Ya-Ya's Tea Board

Having now been through 3 big earthquakes, people in Christchurch know the problems they are facing and quickly slipped back into the routine: assessing damage and breakage, liquefaction cleanup and driving at 20 km/h through broken streets. This time around, the adaption to the circumstances happened really fast. It is amazing, how adaptable people are.

An encounter yesterday reminded me that it is not all bad, but that there are actually opportunities created by these unusual circumstances.
I got a phone call yesterday from someone who had bought an Yixing teapot from us many years ago. His treasured pot had survived the first two earthquakes, but finally broke in the third quake earlier this week. He was quite upset to lose his beloved pot and checked with me, whether I had a replacement for him. I asked him to drop by my house so we could have a look through our current stock together.
When he described his broken tea pot to me, I knew exactly which pot he had bought, but I didn’t think I had another one of these left. But searching through our stock, I discovered a long forgotten teapot that was the exact twin to my hopeful customer’s broken one and he was very happy to get a replacement. He was also looking for some Sencha green tea and he was lucky again, since the fresh harvest sencha had just arrived in the last few days.

We spent a great 2 hours drinking some of the fresh Japanese green teas together and re-connected. He hadn’t been in touch with us for many years and hadn’t it be for the earthquake, who knows whether he would have ever been in touch. He told me that he tried many other teas and brands (that are more readily accessible in supermarkets and health food stores), but that he missed the quality of Ya-Ya’s teas. It only occurred to him now, that he lost one of his treasures, to try looking us up again and get in touch. I have the feeling that I’ll have tea with him soon again – hopefully without an earthquake as the trigger.

There’s so much negative energy around Christchurch right now (although far less than the media coverage will have you believe), but it is the little positive things and encounters that we should really focus on.

And thanks for a lovely afternoon, Alan.