Category: Personal Agenda, Book Two

SATURDAY, 30 AUGUST 2003

Everyone makes mistakes, no matter how hard we try to accommodate each other. Frustration was nevertheless to be expected when the lady at the deep-fried stall earlier this evening failed to grasp what the hell I meant when I asked her the price, in Chinese, of a tofu kebab.

My Chinese is far from fluent, but I manage to express myself adequately on a daily basis in diverse situations. I can converse about this and that with colleagues at work; I can discuss new schedules with a school principal, and I can make small talk and crack jokes with six-year-olds for half a period (in Chinese, when I’m actually paid to speak English). “How much does it cost?” is a phrase that foreigners usually master in their first week in Taiwan. To not be understood after a few years when you use a phrase that at least you had thought you had mastered is disturbing for the serious language student.

My pronunciation of “How much is this thing?” was, like most of my Chinese, probably not one hundred percent accurate. But what other information can one possibly be inquiring about from the woman when you pick up the skewer with little squares of tofu stuffed in a row and inquisitively utter “woof, woof” in her direction? To say an amount should, in my opinion, have been an immediate reaction to any sounds that flowed from the general direction of my face! But instead of replying with a price she declared that she did not understand me.

Figuring that she might not have expected any sounds from their regular and usually mute foreign customer, and that she was possibly overcome with anxiety because she had thought she had to speak English, I repeated myself, slower this time. Again she smiled as if I were an imbecile, and asked the older lady next to her who was throwing food into the boiling oil, “Auntie, the foreign guy has never said a word, but now he’s speaking. What’s he saying?”

I tried again. And once again she could not figure out that I was not asking her for a lecture on the history of greasy food in Northeast Asia, but merely inquiring about the price of the damned tofu kebabs. When she looked at me for the third time with a well-intentioned but unhelpful smile, my own oil started getting hot enough to scorch the kebab there and then on the street.

I thought grabbing a coin out of my pocket might help, but I only managed to throw my keys in the bowl of amputated chicken feet.

Furious, and embarrassed at the same time, I triumphantly held out a coin, moments later. “Qian qian! Duo shao qian?!” I again pleaded in frustration.

The older lady turned away for a moment from another customer’s bacon-and-sausage kebab frying away in the boiling oil and translated my effort as “Duo shao qian?” in her native dialect, or “How much money?”.

“Thirty,” the younger woman indicated with three fingers in the air.

Red-faced, I retrieved my keys from amongst the chicken feet, and started filling my green plastic bowl with tofu kebabs. And because I was in a foul mood and certainly needed it, also a few bites of octopus.

“Haven’t you heard a foreigner speak Chinese before?” I fired off in English over bundles of beans and cauliflower.

But a glow had already started dancing over the woman’s cheeks, so I abandoned my little tirade. Maybe, I reckoned, she was lost in thought, and when I unexpectedly started mumbling strange words, she tried her best to understand what she probably thought was English.

The last laugh was hers, though. I prefer my deep-fried cauliflower and tofu with just a pinch of red pepper, and I was looking the other way when she heaped on the spices.

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TUESDAY, 19 AUGUST 2003

Brand Smit and his wife, Elsa Kleynhans, live with their two young children in number 11 Bluestone Lane. Marie, their oldest, is five and a half, and Ben is three. Brand spends most of the conventional workday on his literary projects. He’s currently working on a first draft of an idea about struggle and creativity, especially in the context of the suburban middle class. Between his study, the living room and the kitchen, chances are that you’ll find a copy of at least one of his two volumes of poetry, as well as a copy of the collection of essays and other pieces from his time in Taiwan and Korea.

Brand’s daily routine follows a familiar pattern. He usually gets up before Elsa and the children, makes them breakfast, takes the children to kindergarten, and drops Elsa off at the primary school where she teaches. Then he might spend an hour or two at the library, and between lunch and dinnertime he’s usually behind his computer.

Apart from the meagre income he earns from his writing, he also publishes English textbooks with a business partner in Taiwan. This endeavour takes him to East Asia at least once a year for book fairs and to talk business with local schools.

Last December, the family visited Elsa’s family in the Cape, and Brand swore never again. Elsa’s brother is a local businessman and prominent member of the community. As before, they didn’t sit around the same campfire when the conversation – as it almost always does – turned to politics and religion. Brand initially said they should stay home this December. After talking about it again, he and Elsa now plan to go to Mozambique for a week or so with Brand’s younger sister and her husband. Christmas will again be at Elsa’s parents in Bloemfontein, and New Year’s with his parents in Middelburg.

Brand frequently talks about the time he spent in the East. Elsa listens patiently, although she can by now tell all the stories in almost exactly the same words. Sometimes someone Brand knew in Taiwan would visit them. They usually talk late into the night about typhoons, pollution, epidemics, English classes and Chinese. Brand registered for a correspondence course in Chinese at UNISA after returning from Asia. He finds it ironic that he now speaks better Chinese than when he lived in Taiwan.

When Brand turned forty last year, he bought himself a lawnmower. Elsa laughed when he first mentioned the idea, but he thought the time had come to see if he could still use one (gardening services had done the necessary maintenance until that point).

Brand is devoted to his wife and children. He hopes Marie will one day become an architect or a vet. Although it’s still too early to say, he believes little Ben may also develop into a writer. He shares this with anyone who wants to hear, and looks embarrassed every time Elsa says to him, “Allow the child to become his own man.” His usual response – he can see it in the boy’s eyes. A writer, or – who knows? – maybe a clergyman.

* * *

Stella Adler said: “Life beats down and crushes the soul. Art reminds you that you have one.”

Brand Smit reckons: “The future waits for those who are patient enough to first figure out the meaning of life.”

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TUESDAY, 19 AUGUST 2003

Let’s play a game. Let’s imagine I’m wrong in terms of 90% of the things I’ve been saying for the past few years.

What would this mean? It would mean that creativity is a luxury that can only be enjoyed by the wealthy, or then only as a hobby by the rest of us. It would mean that one should be grateful if you get any kind of job, and that you therefore have to be grateful for the privilege to address someone as BOSS. That if your services are no longer required by a company, it’s just your bad luck, and probably your own fault because you were dispensable in the first place. That by the time you leave high school – if you were so privileged to have spent twelve years in school – you should have worked out without any drama where you fit in the Great Hierarchy, and be ready to take your place with conviction. That you have to take what comes your way, and just accept it with a dignified “That’s just life.” That you should get married and start procreating as soon as you get a job, because that is what nature dictates, and what society requires. And that you would go to hell if you don’t believe everything the Bible says. It would also mean that banks, large corporations and the government are right because they are stronger than you. That you should treat the bank manager, the boss and the politician with respect because they are higher than you on the Hierarchy.

If these things are true and I’m wrong, I’m in deep trouble.

Anyways, where was I …

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MONDAY, 4 AUGUST 2003

Why were the Beatles “larger than life”? Because they did what they liked and what they believed in. And because they spent most of their productive time on it, their abilities were exponentially sharpened.

The fact that their creations – their particular type of music – was in demand at the time certainly helped. But the fact remains that they engaged themselves, on a full-time basis, with that which they felt most strongly about, that in which they truly believed. As a result, they reached a level of artistic ability any talented, creative person can achieve if he or she busy themselves with what they like most, for the greater part of what is considered a normal workday.

Proper marketing and the talents of other people also played a pivotal role in their commercial success. But if the individual members of the group had to put in eight hours a day at some factory in Liverpool and then work on their music in the evenings – after dinner and a little TV, not even the best wizards of marketing would have been able to sell their necessarily more mediocre work to the masses.

The Beatles were thus as extraordinary as they had become because they succeeded in an ideal synthesis – creative excellence and commercial success.

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[For readers who insist on technical accuracy it should again be emphasised that the Beatles’ story worked as well as it did because what they had spent most of their time on with such passion and enthusiasm had commercial value.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for everyone to spend the biggest part of a “working day” on that for which we save our greatest passion and conviction because we still need money. And if what we spend most of our time on – masterpiece or no masterpiece – cannot occasionally be traded for cash, we still need to do something else for the sake of physical survival.]

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