Ploofle

The overnight temperatures are starting to hover around freezing - I’ve heard from unreliable sources that “heating” will come on on October 1st.  I can’t wait…for lukewarm water

Swiped from WeatherUnderground, here’s Khovd’s seasonal weather:

Hmm.  Would’ve thought more sunlight.  I’ve always thought of that as the upshot to the cold.  Bah, that’s what I get for looking.

Otherwise, tomatoes have mostly disappeared, but bell peppers have made an appearance.  So far the most exciting buy has been the gouda block that has just come back to the local (regional) department store, Nomin’s.

A few days ago people came over and we had bread omelets and chocolate-chocolate-covered-raisins-oatmeal-blueberry Andycakes.  And a bottle of red wine and some beers as we watched the McCain-Obama debate after the fact on youtube (in 11 irritating parts).

People are converging on Khovd soon to go to Eagle Festival in Bayan-Ulgii this weekend.  I’m thinking I may need to wear my midweight long underwear just in case…

Work-wise, I’m getting (a year late) into English lessons.  It at least guarantees uninterrupted face-time with my various coworkers.  I also really really need to email Clarence and get cracking on my thesis.  I swear I’ll write an email to him tomorrow…

Random thoughts:
I would like someday to have concrete counters like this and a similar (yet less schizoid and big) house like this. You know, cool southern house, but with some full-wall windows and lots of light.
Listening to classical music again (heh, can we say bored? all sorts of old habits), I think I may like to pick up an instrument again, if only to play for myself.  Have become a fan of Saint-Saëns.
Or those musical endeavors may be chalked up to a lack of large productive group activities here.

I guess I’m feeling like nesting - despite the lack of offspring

Tags: cold, Music, nesting

As the harvest season is ending here, it means pretty cheap tomatoes of sometimes-dubious quality.  In this case, we can now get em for 500 tugriks (about 50 cents) a kilo compared to 2000+ tugriks a month ago.  Thus began the several-day project of me, Jen, and Amber deciding to dry some.

4 kilos and innumerable flies later, we now are the proud owner of…about two handfuls of dried tomatoes.  By my estimation we lost about 75% of mass due to all the drying out.  Ugh, as it took us several ours to peel and slice all those damn tomatoes.

About a half kilo were left over from the initial slicing (too squishy, too sketchy) and we saved them for cooking.  Well, technically, I was holding em for Jen to take today, but I erm, instead cooked them all then fed some of them to her.  With my leftover 1/3 of the wheat yogurt sourdough bread plus a few spices I tried a heavily modified version of a savory tomato bread pudding, and the remainder of the tomatoes went into a spaghetti sauce with the sort-of mutton loose sausage I made a few days ago.

I wish I had my camera (it’s stuck in UB due to weight limits; hope to see it in October), but suffice it to say the bread pudding was ok - maybe it’ll be better tomorrow - and the spaghetti was tasty.  The dried tomatoes are also tasty, but I’m afraid to eat them until winter when there aren’t actually tomatoes here.

Another food side note: Andy’s boss Altaa’s mom has started a local yogurt-making business, which means cute glass milk bottles and foil caps.  I hope this means yogurt year-round now - it’s not as good (aka sour and raunchy) as the stuff you get from the milk ladies in the courtyard, but it has a nice flavor that’s more like Russian yogurt here.

Finally, a random site where you can download recordings of classical music that have been released into the public domain: Musopen.  Production and actual musicians’ quality varies wildly, as much of this is from high school/university orchestras and it shows, but it’s nice to get a little semblance of culture out here.  I miss, oddly, when I used to go with my dad to his rehearsals in Irving and mostly ignore/fall asleep during it.

Double finally, I’m sleepy and disinclined to go to the showerhouse due to cat-pseudo-sitting Jen’s cat who enjoys knocking about around 6 in the morning. And there are loud people in a nearby apartment singing (I suspect some bottles are accomplices).

Tags: food, Music

…mostly because now, through harnessing the power of wikipedia and google, I can read up on various vices - such as sci-fi/fantasy authors, battlestar galactica, and esoteric bands.  I don’t even *like* TV.

A current favorite is John Scalzi’s blog. Excepts such as referring to tickle-me Elmo’s as “…watch the thing giggle and writhe when you poke it and you can’t help but think that this is what methadone for pedophiles looks like.” and his not-so-nice call for liberals: “I know it’s a lot to ask at the moment, but could you possibly please stop publicly losing your shit all over the goddamn place? Honestly, it’s embarrassing.”  His books are damn good too.

Wikipedia combined with Last.fm, I now know more pop culture trivia than ever - as long as the band broke up by the mid-90s.

Also until now, I had never read seriously Asimov, but thanks to Wikipedia I know a lot more about him, too.  Ugh.  And then recently I saw a post somewhere about memorializing not only the creator of Superman’s house but also a prolific comic book letterer…must…stop…before losing all social skills….

Oh, wait.  I’m in Mongolia.

Tags: books, dorkiness, Music

Hey all,

I’ve updated yet again my address - which will continue to be updated as I move next month into a new office - but hopefully others won’t be subjected to having to copy down items in Cyrillic for customs or whatever as I translated the address.  There are also little tips for mailing stuff if you all like guidance - to those who don’t - you get the “Moh” pinky finger shake from Mongolia.

This weekend involved puppy-sitting, purple guitars, and pancakes.  All of it just about was pleasant, too.  You see, Jason got a cute puppy named Daisy, but she’s small and had stomach issues, so most of my puppy-sitting was watching her closely while she was awake and whisking her off to the tiled bathroom floor strewn with newspapers if she much as began a vague squatting-like motion.  That and I made bread which wasn’t too bad.

Between those two things I pretty much filled up Saturday.  On Sunday I got to talk to Bonnie about her 10k race and post-race events and drama, and that was really really nice.  She finished with an average 11 min mile or so I think, which to me at least is astounding…I would pass out bigtime.  It cooled down some from the light rain that passed through Khovd, and in some of the mountains you can see a good amount of white, too.

Stacey invited Peace Corps folks over to her place for pancakes, and I brought the yogurt I had bought from the ladies in my apartment’s courtyard the day before as well as the remainder of my bread.  The pancakes, made by Andy mostly, were of the chocolate blueberry cinnamon vanilla variety and pretty tasty.  Woo pancakes!  I finally got to see all the Khovdpeople too, except those who are out of town…but still spiffy.  After that people went off in various directions; I went off to see a photo exhibition about globalization that was most unusually on the square area in front of the bright red theater.  The pictures, I thought, were of eh-quality, but it was really neat that they brought this stuff so far out - The pictures were laser copies laminated onto foamboard it seemed, so it helped keep em intact.  Andy had seen em back in Bangladesh, I believe.

I then met up with a couple other PCVs to go on a more extensive market exploration, specifically where you can find meat and produce.  In the process of waiting, I managed to buy a dark purple (fading to black, if that’s any help) guitar for about $20.  Who knows how long it’ll last, but I found myself very happy to noodle around.  I miss making music things, I guess…or at least making musical-like sounds.

They showed me the meat market which is dominated by beef and mutton.  You can check it out too by looking under their card tables - the heads or forelegs are often laying about.  The vegetables were really nice, too - I saw in addition to the normal stuff bell peppers, shallots, and fresh dill.  Buying random things took up a lot of energy and time, and then I made more bread.  Tonight I’ll make lentils to eat with the bread, and maybe I’ll have some pseudo-nutella.  I only have a few more things on my list, and then maybe finally I can decorate the place with photos of you plus maybe some Kazakh wall hangings which are awful nice…

Tags: food, mongolia, Music, photos

The free Cake concert (with other headliners I don’t seem to remember) was a resounding ‘ok’ in musical attractiveness. However, it definitely got a -5 in on-stage presence. I was a bit disappointed that for all the neat songs Cake has, the lead singer dude acts rather like he is in a karaoke bar - you know, the kind of person who stands up when they sing, sways slightly, and sometimes put out a hand for dramatic effect. Hmm. Perhaps a mix between a karaoke singer and the Pointer Sisters.

The crowd was a rather odd mix as well. The crowd seemed to be a mix of frat boy types, potheads with Shaggy-like goatee bits, geeky computery people, and the people who to go anime cons and wear the black baggy pants with lots of zippers and straps. Add beer to that and drizzle well with a light rain for about 3 hours straight. Luckily for us, the dollar store nearby had $2 ponchos…

The highlight of the concert pretty much was the crowd-surfing. Very entertaining to watch people sail over the tops of people and then dive headfirst so that all you could see above the heads were the bottoms of Converse shoes.

They’re going to have Garbage and Weezer and I believe Coldplay eventually (for free!). I may go to Garbage, though I hope it’s not too much stuff from the newest album - so far that one seems a bust. That and Reel Big Fish is playing this weekend for not free, and Ricardo’s supposed to come visit, so I’ll figure out whether I’m going to that one or not somewhat later.

I also made very yummy Thai food this weekend. Now the no-bedroom studio smells all like garlic and basil. Yum. And speaking of smells, the office today seems to have an A/C problem, hence the wet dog smell and humidity.

Tags: Music