THE PLEDGE
In early March,
I went looking for a friend. Funnily
enough his name is (NAME) He calls
himself a post modern chef, and hails from the great land of New Zealand. He sports a kind of pony tail and looks to
have some Maori in him. I met him when
my wife and I went looking for a new restaurant. My wife found out about his restaurant on
the Internet, and she chose it specifically because he is from New Zealand and
I am always complaining about my lack of friends and my feelings of isolation and
loneliness here in Japan. “Japan is the
most lonely country in the world,” is probably my most familiar lament- one I
am sure my wife is well and truly sick of hearing.
That night, my
wife and I were the only two customers in the restaurant, so we received
excellent service. I remember Amigo
asking me what I’d like to drink. “I’ll
just have a beer, thanks, mate.” I
said. It turned out there was no
beer. Why? I guess my (NAME) is just not running that kind
of shop. His main clientele is probably
from the more up market side of the street. Regardless, it turned out myself
and this quietly spoken, outwardly reserved, but friendly and cheerful person
had a lot of other things in common. For
a start, he spent several years living in Brisbane, Australia. With his future as a chef
more or less secure (he was actually a kind of New Zealand version of
Masterchef), Amigo decided to do a course on Philosophy. Specifically, he is part way through
completing a Ph D in Logic. Needless to
say, our friendship began with very sound foundations, and we exchanged phone
numbers, business cards and email addresses.
“Are you on
Facebook”, he asked, “because I am trying to get together with some of the
kiwis in Nagoya for a few drinks.”
“Sorry, mate,” I
would have replied, “Facebook’s just not something I’ve ever really been
interested in.”
As is often the
case, we failed to keep our promises to keep in touch. People are busy with their own lives, running
businesses, teaching classes and looking after their children, and so that
naturally happens quite a lot. Still, I
never called, until the day I got back from the park after having drawn up some
blueprints for my vision of starting a charity.
This was in the very, very formative stages of my idea to write a
book. So I just called him up
I’ve never had
much of a sense of direction. I’ve
always been too busy thinking to pay much attention to important stuff like
what color car my friend drives, or what the house I’m living in looks like, or
even where it is. At different times, I
have actually forgotten those things.
Sometimes I feel like one of the world’s smartest, youngest sufferers of dementia (without meaning to
cause any offence to the sufferers and their families of that terrible
affliction.) Of course, I had a map on my friend's business card, but I just couldn’t follow it. So I called him again from a street somewhere
near his restaurant.
“Hey, man, where is
your restaurant? I can’t find it.”
“Where are you
now? I’ll come and get you.”
“I’m near the
Yellow Hat.”
“Oh,I see you. Are you wearing an orange sweater? Just turn around.”
And I did.
And there he was. A little bit of
magic still exists in this world after all.
Or at least I like to think so.
The rest of that story, about me giving my vision, can be found in my
emails. But this time, when I sat down
to talk, he had a beer. I haven’t
asked him but he probably stocked beer just because of that first time I went
to his restaurant. He is just that kind
of guy.
No comments:
Post a Comment