ulaanbaanjo

Son of Ulaanbaanjo

2008-04-02T21:41:00.001Z

Routes Nomades - France 2008

2008-03-06T21:51:00.003Z

Whilst the Liverpool date is still unlikely, lovers of Khoomei should remember that Europe is only an Easyjet away and Routes Nomades now have the dates for the French performances of Tserendavaa and Tsogtgerel online.

As consolation, Europe's capital of culture can look forward to a visit by the utterly inimitable Mike West and Katie Euliss - the phenomenal Truckstop Honeymoon, who will be performing at the Walk the Plank theatre boat in Canning Dock on Thursday 22nd May, tickets probably to be on sale at Probe and Frets soonish. As the great Chinggis Khan himself would probably say, this is a concert that you cannot afford to miss.

Ulaanbaanjo junkies who have been sending me literally several messages demanding that I start blogging again may well be among the upwards of four people to have clicked onto the ineffable delights of According to the Ninth, wherein I ruminate, cogitate and pontificate on various subjects assisted by 23 tattered volumes and the index of the 9th Edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica. People are already likely to be starting to say that According to the Ninth represents a new and hitherto unanticipated pinnacle of excellence in the field of arbitrary opinionationizing. Chinggis, Khublai, Danzan Ravjaa and all the Wrathful Deities would doubtless join me in urging you to read According to the Ninth right now, without any forbearance or delay.

Mongolian Invasion Update

2008-02-25T15:05:00.003Z

This update would ideally have been published about 4 months ago. I have been making efforts to arrange for a Liverpool performance by the traditional Mongolian musicians Tserendavaa and Tsogtgerel, to take place on or around Saturday 3rd May 2008.

Unfortunately, this has proven more difficult than I may have imagined, and whilst a venue has been secured (the excellent Walk the Plank theatre boat currently moored at Canning Dock), it is looking unlikely that visas for the performers will be secured, owing largely to the cost.

There is every chance that Routes Nomades will be arranging another tour in 2009, when hopefully I will have the finances to put the event on myself.

Many thanks to those people who have offered their support, and my apologies to any scousers wishing to learn throat-singing.

Home

2007-09-11T11:51:00.000Z

Somehow, I eventually managed to get out of Mongolia, although in the process I've had to leave my wife behind, in the hope that the British Embassy will grant her a visa once I have secured employment in the UK (which, fingers crossed, will be sometime early next week). I find I have no enthusiasm at all to write about the process of applying for a Settlement Visa at this stage in proceedings, so will spare you that particular joy. If the application is refused then it looks like I'll be returning to Mongolia a little sooner than planned.

As far as travelling goes, I'd like to recommend that people avoid having their credit card and driver's license stolen before a long journey - particularly if it's Natwest you bank with. I missed my connection in Moscow (even though the plane from UB landed a full hour before the London plane departed, and even though the arriving and departing gates were only a few hundred yards apart: making a connection in Moscow is not a fun experience) and so arrived in Heathrow at about 10pm. Avis were unable to let me have my car until they could phone the DVLA in the morning to confirm my driver's license details. Their shuttle bus driver kindly drove me to what he figured would be the cheapest hotel by the airport: I found myself reluctant, however, to take a standard room at £250 a night, and so dragged my bags and banjo and made my way over to Heathrow Police Station, happily close by, with the hopes of being allowed to sit out the night on a bench, or at least to report the criminal hotel rates in the vicinity. As with most British police stations, the door turned out to be locked at night, with no bell, phone number nor any other way of rousing the diligent occupants. After sitting on top of my bags beneath a security camera by the door for half an hour, I eventually decided to go find a likely hedge somewhere. Not too far away was what I took to be some kind of circular electricity sub station or something (a sign the next morning revealed it to be the "Customs House Escape Shaft")- its low hedge provided cover from the road and the gravel path made a bed as soft as any I'd slept in these past few weeks. Here I was, after spending nine months in the land of nomads, (and returning to take a job working with the homeless) - my first night back in England, staring up at the moon on this mild night, with Orion and more stars visible than expected so close to the airport's soothing orange glow.

Last days

2007-09-02T06:42:00.000Z

Playing the waiting game now - hoping to get Mrs Ulaanbanjo's visa sorted next week, but we're at the mercy of the Embassy here. Things haven't been helped by having my credit card nicked, which was my only means of withdrawing cash here. Natwest kindly stepped to the breach and offered me an emergency cash transfer - 48 hours later they tell me that for a $130 fee they can wire me $80 from my account - thanks Natwest!

Had a very nice time staying with inlaws at a mining town between UB and the Terelj park. I finally took an opportunity to ride a camel, although it was a bit of a humiliating let down - being led round a fence by a little girl, I decided not to go round a second time. Managed to fit in a less touristy activity by going to see a comedy variety show at the Culture Palace, which, for the little I could follow, was very entertaining.

Was turfed out of my accommodation a week early by my former employers at the school (thankyou!) - it being the height of the tourist season we've had an interesting search for accommodation in the city - stayed a few nights at a charming fleapit near the black market for $10 a night but have finally fond a very nice, clean, disco-less hotel just by the Embassy (I think it's called 'Hotel Anna' or something) - $20 a night for a spacious double.

This may be my last post from Ulaanbaatar itself depending on when we escape - I'll try and wrap things up with my final profound observations once back in the UK - thankyou for reading!

Goat Horhog

2007-08-21T12:54:00.000Z

Sunday 19th August
Having spent so much time being rattled around in vans but having had such a wonderful time in Kharkhorin and the neighbourhood, we decided to postpone our return to UB for one more day's rattle. Enkhbold drove us by Russian jeep to Ugiin Nuur - Lake Ugiin which, although 90-odd km off, had a good road all the way.

We stopped firstly at the ger of Enkhbold's father, Peljee, a herder who lives a short way out of Kharkhorin. I was very excited when, after entering, Peljee and one of his other sons got out their snuff bottles, so that I was able to get out my own and exchange bottles in the traditional manner with my host. Each person holds their bottle (with the top slightly opened) resting between the four fingers of their right hand, this is then passed into the palm of the other, as their bottle is received in your palm. As with offering anything in Mongolia, the left hand also supports the right arm, as giving is always done two-handedly. You take a pinch of their tobacco or just sniff at the open lid if you prefer (which I opted for, not wishing to blow my cool by sneezing) and then the bottle is handed back, again with the top partly open. Well, it was a proud moment for me, anyhow, only marred by having taken my bottle out of a plastic bag rather than an embroidered pouch.

We were treated to milk tea, of course, and also a big pan of clotted cream to spread on bread, which was very good indeed. We then said our 'daraa ulzii's with the promise to return for goat horhog that evening.

En route for the lake we also stopped to visit a site where I neglected to take any notice of the fairly wordy signs erected by a joint Turkish-Mongolian project - as a result I am not sure if what we visited was the site of the Bugut stone - sort of the 'Rosetta Stone' of the Turkic-Mongol period, or if it wa just a replica, or indeed something else. It doesn't look much like the photos on this informative webpage, so is either a replica or a very sorry job of reconstruction. The area does look like a burial site, although is presently a building site, with a wall in construction around it to make for a visitor centre/pilgrimage site. If this is the site of the Bugut stone, a very important historical artifact, then it's frankly a mess, but it may well be that it's something else.

Ugiin Nuur is big and broad, and we arrived in perfect summer weather for a swim, which I did alone as most Mongolians don't. The water is very pure, and is filled with fish. It seems to be a popular spot on tour itineries, probably owing to the good road from Kharkhorin and the novelty of open water in Mongolia. After the journey from UB to Kharkhorin I'm distinctly less inclined to head out to Lake Hovsgul next week, as it would be torture to endure days of jolting bus travel for only a few days visit.

Refreshed by a swim, we now headed back to Peljee's ger. We stopped on the way to visit cousins of Enkhbold, who of course served us milk tea and let me ride one of their horses. This was my first experience of a real Mongolian saddle, not as uncomfortable as I'd feared, although ten minutes in it hardly leaves me fit to make any judgement. The stirrups were left high as usual, which made them very high for me, and I would not have been comfortable at a canter to say the least.

We were greeted very warmly on our return to Peljee's with another Mongolian cream tea, served with hard scones this time - jam would have completed the experience. Peljee was also very happy to serve me a glass of real Mongolian 'vodka' - a wine-strength clear drink made from cows milk boiled with yoghurt. It looks and tastes pretty much like water, but has a reputation for leaving your head clear whilst getting your legs drunk: everything is fine until you stand up. It's a shame really that Mongolians acquired a taste for the stronger stuff, I think a lot less damage would have been done to society here if people had stuck to the milk vodka.

Various sons, daughters, husbands, wives and grandchildren were also visiting, and everyone helped with preparation for the evening feast. Even me - I walked out and helped to herd up the flock of sheep and goats and drive them from where they were grazing on the open plain half a kilometre away back towards the ger. Once we'd got the flock back they were allowed to wander off again - except for one unfortunate healthy fellow, who was very deftly separated from his fellows. Peljee wrestled the goat firmly onto plastic sheeting on the ground by the ger, turned the animal over and pinned down its rear legs with a leg of his own while his son Enkhbold held its head and forelegs. It let out one long, unnervingly human groan of despair, but that was all. Once restrained Peljee took out his knife and made a short neat cut in the goat's belly. I was curious because I had expected the animal to be despatched with a hammer blow or something, as all I knew about animal slaughter in Mongolia was that they don't cut the throat - traditionally they don't spill the animal's blood. Indeed, no blood was spilled here, Peljee thrust his hand into the goat's insides, and with a look of concentration felt around, I guess until he found the goat's heart and stopped the flow of blood. Throughout this the goat became increasingly relaxed, but it was some minutes before it died. The heart or something was removed and left exposed on the beast's belly, and it no longer needed restraining for its final moments.

I can well understand people who become vegetarians after watching the proceedings in a slaughterhouse, but I wonder if anyone could be persuaded the other way on witnessing this approach? Mongolians are pretty much the polar opposites of vegans, the diet being almost entirely milk and dairy, but the traditional way of life here has such an affinity with the livestock, which live such a free life until they're needed in the pot. As I have previously remarked, Mongolians are repulsed by the notion of eating lamb or any baby animal.

Anyhow, such thoughts turning in my mind, I took up the invitation to borrow Peljee's horse and ride out onto the plain, which being my first time alone on a horse I enjoyed a lot, even though the plain was too big and night too close to do anything more than go out and come back. I did get to make my way, or rather make the horse make its way, over a ditch twice, which felt like an achievement.

Back at the ger night began to fall, and from nowhere a strong wind blew up. Two of Peljee's grandsons were outside butchering the goat and had to transfer their operations indoors. Before too long there were nearly twenty people in the ger, a small 'four wall' ger, but with plenty of room for the party, which became very close and convivial. Peljee remained sat on the floor and was the very paternal focus of the evening, telling humorous tales and explaining for me via my wife various Mongolian traditions.

The storm quickly developed, rain lashed down and thunder and lightning played. Through the open door of the ger this was very dramatic - and using the open toilet facilities some way from the ger this was very dramatic indeed. Inside the butchering was eventually finished, and the horhog was prepared. Stones had been placed in the stove fire which had been stoked up high, these were now taken out and, red-hot, placed with tongs in a tall pressure cooker. In the bottom were a few pints of water, so steam quickly rose, and more stones and the whole of the goat flesh were added. Meanwhile the intestines were being filled with blood for sausages to be enjoyed on some future occasion. Once the pot was full it was placed on top of the stove, to cook for about an hour. Meantime, Peljee entertained us with a story of how a cooker had once exploded when he was making horhog, but that the burns on his leg had been healed by applying dog's blood, on the advice of an old woman. I would have prefered to hear this story sat further away from the stove, or at least wearing trousers rather than shorts.

We each took a turn singing a song, for which the reward was a shot of vodka. As always, and particularly in the warm and crowded ger, the Mongolian singing was deeply moving.

At last the food was ready. A few burnt bits of meat were at the top, but the rest seemed perfectly cooked. It was piled high on a big metal tray, and the greasy hot stones placed aside to be picked up and thrown from hand to hand, and held under armpits and against the brow for as long as we were able, for the well-regarded health benefits of this treatment. It is invigorating, and also a good way to acquire eau de goat.

The soup was served after the stones had cooled beyond efficacy, and was absolutely delicious - very rich and with a slight burnt taste that didn't detract from the flavour. The wife and I also got to eat most of the half dozen or so potatoes that'd been included with the goat, before taking the meat itself. It was very good, didn't quite drop off the bone the way the beef horhog I'd eaten way back in the winter did, but was very fine nonetheless, and even I managed to find the fat tasty.

A few more vodka toasts were drunk, and I promised to return one winter, when Peljee has promised me we will hunt wolf. We left under the most incredible night sky I have ever seen - clear overhead, with the milky way showing a thick, billowing band across a studded vault of stars, and yet on three quarters of the horizon lightning still flashing every few seconds from dark, distant clouds.

More photos at Flickr

Orkhon River Valley

2007-08-21T07:32:00.000Z

Saturday 18th August
Today we made a trip up the Orkhon River Valley. As I have previously mentioned, the valley is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and probably the cradle of Mongolia's nomadic culture. It's a wide valley - 10km or more for much of its length, and there are no roads only dirt trails. Owing to volcanic activity in the distant past it's something of a bumpy journey.

We travelled by Russian ATV again, accompanied by most of the family this time, with the object of visiting Tuvkhuun monastery and Ulaan Tsutgalan waterfall. The Orkhon valley is incredibly beautiful, and after the overcast weather yesterday, we had wonderful blue skies and billowing cloud today - which lit the lush greens of the valley and the dark volcanic rock beautifully. The valley is a very popular destination for horse-trekking and I think there can hardly be a finer place on the planet for it - there are mountains, rocks and boulders, pine forests, the river itself and the wide plain. It's an absolute paradise of animalkind - of course there are herds of horses, sheep, goats, cows and yaks wandering freely, but we also saw dozens of chipmunks, a pair of marmot and at one point our van passed beneath a tumbledown boulder crag on which were perched a golden eagle hanging out with a ruffianly-looking dozen vultures: they stared at us with the nonchalant "who do you think you are?" contempt of cats as we past beneath them, just 30 metres away.

The Russian ATV we travelled in has to be the only other choice of transport for this region (well, apart from going by foot), although we did occasionally pass an ordinary car on the valley plain. Straight out of Kharkhorin we had to ford the Orkhon river which was flowing pretty fast, wide and deep (well, it can't have been much over three feet deep but that feels deep enough). We then followed the river as it flowed underneath rocks and mountains, before crossing out onto the boulder-strewn plain. Russian ATV's are built to take terrific punishment, although they pass a hell of a lot of that on to the passengers too.

After an hour or so we stopped by a stupa out on the plain, while the driver went over to a ger to buy some airag for our journey - he came back with six or eight litres of the finest fermented mare's milk. There was a richer, creamier taste to this airag than that I've tried previously. I like it, but it's hard to match the Mongolian enthusaism, especially during a day in which you might also be drinking a litre or two of milk tea, eating arrul (dried curds) and probably having a healthy supply of vodka too (although I managed to sidestep that duty today). It's no exaggeration to say that milk, meat and flour make up 90% of the rural Mongolian diet. Enkhbold, on being offered pine nuts, would later refuse joking "I only eat meat" - but it was one of those jokes which was in essence just the bare facts.

A good while later and we arrived at our first objective. We parked up the van in some beautiful pine woods, part of a protected area, and walked up a long path intothe forest and up the mountain. Finally we reached the end of the trees, beneath a singular rocky summit: the home of Tunkhuu Monastery. This small place of worship was founded by Mongolia's prime Buddhist 'saint' Zanabazar in the 17th century. There's a small temple - destroyed in the 30s and rebuilt in the 90s - and numerous meditation caves and, supposedly, the foot print of Zanabazar in rock. Very precipitous paths lead up to the caves and the summit - no deterrent at all to the many very elderly pilgrims who determinedly make their way up there. Beneath the summit there's a rock seat, by tradition Zanabazar's favourite spot for meditation during the 30 years he spent here meditating and practicing various skills and arts (including creating the 'soyombo' script, seen on Mongolia's modern state flag). The top of the peak is very flat, and houses a fine ovoo where, according to the sign, nagas or 'hidden spirits' of the mountain are offered prayers and praise - presumably the Buddhist translation of the older Shamanistic worship of the spirit of the place. The views are spectacular.

Some time later we'd made our way down the mountain, where we had a picnic of tinned sardines and airag. Enkhbold and the driver had somehow managed to polish off a bottle of vodka on the way, everyone was in a very jolly mood. We played 'dembee' - a kind of variant on 'paper-scissor-stone' (thumb beats forefinger/forefinger beats middle/middle beats ring/ring beats little/little beats thumb - keep playing until one of you scores a hit). The loser of each round would have to drink a bowlful of airag.

Eventually we got back in the ATV, and left the forest, to head further up-river. The road got rockier, big and small boulders of lava deposited everywhere along the plain. We continued for a good few hours before reaching our final target: Ulaan Tsutgalan, the 'Red Flood'. The waterfall was very impressive, pouring 27metres down into a steep sided canyon, created by a combination of erosion and the long-ago volcanic activity. After admiring the view from very close to the edge on the top, we made our way down into the canyon, to pose for photos at the bottom of the falls, and submerge our heads in the cool water. More photos at the top and a drink of the fresh-tasting Orkhon, before getting back in our vehicle to return the 125km to Kharkhorin.

On the way we went out to visit relatives of our host family, but when we finally got to the corner of the valley where one nomadic family after another had pointed us, we found that the family had long since left for distant pastures. The sun was setting now, and we still had a long way to travel. I have noted that the Orkhon valley is wide and uneven, and that there are no roads, just dirt tracks. In the day time it's easy enough to point your motor in the general direction of a distant landmark, and when the paths diverge, as they do every hundred or so metres, you can see ahead whether the way you're choosing veers off in another heading. This isn't so easy at night time, and in short we got pretty desperately lost on the way back, zigzagging aimlessly making only the most gradual progress. Often the van was bouncing over boulders under a cliff face or across a heavily rutted bit of plain. Before midnight we'd stop and ask the way on at any ger we'd passed - but I guess it breached etiquette to do so once people were in bed. I think we finally made it home about 2am, having taken nearly 8 hours to cross that 120km. We retired aching to bed, to be woken periodically by the dogs fighting outside, so fiercely tonight that the walls of the shack shook.

More pics at Flickr

Kharkhorin

2007-08-21T00:46:00.000Z

Thursday 17th to Friday 18th August 2007
Ulaanbaatar to Kharkhorin by microbus (a compact 11-seater people carrier) costs Tg10,000 - about $9. It's about 360km - the road is being resurfaced for most of its length, so at present the journey takes about 8 hours over bumpy dirt tracks. My wife, her friend Tuya and I were very lucky on our way out as there was only one other passenger on the bus, so we had plenty of room to stretch out - on the return yesterday we weren't so lucky: there ten adults and four kids plus the driver - by no means overcrowded by microbus standards, but with the addition of one tape of the more bombastic Mongolian opera-style music played over and over for the entire journey, reasonably close to purgatory.

We'd set out around 4pm, then had to wait while the bus had an oil change, and didn't get out of UB itself until 6pm. The bus seemed to make pretty good time rocketing along - quite exciting after nightfall, with the headlights sending out beams into the clouds of dust, traffic coming at us and jostling to overtake those headed the same way over the twisting and turning tracks of a six lane dirt highway. Some time in the night we eventually reached a surfaced road again, and I stretched out and dozed off. When I awaoke we were parked outside a tall, irregular wooden fence, Tuya was banging on the gate and dogs all around were barking a protest.

We were staying in Kharkhorin with the family of one of my wife's old college friends. They live on the edge of Kharkhorin, in a yard with a ger, a 'summer cottage' and a little cook house. Through most of the year the family live in the ger, but in the summer they can also use their cottage - a modest, unheated wooden shack furnished, like a ger, with orange painted wooden box-furniture, pictures of wrestling heroes and a small buddhist shrine. Mother and father both work at the local hospital, their youngest son and daughter and the wife's mother all live here together. They have electricity, but of course no running water, and I guess their life is typical of a majority of urban Mongoloians in the country.

Kharkhorin is a city of about 20,000 people, there are no tower blocks, and very few brick buildings at all. It's not a prosperous-looking place, but it's noticeably cleaner than Ulaanbaatar - ramshackle, but without garbage and waste scattered everywhere. Our first morning there the sky was overcast, with light showers of rain, which seemed to suit the dark gritty earth here, and gave the place a fresh feel, reminding me of England's Lake District in typical weather. I love Ulaanbaatar, but after spending so long there it was very refreshing to be in a town that isn't awash with litter, where there isn't the constant blaring of horns and squealing of breaks, nor the pounding of drills and jack-hammers.

We walked to the Erdene Zuu monastery complex. This giant walled complex was once the centre of Buddhism in Mongolia - the first monastery was founded here by Zanabazar, Mongolia's Buddhist 'Renaissance man' of the 16th Century. By the time of the purges of the 1930s there were over 80 temples in the compound - most were destroyed, and the leaders were executed, the older monks disappeared to gulags and the young monks were sent back to their families. Since the 1990s a monastery has been reestablished here, and work continues both in restoring the temple complex and also building a modern school (with hopes for a sports field to "help our lamas win the World Cup in 2010") for the young monks. It's a very worthy project (the monastery also works in the local prison teaching felt craft to inmates and their handiwork can be bought at the monastery shop - the first such program in rehabilitation of offenders that I've heard of in Mongolia) - visit their website at www.erdenezuu.mn.

Later in the afternoon we took a tour round some of the local sights. Firstly we drove upriver a kilometre or two to a weir which standing at the foot of a small mountain ridge that cuts the upper valley out of view from the city makes the gateway for a rather spectacular change of view - the lower river runs swiftly but tamely down a single course, the old valley bed now stony and dry: the upper river bends and forks, leaving dozens of small ox-bow lakes form its twisting, sinuous course, and the valley is lush and green. Ger and herds can be seen here and there off into the distance: it's a breath-taking view of utter beauty, and well worthy of its UNESCO World Heritage status - climbing the mountain, as the view expands there's a strong sense of looking out across the millennia at a scene that is both living and essentially unchanged.

We walked along the ridge back in the direction of the city, circling the ovoo (cairns) we passedthree times, and throwing on three stones. We were headed for an impressive monument of three giant, curving wall friezes, depicting the three great Empires of Mongolia's history - that of the Hun, the Turks and the Mongols. Traders had stalls alongside the monument selling what I will politely call 'replicas' of Mongolian antiques. One trader was particularly keen for me to buy a very shiny cooking pot and stand from the "hunnu period" (5th century AD), but I did happily buy a small snuff bottle, that my host's wife insists is made from resin but I choose to believe is from the rather beautiful and carefully worked 'rare stone' that the trader enthusiastically praised. Anyhow, perhaps to compensate me for my gullibility the family were later to give me a very nice little hand-embroidered pouch to keep it in as a parting gift.

We also drove out to see one of the four stone turtles that mark the limits of ancient Kharkhorin, and the "bodjra" stone - a phallus resting on a grinding stone propped up by a circular stone basin. At both places there were more cheerful traders selling pretty much the identical antiques. The city was usually visible in the distance - ramshackle, with its ger, shacks and wooden faces, but friendly-looking. I like Kharkhorin.

Back at home we entertained ourselves by playing the very popular card game known as "cards", at which my wife and Tuya firmly beat me and my host's young son Nymka, as they were throughout giving each other strategic advice while Nymka and I were unable to convey much without a common language. In revenge I beat my wife convincingly at chess, and in revenge for my letting him down so badly at cards Nymka then defeated me with a humiliating fool's mate after I had thought I was beating him very easily. I've recently rediscovered an enthusiasm for playing chess, which I'd lost interest in as a kid because of being too lazy to improve my game: now the wonder of the net has revealed to me the basics of chess strategy after a few idle hours at work, and suddenly I find the game exciting again. I still get beat all the time, though.

That night our sleep was occasionally disturbed by ferocious howls from dogs fighting in the street just outside the cottage - it sounded like we were being beset by wolves and bears.

More photos on my Flickr page.

Work: Over, Travel Plans, Farewell Performances

2007-08-15T04:57:00.000Z

I just signed the agreement on the termination of my contract, and so am finally at the end of my work in Mongolia. My flight is booked back to the UK for the 4th September, so I find that I finally have some time to see a little of the country. In nine months I've only spent the odd night out of the capital, which has made me increasingly envious of all the merry back-packers passing through the city this summer - at last I can get to see some of the country myself.

Tonight or tomorrow morning the missus and I will be squeezing into a micro-bus and making the long, bumpy journey to Kharkhorin - Mongolia's ancient capital and part of the UNESCO World Heritage listed Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape. We'll then be back in Ulaanbaatar again on Monday, to check in once more with the British Embassy on progress with my wife's visa application (impeccable service for the $1000 application fee - we can call in any time to be told "The Consul will look at your application when the Consul looks at it" in answer to our queries) and for me to meet my mother-in-law. We're then hoping for the three of us to be able to make a journey to the famously beautiful Lake Hovsgul (0.4% of the world's freshwater) region, where I am also hoping we can find and meet my wife's paternal grandfather, who is a shamanic priest.

The extremely talented Andrew Colwell (double bassist, flamenco guitarist, khoomei singer, morin khuur player, etc, etc) had a leaving do at New River Sounds on Sunday - he's flying back to the States today. In the last few months (since the demise of the jazz night at Mealody) he's been playing a great improv-based blend of sounds with two very talented Australians (Dave Lipson on didgeridoo and I-am-sorry-I-forget-but-will-rectify-ASAP on cello) and they gave a final show to a very appreciative audience. The band may be called Khimoor or something very like, and they have a self-made CD in the works - I'll see what I can do about posting a link or a snippet when it's done - because until you've heard the bass, cello, didj and khoomei in sweet harmony your ears have been missing something important.

Andrew had also sent out an invitation to the many musicians he's made the acquaintance of in his time here to come down and play a tune, so I took that opportunity to make my own farewell performance, and actually play into a microphone for the first time here, which is much easier on the vocal chords, but less easy on the audience's ears. Dragged out the Worried Man Blues and Dirty Old Town yet again, but also properly debuted my own actual self-penned song (to the borrowed tune of Roll in My Sweet Baby's Arms) called I Don't Want to Work Anymore.

(Note to any of the potential employers back in the UK I have sent my CV to these last few weeks: please don't take that last song literally - of course I do very much want to work anymore and am just looking forward to my Well Earned Break, and using a bit of poetic license.)

Vodka Camp, Sheep Gizzards

2007-08-13T08:37:00.000Z

On Friday I went with the rest of my colleagues from the Vodka factory to spend a night and the following day at a pleasant ger camp tucked away in hills a few hours West of Ulaanbaatar. I managed to survive the night, aided no doubt by a very fortifying plate of boiled sheep's stomach, intestines, liver, kidneys and black pudding.

76 Toyboys

2007-08-10T03:36:00.000Z

I've mentioned before the subject of corruption in Mongolian public life - from government through hospitals to the police force - and the general perception that it is widespread and inescapable. Last year a bill passed through parliament established the IAAC - the Independent Authority Against Corruption. Public officials are now required by law to register their earnings and other financial interests and those of their families. The figures that have come in now that the majority of officials have complied with that requirement (and published in last week's UB Post) prove interesting reading. There's a law which according to the Post "does not allow MPs to have a private business entity", so how do the country's 76 monkeys manage to get by?

The returned figures show how progressive Mongolia's MPs are in promoting women's rights, against a culture which generally puts women in second place: the majority of MPs earn less than than their wives. Considerably less in many cases. Prime Minister Enkhbold earned a very modest 3.2 million Tugrik - around $3,000 - last year, while the Prime Minister's wife brought home Tg24.2 million. L. Gundalai MP, chairman of the Popular Party, registered his earnings at Tg3 million , Mrs L. Gundalai is doing a bit better with Tg74 million, although even her paycheck doesn't seem to account for how the minister acquired his Toyota Landcruiser, Mercedes Benz, six motor boats, three horses and Tg500 million of shares in the SOS Medica Hospital. I guess, contrary to the general economic trend in the country, 2006/7 was a lean year for MPs. B. Erdenbat has the pretty thankless task of Minister of Fuel and Energy, earning him a paltry Tg3.2 million. His immediate family managed to improve on this with Tg66.3 million. And I guess if times get hard he can always fall back on his Tg17.2 billion worth of shares in Erel bank, Erel Insurance and assorted companies or sell one of his two Mercedes Benz 500s, or his Lexus 470 jeep, two Land Cruiser 100L jeeps or maybe one of his pair of Hummers.

Well, the list goes on (Supreme Court judge A. Batsaikhan has 20 pigs) and can be seen on the UB Post's website. It's interesting reading, and clearly shows that the law against MPs owning businesses is not achieving much.

In President Enkhbayar's case, the declared earnings provide more food for thought - he earned Tg121.9 million, owns a Tg35 million apartment, and aparently his family earned nothing. To quote the Post "He does not own any mining license, savings, land, credit, debt, shares, automobile, or commercial property." I don't think that many people in Mongolia believe a word of that, but (if only because of his good taste in translating Rudyard Kipling and Virginia Woolf into Mongolian) I'd like to believe in his honesty and probity. Of course he doesn't have to declare how many of his cousins and friends are doing very well indeed thankyou, and I shouldn't think that he'll do too badly in retirement. The real test is what he achieves in his job. The President has been a prominent supporter of anti-corruption laws - now that those laws are revealing to the public the extent of the problem (if largely by inference), what Mongolia needs to see now is action to correct this. Otherwise the cynicism with which government and indeed democracy are viewed will surely grow.

Asashoryu, Wayne Rooney

2007-08-07T10:24:00.000Z

Much sympathy for Mongolian sumo giant Asashoryu, whose homesickness and running around in a Wayne Rooney shirt have cost him the biggest official rebuke of his colourful career. At least it gets him column inches in the Independent and Guardian again.

Mongolian Invasion

2007-08-02T10:14:00.000Z

Reading the unfortunate news that Liverpool's Culture Company have cancelled this year's Mathew Street Festival three weeks before it was due to take place (will artists still get paid, I wonder? Presumably the paying of musicians is one of the smaller expenses of the event anyhow), leads me to buck up spirits on Merseyside by rashly making the premature announcement of my own ill-planned musical/cultural event: please mark Saturday May 3rd 2008 in your diaries as 'Mongolian Invasion Day'.

I haven't yet ironed out all the details (funding, licensing, etc) but I do have an artist booked - the incomparable Tserendavaa, one of the most highly respected performers of khoomei throat-singing in all Mongolia. My good, gallic friend, ethnomusicologist Johanni Curtet, has arranged a tour for Tserendavaa and his son in France for the early summer, and they've agreed to come over and perform for the people of Liverpool.

There may be workshops - for the curious I'm told that it is possible for some people to pick up the basics of khoomei in a couple of hours. I am also persuing contacts with Mongolian artists and dancers currently based in the UK - if I can get hold of a couple of ger then we'll set up in Sefton Park for a day or perhaps longer. By coincidence, 2008 will be the 100th anniversary of Marzan Sharav's "One Day in Mongolia" painting - I think I can borrow a high quality reproduction from a friend to exhibit for the day.

There could even be buuz for those who like Mongolian cuisine, and barbecue for those (like me) who like the idea of Mongolian cuisine. Furthermore, in a spirit of utter philanthropism, it's my wish to make this a free event providing I can secure the sponsorship/funding to pay the artists (and get them to Liverpool from France). Any offers of assistance with the event should be directed to me at ulaanbaanjo@yahoo.co.uk - particularly if you have a spare ger, bactarian camel, leverage with the Palm House or lactating mares. More details to follow.

Mining

2007-07-27T04:01:00.000Z

Thanks to Chris Shannon for sending me a link to an interesting and well informed article from The Times last week about the economic changes taking place in Mongolia. The article focuses on 'Ninja Miners' - Mongolian '49ers risking life, limb and lungs at a number of mining sites/ecological disaster zones throughout the country.

Recent protests held by the Nationalist 'Soyombo' party in Sukhbaatar Square were against contracts granted to the Canadian Ivanhoe Mines Company which, according to opponents, give the foreign company "66% of the sub-soil wealth of Mongolia" (UB Post). There is a general sentiment that foreign investors are securing deals that short-change the Mongolian people via the expediency of bribing key officials.

One reason that Mongolia has such large unexploited natural mineral resources is a very strong tradition holding the land, especially mountains, sacred - a sanctity which specifically prohibited digging the earth in such places, specifically prohibited treating nature as a resource to be exploited. There is, furthermore, a very strong tradition carried since Chinggis' times - and reinforced by some of the higher ideals of communism - that this land belongs to the people as a whole, and is a common wealth to be shared and protected for future generations. Whilst opponents of the current state of affairs mostly do not call for an end to mining in its entirety (although this opinion has been expressed by no small number of people), there is a strong sentiment against the national wealth being squandered by the few, and by foreigners.

Deeper resentments, social division and the uglier face of nationalism will only be fed unless the management of Mongolia's gold and copper is more equably handled in the future. I often find myself coming back to the thought that Mongolia is a large country with such a tiny population - just over two million people - and so it's conceivable that the problems faced here, if there is political will and people of the moral fibre and strength to fit the task, can be resolved.

Rain Missiles, Miss Mongolia Controversy

2007-07-26T06:32:00.000Z

Sweltering heat in the capital and the rest of Mongolia this week. We'd had a fair few days of rain before Naadam, which brought some very welcome cool air. I read in today's UB Post that the precipitation was the product of "rain missiles launched from Gachuurt".

There are a number of interesting pieces in the Post this week, which will save me from writing (and you from reading) about the tedious tribulations involved in applying for a spouse's visa from the British Embassy. Headlined "Many Must Have Been Very Disappointed" there's an interview with a runner-up in the recent 'Miss Mongolia' contest full of very pointed questions alleging irregularities in the selection of the winner. The interviewee, one B. Ganbolor, was the popular favourite, for whom the studio audience "had shared the hopes expressed in sections of the mass media" for her to win. Alas, the crown went to a G. Gantuya, of which Ms Ganbolor says in the interview: "When [she] was being crowned there were screams of "Stop this farce!"" Here's the winner and disgruntled runners-up with their striking float at the Naadam opening ceremony:

Three Manly Games (and Anklebones)

2007-07-15T02:57:00.000Z

Firstly, definitions. Naadam, which Mongolians call the "world's second oldest Olympics" is a three day festival of competitions in the "Three Manly Games": archery, wrestling and horse racing. Actually, women take part in the archery (possibly for a separate prize) and girls race the horses too. The story behind the traditional chestless jacket worn in the wrestling is that once a jealous woman competed, much to the shame of all the men she defeated, and so steps were taken to prevent this from happening again.

My wife and I had tickets for the two main days of competition (the 11th and 12th - Nadaam is held on the 11th - 13th July every year). She'd made me wait outside the ticket office at the Culture Palace while she bought the tickets in case there was the usual extra charge for foreigners - but for ordinary seats the tickets were a very reasonable 7500T ($7) regardless of nationality, for the whole event.

Wednesday morning was hot, with ominous clouds in the sky. However, rather than dress for rain I was determined to wear the short deel jacket I've recently had made - which put me in the exclusive company of old ladies and other foreigners. The National Stadium isn't far out of the stadium, and the route over broken ground, railway tracks, and beneath insulation-clad pipes was busy and lively. Traders lined the route selling cheap sunglasses, plastic toy guns, kvass and skewers of barbecued meat. Our timing was lucky, as on arrival at the stadium, we just managed to find seats, and didn't have too long to wait for things to get started. The stadium was full, but not overcrowded. I wrote the other day about an opinion piece in the UB Post suggesting that visitor numbers are down this year - whilst many more may well have been drawn by last year's 800th Anniversary of the Mongolian State, I find it hard to believe that there's been a significant fall - maybe there are more tour companies and hostels competing for the business.

The opening ceremony was quite enjoyable: a parade of horses followed by people in the various national costumes of the country. A lot of people bearing brightly coloured banners with swastikas on, too - the swastika being an ancient revered symbol in Mongolia and the personal seal, I'm told, of Genghis Khan. After marching round the stadium a few times there were dances performed - unfortunately, the banner holders were positioned so as to form a wall making it impossible for about an eighth of the stadium,including us, to see much of what was going on.

Eventually, after a rock song or two, speeches from the president, poems and so forth, the wrestling began. To be honest, it didn't really grip me, as I couldn't make out much of what was going on at the distance from our seats. We decided to take a walk around the outside of the stadium. That evening I watched some of the wrestling on TV, which I found much easier to follow.

Outside the stadium, we wandered over to the Archery field and the Anklebone tent. Both these events are unticketed - there's bustling crowds at the entrance to both venues, but inside it was possible to get right up on the action. We were at the Archery just in time to catch President Enkhbayar opening proceedings there. The Archery was very impressive to watch - particularly the way that crowds of judges hung very nonchalantly around the targets 75 metres away, it being presumably unthinkable that a Mongolian archer would miss by as much as a metre and a half.

The Anklebone tent was very crowded, and quite a racket was coming from inside - shouting and laughter, but beneath it all a loud, rising and falling drone, like some kind of meditative chant. Two sheep's anklebones - used for a wide variety of Mongolian games - are set up on a box in front of a black cushion. Some 10 or so metres away, the shooters line up on one knee, whilst squatting along either side towards the target are their team-mates - from whom the droning chant comes. With a powerful flick of their middle finger, and without looking up, the shooter fires a small rectangular puck along a piece of wood they have meticulously lined up to face the target - the object being to knock down both the bones. It doesn't qualify as a Manly Sport, unfortunately, so presumably owes its presence at Nadaam to the fact that it's both skillful and very entertaining.

We left the horse racing for day two. This year the races were taking place at Khui Doloon Khudag, some 40km outside of the city, necessitating a microbus journey. We went to see the Shudlen race - for 3 year-old horses. The aspect of the horse-racing that draws most attention internationally, and no small degree of criticism, is that the jockeys are all children aged from about six to ten years. Understandably, where hundreds of horses take to the field, there have been fatalities over the years. According to the UB Post, this year the children would "have to wear some protective gear" - which seemed to consist of an orange day-glo jacket, although about one child in ten was wearing a helmet. Another child in ten or so was also riding bareback.

There can be no doubt, but life can be hard on children in Mongolia. Many children have to work, and others beg for a living for themselves or their parents. Seeing the children ride, though, I find it very hard not to sympathise with the Mongolian instinct to take deep offense at any suggestion that the Naadam races should be ended. I suppose what becomes a bit uncomfortable is the fact that over the years, the race may well become more and more of a tourist event, and that starts to edge more into an area that I'm far less comfortable with, not least from my own perspective as a foreign spectator.

The race was thrilling and entertaining. It's 15 km in all - the 250 horses and riders competing set off for the start line at the foot of mountains on the horizon. Their return was heralded by a steadily approaching cloud of dust. The leaders came in at a thunderous pace. A fair few horses, understandably, were riderless, although I'm given to believe that there were thankfully no serious injuries this year. It was hard to consider the potential danger as the children were all quite clearly such competent riders. If children are going to ride horses at all, then why shouldn't they race? Well, anyhow, for my sins I enjoyed it. The presence of a very large number of country people on horseback - coming and going, suddenly breaking into a gallop through a crowd of pedestrians - kept the event from feeling like a tourist occasion, however many foreign spectators were around. Also, the fact that the two hundred or so ger selling food seemed to only be cooking the boiled flour and mutton buuz and khorschor was proof enough for me that this is still very much a Mongolian event.

Naadam: Equine Indifference

2007-07-14T14:58:00.000Z

From the final horse race (15km, 250 horses, jockeys aged 6 - 10 years). This one wasn't the winner.

Naadam Update

2007-07-12T01:31:00.000Z

Some photos from day one at my flickr site. I'm afraid I didn't get much closer than a zoom shot to any of the Naadam wrestlers, but managed to get to see some of the archery and the anklebones contest, on which more later. Today we're going to head out of town to the horseraceing, and see what we can in the dust. Incidentally, I suspect that the UB Post piece I referred to in my last posting (on the drop in tourist numbers) may be well off the mark - perhaps there are many more firms competing for the trade, because there certainly seems to be a substantial number of foreigners amongst the crowds.

Naadam, Airag, In-Laws

2007-07-10T07:00:00.000Z

July 11th to 13th is Naadam, the biggest event on the Mongolian calendar. Three days of competitions in three sports: horse-racing, wrestling and archery. We've picked up tickets for the first two days, so I'll submit a report on all the fun in a couple days time.

According to an opinion piece in last week's UB Post, there are significantly fewer tourists here than last year - possibly because people are putting off a Mongolia visit to coincide with next year's Beijing Olympics. The tourist presence is definitely noticeable, but there is general disappointment in the trade. These few weeks are when the many Mongolians who work in the tourism industry expect to make most of their year's salary, so a poor year means that a lot of people will be feeling the bite. I had to diappoint a taxi driver the other day by refusing point blank to pay ten times the correct fare, about which he was most bitter. I could hardly begrudge him his bitterness, as his greed had given me a chance to show off my mastery of Mongolian and meet his outrageous demand with a cry of "Yakshtay!"

However many tourists are here, the festival is a big holiday for everybody in the country. Street vendors selling Kvass are everywhere. Kvass is a Russian drink that has a lot in common with ale, I think, but is very low in alcohol and sweet - it tastes for all the world like a bitter shandy, and I find it really refreshing on a hot day. Most of the bars have now got tables out on the street, and are barbecuing beef or mutton, the smell of which is very enticing, a lot more so than the usual waft of steamed buuz.

Just down the road from my friend Niall's home, there's a ger just set up selling the traditional Mongolian summer drink, Airag- fermented mare's milk - so walking home the other day we popped in to try a bowl. The taste is not much of a surprise - salty and tangy, somewhat like a pro-biotic yoghurt drink. Traditionally, menfolk drink gallons and gallons of the stuff until they vomit (as depicted in Marzan Sharav's picture "The Airag Feast") - particular kudos going to those whose powerful stomach muscles allow them to projectile vomit clean out of the ger door. I quite enjoyed the Airag but didn't feel overly keen to test out my regurgitative prowess. This might not have taken much encouragement though, as I'd just spent the day at a large village outside UB meeting some of my very charming and kind in-laws. My wife's Uncle was fascinated to find out how much vodka a man of my height could drink before getting drunk. The fact is (and it's nothing to boast about, of course) I can put back a considerable amount, providing it's just straight vodka I drink, and that at no time am I required to go out into the fresh air or indeed stand up - both of which prove instantly fatal.

Anyhow, Naadam kicks off tomorrow at 11am, with an opening ceremony at the Central Stadium, and we'll do our best to get down there in time to get a seat. The horse-racing takes place somewhere out past the airport, I think, but we ought to be able to find a bus going there. Apparently you don't see much unless you're chasing the horses by car, but I'd still like to get out there and soak up some of the atmosphere. In the evening there's a free concert at Sukhbaatar Square, which I aim to catch from the terrace of Dave's Place. I might make my own contribution to festivities, as it's wednesdays that I like to go down to the English Pub and play a few banjo tunes (speaking of which - thanks for sending the thumb picks Barry! Golden Gates too, just like I asked for). My wife is trying to teach me to sing a few Mongolian songs, but I'm finding memorising the lyrics a little bit more challenging than the 'Lonesome Road Blues'.

Heroes and Villains

2007-07-06T07:22:00.000Z

The photo shows a statue which is found at the end of an avenue near my apartment, not far from the Indian Embassy. I had assumed from the uniform and jaunty pose that it was the statue of a hero of Mongolia's war for independence from Manchu China. As I recall from what I read at the National History Museum, Mongolians also fought the White Armies during the Russian Civil War, for which many generals were decorated, and this feller looked a likely candidate to be honoured as such.

Not long after I arrived in Ulaanbaatar, the statue disappeared, leaving an empty plinth. I asked a few teachers at work if they knew what had happened. Most didn't have any idea, but eventually someone told me that it was 'stolen by the Chinese' to be sold as scrap metal. The winter months went by, I used to sit on the marble step to take a cigarette break from school (no longer - I quit again two months ago). I felt some sympathy for the stolen general, the victim, I felt, of an ambivalence towards the heroes of a past regime.

To my surprise, in the late Spring the statue reappeared. It looked different from how I remembered it, but it didn't seem possible that it would have been recast. I asked another teacher what had happened, and was told that the sword arm of the statue had been cut off by someone, presumably for scrap, and so the general had been sent to China to be repaired. I was reminded of the Victorian worthies who disappeared from Princes Avenue, Toxteth, in the Eighties - Florence Nightingale and some chap sticking a needle into a baby's backside? It's a shame Liverpool can't meet UB's turnaround time on repairs - although the Peltier Monument has been doing a worthy job in the meantime.

The general being back, and having decided to commemorate his return with a small post, I asked my wife the name of the General, for the sake of factual accuracy. "That's Choibalsan," she told me.

Choibalsan was a general, who became the ruler of Mongolia after the communist takeover in 1921, until his eventual execution (or 'disappearance', I am not clear which) in Moscow in 1946. I wrote in my previous posting about the Museum of Natural History that Mongolia's limited involvement in the Second World War caused me to question the extent to which Mongolia was under the direct orders of the Kremlin. During Choibalsan's regime he initiated 'purges' to coincide with Stalin's mass-murderings, and consigned 10% of his populace - 100,000 people - to death or the prison camps, at the clear instigation of his master in Moscow - so perhaps there are other reasons for Mongolia's non-involvement in the Western theatre. There is one book in English on the subject of the purges, "Poisoned Arrows", which you can find a few inter3esting reviews of online. A curiosity thrown up by Yahoo was the news that in 2005 a Mausoleum containing the remains of Choibalsan and the much-loved Sukhbaatar was removed from Sukhbaatar Square, and the remains of both cremated in a Buddhist ceremony. Somewhat ironic, to say the least, as Choibalsan was directly responsible for the murder of at least 30,000 Buddhist monks. My wife told me that at school she was taught that Choibalsan was Mongolia's greatest modern ruler, and only learned about the purges at University.

At work today I showed the picture to a colleague who told me that it is not Choibalsan - it's Lhaugvasuren, a general who fought the Japanese in the Second World War. "So is there a statue of Choibalsan?" I asked. Indeed, his statue is in the city centre, half way down the same avenue, behind the Government building. The persecutor of intellectuals stands rather smugly outside the Mongolian National University, and not too far from the monument to the victims of political oppression outside the National History Museum. There's no name on the plinth, just the year (I assume) of his death, 1946.

Hitched

2007-07-05T12:54:00.000Z

Thursday, 5th July
Sweltering heat already at half nine this morning as we made our way to the Mongolian National Citizens Registry Centre, which happens to be fairly close to my apartment, down a ramshackle road lined by car part traders, dark, grimy ironmongers, and battered yellow trailers selling kvass at 150T a cup. We'd done our best to get hitched yesterday afternoon - after a morning of visiting hospitals to pick up paperwork, taking the paperwork to be translated and spending a fruitless hour at the Bureau of Immigration trying to get a certificate that the office no longer issues. Anyhow, the over-worked guy in the office responsible for marriages to non-nationals asked us to come back this morning at ten.

Arriving back at the office good and early, the registrar directed us to the bank next door, to pay the administration fee for the wedding: 1000 Tugrik, about 90p. Back with our receipt at the bare little office we both signed our names in the records, and that was that. With a smile the registrar handed us the card that is our marriage certificate, and we were married. We invited the registrar to join us for lunch, which he politely declined, so Mr and Mrs Ulaanbaanjo left the office and walked back home.

Certified Sane

2007-06-29T07:16:00.000Z

29th June 2007
One of the first questions I've usually been asked by every group of students I've taught from the 4th Grade to Upper Management is "Are you married?" Next comes "Why not?" followed by "Will you marry a Mongolian girl?"

Finding these questions increasingly difficult to side-step, I've decided to change my answer to them, permanently. So if the paperwork is all in order, by this time next week it will be Mr and Mrs Ulaanbaanjo.

We've opted for a Soviet Bureaucracy-themed wedding at the local district government offices. The preparations have been entertaining. Firstly, my fiance had to get her mother to send paperwork from her home province allowing her to register as a citizen in UB - this came via a micro-bus passenger who arrived at 3.30 in the morning (and kindly phoned us at 2.30am to tell us that she'd be in our neighbourhood in an hour or so). This proved to be only the beginning of a landslide of forms and affadavits needed: we have had to visit three hospitals this morning - one to get our blood-type tested and to give a sample to be checked for HIV. Another to have our chests X-rayed for tuberculosis and the last, to have our heads examined by a rather shy-looking young psychiatrist. Good news from that last visit is that I am now certified sane, which is something of a relief, and contradicts much that has been opined in my direction over the years.

More tiresome are the proofs I need to provide from the UK: a clean criminal record and proof that I am not married. The criminal record should fortunately not be a problem as I happened to bring a Criminal Records Bureau check with me from my last job in the UK. But how do I prove that I am not married? In vain I argued with officials that in the UK it's recorded that someone is married, not that they are not married - there is no record to have confirmed. The British Embassy in UB shrugged their shoulders and offered to publish bans of marriage for $250 (3 times the national average wage to insert our names and print out a form - that's service!) Eventually it was pointed out to me the benefits of Microsoft Word and the fact that bureaucrats here just want to see the form in front of them and tick the correct box.

So all that remains is to get a letter from my employer confirming my good character, a form from the Office of Immigration, Naturalization and Foreign Citizens confirming that I haven't breached my visa status in any way, and a statement from ourselves confirming our love and affection, and come Tuesday - well - wish us luck.

Short Short Stories

2007-06-29T06:54:00.000Z

I have previously posted about the educational benefits of Very Short Stories (6 words) and Mini Sagas (50 words) - they're fun and can be tried whatever a person's English level. The Normblog website is currently running a Short Short Story competetion - the definition of Short Short here being 250 words. Previous entries from last year's contest can be found by rummaging through the site - I think that this form of story is a good one for study, as I found that the traditional published length of story (2,500 - 5,000 words) rarely keeps the attention of students (the venerable exception being 'The Monkey's Paw'). I imagine that the reason that most professional writers have tended to write shorts on the longish side is that they were being paid by the word - I think that there's a lot of elegance to the truly short format. Anyway, check out the entries at Norm's site or submit one yourself. I found 'An Inconvenience' by a promising young talent named Jimi Fallows to be particularly compelling.

Museum of National History

2007-06-27T03:46:00.000Z

I finally got around to visiting the Museum of National History the other day. It’s by far the most modern and best laid out of Ulaanbaatar’s museums, especially the Bronze Age exhibit on the ground floor. The cases are nicely lit and well labeled in both Mongolian and English. The various stages of the nation’s history are well represented on the other floors, although there is perhaps a bit of ‘editorial bias’ in the choice of items shown. The long period Mongolia spent under Manchu rule (from the 17th to the early 20th century) is represented by three display cases of instruments of torture and execution. I am under the impression that people were executed during Chinngis’ reign too, and probably later Khans, and I’m not sure that there’s any evidence that Chinese rule was any harsher – that in fact the centre of government being so far away and fervent Buddhism mostly keeping the populace equable, Mongolians were mostly allowed to carry on their lives as they had for centuries. The infamy of the Manchus is very much taken for granted by the majority of Mongolians today, however, which I think may well have been a version of history strongly encouraged in the Soviet era. This and some of the slant on the Soviet period should be borne in mind of the fact that this building was formerly The Museum of the Revolution.

The hall of Soviet history itself is pretty interesting, although unfortunately a lot of the labels are left untranslated. Mongolia has an interesting place in Communist history – it was the second country in the world to have a Communist revolution. Lenin is still quite fondly regarded in Mongolia, for his support in freeing Mongolia from Chinese rule. There’s a prominent statue of Lenin outside the Ulaanbaatar Hotel. The museum has one display case dedicated to the victims of the purges during the 1930’s – whether these were ordered by Stalin or just inspired by him seems unclear. The justification for the mass arrests at the time was a fabricated Japanese-inspired fifth columnist plot to take over the country. There’s no mention (in English anyway) of the many thousands (30,000?) of Buddhist monks who disappeared at this time, but there are the pocket watches of Minister of Finance S. Dovchin, former Party Secretary O. Badrakh and Minister of Justice D. Dorjpurev’s wife’s handbag: the perhaps unintentional impression that these three items are all that remain of the victims of the mass murder is chilling.

To what extent Mongolia's leaders were under the command of the Kremlin is a question that I would be interested to see historians answer. I believe that there’s evidence that Mongolia had a considerable degree of autonomy. For example, throughout World War Two, Mongolia’s contribution to the fighting on the Eastern front was the loan of a handful of tanks and planes – which Russia had presumably given Mongolia in the first place – and the sale of horses and a few other supplies to the Allies: this when Stalin was sacrificing millions of his countrymen to slow the German advance. Of course, Mongolia’s population was very small at the time (around 1 million? Less?) – and Mongolia was later to fight fiercely against Japan in the campaigns that led to VJ Day. Until the democratic revolution of the 90s, Russia stationed troops and carried out military exercises in Mongolia – but Russia also built apartment blocks, power stations, and factories and indeed provided a degree of security against the country’s other Marxist neighbor.

Anyhow, an interesting museum, with food for these questions and others - well worth a visit. 3,000T admission, I didn’t check how much it costs to take photos. I will try and remember to update this entry with a photo of the exterior, which is a piece of Soviet modernist architecture that is a credit to the city.

Construction Problems

2007-06-25T11:21:00.000Z

Not very good news so far on Mongolia's "40,000 Homes" programme [a government initiative to ease the chronic housing shortage and encourage home-ownership amongst citizens of UB], according to the 21st June UB Post. At a recent conference of the National Chamber of Commerce, representatives of the country's construction firms voiced considerable complaints, particularly about the problem of bribery. Although the language given in the paper is a bit vague, it suggests that bribes in the region of $1,000,000 for the better areas of the city, have to be paid before a given project can commence. The bribes demanded by officials are so high that only foreign companies can afford to build there, so "Foreigners' townships will come up on lands near a water source and with pure air, while Mongolian citizens in their own country have to live in sub-optimal conditions." Even in the less desirable areas, a continual flow of back-handers has to be paid. Certainly, there is plenty of construction going on in the better parts of the city at the moment, and all quite clearly marketed at the foreign buyer. "Project 40,000" is set to succeed, however, because astoundingly, the government has said that every apartment built and sold in the country - including those developments exclusively for foreigners and the super-rich - will count towards the target. In other words, what began as an initiative to improve the standard of living of the population may only serve to push up rental prices and line the pockets of corrupt officials and property speculators.

Capital of Culture: 2008 Pledge

2007-06-22T05:57:00.000Z

Friday, 22nd June 2007
Thoughts turn increasingly homeward - by the beginning of September I should be saying goodbye to Mongolia (only for a while, I hope) and returning to my much cherished home city of Liverpool. Of course, what with Skype, emails and blogs of all things, I've hardly been out of touch with home for more than a day or two in all the time I've been out here in Mongolia. Family and friends aside however, the homeward-turn of thoughts brings me to dwell on the excitement due to kick off on the 1st January 2008, when Liverpool will begin its year as the European Capital of Culture.

I regularly read through the letters pages of the Liverpool Echo and Daily Post on their shared website at http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk and, sad to say, there has been a little bit of negativity now and then, concerning the readiness of the city for the upcoming festivities.

"THE Capital of Culture next year is the biggest farce of all times...It is not safe to be in Liverpool at night as there are loads of thugs, then you have the nightclubs and most of them should be closed down." J.W. Hill, Bootle (Liverpool Echo 19th June)

"WITH regards to Capital of Horse Manure. I would like to express my concern for the vast amount of horse manure on the pavements in the city centre. Besides it being an obstacle course, trying to get from one place to another with building work, you have to dodge the horse manure. It is not being picked up and traffic is actually driving through it and spreading it even more. It is disgusting for we who live here, I just can’t imagine what visitors must think." J.L.H., Bootle (any relation?)(Liverpool Echo 18th June)

A letter arguing that Liverpool needs a Giullianni-style mayor reads like poetry in its description of the state of the city:

"JUST an average day's commute into Liverpool ...

A residential suburban street covered in dog faeces.

A man at the back of the bus with his feet up on the opposite seats.

A teenager on the same bus who looks like he hasn't washed in a month, scratching his filthy head with even filthier nails.

An alcoholic vagrant using a low-rise wall in London Road as a bed.

A discarded syringe near the pharmacy in London Road.

Pavements near the Odeon cinema covered in thick black gunge.

A man blowing the contents of his nose directly onto the street.

A passenger throwing cigarette ends from his car window in Water Street.

What a filthy, degenerate city this has become..." Peter Bradshaw, L36 (Liverpool Echo, 15th June)

I am kind of assuming that for all the changes in the last 6 months (no more NORTON FOR CRAP! That's the city turning its back on its culture and heritage right there!) Liverpool is still something of an untidy city with a degree of social decay, but I'm not sure that these are really enough to hold the culture year back. Of course Bill Bryson famously gave the city a gentle ribbing for the "festival of litter" in his "Notes from a Small Island", and it's certainly arguable that both the litter and the whingeing are integral aspects to the city's culture which it just would not be the same without... Well, on second thoughts, it may well not be the same without them, but it would clearly be an improvement.

Anyhow, to cultivate a a more positive atmosphere for proceedings now that the countdown is ticking, and acknowledging that in the past I've had more than my share of sarcastic comments to make about the city and about 2008, I'd like to ask people to join me in a sincere pledge to be not remotely cynical about the Capital of Culture year from now on; not to complain about the failures of the City Council (which can easily be acchieved by not making any reference at all to the City Council); or the Culture Company (ditto), nor about the involvement of 'outsiders' in the celebrations; to refrain from throwing MacDonalds cartons into the gutter or a garden hedge, perhaps even to pick up the occassional coke can or snickers wrapper; not to spit noisily and aggressively whilst passing people in the street; not to opine that everything in the John Moore's Prize Exhibition at the Walker is shit (even if it is - which in 2006 it most emphatically was not - for which, incredibly, we had Tracey Emin of all people to thank); not to complain that Manchester is trying to steal Liverpool's limelight with its own highly successful festival; not to bemoan the lack of funding for bluegrass related events, nor the complete lack of interest or indeed response shown by the various committees for pet projects (such as a 'Mongolian Invasion' of Sefton Park which, by the beard of Genghis, I will see happen!); not to be smug that however crap we thought the 08 logo was it's nothing like the joke that got foisted on the London Olympics; not to complain about property prices; nor make jokes about the Writing on the Wall 'literature' festival; such as, for example, putting 'literature' in quotes; not to revel in past glories when Liverpool was the GREATEST CITY IN THE WORLD, but to take a degree of pride, tempered by humility, in its evolving present; not to make fun of the letters in the Post and Echo, nor the reports by the hard-working journalists, be they about Stab Boy or even Stab Boy's Mum, and especially not if it's the latest Funding Crisis being reported on by Deborah James; not to repeatedly complain that the Literature section of the official Capital of Culture website neglects to mention Ramsey Campbell, Clive Barker, Olaf Stapledon or even "Redburn" by Herman Melville; nor to wonder what over-priced events citizens of Liverpool will need a special discount card to attend, and why we should be following in the footsteps of tourist traps like Chester and Windsor in implementing such a discriminatory scheme, against the Liverpool museums' fine example of being free to everybody; not to call for the head of Boris Johnson, Margi Clarke, Ulaanbaanjo, or whoever else might inadvertently offend somebody by giving an honest opinion on the city; not to subvert a list of pledges into a catalogue of complaints; in fact, to each do our humble best towards making the year a memorable one, for ourselves and for whatever visitors and guests might grace us with their presence; to celebrate Culture in as many aspects and with as open a mind as we can; and finally, to reserve a special place in our hearts, pockets and all headline events for the Banjo, which was, after all, John Lennon's first instrument, to say nothing of the city's many other fine banjoists over the years.

ESL Teaching Resources Online

2007-06-19T06:38:00.000Z

My attempts at teaching English have been, ah, somewhat hit-and-miss over the past six months. The main excuses I have given (where directly blaming other people couldn't be got away with) has been a lack of training and of suitable teaching materials to hand. I've spent too many hours trawling the web through well-meant but practically useless free ESL sites, and probably-not-quite-as-many hours devising lesson plans of my own invention which 90% of the time have proven to utterly fail to engage students in any degree. When I've asked other ESL teachers for advice I've mostly been recommended to "unlock my inner teacher within" as it were - ie, do whatever I think best.

Although I was aware of the BBC World Service web pages devoted to teaching English, I had failed to notice the downloadable lesson plans, of which dozens are available on line and many seem to be of excellent quality. Likewise, I missed the link to the British Council's Teaching English site, which has even more lesson plans (aimed more at school-age children), and a number of very useful books in PDF all completely free to download. There are also a wide range of articles for the edification of teachers, and both sites make good use of downloadable audio to be used in conjunction with classes, if desired.

Both these sites are extremely well-designed, and I suspect that they contain material as good as if not better than the many pay-for-access ESL resource sites. And if you please you can still go back to one of the open forum "Hey, here's a totally awesome idea for class!!! It REALLY works!!" sites for a handy back-up when in need of a change of pace, ie: a totally awesome variant on Hangman or Eye Spy. (OK, a lot of the ideas posted on sites such as Dave's ESL Cafe are very good indeed, but you do have to read through an awful lot of half-brained stuff before you find anything worth embarassing yourself in front of a room full of bored students for.)

The one actual, physical text-book I have, which I got my mother to order me from Amazon, is "Rediscover Grammar" by David Crystal. Concise and conveniently pocket-sized, it says on the back that it "remains the ideal guide and reference for teachers and students" - and so it is. I don't teach from it, I just occassionally use it to avoid embarassment by discreetly dipping in to check exactly what a preposition is.

Guinea Pig

2007-06-18T02:28:00.000Z

Day three of my new job involved another tour of the plant and a visit to the tasting room. I confirmed that yes indeed there are paid employees who's job is to check the quality of each day's output of spirits - and that involves actually drinking vodka. You may well say that of course there is somebody who's job it is to taste the vodka, but until I met such a person in the flesh, I had feared that perhaps the job was done by a Taste-o-tronic 3000 or something. Hiding my excitement and asking how somebody gets such a post, I was disappointed to discover that the tasters were all highly qualified chemists. Why did nobody take the tame to explain this to me in school?

The taste test is just one check on the quality, and there are a whole series of much less exciting tests done with laboratory equipment that probably take some of the joy out of the job. In Mongolia, as with Russia, there is a considerable problem of counterfeit spirits being sold, particularly in smaller retailers and in the countryside. After putting my stamp of approval on the day's regular and premium product, I was invited to have a taste of some of the bootleg vodkas. I am fairly certain that the regular testers do not bother with passing these through any taste test, particularly when one look at the cloudy contents confirms that it certainly ain't the real thing. More likely they just time how many minutes it takes to dissolve an inch of steel. However, in me they had a daring and needless to say moronic volunteer, quite curious to take a small sip "just to see."

As a small child, I once asked a friend's dad who was siphoning petrol out of his car , what petrol tasted like? He held the end of the tube to me and said "See for yourself." I found out, and I also learned not to ask stupid questions. Well actually, I didn't at all learn not to ask stupid questions, but I did discover the somewhat humbling knowledge that there is such a thing.

The first vodka, which upon being held to the light had quite large, yellowy sediment quite easily visible swirling around in it, tasted and smelled of water. The second vodka, which had a finer sediment, tasted of, well, petrol. I'm not entirely sure how I benefited in learning this, except to acquire a rather chronic 24 hour stomach bug. I did learn that the visual test is one of the most valuable tests for counterfeit spirits, as it is very rare for counterfeiters to employ particularly high standards of filtration: real vodka should be entirely clear, without bits, especially big yellowy bits. For anyone to whom that is new information, I am very happy that my experiment has been of service.

Grain Spirit

2007-06-13T01:28:00.000Z

Wednesday 13th June - only 2 days to go to get hot water!
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I find that in spite of the longer hours, I am so far enjoying working at a vodka factory. I've had a tour of the plant, of course, and for my second day I was required to pose for news cameras drinking our premium product at an expo in the city. I also felt duty-bound to test our competitors' products at the same time, to confirm that we really do make the best.

Of course the regular workplace is an excessively sober environment, in spite of the presence of dozens of bottles of product in every office. My teaching schedule is pretty full - teaching two departments each day and then holding a conversation class each evening. In-between I have to prepare hand-outs etc, which is at least forty times easier than at school as here I'm supplied with both a computer and a printer that actually work, which I find makes a considerable difference towards getting things done.

It's an interesting time in the vodka trade in Mongolia, as the big companies are all on the point of breaking into the international market. I think that the potential for export sales to exceed the considerable domestic sales is certainly there, there surely being a certain cachet to Mongolian vodka. My own company, and a number of the competitors, are producing some real high-end stuff: to my surprise all made with 100% Mongolian organic wheat grain - I wasn't aware that wheat was grown on such a scale in this country, but it's one of the proud boasts of the industry.

One of the biggest problems for companies here is simply getting the product out of the country, as the only route is the not-always-reliable Trans-Mongolian railway - particularly complications arising over the degree of cooperation between the Chinese, Mongolian and Russian monopolies operating each section of the route. There's been considerable wrangling reported in the press this past six months between Russia and Mongolia over responsibility for a series of derailings near the border. As Mongolia's leading businesses start to get involved in a larger volume of international trade, these problems are likely to become acute, without considerable investment in the infrastructure of the only one viable route for freight to get in and out of the country.

Of course, the size of the vodka industry in Mongolia can certainly be seen from the negative side and the extent of alcoholism in the country. I'm told that the trend in the nation is slowly away from vodka drinking towards beer, which is maybe one incentive for companies to look abroad for sales. I'm also told that after copper mining, tax on the spirit industry represents the largest contribution to the state coppers - so for all the damage done by alcoholism in the country, I'm assuming that the new road that's been laid over the dirt track behind my apartment and the promised pay rise for teachers would not have happened without it.

My employers are very keen in sponsoring a number of worthy social initiatives in the country to promote a better image of what they do, and can at least justify themselves against the cheapest spirits on the market - those naturally favoured by the more committed drunks - in that they are producing a clean, quality product. Of course, once they get a good foothold selling as a luxury item abroad, then the significance of the domestic market to their profits will diminish: so you can do your bit towards securing the future of this great nation by rushing out and buying a bottle of Mongolian fire-water today. I would try and discreetly point you in the direction of the vodka made by my employers, by recommending that you buy the bottle with a picture of Genghis on the label, but unfortunately that distinction applies to every one of our competitors brands too.

Summer Teaching, Sore Thumbs

2007-06-07T06:56:00.000Z

Thursday 7th June 2007
Extremely good news is reported in today's UB Post for Mongolia's hard-working primary and secondary school teachers: the state is set to increase their salaries to in the region of $300 a month. This is a considerable raise - at present teachers in state schools are earning $60 - $100 a month - even in private schools the salary is only $200. The article was a little bit vague about when this increase will take place, however, as there seems to be an indication that the aim is for teachers to be earning $350 by 2015... so I'm unsure just yet whether the news will be any cause for celebration.

Mongolia's brief Spring seems to be over, and a hot and sweaty summer firmly established - although I'm told it may yet snow again, as it did overnight a week ago. For now the heat is here - to happily coincide with my district of the city having no hot water for the past three days and, I'm told, none until the 15th June. Bracing cold showers are now the order of the day.

There having been a short period of doubt since the school term ended, I've now had my summer job confirmed: I'll be working for three months tutoring the management team at a vodka distillery - perhaps it's an environment that I'll find myself better suited to. The plan is to give a structured lesson each day and then follow the lesson up with conversation with my students. I'll assess each student's ability and come up with an achievement plan for each and, god willing, we'll work together until September on improving their English, hopefully to everyone's satisfaction. There have been hints that the job may get me out and about in the countryside occasionally, but for the most part I'll be office-based.

Other than any opportunities that work throws up, this does now mean that I'm highly unlikely to see much more of the country for the remainder of my stay - as it is my firm plan to head straight back to Blighty once my contract is up in order to get over to Ireland in time for this year's Johnny Keenan Banjo Festival. Oh, and of course to see family and friends and stuff. For the present, in as much as I am planning for the future, I'm thinking that if I spend a year back in England working I'll be able to come back to Mongolia with some money in my pocket, and that then I'll have the luxury of not needing a salary, and be able to do as I please. I'd like 2009's sequel to this blog to be a year in a ger, far away from the smog, general chaos and satisfying variety of restaurants and bootleg dvds of the metropolis. It is entirely possible that my childhood ambition of becoming either a lighthouse-keeper or an astronaut may intervene, but I'm advised that it is a good thing to have goals.

Be assured that if work does give me the opportunities I will get myself out into rural Mongolia. I recently met a University professor of traditional medicine who I'm helping with a translation of a paper he's written on the early influences of Indian medicine in Mongolia. A very interesting man, he has kindly offered to let me join him on one of his trips to the countryside when I am free to go.

I did get back to Manzushir on Saturday, with a group of friends. It turns out that there's a bus to Zunmod for just under $1 each way, although this time we were getting a lift in a hybrid camper truck that had started its life in Ireland. There must be an increasing flow of traffic from Western Europe braving the journey here: at the hotel outside my apartment there are two 'Rotels' parked up today - converted HGVs fitted with every convenience - that appear to have made their way here from Germany.

We stayed at a new ger camp tucked away in a small valley at the edge of the park, and a very pleasant evening was had by all. I think that the ger cost around $30 for the night, which price included unlimited wood. The wood was needed as it was a cold night - it snowed some time around 2am. Worryingly, the chimney of our stove was propped up by a piece of wood and did not look remotely sturdy. After catching the chimney as it toppled out of place early in the evening we alerted staff at the camp, who made a makeshift repair. Later in the evening the chimney fell down again, narrowly missing braining and branding one of our party, and filling the ger with thick smoke. We got out into the very fresh air and this time staff replaced the stove with one that wasn't falling to pieces.

Out in the streets the bars now have their tables and sun shades out. Dave's Place now commands a respectable corner of the Culture Palace's tall-columned terrace - where along with the English conversation club host Dave and a very talented travelling Irish trad musician Sarah, I played a few tunes last night to a very generous audience. I'm hoping to make it a regular Wednesday night thing for the summer, at least until somebody objects forcibly enough. We'll be playing a mix of bluegrass and sing-along rock favourites by request. I've really not been playing much since things stopped at Mealody, so it's good to get back into it. I seem to have lost all my thumb-picks, however, so if anyone happens to be heading out to Mongolia this summer, please consider bringing me a few, as a desperately needed act of charity. Golden Gates by preference - large size, medium gauge.

Happy Alcohol-Free Children's Day

2007-06-01T06:50:00.000Z

Today is International Children's Day, one of the big celebrations on the Mongolian Calendar. It happily coincides with the formal end of school for the summer, although as I have remarked in the case of my own school, all practical teaching ended about a month ago. As with Women's Day and Teacher's Day, the observation of International Children's Day seems to be one of the happier legacies of the country's socialist past. Preparations at Sukhbaatar Square began on Wednesday night - a giant marquee was erected and, in pouring rain, cables bearing what must have been many thousands of balloons were hoisted around the not-inconsiderable length of the square's perimeter. In one corner of the square a display of different styles of ger and teepee (which is traditional amongst the Tsaatan (Reindeer) people of Northern Mongolia) has been assembled. Walking home across the square after a sunny day Thursday, I noted that every single balloon had already burst.

Exactly what celebrations will take place on the Square today I have no idea. All over the city, however, shops and businesses are closed, so that families can spend time together. My local Nomin hypermarket was open, however I found myself a little less inclined to be good natured towards the younger component of humanity on discovering that no alcohol was to be sold today. No alcohol! Putting my own unwilling sacrifice aside, it is, if you'll forgive me, a sobering reflection on the extent of alcoholism that a great number of children in this country, and indeed everywhere else, have to live with. A few weeks ago I saw a twelve year old girl at a shop buying a loaf of bread and a bottle of vodka. I didn't have the impression that the vodka was to be drunk at a bus stop with her friends - not having yet seen any indication of child-alcoholism here as is found in Liverpool and the UK - but rather that she was running an errand for her parents. A lot of the children who beg on the streets here - and their numbers are escalating with the beginning of the tourist season - must surely be runaways and orphans, but one guesses that a significant proportion are begging on behalf of their families, and that some of the money they get will be buying vodka for their parents. I've only actually been approached on maybe three occasions by adults asking for money, whereas pretty much every time I walk down Peace Avenue at least one child will see me and run up calling "Money, money, money."

An article by Madelene Beresford in this week's UB Post quotes official statistics saying that 35% of Mongolia's 5 to 14 year-olds (60,000 children) currently work. There are many cases where owing to sickness or alcoholism, the children are the only people working in a family. A further piece in the same paper tells the story of a woman and her children recently catapulted to fame after being randomly invited to participate in the reality show called "Lets stay overnight at your house." Their plight, which is surely typical of many other women and children in the country, has touched a chord nationally, and fortunately help for the family has poured in. Briefly, the woman had taken her two children and left the husband who had beaten her and indeed brought another woman into the house. Suffering from a damaged liver, quite possibly as a result of her spouse's ill-treatment of her, she struggled on with her life, getting by on 29,000Tugrik a month (approx $26) state benefits, having to spend 20,000T of that to rent a ger.

Anecdotally, I've heard too many stories here of people struggling against the odds after having been abandoned by an alcoholic husband or father. Family ties are strong in Mongolia, surely much stronger than in the West - but it seems that where those ties are broken, people are left acutely in need. I've heard some speculation on the root causes of men abandoning their families - some tending to blame socialism, and a tendency to turn over responsibility to the state, others see it as a problem arising from the selfishness of a consumer-capitalist society. Whatever the causes, hopefully the plight of Tungalag and her two young children will, having brought more attention to this common problem, generate some agreement and will to change the circumstances for the people who are getting left behind.

In other news, I'm still hoping to get away to the countryside this weekend. Unfortunately I can't make my big trip to stay with a nomadic family and milk horses because my boss at the school, quite possibly out of spite, has insisted that I can't have Monday off and must attend a meeting about the next school year (at which I have not been asked to teach) - for which I'll be asked to make recommendations about the syllabus in order for them to be shot-down and or ignored. I wrote a 5,000 word report with such revolutionary recommendations as 1) for teachers not to actively encourage, indeed to actually discourage students from open plagiarism and cheating; 2) for foreign teachers to be supplied with teaching material. I haven't bothered to suggest that a tiny degree of support from management and colleagues wouldn't go amiss, as I didn't want to make my report a mere record of grievances. I have a blog for that.

Manzushir Monastery, Highway Robbery

2007-05-25T07:32:00.000Z

Yesterday I was finally able to get out of the city to breathe some clean air. Actually, as it was a windy day with clouds threatening rain, the air in the city felt cleaner than it has done over the past week, and noticeably less dusty. Nonetheless, I was extremely grateful that a Mongolian friend took a day off work and found a friend of hers with a car to drive us to Manzushir Monastery in the South of the Bogd Khan mountains - ie - on the opposite side from Ulaanbaatar, about an hour's drive away. A nice omen for any trip, heading out on to the airport road, is a billboard showing a merry, bearded actor on a horse representing the fearsome conqueror Chinggis Khan with the chilling message "Have a nice journey" scripted in English across it.

We skirted around the Holy mountain reserve counter-clockwise. Once the city and its power stations were out of sight, the scenery and the clean air are overwhelming. We passed numerous herds of horse, goats, sheep and cattle - many casually crossing the road (and for whom our driver only very marginally decelerated) and all with new-born young. The windows wound down and the cool air blowing fiercely, I found myself moved to tears.

The road to Manzushir is north out of Zuun Mod, the small capital of Tuv Aimag(province) - a town of mostly wooden houses and ger, with a few old soviet era buildings at the centre, including a couple of derelict factories - in other words, a town like most of the population centres outside of the capital.

The Bogd Khan mountains are not tall and imposing, but roll with many folds and spurs, the heights usually hidden from the low lands up in the forested tops. There are many changes of terrain and scenery - here North of Zuun Mod we found ourselves heading into a very Alpine valley. At the gates to the strictly protected area we paid our entrance fee (500T for the Mongolians, 2000T for me) and drove on up to a parking area. Manzushir is still in the process of being developed as a tourist destination. There are improved facilities being built at the ger camp, which, bearing in mind the proximity to the capital and the airport, ought to boost the number of visitors here, which in turn helps to pay for projects in the Strictly Protected Area. One hopes that a little would kick back to projects in the town, too.

As we drove I was very excited to see two almost golden-furred, big-headed rodents frolicking about in the sun - marmots, apparently. The beauty of the valley here is dazzling, and there were many falcons or hawks flying very low overhead, quite possibly on the lookout for marmots. The pine trees here seemed to be of substantial age, and now with fresh green needles. All around in the valley are scattered time-worn boulders of every shape and size, the heights they have come down from have fine cliffs and rocky pinnacles.

The Manzushir Monastery was founded in 1733, with many temples and a thriving community of monks: it was, of course, regrettably destroyed in the 1930s. There's now one wooden temple which has been restored as a museum, and the rest are picturesque ruins. I didn't spend much time in the museum here because I really wanted to climb up into the beautiful hills above, so I'm afraid I may well have missed out on some fascinating history to the place. I am sure that the valley is a location long-held to be particularly sacred, as the be`auty of the place seems to allow no other interpretation.

Above the monasteries are three main shrines in the rock face. In them are fine rock carvings of various buddhistic deities, some of which are painted. After paying mumbled respect at the shrines we carried on over fallen boulders, climbing slowly upwards. There is a strong feeling of having entered another world up there - again, it is so awe-inspiringly beautiful and, in the late spring at least, so fresh and revitalizing. Gradually, the temples below were lost to sight, and we were up in an entirely natural environment - but here, there are striking walls of rock, looking as though built carefully by giants. High above the valley, one such wall curves in a vast semi-cicle, towering maybe a hundred feet above, creating a natural enclosure, a fortress of rock.

The mysterious nature of the place was emphasised for us as the wind began to howl in the tree-tops, the sky blackened, and a fierce flurry of snow started to fall. We didn't dawdle too long, and took this as a sign to start heading back down. Perhaps unsurprisingly, once we had passed the shrines and were back down in the valley, the sky had completely cleared, we were back beneath the deep Mongolian blue sky of near summer.

We drove back to UB early in the evening, feeling very refreshed. Unfortunately, shortly before the city our driver committed a very minor traffic violation, for which he was stopped by a very smartly-uniformed and extremely serious-looking traffic police officer. His license was demanded and he was told to pull over off the road. Looking considerably apprehensive, our driver went back to speak with the police officer. Meanwhile, my companion expressed a fairly strong contempt for the nation's police force, which I have to say I have heard on any number of occasions before, and never heard contradicted. Finally our driver returned to rummage through his wallet. The situation was quite simple - he had been told "If you want your license back, pay me 4000T." This hadn't come as any kind of surprise. There wasn't even any discussion of the violation itself, nor any pretense that a fine was being paid, just a run-of-the-mill, petty extortion of slightly less than $4.

Inevitable Rant About Property Prices

2007-05-21T10:29:00.000Z

Interesting piece in the Sunday Times on the sudden surge in the number of British people investing in the luxury flats being built here. When my mother told me about the article, my blood rose as it usually does over the subject of the British mania for investing in property, particularly in the spread of this to developing countries. I used to find house prices in the South East amusing, even with its knock-on effects on the British economy - but that was before Liverpool won the Capital of Culture 2008. How we larfed when we heard about someone from down south buying a house in Liverpool's Kensington, presumably on the connotations of the name, for £40,000. It reminded me of a competition in the 80s in the Sun newspaper to 'win a house on the Bread street!' Even in the late 90s the house Ringo Starr was born in on those streets sold in auction for just a few thousand pounds. Hang on while I do a quick search on the price of 2-up 2-downs in Liverpool 8... well, it looks like you can still find one in the Dingle for a mere £90,000.

It's ridiculous to blame the Capital of Culture per se, it's property mania that's at the root of it. And of course year after year those people who repeat ' You can't go wrong with property, it only ever goes up' are proved right, so who am I to call it madness?

The prospect of an article telling me how British investors are spreading their insanity here fired all the usual rage buttons with me. Property prices in Ulaanbaatar are currently going up by 20% each year, the population is set to triple in the next ten years, and so there are more and more people desperately looking for homes. As I have already said, the average rental price for an apartment is above the average salary. [Edit: Of course, this is on the private rental market. Families fortunate enough to live in social housing allocated by the communists pay around $10 a month rent, which with utilities brings it to just under half the average monthly salary. I do not yet know how much the rent will be in the city's new '40,000 homes' scheme, nor how much social housing has been allocated since the end of communism. Many thousands of homes were built in the communist era, the last big wave being in the 1980s. Of course, all this information I'm posting is extremely flakily researched and entirely subject to failures of my understanding.]

Are people looking for holiday homes here? Of course, there is a shortage of decent hotel accommodation, but surely if you go on holiday to Mongolia, you want to stay in a ger? As it is, there are dozens of sparkling new buildings standing completely empty, while children and the destitute are living in any hole they can find. The government is trying to push a bill through parliament to allow the building of casinos that only foreigners can visit, and of course next year's Beijing Olympics should mean a big knock on growth of tourism here. At present there's only half a million visitors a year to the country.

It turned out on actually reading the article that the flats being bought by Britons are luxury apartments being built for Western high-flying business men and executives. It surprises me that there's that much of a demand for them, or that the demand is predicted to increase, but that's probably correct. If the high-flying executives are prepared to pay astronomical rents to live in their ivory towers then where's the harm? One investor in the article, Lord Newborough (now, at least - if he didn't buy his title - he's following a long and noble family tradition of squeezing the life-blood out of tenants) said “I was looking for an interesting high-yielding investment. It’s a democracy and the government are keen to see more foreign investment. Providing common sense prevails, it should be a very good long-term investment.” My failure to see how the whole world can see property prices increase ad infinitum is probably just a failure of my common sense organs - after all, the world's population is ever-increasing - it stands to reason, don't it? Before investing in the long-term Mongolian property market, I'd be interested in finding out when the Mongolian government are going to get around to ascertaining whether or not UB is the most polluted city in the world, and what they propose to do about it. Actually, the answer to the latter is bound to be 'build more homes', so no doubt the boom will continue.

A new development of luxury apartments just behind the Zaysan Tolgoy, beneath the Bogd Khan Uul -the 'Holy Mountain'- the world's oldest protected National Park. Also, conveniently within sight or just two minutes walk of the Children's Prison.

Admittedly, the idea of owning my own home is as attractive to me as to anyone else. I'd quite like to settle in Mongolia. I could probably buy a flat like mine in one of the nicer old soviet buildings for around $30,000. By next year it wouldn't surprise me if the same would cost $60,000. I guess I could buy a fully kitted-out ger for $1000.

Certainly, some of the poorest people in the city are getting rehoused - I imagine that the rate it's happening at is slow, but it is happening, and I believe that if they want to, the government here can get on top of the situation. I was giving my college students an end of term speaking test the other week. The student I was speaking to didn't have much English and so we chatted about his family. He lives with his mother and two sisters.

"Do you all live together in an apartment?"
"No, ger!" he replied with a smile.
"Well, uh, what do you think of living in a ger?" I asked.
"Ger is good," he replied proudly.
"So your family moved to the ger districts from the country...?" (he nodded) "How long have you been living in the ger district of UB?"
"Ten year!"
"Are you going to, would you ever move into an apartment if, er, if one was available?"
"Yes. Next year, next year we get," he said and his smile now broadened.
"So, you're going to be rehoused?" (nods) "Are you happy about that?"
"Yes, apartment wery good!"

The lad was about twenty years old, but he looked thirty or over. Living in the ger districts of UB is not great for the skin.

[My apologies to anybody reading this who buys-to-let, and who might take offense at my views on property investment. It is my personal opinion that spiralling house prices are harmful for a society and that, broadly speaking, there should be some kind of law against it. I'm a fan of social housing, where that can work positively alongside encouraging home ownership I am very happy. Where rents increase faster than salaries, then landlords are, as I see it, taking food from the mouths of their tenants. I am aware of the counter-argument that investing in property is investing in the infra-structure of a country, and is all for the nation's long-term good. I hope that it proves to be so]

Dust Pneumony, Man's Best Friend is a Fish, Knock-off DVDs,

2007-05-21T05:40:00.000Z

I wrote most of this entry last Thursday and started
A beautiful spring day. We had a few days rain a week or so ago and now everywhere is green. It's quite a transformation, as the city has many tree-lined avenues. Wandering around before sunset last night I was quite stunned, realizing that more than having simple affection for the place, Ulaanbaatar can actually be, well, beautiful. If you're considering an impulsive jaunt to Mongolia then don't hesitate, get over here immediately.
Every word of it true, of course, however, that afternoon the sky turned an ominous muddy brown. Now, we've had plenty of windy days here where the dust in the street gets caught up in gusts and stings your eyes, but that Thursday's dust had clearly arrived from elsewhere, and with purpose. My cleaner warned me to batten down the hatches. By oversight I left the bedroom window open, and after a few hours a thick layer of black grime had gathered on the sill and much had blown out across the bed. The wind howled in the elevator shaft.

This weekend I have been down with a crippling flu, which I am fairly certain was brought on by the dust. A lot of other people I know have been ill, some think from food poisoning or a summer cold, but I am certain that it's the black dust. The first night I had difficulty breathing, the next two days I could barely move from fever, and I've had a pounding headache to today. The dust pneumony has threatened to break my proud record of only having taken one day off sick in my whole working life. (That day was when working in Holland - I had a cold which left me physically unable to cycle the six miles into a headwind to work. It was November and I was living in a tent in an unheated cow shed.) I managed to struggle in to school this morning, for the first of my last two days, to mark more exam essay questions. This did at least cheer me up. The 7th Grade question was 'My favourite pet animal'. About 70% of the students had memorised or were copying the exact same essay about owning a dog. The really clever students had cunningly substituted the word 'dog' for some other animal. So there were countless cats as "man's best friend", needing to be taken for daily walks, the same applying to rabbits, both of which "repay the kindness of their owner with loyalty and devotion". My favourite essay, however, was about a fish, which amongst other things "can be trained to do useful tricks, like collecting the morning newspaper."

The tourist season has begun, but I think that the number of travellers is still pretty low. I see a lot more westerners about, but so far I think that's mostly warm weather bringing the expats out. There is a fairly failsafe way of spotting an expat - 99% (myself included) can be spotted by our dress. Not traditional deel or leather caps, but knock-off 'North Face' gear from China.

Speaking of knock-off merchandise from China, and spring being the perfect time to sit indoors with the curtains closed, the 'Happy Shop' is still keeping stocked with the latest DVD releases from the US and Europe - usually with a good quality picture and costing just under $2 a movie. This week I bought The Last Confederate, which I believe isn't due to be released for a while yet, Frank Miller's 300, Flags of Our Fathers, Kill Bill (vols 1 and 2), The Last Samurai, Hot Fuzz, Seraphim Fallsand, er, the new Ninja Turtles cartoon and Mr Bean's Holiday (honestly, I bought it for Mongolian friends - having discovered that Mr Bean is enormously popular over here. In a popular culture quiz, just about every single student I have taught has correctly identified Rowan Atkinson as the actor responsible - probably making him the most famous living Englishman after James Blunt). Being housebound has given me plenty of time to catch up on my viewing, when the headaches have allowed it.

Seraphim Falls, the new western starring Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan (or Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson according to the credits on the back of the dvd sleeve, which appear to be for "Batman"), is a pretty interesting movie: cinema-goers get two films for the price of one. One is a gritty and engaging struggle for survival, the other a mysterious and allegorical something-or-other. I prefer the former. Both, however, are representative of some of the more interesting westerns of the '70s, when the genre - post-Wild Bunch, post-Leone, post-Vietnam and Watergate - lost its way. Just how far the western lost its way is indicated by the fact that Dances With Wolves was considered to be the genre's return. The finish of Seraphim Falls seems thoughtful and well-meant, but is on the whole pretty lame. Still, the first half-hour or so might be one of the best man-hunt sequences on film. A shivering Pierce Brosnan struggle to light a fire or die after escaping pursuit by falling into an icy river, will prompt you to think "This film can't get any better." Unfortunately, it doesn't.

School is Over, Some Lessons Learned

2007-05-18T06:57:00.000Z

The school term is suddenly over - a little sooner than I expected, having again failed to realise that it wouldn't occur to anyone to keep me informed about a little thing like my job being finished. To be fair, I've had a summer tutoring job offered to me and so discovering that I now have two weeks holiday is a very pleasant surprise. There'll be a few exams for me to invigilate and mark next week, but no more classes, the Wednesday just gone being my last.

I'll certainly miss teaching the little blighters. All told, I have to admit that I found teaching the 4th grade a lot easier than teaching the 9th, 10th and 11th. I also have to say that I've not had any indication from the school that they're particularly happy with the work I've done - although they have found me a very nice job to move on to. I can't be certain whether this is a cultural thing or a reflection on my abilities or personality. I'm aware that I'm not a particularly easy person for a manager to have to deal with - I have no time to listen to criticisms of how I work, and I generally have a thousand and one suggestions on how everybody else involved could do things better to make things work for me. These aren't qualities that I generally put on my CV, but I'm aware of them. I do believe that I am genuinely committed to doing a job conscientiously, and I hope that I've done as well as I am able over the past five and a half months.

Some things have worked, and other things haven't. One problem I had right at the beginning of the job was expecting students to address me by my surname. Nice for me to feel like a teacher and a bona-fide member of the adult world. Unfortunately, I was unaware that Mongolians don't have surnames - so typically a teacher would be addressed as "Jim Teacher" rather than, say, "Mr MacTavish, sir!" I guess I partly had it in mind that the whole social structure of a school depended on such fundamental forms of repectful address - ignoring the fact that they were entirely meaningless in Mongolian. Furthermore, I was denied the opportunity to bellow "Jones: stop running in the corridor!" or "What was that you said, Smith?"

I am glad that I abandoned trying to teach from the coursebook after the first term. It made no sense to be boring the students rigid with material they were already covering with a teacher who they could actually understand. Of course, this made me entirely responsible for the quality of the materrial I chose in replacement.

The students preferred working in teams rather than alone. I was never able to persuade the students to address each other in English much on these occasions, but they must have got something out of these lessons, by virtue of their remaining awake at least. Of course, in a larger team there would always be an opportunity for somebody to doze off - likewise, working in pairs it would usually be the case that the brainiest student would carry the burden of the work. If students were expected to work on their own, it was only the smallest proportion that came up with anything at all.

Most of the students did not want to discuss or work on current affairs, pretty much whatever the topic. They might say that they would like to work on something they werte personally interested in - like say a certain movie or singer: invariably that would engage the interest of only those students who particularly liked that subject. If the entire class were allowed to chose a subject to work on (even within a limited scope, such as "My Favourite Movie" or "A Person I Admire") then that would be taken as a signal for students to do absolutely whatever they wished, and no work at all would be done.

Students did very much enjoy doing quizzes, particularly in teams. The favourite format for this was "Jeopardy" - where teams pick a category and then a difficulty level of question to answer. I found that even in quizzes where I'd made the questions far too difficult, causing annoyance and complaint, the students at least remained involved. The students liked the introduction of random factors - engineered by a coin toss or the draw of a card - into the game. Also, they got a lot of fun out of thinking up stupid names for their teams. With the 4th grade I would usually insist taht the boys and girls play in mixed-gender teams. This would provoke howls of protest from all, but as soon as the game started, the teams would be united in their desire to win.

Competitions with the 4th grade students did create a few situations where tears fell. A short while back, my mother posted me some jars of Marmite. For the next two days I had little else to do in class but dare the students to try the stuff. One group of 4th graders formed a very eager queue, with each trying to eat more bread coated in the black substance than the others. In the next class, I decided to use Marmite as a forfeit in a Spelling Bee. Unfortunately, the poor girl who lost was so overcome by the situation that, although she gamely ate her piece of bread, she burst into tears and sobbed for the rest of the class. "Look, it tastes horrible, but it's really, really good for you," was the best I could guiltily manage in an attempt to console her.

I have reported that I was entirely unable to convey a love for literature to any of my students. Whilst the 11th grade managed to get through some pieces and express a degree of appreciation for the subject matter, it was very clear that they would have preferred not to have bothered. Students in all grades, however, produced some excellent pieces of creative writing in class. My favourite responses came from an essay question I set asking the students to write an imaginary news report to fit one of the following headlines from the year 2027 "Scientists abolish sleep - Welcome to the 24/7" and "Knowledge Implants - 40,000 gigabytes of learning direct to your brain. Never study again!" The responses were imaginative and entertaining. Somewhat sinisterly, very few of the students foresaw any negative impact from these two very probable future developments - but why should they? By and large, the students I taught are very happy to embrace the changes that technology brings.

Their embracing of the modern world led to my pretty much entirely abandoning the concept of homework. I decided that if I wanted to read a Wikipedia article on a subject it would be quicker to visit the site myself, rather than ask the students for a 500 word essay. One area of creative writing that produced some really worthwhile stuff was poetry written during class. One student cheerfully completed his two poems at home, and came back the next day with a rhyme from a greetings card (complete with unfunny innuendo) and a poem from somebody else's blog - which was so bad that it could have been written by my 9th grader, except that it included the words nostalgia and forlorn. Forlorn! the very word is like a bell! Tolling a warning to the wary: here be plagiarism. I printed out the Plagiarism entry from Wikipedia and put my name to it, but the irony went unappreciated. Incidentally, the Wikipedia entry makes some very good points about how plagiarism is perceived in different cultures - that developing societies do not share the western aversion to it.

Some class exercises that I picked up from sites like Dave's ESL Cafe, which were 100% guaranteed to capitivate a classroom went down like the proverbial lead balloon. However, I was very glad to have that kind of resource available, and usually if something worked with one class, it would go along well in the others. My hit rate might have been 50/50, which is surely good enough. No matter how many times it happened, however, I was left feeling pretty abject when a class did not work out.

Fortunately, I had started the job with one thought at the back of my mind: at the very worst, all I'll turn out to be is a bad teacher - and teachers are supposed to suck. What kind of education would a child get if all their teachers were wonderful, creative, inspirational human beings? At the very best, it would set them out in life with unrealistic expectations.

Rubik's Cubes, iBooks

2007-05-12T04:56:00.000Z

Confiscating or attempting to confiscate Sony Walkman phones and iPods all the time is one of the untrammeled joys of my profession. I can get a bit carried away: meeting recently with two Ukranian friends I had to stop myself from yanking the ear-phones out of the ears of one, and restrict myself to an "If you were one of my students..." admonishment.

Recently a bit of variety has been injected into the situation at school by some genius deciding to present all of the students with a Rubik's cube each, and giving them a month to hone their skills before a competition at the end of term. What a great idea. I guess someone thought that there was a risk, however infinitesimal, of students getting bored of listening to BX or System of a Down or wottevah, and actually start paying attention to their classes. Happily that possibility has been averted, thanks to the timely intervention of Professor Rubik's 1974 invention - a record low of attention-paid has been achieved, and I've got a growing collection of the bloody things in my locker.

These kids with their iPods though, tchah! I have complained often enough on this site of the difficulty in finding decent English reading material in Ulaanbaatar (I mean, what is this place, Outer Mongolia?), and mentioned that I have been very much taken by the ebooks available to download from the Project Gutenberg website. The problem with ebooks is that while they're convenient with clogging your hard drive with every major work of literature in western civilization, even laptops are not very portable as far as a quick read goes. And there's me with an iPod mostly empty other than a very extensive collection of Bluegrass and Johnny Cash (the new 'Personal Files' release is, incidentally, just incredible) and now the occasional video download of Prime Minister's Questions and the sister broadcast Ask A Ninja. Well, slowly the wheels of my brain ticked and I thought to check online whether it's possible to download an ebook onto an iPod. Of course it is indeed possible - the book gets stored in the iPod's 'Notes' section. There's a website where over 11,000 books from Project Gutenberg have been converted to formats for downloading to 'readers', including iPod Notes.

Of course many people will say that it's no fun reading from a screen slightly smaller than 2 inches across, and on the whole it's not - I do find it leaves me a little groggy after an hour or so. However, it's tolerable, especially when the alternative is reading a disintegrating copy of R. F. Delderfield's "God is an Englishman" and paying 3000 Tugrik for the privilege. The backlight of course means that you can read without disturbing sleeping companions or indeed getting out of bed to turn the light off when you're finished (which has always been a considerable chore during those times of my life when, as now, I've been without the luxury of a bedside lamp). And when someone asks "Is that Jeremy Clarkson yer watching there on yer iPod?" you can reply "No, I was just reading 'Jurgen' - you know, the controversial 1919 James Branch Cabell satire. It's rather good, actually." This affords a warming glow of smugness and self-satisfaction that can sustain oneself long after the battery on the bloody thing has died again.

One Million and Counting

2007-05-12T04:19:00.000Z

A ceremony was held in Ulaanbaatar on May 8th to honour the birth of the city's one millionth citizen (born April 11th). Actually, the honour was bestowed on three babies born around the same time. After the birth of the children, the President and other worthies rushed to congratulate the families and speak proudly of this milestone event. All well and good, but a Mongolian friend remarked to me that all this celebration seemed a poor joke to him, considering the problems facing the city. The city's real millionth citizen was clearly born some while ago now and possibly to one of the uncounted thousands of people living here off the census books. Some estimates put the city's unofficial population at 1.2 or 1.5 million, with the ger districts growing and getting more crowded, and an unknown number of homeless people still living under the city in the heating system. The estimate for growth of the official population, as quoted in Thursday's UB Post, predicts 3 million citizens by 2015.

New apartment blocks are being built everywhere, but it seems that the demand must be well ahead of supply - for one thing property values are currently increasing by around 20% each year. I am hopeful that if the '40,000' homes scheme - which aims to use public money and private investment to build a new stock of social housing - begins to look like working then the government here might increase the project, as it's my guess that 40,000 homes ain't enough.

Happily for the city's three 'one millionth' citizens there need be no concern over their future housing. The one month olds were each presented by UB Mayor Ts Batbold with keys "too big for their little fists to grab" (UB Post) to single-bedroom apartments. Yes, in a city where people live in the sewers and the monthly rent for an average sized apartment is three times the average wage, the Mayor is handing out flats to babies.

I'm curious about these flats, but there weren't any other details included in the paper. Have they been handed over with any conditions? I mean, do they belong to the babies or their parents? I'm hoping that, however small these flats are, this means that at least three ordinary families here will get a chance to move into their own place and start building a better future - but maybe the flats will just be moth-balled for twenty years until the babies can make use of them - or sold so Dad can buy a Humvee.

Supermarket English, Taxi Mongolian, F Grades, Poetry

2007-05-03T06:25:00.000Z

Thursday 3rd May
There's now a very languid heat throughout the day and warm night breezes, but still no green shoots appearing: as yet there's been no rain. Thursday afternoon is now the calm lull in my week - no lessons at school and no evening classes either. I've just started a job teaching the managers of a supermarket chain basic English three nights a week. It's the first class that I've been left entirely to my own devices to devise and run, which I am slightly surprised to find is coming as an almost welcome challenge rather than a dreaded chore. It's strangely enjoyable trying to work a supermarket twist into every lesson plan - suggestions are welcome, folks. So far the students seem very happy with the class - although admittedly I've only taught two classes so far, so there's plenty of scope for disillusionment to settle in before my contracted month is over.

The lessons are at the supermarket's HQ, which is at the very western edge of the city. In conversation I'm frequently challenging the way that my fellow expats criticise the driving here, countering that it's certainly no worse than London even if the lane-changing and light-jumping is somewhat colourfully individualistic. It now occurs to me that my experience of Ulaanbaatar's traffic has been fairly limited, my opinions, some might say, coming from a sheltered viewpoint - spending most of my time around the city centre and only usually getting a cab late at night when the streets are mostly empty. The experience is a bit more enterrorficating on the ring roads at rush hour, particularly at the big junctions. My admiration goes out to the traffic cops who stand in the middle of the tornadoes of steel and rubber, permanently blowing on their whistles and vigorously waving their batons as ton after ton of painful death speeds by them with mere inches to spare, or screams to a juddering stop and reluctanctly concedes his authority.

I can now ask "How much?" and count to nineteen, whilst also knowing the words for hundred and thousand - an achievement I am very proud of in spite of the fact that it has taken me five months to attain. Combined with "Yakshtay?!" ("Are you taking the piss, mate?") this means that I am rising to a level of mastery of taxi-driver Mongolian hitherto only dreamed of. No longer do I settle for tourist rates! No longer do I accept a charge of 40p when I know damn well it should be 15p! In outrage I will complain "Bi bagsh, bi bagsh" ("Me teacher, me teacher") - I guess that once I can say "I am not a tourist" then I'll have learnt everything I need to know. I can give the number of my district, and have an impressively accurate mental GPS of the city, although this isn't guaranteed reliable after 2am/five pints. There's a sizable degree of confidence that arises from conquering this sphere of daily life.

Incidentally, as I don't think I've mentioned this before, in UB every car is a potential taxi - one just stands at the edge of the sidewalk (a more appropriate term than pavement as it simply indicates where pedestrians are found, rather than any expected degree of surfacing) and waits for the first fume-belching, exhaust-rattling vehicle to pull over. This is how everybody who gets around by taxi manages it, and there doesn't appear to be a level of risk to the activity worth worrying about. In fact (very much contrary to the advice given by hotels etc all over the city) in my experience it's generally only in the licensed cabs with meters that a really concerted effort is made to rip-off foreigners: every single time I've got into one on my own the meter has either been switched off or else it climbs at an astronomical rate. I had a fairly heated exchange with one driver who was trying to charge me about ten dollars (enough to get you to the moon and back) which might have turned ugly were it not broad daylight and outside a fancy hotel. Private citizens have always been far more modest when they've tried to overcharge me - only doubling the fare rather than asking for 5 or 10 times the going rate.

My job at the school, as I have previously remarked, is now drawing to a close. Final exams are underway or approaching for all the grades. I am being magnanimous in my scoring, only partly because my departmental senior has politely and cautiously informed me that F grades are not given in Mongolia. They're built into the school's grading software of course, but they have to be creatively avoided. Sometimes I'm reluctant to play along with this - such as today stopping the 10th grade (advanced class) student who can neither speak, read nor write a word of English, from transcribing the essay his neighbour had generously scribbled out for him. I have been given the freedom to teach my classes however I liked so this a bit spoil-sportish of me, I know, and will doubtless gamely give him a D when the time comes, but I do kind of enjoy the exasperated "he-just-doesn't-get-it" looks from students when I insist on their not copying work in exams. Looking at the results as far as their essays and this terms creative writing go, I allow myself the luxury of shaking my head and concluding that they just don't get, because a lot of the work that I've insisted they do for themselves has actually been fresh, original and a pleasure to read. The classrooms and walls of the school are plastered with the students' poetry and prose. This is because the Mongolian teachers get a cut in their pay if the walls aren't plastered with the "students'" work. Almost every single word so neatly printed out in curly fonts is lifted from a 1950s rock and roll song or is just direct from Wikipedia, complete with all the link words still underlined. And yet, when I force my students at a metaphorical gun point to write a poem in 10 minutes or less if they don't want an F grade this term, I get charming results like

Spring

Spring is beginning of
something new
In Spring we saw
new herbs, vegetables
In Spring it
rains very first time
of the new year
That rain brings love
all living things
will fall in love
That's the beginning of
Life.

which may not be Keats but it's refreshing indeed to read after marking 20 essays about "A Mongolian who has made a great contribution to this country" - which proved, surprise, surprise, to be 20 identi-kit potted bios of guess-which plucky young son of the steppe, visions of oceans united in his merciless eyes? I particularly liked the inclusion of the word "vegetables", which has an earthy and prosaic rhythm that takes the poem away from mere cliche.

Dornogov, Danzan Ravjaa, Shambhala, Kharaa

2007-04-25T03:00:00.000Z

Although I've been here in Mongolia for over four months now, I've only actually left Ulaanbaatar on a precious few occasions. I like it here in the city, and I've managed to keep myself occupied, but obviously I want to see more of this vast and wonderful country. So when I was told that a group of the teachers were planning a trip to visit holy sites in the Eastern Gobi, I was very keen to tag along. We would get the train down to Sainshand, the capital of Dornogov Aimag (province) on Friday afternoon and return on the Saturday night train back to UB: the journey being about 450km each way. A short visit, but at least it fitted-in with work. Plus, a third class ticket would cost less than $4 each way - ie, close to the bus fare in and out of Liverpool city centre from Sefton Park. I was extremely vague on what we would actually be doing in Dornogov, although I had been told we would be visiting a very holy site - the world's "second energy centre" - and I also had a hunch that consumption of vodka might also be somehow involved.

For more photos of this trip, please visit the Dornogov album on my Flickr page

Friday 20th April 2007
The train was due to leave from Ulaanbaatar station at 4.30pm, we arrived in taxis from the school at 4pm. I'd been hoping to get a first class ticket (for about $9) but there were none left, so I was stuck with the rest of my colleagues in coach. About a dozen of the teachers were on the trip, all women, and one of their husbands, Ganbold, who proved to speak excellent English and be extremely competent to answer my endless questions during the trip. The atmosphere at the somewhat surprisingly modern and clean station is exciting and uplifting - the long train of huge, dusty green carriages, neatly uniformed staff and milling crowds, smiles, shouting and joking.

The train left UB dead on time. Third class on the Trans-Mongolian is entirely comfortable enough for a day time journey - and there seemed to be enough space for the people who wanted to lie down in the overhead bunks to do so. It being the first time I had seen so much of the country not blanketed in snow, I noted how the low rolling hills and then undulating steppe were brown in colour: Ganbold told me that the green grass would not show through until June or even July. As the evening wore on the air inside the train got dustier and dustier; people muttered about the increasing problem of desertification and looked enviously at the few passengers who had brought face masks along with them. We arrived in Sainshand, on schedule, around 2am. We disembarked then were taken by a waiting micro-bus to the town theatre. The director is related, I think, to one of the teachers, and so we were let into the grand old building to sleep until the following morning, on the floors of the director's smart office, and the dressing room which had faded posters of Russian stars of the stage peeling from the walls.

Saturday 21st April 2007
We got up for breakfast at 8.30am. A fine sunny day out, of course, but with a chilly breeze. Sainshand seems fairly typical of what passes for a large town in Mongolia: wide streets, very empty-seeming after the hectic bustle of UB, square Soviet buildings scattered around and spacious play areas and public parks. Our first stop of the day was at a modest little building next door to the 'Missouri' bar: the Danzan Ravjaa museum.

It turned out that Danzan Ravjaa, the Lama of the Gobi as he is known, was very much the focus of our whole trip. I was entirely ignorant of this extremely important figure in Mongolian history before my trip - I have certainly learnt a lot about him through the course of my visit, but please excuse any errors that remain in my understanding. More about this truly fascinating man can be learned from this website.

The museum contains a collection of materials associated with the life of Danzan Ravjaa (1803 - 1856)- from the clothes he wore as a child and his toys, through materials he used to teach art and buddhist scripture, musical instruments he played and music he scored, costumes worn in sacred dance, his "ninja star" and samurai sword, to his ashes themselves, in a shrine at the building's centre. Furthermore, the building also contains some of the wooden chests and crates which were used to hide these relics during the bloody Communist suppression of Buddhism, which were finally dug up and reopened to allow the establishment of the museum in 1991. The preservation of these items means that the existence of the museum is in itself an intrinsic part of Danzan Ravjaa's story.

Danzan Ravjaa represents many things: he was a Buddhist, of course, but also in lay terms an educator, a proto-feminist, a playwright, a musician, an artist, a warrior (did he actually use his martial skills in battle? I don't yet know), a Mongolian, of course, and now representative of Mongolia's rediscovery of its past too. First the Manchu Chinese and then the Communists had attempted to obliterate his memory and the veneration with which he was held by his people - again, I would direct you to the Danzanravjaa.org website to read more of this fascinating story in an article there by the CEO of the Khan Bank, J. P. Morrow.

Waiting for one of the teachers to make an errand before we headed out to Danzan Ravjaa's birthplace, some young kids came over to practice their English on Julia - an American teacher, and also a Buddhist who kindly filled in some of the considerable gaps in my understanding - and myself. Their pronunciation was extremely good - a legacy, I like to think, of the Gobi Lama's mission to educate the Mongolian people. Danzan Ravjaa was born to a poor family, which distinguishes him from Zanabazar and the other noble descendents of Genghis who mostly seem prominent in the Mongolia's history.

Ganbold and I travelled by Russian jeep, along with the theatre director's husband - a large and merry man, dark-skinned, who was extremely knowledgeable and clearly proud of the heritage of his region's most famous son. On our journey down bumpy tracks through the Gobi, he explained the story behind the exhibit in the museum that had most caught my eye - Danzan Ravjaa's "ninja star" and Samurai sword. Danzan Ravjaa was a master of this peculiar-looking throwing knife - which was thrown to slash an enemies throat, and then returns to the thrower's hand. Unlike the more familiar shuriken of movies, comic books and martial arts stores, The Lama's knife is not symmetrical and has a bulbous handle. A Samurai came from Japan to study this art from Danzan Ravjaa - he spent three years training with him (at this point, I wonder exactly how someone can learn to throw and catch such a knife without losing their fingers in the process), after which, in gratitude, he presented the monk with his sword. Furthermore, in the desert gulley where Danzan Ravjaa would meditate the Samurai planted a Sakora tree or trees, more of which later.

The only camels I would see on this journey were a herd a kilometre or so off as we drove for 50 or 60km into the desert. This region isn't true desert - apparently none of the Gobi really qualifies as that - but is rather desert/steppe: some kind of Asian sagewood grows in most places and there are scattered clumps of grass. There is certainly the vastness of a desert - the spaces are wide and humbling. The richness in variety of earthy colours is the most striking feature, particularly beneath the luminescent blue sky: deep reds and browns and ochre shades.

These colours seemed to grow richer in contrast as we approached Danzan Ravjaa's birthplace, centred around rocky patches of various minerals, chief amongst which certainly appeared to be coal. Finally, and after my neck had nearly been broken a few times by sudden impact of my skull against the roof of the jeep, our drivers parked us alongside a few other micro-buses and jeeps, in a small levelled-off car park.

We stretched our legs. I could not help noticing that the party next to us were unloading a surprising number of vodka bottles from their jeep - even by Mongolian standards this seemed to be an odd time and place for such a party. Of course our guide had treated us to a shot or two of vodka to consecrate our drive across the desert, but this looked excessive.

A buddhist priest was waiting, possibly by arrangement, to greet our party: he addressed the crowd for a short time, and we then followed him along a path marked by large white ‘stupa’ (a Buddhist devotional marker - of which I am unsure of the doubtless many and intricate significances). I was unsure of our destination, but as the path crested a low rocky rise, it revealed itself.

Ahead of us, indeed like some kind of vision or materialization to which the correct response is “wow” was the Shambhala at the birthplace of Danzan Ravjaa. This was self-evidently the “second energy centre of the world” which had been somewhat unclearly spoken of before our trip started. If you will indulge me I will try and explain what I have come to understand the place to be.

As I understand it Shambhala is a kind of spiritual realm, a buddhist heaven of sorts, which has two physical parallels on Earth - this one in the Eastern Gobi, and one somewhere in the Himalaya. All three are in a metaphysical sense actually the same place. At this one, there are 108 (an Auspicious Number) Stupa in a rectanglular pattern - these represent 108 mountains in the spirit Shambhala. This Shambhala - apparently - was first built by Danzan Ravjaa and then destroyed during the Communist persecutions: it was rebuilt 3 years ago - apparently - on the same lines as the original. Or so I am told. All this goes somewhat beyond what I can verify on the much referred-to pages of Wikipedia, which refers only to the spiritual and mythical location.

Whatever the credentials are for this particular slice of heaven-on-earth, it certainly gives an extraordinarily powerful imprint on the visitor’s consciousness: if only for the sheer beauty of this particular stretch of desert, the blue sky, the red and brown earth, the white stupa. We followed the monk to the gateway.

Shambhala is entered by passing through the left hand side of the gateway. There is a gateway to Shambhala within each of us, supposedly, and perhaps the face on the physical gate here represents that self-knowledge - or perhaps not. Anyhow, I enjoyed the absence of a physical wall, and the speculation, later, that if one did not enter through the left hand side of the gateway, one wouldn't be in Shambhala at all, however much physically that appeared to be so.

In the grounds of Shambhala itself we were encouraged to feel the cosmic energy coursing around, to sit or lie in the warm sand, to meditate in whatever fashion we chose. The majority of pilgrims were clearly here to follow a particular ritual, one which is ascribed to Mr Ravjaa, and its formula was explained stage-by-stage by the monk. He spoke good-naturedly and at some length, and some of what he said was translated for my benefit.

The first stage was the purification of our sins. Each of us wrote down our sins on a piece of paper, to be burned in a special shrine. I noted that people were only writing on very small pieces of paper, so I assumed that we were either supposed to write just our biggest or our most recent sins: I opted to believe that the latter was intended, and restricted myself to humbly asking forgiveness for raising my voice to my students, and kicking the desk of a sleeping 10th-grader. The priest joked that we must run our sins by him before burning them, which provided much amusement to people presumably unfamiliar to the Roman practice of confession.

Having given up our trespasses, we were now green-flagged to participate in the main event. Here's where the vodka bottles made their appearance - as everybody produced from their bags a bottle of the good stuff - almost exclusively the 500ml bottles of Kharaa. I don't think I've mentioned before, but the 500ml bottle of Kharaa is pretty much the vodka of choice for those who don't want to splash out on Chinggis. It costs around $3, and is favoured primarily (so a teacher once told me) because of its tamper-proof seal. There isn't such a seal on the 750ml bottle - why this should be, I do not know, although as almost everybody swears by it, it's a pretty effective sales promotion, and they certainly shift a lot of units of the half-litre.

Anyhow, literally everybody on the trip from our party and the others we had joined had a bottle. By chance I had a bottle on me too, although I'd opened mine on the train for a night-cap. I asked a teacher and she didn't think it would matter that my bottle was already opened. One by one we were to proceed to the centre of Shambhala, where we should stand, facing West and the Himalayas I guess, and silently make our wishes. At the end of our wish we should toss a beaker of vodka into the air. Not only would our wishes be granted, but the vodka would become sanctified. From now on, if ever we were ill or in need of some divine assistance, a shot of our Kholy Kharaa would see us right. A few drops at the beginning of a day would be sure to make that day fortuitous. Furthermore, once the bottle begins to run empty, we could refill the bottle with some fresh vodka, which would likewise become sanctified, guaranteeing us, if we were careful, a lifetime supply. All in all, a pretty good deal. I patiently waited my turn.

People seemed to be taking a good long time with their wishes, so it seemed that there wasn't a limit to what could be asked for. My turn finally came - unfortunately, the terms of this particular enchantment prohibit my sharing the details until the wishes are granted. All I can say is that should any of my friends and family find themselves blessed by some piece of exceptional good fortune over the next 12 months, they might consider from whence it came, and send me some form of kickback: be that spiritual or monetary, whichever seems most appropriate. The droplets of Kharaa sparkled in the air as I tossed a cupful to the wind, and I let the next person take their place, while I returned to sit in the warm sand, feeling beneficient and blessed, and partaking of a small cupful of my now-miraculous beverage.

There was a final ritual at an ovoo (holy cairn) on the far side of Shambala. I can't quite remember what the significance of this ritual was, maybe a further chance to confirm our wishes. However, after people had made their offerings we all joined hands in a circle and a beautiful song was sung - one of Danzan Ravjaa's many compositions. It was a moving experience. Looking north from here we could see a small tree marking the spot where he was born. His mother died in child birth, he kept her memory sacred. I was told that the Lama of the Gobi was a proto-feminist: that he believed strongly in the education of women.

Finally, we made our way out through the left hand side of the gateway and returned to our transport. Speaking to the teachers I heard numerous testimonies from people who had previously undertaken the ritual here, and had had their very concrete wishes - for promotions, a child, a new refrigerator - granted.

We now drove to the Women's Ovoo - a twin cairn erected by Danzan Jarvaa himself in memory of his mother. Ganbold and I remained in the jeep while the women made a triple-circuit of the ovoo, scattering vodka and candies as an offering. I guess that they got another chance to reconfirm their wishes, but by no means the last of the day.

We made our way to a temple bell and rang it a few times, and then drove to the gulley where Danzan Ravjaa and later monks would meditate in caves. The colours of the desert were rich and beautiful here. In the bottom of the gulley grow Japanese Sakura trees - as mentioned earlier, the gift of the Lama's Samurai disciple. The trees are very popular with Japanese tourists today, particularly when their pink blossom blooms for ten days or so in June. It is considered remarkable to see such a sight in the Gobi. Clearly though, the earth here is rich in minerals and nutrients - walking down to the bottom of the gulley I noticed that a small bush had tiny green buds beginning to open on it - the first green plantlife I've so far seen in Mongolia.

Monks would meditate in the caves here for 108 days. Some did not make it to the end of their meditation, and their remains were sealed up in the rock. It proved that I had saved myself much time and effort with my rather scanty confession of wrongs in the Shambhala - for here there is the Womb Rock - a natural archway under which one crawls to be reborn, and in the process have all one's sins washed away.

Our guides took us over the soft undulations of earth for half a kilometre to show us some dinosaur fossils. The bones were very impressive - however, it was impossible to shake the suspicion that the majority had been carted to this convenient location from somewhere less accessible. Nonetheless, one sizeable leg bone certainly appeared to have been in the earth here for some time. The vertebrae our group eagerly picked up and examined, and then placed back roughly as found. We were told that there'd been some rib bones too, but "the Chinese stole them". The guides also said that there were people who knew the location of dinosaur eggs, but who were keeping that information secret to protect the Gobi's heritage. There are many dinosaur eggs from the Gobi in the Natural History Museum in UB, and however staged the appearance of the fossils at this location, it's clear that there's an absolute wealth of such remains hereabouts, and presumably plenty of scope for increased scientific surveys.

Next we drove to a small settlement and a rebuilt monastery founded by Danzan Jarvaa. On the way we passed by a marker showing the location of Mongolia's first theatre (founded by guess-who, the man of many parts). Outside the monastery was a young boy in traditional dress. Ganbold asked me how I would like teaching English for a year say in such a place and I replied I would like it very much, could I afford to forgo a salary for so long. I felt a considerable pang of envy for those volunteers who do make such a sacrifice, as the experience would clearly be deeply rewarding. Ganbold asked the boy if he goes to school: he replied no, that he was studying to be a monk, and reading the Sutras. Making our tour of the monastery temple, the young monk made certain that I bowed and showed my respect at all the appropriate places within.

We drove across the desert again. The director's husband impressed me by managing on this particularly bumpy stretch to lie back and snore contentedly, in spite of his fairly considerable bulk being thrown around like a ship on a stormy ocean. Our final stop of the day was at a holy mountain, possibly the Black Mountain, where I was told that for centuries monks were cremated. The dark ground is very gravelly and soft, conjuring an image that it is composed entirely of the burnt remains of endless aeons of holy men. Here only Ganbold and myself were allowed to proceed to the top, for, as is the case with a number of holy mountains in Mongolia, this one was for men only. The women waited at a temple at the bottom. Although the mountain isn't very high, it took a while to climb, as Ganbold had to alternately make a sprinkled offering of Kharaa and sip a small cupfull every three or so steps of his climb. I hasten to add in all seriousness here that Ganbold isn't a drinking man and was performing this act strinctly out of piety. At the summit was a large ovoo festooned in blue silk scarves and prayer-flags. There were also stupendous views of the surrounding Gobi - darkening now as the sun settled towards the horizon and clouds raced across the skies. Ganbold proceeded to tie prayer flags to the ovoo - on each was written a name which he called out to the wind - so as to be heard by the spirit of a partly deaf monk. The women had given us dozens and dozens such flags for us to take up and set flying in the winds there. Although he began the task alone, Ganbold eventually asked for my assistance otherwise it looked unlikely that we would make it back to Sainshand in time to catch the 9pm train. I figured that the mechanistic nature of prayer flags and prayer wheels indicated that there need be no particular piety from the person carrying out the task: however, one young Mongolian chap who had been taking his vodka imbibing duties very seriously did object to my presence there before "his country's gods" so I had to leave Ganbold to finish the job. In a somewhat conciliatory tone the young man asked me where I was from and (perhaps pointedly) when I'd be going home. There didn't seem to be any hard feelings.

After at least three quarters of an hour on the hill top we were able to descend, the flags all flying merrily, among the multitude of others. Many other pilgrims had come and gone in that time, some requiring a considerable degree of support to stay standing. Most were pouring libations rather than tying flags, some were also throwing candies and chocolate biscuits. Perhaps feeling a little high-and-mighty, I decided that, rather than by making an offering, I'd show my respect for the land and its spirits by taking away some of the litter abandoned here (silver paper wrappings from a biscuit packet and a few plastic bags) by the faithful.

The drive to Sainshand took about an hour. Our guide graciously made me a gift of a bottle of vodka - it was then indicated with a grim that the correct thing for me to do would be to invite my fellow travellers to join me in a drink. The driver and Ganbold accepted their cups but only dipped their fingers in their drinks, as is allowed. Naturally, it would have been deeply ungracious of me to follow this practice, however, and so leave the gift-giver alone drinking, so I proceeded to get rather merry. Of course, after somebody has dipped their ring finger in vodka you don't need to throw their cup away, but you do have to pour a little bit more into it before offering the cup to the next person. This can lead to some fairly stiff measures being poured. The drive became something of a blur - shortly before arriving back at Sainshand, though, my attention was drawn to a small pool of water in which three ducks stood. Their plumage seemed to be light brown on the body and white on the head. I'm sure that there was nothing unusual in the sight, just that it was unexpected to me. Probably there are larger bodies of water around in the region - but otherwise were the ducks migratory, did they stop off at this particular puddle every year en route to wetter climes?

We beat the sunset and so were able to stop off for (Inner-Mongolian) Chinese food and just enough further drink at a restaurant in town. The theatre director pl;ayed host - she got our table and the adjacent one singing a very rousing song - a Ravjaa composition? At this stage I'm afraid I didn't have the wits about me to ask. A good meal inside us we poured onto the train. Very happily, a sleeper ticket had been procured for me for the return journey - before the train had left the station i think I was up in my bunk and asleep. It was a very soothing journey - took 12 hours this time, but I was very happy for the delay as I spent almost all of this time fast asleep. There wasn't any dust in the train for the return - a glance out of the window in the morning showed snow on the ground, which is perhaps what made the difference.

Thursday 26th April
Back at home now and back into my routine. I was a bit surprised on Monday to learn that there are only four weeks or so of regular teaching left. There'll be exams and things through the end of May and June, but my full-time duties are drawing to an end. Summer is arriving - there was a fly in my bathroom this morning. It's warm out on my balcony, the mountains are clear and feel close. I pour out a very small shot of my sanctified Kharaa, and raise a silent toast, to Danzan Ravjaa, the "Terrible Noble Saint of the Gobi".

Enkhbayar, Leeds University, Marmite

2007-04-18T01:28:00.000Z

Wednesday 18th April
Trawling the net (pretty much unsuccessfully) for any news of President Enkhbayar's current visit to the UK, I did at least stumble across this interview on the Leeds University website which took place during Enkhbayar's last visit to the UK.

He speaks very enthusiastically about his time in Leeds (which was in 1986 rather than the 1990s as Wikipedia led me to misinform you), how he loved the access he had to the University library which enabled him for the first time to read the works of "Soviet dissidents and European intellectuals". He translated into Mongolian short stories by Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Rudyard Kipling and - his particular favourite - Aldous Huxley.

"My time at Leeds was a time of reflection. It opened my eyes, and helped me to embrace the changes that happened to my country in 1990[...] And Leeds is the city where I discovered Marmite."

Magic Pine Football Boots

2007-04-16T11:54:00.000Z

Wherever possible, I try and use the same lesson plan for all my classes, regardless of age or ability. This works more often than it doesn't, partly because I get the chance to tinker and improve on things, in mainly obvious ways that for no good reason failed to occur to me the first time around. Today's classes (and tomorrow's and the day after's no doubt) got the Noun Bag. I imagine it's an idea that has been used half a million times before: I wrote down forty or so nouns of as wide and random a selection I could think of, including objects, places, people and so on. I split the first few classes into groups and got them each to pull four or five nouns out of the bag, and then try to think of a story to fit. The results were very encouraging. By my last class I realized that it would work better to have the class split into groups and to each separately try and come up with their own stories for the same selection of nouns.

My favourite story of the day came from a selection that included teacher, football, pine tree, Ferrari, camera and waitress. It went something like this:

A teacher loves football and is due to play in a big competition. One night in his dreams, a wizard tells him to go to a certain pine tree in the forest and make a pair of football boots from the wood. So he wakes up, does so, and indeed goes ahead and wins the match. The prize is a Ferrari, with which he impresses a waitress: they fall in love; and he buys her a camera.

More Useful Information

2007-04-11T11:13:00.000Z

Thursday 12th April
Yet again as I browse through my StatCounter account, I find that Google has been bringing to this site people from all over the world in search of wisdom that they are presumably failing to find elsewhere. This is all kinds of wrong, for as the students whose essays about the pros and cons of computers I recently graded repeatedly observe: everything you need to know is on the internet. Please excuse me while I do my humble best to answer those queries.

9. CAT PREPARATION MONK TEST PAPER (Gujurat, India )
Unfortunately, I can't really answer this particular query without knowing whether you want a test for monks wishing to prepare cats, or for felines seeking religious orders, as the two are really very different. Still, if you can't find a suitable test paper why not just ask the candidate (be they man or beast) to "Write a 1,500 word essay on exactly why you are considering this particular course of action."

10. ESL lesson plan with Seinfeld or The Office (Springfield, MA)
One of my students asked me to recommend a comedy to watch and I suggested Seinfeld. They pulled a sour face: "That's that one where they wear really old fashioned clothes, isn't it?"

11. apartments for rent in ulaan baatar (Econo Lodge, Salt Lake City)
To foreigners, apartments in UB usually start around the $200 a month mark, but they are presumably cheaper for locals as the average wage here is $80 a month. I can't help thinking that some pretty desperate circumstances must have led to someone finding themselves in an Econo Lodge in Utah looking to rent an apartment in Ulaanbaatar. Is this a desperate salesman with a suitcase full of unsold samples, or a guilt-stricken recidivist Mormon adulterer seeking to escape from the consequences of a forbidden liaison?

12. how to teach English Literature interesting (Kuala Lumpa)
Apparently sword-swallowing isn't so difficult with a bit of practice, and if you pay strict attention to their feeding routines, a python or a lion can be handled very easily. Or take a tip from Arthur Brown and set fire to your head (he did wear a special hat for this, although he is noticeably bald today).

13. In a hurry beef stew (Vancouver)
I was really excited to get this search because I know exactly how to make a beef stew about as quickly as is humanly possible. Peel your spuds and set them to boil. Meanwhile, dice and fry a few onions and carrots. Once they're ready, add them to the spuds with a can of corned beef, also diced. Bung in some pepper (usually there's enough salt in the corned beef, but do at least do the chef thing and slurp at a spoonful before serving). The whole process usually takes about 35 to 40 minutes. Serve with a garnish of pickled red cabbage. A lot of people have turned up their noses at stew made with corned beef, but I can't recall anyone who's tried it ever complaining.

14. Fish and chip gravy bisto granules which type (Coventry, UK)
Whilst I will defend corned beef stew to my dying breath, this kind of query really is beneath me. Bisto granules! That's blasphemy. Fish & chips = mushy peas. Gravy of any sort should never enter into the equation. I have no doubt that if you visit the Bisto website you'll find that they market a "yummy chip-shop brand" or some such for anyone perverse enough to consider that. Is this the kind of behaviour which passes without comment in Coventry; is this why people get 'sent' there?

15. What is fecund (Southampton, UK)
16. fecund (Oakland, CA)
17. fecund (Atlanta, GA)
18. What is fecund (Somewhere unspecified, UK)
Okay, this one has already been answered, but it doesn't do any harm to reiterate: That field over there is fecund.

19. How to freshen up a dog when you can't give him a bath (Camden, NJ)
I am picturing a real decrepit invalid of a dog, but maybe the would-be-freshener doesn't have a bath, or cannot be arsed to immerse the hound in question in water? Whichever, I would think a few cans of deodorant or maybe some Shake 'n' Vac would hold the key to this particular dilemma. For a while Elvis was popping pills that his 'doctor' told him would obviate the need to bathe. They didn't work.

20. Les Dawson (Poitou-charentes, Poitiers, France)
The thought of some would-be Camus or Foucault down in sunny Poitou-charentes pondering the existence of the late-lamented host of Blankety-Blank tickles me somewhat.

21. How does a guy feel when he receives a job inside a art museum and he was surprised when he arrived on his fi (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
I cannot tell you how intrigued I am to know what the guy found when he arrived at his new job in the art museum. Sometimes, alas, the internet can only tantalize us with questions to which we will never know the answer.

22. cartoon of a baby smoking a cigarette (NY State)
I hate to think that someone might search the internet for a cartoon of a baby smoking a cigarette and not find one. This is a need which I must immediately remedy. It's the best I can manage with Apple Paint, but I hope that this will do.

Enkhbayar, 76 Monkeys go "Blah, blah"

2007-04-11T09:46:00.000Z

Wednesday 11th April
I heard the rain falling against my window last night, a sound I last heard more than four months ago.

President Enkhbayar will be visiting Britain on 17-18th April, so be on the lookout for reports of him describing Britain as Mongolia’s “Third Neighbour”. Actually, on his last visit to the UK he was described as an anglophile in the press, which may not be an exaggeration: apparently he has translated works by Dickens, Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf into Mongolian. Indeed, according to his Wikipedia entry, Enkhbayar studied literature at Leeds in the 1990s. I wonder if he was at any of the parties I stumbled into in Headingley around that time?

Enkhbayar’s a curious figure in Mongolian politics: a man who seems to have quite an air of dignity and trustworthiness about him. I’m not aware of him being directly linked with any of the many scandals and irregularities reported in the press and gossiped on the streets, but I haven’t heard anyone speak with much enthusiasm about him. The most usual comment, spoken perhaps with feelings of having been betrayed, is that he is more concerned to look after himself and his family than his country.

I had a very successful class with my evening college students recently, working on Very Short Stories, as published in WIRED magazine and posted about some time earlier in this blog. The students as previously seemed to really enjoy the exercise (although were universally baffled by the WIRED offerings) and came up with some pretty good ones: “Iceberg hits; he drowns: she lives.”(Titanic, of course) and “76 Monkeys go ‘Blah, blah.’” Apparently there are 76 members of government (or parliament, I’m not sure which), and that is how they are collectively known.

Four Sides of Khoomei, No more Mealody, Screwed Bunny

2007-04-09T13:07:00.000Z

Monday 9th April
Last night’s “Four Sides of Khoomei” concert was an unqualified success. It was held in a small conference the Cultural Palace. I guess that this stunning building was put up some time in the 80s; it’s white with funky gold trim and looks to me like the Battle Destroyer of some alien overlord that has landed here to subjugate the inhabitants of this puny planet. I think it’s my favourite building in UB.

The four performers sat in a semi-circle in an open half-ger erected on the stage; with the low lighting in the smallish room, this gave the performance a very authentic atmosphere. Four notes were sounded on a jew’s harp, and then the first rumbling low notes of Khoomei began. The interplay of voices and instruments proved enchanting. Sometimes one performer sang a song while two others sang low note khoomei and the fourth sang the high, whistling tones. Parts would change from song to song or through the course of the song. There were bird calls, camel coughs, the shouts of herders and whinnies of horses. Songs were accompanied on the two-stringed Mongolian banjo, or the Morin Khuur (‘Horse-head fiddle’), or two banjos and the fiddle, or two fiddles alone, or were unaccompanied. The rapt silence, followed by smiling faces turned to each other in the brief pauses between songs showed how well the performance was received by the audience.

Due to unfortunate circumstances, Khoomei master Taravjiin Ganbold did not take part in the concert. His replacement, Nerguin Ganzorig, proved, however, proved to be an inspired choice. The second song in the set was composed by Ganzorig, performed solo, and was pretty funky sounding, played on a swan-headed banjo strummed rigorously with a plectrum (rather than the simple two finger alternate plucking which seems to be the usual use of the instrument). Likewise, the finale of the show was also a song of Ganzorig, with a very catchy chorus (“Morinkhuur, khoomei, blahdiblah, Mongol-something-something dah...”) and again with a driving rhythm.

After the concert I bought the CD “Melodious Tree” by Altai-Khangai - the which both Ganbold and Ganzorig (along with one Lhagva Bjambakhichig) have performed with since 1995. It provided the perfect accompaniment to a very pleasant lunch today sat on my balcony, in my shirt-sleeves (Spring is definitely here!), whilst staring across the rooves of the (happily smog-free) city towards the Bogd Khan Mountains, with the white portrait of Chinggis on the hillside staring back. Here’s a link to their website, from which you can navigate to a sound sample on an English page, and buy some of their CDs through a French website. I have no doubt that they’ll be performing in Europe in the near future, and it’s my hope that I can nudge them in the direction of Liverpool for 2008.

Sad news for those of us here who’ve been spoiled rotten by the incredible music from the U-Bop jazz trio at Mealody, where they’ve been playing every Friday for the last 8 Months. Unfortunately it seems that there have been disagreements with the management of the restaurant, or something, and Friday nights are no more. Just when the hillbilly interlude was getting into its stride - in fact, come to think of it, maybe there’s a connection there... Well, it was certainly fun while it lasted. I’m hoping to get something musical going at the new Colombo Cafe (north of Sukhbaatar Square, just off the Baga Toiru round the corner from Los Bandidos) - haven’t settled on a regular date there, but I recommend anyone in UB to pop in there and try out their real Columbian coffee (a considerable rarity here as pretty much the only thing drunk in UB is Mac Coffee, which makes the likes of Nescafe taste as good as their adverts claim) and the excellent food and very reasonably priced beer.

A happy accident at the home of my good friends Niall and Enke (and now their newborn son Sainaa) has led to the discovery that vodka, carrot juice and and slices of orange served with plenty of ice makes an extremely drinkable combination. N Peszka of Boise, Idaho has suggested that this be named the Screwed Bunny, and so it is. I'm using carrot juice in a carton, made from concentrate: am dubious as to whether freshly blended would taste better, but hope to be able to try it once I find a kitchen suitably equipped. If you are skeptical about the result of this mix I urge you to try it: you may be surprised. Stir well.

Khoomei Fever

2007-04-03T11:30:00.000Z

Tuesday 3rd April
The Spring vacation is here - a week rather than the two weeks I'd expected, for reasons which it would make me seem bitter to go into here. I might have had nothing to do, and been forced to take a holiday out in the countryside, riding horses, breathing the fresh air, etc - but happily the school volunteered me to mark exam papers in yet another of the city's many English 'Olympics'. All that fresh air would have doubtless proven too much for me; today it was a sweltering 11c outside, so, although I'm still waiting to see the first green shoots, Spring is undoubtedly here.

In all honesty, I haven't lost out by staying in UB: happily the past few weeks have been very productive musically. Vadik, the Ukranian mouth harp and percussionist, is sadly on his way back to Odessa in a week or so, but we've taken every opportunity we can to play, and it's been very enjoyable. Vadik's flatmate is a French Ethnomusicologist, Johanni Curtet, who's been studying Mongolian music here (in particular khoomei) for two or maybe three years now. We had a jam at their flat a couple of weeks ago, along with Andrew Colwell - the Bassist, and indeed Khoomei singer with the U-Bop band. Johanni recorded the jam and when I can figure out how I can cut down the length of the main 29 minute jam in the key of G (not that it isn't all wonderful stuff, but the filesize seems to be a bit unweildy for the internet) then I'll post it here. The great thing about jamming with khoomei singers is that you can keep it minimalist and stay on one chord, and it still sounds fantastic.

Johanni has been extremely busy lately as the fruit of his Doctoral studies takes place this weekend: he has arranged for the leading exponents of the four main schools of khoomei to perform at the Art Gallery in Ulaanbaatar's Culture Palace on Saturday and Sunday, after which he will give a lecture. I'm informed that this is the first time that the four have performed together, and that indeed there has been considerable professional rivalry between them in the past. For the past week they've been rehearsing five or six hours a day at Johanni's apartment. I've been very privileged to have been round at the flat on a couple of occasions and listen - the sound is truly awe-inspiring. On Saturday night Vadik and I called round to collect Johanni to head over to a party. Johanni's khoomei teacher, Tserendavaa, is staying at the flat along with his son. Johanni is recording their next album for them, and they were just finishing the last few recordings after a long night. I'm told, and a little internet research confirms, that Tserendavaa is one of the foremost teachers of throat-singing. He has performed all over the world - but when he isn't performing, he lives as a herder and nomad in the west of Mongolia (Here's a link to a blog by Robert Beahrs about the time he spent studying khoomei with Tserendavaa in 2005). Tserendavaa has quite a presence, especially in a small flat - a good natured, barrel-chested man, who would stand as a good case-in-point in favour of my suggestion that John Wayne makes a pretty convincing Mongolian in The Conqueror. Before we left to let the man get some hard earned rest I played the Worried Man Blues for him, to which he did me the extreme honour of adding a little throat-singing.

If anyone is reading this in UB, you cannot afford to miss one of Johanni's historic concerts this weekend. Tickets are 5000T and available from either the Alliance Francaise (opposite the entrance to the Daschoylin Temple) or from the Art Gallery in the Culture Palace (Sukhbataar Square). The performances will be on the 7th and 8th of April at the Culture Palace Art Gallery, 6pm. Johanni's lecture, "Xoomei, nomadisme et urbanisation" (in French and translated to Mongolian) is free and will be held on 8th April at 2pm (I assume in the Alliance Francaise). The four performers are Nanjidiin Sengedorj, Dashdorjiin Tserendavaa, Baatarin Odsuren and Taravjaviin Ganbold.

Useful Information

2007-03-22T11:49:00.000Z

I'm conscious, monitoring the traffic to this blog, that I am not always providing the answers that people are looking for when google drops them here. To remedy this, here are the answers to a few recent searches that weren't for Jon Ronson:

1. Who stopped Genghis Khan?
Nobody stopped Genghis Khan! He had a heart attack, or something: in which case it may well be that buuz stopped Genghis Khan. His sons continued to enlarge his empire.

2. Income of a Mongolian teacher
I think it's about $100 a month in state schools (may well be less, especially outside UB) $200 - $400 in private (mostly at lower end). Not a hell of a lot.

3. Listening to mp3 during school hours lower grades
If I have any say in the matter, yes.

4. How much does the fattest dog in the world weigh?
That's a very good question, I hope you found the answer: that kind of question is exactly what the internet is for.

5. What an ESL Teacher should know
See answer to 4 above, then get back to me if you find out, urgently.

6. 11th grade English vocab sheet
They should know it all by now, they certainly claim to. Discombobulate, fractious, defenestrate, nutria, erstwhile, fecund, etc. Better still, make words up: that'll larn 'em.

7. Napoleon ate horse meat
I should imagine so: most obviously because he's French; spent a lot of time on horses (crossing the Alps etc); and horse meat is very good cold and sustains you well.

8.Why I musn't be disruptive in class
This exact same search has hit me four times, from different cities in the US. I am assuming that the student has been set the essay to write as a punishment, and then had the gall to surf the web looking for an essay to cut & paste. What is happening to education? Your details have been entered into an international database of unrepentant plagiarists, shame on you.

American Questions, Presentations, Grading, Stab Boy

2007-03-21T14:21:00.000Z

Wed 21st March
The school is hosting an English Olympiad at the weekend in which students from all the schools in the city are invited to compete. I’ve had the American Culture, Society and History questions I set rejected on the grounds of my not being American (rather than because they are all very arsey questions which allow a 33 year old to say “Ha! You didn’t know that? What do you know?” to an annoyed 15 year-old Mongolian honours student). Here are my favourite ones, for your edification: (answers at the bottom of this post, and Wikipedia, presumably)

-Which founding father was a leading figure in the Enlightenment, and among countless other achievements invented bifocal glasses and a peculiar musical instrument which was later rumoured to cause insanity in the listener?

-Who is the current Vice-President of the US?

-Born around 1595, the daughter of a native american chief, which princess reputedly saved the lives of colonials, in 1607, by pleading on their behalf with her father? She died on a visit to England in 1617, and is buried at Gravesend, Kent.

-The citizens of which American city were only given the right to vote in Presidential elections after the 23rd Amendment of the US Constitution in 1963?

My term plan of setting the students to do presentations to lesson my teaching load didn’t really come off, with only a handful of students believing it was worth the effort of trying to improve their grade from a notoriously bollixy teacher. It did inspire me to give the students a lecture on why Hitler wasn’t so great, which I enjoyed and which seemed to provoke some interest from the 11th grade.

I took the opportunity to castigate my students for relying on PowerPoint and the internet (without which I would have had some trouble with my Shackleton presentation, but need I remind you that hypocrisy is a teacher’s prerogative?): a lot of students had one variant or another on ‘the-dog-ate-my-memory-stick’ excuse for not having their work ready to give. All the Power-Pointed presentations that were given ended with a screen proudly saying “Sources : www.google.com”

Does this happen in the US and UK too? I imagine it does. Whatever happened to the time-honoured tradition of getting one book on a subject from the library, then listing half the bibliography as your source? Is that too much trouble for this generation of cyber-slackers?

I’ve also been sounding-off to my colleagues on the failings of education systems where grades are the only thing that students, parents and schools are interested in.

To be fair to the school, if it was the only thing they were interested in, then they’d have relieved me of my grading duties at the end of last term; and to be fair to Mongolia, the grade-obsession must be near universal, wherever education is practised. Much as I was as a student, I am convinced that as far as teaching and learning go, grading, beyond ‘pass’, ‘fail’ and maybe ‘distinction’, is about 93.4% useless.

The carrot I use to get the 4th grade to hand in work is that I draw them a little cartoon rather than write a score - a carrot or themselves looking stupid if the work was poor, a happy rabbit, or a zombie, or a baby smoking a cigarette, depending on their preference, if the work was good. This has worked surprisingly well - as the poor students are rewarded in as much as they all get a cartoon, but I find they all make more effort with their work even though some of the ‘lazy student’ drawings are better than the rabbits; naturally, though, nothing could be cooler than a baby smoking a cigarette.

In occasional bouts of homesickness I find my way to www.icliverpool.co.uk to read the latest news from the Echo: home of balanced, informative journalism. Today I learned that Liverpool gangs are producing skunk cannabis "one puff of which can cause schizophrenia" (well, we already know it induces paranoia), and was moved by a touching photograph of Stab Boy and his mother, who blames the infamous Chucky movies (source of all juvenile crime in Merseyside for many years now, well, apart from instant-schizophrenia skunk) for her son's recent behavioural problems. Actually, now I have a pseudo-broadband connection I am listening to Radio 4 a lot, so I am well aware that the Echo is making the most of local variants on what seem to be the big stories at the moment in the national press: nonetheless, I admire the particular panache with which those exemplary Echo hacks manage to churn this stuff out. Well done!

American Quiz answers: Ben Franklin, Dick Cheney, Pocahontas, Washington D.C.

The Natural Resource Curse, Housing, Waitress!

2007-03-20T12:58:00.000Z

Tuesday 20th March 2007
A thoughtful article in last week’s UB Post by Arshad Sayed (Country Manager and Resident Representative of the World Bank) entitled “Mongolia’s Natural Resources: A Blessing or a Curse?” Mongolia is rich in certain minerals, particularly gold, copper and uranium, and whether owing to remoteness or a culture which venerated the sacredness of earth and sky, these resources are only really becoming tapped at the present time. March 28, according to an advert in the same Post, “The Mongolia Investment Forum” will be held at The Metropolitan Club, New York, lead sponsors including the major Mongolian banks, the ING bank and Merrill Lynch.

Arshad’s piece talks in the main about the ‘Natural Resources Curse” - a phenomena observed that some of the most resource-rich nations in the world are also the most troubled: ie, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Surinam, Sierra Leone and indeed Russia. The article explores the reasons for this.

The final section is entitled “Can Mongolia avoid the natural resource curse?” What does the author have to say? Er, that the great Chinggis Khaan conquered much of the world, and that his empire was very efficiently run. So, he concludes, surely a “people that managed all these things almost eight hundred years ago [can] manage to overcome the natural resource curse[.]”

Well, hopefully they can, although if so it seems highly unlikely that Mongolians will avoid the curse of spuriously connecting everything back to Chinggis bloody (literally) Khaan.

In my classes I recently brought up the subject of ‘voluntary work’ with my students. After a little prodding they were soon able to come up with names of some of the many international organisations that operate in Mongolia. Why do all these organisations work in Mongolia, I asked? Because Mongolia has a lot of problems and needs help, they replied. Why do so many young European and American volunteers come here? Because they want to help us.

I put it to the classes that the actual motive for most volunteers to come was that they wanted to come to Mongolia itself, regardless of the degree of the problems here: most volunteers are drawn by the nomadic culture, the open steppe and the deep blue skies.

Why should a vast country with abundant natural resources (of a few limited kinds, it’s true, but all rather saleable), with a population of a mere two million and a history of independence and self sufficiency, need any assistance from the outside world at all?

The pressing concern in UB (although, as previously noted, not so pressing that the government can be bothered to fully measure it) is air pollution. Latest statistics put levels of nitrous dioxide, one of the pollutants that is actually measured, at 25 times the safe level in parts of the city. Now that spring has brought the odd breeze, the past few weeks the air has been quite clear: I can see the Zaysan Tolgoy at the foot of Bogdkhan mountain. Still, opening my window last night, which is possible now that the weather is getting warmer, filled the room with a burnt, dusty smell. I assume that what everybody here says is true, and that most of the air pollution comes from the stoves of the thousands of ger that surround the city.

The government has a scheme to build, I think 25,000 new apartments over the next 5 years[Edit: Actually, what I'm referring to here is the "40,000 Homes" project]. The budget for the housing department project is somewhere around $25 million. I am making up the figure off the top of my head, but, assuming that the government has underestimated the demand for apartments (and bearing in mind that the existing buildings aren’t in too great shape: I thought my block was from the late Stalin era maybe - it was built in the 1980s) I think that Mongolia probably needs at least 100,000 new apartments - that 100,000 (say) would solve the current housing problem. These apartments don’t all need to be built in UB either - maybe some of the international mining companies scrambling for contracts here could give some thought to creating housing and employment opportunities in the towns near the mines.

It would be nice, of course, to see Mongolians continue living in ger and herding livestock. I would hope that many would choose to do so. I haven’t met any Mongolians who aren’t fiercely proud of their heritage - yet those who do live in apartments don’t usually hesitate to give good reasons why they prefer their lifestyle for themselves: usually starting, as any westerner would, with the obvious preference for flushing toilets. The ever-growing ger districts of Ulaanbaatar aren’t a charming relic of the past - they’re the homes of desperately poor people surviving as best they can, as close as they can to the tantalising source of Land Cruisers, hi-definition tvs and ipods.

A permanent and immediate solution to Mongolia’s housing and pollution problems would come as a welcome relief for a nation which is going through a particularly troubling time at present as regards the closest current candidate for Chinggisdom - Asashoryu. Unfortunately, he has not done so great in recent sumo matches, leading to some very unkind things being insinuated (here, in the LA Times, for example) in regard to the recent opponent-bribery allegations.

The Japanese themselves have made their own Chinggis Khaan, in Borte Chono Chinggis Khaan(the English title, according to IMDb will be Blue Wolf: to the Ends of the Earth and Sea), a movie filmed in Mongolia last year and just released. One of my night school students had a modest part in the film (actually, for a Mongolian in this very Japanese production, it was quite a substantial part) and showed me some photos of the battle scenes which were absolutely incredible, and next time I see him I will try to remember to beg him to let me post some here. I don’t know if the film has any other merits, but it’s clear from the pictures of thousands of crazed horsemen charging at each other that the action should be pretty spectacular. Critics here have been lukewarm: in the UB Post N Suvdaa said the movie was at least “an improvement on the John Wayne film, The Conqueror”. I haven’t actually seen The Conqueror but I did find some stills and posters online which I actually think look pretty good. A teacher I asked agreed that big John looked pretty damn Mongolian too.

All the big parts in Borte Chono Chinggis Khaan are played by famous Japanese actors, speaking Japanese, of course. According to the Post this led to some sniggers amongst movie-goers here in Ulaanbaatar as Chinggis’ men always refer to him in the film as ‘Leader’. “The phonetic pronunciation of ‘leader’ in Japanese sounds like ’zuugch uu’, which means ‘waiter/waitress’ in the Mongolian language.” (UB Post 8/3/07)

What was that I was saying earlier about everything in this country being spuriously connected back to Genghis?

Mongolia's 'Third Neighbour', Golden Arches

2007-03-10T03:50:00.000Z

Saturday 10th March
Another glorious sunny day out there. A fortnight ago we had a freak tropical heatwave in UB - the day time temperature was ABOVE freezing: rumour has it that the thermometer reached +5c. This was followed by snow, and the temperature dropped again; ups and downs, however, have ensured that the snow turned to slush and then ice. There's been markedly less air pollution: presumably because there is some air movement with an icy wind building up now and then. When I arrived in December the cold was steady and constant, and the rule was simple: wrap up as warm as you could. Now I'm forever getting caught out - either wearing too heavy a coat and over-heating, or deciding not to wear long johns and ending up wondering whether I'll make it back home before the arteries in my legs freeze solid.

Mongolia's charismatic and hard-working President N. Enkhbayar (furthermore, Wikipedia informs, a former Leeds University student) has been busy with international diplomacy over the past few weeks. At the end of February he was visiting France, discussing deals for Mongolia to supply France's future uranium needs. France has tabled and supported motions in Mongolia's favour in the European Union: Enkhbayar thanked Jacques Chirac for this support, and called the EU Mongolia's 'Third Neighbour'. Mongolia, of course, is a land-locked nation, with borders with only Russia and China, so the 'Third Neighbour' concept is rather a neat one. Indeed, as last week's UB Post observed, it's such a neat concept that Enkhbayar has also previously described the US as Mongolia's 'Third Neighbour'. Of course, it's easy to mock such self-plagiarism, with the outrage of a heckler who attends a second show on a comedian's tour, only to discover that the performer uses the same witty one-liners which had seemed so brilliantly spontaneous the first time round.

President Enkhbayar has just returned from a 5 day tour of Japan, where, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, he has been discussing strengthening business ties between Mongolia and Japan; the two nations also promising to continue working together within the UN, especially concerning their commitment to 'maintain the nuclear disarmament and nuclear nonproliferation international regime' (UB Post, 8/3/07). Student exchanges, financial aid and much else will all increase. The UB Post further reports that in gratitude Enkhbayar said that "because Japan assisted Mongolia, extending a friend's hand when our country had difficult times and because Japan is an important partner which can help to fasten Mongolia's development and to strengthen our country's position in the international arena, we consider Japan as the 'third neighbour' of our country."

Elswhere in this week's Post the news is not so good for Mongolia's standing in the international community. After a survey team were sent out in the early part of the year, McDonalds have concluded that they sadly won't be opening a franchise of their delightful cultural and culinary embassies in Ulaanbaatar, owing mainly to the limited size of the population here.

Women's Day

2007-03-08T06:56:00.000Z

Thursday 8th March
In Mongolia, and I am also assuming throughout the former Soviet Union, today is Women’s Day. This means that there is no school today - yet another holiday which I only found out about at the beginning of the week - a pleasant surprise which has occurred frequently enough to leave me a little disappointed on those Mondays when I discover that I'm expected to put in a full week’s work. Today men and children will do the housework and the chores. Since most other holidays in Mongolia involve throwing a party for which the women have to cater, this might be considered to be the only day’s rest for women in the entire calendar.

Yesterday, my friend and colleague Ganaa suggested that we put on a small party, at my apartment, for the women in the English department. Ganaa is pretty good at coming up with such ideas; they are preceded by him spending some time dropping heavy hints at me to try and get me to suggest what he is thinking. I will do my best not to be corralled in this way, but inevitably I succumb to his charming persistence.

The women were planning on going out to take advantage of the 50% off happy hour(s) at the Rendez-vous restaurant, but were very happy to accept Ganaa and my invitation for ‘afternoon tea’ to start their evening. Ganaa and I slipped out of school early (we didn’t have any lessons anyway) and hurried off to make preparations. For a total cost of about 30,000 T (£14+/-) we were able to serve up a big bowl of sangria (made with red wine, orange juice and a lot of ice and fresh fruit), vodka (of course), some cheap and slightly unpleasant chocolates, a few russian beers, bread, jam, cold sausage, green tea and English tea, and biscuits. The main course was the pride (and absolute limit) of my culinary skills, learnt from my dear friend Rossella in Calabria: spaghetti ‘aglio e olio’ (with olive oil and garlic). It takes about 10 minutes to prepare but is, for all its simplicity, deeply satisfying. There’s some kind of cheese I buy here which is very like Italian Pecorino and goes very well with pasta. Incidentally, there is very little dairy produce in the supermarkets, which runs contrary to what I had expected; perhaps this will change in the summer, or maybe people get their dairy goods from country cousins.

The ladies were very impressed. Initially they were very suspicious of the punch, but I managed to convince them that Ganaa had had no part in its preparation.

We were asked to sing some songs for women. Ganaa did a very good job with two hearty traditional Mongolian tunes. I sang the old English ballad (about the faithlessness of men) ‘Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maidens’ and then, feeling on a roll, sang a song I wrote myself the other week. Admittedly, the song is a bit on the maudlin side, but I felt the inevitable requests for the deeply dreary ‘Yesterday’ surely justified my trying out, for the first time, a song of my own composition. I’ve sang a lot of old traditional songs, many of which have pretty lame lyrics, and a very large number of which concern the death of parents, etc. Nonetheless, this was the first time that I can recall that a song I’ve sung has provoked a comment about the content. During the song: one of the teachers loudly remarked “What terrible lyrics.” Kind of off-putting, but fair comment perhaps.

Our efforts were well-received: I had to hand it to Ganaa, that in spite of my initial reluctance, he’d had a very good idea. Furthermore, as Men’s Day (well, actually, it’s Soldier’s Day) is only a week off, we have thrown down the gauntlet and feel fairly confident that our generosity will be handsomely repaid.

After the meal Ganaa and I were invited along to join the women teachers at Rendez-Vous. Eating and drinking there was followed by a trip to a nightclub somewhere for dancing and a Mongolian rock band whose name I didn’t learn, but whose songs I’ve heard on the radio, and who were pretty good. All this was courtesy of our principal, who is scrupulous about making sure that the teachers at the school feel valued on these occasions.

I think that slowly I’m getting along better with my colleagues, which is a very happy situation to be in. There are a lot of factors that can create awkwardness between the foreign and Mongolian teachers - not least the huge discrepancy in pay (as I have remarked, I believe that we are paid about four times more than our colleagues) which, however inevitable given the economical incentive needed to attract native speakers, can be a bit of an embarassment. I have discussed it with my colleagues, who certainly don’t express any resentment of the situation. I feebly try to justify it to myself by remembering that I’m losing money by being here - my bills in the UK still need to be paid - but I still feel a bit guilty about the quality of life I’m able to lead (ie - I can eat out whenever I want, buy any of the groceries I feel like getting, etc).

I've had a slow and lazy start to the day, but have at least cleaned up the carnage from yesterday's gathering. Ganaa had offered to send some women round to do the tidying for me, but, given the occasion, I felt that this somehow would not be right.

Chicken, Cossackbilly

2007-03-03T09:57:00.000Z

Saturday 3rd March
Mongolians do not eat a lot of chicken. I have been asking about this, and one possible explanation may be related to the Mongolian taboo against eating young animals. Being informed that in England we almost exclusively eat lamb rather than mutton, Mongolians tend to adopt a rather dismayed and disapproving expression, which is somewhat touching coming from such a legendarily blood-thirsty people. "We do not eat baby animals," I am informed. Certainly, fond memories aside of tender cutlets and chops served by barbecuiste extraordinaire Graham 'Little Blue Boat' Stopforth on the Weaver last summer, I could happily forgo lamb for mutton: mutton does not taste so bad. As far as chicken goes, I am not yet won over. From the few leathery scraps of stewed bird I've eaten in the school canteen, it seems that the Mongolian taboo also applies to poultry, and a hen that has lived a full and productive life gets thrown into the pot only when it has died peacefully in its sleep from extreme age. Unfortunately, they do not make great eating.

It’s semi-official (ie, not official) folks: Bluegrass music now has a home in Mongolia, at the Meal Ody (wonderful pun) Jazz Club and Restaurant. Resident jazz combo 'U Bop' have for some mysterious and possibly sinister reason encouraged me to provide some musical contrast either between or before their Friday night set and I am very happy to oblige. Last night they played another blistering set, of which it was somewhat daunting to step up on stage during the interval. I was joined by a very amiable Ukrainian fellow, Vadik, on the harmonica. Vadik had borrowed a friend’s harmonica, which was happily a C harp (ie, perfect for blues in G). I played “Fireball Mail” and he got straight in there with some great bluesy blowing, and a very entertaining Cossack interpretation of flat-footing. Vadik carried on to hold “Mountain Dew” together whilst I bellowed the song at the clientele - making the most of the initial shock-factor that my particular approach to singing tends to create. Being on a roll, I then demonstrated my versatility and range by singing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” (which of course shares the same chord structure and has mostly the same melody as “Mountain Dew”). We then quit while we were ahead and let the musicians get back to work, whilst we proceeded to celebrate our success somewhat disproportionately to our achievement.

Joseph Conrad

2007-03-02T13:32:00.000Z

I'm slowly working my way through "Chance" by Joseph Conrad (downloaded from the Gutenberg Project). Conrad can be a bit heavy going at times. After a promising start with an entertaining depiction of a newly qualified First Mate getting a commission, Conrad then gives us Marlow - the narrator of "Lord Jim" and "Heart of Darkness" - telling at great length about a rather unengaging domestic drama. He does have this to say, however, on the subject of Blogging:

"[...]She did not answer me for a time, and as I waited I thought that there's nothing like a confession to make one look mad; and that of all confessions a written one is the most detrimental all round. Never confess! Never, never! An untimely joke is a source of bitter regret always. Sometimes it may ruin a man; not because it is a joke, but because it is untimely. And a confession of whatever sort is always untimely. The only thing which makes it supportable for a while is curiosity. You smile? Ah, but it is so, or else people would be sent to the rightabout at the second sentence. How many sympathetic souls can you reckon on in the world? One in ten, one in a hundred--in a thousand--in ten thousand? Ah! What a sell these confessions are! What a horrible sell! You seek sympathy, and all you get is the most evanescent sense of relief--if you get that much. For a confession, whatever it may be, stirs the secret depths of the hearer's character. Often depths that he himself is but dimly aware of. And so the righteous triumph secretly, the lucky are amused, the strong are disgusted, the weak either upset or irritated with you according to the measure of their sincerity with themselves. And all of them in their hearts brand you for either mad or impudent . . . "

Shackleton

2007-02-28T13:29:00.000Z

Wednesday 28th February
I'm moderately pleased with how my presentation on Ernest Shackleton went at school today. Classes have not been going so great recently (since English Literature has become optional classes have finally dwindled down to a stable number of students: zero), so the largely positive reception from the 10th and 11th graders cheered me up.

I had never heard of the great man myself until I saw the Imax movie 'Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure' whilst I was working in Boston five years ago. At the end of the screening the audience had erupted into spontaneous, sustained applause, the tears had rolled down my cheeks and I'd felt a surge of patriotic pride - as though I had somehow shared in the achievement of the crew of the Endurance.

What has, of course, played such an important role in making the story of Shackleton and his crew's incredible survival so immediate to a modern audience, is the photography of expedition member Frank Hurley. It took me a while to find the photos at a reasonable resolution for projection on the internet, but happily I eventually stumbled upon the website of the National Library of Australia. They have a pretty extensive collection of Hurley's photographs, all available to download free of charge for study or personal use. Searching on the keywords 'Hurley' and 'Shackleton' turns up 135 images.

What was a new perspective on Hurley's work for me was the realisation that the Australian photography was no accidental artist - there is evidence in the collection of double-exposures and touched-up images - most notably the phony sunset on this image of the launch of the lifeboat James Caird.

Anyhow, I used about 30 images of the expedition, and finished with a picture from the trenches in World War I (several of the crew members whose lives had been preserved with such care by Shackleton were then thrown away by generals in the bloody battlefields of northern France) and a moody photograph of Shackleton's grave on South Georgia, posted online by some recent pilgrim there. I didn't script my presentation, because I'm too lazy, but extemporised - hopefully without getting too lost. Given the photographs, the story of the Endurance tells itself.

The idea of asking students to give a presentation on Great People from History came when a student asked me for help with a presentation he'd been asked to give on Martin Luther King Jr. This was at a formal dinner on Martin Luther King Day - which was to say, about one hour's time. I very much admire the Mongolian characteristic of leaving things to the very last minute - it reminds me of somebody. He'd done a very reasonable job on it, although it was also pretty clear that he only had the vaguest idea who Martin Luther King Jr was, and had basically lifted a lot of very dry biographical data from somewhere on the web (great detail on King's education, various academic achievements and posthumous decorations). I suggested he think about why King had made a mark on history, to which my student very honestly admitted to having no idea. Amongst other characteristics I suggested that MLK had moral authority - a description I smugly felt to be very apt.

This same student is to be the first up to give a presentation on a great figure from history. His subject (once I said that he couldn't just recycle the Martin Luther King script that I (mostly)wrote) is... Adolf Hitler. I had a look at his subject headings for his work: "Rise to Power", "Military Success", "Genocide" and "Last Days". Oh, and also "Moral Authority".

Tsagaan Sar, Darkhan, Mealody

2007-02-26T04:37:00.000Z

Monday 26th February 2007
I apologise for not reporting sooner on Tsagaan Sar - the Mongolian New Year. One problem has been that it is impossible to write about Tsagaan Sar without writing about buuz and, now that the festival is over, I don't find my mind (or my stomach, more to the point) returning to the subject of buuz with much enthusiasm.

Tsagaan Sar - either 'White Moon' or 'White Month' - is the most important festival on the Mongolian calendar. The practise and traditions go back a long way, and strongly reflect the nomadic culture. During Tsagaan Sar people visit the homes of their relatives and friends, greet each other with a special embrace that shows deference to the older party, and eat buuz. Each home, for the 3 main days of the festival has its dining table loaded with food: a boov: stacked layers of a special kind of bread (one layer for each decade of the senior member of the household) on which are piled sweets; and a lot of cold mutton - traditionally a whole sheep is cooked for Tsagaan Sar. In the houses of the older people I visited there was always the back and ribs of a sheep, in the houses of younger people there was simply a huge bowl with various cuts of mutton in.

White Moon is very much a family occasion, but, hospitality being a deeply ingrained tradition, foreigners are invariably invited to spend Tsagaan Sar with a surrogate family for the weekend. I travelled up to Darkhan with Ganaa, one of my fellow to teachers, to visit with his family there. We caught a taxi there on Sunday evening, along with Ganaa's girlfriend and his brother, who was returning home from work in Korea (there are a lot of Mongolians working in Korea - I heard an estimate of 20,000 workers, from Mongolia's population of 2 million). Darkhan is about a 4 hour drive in a taxi, on what must be a pretty good road by Mongolian standards: single-lane and pot-holed, of course, and also fairly busy with traffic that . I couldn't see much of the countryside in the darkness, but when we made a brief relief stop I stepped off the road into a deep drift of snow. The stars were fantastically bright and clear above - such a profusion of stars that the constellations were almost lost amongst them.

Although we arrived very late, we were still able to visit three homes At each one making the traditional Tsagaan Sar greeting, drinking milk tea, followed by vodka; meanwhile, a big pan of buuz would be boiled. Buuz are boiled dumplings - balls of beef wrapped in dough. They don't taste at all bad, but it is kind of disheartening to be faced by a plate piled with 20 or 30 of the things, accompanied by nothing but cold mutton and maybe potato salad. Small gifts would be given by the host to the guests. More vodka was then drunk, accompanied by a round songs, one from each guest. More milk tea and then vodka - and then suddenly, everybody was putting on their coats to leave, we all piled into a car and slowly drove to the next home, where the whole process began again. From apartment to apartment, to a ger in the old town, back to another apartment in the new - it all becomes a bit of a blur.

There are many small ceremonial civilities that make up the festival, which, broadly speaking, is about reaffirming the bonds of family and friendship. Men exchange snuff bottles with a special open handed gesture. The bottle is always left slightly open, and returned to the giver that way. One of my fourth graders, dressed in the traditional deel, passed me a bottle for a snort at a class on the Friday before Tsagaan Sar.

Monday we saw the sights of Darkhan before beginning the circuit of calling on relatives again. With a population of 100,000 Darkhan is Mongolia's second city. The sights include Mongolia's Tallest Building (a 14 or so storey tower block which I am pretty sure is smaller than the Ulaanbaatar Bank building and numerous new apartment blocks in the capital) and the view of the old and new town from the top of the low hill between the two. Old Darkhan is wooden houses and ger; new Darkhan is a lot of crumbling tower blocks built in the 1980s. The graffiti painted on the wall outside Ganaa's brother's home included Take That and East 17.

It isn't such a pretty city, but the people are certainly friendly, to judge by Ganaa's relatives, and I was made to feel very welcome. By Monday evening, however, I was quite ready to head back home. Vodka-fueled 'negotiations' from my hosts regarding taxi fares finally secured us seats in a Micro Bus headed back to Ulaanbaatar at about 10pm. For the next four and a half hours I did my best to doze - my skull being cracked at every pot-hole along the way. I didn't exactly feel great at school the following morning, but pretty much everyone had a buuz-glazed look to their eyes.

It took me the remainder of the week to recover. By Friday, I was ready to head out in search of Mealody - a small jazz club/restaurant somewhere in the University district. I'd tried to find it the previous week, as Chuluun, the Inner Mongolian musician who played some Monrin Khuur and sang Khoomei at my apartment, had urged me to go and see his friend's band. Unfortunately, I'd gone to a place called Blue Melody, where a girl punk band were playing, not the jazz-fusion I'd been lead to expect. I'd then spent more than half an hour walking up and down (passing Mealody three times as it happens) looking for the place, before finally retreating home with the excuse, at least, that I would have died of exposure had I spent any further time searching. This time I phoned in advance to clarify the location.

Mealody is a very pleasant, cosy little place, and I'm very glad to have found it this time round. Furthermore, the band were phenomenal. The jazz was less experimental than I guess I had feared - it was just good, exciting, entertaining music. 'U-Bop' (I must say that Ulaanbaatar's name really lends itself to musical puns) are an English guy on piano (Steve Tromans), a Mongolian drummer (N. Ganbat) and an American Double Bass player (Andrew Colwell). They play original music, arrangements of popular Mongolian songs and jazz standards. Throughout their playing is characterised by energy, enthusiasm, and sheer talent - they are a bloody good band. For a centrepiece they played a wonderful, moody tune, in which Andrew sings Khoomei - tri-tone ‘throat singing’ - which you should listen to on the JazzMongolia MySpace site to get some idea of (the site’s shared with other bands so I’m not sure who’s doing the singing on it). It was a wonderful evening.

Furthermore, the band very generously allowed me to take things down a notch or two in terms of musical sophistication and play ‘Cumberland Gap’, ‘Down the Road’ and a few others in the break. I’d missed an earlier set by a Japanese player of the Cavalkino (I’m not sure of the spelling, but as all those who attended the Grapes bluegrass jam will remember, it’s the Brazilian cousin of the ukulele), but we chatted and hope to get a chance to jam together in a few weeks’ time.

Line of Dance

2007-02-17T11:41:00.000Z

Does "Line of Dance" Club mean what I think it means?

Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, Jon Ronson

2007-02-17T09:53:00.000Z

Saturday 17th Feb
Having abandoned teaching from textbooks, but still wishing to put the burden of work on my students rather than myself, I’ve themed the first part of this term on one of the few subjects suggested by students as ‘interesting’: Famous People. To start with, in each of the 9th to 11th grade classes I got the kids to play ‘Who Am I?’ - I wrote the names and a brief bio of a selection of famous persons living and dead onto pieces of paper and a student chose one at random, to answer yes/no questions until somebody guessed their identity. It’s a game that is presumably known the world over, and the students seemed to enjoy it. Napoleon was the easiest to guess - once the students had hazarded European and French then there was no hesitation. I was surprised that the only Mongolian I had included, Zanabazar - who is probably the most culturally influential person in Mongolia’s history - proved to be extremely obscure for the students. It seems that beyond the Khans and Sukhbaatar (hero of the revolution, and founder of the still ruling Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party) the students only have a vague notion of their nation’s history. I am sure that they would strongly object to that statement, but that’s the appearance given to me.

Almost half the students - mostly but not exclusively the boys - have no interest in any history beyond The Secret History - the near contemporary narrative account of Genghis Khan’s reign. The Secret History probably comes 3rd place after Harry Potter and the Da Vinci Code as most commonly cited favourite book. Comic book versions of the life of Genghis and his generals are extremely popular with young lads, and even the 4th Grade girls will hotly dispute which of Genghis’ wives was the most intelligent or beautiful. It has been much noted elsewhere that since the beginning of democracy in Mongolia, the cult of Chinggis has grown and grown. Young Mongolians are fiercely proud of their ancestor, and it colours their perception of every other period or person in history.

For example, Adolf Hitler. Hitler, or ‘Gitler’ as the Mongolians usually call him, is, I am sorry to say, greatly admired by the young men I teach. “He was a great general” “He gave great speeches” “Everybody was afraid of him”: these accolades are given in a reverent tone by every student who has spoken on him - except, happily, for the scorn from a handful of the girls who have objected that Hitler was a terrible man. Ironically, however, whilst the lads can accept with an amused grin that Hitler is usually perceived as being the very worst criminal in history in western countries, they are deeply shocked and offended at the notion that Genghis Khan is also often included in the roll-call of historical infamy.

I’m hoping that I can encourage the students to look at other aspects of greatness in historical figures than the numbers of millions murdered or subjugated. I’ve set the classes to do a presentation on a chosen person from history - for myself I’m going to do a slideshow about Ernest Shackleton. A very macho figure, but someone who’s notable achievement was a heroic failure, and who is remembered because of the people his ambition didn’t kill.

I think I’d also like to see how the class respond to reading some Jon Ronson, too. Ronson’s English in “Out of the Ordinary” is clearly written, with short sentences, and to the point. I think that his writing is well within my student’s reading abilities; they hate being given a piece to read that’s more than 500 words long. I’d like to see the students’ reaction to humorous writing about social embarrassment and ostentatiously failing to be a good role model to his son. I’ll try the piece on Goths in Starbucks or the one about getting his trousers mended. With startling generosity, Ronson has posted most of the best short pieces from the book at his Amazon Blog.

Like Larry David, Ronson’s best asset is writing about his own failings and insecurities. That isn’t to say that there isn’t a lot of merit to his attempts at serious ‘offbeat’ journalism, but where the implied Ronson sometimes irritates there, it delights in those pieces that focus entirely on himself. I enjoyed large parts of “Them” - particular the first piece concerning Osama Bin Laden's 'mouthpiece’ Omar Bakri, but grew increasingly irritated by Ronson's faux naiveté in the rest of the book. It was after reading "Them" that I first came across Jon Ronson’s by-line in the Guardian. Initially I read his self-obsessed pieces in a rather sneering manner - “What ‘amusing’ anecdote has Ronson got to say about himself this time, I wonder?” I’d started out reading Auberon Waugh’s columns in much the same way - not that I would wish to draw too strong a comparison between the two writers, beyond the fact that it was what offended me about each writer that initially drew me to reading them.

One thing that Jon Ronson admits in his book, is that he is an occasional self-Googler. Mentioning Jon Ronson in the text of your web site is a well-known technique in the blogging community for artificially boosting site traffic. Within two hours of my first post that mentioned him I had a hit from a blog search for “jon ronson”. The ISP address for the visitor included Ronson in the host name - suggesting that, as a cyber-equivalent of the Devil himself, no sooner do you mention Jon Ronson’s name online, than he appears. The same searcher has visited the site four times, all from Googling “jon ronson”. Curiously, no other ISP has visited the site with that search. And no one at all has arrived by Googling “louis theroux”.

Khoomei Sweet Khoomei

2007-02-15T13:35:00.000Z

Thursday 15th February
My attempts to track down some traditional music have been a bit half hearted in the two and a half months I've been here in Mongolia. I've heard a few traditional singers at Christmas parties, but other than my visit to an instrument maker's shop last week the rest of my time I have been somewhat culturally delinquent. At last I have rectified the situation, thanks to my friend Bulgaa who texted me this afternoon to ask if I was free this evening. Would it be okay for him to call around to my apartment with his friend Chuluun?

Chuluun is originally from Inner Mongolia and plays the Morin Khuur and is a Khoomei singer. He arrived at my home with the distinctive, roughly bar-bell shaped Morin Khuur softcase on his shoulder. I've heard the Morin Khuur played and I've heard throat-singing before - Bela Fleck and the KLF have both recorded with the unearthly tri-tone singing. Words fail me to describe the experience of hearing the music sung in my living room. I'm hoping to hear Chuluun play tomorrow so I will try and find something to write worthy of his art.

In the meantime, here's Chuluun with his instrument, and also in mid-Khoomei playing the banjo. I had hoped to possibly post the first picture on the web of Khoomei being sung to the banjo, but then I Googled and confirmed that there's nothing new in cyberspace - here's the Myspace page of Arjopa, a Khoomei singer in Germany who plays an old English zither banjo.

English Literature is Optional

2007-02-12T11:16:00.000Z

Monday 12th February
Inevitably, the first week back in school after two weeks’ recovery time was a mixed experience, mostly of the spirit-grinding character. I would surely have benefited from doing more preparation during the break, although I did concoct a lot of ambitious but extremely vague notions of doing a lot of themed classes throughout the coming term. The fact that I hadn’t actually physically planned anything out turned out not to matter a great deal, as, presumably some time late Sunday night, the school's entire timetable had been completely rewritten.

The big change for me is that my literature classes had now been made optional - something I had begged for in relation to the 9th graders but would like to have saved as a last resort for the 10th and 11th. I spent most of last weeks classes holding ‘surveys’ of the students opinions about English and what to do about it. A great way out of getting around not having planned work for the week but also for stealing ideas from the students themselves (Not that the ideas would necessarily be any good, but then I could have the joy of telling the kids “Yes, this lesson sucks, but that’s YOUR FAULT because it was YOUR IDEA - Hah!”) Well, particularly to the background of timetable chaos, the results of the survey were pretty uniformly depressing. The greater part of the students requested “More interesting lessons” with only about two out of sixty students suggesting anything that might be of interest to themselves (“Talking about famous people, shopping, movies”). “More interesting” basically means more games and fun exercises, and more oportunities to chat to each other (in Mongolian). Well, I’m prepared to concede them a little more fun, in strictly measured doses of course, but on the whole, I reserve the right to be as boring and un-fun as I like. It is a teacher’s most sacred prerogative.

My 11th grade got quite involved in a discussion of what to study in Literature, with an agreement to read more short stories and look at something in the vein of Harry Potter and “The Da Vinci Code”, both of which these bone-idle kids have read from cover to cover. I had it in mind to maybe try and get copies of “The Hobbit” at least or “A Wizard of Earthsea” as a Rowling antidote, and half a notion to force extracts of “The Name of the Rose” and the “Illuminatus!” trilogy to de-Brown them. The 11th grade did pretty well last term, giving the extracts of “Hamlet” a sporting chance, suffering Dylan Thomas with dignity and generally hiding their disappointment that the course would not be all Monkey’s Paws. Everything looked quite promising: and then the class became optional, and 5 students out of the twenty turned up. No students from the 10th grade classes are choosing to take English. And the 9th grade class which I had begged to be made optional is still on the syllabus, sat there in the ungodly monday morning hours, with the students less willing than ever to have anything whatsoever to do with books.

Still, the five-student classes will hopefully turn out to be very worthwhile, although I do feel that i am losing the battle to force these kids to appreciate English literature. The students were very keen to read Sherlock Holmes and so I settled on “The Stock-Broker’s Clerk” purely on the merit of it being one of the shortest stories. It turns out on reading it (and preparing a vocab sheet! Before the lesson! I am a teacher!) that it has lots of good use of English idioms and phrases that are still common currency (“at the end of my tether” “I was in the swim” and so on), but it isn’t the most exciting of Holmes’ adventures - and is indeed just a rewrite of the funnier “The Red-Headed League” which Conan Doyle seems to have forgotten having written. Well, I’ll see how they got on with it tomorrow. In the meantime I wrote them a very clever little essay about the character Sherlock Holmes and his wide influence on later fiction, which they are sure to find informative and inspiring. I even managed, in the best teaching tradition of disparaging everything the students admire, to work in a snidey reference to “The Da Vinci Code” (which, needless to say, and also in the best teaching tradition, I have never read). Once they’ve finished with that I’m intending to try some Jack London, particularly “To Light a Fire” and “A Piece of Steak”, both of which I recall as being short but gripping, and concerning the cold, wolves and boxing, all of which ought to be able to hold a Mongolian’s attention for half an hour at least.

For my other classes, I am belatedly dispensing once and for all with the text book I have been given. The course (Upstream Intermediate and Advanced) is extremely good, but the students, who are already studying the course with the Mongolian teachers do not want to study it with me too. Personally I think that if I could get their attention they could really benefit from letting me teach it, but as soon as the text book opens their minds close, and I am finally giving up. All remaining classes will be conversation or based on newspaper articles and lessons I steal off the Internet. I have also had the brilliant notion of getting the class to prepare Power Point (ie slideshow) presentations on subjects of their choice, with that whole class being their lesson - cleverly getting myself out of having to prepare that lesson, and again giving me recourse to being able to say “Yes, this lesson sucks, but that’s YOUR FAULT because it was YOUR IDEA - Hah!”

You may be wondering whatever happened to my threats to teach Mongolians bluegrass, which had caused a degree of consternation in some parts of the globe. Many historians consider that the rampages of Genghis Khan were only alleviated by the fact that the banjo had not yet been invented in the 13th century. As of yet, the world is safe. I have not been able to inspire a sudden interest in all things hillbilly amongst my young charges, but I am working on it. Last week was my first after-school music group, which a handful of students finally signed up for once another student helpfully rewrote my unsigned “Bluegrass Music Club” poster and replaced it with “Live Music Club”. I’ve now got 6 8th grade piano-playing girls, who want to form an EMO Rock Band. In my own time I am trying to meet up with some local musicians who a mutual friend is in touch with - hopefully after all the meatballs and vodka of next weekend’s White Moon celebration are over with we can manage to get together.

Finally, just to prove that I am complaining about my job from Outer Mongolia and not Basingstoke, here's a picture of the ger recently assembled outside my apartment block.

Sumo Corruption Scandal

2007-02-08T05:41:00.001Z

Thursday 8th January
Last week my good friend Chris Shannon sent me a link to an article in The Times about Mongolia's Sumo champ Asashoryu, who has been at the centre of allegations of match-fixing. Asashoryu, who is aptly described by Lloyd as swaggering into the ring "like a 23st loincloth-clad cowboy" is a big hero to Mongolians of all ages. They are proud of his phenomenal success, but also fond of his humorously bullying and irreverent attitude. Many people have told me with a smile how at the party held for his recent record-breaking victory, he punched celebrity guests who were reluctant to drink with him, and forced them to down their vodka.

The story is very big news in Japan, however even the article in the Times was considerably more in depth than the small piece that I had read in the UB Post. Curiously, when I asked my students and colleagues about the allegations, no one had heard them, in spite of many being very keen followers of the sport. In previous discussions concerning Mongolia's limited successes in the Asian Games and prospects for the Olympics, students have complained that competitions have been rigged against their country's favour. I am told that bribery is very common - in the early stages, at least - of the Naadam wrestling competition, with the lowest ranked wrestlers paying those of higher rank to take a fall.

Needless to say, these current allegations from Japan are treated by Mongolians with contempt and shocked outrage, and dismissed out of hand. Richard Lloyd's piece in the Times (there are several other articles by the same writer about Asashoryu's controversial career which make good reading, available at timesonline) points out that the details of the current accusations are "less than convincing" and quotes Sumo commentator Kunihiro Sugiyama on the possibility that the allegations are a "concoction by some of his many detractors":

“It’s possible — just because he is so strong. That creates jealousy. The fact that he’s a foreigner gives people a harder attitude towards him. But we have to face up to his great strength. At the moment Asashoryu is stronger than the Japanese.”

A colleague has just told me that Asashoryu has answered these allegations in the Mongolian press, and assured the Mongolian people that the story is false: "I don't have any interest to buy these rounds and the victories." Asashoryu has promised the Mongolian people that he will become the greatest Sumo Yokozuna of all time - a record that he is close to acchieving. The article that he has made this statement in is more concerned with Asashoryu's recent purchase of Ulaanbaatar's State Circus building. There are fears that the Yokozuna plans to abolish the circus and use the building to stage Sumo matches. Again, however, he reassures his people that he has loved the circus since visiting it in the 3rd grade, and has had a particular admiration for Mongolian circus entertainers since seeing them perform in Las Vegas last year.

I'll put my faith in Asashoryu's honesty, but I guess that the measure must be what happens to the dear old, decrepit State Circus - whether it blossoms as a showcase for the stupendous acrobatic talents that have long been a tradition of the Mongolian people (and for performing dogs and cats), or becomes instead the number venue in UB to see two large, sweaty men grunting and tugging at each others' mawashi.

Back Streets, Bookshops, Morin Khuur

2007-02-05T15:13:00.000Z

Monday 5th February 2007
The tree-lined avenues north of the Government Building at the centre of Ulaanbaatar stretch out to east and west and are the main university district of the city. The buildings along these avenues are rather grand and sombre, built, I suppose, in the early soviet era. They are brick buildings, with plaster facades moulded as stone. There isn't the profusion of shops selling bootleg cds and cut-price cashmere, but rather some very good restaurants here and there, and otherwise the heavy wooden doors and dark stone-linteled windows don't give much clue to what goes on within, except to suggest serious business of some kind.

I enjoy cutting through the back streets between this area and my apartment block, which is at the north western edge, behind blocks of accommodation known, I am told, as Student Town. The surface of the street rolls like a frozen sea, and the cars that do pass down there make their way as cautiously as I do, no more eager to rip off their exhaust pipe than I am to slip and break my neck. There are two make-shift ice rinks behind what I suppose is a school, most evenings and throughout the day at weekends children and teenagers skate around to Mongolian and Russian-sounding pop music played from tinny speakers screwed to the wall of a wooden shack. In an impressive building between the back wall of the Chinese Embassy and back alleys where dogs root through discarded vegetables and shredded plastic bags, running off with the prize of a large filthy leg bone, there's a karaoke bar and the neon-lit sign for the King Arthur restaurant. I'll pass this having left my home, ignore the temptingly-priced menu, turn a corner then pass through a gap in a wooden fence.

Just before reaching the main road there's a great square of a building with one of the ubiquitous 'PC Game' establishments in the basement, and on the first floor, behind a typically anonymous great wooden door, a little supermarket that I tend to buy bread at and - sorry mum - cigarettes. Of course I'll give them up again once I'm back in Blighty but at 40p a pack I'd be losing a fiver every time I didn't buy any, wouldn't I?

In the hallway before the the supermarket there's a door leading to a bookstore which has thte best collection of second-hand English books I've found so far. It seems that most have found their way there through the hands of diplomats at the US Embassy - there are an awful lot of very dry books on American politics, mostly 30 years old at least but with the odd book on Clinton in between numerous appraisals of the Nixon era. A lot of Grisham and Grishamesque thrillers, which I assume is also popular reading with diplomats. When my iBook had decided to take a five day rest I was very happy to find a copy of 'Creation' by Gore Vidal which I am enjoying working my way through. They only charged me 3000 Tugric ($3) - a lot cheaper than most second-hand books here. Actually, I was very happily surprised to receive my first piece of mail when I arrived at school today - my sister Helen had sent me 'Out of the Ordinary' by Jon Ronson. At first I was deeply disappointed because I thought I'd already read it just before leaving the UK: then happily remembered that I was confusing it with Louis Theroux's book. A confusion which I am given to believe Mr Ronson would not find flattering.

Having passed through this area on Saturday whilst wandering aimlessly in the direction of Sukhbaatar Square, at the corner between the Natural History Museum and the rear of the ominous Government Building I noticed that the building on my left called itself National Musical Instruments and Instrument Makers of Mongolia. Couldn't see up to the windows, so I climbed the steps to the door. Most of the souvenir shops in UB sell somewhat gaudily painted Morin Khuur - known as the Horse Head fiddle - a beautifully carved two-stringed cello most typical of Mongolian folk music. For all I know the instruments flogged amongst mocassins, fur hats, bows and arrows and paintings of Genghis on stretched hide are as good musically as any, however, this small establishment has the sombre feel of the home of the work of true craftsmen. The walls are lined with Morin Khuur and other instruments: including large snake-skinned Chinese banjos, an array of different sized and styled dulcimers, European fiddles and, somthing I was hoping to find, a lovely fretless Khulsan Khuur. The Khulsan Khur looks pretty much like a Morin Khuur - with the same two strings and box-shaped body - but this one's head was carved as an ibex rather than a horse. It is plucked or indeed (for the benefit of Old Time banjo enthusiasts) frailed - at least it was when I saw one on TV a while back. I had a little play around with it - was very delighted with the silly little melody that fell onto my fingers, and the beautiful feel of the neck. They're asking 100,000T for it and I may have to go back there on pay day.

The back room is a workshop, where it seemed at the time mostly old instruments - some very fine and venerable looking, very intricately detailed and carved - were being repaired. The smell of sawdust in the air, and clouds of it dancing in the sunlight, contrasting with the shadowed darkness of wood hanging all around.

I picked up a brochure for the shop: they're the Eshiglen Magnai Co. Ltd: established in 1991 by Purevdavaagiin Baigal av, "famous master on production of Mongolian traditional instruments", they now have more "40 masters leading in the field of traditional musical instruments" working with them. Their mail address is

Eshiglen Magnai Co. Ltd
Ulaanbaatar 210646
Mongolia
PO Box 46-178

and they can be contacted by email via

toogii_36899@yahoo.com

Teachers' Day, More Technology Gripes (State Department Store Boycott!), Word of the Day is 'Fecund'

2007-02-02T04:50:00.000Z

Friday 2nd February 2007
It is eerily quiet in the school today, only a very few members of staff coming in for the day after the annual Teachers' Day celebrations.

The socialist era gave Mongolia special days celebrating the acchievement of many different workers - there's a Builders' Day, a Nurses' Day, etc. My colleague who told me this proudly informed me that Teachers' Day was the first such holiday and, as everybody has had a teacher or has a child who currently has one, it is by far the most important. Mongolia's revolutionary hero, Sukhbaatar, believed that Mongolia needed modern and effective education, so in honour of him and as a mark of extreme respect for the most noble of professions, Teachers' Day is held on the weekend closest to Sukhbaatar's birthday (which I believe is today, Friday 2nd Feb).

Preparations for the day were impressive. We were told to be at the school for 9am sharp to take a bus out to a Ger holiday camp for the day. Indeed, by 9.45am everyone had arrived and we were ready to go. There was a very good turnout, although my American colleagues opted out of the experience (ominously owing to having previously experienced Teachers' Day). I helped load up one of the busses with the boxes of fruit, crates of soft drinks, and the six crates of beer and two crates of vodka.

We drove west through the city in the direction of the airport. As we neared the power stations the smog got thicker and thicker, until the power stations themselves as we passed were completely lost in the dirty yellow air, the tops of the smokle-belching chimneys somehow visible above and ghostly silhouettes of ger and ramshackle buildings in the foreground. I am glad I live in the east of the city.

We spent the day in a deluxe camp just outside the city, at the foot of the Bogd Khaan mountains. Our bus had turned off the paved road, and hurtled up a muddy track to the camp, up in a valley above and out of view of the pollution around the city. It's a beautiful location for an impressively ugly camp. In the 'Modern' part of the camp there's a new hotel building made from Lego and surrounding it a dozen of Barratt's finest semi-detached housing cubes. We, however, were in the 'Traditional' facility and so made our way to the four large concrete gers for each team of 15 or so teachers that the school had been arbitrarily divided into. The weather yesterday and today has been ridiculously warm: getting out of the bus into the sunlight of this sheltered valley really felt like spring.

By 11.30 we'd settled into our temporary home: Russian MTV playing on the flat-screen TV, the chairs all gathered around a table on which fruit and drink had been piled. To allow one more person to take a seat I sat on a bedside cabinet which was just as comfortable as the flat-seated wooden chairs - when I offered to bring a second one over I was told that while it might be ok for me to sit on a cabinet, it wouldn't do for Mongolians. I later got in trouble for leaning on one of the fake ger's two fake centreposts and then for walking between the centreposts across the non-existent hearth; this was poor ger etiquette, even in a fake ger: although the teacher who informed me of the first custom broke it herself within five minutes and most teachers didn't show much compunction about crossing the hearth.

We started the day, of course, with a vodka toast, and much wishing each other a happy Teachers' Day. Then we went to the giant concrete ger restaurant for lunch with the rest of our colleagues. For all my sneering at the ugliness of this luxury camp, the food was very good. Of course we had more vodka with the meal, and glasses of Grants Whisky too to toast the success of two of our prize-winning teachers. As Grants is so much more expensive than even the very best vodka here, my colleagues did their best to like it, albeit with somewhat confused expressions on their faces.

A humorous film made by each of the teams in the past week was shown, for which Oscars were awarded. Best Female Actor went to a male teacher - not previously known for being in a great deal of touch with his feminine side, too say the least - who did an extremely entertaining Les Dawson-esque routine. I'm not sure which film was made by my team; presumably owing to some kind of unfortunate error of communication, I hadn't been asked to be in it. There were a lot of speeches and giving of prizes and plaques. Everybody seemed to be having a very good time. After a decent amount of food and an indecent amount of alcohol we merrily made our way outside for numerous games and challenges.

In the end the only challenge I took part in as a participant was the tug-o-war, and I'm afraid that my team, for which I was the anchor, got pretty quickly and convincingly defeated. I really think that the rest of my team has to take the blame for their poor coordination. I was a very enthusiastic spectator to the extremely serious sumo wrestling bouts, of which the female contests seemed particularly aggressively fought. Sumo is a very popular here since the rise of Ulaanbaatar's champion Yokozuna; I have yet to witness the Japanese variety but can safely say that I am at least a convert to Drunken Female Teachers' Sumo.

There were no horses available to hire for a trek yesterday, which is probably as well. Instead with a few of my colleagues I climbed the mountain over our camp in time to catch the spectacular sunset. Fist to the top I was also very excited to see a very large dark brown-feathered bird gliding from the forest on the far side of the hill, across the ridge below me and out across the valley. My colleagues insist that I can't have seen an eagle, but it was a very big bird of some kind, and I'm glad I saw it.

Back at the restaurant we had our evening meal accompanied by more vodka, whisky, Russian champagne and Bulgarian wine. This was followed by a very enthusiastically danced disco. Finally, before leaving we returned to our team ger to polish off remaining beer, tangerines and pseudo-Ferrero Rocher (actually, of all fake brands, Russian chocolates seem just as good if not better than the brands they rip off). My colleagues very kindly and easily agreed to sing some traditional Mongolian songs, which I am now determined to learn. Most of the teachers joined in, and they sang very feelingly and well. And indeed, once they'd started with the singing it carried on onto the bus and all the way back to the school. I think there was a plan to invade a night club somewhere, but fortunately the people I caught a taxi with dropped me off at home, meaning I was very gratefully able to call it a night at 11pm.

No doubt the fresh air and exercise managed to dilute the excessive drinking, and I didn't feel too bad today. Went to the State Department Store to return the 1Gb memory stick which I bought 5 days ago and which stopped working after the second time I used it. The guy at the desk of the electronic goods section when he eventually deigned to serve me helpfully confirmed that the stick is indeed broken, but regretted that in spite of the piece of paper saying '1 year guarantee' the code on my receipt says that the product can only be returned on the day of purchase. He sympathetically suggested that I speak to a manager on the 5th floor. Following directions on that floor I found a corridor with two dozen assorted despairing wretches standing and sitting on the floor ouside an ornate office door bearing a sign in Mongolian. I turned away from the Kafka-esque scene with a deep breath, and resolved that the $30 spent on the stick needed to be considered a lesson learned, and so calmly walked away. I resolved not to shop at the State Department store again - although I took that not to include the Nomin supermarket at the back of the ground floor, where I stopped by to pick up some washing powder.

Crossing Sukhbaatar Square I saw an impressive military parade - the soldiers in red and blue with the sunlight shining from their gleaming pointed helmets as they marched with sabres and guns to the foot of the Sukhbaatar monument, where they slightly spoiled the effect of their neat and orderley marching by shuffling about somewhat comically so as to stand in an evenly spaced line. This and the accompanying brass band I later realised was to be for the President or Prime Minister to perform some ceremony to mark Sukhbaatar's birthday Unfortunately, I had to get to the school to tutor a student and sadly I did not have my camera with me to record the very impressive scene.

I get numerous text messages from my network provider everyday on my mobile phone. Mostly I can't understand them - although sometimes I can see that they're the times of movies on TV, or of the Tugrik's exchange value to the dollar. Occassionally there is an English 'Word of the Day' accompanied by a translation in Mongolian. Today's word is 'fecund'. There was even a helpful example sentence given to illustrate the word in context: 'That field over there is fecund.' I imagine that all over the city there are now students of English fervently hoping to asked whether they can recommend anywhere as particularly suited for the planting of crops. They're sure to be gutted if there are no fecund fields in sight when the question is asked, though.

Apple Praised and Censured, Divine Intervention, Teachers' Day

2007-01-30T15:38:00.000Z

Tuesday 30th January 2007
Just to reassure those of you who may have been thinking of starting up a crisis fund to help me out of my recent technical difficulties - my iBook eventually recovered, through its own mysterious means. No damage done - although the date on the calendar was mysteriously changed to 1970. I should also post my apologies to Project Gutenberg and the author(s) of the King James Bible - it seems that iTunes and its system-choking Album Artwork feature were the source of my processing meltdown.

Furthermore, I was paid in full by my dear Turkish friend, thanks, apparently, to the good grace of Allah, who saw to it that the school managed to sell some text books. I am reluctant, however, to have future remuneration dependent on the intervention of the deity. Some heated words were regretably spoken last night, but, cash in my pocket, I don't hold any hard feelings.

Meanwhile, Thursday will be "Teachers' Day" for which all kinds of exciting activities have been planned at a ger-restaurant outside the city. I can't reveal much about the planned activities as the meeting I was required to attend today for my 'team'(?) at the forthcoming festivities was held entirely in Mongolian and - presumably to allow me the thrill of surprise - noone bothered to translate any of it. Watch this space.

Weather report: Conditions have been sub-tropical: Saturday was a sweltering -6c with a breeze that I would have sworn was balmy. This has cleared the smog, although since Saturday there has been a bit of a bite in the air again.

Technical Problems, Performing Cats, Nurses are Women

2007-01-29T01:53:00.000Z

Monday 29th January 2007
Thursday I had the joy of experiencing meltdown with my iBook, quite possibly as a result of downloading the King James Bible from the Project Gutenberg site. My laptop now won't boot up, which may be repairable with a system restore disc - unfortunately mine is nestled away in a packing case somewhere in Liverpool, and Apple don't seem to have got an awful lot of suppliers out here in Mongolia.

I cheered myself up by going to see the visiting Russian circus on Saturday afternoon. I was particularly drawn by the feature in the UB Post which promised performing dogs and cats. I was not disappointed - my particular favourite being the cat which lay on its back in a special harness and rolled a ball on its feet. The acrobats and trapeze artists were all Mongolian and pretty impressive. On the whole though, the circus was a very scrappy affair. The kids in the seats surrounding us had been to see it three times, and mostly came for the tigers in the Grand Finale. One of the kids admonished me for clapping too enthusiastically during a trapeze act.

Through asking my colleagues and students I have learned that the overwhelming majority of Mongolians express a marked aversion to cats. By way of explanation I have been told a rather involved story concerning a Buddhist monk who crucified a cat and set the creature adrift on a river. The cat was rescued and nursed back to health. Years later the monk passed by the cat's home and the vengeful creature attacked him and bit through his jugular. Well, so I was told.

Over the weekend I worked recording a CD of basic English grammar - spending hours reading out lists of words and sentences such as: "The pen is on the table", "Mr Smith is going to work", and "Nurses are women." The grammar book is the work of my Turkish night school employer, a very charming man and tireless self-promoter. His own name finds its way into his exercises, such as "Our English Teacher Mr ------ is very good" and "'Who are two good writers?' 'Charles Dickens and Mr ------ are two good writers.'" I haven't actually been paid for my work yet, which situation is almost made worthwhile by the overblown excuses and promises calling down God as a witness that I will certainly be paid by noon tomorrow. I'm due to work at the night school this evening - for the fourth day running I was promised I would be paid by noon yesterday - that he would phone me and come to wherever I was to bring me my money. I am looking forward to hearing his latest excuse this evening. In the meantime, I am looking to find another evening job.

Full English, White Moon, Abraham Lincoln's Vices

2007-01-25T03:51:00.000Z

Thursday 25th January
Without the chaotic pressure of school, the past week has been quite relaxing. I am ashamed to report that I haven't been out to the mountains, hunted any wolves or ridden any horses during my holiday. My excuse is that I have kept myself quite busy by teaching two conversation classes each day. I am enjoying teaching the conversation classes, largely because it has been made very clear that my duty there consists of chatting amiably and encouraging my students to do so.

One frequent subject of my conversations with students has been the upcoming festival of 'White Moon' - which, being the Mongolian new year, is second only to the summer Nadaam Festival. The festival, which I believe falls on the 18th of February this year, is a time that Mongolians traditionally spend with their family doing three things - drinking milk tea, vodka and eating 'buuz'. Buuz are boiled meat dumplings, and I am repeatedly assured that that nothing but buuz are eaten throughout the festival. As with Nadaam, there will also be wrestling and horse-racing: as everybody knows, the horse-racing is done by children in Mongolia, and promises to be an interesting spectacle. The reigning champion of Sumo in Japan is a Mongolian, Asashoryu, and by all accounts he is having another very promising year so far. Last night a Mongolian friend told me that Asashoryu's brother won the Nadaam wrestling bout last year. He also told me that Asashoryu was sent to Japan to compete in Sumo by his father in hopes that the traditions of the Japanese sport would help to improve his son's temper and undisciplined character. Asashoryu is a much beloved character in Mongolia, I have heard numerous stories of how he is liable to punch in the face anyone who doesn't show him enough respect, and then consider that person to be honoured to be felled by such a legendary fist. The Speyside distillery have recently begun marketing Yokozuna whisky in Mongolia in honour of the great man - Yokozuna being the highest ranking in Sumo. This week's edition of the UB Post informs me that Asashoryu has won this his 20th 'Basho' and is now ranked as the 5th greatest Sumo wrestler of all time.

For the time being I have transferred my bibulary loyalties from the Grand Khan Irish Pub to Dave's Place English Pub. Cornering the proprietor (Dave, of course) late on Saturday night whilst he was engaged in a merry game of Jenga with some of his regulars quite happily acquiesced to my playing some banjo at the bar on Sunday evening. A proportion of vodka in his veins at the time may have been responsible for his carefree decision - certainly when I arrived at the pub on Sunday morning for a Full English breakfast he seemed a bit apprehensive about any details that might have been agreed to in regard to my playing. I hastened to reassure Dave that nothing had been promised, only that he had agreed that I might come down and play that evening and 'see how things go.' When I returned to the bar as arranged at 7pm to pick, Dave happened to be absent on business elsewhere. The various customers who left as I played were careful to express their gratitude for my performance as they passed me on their way out.

Dave's Full English and his meat pie and chips are very good. There is something very reassuring in knowing that there is no corner of the globe where an Englishman cannot begin his day with fried eggs, bread, mushrooms, bacon, sausage and tomato, accompanied by toast and baked beans. Here in Ulaanbaatar that can only be achieved satisfactorily on a Sunday morning, if Dave's confident dismissal of the Grand Khan's Full English is to be credited: but I think once a week is enough. Afterall, I don't want to be thouht of as a xenophobic, homesick ex-Pat, railing about the indignity of being forced to eat all this foreign muck, and not being able to get a decent pint of bitter and people not knowing how to queue properly.

Abraham Lincoln was inordinately fond of telling raucous and rough-hewn tales, at the slightest provocation and particularly to illustrate his point in an argument. Gore Vidal's excellent biographical novel 'Lincoln' illustrates this side of Lincoln's character very strikingly throughout. Doubtless one important source for Vidal was "Lincoln's Yarns and Stories" by Colonel Alexander McClure, a very lengthy collection of hundreds of Lincoln's annecdotes - some, no doubt, apocryphal, but most as reported by this or that person and covering Lincoln's life from his early days as an Illinois lawyer to the long and difficult years of the Civil War. The book is an extremely entertaining oral history, possibly of wider interest than to Civil War obsessives like myself, and is my recommendation for the week from the Project Gutenberg free e-book website. My favourite quote isn't from one of Lincoln's stories, but from one of the editor's introductions to a tall-tale:

It is true that Lincoln did not drink, never swore, was a
stranger to smoking and lived a moral life generally, but he did
like horse-racing and chicken fighting.

Half-term, Wolf Hunting, Palace of Culture, Laxative Clyster No.20

2007-01-20T08:14:00.000Z

Saturday 20th January 2007
The school holidays have begun, with a tremendous wave of joy and relief all around. We were to have one week’s holiday, but Friday morning I learned that the school management had met with the teachers and decided to give us two weeks holiday instead. Naturally I was very happy at the news, although if I had known how long I would get as a break I might have made arrangements to do something with my time. As it is, because of my committments to teach in the evenings, it is going to be difficult for me to get away from the city for more than a couple of days and I find myself wondering what I can do with all my spare time. Most of my students are going abroad - to Thailand, south China, London, and Korea. A lot of the kids’ parents work for the school’s owning corporation, and there jetting off in two chartered planes for warmer climes for a week - or now maybe two. I’m most envious of the students who are going to the countryside. One student did very kindly invite me to go skiing with his friends and himself at the weekend, which I felt a bit of a coward in declining his offer. I haven’t skied (skiied?) before and I feel fairly certain that there are dozens of better ways for me to break my leg whilst over here. Another student is going hunting with his father 300km away from the city. Two of his uncle's horses were recently “eaten by wolves” and he is very much hoping to hunt the creatures responsible.

Wolf-hunting is a subject of passionate enthusiasm for many Mongolians. Wolves are hunted with rifles and night sights and with bows and arrows,they are stalked on foot, chased on horseback or fired at from the comfort of a Mitsubishi Shogun. A student in my night-school class very eloquently explained the national obsession, and poured scorn on the objections of Europeans who had been shocked to learn during a study visit he made to Ireland that he enjoyed killing wolves. “We hunt the wolf and kill them. When we find their hole, we pull out the wolf cubs and kill them, but we leave one alive. Then, when this cub is grown he makes noise - awooo! - and brings the other wolf, they hear him, and we kill them too.” Something every Mongolian confirms when I ask is that “no part of the wolf is wasted.” A lot of the Mongolians who I have discussed wolf-hunting with have been tour guides, or from the middle and upper classes of UB society. They have told me that, once killed, they give the carcass to the “countryside people, who are very poor.” This seems quite an act of generosity, as from their accounts the individual parts of a wolf when sold have a total value around $1000. Whether this figure is accurate I don’t know, but certainly every Mongolian I have asked has stated an absolute belief in the medicinal qualities of the wolf: which is to say that following a fairly straightforward homeopathic rule you eat wolf liver for cirrhosis, lung for bronchitis; the brain is a cure for headaches, the heart for pulmonary ailments; wolf throat beats lemsip every time, and of course the wolf testicles, preferably eaten as soon as the wolf is slain, will guarantee a man unshakable vigour and virility. Most people I have spoken to have a personal testament to the efficacy of these cures.

Assuming that noone invites me to go wolf-hunting, I find myself at the beginning of the holiday well-disposed towards the notion of doing some class preparation. So far, preparing for a class has meant knowing roughly what grade of students I was to be teaching and checking my notes from the previous lesson (usually something like "No students brought books to class. Most students settled down to answer p.67 q2 once 5 mins of lesson remained."). Now I have two weeks' breathing space I supppose I can sit down and plan lessons properly.

A student from my night school class took me to the 'Swiss library' which has quite a lot of decent books on the subject of teaching English. The library is nestled in the 'Cultural Palace' on Sukhbaatar Square: a fine building which contains a theatre, the Ulaanbaatar symphony, numerous other small libraries and also Dave's Place English Pub (a cosy little cellar bar frequented by Anglophonic ex-pats, where you can eat very passable 'real English chips' and also cheese and baked bean toasties).

I am constantly looking for reading material. I have recently become an avid downloader of e-books from the Project Gutenberg site. The website has thousands of out-of-copyright books in its catalogue and the books are free to download and distribute as you see fit, which is a considerable resource indeed. There's a lifetime of reading material on there. Reading books off a screen isn't the chore you may imagine it to be when it's the only way of getting something worth reading. Reading in the bath is a bit more of a problem. The e-book format has many advantages - for example, using the 'find' feature of your word-processing software to scan through the complete works of Shakespeare, the King James bible or the unabridged Pepys diaries makes a very useful research tool. And it's free! Some of the books are available in audio format. Obscurities that you would have to pay a lot of money for in print, such as 'The King in Yellow' and 'The House-Boat on the Styx' are yours for the click of a button.

I was delighted to find on Gutenberg a book I have been trying to get a copy of for years: 'Enquire Within Upon Everything' the ultimate Victorian gentleman's guide to, well, everything of course. A friend once had a copy he found at a flea-market. The section of medical advice will give many hours of hilarious reading, and is really quite an alarming insight into the state of medicine in the late 1800s. They make Mongolian wolf-cures look like the height of medicinal sophistication. To treat 'Hysterics': "the fit may be prevented by the administration of thirty drops of laudanum, and as many of ether." Inflammation of the brain? "Application of cold to the head, bleeding from the temples or back of the neck by leeches or cupping... Avoid excitement, study, intemperance." 'Cupping' is one of the treatments used against mad King George - placing a glass cup on the back of the patient and heating it with a candle to cause blisters. May possibly make 'avoiding excitement' a bit of a problem. The dutiful husband is advised to treat 'scanty' menstruation from his wife by (in 'strong patients') "'cupping' the loins [and] exercise in the open air." Is your child suffering convulsions? "If during teething, free lancing of the gums, the warm bath, cold applications to the head, leeches to the temples, an emetic, and a laxative clyster, No. 20." 'Laxative clyster no. 20' by the way is a "pint and a half of gruel or fat broth, a tablespoonful of castor oil, one of common salt, and a lump of butter; mix, to be injected slowly. A third of this quantity is enough for an infant." For those unfamiliar with the term, a clyster is an enema. That should keep the buggers from convulsing.

Yod, Celebrity Evening Class

2007-01-15T14:58:00.000Z

Monday 15th January 2007
Are you getting enough Yod? I know I’m preaching to the converted here, friends, but the advice on the back of the bag of Bamash Co. salt I bought today set me worrying that some poor souls out there might be neglecting the yod element of their diet:

“Salt with yod can protect human body from yod deficiency and prevent body from pathogeny because of yod deficiency as well as its aftermath reliable.”

So please, folks, keep up your yod intake this winter, or face the aftermath reliable.

Fans of Guys666 will be disappointed to learn that although I did meet the Guys today they did not take my class, for obscure reasons (yod deficiency?) that escaped me at the time. Apparently it has something to do with the fact that they are going to Korea for Valentines Day. Whatever the reason, I was able to hide my disappointment from my non-boy band students, and teach my first English beginners class. I think it went ok.

Whilst I cannot now boast to my school students that I teach the coolest soft-rap band in Mongolia, at least I do not have to face the prospect of Guys666 releasing a song about what a boring and bad-tempered teacher I am.

Health, Horses

2007-01-14T13:33:00.000Z

Sunday 14th January 2007
Some revealing articles in the Mongol Messenger last Tuesday. The results of a ‘Health bribery survey’ have been published. The survey covered 1400 people who have used medical services across Mongolia, also 228 medical staff responded to the questions. 68.4% of patients claimed to have given bribes of up to T30,000 (40.8% of respondents earned T50,000 - 100,000 per month). According to the messenger: “Of hospital staff, 48.1% of those who admitted to accepting bribes earned T50,000-100,000 a month; 34.1% earned T100,000 - 200,000; 4.3% earned over T300,00.” The article does not report what percentage of the 228 medical staff admitted to taking bribes - perhaps the meaning is that all these 228 did so. Furthermore, it doesn’t indicated whether the reported earnings are salary or from bribes. However, the article goes on to quote Survey team head M Batbaatar: “In Dornod Aimag [district], the local level of bribery is that a surgical patient should give T20,000 to the surgeon and T5,000 to each nurse. In Ulaanbaatar, with its higher cost of living, people pay more.” The salaries of medical staff are very low, and the bribes are generally referred to by citizens as ‘informal payments.’

Front page news is that Health Minister L Gundalai has been dismissed by the Prime Minister M Enkhbold, because he has been “unable to maintain the principle of cabinet solidarity... operated a mistaken personnel policy... fought with the Environment Minister [literally?]... and displayed an unethical and inappropriate character.” The Health Minister strongly denies these accusations. There is no mention of the bribery survey or the general reported decline in medical services being a factor in his dismissal, although speaking at a public rally, L Gundalai did say “...I was Health Minister for 11 months. The sector... suffer[ed] from corruption and red tape. I have been unable to do much about this because of much pressure.” I do not know what the allegations of an “inappropriate character” specifically refer to. As it happens, I had recently been told a first hand anecdote about a morning meeting somebody had with the minister when said minister was, in the British political euphemism, ‘tired and emotional’ - that is to say ‘tired and emotional as a newt’ - but I am given to understand that this is by no means uncommon here (or Westminster or presumably anywhere else for that matter). It would seem to me, however, that if in a speech at a rally of your supporters after your dismissal that you can say that after 11 months in your job you have been “unable to do much” then it is probably unsurprising that most Ulaanbaatans are less then enthusiastic (and light years from optimistic) on the subject of politics and government.

The subject of air pollution, in the same issue of the Messenger, paints a further grim picture of the health situation in Ulaanbaatar. Head of the Mongolian Green Coalition (founded January 4th), O Bum-Yalagch quotes the Social Health Institute as finding Nitrogen Dioxide to be 1.5 times the safe limit, Carbon Monoxide 4.2 times higher and “dust” 7.8 times. In response the ‘Hydrology, Meteorology and Environment Monitoring Office Air Pollution Quality Department’ said that “at present we have no equipment to detect the six basic pollutants, so we can only measure SO 2 and NO 2 at our four Ulaanbaatar monitoring points.” Presumably there wasn’t much left in the budget after paying to get their letterheads printed. If the government cannot at present actually be bothered to measure the air pollution, any hope that something effective is going to be done about it remains somewhat forlorn.

For myself then, I was very happy this weekend to take an extremely healthy trip out to the Gorkhi Terelj National Park, some 40 km or so East out of UB. The park is a very popular destination in summer, and well served by tourist camps. Mathieu and Francois - the intrepid French travellers I met last week, were heading out there to stay at a ger. Also coming along was their fellow francophone Marie, a Swiss ceramicist currently travelling before taking up a 6 month placement at a Chinese university. The trip was organised through their hostel, the UB Guesthouse (http://www.ubguest.com) and there being 4 of us cost a very reasonable $30 a head, which compared favourably to other prices we were quoted. Furthermore the UB Guesthouse seems a pretty decent place to stay, being clean and centrally located, and costing only $5 a night (although it does have a midnight curfew “for the safety of guests”). For that we would get 3 meals, ger accommodation and a 2 hour horse ride.

Our taxi left the hostel some time around 10am. I recognised most of the route from my trip to Baganuur with Tso and Shinee’s family. There seemed to be a little more traffic on the bumpy and icy road. We had to stop here and there to let a herds of goat and cows pass, and at one point our driver executed a quick swerve to avoid a giant lump of coal that dropped off the back of a lorry travelling in the opposite direction and hurtled towards us. In around an hour we were in the Terelj Park. The park is spectacularly beautiful. Anyone who’s mental image of Mongolia consists only of wide empty grasslands would be surprised at the scenery in this region - there are forests and wide (now frozen) rivers, and the rocky crags and outcrops of the hills and mountains are more familiar from images of America’s west. As we stood drinking in the surrounding scenery at our camp, Marie (I think) remarked that in every direction was a different view, something else to stop you and demand your attention.

The park is doubtless beautiful in the green of spring and summer, but has its own appeal under a white winter blanket. Apart from the unearthly beauty is the scarcity of other visitors. There are many tourist camps in the Park and most are deserted for winter. Hoardings alongside the road advertise modern hotels and ‘Western bathrooms’ - we also passed a camp with a football pitch and a basketball court. We didn’t know until we arrived, but our own accommodation was in as single ger next to the ger and winter stables of a herder family, rather than in one of the larger and indeed pleasant but perhaps slightly sterile tourist camps. There was, in fact, a camp consisting of a dozen ger and three or four Swiss chalet just a few hundred metres around the valley’s corner from us, but it may as well have been a hundred miles away, being mostly empty, and hidden from us by a rocky spur of timeworn rocks topped by giant boulders.

The fire was blazing noisily in the rusted stove of our ger when we arrived, each to climb one of the five slightly short and stiff but comfortable enough beds around the walls. With some intuition that our lunch would be a couple of hours away yet, we had a little walk and look around the slopes and boulders surrounding the encampment. Before we were overwhelmed by the tranquility of the scenery, the herders’ children called us over to where they were throwing themselves into a deep drift of snow, and we spent the next hour with them sledging down a near vertical slope, being vigourously attacked and snowballed, until we were able to wearily trudge back to our home - where the fire had faltered but not died, and was quickly revived. Lunch was simple but adequate - a plate of fried meat and vegetables with rice, and also happily with some herbs and so a little more flavour than what I have started to get increasingly picky about eating at the school. Accompanied by a large flask of tea, the meal was followed by a spontaneous and simultaneous 40 winks.

The temperature began to drop threateningly as the fire died again, which woke us all up pretty effectively. We went out and scrounged some more wood for the fire, and 2pm being on us, hung about expectantly for the afternoon’s horse ride to start. Our hosts prepared our horses - very promisingly one had earlier bitten Mathieu and left a sizeable hole in his sheepskin coat. Being on the large side I got the largest horse - which could not have been mistaken for a pony but was obviously short (although extremely stocky) by comparison to the breeds we’re used to calling horses. After the ride, one of our hosts, maybe the senior guy, said the horse was a siberian breed, and cost $5,000. Our horses saddled we mounted them, without any nonsense such as instructions on how to handle our steeds or basic safety - we’d all ridden a horse at least once before in the distant past, so of course that would have been entirely unnecessary. Actually, they proved to be very sensible horses and required very little from us as riders, except not to freeze to death. It was a little on the cold side, I’m thinking probably below -20c. Naturally, we were all wrapped up as much as humanly possible, but after an hour or so it was a challenging environment. The beauty of the scenery entirely made up for any hardship experienced. Personally, I was very happy with my outfitting, and my Mongolian boots certainly did the job they were made for. I would recommend gloves to anyone else giving it a try, however, and regret not replacing mine after losing them a few weeks ago.

As we rode along up and down over small hills in the narrow valley, our guide either helpfully whipped at our horses to encourage them to canter, or sang incredibly lonesome and soulful traditional songs. The sun was disappearing behind the mountains before us when we arrived at our destination, and very grateful dropped off our equally grateful mounts, hitched them to a post and entered a warm and cosy ger I took to be the home of our guide, where his wife had prepared tea and fried dough cakes. The children watched a movie on tv, while we gratefully drank the warm tea and defrosted to the point that the return would be possible.Going back of course, the horses though more tired were easier to encourage to canter, and as the landscape was darkening and our faces were muffled by hats and scarves, as we were jolted up and down or our horses occasionally stumbled in the snow (though they were extremely sure-footed, as you’d expect them to be), it was an exciting ride. I’m aching a little, as I write this now (in my straight backed living room chair - which has proven to be some bizarre soviet or Mongolian concept of a Lazy Boy, having a hidden footrest though still no way of reclining the 90 degree back), but not as sore as I expected to be, and still enchanted by the experience.

Our fire, happily, had been taken care of by our hosts, so we returned to warmth and comfort. The evening meal was buuz (meatballs) followed by booze (vodka), a game involving taking turns trying to guess what each other had drawn, and possibly a degree of banjo playing also. There was much Gallic smoking of cigarettes and conversation that although I couldn’t understand, I could at least follow the gist of - which for me makes a welcome change. We went out to look at the night sky - slightly clouded but still compelling, and were rewarded with two shooting stars - the first being particularly bright and long, and my eyes tricked me into seeing a trail of vapour following it, which I suppose couldn’t have happened. Finally, our wood box stocked and a bucket of coal tipped into the stove, we turned in, probably only around 9.30pm, but surely having had a full day. It was incredibly hot at first, to the extent that breathing was difficult, but naturally the fire cooled down soon enough. Of course we’d been warned by people not to let the fire go out, as however cosy the ger are with the stove burning, the outside temperature is going to quickly make steps to assert itself once the stove goes cold. I first woke around 12, the temperature now extremely pleasant and checked the stove to find the embers still quite fiercely glowing, and so probably unnecessarily loaded up more wood. Woke again at 2, 3 and 7am - when I put the last two sticks onto the fairly sparsely strewn glowing coals. Our cheery guide of the previous evening came in around 8.30 maybe, and it seems he was able to get a new fire started from the ashes of the previous one, so we’d lasted the night pretty well. It was cool now in the ger but not cold - in pretty short order it was a furnace again, making breakfast a little difficult to manage, but welcome all the same.

Got a great deal of satisfaction before leaving from helping our guide to push an unwieldy two-wheeled wooden cart to the well in the outbuildings of the tourist camp. The system for the return was for one of the kids to cling to the top of the barrel to prevent it from slipping or spilling. We got the water back without mishap.

Finally, our taxi arrived and we waved our good byes and returned to the city. All-in-all it had been an unforgettable experience - would have been worth it had it cost more, extremely good value as it was. We left a T20,000 tip when we left, which there had been no prompting at all for and which was surely deserved by these very gracious and hardworking people. I hope to get back out and stay there again some time.

On leaving the park the car was stopped by an ominous array of police and military types. No one could explain at the time - but indicated that we needed to wash our hands, then pass through a green canvas decontamination tent. We were told we wouldn’t need to wear the gas masks waiting on a table outside. After walking across some white chalky substance, we were allowed to get back in our taxi and leave. I assumed it was related to foot and mouth or something - and indeed on our return found a reference in the Messenger to a recent outbreak in livestock of smallpox, and measures being taken to contain it.

Photographs to follow. Meanwhile if you cannot wait, please checkout those posted at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ulaanbaanjo

Workaholic, Encore en Bogdkhaan Uul, Bones, Rocks, Peanuts

2007-01-08T12:34:00.000Z

Monday 8th January 2007
It has been a while since I’ve had the chance to sit down and write either this or the many emails and letters I have promised people (sorry). I could blame myself (congenital laziness, watching too much TV, having nothing worth writing, etc) but the fact is that my conniving employer tricked me into agreeing to produce 8 exam papers by today. It would be “no problem at all,” I boasted. I managed to ‘finish’ (well, slightly more than start) 4 papers by about 9.30pm last night, when I angrily threw my books aside, cursed my boss for allowing me to agree to such a head-wrecking task, and watched a DVD of ‘Snakes on a Plane’ (accompanied by a few vodka and cokes) in rebellion. I dreamt of exam questions all night. When I set a reading piece in the classroom, I have no problem coming up with a half dozen thoughtful and engaging questions that manage to both test the students’ abilities and enable them to learn from the process. Multiple choice, fill in the blanks (which is what are preferred for exam papers here) I find it takes me half an hour to come up with one facetiously worded question, ie - (from my first paper) Complete the following sentence using a gerund:

It is very annoying for me ________(deal) with sudden changes in my schedule.

I didn’t even know what a gerund was until a few weeks ago. And I spelled sentence ‘sentance.’

Of course, I took the correct approach to informing my boss that I hadn’t done the work I’d agreed to do: I went to her office first thing this morning and complained at great length about my incompetence in the area of test writing. I’ve been given a week’s reprieve.

It is very refreshing being in a job where, owing to a complete absence of any other suitable candidates, I can be honest about my failings. There is no need to lie and claim to be punctual, hard-working, competent, etc. Today I went to visit the Turkish teacher’s language school. He very much wants me to start working for him. At present his courses are indeed taught by “100% foreign English teachers” as his literature boasts, but he has not attempted to hide from me that he really, really needs to hire a native speaker. We discussed terms. “I have to tell you,” I said, “I’ve no previous experience teaching English, am extremely lazy and not at all drawn to the idea of hard work.” I start next Monday, teaching 2 hours in the evening Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

I’m promised that I’ll be paid a decent salary - I’ll check exactly how much tomorrow (if it’s T10,000, ie £4 an hour then that buys a decent meal at a restaurant). After talking terms though (and me further saying that the salary is very important to me regardless of my ability) my new boss then told me that one of my students will be a member of the Mongolian group Guys666! That’s the fellers who are currently pictured on the back of Hite beer cans, and who I previously mentioned in the blog here.If I’d known that I’d be teaching Guys666 then I would have agreed to work for nothing.

In all serious, though, although I am congenitally lazy, I think I may enjoy the tutoring job, and it should be an interesting change to teach students who are all motivated to learn.

Yesterday, other than spending a few weary hours in the evening attempting to work, I spent the day out hiking in the Bogdkhaan Uul again - this time dragging two young french travellers, Mathieu and Francois, along with me, so as not to be trespassing on my own. There was fresh snow on the ground, creating a pleasant contrast with my previous hike; the sun, of course, shone as brightly as ever and again there was barely a breath of wind. Crossed the path of many more people out gathering firewood. At the top of a mountain pass Francois found two camel heads and two horse heads left at the foot of a pile of stones (an ‘ovobo’ I think the word is) presumably for shamanic reasons.Unfortunately the powdery fresh snow was not as good for sledging on the plastic sack I’d saved from my previous trip. Mathieu and Francois are travelling on the Trans-Mongolian, with the aim of eventually heading to Kazakhstan and driving back to France. They keep a blog of their travels at onetrip-onenoise.over-blog.com (written in French for some reason)

Saturday I went to the Museum of Natural History. The Gobi desert has been the location of some of the most important finds in palaentology, and Ulaanbaatar has some of the most significant finds in this splendid and very soviet era museum. I was most excited to see the fossil of two dinosaurs who died locked in (assuredly) mortal combat: the only such dinosaur remains in the world. I don’t know what dinosaurologists say, but my 2 minute inspection led me to conclude that the smaller dinosaur, which looks in a pretty bad shape, managed, with a kick of its sharply clawed feet, to rip the stomach out of the more powerful-looking one in its death-throes. There are also about half a dozen dinosaur egg nests, and (ah!) a fossilized nest of deceased newly hatched dinosaurs.

An irresistable appeal to me of the Museum of Natural History is the building itself, which is as soviet-era forbidding and run-down as you could hope to imagine. I will return someday soon and pay the T5000 photography fee to take pictures of the walls and dimly lit corridors. This is a real Natural History museum, with stuffed birds and insects pinned to cards. No high falutin’ interactive displays - unless you count iron meteorites that you can rub or try to pick up (heavy) when the attendants aren’t watching.

As I didn’t bring my notebook with me I couldn’t jot down any of the gems of asian English from the display labels. To compensate, here’s the label from the back of a chinese packet of salted peanuts:

THIS PRODUCT IS MADE OF SELECTED SHANDONG GREAT PEANUT KERNELS AND PROCESSED WITH ADVANCED EQUIPMENT AND TECHNOLOGY OF THE WORLD. IT IS TASTY AND CRISP, NOT OILY, AND IS A KIND OF CONVENIENT TOURING FOOD AS WELL. YOU MAY CHOOSE IT AS A PRESENT OR ENTERTAIN GUESTS WITH IT. IF IT GOES WITH TEA AND WINE, A NICE FLAVOUR COULD BE ENJOYED.

Television, Inertia

2007-01-04T11:56:00.000Z

Thursday 4th January 2007
I’m told that we’ve been having an exceptionally mild winter. There were only a handful of days it snowed through December, and the temperature usually remained above -20c during the day. It has snowed all day today - a very light and powdery snow, as previously, but the constant fall has led now to a little over a half inch on the ground; for what may be the first time in my month here there are irregular little gusts of wind. Winter may be coming on.

School continues fine, ups and downs, but continues, and behaviour has improved immensely. Sadly, the students are starting to make salient criticisms of my teaching methods and pertinent suggestions, forcing me to pay more attention to them and their needs. Sigh.

Today we had fish for lunch! Rather than adapting to the diet I’ve been getting fussier and fussier over my eating at school. I just can’t work up an appetite for a mound of meat and rice, in very much a natural gravy, accompanied by three or four slices of carrot - day in and day out. The dinner ladies don’t seem to be able to overcome the instinct to give me manly-sized servings - possibly because I always do my best to prevent them from seeing how much I am throwing away at the end of every lunch

I continue to face unanticipated requests to do additional work: this week, to produce 6 exam papers by Monday (so far managed to do about a quarter of one), which I agreed to without any thought about how difficult it is to write a balanced test paper. I suppose I will have to write six deeply unbalanced papers instead. What I did whinge about was being asked to teach 4 additional hours of lessons for a month to coach 6 leading students for an upcoming inter-school English ‘Olympiad’. A - I need those four hours to prepare for (and, more importantly, recover from) my scheduled lessons. B - If the students did a fraction of the work expected of them, maybe they wouldn’t need additional coaching? And if they do need coaching then why don’t their wealthy parents pay for it? Graciously, I agreed to do it.

Later in the day a Turkish part-time teacher asked whether I might be interested in any work at his English language school - so I’ll be meeting with him after school Monday. Which reminds me that I’d promised to volunteer my greatly-in-demand teaching abilities to the CNCF this week - must give them a call again tomorrow.

The question now is whether I can fit all these commitments into my busy schedule. I have become a bit of a TV addict since finding my way about the schedules. Other than The Simpsons, Arrested Development, The Office (American version - which, dare I say, is fresher and funnier than the original -sorry) and Seinfeld, the Korean KBS World channel usually has English subtitles has some great soap operas and historical dramas; there’s a Japanese channel which doesn’t have subtitles but an excellent sci-fi kung-fu series which seems to be on all the time, and is maybe about a group of hot young women and cool dudes half of whom have been brainwashed into hunting down the others (I think); Russian TV has a lot of slapstick comedy programs which are pretty easy to follow - the main comedian in a sketch show bears an uncanny resemblance to Vic Reeves, with blond hair and a tash. Sadly the dozens of Mongolian channels are less than compelling on the whole - although there’s always a music video worth catching on some time - I saw the ‘Beer Band’ on one channel recently, with my good friend Lhagvaa (or Ganko, I’m still unclear on the name) on vocals. Unfortunately I don’t get the Knowledge Channel - a Mongolian channel which shows BBC DVDs (‘Life of Plants’, ‘Walking With Dinosaurs’, etc) all day (at the end of the program a blue ‘DVD Eject’ screen comes up, followed by ‘DVD Loading’ and ‘Play’). I can always catch a Premiership game if I want to see the footy - pirated from Sky Sports or Setanta. I don’t think much attention is paid to international copyright here yet. It doesn’t appear to be possible anywhere in the country to buy CDs or DVDs that aren’t Chinese copies (and on the whole very high quality copies too, except of latest releases, which are usually video-cammed).

I am ashamed to admit that I have so far made no attempt to find out where I can catch some traditional Mongolian music, which I hope to rectify soon. Not that I’m not getting enough culture, as you can well see. Fortunately, I have run out of the delicious bubble-and-squeak type concoction that my cleaner knocked up for me from the odds and ends in my fridge, and which I’ve been living off for a week (supplemented by a more than adequate carrot and potato soup which I cooked myself) - so I may possibly be able to save ‘Snakes on a Plane’ for another evening, and to brave the elements and get myself out of my cosy apartment to a restaurant to eat this evening. Damn, Seinfeld’s started, and I’ve only seen this episode a few times before - I’ll head out to Los Bandidos curry house just as soon as it’s over. And if I’m not back in time for The Office, well, so be it. I can buy the whole season from the video store for about a fiver anyhow.

Happy New Year, Tag

2007-01-02T15:17:00.000Z

A very Happy New Year to one and all, and thanks for the encouragement and kind comments that have come from, well, if not all quarters, at least more quarters than I expected. I'm back at school and everything is going surprisingly smoothly at present. Normal service will be resumed presently.

In the meantime it seems I have been 'tagged' by my good friend and inspiration Patrick Finch, who (having been tagged himself) has given us 5 Things We Didn't Know About Him on his blog Peregrinations(see link on right until one of you HTML-savvy types tells me how to embed a link here in the text) - Pad, you phoney, I knew 4 of those facts, and I seem to remember discussing the merits of vanilla Martinis in Harry's Bar not too long ago. Of course Patrick knows that until I met him (1985?) I knew nothing whatsoever about pretty much any kind of music, and that he insisted that I be known as Jimi rather than James and spell it so, but does he know that:

1. Like my hero the late great Johnny Cash, I once worked unsuccessfully as a vacuum cleaner salesman.

2. I was first published (aged 8) in the short-lived Nutty comic, with a letter to Bananaman I copied word for word from the Beano.

3. I own the first three Spice Girls singles on vinyl.

4. A a child I took piano lessons for 2 years. I was not put forward for my first grade exam.

5. Richard Dawkins and his (presumably) well-reasoned arguments aside, I believe in some kind of all-pervading benign presence, and that, ultimately, everything will be Alright. I haven't worked out the details yet.

I'd like to pass the tag on to Ken Grady at Gradygroove (again, see right). I would also like to take this opportunity to recommend that you check out his mercilessly incisive observations of life from a transplanted Georgian (that's Georgia in the good old southern US) living in rural Cheshire and working in Liverpool. WARNING There is banjo content WARNING

Parties, Pageants, Hiking in the Bogdkhaan Uul

2006-12-31T07:02:00.000Z

I’ve had a little trouble getting photographs onto this blog, so for the time being I’ve decided to stick to small file sizes - however, if you want to see any of the pictures in their full glory, and also photos I don’t have room for in the blog, please check out my new Flickr site (also under the Ulaanbaanjo name, there should be a link in the column on the right). Once I figure out the technology I may be able to improve the situation and make it a little more user friendly. And if anyone has any advice, please be encouraged to either leave a comment or send me an email ulaanbaanjo@yahoo.co.uk

Thursday 28th, Friday 29th & Saturday 30th December 2006
Following the party at the Grand Khan, the social whirl has continued: I’ve attended the students’ Christmas/New Year party - much of which was taken up by a beauty pageant style contest judged by the teachers to find a King and Queen of the Prom; I was also given a gift from the students (a giant candy Christmas tree made in China for export to the US, listed ingredients include Titanium Dioxide). I’ve attended the teachers’ Christmas/New Year party, where entertainments included an inevitable contest to find out who the King and Queen of the teachers were (I feel I was let down in this by not wearing a suit, otherwise then my banjo turn would surely have won me a crown); we also had two ballet dancing angels who danced for 2 minutes and posed for photos for 20. We had a traditional singer perform a few songs - the singing style seems to be a fusion of western operatic singing and oriental tones and melodies. At the Grand Khaan we had a woman singing who I’d seen a video of on Mongolian TV a few times - a really powerful singer.

Having learnt the error of my ways since the party on Boxing Day, I sat at the ‘Wine’ table, with the older and calmer teachers rather than at a ‘Vodka’ table, on the understanding that I would so be able to civilly stick to a glass or two from the vine, rather than struggling to keep down distilled grain. Having sat down, a waiter then brought a half dozen beer and two vodka bottles to the table, and a single bottle of cheap red wine. Later in the evening the ‘Vodka’ tables got an additional bottle of quality ‘Chinggis’ vodka - our table got a bottle of real French red. Still, I managed to wilfully refuse all but the most obligatory vodka toasts. As the party wound up our glamorous principal arrived and shortly announced to a cheering audience of inspirited teachers that we had all been invited to the corporation’s employees’ party, which was being held at an expo centre on the far side of town. I gamely attended, danced without being drunk, listened to one of the top young Mongolian rock bands play their hits (they were pretty good), amongst a crowd of wildly enthusiastic photocopier engineers, teachers, waiters and god knows what other lines of business (and I am assured there are many) the corporation is involved in.

Saturday morning, regardless of having avoided the pitfall of drinking copious amounts of vodka, felt I really needed to clear my head. Yet another bright and glorious day, but with a particularly thick and orange morning smog. I left my apartment at 10am, walked across the edge of the centre, past the Ulaanbaatar Hotel and the statue of Lenin out front, and down a long avenue south with little traffic. My map showed this to be an alternative route over the railway and river south in the direction of the mountains to the busy road across the ‘Peace Bridge’ which I had walked on Christmas Day. After crossing over the tracks of the Trans- Mongolian the long straight road continued, through a very quiet area with even less traffic, smart new apartment blocks being built, and the mountains south and east clear and inviting.

The road surface seemed smooth and quite new, and walking almost the only sound was the steady crunch of the powdery snow beneath my boots, the sky here clean and deep blue. Past the last of the construction sites and then a large and fancy looking driving range. Had almost reached the mountains - the road carried on, rising, clearly to bridge the wide river that runs from west to east at the foot of the southern mountains. Strangely, there seemed to be a few obstacles in the road - it occurred to me that although there were no signs to warn of it, the bridge was incomplete. Left the road then and walked down to the wide, frozen river: and indeed, 20 feet above me the bridge continued half way across, and then abruptly stopped, pillars in the middle of the river awaiting the bridge’s completion. Later, I was told that it is not uncommon for unwary and usually unsober drivers to drive off the edge. I didn’t actually see any sign of this, although I’ll have to go back and check out if it’s possible. How long the bridge has been incomplete I don’t know - I do know that for the obvious reason of the deep subzero temperatures, most construction in Mongolia grinds to a halt for the winter months.

Now at the foot of the mountains, headed west up the frozen river. The river must have been frozen entirely solid, but I still trod a little warily. When I’d previously walked to the war memorial (Zaysan Tolgoy) I’d been very drawn to the hills that surrounded it in a horseshoe ridge - presumably a small glacial valley. I was dimly aware that these hills presumably formed part of a very old National Park I remembered reading about. The eastern foot of these hills came down a quarter mile upriver from the unfinished bridge. As I reached that point, I past a large group of fellers, all dressed in the colourful sashed robes, boots and fur hats of nomads, playing a sort of curling/bowls game on the ice with pucks of some sort. It was a very picturesque scene - regrettably my camera was playing up at the time. I left the river and struck off up the hillside.

The hill was quite steep, and the going fairly slippery with slow (yellowed grasses growing through), but I took my time, knowing it would be easier on the ridge, enjoying the warm sunlight and the ghost of green in the grasses above me; pausing frequently to look back down on the game in the ice, and the higher I climbed, looking back in wonder at the city, and the thick dark sea of smog above it: all the time myself breathing wonderful, clean air, and wondering why no one else in a city of a million people would be out here walking on so glorious a day. In Britain it is a very hit or miss thing to go out hill-walking at winter - you have to be very wary of changes in the weather, have precious little daylight to walk in either - the day seems to be darkening as soon as it has begun, and your spirits inevitably harden and darken with it. I don’t know what the air temperature was during yesterday’s climb - it may have been unseasonably warm, but was undoubtedly no more than -8C and could feasibly have been significantly less. With no wind, and the air dry and crisp, I felt a lot warmer and in none of the life-or-death rush to get to the top and down of climbing Snowdon on a wet and windy summer’s day.

After the first small peak, the ridge was easy to follow, and eventually I came across the boot tracks of other walkers. My geology is pretty much non-existent, the hills reminded me of the Lake District, smooth sided, with broken rock showing through. There was practically no litter at all, which seems incredible contrasted with the casual filth and grime of dear old UB. The hills are pristine, feel wild - and always you look back at the colourful, sprawling chaos of Ulaanbaatar - at the power stations belching out smoke to the West, at the crowded tower blocks, cranes and construction sites, at the barely visible northern ger districts rising on the slopes of the northern hills - then the snow covered mountain tops rising like islands from the dark grey sea of smoke above.

Looking down into the basin the ridge surrounded, at it’s lip is the rugged pyramid of rock (I would like to say basalt, except I only have a vague idea of what basalt actually is), topped by the very splendid Zaysan Tolgoy monument, looking not unlike Isengard. Beyond that, too, the golden, shining Buddha statue (according to my city map, the “highest, bronze-plated statue of Buddha” in the world!) and from the gardens, the big bronze bell ringing out intermittently, clear, heavy and deep. There are ger in the little valley, and I watched as a farmer herded his brown sheep and maybe goats from one pasture to another.

I continued along the ridge from small peak to peak, stopping often, looking about and smiling to myself. After a while I met my first other walker - a man in blue robe and orange sash, bearing a large sack of chopped fire wood on his back. He smiled and nodded when, I raised my hand, and continued his laborious way down along the ridge. On the higher slopes there is a large forest - how legal it is to chop down the wood I am not entirely certain. It’s an extensive forest, but I am guessing it wouldn’t feed the stoves of UB’s ger for a week if it was open game.

Eventually I approached an ominous looking battered old sign - some fierce cyrillic words and beneath: PROHIBITED AREA. Oops. It may have referred to the area East of the ridge trail I was following, which was to be my excuse if anyone challenged me over being there. Later, I had a fresh look at my map and my Bradt guide. The National Park south of Ulaanbaatar is called ‘Bogdkhaan Uul’ (or Bogd Khan, or Bogdhan) - ‘uul’ means mountain. It is Mongolia’s oldest protected area - a minister declared it such in 1778. I am yet a bit vague on the details, but the guide refers to both a “Strictly Protected Area” and a “Transition Zone” - so whether I was breaking any rules I am not sure. I have a feeling that the area may not be much policed in the winter, but that I might risk a fine walking it in tourist season. I am reluctant to enquire at the official Bogdkhaan office as I have a pretty strong feeling that they will say that I need a pass whatever - so I think I’ll get Mongolian friends to enquire for me.

I walked up into the timber line. Most of the trees seem to be dead or dormant (as well as not being a geologist, I am not a great expert on flora or fauna, either) - so it was a pleasant surprise to climb one peak and find a tree fresh and green. I don’t know what kind of evergreen it is, but it was round-topped and the green very light and bright, and so a further surprise among all the lifeless, conical pines. I sat on a rock that was almost warmed by the sun, and enjoyed the peace.

Being around 2pm, having got most the way along the eastern arm of the horseshoe, I decided to find a path down through the forest. I came across what seemed to be a sledge track down through the woods, and shortly found a sturdy piece of plastic sheeting. Had to give it a go, and so slid very quickly down through the trees, panicked a bit as I sped up and up and was also entirely unable to steer, carried down by the track. I managed to bring myself to a stop, and walked the rest of the way down. At the bottom, in the middle of the small valley, is a collection of ger and ramshackle wooden houses. Approaching this I passed a group of kids playing with a sledge - maybe having come down the way I’d just followed, maybe just pulling each other around on the flat. They followed me, laughing, introducing themselves with “Hello, may name is...”, giving me the ‘peace sign’ and shouting out bye-bye as I left.
Walked through the settlement towards the Buddha park, dogs barking at me, feeling invigorated and a little footsore too. Ignored the buses though, and carried on up towards the Peace Bridge, through the increasing noise and dirt, occasionally looking back at the mountains, which seem to get larger as they get fainter towards the city. Past two police traffic officers deep in joking conversation, one miming beating someone with his orange traffic baton, the other wearing`a full santa outfit (including beard) beneath his Day-Glo outer jacket. Plodded across Sukhbaatar square, gearing up for tomorrow night’s big celebration. The tree, according to the UB Post, is the first real Xmas tree the city has had: a splendid Spruce from the Bogdkhaan Uul. “We sought and received permission of the Environment Minister for this,” the city’s head of the Cultural Office hastened to add.

Chim-chim-cheroo, Gifting, A Dog is for Life

2006-12-27T17:32:00.000Z

Wednesday 27th December 2006
I was pleasantly surprised yesterday to learn that not only do we get Monday off for New Year, but also Thursday and Friday. I suspect that I am almost beginning to enjoy teaching, nonetheless a break will be very welcome. I still have to get up pretty early tomorrow because the 11th grade students have asked me to play a couple of tunes at their New Year’s Prom, and I agreed to head down there at 10am to run through ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ and ‘Let It Be’ with one of the students who is a pretty good guitar player. I have now committed myself to running a Bluegrass jam at the school one or two nights in the week.

Last night was our parent corporation’s New Year do at the Grand Khan, and of course also my banjo picking debut there. I had been asked to come down at 7pm to play at the night’s “opening ceremony”: when I got there I found out that they had a whole slew of professional entertainers lined up for the night, and that they meant for me to play outside alongside an accordion player in a Santa outfit. I was dismayed at the notion that I was to be expected to freeze my fingers off as some kind of amusing hillbilly freakshow, while the real musicians would be playing in the pub’s luxurious and warm interior. A troupe of dancers were running through their routine for the chimney sweep song from ‘Mary Poppins’ as I sulked and Lhagvaa very generously said I could play a few tunes with a keyboard lounge jazz player. The old guy didn’t look massively thrilled at the honour of backing me up, but he gamely suggested ‘Country Roads’ as a song he knew, and of course picked up the ‘Worried Man Blues’ very easily.

Outside there’d been fireworks (and an accordion playing Santa), then the guests rolled in, in their tailored suits and flowing ball gowns. Tables for the serving of free booze were everywhere - a limitless supply of beer, wine, whisky and of course vodka - all the very best stuff. I did my best to pace myself and had a glass of beer then a bottle of Guinness before I played. Then a large Chivas Regal with plenty of ice as the lounge Jazz carried on and I hung around feeling very scruffy in my Wranglers, waiting to be called on to play, thinking that piano man had decided to just ignore me. The crowd were all elegantly dressed and suavely enjoying their wealth and privilege, and I couldn’t quite see “Now we’ll pick things up with a bit of Hillbilly music, folks!” going down too well. The professional dancers filled the floor and the PA blasted out Chim-chim-cheroo. Finally, just as I had decided that maybe I would have another whisky, the excitable announcer jumped up and let loose a string of showman talk and flung out his arm in my direction. There was a polite scatter of clapping, the keyboard player looked at me with world-weary reserve and I stepped up onto the stage.

Well it didn’t go down like a lead balloon, at least, and one guy shook my hand when I stepped of the stage, with what I felt was admiration - doubtless for my bravely giving it a go in spite of my obvious shortcomings. There was no rapturous applause, however, and kind of glad it was over, I settled down to some uninterrupted (except by amazing food) drinking. Let me assure any prospective future employers that there is no way that I would have allowed myself to drink excessively on a week night - but the principal and various big wigs from the school and the corporation behind it gave me every encouragement. I am sure that my extremely agile and energetic dancing later in the evening won me the many admirers that my banjo playing had failed to arouse; I am sure, but the memory is a bit hazy, so let’s just say it did.

Woke up this morning feeling considerably less than great, and then some. Sunlight was pouring into my bedroom - grabbed my watch: 9am. Got up and showered, brushed my teeth and gargled mouthwash. Did not really feel much better. Thinking that it might not be such a good idea to turn up in front of class drunk, I phoned the School. Someone answered in Mongolian, I said Good Morning and my name, they said something else in Mongolian and hung-up. I have spent so much time boasting to my employer that I never take a day off work that I realised that I would have no option but to go in, and catch my 10am lesson. This I did. The freezing walk didn’t really freshen me up any, but it certainly woke me up a bit more. I had three classes left to get through. Stayed sat down for them and didn’t write anything on the blackboard, which would have made me feel nauseous. Kept as far away from the students as possible, and found that, in all, the lessons went fine. Had a good chat with one of the best students in one of my worst classes after the lesson: she said that the previous teacher, an American who quit just before I arrived, had ranted at them on a regular basis about how much he hated teaching them. They aren’t bad kids, but this class simply do not understand the work that they are being shoved through - I need to go back over basic grammar with them, and hopefully some of it will stick.

Lunchtime I decided not to brave the canteen. Yuan Yuan, the Chinese teacher, arrived carrying a waste paper bin and a smile. In the bin she had a shivering puppy that she’d found out on the street. I guess it was a couple weeks old and in a sorry state, but didn’t look injured and its eyes weren’t glazed. I suggested she get a little rice and milk for it (my friend’s dog has just been ill, and the vet told them just to feed it that).

She came back shortly with a little bowl of the rice and milk, and the news that the school had told her that she must not keep the dog on the premises. “He’s so nice,” she said, “you take him, Jim. Yes, you like him.” “I can’t take a dog, Yuan, and I don’t know anybody here I could give him to.” “Yes, you take him, you like dog. He so lovely.”

I guess the drink still hadn’t quite worn off; I agreed to take the dog if she still had it after my next and final lesson. But I’d be taking him to the vet for an injection or finding someone with a gun. Yuan said it was no problem, I could just put him back out onto the street, and I was so very kind. “Please don’t ask me for any more favours, Yuan: you’ve used them all up.” She laughed.

We took the shivering dog back to my apartment (“Here your new home, dog! Very nice!”) and tipped the little feller into the bath. I showered him for about 20 minutes, until the water ran off him clear. He didn’t protest much and drank a bit of the water. I dried him a bit with a tea-towel and then carried him through to the kitchen, putting him down on a folded seat cover in a plastic basin. He lay curled up, and I shut the kitchen door and went for an hour or so to lie down.

I felt better when I got up. Checked in on the dog, who I’d decided to call Jamsran, after the chief ‘Wrathful Deity’ in the Mongolian/Tibetan Buddhist canon. He looked considerably better, and was still curled up in the basket. I had to go back to the school for a teachers’ meeting. Would try and get some dog food on the way back. The meeting turned out to be about the Christmas ‘Secret Santa’ system that the school runs. We had been asked, last week, to pick a number and so a name of one of the sixty or so members of staff. That person we would secretly give a gift to during the week. The gift was typically a chocolate bar or piece of cake. On the staff room door was a list of the names of the staff, with a column along side it for each of the days of the last week in the year. Throughout the week, it was eventually explained to me, people put stars or smiley faces next to their name as they received a gift. I got a piece of cake one day and a coffee mug on another. Smiley faces on the chart. Some members of staff had dozens of smileys, and some none. There was a great deal of gleeful excitement amongst many of the teachers about the whole process. Well, tonight was the grand finale of the whole thing - which I had had no idea about. A teacher read through the names on the list and then revealed who that person’s ‘Secret’ Santa was. They then gave the person they’d received a chocolate bar or piece of cake from an extremely expensive looking gift (a lot of framed paintings, baskets with champagne bottles and chocolates in, etc.) out of gratitude. It took about an hour to go through the whole list. I was the only person who hadn’t bought a gift for my secret Santa. Myself, I received a plastic bag, containing the very same box of chocolates that I had given as a gift, and a bound notebook. Is there any meaning to the return of the original gift in Mongolian culture? Was this some kind of snub?

After the long, long process of sitting through the counter-gifting we then each had a gift to collect with a lottery ticket we had each been given. Some people had dozens of tickets, so I assume that the school had been selling additional tickets. I stood in front of the gift table, hungry, tired and hung-over, while a mad scramble of teachers pushed past me to get their gift or gifts. I got another mug.

I was starting to worry a bit about having left Jamsran so long, was mentally preparing myself for a torrent of abuse off Puru’s mother for keeping a stray dog in my apartment. One of the teachers had told me that you need a license for a pet, and also gone on about the various illnesses the stray would probably have. Thankfully, things were drawing to a close at the school. There was now a raffle for which our lottery tickets doubled. A dozen prizes of ascending spectacularness, each winner being accompanied by much cheering and jollity. Sadly, I didn’t win anything; finally, the humidifier and the (drumroll) deep fat fryer were triumphantly carried off and I was able to leave.

Stopped off at a small supermarket on the way home in hope of finding dog food, but no such luck. Would try the bigger supermarket further past the apartment. First though to drop off my gifts and check up on Jamsran.

He had certainly picked up his spirits. He’d knocked over the bin, figured out what I’d put the newspaper down for (Good boy!) and playfully chewed at my boots as I walked in. I left the kitchen to discard my coat and he started to yelp as though he was testing out his voice: it sounded like he would have the capacity to get a fair bit louder. Felt very paranoid about my neighbours complaining, and tired and hungry. Went back into the kitchen and cut small slices of smoked sausage, which I attempted to get Jamsran to sit down for. He wanted more; he scratched at fleas. I left the kitchen, and he again started barking.

I would have to take Jamsran to the vet tomorrow, and I was supposed to be going to the students’ prom for ten. Well, gentle reader, I thought it through. I could not house train a puppy and leave it alone in the apartment every day. He’d been washed, warmed up, fed some. It wouldn’t be fair to let him get any more used to the apartment. If I took him to the vet, it would be for injection, because I couldn’t look after a dog. Maybe if I let him out near some warm pipes somewhere he might survive the night. Maybe some other dogs would look after him, like the cheery bunch I’d seen peering out of a hole in the ground near the market. I cut a few more slivers of sausage and put some newspaper down in the bottom of my school bag, wrapped Jamsran up in a teatowel, gave him a couple of slices to chew, and placed him in the bag. He sat quietly as I zipped the bag up.

Puru and Mungun knocked on the door just as I was leaving - to give me a present of a 2007 calendar featuring the President of Mongolia or somebody. “Thank you, thank you, very nice. I’ve got to go out now, thank you.” Jamsran shifted in the bag, but didn’t bark. I did not want to let the kids see him. I did wonder why it is that you’re always smuggling puppies out of buildings to abandon them in the arctic cold when you’re hungover. Some kind of penance, I guess.

Jamsran kept quiet as I descended the six floors and left the building. It was some time after nine, and there were plenty of people about. I walked away from the tower blocks, hoping that I would get a chance to stop and let Jamsran out without anyone walking past. Maybe I should just unzip the bag and leave it somewhere.

As chance would have it, just round the corner from my building, I saw a homeless guy emerging from a manhole. I hurried over. “Excuse me, do you speak English?” I tried. The guy, who was not too scarily drunk, looked a bit confused. “Please, I have a dog,” I continued, opening my bag like a kitchen appliance salesman. He called to someone else beneath the ground, and a young lad climbed up.

I have been warned very strictly to avoid the homeless people here: the manner of these two (luckily) seemed to be very gentle and understanding. The young man held Jamsran against his chest and stroked him. They didn’t seem to be expecting any payment so I quickly handed them a T10,000 note, for which they were very grateful. I hurried off, feeling a little sad, but immensely relieved. Maybe things will work out for Jamsran.

With a certain sense of irony, I walked to the Korean restaurant, and treated myself to dinner for my good deed. The meat in my Bi Biim Bap was very good, although I couldn’t decide if it was pork or beef.

London and Belfast residents: Lhagvaa and ‘Beer Band’ are flying over to Europe today and playing sometime somewhere in your town! Lhagvaa does not know the details, but the Mongolian Embassy may know as they have sponsored their trip. Go see them, and say hi. Oh and tell them how famous and well-respected I am as a musician in Europe

Merry Christmas, Zanabazar Museum

2006-12-25T17:24:00.000Z

Monday 25th December

Merry Christmas!

Yesterday I met a young American doctor whilst getting a meal at a Korean restaurant. He’s over here as part of an exchange program, working in Accident & Emergency for a few weeks. He had a piece of advice for me: “Whatever you do in Mongolia, don’t get sick. There’s a reason you don’t see old people here.”

Managed to get myself up, fed and out at a reasonable hour of the morning today. It was snowing when I left the house, which was very apt and seasonal, although the sun was shining brightly too: looking around, there did not seem to be any clouds in the sky. Quite possibly, as part of the seasonal celebrations, the city had a giant snow making machine hid behind one of the tower blocks, bellowing out chemically manufactured flakes.

Crossing Sukhbaatar Square I noticed that they were still putting up decorations around the tree that was erected yesterday: it has miniature Santas crawling up it, and a big red soviet star on the top. I guess the decorations may actually be getting put up for New Year’s Eve, but possibly they are just being erected on an unfathomable Mongolian schedule.

After a long visit to the Zanabazar Fine Art Museum (on which more later in this post) I started to walk south out of the city , heading for the War Memorial, with the intention of taking the day-time photographs I had promised after my previous night-time visit to the spectacular location. Outside a restaurant near the centre I was very impressed to see a bunch of guys putting finishing touches to a splendid ice sculpture of four life-sized horsemen, leading the way for a bronze sculpture of Genghis behind them. I got a couple of decent photographs, and a laconic sculptor taking a cigarette break took one of me pretending to carve the ice, before the battery failed on my camera.

Crossed the Peace Bridge out of the city: it takes four lanes of traffic over a wide valley of railway tracks (including the Trans Mongolian), concrete-clad pipes, and a sorry-looking frozen river. The view to the west is dominated by the city’s two monstrous, smoke-belching power stations. Half way over the bridge, eight fully battle-dressed Mongolian horsemen came charging from the other direction into the city. Behind them followed a cart pulled by two horses, containing a somewhat slim, but doubtless merry, white-bearded and crimson-clad fellow. Now that is Christmas, Mongolian style! I carried on walking in the direction of the looming mountains.

It doesn’t take long to walk out of the city and reach the Bronze Buddha park at the foot of the 'Zaysan Tolgoy', War Memorial’s hill. On the way I passed a lot of construction sites where, to judge from the completed sites, ‘luxury’ apartments in the shape (very approximately) of Bavarian castles, garishly painted, will be built. Otherwise, the usual mysterious pipes and broken concrete structures abound. Managed the few hundred steps up the monument without too great difficulty; passed an empty plastic ‘Vodka Blackcurrant’ drink cup near the bottom - further up, a mysterious splash of frozen purple fluid in the centre of the steps. The view, climbing and from the top, is splendid. The mountains look very Scottish, are dappled with snow, and forested with firs. Beyond the Monument there are a few old soviet buildings and a few ger encampments. Was very drawn to make my way up the encircling ridge of hills - if I can get out there earlier in the day maybe next weekend I could give it a try. Looking back at Ulaanbaatar, it is at least more visible than at night. Unbelievable that these hundreds upon hundreds of apartment blocks are barely lit after dark. It is a smoggy and scrappy sight: a considerable contrast with the beauty of the mountains.

Walked back into the city, deciding to treat myself to another restaurant meal. Unfortunately, the American Ger’ll Bar was closed for a private function, so I had very good Indian food at Los Bandidos Indian & Mexican Restaurant - indeed, Los Bandidos is Mongolia’s Only Indian & Mexican Restaurant - fancy that!

So, the Zanabazar Fine Art Museum. At the Choijin Lama Temple the other day none of the guides spoke English, but the lady who ran the gift shop spoke very fluent English indeed. She was reading a copy of ‘The Beautiful and the Damned’, although was reluctant to be drawn into conversation on it. “Ah,” I said, “’The Beautiful and the Damned’: one of my favourite novels.” “Yes,” she replied neutrally. “F Scott Fitzgerald is a really fine writer,” I ventured. “Yes.” It didn’t look as though we’d be starting a book club, so I had a look at the odds and ends on display. She was much more vocal on the merits of various pieces of tat (and otherwise - there was plenty of interesting stuff in the shop too, to be fair) for sale. Because I was a volunteer in Mongolia (I didn’t hasten to disabuse her of this notion) I would be entitled to a special rate and not have to pay “tourist prices.” Wow. Of course, as everything in the shop was labelled but nothing was priced, I had no way of ascertaining the veracity of this statement and - call me a cynic - I suspect that the T1000 I paid for a Mongolia sticker for the old banjer case was the same amount a mere tourist would have to shell out. I said that I was particularly taken with the Temple’s collection of traditional Mongolian devotional art, and enquired whether there were any other collections on display in Ulaanbaatar. “No,” shopkeep answered very vaguely, “well, some of the other Temples have some art, but our collection is the best.” She would be very surprised, then, to learn that in the centre of UB I found, with the help of my Bradt guide, the Zanabazar Museum of Fine Art - a museum entirely devoted to Buddhist devotional art.

Arrived at the Zanabazar Museum at 11am this morning. It’s a fine old dour soviet era building. The ground floor seems to be being prepared for an exhibit of some sort, but I was allowed upstairs to view the main collection. Again, I was the only visitor, but was allowed to view without a curator “tsk”ing at my heels. As I left each room, however, the lights were turned out, in what may have been something of a hint.

There’s some interesting Bronze Age pieces in the museum: I am assuming that I’ll find more at the Museum of Mongolian History so will pass over these for now. The centre of the collection is a room of bronze work by the master of the Mongolian Renaissance, Zanabazar (1635 - 1724). I took some notes from the decently labelled displays.

Zanabazar was the grandson of a Khan and so a direct descendant of the great Chinngis - always a good pedigree for a Mongolian national hero. He was born on the 25th day of the 9th month of the year of the Wooden Boar, which I don’t need to tell you is “the best day for the meeting of fairy goddesses between the autumn & winter.” As a young child he studied in Tibet as a disciple of the 5th Dalai Lama and was proclaimed to be the first reincarnation of the Bogd Jivzundamba. He received the title of Khalkun Gegeenten, or “Holy Saint.” He founded numerous monasteries and temples in Mongolia (his first when he was just 13).

He “created an ideogram and derived script in 1686 which he named ‘Svayambu” meaning ‘self-enlightening’; the ideogram, today the state symbol of Mongolia, was intended to express the idea ‘May the Mongol nation exist by its own right.’”

Zanabar’s bronze castings of buddhist deities are the work for which he was best known. The pieces in the museum are very fine, and about a foot and a half in height. The main pieces at the Fine Arts Museum are the five Buddhas, representing the defeat of “the five evils: anger, ignorance, pride and greed.” I am assuming that this list is a sort of buddhist mystery or joke, something like the painting of ‘The Three Asses.” The five appear alike, but “every detail of each differs.”

Zanabazar’s works “embody the 32 and 80 features (32 inner content, 80 iconographic[?]) for depiction of the beautiful human body, which include proportionality of the body and its various parts, strength, youthful muscles, straight and shapely shoulders and limbs, rounded waist and so on; so Zanabazar’s works were the Mongolian mode of Mankind’s dream of aesthetics.”

There is an excellent collection of Mongolian Thangka paintings, Mandalas and applique (embroidered silk) wall-hangings. The Thangka and Mandalas are basically of the Tibetan school of devotional art - which Liverpool residents can see an extremely good collection of at the World Museum. Thangka painting came to Mongolia in the early 19th Century and reached its artistic peak in the early 20th century. These portraits of deities are characterised by “precise anatomical proportion, the incorporation of symbolism from religious parables and artistic amplification.” They’re very trippy. The ‘Ten Wrathful Deities’ - the protecting demons of Buddhism of which our pal in coral Jamsran seems to be chief - are a favourite subject.

Mandalas, the museum informs, serve to invoke ”the Holy Force within the contemplator... not communion outside oneself with the Divin Power, but an ecstasy or invocation whose purpose is to find and realise the... Divine Power in one’s own heart.” The Mandalas are designed to suit “all levels of consciousness... for the spiritually highly developed, for average people and for the people not yet developed... who are politely referred to as children.” The Mandalas will typically incorporate into their design the Eight Auspicious Symbols: The White Conch, The Wheel, The Lotus Flower, The Auspicious Drawing, The Golden Fish, The Vase of Treasure, The Victory Banner and The Precious Umbrella. My favourite is The Precious Umbrella.

The final section of the museum is mostly devoted to the art of Marzan Sharav - and features his most famous work ‘A Day in the Life of Mongolia’: a large traditional zurag painting on cloth - which depicts many colourful incidents typical of Mongolian nomad life (and with a great deal of humour). I spent a good while absorbing some of the details: wool and hides are prepared; a blacksmith’s privates are exposed when his pants catch fire: an old man points and his wife covers her eyes; sheep are butchered, and someone throws a boot at a dog escaping with a sheep’s head - it jumps over a roll of wool, beneath which a man and woman secretly embrace; a priest says rites over a dead body in the desert while dogs (or wolves) watch - other dogs meanwhile devour a fresh corpse, while vultures pick at the remains of another; men brawl in various encampments; at the top of the picture trees are felled and carpenters work the wood at the edge of the forest; there feasts, traders, ger being assembled, women attacked by snakes that have hidden in their baskets; farmers tend fields and scrubland is burned; at an encampment of camels a man and wife make love, and a midwife assists at the birth of a child.

Cruelty, The Choijin Lama Temple

2006-12-23T13:39:00.000Z

Saturday 23rd December
Yesterday evening my former helper Puru got a severe dressing-down in front of me by her mother, for neglecting her duties cleaning the halls etc by taking time to tidy my apartment. Her mother (or grandmother or aunt - I don't know which) drove home one point by slapping the poor girl backhanded across the mouth. It was a sorry scene. I felt particularly useless and stupid as of course I could contribute nothing except protests in English. I had had a cleaner start working for me earlier in the day: I may see if she can speak to the vicious woman for me to clarify matters. Meanwhile, the incident did at least spur me to make a phonecall to the Christina Noble Children's Foundation - who work with street kids in Ulaanbaatar, please visit the link on the right where you can sponsor a child from $24 per month - to see about doing some voluntary work out here whilst I'm getting paid an extremely comfortable salary teaching the spoilt offspring of the city's wealthy.

Today the sun was glorious and in the direct sunlight, felt almost warm. I walked down to the Choijin Lama Temple. Traditionally, Mongolia’s Buddhist temples were mobile structures, to move with the mobile population. From the end of the 19th Century more permanent structures of wood and brick were built. During the 1930s however, the majority were destroyed by the communists. Of the few surviving temples, according to my Bradt guide to Mongolia, Choijin Lama, built around 1905, is one of the finest.

The temple compound is close to the centre of Ulaanbaatar. It is surrounded by half built concrete towers and cranes, but faces south where the mountains loom blue and impressive. The curling roofs and their carved and painted eaves are dimmed and coated by the city’s dust. The Choijin Lama Temple is a museum now: June to September traditional Mongolian ‘Tsam’ masked dances are held here: on this fine sunny December afternoon I was the only visitor.

A guide opened each of the different temples for me and did her best not to show impatience as I slowly strolled around the chilly interiors. The main temple building has dozens of glass cases containing the elaborate and monstrous Tsam costumes. The daddy of the lot is this here costume, which I believe is Jamsran. The mask is made of coral, and weighs thirty kilos. That’s more than three full-size bluegrass banjos! The total weight of the costume is 70kgs. The sign on the case notes that the costume is worn by particularly strong and healthy young men.

There are many fine brass and gilted buddhas and the like. I was particularly interested in two paintings one of the ‘cold hells’ and one of the ‘hot hells’: many amusing little Bosch-like details (a flaming elephant walking on sinners; demons using naked men as pack animals; naked warriors chopping each other to pieces: all the damned wearing dolorous and pained expressions, as you might expect).

A frequent motif in the temples is that the ceilings are often decorated in what I guess is Genghis-fashion: with rows of the carcasses of enemies hanging down from broken knees. I first noticed these painted on the ceiling in one temple and so was pleased to see silk, stitched corpses tied together with pink silken entrails around what I take to have been the throne of the chief priest of the complex.

Most tantalising stop on the tour was The Temple of Yadam: forbidden to the public when the Temple was operating as intended - home of secret Tantric rites. After the gruesome silk work mentioned above, I had hoped for something outrageous and carnal in the decor, and so was a bit disappointed. Finally, paid my respects to the Mongolian deity of Banjo-playing, a cheery-faced little chap, who has his home, most appropriately, in the Temple of Peacefulness.