June 30, 2008

• Coffeehouse Weirdos (and extra post about Obama below).

   

  After 4 years of med school, 3 years of residency and 2 years of fellowship it has all come to an end.  Today is the last day of fellowship!  Woop-Woop!  Okay, now on to the post...

   

  In preparation for my final research presentation I spent countless hours at coffee shops sifting through journal articles, data…AND all the weird people that came through.  After all the time I spent there I came to the conclusion that most frequent customers of coffee houses who are not normal fall into one of 5 categories.

   

  The Baristaphile

  I never knew whether I should regard the Baristaphile with pity or irritancy, but I have to admit that it’s quite amusing listening to him trying to finagle a date from the workers.  Baristas, you see, are paid to smile, flatter and converse with you, which for most men = “she likes me, she really really likes me!”  As a result you have men all over the country afflicted with a penchant for flirting with baristas.  (One loser even took a barista’s photo off of the employee wall and took it home, the super freak!)  It’s a win-win situation for a single man.  With the captive audience it’s kind of like speed dating, except there’s no time limit and she’s forced to listen to you blabber on and on and in the end you’re buying a drink for yourself, and not her.  (Genius!)  Just be careful, young hustla, since the place is napalmed with the smell of all things coffee, you have no idea whether the wahine on the other side of the counter has breath that smells like rotten gouda cheese and you won’t find out until you lean in for the win and pass out from the noxious fumes emanating from her mouth.  As Plato once said, if her breath is so stink that you can see the words coming out of her mouth, it’s time to make like a tree and leave. 

   

  The Cheapskate

  Similar to the loser in the booth next to you at Red Lobster who instead of paying 99 cents for lemonade tries to make it himself by mixing lemons and sugar packets in his water, the Cheapskate in the coffee shop tries various tricks to get more out of his dollar dollar bills y’all:

  • Orders a small coffee in a large cup in the hopes of getting extra
  • Brings in his own bagel, asks the barista to toast it and then pays 25 cents for a single serving of cream cheese
  • Orders a shot of espresso in a medium cup and asks to top it off with hot water or orders coffee topped off with hot milk, thereby avoiding paying for a café americano or café misto.

  I guess the Cheapskate forgot that buying a drink at a coffee house—whether at Starbucks, Peet’s Coffee or The Coffee Bean—is a luxury and not a basic need.  It’s like going to Chinatown and buying a pair of Kalvin Clein jeans or a Caoch bag.  If you’re too cheap to buy the real thing, don’t try to be a faker!

   

  The Eye of Sauron

  Nothing weirds me out more than those people who purchase a drink and sit there with their pedophile sunglasses on, doing nothing but staring out into space for 60 minutes.  It gives me the heebie-jeebies.  What are they thinking about?  Reaganomics?  The identity of the 5^th and final Cylon?  Roseanne Barr in a speedo?

   

  The JABBER-wockeez

  I don’t know whether it is out of loneliness or a pathological need to use their mandibles, but the JABBER-wockeez just won’t stop jabbering on and on with random victims sitting next to them.  Once he made eye contact with me and asked, “excuse me, are you Oriental?” I knew that I was in trouble.  Despite seeing that I had a stack of journal articles and was furiously typing on my laptop, he persisted in talking to me for 15 minutes.  Being the passive-aggressive person that I am, instead of ending the conversation I began asking him how he liked growing up in the 51^st state, since Canada isn’t a real country.  He left shortly after that which was good for him, because The Wife™ was about to give him the HAI-YAH karate chop to the frontal lobe.

   

  The Verizon Tireless

  One cousin removed from the JABBER-wockeez, the Verizon Tireless person seems to forget that brevity is the soul of wit and that the person s/he’s talking to is not hard of hearing.  I know that talking on the phone is a ploy that wahines do when alone at a bar to look busy instead of lonely, but yapping loudly and incessantly on your cell phone in a coffee shop is just plain rude and makes me want to get all Cobra Kai up in here and sweep the leg. 

  

  Use your cell phone at Starbucks and we'll put you in a body bag, yeeeeaaaahhhh!

   

  So if any of you fit into the above categories and catch me in a coffee shop, please do America a favor and don’t sit next to me so I can do my work.  In return I’ll buy you a small coffee in a large cup topped off with hot milk.

   

  Have a great weeeeeeeeeek!

  ------

  Bonus post about Obama:

  Obama and the Race Game.

   

  Some of you may have seen the post I briefly had up about Barack Obama’s appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel Show where he basically said that people of Asian descent are short.  I was upset when I wrote that post, so I took it down and am writing about it again now that I have had time to chill and think about it.

   

  I had written that Obama was in err to propagate a racial stereotype about the height of Asian Americans, to which some people replied, “well, Asians are short.”  I’m sure that you could produce some statistics that the average Asian American is shorter than the average white American, but does that justify what he said?  Consider this…  There are statistics out there showing that African Americans score lower on IQ tests than their white counterparts.  If John McCain was questioned about being a fighter pilot and responded with, “well, I was competing against African Americans who statistically have lower IQs, so it was easier to beat them out to become a fighter pilot,” would everyone reply to that with, “That’s RACIST!” or “He’s right, African Americans do have lower IQs.”  When the Bell Curve was published, it was immediately received with accusations of racism, but if someone makes a crack about Asian Americans being short, everyone simply nods and accepts it as fact.

   

  I’m Asian American and from Hawaii (the population Obama was referring to) and I’m 6’1”.  I have patients from all walks of life of all colors, and I can assure you that the overwhelming majority of my patients are shorter than me, be they white, black, yellow or brown. 

   

  “But Franksabunch™,” you say, “you’re just an exception to the rule because you’re tall.”  Well, how would African Americans feel if John McCain said that Barack Obama managed to graduate from an Ivy League law school because he was an exception to the rule because he’s an intelligent black man?  (For those of you who are going to argue that IQ is not the same as a physical trait, do you think it would be any less offensive to African Americans for someone to go on David Letterman and make comments about an inordinate amount of African Americans having large noses or nappy hair like Don Imus?)

   

  I find it ironic that someone who has run his whole campaign as if race shouldn’t matter and severed ties with the pastor who officiated his wedding and baptized his children because of racist comments he made would go on a a national television program and propagate a stereotype about another minority group.

   

  I find it sad that he said this despite the huge support he has had from the people of Hawaii (I think he had 75% of the vote) and from certain prominent, nationally known Asian Americans.

   

  I find it disappointing that the media and everyone else are so enamored of him that they are essentially giving him a free pass over this.

   

  Yes, Barack Obama has Asian American (and Asian Canadian) members in his family.  But that excuse is the same as someone saying, “I’m not racist, I have friends who are Latino,” while tagging “Mexicans are fat” at a wall outside of Taco Bell. 

   

  Yes, John McCain used the word “gook” years ago when referring to the Vietnamese people who imprisoned and tortured him.  It took a while, but he eventually apologized and to my knowledge hasn’t used the racist epithet again since.  Obama made his “Asians are short” comment in the middle of a presidential campaign and has yet to apologize for it (as far as I know).  This was not a comment made by someone drinking at a bar or some disgruntled shopper at Target, it was made by a man who may very well be the next president of the United States.  Ask yourselves, is it okay for the president of the United States to affirm a negative stereotype about a minority group?

   

  I don’t necessarily feel that people should not vote for Obama simply because he made that remark on the Jimmy Kimmel Show.  However, Asian America should still hold him accountable for it and ask for an apology, otherwise we are doing nothing but laying down and accepting the fact that at least in one respect Obama’s campaign for “change” is not change at all, but rather a preservation of the racial status quo where yellow is the lowest color on the rainbow.

   

  My children deserve a future better than that...and so do yours.

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  Edit: I actually think that being labeled "short" is a negative thing, statistic or not.  I can't remember the last time someone called someone "midget" or "Frodo Baggins" to compliment them.  I am also very well aware that there are multiple factors that influence the results of IQ testing besides race (i.e. socioeconomics, etc.) just as with height.  My dad was 5'4" and grew up in rural Taiwan eating fish and noodles while I grew up in America eating chicken katsu plate lunches and Quarter Pounders.

   

  Edit #2: These xanga popups are killing me. ("Would you like to subscribe or get email updates?")  Anyone know how to turn them off?  I don't think xanga will stop those popups until we all agree to get microchips implanted in our brains notifying us of subscription updates.  @_@

  • 11:07 am
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