Quizzical

Last night was the weekly quiz at Dave's Place. Altaa and I arrived before the quiz started but the team I had been invited to be on was already oversubscribed with five members by the time we arrived. So I linked up with a team of three. As it turned out, this team was the famous 'Sausages'. I say famous as, despite the varying composition of the team, it usually wins, as it had done the previous week when it beat the team I was on into second place (by half a point!). The surviving member from last week was Stephanie, an English woman. The other two were Matt and Nicky, a New Zealand couple with three children (the kids were obviously not present). So we had an official team of four as opposed to the last time I won a quiz at Dave's Place with an 'unofficial' team of four. This is because although the latter team had seven members, four of us did all the work. There were five teams in all, two of five people, two of three and ours of four (Altaa didn't play, but just talked with the other team members). There were some pretty tough questions and for most of the night, I thought we were destined to finish second or third, but the table round of guessing the song to a quote swung it our way and we emerged victorious with five thousand tugrugs apiece (quiz entry fee - 1,000 tugrugs) and a drink on the house. Dave's team surprisingly finished last while Dave had a booby prize for the second placed team (the team I might have been on). If they could eat a whole bag of solidified mare's milk (a Mongolian delicacy) he suggested he would pay their bill, though in the end he gave them Dave's Place t-shirts. The five of them gamely ate away, but the retching faces they pulled as they forced it down themselves was a form of amusement in itself. It had been a good night to be a quiz winner.

Moving in

Finally moved into a new apartment last Saturday (9th). It's so great to be able to stretch out and no longer virtually live out of one's suitcase. The old apartment was just one room (with sloping ceiling mirrorring the roof) shared by three people. Homely enough, but a little cramped. This new one has three rooms (one that is massive), running water, an indoor toilet, a bath and shower, a balcony and a closet (at last I can hang my shirts up). It's still too cold to recline on the balcony, but it will come into its own in the summer, plus the drying lines have already been used for some damp washing (even if some items are rock-solid on removal). Our windows face north-west and on a good day, it's possible to see right across to the industrial district (though mostly it is shrouded in its own fumes), from our own third floor level. Away from main roads, it is quiet and there is little pollution, while only a few minutes walk away from Altaa's main place place of work at a school. In short, I'm quite happy with the apartment.

All right at the big top

It's been a while since I last updated, but I'll keep it sweet. On the 1st February, Altaa and I went to the the permanent circus in UB, where it was the final night of a visiting Russian circus. The highlight of the circus was not the main attraction of the big cat tigers but their smaller, house-adapted cousins. These moggies put the preceding poodles in the shade. The most impressive act to which cats do not naturally perform was one cat twirling a pole aflame at both ends with its front paws while lying on its back in a box on a spinning table.
This year's Russian circus was a cut above the offerings of last winter when the elephants were the saving grace. Altaa and I had our experience enhanced by being close to the front when only paying for normal fare tickets.
There was more audience participation with the clowns over last year, playing leapfrog with guys of different sizes drawn from the stands (including a ten year-old), crazy dancing with other audience members (with the clowns playing the goat at saying goodbye) and getting two people to inflate balloons to exploding point by bouncing up and down on a chair pad while wearing silly wigs. The pony troupe was a decent opener to proceedings with a gorgeous black horse, wearing a feather-duster-style unicorn horn and trying to chew away its bit, accompanied by a couple of pygmy ponies with shaggy hair, one of them trained to shake its head in an anthropomorphic refusal to accede to the trainer's request. If the pony knew what it was doing, this was not the wisest course of action with the trainer having a whip in her hand, no matter how sparingly it was used. The solo acrobat, using just two red drapes to hoist herself around at high altitude, was impressive as were the air ballet despite the blidning spotlights associated with the latter. The normal acrobats didn't do anything especially extroadinary - for their trade - but were enlivened by another clown among their number. The double act of jugglers did their tricks, switching to fire juggling partway through. The poodles just jumped over or through a series of hurdles (occasionally running around the hurdle if it couldn't be bothered) or walked around on their hind legs. The plus point was the biggest of the poodles, a dirty white one, constantly yapped away from its pedestal when not engaged, dopily lolling its tongue out. The cats did far more, proving that they can be trained, doing everything the poodles did and more, such as lightning climbing fifteen-foot poles to the perch at the top by virtue of their claws and spring power and much other versatility involvinga climbing frame, including using only their 'armpits' to advance along two suspended rails. Naturally, after every piece they landed on their feet. The fire-twirling cat was really amazing.
All this was before the break. The tigers got the second part all to themselves. All were magnificently groomed creatures, the two Siberian white-and-black tigers being gorgeous. Their five Indian compatriots were smaller in size but still beautiful. Whatever one's views on animals in circuses, being so close to them was pleasing (a flexible wire mesh had been thrown up round the ring). They were all quite docile; I can't remember one roar - a far cry from the wild animals posing on the tickets, but I didn't mind. Watching the tigers, it was more enjoyable seeing them do things that were not part of their training, such as sniffing each other's bottoms, taking an impromptu bath or getting off their stools to cradle one another in their paws (the last part not part of the act since their 'mistress' was conducting other tigers at the time). This was more satisfying than seeing them jump over a pipe pumping flames upwards onto converted disco balls or weave in and out of adjustable rods on a raised platform.
Russian circus stopping off in Mongolia it may be but I don't know if it has any connections to Moscow State as it doesn't run under that name. Certainly, the prestigious Moscow one has a far bigger ring than UB's giving freer rein to the invention of the circus artists. Altaa had a great time though which is the main thing and so did I.

On another note we saw a car with one headlight normal, the other one which was hazy purple, then switched to melow yellow after a few seconds, then deep blue after a few more - the colours of disco lights. Obviously, the owner could not find a headlight replacement and so had installed as the light a disco mood-mixer instead!