And so this was the last task to do. The annual greeting card giving. I usually only do one – & it goes to the ‘asian eatery’ (as I call it) – my regular hangout. I get a great personalised $20 deal – I am a choice of allowed 4 items – Nasi Goreng / Sweet & Sour Pork / Works burger / Crispy Chicken. All options come with quality beer – I get Steinlager or Ashahi if its in stock.
Anyway, I digress.
So I make the greeting card – I have water colors & ink etc. -The final image is a ‘fat sunglasses wearing santa’ with his shirt off. In one hand is a beer bottle & the other is ‘Santa Sack (full of ‘prezzies’). Santa saying that he is quiting because he’d rather go to the ‘asian eatery’. At the bottom of the image there is a rat that says “Santa you lazy bastard”.
I drop off the card – which must be my seventh in a row by now (??). Because of the language/cultural barrier the main owner lady (lets call her ‘Vicki’) needs me to explain it. The joke is that ‘fat santa’ is actually me. We laugh.
While this is going on I notice a father & his daughter sitting & having food – they are chinese as well. I show the card to the little girl & she likes it. I introduce. He is ‘Barry’ who is working at a major university here, visiting from China. His daughter is ‘Angelica’ (not their real names). The asian eatery owner – Vicki has given me a box of chocolates (the usual gift in return) which I offer one to both father & daughter – they oblige. I offer another but the Father I presume is weight conscious, so declines (he is rake thin & I joke that he could use fattening up).
He askes me a little about what I do & I explain my day job instead of my highest interests (writing, studying, reading, drawing etc). I am a kiwi & we talk ourselves down – probably a very bad trait. The father – ‘Barry’ says I should visit China some time. I say I’d like to. We say our goodbyes. They leave to go back to their car to go back to their normal lives. I wonder if the mother is with them in NZ? I assume so given separation/divorce doesn’t really happen in Chinese culture (unlike it’s normality in the West).
I sit & start eating my fish & chips. I have a book on the table – poetry. It has a crappy bookmark. lo & behold the little girl (perhaps 7 years old) comes & gives me a Chinese ornamental book-mark as a gift (the ones housed in plastic). I say thankyou that’s great as I need a better bookmark. The little girl has a real kindness to her. She has a little soft toy lamb in her arms & I ask her if it has a name – she says no, so I say ‘you could call it ‘Bleetie’ – I’m not sure if she understood its relevance. I said thankyou & goodbye.
As I put some soy sauce on on my battered fish, I thought that that was a really lovely thing that just happened. It warmed my sometimes too also ‘battered’ weary 47-year-olds heart more than a little. The Chinese are not perfect, but I admire that they try to be polite as much as possible. We’ve lost that too much in the West I think.
I hope Barry & Angelica have a good time in NZ. I hope the artificial intelligence he is working on doesn’t all put half the world out of work by 2030. But then my day job is shifting dirt, cutting lawns & banging nails – so I should be ok at least until age 62 in 2040. And who knows maybe I’ll be a proper ‘quirky, niche partially sought after by humans, non-AI cottage industry human writer’ by 2032.
But I know that the future will be what it will be, but today was very ‘humanly nice’, you might say.
Merry Xmas Y’all!
Anton Martin
Anton Martin Smith Writer 