Free memories

I buy the Guardian today to give me something to read at lunch, because I don’t want to have to go back to the office and eat lunch at my desk. Special offer for a free Starbucks espresso drink inside. Seems they are appealing the ethical guardian readership with their new “our beans are responsibly grown and ethically traded” marketing nonsense. Typical Guardian reader probably wouldn’t be swayed. I, however, am not a typically ethical Guardian reader. I generally avoid Starbucks because their coffee isn’t that great, not because I have some moral beef with the company. But this is a freebie so I figure why the hell not take advantage? Maybe I am a cheap skate?

So I go in there after lunch and get a double shot mocha with whipped cream. I don’t think I have had a Starbucks mocha for at least 10 years! I don’t even realise this fact until I take a sip. The taste brings back a flood of memories. I am transported back to when I used to get one in the morning before work when I worked downtown San Francisco for gap.com. I remember the chill of those brisk wintry mornings and the rush and crush on the BART train and then the 3 block trek to the office, hoping I had enough time to snag a drink before I arrived at my desk ready to toil all day coding web pages selling jumpers and jackets for kids. The job was all right actually. There were lots of friends working there, and the work was a bit challenging as I was just a beginner on the web coding front. The atmosphere was a bit crap though, all of the Gap HQ people who worked in the building were all clones. They were a tall blonde army of women who were immaculately dressed in a completely dull way. The only interesting people where the online folks, but as they had run out of room in their section I was forced to sit amongst these accounting and merchandising un-fashionistas in heels and khakis.

Now I am 8 thousand miles and 8 time zones away from that place. And almost 1o years later in time, I forgot that it even existed. The Mocha brought it all back. I think the memory burst was far more beneficial than the caffeine/sugar rush, because now I am finished with it I have a rather dull headache from the sugar. I remember why I stopped drinking this shit. Maybe in another 10 years I will have another. It just reminded me that, to quote a cigarette advertising campaign :“hey, you’ve come a long way baby!”