Bill's Blog

One of the only nice things about being sick last weekend was it gave me a bit more time to read. I finished Adrian McCinty’s, “The Cold Cold Ground”. I loved getting lost in his world. The novel is a police procedural set in 1981 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. This was at the height of the violence between the IRA (Irish Republican Army), the Ulster paramilitary groups, and the UK government. McCinty is from Belfast and his goal was to put a murder investigation story in the backdrop of a crazy time in the history of the city.

I liked the main character, Sean Duffy, a Catholic policeman trying to make a difference. McCinty is a good writer and his prose reads easily which separates him from a lot of thriller or detective story writers. I learned a lot of British/Irish slang, “bangers and mash” (sausage with onion gravy), “bairn” (a child), “banjax” (to ruin or destroy).

You don’t hear much any more about the conflict between Irish Catholics and UK Protestants. It sounds like from my reading that the two sides (Irish nationalists and UK loyalists) still don’t like each other, but they are not using violence against each other. It will be interesting to see what happens now that the UK has left the EU. There is not a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, which is a compromise from the UK government. It is being questioned and still not quite set yet. From an outsider’s perspective, I think the island of Ireland should be one country, and the UK Protestants in Belfast and the region should be protected as a minority within Ireland. I find it not natural when islands are split like Cyprus. I am glad that both sides are working on the relationship peacefully, but I always think this will hold back the region from fully realizing its potential. I still see a lot of separate lives being lived between Irish Catholics and British Protestants.

It seems like a dreary place to live with the amount of rain Northern Ireland receives. It did feature in the Game of Thrones and the coastal castles are picturesque. Like all the islands in the UK, the land is overpopulated and stripped of its forests and wildlife generations ago. I might read another McCinty novel in the future.

Oliver finished his “mock” (practice in American English) exams this week. The whole family, especially Nadia, was supporting him by encouraging him to study, making sure he arrived to school on time and that he would do his best. It was nice on Monday morning to ride to school with the whole family on the way to his mathematics exam. Often in the mornings, Oliver and Ocean walk to school to get the most possible sleep. We only live 800 meters from school. We only have a month of Oliver regularly attending school before they go on study leave and take the IB exams in May.

On Tuesday evening Nadia and I attended a screening of the film, #Nova, produced by a small Israeli production company called Yes Studios. The documentary shows the night of October 6 and the morning of October 7 at the NOVA music festival. The documentary is entirely made from mobile phone and Go Pro footage from the Nova Music Festival. This is the psychadelic dance music festival that took place in the fields of southern Israel, just across the border from Gaza. There are no interviews or explanatory dialogue. Most of the documentary are mobile phone videos of concert goers supplemented with some footage from the terrorists. It reminded me how much today’s youth documents their lives and how comfortable they are with doing this, even in times of high stress.

My reaction to the video was horror, anger, and sadness. The heartbreaking calls from kids to their parents were too much. It could have been my daughter calling us. I was angered over the loss of young lives. The documentary focused more on the concert attendees rather than the terrorists, but the film shared the Gazan soldiers calls to Allah to bring them strength to murder unarmed Israelis. The statistics are horrifying. Of the roughly 3,500 in attendance at the festival, 364 people were murdered and 40 people were kidnapped and taken to Gaza. The film captured the “fog of war” well. We had the perspective of the concert goers and they were unsure how big the attack was going to be, when the police or Israeli army was going to arrive, whether to stay at the venue or drive away. What was the safest option? Many ended up running into the countryside and hiding.

The Israeli Ambassador had a lot of courage to put on an event like this. It was uncomfortable for us all and not your typical diplomatic event. She reserved 5 seats in front with photos and a flower for five of the women who were taken hostage by the terrorists. I can’t imagine what they are going through.

A virus has come to our family. Nadia and I stayed home from school yesterday with fever, headache, cough, etc. Ocean was sick as well, but she had two school exams. Oliver was the only one who escaped it. We are taking this 3-day weekend to rest and recover.

It was a quiet day of rest and recharging after an emotionally and physically draining CABC tournament. There was wet snow most of the morning so I stayed in and caught up with my yoga. Nadia and I supported Oliver who is getting ready for his practice IB exams this week. I did errands around the house like putting windshield wiper fluid in the car, tidying the kitchen and living room, doing dishes, etc. Ocean stayed in her room most of the day, working on getting her personal project journal completed. Oliver, Nadia, and I watched the first half of Oliver’s favorite team, Manchester United against Manchester City. Man U scored the first goal but ended up losing the game, 3-1.

The big event was Nadia and I visiting the new Tashkent City Mall that opened last week. This is the first major mall in Tashkent. It has an IMAX theatre with movies in English, international brand stores like Zara, Pull & Bear, etc., a food court that will feature the first Pizza Hut in Uzbekistan. The mall was filled with people like us, just walking around and checking out the scene. It reminded me of when the first international standard ski resort opened a couple of years ago here (Amirsoy), and Uzbeks were proud that they were joining the international community after a repressive dictatorship under the first president Islam Karimov. It helps our family to buy clothes. We don’t have to wait until the holidays and can get the fashion Nadia, Ocean, and Oliver want here.

It is a very young population here and this is an example of rapid growth. The mall is part of the Tashkent City development that includes two international hotel chains, restaurants, apartments, office buildings, and a Dubai-like park. The city is changing rapidly and becoming more like other cities with modern amenities like large shopping malls, cinemas, restaurants, credit cards, etc. We have seen all this happen within the 4 an 1/2 years since we came to Tashkent.

It was a heartbreaking end to our season in the Central Asian Basketball Classic. Six schools from Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan were hosted by our school for 3 days of tournament basketball. We played 7 games over the 3 days, winning 4 of them and losing three of them. After the round-robin portion of the tournament, we were seeded #2, just missing out on the top seed by a point differential of 1 point. That set us up for a difficult path to the finals. We lost in the semifinals to Bishkek IS and then in the consolation match, were upset by one point by Almaty International School. We finished a disappointing fourth place.

We had one of the youngest teams in the tournament with no grade 12 seniors and a team mostly of grade 10 students. The girls improved during the season and we finished with a record of 11 wins and 5 losses. We won our city championship tournament and have a lot to be proud of. I profoundly enjoyed the experience and love coaching basketball. In my career, I’ve been blessed to not be on the losing side to often, so losing out on a medal was painful. They say you learn from losing more than winning. I am taking away the following:

• Physical fitness is key in a tournament of this nature. I didn’t prepare the girls with strength and conditioning and it showed as the tournament wore on. I could have played our starters less during the round-robin in retrospect.
• We didn’t prepare enough against zone defenses. Our girls struggled with turnovers and finding open shots.

Probably the best thing about the season was the relationships I made with the players and coaches. It is such a privilege to get to work with and know young people. I have not coached girls in many years and it was cool to get back to teaching basketball fundamentals to them. My mother was a long-time basketball coach and I grew up around women’s basketball, so I felt a bit a home surrounded by girls in gymnasiums this season. I am glad the season is over because of the time commitment. I am looking forward to getting back to more time with Oliver and Nadia. Nadia was a fantastic supporter of the team and I want to thank her too.

This morning I am watching the Los Angeles Lakers versus the Denver Nuggets. LeBron James scored his 40,000 points earlier in the game. He passed second place Kareem Abdul Jabaar (38,387) who also had a long career. Kareem would have had more points if he had been allowed to go directly to the NBA like LeBron James. He spent 4 years at UCLA due to the rules at the time. He scored over 2,000 points a season in his first five years in the NBA. Even if he would have averaged 1,500 points a season as a rookie and the next three years, that would be 6,000 additional points, and I would add another 2,000, so say he would have finished with 46,000 points. He was a much different player than LeBron and had an unstoppable sky-hook shot. In looking at the all-time scoring leader list, I don’t see any current players approaching LeBron’s total. The closest is Kevin Durrant of the Phoenix Suns with 28,000 at age 35 and an injury history. It is amazing what LeBron is doing at age 39 with the Lakers. I think that will be his big legacy. He is still scoring at an elite rate, amassing almost 7,500 points and counting after age 35. How much more can he get? Players in their 40s are more injury prone so his career could end earlier than expected, based on his health today. I predict LeBron will get another 5,000 points over the next 4 seasons and finish around 45,000 for his career. By the way, Denver beat the Lakers with big baskets in the final few minutes of the game. The difference was Denver has two superstars, Jamaal Murray and Nikola Jokic and the Lakers only had LeBron tonight. Jokic is amazing and in just the few minutes I watched, he made an awkward, off-balance jump hook and had an amazing pass off the same jump hook move that resulted in a teammate’s dunk. Absolutely a joy to watch.

It was a special day when the Varsity Girls Basketball Team won the TIS Tournament. We went undefeated winning four games and capturing the first varsity girls championship in several years. The games took place February 17 and 18 in our gym. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed coaching the team and collaborating with coaches Yuliya and Jeanette.

• TIS 31-17 versus Skola 208
• TIS 28-16 versus Skola 86
• TIS 19-10 versus British School of Tashkent
• TIS 30 – 8 versus Skola 86

The girls are really improving and it is also a pleasure to work so closely with my daughter Ocean. We are bonding over sport! We are halfway to our goal of two championship banners. Next week we have the Central Asian Basketball Classic (CABC) and it will be much tougher with 6 teams in the varsity girls category including teams from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. I can’t wait for the games!

As I get older I appreciate more the simple things in life. I loved spending the afternoon and evening outdoors on a snowy day in February. It is nice to live in a place with four distinct seasons. Winter is my least favorite of the seasons (#1 summer #2 spring #3 fall #4 winter) but I do take advantage of the positives winter brings. Last Sunday I took Obi for a long walk along the Ankhor Canal. Snowfall quiets the landscape and brings out the shapes of trees and pathways. It was so peaceful to be out.

One of the downsides of snow is road conditions. It is my job as the director to determine if the community can get to school safely. Tashkent does not plow and salt/sand many of the roads so even a bit of snow like we had on Sunday (4-5 inches) makes it bad. My big criterium is icy on the road and sidewalks. Thankfully, it was bare road and snow more than ice on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.

Another aspect I like about the winter months is hockey season. The Tashkent Humo Hockey Club is in the playoffs this week. I went to Game 1 on Tuesday at Humo Arena. Humo is the second seed and they were playing the seventh seed, Karaganda Yellow Hawks. They looked sluggish and were down 5-2 in the third period when all of a sudden, Humo exploded for three goals in 6 minutes! The game went into extra time. I made it through the first 17-minute intermission after the game and the first overtime period (20 minutes) but no one scored. I went home after that and missed the Karaganda’s winning goal 5 minutes into the second overtime period. I took Joe and Cam to the game and met my friend Shawn and we had a good time. I like a game with goals!

Humo went on to lose Game 2, 2-5 the next night. They are playing February 25-26 in Karaganda in Games 3 and 4. This would be a big upset if Humo loses. They finished the regular season with 38 wins and 12 losses compared to Karaganda’s 24 wins and 26 losses. Karaganda is a city of 500,000 in the center of Kazakhstan, south of the capital of Astana. I am learning Kazakhstan geography through Humo’s participation in the Kazakhstan league. My question of the night was why are periods in hockey not referred to as “thirds” like in basketball or football’s “quarters”?

I end this post with some photos from the Tashkent City Development Park. I have not been there for a while but on Wednesday night, I went to dinner with friends. I was impressed with the growth of the place with literally 10 massive building projects going up over the past 2 years. I didn’t recognize the place. It looked like a winter Dubai. It is incredible how fast Tashkent is growing during my 5 years here. Projections show that Tashkent will grow to 4 million people by 2035.

I had a fascinating afternoon touring Tashkent yesterday with architects visiting our school to renew our Master Site Plan. I wanted to give them the full flavor of Tashkent and Uzbek architecture. Alexander Federov led us on a tour focusing on Soviet-era modernist buildings. He is a graphic designer, artist, activist, historian, and passionate about preserving these historic buildings in Tashkent. His enthusiasm for Soviet-era “Oriental Modernism” was infectious. It was sad to learn how these buildings are slowly being replaced or altered. I understand the Uzbeks, however, and they might not want reminders of being colonized by the Russians. Something is lost if these buildings are not preserved. They are part of the history of the city and make Tashkent distinctive and add to its charm of east meets west.

It was also fun learning from architects talking about their work and architecture. I learned a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright and the fundamentals of architecture and design over the 4 days I spent with them. I feel our school’s Master Site Plan is in good shape with Cam and Joe and their firm of Truexcullins. We also took the subway back and got to admire the Soviet’s recreation of the Moscow subway station design in Tashkent. Below are some of the buildings and sites we saw on the tour.

Exhibition Hall of the Union of Artists (1974) Rashidov Ulica 40

One of my favorite buildings is the Experimental House жемчуг “Pearls”. It was finished in 1985 and recreates the idea of the mahalla in apartment block form. As you can see in the photograph in the far right, there are 5 common areas that children and families can play and socialize, recreating the idea of the neighborhood streets. There was even a pool on the roof that is no longer working.

The National Historical Museum used to be the Lenin Museum and was built in 1970.

We started the tour at my favorite building in Tashkent, the Hotel Uzbekistan. I learned that it used to have an outdoor pool in back with an amazing roof and that the concrete facade hides utilities underneath.

We hosted a Super Bowl party last Monday. Central Asia is UTC+5 which is 13 hours ahead of Las Vegas. That meant the game started at 4:30 AM for us. It was the first time in a long time that I did not have to go to school on Super Bowl Monday. We celebrated Lunar Year with a 4-day weekend and had the Monday off.

The Super Bowl is the quintessential American holiday. It celebrates consumerism, spectacle, and violence. Many people watch the broadcast solely for the commercials that this year came with a price tag of $7 million for 30 seconds of airtime. Considering that the Super Bowl is one of the few events that many Americans stop to watch at the same time, it was probably worth it to the companies and people advertising. The game is a small part of the event with the hype and commentary before and the halftime music concert. Usher was the artist and I thought it was a too over-the-top show. The only part I liked was the roller skates. My cultural and pop music references of the 1990s is limited because I lived in Colombia and Bolivia in the 1990s and at that time, the internet was just getting started. I was isolated from the global culture. I remember in the early 90s, having to rely on getting a Miami Herald occasionally at the Hotel Prado in Barranquilla and my mother sending me VHS video tapes of sports games and newspaper clippings. I only knew one of Usher’s songs.

Our party theme was “Denial Bowl”. Because my favorite team, the Detroit Lions lost to the 49ers in the NFC championship game by 3 points, that might be the closest they ever get to participating in the big game. They have not won the NFL championship since 1957, 9 years before the Super Bowl started in 1966. We had a Detroit Lions/Taylor Swift cake and asked attendees to wear Honolulu Blue of the Lions. People actually came over at 4:20 AM and in attendance were a family from California rooting for the 49ers. I was cheering for an entertaining game and slightly favoring the Chiefs. I correctly picked the outcome of the game as I went with Patrick Mahomes being a better quarterback than Brock Purdy and the under (45.5) because I thought the 49ers would play slowly to keep Mahomes off the field. As with all close games, a few lucky breaks usually determine the outcome and the Chiefs won. We also were cheering for Taylor Swift suite camera shots. I probably won’t have a chance to host another party until I retire. I was kind of sleepy the whole day and would have preferred to get up at 7:00 AM and watch the end of the game live. We have a subscription to Paramount + thanks to my uncle and watched the US broadcast. I hope the Lions are playing in the game next year!

Saturday afternoon we had dinner and went out for drinks at Maqom Bar (“status” in Uzbek). They have a fun drink menu and beautiful Art Deco/Uzbek decor filled with interesting-looking people that makes it one of my favorite places to socialize. I rarely drink these days because alcohol has such a strong negative impact on health. I want my remaining years on earth to be as active as possible and taking care of my body is my priority. I am exercising a lot and eating less and better and hoping to extend my physical fitness into my 70s and 80s. Nadia and I went to the Hippodrome Market shopping for “disco” style clothes for next weekend’s Gala and were successful. Always good people watching in the market.

Nadia and Ocean had a girls day at the InterContinental Hotel. Massages, spa, and the breakfast buffet. I am blessed to have two beautiful women in my life!

The first adult novel I really enjoyed was Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot when I was a grade 9 or grade 10 student. 40 years later I still occasionally read a Stephen King novel and his latest, “Holly” was good, but not great. He has written over 70 novels and collections of short stories so not all of them are going to be incredible. It was a solid horror/detective story that helped me fall asleep.

Holly is a detective crime story featuring Holly Gibney, who was featured in the book and HBO television series, The Outsider, which I loved watching. This time she is investigating the disappearance of a young girl. I don’t want to spoil the book too much, but it is the story of a couple of elderly cannibals and Gibney puts together a series of missing persons to track them down. King always tells a good story but I found myself scrolling through parts of the story that I found boring. One major side story was a character’s relationship with an acclaimed elderly poet that I felt didn’t really go anywhere. The book was criticized by some for its many references to masks, anti-vaxxers, and the habits we developed during the pandemic. It felt like King included them to publicize his strong views instead of having them be part of the story. He was really affected by the COVID pandemic as I listened to interviews he gave. The references don’t distract from the story, but they don’t add to it.

The book made me think about the biology behind cannibalism. I read over 1,500 species of animals practice cannibalism. Research is showing that Neanderthals practice cannibalism and may have eaten Homo sapiens as well. Human cannibals make good horror stories and I think there would be some good historical novels set in places like Papua New Guinea or in other cultures that practiced cannibalism.

One line I liked from the book, “Sometimes the universe throws you a rope. If it does, climb it. See what’s at the top.” That encapsulates the role of luck in one’s life. You must seize opportunities when they are presented and the more you are searching or just being open to possibility, the more lucky breaks you will get.