Ploofle

So, finally, a bit more on the budget issues here in Mongolia-land.

I’ve mentioned the shortfall before, and it’s shaping up to about $18 million.  I believe every post has been asked to make across-the-board 10-15% cuts in their finances, and this is making things interesting, given how expensive it is to get people together here - and prices are only getting worse.  I heard yesterday that the taxi ride from the airport to the center of UB is up to like 15,000 tugriks - over the summer I could get as low as 7,000.

Our support office has had to lay off 2 people, postal mailings have been generally discontinued and replaced with a small communications allowance, the 2 inservice trainings have been cut down to one with fewer days to cover all the same topics.  I have heard anecdotally that this year office staff won’t get a cost-of-living salary increase unless the budget improves - the money was instead used to give volunteers who needed it a bit of a living allowance increase.  Due to medical decisions, it looks like there will be no volunteers being able to get in for a regular visit - or whatever - to the capital until Close of Service.  I hope the training schedule gets changed for the next batch, as keeping it the same means that for your last 20 (or so, out of 27) months of service you never get to come in to UB for until Close of Service on PC’s dime.  For a site like mine, that means having about $100 to take the bus roundtrip or an exorbitant $450 to fly roundtrip.  I do like being out at site though, as long as I can occasionally get some brown sugar or oats.

Next year’s training will be moved to be closer to the capital to save money, and it’s likely its mid-training gathering for training will be eliminated and the training itself will be shortened by about 10%.  I’m sure we’ll make do, but I wonder about language teachers and whether the veterans will make the move elsewhere temporarily.  Mongolian is considered a pretty difficult language - for reference, among non-Latin languages, it’s less difficult than Mandarin Chinese or Arabic, but more difficult than Russian, Greek, or Swahili.  As it is when we come out we have a grasp of survival language and continue to learn throughout service.  So I’m a bit worried about how cutting out a decently sized chunk of full-immersion will pan out.

Anywho, this isn’t my post’s fault, or PC’s even.  It a general lack of funding and everyone, both in DC and abroad, has to cut corners.  Too bad there aren’t really corners to cut…

Some volunteers have been discussing how the next administration may change things, even with the economy being as it is.  For comparison, something like 200 times this is being spent on the War on Terror extra funding this year (doesn’t include other Dept. of Defense allocations).  So, maybe you all can help.

We’ve set up this website to generate letters to mail to their representatives.  For the simplest case all you have to do is enter your zip, then at the end copy and paste a bit.  Or you can get fancier…I’m not going to complain.  It looks up info on the representatives and adds references to their Peace Corps service (if they served) or their ability to change the budget (if they’re on the Appropriations Committee).  So please check it out.  The site is Fund Peace Corps.

Tags: budget, mongolia, peace corps

Crawl into bed and sit under your covers (if you’re not already there due to poor insulation) for 15-20 min before actually laying down to go to bed.  That way you don’t shiver until you warm up a little and fall asleep.

Also, capilene long underwear and wool socks are worth their weight in gold.

Tags: cold, mongolia

In the likely event of personal illness, the best and only option is to lock yourself in, find the warmest spot you can, then lie down until it blows over.  Really, it’s not worth dragging yourself around when all it’ll do is give you a sinus infection or pneumonia.

I tested this treatment over the weekend and can assure you it’s swell.

Tags: mongolia, sick

Before the non-Mongolia-experience people stop reading, as a tidbit of life here, virtually all doors and windows are doubled - an outer and inner one with about 1-2″ of gap in between them.  And virtually all of em don’t fit well unless they’re the new vacuum double-paned window installations, which seem to only exist in buildings built in the past few years to me.  AND often times your window glass will be cracked and taped back together along the crack.

***

While I was gone for training, some people broke my large (4′x2′) glass windows by throwing rocks. I just got the glass replaced and I’m already thinking about wintertime and sealing them so I may possibly be warmer this winter.  Since the windows here are virtually glass doors, I’ve pretty much looked up how to weatherstrip and seal doors as my guide for sealing these up.  Plus, I found some foam adhesive weatherstripping in the market today and I’m excited to start using it…how I dream for vacuum double-paned windows…

As I know other present and future volunteers may find themselves in this situation, I thought I’d share what I’m doing.

But first off, even if I seal the points between the frame and the moving doorlike part, it’s a moot point if the glass isn’t sealed into the frame. Most windows here are set into a groove then held in place with a few nails around the edges, much like how glass is held in picture frames.  So you need to caulk or seal somehow the windows on the exterior side.  First off, check to see if the glass actually contacts the wood frame on all the edges.  Oftentimes the glass is a bit off, so you’ll need to scoot it to one side or another or even scoot it up.  You can do this by carefully pressing on the glass (pref. from both sides) and pushing in the direction needed.  If it needs to scoot up, I grab a couple pennies or something else kind of thin and flat and jam it in the bottom edge where the glass meets the wood to keep it at that height.  Then you can start caulking.

At the market they sell tan or brownish blocks that look like clay but are essentially putty - most people use that here for sealing - called замазка in the direct Russian translation.  This stuff is shitty, but may be the best you can find if you can’t get silicone caulking (which comes in a tube that may fit into a caulking gun).  The way I use the putty is to pull off a piece, roll it between your hands to make a long skinny piece, then gently press into the window where the glass and wood (in theory) meet.  After you do this around the entire window, take some kind of small flat piece of metal (I use the “head” of the key or the edge of a coin) and kind of scrape the putty so that it’s smooth and squashed against the glass and wood.  This also gives you back that excess putty to use on other windows if needed.  After a while the putty will dry and hopefully seal itself against the window.

I don’t have it, but if you actually have silicone caulking, the same glass adjustment technique above applies then check out this link for how to use the silicone.

Then, check out if you have cracks (inevitably) in the panes themselves.  Seal these up as best you can with tape, silicone caulking, or whatever.

This is where it gets more theoretical for me - I’m still in the process of doing the stuff below for actual weatherstripping and sealing.  Your counterparts will help winterize your first year, but the essence is try to block all the drafts in the outer windows as much as possible, then focus on inner windows/doors.  If the cold doesn’t get in in the first place you’re good.

To this end, I’m going to use the advice here for weatherstripping doors for my windows and doors - trying to adjust the fit of frames, tightening screws, “planing” the wood with my knife, etc., then putting the foam strips in the jambs as illustrated in the door diagram from that article.  Note that you have to make sure the door/window actually closes easily before you can do this stuff, otherwise after applying the weatherstripping you may not be able to close it at all.

Also, I believe that felt is an excellent insulator (check out the ger - it can get toasty!) so this may be a good substitute for weatherstripping or other plugging materials you would use below.

Now, back to what’s done here around October - for the doors/windows you’re certain you’re not going to open again until the spring, close the outer door/window and thoroughly seal up the gaps from the inside and outside if you see any.  I’ve seen this done here with wadded up newspaper, cloth, felt, horsehair (I hope it was horsehair), sand, dirt etc.  Some even tack up clearish plastic tarp around the interior/exterior side to…do something.  Prevent drafts, I suppose.  Then, if you’re super fancy, in the space between the outer and inner window, dump woodshavings (preferred from a lack of mess standpoint), sand, or dirt along the bottom edge - this will at least seal up the bottom edge draft if you missed something.  I don’t know how to deal with the other edges other than possibly applying more putty or caulking on those edges - last year my outer windows were sealed without doing this so I don’t know if it’s effective yet.

Close the inner window and repeat the plugging of gaps with newspaper, cloth, etc. and putty if you want it.  For those gaps between the frame and the inner window, I *think* it’s better to use the putty here, rather than silicone if you have it, as the putty will pop right off when you want to open it again while the silicone needs to be scraped off.  So, for those temporary seals for winter, putty.

Finally, if it’s still super drafty, try hanging blankets or curtains around the windows that at least limit that coldness to the area closest to the window/door.  I also stuff a towel along the bottom edge of my balcony door and windows as it has some super big gaps.

For doors that have to be usable during the winter, seal the windows/frame and at least put in that door edge weatherstripping mentioned above. Try some sort of jury-rigged door sweep like this from the article mentioned above.

Check your house for other drafts, too - like a air ventilation shaft in the bathroom.  Most Mongolians tape this closed with paper or something to prevent that -30F air from shooting in.  Try putting weatherstripping on your actual apartment door or tacking in some carpeting on the inner side of the outer door.

Blah. Done writing.  This is prolly boring for those not living in Mongolia, but you’ll find that a major portion of your brain will be thinking of ways to keep warm when the winter comes.

Tags: cold, mongolia, preoccupations, random, too much free time hence this long post

Despite all the random tech postings, I actually still reside in Mongolia and it’s high time I actually talk about that for once.

The weather’s cooling down for real now - overnight I close my apartment window and use my fleece blanket, and yesterday I actually was a little chilled in pants and a long-sleeved shirt. The weather here, though, tends to have this downward trend made up of dips and peaks, so I hope to get a little bit more warm weather a time or two before it settles into Fall.

The days definitely aren’t as long as they were a few weeks ago. Light starts fading about 8pm and it’s full dark by around 9pm now. The fruits and vegetables still remain pricey, though, and oranges and bell peppers haven’t come back yet. Thus lots of apples and onions for me.

Yesterday we had a birthday/welcome back party for Khovd volunteers. It was really tasty - instant falafel and latkes were fried, yogurt-garlic-dill sauce was made, and chickpeas were boiled and smushed for hummus. Add to that fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, homemade wheat pita bread, peanut butter-chocolate cake, and several melons and you got what here definitely is a feast. We even had leftovers - I suppose that’s what happens when you end up having only two guys at site, one of whom never eats, compared to the four originally.

We watched women’s volleyball and basketball, which was cool, and generally picked on each other, which was of course fun

Lately at work I’ve been starting to get into other interesting things - like helping improve the quality of service at the adolescent reproductive health center in Khovd. I haven’t done anything concrete yet; more reading up and thinking, but I’m looking forward to this as I find I continue to like working with young people. One of the stranger difficulties was finding STI/RH statistics for ages 15-24 in the aimag - my counterpart and I went to the health department to talk to the statistician (doctor; everyone’s a doctor) and he pretty much said he didn’t have them and go talk to the adolescent health center. The thing is, their numbers focus more on their internal intake and testing results, not the whole aimag, and I was curious to see how much of an impact the center has, if any, on those overall numbers, so it wasn’t quite what I was looking for - and they were all on vacation besides. This also reinforced for me the idea that mystery shopper-style assessments for accessibility will be a good tool for checking things out.

Anyway, after then walking to the regional hospital, talking to random people (though technically I didn’t talk; my counterpart did most of the talking based), and looking for the RH one-point service center people (also on vacation), we went back to the office, somewhat bewildered. My counterpart saved the day though by calling different people on vacation (eh, well) until we found someone who actually had the information - and we’re going to go by Monday to pick it up. Yay!

Today has been calm - I’m working on this Yogurt French Bread recipe (which seems more like a sourdough) that needed me to make starter to sit for at least 12 hours. I forgot to add the yogurt after I had made the dough and had to squish back in a cup of yogurt (which was messy by hand; got yogurt all over myself), then had to go to the store to buy more flour. Bleh. Regardless, it’s rising now and I hope to punch it down and bake in an hour or so. It better be damn tasty for all this effort.

As a side note for bread, I think here especially I need to be a little more patient with rising - instead of waiting to it to get to being doubled, I tend to focus on the actual time it says it’ll take and go along. But the brioche I made a bit back was really spectacular because I gave it time…so I’m going to work on being better about that. Of course, when it’s wintertime and the special challenges of attempting to make dough rise in a 40-degree apartment starts, all bets are off.

Oh! and it looks like I will indeed be going to Thailand next year. My 50k frequent flyer miles are enough for a free RT inter-asia ticket, and I’m going to play that up, as it seems like Delta’s mile usage in the US is getting pretty crappy (up to 60k for just a domestic RT?? bah!).

The 1001 nights LaTeX conversion is going well, and I actually found a full-color scan of the original that I’m going to use to make sure I have similar layout. I also found a neat site that covers historical illustrations of the book, including quite a few works that are by now in the public domain, so I’m going to add some illustrations to it too. The only big deviation, I believe, will be the use of margin notes versus footnotes - but that’s easily changed. I’m excited even though it only Volume 1 and who knows if I’ll get to Volumes 2-9.

Finally: Biden? Hmm. I’m curious to see how this pans out - wish I could see/hear the Democratic convention…

Tags: books, bread, mongolia, work