Late breakfast of coffee and banquettes. I tried a new coffee shop. They’re everywhere. It’s extraordinary. But strangely the don’t sell food. You have to get that elsewhere. Working the coffee shops are sellers of all things, from shoe shining to snacks to lottery tickets. The lottery-ticket sellers don’t bother with foreigners because you have to be a local to win. The shoe shiners are always young and old men and the lottery ticket sellers are usually old women. Some of them very old. For every ticket they sell they get 20% I’m told. I think about these women. Some of them could be in their 70s. What a life they’ve had and now they’re walking the streets hawking these tickets for meager gains. These women have lived through hellish times. Maybe they had families who were wiped out by the war. Who knows what they’ve lived through, what side they were on. Did they survive the war on the losing side then spent years tortured in ‘re-education camps’? Possibly. Or were they on the winning side but still lost so much. Possibly. Either way they would have experienced things my privileged life would never allow me to understand, thankfully. And we, as Australians, would have contributed in some way. It’s unlikely they know this. To them it was the American war and America was the enemy. Anyway at this time in their lives this is where they’re at, flogging off raffle tickets to a largely disinterested young generation. It’s a thoughtful morning.
In the heat of the day I work on my computer in my air conditioned hotel room.
angusmccoll 