sibling date

Coffee in California is different from Canada. My medium Americano misto is always a little stronger than I expect. I’m starting to like it this way.

There’s actually not much misto in it at all. I have to order it as an “Americano with a little bit of steamed milk” because last time I only got a half-hearted spoonful of foam. This time, I watch the barista reluctantly spoon in two tablespoons of steamed milk, while he in turn gawks at me like I must have come from outer space.

Considering that I just moved from Canada, I guess that’s not too far from the truth.

About a month earlier, when I ordered an Americano misto at a nearby Starbucks, I was told by the barista that I had just ordered a “watered-down latte”. I almost took it as an insult, but a corner of his lips betrayed him, twisting up into a mischievous grin. His eyes twinkled at me. I laughed. A part of me suddenly wondered if his name was Taylor and if he’d add a little extra foam at no extra charge.

He didn’t.

I’m sitting at a tiny table near the wall in a small Peet’s Coffee and Tea shop. My brother is sitting across from me, so engrossed in his Winter Solstice tea that he doesn’t notice his glasses fogging up from the steam. There are random bits of stubble dotting his upper lip and chin. He likes to call them his “masculine hairlings” because he can’t actually grow a proper beard.

Neither of us can really think of much to say, so we don’t say anything. I realize very quickly that this is probably the last sibling coffee date I will have with him before he leaves to go back to his beautiful fiancee in Canada. He’s been here for about a month.

My brother used to take me out for coffee regularly, and sometimes we’d even get up really early to go for breakfast. We always looked like the perfect pair of zombies. Before he started dating his fiancee, he’d talk about girls, and I’d talk about boys. I’d explain why girls were so moody. He’d explain why boys were so stupid. After he started dating, it was mostly just me talking about boys. And he was mostly still explaining why boys were so stupid.

Once, as we were getting into the car to go on one of these crazy morning escapades, he told me that he was going to pay for breakfast. I asked him how I could pay him back. He said, “Get me a girlfriend.” So I told him, “Get me a boyfriend.”

Granted, a lot of people thought we were a couple, which grossed us out to no end. There was a Japanese restaurant in particular whose waiters and waitresses never got the hint that we were in fact siblings. We always used to go there on Friday nights, at least once a month, because my studio masterclass was held once a month on Friday evenings. My brother would listen to me rant and rave about how nervous I always was for these performance classes. If I was feeling particularly down, he’d let me eat almost all of the chopped scallop roll even though I’d still rob almost half of his Dynamite roll.

After my brother started dating his fiancee, they invited me to some of their coffee dates, along with his fiancee’s little sister. We became a perfect set of zombies, eating breakfast at each other’s houses.

On one particular Friday evening, my brother and his fiancee decided to wait for me at that particular Japanese restaurant while I was still finishing up the masterclass. They later told me the waiters and waitresses looked aghast that he’d apparently “switched” girlfriends. I’d been going to this restaurant with my brother for about three years.

It was amazing when I marched in about 20 minutes later, planted myself in the seat across from them, and promptly started rattling my tongue off about how horribly the masterclass went. I swear one of the waitresses looked like she threw up a little in her mouth.

I smile at the memory and look up to see my brother looking at me too. I think he realizes the same thing as me. We’ll bug each other a lot over Skype, but we won’t be doing coffee like this again for a while.

Before he left, he bought my family a bag of Peet’s Coffee beans and a Peet’s mug for each of us. We don’t brew the same kind of coffee every morning. Some mornings it’s French Roast. Other mornings are Hazelnut. And there are a few mornings here and there when we brew Peet’s Coffee.

I think we’re trying to make it last until the next time we see him.

intersection

Today, I succumbed to the lure of Starbucks.

I’m not actually that fond of their decaf Americano mistos. I just wanted to stand in line. The Starbucks line was the closest one.

I’m at the UBC Student Union Building. When I look around, I begin to remember all those times I had come here alone. And here I am, alone again.

There’s something about doing something, even if it’s nothing, by yourself. It’s almost like walking in an alternate reality. For a few moments, when you step out of your circle friends, out of your department, away from your professors, and even away from your family, you become part of the several realities standing around you.

You’re standing behind them in line. They’re standing in front of you in line. You wonder how they can survive a full day of classes with just a tiny purse. They wonder what the hell is making your heavy duty shoulder bag burst at the seams.

The barista calls out a decaf Americano. I think she has forgotten to make it a misto and make a motion to ask.

“Did you order a decaf Americano?”

It isn’t the barista asking me, but the girl standing to my left. Her eyebrows are furrowed more deeply than I ever thought finely plucked brows could furrow, and she’s staring more intently at the decaf Americano in my hands than my face.

I ask her if her order is a misto, but she just keeps staring at the drink. The barista finally calls out a decaf Americano misto, and I realize that the drink in my hands is the girl’s after all. I happily hand it over, smiling and trying to make a joke of it. But without a word, she snatches it up and stalks away, nose held high.

At first, I think she’s a little bit rude and mostly socially inept, but as I start to wander away with my own drink, I realize that she probably thinks I’m the rude one.

I must have burst into her world suddenly and unannounced the moment I laid hands on her drink. She was supposed to have simply ordered and picked up her drink with no interruptions. I was the interruption. Therefore, I must be wrong.

To her, I probably was nothing more than five strange fingers on her drink.  But all the same, my reality and her reality were confused and, consequently, fused for a few fleeting seconds. We both lived the same confused reality for one moment. But, just as quickly as our realities had fused, our realities diverged. Two lines intersecting at one point.

I sit down at my usual spot again. Barstool in the corner, facing the window, earphones on, wireless network secured. I spill some coffee near my laptop and rummage in my bag for a pack of tissue. The girl next to me glances over. Her nose is turned up a little in disdain at my clumsiness.

There, again. I’ve interrupted someone else’s reality because I couldn’t sit still.

She does a funny twist with her neck and continues surfing away on Facebook, and I realize that she’s trying to hide that glance that she couldn’t help just seconds ago. She’s failing miserably.

Even when I’m alone, I can’t help running into other people’s realities. But maybe that’s not the right word. It’s not “running into”; it’s “running through”.

I’m charging straight through people’s lives like a battering ram. I’m walking through walls I never knew existed.

I’m a line intersecting many other lines, one point per line.

Only for a moment.

where opposites meet

I’ve started developing a strange habit lately. It’s the last few weeks of my bachelor’s degree, and I just decided it was time to indulge in Blue Chip Cookie’s coffee at the SUB (Student Union Building). For four years, I’ve been avoiding the SUB because I didn’t want to get fat off of greasy Chinese food or too poor from buying too much coffee.

To hell with that now. I want my 12-ounce single Americano misto, please and thank you very much.

I would say it’s my lunch routine, but it’s more of an afternoon tea type of deal because I’m usually rehearsing or having a lesson at noon. I bring my own lunch from home, packed, of course, by Mom because I’m really just that hopeless and that poor. I walk up the concrete stairs to buy my Americano on the second floor, then I go downstairs where the microwaves are, heat up my lunch for a minute and a half, and then I walk back upstairs to the seating area near Starbucks. I always pick a dark corner where the barstools are, where I can look out the windows facing the bus loop. I put my backpack on the ledge, slip my black coat off and onto the back of the barstool, place my purse on the seat, and ease myself on. I take out my laptop and open up iTunes to the playlist I’ve named, “Always on Repeat,” and while I listen to Jessie J’s “Price Tag”, I arrange my belongings so that my coffee, lunch, and cell phone sit to the right of the laptop, while my backpack sits to the left. I always stay longer than I mean to and I’ve even nearly been late to a couple of rehearsals.

It’s funny how I always find myself like this at 3:30pm every Tuesday and Thursday after Chinese ensemble. I think it might have something to do with how all kinds of opposites meet here. I’m alone, but there are lots of people around me. I’m in the shadows, but I’m facing the windows. I see people I know, but they don’t see me. I hear everyone around me, but no one else hears Jessie J.

While I halfheartedly watch YouTube videos, I’ll glance one way and see a couple huddled together over a laptop and giggling at a YouTube video with one earphone in the girl’s ear and the other in the boy’s ear. I’ll look another way and see another couple facing each other at a table, nibbling at their sandwiches in that sort of awkward silence as if they’ve been together so long that they’ve run out of things to say to each other. And off in a dark corner, there’s a girl attempting to look very busy on her laptop but looking very sad and lonely instead, until a friend passes by to say hello and her face instantly lights up.

I wish I could secretly film it all, but then everyone would think I’m a creep. There’s just something about sitting here and seeing snippets of everyone’s lives around me. It’s like watching a hundred short films at the same time.

I love it.