Missing cables and software that drive you crazy
N 47°55'513'' E 106°55'559''
Day: 10-11
Sunrise:
05:30 h/05:32 h
Sunset:
8:26 pm/20:24 pm
Temperature – Day (maximum):
31 °C
Temperature – day (minimum):
22 °C
Temperature – Night:
20 °C
Latitude:
47°55’513”
Longitude:
106°55’559”
Maximum height:
1315 m above sea level
After a rainy night, the clouds clear around midday. Not much is happening today. We finally get a good night’s sleep. After a delicious pancake breakfast, I check the charge status of the energy box. Then I try to charge the Durabook from 12 volts to 230 volts via the energy converter. Unfortunately, the converter gets extremely hot after a short time. Then I am looking for the 12 volt power supply for the notebook. Getting more and more nervous, I empty every pocket, but the power supply isn’t there. “Either I forgot the power adapter in the rush of packing or I never had one,” I say in frustration. “What does that mean?” Tanja wants to know. “In the worst case scenario, we won’t be able to use the new laptop during the expedition.” “Does that mean we can’t do live coverage?” “If we can’t load the device, the laptop can’t be used,” I reply, feeling the sweat beading on my forehead. I feverishly think about how we can solve the problem. Fortunately, we still have a spare computer with us. It can definitely be used and I also have a 12 volt power supply for it. Nevertheless, I don’t give up and call Mr. Einetter from Gesat to ask him to send me such a power supply unit. “UPS charges €160 for this. Do you have any other ideas?” asks Mr. Einetter, one of the company’s bosses. “If you send the power supply unit by post, it should actually arrive,” I hope, and we agree that Mr. Einetter will send it straight to Erdenet to Sara’s sister.
I’m busy all day because of the packing and searching. Tanja is on a public internet to publish some pictures on facebook. “Are there the right signatures under the pictures?” she asks later. “What a question,” I reply confidently and want to show her. But what we see now gives us another fright. Photoshop has hung up in such a way that it can no longer be activated and the image archive program has lost all the captions and other data I have entered so far. I try to find the error until 1:00 a.m. without success. The next day I call Germany again to find the error with the software distributor. Without success. In the meantime, Tanja has caught a bad cold. I go into town with Tagi to find an energy converter from 12 volts to 230 volts. It takes us half a day to find a converter from China in a motorcycle store that also sells solar panels. Later tests show that the Durabook’s power supply hums extremely when I connect it to the Chinese converter. Measurements with my voltmeter show that the output is not 230 volts, but 270 volts. I exchange the part and buy one for just under €100. Now it works. This means that the laptop can also be used in the steppe. After several expensive and long phone calls to Germany with my cell phone, I have to learn that the image archiving software cannot save media data from raw images. This means that all the work done so far has been ruined. Ohhhhh my god, the software can drive you crazy!!! I long for the internet-free time, the time when I still wrote with a fountain pen and inkwell on old Indian paper. Since we no longer take photos on slides but store everything digitally, such an archiving program has become enormously important. But what’s the point if it doesn’t work as it should? I set to work again to get everything up and running before the start of the expedition, mainly the extensive and sometimes faulty software. At the same time, I go to the black market with Tagi to buy the necessary and missing 12 volt plugs. Even the road to the black market is so dusty that there are no words for it. The cars struggle over the gravel and through the clay. People swarm across the runway, unfinished or under construction high-rise buildings line the way. It honks and talks in confusion. The gate to the black market is a hole in a concrete wall. Beggars and very poor people sit on the dirty ground by an old house wall. Her lips are torn open by the sun, her eyes clouded. “Take care of your camera,” whispers Tagi. We work our way through the crowd. Traders offer their wares to the left and right of the path. Old and used shoes, furniture, tools, car parts, horse stuff, cheapest Chinese scrap, electrical appliances of all kinds. There is simply everything, but mostly without quality.
I invite Tagi to dinner in a restaurant. It tastes terrible and is far too fatty for my taste. Mongolians love fat. The fatter the better. They need it for the harsh winter. However, I don’t want to know what her cholesterol level says. We sit at a greasy table, drinking warm Coke. Around me it smacks with relish and quite loudly. The food culture here is completely, utterly different.
Because my beard has already taken on some serious wild growth, we are looking for a long-hair shaver. I didn’t take it with me from home because the power supply unit was too heavy. Undoubtedly a mistake. These things are clunky, heavy and big. I buy one of these things, which is called Uslimaschin here, for €7. “I wonder how long it will last?”
On the last evening before we leave for Erdenet, we are still packing. With all the packages that had arrived and our equipment, we estimated around 350 kilograms.
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