There are a handful of new Central Asia blogs over on the right. Almost all of them are by Peace Corps Volunteers in Kyrgyzstan.
Tim, who maintains Kumys, enlightens us as to the difficulties of navigating Jalalabad’s real-estate market. Read the whole thing for the context, but I find this fascinating and a not at all unexepected expectation on the seller’s part [That's one heckuva sentence--ed].
The story of a fellow American’s recent house shopping experience in Jalalabat helped to provide some context for our experience, though. After working out a price of $7,000 for a place he was interested in, he was told by the seller that he would need to pay $17,000 to complete the deal: $7,000 for their place and $10,000 to buy them the house that they would subsequently move into. “Of course, you need to do that,” they told him. “Otherwise, where will we live after you buy our house?”
Of course. How could one think otherwise?
In a completely unrelated item, if you’ve never seen a Mexican in a dopa, well, here’s your opportunity.
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Dopa is a couple of sizes too small, but nevertheless, charming.
I’m using this opportunity to alert you to the discussion here about origins of the word Bishkek. I thought may be Alisher could help with reference to the relevant Uzbek word (does Pishpek mean anything to Uzbek?), but anybody who qualify may comment, of course.
Hey Nathan and Tanya,
Actually it’s prononced as “douppi”. And I took this picture at Midnight Mosaic. Rolando(that Mexican guy in dopa)is a freshman here. I did my cultural presentation about Uzbekistan.
Also, I never heard the word “Peshpek” in Uzbek. But it maybe mispronounced of “Beshbek” which means “Five Beks” from Uzbek. “Bek” was a ruler of an administrative region called “Beklik” in 18-19 centuries in Khanates and Bukhara emirates.
Hey, Alisher, where are you? Do know this word?
For some reason, I remember “Pishpek” having something to do with 5 also, but I might be making that up.
“Pish” does, though, sound a lot to my far from expert ear like how a Kyrgyz might say five (even though it is “besh” here).
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