26.12.09: my local

I have been spending my Sunday mornings the past few weekends at the cafe closest to my house. It gets me away from my loony ayi and forces me to work on some of the stuff that I really want to do. It's starting to feel like I am myself on these weekends where I can hide out in the cafe and play at being a writer, and then I have to wriggle back into some suit of responsibility and a deep interest in the Chinese business world on Monday mornings. I can tell already that is only going to be harder and harder, so I am going to have to work harder and harder on the weekends if there's any hope for me to actually lead the life that I want to lead.

I don't love this cafe. Lately, it's been ridiculously cold, which is no fault of theirs, but it's also filled with people, which I hate. Like this woman sitting across from me who keeps raising her hand and then slapping her thigh in defeat. Over and over again. She's trying to get the attention of the wait staff, despite the fact that there is a sign, in English and Chinese, explaining that customers should order their food at the counter and pay for it first. It's just a special streak of stupid. This morning, I got to watch a foreigner, a man in his mid-40s, have a conniption because his orange juice was too big. That's right--he paid good money for a glass of orange juice and there was just too much of it. "This is enough for a whole family," he snorted in anger. I fucking hate places full of people, because then you have to listen to stupid shit like that and it rots your brain.



Last weekend, the weather was quite nice, and lots of people started showing up for lunch around two. It got so crowded that there was no more room at one point. I had an extra empty chair at my table, and there was no end of customers complaining that I should not be allowed to sit there and read and drink the coffee I paid for when they were waiting for a table. This was all done in Chinese, so I assume they thought I didn't understand how awful they were being, or else they were just that obnoxious. I had a meal and three cups of overpriced, not entirely pleasant coffee - served, I will add, in glasses that would have been perfect for iced tea, but as containers for hot coffee with only a stupid paper napkin tied around them, they are trendy, idiotic, and really, really frustrating. Hot coffee is conventionally served in a mug with a handle for a reason: so you don't burn your fucking fingers. Now, I just sit here and stare at my coffee until it's cool enough for me to actually touch.

I wanted to ask those irate would-be patrons the other day if it would make any difference to them if I were Chinese. I have certainly seen on many occasions Chinese patrons taking up four-tops and reading the newspaper while we got seated at the bar or took our order to go. What are you gonna do? They got their first and they are paying for the coffee and cake, so it's not like you can ask them to leave. But that's exactly what those nasty folks wanted to do to me, as though me drinking my overpriced coffee at a two-top was not a reason to leave me in peace. How about the charming woman I just saw literally taking up two tables just now while a white dude and his Chinese girlfriend looked for a table? She had her laptop on one table and her tea on the other, and was staring at her shoes until the dude had the gumption to ask her if she wouldn't mind if they sat down. "Oh, sorry! Yes, here you go!" like she didn't see them eyeing the prime real estate she was squatting on until that moment.

And now a mother has just advised her young son to take out his guitar and have a practice here in the cafe. Right here, in the middle of the cafe. Right over the obnoxious Christmas music, like sitting and having a normal chat over lunch would be too much to fucking ask.

Yet somehow being inadvertently annoyed by strangers in an icy, cold cafe is preferable to being shouted at by the housekeeper in warm intimacy of my own living room.

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