So we know this guy, Beegii (pronounced "Biggie"), who is a driver that Jaspal became friendly with after once riding in his cab (again, if you know Jaspal, this does not sound odd). Jaspal asked him to drive to the airport to pick me up, so he was the first Mongolian person I met here.
He's very friendly and jolly and loves to ask questions that poor Jaspal has to translate. He's come to our aid before when we needed a native Mongolian speaker to help a friend sort out a money issue (a weaselly driver who wanted more money than he was owed).
But...
There's something a bit odd about him. Could be the fact that he calls at least once a day (sometimes three times an hour) for no real reason. Maybe because whenever we try to hire him to drive us somewhere, he insists on coming over and hanging out in order to discuss the deal, but he generally manages to be unavailable to drive us (we don't quite know why he can't just tell us over the phone). Also perhaps his obsession with documenting our presence. When MB & K were here, he took numerous photos of us all together, and he once recorded Sunmin and I singing on his cellphone. Last night he brought his video camera and filmed us looking through guidebooks and drinking tea.
Weird. Now we're waiting to see if he can drive us to Bayankhongor. He's supposed to let us know by 1:00, which is in 8 minutes. Seems doubtful.
On a totally unrelated note, BBC News is doing a series of articles called "Partition: 60 Years On" that is really interesting. Check it out.
2 comments:
That does seem hecka weird, really weird. But JSS invites that kind of weirdness occasionally.
Not odd at all that Jaspal would make friends with a cab driver. Though the dude himself does sound quite odd.
I've also been reading the Partition articles on the BBC - quite interesting. Happy Belated Indian Independence Day, by the way.
And I have to say, I love K's hat in that photo!
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