Illustration and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay
Illustration
I begin this piece with a cup of milk tea at the Cafe de The Francois in Kyoto. Waiting for a friend who didn’t turn up (lost at the other end of the street). The lighting is yellowed like the walls, playing off bald heads and gold spectacles. Well dressed ladies cluster on red velvet upholstery raising their pitch over the piano concerto. A man with his elderly mother bend over cream cakes. He stirs his drink vigorously and when it spills he exclaims and stops all movement. His mother rustles through her purse and takes out tissues to wipe the spill. After finishing his cake, he reaches into his own bag, takes out his own tissues, and wipes his own mouth. I accept a final refill of my glass of water, and leave for the train.
Milk Tea with Cream
This week I’ve been occupied, watching an old 11 week TV Japanese drama on Youtube starring Takuya Kimura, a Japanese singer and actor breaking new ground in pan-asia entertainment, followed by the Julian Assange interview series. I started with the old guys and worked my way down to the new ones, ending with Occupy.
Toward the end of the Occupy compilation he asks a question about the organisation of the occupy sites. You started to put up instructions, he says. For how to organise the police, how to organise yourselves, how to organise interferers, crazy people, the garbage. Was this a model specifically for your events? Or was this some kind enactment of a larger model.
Fascinating to listen to the responses. I had the feeling that Assange is not interested in the Occupy movement as much as his audience. President Obama, did you take note of the cigars he was waving about? Or was that smoke not meant for you.
It seems that there is more to come.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Yes, amazing value. Not only top quality rump but also top quality mashed potato with lovely gravy. $ 6.00 and that’s not all…… your membership card of the pub (Bowral Hotel) when swiped gives points so after a while you get either drinks or meals for free….It’s the future for fizzing or stagnant economies and businesses or… perish.
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So – have someone swipe your card and you get either drinks or meals for free. I like the sound of that. We might recommend it to the any number of public bodies.
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According to The Online Converter, my cup of milk tea cost $5.70 and was mere consolation for me as the winter of my life drifts toward imminent apocalypse. Actually, though, it has real cream in it. And I like real cream. You can eat it with a spoon, or you can just let it sink in.
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Is my blue willow cup of milk tea with real cream: is it always to remain a symbol of colonial imperialism. Sigh. Or could it be that it has become, for me, a cup of tea. Refreshing. Vigorous. Tastier than the blend coffee.
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Yes, to find wholesome godness in a cup of tea, satori, not everyone can do it.
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Like the media, for example. If they deal with stolen data these days – and their use of Wikileak data tells us that they do – then why don’t they tell us MORE?
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Like us, for example. Our phones have already turned into credit cards. Kids can get all their delights by downloading them and adding them to their credit accounts. Accounts? Banks, why didn’t you TELL us that things had changed? That the card was no longer the liability – we were.
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It’s not good enough to only give us our money back when somebody buys a boat. Is it? I didn’t agree to pay that “credit card subsidy” when I didn’t even “use” my credit card. Did I?
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And what do you need the money for, anyway? Is it foreign currency transfers? Because you’ve shifted your business offshore?
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Like the Australian Government, for example. If we’re being forced onto the internet, then why don’t they guarantee the security of our information? It’s not good enough to say that we are responsible for our own security. We don’t have any. All our data is taken. So all their data is taken. I hardly see that as secure governance.
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And our mining industry, of course. I mean, sure we get free food and drinks. But if we don’t like the agreement in the future, we can just cancel the contract. Can’t we?
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Our social conscience, those young people who protest and tell us when we’ve stopped noticing that things have gone bad. Sure they’ve all now been added to the Register of Dangerous Thought. But we still have a little left over, don’t we? Some Reserves? In the banks?
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$6 steaks! Almost unheard of.
Went to the local pub at work on Thursday after a two day conference with our country workers. These had stayed on to work in our office for the day. I think it was about $16 for a steak there. My salt and pepper squid with a drink set me back a lobster.
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Algy, I love mashed potatoes, the real stuff, not from a packet…the pub also has a very nice gravy with the steak…I don’t bother with certain type of cooking for just the two of us, when the grandsons come over they demand my gravy and eat it by spoonfuls 🙂
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Bought some Dutch Creams the other day as something new, some of the nicest mash I’ve eaten. We only use real potatoes here. When they’re so cheap why would you use anything else.
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Alge, gez discovered the Dutch creams in some shop, and now it’s D Cs whenever we have potatoes, they are nice I have say…
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What pubs rely on is the alcohol bought while eating the $ 6.- steak, (Rump from Meagher meats) together with the pokies pulling. This is what is not so desirable, that the cheap food is subsidized by alcohol and gambling. On the other hand if gambling did not take so much money out of circulation, people might have more money for eating food at pubs, or have I got the economics of that all wrong?
It’s getting very hard to find anthing that is not connected to something bad. Years ago there was an outcry that big Mac’s were sold in paper containers with some figuring out that Big Macs carton and paper containers alone were resposible for entire forests being cut down. They changed over to poly styrene that would not decay and fill entire landfills. Now it’s back to paper again.
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Thats the rub isn’t it Gerard, You need a pull somewhere with the hope of a benifit elsewhere. Where I worl the best yu can find for a steak is $12, though I believe theres a pub on George Street doing them for $10 and from memory its only on a Tuesday.
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Something I’m only starting to notice about these dramas and movies being produced in Asia is a new level of cooperation and collaboration. So the audience for local productions is growing. The “tolerance” of local audiences for their neighbouring cultures, customs and histories also seems to be increasing.
Outside of the world of media, on the train, an old lady told me that there were many more Chinese and Korean people around than there used to be. I have noticed that too, but I was wondering if they are becoming visible, rather than becoming more plentiful because they are speaking in their own languages. Local signage is no longer always just in Japanese, or Japanese and English, but contain Korean and Chinese translations as well.
So I felt this week as though I was watching two new worlds emerging: the world containing Takuya Kimura, and the world containing Julian Assange. It’s not often you get to see two new worlds in one week.
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were they worlds? maybe states. I’m not sure if I know the difference yet.
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This is funny, Lehan. Yesterday we had our weekly six dollar steak lunch at our Local. I spilt some beer on the table, few drops only…I got a clean paper napkin, wiped the table, stacked our empty plates to make it easier for the waitress. “I’m doing it the nice and consirerate way, the Japanese way”, I told Gerard.
On the way home we met our neighbour who had spent a couple of weeks in Japan, he was full of praise for the Japanese civility and cleanliness of the place
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A six dollar steak, Helvi, I am envious.
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Lehan, lately everybodyseems to be angry in Australia, I envy you living in the most civil society….
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BRING HER TO US, Tim Dunlop, and we too will ply her with anti-pesto.
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Poor little wombat. Just found a stormwater drain to have a good sleep – and suddenly another damned journalist appears.
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Perhaps there are some questions around that wombats don’t like to listen to.
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Here in Japan, for example, if it’s a big question, one would consult with everyone. Hard, for a wombat.
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