AFC Flag Expedition

Out and About in UB- A Visit to the Mongolian Modern Art Gallery (Illustrated)

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Went to BD’s Mongolian BBQ for dinner night before last. It’s quite popular with the Mongols even though there’s nothing authentically Mongolian about it. Apparently it’s a Chinese invention. BD’s does the same kind of stir fry on a big hot surface that you see in the USA. Mongols don’t do stir fry.

Real Mongolian BBQ involves killing a goat, slitting the body cavity open, cleaning it out, stuffing it full of hot rocks, putting the whole thing in a metal container and setting that on hot coals to cook. When it’s done, the meat is pulled out, along with the rocks, which are then passed around, hand to hand, for good health. And yes, I’ve had it, hot rocks and all, and it was good.

I don’t envision a real Mongolian BBQ place coming to your neighborhood anytime soon.

I’ll probably go back there again since for 6900 tugrigs I can get a heaping bowl of veggies, noodles and meat with Mongolian ginger sauce. A small Chinggis Khan beer is 2100 tugrigs. 9000 tugrigs at the moment is less than $8.

Plus the cooks show off by doing things like lining up four or five pieces of broccoli on the long sword-like turner and then flipping them all up into the air and catching them all on the plate. So it’s dinner and a show.

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This morning I had breakfast in the hotel, which is included in the price of the room. They’ve gone from a menu to a breakfast buffet with an egg cook, like you see at many hotels now in the states. It’s really sped up getting breakfast and one can skip the slices of mystery meat that I think they put out for the Germans.

The weather was nice and cool when I left the hotel around 9 am. I walked about twenty minutes to the Mongolian Modern Art Gallery, which is actually a museum since nothing there is for sale. There was a show that I had read about on one of the Mongolian news sites and today was the last day.

With all the Prop. 8 stuff in California and the civil rights issues concerning LGBT citizens that remain to be addressed, I wanted very much to see “Beyond the Blue Sky”, a “multi-media art exhibit for, and in collaboration with, Mongolia’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community.

The people in the photographs have their faces covered by khadags, blue scarves, which are given as gifts, but are also used to cover the faces of the dead. It symbolizes the position LGBT people find themselves in in Mongolia since currently they cannot live their lives fully, but must conceal their gender identity or otherwise be vulnerable to prejudice, discrimination and violence.

It was a very powerful show.

Here’s the image that really struck me the most:

Image of man in del. face covered by khadak, "Beyond the Blue Sky"
Image of man in del, face covered by khadag, “Beyond the Blue Sky”

I then went upstairs to see the main galleries, which house original Mongolian paintings, sculpture and fine craft dating from the early/mid-20th century. As a socialist state with close ties to the Soviet Union, aspiring Mongol artists often studied art in Moscow. This gave them a grounding in classical realism that allowed them to create paintings of great quality. And they’ve built on it ever since, adding their own unique interpretations of the world they live in.

Here are some examples:

Portrait, Orkhon, N. 2006 oil
Portrait- Orkhon, N. 2006 oil
Portrait, detail
Portrait, detail
The Red Portrait, Nasantsengal Bayanjargal 2001 oil
The Red Portrait- Nasantsengal Bayanjargal 2001 oil
The Own Portrait- Ulziikhutag, Yondon 1991 oil
The Own Portrait- Ulziikhutag, Yondon 1991 oil
Lord of Great Land- Ichinnorov, Choij 1981 oil
Lord of Great Land- Ichinnorov, Choij 1981 oil
In Art Studio- Bold, Dolgorjav 1981 oil
In Art Studio- Bold, Dolgorjav 1981 oil
Horses Hoof- Tsegmid, P. 1986 oil
Horses Hoof- Tsegmid, P. 1986 oil
Post Man- Tsembeldorj, Myatov 1997 oil
Post Man- Tsembeldorj, Myatov 1997 oil
The Bullet of the Sky- Tumurbaatar, Badarch 2004 oil
The Bullet of the Sky- Tumurbaatar, Badarch 2004 oil
The Guardian Spirits- Advabazar, Nyam 2001 oil
The Guardian Spirits- Advabazar, Nyam 2001 oil
The Light of the Steppe- Sanchir, N. 2002 oil
The Light of the Steppe- Sanchir, N. 2002 oil

There was also this wonderful ceremonial drum with deer painted on it..

"Deer Drum" leather on wood frame
“Deer Drum” leather on wood frame
"Deer Drum", detail
“Deer Drum”, detail

Finally, here are some views of the gallery spaces:

Gallery 1

Gallery 2

Gallery 3

I had lunch at Millie’s, which serves good solid American food like burgers and sandwiches and is popular with the expat community of consultants and aid workers, along with visitors like me.

The next stop was the Hi Fi store, to see if I could get some of the music CDs for groups I’ve found on YouTube and Imeem. And I had some success. By the time I left, it was getting seriously hot, so I hiked it back, about 30 minutes, to the hotel to hide out until it cools down.

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An addendum to my comments about all the livestock I saw when I was coming into town. Looks like it’s not as charming and picturesque to the authorities as it was to me. This is from a Mongol news website, http://www.en.news.mn:

“Herders asked to move livestock away from Ulaanbaatar
Tue, 7 Jul 2009 17:07:49

The Metropolitan Professional Monitoring Agency has reminded herders that there is a ban on livestock entering Ulaanbaatar green areas, and another on trading of any form in certain areas. With demand for sheep rising in Ulaanbaatar just before and during Naadam, some herders come to the city with their livestock at this time and the reminders are aimed at stopping the move.

Some 200 herder families have brought 30,000 animals into prohibited areas. The law calls for confiscation of all income earned from trading in such restricted areas. Further violation of the law can lead to imprisonment.”

Ouch.

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How To Run a Hotel, Cont. – And I’m in Ulaanbaatar

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I came downstairs to check out after the previous post. I walk up to the counter. The nice woman says that she is to call the manager, who wishes to speak with me. In the meantime, I finish settling my bill. He comes out and asks if breakfast was ok. I say fine and then tell him that everyone makes mistakes, but it’s how they respond that counts and that he and the hotel had out-done themselves and I was very pleased. He smiled and made a little bow. I then asked where to go to wait for the shuttle bus. And he says……we have a special shuttle for you, a car. And darned if there wasn’t a spiffy black sedan waiting at the curb for me. Can you believe that?

I walk out to the car and get in while they load my luggage. Just before we pull away, I look to my right and there is the manager and one other man, in attendance is the only way to put it. I smiled and waved and they smiled and bowed. And then the fairy princess was wisked away to her MIAT flight to Ulaanbaatar, where she is now ensconced in a tenth floor room with a view of Peace Ave. at the Narantuul Hotel and happily connected to the internet, a great relief.

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On the way in from the airport, besides the gers and gas stations, buildings and billboards, there were sheep. And goats. And cattle. Lots of them. And Mongol guys riding around on horseback. I must have seen 20 small to largish herds of animals. Their owners were hanging out in whatever shade they could find. The billboards seemed particularly handy. One family group had set up a low table with a white cloth on it and appeared to be about to have tea.

I’ve never seen this between the airport and town before, but then I realized – Nadaam. The herders have come in from all over and they can’t leave their animals, so everybody is here. I also think I saw some townspeople “shopping” for that perfect main course for their holiday dinner. On the hoof at the moment.

I had no idea and the cameras were buried in the suitcase, so no photos at the moment. But it was a great sight. And is exactly the kind of thing I love about Mongolia.

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If Chinggis Khan had had a car it probably would have been a huge black Hummer trimmed out in lots of chrome, like the one I saw coming into town. Over here those stupid things almost make sense.

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How to Run a Hotel and a Cautionary Tale from Last Year’s Trip

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Just back from breakfast. I had asked for an 8am wake-up call when I checked in last night, just in case I had a rough time getting to sleep. I didn’t.

This morning, 8am came and went and no call. Inexcusable in a high-end business hotel adjacent to a major international airport. Especially for what they charge for a room, which was still cheaper than the expense and hassle of going through Beijing.

So I stopped by the check-in counter and told the woman what had happened because I thought they needed to know that the young lady who checked me in last night was apparently more focused on running through her spiel about how, for only $40 more, I could have a room on the Concierge Level with a beautiful view and complementary wine and beer. I passed since the last thing I cared about at that point was a convivial drink and a view.

The staff woman apologized, I went to breakfast and figured that was the end of it. But no…..

I was walking back to my table with my guava juice when two, not one, but two managers came up to me. They apologized a couple more times, explained that the call request had not been written down wherever it was supposed to have been noted and informed me that the hotel was comping my breakfast, a rather lavish buffet with items from at least three or four countries. Eggs any style, including custom omelets, all the usual side dishes, Korean dumplings, German bircher muesli, five kinds of juice, a huge spread of breads, four kinds of yogurt…….

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If you’re interested, here’s the Hyatt Regency Incheon’s website. We ended up staying here last year when our flight through to UB was re-scheduled to late the following afternoon due to weather. Wind was what we were told. Why I’m flying with MIAT this time instead of AirChina. Hope it works.

At that point we had, or I had, an “adventure”. We looked over the hotel options and picked the Hyatt because we’ve stayed at them before and liked them and we could get points for future stays. There was also the advantage of the presumably familiar which is comforting when things are a little stressed.

The incredibly helpful Korean United Airlines staff (who the UA people in Chicago could learn a few things from), extracted our luggage out of the hold area, so we could have clean clothes, in about 20 minutes. Off we went to the shuttle, which is a big bus. At this point, we had just come off an 11 hour flight from San Francisco and were not tracking too well.

Our luggage joined a huge pile on the sidewalk. The driver gestured to us to get into the bus while he loaded as much luggage as there was room for. So we did and I sat there in air-conditioned comfort as he then drove away, leaving my roll-on with $3000 worth of camera equipment sitting on the curb with no one watching over it or any of the other bags. The driver spoke no English, so had no idea why this crazy American woman insisted on riding back to the airport with him. Longest four minutes of my life, I’ll tell you.

We get there and I spot the bag and make sure it gets loaded. Then I start to breath again.

We arrive back to the hotel and as my bag is unloaded. I make eye contact with the driver and gesture like I’m taking a picture. I see the light come on and he grins in understanding. We shake hands. All’s well that end’s well.

So yesterday it’s same song, second verse. Same bag with same camera stuff, same bus, same driver, same gesture to get on, but this time I watch the bag go onto the bus. Whew.

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And the Itinerary Is…..

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Having used the “Jet Lag Program” to re-set myself to destination time, it’s about 6 am and I’m feeling pretty good. Got a decent night’s sleep, which makes things ever so much more enjoyable.

Getting ready for the trip got a little crazy because I got sick a couple of weeks before and lost that time. I had to put my effort into prep and packing and didn’t get to write about it as much as I had intended. Fortunately I have a well-tuned packing list.

I don’t have to be back to the airport until 11 am, so I can catch up in this lovely, quiet room that isn’t moving 560 mph at 38,000 feet. Plus……coffee.

Here is my current itinerary for the trip, subject to the vagaries of traveling in Mongolia. I’ve provided links for each location.

Arrive and stay at Narantuul Hotel tonight and following two nights. I’ll try to post photos of the interior, which can probably best be described as Mongol Contemporary.

Then I will move to a different hotel to join the small group for Nomadic Journeys’ Nadaam tour. It will be kind of relaxing to just show up when and where told to for a few days and take in one of the major cultural events in the country, which is also the biggest national holiday. There will be competitions in the “Three Manly Sports” – wrestling, archery and horse racing.

On the 13th, I’ll be picked up by my car and driver and travel a couple of hours over paved road to the Gun Galuut Nature Reserve.  It looks to have a classic Mongol holiday ger camp, complete with lodge (where I should be able to re-charge what needs re-charging. Otherwise, I have a converter that fits in a car cigarette lighter.). Besides argali, about 90 or so, there are wetlands known for their birds, especially cranes. I’ll be there three full days.

On the 17th, we’ll proceed to Arburd Sands, where I’ll stay one night. Some of you who followed the blog of last year’s trip will remember the memorable afternoon my husband and I had at the foal branding. That post is here.

Then it will be on to Baga Gazriin Chuluu and the ger camp there. While in the area, I’ll get to view petroglyphs and an old monastery tucked up into a mountain.

Back to UB on the 21st. As per previous post, meet up with Gana Wingard and get prepared for our meetings with the herder women at Ikh Nart.
Drive to Ikh Nart on the 23rd. Out looking for argali in the morning and evening, meetings during the heat of the day.

Back to UB on the morning of the 29th. Afternoon and next day free for loose ends, then fly home on the 30th.

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The Flag Expedition Journal Title Page

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The finished title page
The finished title page

I may add embelishments as the fancy or inspiration strikes me. But I’m tolerably pleased with how it came out.

My Flag Expedition page is up and running here over at Artists for Conservation. I’ll also be blogging and posting photos there.

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Plans are Coming Together

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Let’s see….my Flag Expedition page should be live soon over at Artists for Conservation. I have confirmed that the weather is likely to be hot, hot, hot. Unless it rains, in which case it could be cold enough that I’ll want my down bag.

I spent three hours on the phone last night with Gana Wingard, the scientist with whom I am working on the women’s craft cooperative. She sent me a great email this morning entitled “The Grand Plan” and then noted that, of course, it’s all subject to change. But we now have hashed out a way forward and know what we need to do, who we need to talk to over there and when and in what order it will probably happen.

It reminds me of one of my favorite exchanges towards the end of one of my all-time favorite movies “The Wind and the Lion”. The Raisuli and his men are on their way to a small village, returning Mrs. Pedicaris and her two children to a contingent of American marines and, after hearing their destination described, along with the myriad dangers likely to be lurking there and the possibility that he could be killed,  The Raisuli says “It is good”. His right hand man says “What is good?’. The Raisuli answers “It is good to know where we are going.”

It turns out that Gana will be bringing radio telemetry equipment because she needs to find all the radio-collared argali or as many as possible before the next Earthwatch team arrives on August 2. There are plans to try a new population survey method since, at this point, it’s not really known how many animals are in the reserve. This is great news for me, since I will now be able to go out looking for sheep with someone who knows the reserve really well and is as motivated as I am to spot the animals.

Here are a couple of photos that I took on previous trips of the scientists using radio telemetry equipment. The research project now has some GPS collars, which send in the data via satellite, but those are relatively expensive, so there are still animals that need to be tracked the old fashioned way.

Amgaa doing radio telemetry just below an ovoo, Sept. 2006
Amgaa doing radio telemetry just below an ovoo, Sept. 2006
Jed Murdoch searching for a collared Pallas Cat; he never got a signal and the cat had vanished, April 2005
Jed Murdoch searching for a Pallas Cat he had captured and collared; he never got a signal and the collar was never found, April 2005
My "grand finale" sighting in 2005; a good-sized group; note the ewe left front wearing a radio collar
My "grand finale" sighting in 2005; a mixed group of eight argali; note the ewe left front wearing a radio collar; one of the handy things about argali is their habit of stopping to look back, which provides an opportunity to get photos of something besides their butts as they run away

Our plan is to “game drive” in the mornings and evenings, when it’s relatively cooler (Gana said that temperatures went over 100F last July. Okaaay.). During the day we will have our meetings with the women, for which the groundwork is being laid by another of the scientists, Amgalanbaatar (which means “peace hero” in Mongolian; see above photo), who we all call “Amgaa”. He is now at the reserve and is passing the word about the meeting and the hoped-for dates. Everything is tentative because summer is when the women have the most work do to, milking animals, making aruul and airag and also felt. We don’t know how many will come, but we know that they are interested. They will need to arrange to have someone watch the children and will want to be home in time to make dinner. Gana expects that they will arrive both on horses and motorbikes.

There are about 100 families living in and around the reserve, depending on their livestock for their living. The women all know how to sew and, in fact, the country women are the repository of the skills needed to make garments like del (the long robes). The younger women who have been brought up in town don’t learn to sew anymore. The material to make a del, outer fabric, liner fabric and trim costs about $30. Some of the women also do embroidery and since that’s something I’ve done on and off for many years, I’m really looking forward to seeing their work.

Three Mongols wearing del; train station, April 2005
Three Mongols wearing del; train station, April 2005

After talking with Gana, we’ve scheduled a third day for me to get together with any of the kids who are interested in art. I’m taking some sketchpads, pens and pencils. Should be a fun way to pass a hot afternoon.

We plan to go to Ikh Nart on the 23rd and return to UB on the morning of the 28th. That will give me a day and a half to tie up loose ends. Five days and counting………..

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“Flipped” Out and Got a Flip UltraHD

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I’ve gone back and forth over whether to add some way of shooting video on the upcoming trip to Mongolia. I looked at “real” camcorders and finally decided that another $600 and hauling a third thing that is bigger than a Nikon just wasn’t in the cards. But I was very skeptical of the little Flip camcorders. Many times it’s better to skip something rather than settle for the minimum and then just be frustrated.

But I’ve watched a couple of people use them and saw how compact and light they are. Hummm. I went to Amazon over the weekend and poked around. The second generation of Flips are out and the price was too good to pass up, so, for $129 I got a Flip UltraHD and I have to say, I’m really impressed. Here’s my first ever video that I shot last night, all nine seconds of it:

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I’ve already learned one thing and that is to let the subject go all the way out of the frame before stopping the shot.

This Flip will shoot 120 minutes of video and has 8gb of built in memory. It has a flip-out USB port that plugs into your computer. I also got the rechargeable battery pack and the padded case. The case was returned today. It was a $15 rip-off. Cheesy and no way to even get the camera in it since it was effectively sewn shut.

I have no idea what kind of wildlife footage I’ll get since there’s really no zoom to speak of, but for the national Nadaam events, especially the horse-racing, and domestic animals like the horses and camels, it will be interesting to have images of moving animals to work from when I get home instead of only stills. It’ll all be a big experiment and a fun one.

Two Weeks to Departure; Getting the Official Journal Under Way

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Spent a good chunk of Friday finally coming to grips with The Journal. I need a title page and a page with a map of Mongolia on it. The backstory on all this is that from 1976, when I was mumblety years old, until 1988, I was a freelance sign painter, graphic designer, calligrapher and generally a lettering and type nut. All that was peeled away as I decided to concentrate on illustration and then easel painting. But I have always kept my lettering and type books and also the late 19th-early 20th century illustrated storybooks and historic decoration books that I had accumulated way back then, always kind of thinking and hoping that maybe some day….

Well, some day is here. I was blanking out on how to approach the journal when I realized that it was time to do what I know- the lettering and stylistic approach of the Art Nouveau and Edwardian eras. I got out a stack of books for inspiration and to jog my memory. Here’s motifs from a couple of them, which helped get the juices going:

Motif-1Motif-2

Motif-3

Then I needed to look at some lettering samples, once again to jog my memory. I have a number of old commercial handlettering handbooks. The sign painter I worked for and who taught me brush lettering used the same kind of letterforms for the basis of his sign designs:

Lettering-inspiration-1The name of my Flag Expedition is rather long and when I came upon these pages, I realized that I could use that to my advantage:Lettering-inspiration-2

Title-page-inspiration-1

I got out the tracing paper and started to scribble any ideas that occurred to me- thinking with a pencil. I liked the block in the lower middle of the page with the sheep’s head and decided to develop that further to see how it worked. This is half the sheet:

Title-page-rough

I did a rough layout next:

Title-page-1

I needed to leave a space for the sheep’s head and also started to refine and design the lettering.

title-2

This is the final layout from which I’ll do a graphite transfer onto the Journal page.

title-page-3

I based the letters on the kind of thing I always liked and have done a lot of. I let the forms vary without worrying about consistency. I don’t want to and don’t have time to agonize over this for weeks, so decided to take it to the next step and refine the letterforms.

I settled on a more rounded small serif, used the curved cross stroke for the “A”  and added the little dots in the centers of the “o”s, kind of a tribute to my old sign painter boss, since it was one of the things that made his signs instantly recognizable as being done in his shop.  I’ll post the finished page as soon as it is done.

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Packing for Mongolia And….How’s the Weather?

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Here’s the deal. Mongolia is a land-locked country where there is no/none/zero marine influence to moderate the weather. I am from a coastal Mediterranean climate (the north coast of California) where the average temperature swing is from an average of 55F in January all the way up to  65F in August. Are we weather weenies here? Yes, we are.

I  got on Weather Underground and checked the current six day forecast for Ulaanbaatar. The daytime highs and nightime lows read like this: 80, 30, 50, 32, 59, 33, 66, 42, 69, 37, 89, 44 with chances of rain every day. Not sure what it will like when I’m there, this being the first trip in the summer, but I’m going to be ready for heat, cold and rain. Thank goodness it looks like it cools down at night. I don’t sleep well when it stays warm. We pretty much always have a window open at least a little here at home.

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I’m now three and a half weeks from departure and I’ve dragged out the luggage and a lot of the stuff I’m taking. I’ve printed out my packing list. An extra camera battery and two additional memory cards are on their way. The failing MacBookPro’s battery has been replaced. New light hiking boots have arrived, along with a lightweight rain poncho. I have new, sturdy walking shoes. I’ll probably take the Teva sandals and a pair of nice shoes for when I’m in town.

David, my husband, and I went over everything that needs power this evening. The gear falls into two categories: stuff that needs juice to re-charge and stuff that runs on batteries only. I plan to do my re-charging either when I’m somewhere that has electricity or by way of an adapter that plugs into a car cigarette lighter. That will cover the MacBookPro, the iPhone and the Wolverine external hard drive, which will be my backup image storage. The iPhone can also be charged by way of the MacBook when it’s plugged in. The charger for the camera batteries and also the one for the Wolverine can be plugged in to a wall socket or the lighter adapter.

The immersion heater will only work when I can plug it in. If there’s no electricity, then I’ll use the little “stove”, which I also need to test run. A friend said that I’ll need to get a lighter, so that’s been added to the list.

I’ll also have a GPS, Tikka headlamp and a travel alarm which are battery only. I’ll carry one set of extra batteries for each.

This sounds like a lot of hassle, but once I’m on the road and organized, I have a routine that involves always charging things whenever I have the chance while I read or am at dinner or overnight.

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I dress in layers. No jeans. Too bulky. Instead I’ll have a couple of pairs of LL Bean ripstop cotton pants, plus a pair of loose pull-ons for on the plane. For town, I may take a sleeveless dress I got some years ago at Hilo Hattie’s in Hawaii in case it’s really hot and a pair of “town” pants.  I have a Patagonia fleece pullover that I found at a outdoor equipment consignment shop in Berkeley for about $30. That, a jacket and a set of smart wool thermals will keep me warm. I’ll take two pairs of heavy smart wool socks, too, just in case.

Otherwise, a couple of field t-shirts, a couple of town t-shirts, my denim shirt, which can be a light jacket, a turtleneck and a couple of tank tops. I’ve really pared down the clothes over the years. I just want to have something clean to change into if I get hot and sweaty and while I’m washing the dirty stuff. The humidity is really low in Mongolia, but the insides of the buildings in UB can be sweatboxes.

I’m debating whether or not to take my grey Mongolian del, the traditional item of clothing. It’s kind of bulky, but it makes a great robe/lounge around/throw-on-to-run-to-the-toilet garment. I’ll probably try to squeeze it in.

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Still sorting out art equipment. More on that later.

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