Every once in a while, you walk up a coffee shop and the person standing behind the counter look at you like she wants to eat you up, with no smile, no friendly voice, instead, shouting on top of her lungs “How can I help you today!”, almost picking a fight.  That’s the coffee bitch.   The coffee bitch is not one specific person, but a species of bitches who serves coffee.  I just wonder if they spit into the coffee or food to make their day.  In Malaysia, Coffee Bean, which I patron almost every weekend has the most of these bitches.  They are scattered all over Malaysia.  If not for their breakfast and royalty program, I would have ban this franchise long before.  Even when I help to clear the table when I was done, I was greeted with a ‘Oi!, Just Pass to Someone Can Already!’, like what the fuck, a thank you would be nice. 

On the other extreme, I have never encounter such coffee bitches at Starbucks.  I patron Starbucks in every city I visit and always, never fail, greeted with a smile, friendly voice and always made to feel like home.  I’ve read “How Starbucks Saved my Life” by Michael Gates Gill and finally understood why there’s a smile at the back of every Starbucks counter.  It’s their culture.  Now, why can’t coffee bean be more like them.  Then again, if coffee bean would embrace such cultures, then coffee bean wouldn’t be coffee bean today.  At the end of the day, these coffee bitches are human after all, and thanks to Coffee Bean, they have a job.  If there were no coffee bean in the world, and only Starbucks, these coffee bitches would have been discriminated, or worst being forced into doing someone that they are not.  So, the next time, I encounter these Coffee Bitches, I would just smile, and glad that these bitches are working in the coffee shop and not in my company which I have to deal with more often than visiting the coffee shop.  Maybe they will smile back and dont spit into my food.

 

Windows trash can that is. For a coffee lover, it couldn’t trill me more to have a trash can with the starbucks brand trash can, a constant reminder to get my java to fuel my day…Speaking of starbucks, I was required to travel next week to audit one of the newly setup factory in China. Considering which hotel to stay at, the first thing I did was went to google map, and search for the city’s name. Next I type in ‘Starbucks’, to search for business at the city. To my dismay, the city was not listed in Google map, to have this service, too small, so I stayed in Shangri la ShenZhen without any starbucks near by. Fear not, there are 13 starbucks stores in ShenZhen, a quick cap will do my fix.

Get your trash can here.

This is the weekend of which I have my encounter with a book of “How Starbucks Saved My Live”, Jack Johnson new album and the 50th Grammy Awards album of the year. Michael Gates Gill, born into a priviidge family, worked hard, and years later to be fired from his job and life just went down hill from then on. One day, he happens to be on the right place and time he was offered a job as a barrista @ Starbucks. Starting then on, his views of life of what he used to be gradually transformed and found a whole new fulfilling life beyond his wildest dreams. An inspirational story, told in a narative matter. The writing style was simple and narative in nature. At every turn of the page, the structure will start with an introduction, and then a history, especially on the characters. Sometimes, I just felt that the history were too long or boring prompting me to skip. Then the main juice and gradually moves on to the next item of which an introduction starts, and the history and so on.

Jack Johnson have recently released a new album titled ‘Sleep Through The Static’. Not knowing what that meant exactly, I got the album as I have been a fan of Jack, ever since ‘Thicker Than Water’. His previous album ‘In Between Dreams’ was a little dissapointing. Though he stays true to his music, the catchy tunes were un-inspring and none stuck. This new album on the other hand was much better. Again, the entire album is laidback, perfect to accompany you anytime of the day when you feel like mellowing. A good album to add to your collection or Ipod, Jack is back with this one.

River: The Joni Letters by Herbie Hancock won the 50th Grammy Awards as the Best Album. For winning the best album of the year, I had to get it to check it out. Its Jazz, if you have not known it yet, and extremely suttle. All the songs are 5-8 minutes in length and the entire album will take you more than the hour to finish. i am not an advent fan for Jazz, so the album did not strike me that much. I will let it grow on me, since I only just got it.

These are the highlights of this weekend.

What do one do while the significant half spends hundreds on hair that takes half a day to complete? Well, spend more money myself of course. I park myself at the nearest Starbucks and booted up my laptop to pace across the hot Saturday afternoon. The hairdo is taking 4 hours to complete, and blogging was on my mind. I got myself a mocha and log into Wordpress to check for comments. I remembered seeing in the papers that Starbucks was promoting gift cards for the Christmas season, and I made a note to myself to get one. I am one of those junk collectors that loves to collect interesting looking stuff. When I was in the states, I collected giftcards from everywhere possible, not that it worth any money at this moment, I just like the look of it and the joy of admiring the design.

I took out my RM20 and handed over to the cashier, and he handed the card over to me. Hold on, it’s a paper card? Damn, its not plastic. Oh Crap, it expires in Feb 2007. I was disappointed as I expecting a plastic card, where we could reuse again and again, like what coffee bean has. Anyway, the paper card do look nice, and can complement my car collections, if it last the 2 months of usage before expiry.

Can there ever be a quiet coffee shop? From the mamak stalls, to the Kopi Thiam and up to Coffee Bean & Starbucks, there is no peace and quiet. Mainly it is a place for mingle, business, and pure Malaysian style lepak, all these coffee shops are always vibrant with loud customers. This is not only in Malaysia, its the same over in the US too. After all, what could one expects, it is a public place, and a public place is never quiet, only the library I guess…