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Thursday 12th April
Yet again as I browse through my StatCounter account, I find that Google has been bringing to this site people from all over the world in search of wisdom that they are presumably failing to find elsewhere. This is all kinds of wrong, for as the students whose essays about the pros and cons of computers I recently graded repeatedly observe: everything you need to know is on the internet. Please excuse me while I do my humble best to answer those queries.

9. CAT PREPARATION MONK TEST PAPER (Gujurat, India )
Unfortunately, I can't really answer this particular query without knowing whether you want a test for monks wishing to prepare cats, or for felines seeking religious orders, as the two are really very different. Still, if you can't find a suitable test paper why not just ask the candidate (be they man or beast) to "Write a 1,500 word essay on exactly why you are considering this particular course of action."

10. ESL lesson plan with Seinfeld or The Office (Springfield, MA)
One of my students asked me to recommend a comedy to watch and I suggested Seinfeld. They pulled a sour face: "That's that one where they wear really old fashioned clothes, isn't it?"

11. apartments for rent in ulaan baatar (Econo Lodge, Salt Lake City)
To foreigners, apartments in UB usually start around the $200 a month mark, but they are presumably cheaper for locals as the average wage here is $80 a month. I can't help thinking that some pretty desperate circumstances must have led to someone finding themselves in an Econo Lodge in Utah looking to rent an apartment in Ulaanbaatar. Is this a desperate salesman with a suitcase full of unsold samples, or a guilt-stricken recidivist Mormon adulterer seeking to escape from the consequences of a forbidden liaison?

12. how to teach English Literature interesting (Kuala Lumpa)
Apparently sword-swallowing isn't so difficult with a bit of practice, and if you pay strict attention to their feeding routines, a python or a lion can be handled very easily. Or take a tip from Arthur Brown and set fire to your head (he did wear a special hat for this, although he is noticeably bald today).

13. In a hurry beef stew (Vancouver)
I was really excited to get this search because I know exactly how to make a beef stew about as quickly as is humanly possible. Peel your spuds and set them to boil. Meanwhile, dice and fry a few onions and carrots. Once they're ready, add them to the spuds with a can of corned beef, also diced. Bung in some pepper (usually there's enough salt in the corned beef, but do at least do the chef thing and slurp at a spoonful before serving). The whole process usually takes about 35 to 40 minutes. Serve with a garnish of pickled red cabbage. A lot of people have turned up their noses at stew made with corned beef, but I can't recall anyone who's tried it ever complaining.

14. Fish and chip gravy bisto granules which type (Coventry, UK)
Whilst I will defend corned beef stew to my dying breath, this kind of query really is beneath me. Bisto granules! That's blasphemy. Fish & chips = mushy peas. Gravy of any sort should never enter into the equation. I have no doubt that if you visit the Bisto website you'll find that they market a "yummy chip-shop brand" or some such for anyone perverse enough to consider that. Is this the kind of behaviour which passes without comment in Coventry; is this why people get 'sent' there?

15. What is fecund (Southampton, UK)
16. fecund (Oakland, CA)
17. fecund (Atlanta, GA)
18. What is fecund (Somewhere unspecified, UK)
Okay, this one has already been answered, but it doesn't do any harm to reiterate: That field over there is fecund.

19. How to freshen up a dog when you can't give him a bath (Camden, NJ)
I am picturing a real decrepit invalid of a dog, but maybe the would-be-freshener doesn't have a bath, or cannot be arsed to immerse the hound in question in water? Whichever, I would think a few cans of deodorant or maybe some Shake 'n' Vac would hold the key to this particular dilemma. For a while Elvis was popping pills that his 'doctor' told him would obviate the need to bathe. They didn't work.

20. Les Dawson (Poitou-charentes, Poitiers, France)
The thought of some would-be Camus or Foucault down in sunny Poitou-charentes pondering the existence of the late-lamented host of Blankety-Blank tickles me somewhat.

21. How does a guy feel when he receives a job inside a art museum and he was surprised when he arrived on his fi (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
I cannot tell you how intrigued I am to know what the guy found when he arrived at his new job in the art museum. Sometimes, alas, the internet can only tantalize us with questions to which we will never know the answer.

22. cartoon of a baby smoking a cigarette (NY State)
I hate to think that someone might search the internet for a cartoon of a baby smoking a cigarette and not find one. This is a need which I must immediately remedy. It's the best I can manage with Apple Paint, but I hope that this will do.

Useful Information

I'm conscious, monitoring the traffic to this blog, that I am not always providing the answers that people are looking for when google drops them here. To remedy this, here are the answers to a few recent searches that weren't for Jon Ronson:

1. Who stopped Genghis Khan?
Nobody stopped Genghis Khan! He had a heart attack, or something: in which case it may well be that buuz stopped Genghis Khan. His sons continued to enlarge his empire.

2. Income of a Mongolian teacher
I think it's about $100 a month in state schools (may well be less, especially outside UB) $200 - $400 in private (mostly at lower end). Not a hell of a lot.

3. Listening to mp3 during school hours lower grades
If I have any say in the matter, yes.

4. How much does the fattest dog in the world weigh?
That's a very good question, I hope you found the answer: that kind of question is exactly what the internet is for.

5. What an ESL Teacher should know
See answer to 4 above, then get back to me if you find out, urgently.

6. 11th grade English vocab sheet
They should know it all by now, they certainly claim to. Discombobulate, fractious, defenestrate, nutria, erstwhile, fecund, etc. Better still, make words up: that'll larn 'em.

7. Napoleon ate horse meat
I should imagine so: most obviously because he's French; spent a lot of time on horses (crossing the Alps etc); and horse meat is very good cold and sustains you well.

8.Why I musn't be disruptive in class
This exact same search has hit me four times, from different cities in the US. I am assuming that the student has been set the essay to write as a punishment, and then had the gall to surf the web looking for an essay to cut & paste. What is happening to education? Your details have been entered into an international database of unrepentant plagiarists, shame on you.

Teachers' Day, More Technology Gripes (State Department Store Boycott!), Word of the Day is 'Fecund'

Friday 2nd February 2007
It is eerily quiet in the school today, only a very few members of staff coming in for the day after the annual Teachers' Day celebrations.

The socialist era gave Mongolia special days celebrating the acchievement of many different workers - there's a Builders' Day, a Nurses' Day, etc. My colleague who told me this proudly informed me that Teachers' Day was the first such holiday and, as everybody has had a teacher or has a child who currently has one, it is by far the most important. Mongolia's revolutionary hero, Sukhbaatar, believed that Mongolia needed modern and effective education, so in honour of him and as a mark of extreme respect for the most noble of professions, Teachers' Day is held on the weekend closest to Sukhbaatar's birthday (which I believe is today, Friday 2nd Feb).

Preparations for the day were impressive. We were told to be at the school for 9am sharp to take a bus out to a Ger holiday camp for the day. Indeed, by 9.45am everyone had arrived and we were ready to go. There was a very good turnout, although my American colleagues opted out of the experience (ominously owing to having previously experienced Teachers' Day). I helped load up one of the busses with the boxes of fruit, crates of soft drinks, and the six crates of beer and two crates of vodka.

We drove west through the city in the direction of the airport. As we neared the power stations the smog got thicker and thicker, until the power stations themselves as we passed were completely lost in the dirty yellow air, the tops of the smokle-belching chimneys somehow visible above and ghostly silhouettes of ger and ramshackle buildings in the foreground. I am glad I live in the east of the city.

We spent the day in a deluxe camp just outside the city, at the foot of the Bogd Khaan mountains. Our bus had turned off the paved road, and hurtled up a muddy track to the camp, up in a valley above and out of view of the pollution around the city. It's a beautiful location for an impressively ugly camp. In the 'Modern' part of the camp there's a new hotel building made from Lego and surrounding it a dozen of Barratt's finest semi-detached housing cubes. We, however, were in the 'Traditional' facility and so made our way to the four large concrete gers for each team of 15 or so teachers that the school had been arbitrarily divided into. The weather yesterday and today has been ridiculously warm: getting out of the bus into the sunlight of this sheltered valley really felt like spring.

By 11.30 we'd settled into our temporary home: Russian MTV playing on the flat-screen TV, the chairs all gathered around a table on which fruit and drink had been piled. To allow one more person to take a seat I sat on a bedside cabinet which was just as comfortable as the flat-seated wooden chairs - when I offered to bring a second one over I was told that while it might be ok for me to sit on a cabinet, it wouldn't do for Mongolians. I later got in trouble for leaning on one of the fake ger's two fake centreposts and then for walking between the centreposts across the non-existent hearth; this was poor ger etiquette, even in a fake ger: although the teacher who informed me of the first custom broke it herself within five minutes and most teachers didn't show much compunction about crossing the hearth.

We started the day, of course, with a vodka toast, and much wishing each other a happy Teachers' Day. Then we went to the giant concrete ger restaurant for lunch with the rest of our colleagues. For all my sneering at the ugliness of this luxury camp, the food was very good. Of course we had more vodka with the meal, and glasses of Grants Whisky too to toast the success of two of our prize-winning teachers. As Grants is so much more expensive than even the very best vodka here, my colleagues did their best to like it, albeit with somewhat confused expressions on their faces.

A humorous film made by each of the teams in the past week was shown, for which Oscars were awarded. Best Female Actor went to a male teacher - not previously known for being in a great deal of touch with his feminine side, too say the least - who did an extremely entertaining Les Dawson-esque routine. I'm not sure which film was made by my team; presumably owing to some kind of unfortunate error of communication, I hadn't been asked to be in it. There were a lot of speeches and giving of prizes and plaques. Everybody seemed to be having a very good time. After a decent amount of food and an indecent amount of alcohol we merrily made our way outside for numerous games and challenges.

In the end the only challenge I took part in as a participant was the tug-o-war, and I'm afraid that my team, for which I was the anchor, got pretty quickly and convincingly defeated. I really think that the rest of my team has to take the blame for their poor coordination. I was a very enthusiastic spectator to the extremely serious sumo wrestling bouts, of which the female contests seemed particularly aggressively fought. Sumo is a very popular here since the rise of Ulaanbaatar's champion Yokozuna; I have yet to witness the Japanese variety but can safely say that I am at least a convert to Drunken Female Teachers' Sumo.

There were no horses available to hire for a trek yesterday, which is probably as well. Instead with a few of my colleagues I climbed the mountain over our camp in time to catch the spectacular sunset. Fist to the top I was also very excited to see a very large dark brown-feathered bird gliding from the forest on the far side of the hill, across the ridge below me and out across the valley. My colleagues insist that I can't have seen an eagle, but it was a very big bird of some kind, and I'm glad I saw it.

Back at the restaurant we had our evening meal accompanied by more vodka, whisky, Russian champagne and Bulgarian wine. This was followed by a very enthusiastically danced disco. Finally, before leaving we returned to our team ger to polish off remaining beer, tangerines and pseudo-Ferrero Rocher (actually, of all fake brands, Russian chocolates seem just as good if not better than the brands they rip off). My colleagues very kindly and easily agreed to sing some traditional Mongolian songs, which I am now determined to learn. Most of the teachers joined in, and they sang very feelingly and well. And indeed, once they'd started with the singing it carried on onto the bus and all the way back to the school. I think there was a plan to invade a night club somewhere, but fortunately the people I caught a taxi with dropped me off at home, meaning I was very gratefully able to call it a night at 11pm.

No doubt the fresh air and exercise managed to dilute the excessive drinking, and I didn't feel too bad today. Went to the State Department Store to return the 1Gb memory stick which I bought 5 days ago and which stopped working after the second time I used it. The guy at the desk of the electronic goods section when he eventually deigned to serve me helpfully confirmed that the stick is indeed broken, but regretted that in spite of the piece of paper saying '1 year guarantee' the code on my receipt says that the product can only be returned on the day of purchase. He sympathetically suggested that I speak to a manager on the 5th floor. Following directions on that floor I found a corridor with two dozen assorted despairing wretches standing and sitting on the floor ouside an ornate office door bearing a sign in Mongolian. I turned away from the Kafka-esque scene with a deep breath, and resolved that the $30 spent on the stick needed to be considered a lesson learned, and so calmly walked away. I resolved not to shop at the State Department store again - although I took that not to include the Nomin supermarket at the back of the ground floor, where I stopped by to pick up some washing powder.

Crossing Sukhbaatar Square I saw an impressive military parade - the soldiers in red and blue with the sunlight shining from their gleaming pointed helmets as they marched with sabres and guns to the foot of the Sukhbaatar monument, where they slightly spoiled the effect of their neat and orderley marching by shuffling about somewhat comically so as to stand in an evenly spaced line. This and the accompanying brass band I later realised was to be for the President or Prime Minister to perform some ceremony to mark Sukhbaatar's birthday Unfortunately, I had to get to the school to tutor a student and sadly I did not have my camera with me to record the very impressive scene.

I get numerous text messages from my network provider everyday on my mobile phone. Mostly I can't understand them - although sometimes I can see that they're the times of movies on TV, or of the Tugrik's exchange value to the dollar. Occassionally there is an English 'Word of the Day' accompanied by a translation in Mongolian. Today's word is 'fecund'. There was even a helpful example sentence given to illustrate the word in context: 'That field over there is fecund.' I imagine that all over the city there are now students of English fervently hoping to asked whether they can recommend anywhere as particularly suited for the planting of crops. They're sure to be gutted if there are no fecund fields in sight when the question is asked, though.