March 2003
Destination: Manila

Coffee Rants
by John Bert Rodriguez

Wow, an entire page for my very own rants. I feel exalted. Ha! All my rants can sound absurd and non-sensical most of the time. Rants are supposed to be that way anyway. So hop on to my mug of coffee rants!!!

< Maybe I am just too bitter but I cannot understand why people should use gourmet coffee as a status symbol. Coffee becomes a status symbol as a consequence of its price, but I do not find sense in people making coffee as the consequence of their search for a status symbol. Got the gist? Good. Some people go to the best coffee places around like Starbucks, Seattle's, and San Francisco's not really to savor the nerve-racking goodness of their coffee but to be with the "in" crowd. They think they would really look "cool" and very "coño" with their not-cheaper-than-one-hundred-peso coffee hanging around. You will easily spot this people by looking at their cups. If the Starbucks or any coffee shop's logo faces a side where the crowd can see it immediately, ahhhh... there is a meaning behind that! It is not by random chance that the logo of that person's cup is staring at you directly. It has a sign hangin g from it saying "look at me, I drink expensive coffee." It is really pathetic in my opinion.

Like many other people say. Coffee is more than just a status symbol. It is a way of life. It is part of your attitude. People who use it to look cool are a lot worse than bad tasting coffee. There are coffee joints where coffee are not as expensive as the one's in the internationally popular cafes but are not any worse than what they have !!!

I remember some people scandalized whenever I tell them that when they drink coffee at Starbucks, they should match the price of their coffee with the level of their discussions. That is too intellectually snobbish they thought. Have coffee joints become havens for the intellectual and the pseudo-intellectual? Maybe yes, maybe not. Coffee is a psychoactive drug, so it does help in making your brain function. It makes you think more clearly, react quickly, and sometimes, even hallucinate. This can be the perfect help one needs when he is into lengthy socio-economic-political discussions that would make even Larry King feel like he's an amateur. Either that or artsy-fartsy discussions done in the name of art. A big HOWEVER though is that even if it helps in the lubrication of our cranky brains, it does not feed our mind with the information we need for the discussion. Coffee can make us talkative but it is never the mythical brain food that would make our discussions meaningful. In short, you can talk for ages over your macchiato and still do not make a single point; and please, never have a discussion in a coffee shop when you are alone. !!!

What kind of books is perfect for coffee? Is it the Sydney Sheldon genre that makes love seem like an aroma from an over commercialized 3-in-1 coffee sachet? Is it the non-fiction type that discusses international relations that would seem like a perfect prop for a pseudo-intellectual's masquerade? A Deepak Chopra that would cleanse our souls from the strains of this temporary world we are living in? Honestly, I do not know. I just drink coffee. If I read something while I am drinking, it is not a deliberate choice of picking something appropriate for my coffee. Read anything you like. Read something about sex they say. In my opinion, reading about it while drinking coffee seems too redundant. Go figure. /endrant

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