Coffee Shops

On some of my best lazy days (if there was such a thing). I would frequent coffee shops and hang out with friends. That's pretty much what I did just a few days ago. For some reason, my friends think it's the 'hip' way to have small talk and gossip. As for me, I'm just glad that I'm able to be with them.

I'd either sit on a comfy couch inside the air conditioned part of the shop or stay outside and inhale secondary smoke. Often, I would avoid doing the former as I feel like being inside an aquarium. Notice how people look at fishes, observing them swim from left to right? Marvel at their beauty, compassionate if their ugly. Yup, the aesthetics of the world.

In my country, going to coffee shops is an indulgence. I would call it a luxury the majority could not afford. With the rising of the tall buildings in Makati and the rest of Metro Manila and eventually in different cities of this country, came the mushroom-like emergence of coffee shops.

We always have the option to buy the instant brand or even brew our own coffee at home. So let's say we want some place else, other than home. If a friend's place won't do, then yes, a coffee shop would provide the right ambiance, the appropriate furniture, dim lighting, and the presence and/or absence of comforting noise from people who frequent them.

Then came a barrage of questions. Are coffee shops designed for the customers to conveniently spy on the passers by behind neatly folded magazines and newspapers? Or did they design it in a way that would make the people inside, look like they're having a great time, inviting onlookers to come inside, order something and join the cult. But here's my favorite question:

Do people stay in coffee shops to be seen, or do they stay to look?

Yeah. I know this is a bit silly a question to ask. But I'd like to understand this coffee culture that has so quickly engulfed my country and its citizens of the highly urbanized areas.

I would probably end up concluding that different people have different intentions, interests and needs as far as coffee shops are concerned. Well, I'd like to know every single one of them.

And I have yet to find out.