The Mongolian Bloggers Association, the existence of which I just now find out, is donating Tg 1 million (approx. USD 850) to the artists that lost most of their instruments and costumes during the fires. Good to know that Mongolian bloggers are now getting organized.
The silent protesters at Sukhbaatar square intend to continue their peaceful demonstration today. Reportedly, the PM met with them this afternoon. The public are now demanding a full investigation into the shooting deaths of 5 persons during the riots. Again, I fail to see why this is so slow, seeing as they have the bullets and the empty bullet casings from the scene. One explanation is that the process is simply too slow and inefficient, but the one I'm inclined towards is that there is a certain level of reluctance from the Prosecutor General's office to investigate policemen.
Everything is being stalled by the current stalemate, and people are getting impatient. Songinokhairkhan duureg chairman has issued a demand to the MP's elected from the constituency to start their work. The constituency is waiting to start work on its annual budget for next year. The new Parliament is yet to be sworn in.Various bickering continues, but hardly worth a mention until something actually gets done.
Meanwhile, our president keeps himself busy worshipping ovoos (овоо тахих in Mongolian). These days, I am not too sure if we'd elected a President to office or a head priest. All he does nowadays is travel around the country visiting various Ovoos and temples. The problem is, Ovoo worship (if you're not sure what an Ovoo is, look
here) is a shamanistic ritual, which is now also practiced by Buddhist lamas. To me, it doesn't make much sense for lamas to be involved in these rituals. But to each his (or her) own; debating religious appropriateness is hardly my territory.
And now it's the Olympics. Mongolians are aiming for 2 medals, the international press echo. We haven't gotten many medals from the Olympics, so far the numbers are 5 silver & 10 bronze medals in total, mostly in boxing & wrestling. Look
here for a breakdown. Speaking of the Olympics, the papers report that the Chinese and Mongolian teams will be wearing (not intentionally) the same colour schemes for the opening ceremony: yellow jacket, white trousers and a white shirt. Too late to order new sets of clothes to avoid the obvious and unwanted comparison, the Mongolian team's solution is to..... wear a blue tie. I can without any great difficulty picture the Mongolian team dressed in white trousers and shirts, yellow jackets and blue ties. What they're missing are enormous sombreros to complete the picture. But really, why not simply wear our traditional deels? It's the opening ceremony after all, I doubt they would need to do anything Olympian except smile and wave.
