Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
I couldn't sleep last night, or at least for more than an hour at a time, because I kept thinking I was going to oversleep my phone alarm and miss my morning interview for my intern position next year. I woke up before my alarm went off and dragged myself out of bed. It is a cold morning and the heat has now been turned off in the city. The city has central heating and so they come around about this time of year and shut off all heating for all the buildings and ours happened just a few nights ago.
I think part of not being able to sleep last night was my anxiety about not being able to find a phone to call Australia on at 7 am. I left the guest house about 6:40 to walk past an Internet shop I thought might have been open at that hour but unfortunately they weren't. Most Internet shops don't open until 9 or 10 in the morning, even the ones that say "24 hour"! So I kept walking to the French Bakery to see if they were open. All I needed to find was a working Internet connection and I could use my laptop to call in on the interview using Skype. Skype seems to work MUCH better than any other type of connection in general. Unfortunately, the bakery was shut. I thought that perhaps I could still connect wirelessly from outside the shop, which I managed to do, but the DSL modem must have been switched off because I couldn't get a live Internet connection, only a connection to the router. So I went to my "fallback" plan, which was to use a 24 hour calling centre that used the Internet but was set up like a regular phone centre. I walked another few minutes and at 6:55, five minutes before my interview, found that they were shut too! So now I started to panic - what was I going to do!?! I quickly walked back to the guest house to see if I could use that Internet connection even though it was down when I woke up. When I got back I found it was still down. I quickly sent Michelle a text message to ring the people and apologise and to let them know I'm still trying, but I don't think she got the message because she's working in the maternity ward with no reception. I rebooted the guest house router but it was still down. I fortunately was able to move the laptop to a position in the guest house to connect to another person's unsecured network and was able to make a call through that finally (sorry to whoever you are for using your network!) I was now 10 minutes late and there was no answer. I rang and rang for the next 20 minutes but no one ever picked up.
I sent off an email to the interviewers explaining that no one had answered and she wrote back saying that they were having problems with that line earlier. She sent a reply by email just a short time later with a new time but I didn't get it in time so the interview is now rescheduled for tomorrow at 1:30 pm (11:30 am my time). After all this, it had better go well! This will just mess up my visit to the infectious diseases hospital that I'm schduled to go on. Oh well!
So I decided to get a little more sleep to be awake for my next scheduled interview at 1:00. I had slept for about an hour when in came two new guests, both staying in my room. I had just gotten rid of the big crowd but I was glad to see it was two people who had ridden their motorbikes all the way from Italy to Ulaanbaatar, Monglia! One had a BMW GS1200, and the other had a Transalp XL650V (2007)! The had touratec panniers mounted and the BMW had a GPS mount. They had taken a month to do the trip and they said it was the best they had eve done. They said the Mongolian countryside was absolutely spectacular, and that both bikes held up well on the journey, with the exception of the BMW's panniers that got a hole ripped in the side. Wow, what a fun trip that would have been! They will be staying until Thursday, at which point, the BMW will get shipped to China and the TransAlp will get sold here.
I decided to go to the French cafe again now and catch up on my emails and write some more blog before my next interview, and so I am here now. It's getting close to 1:00 (12:30 now), so I think I will sign off and secure a spot at a computer with a Skype connection so I can make my call. See ya!
Aaahhhh, F%#$! I've struck out again. I went to the Internet cafe at 12:30. The first computer I got on connected to Skype but the microphone didn't work during my testing. I switched to another computer and then the microphone worked but not Skype. I ran to another Internet and there was some sort of police ativity going on so I couldn't get a computer. I went to another Internet cafe and Skype didn't work there either. I ran back to the guest house and tried the wireless there. Neither the in-house wireless nor the one I "borrowed" earlier worked. I ran 1 km to the next nearest phone centre (the Internet based one that's supposedly 24 hours) and I finally was able to make a call. After all this running around, I was 20 minutes late and missed my slot. They were kind enough to reschedule me for tomorrow, just as the one this morning was. I'm just hoping I have better luck tomoroow. I think what I'll do is get up very early and park myself at a computer that actually works at least an hour and a half ahead of time and that way I should have more luck. How frustrating! Not only is this frustrating, but it feels like I'm spending half my time here in Mongolia just trying to get things done not related to here, like these stupid group projects and other stuff. I'd really like to come back here again later when I don't have all these other obligations distracting me from learning about Mongolia. So no we have yet another day wasted, and I'll miss more stuff tomorrow. Anyway......
So I decided to spend the rest of the day doing other things hopefully more productive. I fixed the guest house wireless Internet connection so that I could use it. The problem was that the router was entirely in Chinese so I had to guess what it said but in the end I got it working. After that I used the connection to give Michelle a quick ring to catch up. It sounds like every thing's going well at home.
Another productive thing was souvenir shopping. I headed over to the State Department Store along with number of little streetside shops and picked up some things for people. Souvenirs here are cheap here compared to the rest of the world, but in context to what I've spent since being here, it almost equals my entire first two weeks! The average Mongolian here would probably have to save for a month just to buy one average souvenir item.
After I got back, the two guys on the bikes wanted to head out to dinner so we went to a nearby restaurant I hadn't been too yet. Over pizza, a beer, and a green salad (rare here!), they told of their many adventures over the past 4-5 weeks. It sounds like they've had a great time. If you want to check out their blog, see:
http://www.eurasianmotorcycleadventure.blogspot.com/
Some of the photos, especially of Mongolia, are absolutely spectacular. See for yourself.
It's going to be an early night for me today. Off to sleep. G'night!
- comments