The Cookie guy

My manhood and my self esteem have gone to bits… what is worse, I doubt that it can be repaired.

It all started last autumn when Nadia told me that it is easy to remember my name since they sell a type of cookie called “Orjan” in Ulaanbaatar, and hence, I was the “Cookie guy”. I suppose I could live with this. Sure “Cookie guy” might not be the toughest of nicknames but what the heck, the people in the Gobi have probably not heard of Orjan cookies. Then, I realized that a few of the herders seemed amused at my nice Chinese motorbike. Turned out that it’s a “girl’s bike” according to Mongolian men… Damn it. Well, that got sorted out when we got the new dirt bike.

So, in February, Nadia dropped the bomb; Orjan is not a type of cookie… it literally means “cookie” in Mongolian… What are the odds? I had never considered moving to Mongolia–I mean it is a very nice country and all, but before I met Tom, Mongolia had never crossed my mind as a place where I might live. But even so, I moved abroad and obviously, my name has to mean something in the new country… and not something cool like “slick” or “tiger” or… whatever. Nope, it means “cookie”.

My closest neighbor at the first trap camp, Battur, came visiting at least once every week. We drank tea, looked at pictures and tried to have a conversation, but that didn’t work very well. Every time Battur saw Friday (my domestic cat) he said “baba”. I could tell from his body language that “baba” meant something bad but I had never heard the word before and didn’t find it in the dictionary. So when Bayara was in Base Camp in early April I asked what “baba” meant and explained how I had heard it. Bayara laughed and told me that “baba” is baby-language and means “bad”… baby-language??… Hi, my name is Cookie, I used to drive a girl’s motorbike and the locals talk to me in baby language… Something has to be done…

My current plan is to trade the dirt bike for a Chopper, grow long hair and keep it in a pony-tail, do some base jumping from the mountain peaks and start smoking. That’s dangerous. Maybe I should get some tattoos too… yup, a couple of tattoos can’t hurt.