Then I found someone

The answer to my questions

Where can this love be found? This question became a blog of deep grief, uncertain wonder, recurrent reminiscing, and disturbing thoughts. To a point, I realised I could no more force it, the objects of affection were reduced to plants, roses that bloom but were a harvest of thorns that choked away the passion before it became a fashion. The flower withering long you brought your nose to embrace the whiff of a scent that betrays its beauty.

Blog - Where can this love be found?

Another was like cactus, attractive in the desert, sometimes with colour, deceptively suggesting an oasis is nearby, but needing neither care nor attention, self-satisfied in the nutrients it gleans from nature, surviving on hardship than love, just as prickly to the touch that it fits in no garden. Not even in the Eden of dreams.

To some friends, the interests were discussed terms of plants much as there was one who in his internment might well have nourished the plants that thrived on his grave. I did not know where that love could be found.

Then I found paradise,
As I looked deep in his eyes,
In the embrace of his arms,
All my storms, it calms.

That is a poem or a song to be completed eventually because I found someone and fell so crazy in love with him. Yes, we find love and it is wonderful to express.

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Thought Picnic: The plant

Labours of reluctance

I am not as green-fingered as my father who in his professional prime left lucrative accountancy on an unfortunately doomed enterprise in farming, the first harvest was raided first by monkeys and what was left fell to mould.

Besides, as authoritarian patriarch long before his father died, he had a penchant of starting us off on some laborious earthy project and conveniently disappearing off for some more important activity. We noticed that sleight of hand long before and it probably informed how we sometimes distanced ourselves so as not to be enthused into another wild scheme.

The plant

I was given an orchid when I bought my home in Amsterdam, it needed careful tending and it only flowered annually, it was the plant.

The plant in some ways was something I desired, I was ready to invest in it for the pleasure of the bloom and so the tending began. The right flower pot, a place to put it to catch the sunlight, the watering done not to drown the plant, the soil sometime fertilised to nourish the plant and I waited.

Religiously, the tending became routine, as expectation grew, but the flowering and the pleasure came once, then the waiting for a second as the routine continued after which one hoped the season may shorten for a more frequently flowering.

I’m done

For all the hope, it began to look hopeless, there was no bud and no flower, the plant took the sun and the water, it was trimmed and pruned to the point that if it were possible one would pull out a flower like a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat. All to no avail.

By the third year, I was tired of the orchid much as I have grown tired of the plant, this love interest that one is apparently trying to woo with all charm, concern and compassion is taking sunlight and water, and giving nothing back in the colour of nature. I am quite done with this, time for another plant, though maybe that is why I am not green-fingered, I'll place an order for Gardening for Dummies.

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.