Entertainment

June 17, 2003 • Blog

World » Mongolia » Ulaan Baatar » Shared apartment

The cut on my knee seems to have made up its mind. It started healing fairly well but later in the week it needed stitches, healed well, needed stitches and now seems to have settled on healing well. Last Saturday, Jocie had taken me to the hospital for stitches but when the bandages came undone, everyone (there were three doctors hanging over me plus some additional nurses here and there) seemed to radiate happiness. It was ok and didn’t need stitches. Not that they were easy on me. I was dragged through the hospital twice, first to the second floor, then to the fifth. Initially to find a place to take off the bandages, then to a place were the doctor that was set to stitch me now applied ‘happytape’.

In the afternoon, we visited a show of national folk music and dance. The extensive mix of throat singing, orchestras, dances and contortionists was very good. The two only misses being a forty piece orchestra doing a waltz and a march and the opening act: some 30 men and women dressed up in animal skins dancing to modern techno music.

Saturday night, as something of a precelebration to Bec’s birthday on Monday, we started drinking at Gin and Bec’s place. Guanz, a tour guide who will probably take us up to Khovsgol in a couple of weeks was there too at the beginning of the evening and he talked Henry and myself into going to a wrestling match at the wrestling palace.
Wrestling is NOT as exciting as you might think. They start of with some 64 wrestlers, traditional costume and all, until three hours later or so, through a knock-out system, only one wrestler is left standing. Today, ‘Tree’ won.
The first couple of rounds were the most interesting. Wrestlers took chances, differences in strengths were obvious and occasionally resulted in spectacular crashes. But what was most interesting, was that many matches were taking place at the same time. Groups of wrestlers would constantly bump into each other or into the wooden fencing built around the ring. Henry and I were clearly not the only ones who weren’t enjoying ourselves to the max. This five year old kid sitting next to me started to punch me in the side halfway through and kept going for an hour or so. Then again, maybe he aspired to be a wrestler.

Striptease, Webawards, Children’s day and a burning ger

June 10, 2003 • Blog

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World » Mongolia » Terelj

I know, it's been a while. Betsy, my girlfriend, has been here over the past two weeks and every moment I had a little bit of time, say to write some for my blog, she came in and claimed that time. And rightly so. And to be honest. I already miss her.

Hardware seems to be vexed in this country. After my modem, network card and sound card, my diskette drive now also seems to have stopped working. What's worse, my digital camera has died. After it gave off an early warning in my first week here, which was solved by dropping it on the floor, the pictures accompanying this entry will probably be the last ones ever taken with my good old Canon Powershot Pro 70. I bought it near the end of 2000, just before my trip to Ghana, also for Geekcorps and it has served me some 20.000 pictures.
Just before leaving for Mongolia, I almost bought an inexpensive video camera to play with. Ah, hindsight. Luckily, Gin borrowed me her Concord (what brand?) digital camera. It's better than nothing, no?

Since two weeks or so, Gin, one of the Australians here through AYAD (Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development), and Henry have been more or less dating and Betsy and Gin became real mates. A good thing since last week the four of us and Andy went to Marco Polo, according to one American, one of the better strip clubs in town.
And it was good, although Betsy and Gin unanimously decided that the girl with the perfect boobs had them surgically altered. The best show of the evening, easily, was Gin and Betsy doing a table dance for us boys. Without a doubt, they beat the very impressive contortionists who have a show at Marco Polo's everyday at 12am.
Later, Gin had an interview on Australian national radio on Mongolia's transition from a communist economy to a capitalist one. In it, she claimed that the strippers at some strip joint some of her American friends had gone to hadn't really understood the new economy yet, since they weren't wearing any garter belts to accept tips in.

After the exciting Saturday night, the Sunday was for the kids. That is, 'Children's day', being renamed to 'Mother and child day' a while ago, had now been renamed to 'Children's day' again. For some reason, the Nairamdal (friendship) park, which is normally quite empty, was littered with people. It made me wonder were these people normally hang out on a Sunday. The line for the ferris wheel was some 150m long.
The good thing about the celebrations was that we got to see children's sumo wrestling. I'm not totally sure if this sport is very healthy to a kid's physique, but at least it was a spectacle.

Last Tuesday, it was finally time for the awards ceremony of the 'All Mongolian Web Awards'. As you might recall, I was a judge for that back in my first week here in Mongolia. Because of SARS and the ban on public events, the final ceremony was postponed a number of times but now, it seemed, it was finally happening. On Monday night, I got a call from one of the organizers, if I could please give a speech on my experiences as a judge. No problem. Almost needless to say, I gave them a good verbal beating. I was only impressed by one of the six winners, a comprehensive guide on how to obtain certain effects in Photoshop. Most of the other sites were as good as your nephew's.
Claudia and Ryan also showed up at the occasion. The master of ceremony, Ian, a Brit working in Mongolia as a UNV, had supplied them with invitations. Or was it only Claudia showing up, since I can't remember talking to Ryan at all. In fact, I can't remember talking to Ryan over the past five weeks or so.

This weekend, Betsy and I staid at UB2, a ger camp in Terelj, one of the natural reserve areas close to Ulaan Baatar. Although the area supposedly is great for hiking and has a very tacky disco, we discovered neither. I still had a blister from the previous week's hash and Betsy isn't really into hiking at all, so we mostly staid close to the town and the ger camp, reading books in the sun, next to the Tuul river and enjoying the food at the hotel restaurant.
On Saturday night, when we were both in bed, ehm, reading. Betsy asked if ever these gers catch fire from the stove inside the gers. I suggested that, probably, occasionally, a ger actually would catch fire. And an hour later, ours did. I was lucky enough to notice it shortly after it happened. But what was better, some of our neighbors had noticed it too and were already banging our door down before we could get dressed. Before we knew it, one of the guys had gotten some of the wallpaper we had found lying around, which we used for getting the fire started, and climbed up on the ger to beat out the flames. Shortly after him climbing up, people were throwing bottles of water at him to use that to kill the flames. We thanked the man, who turned out to be Korean. Over the next two hours, every ten minutes or so, we had people walking into our ger without a warning. From receptionists, to children to neighbors. I still do not know why.
Not that THAT was a real surprise since, in the afternoon, we already had a cleaning lady walk in on us when we were having, well, an intimate moment together.

After getting a really good deal on a trip back to town on Monday, we mostly just chilled. It being Betsy's last day in town. Fate, as these things go, had other plans. During an afternoon nap, my phone rang and I jumped up to pick it up. Being to late to answer the phone and still groggy, I stumbled over to the bathroom to take a pee, only to almost faint. I got up again and stumbled back to the bedroom, realizing that my right leg was really sweating a lot. I looked down and noticed blood running down my leg.
I somehow had gotten a long and deep cut across my knee. Almost fell to the ground, started sweating, and called Jocie, one of the Australian nurses in town, while Betsy was starting to take care of my leg.
Jocie, working at the city's children's hospital, dressed the wound nicely but considered stitching it up the next day. In her office, taking off my pants, her office help almost went into cardiac arrest for me doing so. That was a hospital for chrissake! What a country.

Nothing special

May 26, 2003 • Blog

World » Mongolia » Ulaan Baatar » Capital Bank

Last week or so was reasonably uninteresting. As far as work is concerned, FIFTA, my secondary project, is going reasonably well. The guy I’m working with knows database design and Visual Basic. I am teaching him object oriented database design and VBscript. Both aren’t that hard when you understand the basics.

Capital Bank is a slightly different story. Although it seemed that their primary needs were an updated Internet and intranet website, it turns out that their most important problems are related to their network setup. Today I brought Henry in to talk about helping them out.

Last Tuesday, at the Hash, I acted as GM, which was quite a bit of fun. On Friday, my phone suddenly stopped working: ‘Your prepaid account has expired.’ It turns out you not only buy units in this country, but also days. I still had some 65 units (65 minutes or 650 SMSs) but no more days.

On Saturday, we celebrated Paula’s birthday. For some reason, there’s a whole contingent of young Australian girls volunteering in UB. Paula is one of them and some 6 girls, together with Henry and myself we celebrated with a good round of bowling and some mediocre food at ‘Winners’. Yes, there is a bowling alley in this city.

How did the great bear originate?

I picked this book up at the tourist store of the Palace Museum of the Bogd Khan. It was printed in 1988 and the price of the book has increased a cool 1000-fold since then.

The book contains all sorts of folk stories from Mongolia. Most particularly, the first group of stories, legends, are very interesting. These are the kind of stories that explain how the great bear did originate. One part of the book, that deals with magic, gets boring quite quickly. These group of stories seem to lack insight and don’t appear to be inventive.

However, a lovely book to read with some outright fantastic shorts.

Takhi

May 19, 2003 • Blog

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World » Mongolia » Khustai natural reserve park

Last weekend, Henry and I, together with seven other people, visited the Khustai natural reserve park. After the Takhi, the Mongolian wild horse, became extinct in the wild, breeding programs were set up in several countries with the aim of reintroducing the species in Mongolia.
Sponsored, among others, by the Dutch government, the park oversees the reintroduction and makes sure the area is reasonably protected.
The horses themselves are not that impressive. Like the 'regular' Mongolian horses, they're rather small, although their light gray white skin does make them stand out. The park itself, however, is quite nice: rolling, sometimes rocky, hills with numerous species of wild animals and hours and hours of tracks to hike.
The group we went with was an offspring of last Tuesday's Hash. Henry and I set that Hash around the Zeisan memorial. On Monday it had rained all day so we decided to set the hash only shortly before the run itself. Not that it made any difference. Although it was dry when we started setting the trail, by the time we were halfway through, we were caught in a bad rainstorm: cold, heavy rains with an even colder storm. By the time we were done, most of the tracks were already rained away. Funnily enough, minutes later, when the hash was to start, the sun came out and we ended up with a really nice evening.

Today I had my first real working day, at Capital Bank. Last Friday morning, at 8 o'clock, I was introduced to the employees at the bank and today I actually really started. Or… well…
At first, I was going to discuss my work plan with the director of the bank on Thursday who, as it turned out, doesn't really have much of an idea as far as what needs to be done. We rescheduled the meeting to Friday afternoon, when the person, responsible for the company's website, would also be present. Not really though, since all banks in the capital were having a basketball competition on Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday and he had to be there as well.
So, rescheduling again. This time to Monday morning. The director himself had already left for a three week trip to the US but when I arrived at work, actually no one whosoever was there. Sure, the cute receptionist was able to tell me that 'they' were late, but I could see that myself.
At 3pm I finally talked about my project plan with the marketing director. Although he knew slightly better what needed to be done, he tried to steer me more into networking the company. Both for secure intra-company transactions and setting up a network for sending and receiving Moneygrams (a sort of Western Union Money Transfer). I made it clear that was not my business, although I might be able to involve Henry, another geek. Currently, I doubt there will be enough work to keep me busy for another two months.

Just a chip

May 11, 2003 • Blog

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World » Mongolia » Ulaan Baatar » Black market

Last Thursday, Michael Richmond (from the US embassy) and I visited four companies to select a new primary and a new secondary project. Not that I really need a new secondary project. It is clear that I (or rather, my skills) am nothing more but a chip in a political poker game. However, I do not know the players and I do not know the rules. Quite a couple of people, within the embassy, were pushing for my placement at Kapital bank with FIFTA (Foreign Investment and Foreign Trade Association) as a secondary project. And guess what? It seems Kapital bank will be my primary project and FIFTA my secondary.
The way I understand it, the CEO of Kapital is a Mongolian who's lived in the US for a number of years after almost fleeing the country somewhere in the 90s after a land-slide election victory for the democratic party.

Last Friday, all schools and universities finished off their year with the highest classes graduating. Flower shops around the city had a magnificent day and, for the first time this year, some natural colors could be seen in the streets. The main entrances to the schools and universities were packed with nicely dressed girls, guys, men and women, all holding multiple bouquets. Either to give away or just received.

The 10pm curfew due to SARS has also been lifted. Although they already did that on Friday, we still weren't allowed in to Khan Brau after our weekly gathering at the Steppe Inne. On Saturday, the whole city was throbbing with celebrating youngsters and we couldn't escape a gathering at Hollywood club, where Tsolmon, one of the employees at Golomt bank, where Henry works, was celebrating his graduation.
Easily, Saturday night was the 'worst' night since my stay in Ulaan Baatar. Sunday morning I came closest to a headache I've been since being here. Not really surprising, considering we mixed beer, vodka and champagne. Still, we ruled on the dance floor, again, where Tsolmon tried to convince everyone we had to dance bare chested and circle up.

The black market has also opened again and yesterday, in search of sneakers, I almost had my backpack slit open. Quite suddenly, five or six people came up close to me, pressing themselves against me and my bag got caught between two people in front of me. Realizing what was going on, I pushed the people around me briskly away when the person walking in front of me turned around, looked at me, saw my face and took off, in the opposite direction.
Later, I also walked up to the Zeisan memorial, a Soviet-build memorial to commemorate 'unknown soldiers and heroes' from various wars. The memorial is already impressive enough by itself, but also built on top of a hill just south of the city. On normal days, you have a great view of Ulaan Baatar. Unfortunately, on Saturday, a huge dust storm limited view to only a couple of hundred meters.

On Sunday, waiting for the internet connection coming up, I started talking to a Mongolian girl who was going to the Gobi for two weeks the day after, as a translator. She told me that all Mongolian babies are born with a large blue birth mark on their backs, a sign of true Mongolian heritage. I remember from my stay in Hungary that there too, you are considered of true Hungarian decent if you're born with a large blue birthmark.

Observations

May 08, 2003 • Blog

World » Mongolia » Ulaan Baatar » Shared apartment

DotMaker, my company, called the US Embassy Wednesday morning, telling them they were not able to sustain me. A good thing because otherwise they would have gotten the call stating the exact same thing only hours later. On Thursday, I visited four companies finding the right project for me, of which Kapital Bank seems to most likely candidate.
My personal favorite is MongolArt.mn, run by MCIC. Recent foreign aid politics, however, dictated that a totally new organization, ACM, would deliver everything MCIC had been supplying in the past. Needless to say, although ACM is not nearly up to par with MCIC, they are in total limbo. SOROS, the supporting organization, is financing MCIC. Nepotism has taken care of the ‘right’ people within the organization.

Sports nights

May 06, 2003 • Blog

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World » Mongolia » Ulaan Baatar » Cricket ground

I’ve been planning on doing some sports here since the day I arrived. I normally work out (fitness or, as some people have it, body building) two-three times a week and I do some squash on the weekend, not to mention the physical activities I undertake together with my girlfriend, Betsy. So going from an action packed life to a seven-nights-a-week-vodka-binge-lifestyle tends to influence my physical state of being.
Last week, I visited the fitness at ‘star apartments’, a secluded area where mostly Americans, working at the American embassy live. Gaining access to the rather small, but well equipped room, would have cost me 90 dollars per month. Although they do, hurrah, give discounts.
I managed to find a place at the youth center where the machines are of significantly lower quality, as was the price, at 20 dollars per month. The building turned out to be the same one as where Bakir and I later went swimming. Bakir also showed me a fitness place where he supposedly hangs out, also for 20 bucks a month but with better machines.

Meanwhile, last Sunday, Henry and I played cricket with a bunch of Indians, some British and an Australian bloke. It was quite a bit of fun although we had to share the pitch with a group of Mongolian kids playing baseball. The few times that either of us managed a good hit, people from the other group would be trying to catch the ball. Man, catching those baseball balls with your bare hands hurts!
And tonight, finally, the first Hash ‘happened’. Much tamer than I ever experienced, it was a very hard run, running up one of the ridges in the National Park close to Ulaan Baatar. Only five of us ran, the rest of the group, some twenty people, walked a much shorter and easier route. I’ve been appointed RA, Religious Adviser, which basically means I can take the piss out of anyone. The group needs some shaking up.

Sex!

May 04, 2003 • Blog

World » Mongolia » Ulaan Baatar » Shared apartment

Yeah, that’s a catchy title, no? Read on and be amazed…

On April 13th, the government imposed a two week ban on all public places being open after 10pm. Additionally, some of the markets were closed and public events were postponed. Last Monday, the two weeks were over but since the first case of locally infected SARS was reported, the ban was extended for another two weeks.
Just like two weeks before when suddenly 90% of the population started wearing masks, an initial scare was unavoidable on Monday and Tuesday. Now, it was even impossible to enter the state department store or the sky shopping center without a mask. That some people would take off their masks right after entering didn’t really matter and by Wednesday, holding up a mask when entering was already enough and by Thursday, nobody was standing guard at the entrances anymore.

Strangely enough, the swimming pool remains open. That is, on Tuesday, Bakir (our driver into Tsagaan Nuur) and myself wanted to go swimming but were stopped at the entrance. Not because of SARS, but because the prime minister was using the swimming pool and it seemed he did not allow others in at the same time. Instead, we went the next day and castigated ourselves lovingly.

Tourist season is, indeed, slowly starting up. Last Friday, at the Steppe Inne, some ‘dirty’ backpackers were among the guests and you run into them in the streets (or more accurately, in the Internet cafes) more and more. Jean, a Frenchman, came over for a drink on Thursday. He had hitchhiked from Paris, through Russia, and was hoping to continue into China, possibly Tibet and India and then fly back to Holland, were he would start working in July.
Tourist or not, we had a guest of another kind on Thursday, when a young individual staid for the night in front of our door. We tried waking him, without success, but the next morning, he was gone.

When the previous group of geeks were here, Kirk, a vegetarian, sprained his ankle. On Thursday, Ryan, a vegetarian, sprained his ankle. Is that proof enough you should not be a vegetarian in this country?
And we had another car crash. After returning from the Korean restaurant Imbuss on Friday, we took a cab to our place to continue drinking. I explained were the driver had to take us, but when we arrived he seemed to keep on driving, apparently waiting for my signal to stop. Everyone was talking to each other in the car, so my Mongolian rendering of the word ‘stop’ didn’t really register. I resorted to plain English and said it at a significantly higher sound volume. The driver, startled, immediately steered to his right, in order to stop, and crashed into another car who was just passing him.
Naturally, both drivers came out of their cars and started to verbally fight over who’s fault it was. I paid the driver and gave him a 35% tip before we left. I only ‘just’ could afford the 80 cents that the trip now cost me in total.

Oh, right, so what’s with the title, right? Well, everyone seems to be doing it and I only dream. 23 days before my girlfriend arrives…

A quiet week

April 26, 2003 • Blog

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World » Mongolia » Ulaan Baatar » Nairamdal Park

Last Tuesday, I finally got my passport back, fully registered and all. Yes, I entered the country on April 7th, over two weeks before. The whole process has been wildly expensive (totaling some 130 euros) and they fucked up: My working visa, which I had to get here in Mongolia, was put on the page in my passport reserved for my kids. Not that I have any or plan to get any, but still. It probably, technically, renders the visa invalid.

The week wasn't all that spectacular. I Finally got down to some real training, although it was sketchy. DotMaker is still in the process of moving, where the future office is still being occupied by some other company and those people don't seem very willing to move. I've been put aside in the office of a friend of my counterpart where, it seems, five to ten people work, on and off. The one PC I was able to claim, I had to clean completely and reinstall everything I needed, to be able to do some training.
On Wednesday, one guy showed up for training, although there were supposed to be two. Quickly, I realized that Byamba's English language skills left to be desired. However, we seemed to manage. On Friday, however, I got very annoyed. It seemed he had been fooling me quite a bit, his English language skills sucked. Sure, he could have simple conversations on where he was from, what his age, etc, but technical questions were out of his league. In itself not a problem, since we have a budget for occasionally hiring translators, but what set me off is that he didn't even admit to not understanding me.
I cut the training short and will be getting a translator for our Monday session.

No webawards

The web awards ceremony has been postponed due to SARS. On April 13th, after the first five probable cases of SARS were recorded, a two week ban on public meetings and closure of all public places after 10pm was ordered. So not only do we now have to drink at home and have many of the markets closed down, all conferences were canceled too. The funny thing about the web awards: I walked over to the offices of the organizing body of Friday and it turned out that the websites I reviewed weren't the ones that actually were in the running for the awards. I'm now being sent the actual list of candidates. Don't you just love their organizational skills?

I'm happy the two week ban on public events, as imposed by the national government in relation to the SARS epidemic, is coming to an end. Not only do bars and restaurants close their doors at 10, ballet, opera, public showings and several markets have closed their doors. On Saturday, I was hoping to visit the puppet theater in the afternoon and a local music show in the evening. Not.

Remi

Today, a friend of Henry is coming over, possibly for a month. A British 'girl' he met in South East Asia. After last Wednesday, and Claudia hooking up with another geek, I wonder what am I going to do for the next 30 nights before my girlfriend shows up!?

Touring the town

Meanwhile, it is apparant the hunting, I mean tourist, season has opened. Walking around a much quieter Ulaan Baatar this Saturday, I was stopped a number of times. One guy tried to sell me postcards, a second had a message written on paper saying that his house had burned down and his wife had left him, a third tried to sell me a number of antiques he retrieved from all his pockets, a fourth was hoping to sell me some girls and two children followed me around the natural history museum where the most prominent exhibit is a 15m dinosaur skeleton.
So I was wary of the girl approaching me in the quite nice Monastery-Museum of Choijin Lama who was willing to give me an English tour of the grounds. However, she was very friendly and a tad insecure and didn't even ask for money after her tour had ended. By far the loveliest temple on the grounds was the gongkhang with the statue of yab-yum, mystical sexual union. Yab-yum? Yam!

I also went in search for a fitness room on Saturday, but wasn't successful. That is, the continental hotel has a small room with five machines, charging 3$ per hour and the fully secluded and highly secured Star apartments has a reasonably equipped fitness room where they charge 90$ per month, 'but we give 20% discount, yes?'
Star apartments is a collection of 22 apartments, solely occupied by people working at the American Embassy. I had a hard time to get through the slide-open gates and was screened before I could get in. Then, I was escorted all the way to the fitness room. Sure, this was really a place I would feel happy putting my 90$ per month in. As if these people needed it.

In the Nairamdal park, people were working on the numerous fairground attractions opening up shortly. The park itself looks rather dreary, but I suppose that, as soon as the raining season sets in, the park will be a true sea of green.

In the countryside

April 20, 2003 • Blog

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World » Mongolia » Tsagaan Nuur

Standing on a hilltop in the middle of rural Mongolia, which is basically everywhere outside of Ulaan Baatar, I was looking at a big sign with the text 'Tsagaan Nuur' in individual letters spelled out on top of the monument, in Cyrillic of course. To the right, Bakir, our driver, was calling one of his girlfriends, Hulan was in the car just receiving a call and the geeks were strolling close to the car, taking in the magnificent view and enjoying the hot sun and the blue sky from horizon to horizon. For miles around, the only sign of life were the miles long electricity cables running off to Tsagaan Nuur (White Lake) in the distance.

After our trip to Tsagaan Nuur had been postponed from our first weekend to the second, it almost was canceled again, after Hulan wasn't able to get in touch with Bakir. However, Thursday evening, Hulan gave us a call that in fact we were still going, but a day later as planned.
Tsagaan Nuur, a small village some 25km from the Russian border mostly inhabited by Kazakhs, is typical for many of the larger(!) settlements in Mongolia. Most households send out their children early in the morning to collect water from the well in the middle of the town, but we stayed at one of the richer families, meaning that although we had a water pipe coming in, there still was no shower and the toilet was a shack in the garden over a big hole that, in the spring's sun, was already starting to reek unpleasantly. Bakir's parents own a very large, at least to European standards, plot of land where several herders farm their animals and they themselves grow wheat. Additionally, the own a farm and are planning on making cheese in the near future.
I asked Bakir, Muslim, how he could pay his respects at an ovoo (a shamanistic offering location) like regular Mongolians. His reply was a nice variation of 'When in Rome…': 'I drank the country's water, I should follow it's customs'.

On the second day of our visit, after starting the day by emptying two bottles of arkhi (vodka), we visited some herders, rode a horse, had lunch prepared on the banks of the Selenge river and tried our hands at shooting empty bottles of vodka.
The visit to one of the richer herding families in the area was very interesting. Rich, here, is related to the number of animals a family owns. We were welcomed into a small ger where the men had to sit on the right and the women on the left, the entrance of the ger facing south. After the host offered us his snuffbox for some tobacco, we were giving milky tea made from blocks of ice, heating in the ger's central stove, together with small hardened blocks of curd. The couple's most important possessions were located on a small alter, in the back of the ger: two frames with pictures, an old Russian radio, the snuffbox and some small paraphernalia. The old man, after lighting a cigarette, told about his livestock, his pasture grounds and his family, flicking the ashes from his cigarette with his fingers. The biggest, and only, sign of any modern advantages being used by the couple, were the solar panels delivering electricity for the radio and the one light bulb, allowing for more productive and longer days.

In the evening, the 'boys' (that is, the geeks) went together with the 'men' (three locals, including Bakir) to hunt for deer. All in the comfort of a car, using a flashlight and shooting from one of the windows. The -20C outside temperature still required four layers, gloves and a good hat to brave the cold. The women were not allowed to join and Claudia, together with Hulan and Bakir's mum went crazy at home, downing several bottles of arkhi, smoking heavily and teaching each other Dutch, Kazakh and Mongolian songs.
We were successful in shooting deer. A fairly young and pregnant deer was first crippled and fatally wounded on a second shot. Custom demanded that we had to drink the deer's blood, mixed with Arkhi and even Ryan, a vegetarian, joined in the feast. Not that it was a very welcoming drink; the thick chunks of blood, mixed with the 40% alcohol made for a, well, interesting combination.

The nights were spent on the floor in communal bedrooms. One for the women, one for the men. I had the honor of using what seemed to be the only bed in the house but happily traded a spot on the floor with Henry for our second night. Not that it was all that bad since the continuous refilling of our shot glasses made us sleep as fast as possible, only being awakened by Bakir's mum singing in the morning.

Got to work

April 17, 2003 • Blog

World » Mongolia » Ulaan Baatar » Dotmaker office

I finally did some real work today. In about five minutes, I explained to my counterpart how to use ASPmail to send emails from a website. I think he got it!

The past week I haven’t put much time into my partner business. One reason is the Mongolian way of doing business, the other is the inconvenience that the Dotmaker office is waiting to move to a different building. However, there’s still some other company occupying the new offices.
Many Mongolians carry a GSM and although this is a luxury item, it really isn’t. Nobody seems to be able to make or keep appointments, so everyone has to call each other all the time to adjust or postpone agreements earlier made. I did bring my own GSM but for the time being decided against getting a local phone number, I just didn’t want to be too reachable. Now, however, it does seem to be useful. Yesterday, I basically waited by the phone all day for a phone call from my counterpart that never came.

We still haven’t finalized the work plan for Dotmaker. This was supposed to happen tomorrow, however, after the trip into the countryside was canceled yesterday, it now is scheduled again and we’re leaving tomorrow morning. So, for the time being, still no work plan.
Dotmaker seems to be eager to go into offshore business and it seems Amaraa, my counterpart, considers me the holy grail for this objective. Although I’d be happy to help him with this, it wasn’t part of the original plan and, what is much more, this generally isn’t something you can ‘just’ accomplish in a couple of months. Most certainly not in today’s economy.

Meanwhile, virtually everyone is wearing mouthcaps because of SARS. Two days ago, I tried visiting the other geeks at their jobs but at Claudia her place, a small woman banned access for me, Soviet style because I wasn’t wearing a mask. However, the six people that are now suspected of SARS are still only that, suspected.
This morning, BBC World announced that ‘they’ are now certain SARS is nothing more then a cousin of the common cold. Each year, hundreds if not thousands of people die of a common cold so, in effect, a handful of people are suspected of having a cold and the whole country starts wearing surgical masks.

And, finally, I had my first phone interview yesterday with Radio Rijnmond. They had tried to contact me a number of times already, but hadn’t been successful in contacting me yet.

Circus, ballet and (not) a stripclub

April 15, 2003 • Blog

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World » Mongolia » Ulaan Baatar » Steppe Inne

Friday was going to be the first real day at work where we had to discuss the work plan submitted by our counterparts and adjust it where possible. We had planned to call it an early night the day before, but were very unsuccessful. I was dead tired on Friday morning, but still had to make the appropriate changes to the work plan AND meet USAID representatives and the American ambassador in the morning.
I managed and arrived at DotMaker at 4 o'clock. To only find a closed door.

In the evening we partied again. It's such a hard life, isn't it. We started at the Steppe Inne, a bar open once a week on the grounds of the UK embassy. We were hoping to meet some guys and gals of our age, but were surprised to find the average age to be over 50. Still, it wasn't totally fruitless since I met one of the UB hashers there.
After eating at the 'French restaurant', which wasn't very spectacular nor really French, Hulan took us to River Sound, a reasonable club with some good and some bad live music. The best part of the evening, without a doubt, was the cat fight that lasted for minutes. The joy of arkhi.

Ryan had his mind set at going to a strip club on Saturday. Although no one had real objections, except for Ryan, no one was really in the mood for it. Originally, the plan was to visit the Russian circus that had come to town, but we were too late to get tickets. The strip club that was supposed to be right next to the Chinggis Club Ryan dragged us to didn't exist, so the saturday evening turned out to be fairly quiet.
Having set my mind on the circus, I was able to get tickets for the Sunday afternoon show, getting the best tickets in the rather small building: on the first row, right in the middle. I vaguely remembering going to a circus when I was four and I believe this was the very first reprise.
It was a lot of fun, although it wasn't all clean fun, with a boxing kangeroo, monkey's performing tricks and a rather stressed out zebra. Still, the dancing chicks were lovely and the trapeze artist was quite amazing. The clowns too did very well with the kids in the circus.

On Saturday, I had visited two good museums; the National Museum of Mongolian History and the Zanabazar Museum of Fine Arts. I did remember that Amidalah's headdress (from Star Wars) was modeled on something out of real life, but to see the actual headdress in the History Museum as a cultural item of the Khalkh ethnic group was quite a surprise. The museum has an outstanding collection of national dresses and some are truly fantastic.
The Fine Arts museum is also enjoyable, among other things because of the paintings 'One Day in Mongolia' and 'The Airag Feast' by B. Sharav. At first sight, both paintings show a multitude of cultural events on each fairly large canvas, but on closer inspection, many of the events involve sexual acts, vomiting and S&M.
If you�re wondering, the name 'B. Sharav' is not misspelled. It's the way names are written down here, where the first name is more important than the family name. This is a result from Soviet influence in the 1920s, when the use of clan names was abolished. Only in the 90s were clan names allowed again when some 20% of the population claimed the Ghenggis Khan clan name. Mongolia's only cosmonaut went for the name 'Cosmos'.

Not knowing when we would have the time again to satisfy our inner cultural needs, I tried to push Henry and Claudia to visit the ballet scheduled for the night after we went to the circus. They didn't go and Henry and Claudia opted instead for a bottle of vodka right next to the theater. When I came back, Claudia was almost unable to walk.
The show was very good, although it was sad that less then half of the theater was occupied. A stark contrast with the sold out circus. The ballet was a one-off, the circus was doing a total of ten shows in UB.

A worrying sight is the increased number of people using mouthcaps, afraid of acquiring SARS. Last week, the first two cases of SARS were recorded in Inner Mongolia, the Chinese province just across the border and I learned today, from another Dutch guy who's currenlty living in Mongolia that here already five cases of SARS have been reported. Not a good thing.

Web awards

Today, I had the honors of grading the nominees for the 2003 Mongolian web awards. Most of the nominees weren't very impressive, but some were very good. Most notably, a reference on Mongolian sign languages, a dating site and a compendium of tutorials in Mongolian on using Photoshop. The awards ceremony is scheduled for next week.

Some more bars

April 14, 2003 • Blog

World » Mongolia » Ulaan Baatar » Steppe Inne

Yep, we’re still going strong and over the past couple of days, we have visited a good number of new pubs and restaurants. Here they are:

Steppe Inne

On the grounds of the English embassy, this bar which opens up every Friday afternoon is THE place to meet fellow expats. Claudia and I were there early and, unfortunately, had no choice but to talk to an older Dutch couple who also happened to be in town. Surprisingly, you pay for your drinks either in USD or Tugrik, with an exchange rate of 1500 Tugrik for the dollar. When I asked why they weren’t accepting Euros, I got the reply that the UK wasn’t part of the monetary union. Me pointing out that it wasn’t part of the USA either didn’t generate an intelligent response.
Bob hooked me up here with a hasher, but it turns out that the UB hash only runs from roughly May till September. Furthermore, the average age of the patrons was much higher than we expected, with only very few people of our age.

French restaurant

Definitely an escapist place, the manager of the place was the first black guy we met in UB. The cook, luckily, was French who mostly did fusion dishes (I had yak cheese in my starter). The food wasn’t bad, but quite bland, not extremely interesting. Considering the prices we had to pay for it, not a restaurant worth visiting often.

River sounds

A club more than anything else, Hulan had made reservations up front which allowed us a booth to sit in. The live music ranged from very good to downright annoying although the best show of the evening where a group of girls who got into a catfight.
It’s worth checking this place out, although it’s amazing that any Mongolians visit the place, considering the 5000T cover charge. A programmer in Mongolia earns about 100.000T per month.

Indian American Italian restaurant

Close to where we live, as you can guess by the name, this restaurant doesn’t really limit itself to one particular kitchen. The food was good and affordable.

Chenggis Khan club

Next to the Chenggis Khan brewery, this place is docorated like a German style beer hall. They serve reasonable and cheap pub food with, you’ve guessed it, Chinggis.

Sapphire

This Thai restaurant is on the expensive side, but very good. Nice and spicy and a large selection of dishes make for a very good experiences. Henry tried out the two Thai words he knew on the waitresses, but they turned out to be plain Mongolian.
We wanted to know what ‘White devil’ would be translated into Mongolian and asked the manager, a goodlooking, fairly good English speaking girl. She didn’t know but handed us a dictionary to look it up. Before we knew it, we were drinking Chinggis vodka with her in the German pub next door.

Khanbrau bar

Yet another German pub, this place is crazy about Khanbrau. Not that we tasted anything since, by now, we’ve realised it’s better to stick with vodka, any vodka. I’m really surprised that I still haven’t woken up with a hangover.
As mentioned, Byamba (the girl from Sapphire) joined us shortly after we arrived here and couldn’t stop saying how fantastic it was we let her practice her English with us. She wanted to repay the debt and teach us Mongolian. Henry, however, was more interesting in her Russian, which she spoke very well. Besides her Russian, Mongolian and English, she could also manage in Japanese. Very impressive.

Some place close to Churchill’s

After the Khanbrau bar closed its doors, Byamba took us to what I think was Churchill’s. Taking a cab, we waited in the car while she checked if the bar was still open. Interesting, since all shutters and doors were already closed. The bar wasn’t, though. Good to know that, apparently, bars stay open even if they might appear closed.

In my memory

Serving anything from hamburgers to sushi, this is a good place to have lunch.

Pubs and restaurants

April 12, 2003 • Blog

World » Mongolia » Ulaan Baatar » Los Bandidos

As I mentioned, we’ve already seen quite a couple of restaurants and pubs from the inside by now. Here’s an overview of the ones weґve been to.

Millie’s

Without a doubt, the most popular expat hangout we’ve seen. So popular, in fact, that we’ve already been there three times. During lunch, you have to get in early or forget about a table.
They do serve good breakfast and lunch though.

Marco Polo

First considering going native on our first night and splurging on a multitude of fat, we went for a pizza place instead. Located close to Millie’s the interior is decorated like some dark brown Bavarian hunting lodge. Still, they are showing Rai Uno and serve what is supposedly the best pizza in town.
The tiny waitress seemed to float across the room, moving from table to table and giggling away happily at our sorry attempts at Mongolian.

Cafe Sacher

On our first night in UB, Claudia and I finished off with some central European cakes and coffee in another rather Germanized setting. The sacher torte didn’t really totally taste like sacher, but still. What can you expect if Vienna is some 10.000km away.

Amtat Bulag

Our first try at a Mongolian restaurant resulted in a strange mix of Mongolian, Korean, Chinese, Russian and Hungarian. Prices were low, service was quite good and the beer was cold. What else can you wish for.
It was here that we first discussed working on Geekhalla and Ryan started drawing out complete sidemaps as possessed by some web god. Then again, maybe it was the food.

Appollon Art Pub

Located right next to the Chinggis Jazz Pub, this bar seemed mostly to be frequented by Mongolians, of which some were real babes. We drank till late on the first night all geeks were together and had the best of times.
The place itself is kind of awkward, with copies of works by several great modern artists painted on the wall and one area totally devoted to Beatles memorabilia.

Los Bandidos

This restaurant, which serves a mix of Mexican and Indian food, is hidden inside a block of apartments close to where we live. Surprisingly, the mix works really well. I ate here together with Henry and Ryan, Claudia being taken out by the director of the second company she will be working for.
They served lassi and reasonably peppered dishes, something that’s a real exception here in UB.

Chinggis Jazz Pub

We had been warned that this Chinggis pub was not a jazz pub at all, but it wasn’t so bad. Not only are the walls covered in memorabilia typical for a jazz pub, they in fact also played some jazz. That is, when we came in. Shortly after, they moved to 80s classics. Something we enjoyed even more.

Khan Torkh Bier Garten

The first place we found that served Khan bier. All the others seem to be doing Chinggis. Not that I tasted any, but still. We’re drinking a lot each evening, and I feel uncomfortable with the bloating feeling the liters generally give, so here too I stuck with local arkhi.
Although in summer the place has an outside terrace, the dungeon it’s located in felt more like a money laundering place then anything else. We assumed we were their first customers since the previous group of geeks.

Serpicon

The food was good, although on the expensive side. I enjoyed a good ‘sheper’ salad with some lovely soft feta-like cheese.

‘Bar’, right across from where Claudia and I live

We were attracted to the place by the many blinking Christmas lights hanging in the windows. Something we’ve noticed more often in Ulaan Baatar. There seemed to be a small restaurant downstairs and a darkish kitchen like room on the first floor, serving as a bar. The export vodka was good enough for us to stay late and discuss the positives and negatives of Mongolians not paying for many of their software licenses. Ryan was totally against the locals using the ripped versions and thought they should pay licensing fees on their copies of Windows, Office and others. The rest figured that considering the situation they are in, nobody should complain about their pirated copies, which in turn leads to better market share for products like Windows and Office in the long run anyway.

Chez Bernard European Bakery

Nothing French about this coffee place close to our apartment serving mediocre, but filtered, coffee, bland but reasonable quiches, good curry and enjoyable sandwiches. The small interior consists of light brown wooden tables, chairs and some benches and would have fit well in any mid-sized European town.
The local very slim girls spoke enough English for us to communicate what we wanted.

Give me some sleeep

April 11, 2003 • Blog

World » Mongolia » Ulaan Baatar » American embassy

I’ve decided to let money not stand in the way of fun during my first week in Mongolia and it seems all geeks agree on this one. The only real exceptions are Bob and Henry, who both are on a more relaxed budget due to various reasons and basically can spend whatever they like.
The result is that we’ve been eating and drinking out a lot over the past couple of days. Even yesterday, when we all had planted on going to bed early, we couldn’t resist the temptation of another arkhi and another arkhi and another arkhi and another…
Since we still do have something of a schedule to adhere to, we have to get out of bed early each and every day. I’m looking forward to the weekend.

Today we had to sit through a speech by the American ambassador. We’ve been having a lot of contact with people from the American embassy and I had been wondering why. It seems we’ve got three different contact points within the embassy, of which Hulan is one. Yesterday, I finally learned why. USAID, a US government sponsored international development program, is the sole sponsor of this second group of geeks in Mongolia. I’m not sure if USAID is behind IESC or that USAID has sponsored IESC (and therefore Geekcorps) on this one occasion only.
The result of this setup is that we ‘are here because it is in the interest of America’. The exact thing I wouldn’t be hot about, being anywhere doing anything. I wondered for a moment if, would I have known upfront, I would still have agreed on going to Mongolia, but I probably would have. The experience itself will hopefully be worth it by far.

Web awards

I’ve been asked to act as a juror for the 2003 Mongolian web awards. No clue as to what this will really mean, but next Monday, I have to spend a couple of hours judging some twenty websites in three categories.

Geeks and car accidents

April 09, 2003 • Blog

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World » Mongolia » Ulaan Baatar » On the street

Monday was used for relaxing. The trip had worn us out quite a bit and the time difference didn't help either. At first, Claudia and I considered calling up Henry to get a beer with, but we decided against it. It would have to wait for the next day.

On Tuesday, Claudia and I both went to our businesses for the first time. We only were given two hours since Hulan, our IESC contact, had reserved the afternoon for an informal geek get together at the American embassy. The embassy is located a bit out of the center, close to the ring road and hidden from view. According to Bob, the senior volunteer who already lived in UB, the Americans are moving many of their embassies to smaller buildings at more out of the way locations. Security was fierce. We had to leave all our electronics, including cell phones, at the door. The Americans got passes that allowed them in the building where as Claudia and I got passes that only allowed us in the building if escorted.

Driving to the embassy from Millie's, where we had lunch together, we got into a car accident. I was sitting in front of the second car with a seatbelt that didn't work. Just after leaving I realised that this was not the time to get into an accident, since I always wear a seatbelt. But alas, some crossroads along the way, the first car of geeks was rammed from the side, lost speed, resulting in us bumping into them again. Nothing serious, everyone was ok.
The next morning, Bob, who wasn't with us at Millie's and therefore didn't get into the accident there, got into his own accident when his car was rammed from the back.
Needless to say, Mongolians are great drivers. They're avoiding millions of accidents a day. It's surprising only so little happens, considering the sheer chaos on the roads.

Geeks and businesses

Two years ago, in Ghana, I suppose I possibly had the best project of the group. This time, it seems I've got the biggest challenge. Henry is going to do consulting on network and information security at what seems to be the most modern bank in the country, Golomt Bank, with a staff of 250. Ryan is working at a smaller bank, where he's going to work on an application that should facilitate currency exchange. Bob has been placed at NewTech, a consulting firm itself, where he's going to work on marketing and sales. Claudia works together with two printing businesses of reasonable size.
Dotmaker, my company, is run by one guy who only speaks a little bit of English. His four, or so, employees all seem to be students who work part time out of the tiny office accross the street from Claudia's Tod Mongol. None of the students speak English. On top of that, the building DotMaker is located in will be renovated, supposedly starting next week, and the business will have to move to a new location.
Claudia has an issue too, though: No one except the director of Tod Mongol seems to speak any English.

In true geek fashion, we started work on the /m2 geekhalla. Ryan took the lead and he went almost berzerk on it. This man's got plans. He claimed it wasn't going to be much work, so when we asked how long it would take for him to build the framework (he's the only one who even remotely speaks the only programming language we can use on that server), he replied 'six weeks'. This wasn't a joke.

On the positive side, my luggage finally arrived today and yesterday evening, after dropping my camera on the floor by accident, it worked again. My karma seems to have changed for the better.

First impressions

April 08, 2003 • Blog

World » Mongolia » Ulaan Baatar » Shared apartment

Although it can get as cold as -60 celcius in Mongolia, we only had a mild -6 on arrival. By the time we were driving away from the airport, the sun had already come through the clouds and temperature had gone above zero.

Surprisingly, many good restaurants seem to exist in town. It’s hard to believe these only live from expat money since, according to Hulan, there are at most 1000 expats in Ulaan Baator.
Driving around town, we were shown some of the important buildings in the center, ranging from the Russian embassy to the state circus.
We noticed several people wearing mouthcaps, including some personell at the airport. But when I asked Hulan about the country its stance towards SARS, she said that it wasn’t an issue at all at the moment.
Still, here people were actually wearing the masks. At Schiphol airport, we had seen large metal containers, ‘SARS kits’, near the doctor’s office, but nobody was wearing mouthcaps in Holland.

The city itself looks rather nice. It’s clear the town is relatively new and was mainly build by soviet architects. The wide boulevards and the social realist buildings reminded me of cities like Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg in Russia. The city has many statues and monuments but was is most striking is that the city is surrounded on all sides by snow covered mountains.

As far as the people are concerned, I’m not really sure what makes people particularly Mongolian. If anything, people seem to be a mixture of Japanese, Chinese and Korean. Then again, exactly that combination may be unique to Mongolia.

Not the best start

April 07, 2003 • Blog

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World » Mongolia » Ulaan Baatar » Marco Polo

While flipping through the pages of my Lonely Planet guide for Mongolia, I came accross a picture of my girlfriend. I'm not really sure if I had put it there myself, so I chose to believe she had, to surprise me. I loved it.

The plane we had, flying to Ulaan Baator from Moscow seated 7 people in each row and was filled for maybe two thirds. We had inflight movies and the food was good. The flight from Amsterdam to Moscow was on a small, completely booked, plane with bad food and no inflight shows. The trip to Moscow was with KLM, to Ulaan Baator with MIAT.
The only thing that worried me on the MIAT flight were the heavily shaking luggage compartments in the middle of the airplane during take off.

Reading through the guide, I was impressed by the cultural richness of Mongolia. The things we have to take into account when meeting people! Never touch another man's hat, sleep with your feet towards the door, don't whistle indoors.

Although the flights went relatively easy, not everything went as smoothly. Before flying out, I had visited the doctor's office at Schiphol for what I believed was a beginning ear infection. The doctor couldn't find anything but over the course of the day things did get worse, to the point where I couldn't even put my teeth together anymore because of too much pain in my right jaw. Luckily, now, some 12 hours after arrival, the pain is slowly subsiding.

We were welcomed at the airport by many women dressed in a uniform probably designed by a man with a fetish for dominatrixes. Dark green uniforms with short skirts and knee high boots with high heels. Lovely.
Less lovely, however, was the loss of my luggage. Claudia was stressed for her bicycle arriving (yes she brought a bike), but that arrived without a hassle. My backpack, complete with some 20 books, all my clothes, a laptop and, ohmygod, my cigars, never showed up on the luggage belt.
A clerk had me fill in a form after he told me that probably the bag would come in the next day. When I asked what would happen if the bag wouldn't arrive he said "I don't know, that has never happened". His remark didn't really assure me.

After getting through customs, Hulan, our Geekcorps contact in Mongolia, was waiting for us at arrivals. She had come in with two other people, our contacts at the companies Claudia and I would be working with.
We were invited to breakfast at Millie's, which was good. What was less good was that at Claudia her company, apparantly no-one speaks English or German. The people at my company seem to know a small bit of English. How will it be possible to do a skills transfer smoothly then?

And on top of it all, my digital camera seems to have broken down.

Radio killed the video star

April 03, 2003 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Rotterdam » Radio Rijnmond studio

Yep, Baba made it into ‘mainstream’ media again. In fact, if all goes well (and what is there to stop it?), I will have a weekly on-air update on my findings in Mongolia on Salon.com (not the American one), the weekly radio show on Radio Rijnmond by the media doctors from gwrrf. Sounds confusing? Check any of the links.

As these things go, I was only interviewed for three minutes. But hey, at least it was live! Later, I was told I occasionally ‘ehm, eh ehm’-ed like Femke Halsema did in her interviews shortly after she became the lead candidate for ‘Groen Links’. You can’t have them all. At least not immediately, I guess.
Duco, a friend with whom I ran in the national elections of last January was waiting when we left the studio. Briefly, I had visions of hundreds, nay thousands, of female groupies awaiting my arrival, any arrival, in the very near future.

Radio and visa

March 31, 2003 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Delft » Home

Today, together with Claudia, who also will be going to Mongolia, I got my visa from the Mongolian Embassy in Brussels. Yes, this meant we had to drive for 200 kilometers to just get a stamp, and pay for it.

Apparently, the previous group of geeks going to Mongolia had had quite a bit of trouble obtaining their visas. Now we came prepared, with letters of recommendation from our partner business, an IESC contact in Mongolia, a contact at the American Embassy in Mongolia and a letter from Geekcorps. We entered the embassy and left with our stamps only minutes later. Not, however, because we had all those documents with us but because they ‘had gotten instructions’ to issue single entry visas to us immediately. The first group of geeks in Mongolia had had so many problems with their visas since they were issued single entry visas.

On a different note, last week I got a call from an old acquaintance who now hosts a show on IT and IT people in the region of Rotterdam. Some months ago, he interviewed me, mostly because of my love for travelling and now my voice will be broadcast live into the homes of approximately 60.000 homes, discussing the possibilities of IT abroad and volunteering in this line of business. I guess the main question is, ‘How much can I advertise my own company?’

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