That Music's Rubbish!

Several times a week, I and my critters cock our ears toward the courtyard windows, arrested by the sudden swell of recorded music billowing through them. It’s always the same – a rich female soprano lilting in Mongolian along a gorgeous popular melody. Even if you don’t understand the words of the song, its tone evokes the fertile scent of the early summer steppe, and perhaps fresh, new love blooming thereon. Your own sweet memories shimmer in the crystalline notes. You’re compelled to discover its source and lean on the window ledge, scanning the yard. You figure it’s probably a soulful young man with his eyes closed, leaning back in his car, obsessed with whatever feelings the music sends coursing through him as he increases the volume, needing to share it with whoever will listen. Maybe like the motorcycle courier in Diva.

But you see no such man, nor his car. All the windows along the apartment buildings are shut against the biting cold. There are few people to be seen, just one or two well-bundled individuals hustling toward the next warm doorway. To the left you notice the muffled clatter of work, in the same direction from which the music seems to emanate. You focus on the activity over there and…it can’t be. But it is. But it can’t be. But it is, and once you accept the fact, laughter shakes deep in your belly as you once again wonder at the inscrutability of Mongolia.

The lovely music is wafting from a garbage truck! Why?

Then you remember occurrences from earlier last year. Again, several times a week, you would hear a short, tinny melody droning on and on, over and over, clearly coming from a moving vehicle. The result then was that you had to subdue the Pavlovian response to shout, á la the old Eddie Murphy bit, “ICE CREAM MAAAAAN!!” Good thing you got a grip on yourself, too, as you would have been baffled and bitterly disappointed had you skipped out clutching a fistful of tugrigs, your head aswim with images of creamsicles, only to encounter…the garbage truck.

Again, why? Why in the ever-lovin’, blue-eyed world* does Ulaanbaatar host a fleet of musical garbage trucks?

This morning – in the middle of my prayers, of course – the answer dawned on me. UB doesn’t exactly have the world’s most sophisticated trash collection system. My building, for instance, has neither outside containers nor a trash chute. I, like all the other residents, put my bags on a concrete stairway landing and unknown hands later schlep it out next to the tiny guard’s house. The garbage truck loads it from there. There used to be a dumpster on the far side of the courtyard, but that was dispensed with. I suspect this is because of the unfortunate numbers of UB poor who eke out a living combing through the trash for glass and plastic bottles to sell for recycling. They tend to leave a fairly impressive mess strewn in their wake.

In any case, it occurred to me that the music is simply a pleasant way to signal the neighborhood that now is the time to bring out last minute items for the trash, maybe bigger things you couldn’t bag up. Not sure how the singer feels about her music being permanently associated thus in people’s minds, but nonetheless, I felt like Encyclopedia Brown this morning. Case closed.

Update: Ah ha! Oh, my sleuthing is the sleuthiest! That, and I really need to find more ways to occupy my time. Recently I read that Japan, with great magnanimity, bestowed 20 new garbage trucks on Mongolia. I even remember goofing on Luke about the powerful copy that MonInfo was generating. I should have known that Japan was the ultimate source for musical garbage trucks, as this page makes clear (they also touch on the ice cream man thing). Surprised they're not emblazoned with a Hello Kitty! logo.

* This expression, like many others that color my family’s banter, arrives courtesy of Pogo Comics.

Comments

[Sarabaite]

I love the idea of music-playing garbage trucks! If I forget to take out the garbage, my first sign (ah-HAH, another former Encyclopedia Brown reader) is a loud squeaking as it loads my neighbor's bin.

BTW, when did you start bird-watching? Is there much variety in the harsh climate in your area? While I have a couple of parrots as pets (a lovebird for the classroom and a Meyer's parrot for the home), I know little of birds outside the hookbill family. Around the LA suburbs, I don't think we have too many songbirds; there's plenty of scavengers and birds of prey, though.

This must be a common question, so you probably have another posting or essay on the matter, but what led you to your current profession/position? If you just answer by directing me to an old post, that's cool. I'm sure you have a speech memorized for that exact explanation.

[Konchog]

Wow, Sarabaite, you just reminded me! I forgot to mention that this past Christmas Day was the 10th Anniversary of my contracting the illness known as "birding." I think I must have written about the origin of the obsession somewhere, but it began with a simple curiosity about what birds inhabited/moved through the 72 acres on which my temple sits in MD. Since then I have seen about 110 species just on that plot. You'd be shocked to discover what flits about your LA 'burbs.

I did find a post, though, from May of last year that chronicles the disease in the form of my single-minded quest to lay eyes on a Kentucky Warbler.

BTW, before I left in '05, I had an African Grey named Scooter. Check the archives from Feb/March '05 for some photos and such. He's now in the capable and loving hands of sometime DODR commenter Jim and his family.