“I’d like a table outside, please.”

I love coffee and I love great places to drink it. I think any city that wants to make a claim to greatness needs to have at least a couple of places where you can have a memorable cup.

Take Hong Kong, for example. It’s a polarizing city that evokes love and loathing in equal measure, often from the same people. But on the whole I think it is a great city because of two reasons. The first is the Pacific Coffee Company in Pacific Place. I went there the first time I was traveling alone. After a day of tramping through the city I was tired and bored. But the café was warm and friendly and their checkered red tablecloths were just what I needed to see on a rainy December evening. Sadly they have since been displaced by Starbucks.

The second reason is a coffee shop on Hong Kong peak. I still remember spending a winter evening on the terrace with friends eight years ago. We huddled against a stiff cold wind and admired the cityscape as we sipped from giant yellow mugs of steaming coffee and nibbled on mango cheesecake.

Talking of Pacific Coffee, one of my favorite places for coffee in Singapore is their café at the airport. They have the comfiest sofas and it’s just the perfect place to curl up with a thick book and a large latte. Who says flight delays are a bad thing?

Somehow Starbucks isn’t one of my favorite destinations in Singapore. But Manila is a different story altogether. I used to work in Manila for a while, in a building that is host to possibly the hippest Starbucks café anywhere. I’ve ended many a long lunch sitting on one of their sidewalk tables with a friend. We would nurse our iced black coffees and exchange commentary on an eclectic mixture of expatriates, truant school-kids, cigarette vendors and hipsters as we watched the world walk by.

Don’t mistake me – I don’t only patronize up-market franchise brands in prime locations. One of my all-time favorites is Sassi, a roadside shack in Delhi that I used to frequent from the time I was a student. I used to go there with friends on a lazy afternoon. We’d sit on the pavement (not at a pavement table, just on the pavement) and count the cars that whizzed past as we drank thick milky coffee with generous sprinklings of chocolate powder. Sassi, the eponymous shack-owner was also kind enough to give us credit, which didn’t hurt our loyalty to him at all. One of our occasional companions was the world’s happiest stray dog. He was well-fed on scraps from the food stalls, and he had found a depression in the ground that fit him perfectly. He would curl up in it and look at us lazily through one half-open eye and we would gaze back at him enviously. If we all had such lifestyles that would spell an end to all the war and strife in the world.

Interestingly, Sassi’s earthiness is of a piece with Delhi itself. And conversely Mumbai, which is altogether a more sophisticated city (but far less pretty) has a correspondingly sophisticated (and very pretty) coffee haven at the Prithvi theater. After watching a play you can relax at night among the trees in their open-air café. As you drink a perfectly blended Irish coffee from a tall, graceful curved glass, you can either choose to make conversation yourself, or else eavesdrop on your neighbors as they talk knowingly about anything under the sun.

If coffee shops reflect the spirit of the place they are in, probably none does so better than a small breakfast café in Boracay, in the Philippines. Boracay is a delightful island resort. It is small and charming, yet remarkably cosmopolitan; it has an utterly unexpected range of international restaurants. And along the beach, right next to the surfboard and jet-ski rental, is a kiosk run by two friendly American ladies. Every morning they serve enormous slices of freshly baked bread with honey, or jam, or butter. After you have wolfed down the food you can sit on a bench or a tree stump with your mug of coffee, and watch the crystal clear water lap against clean white sands.

As I look out the window at home and watch the rain drizzle down, as I let the smell of cappuccino drift up out of my mug, I raise a silent cheer to the two ladies on the beach, to all the other great cups of coffee I’ve enjoyed, and to all the wonderful cafés where I’ve enjoyed them.

December Remembers

December is meant to be a festive month but it has always seemed a little sad to me. When I was growing up in Delhi it was a time of cold weather, sunless days, and sometimes bitter rain. It was a time of year that invited poignant reflections. Now I live in Singapore and the sun is never gone for long. But I can still sense a melancholy trace underneath the holiday cheer.

I was reminded of this earlier today at the football pitch (of all places!). Going for my weekly game I was struck by how few people there were at the ground. It's the same in the office. People are going away, and it's starting to feel emptier. Soon it will feel empty.

It's been a strange year at the office. So many people have resigned and gone away. Too many of them were people I liked. I must admit I am surprised to realize how much I've been affected by their departures. Very few were people I would call friends; I don't really have that many close friends. But each person who left, left behind a small empty space that I cannot help but notice if I just take the time to look.

The calendar counts down to the end of the year and invites us to remember endings, to count partings, to notice what is no longer there and consider what else may soon be gone.

December still feels sad to me.

At Dawn They Sleep

This weekend saw me at Zoukout, the annual dance music festival at Sentosa beach. Two words. It rocks.

The first thing I noticed was a live performance by Electrico, a Singaporean indie-rock group. It was an unexpected gem of a performance. The singer was frantic, the guitars were stuttering and the combined effect was electric. After a long time resigning myself to synthetic Top 40 songs performed by talented but ultimately predictable nightclub bands, it was a stunning surprise. Later I was to listen to another great local band, Plain Sunset. The music was great, and went down nicely with the frontman's self-deprecating humor.

The next thing that hit me was the prices of the drinks. The boys and girls at Zouk had clearly decided that they were not going to poop the party. At $6 a pop, they were out to give everyone a full opportunity to get wet in the throat. Which was just as well, because it was going to be a night that would call for a lot of Red Bull.

After that I spent time going from one sound stage to the other (they had four of them). The hip-hop stage was a disappointment. I was looking forward to DJ Jazzy Jeff (he of Fresh Prince a.k.a. Will Smith fame), but he turned out to have run out of invention. Velvet was mostly good and occasionally great. And the live stage was, as I mentioned above, a delightful Easter egg.

But it was the main stage that blew me away.




When I got there the headline set by Ferry Corsten had already begun.



Listening to him work the mixing table was a sensory delight. It wasn't just that he had a brilliant ear for beat or that he struck just the right balance of melody and noise. What was truly amazing was his sense of timing. He controlled the tempo of the set with delicacy and assurance. He was pulling strings and our neighborhood of thousands could only follow. And then there was the light.

It was mesmerizing.

We stood under a ceiling of electric green clouds a foot above our heads. We moved between lasers that lanced amongst us where we pounded the sand under our feet. We watched as a wall of red and yellow light erupted in incandescent bursts.

Until finally dawn crept in, first purple, then grey, then bright blue. So we blinked our eyes and gathered our feet and went softly to bed.

Best Anarchist in a Motion Picture

Back in 1999 I saw a stunning film. It made the Simpsons look like Sunday School, and Beavis and Butthead like mouthpieces of the establishment. The movie I'm talking about is South Park. In case you have not seen it, you must. And if you are wondering what it was about, all I'll say is that it featured a homosexual relationship between Saddam Hussein and the Devil. And that was just one of the sub-plots. Before you ask, Saddam was the outer spoon :-)

Tonight I saw South Park's spiritual sequel, Lil' Pimp. (The rest of this paragraph needs to be read in a movie-trailer Hollywood baritone.) This is the story of a boy and his struggle to redeem his friends. To bring salvation to the role model he worshipped as a father. To rediscover his mother. This is the story of the Lil' Pimp.

Lil' Pimp is a fatherless schoolkid. While not doing his homework he befriends a pimp, has a lock-picking pet rat, and talks his mom into dressing up as a hooker. Simply magical.

I think there should be awards for the most evil, subversive movies. For best actor in a leading role, the award goes to Sacha Baron Cohen (for the title role in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan). Best actress is probably Cristina Ricci as Wednesday in The Addams Family. And best original song would have to go to the much-decorated South Park for the timeless classic Kyle's Mom Is A Bitch. Sing with me:
Kyle's mom's a bitch, she's a big fat bitch,
She's the biggest bitch in the whole wide world
...and so on.

But coming back to Borat, not only is the film hilarious, so is the controversy surrounding it. The American media has been in a tizzy about the film's apparent denigration of Kazakhstan. What they have totally missed is that it takes the mickey out of America! Cohen is a master at acting stupid to make other people look like morons. A few years ago he made a movie called "Ali G in da house". In which he kept a straight face while debating with an FBI officer whether an old couple were terrorists who were using an elaborate sign language code, or whether they were using sign language because they were mute. And now as Borat he gets an American hunter to say "It's a great feeling to consummate a hunt". Only in America, home of the NRA.

Tartan in the Tropics

I now know where to go in Singapore to eat kipper toasties and haggis. There's a new bar in town, it's called the Highlander, and it's Scottish.

Of course, it still has to deal with the fact that it is in Singapore, which makes for some interesting juxtapositions. Like the twenty Chinese bagpipers who marched in double file in a circle, before a drum and pipe performance by a quartet of authentic Scots called Clann An Drumma. That's Gaelic, so it is pronounced "Coit On Drim" and it means "Pass the Salt". And then there were the staff, all Malay and Chinese, and all obligingly attired in tartan kilts.

(Question : If it is worn by a girl is it called a kilt or just a skirt?).

Incongruity aside, it's a friendly joint, and with two hundred whiskies to choose from, they might get a bit more of my custom.

I love these geographically themed bars. A couple of doors down from Highlander is Cuba Libre. And across a paved courtyard is Marrakesh. It's brilliant how the names leave nothing to the imagination, least of all the staff uniforms. The guys at Cuba Libre had the inevitable sleeveless jackets and hats. And the ones at Marrakesh were dressed like Sam, the black pianist in Casablanca.

One day I'll open a bar called Antarctica and dress my waiters up as penguins.