FACE LIFT!

Not in the grand Los Angeles style, remember, we're still in UB. So I returned from two weeks of travel to Cambodia and Beijing in May to a greener, not as meaner, Ulaanbaatar. Cars would actually stop for pedestrians, green shoots came through the plastic bags and bottles in the river bed, and flowers opened up for the superflousness of butterflies - that's right, butterflies abound in Mongolia. What lovely surprises. I tried to reflect the new feeling of hope and upliftment in our blog design. Don't worry, soon as October hits, we'll be back to greys and browns.

I decided Mongolia had turned into a Chia Pet. If i were a bit more savvy I could digitize this. I haven't had my camera on me when walking home from work, but I will, if only to catch the guys who insist on passing out on the middle of the sidewalk, by the river and under lamps. What the heck, it's summertime in Mongolia.

And with summer, comes short shorts, higher heels and Nadaam. Nadaam is the summer festival where Mongolia's three manly sports (horses, bows n' arrows and fat men in little bikini bottoms wrestling) come into full display. The festival is opened up with an extravaganza of corporate sponsorship, and historical reenactments of the fierceness of Mongolian horses, warriors and rockbands. Pictures will of course be forthcoming, but in the meantime, here are some pics from Patrick and his Dad's recent trip to the country, and my favorite, a photo of LV suitcases in the desert have become the favored backdrop of summer strollers in Sukhbataar square.

First Johnny, now Mickey

I guess i see the similarities....


And now Hollywood comes riding in on the money horse for a game of revisionist history! Chingis is going to be blonde, and sexy and have a full set of nice clean white teeth, he'll be a ladies man, with some violent tendencies, but not too garish - or perhaps extremely blood thirsty with a soft side for puppies and burning down villages. Oh, the possibilities are endless!

I wonder if they'll even film it here....

ROURKE TO PLAY GENGHIS KHAN
27 April 2010
06:07
(c) 2010 World Entertainment News Network, All Rights Reserved
Apr 26, 2010 (WENN via COMTEX) -- MICKEY ROURKE is to play GENGHIS KHAN in a new movie about the Mongol warrior.
Conan The Barbarian writer/director John Milius will oversee the project.
Rourke tells the Orlando Sentinel newspaper, "John wrote (the) piece from the son and grandson's point of view, how they saw this mythic figure from their family.
"You see him (Khan) in flashbacks, back when he was in his mid-40s. And back then, being in your mid-40s was being really old."
Genghis Khan was the emperor of the vast Mongol Empire in the 13th century. He united the nomadic tribes of northeast Asia.
He died in 1227 and was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Mongolia

Zephyr Dirge

I don't think i've discussed before the pervasive smell of boiled mutton in Ulaanbaatar, but what I can only imagine is also in Mongolia, a very large country. Sheep, a national treasure right after massive coal, gold and uranium deposits lingers in the air, pervades your clothes, the walls, infiltrates and numbs your olfactory senses, it creeps into government buildings, coal factories ( I swear on sunshine and warm weather), museums and shopping malls. For some, this may be a tantalizing prelude to a steaming meal of buuz (meat dumplings) or a warm memory associeted with noodle and meat soup or a nice piece of glistening sheep butt fat.

For me, it is a serious affront to the bouquets of coal ash, exhaust fumes and burning rubber I've grown so fond of. This malodorousness finds no place in my heart or on my plate, so when, on Monday morning, I went to take my first sip of coffee, ( a religious experience for a night time person) and found myself slurrping a coffee so redolent of sheep I had to take a second and third sip to make sure I wasn't losing it (Patrick thinks i'm becoming a paranoid meat hircinist) I had to begrudgingly replace that revered first cup of coffee, with green tea. I much healthier option, but one less likely to keep the snooze button at bay.

After some sherlockiaian forays into lactic investigations this morning that included taste testing the milk on its own, in coffee, and two different types of cereal, I am loathe to report that it is indeed the box (not carton, box) of 2.5% milk (the one with the slight cartoon lady on it that indicates if you drink more fatty milk than is accepted in some Western countries, you're likely to develop a peachy pink complexion, trim waste, buxom top and bottom and straight, flowing hair) that has commingled with a cooked form of its cousin and thus has ruined another healthy morning of instant coffee and sugary cereals.

This harkens me back to a fine tuna salad I had made for myself not two weeks ago, when an earnest bite into a cucumber left me floored by its uncanny degustation of sheep. Another meal sabotaged.

This wicked infiltration of non meat products into my repasts is either a massive conspiracy or a test of will. I refuse to lose my mind or my appetite to this ursurper of palates and am considering a second career in cold chain supply methods of the Mongolian meat industry - this will also help us understand how Patrick's stomach, which ingested escargots and steak tartare at a French restaurant in UB, let it be known, that snails and raw meat, were not a choice made of sound mind and constitution.

Round 1: We fought the meat, and the meat won.

Mongolia in the News

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8605549.stm

In addition, a mass protest was held in UB this week - demanding the government meets its campaign promises...The Government asked the local media not, NOT to cover these protests in fear that it would incite violence and general pandemonium. So, the international news did their journalistic duties by reporting the protests (of 5,000 mostly rural and poor) and also noted that sale of alcohol was banned that day, again, in fear that demonstrators would become violent. We experienced thsi first hand when we ordered wine at dinner that day and the waiter returned to tell us no wine. Beer? No. cocktail, No. It seemed arbitrary at the time and lack of communication in a common language limited explanations.

Thankfully, we're able to turn to the international media to help us understand what's going on in the city in which we reside.

FYI First of every month is also 'no sale of alcohol'

I Heart Horhog

Or, The Mongolian Atkins Diet or, The one Meal a Day Plan

Having just watched Julie & Julia, I am inspired to describe our very own eating extravaganza, also to be known as our only meal this Saturday.

The producer of the reality tv show patrick is in has, for many weeks now, insisted on having us over for horhog, a stew largely composed of, wait for it, meat.

Uniquely Mongolian in this manner, it is comprised of layers of foraged stones, meat, stones, meat, stones, some vegetables (a carrot), potatoes, stones and meat. The stones serve as a cooking device in the stew, I'm trying to figure out why because it's still heated by fire but I suppose they distribute the heat throughout the pot during the cooking process and make for a fun distraction later on.

A feast of Indian food the evening before left neither of us particularly hungry for breakfast or lunch, so by the time 5 pm rolled around, we would have eaten the hot-stones had they been offered to us. It was around this time we entered the home of the producer's mother in law, which, I will admit smelled like a slice of mutton heaven (the home, not the mother). A huge tin pot was sitting over the fire the brother in law, in white cotton gloves ceremoniously loaded huge hunks of sheep onto two trays.


The hotstones, removed first, were handed to us with the claim that they were good for the circulation. As we dutifully bounced the stones, glistening with fat, between our hands, for a brief moment, the desire to dive into the meat stew was put to rest by the burning sensation in my palms. (George later told us that the hotstones are often rubbed over the body following the stewing period and preceding the meal - we unfortunately did not have the pleasure of having that shared experience with our hosts)

We stood watching the unloading of brunner onto trays, and as the random pieces of sheep legs bounced to the floor, it became evident that the 5 second rule holds hard and fast in Mongolia. And now, I'm sure it is these pieces that are sitting in the plastic bag that was handed to us as horhog takeaway when we left a few hours later.

Seated, the trays were loaded onto our makeshift tables, without nary a plate or fork in sight, we were instructed to eat with our hands, which we did gleefully. I cannot describe what it's like to face a piece of meat lined with a two inch layer of fat when your proclivity for food tends towards spinach and dark chocolate. Being culturally adroit, and physically too weak to resist, I dove in molars first, gnawing and slurping with gusto, leaving the bones and fat on the plastic table cloth like my fellow table mates. The producer must have known me in a past life and placed in front of me a bowl of luscious green broccoli, which I proceeded to dip in the mutton soup while the men layered their consumption with shots of vodka and cigarettes.

As delicious as the food was after 17 hours of 'fasting for Easter', the feeling of having overindulged hit pretty quickly after, particularly when, I asked patrick if he was hungry again and he looked at me blankly, and unwaiveringly said, 'are you serious?'. I blame the lively red bruschetta being chopped and consumed in the, as well as Meryl Streep's joyful reenactment of Julia Child biting into a juicy pear in a colorful Parisien market scene.

Our hosts were exceedingly generous and it was truly a rich cultural and gastronomic experience. As with any good meal, it was accompanied by a dicussion on politics, a shot of vodka, and Mongolian milk tea 'coo tsai'. We now have a thick lining of sheep leg coating our stomachs and a reason to nap for the next 10 days.

HAPPY 33rd BIRTHDAY PM!!

http://www.golfmongolia.com - He wasn't joking. Neither am I.

Every day the Embassy sends a list of news articles that mention Mongolia. After reading one about a proposed golf course in Mongolia (coming 2011) in the San Diego Tribune, I decided to post the link here.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/feb/23/mongolia-facing-task-grass-golf/

However, the google search resulted in not just one article referencing Mongolia but THREE. All courtesy of San Diego's enterprising and curious (bored?) journalists.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/feb/23/mongolia-facing-task-grass-golf/

http://legacy.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040704/news_1n4golf.html

You'll have to read a bit of this before the Mongolia pay off.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/may/20/golf-column-leonard-amy-mickelson-cancer9024/

And now the 'Political Commentary':

Mongolia is in a state of emergency in some far western and northern provinces (aimags). Severe weather (that's cold, not heat) have caused snow melt to freeze, rendering the grass/grazing lands inaccessible for sheep, horses and goats. Hundreds of thousands of animals have died since late 2009, with low income and poor livelihoods devastated. The implications are not only immediate, loss of arable land for months, precipitous drops in income and earning potential as well as food scarcity, but long term: unemployed herders flock to Ulaanbaatar for work, but due to lack of employment opps and housing, crowd around the city in gers, adding to the air pollution by burning anything from tires to plastic to generate heat and exacerbating unemployment rates, land ownership issues, social needs and capacity constraints of water, heating and electricity infrastucture.


The idea of taking some of this already meager grazing land to develop a golf course may be great for foreign business travellers, but not for Mongolia's development overall. This is again an area where the money making prospects trump common sense and sustainable development priorities. Unless, of course, thousands of herders decide to become caddies.

Hey, at least they're not cutting down rain forests to build golf courses, right?

Road Kill takes on a whole new meaning

Common sense dictates that buying fish on the side of a road, in a landlocked country, in the blustery grey of winter,

when all rivers and lakes are turgidly frozen,

where the road is riddled with holes of indeterminate utility and with forlorn, hungry dogs

common sense would suggest this purchase is not a good idea.

But there is nothing common about Mongolia, and every kind of delicious about smoked highway fishes.

Canine Consumption

Apparently eating dog is believed to clear the lungs. Wouldn't it be healthier to just go green? I don't know about other pooches, but ours is probably not very tasty or nutritious. Though P appears to be going in for a nice piece of neck fat here.

It's not that I look for dead animals

but they seem to pop up a lot on UB's topology.

When we first arrived, we were told that once the snow melts we'd find a lot of frozen animal corpses on the sidewalks that just didn't make it during the winter months. (there are dozens of stray dogs in the city - some of them survive, some don't, some make it to the meat markets and dumpling shops)

The word 'melt' connotes say, 80 degrees or above. Not -15 as it was yesterday on our walk along the UB river (see: LA river) or when I caught a glimpse of what I thought was a frozen cat.

It was two puppies. Two furry, frosty darling little bodies curled up next to one another covered in a very thin layer of snow. Their eyes shut as if they'd just fallen asleep. As upset as I was, Patrick's suggestion to bring them home with us to see if they defrosted and come back to life actually made me pause to think, possibly?

My argument to him, 'if we'd brought them home already then we wouldn't have to worry about them freezing OR defrosting' did not carry much ice (it's too cold for liquids here).

I don't know what the parable of this story is, but the image has stuck with me. Sort of like those Sarah Machlaclan tv ads with all the cute animals and her braying a sad tune, you just want to change the channel. We'll have to brace ourselves for a lot more scenes of what will probably turn out to be Animal Kingdom CSI as the warmer months roll around.

Needless to say, there are no accompanying pics to this post. I think the goat heads are enough for one month.