A whoosh moment

Coffee Gets Milky

The wind lifts the leaves and sends them dancing. What a thing it is to feel that sea breeze against your face, salt-sharp and bracing. This is Cape Town in all its contradictions: the water we adore from a distance, too dreadfully cold to ever step into, lapping at shores of the beach we walk but never wade.

Morning breaks, and somewhere in a sanctuary, someone reaches for their second cup before the first is fully drowned. Here, beneath vaulted ceilings that will echo with songs, the beans speak their own benediction, at hands one mirroring another.

The milk froths to an airy resurrection, poured into waiting darkness until the black turns cloudy with grace. It's communion of a different sort, but no less sacred for its secularity.

Notes Get Windy

In the dreaming hours, when consciousness drifts between waking and sleep, a figure moves through half-lit streets. From her handbag tumbles a scatter of notes, and in that suspended moment before she reaches down, the wind stirs with intention. You call out, to warn of the loss she's about to suffer, as dream-logic speaks in your voice.

Then the child appears, whimsical and wild as wind itself. From his lips comes a sound, a playful whoosh that blurs the line between breath and breeze. The notes lift, caught between gravity and air, between currency and sound, everything suddenly, impossibly airborne.

It's the kind of moment that clings to you after waking, vivid and strange, the sort of thing that makes you wonder if wind has always been this mischievous, this alive.

Just milking the milk

Excuse me please

After settling down at my desk, I put a teabag of my decaffeinated Earl Grey tea in my mug and made it for the kitchen with half a litre of whole milk that I bought from Sainsbury’s on my way to the office.

People sometimes gather in the kitchen around the instant hot water faucet and the coffee machine, chatting and totally oblivious to others.

At times you must make your presence known, intrude in their space to make them aware that once they have had their drinks or beverages dispensed, they really should move on.

Swift of hand

I placed my bottle of milk on the counter and went to fill my mug with hot water, between doing that and adding sugar to my tea, one of the interlopers, instead of opening the fridge to use the public access semi-skimmed milk, had opened my bottle of milk and poured it in his tea.

When I reach for the bottle, I was surprised it was already open, the seal had been removed, and I do remember seeing the seal intact before I left my desk. What to do? Just ignore the situation and finish making your tea. But what an Artful Dodger he was.

The milks of taste

One of my colleagues later came to get some tea and waited for it to brew before pouring in some milk. I offered the whole milk, and we began the discussion about the difference in taste between fully skimmed, semi-skimmed, and whole milk. Then, we discussed the new range of designer milk substitutes made from oats, almonds, coconuts, or other sources. I have never liked goat’s milk, and I might just fall ill on camel’s milk.

As we talked about tastes, I recalled the explosion of taste I experienced on a visit to Prague, and I wondered if I had already written about it. Well, I had, and I did not want to repeat myself, so I excerpted the section and offered a link to the corresponding blog.

“For years, I had semi-skimmed milk with my cornflakes till I had breakfast in Prague with whole milk - the bouquet, the taste, the wonder of things unadulterated - I never went back to that tasteless half-milk stuff, it only contains 2% less fat than the real deal.” [Ich bin ein Berliner – March 2006] I cannot believe my proofreading skills were that bad in 2006. Anyway, the source blog is fixed.

Meanwhile, the thought alone of when they ran out of milk last week, and it was the milk I bought that kept things going until there was barely enough for my last cup of tea. It literally is a case of my sharing the milk of human kindness. I get what I need, others just take what they see.

Photons on the Prostate - I

Change and difference

I guess this does not really fit the Men’s things blogs so I have decided to write about my radiotherapy treatment as Photons on the Prostate, basically on how I feel and other experiences. The Image Guided Radiotherapy treatment I am having uses a photon beam rather than a proton beam. [City Of Hope: What’s the difference? Photon and proton radiation therapy]

We are advised not to change our eating habits, but there is no way to prevent changing something when met with the prospect of treating cancer. You adjust or the situation forces them on you.

The first thing I had to sort out to prevent bowel gas was in the drinks, and I miss the fizzy comfort of bubbles dissipating on my tongue as sparkling water creates a sating sensation even before you have swallowed. Still water is so bland and ordinary, it is how things are.

Dishwater tastes so good

Returning from the hospital yesterday, I stopped at my local supermarket to get decaffeinated tea and coffee, how this effluent of dishwater was ever palatable escapes me. The coffee having lost its potency with the absence of caffeine is perceptible to taste, at least to mine.

Two cups of coffee later, I can understand this is being done for a cause as there is no way I could have been persuaded of the benefit of it, I shall persevere. What I have not dared to try yet is the decaffeinated Earl Grey tea, I guess I’ll just pinch my nose when I drink it.

Getting tired of food

In terms of side effects, whilst it is early days, I do not seem to have much of an appetite for food, I have already been skipping meals long before I started treatment, an anticipatory response that I need to counter. Every desire to cook deserts me too.

There is some tiredness and early morning insomnia, whether related or unexplained, I cannot tell. A feeling of bowel discomfort with some urgency that is not presenting effect, I can only wonder what that is.

Blog - Photons on the Prostate - II

Blog - Men's things

Little quirks for smirks

Smirking for coffee

I just spooned some demerara sugar into a highball glass which is essentially a typical drinking glass with a thick base, straight-up sides, and probably about 2.5 inches or about 8 centimetres tall. I smirked and sniggered at the quirky things I have done, as the sugar was meant for a coffee mug.

The kettle was just switched on, the routine of making instant coffee rather than tea that used to be my comfort beverage for the morning. As soon as I noticed, I took my big mug out of the sink, poured out the water, and tipped the sugar out of the glass into the mug before adding a teaspoonful of instant coffee. I stick to NESCAFÉ® Original Instant Coffee, whatever the cost.

Sometimes, I make filter coffee and for that, I would set up my milk frothing machine as it is never really right with ordinary milk or evaporated milk which is a holdover from my time in the Netherlands where they use coffee milk, a creamier full-fat milk for coffee.

Interestingly, some consider coffee a drug, I have heard a preacher boast about never tasting alcohol or coffee, maybe it is an abomination to others, but I do like the taste of coffee even as my mother has tried to prevail upon me to ditch both coffee and sugar. It doesn’t work for her; it works for me.

And this is funny

I have put it all down to quirks, nothing to concern myself too much about since I might have done many of these things before, and this is not a result of aging. Forgetting I already have my glasses on, I attempt to put on the spare only to realise I could not. Wearing an undervest back-to-front and that slight constriction at the neck is an alert to it.

The other day, I had a jumper on, then a jacket, but before donning my overcoat for the cold outdoors, I reached for another jacket and my arm went down a sleeve, it felt too tight. Very funny, I surmised inwardly. You do not need another jacket on.

I might say my name, but I do not call myself names for doing silly things. I guess what matters is being aware of things rather than forgetting and being observed by someone else like Brian who still ribs me no end about when I did the glasses skit. Living with your quirks is just one way of being able to make fun of yourself.

Cupping coffee

Quite early for a drink

I found myself asking, where are our cocktails? Surely, they are not being made in heaven and needing a prayer of faith with the miracle of changing water into wine, just at our tables. Soon, they arrived without the need for a prayer on our lips, our yearning and expectations met as the ice entombed slices of lime and lemon in the glass.

Blood orange juice, gin, Cointreau, chilled prosecco and lime came to Alcoholic named as Blood orange French and Pom fizz which was lighter on the palate with pomegranate juice and chilled prosecco was served to Anonymous.

Stirring much curiosity

He puts a teaspoon of sugar in his flat white cup of coffee, the cup having no handles that he has to cup it between his hands as a warmer to take a drink. I could not decide after he put the sugar in his coffee if he was stirring or doodling, but soon after he did have to stir in the sugar, so, my first observation about doodling was right.

Apparently, she looks like a Karen. Pray, what is a Karen look? Surely not Donna Karan. Now, the waiter or waitron as they are apparently known on the menus in Cape Town has noticed I am taking notes, he thinks I am writing reviews of the food and probably describing something, not to my liking, which I am not at this time. What have I been writing about?

No one takes AMEX

So far, I have written nothing about our meals, our choices were good and tasty. We were at Hemelhuijs or Heaven’s house, the U appears as a V on the building sign, I guess we’ll touch the subject of meals another time.

When paying, the invoice said only Mastercard or Visa accepted, it made for a good joke to the waitron when I told of our visit to Simon’s Restaurant at Groot Constantia, the bill came in an American Express folder emblazoned with the by-line, the best way to pay is with your AMEX, but the bill strictly noted, only Mastercard and Visa were acceptable. Funny and ironic at the same time. All the waitrons agreed.

Bowling coffee

Standups at dawn

In the mornings we send each other video messages on WhatsApp but recently because of a pandemic control situation we do now get to have a video chat, first thing in the morning and then after work just before the networks on his side of the world start to misbehave for some unknown reason in the evenings.

Then, the videos were recorded in his office, the backdrop with medical charts and his visage a thing of undying pleasure to behold. However, depending on when I call, it is somewhere from just rising to possibly driving.

To sip and not slurp

The opportunity for a coffee to deal with the tremors of the early wake up to attend to the day could if not fully drunk leave the video conference in a shaking frenzy of possible concern. The coffee mug is hardly such that it has a handle for it is a bowl, a whole bowl for a two-handed manoeuvre from rest to lips and down again with the function of not needing another serving.

Whilst I should probably confess to thinking too much as he would at times surmise, the bowl could do ten pins in one or hit a six to the boundary. I guess that is where we got the title of bowling coffee. Having just about enough and more than the usual to give the day a start of not repeating the same ritual until the next morning. 

Thought Picnic: No stars for my coffee and no bucks for the WiFi

Starbucks to the rescue

For free wireless internet connectivity at the price of a coffee with strange names [tall, grande or venti] pretending to trendiness at Starbucks you can surf.

I usually have a café latte grande which in simple English is a medium-sized coffee with frothy milk, but it felt strange seeing the coffee being made.

Now, I have had student doctors gather round my bed, even had some sit in on consultations either with my medical consultant or for intimate topics of discussion without thinking much about it as long as they are not poking me with things or making the calls.

The taste of trainee coffee

It is the first time I have had an apprentice barista [not barrister at law for a vendor at a coffee bar] prepare my coffee as she was instructed through each step of making the coffee.

You could see she was not a dab hand that my coffee was in danger of coming short of the Starbucks quality I had grown accustomed to; there was not enough frothy milk to fill my mug that the instructor had to step in.

She might with time become such an expert able to train other baristas in making the Starbucks menu of coffee-bean offerings but I would have liked a little subtlety in the instruction.

Just ask

For a café full of people who I thought were using the free WiFi, I found out it was down, the jinx of my hotel seemed to be following me, but when I asked, the guys in the café switched it on and we were all able to surf for free.

I cannot be the most forward and assertive person around, I guess people just looked for alternatives rather than ask and that might be because they had their coffees in take-away paper cups rather than in a china mug as I always have mine.

Why ask?

This only lasted so long before the WiFi service became unusable in two Starbucks cafés around Chatelet des Halles that it was better to find a seat inside Forum des Halles for the free WiFi connection.

Where an annoying prick took exception to people taking pictures in the mall where he might have inadvertently appeared in their pictures after being the most irritating nuisance on the phone beside me. He was just about walked out of the place by security – Good riddance.

To think in one Starbucks café I only had to click on a button to connect and in another hardly 300 metres away I filled in a form to guard against terrorism just short of divulging my sexual preferences and blood type – I’ll rather be rescued by something freer than what Starbucks has to offer of over-priced coffee and a fraction of a carrot cake compared to what I will get in Germany going for literally twice the price. Daylight robbery!

In the shadow of Mount Fuji

A new class of coffee

A journey of sorts as one waits for the train which gives just about 90 minutes to while away the time but not enough to do anything substantial.

Starbucks Coffee with a carrot cake and a blueberry muffin perhaps but the ever-friendly and helpful porter suggested the Café Royale on the 1^st floor, high ceilings, gilded gargoyles and 1830 just to tell you that it has been around for quite a while.

For location, Starbucks is a dreary, conventional template of dark colours and trendiness pretending to class, here, I get real bone china for a teacup and saucer with a silver spoon, not a mug and a wooden spatula – even the traditional does matter.

To Nippon with names

So, I collected my luggage and made for the platform, my name is sometimes mistaken for Japanese and there we were, a troop of Japanese tourists with their trunks, portmanteaus and suitcases, whatever happened to those humongous large Japanese-brand cameras, not one in sight – very strange.

The train was running late, they found out it would be 5 minutes late just 2 minutes before it arrived and then the train formation was reversed – I could not understand why an international train platform and announcement stuck to French and Flemish only – stubborn Belgian pride sometimes comes across as parochial – though I very well understood what was being said from the sound system that drowned out its original output with reverberating echoes. New station, rotten audio.

As we made for our coaches, the Japanese began genuflecting to each other, the guide as obsequious as could be sick-making, all that bowing and deference – we need to get on the train, for crying out loud.

Times have changed

You could see the hierarchies, the seniority, the juniors remaining standing until the seniors were settled, it all looked so colonial, the power-distance index showing a gulf as wide as to be unhealthy for genuine mentoring or leadership in the 21^st Century. That kind of society thrives within its own indigenous setting but one wonders about it when teleported to multicultural settings well away from home.

Then my reserved seat – a mess, just like the last time – whilst the stewardess might have been a bit miffed, it was only right for me to ask that the rubbish be cleared away just as one would expect of a table in a restaurant that was brimming with patrons.

I would suppose the Japanese are getting off at the airport having stripped Antwerp of its diamonds, well, the times of that kind of excess – the Japanese acquiring masters and valuable antiques of note – have probably gone but then this blog would be online before I find out.

Should be home in an hour, I think, as I glimpse the lives of those in whose backyard looms Mount Fuji.

Scanning Starbucks' Napkins

The name sells coffee

As I changed trains on Sunday, I had a 30 minute stopover at Duisburg and decided to get a coffee.

Of all the coffee shops in the station, I had seen a Starbucks Coffee sign on the platform which was 70 metres away – I was willing to drag my baggage and self all the way to the global giant in a German city railway station.

Not so much for the coffee but for the fact that they do muffins – the muffins are not perfect, there are times I have looked at the muffins and thought I was in some biohazard laboratory with fungal spores cultivated on the surface of the muffins.

But ignore the eyes and mind, go for the taste and all will be well. I hate chocolate in my muffins, in fact, I only do blueberry muffins and when hard pressed vanilla or banana.

I’ve been silly

Too many choices of coffee and as I remembered the Undercover Economist, I realised I had been fleeced the moment I walked into the café, I was suckered and the fool in me was about to be parted from my money.

I ordered a Caffe Mocha Grande from the wall menu which according to Page 35 of my copy of the Undercover Economist with embellishments translates to - I want a cappuccino, mix that with hot chocolate; I feel special - and then make that big by adding water and milk; I feel greedy - and top it with whipped cream; I feel piggily gluttonous. Then charge me over twice the price of a regular coffee.

Did I also get a lemon cake too? My waistline is getting strained already.

I settled in a corner to down my coffee, muffin and cake and as I wiped my mouth of the crumbs, I noticed my napkin had one of those green messages that is supposed to make you feel concerned whilst delivering nothing in reality.

Annoying napkin

The napkin was made from 100% recycled fibres using a bleach-free process, one can be glad for that but the other messages took away from my satisfaction with the snack.

I could not say if it was the More plants, More planet. STARBUCKS COFFEE or the Less napkins, More plants, More planet that annoyed me more as a message that was a non-message; though if contrived enough, it could mean we all depart for the moon.

Similar to the message to save the trees as the paper is friction and pressure heated to bind the toner as you stand by the laser printer ready to pick up your essential printouts.

The trees have already been felled, that is why it is already paper in the laser printer – For crying out loud.

So, here I was in Duisburg, Germany using recycled paper to wipe my mouth and then noticing that the napkin was manufactured in the Netherlands; it would had have to be transported from somewhere in the Netherlands – so much for recycling and the carbon footprint of transportation.

Less Schmaltz, More muffin, More Coffee – I say.

Refusing the most expensive coffee

Train in traffic jam

It was just a few minutes past eight this morning as I sent a text message to my colleagues that I was already in Germany but our train had been caught in a traffic jam. Imagine!

Well, it so happened that the border station of Emmerich in Germany had all platforms occupied that our train could not traverse that area towards the first stop – Oberhausen.

It was not till late on Tuesday that I decided I would rather travel by train to Krefeld than car-pool with my young colleagues who had the tendency to floor the accelerator.

Besides, I do not travel well in cars for long distances, dizzy spells and nausea buffet me as the strongest mints are sucked to save me from car-sickness, trains are better for all sorts of reasons.

By the time we got to Oberhausen the train was running 35 minutes late, now, earlier in the journey as a 1^st class passenger, I had been served coffee at my seat, so after so many trilingual excuses for the train delays we were offered a free drink to cool our rising tempers and impatience.

However, we all had to suffer the indignity of going up to queue for the drinks at the bistro showing our tickets as we got “compensated”.

I am growing increasingly annoyed with these seeming favour-driven no-fault gifts masquerading as benign compensation for services we have paid for.

If I had gone for that coffee, I would have acquiesced to having probably the most expensive coffee I have ever had from a paper cup on a train and this cannot be compared to the rates that the international corporate lawyer who shared my cabin would charge for 35 minutes of legal waffle.

Whilst the drink would have been free, it was no deal, rather, it was the situation where you are glibly offered a palliative thing on terms you have had no choice in negotiating.

On any given day, I’ll rather have the service I paid for than the compensation and if you must compensate it should be for the inconvenience I have suffered with my qualified input into the negotiations and an act of genuine contrition, feel some pain and make me happy – just do not patronise me – the coffee can make you sick – Yuk! Yuck!