Nother story I heard, last night. Met up with this girl, then later walked over to Parliament Square with her to meet some of her friends, who were watching the open-air movie there. Movie'd finished by the time we got there, but the friends were interesting.
One of 'em was this Mongolian guy (translator/orientalist) who's been here since '89 and apparently throws huge parties, three- fourhundred people for a Mongolian sunday grill. He's a really colourful guy, going around in traditional Mongolian dress. Girl's friend, who teaches translation and literary theory at the university, recounted how at the last open-air do of the Mongolian, one country's ambassador had been there, but he'd failed to get the Vietnamese ambassador. So instead, another Vietnamese guy (who later claimed that the Mongolian had approached him on the street and asked him to 'fill in', as it were) was presented to the guests. Homeboy had to translate, but ran into some trouble because the guy (an acupuncturist, according to his card) kept piping up: "I no Vietnamese ambassador! I no ambassador!"
The other story was from when the Mongolian man looked them up in London. They'd been out all night and only just in time got him on the bus to the airport in the morning. Nevertheless, he missed his plane after all. How come? Well, he had run into this place where they shrinkwrap your luggage. Now that had seemed a crucial idea to him, so he spoke to them, asking to have his luggage shrunkwrapped too. Problem was, nobody understood a word he was saying - what, with him only speaking Mongolian, Hungarian and Russian. So they went scrambling to find someone who might be able to communicate with him, and he waited for his place - and missed his plane. In the end they just put him on the next one, cause they didnt know how to tell him to buy a new ticket ...
They should make a movie ...
