Random stuff

For the life of me, I can't figure out why someone is blasting Mongolian ballads. I stuck my head out the window to see if there was some kind of event, or restaurant nearby, but I can't see anything. All I know is that that music is loud.

I find it weird that I can recognize some Mongolian songs. I don't know them or understand them, but I recognize the tunes.

Ingrid emailed and we are going to the countryside on May 11, which makes me happy. It'll give us extra time to plan. Have to call Doki today to tell her about that.

I'm going to interview a man connected with a German project here at 4:00 this afternoon.

( Kinnie Starr )

(no subject)

Today I took my camera with me and took lots of good photos of people. I like to photograph old people and children, but I also got some photos of some army guys.

I read the newspaper and found out that there is going to be an international conference here in June. The conference will be for new or recently formed democracies.

People invited include Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Ted Turner, Mikhail Gorbachev, Vaclav Havel and Megawati, president of Indonesia.

I think that Megawati needs to clean up her own country before she goes touring around. I also think she needs to stop touring because she already spends far too much money doing that and her nation could benefit from her being at home.

Anyway, I hope that I can get a glimpse of this people when they're here.

(no subject)

I interviewed Muller, a German co-operator today.I learned a lot. He told me that I ask tough questions. I take that as a compliment.
On the way home, I stopped and watched some men play pool. They put the billiard tables outside here. I think that's really cool.

I went to the Internet cafe to see if any of the American students were there. Kate was there. I asked her what she is doing her independent study project on. She's doing it on the takhi horses. She will be working with an Austrian researcher to study the horses. How very cool.

She told me that Dan's project is 2 weeks of intensive meditation with lamas. He is going to go into a cave and meditate. He will also be interviewing various lamas. I am very envious.

Yesterday I felt like I was tripping out as I watched tv. I watched a few minutes of Spiderman in Russian, then something with Tom Hanks speaking Chinese, and then I had to turn the tv off because it was blowing my mind.

Pros and cons of being a journalist

Pro
-Ability to research and find information
-Ability to write on demand
-ability to phone or approach anyone without feeling shy
-ability to ask questions
-ability to handle any sort of interview, or unpredictable situation
-tendency to become even more observant

Cons
-extreme impatience
- a tendency to call or "harass" people, until they give you an answer you want (friends can get annoyed when you keep calling them until you get hold of them)
-fear of missing deadlines
-annoyance when you can't find a fact or answer to a question
-tendency to examine the layout and typos in everything you read



Neutral-
-the tendency to want to turn anything into a story
-extreme curiousity
-the feeling that you wish that you could have a press pass or special privilege to attend an event
-the feeling that you don't want to leave your house without a camera or a notebook
-the tendency to ask a lot of questions