February 25th, 2006
Have you seen those people always drinking coffee, on the train, on the subway, in the computer lab, at lectures, in the cafeteria, on the street, in coffee shops, at home, everywhere? I have become one of those people. Well, not exactly, because my consumer instincts do not quite match with the culture of buying food and drink everywhere, I think more along the lines of "if I get it at the supermarket, it'll be cheaper". But that's really all that's holding me back from drinking coffee all the time. At school the coffee machines are cheap, so I do get it. They charge .35-.5 for a small plastic cup. At home then, I'm tempted to drink a lot of coffee. The trouble is that coffee messes with the biological clock and that's not good when you're trying to maintain a constant rhythm of going to bed at a certain time and getting up early, while getting enough sleep. Back home (home-home), I got into the habit of drinking coffee at 11pm, and that would keep me up until about 2am. So I try not to do that here. Coffee in the afternoon is fine, cause I'm up anyway. But coffee in the morning and coffee at night is bad, cause it keeps me alert superficially. So since I'm prone to having coffee anyway, I started drinking decaf. It tastes the same, and it doesn't (or shouldn't) affect the state of alertness.
The funny thing about coffee is that I don't know where it came from. I remember vividly disliking coffee. The smell was nice, the taste was awful. Coffee with milk and sugar would pretty much kill the natural taste of coffee, it made a big improvement, but it still wasn't good. Somehow I just started drinking coffee a few years ago, not really knowing why. It wasn't really good, it didn't give me a boost, I don't know why I did have it. Then it started growing on me and now I like it. And it's not because it's a drug either, I don't feel a strong effect from coffee. If I'm drowsy and I have it, it gets me a bit more alert, otherwise it doesn't do anything. But when I'm drowsy, I'd rather go to bed anyway, and often I will have coffee (thinking it will keep me up), but then I fall asleep right after that.
So yeah, I totally bought into the coffee culture, and it seems to be spreading everywhere now. It's big in Norway, it's being introduced in Poland with places like Coffee Heaven and in Holland it's always been like this.
Never got coffee and probably never will. Although I love coffee flavoured things, bizarrely. Hot chocolate (maybe with a sprinkling of coffee in if I need to wake up) is always my hot drink of choice.
On the other hand, I absolutely love Red Bull. During my first year of university I was addicted to the stuff (and it was not long after I first 'discovered' Red Bull). And during exam periods I usually stock up.
These days I just have it when I work out, case the energy boost it gives you is crazy.
Red Bull is horrendous; the mere smell of it from 10 yards distance already sickens me.
No offence :D
[2] None taken, for some reason a lot of people can't stand it. For me it's the equivalent of Popeye's spinach.
I had a lot of this red bull stuf during the Project Europe Killing (eh, pardon me, it should be Europe Calling) when I had to stay up a whole night to meet a deadline. After that I couldn't taste, smell or see that stuff anymore. :S I prefer vividly coffee nowadays, espresso or something similar (though not the one that is served at school, right Erik?) :)
That school-machine-coffee-stuff-whatever could be used to fuel Soviet tanks...
Well I don't know about you kids but the coffee at school over here is good stuff :D
Shadap :( :D
[6] You very very lucky boy :wallbang: :D Thank heaven and earth for it :D