Tuesday, January 24, 2006

11:25 PM | Coffee Day

These are bits of happiness: I am listening to Madonna's underappreciated Music album while slowly making progress dismantling the mountain of backlogged work, and I am smelling the brew from the coffee maker just a few sweet feet away.

I don't know what it is about perfectly brewed coffee that excites me even more than sex or chocolate, but I have a feeling The Coffee Goddess would have some answers. I had ran out of beans yesterday, and only remembered to go grocery shopping late this afternoon. In Lee Cimbali, I chose to buy 250 grams each of French Roast and Arabica -- and I am sure now that I've made the right choice: the evidence lies in the coffee aroma that embraces me right now. Arabica, I think, comes closest to the aroma of heaven. But I must confess that I have forgotten how real coffee smelled like. For the past few months, I had subsisted on Folger's Classic Roast, American-made of course, which should have told me something. My brother, you see, had given me a 1.47 kilogram pack, which took me forever to consume, and which altered my coffee habit for quite a while. Folgers was bland, but I didn't know that until now, now that I am smelling Arabica, and it comes as a shock to me that its smell basically punches me to excitement.

Sigh.

This is such a nice night. And a nice day. Even though more than half my research students in one class chose to make today their Playing Hooky day. Given that today commanded a pressing deadline for their submission of their notecards and documentation exercise, it was only too predictable. (I think this is a recent phenomenon: students vanishing when deadline comes.) I told the three studebnts who did come through for me that it didn't matter to me: as long as I can have just one student who takes research seriously, that's enough for me. This generation of college students, I tell you, are hopelessly unread, hopelessly incapable of comprehension, and hopelessly saddled with personal problems and esteem issues. In my literature class, I have long ago abandoned the classroom practice of letting a student read aloud from the text. More than half the time, the student turns out to have the reading level of a first grade pupil, complete with unforgivable mispronunciations, unfamiliarity with freshman vocabulary, and the stutter of someone who does not know how to read. It's really painful to listen to them read, and it's more painful to consider that these guys will be running the country one day. Ayay.

Nevertheless, I made sure I was going to enjoy my day. And I did.

Coffee helped, of course.

Labels: food

[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

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