Road Kill takes on a whole new meaning

Common sense dictates that buying fish on the side of a road, in a landlocked country, in the blustery grey of winter,

when all rivers and lakes are turgidly frozen,

where the road is riddled with holes of indeterminate utility and with forlorn, hungry dogs

common sense would suggest this purchase is not a good idea.

But there is nothing common about Mongolia, and every kind of delicious about smoked highway fishes.

Canine Consumption

Apparently eating dog is believed to clear the lungs. Wouldn't it be healthier to just go green? I don't know about other pooches, but ours is probably not very tasty or nutritious. Though P appears to be going in for a nice piece of neck fat here.

It's not that I look for dead animals

but they seem to pop up a lot on UB's topology.

When we first arrived, we were told that once the snow melts we'd find a lot of frozen animal corpses on the sidewalks that just didn't make it during the winter months. (there are dozens of stray dogs in the city - some of them survive, some don't, some make it to the meat markets and dumpling shops)

The word 'melt' connotes say, 80 degrees or above. Not -15 as it was yesterday on our walk along the UB river (see: LA river) or when I caught a glimpse of what I thought was a frozen cat.

It was two puppies. Two furry, frosty darling little bodies curled up next to one another covered in a very thin layer of snow. Their eyes shut as if they'd just fallen asleep. As upset as I was, Patrick's suggestion to bring them home with us to see if they defrosted and come back to life actually made me pause to think, possibly?

My argument to him, 'if we'd brought them home already then we wouldn't have to worry about them freezing OR defrosting' did not carry much ice (it's too cold for liquids here).

I don't know what the parable of this story is, but the image has stuck with me. Sort of like those Sarah Machlaclan tv ads with all the cute animals and her braying a sad tune, you just want to change the channel. We'll have to brace ourselves for a lot more scenes of what will probably turn out to be Animal Kingdom CSI as the warmer months roll around.

Needless to say, there are no accompanying pics to this post. I think the goat heads are enough for one month.

Statues in and around UB

Kemal Ataturk. Pure steel Chinggis Khan.



Have you seen two people who have done so much look so curmudgeonly?


Maybe if I stand very still, and look very serious...

Obligatory Lenin. In front of the UB hotel which has the Taj Mahal Indian Restaurant. Again, globlization rules.

Our favorite Chiggis Khan iteration yet.

Oh, Louis!

Here's what was really missing from the list of necessities, an LV store. On the other side is Emporio Armani and Enzo Anglioni. Contrast this site with the picture of the severed goat heads on the ground.

Central

Sukhbatar Square, a very conical christmas tree, Sukhbatar riding his horse to victory and parliament building behind him. One of the grander sites in UB, surrounded by the Opera House, museums, mutton, and some schmancy high rises.

I found it interesting that in the book I'm reading about Chingis Khan, Mongolians during the conquering the world period believed the head was the home, or center of the soul. Hitting someone on the head, or tattoing someone's crimes on the forehead was verboten. So seeing these goat heads piled up behind a local meat/fruit/vegetable market struck me.

RiverSounds never sounded so good

There's a club near our apt compound called Riversounds, which we finally made it to this Friday night after a delightful meal of 'chicken sandth' at Saffron Bistro.

After hearing a handful of some pretty good Russian pop songs and ballads, to which almost everyone except us knew the words to, we got thrown a bone when Billy Joel's Uptown Girl came on. At first, we weren't sure if we had drank too much and had forgotten the words, but then we realized the lead singer, who was really, really good, couldn't read the lyrics. He'd brought them up on stage with him and the lighting made it difficult to nail 'she never had a backstreet guy, her mother never told her why' OOH OH OOOOH OH OH OH OOOOOOH OH OHO ! In any case, Mongolians know how to partay - mixing it up with a cashmere fashion show and cashmere clothing raffle around midnight - even as were leaving at 2 am, people were just getting their night started. I'm beginning to see the parallels between Greeks and Mongolians.

Hey Cowboy, what's cookin?

Patrick's wishes came true and he got to ride a Mongolian horse for the first time last weekend. For $1.50 he got to ride for 5 minutes as the locals looked on with great interest.

We learned a new Mongolian word, 'chu'! which means go! go! wasn't very effective as the horse seemed disillusioned with the pony show. In any case, more pictures of Patrick horseback riding are not far off.

In Case we missed the East Coast....

These bags, along with Jay Z's 'New York' anthem are ubiquitous. If we ever doubted the reach of the Big Apple, these plastic totes would bring tears to Thomas Friedman's eyes.