Sunday, October 10, 2010

Odd bits

4/21/10
The kids have a T-shirt from Japan which reads in part, “Feelings that want to swim! GO!! SWIM!!

I can’t find real dried beef, which I knew as chipped beef, here. Real in this context means identical to what I had as a child, bland, cooked to a consistency of oatmeal, served on toast in a white sauce with butter, salt and pepper as the only condiments. What I’ve found in looking for real dried beef is Twin Cow, a foil packet about 4 inches square containing a miniscule amount of shredded beef and an equivalent amount of sweet, moderately hot, chili sauce. The label is red on top, yellow on the bottom. “Twin Cow” is printed on the top, in the red section, in shadowed white letters of a rounded font that I can’t name. Below this, still in the red section is “Dried Beef” in yellow capital letters and “It’s hygienically preserved” in white capital letters. In the yellow section in red capital letters are “Ready to eat” and “really appetizing and delectable”. Each of these is in a different font and size. Taking up about half of the label is a circular illustration, bordered by a thick black line, of two cows standing on a patch of dark green in a yellow field with cerulean blue hills in the back ground against a white sky with a patch of light blue that matches the shadows on the white underside of the nearest cow. Despite the name the cow in front is black and white, with blue shadows, with a long snout while the cow standing behind her is yellow and orange with the shorter nose of, say, a Guernsey. With the circular shape of the drawing the view is of looking through a rifle scope without crosshairs, as if just before taking a shot after a long and careful stalking of the prey. Altogether, the label gives an impression of something that started as a family recipe, then spent a period of time being made at home and sold to friends and neighbors before making the leap, somewhat clumsily, into commercial production. It takes about 6 packages to make one serving. It’s really pretty good, sweet and tangy, but I miss real bland, mushy chipped beef on toast.

SuperDhay came back a week after she left, arriving about 6 AM after an all-night ride on an “ordinary” bus, which means without air conditioning (“air con”) but generally comes as a package of bad suspension and hard, thinly padded seats with minimal room for your knees between the edge of your seat and the back of the seat in front of you. Often included is a VCD player and bad TV set at maximum volume to be heard over the rattling. Despite the rigors of her trip she immediately went to work and kept it up until she went to bed at 8.
Dhay brought back with her an assistant or companion, Shirley, thin, dark, of indeterminate age, extremely quiet. Even when she was with us I had a hard time remembering what she looked like. As far as I could see, Dhay still did all the work. Shirley lasted about two weeks and then returned to the familiarity and security of her own family. The only thing I can remember her saying to me directly was “Hello,” on the morning she arrived. She left without leaving a ripple in her wake and I remember her as Shirley, the Invisible Maid.
There’s been no mention of the fellow who “found” Dhay’s carabao.

Shintaro and I were working on his science homework when we encountered a picture of a kiwi. In the course of our conversation I told him that the kiwi was a bird that had no wings. He was quiet for a moment and then said, as if resolving an incongruity in his world view, “He has a parachute?” but it was more a statement than a question. Then, after the briefest pause he said, as if filling in a gap in a logical argument, “In his tummy.”

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