Monday Morning War between Sleep, Work and Coffee

It’s always hard for me to go back to work on Monday. The bed feels extraordinary comfortable than usual. Eyes can’t hardly open and sensitive to sun light. There seems to have some kind of magnet in my body that keeps on pulling me to the bed. It very difficult to pull myself to the bathroom… These are all the excuse that comes in my mind saying “Stay, skip work today” every Monday morning. I have to fight on to go to work. It’s a terrible fight as the war zone is in my house. The Enemy has advantages on the land marks. The bed, the sofa, even the soft carpet on the floor can drag me down. The only way to survive is to get out of the house fast and rush to work. 10 minutes of washing and dress up is the basic necessary for work. After the preparation, breakfast has to be schedule in the office. Ever minute spends in the house increase the risk of going back to sleep again.

Next is run and pursued. This part of war occurs on the way to work. Strictly speaking, it’s the fight to keep awake when driving to work. It’s the most difficult and terrible fight. If you own a fairly expensive car that has a very comfortable seat, cool air conditioning system, absolute sound prove and super sound system that plays Johann Pachelbel Canon in D major, you’re going to have a hard time winning the war. If you lose this part of war, you might end up sleeping in the hospital for month. Worst scenario might just be not waking up at all. In order to win this war, you must switch to wake up songs like Girlfriend by Avril Lavigne. It might not be your type of songs but you need it. Roll down your windows and enjoy the cold morning wind. That is unless the air is clean enough and not carbon monoxide from the heavy traffic. Get some toothpicks in your hand and ready to poke yourself when feeling sleepy. This part of war usually last not more than 20 minutes, unless the work place is far away or unfortunate traffic jam occurs.

So when or where coffee comes in? Well, the first thing that we put into our mouth after wake up definitely is coffee. It is really not a good idea of having just coffee without any solid food but that’s one way to wake up. I’m sure many of us did that. Not encouraging as it’s not good for health. Thus some will wait to have their wake up coffee. Second location that we can take coffee is along the road to work. We just have to make sure that the coffee doesn’t get in the way while driving. Spilling the coffee while driving might cause accident. Thus some will consider wait extra longer to have their wake up coffee. The third and final place to have coffee is in the office. After all those excitement, it’s not “wake up” coffee any more, it’s “start working” coffee to be more precise.

P/S: I just hope that we can sleepwalking to work. Don’t have to go through so many troubles. Just wake up sitting in the office and ready to start working.

Entertaining Evening Dinner with My Friend singing on stage

It’s very enjoyable when you are able to enjoy a good meal with friends while listening to the songs presented by your friends. The food might be a bit expensive than usual but given that it’s delicious and the dinning environment is great. I say it’s worth the price. Not to mention that we are able to enjoy the singing performance for about couple of hours too. That evening definitely is entertaining.

At the beginning, a friend of mine that likes to sing started out singing in restaurant just for fun. It was once in a while performance and it’s not about money but the satisfaction of able to sing in public. He also participates in song writing contest and received great results. Lately he gathered couple of his friends and form a band just for the fun to perform at various occasion. The band is called Mangroove and you may check out the website for details.

That night I was around the area where my friend has a live performance in a small restaurant. So I call out couple more friends to join me for dinner and check out their singing performance. I pick a table that is close to the stage and wait until my friends show up. As usual while waiting, I look around and observed the people around me. The table beside me sat 4 youngsters that seem wealthy. They look like college students, having lots of drinks that seem expensive without a sense of worrying about money. They laugh and talk as if they own the restaurant and nobody complain about it. Oh well, it doesn’t bother me at all. In fact it’s kind of interesting for me to watch them. At the other side at the corner of the restaurant, is table of 4 is celebrating birthday party. I’m pretty sure that it’s a birthday party for a girl. Boys normally won’t or don’t celebrate birthday party in a restaurant where all the unknown waiters and captain singing “Happy Birthday” to god knows who they sing to. Still this trick successfully make the birthday girl put on a smiling face for the entire evening.

It rain that night but my friends still shows up. We talk and place our order. Couple more minutes later, my friend that suppose to sing arrived. We had a short conversation as he needs to prepare for his performance. When the food arrived, he began his little concert. To my surprise, the sound system in the restaurant is well equipped. It’s nothing like other restaurants that I’ve been before where only bass and shouts can be heard. In this restaurant, I’m able to listen clearly every single songs performed. That’s good for the audience but not completely good for the singer. Any songs that are badly performed will be noticeable clearly. That’s the thing my friend worried as some songs perform is requested by customers. He has to be ready and good enough to perform the requested song, or switch song if not familiar with the song. If not people might boo him from down below. Overall the singing performance is good. There are some songs that are not quite well performed but still acceptable.

It was about 2 hours singing performance. It’s very entertaining as some of the song brings back a lot of memories. We are able to enjoy English songs, Chinese songs, hokkian songs and kantonese songs thanks to our friend that speaks and sings so many languages. Even though

Expensive Coffee from Cat Poo

I post about this special kind of coffee about 2 years ago and it seems that this coffee is still hot. Cat poo coffee still tastes as good as before and the price still at the top of it, seems like it. An article that I stumble at thedaily.com.au features Cat poo coffee reminds me again that I must not miss out this special coffee. As a coffee addict, one of the enjoyable moments is to able to taste different kind of coffee from all over the world. That includes the expensive cat poo coffee. No doubt it might feel strange or perhaps may give it a second thoughts weather to drink coffee made of cat poo, but if the coffee smells good and looks good then why not give it a try. When you look into this cat poo coffee seriously, the coffee is made from coffee beans that go through the digest system of a cat call Luwak or civet. That means the cat eats the coffee bean, go through its stomach, comes out from its behind and people collects them and blend it for a fine expensive coffee. It’s still the coffee bean that is used, just that it goes through a cat body. The coffee is so expensive because of the amount of coffee able to produce using this process is limited. Perhaps the only way to increase the production of cat poo coffee is to breed more civet.

P/S : Even Jack Nickelson loves it. ( Check out the movie Bucket List )

International students, go to YouTube Edu and have a look at the US college that you plan to study.

YouTube Edu is a great place for international students to check out the US colleges. International students have the chance to see how the condition of the college they plan to go and at least have some idea what problems they may face. It’s really difficult to understand the situation and environment just by listening to others experience or looking at pictures and descriptions form brochures. A short video clips explains better then thousand words. Based on the video clips, international students can prepare themselves before getting on the plane and fly thousands of miles across the sea to an unfamiliar place for further studies. Seriously, it’s not just the study part that international students might face problems, it’s everything. Even little things like the air that they use to breathe in also might be a problem, things that they didn’t notice their existence but important suddenly becomes their enemy. In other words, international students might face some cultural shock issue.

Those of you that like to learn or maybe attend classes from your home can also check out YouTube Edu. There are several video clips with more than an hour of lectures available from varies topics. Perhaps if you miss a class of your course, you might be able to find it here. For those that interested in learning at home and don’t want to go to college, YouTube Edu might just be right for you. Best of all, it’s free.