Chess

The title of this post says that it is about chess, and the picture is, indeed, about chess, but o.my.god. I am not going to write about chess.  Just yesterday, I wrote about how my students make me happy.  Then, today, I come to my part-time job, and two classes in a row, my students manage to prove that wrong.  In the first class, I'm trying to explain something, and my students are sitting there talking to each other, joking around, and not listening whatsoever.  I told them that this behaviour was unacceptable, but they continued to do it.  I warned them that I can be either an extremely fun teacher (like what they have seen up until now), but if they disrespect me (and I feel incredibly disrespected when it's obvious that nobody is listening to me), then I can also be an absolute bitch.  Then, I go to my second class.  I start every class by reviewing the homework which I assigned in the previous lesson.  That way, we can be sure that everyone arrived at the correct answer and that they understand what we are learning.  It should take a maximum of twenty minutes.  Maximum.  This fucking class didn't do the homework.  I don't mean that a couple people didn't do the homework.  I mean that absolutely nobody did the homework.  Making them answer a question was like pulling teeth, and it took the entire fifty fucking minutes of class to review their homework.  I ended up slamming my whiteboard marker down four minutes early and walking out of class because 46 minutes of trying to be patient when I'm actually incredibly pissed off that no one did my homework is apparently all I can manage.  Thank you for listening to this rant.

The Butchers #2

If you read my post which immediately precedes this one, you would know about my childhood and my stance on meat-packing and butchers.  You would remember that I don't find it inhumane to slaughter animals (even though I do hardly eat any meat at all these days, but that has nothing to do with a moral dilemma), and that I kind of find it fascninating to stand amidst the butcher shops in a foreign country, even if I can't find the words to explain to them how I'm different from the standard gawping whitey tourist.

Some people might say that they think a cart full of innards and heads is gross, repulsive, revolting, sick.  But me, I find it fascinating.  Like I said in the last post, if it were a cart piled with human heads or kitten heads or puppy heads, I would be outraged and sickened and wouldn't be able to look, but these, these animals, they were bred right from the beginning for this purpose.  They never had any other purpose in life than a trip to the slaughterhouse so someone could have some sustenance.  And of course, as always, this trolley (anything butcher-related, really) fascinates me.  We used to always cut the tongues out of the animals we slaughtered.  Some people liked to use them as fishing bait, and some old-timers liked to boil and slice them to make sandwiches.  But as you can see, here in Mongolia, they do not cut the tongues out of the heads.  Maybe this has something to do with the fact that Mongolians like to boil an animal's head whole, and then cut chunks of meat off of it.  I'm just speculating, but maybe, in that case, just maybe the tongue might be a special treat.

ETA: Just yesterday, I was walking around downtown Ulaanbaatar, and I saw three street dogs stop in turn to sniff at something on the sidewalk.  I got a little closer to see what this something was, and it was none other than an animal skull which had been boiled and picked clean!  Only in Ulaanbaatar can you find animal skulls laying around on the sidewalk and nobody looks twice because they don't see anything abnormal about that.

The Butchers

Growing up, my family owned a small meat-packing plant.  We did it all in our meat-packing plant: slaughtering, processing, and selling retail and wholesale meat.  Since we didn't have much money, we couldn't afford babysitters, which meant that my brothers and I got to spend almost all of our spare time at the meat packing plant.  My personal favourite part of the meat-packing plant was the kill floor.  If my parents were ever uncertain of where I was, they would know to go look for me at the kill floor, and sure enough, ever time, they would find me, mouth agape, as our employees slaughtered beef after beef after beef.  You would think that this kind of upbringing would have scarred me for life, turned me off of eating meat, or turned me into some kind of sadistic human being, but none of that is true.  It just developed in me an understanding of where meat comes from, that if you want to enjoy the bacon at Sunday brunch, someone has to slaughter Piglet.  I also actually really like meat (although I rarely eat it these days).  When I was young, I knew from the moment the animal arrived at our meat packing plant until the moment it touched our dinner table exactly who had handled it and how it had been handled.  I had no guilty conscious, because I knew we didn't needlessly torture animals (we just did what we needed to do so all of our customers could enjoy their delicious ribeyes), and I had no worries about the health of the animals which were now our dinner, as my dad knew a lot about meat, and if he felt that it was not a good quality, he would either let that specific customer know that he thought that the cow they had brought in would not yield quality beef or (in one exceptional circumstance) did his best to have the meat condemned when he found that a 4H calf which had probably been sick at 4H time had likely been doctored to not appear sick, but he knew as soon as he saw the meat that there was a problem.  Of course, the vet wouldn't hear of condemning this calf.  All I could think was "Thank God that's not going to end up on our table, then" because, for however much I respect the expertise of a doctor or vet, when it comes to all things meat, my dad's word really is gospel.  And as far as growing up watching cows being slaughtered, no it did not turn me into a sadistic human being.  Yes, when I was a child, I thought, "How cool-- all the other kids also enjoy 'Lamb Chops Play Along'!"; I just didn't realise that they were watching TV, and I was watching something totally different.  And truth be told, if I saw a beheaded cat or puppy, I would be outraged, whereas the carcass of a cow, sheep, pig, buffalo, etc doesn't even move me at all.

I've got to admit, I feel like a terrible daughter, that when I reached a certain age, I refused to work at our meat packing plant.  Kids called me "meat bitch".  That was uncool.  But even so, now, when I am in foreign countries and I see foreign butchers, I have to stop and linger and watch for a bit.  I seldom take pictures because one thing that is universal for butchers is that they don't seem to like having their pictures taken.  I can understand.  If, when we had our meat-packing plant, a crowd of Japanese tourists had burst in and started snapping pictures of me as I worked with my bloody apron and bloody hands, I would have been so upset.  So yeah, I know where butchers are coming from when they tell me to put my camera away, and I rarely have the linguistic skills to explain to them that this is what my family used to do for a living as well.  Once, in Jordan, I was able to explain it to a butcher whose photo I had just taken (I had been taking an Arabic class), and his demeanor towards me immediately changed.  Suddenly, I was just like him, and not just an overprivileged white tourists.  I guess that is a butcher's biggest problem with having their photo taken.  Not only do they not enjoy being captured on film smeared with blood, but they also take pride in their work and they don't want it belittled.  They know that if you are taking their photo, it's likely not so you can show your family and friends back home what skill and care they put into their job.  They know that your reasons for taking their photos are the same types of reasons that someone will exclaim, "This food is so gross! You have to try some!"

It saddens me a bit that I can't explain to foreign butchers that, for me, my interest in their work is very different from that of the typical tourist.  When I pass by a foreign butcher, I'm filled with nostalgia as memories from my childhood come flooding back to me.  Yes, even though the meat on offer in butcher shops in foreign countries is often very different from what we processed in Canada (in Mongolia, it's anything from beef, sheep, and goat to horse, camel, and yak), it's the slabs of meat and tubs of discarded bones and bloody aprons that remind me the most of my childhood, and it makes me sad to have (probably) disappointed my parents so much when I decided I didn't want to work in our meat-packing plant and it also makes me miss my family immensely.

This Little Piggy

This little piggy went to the market and was never seen or heard from again.  If you have any information regarding his whereabouts, please notify the police or call the TIPS Hotline, as his family are all very worried, at home, and eagerly awaiting their roast beef.

The Buskers

They may not look like much to you, but they are two of the most amazing buskers I have ever seen in my life.  And I saw them in Naran Tull (Ulaanbaatar's black market), of all places!  Most of the time, I'm able to walk right past a busker, but these two stopped me in my tracks.  And held my attention.  Their singing was mesmerizing.  And it was all a capella.  I don't know much about singing, or about music in general, but I thing what they were doing was throat singing.  Whatever it was, it was truly beautiful.  They deserved so much more than the 200 Tugrug (less than 20cents) which I put in their box, but I have myself on a strict budget these days.