Back in October, I received a television that one of my CPs had lying around. I couldn’t figure out how to hook up the cable that worked as my antenna, so the TV became a shelf for things on my table. The week before the Olympics were scheduled to start, I made sure to hook that baby up – I may have sketchy reception that skips like a scratched CD every time the clouds get bad, not to mention serious rain storms, but I have a connection to London.
Step 1: success
Step 2: Pump up your team spirit
As I am the only American for miles, I had to make my own cheering section. Nothing I own said, “I’m cheering for Team USA, obviously.” No American flags, nothing overwhelmingly American about my clothes except the names on the tags (how useful), and therefore I felt a little lacking in team spirit. Not to worry, I made my own American flags:
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| Boom |
Step 2: success
Step 3: Watch the Opening Ceremony LIVE! AS IT HAPPENS!! in bits and pieces the next day
The day before the Opening Ceremony, I had the TV on all day so I could find out when and which Mongolian stations would be broadcasting the ceremony. They repeatedly said 4am which made sense to me because that meant 9pm London time and the Opening Ceremony usually happens when it’s dark out. So I went to bed nice and early with an alarm set for 3:55am – I am nothing if not dedicated. 4am rolls around and every single station was bluescreened. Mongolia doesn’t even have the infomercial culture so my efforts were foiled by silly Mongolians who don’t stay up to all hours of the night watching stupid television. How rude. The next day I got up bright and early in order to not miss the showing of the Ceremony, only to find morning talk shows on every station. The first broadcast I found was at 11am and I’m pretty sure I missed a lot of the beginning. I was sad that my French wasn’t better because the Mongolian announcers were silent during the French parts and talked through the English. This is when the true nature of my relationship with Mongolian television was revealed: I spend a lot of time calling the broadcasters names and yelling at them. C’est la vie.
Step 3: fail
Step 4: Go to Erdenet to watch the swimming events and commentary in English via the internet
I hatched a brilliant plan in June: I’d go to Erdenet for the first week of the Olympics aka during the swimming events, wash my laundry over and over in my friend’s washing machine, and watch the Olympics streaming online on his fancy TV with his fancy internet. First, I got a call from PC saying they were coming to check my new yard and family to make sure it they complied with PC housing standards…on the Wednesday of the first week of the Games. It seemed silly to go into Erdenet for a couple days, go home for the housing check, go back to Erdenet to finish the events, then go back home all in the span of a week. I settled in to watch them at home in the hopes that Michael Phelps was still a big deal here even if water sports aren’t. At 5pm every day, one station would show the prelim heats live but that was it. No semifinals or finals to watch the next morning because the mornings were filled with talk shows and news.
I finally got in to Erdenet on Wednesday only to learn that my friend had to go to UB that week so the internet in his apartment would be gone. I installed a Windows Update a few months back and now my computer won’t connect to WiFi networks so Plan B was out. I found one computer in one internet café with all the necessary plug-ins installed and with internet fast enough to slowly work through the videos on the official IOC youtube channel, but those videos took forever to load so I only got through about half of them. The upside of watching the events in public when nobody else could see what I was doing was that people would give me very strange looks when I got stressed about the races. Oh what they must have thought as part of my soul died watching Michael lose the 200 fly.
Step 4: partial failure
Step 5: Watch a wide variety of events judo, boxing, judo and more judo on Mongolian TV
The Mongolian Olympic team is small – less than 30 people. I understand that Mongolians want to watch their countrymen and women compete more than other events without Mongolians. What I don’t understand is why Mongolians only compete in events that I couldn’t give two figs about. I tried watching judo, but since I didn’t understand the commentary it was basically background noise until something different came on a different channel. Two out of the five stations I get will sometimes play things other than Mongolian sports (basketball, table tennis, volleyball, beach volleyball a couple times, and one midnight showing of synchronized swimming) but the other three can be guaranteed to be showing either something other than the Olympics or judo, archery, and/or boxing. Now that judo and archery are over, the variety is getting better. As type this, I am hiding under my mosquito net in my ger which both keeps the horrible flies away and makes the already fuzzy quality of the TV worse and watching the men’s decathlon on said fuzzy TV. I may not see a single gymnast during these two weeks, but at least I can understand this without help.
Step 5: initially a failure but getting better
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