Sunday, August 23, 2009

USE OIL


Got off the plane from Bayankhongor yesterday and thought, "Why not take the bus into the city instead of a taxi and save 9,700 tugriks?" Seemed like a brilliant idea. Being a Sunday, lots of people got on the bus at each stop resulting in absolutely no free space. Every time the bus stopped or started we all fell all over each other: I almost killed a little girl ("I can't breath! Please move...").


Anyway, on the way into the city I see this sign: "USE OIL" written in huge block letters with the American flag used as letter filler.


Possibility #1: The letter "e" in Mongolian sometimes sounds like the long english "a". Maybe the attempt was so say USA using half mongolian half english lettering (?).


Possibility #2: This place is just really unabashed about encouraging the use of oil. I guess this shouldn't surprise me: this is their product, they want to sell it, so to promote its consumption makes a lot of sense. The States have simply become concerned enough with oil and its effects that such advertising would work less then wonderfully.


Possibility #3: USED OIL but they forgot the "d"?

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