Have I told you about starbucks’s place near my house? Nope? Well, I’ll tell you in other time. This time I want to tell you about some people I came across in my fav sbux.
Anyway, I often come to this starbucks in my area, near my home. I like this place not because of the coffee, but I’m falling in love with the place and the view. It place in one of the biggest mall in Jakarta, it has views to part of the mall, one of the busiest road in Jakarta, and if you’re lucky, you can see beautiful sunset from this place. Yes, you read it right. You can enjoy beautiful sunset in this coffee shop, in the middle of the city, while you’re doing your work or enjoying your favorite drink.
It turns out, there’s some regular here who enjoy this place like I do. No, I don’t know them personally, and I don’t even know their name, but all regular have one thing in common: their behavior is so laid back, some people will do some sort of things here (including me, lol), and they act like it’s their home, not public places.
I was amazed when I discovered these regulars’ people, and I’m more in awe when I realized that thing we have in common. It’s like mixed of surprise, funny, disbelieve and awe rolled into one. A little relief though, knowing that it’s not just me who needs some place to chill or think beside home and choose this weird place to feel.. like home. Funny, huh?
Okay, here we go…
1. Grandma with bad taste of cigarette
First time I see this grandma, I feel a little weird. This grandma dress up like the type of stay at home grandma, wearing big hijab and sandal, never finished her drink, and her cigarette smells awful. Awful, like really bad, bad. Another weird thing? She just sit there and play candy crush on her two iphones!! She has two! And I thought she randomly come here! I guess, shame on me for judging people by appearance, huh? Sorry grandma. By the way, even though she wear hijab I often caught her in here in Ramadhan, which means she doesn’t fasting. No judging, just fascinating, that’s all.
2. College/school (?) boy who often come here alone
We met often, but I didn’t notice until recently that he is a regular. He usually sit down in a bar, far from the crowd with his book open, two glass coffee, one glass water, and he is busy reading (another) book or observing the crowd. First time we met, I thought he’s just familiar faces, but infact he is a regular. I don’t know what he is doing here, sometimes he just laid back with reading a book, sometimes he is like studying, but I caught up he’s more interest with the crowd rather than his book. One thing we have in common is, we love sit here for hours without exactly doing anything. I was so relieved that I’m not the one who is weird, sit here for hours. Literally hours. We can sit here like 6 hours or more.
3. Weird interesting guy who always come with different crowd
First time I met this guy, he was asking for the empty chair in front of me. He and his friends were sitting on the table next to me, talking about their thesis, their works and stuffs. Funny thing is, heasked me “is this chair empty?”
And I said, “yes. Just take it”
And he said back, “yeah, I can see there’s no one sitting here”
And I was taken aback, this guy kind of funny. Other people usually just ask and took the chair or better yet, they took the chair without asking for it and he make a joke about it. Nice.
Next Friday, I saw him there with different crowd. So two weeks later. And so last Friday. So I just assumed that he come here every Friday, after work, with his friends, or his fans, or his colleage. Who knows, rite?
4. Smoker hijab’s women with her husband every weekend’s morning
I used to come every Saturday morning, because this place usually empty and quiet. A perfect place to write or doing self-introspection before the weekend crowds coming. I met her in smoking area. It’s interesting for me because at first I thought, her just using this coffee shop to rest after her exercise or morning shopping, but instead it was just her style wearing sporty outfit. She and her husband wasting their Saturday morning here, talking about everything and anything with their favorite drinks and cigarettes.
5. Fatty businessman with his colleague
This week, I’ve been spend my early night at sbux, and I found that almost every night there’s this fat guy with his partner, a Chinese guy and their client(s). I don’t know if the people are their clients or investor but absolutely not their friends or colleague. I overheard them talking one time, they’re talked about business, IPO and such. I assumed they’re using this place as after office hour-office meeting place. They always coming with different crowd and different people, with tall glass of hot something, a laptop and tablet and they’re just talking for hours.
6. a college girl with red lipstick and her phone in edgy outfit
Sometimes this girl come with her friends, but often I saw her alone. Either she just need place to sit, alone time or wasted time after shopping (I saw her for all the above), she always come and looking for a table first then line up. That exactly what I’m doing sometimes. The regulars know how hard it is to find table here, so we chose to find a place first than lining up. This place can e so crowded sometimes. And yeah, we both agree that sofa near windows are the best chair they have! Not that I know her personally, I just saw her so excited to find an empty sofa.
7. Very nice grandpa with his laptop and his nice smile
This grandpa is a newbie, and that makes me his senior, lol. I met him in Ramadhan, almost in the middle of the night. I overheard he asked around about when this place is closed. And everytime I came here for late night sneak up, he is there. I thought it only happen because of Ramadhan but after ‘Eid fitr I see him again, at the same time. It’s a little weird if you think about it, it was past after office hour (around 9 or 10) but he dressed up like he came straight from office and doing something or (maybe) work in his laptop, I stayed until it’s closed one time, just out of curiousity, and it turns out this grandpa doesn’t stay that late. Like one hour and a half? Not more than two hours he already packing up his laptop and say bye to baristas crew.
