I don't drink much coffee, which does not give me much occasion to write the word coffee, which is why I spelled it wrong the other day at work when I was tasked with the all-important mission of alerting the office that the coffee machine was broken by attaching a post-it note to the coffee machine. Coffee, one of those weird words that only English can conjure up with double f's followed by double e's ending the word, and pronounced in a distinctly different way here in New York City than it would be in other parts of the world, much less U.S.
One of the most important areas in any office is the coffee machine. Next to the elevator breaking down or bathrooms becoming flooded, it is one of the things that cause mass hysteria. I guess I haven't noticed it in all my time in different offices because I don't drink coffee, but people drink a LOT of coffee; they got their morning fix, their lunch fill, and then on long days (we've recently been working from 8AM to 8PM) the afternoon coffee. Having never made a batch of coffee in my life, I recently learned there are various different ways of making coffee, but the quickest (and probably least fulfilling) way to make coffee is to put the coffee bag in the coffee machine and let it just spit out water. Speaking of water, the coffee goes through a LOT of water per day, and if it's not connected to a water source then that means there has to be plenty of barrels of water available for an office of people. Oh and milk! People get upset if the accompanying milk supply has been exhausted, even the Half & Half. They gotten have something, anything but black coffee!
The coffee machine, thus, is the last refuge, the only place to have conversation nowadays (see previous entry). People actually have to look at what they're doing to grab a cup and put the cup under the dispenser to get coffee, or seliect the coffee they want to drink and put it in the machine to stir. So for once in the whole day, you get people's attention as their mind actively looks for something to keep occupied with, and with my desk near the coffee machine, I'm in prime position to comment on something, ANYTHING, to start a conversation. But it has to be a quick conversation, because once the coffee's done and has been poured out, no more coffee is coming, the coffee drinker will take a few extra sips as a courtesy but then they're gone, they've gotten what they needed and ran out of excuses to stay, so the conversation ends abruptly. Thus is the daily social conversation level of most humans nowadays.
Coffee also helps keep people awake, which is desperately needed for me about a half hour to an hour after lunch. Oh, but I had a dragon fruit today, also known as a pitaya, which looks really really good, really exotic on the outside with intricate design of vines and curved shell and a very promising interior of white and black sesame seeds.......but then the taste leaves one wanting, and makes it unworthy of the "dragon" in its name. I'll stick to grapes, watermelons, and oranges.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
No comments:
Post a Comment