Bill's Blog

“He said you exemplify a primitive form of masculinity. He said he was surprised that I ever found that attractive.”

The main character of the novel István, is a Hungarian immigrant to the UK. The book traces his life from his teen years in Hungary, to his many years in London, and his elderly years back in Hungary. In one way it is an immigration story. István is probably the typical Hungarian immigrant London, not well educated and getting by with blue collar jobs. After serving in the Hungarian army in the Middle East, he starts working as a night club bouncer, barely making ends meet in an expensive city. Coming home from a late night shift working the door of the club, he encounters a man being beat up by a couple of thugs and because he stopped to offer some help, the two ran off. The grateful victim takes István under his wing and helps him start a career in private security. Mervyn is an elderly gentleman who develops and provides bodyguards to the rich or famous of London. István eventually gets a job as driver and guard for an elite wealthy businessman (Karl) with a much younger wife (Helen). Istvan has an affair with the wife and when her husband dies of cancer, Istvan, marries her and they have a child. Karl’s son with Helen, David, become estranged from Helen and Istvan and trouble ensues over the inheritance of Karl’s fortune.

István is not a particulary likeable character for a protagonist. He had a deeply troubled youth and does not think too deeply about life or his career choices. In a way he represents to me, a significant number of young men around the world that have to make due in a world that rewards ambitious, intellectual, men focused on income generation while building a successful career. Szalay doesn’t get into what István feels or inner thoughts about the events of his life and most likely, he doesn’t really have any. Like many men, he does not express his thoughts or engaged in conversational reflections with signficant others in his life.

It was an enjoyable read, and the 3 and 1/2 hours spent reading the book in the evenings and on the plane, had me following the story and thinking about guys like István, uneducated, without commercial skills, trying to create a life in a new country. In this current economy, they don’t have many choices for work or finding a wife, that creates its own problems. This may change with AI taking out white collar jobs, but for now, men without a trade or degree, have a hard time. In that way, the book is an expatriate With his background and upbringing, I don’t think he could relate at all to his step son that causes his downfall. He did “make it” in many ways. Often people’s career advancement is due to luck, and his late night chance meeting with Mervyn was his break.

I learned two British English terms. A “dressing gown” is a bathrobe and “mews” which are former houses for horses and carriages converted to townhouses that are all over London.

We had a late-night flight out of Tashkent for a transition visit to Cairo, Egypt. We are preparing for a permanent move to Cairo in August, and these few days are for Nadia to sort out our living arrangements and for both of us to learn more about the school. We are not using a shipping container for this move due to the difficulty of large shipments to Egypt. Instead, we are taking excess baggage. This is the first time we’ve tried this, and it worked! We took a maximum of 10 extra pieces each, and all the bags made it from Tashkent to Cairo! Ocean’s boyfriend, Roman, was very sweet and helped us with the logistics last night.

On Thursday night, I was walking Obi in a tunnel under the Small Ring Road near our house. When we came out of the tunnel inside the Ring Road, we encountered a recent car accident. A badly damaged car smashed into a bus stop. It happened a few minutes before we appeared but I could not asses the extent of injuries and/or fatalities. It looked like a one-car accident with the damaged car facing into oncoming traffic. It struck an ATM and part of the bus stop shelter.

I see a lot of car accidents on the streets of the city. For many Uzbeks, they are the first generation to own private cars due to the end of the Soviet system and the opening of the economy. There are a lot of reckless and aggressive drivers. I don’t know if it’s “machismo” or the thrill of driving that inspires these drivers. I hope people eventually learn that high-speed driving results in life changing accident like the one above. Humans make errors, especially at higher velocities, which results in unnecessary deaths. I don’t understand why people are not more outraged at this. I wonder if any innocent pedestrians were injured? I wonder what caused the accident? With over 1 million cars moving through the city daily, I couldn’t find anything on the local news about the accident. It is another example of why autonomous cars will replace human drivers, probably in my lifetime, or at least in the lifetime of my children. I would like to check out a Waymo this summer in the USA.

On Monday, March 30, 2026, Ocean participated in the Tashkent International School’s International Baccalaureate Visual Arts Exhibition. This is cool requirement of the IB. Not many people in their lives host an exhibition of their art works. I find it illuminating into the personalities and brains of the students. The arts are personal and human (in this age of AI) and it was delightful to admire the works and talk to the student-artists about the inspiration behind some of the pieces.

I would like to thank our Artist-in-Residence, the Dutch painter Ronald Kleijer. He is a celebrated and known artist here in Uzbekistan and it is great for our students to work with such a professional. Congratulations to Ocean, your mom and I love you and your amazing works of art!

Our Spring Break 2026 ended this past weekend. The weather was just divine, with signs of spring and new growth everywhere around the city. We had a relaxing time in the city, although I did do a bit of work every day. On this last weekend, we spent most of it supporting Ocean for her IB Diploma Programme Visual Arts Exhibition. We drove around Tashkent with Ocean, taking photos so she could complete a photography work in her exhibition. We took photos of architecture, people and street scenes.

One of my favorite buildings in the city is the Romanov Palace. The Russian Emperor Nicolas I exiled his grandson, Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich Romanov, to Tashkent for stealing his mother’s diamonds to give to his mistress. Nikolai lived here from 1890 until his death in 1918. He was an avid hunter, and you can see the statues of hunting dogs on the balcony above the main entrance. The Grand Duke did a lot to spur the development of the city, including using his fortune to build several canals. He was buried at St. George’s Cathedral, which was destroyed by the Soviet government. A monument was recently restored there, and I will need to check it out before I leave Tashkent. Nikolai’s palace was a museum for many years and most recently a reception gathering place for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I have never seen it open in my seven years in the city.

The other building of note is the nearby State Museum of History of Uzbekistan, formerly the Lenin Museum. It was built in 1970 and according to UNESCO, “The building’s monumental façade blends modular modernity with Islamic-inspired decoration, featuring pandjara-like sunscreens and honeycomb elements that recall the Islamic muqarnas, while the extensive use of prefabricated concrete and glazing speaks to its modernist roots.” I love the building and the neighborhood around it. It is one of my favorite localities in the city.

We went out to dinner a few times towards the end of break. We had a fantastic dinner at La Mer Restaurant on the recently renovated Shota Rusevelti Street. I did a lot of cycling over the break, including doing a few laps inside the Yangi Uzbekistan Park (below).

We are staying in Tashkent for our Spring Break this year. We only have a few more months living here and are soaking up the city and Uzbek culture before leaving for the next chapter of our lives. Nadia and I are particularly focused on getting meaningful time with our daughter Ocean. She is participating in the IB Diploma Programme Visual Arts Exhibition next Monday, so she is spending this week completing her works of art and preparing the finishing touches on the presentation of her displays. It was a double holiday this year with the end of Ramadan (Eid al-Fitr) coinciding with the Persian celebration of Navruz. The crescent moon rise at school reminded me that Ramadan is a lunar calendar month. Nadia is a great artist herself and helped Ocean yesterday afternoon at the TIS Art Studio.

Nadia, Ocean, and I on Sunday night saw Project Hail Mary конец света “Project End of the World” in Russian. Of course, there are no Catholics in Russia! I read most of the book in late October of 2025 so it was cool to see how my imagination compared to film. I pictured the alien a bit more spider-like, but overall, the movie enhanced my experience of Andy Weir’s science fiction novel. It was refreshing to watch a movie that featured kindness, friendship, and connection. It was a surprisingly quiet movie with lots of Ryan Gosling alone on screen with flashbacks to what led to him being on a ship alone light years away from earth. We had a nice dinner at another Novikov Group (Russian) restaurant called Kitana. It is an Asian fusion restaurant and we had dinner before the movie. Also below is a photo of Ocean’s favorite café in the city, Roun D. It is a Korean cafe owned by a TIS graduate. They make great bubble teas, coffee, desserts, and savory dishes. I usually have the Sangwan Cha herbal tea. Ocean and I went to it after we were at school.

It has been a wonderful break so far, balancing a bit of work, family time, and exercise.

The Spring Equinox is here! It certainly feels like spring with the warm afternoon temperatures and blue skies! It was so nice to practice yoga in our garden yesterday afternoon. I even spotted the return of swallows hunting insects in the skies of Tashkent around sunset. The simple things in life have more meaning for me as I get older, and the bright blue sky and shifting cumulus clouds brought me contentment and peace.

I worked on Thursday, March 19, the first day of our Spring Break. I set some meetings for after the break and tied up tasks that needed to be completed before the end of Spring Break. I also needed to sign paperwork for visa applications and make sure the campus was in good condition before the four-day Navruz Weekend.

Navruz is the Central Asian New Year (“new day” in Persian) Celebration marking the Spring Equinox. It is one of the oldest holidays in the world, with roots going back to the ancient Zoroastrian traditions. Uzbeks have large public celebrations in parks and other public areas, spring cleaning of their homes, and the consumption of sumalak, which I will go out and find today and make a video of it for my blog. I was not allowed to ride my bicycle through Yangi Uzbekistan Park yesterday morning because police and government officials were preparing the park for some gathering. The city is full of Navroz Displays and I notice a lot of family gatherings in my neighborhood. Below is one of the displays in Yangi Uzbekistan area. We had the first tulip bloom of the year in our yard, a sure sign of spring. The middle photograph is of the commercial area near our house. The Soviet era apartment blocks are endearing in their ugly way.

One of the highlights of break so far was going on a double date with Nadia and my daughter. She invited her boyfriend, Roman, to dinner. We had a decent meal at the Syrovana (Cheese Factory) restaurant. It is awesome to still have Ocean with us. She is such a fun dinner companion and such a beautiful soul. Nadia and I also went out last night with our friends Aaron and Lisa. I sense we are rediscovering our social selves as we become empty nesters!

One of the things I don’t like about the expatriate life is packing and shipping household items when we move around the world. We’ve been fortunate to have relatively longer stays in all of our schools. It has been seven years since the last time we had a big move. I’ll blog more about this process this summer. Ocean is shown below on the bed in our spare room as the packers and Nadia were sorting out what stays and what goes.

Dr. Robert Greenberg, the Music Historian-In-Residence with San Francisco Performances in his “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music” course, said that going to a classical music concert was like time travel. The concert hall is like a reanimation machine that brings back from the distance past, pieces of music that were written and performed a long time ago. I was thinking about that when my daughter Ocean and I attended Prokofiev’s ballet, Romeo and Juliet, on Sunday night at the State Academic Bolshoi Theatre named after Alisher Navoi.

Sergei Prokofiev was a child musical prodigy born in a small Ukrainian village in 1891. Thankfully for music and dance lovers, his family was wealthy, and his mother was a great pianist herself who encouraged Sergei’s talent. He composed his first full opera at age nine and entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory at age 13! Prokofiev was unlucky to be in the prime of his music career as Czarist Russia was ending the USSR was beginning. It was a tumultuous time in Russia, and for much of his life, he lived in exile with his Spanish wife in France. The Soviet government tightly censored the arts. Prokofiev was way ahead of his time, a musical genius, and many people of his time didn’t get his music. He was finally lured back to the Soviet Union in 1935 part by the lies of government officials and the urge to go back to his homeland, the Russian language. Stalin’s government demanded the arts celebrate the glories of the socialist system, be simple, and politically correct. Watching Trump’s Super Bowl halftime show reminded me of this! Kid Rock, Country Music, patriotism, the USA!, traditional family values, etc., can be compared to autocratic Russian and German regimes of the 20th Century. Stalin eventually denounced Prokofiev. His music was too complex, modern, and “Western” for Soviet officials. He, along with some other great musicians, composers, and artists were “purged” by Stalin and his works were banned in 1948. Prokofiev retired to a dacha outside of Moscow in his later years and died from a series of strokes on coincidentily, the same day Stalin died, March 5, 1953.

Ocean and I were swept away with the beauty and power of the concert. He composed the ballet like a director of a film score, and the music is some of the most complex ever written for dance. This was my first time in a long time watching ballet. I was impressed with the athleticism, flexibility, and grace of the dancers who moved on stage. The story was easy to follow with the music, the movements, gestures, and facial expressions of the performers; no language was needed to understand what was happening. It was like an opera without words. We were in the second row near the orchestra pit. Thank you again Russia, ironically, for supporting the infrastructure of the arts. Most former Soviet Republics have a beautiful concert venue and low costs for citizens to attend the fine arts. We paid $36 for two tickets next to the stage, including free parking 25 meters from the door!

I would like to thank the actor Timothy Chalemet and TikTok. Chalemet made a comment about the waning popularity of opera, ballet, and classical music that spurred my teenage daughter to want to attend the ballet. The “Dance of the Knights” piece in the first act is also often used on social media videos. I need to ask my daughter again what the significance of that is. I had just as much pleasure watching Ocean watch ballet as watching the performance myself.

Prokofiev’s greatness and contributions to humanity outlasted Stalin, the monster.

I continue to savor the sights of the city of Tashkent. On my Saturday morning run with Obi near the Russian Orthodox Diocese (territorial jurisdiction) Headquarters in Tashkent. In Orthodox Christianity, a synod, a formal council of clergy (a new word for me), runs the various dioceses. The Patriarch reorganized the Orthodox Churches in 2011 for all of the Central Asian former Soviet Republics to be one diocese. The building used to be the residence of the ruling bishops of the Tashkent Diocese back when there were many more ethnic Russians here. I read it also used to be a hospital and I saw a group of nurses cleaning the pathways around the property while I was running by so there probably is a Russian hospital on the property. Byzantine Orthodox mosaics are beautiful, and the onion domes are distinctive. I am heartened by the Orthodox Christian Church to still be present in the ever-increasing Muslim majority post-independence Uzbekistan. As an American, I value religious freedom and a secular government.

The city improved the pathways along a canal that runs between the Ring Road and the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, also in the area. I noticed city officials are creating nicer walking paths along the various canals that run through the city. The next step would be to try to connect the pathways to create longer routes and loops. They could also publish route maps and promote Tashkent as a city great for walking. I also took a cool photo of four classic early 1980s Soviet apartment complexes. The four 19-story apartment blocks form a half circle around Hamid Olimjon (Uzbek poet) Square, named after the train station underneath. Some people think they are an eyesore, but I like them.

Hopefully, we had our last snowfall of the winter this week. A cold front came into the city and temperatures have been freezing for much of the week. March is the wettest month of the year. We have had rain or snow almost every day in the first half of the month. I sound like an old person, headlining my blog post with the weather! As this might be my last cold winter for awhile, I am taking a positive approach to it, trying to enjoy it! I’ll even miss the cold mornings greeting community members as they come into the school.

It is always nice to randomly bump into my daughter at school. I love walking with her into homeroom. I wish I would have recorded some ordinary conversations I had with my parents as a young person. It is a delightful way to start my work day.