Sipping from my Roasted Rice Tea, I think of how I've never been a fan of coffee and how, for unknown reasons, my soul has found consolation from almost all types of tea (except mint, oh no, not mint). I've been here for almost an hour now, here in this coffee shop near my place. I think of how fun it would have been to have that daily routine of grabbing coffee in the neighborhood's dear coffee shop in the wee hours of the morning. Yeah, something Lorelai and Rory are likely to do. And again, I am reminded of how I just don't like coffee, but it also sends me this crazy feeling in my tummy whenever I take any form of it (jelly, candy, drink, etc). But it's not like I've never craved for it all my life.
Growing up, we have been trained to think that coffee is just for adults because it dulls the delicate brain of a kid, my mom would say. I remember now how I used to envy my cousins whose breakfast won't go without a cup of instant coffee, sometimes, having it as the sole element in their meal. Come to think of it, I now remember some cousins who would have real rice turned into coffee, by adding hot water to the toasted part of the rice or what we call
tutong. And that'd be the most they'd have for breakfast. I used to envy them because they drink something I was denied of. Coffee never made it to the cut of our usual breakfast composed of rice, meat/fish and hot milk. Never coffee for the kids in our household.
About a decade later, when I was taking my degree, I tried to be more open with the food and drinks I take. During exams seasons, different types of coffee would be out there. It's the usual, the savior. The companion to the sleepless nights of reviewing and doing requirements. When I was in my first few semesters, I tried imitating what my schoolmates, or should I say "university colleagues", would do. I did drink coffee a few times and it just didn't seem to work for me: I would still sleep when I want to. But there was this time when I indulged to a recommendation by a colleague, which involved getting
really caffeinated. It was when I was gonna review for a Chemistry exam (a subject I barely got into good terms with, that, I'm pretty sure until now, I only passed out of my professor's grace and kindness seeing I've taken removal exams for too many times already), which I was gonna have the next day itself. I wasn't the type who would review early on, and since I don't enjoy Chemistry, I don't get down to studying it until the last few hours prior the exam. Well, here was the recommendation: 2 bottles of 8-ounce Coke each and a cup of instant Original Nescafe. The thing is, I have to drink them all at once and it would keep me up for the rest of the night. For those who know how the brain works, imagine how that kind of mix would shoot up the neurons. And did I drink it? I did. And did I stay up until it was very late? Well, surely, I did. But did I have a great time studying and keeping alert throughout all that time I was up? Well, here's what happened. Half an hour or so after taking the
booster, my mind was already getting frozen. I was slowly getting inattentive and I started hating how my brain became hazy. I just wasn't able to focus on my exercises so I had to stop reviewing and headed on to sleep. Which I wasn't able to do as well. All I did was stare out into spaces and stuff around me. I felt like a robot as I lied still in my bed until the night has birthed into day, The next day, my eyes were dry and I knew I was gonna flunk my exam. I dreaded that so much. It's not that I wasn't able to review and that I was gonna fail, which I think, would happen in any other way. But it's that I wasn't able to get my sleep. So, that's the end of coffee and me. It's been 6 years since.
Ever since that long and tragic night, I've learned to order non-coffee drinks in coffee shops. My tongue has become very sensitive of the taste of it, that I know the subtle pierce it has when I accidentally take anything that has coffee in it (except for my tiramisu). I've always resorted to getting myself chocolate drinks, but since I've been gaining some weight on, I had to shift my orders into something less fatty as chocolate frappes. Which, somewhere along that period, led me to my very much loved drink: tea. There's just something so subtle yet confronting about this drink that I couldn't give name to.
Oh well, I gotta sip the rest of my tea and head back home. It's been a Friday. It's been a week. And a gloomy one for that. Just a few more minutes and would take this thinking back home.
