I and all my luggage made it to UlaanBaatar in one piece. FYI, people call it UB for short (gotta stay up on the lingo). My new colleagues were probably thrilled to see me walk out of the arrivals gate. Who wants to pick up a stranger at 11pm on a Friday night? That is dedication to the job, that’s for sure. I have to imagine that they probably didn’t mind that much because they had the COO’s SUV complete with a driver to take us to my new place. I was surprised at this level of generosity by the firm and also so grateful. After reachig the end of a long journey, I was ready for a nice long rest in a horizontal, rather than vertical, position. I cannot reach that in rem type of sleep when I fall asleep in a chair. I think I’m in the majority of people on that one.
In any case, my thoughts of sleep and unwinding quickly vanished when on complete accident my brand new sim card (given to me by Ankhaa) jumped out of my hands and land somewhere near the door of the SUV while we were driving away from the airport. In complete darkness no less. Seeing as I have dropped many-a-thing in the past, but pride myself on my razor sharp vision, I assumed I would find the card. The card, however, is a tiny piece of white plastic that is barely bigger than the size of a pinky fingernail. Ankhaa, Nomin, and I spent the rest of the car ride looking for, or talking about, the card.
Focussing on the small talk and niceties of meeting someone for the first time dissolved. I felt terrible, thinking how I had made such a bad impression in the first 30 minutes of my arrival, and whether I would ever recover from this. It was like a switch in my emotional mind had been turned from on to off. And even with all the searching we did, none of us could spot where the card had went. I still wonder how a white micro sim card disappeared in that half second in a vehicle that has all-beige coloured interior. I’d like to think that one day the COO will be cleaning his car and stumble across the sim card hidden in a small crevice, and finally close the chapter on this story.
I full well started this post with the intention of writing about my new apartment, but it didn’t take long for it to devolve into a story about the mexican-jumping-bean sim card. I suppose I am easily side-tracked with things that gnaw at me. I can’t stand it when I misplace or lose my things, no matter how small or worthless (not that a sim card is worthless. It’s actually one of the most important things to acquire when you enter a new country–its a lifeline to the world and the familiar). The perfectionist, organizer in me crumples and shakes her head in distaste every time I can’t find what I’m looking for. The moral of this sordid story is one should not open or try to install tiny sim cards into a phone when in a moving anything (vehicle, plane, camel, etc.), especially when one has been up for more than 20 hours.