Well, I was up very late last night (almost all night) working on that darned computer. I tried my best to fix it but it was so infected with viruses that I had to do a complete re-installation of Windows - yuck! Anyway, half way through the power went out and I had to start all over again. After getting to bed at 5 am I slept in until noon today. I consider my effort to be my donation to the foundation so that they can do their jobs to help the kids.

After waking up at 11:30 am today, I took a quick stroll to the French bakery to get some work done. Unfortunately, today Alex the owner was out so the Internet wasn't working there. I was able to write a bit on my paper anyway, but I left after an hour or so to head over to the Korean alternative medicine hospital instead.

The Korean Hospital next to the guesthouse is really more a geriatric relaxation centre. It's called "Happy Dreams", and it looks very cultish from the outside. However, every morning at about 6 am people start queuing up by the hundreds to be the first to enter. I've even seen a few fights among the elderly break out when one tries to cut in front of another. Fortunately there's a rope to keep the line in order. Since everyone there spoke only Mongolian and Korean, I asked the lady at the guesthouse if she could help me out with some basic translation. She did and I was told all about the place. People first go to a waiting room where the do group stretches and are educated about good health care, at least in the alternative sense. Just to make it more "medical", there's a spinal skeleton at the front of the room. After about 40 minutes, they enter as a group into another large room with about 30 padded tables to lie on. Next to each table is a machine called the "Happy Dream" machine, to which is attached by cables two brick-sized blocks. On each of these blocks are about 8 uniform rocks that have small infrared light holes. These rocks heat up and cool down cyclically. Both of these blocks are placed under your spine in different locations for two minutes, then a sound goes off on the machine, and they're moved incrementally up your back for about 30 minutes. Towards the end, the uppermost block gets moved to your abdomen to "heal" your internal organs as well. After the back is done, you flip over and place a single block over your bladder and prostate (for men), or place two blocks over your ovaries and bladder (women). You then rock back and forth for a few minutes until the final beep goes off. Whew! I'm finished. I can't say that I felt that much better but it certainly was interesting. There's also a small fish tank in the corner of the room to which water runs in from a pipe in the wall. In the bottom of the fish tank are special rocks that cleanse the water. Then coming out from the tank runs another tube, which then runs into a Brita filtre, then to a tap to get your water. I guess the Brita filtre is there "just in case" the rocks don't work.

So after the several hours there, I was a bit tired. I managed to get a bit more work done on the laptop I'm repairing and picked up some new memory for it from the local shop. All the electricity went out again this afternoon so I couldn't do much else on it, just what the battery would allow. The computer shop where I got the memory is actually one of about a hundred all grouped into a building behind the Canon building on the west end of town called "Computerland". It's great because you can shop around and get some decent prices. I ended up getting the memory for around $30 - not bad for 512MB laptop memory in Mongolia.

I gave Michelle a quick ring since it was getting toward evening but she was working late today and I couldn't reach her. I went back over to Dave's Pub for a quick bite to eat and to enjoy this evening's trivia. Our team consisted of Meg, a local tour guide, Lee, the guy who plays guitar at the English group, Catriona, the scottish woman staying at the guesthouse and working at CNCF, Jane, an expat travelling the world for a year, Moni, a local Monoglian woman, and another guy whose name I can't remember. Anyway, we ended up doing quite well against the 6 other teams and won! However, we missed one of the anagrams making fun of George Bush - how could we!? We also missed the year the Australian pound went to the dollar - 1966. I was very proud to have known the answer to the question that went something like "nature's fundamental number," which was Avogadro's Constant, or 6.022 x 10^23. As winners, we got "fame", the winning money, about $4 each, and a free shot of vodka. It used to be beer but I guess that was too expensive.

I headed back home after the quiz and got to sleep. Tomorrow I'm headed to the children's gher village to see how they live, what kind of healthcare they get, and to see they general state of the gher districts.

So g'night, once again!