Well, at least I have changed.

I looked at the first cafe I remember visiting – the King George Square Coffee Club – and noticed that it was gone, making way for a new bank branch. New buildings were up. Old buildings were gone. And then I walked into Subway.

I would frequently have lunch at the Subway at the top of the mall when I was first in University. The most surreal thing of today was that I saw the same guy running the shop as I remember chatting with so many years ago. The store is larger. The menu was better. He looked a little more bald. But he was still there… even if he didn’t remember me.

It’s going to be interesting to see what happens in the coming months…

Chrysanthemum tea

Right now I’m drinking chrysanthemum tea.

I love to drink it with rock sugar. I started drinking it that way the first time I tried it and have done so ever since.

For years, when I had coffee, I always had cappuccino. I tried Vienna coffee once and latte a few times. But I always came back to the chocolate coated foam with a cappuccino. And I developed a ritual about how I would drink my cappuccino too. I would eat the half of the foam closest to me – not all of it, just half – and finish the cup before consuming the remainder of the foam. Oh – and I didn’t take sugar. I learned to drink cappuccino that way on 22 September, 1995 – and did it almost exactly the same way for many years.

And then I woke up. I realized that I was not drinking it the way I like it – I was drinking it the way I’d happened to pick up along the way. And I actually didn’t like it!

While drinking cappuccino wasn’t a problem for me, once I started challenging the way I had been doing things, I found that I actually preferred a cafe latte – though it can change according to my mood.

Until I was 15, I wore my watch on my right wrist. Most of my peers wore their watch on their left wrist – again it wasn’t a problem. But I wanted to be able to change it. I wanted to be able to stand out if I wanted to but to be able to be ‘normal’ if I chose to be. Being at an age when I wanted to control everything, I figured that being different was fine provided that I was doing it deliberately. So I changed. It wasn’t hard – I just practiced putting my watch on my left wrist. Ultimately it became as natural to wear it on my left wrist as to wear it on my right wrist. Then I stopped wearing a watch.

We are all unique. We all have something different to offer the world and those around us. Sometimes, the part of us that stands out is brilliant and beautiful. Sometimes it isn’t. We can influence our habits and change our patterns. And once you can get yourself out of the habit (or rut?), you can put yourself back to being able to choose.

Affogato - the way Zarraffa's makes them - though skip the cream...

Maybe you’ll choose cappuccino. Or cafe latte. I choose affogato – when I can get them!

Maybe you’ll wear a watch or maybe you won’t. How would you like things to be?