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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,...

First Paralympic Gold for Mongolia

 
Baatarjav Dambadondog or Dambadondogiin Baatarjav brought home the first Paralympic Gold medal for Mongolia, in Men's Individual Recurve - Standing category (read: Archery) in Beijing on Sunday, September 14. The official Olympic site says:
The Mongolian archer began tentatively, failing to impress in the first two ends. But he showed his class in the third and fourth end, outscoring his French opponent 50-41.
Three Gold medals for Mongolia this year from the ~lympics. Needless to say the Paralympics get far less media attention than the Olympics. D.Baatarjav will be awarded MNT 120 million (USD 104,000 or so) from the government, same as the medalists of the Olympics (though I heard rumours that the officials were considering of increasing the prize to USD1million for the Olympians) I wonder if many private companies are promising him sponsorhips and gifts as had happened with the Olympic medalists.

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