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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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Oyu-Tolgoi deal to be signed on the auspicious double-Nyam day

The government is going to sign the $4 billion Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine agreement tomorrow at 11am.
Mongolia’s government may approach international financial Institutions, including the World Bank, to help it raise the $820 million needed to maintain a 34 percent equity stake in the project, Montsame said, citing the parliamentary economic committee Chairman T. Bayarsaikhan.
The government missed a Sept. 30 dateline for signing the accord because of a need to translate the agreement into English to avoid interpretation issues, Bayarsaikhan said, the news agency reported. [Source]
All fine and dandy. Except for their choice of October 6th for the signing of the agreement. This day is when Baljinnyam and Dashnyam days coincide in the Buddhist calendar. It apparently happens once a year, and it is on this particular day you might find couples queuing outside the wedding palace from 4am to get married and hopefully be blessed with the double-nyam auspiciousness. The ceremonies are held every 30 minutes at the Wedding palace, so you can imagine the insanity that goes on there on this particular day. Kwik-e-wedding-day. Nobody's yet to carry out a statistical survey to see if marriages officiated on this particular day have higher success rates.

I have not been able to find any references to these days in the Tibetan buddhist / astrology websites I hastily googled. Never mind the fact that the government is given to observing religiously auspicious days, it would be funny if they'd deliberately been delaying the signing of the agreement just for this reason. Of course, not something they should ever admit.

If anybody knows why the -nyam days are all that well and can point me to a reliable source, I would really appreciate it.

Update: Thanks to jngl of Mongolian Music blog, here's an explanation of the double-Nyam concept posted in Mongolia Web News.

In Mongolian Buddhism several deities are worshipped and regarded as divine beings. Each one is in charge of specific issues relevant to human beings. According to the Mongolian Buddhist mythology, two of these deities, the god of "wealth and prosperity" (Baljinnyam), and his partner the god of "cheerfulness and energy" (Dashnyam), meet twelve times a year on specific dates. Each meeting has its agenda of subjects which they will discuss.

Only one specific meeting date once a year, has an agenda which is completely favorable to humanity. The subjects they will discuss on this date are happiness, prosperity, good health and the wealth of humanity. This year the lucky date is the 17th day of the middle month of Autumn according to the Mongolian Buddhist calendar (October 6, 2009) and it is therefore a very special day for Mongolian Buddhism and for the Mongolian people. [Source]
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