Life in Mongolia...

Why do all messy jobs follow me around???? From Malaysia to Vietnam to Mongolia!!! I just finished a ‘dao dao’ (headache) job in Vietnam whereby the accountant uses excel sheets to record EVERYTHING!!. Man he is such an expert in excel that I’m greatly impressed. But dem it is still messyyy… Tho so messy, the accountant is so funny that I cannot get angry with him.. that’s the best part. Ahah. He’s the only client that comes to our office… to my seat… to settle his outstanding matters.

Here I am doing another messy job where the chief accountant does not know which is her latest trial balance. The Finance Director even asked me if I can work on Saturday to help train their staff re-calculate their depreciation. I’m thinking.. you must me mad.. this is not even my job scope and I don’t even get paid working on weekends and what not in Mongolia where I don’t even get extra allowance for this trip. (We just get a Beijing trip…!! Ehehe).

I don’t know whether I’m really enjoying this trip. Yea we were all very excited to experience snow on our first day and the beautiful country side. This country is cold. The weather, the people, the building, the sceneries… No one smiles in all the pictures we saw at our client’s place. The people here just don’t give me a very friendly impression.

When we went to the Black Market, Brian’s wallet got stolen. And the best part is, after 2 minutes, one guy came to return his wallet to him .. but of cos without all the money. Thank God he distributed some of the money to be before that. The Black Market was indeed impressive.. It’s like an open air Carrefour. Everything under the sun, name it.. they have it… food, clothes, shoes, kitchenwares, cds, sunglasses, electrical appliances, cashmere, etc etc etc… its just a huggeee market. So many things yet we didn’t buy anything other than fruits. Ahah. Well, if I’m staying in Mongolia permanently than I’ll have a lot of things to buy. :P We’re all waiting for our shopping moments in Beijing and Hong Kong. :)

We went to the departmental store yesterday and again we found nothing to buy except souvenirs for our friends. And even that, we found difficulty. Ahha. What’s famous in Mongolia? Let’s see… there’s about 50 million livestock of camel, horses, cows… compared to the 2.8 million human population. So cashmere is their specialty… camel and sheep wool… but man it’s expensive. I saw a nice SMALL camel wool scarf which I am about to buy until I saw the price of 18,000 turiq. That’s like USD15. I can get a normal scarf for USD3 in Hanoi. There’s a lot of nomadic tools made from animal skins, bones, legs… not suitable to buy.. ahah.

The country side trip was good. We paid USD100 for the return trip to Telrej, the National Park for 4 of us. There’s a 300 years old monastery up the mountains. We decided to take the horse ride up to the monastery. When we made the decision, all the local men with their horses just surrounded us asking us to take their horse. Man I hate these situations. Not that I know how a good horse looks like. At last each of us took one horse. It was cheap. The 2 hour horse ride cost us each 5,000 turiq. That’s less than USD5. It was a great experience with painful butts. The scenery is beautiful to begin with.

The monastery has this er… turning thing (picture below).. don’t know what you call it… for good luck. We turned it all.. hoping that all the bad news that I’ve got during this trip will go away. In my head, I know it doesn’t work this way… haih… No matter how far I go, from Penang to KL to Vietnam to Mongolia…. what’s not solved will always be there. Can I accept this fact? I don’t know.. and I can’t think no more.

On Friday night, we went to Strings, a famous night club here. It was good live music by a Pilipino band. I had a little extra to drink. Good dancing floor. Everybody has their ‘undisclosed item’ and maybe I’ve had mine in Mongolia. I’m reminded again that each person is different and unique in their own way. We do not have the capacity to change people around us and that’s not the way to be. I’ve learnt again and again to accept things and people in my life… be it good or bad situations. And yea, its better that way… :) A friend is only a friend when we’re honest to each other.

I really miss the people in Msia now… I’ve spent USD20 talking to people in Msia for the past week over Skype… well half of it goes to my mum. But I really do miss being able to talk and pray about what’s inside. I miss all yam cha sessions. I know I may not be doing what’s best now with all that is going on. I know I need to buckle up and do certain things the way that I’ve done before. I know inside me what is right but right now I just don’t know how I can do what I need to do. It’s confusing even for me to explain. Can I just let it be? Can I… I shouldn’t…

What lies ahead for me is always uncertain to my knowledge. I guess it’s the same for many of us. We do not know the future. My predictions are always wrong… ahha. But there is a God that we can trust. Jeremiah 29:11 – For I know the plans I havefor you. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Can I just hold on to this verse and let it be?... It’s been almost 6 months since I left KL to venture into a new land of different people, culture, food, and environment. Is this what God has in mind for me? I still can’t answer that.

Life is challenging most of the time. Whatever happens along the way has built me up to who I am today and more to come. Challenges that comes build us stronger.

This is a long entry after two months. Ahah. I finally found some time in the hotel in Mongolia to blog. It’s cold outside and I don’t want to visit anymore museum or monastery. We’ve gone to see the Mongolian historical museum and yesterday the natural museum where I saw dinosaur bones for the first time.