fossildoc
11-07-2007, 06:04 PM
It's no secret that Arubans are not coffee drinkers. Nothing wrong with that; every country has its own cuisine, and coffee is simply not part of Aruba's.
But Aruba's main source of income is the tourist trade, and the overwhelming majority of those tourists are from the United States, where people are big coffee drinkers. Is it unreasonable, then, to expect that restaurants which cater to tourists -- like those near the harbor where the school is located -- would try to learn the fine art of regular coffee brewing, American style?
If you go into an Aruban eatery near school, like Quiznos, Pizza Charlie's, or Dushi's, and ask for coffee, they go through a sort of ballet to make a custom-brewed concoction which fits into one of those little cups that looks like it came from a child's teacup set. I could pour the entire contents into my external auditory canal (that's medical mumbo-jumbo for my ear) without spilling a drop, and it tastes terrible, besides. So today, when my mouth was watering for a good old-fashioned submarine sandwich and big cup of coffee, I walked into Quiznos and -- after having glanced at the Nescafé espresso machine -- asked the cashier if they made American-style coffee. The sandwhich crew was petulantly motioning me to come to their station to place my order, but I brushed them off. The cashier gave me a polite 'no', and I put on the most indignant face I could without being offensive and left, exercising the only power a consumer can exert against a merchant: denying them profit.
There is one chain of stores in which an American-style cup of coffee can be bought: Dunkin' Donuts. This should come as no surprise, because it's an American company. Surely trainers must come here to instruct store managers on how to run the place. One of the busiest Dunkin' Donuts shops is in the tourist trap district down the street from the harbor, where people getting off the ships are plucked clean to the limits of their credit cards. Unfortunately, Dunkin' Donuts makes only one kind of sandwich -- an egg and cheese, optionally with ham, on a croissant. But how many lunches of egg and cheese, optionally with ham, on a croissant, can I eat in a row?
There was some hope when a cafeteria opened up inside a school building at the start of the semester. The place was operated as a concession and with no supervision whatever by school personnel. The manager simply didn't understand that the overwhelmingly American and Canadian student body wasn't interested in their starchy Aruban delicacies. The first time I asked for coffee, they gave me a tiny cup of lukewarm water which I saw them take from the tap, into which they dissolved a half-teaspoon of instant coffee. They started to add a teaspoon of powdered milk, but I stopped them in the nick of time, and bought a container of real milk, some of which I poured into the tiny cup. Then I made them microwave it until it boiled.
The manager vowed to provide real coffee. And so, the next day there appeared a 40-cup coffee maker, but without the coffee. They used it to boil water so they wouldn't have to microwave it. They still served the same instant coffee, but acquiesced on the milk, which they kept a container of in the cooler.
Mercifully, they shut down. The place was cleaned out as of a few days ago. Why? Hopefully due to my aggressive campaign to boycott the place after I and two other students got food poisoning from bread made without preservatives and kept unrefrigerated overnight. The Aruban custom is not to use preservatives; the bread tastes much better, but it is never stored overnight. The supermarkets are sold out of fresh bread early each evening.
With all of the stresses of med school weighing on students, and all of the daily incidents that befall us, you'd think the System would at least grant us the simple pleasure of a good cup of coffee. Is this some metaphysical existentialist torment designed to test our suitability to be physicians?
If you know of any place near school where I can sit down to a decent lunch and get a realistically-sized cup of freshly brewed coffee, please respond to this post. The first one to do so wins a prize: a free cup of coffee on me, at the suggested coffee emporium. But you must come up to me and announce yourself. Everyone knows who fossildoc is; if you don't, you're probably a pre-med, so ask one of the med students.
But Aruba's main source of income is the tourist trade, and the overwhelming majority of those tourists are from the United States, where people are big coffee drinkers. Is it unreasonable, then, to expect that restaurants which cater to tourists -- like those near the harbor where the school is located -- would try to learn the fine art of regular coffee brewing, American style?
If you go into an Aruban eatery near school, like Quiznos, Pizza Charlie's, or Dushi's, and ask for coffee, they go through a sort of ballet to make a custom-brewed concoction which fits into one of those little cups that looks like it came from a child's teacup set. I could pour the entire contents into my external auditory canal (that's medical mumbo-jumbo for my ear) without spilling a drop, and it tastes terrible, besides. So today, when my mouth was watering for a good old-fashioned submarine sandwich and big cup of coffee, I walked into Quiznos and -- after having glanced at the Nescafé espresso machine -- asked the cashier if they made American-style coffee. The sandwhich crew was petulantly motioning me to come to their station to place my order, but I brushed them off. The cashier gave me a polite 'no', and I put on the most indignant face I could without being offensive and left, exercising the only power a consumer can exert against a merchant: denying them profit.
There is one chain of stores in which an American-style cup of coffee can be bought: Dunkin' Donuts. This should come as no surprise, because it's an American company. Surely trainers must come here to instruct store managers on how to run the place. One of the busiest Dunkin' Donuts shops is in the tourist trap district down the street from the harbor, where people getting off the ships are plucked clean to the limits of their credit cards. Unfortunately, Dunkin' Donuts makes only one kind of sandwich -- an egg and cheese, optionally with ham, on a croissant. But how many lunches of egg and cheese, optionally with ham, on a croissant, can I eat in a row?
There was some hope when a cafeteria opened up inside a school building at the start of the semester. The place was operated as a concession and with no supervision whatever by school personnel. The manager simply didn't understand that the overwhelmingly American and Canadian student body wasn't interested in their starchy Aruban delicacies. The first time I asked for coffee, they gave me a tiny cup of lukewarm water which I saw them take from the tap, into which they dissolved a half-teaspoon of instant coffee. They started to add a teaspoon of powdered milk, but I stopped them in the nick of time, and bought a container of real milk, some of which I poured into the tiny cup. Then I made them microwave it until it boiled.
The manager vowed to provide real coffee. And so, the next day there appeared a 40-cup coffee maker, but without the coffee. They used it to boil water so they wouldn't have to microwave it. They still served the same instant coffee, but acquiesced on the milk, which they kept a container of in the cooler.
Mercifully, they shut down. The place was cleaned out as of a few days ago. Why? Hopefully due to my aggressive campaign to boycott the place after I and two other students got food poisoning from bread made without preservatives and kept unrefrigerated overnight. The Aruban custom is not to use preservatives; the bread tastes much better, but it is never stored overnight. The supermarkets are sold out of fresh bread early each evening.
With all of the stresses of med school weighing on students, and all of the daily incidents that befall us, you'd think the System would at least grant us the simple pleasure of a good cup of coffee. Is this some metaphysical existentialist torment designed to test our suitability to be physicians?
If you know of any place near school where I can sit down to a decent lunch and get a realistically-sized cup of freshly brewed coffee, please respond to this post. The first one to do so wins a prize: a free cup of coffee on me, at the suggested coffee emporium. But you must come up to me and announce yourself. Everyone knows who fossildoc is; if you don't, you're probably a pre-med, so ask one of the med students.