing in front of abandoned tanks and pointing (in case anyone was in any doubt that the huge green armoured vehicle looming behind was, in fact, a tank). It was Revolutionary Tourism. Of course, since then I’ve significantly embellished the part I played on that day, and reading some of my emails you would think I went face to face with the baton-wielding police.

So, coming back to the start. A couple of days ago I was wandering past the parliament on the way to the shops, and saw a fairly large crowd gathered there. This is not unusual. Since the revolution there have been daily protests about something or other. Normally, you get about ten people standing around forlornly with a couple of placards and often they are protesting about several different things. But today the crowd was larger, so I hung around a bit with my camera to take a few shots.

And then it kicked off. A gradual swell of people got louder and louder, threw a few rocks, pushed at the gates and suddenly there were inside the compound. The army (who were clearly better prepared this time) pushed them back and started firing gas at the protestors. Everyone started running towards me, so I turned and legged it as the canisters came flying overhead. Puffs of smoke started to erupt behind me. Now, this was exciting…

This all went on for a bit. A crowd surge, a bit of argy-bargy, then the gas and running. I’ve got to give the police their due -they were much better organised this time. I suspect they’d been practising in-between taking bribes from drivers on the streets of Bishkek. I hung back a bit and watched it all. Clearly there was not going to be another revolution today. So, what was all this protesting business about? Well, apparently they were supporters of this candidate for president who wasn’t allowed to run because he didn’t happen to be Kyrgyz, but Kazakh. Now, this seems eminently fair to me. I mean, Kazakhstan is a different country, right? You can’t just become the president of whatever country you feel like. The protestors seemed on pretty thin ground as far as I could see.

I didn’t get this info from watching the news or reading the local paper. No, I got it from ‘guy in the crowd cadging cigarettes from me’. While I was watching the protest unfold, he came up to me and asked if I was a foreigner. I assumed he was one of the protestors, thought I was a journalist and wanted to put his side of the story. But he was more interested in the full packet of cigarettes in my pocket and reluctantly told me what was going on only if I gave him a cigarette every five minutes. He was a very cheap informant, though as it turns out not particularly accurate. The presidential candidate wasn’t in fact Kazakh, but a Kyrgyz citizen who happened to have Kazakh citizenship. Hardly Deep Throat.

The whole thing kind of fizzled out after about half an hour and the protestors sloped off to the bars for tea and beer and the police went back to sleeping in the nearby park. But hey, I got some nice pics out of it and some video footage. I was particularly impressed by one clip I took when running away from the gas canisters. It’s got that authentic, jerky, panicky feel reminiscent of Baghdad when a bomb’s gone off. But looking back at it later on my computer, I noticed that half of the people running away were laughing, clearly not impressed by the police’s efforts. Jesus. How can I convince people I was caught up in a war zone when they do that sort of thing?

Below are some of the pictures I took

Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
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Picture 5
Picture 6