20

9.6.07
Dinner with the bigwigs pt 1

Jaama was at the other end of the table, talking with a former member of parliament.

Someone says, I was sitting here at the Asia Foundation looking at a grant proposal to translate the Perry Mason series into Mongolian—
--look at how the Russians did it, Jaama protested, it really taught them something, the People’s court
--and look at what has failed since then in Mongolia: the judiciary system, she added
--there is no mass identity in America but mainstream media, said Jaamal, sinc it can no longer be found by a common region, a common language, or a common religion.

I said that the most important thing I heard in university was “culture is as real as a rock.” Jamaa nodded empatically when I said this. She said about Geoffrey Sachs that she translated for him and the president of Mongolia at that time, to whom she was foreign affairs advisor, Yes you can use a parachute when you jump from the plane and all that—
--Geoffrey Sachs went skydiving in Mongolia? Or is that a metaphor?
--Metaphor.
--Oh.

She lent me a menthol cigarette. You cannot use the same theory for another nation, you’re missing the key point which is culture—of all the nations that were under Soviet rule Mongolia is the only one of *nomadic* people. It’s completely different.
Now Jamaa is working on gender law, but she was representative for Mongolia in East Timor, in Cambodia, in…

She says, UB was not made to suddenly accommodate a million country dwellers who had not sense of urban life. The traffic is horrible here, and all the traffic directors are rural, they have bad training. It’s a mess.