Easter Monday
What to do on a Easter Monday when your married friends are with their families, your own family is 100,000 miles away from where you live and you are single? You go shopping. The problem is that all shops in Paris are closed today and it's pouring down. And my fridge is empty. I can't even make myself a descent cup of coffee, the residue of milk in my fridge has transformed into a smelly Brie cheese. I'm flicking from one channel to the next, nothing of interest, unless you find the democratic future of Belarus, or the development of Africa and international assistance subjects to be considered deeply on a Easter Monday. Not for me... Okay, I will go to the office, at least, there will be diet coke and milk.Labels: Self derision, Simply coffee, Wash away my sins...
3 a.m on a Monday night...
It's 3 A.M., I am still at work. Sometimes I wished I were dumb and beautiful so that I could sip cocktails all day on an exotic island and live the life of a woman of leisure. But I am clever so I have a real job, which keeps me awake at this time of the night... Or maybe I am dumb that's why I am still at work.I drank about 10 cups of strong espresso and 3 cans of diet coke within a limited time-frame of 2 hours. I feel sick.Labels: Professional hardship, Self derision, Simply coffee
Monday Morning Ritual
Monday Morning at work (i.e., now, at this right moment), I'm knackered. No time to put my make-up on. My secretary said I looked tired. Hell no, I'm not tired, I'm simply not wearing my make-up on. Thanks for reminding me I look pale. Need my coffee with milk no sugar. Damn! Why don't they serve proper coffee here??? What the ... is this tiny and bitter grayish colored liquid they call coffee with milk? Oh yeah, I keep forgetting, this is an espresso with a drop of milk (in French "noisette." Translation: hazel nut. Why do they call it a hazel nut? Doesn't look like one... Or maybe it's because it's as bitter as a raw hazel nut?? )
Back to my Monday morning ritual. I turn my computer on. Ugh... it takes ages....! I should have turned it on before getting my noisette. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... .... (keep losing my patience...) Finally! It's on!! Browsing through the net, I go to NY Times, I open the Weddings & Celebrations Section. Some Mondays, I read the weddings & celebrations section with my colleague. She emits weird sounds while reading it: "awe, ahhh, soooo nice, awe, ahh, so cute... mmm... so romantic..." (Me: Uh-huh, yeah cute, kinda... well...)
I wonder. The majority of those couples in the weddings & celebrations section have graduated magna cum laude from an ivy league college and went to grad school and now are working in a high-profile firm on the 45th floor with a view to the river in some financial cities in the world. Do you need to do your undergrad at Princeton and get a law degree from Yale and work in a fancy investment bank or a top-notch law firm downtown to get your name + picture appear on the NY Times???
Oh ##%&&@# ! It's 11 A.M. already!!! What am I doing dreaming? I forgot! I have a deadline today!!!Labels: Professional hardship, Self derision, Simply coffee
Regular, Skim 2%, Half and Half or Cream?
I didn’t know until I moved to NYC that cows produced different kinds of milk (e.g., whole, skim, 2%, half and half, cream), like coca-cola which comes in various flavors (e.g., Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, Caffeine-Free Coke, Vanilla Coke, and the latest breed, Coffee Coke.) By the way, why would people buy Coffee Coke? If soda consumers want a triple shot of caffeine in their veins, why don’t they drink Red Bull?
I don’t like skim milk in my coffee. Tastes like coffee diluted with lukewarm water. Remember? I transited via a European country where coffee is as bitter as bad cough medicine… Natives in this European country which confuse coffee with bad cough medicine call regular American coffee as “jus de chaussette.” Could literally be depicted as tainted water dripping from a dirty wet sock. The imagery is so not mouth-watering that I would almost lose my thirst. Anyway, I was saying that I don’t like skim milk in my coffee. If I wanted to have lukewarm water, I wouldn’t waste my dollar bill at the corner deli. I can just open the faucet for free. I want to make my dollar worth its value. That’s why I order coffee with half and half or cream. But here’s my constant nightmare each time I see the deli guy generously pouring a waterfall of cream.
According to the Nutrition Facts found on Calorie-Count, a one size order of coffee with regular milk translates into 25 calories with 9 calories from fat. Should you replace regular milk by cream, you add on 35 Calories, with additional 64 calories from fat. No wonder why my daily coffee break at the corner deli on Amsterdam and 116th contributed to the exponential swelling of my Asian body by 20 pounds in no less than 8 months… Thank God, I don’t like sugar in my coffee…Labels: Self derision, Simply coffee
Hey, There's a Tourist...
Shortly before my moving to NYC, my friend M. a native New Yorker residing in Brooklyn gave me a few surviving tips including this one, if I didn't want to be mistaken for an annoying newcomer:
M. says: "If you want to have coffee, you go to a nearby corner deli. Go straight to the counter, and say: 'Coffee, with milk, no sugar.' No need to say hello, don't say thanks, just hand your dollar bill and leave. Don't try to be polite, don't say: hello, I'd like a cup of coffee please, with a bit of milk, I won't take sugar, thank you... There are thousands of people waiting behind you. Just take your cup and MOVE. Understand??"
Me: "uh..huh..."
And so I did, on my first encounter with the deli guy behind the counter selling his morning coffee on Amsterdam and 116th. (Thank you Hamilton Deli for your long-term service.) The only difference was that the deli guy asked me whether I wanted small, medium or large... I therefore had to enter into a deep consideration as to the appropriate size of the coffee cup. I was freshfly arriving from a country where coffee cups are as small as a teaspoon and coffee as bitter as a bad cough medicine.... What the....!!
Another coffee ordering experience, this time in Palm Beach Gardens, FL, where I was visiting my friend Ruth, a true Southerner who moved to Florida a decade ago. There we go to a Dunkin' Donuts' store along the highway, temperature as high as 100F (i.e., about 40 C), my friend all jolly and with impeccable make-up on, and me, disgustingly looking and dying of heat... I wanted my coffee, immediately. There she was, behind the counter, a nice-looking Dunkin' Donuts' salesperson smiling and saying: "How are you today???" My friend Ruth replies: "Ohhh well, than' you dear , oohh so hot' outside, 'tis ever gonna stop, my back is hurtin' ..." The coffee lady (smiling and showing her beautifully white teeth): "Sorry to hear that ma'am, I can't stand the heat either. So what can I do for ya today???" (Me: What the .... can we please stop the chit chat, just order the %%#@# coffee and leave??!!) .
The French touch: My first NY deli experience and the Florida moment reminded me of a hilarious book I've recently read (which I highly recommend for those of you wanting a truthful description of the French) written by an Englishman in Paris: A Year in the Merde,* Stephen Clarke. The narrator, a young British guy in Paris goes to a cafe and orders a cafe latte. He asks for a "cafe au lait" but he's being served a huge cup of coffee of what he calls a "combined annual production of Colombia's coffee fields and the dairy herds of Normandy," with, of course, a check proportionate to the humongous size of the drink he got. A rip-off for tourists. A true Parisian would have ordered a "creme." Not a cafe au lait. ---------
* Footnote: For those of you not francophiles, Merde means shit, poop but also is a popular French swear-word (e.g., if you want to sound like a native French, just say Merde in each sentence.)
Labels: Self derision, Simply coffee
Dunkin' Donuts, the Coffee, not the Doughnut...
My sister and I, we grew up with Dunkin' Donuts, not the coffee, but the doughnut, glazed or strawberry filled... It was a pure delight for my childhood palate, until our grandma decided it was too fattening for the 4 year-old Asian kids we were, so grandma switched to Baskin Robbins. She would take us every afternoon after kindergarten class of our childhood years to the local Baskin Robbins (in front of Arisugawa park in Azabu, Tokyo), whether rain or shine, winter or summer... She would order one scoop of orange sherbet... It tasted like a mix between Fanta and Kool-Aid, a beautiful, but yet an amazingly unnatural flashy orange color... we loved it...until we realized that Baskin Robbins ice-cream factory was not limited to orange sherbet.* They had a variety of flavors, much cooler -so to speak- than orange sherbet: e.g., mint ice cream filled with chocolate chips... We saw that kindergarten kid (then our classmate) eating it, or rather swallowing it. My sister and I wanted to give it a try, wanted to ask our grandma that maybe, a change in flavor would not be a bad thing in our monotonous culinary afternoons, but never managing to voice our objection to the daily treat that my grandma was generously offering us. 10 years later, when I had full authority to decide which ice-cream flavor would slide into my greedy throat, I finally tried that most wanted mint ice cream filled with chocolate chips... First reaction? Disappointment. Felt like eating a mint-flavored chewing gum. Since then, I opt for orange sherbet -not that I still crave for Baskin Robbins, which has been truly replaced by a whole pint of "dolce de leche" Haggen Dazs...
All this digression, what was it for...? oh yes, I wanted to talk about Dunkin' Donuts. I didn't know until I moved to NYC that Dunkin' Donuts made coffee. Not a random coffee, but THE coffee, the best coffee I've ever had in my entire short life. Ok ok what would an East Asian (hereafter "EA") know anything about coffee? EAs could talk about tea (green tea, not Ceylon or darjeeeeeling) but not coffee, you would say! EAs don't produce coffee... Anyway anyway, so I discovered Dunkin' Donuts coffee, with milk, no sugar. I was first very skeptical in having a sip of this warm Styrofoam coffee. After a first few sip, I was converted. I had this sudden feeling of warmth, as if I were sleeping in my fluffy bed in a cold winter night or this feeling inside of me when I have "tea and cake" next to the fireplace. Good bye bitter taste Starbucks! The only downside of Dunkin' Donuts, besides the fact that I always want to buy a glazed doughnut with my "large-coffee-with-milk-no-sugar" is that there are comparatively fewer stores in Manhattan. Starbucks are on each block/corner so why not Dunkin' Donuts? Luckily (Thank you God), there were 3 Dunkin' Donuts' stores within walking distance from my downtown apartment. (Check out stores on Fulton/Cliff St, Fulton/Nassau St, and on Broadway/John St. As a matter of comparison, I was surrounded by 10 Starbucks stores within walking distance). The staff was not as nice as the "baristas" and the stores were a bit shabby. However, here is evidence that Dunkin' Donuts are famous for their coffee: go online to Dunkin' Donuts and you'll see that their doughnut skills are not mentioned, they only talk about and sell coffee and all sorts of coffee related accessories. You'd say, "silly, they don't talk about doughnuts on their website because they can't sell doughnuts online! Doughnuts are perishable goods!...." Well... go to Krispykreme, the first image you'll see is a big original glazed with a whole in it...not coffee...
Another digression, I also discovered for the first time Krispy Kreme in NYC (sounds as if I were living secluded in a Monastery and discovered every single delight that life has got to give in NYC, but the answer is NO). At first, I thought Krispy Kreme was much better than Dunkin' Donuts, but I've changed my mind and gone back to my first love, Dunkin' Donuts... Novelty always appears handsome, I guess, until we get bored of it...then we go back to our true values...
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* Footnote: Strangely, my sister has always managed to drop her orange sherbet cone in the park. Grandma would buy her another cone but my sister would drop it again... She would cry staring with eyes full of tears at the flashy orangy spot on the ground...
Labels: Memories..., Self derision, Simply coffee
First Post, First Blog, Time Zone
Welcome to my Blog, welcome to my First Blog...
The posted time will show 7:00 AM but in real life, my day is almost -well hopefully- over. I'm at +1 GMT, but my laptop is still on EST (NY Time)...after 6 months back in Europe haven't managed to change the time zone on my laptop yet, okay okay I know this is Paris not New York, (as my friend AMJ loved to say: "This is America not ##&%@# Europe" or as Xristos likes to whine: "awwwe this is Neeew York, not laaaame Paris" under NY Time Zone) on top of it all, with my mom calling me at 3 AM in the middle of the night (+9 GMT my mother's time zone) No wonder I'm becoming schizophrenic. Time for a large coffee with milk, no sugar. Not espresso.Labels: Parisian life, Simply coffee
