During our paktology days – that’s ‘dating’ for our Ang Mo friend – Ling would often muse aloud about finding some nice coffee joint and stoning (i.e. vegetating) around a couple of beverages. Problem was that I wasn’t a coffee person then, so our dating places were usually anywhere but. That was of course a while ago. Since returning to full-time work 7 years ago, I’ve gained a new appreciation for hot beverages. I can’t today for instance get through a morning without my usual caffeine kick.
Over the last week and possibly because we were slowly exhausting our weekend morning brunch places, we ventured into a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf joint at TampinesOne just to try something different for breakfast, and we were pretty impressed. The food itself was alright but it was possibly the laid back ambiance and decor that the both of us determined to start hitting beverage cafes as an alternative to the usual breakfast places we hit over weekends. Best of all, Hannah loves the new environments, and has taken to bringing either books or even worksheets to occupy herself with.
Thing is though is that location is everything. Not all these cafes are as equivalently conducive to stoning for an hour before we have to go about our business for the rest of the day, and the ones which are centrally located are also frequently descended upon quickly by hordes of JC and University students who’d buy a single beverage take-out and stretch their stay for the rest of the day.
Photos taken again using the 14mm f2.5. The colors were pleasingly warm, which is a bit of an odd contrast against the somewhat cooler color rendition off the 20mm f1.7 which I sold away earlier this year.
Places where you can vegetate for a good while seem to be few and far between. I always feel the pressure to rush off wherever I go.
Does it count as stoning if you gain two stone in weight after eating?
Yeah, but apparently the beverage joints here seem not to mind too much their patrons taking their time over tea and coffee, though some students really take it to the extreme by sharing a single drink and parking themselves for the entire day. Every now and then, there’d be letters written to the media from irate patrons who’re unable to find a table because all of them are being hoarded by students.=)