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The chaos theory of Mongolia

I returned to Mongolia 15 years ago after an absence of 13 years, save for the occasional 2-week leave from work, and that time I spent a semester and a half at a local university drinking endless cups of brown, watery 150 Tugrik instant MaCcoffee at the café strangely, or perhaps egotistically, named "In my memory", writing the first and so far the only book that got us into trouble with the local intelligence who apparently had little else to do than to pore through the ramblings of teenagers to catch the tell-tale signs of drug dealery. But I digress. When you visit a country for a short period, be it home or not, you hardly have time to immerse yourself in the spirit of the country and the city and feel the nitty gritty and dirty shiny of it all. So after 13 years, it took me a while to readjust and finally understand what the hometown of my childhood had become.  The most striking, ubiquitous, and inescapable feature was and still, unfortunately, is the traffic. In 2008,...
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No definite end in sight for the political stalemate

The DP executive committee convened yesterday to discuss the current political stalemate. While the President announced the Parliamentary session for Monday afternoon, the DP electees chose not to attend, citing the President's disregard of the earlier agreement that a Parliamentary session will only be called upon agreement by both MPRP and DP. Perhaps the President had put a bit more faith on their night of gold-medal celebrations and the inebriated pleasantries that ensued.

The DP has in principle agreed to attend the Parliamentary session and have their MP electees sworn in, once the GEC presents the President with the complete and final list of 76 electees. There have been little to no updates from the GEC on the names of remaining 10 MPs from the disputed constituencies, with the media attention focused on the increasing gas prices and the Olympics.

Same goes for the detainees and the silent sit-in protestors: no news reports and no apparent progress.

All in all, little progress and much confusion, as the leading parties, in particular the DP MP electees, seem divided internally, giving conflicting information to the press.

The only progress so far is Badar-Uugan's climb up to the semi-finals in Bantamweight boxing. He will be facing a Moldovan boxer on 22 August for the silver medal. He secured his bronze medal yesterday against a fighter from Botswana, whose name, Khumiso Okgopoleng, must seem just as unpronouncable to everyone else as Mongolians names are. And a random fact: a person from Botswana is called a Motswana, and Batswana in plural. How cool is that. And their language is Setswana! And I lived with a Motswana for a year in uni and never did learn that, opting instead to converse in the universal language of alcohol.
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