Eating makes one happy

Last week was a testing one, where our babysitter had to take a whole 4 days off, which basically meant the whole week. The timely arrival of my mum meant that she could instantly become babysitter for 5 days which was such a blessing however it meant for a week we lived a proper nomadic life where early mornings, food preparation, bottle cleaning, nappy changing, spare clothes packing, walker folding and potty cleaning jobs were all done at super fast speed at a god forbidden hour in the mornings so we can take little Arvis to his granny's before work. And the end of the day I'll walk over to mum and dad's, or stop by the old office for some extra work, then dinner, talks and more packing before bundling little Arvis off to home in the dead of the night while he sleeps. After 4 days of this happening, plus a huge, impromtu family gatherng involving more washing cleaning, packing and serving, it was getting pretty tiring.

During all this I decided to go on a little diet because having no babysitter meant I wasn't able to exercise after work or in the evening because of the exhaustion, so cutting out on food was the best solution, or so I thought. I even went as far as to record all the things that I ate and any activity that I did. Taking 208 stairs to the 9th floor in the morning and after lunch was to my mind a small victory, however I was not prepared for the lack of food.

I had always suspected and said that I cannot do diet, I prefer to exercise and eat my chocolate. This I filly accept now. The exhaustion, sleepiness, irritability, lack of concentration is not worth the effort of trying to lose or even maintain one's weight. A cup of cup-a-soup is not enough for lunch or for snack if it doesn't have a sweet taste that I can chew or crunch on. Sunflower seeds do not keep hunger at bay, it only makes me wait for the next thing that'll pass my lips. And drinking hot water with a slice of lemon is great in the morning, but when you're on your fifth already and it's not even 11 am, you're most definetley still hungry.

Having no energy when you get home in the evening is the worst. There' so much to do, clean, e-mails to write, bills to pay and a husband to pay attentions to. You even forget to have a  shower because you're so tired. Coffee only makes you jittery and sweat and you no longer feel any sense of emotion-ok this is a bit exaggerated, but it seriously felt like the colour was drained from everything that I was seeing.

Then I finally realised and accepted that I enjoy food. Eating what I want and when I want it makes me happy. And if you've managed to learn to some degree to eat in moderation and have a tiny bit of self control you're ok, I promise. Eating makes me happy. It gives me energy. And it lets me exercise. After just 4 days of feeling miserable I suddenly decided to let the invisible strap go, and then I went to two very intense sessions of Pilates on the Thursday and Friday. I couldn't feel better! I ate pizza that Friday night and didn't feel bad, just very happy indeed.
Screw diets, I want some chocolate and look like this too!

Office Life

I’ve now been employed by a highly reputable foreign company in UB for the last four weeks, doing a 20 hour week, part-time translation work. Rejoining the work force has been great, and although I applied for and accepted a job well below my previous positions and capacity voluntarily, there is still that feeling of being underused but also being pushed forward.

Let me expand. Translation work is boring if you have no self interest in the job - and it is not going to benefit you in anyway by furthering your intellect or even just amusing you. But I’ve convinced myself that despite having had more managerial roles in the post, I had missed out on the crucial and basic skills one has to gain. Like typing, translating, concentration and submission. Learning the basics is quite grounding for someone who’s in danger of being a little too confident.

However, seeing the managers of departments and others in a slightly senior role than me I naturally feel unnoticed, wasted and, let’s face it, unimportant. The first time I felt like was like looking through the window of a bakery when on a diet-quite sad really. But now there is that knowing nod inside and an invisible pat on my head (‘don’t worry, you’ll get to eat the cake, but after you’ve lost the baby fat’).

Body issues aside, something else that I noticed is the gender inequality and the general inequality in the office. Trust a woman to reference the 3 classic female causes of today’s politics consecutively in my last 3 blog posts right? (Child care, healthcare, gender issues-but I believe one should talk about what one doesn’t know so they learn, write about what one does know).

For a foreign company with overseas operations it’s generally the norm to send male executive types to oversea and manage various departments, with local subordinates. In fact, it has become such a common establishment in Mongolia today that seeing one (female) Mongolian in charge of a department at my current company was refreshing (albeit she was heading up the typical female department of HR).

Why the bipolarity then? It feels almost like a modern equivalent of a 50s office situation, minus the cool Mad Men type attire and cigarettes. Study after study has shown that women tend to be better leaders and managers, if we only get over our inability to speak up and be aggressive, or that pesky little nature’s issue of child bearing duties. The typical Asian response would be that women are easier to work with (read: submissive and easily controlled) or the typical developing country based company response would be that they need someone with experience (read: one of their own and unlikely to cheat the company). I realize that there are many other sides to my above generalizations but the effort to overcome this typical-ness is frustratingly little.

Lower positions of clerk, translators and assistants are predominantly female, and funnily (and maybe saddeningly enough) the IT predominantly male so that the female assistant will at some point have to ask for help about her darn printer.

And what’s more interesting to observe is the fact that departments, different levels of position do not mix at lunch time, in the kitchen or even at after work functions. For a foreign company it can be understandable that the language can be a slight barrier to vertical socializing for some employees but even the competent English speakers tend to segregate themselves and run with their pack. This may be an age old issue that has been discussed, ranted and blogged about from a long time ago by millions of females out there. But considering I’m from a predominantly liberal, small scale and not necessarily a profit seeking professional background I find this setup alienating. How will one learn, gain experience and more understanding if one only sticks to their own department/work/recipe? Is the higher plan to keep the ants working so they can be wielded in one profit margin smashing direction or is it that there is no higher plan, just the reality of what employment is like in Mongolia today?

Where are the good doctors?

Recently my son was quite ill. He had a fever of 39.7 degrees, diarrhoea and irritability that bordered on the bipolar, where one minute he was trying his best and the next he was screaming at the top of his lungs with streams of tears down his cheeks. When your child is sick, there is no other feeling like it. The feeling of helplessness and desperation and exhaustion was all I had, and my transformation of a generally happy-go-lucky type mum into a suspicious-lioness-protecting-its-cub-from-anything-that-moves took place.
After the second day of squirting baby paracetamol into Arvis' mouth and not seeing much improvement we decided to see the doctor. This was a mission because we never really registered him with any doctor in Mongolia since he arrived. And here are the problems with trying to get treatment here.

Like the GP system in the UK, everyone must register with their local district and khoroo to qualify for health, education, social and council services. We;re not registered at the the place we're living in becuase it doesn't belong to us and also because moving isn't just about packing up and leaving, then notifying your bank, tax office and maybe your magazine subscription. Because there's a monster of a citizen's databse that has everyone's infomration, enytime the slightest change happens you have to physically get your self out to the Citizen's Registration Centre, queue for hours on end and then be declared 'moved.' But that's the not the end, you then have to go to the disctrict and khoroo that you've moved to so that you can be registered with them and their services but only after you visited your previous khoroo to let them know that you're no longer in need of their services. All in all, we pay taxes so that we can run our own errands whilst the civil servants sit and watch you queue. This is just the tip of the iceberg though and I've diverted my ramble a bit.

Because of this problem of our's my mum, who used to be considered one of the best doctors in the city in her heyday, put us in touch with a paedetriction at her old hospital. She's the best paedatricion apparently and my mum asked her to see Arvis if he needs it. You have to know people to get the best services you can possibly get and if that fails, know someone who knows a lot of people. I mean good in two basic meanings-capable and trustworthy. There are shortages of these good people-doctors/teachers/engineers/whatever that you need, those with the resources usually hog their time and their lack of accesibility to those with less financial means or less conncted creates a truly divided society. And as Mongolians say, a knife has two edges, eventually even those good people become bad as their demand increases their price or worse reduces their value (as in they become moneymakers foremost).

Our paedatrician was not working privately, but remained in the state hospital, and although she was capable I had no trust. At that point I did not trust many people, and was always skeptical of doctors who prescribed anti-biotics as the first choice of medicine. But we were despearte and after two days of giving him the meds he was still not better. I decided it was time to start calling around and asking 'Where are the good doctors?'

A good friend of mine suggested a doctor she takes her daughter to and by then we both thought a private doctor will be better than the state docotr-why? Because we're at least paying the price of their consultation and time, rather than depending on their goodwill. And the doctor was pretty good because she conducted a very thorough examination in a very child friendly and bright clinic, and said that she doesn't want to rpescribe anything as he's in no real danger, just carry on with the paracetamol and stop the anti-biotics because it may be poisoning him more than anything. Perhaps it was the toys and bright wallpaper, perhaps it was hearing that he will be ok, or perhaps it was because I had a feeling about her. Whatever happened, I was immediately put to rest and felt so much lighter. When it comes to illnesses and your child you never know what is the right thing to do, except to look for a recommended doctor and trust in your instinct, then stick to them when you find them! You can never tell if a doctor is good (in both senses) or not for sure, be it in Mongolia or elsewhere in the world, and the scary thing is to put your trust in them. I know that we'll all need doctors at some point, no matter how healthy a lifestyle we live, and when we do, I hope their goodwill hasn't run out.

Childcare is a B****

I recently went back to work, after having spent some nine months being the primary caregiver to my little Arvis, because it felt like now I can tear myself away from him for a little bit and also because I was getting restless. Being quite lucky, I managed to land the perfect job, at least for the time being. 20 hours a week, three times a day from the office-and my office is pretty swish and right in the centre of town. It feels great to leave for work in the morning with my husband, knowing that I’ll be back by 6pm, or later should I wish to meet up with friends and then be home for two days of the week to play with my little boy, and do some baking. Couldn’t be happier. What’s more, meeting new people, making new friends, learning new things and accomplishing tasks and getting things done feels so invigorating, no matter how small. I know that this will only continue for the summer but it’s a great way to get back into gear and ready myself for the impending further study.

It all sounds perfect but it wouldn’t if there was no reliable babysitter, someone I can trust completely and who I know will be good to my son. Again, we’re lucky it worked out great but it got me thinking about  how the other young parents do it in Mongolia. It seems, from speaking to many people with children (I think people with young children naturally get drawn to one another!) that their parents (grandparents) perform a huge chunk of the childcare when the parents decide to get back to work or in a lot of cases in recent years, to study. In Arvis’ case though both of his grandparents are unable to do that both two very different reasons-one grandma’s very elderly and needs a lot of care herself and the other set is in their prime and working away.

Paid hourly babysitting is an alien thought in Mongolia because of the abundance of relatives and grandparents, and also because of a lack of trust in people and a even more so a lack of integrity in the carers. I know of several agencies training babysitter but they’re mostly for permanent and full time carers rather than services which you call in an emergency and still be at peace.

Once the kid gets old enough they’ll inevitable be sent to nurseries and kindergartens, some even to nurseries that care from Monday to Friday-a social conditioning and infrastructure that is no doubt a residual Soviet system-and they are not at all great. There’s the problem of unreliable care (food, environment, discipline tactics from medieval times) and then the issue of logistics. I honestly have no idea how some people deal with it. A very good friend of mine leaves her daughter with her mother-in-law and her own mother when she’s able to take time off her work. I think it requires a lot of energy to keep lugging a child around as well as leaving them behind, then going home to take care of house business, never mind personal business.

There are good nurseries out there, ones with great facilities, good food and abundant supervision, and the children who attend them tend not to get ill very easily-is it that it’s more clean or that their home environment is healthy? And is that in any way related to socio-economic background? Inevitably, it all comes down to affordability. Not everyone can afford to send their children to these great places, and they are a dime a dozen. Why aren’t more nurseries being built and run this way? The biggest reason it seems is that there is no physical space left in UB for the infrastructure. Thousands of people move to the city every year in search of a better life-employment, housing, education, opportunities. Buildings containing banks, shops, mining projects and health spas are being erected in every nook and cranny, and they are being filled by jobs for the thousands of newly graduated young Mongolians, with dreams to leave their country for an even better life. But why is child care being left behind? Why is the concept of raising your children in a good environment, nearby and without risks such an separate issue for our development leaders today? Surely it’s all tied up together?

Nurseries in the office building, or within the office if they’re accommodating enough, or one nearby a concentrated amount of offices in the city…it’s all possible with enough planning and a genuine concern for this growing trend of leaving your children behind or resorting to less than happy situation. I only hope that it’s not too late for development to keep striding forward with social issues holding its hands.

This was of course a non-issue for me a year ago because how we raise our children in Mongolia was not our main cause for concern, or what we’re offered as choice for child care. I never want to  burden my parents or aunts and uncles and distant relatives with child care but if I had no choice, no money, no Baljka (our lovely nanny) our situation becomes the normative situation. Here’s our lovely twosome: