Coffee shop drama

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Wed, 09/26/2007 3:24 PM

Tantri Yuliandini, Contributor, Jakarta

One evening a woman enters a popular coffee house, orders a Macchiato, and then settles herself on one of the cafe's sofas. Before her coffee arrives, she takes out her mobile phone and proceeds to call up some friends who later join her at the table. Pretty soon, with steaming mugs on hand, the friends strike up a lively conversation.

Across from the women, a man is sitting with his laptop propped up, earphones blaring out music to shut out the bright laughter from the next table, a coffee on the side. The man is making use of the cafe's wireless Internet connection to catch up on email left over from the office.

These two examples are common sights in Jakarta's chic coffee shops, or cafes. Gone are the days when socializing meant dropping by someone's home for a chat. These days -- when ""going to a friend's house"" could mean more than an hour's drive in Jakarta's notorious traffic -- it's quite understandable why Jakartans prefer to shift their meeting points to the numerous shopping centers dotted across the city.

In the air-conditioned comfort of these malls, cafes have become the modern Jakartan's ""living room"" for entertaining guests.

There used to be a time when a cup of coffee simply meant ground coffee beans served with scalding hot water, locally called kopi tubruk. In today's modern coffeehouse you can order from a range of espressos, lattes, cappucinos, moccacinos, macchiatos, served hot, cold or iced, with the choice of regular or decaf (decaffeinated), sample different roasts, and even beans from different countries and continents.

And not only coffee, understanding that not everybody likes or can drink coffee, the modern cafe also serves tea, sometimes an astonishingly wide range of designer teas.

Your coffee not only goes with pisang goreng (banana fritters) -- the staple fare of the street-side warung kopi (coffee stall) -- but can be served with anything from sandwiches and cakes to rice and pasta.

Not only is the cafe changing the way we socialize with friends, it is also redefining business lunches, and even the workplace. Many business deals are now being made over a coffee shop table. In the comfortable, non-hostile environment of the retro-style lounges, instead of the formal meeting room of a high-rise office.

There is a lot of human drama being played out inside the modern cafe. There, people come together to chat, date, go steady, break up. People work, play, unwind, they read newspapers, wait for friends, wait for the 3-in-1 to end. These days, cafes are becoming a center for social activity. What's your favorite cafe?

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