Author: billkralovec

One of my pleasures in life is walking my dog Obi in the evenings. I am moving to more walking than running these days, but the idea is that I keep moving. Tashkent is a pleasant city to walk in with wide sidewalks, many parks, good weather, and variety in different parts of the city. The crazy drivers make me nervous sometimes, but overall, it is a walkable city. Unlike American cities, there are always plenty of pedestrians and people outside. I think it is because most people live in small apartments and they like openness of public spaces. The “third space” (not work or home) is alive and well in Central Asia and is a channel for people to connect.

I went for a bike ride last weekend out towards Parkent and noticed the progress of the “Olympic Village”. The government is building a sports complex in preparation for the Asian Youth Games 2025 that will take place in Tashkent from September 10-25, 2025. This will be only the third Asian Youth Games. Singapore hosted the inaugural games in 2009 to show the International Olympic Committee they could host the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics. Nanjing, China picked it up in 2013, but the event was cancelled in 2017 due to the disorganization of the host, Jakarta and in 2019 due to COVID. There are 13 sports and the previous two games have been dominated in the medal tallies by China and South Korea. They are called “Youth” because they are for athletes ages 15-18. After the successful Paris 2024 Olympic Games which I absolutely loved following, it should be fun to have them in the city. Athletics, tennis, soccer, handball, and swimming will be the sports I will be following. I wonder if they will expand the games. Uzbekistan may want to add the sports they excel in, including boxing and wrestling. I can’t wait to see the finished site. I see there are several Chinese construction companies involved in the project.

I also noticed the upgrades to Central Asian University, which is across the street from the Olympic Village. Someone or some organization is infusing resources into the campus and its programs. Hosting conservative commentator and author Jordan Peterson does not come cheaply. I think they are trying to become a higher education hub in Central Asia.

It was a bit of an emotional week for us as our middle son Oliver earned his driver’s license, moved into his dormitory, and started his orientation at Saint Norbert College. It was sweet that our eldest son was able to drop him off and get him started as well as good family friends, Mark and Donnell. We miss Oliver dearly and are excited for him to start life on his own.

I end this post with a classic Central Asian motif. I appreciate when the Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev visits Tashkent because the traffic circle near the park named after his father and the Azeri neighborhood in Tashkent gets an upgrade. This time, they planted grass, flowers, and trees in the circle and put up a new photo billboard of the host, Uzbek President Mirzoyoyev and President Aliyev. There were a few traffic delays as the official delegations moved through the city, but the visit was mostly uneventful. I see the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus region coming closer together. They are also being pulled in different directions by the big players in the region, Turkey, China, and Russia. It is fascinating to see how this will play out.

Nadia and I love tennis and we played for the first time this school year last Sunday. We played on hard courts at the Yunnusobod National Tennis Club. We’ve played on the indoor courts there in the winter, but never on the outdoor courts in the summer. We reserved Court #2 which is literally under the iconic Tashkent Television Tower. After watching Novak Djoković win gold in the Paris 2024 Games, we were ready to hit the courts. You can see in the video below, we got a good workout in and had a lot of fun.

I need to comment on Djokovic’s accomplishments. He completed his career “Golden Slam” by winning Olympic Singles Gold, a tournament that has eluded him for many years. He did it against his latest arch rival, up-and-coming superstar, Carlos Alcaraz. Both players were at the top of their game with no service breaks and three tiebreakers to win it. I love the format of 3-set tennis with the third set being a 10-point tiebreaker. I think tennis should move to that format more often on the ATP Tour. It is great when your favorite player is the greatest of all time and he has undoubtedly proved it. He has the most Grand Slam Titles in the Open Era (24), the most Masters Series Tennis Titles (40), the Most Weeks Ranked #1 (404), most ATP Tour Finals Titles (7), the highest overall career winning percentage (83.8%), and now he can add an Olympic Gold to his Davis Cup Title representing our beloved Serbia!

What else does Djokovic have left to play for? I guess he can overtake Margaret Court’s record of 24 Grand Slams. She won 13 of those at the Australian Open in an era when the best professionals didn’t go to Australia to play. She was the dominant player of her era and one of the best female tennis player ever, but her accomplishments do not come close to what players like Federer, Serena Williams, Stefi Graf, and Nadal have to do more recently. I would like to see how long he can stay at an elite level. He has not won a Grand Slam since the US Open last fall at age 36. The oldest Grand Slam winner was Ken Rosewell (age 37, 1 month, 24 days) at the 1972 Australian Open. Federer had to retire because of a knee injury and Rafa Nadal looks like he will soon be joining him. I would put Novak still in the top group of current tennis players. There are Alcaraz, Sinner, and possibly Medvedev that can beat him, but no one else on the tour can, especially at the big tournaments. If he can avoid playing 2 of the 3 in a tournament, his chances are good for another Grand Slam.

I end this post with giving a shout out to the Uzbekistan Olympic Team. They won 8 gold medals, finishing in the #13 in the gold medal tally. They won an additional 5 medals to finish with 13 total medals. Uzbek specialize in combat sports and all of their medals came in boxing, wrestling, judo, and taekwondo with one medal in the related sport of weightlifting. Pretty good for a country of 36 million people! All medallists won a house, car, and cash prize from the government.

Ocean’s grade 11 (Junior) school has started! She is 16 years old and is entering the IB Diploma Programme. Her classes include English A HL, Spanish Ab Initio, History HL, Biology SL, Mathematics A&I SL, and Visual Arts HL. We traditionally take a family photo on the first day of school at home. This is the first time we have had only three of us 😦 with both Owen and Oliver now at university. This is also the first time we have more females in the house than males in the house. It is definitely a different vibe with only Ocean with Nadia and I. We are buying less food, there are less dishes to do, it is much quieter, etc. At least we have Ocean here for two years. I’ll try to enjoy it as much as I can.

The first day for students was Tuesday, August 13. The first week always goes by slowly as we get out of the summer rhythm and back into school mode. Nadia is teaching Grade 1 this year. I am still the director at the Tashkent International School, starting my sixth year here. Nadia is taking morning playground duties this year so we get to school earlier than usual. I spent the extra 10 minutes with Ocean in her homeroom, talking with her friends. It is such a privilege to be able to go to school with our children. One of the perks of being in education.

Gregory Wallace’s book “Into Siberia: George Kennan’s Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia” was fascinating. Wallace details Kennan’s journeys in the 1880s and 1890s in Russia’s vast region of Siberia. I am interested in all things about Russia and the name George Kennan was familiar to me. George Kennan’s younger cousin was a famous diplomat and the foremost expert on the Soviet Union during and after World War II. They met each other in 1910 when the future diplomat was six years old. It was a symbolic changing of the guard, with the older George Kennan being the great 19th century expert on the Russian Empire and his namesake, the younger Kennan becoming the foremost expert on the USSR. The younger Kennan founded the Kennan Institute in honor of his older cousin.

George Kennan first went to Russia to search for a route for Western Union Telegraph lines from St. Petersburgh through to Alaska. At the time, it was not thought that an undersea cable across the Atlantic was possible. Western Union was looking for a land route through Siberia to Alaska instead. He wrote a riveting account of how hard travel was in the far east Siberian winter. The native people helped his crew through. Kennan loved the adventure, much better than his boring life as a telegraph operator in an Ohio town. Plans for a cross Atlantic telegraph line eventually worked and Western Union called off the plan for lines across Russia. It was cool that there were Pony Express-like stations across Siberia where travelers could change horses and rest before moving on.

After the Telegraph experience, Kennan went back, traveling through the Caucasas region. He eventually did an expose on the Exile System under the Tsar. He thought it was a good system because families could move out east with the convicts. Kennan also thought they were truly criminals, but when he did a tour of the prison system, he found otherwise. He became a Human Rights advocate in the US after his observations, which eventually turned the USA away from being friendly with Russia. I didn’t know the gulags and Siberian work prisons were part of the Tsar’s playbook. Stalin the Soviets just kept up the tradition, and probably enhanced it. Other interesting notes are below.

• Tsar Alexander II in 1861 publicly supported Abraham Lincoln which made Russia the only European country to openly support the Union.
• George Kennan grew up in Ohio and was one generation away from when it was on America’s frontier. “Mortality among children on the Ohio frontier was high. Simply wandering off and getting lost in the forest could mean death for a child.”
• According to Caucaus historian Charles King, in Greek mythology the Caucasus was “the far edge of the world where Prometheus the fire stealer was exiled by the Gods.”
• Kennan noticed in Dagestan that the men slept late, socialized and smoked in mosques and although some men worked in the fields, it was mostly a male dominated society that depended on the near enslavement of women.
• I love Fyodor Dostoevsky’s observation when he candidly wrote, “By capturing Asia our spirits and strength will lift…in Europe we were hangers-on whereas in Asia we will arrive as masters.”
• I need to find “Notes from the House of the Dead” by Dostoevsky, an account of his time in Omsk.
• Checkov wrote of a steppe crossing that “on and on you travel but where it all begins or where it ends you just cannot make out.”
• Kennan noticed the unendurable smell of the exiles’ prisons.

(refering to Dostoevsky’s exile) The wooden floor of his prison on Omsk was covered by a slippery, inch-thick layer of filth. He wore chains day and night and shared an excrement tub with hundreds of convicts, many of whom hated the elite inmates. ‘They would hae eaten us alive given the chance.’

We are in the middle of a heat wave in Tashkent with temperatures hitting 100F (38C) often. Uzbekistan has a dry climate so most nights it cools down because of a lack of moisture in the air to trap the earth’s heat escaping land after absorbing sun all day. However this month the nights have been warmer than usual. As I am getting older, I appreciate the small things in life much more than when I was younger. Last night I went for a swim in our pool and air-dried on the top chan in our garden. It was so nice to cool off and fall asleep on a sultry summer night. It is so relaxing with the Christmas lights and the quiet of the stars above. I awoke at 2:00 AM and went into the air-conditioned bedroom.

I am savoring life every day and stopping to notice things. On my morning walk to work on Friday, I noticed the woman below (left) selling cigarette lighters, candy, etc. in front of the shops in our mahalla. That must be a tough way to make a living and I would be interested in hearing how many sales she makes a day, where she gets her products from, how long she is out there, etc. I also noticed the donation box of the local mosque. The Al Badr Mosque is located adjacent to our school on the back side. We often hear the call to prayer at school. A nice aspect of Islam is one of their core tenets of helping the poor. You see donation boxes like this all over the city.

This morning I went for a run along the Ankhor Canal and loved the view from the bridge near the Minor Mosque. The Uzbek Rowing and Kayak Association has its headquarters on the canal and a flotilla of kayaks was out on the canal this morning. The new Crowne Plaza Hotel is in the background.

I took Nadia and Ocean to the “Asian Model Competition: Face of Uzbekistan – 2024” model and fashion show on Saturday evening. It was our first time attending a fashion show and it was delightful to be on the front row near the end of the runway. It was a combination fashion show and a reality TV modeling competition. Three of the 24 models (12 male and 12 female) were selected to represent Uzbekistan in the October final competition in Seoul, Korea. The event is sponsored by UzNex (Uzbek crypto currency) and it was led by the Korean Modeling Association. Similar events are taking place in 41 countries all over Asia to select models to participate in the October finals in Seoul.

A highlight for me was the performance of Uzbek recording artist Munisa Rizayeva. She is very well-known musician and is popular in Uzbekistan. She gets about 17,000 monthly plays on Spotify, which is not a lot but I think that more reflects the lack of Central Asians that subscribe to Spotify than her popularity. Musicians and actors have a certain charisma/showmanship/presence and she certainly had oodles of it. She has a booming voice and the music had a rock vibe. I added a couple of her songs to my Spotify playlists.

One of the contestants during the interview section said “modeling is my passion”and it got me thinking. It is a frivolous activity and I thought the young people looked silly after going to NN Model training. I guess it is better practicing being a model rather than playing video games and scrolling through TikTok. The two main winners of the competition I thought were good choices. They both had the classic Central Asian Uzbek facial features and the girl had naturally curly hair, a rarity in Asia. I wish them luck in the finals.

Nadia and Ocean really enjoyed the event and I am glad I am a member of the American Chamber of Commerce and received an invitation. It was enjoyable to see my two models have a fun evening.

Summer and long flights give me the opportunity to read. I took advantage of my free time to do some pleasure reading as well as professional reading.

The West Iron County, Michigan librarians set me up with a new digital media service called Hoopla. My first book borrowed was Stephen King’s latest collection of short stories, “You Like it Darker” I always get swept away with his story telling and it is easy to continue swiping pages to find out how the story will end. I especially like two previously unpublished stories, Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream and Two Talented Bastids. I don’t believe in the supernatural but really enjoy King’s exploration of all things other worldly.

One of my guilty pleasures is true crime and crime novels. Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows is set in glamorous and seedy Los Angeles and is an “LA Noir” crime genre. The two main characters work for a firm that protects the reputation of rich people and organizations when scandal hits. They do this by having public relations and communications experts, friendly contacts in the media, high-powered lawyers, security guards (thugs), former police detectives, etc.

The first character is Mae Pruett who is a publicist and assists Hollywood movie stars, politicians, business moguls, etc. The second character is Chris, an ex-cop who is used as “muscle” to intimidate and physically harm people. Both of them struggle with their conscience because they protect immoral people and most of their work for the company is cover-up and deceit. I can tell Jordan Harper has lived in Los Angeles a long time as he describes in great detail the ambition people have to become rich and famous. He pulls from the news in that there are characters similar to Harvey Weinstein and Jeffery Epstein. It was a page-turner and I was not pleased with the ending, but from an interview I heard with the author, this will be the first in a series of books set in Los Angeles.

Some quotes from the book:

• “Don’t worry about the truth. It’s not that the truth isn’t important. It just doesn’t matter. A lie that is never believed by anyone can still have power – if it gives people permission to do what they want to do anyway…Give them horror or give them heartstrings. Nothing else sticks.”
• “She learned how much of our lives is just stories we tell one another, or ourselves.”
• “Real power comes from generating profit for other people.”

The library apps gives me access to great magazines as well as great books. I was fascinated by Dexter Filkin’s reporting from northern Israel and Lebanon “Will Hezbollah and Go To War?” I also listened to Terry Gross interview Filkin on NPR’s Fresh Air. My main takeaway is it is amazing that Hezbollah has so much freedom and power to act seemingly without Lebanese government control. They are funded by Iran and do Iran’s bidding. Their aims are to destroy Israel and start an Islamic Caliphate in the region. Putting it in my context, it would be like a foreign country, say Canada, funding a militia in my state of Michigan whose aim is to destroy Ohio and set an ultra-Christian government instead of our representative democracy. They would not last very long. The national guard, police organizations and maybe in national armed forces would be called in to put them down. Not so in Lebanon. Filkin fears their actions will lead to an all-out war in the region that will destroy both Lebanon and Israel. It was interesting that he mentioned there is a big portion of Lebanese that oppose them.

It is also odd to an American that towns and villages in some countries can be all Christian or all Islamic. In Lebanon, Israel avoided airstrikes on Christian villages, nestled among Shiite villages. We do have pockets of Arabs and other Middle East nationalities in cities in the US, but they are always mixed with others. It reminded me of travelling through North Macedonia this past spring. We would come upon either Orthodox Christian villages or Islamic villages. You could tell immediately by either the towers of a mosque or a big cross above the town in the hills. In the American west, they usually have the name of the town in the hills above. Only in Bethlehem, Pennsylvannia is there a lighted cross, but I think that is just for tourists as part of the Christmas theme and acknowledging the history of the founding of city, rather than a statement that this is a Christian town. I hope the war does not escalate for everyone involved.

This weekend I am picking up our new staff from the airport and delivering them to the hotel. The annual orientation of new employees marks the start of my work year. It is a big responsibility to bring people to a new country and set them and their families up to be comfortable and happy. I am looking forward to school year! We arrived yesterday afternoon after a 90-minute flight from Marquette to Chicago, a 10 and 1/2 hour flight from Chicago to Istanbul, and a 4 and 1/2 hour flight from Istanbul to Tashkent. We made all of our connections and only had a 90-minute delay at O’Hare.

Tashkent International Airport is isolated in the middle of the Eurasian continent. Many flights arrive and depart in the middle of the night. Jetlag is helpful because I am not struggling with nocturnal pick-ups. Last night I was at the airport from 2:30 AM and returned home at 4:00 AM. The spectacular opening ceremony of the Olympic Games from Paris was on last night as well. We love watching the Olympic Games and Peacock, NBC’s streaming service has all of the coverage.

I drove Nadia to BeFit Pro pool for a swim workout. Tashkent is experiencing a heat wave with a high temperature of 104F (40C) at 4:00 PM today. We also did a late night shopping to refill the fridge and kitchen for meals this week.

I missed my dog Obi and took him for a walk last night while Nadia was swimming. I noticed for the first time office lights on inside of the SQB Bank building in the Tashkent City Development (above). SQB is mostly owned by the Uzbek Government’s Ministry of Finance and its name in English is “Industrial and Construction Bank” and it was started in 1922 by the Russians. The bank rebranded to the Uzbek name (Sanoat Qurilish Bank) as part of the country’s move to using more Uzbek language and less Russian language.

Central Asia culture has a tendency to put fairy lights and neon lights all over buildings and trees. As you can see above, Nadia’s gym, BeFit Pro does this with the trees in the parking lot. My theory is because most of Central Asia is a vast darkness of steppe and desert, people wanted the comfort of lights in the evening to light up their lives. I also noticed for the first time public bikes have been added to the fleets of electric scooters. When I first arrived here five years ago, bicycles were not allowed. An amazing pace of modernization in Tashkent! I wonder what the statistics are on accidents and injuries. I had a scooter whiz by me last night while walking Obi. The kid was going very fast, weaving through pedestrians. There must be pedestrian-scooter collisions or car-scooter collisions occurring in the city.

We completed our summer holidays helping Oliver prepare to be on his own. It is heartbreaking to leave behind another of our children! The house is so quiet now with only one child left. 😦 We had a great final day in Caspian with our son Oliver. He is not coming back with us and it was strange to only have Ocean, Nadia, and I traveling. It was a busy final day. 

In the morning Oliver and I dropped off a truckload of junk at Waste Management. We continue renovating and cleaning the house. We still have a long way to go, but clearing a couple of rooms felt good. Ocean and I did errands in town, including closing one of our bank accounts and donating clothes to Saint Vincent DePaul, the local Catholic Goodwill store. It is depressing to see all of the second-hand stores, closed businesses, and dilapidated homes that are signs of depopulation and economic decline. Iron River and Caspian are much different towns from the one I grew up in, in the 1970s and 1980s. I wonder if the area will ever return to its economic zenith when the iron ore mines were working and small manufacturing businesses were able to be profitable. 

Nadia and I went grocery shopping with Oliver. His aunt and uncle are coming tomorrow and his brother will be back in the UP on Saturday. We had a nice final night having drinks with our neighbors, Vicky and Rocko. It brought back memories of my neighborhood when I was a child. The neighbors were like family and without internet and modern digital entertainment, we spent a lot of time together. 

We also improved the protection around the trees in the front yard. Oliver and Andy will plant the fourth tree when it arrives. Earlier in the week we set up Oliver’s room at St. Norbert College in DePere, Wisconsin. They were kind to allow us in there before moving day because we will not be there on the official moving day.

We planted three trees yesterday in our front yard. Two Northern Red Oaks (Quercas rubra), a type of Oak that can withstand the colder temperatures of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. My village of Caspian is located at 46 degrees north latitude. I also planted one Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum). This was the first time doing this and I would probably give us a grade of “C”. The western Upper Peninsula ground is quite rocky and it was difficult to pound the poles into the soil. We need to protect the trees with fencing because deer will eat the young leaves. I am curious to see if they will survive and for how long. Hopefully, my children and grandchildren will enjoy the shade and autumn color they will provide and wildlife will be sustained by the trees fruits and seeds.

Douglas Tallamy, a professor of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware’s book “The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of our Most Essential Native Trees” really opened my eyes to how homeowners can improve habitat in their gardens and yards to support wildlife. Humans have greatly damaged the ecology of North America, especially after European settlement. The cutting down of forests, extinction of large animals (mastodons, ground sloths), and importing non-native species have devastated nature.

The tree genus of Oaks, Quercus, is one of the most woody genera in the Northern Hemisphere. They are famous for being huge, long-lived, and having the distinctive cup fruit, the acorn. There are around 300 species worldwide, with 90 oak species in North America and 14 oaks native to Michigan.

Professor Tallamy concentrates on promoting property owners to plant native plant species to help the web of life. His research counts caterpillars and other insects on native vs. invasive species and found that today’s North America provides only 4% of the food for insects than it did at the time of the European arrival. Tallamy advised planting more than one oak tree so the roots can support each other and not get knocked down in the high winds of the summer storms. He also advises not to plant older trees because they don’t establish roots well. I am planting a young and an older tree and hope that both make it. Finally, he asked owners to plant native plants and shrubs under oaks and keep the leaf litter on the ground. Homeowners usually sweep or burn the leaves to preserve their lawns (Americans love lawns), but actually, this is a sterile environment for insects. Insects provide food for birds and other animals, so fewer plants means fewer insects and fewer insects means fewer birds. Below are other things I learned from the book.

• Periodically, all oak trees in a region will produce an incredibly huge number of acorns in the same year. This is called “masting” and ecologists speculate that every so often, oaks put their energy towards acorn production instead of growth. The idea is wildlife cannot possibly eat all the acorns and so more young oaks will develop roots and start growing.
• Cicadas have 13-year and 17-year life cycles partly because as larvae, they eat xylem in tree roots which has a low nutritional content. If they ate phloem, they would not have this problem. Trees transport nutrients through the phloem and only a bit of nitrogen and water through the xylem. The long periods between adult cicadas being abundant prevents predators to specialize on cicadas.
• Oaks mostly maintain their dead leaves on trees in the winter. This phenomenon is called marcescence and is thought to be beneficial by protecting young buds in the spring.
• The percentage of oaks in eastern North American forests has dropped from 55% pre-European settlement to 25% today.
• Eastern forests were less dense before Pleistocene mammals were hunted to extinction by indigenous people. Today’s suburban landscapes mimic this savannah and mixed forest landscape.
• I never thought that when the glaciers retreated and the temperate zone offered a huge amount of insects, this drove birds to develop the habit of migrating north to take advantage of this food source. Human development has lessened this.

“Healthy oaks will grow for 300 years, maintain a stasis between new growth and canopy loss for the next 300 years, and then decline for 300 years or more. During each one of those 900 years, these magnificent plans are making outsized ecological contributions to the life around them.”